Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (7 page)

She stood then had the slip drive mostly out of her pocket when another shout seemed to echo much closer. Almost outside. Her fingers stopped between denim and denim, the drive still hidden.

“Could you get something to them?” Piper asked, her voice now rushed. “Could you get something to Benjamin for me, if you had to?”

An ugly noise chattered from beyond the front porch. A vast, deep sucking sound, slightly guttural, chattering, like a demon inhaling. It turned Piper’s blood and widened her companion’s eyes like saucers, instantly stealing his cool. It was a sound they’d both heard many times, when the ships had first established order on the ground. But she’d never heard a purr so close, or felt so sure she was the target.

“Yes,”
Terrence answered, nodding.

The front door swung inward. Locks didn’t slow them, and privacy didn’t matter. A blue glow illuminated the door’s bottom and bled into the gap along the floor. The tip of an appendage teased its horror, black skin crawling as if covered in a billion writhing insects. The deep, inhaling sound grew louder as the glowing gap at the small home’s entrance yawned from an inch to two, then six.

“Go!”
Terrence hissed, shoving a small card into her hand. Then, his brown eyes steeled but terrified, he added in a harsh whisper, “I can make it believe me.”

Piper knew that wasn’t true, but she sprinted for the back door anyway, ignoring the rattle of death growing louder behind her.

C
HAPTER
8

Nathan Andreus stood on the widow’s walk atop his second commandeered house, sipping black tea, watching the gap amid the hills as the enormous mothership drifted between the peaks.

Feeling meditative, he wondered which ship he was seeing.

It wouldn’t be the Vail mothership. Nathan had never seen a capital mothership leave her post. According to his network — not the public Internet but the special one beneath that only trusted people like Nathan could access — those nine keystone motherships hadn’t moved since they’d made their first connections, dropped off their first contact teams, and reestablished themselves in the skies.

Nathan sipped his tea, watching the thing, knowing its identity didn’t matter at all. But a curious man wondered for spectacle’s sake. He’d been inquisitive when average — and was still curious as a baron today.

It might be one of the outpost motherships. They were nomadic, circulating among a handful of cities rather than remaining tethered to one. Nathan hadn’t worked out their patterns — even the privileged network was clearly censored — but he had his guesses. Aliens behaved like territorial animals — wolves, say, which staked out an area and patrolled it in a circuit. But that territorial thinking was meshed with something higher, which coordinated the ships’ efforts on a global scale. The motherships assigned to the larger, non-capital cities (New York, Chicago, LA, Dallas) seemed to stay put like those above the capitals. As a whole, the system of motherships and shuttles behaved more like a colony of ants than wolves. They surely communicated ship to ship, but there was more at work than sci-fi phone calls. Ants worked like parts of a single organism, aware of a group goal that transcended the individual. Those goals served a purpose that no single ant could know or understand. The Astrals, who sometimes seemed to share a common mind, were like that.

“Mr. Andreus?”

He turned. Coffey was behind him. She hadn’t always been Nathan’s lieutenant and number two, but Coffey was loyal, greedy, and more afraid of her boss than the alien occupiers. As it should be. The outlands were lawless, and if shuttles flew by and saw you out there, you were likely to be vaporized without ceremony or cause. And because of that, there were only two truly safe places. The first was within an alien colony, sucking alien cock and swallowing your pride as a human. The second was in organizations like Nathan’s — those groups tapped by the overlords as being worthy of leaving alone. The Andreus Republic and similar groups didn’t have to suck alien dick. Coffey was second in command at the best place to be during an alien apocalypse — comfortable, safe, and clinging to dignity, so long as you stayed in line. Coffey
should
be respectful, and fear was adjacent to respect.

“I keep telling you, call me Nathan.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Andreus.” She stammered. “
Nathan
. I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“Well, that’s not a problem,” Nathan said, turning but not coming closer. “Really, the only thing worse than disturbing me would be disturbing me
for no reason
and then
not getting to the fucking point.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I’m sorry. There’s — ”

“Jeanine?” Nathan said.

“Yes?”

“I’d like you to breathe.”

“Of course.”

“You like it here, don’t you?”

“Yes. Of course.
Hail Andreus!”

Nathan rolled his eyes. “Jeanine?”

“Yes?”

“I know you’re trying to be loyal. But don’t ever do that shit again. Don’t ever tell me ‘Hail Andreus.’ I don’t like it. They can salute out there, fine; that crap helps them belong and gives them a sense of unity. But I don’t want to be a god. I’m not Meyer Dempsey or Zhuo Feng Huang.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“But you like it, I mean. Being here. Hail or no hail.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you like being near the top. Being my second in command.”

“Yes.”

“My most trusted compadre.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Number two. My right hand. The second most important person around here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I need you to get two things through your head.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t want a toady in your position. I moved you up because you were an insubordinate bitch who always did what she thought was smartest even if it wasn’t what her commander wanted. I have plenty of toadies. It’s been a week, and you keep calling me sir. You’re practically bowing. I want you to respect me and listen, but if you don’t stand up and be the person I promoted, you’re out. We’ll use you for mission fodder, and I’ll bring in someone with some balls, no offense to your literal lack thereof. Do you understand me?”

Coffey stood taller. Her eyes found some of the disobedient sheen he’d first seen in her. You didn’t kill your way to the top in the Andreus Republic, but Coffey had killed enough people either outside the Republic or below her in rank to have earned some self-respect.

“And I hate pleasantries,” Nathan added. “You used to understand that.”

“I still do, s — Nathan.”

“Then let’s start over.” He pointed both index fingers at her, smiling something that probably looked more sinister than friendly. He’d once smiled for a living, back when he’d run a business instead of an army — but the world had changed despite so many principles staying the same.

“Go.”

“There’s someone to see you.” She hung on that for a half second then pushed on. “His name is Cameron Bannister.”

“I don’t know any Cameron Bannister.”

“He asked for you specifically. And he came here — to the house, not to HQ.”

“What, right here?”

“To the front gate.”

“Nobody knows this is where I live.” Nathan felt his eyes inadvertently narrow. “Nobody outside the High Guard anyway.”

Coffey should have flinched. It was a direct accusation of the elite few who guarded the home. Those people were supposed to be undyingly loyal. There was no reason for them to betray Nathan Andreus. Doing so threatened the power structure they were trying to reach the top of. Nathan, who’d earned one of his college degrees in psychology, knew mutinies in an organization like his were almost impossible. Mutineers were killed outright by those wanting to please the boss, eager for a safer way to grab the brass ring. You didn’t mutiny to get ahead. You curried favor like a kid seeking a stern parent’s approval.

But Coffey didn’t flinch. Now that Nathan had reminded her why she was in her current position, she seemed to have reverted to the person he’d known her to be. If she’d done nothing wrong, she wouldn’t back down. She’d probably stand tall and bluff even if she had.

“He knew on his own.”

Nathan looked toward the hills, toward the place where the mothership had been a moment ago. He could see the perimeter gate, guards circling the house. Once, he’d had none of this.

“What does he want?”

“He claims to have important information about the Astrals’ plans.”

“Everyone claims that.”

“He told me to give you this. Said you’d understand.”

Coffey held out her hand. Nathan extended his. She dropped something cool into his palm. He unfolded his hand to a thin silver chain, a sort of charm hanging from its front. Two delicate silver lines dangled from beside the charm, which looked like a coin engraved with a crescent moon. On the back, barely readable, was an inscription. One he knew well.

Nathan pushed down a surge of emotion. In the moment, with Coffey still watching, he couldn’t place that emotion. He might have been angry. He might have been wistful. He might have been (if he didn’t cling to rationality and sense) about to shove Coffey from the widow’s walk to her death.

He slid the sliver necklace into his pocket, ran a hand over his shaved head, and looked at the hilly horizon for another few seconds.

“Have him wait for me in the front study,” he said.

Coffey nodded and turned. When she was gone, Nathan took another few deep breaths, trying to center himself as if he’d never been interrupted. The flash of anger slunk back, awaiting judgment. His fingers trailed idly across the fabric of his pocket. This could mean anything. It could be nothing — although God help this Cameron Bannister if it didn’t.

He took the steps slowly, making his way down to the third floor then to the second. He detoured to the washroom off the hallway and splashed his face with cold water.

Nathan toweled off and stared at the reflection feared by thousands of people inside the Republic’s ranks. Tens of thousands more feared it on the streets and in the outlands sprawled across three states. But it hadn’t always been that way.

He re-hung the towel and rounded the central hallway to the staircase on his way to the ground floor. Several underlings milled in the corridors, but for the most part this was a house, and soldiers didn’t patrol homes. HQ was for HQ business. This was Nathan's place first, and a quiet spot for high command meetings second. Whenever he had to do business where he slept, Nathan hated it. Having to meet someone bringing this particular nugget of possible news to the house where he’d always planned to make a proper home? Where he’d carefully chosen to raid a place with such a fine master bedroom and separate vanities in the bath? That was repugnant.

Coffey and a Republic soldier stood outside the front study. The place was arranged in an odd position, Nathan always thought. It was at the home’s front, beside the door, walled mostly in glass. It had always seemed mostly soundproof, and Nathan had never minded everyone seeing what he was up to. It was instructional for the others. A way of showing how powers lay in the Republic — with no additional words.

Inside the room, sitting with his back to the door, was a kid with a mop of messy brown hair. Thick as a twig, with a lean, conniving look — the kind of build that made Nathan think of an agile animal, faster and smarter than it looked.

Coffey nodded to the soldier. He opened the door.

Nathan stepped inside then stood above the kid, who was seated in one of the soft red, distressed leather chairs. Meeting his visitor’s patient gaze, Nathan realized the man was older than he’d seemed from the back and side: midtwenties at least, maybe upper twenties or thirty. But he’d be able to pass for his late teens, Nathan thought, if he put on a baseball cap and let some of the experience leave his eyes.

The kid’s look was placid, not nearly as afraid as most of Nathan’s visitors. As he’d felt earlier with Coffey, Nathan wasn’t sure if he admired the kid’s unwillingness to cower and snivel before the great Nathan Andreus, or angered.

A lot depended on his answer to Nathan’s first question.

“Where are they?” His own bluntness surprised him.

Cameron Bannister stood and — unbelievably — offered his hand to shake.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, “but seeing as that bit of trivia might be the only thing keeping me alive, there’s something I’d like to discuss first.”

C
HAPTER
9

Cameron shook Nathan Andreus’s hand, noting the hard calluses on his palm. Andreus wasn’t a soft despot. Two and a half years of living at the top of a seized kingship was long enough for a man’s hands to smooth with disuse, but this tyrant clearly still worked for what he had. He still built. Still walked the trenches. Still did, Cameron was sure, many other unthinkable things face-to-face without flinching.

He let Cameron reclaim his seat before sitting in the largest chair, his posture subtly solid and unmoving. Andreus’s bald head gleamed above his neatly trimmed goatee. Forty odd years had added a scatter of salt to the brown. If what Benjamin had dug up on Andreus were true, he’d run a successful software business before Astral Day, helping to pioneer many of the technologies people like Charlie and Terrence had twisted to form their subversive network after the fall. It meant that Andreus held a thug’s facade in front of his brilliance. It told Cameron that Andreus had once been rather ordinary, perhaps unremarkable.