Space Above and Beyond - #1 The Aliens Approach - Easton Royce Read online

  All photography © 1996 by Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. Photo credits: Paul Broben and Jason Boland.

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  Space: Above and Beyond™ © 1996 by Twentieth Century Fox Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information please address HarperCollins Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

  prologue

  The brilliantly colored rings circling the planet Vesta were far more impressive than the pale rings of Saturn. They swept across the sky at a wild angle, shimmering in the setting sun like a permanent rainbow.

  Everything about Vesta was spectacular, from its jagged ice blue moon to its thick jungle brush, greener and denser than any jungle left on Earth.

  Millions of people had wanted to be Vesta colonists. Tens of thousands had volunteered. But only two hundred and fifty were chosen for this first mission to settle the stars.

  Now, sixteen light-years from Earth, the chosen few stood hand in hand on the planet's surface. Reveling in this strange violet twilight, the colonists prepared to dedicate their colony and claim Vesta in the name of Earth.

  Colonial Governor Borman had been a hard taskmaster back on Earth, drilling each of the would-be colonists in their tasks and procedures. He had made sure that everyone was perfectly trained for this mission—flawlessly ready. But now, as he stood there in the center of the circle, he didn't seem cold and larger than life anymore. He seemed overwhelmed by emotion, just like the rest of them.

  As Governor Borman spoke, his voice boomed through the dense, oxygen-rich air. "After a hundred fifty years of calling out, the universe has answered us with tranquil silence, assuring us that humanity alone reaches for the stars." He looked at the collection of joyous faces around him and smiled.

  "The silence of the universe is an invitation for us to reach out as far as we dare imagine, and populate every livable star system that we can find."

  Around him the colonists tightened their clasped hands, moved by the moment. They were all still wearing their flight coveralls, having not had the time to change since their arrival earlier that day. The rust-colored coveralls displayed the emblem of the Earth over their hearts—an emblem that suddenly seemed more and more important to them as they stood beneath the setting Vestal sun.

  "We are a gift to the universe," proclaimed the fledgling colony's governor. "And although the light from our new sun will not reach Earth for sixteen years, we must not grieve for our old lives, but rather rejoice in our future." He turned, catching as many faces as he could.

  "There are those back home who say we're here only as a status symbol," he said. "Others call us fortune hunters or say we're running away. But I know we're here because of faith. A faith in each other and in a better world."

  Many of the colonists nodded proudly. Yes, this would be a better world, a world without the pressures and politics of Earth, a world without poverty. A world where there were still things left to discover. A place of peace.

  Two colonists had affixed the flag of Earth to a thing four-foot flagpole. Now they entered the circle and handed the flagpole to Borman.

  ''The rocket fuel that brought us here can be burned away," continued Borman. "But the belief in ourselves, in one another, and in the future can never be."

  Barely able to control his own emotions, Borman held the flagpole high, proclaiming the words that he must have planned from the moment he was chosen for the mission.

  "As of today, two suns shine over the human race. Tomorrow may there be a hundred." He brought his hands down and jammed the flagpole into the soft, rich soil.

  Thunderous applause rose above the thick Vestal jungle. The joyful noise spread toward the purple-tinged horizon and the shimmering planetary rings beyond.

  The sounds of the Vestal night were somewhat like those on Earth, yet at the same time entirely different. There were no crickets, but there was the eerie, eccentric whirrr of some insect no one had yet seen. There were no coyotes howling to the ice blue moon that hung heavily in the sky, but some faraway animal did whistle to the night with a strange, singsong melody.

  Some colonists were unsettled by the noise, but for the most part they were comforted. The scout ships had found few dangers on the planet. No large predators, and no bacteria that human antibodies couldn't handle. With nothing to fear in paradise, most of the colonists had little problem falling asleep. After all, it had been an exhausting day for them.

  They had unloaded cargo from most of the ship and had erected the small prefab huts that they would live in until they had a chance to build more permanent structures. The high level of oxygen in the atmosphere had kept them giddy and wakeful for a while, but their own tired bodies couldn't fight off sleep.

  No one in hut number five was awake when the clock struck fifteen—the new hour for two A.M. on this strange and wonderful world. Had any of the colonists been awake, they might have seen the dark figure standing silhouetted against the cold moonlight in the doorway. They might have seen it slowly making its way down the narrow aisle between their cots, its breath so hot it steamed in the thick Vestal air. The dark, powerful form studied the sleeping humans before stalking out and disappearing in the rustling leaves of the forest.

  Five minutes later, three dots appeared in the sky. Three tiny slits of light, moving in formation, growing larger in size as they approached the unsuspecting Vesta colony...

  But even before the engines of those spacecraft could be heard, ground forces were in place. The sound of approaching footsteps startled some of the colonists in but number five, and they awoke. It must he one of the night guards, they assumed drowsily. They're checking to make sure everything's secure.

  They had no way of knowing that the colonists chosen for the first night's watch were already dead.

  The footsteps stopped for a brief instant.

  BOOM! An explosion shook the corrugated steel frame of the hut, awakening everyone in the colony. The steel door of the hut blew off its hinges and slammed to the ground. A creature, tall and angular, covered in black armor, stood in the doorway.

  The colonists barely had a chance to scream before the Alien raised its weapon and shot a stream of fire that burned through everyone and everything in its path. Suddenly the strange, unearthly sounds of the Vestal night were replaced by the all-too-earthly sound of human screams and wails of agony. The invaders blasted their way into all fifteen huts, setting them aflame in less than a Vestal minute. Bursting from the burning huts, the colonists fled in all directions. But they were running from an enemy they knew nothing about and could barely see in the dark—and they had nowhere to run. If sixteen light-years had seemed like a long way from Earth before, it felt like a whole universe away now.

  Up above the carnage, the three warplanes were still flying in formation. Engines screaming, they smashed through the thin blue cloud cover, coming in low over the colony for a strafing run.

  They blasted anything and everything that moved with pinpoint accuracy. The warplanes were like nothing anyone had ever seen. The black triwinged ships flew faster than any man-made fighter and seemed almost like living beasts breathing fire. It took them only two passes to set the entire colony aflame.

  A handful of colonists ran to the radio to transmit a call for help. Before they could even begin, one of the Alien troopers aimed his weapon at the communications device and reduced it to a useless, melted lump.

  A
s the horrified survivors watched, the huge satellite dish that was their last connection to Earth became the next target of the three fighter ships above. Spinning through the swirling smoke and flames, each ship fired a single blast. The dish went up in a ball of flame, leaving only tiny chunks of singed metal where it had stood.

  But the intruders were not done yet. Next, they took aim at the great colony transport ship. The mighty hull of the Giant Star vessel had survived the violent, wrenching forces of the trans-Vestal wormhole on its trip from Earth. But after three combined blasts from the screeching warplanes, the once-grand vessel disintegrated into a smoldering heap.

  In the center of what was once the Vesta colony, Governor Borman screamed frantic orders, trying to group the few remaining colonists into battle against this unknown enemy. But it was too late. With a panther-like precision, one of the Alien shock troopers mercilessly turned its weapon on the governor, cutting him down. Then, without a second thought, the creature took aim at the flapping flag of Earth—the flag that Borman had proudly raised just a few short hours before. With one blast, the flag burned brightly in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Vesta. Its tattered embers drifted into a night sky filled with the harsh, unfeeling light of the ice moon.

  chapter 1

  Ninety-six trillion miles from the doomed Vesta colony, on a blue planet called Earth, three humans were preparing to change the course of the human race—only they didn't know it yet...

  The first hid, knees to chest, cramped in a storage crate aboard a forty-six-story interstellar craft, counting down the final seconds to launch. His name was Nathan West, and the plastic crate he sat in had, until a short time earlier, contained hydroponic supplies.

  As far as Nathan, or anyone else on Earth knew, the Vesta mission had been an unparalleled success. Communication had been temporarily lost, but that was just a small glitch.

  Now, the second interstellar colony was to be set up in the Tellus system. The new planet boasted eight moons and a waterfall six times as wide as Niagara—or so the early scouts had reported.

  All systems were go aboard the Tellus interstellar transport. The entire world was watching the proceedings with breathless anticipation. Watching, especially, the two hundred and fifty colonists—just like the Vesta mission on board, strapped into their padded seats, knuckles white as they listened to the final countdown.

  Except there weren't two hundred and fifty colonists on the ship. Nathan West was the two hundred and fifty-first person on board. And that was his problem—the biggest problem he had had to face since signing up for the colonization project.

  It's amazing how quickly a man can go from being a national hero to desperate stowaway. For Nathan, it happened faster than a ship could pass through a wormhole.

  Nathan had been the jewel of the colonial program. Smart, well-liked, a quick learner, he was just the sort of young recruit the colonies were looking for.

  He had originally been assigned to the Vesta colony, but he'd turned it down so that he could be with his girlfriend, Kylen, on the Tellus trip.

  Nathan had been in love with Kylen Celina for as long as he could remember. They were a rare and perfect pair in a world where few things seemed to last anymore. They had applied for the colonization program on a whim—and when they both made the list it proved something to them—something that they had suspected for a long time: they were destined to be together forever.

  But that was a long time ago. Those memories were marred by a more recent incident. Nathan could still hear the awful words that Overmeyer, the soon-to-be governor of Tellus, had spoken just the day before:

  "You and Kylen fought for the rights of the In-Vitros," Overmeyer had said, his voice filled with accusation. "And now, thanks to you, we're being forced to take ten of them to Tellus. We'll have to leave ten of our original crew behind."

  But that wasn't the worst of it. One of them—either Nathan or Kylen—would have to stay behind. Only one of them could make the trip.

  They had sworn they would live their lives together, and now they would be separated by hundreds of trillions of miles.

  No! No matter what Overmeyer said, whatever the risk, Nathan could never allow that to happen. And so, they had devised a plan. While Kylen took her place among the colonists at T-minus one hour, Nathan found his way into the cargo bay. He could only pray that the tightly packed, pressurized hold would have enough oxygen to last him for the trip to Tellus.

  He had no other choice. His life wouldn't be worth living without Kylen. He knew that. Overmeyer had offered him a position in the Marine Corps Space Cavalry, and there was a slight chance that the Marines would eventually join the colonists. But Nathan needed more than a slight chance. He needed to be on this ship with Kylen, no matter what it took. No matter how many rules he had to break.

  Little did he know as he sat there, crammed into his hiding place, that the countdown had stopped. When the ship's computers had detected almost two hundred pounds of extra weight, the launch was halted. Before Nathan suspected that anything was wrong, security forces were already running down the gantry catwalk with life-sign sensors, heading right for Nathan's hiding place.

  He heard them climb down into the hold, but it was too late to escape. They ripped open the face of his small storage box and jerked him out of the cargo hold. It didn't matter how well-liked he had been before. Now he was a stowaway. A criminal. They treated him with cruel disdain.

  As they hauled him past the colonists—those lucky two hundred and fifty, still strapped in their chairs—Nathan caught sight of Kylen. When she saw him, she wrestled herself out of her safety harness and tried to run to him. But she was held back by security guards.

  "Nathan!" she cried. She reached for him, but the security officers hustled Nathan past before she could get close.

  He pulled an arm free from the heavy hands holding him, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a piece of paper. It was a letter folded small enough to fit in his palm. He tossed it to Kylen.

  "I'll find you," Nathan screamed, struggling against the guards. "I will find you!"

  The sight of Kylen's tears were almost too much for him to stand, but he could not look away from her. She reached around her neck and yanked off the phototag she wore there. Nathan dug in his heels against the airlock threshold.

  "Nathan!" she cried again. "I believe in you." She threw him the tag as they pulled him out of the ship.

  The heavy hatch came down between them, sealing the great ship closed with Kylen inside. For the first time, Nathan realized how desperately different his life would now be.

  They drove him to the perimeter gate of the launch complex and cast him out with nothing more than the pack he had arrived with on his first day. They left him there, alone, without so much as an apology for having destroyed his life so completely.

  As he stood there, Nathan felt something strange under his feet—a vibration that tore at his soul. Around him trees rattled, sending flocks of birds heading in terror for the skies.

  The launch. He could see it taking off in the distance, a plume of white smoke arcing across the sky. He watched until it disappeared into the heavens, taking Kylen as far away as two people have ever been...

  Yet even now, in his moment of defeat, another plan was emerging. They had offered him flight training with the Space Cavalry—and it was rumored that the cavalry might be sent for sentry missions to the colonies before the wormholes closed. It hadn't sounded like an option a few hours ago. But if that was the only way to get out there, then it was the path he had to choose.

  "I will he with you, Kylen," he whispered to himself. "Even if I have to tear a new hole in space myself, I'll find you."

  chapter 2

  Far away, in the City of Brotherly Love, Cooper Hawkes raced through a dark construction site, the object of old-fashioned hate. He was the second one born to save the world, although many would say he wasn't born at all, but rather hatched—from a tempered glass gestation tank.

&nb
sp; Cooper was an In-Vitro, a being created without the luxury of parents for the sole purpose of fighting in the Artificial Intelligence War. But, as everyone knows, the In-Vitro project was an unparalleled failure. The In-Vitros, who were bred for war, refused to fight. And when the AI Wars were finally won without their help twenty years ago, the In-Vitros became an underclass in every society, despised by the very people who brought them into the world.

  So it was no wonder that Cooper Hawkes spent much of his time running for his life.

  He had been hired on the construction crew of the hundred-and-forty-five-story Philadelphia Center just a few days before. He figured he might get a few weeks of work in before the crew suspected he was an In-Vitro and hurled him out into the gutter. No such luck. He had been there only three days before they found him out.

  He could hear the footsteps behind him as he ran. He was fast, but there were too many of them, coming from too many different directions. He leaped past the billboard showing the spectacular tower he had almost had a hand in creating. His shadow slid across the brightly lit billboard and back into the dark night.

  BANG! He landed hard on the tower's foundation—but the pain of the fall didn't stop him. He had always been tough. He used the pain to push himself forward, away from the bloodthirsty men chasing him.

  As he raced out of the construction site and into a dark alley, he slammed into a homeless man and his shopping cart, sending the cart flying.

  "What the..." the old man hollered. But Cooper had no time for an apology. And if he had, he wouldn't have apologized anyway. Remorse and compassion were not a part of his emotional vocabulary.

  His pursuers were closing in. Cooper crashed through a steel door—but he only found himself back in the construction site, where the polymeric graphite girders of the skeletal tower rose toward the moonless sky.

  The moment he crashed through the door he realized his mistake. He hadn't worked there long enough to know the terrain, the best paths of flight. But his pursuers had all been there for weeks. They knew every inch of the site. It would be only a matter of time before they found him.