Chapter Ten
Bruno surveyed his brothers and their paired-mates with trepidation. He’d gathered them in his living quarters, because he couldn’t bear to speak to them in front of a conference table, as if they were just another group of politicians. Isaac and Solomon leaned back against one of the windowsills, while Greyson stood with Lucy and Eva near the sofa. Saige and Amy sat together on the sofa, holding hands.
“Bruno, just spit it out. You know how uncomfortable it is for us to come to Manhattan,” Greyson said, finally. “Also, you look like death. Tell us.”
Bruno took a deep breath, knowing he couldn’t delay. Time was of the essence. “As we all have our gifts, I have a gift also. One you don’t know about.”
Isaac frowned. “You didn’t call us here to discuss a gift. That isn’t an emergency.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“We already know that you have more power than we do,” Greyson added, frowning. “You’ve never mentioned it, but it is obvious. You are older than the rest of us by twenty years. You helped raise us.”
Bruno grimaced, but didn’t deny Greyson’s words. “Yes. I have more power than you. Our father tinkered with my biology when I was born. After the difficulty of my early years, he realized that the additional personal energy was more a curse than a help.” He shook his head. “But that is not what I called you here to explain.”
“Now isn’t the time for old family stories,” Isaac said, running a hand over his face. “We’re exhausted.”
“I know, but you must hear this.” Bruno inhaled again, wondering how to explain. “Since childhood, I’ve had visions of the future. Sometimes it happened often, and sometimes I would go for years without seeing anything. These visions didn’t always occur, as the future fluctuates depending on the present.”
“Visions?” Eva whispered, looking at her husband worriedly. She glanced out the windows.
Greyson put an arm around her. “Let us hear what Bruno must say before we jump to conclusions.”
It is already the worst news you could imagine, my brother, Bruno thought, but did not say aloud.
“Why didn’t you tell us, Bruno?” Solomon asked, standing up from his slouch. “Did you think we wouldn’t believe you?” He shook his head. “We all have weird gifts. You should have told us.”
“I did not tell you because I didn’t want to burden you with my knowledge. You had enough problems of your own without my adding possible future disasters to them.” He pushed his fingers through his hair, wishing his damned headache would fade. It had been dogging him since Amy and he paired, and that worried him, almost as much as the vision of Earth in flames.
“What did you see that was so important you called us here?” Eva asked quietly. She glanced at her husband, and Greyson nodded to her. “It’s still very early, and you know we need rest in case the swarm overwhelms the shield net. We need to conserve our energy.”
Bruno closed his eyes and flames danced behind his eyelids. “Amy and I shared a vision early this morning, before the sun rose. It is the clearest of all of the many hundreds of visions I have had during my life.” He opened his eyes and pinned every last one of his brothers and sisters-in-law with his gaze. “The sensors failed because the swarm is much larger than we thought. Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, is no more. The Spiders destroyed it, and the flames left not even the smallest bacteriophage in its icy oceans alive. Our shield net will not survive this onslaught. Earth will go down in flames.”
Isaac stepped forward. “You said the visions don’t always come true.”
“This one will.” Bruno imagined all the years he thought he’d still have with his family, and then shoved his grief into a small corner of his mind, along with his terror. He couldn’t afford weakness, not now. “We will still fight, of course, but I see no way out of this.” He sat down near Amy, gratefully accepting her hand. She squeezed, hard, and he felt her fear. He didn’t have the energy to wince. He loved her, as he’d always loved her, even before he’d met her. And now they had no time for any kind of future. At least I no longer have to worry about losing my mind, he thought bitterly.
“How is this possible? We saw the swarm. We documented their numbers.” Isaac went to the pillar in the center of the room and pulled up his report. He started scrolling through the data.
Bruno watched. He’d already pored over the numbers, in excruciating detail. They were wrong. “The only thing I can posit is that the Spiders somehow spoofed the sensors.”
“Wait. How do you know that we are actually facing more numbers than what we anticipated? We have no hard data,” Solomon said, pacing. “We have only your vision as guidance.” He headed to the pillar, and pulled up diagnostic windows. Isaac made room for him, and together they began cross-referencing information.
“You are sure?” Greyson asked, sitting down on the sofa. He pulled Eva with him.
Bruno nodded, sensing his brother’s resignation. He had the feeling that Greyson had always known the planet might die like this.
“The Stronghold net is still unstable,” muttered Solomon, fingers flying over the pillar. A dozen windows rearranged themselves.
“Work around it,” Isaac replied, opening some windows and closing others. “It’s not like we have time to debug it, Solomon.”
“It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t be so unstable. It’s making it difficult to trust this data.” He turned to Bruno. “You’re positive that what you saw is real?” he demanded.
“This is the clearest vision I have ever experienced. It is not wrong.” Bruno’s heart hurt. “It will happen.”
“We can send up additional sensors,” Lucy said, joining her husband at the pillar. “That will give us hard data.”
“I’ve already done so,” Bruno said. That had been the first thing he and Amy had done once they’d been able to stagger out of bed. “They should be able to detect the swarm now.”
“Oh my God,” Lucy breathed, pointing.
Bruno didn’t have to look to know what she’d just discovered. The sensors he’d sent out, a mere twenty of them, had already begun sending back information.
“The swarm is nearly to our moon.” Lucy put a hand to her throat. “I don’t understand.”
“What exactly did you see in your vision?” Greyson growled, arm around his wife. Eva’s hand on his knee was white-knuckled.
Bruno felt their shock. He felt their horror. He felt all of it, and more, as Amy’s emotions threaded through his, amplifying their empathic gift. “Flames. Flames on the shield net. Flames as it failed. Skies on fire.” His throat closed up, preventing him from describing any more.
“That’s terrifying,” Saige said, hands twisted together. “Isn’t there something we can do?”
“We should notify the President,” Isaac said.
Bruno shook his head. “For what? Soldiers have no protection from this, and they can’t fight the Spiders. They don’t have the technology.”
“Maybe we should have focused more on integrating our technology into human defensive capabilities. It could’ve at least bought us some time,” Solomon mused.
“Hindsight does none of us any good,” Eva said quietly. “We will just have to deal with the swarm with the weapons we have.”
“Energy bombs,” Greyson said, frowning thoughtfully. “I can make them very quickly if I modify the grenades I’ve already manufactured. Isaac and Saige can deploy them just outside the shield net.” He shrugged, looking at each of them in turn. “It can’t hurt.”
“It’s worth a try,” Amy said, before Bruno could speak.
He looked at her. The warning in her gaze was enough to keep him from blasting Greyson’s idea. He didn’t want them wasting their energy on a plan that wouldn’t help. It might delay the swarm for a short time, but it wouldn’t save them in the end. There were too many of them for a few dozen bombs to eradicate.
“How many grenades do you have?” Isaac asked Greyson.
“Two dozen. I have another dozen partly assembled, “Greyson said, rubbing his chin. “It would not take much to complete them, if Eva and I have help.” Greyson nodded at his brothers.
“That’s decided then,” Lucy murmured, standing up.
“Bruno? You haven’t spoken. What are your thoughts?” Solomon walked over to the sofa. Lucy joined him, slipping under his arm. “It’s a good plan.”
Amy nudged Bruno with her elbow. He sensed her hope, even in the midst of the despair he couldn’t seem to suppress. “Very well,” he finally said, wishing he’d had more time with his family before sending them out to die.
****
Amy frowned as her best friend slid through the pillar with Isaac and the others. They were headed for Greyson’s Stronghold, where he could manufacture the physical components needed to complete the bombs. Solomon and Lucy could program the devices from there, and Isaac and Saige would deploy them with Greyson’s starship. The only ones who weren’t needed to create the energy weapons were her and Bruno.
“Maybe we should’ve gone with them. We could’ve spared some energy, at the very least,” she murmured, hands wrapped around herself. She felt cold, and sad, and scared.
“No.” Bruno ran a hand over his face. “Let them go.” He sounded tired. Distracted.
“Hey.” Sensing his weariness, she put her hands on his forearms. “We’re not dead yet.” She leaned into him, pushing down the fiery images that kept replaying in her brain. She would not give in. Not yet. Not until the very end.
“I know.” He smiled at her, but she could feel his pain. He looked away. “I wish I didn’t still have this damned headache.” Sliding out of her grasp, he rubbed his temples.
Amy put her hands on his forehead. “Let me help.” She stroked her fingers over his head, sending some of her energy into him. His frown eased slightly, but she could tell the pain hadn’t completely subsided. She tried again, until he pulled her hands down.
“Enough. I don’t want you exhausting yourself,” he said, kissing her lightly.
“You shouldn’t have a headache,” she replied, frustrated.
He sighed. “It is what it is.”
Amy shook her head and walked to the pillar. They’d left up the view screen that was monitoring the swarm’s progress. So far, the Spiders hadn’t detected the sensors they’d boosted into Earth’s Lagrangian points, hidden by the rocks stuck in the planet’s gravity well. She put a finger on the pillar. Energy tingled through her arm, but she didn’t know what to do with it.
“I never thought it would end like this,” Bruno said, joining her. He tapped a few commands, and the graphical representation of the swarm zoomed out, showing them the undulating mass of Spiders more clearly.
“No, I won’t accept that. It hasn’t ended.” Amy’s brain supplied her with an image of flames, again. Anger pricked at her, and she started pacing. She needed to do something, or she’d fly apart, and that wouldn’t help anyone. She ended up at the windows. Outside, the morning sun gleamed in a pretty, blue sky. Nothing looked like the planet was about to be invaded. “There has to be something we can do.” She’d never forget what it felt like to have her skin catch fire. She shuddered. “How long do we have?”
“Not long. Maybe an hour. Maybe two.” Bruno looked at her. “I cannot help but think I did something wrong.” He tapped the glass, then leaned his forehead on it. “All those innocent people…”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, pushing back against his dread. “Come on. We can at least monitor the swarm.” She dragged him back to the pillar. There was no way she was going down without a fight. “Why isn’t the camouflage shield confusing them? I thought that’s what it was for?”
Bruno opened a new viewer screen and scrolled through another list of numbers. “There are too many Spiders. The swarm is like a herd of wildebeests that needs to cross a river. The ones in front don’t want to go forward, because they are afraid of drowning, but the sheer mass of the herd behind them pushes them in. The ones in the back don’t even know there is water ahead. They just move with the herd.”
“So, Earth is like a river?” Amy didn’t quite follow.
Bruno nodded. “A lot of the Spiders will die, but there are so many more behind them that it does not matter. The swarm is already moving.”
“Do they even know that Earth is here? Or are they just moving instinctively?” Amy asked.
“I believe it’s mostly instinct. We have managed to repel small swarms with the camouflage shield. The Spiders scatter, or die of starvation. The ones who get through, we kill with our personal energy. And they are not sentient, so they don’t send data about Earth back to the originating swarm.” He pulled up more data. “See? This is the record of all the swarms we have pushed away.”
“That’s a lot.” Amy could hardly believe it. Without the Sentries, Earth would have been obliterated at least fifty times already. “These are substantially smaller than this swarm.”
“Yes. This is an originating swarm. There may be more, larger swarms out in the universe, but we simply do not know. We have been monitoring this one for many years.” Bruno created a visual comparison. “See? The shape of this swarm is reminiscent of the last largest one over three hundred years ago.” He traced a finger along the shape. “My father dealt with that one, with the help of the Others. They are the aliens who modified our DNA, but they’re extinct, now. The last surviving Other died not too long ago.”
“I remember. Saige explained what happened, how the rogue Other had been hiding for decades, and then tried to kill her because of her supposedly mutant genes.” Amy didn’t like to think of her best friend fighting off a completely different alien species. “Are we sure they’re all gone? Maybe we can appeal to them for help?”
“They are extinct. I don’t know how or why one particular Other survived all this time on Earth, but the creature was obviously quite mad,” Bruno told her. “It thought that its species had made a terrible mistake by gifting the Sentries with power. It felt that tinkering with our genes was an abomination.” He snorted. “As if a handful of Sentries will make any difference now. The point is moot.”
Amy took a deep breath. Bruno’s fatalism was starting to trigger the panic she’d felt from the vision, and she could not accept that. Maybe she was too young to truly appreciate mortality. It didn’t matter. She was going to do all she could to live, and to help Earth survive. “Okay. So, there will be no help forthcoming from the Others.”
“No.”
“We’ll fight. What else can we do?” Amy asked him. He’d managed to shore up his mental wall, and though she could still faintly sense his trepidation, it wasn’t as overwhelming as it had been.
“Fight…” Bruno trailed off, staring at the pillar.
Amy touched his back. His muscles felt like iron. The tension buzzing through his body had to hurt.
Bruno straightened his shoulders, dislodging his hand. “Fighting is what we do,” he said, voice low. He closed the windows showing the animated representation of the swarm. “Or at least, it is what we used to do.”
“It is what we’ll do again,” Amy insisted. She glanced outside. Still nothing. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved, or frustrated. In a way, she just wanted to get it over with. I wish I’d had time to say goodbye to Mom, she thought, swallowing hard. “Do you think the military knows anything is happening?” she asked, fighting past her sorrow.
Bruno shrugged. “Finding something in space is nearly impossible, even the space close to our planet. On the other hand, the swarm is so large, it might look like a cloud shrouding the sun soon enough. Many people will panic.”
Amy put a hand on the pillar, willing it to show her more complex data from the sensors they’d deployed. She ran through the estimates of speed and movement, and then pulled up the numbers that told them how quickly that many Spiders could destroy the planet. She wished they could have used a starship to set up the sensors—she’d always wanted to see what Earth looked like from space. She squashed a pang of regret. That emotion wouldn’t help her now. “The swarm is bypassing the moon.”
“There’s nothing organic for them to eat there.” Bruno leaned over her shoulder. “We should deploy the bombs here. And here.” He traced a line on a visual representation of the planet and the shield net. “That would give us the largest amount of coverage, and also disrupt that wave pattern they are using.”
“Tell your brothers what to do. You’re their leader.” Amy knew he’d spent several lifetimes working on battle strategies. “And we’re not dead yet.”