Occupied Earth Read online

  There existed a clandestine group of people who preferred handling a physical book over the Mahk-Ra laundered electronic ones. But since the paper blight back in 2025, and the mass burnings under the Mahk-Ra, few had survived. Because of their rarity, and the fact that most pre-Occupation books were now illegal, made them prohibitively expensive. He had a few hours to kill before his last appointment and how better than to spend those hours in a highly illegal den of paper and ink.

  Approaching the building, he reviewed the password in his head. He’d been here before, but he wanted to make sure there would be no trouble. After a series of hidden passageways, and once past the rough looking guard, Robert turned in his Gladstone at the counter. He then wandered the arranged aisles with the euphoria of a child let loose in a candy shop with a wad of dollar bills clenched in their fist. This was going to be a good day.

  Nearly two hours later, Robert emerged from the bookstore two blocks away via a disguised exit with an autographed copy of The Land of Laughs by one of his favorite authors, Jonathan Carroll. The edition was rated in very good condition, and had cost him slightly over three thousand dollars, cash. He also managed to fetch a fairly beaten up copy of Michael Connelly’s The Concrete Blonde for around eight hundred, again in cash. It might have been autographed too, but the title page was so faded he couldn’t tell.

  Feeling very happy with the purchases he’d made, Robert tucked the books into the false lining of his valise. He walked the slightly longer than a mile distance over to Lankershim Boulevard where he knew he could relax and get a bite to eat. He stopped at a nice restaurant bar he was familiar with on the corner of Lankershim and Weddington, sitting near the window so he could watch what was going on out on the street. After the host made sure he had the proper ration cards to eat there, Robert spent the next hour enjoying a Portobello mushroom burger, a tasty microbrew beer and girl watching. Usually he didn’t like to sit near a window, because the destitute tended to gather outside and stare at him as he ate. He was finishing his beer and marveling over how this section of the city had remained mostly unscathed from the war when he realized he needed to get to his last appointment. Unfortunately cabs were not as plentiful in North Hollywood as elsewhere in Los Angeles, so he was forced to ride a bus, despite his friend’s warning, to where Universal Studios once stood and catch a cab from there.

  Robert got out of the cab about a mile and a half from his actual destination. He took a route predestined long before he arrived in California. He walked briskly through a seedy neighborhood, trying hard not to draw attention to himself. After all, he was carrying thousands of dollars in collectables, and really wanted to keep them -- at least until he had time to read them both.

  Despite his mild appearance, he wasn’t worried about being rolled for his wallet or his Gladstone. But he wanted to avoid a confrontation given the presence of surveillance cameras even though he could tell that many in the area had been destroyed. Probably by the humans…or could be the Mahk-Re. They liked to prey on people who didn’t belong here too.

  Walking up Van Nuys Boulevard, Robert passed graffiti covered walls, the telltale circle and letters that were the symbol of the Red Spear. Two buildings later, he entered a large apartment complex that was across the street and south of the Van Nuys courthouse. It wasn’t too new. It had been built somewhere in the last twenty years. Waiting for the elevator, Robert noticed the cameras pointing at the entrance when he came in, were also non-functioning.

  The combo lock opened after he entered the correct code. The apartment was tidy and non-descript. He stood in the doorway, listening. Robert slid inside and closed the door. He paused again, making sure his first instincts were correct and that no one would surprise him.

  Moving to the back of the apartment, Robert opened the door to the bedroom and then to the closet. In the rear of that, where they said it would be, was the equipment bag. Inside he made sure everything they said would be there, was. Zipping it closed, he placed a roll of cash in the sock drawer of the dresser and carrying the bag and his suitcase, exited the apartment.

  Taking the flight of stairs at the back at the building, he made his way to the roof. It was fairly level, with a three foot parapet around the edge of the building. He set down the valise. Walking over to the north-east corner of the build, he could easily see the entrance to the courthouse. Lying down below the lip of the roof, Robert extracted from the equipment bag a camouflage tarp painted the color of the roof and a flattened cardboard mirror box. Sometimes, low tech in a high tech world was best. He covered himself with the tarp and quickly constructed the mirror box. He fondly eyed the little periscope toy he used to play with as a kid, then attached it to the lip of the building, its specially coated surface suffusing sunlight from glinting off its surface. Now he could watch who entered and exited the courthouse without being seen.

  Next he assembled the sniper rifle and checked the load. Three bullets as promised. If he needed more than three, he knew it would be time to retire. Keeping his eyes on the mirror box, Robert extracted a warm bottle of tea, and after wiping the rim of the bottle with a tissue, opened it. He settled in, keeping his eyes on the front of the courthouse.

  It took twenty seven minutes from when he’d taken position on the roof.

  A hover transport van pulled up and an armed guard got out carrying a bleater. Within a minute three security drones were in the air. Not thirty seconds after that, the witness was brought out of the courthouse surrounded by more armed guards. They had armor on him, including a protective helmet. Didn’t matter. The poor Mahk-Re that the humans were trying to protect was a good head and a half taller that anyone surrounding him. It took only one shot to shatter his head like a melon struck by a hammer. The bullet was made like the chokota, the crystal-metal hybrid. When launched, it activated and vibrated through the helmet’s armored shell. The drones all turned in unison and started to coordinate his position.

  Robert swiftly hit the button on the mini electronic pulse device that was designed to take out anything in a half mile radius. The drones dropped from the sky like wounded doves, their control chips fried. He chuckled, sometimes high tech in a high tech world is best. Unscrewing the barrel of the rifle, he dropped its segments back into the equipment bag along with the camouflage tarp and the mirror box. He set the mechanical timer on the incendiary device in the bag for three minutes. He was pretty sure no one had seen where the shot had come from, but the fire would take care of any evidence left behind. If they got up to the roof before ten minutes, they’d probably be able to put it out before it caused any serious damage.

  Snatching up his valise, Robert ran to the far edge of the building and in one fluid movement leapt onto the edge, then across the three foot expanse of a passageway that separated his building form the next. He dashed across that roof to the far side pulling a zip line from a hidden pocket in his suit jacket and used it to drop down and escape into the alley below, gripping his Gladstone between his legs. Running down the alley Robert made the next corner at the end of the block. There, just inside an electrical breaker room fronted by a metal side door sans latch to an office building, the mag-glide motorcycle was where it was supposed to be, along with a helmet – there was still a helmet law. He strapped his valise to the machine and switched jackets, he had a leather one in the valise, he ditched his dark suit coat elsewhere.

  Riding south along Van Nuys, Robert made it to the freeway within minutes. He’d also stripped off and disposed of his wig, latex nose and fingertip sheaths before reaching the freeway. He’d dissolved the latex with acetate and pouring the flammable liquid onto the wig, tossed it down a storm drain, dropping a lit match in after it. His luck was holding and it only took one match. Given the preponderance of dead leaves inside the sewer he hoped things didn’t get out of control. It was another drought year in California.

  While he rode the motorcycle east along the 101, toward downtown’s Union Station, Robert wondered if he’d have better luck taking his
alternate escape route via the former John Wayne airport in Orange County, because as Matt had said, things downtown were getting kind of crazy.

  Hours later he boarded his plane, his two books hidden securely in his valise. Robert wondered again why so many people were having trouble with the Occupation. He loved the Mahk-Ra. They always paid on time.

  JEMMA DIDN’T need another asshole. She had the one nature gave her; she had her Mahk-Ra husband who worm-holed back home to Ra-Prime seven months ago with all their savings; she had her MR slumlord who demanded a hand job every Friday in exchange for not evicting her for the two months’ back-rent she owed; she had her dick-brained human boss who was, at the moment, smirking behind his desk; and she had the MR jerk with the greasy brown comb-over at table ten who’d complained to Dick-brain Dave after Jemma’d slapped him.

  “You think I’m going to let you skate for hitting a customer?” said Dave, his face so sweat-drenched it looked like he was wrapped in Saran, even though Jemma had goose bumps from the air conditioning. He took a swig from a still-frosted mug of some foul mix of Melonzade and Jägermeister that he’d invented and spent four years trying to persuade Corporate to put on the menu but, as usual, the Mahktard suits just didn’t get it.

  “That comb-over put his fucking hand up my crack, Dave. I don’t recall that in the job description.”

  “Allow me to refresh your memory.”

  Dave pulled out the thick employee handbook, miraculously extant though printed on paper fifty years ago.

  The longevity of a cockroach, thought Jemma, like this restaurant.

  Dave flipped to a well-worn section and read, “I hereby acknowledge and affirm that the Melonz concept is based on female sex appeal and that the work environment is one in which joking and innuendo based on female sex appeal is commonplace.” Dave looked up with a vicious gloat.

  Jemma’s bile burnt the back of her throat. “Innuendo means wordplay, Dave, not foreplay.”

  “Tough shit, Jemma, it’s not okay to take a swing at a customer, especially if he’s MR.” He wiped his forehead with his arm and it came away soaked.

  “It was a reflex, okay? I didn’t mean to hit him. If I’d’a had a little more time to think about it I would have stuck a fucking fork in his chest.”

  She glared at Dave. He softened.

  “Look, I like you, Jemma. You got a nice rack and you’re a good waitress, even if you have put on a few pounds. So I’m sorry you don’t like it here. It truly pains me to accept your resignation.”

  She felt her stomach twist at the thought of telling her thirteen-year-old son that they’d have to live out of her rattletrap of a car for a while, despite the fact that even duct tape couldn’t stop cold drafts from flowing through the aft-hatch.

  “I need this job, Dave.”

  The smarmy tyrant gave her a grin. “Then get the hell back to work. And no more screw-ups.” A drop of sweat dripped from his nose into his Melonzmeister as he took a sip. She wished she could piss in it.

  THE LAB was bathed in red light allowing Scud-re to work without the protective dark glasses MRs usually needed on Earth. Above his large eyes, Scud-re’s brows began to dance as he validated the gene fragments he’d finally managed to extract from the ancient linen. Glee filled his heart as the data checked out. He’d been working for sixteen hours straight and his stomach was rumbling like one of those primitive internal combustion engines some humans still used, but he couldn’t tear himself away from his work to eat. Despite being a so-called aboriginal Mahk-Re, Scud-re was sure this breakthrough would be his ticket home to Ra-Prime.

  Humans had labored for thousands of years to decipher the story that now glowed in the view-field implant behind Scud-re’s emerald green eyes. Granted he had been working on this bloodstained rag for a year, but most of that time he’d been waiting for his gluon scanner to arrive from Ra-Prime. Earth being just one of twenty-six worlds on the shuttle route from the pater-planet, shipments were routinely delayed – particularly these days. But once Scud-re got the scanner up and running, he’d needed only three days to recreate DNA fragments from the ancient image stained into the sacred cloth.

  Since at least the fourteenth century, many humans believed the Shroud of Turin was Christ’s burial cloth. They’d even managed to isolate iron oxide from the Shroud, which may have been residue from hemoglobin. But in 1988, carbon-dating proved the Shroud to be a fraud. It wasn’t until 2031 that archaeologists, using MR technology, finally discovered Christ’s actual burial site. His funeral shroud was among the treasures they unearthed, in addition to contemporaneous writings and artifacts that corroborated its historicity. Now Scud-re had finally extracted the shroud’s ultimate revelation.

  HE RAN down the hall to his supervisor’s office. At six-six and a hundred eighty pounds, he was trim, but he was still winded by the exuberant sprint.

  Huxen-ra’s office door scanned Scud-re and evaluated his job level, his Mahk-Re ancestry, Huxen-ra’s schedule and current activity. Then it did the math and slid open to admit Scud-re without ceremony.

  Scud-re’s boss was watching 3D-mini soccer players run around on top of his desk, a livecast match from Brazil. “Humans and their games,” he chuckled. “I’ve got three K riding on Real Madrid Bahrain.”

  “Do your wives know you’re gambling?” asked Scud-re. He and Hux had an easygoing relationship, despite the difference in their castes.

  Hux shut off the game with the flick of a thought. “What’s up?”

  “I finally nailed it,” said Scud-re, amused by his own metaphor.

  “Christ’s DNA?”

  Scudre replied with a gleeful grin. He dropped into a gelatin chair and felt it jiggle from his excitement.

  Hux sat up, suddenly attentive. “The humans are going to go nuts over this, especially the Christians.”

  “That’s just the half of it,” said Scud-re. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough shards to sequence his genome.”

  Hux’s huge black pupils sparked. “Are you shitting me?”

  “I shit you not. I’m going to get to work on it after lunch. By this time next week I hope to have a healthy clone of Jesus Christ.”

  “Cloning a human god.” Hux spoke slowly, as if rotating the phrase to ponder it from every side. “We can’t just jump into this, Scud-re. We need to think it through. What if he’s born a mere human? What if he can’t work miracles, or whatever it is humans use to identify their gods? An event like that could cause a lot of unrest.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Hux continued to ponder. “Or what if he does have divine powers? How would the Muslims react? Or the Hindus? Or the Jews?”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t do it?”

  “Now don’t go disassembling on me, Scud-re. I just have to run this cloning by the powers that be, that’s all.”

  Scud-re’s hackles spiked. “Come on. I’ve been stuck on this dump of a planet for years waiting for a high profile shot like this. It could mean my own lab back on Ra-Prime. This kind of opportunity doesn’t come along every day, especially for a Mahk-Re. Please don’t tell me you’re going to let the brass screw it up.”

  “We’re talking about bio-engineering the Second Coming of Jesus Christ,” said Hux. “The backlash could be huge and global. I can’t approve this on my own. I have to notify Rhea-ra. It’ll be her call whether it has to go any further up the chain of command.”

  Scud-re wasn’t worried about their department head. Rhea-Ra was a biophysicist. But above her level were politicians and they were capricious. Especially with a Mahk-Re involved. The more bigwigs who weighed in, the greater the chance that one of them would find a reason to kill Scud-re’s project, perhaps his future.

  “Even if this does get approved,” said Hux, “how are you going to find a huwoman surrogate to carry the clone? You can’t exactly advertise, ‘Help wanted: Mother of God, preferably virgin.’”

  Scud-re was already wracking his brain to answer that question. If he co
uld get the egg planted in some human womb, the political risks of halting the project would be much greater for the powers that be. He needed to find a fecund huwoman who would willingly face an explosively controversial pregnancy with a potentially unhuman baby in a goldfish bowl of global scrutiny. Finding such a female would be no easy task. But he had to impregnate one fast.

  IT HAD been more than seventeen hours since Scud-re had eaten anything and it was affecting his ability to concentrate. So when the young, blonde waitress delivered his deep-fried Philly cheese steak, Scud-re wolfed it down. The fatty fuel flooded his bioburner and relief was immediate. He finished off his third cup of coffee, feeling his mind clear and his muscles pump up. He was trying to catch the blonde’s eye for another cup when an office door shot open in back, sending chips of plaster flying from the wall it smashed into. A brunette stormed out, her nostrils flared, her jaw clenched, her anger so visceral it turned heads.

  Her Melonz T-shirt was stretched tight across her breasts and knotted beneath them to reveal nicely sculpted abs. Her faded jeans fit her like spray-paint, knees worn, leg-bottoms shredded. Scud-re thought she was pleasantly plump in her rear and her breasts, as befit a huwoman sneaking into her thirties. The woman’s molten dark-chocolate eyes were a little too close-set for her face and her nose bent to the left from a break that was never set right, yet somehow she made it work. The woman practically oozed a wild, spicy, real-human spirit that appealed to Scud-re.

  The brunette slipped behind the bar where the other waitress was arranging glasses.

  “Jemma, where have you been?” asked the blonde.

  “Eating Dick-brain Dave’s shit.”

  Scud-re’s waitress gave “Jemma” an empathetic smirk. “Twelve’s been bitching for unleaded.”

  Jemma grabbed a fresh pot of decaf. Scud-re admired the way her bicep flexed from the weight. She strode toward table twelve, the steam from her pot wafting behind her like a vapor trail of fury. Scud-re thought this strong, fierce huwoman seemed like the perfect candidate to carry his clone, but he couldn’t imagine how to broach the subject, even if the opportunity arose.