Stars Rain Down by Chris J. Randolph Read Free Book Online

of those things. The dense jungle had been supplanted by a new environment. A complete alien biosphere. The invaders hadn’t just colonized; they were transforming the Earth into a different world altogether.
    Near the alien city, green jungle gave way to a strange twisting growth of orange and purple. The branches of alien trees joined together and intertwined in a latticework, making it impossible to gauge where one plant ended and the next began. They formed distinct levels suspended above the ground that Jack and his team traveled across with ease.
    The wildlife was overtaken as well. The team saw plenty of native animals on the shores of Lake Edward, including hippos, elephants, crocodiles and even some okapi, but as they ventured deep into the alien world, they found creatures like nothing from Earth. Strange things with tendrils surrounding their mouths and multiple sets of wings flapped erratically overhead, while furry little beasts with arms ending in long hooks and too many eyes swung from branch to branch. The ground below was scavenged by a strange, sedate animal with leathery skin, which crawled around on five human-like arms, and devoured bugs it found with a long snout. It occasionally let out a call that sounded just like a poorly tuned bassoon.
    The only natives curious enough to enter the strange world were Jack’s team and the occasional band of chimpanzees, both of whom avoided the forest floor and anything not of their world. The passing chimps would sometimes stop to watch Jack and his crew move from cover to cover, before taking off for some other destination.
    A few kilometers into the obnoxiously colored forest, they finally found what they were looking for. The forest thinned and came to a halt, giving way to delicately arranged gardens and crop fields of yet more alien plants, and another half-kilometer beyond sat an impossibly large alien fortress in cerulean blue. It stood exactly where the maps had indicated. The great disc-shaped city was twenty kilometers in diameter, and sat above the ground atop a jumble of roots which dove into the soil below.
    The body of the disc was split open like a fruiting mushroom, revealing an interconnected network of gills, stalks and bulbs within. The inside was its own kind of forest, one overflowing with activity as its denizens went about their daily business. All of this was hidden from the sun beneath the top part of the disc, an umbrella-shaped cap whose inside glowed like an immense street lamp.
    â€œThat’s a city?â€

Chapter 35:
Civilian
    The alien monks’ unerring patterns made them easy targets. During daylight, they came out every three hours to perform their ceremony, which lasted for twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds. Their movements and positions were always precisely the same.
    Long distance observation revealed more of their kind in the city, dressed in identical robes and always traveling in groups of eight. Jack decided the robes would make ideal disguises, and he set his sights on acquiring a set.
    After a week of watching, the team moved into the nearby ravine, waited for the right moment and then struck in the middle of the monks’ prayer session. They did it with knives, their work intentionally messy in order to make it look like a wild animal attack, then dragged the corpses back into the wilderness. The bodies left a trail of amber blood that glimmered in the sun.
    In the forest, they stripped the monks and left them for the scavengers to dispose of. They turned out to be yet another new species, not particularly humanoid but close enough for the robes to fit. They were bipedal with backwards hinged knees. Each arm split into two forearms at the elbow, both ending in identical four fingered hands. The head was just a bulb at the top of two thin stalks, carrying a pair of eyes and nothing else. Their mouth and ears were instead located on their slender torso, which was also where their brains were