Jack knew Uganda and Kenya well enough, and he thought he was pretty well acquainted with the Congo rainforest too, but things change. The Earth was now one 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.
“That’s a city?” Nikitin asked in awe.
Charlie nodded. “Is it really that different than Manhattan?”
“Yeah. Looks like something you find growing in your sock.”
Jack raised his binoculars and tried to take it all in, but there was just too much to absorb. Charlie was right in a way. The details were foreign, but the shape was the same. It was a living city, with its own congested traffic and bustling neighborhoods. Jack could only see the very edge of it, but he could tell there was a lot going on inside.
Charlie started snapping pictures through his visor, while Jack brainstormed ways to get a closer look. They weren’t going to learn anything useful from the park across the street. He wanted to get into the backyard, or maybe break into the basement if he could.
“I can’t figure it out. How the hell do we get in?” Jack asked.
“I dunno,” Lisa said. “Anyone remember to bring an armor division?”
Nikitin snapped his finger in mock disappointment. “Drat! Left it in my other pants.”
“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” Jack said dryly. He wondered why he was always stuck with such smart mouths.
“Usually, you just do like the Romans do.”
“Nice thinking, Charlie,” Nikitin said. “Should we do like the four-armed Romans, or the six-armed ones that float?”
“Point taken.”
The team moved on when Charlie was done taking pictures, keeping to the thick bush at the edges of the alien civilization. They didn’t move particularly fast, and the circle around the city was over sixty kilometers in circumference, so it began to feel like they weren’t getting anywhere.
They got better views of the crops and the creatures tending them. Fields were laid out in rows, filled with unfamiliar plants. Agriculture had never been Jack’s strong suit, and he thought most vegetables looked kind of alien to begin with, so the fields were at best unsurprising. Of more interest were the creatures tilling the fields, which looked like short, squat versions of the walkers, but with large blades they dragged through the soil. Jack imagined they were also vehicles driven by the skinny white pilots.
The team stopped after a klick, and something in the distance caught Charlie’s eye. He flipped down his mask and dialed up his optics. “Hey, how about Romans in hooded robes?”
Jack brought his binoculars back up, and he could just barely make out a small group headed out from the city. There were eight of them walking in single-file, dressed in graphite-colored hooded robes, like futuristic Franciscan monks. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jack said.
The monks walked out to a cobblestone circle surrounded by meticulously arranged plants, stood at the edge and began to pray. At least, Jack assumed they were praying. They put their arms out and looked up toward the sun, and just stood that way for a little over twenty minutes.
“That might just work,” Jack said as he watched. He turned away from the prayer circle and started looking for nearby cover. He was looking for a place to stage an ambush, and he found it, a thin gouge in the land, maybe a creek, that ran within ten meters of the circle. “Let’s consider this a top priority. I want someone watching that circle whenever the sun’s up.”
They stayed and observed until the sun sat low on the horizon, then finally left back for the base camp