The Last Holidays

by Grover Young

  Grey saved those details for later, looking deeper at Flashback. Based on missing person reports and the hero's general description, it hadn't been all that difficult to backtrack to his most probable identity.

  “Craig Elder, last seen in 1988,” He read, “Age 28, audio-video technician, film maker and employee of WNOK TV, Columbia, SC.

  The copy progress bar vanished, and he wasted no time ejecting the flash drive. Five minutes later his was just another car in late night holiday traffic. The radio busted out in cheers as the clock stuck midnight.

  Grey sighed thinking of all the pain the person named Craig Elder had somehow withstood for decades. Yet, there was still enough of that person left to defy the commands of a monster. There was always hope and courage.

  “Happy New Year,” he wished, as the fireworks bloomed in the winter's night sky.

  “Just what do you give a bunch of invading aliens for Valentine's?”

  The Last Valentine.

  By

  Grover Young

  12/26/2019

  Dust rained down on the makeshift briefing table. Pantheon Team Epsilon, such as it was, was assembled around it as they gave General 'Big Jake' Morris a quick and dirty debrief.

  “Our plan of foxing them into releasing nanotech on their own position worked well.” Our team commander, Athena, reported, “Kingfisher still hasn't fully recovered from his injuries, but after Asheville, the Sha'leians are very skittish when they see Halcyon show up. That was a good enough diversion to let the rest of us get into position and take out that T-Rex.

  She gave me the nod to begin.

  “We had guessed that once they knew Halcyon could transform to avoid their nanite bombardment,” I continued, “that they would use some kind of mass attack to take care of that problem. This orbital strike is using lesser projectiles than the nuke sized ones we've seen before.”

  Another boom had more dust raining down upon us, making the light hanging from the ceiling swing. It was a good thing this bunker was built deep into the Appalachian bedrock. Tunnel Rat did good work. His Gift from Prometheus was only moderately useful in direct combat, but his ability to shape and dig tunnels was priceless. In only minutes, he'd excavated an entire bunker.

  “It was little close, but a good percentage of their 'bots dropped from the friendly fire of their Nano-bombardment. What was left, Team Epsilon was able to steamroller, along with help of precision missile and artillery support from the Army and Air Force,” I reported.

  “This beachhead attempt is finished.” I kept my sigh away, “However, this little trick won't work again. I'm thinking that this drop was really just a recon force.”

  “I agree,” Athena, my team leader, spoke, “It's a good bet this was just a probe to confirm Halcyon's location.”

  General Morris nodded and dismissed us as he turned his attention to the clean up.

  Tired and exhausted from the mission, Athena led us to the way out. She and most the rest of my team were sucking down Blue Soylent from the toothpaste like containers someone had come up with. Many Pantheon members' gifts took a huge amount of energy. Taking in enough calories to power it was a challenge these days with food being so hard to come by. The stuff may suck as far as taste goes, but it filled a need. Personally, it reminded me of my childhood, watching, when we really had a space program, astronauts 'eating' their food much the same way. That began a thought, but it got cut off as Athena took my arm.

  “Let's get you back to your chair,” She wasn't going to take no for an answer.

  “Do I have to?” I didn't try to hide my sigh this time.

  “Yes, you do.” Her smile wasn't forced or false.

  This whole thing had surprised me, with us becoming something closer than friends, comrades in battle.

  My assigned medic, Corporal Morgan Sloan, had the damn torture device ready. It was a pain to maneuver seven feet of Halcyon into a chair more designed for five feet eight of Craig Elder, Kingfisher, but I'd had lots of practice.

  Transforming, I winced, as all the aches and pains of my still healing injuries hit me.

  A little less than four weeks had passed since the Battle of Asheville. Broken legs, arms, ribs needed from eight to twelve weeks to heal up. While I'd made great strides in healing up, I still had a long ways to go. Doc Schneider's estimate was I should be up and about in another two weeks or so. That was still twice as fast someone without Prometheus's Gift would heal, but it wasn't any fun at all.

  Athena still jokes that it hadn't been hard finding me after the battle. All you had to do was follow the path of destruction. They probably had a point that I should've died, but all that energy I'd sucked up had given my body what it needed to hang on till help arrived.

  Hell, my Halcyon form hadn't been in any too great of shape either. The first thing Doc wanted when I regained consciousness was for me to change into her. He wanted to test a theory that I would magically shed all my injuries as I changed back from one form to another.

  This time he'd been wrong. She appeared just as she'd left, looking like a candle that'd been left in a hot car. Those damn nanites had done one hell of a job on me. On the other hand, I'd self-repaired from that half-melted state in a handful of minutes even if it did itch like crazy. Even that sapphire blue hair of mine regrew itself.

  No, the problem started when I changed back to the real me, Craig Elder. Okay, the almost real me now, Kingfisher. I was still broken all to pieces and all the casts had to be redone. Doc with another of his demented plans came up with a way to help. Since as Kingfisher, I also had that energy thing, I could translate that into a kind of regeneration by 'drinking' the power. The sticking point was I had to be conscious and concentrating to make that work.

  That was where the chair came from. It was designed to support and allow me to go from Halcyon to Kingfisher without needing me to see a doctor each time. The damn thing constantly hit me with low current shocks to feed that energy absorption thing to help me heal.

  It was a two edged sword.

  As Halcyon I was just fine, even if I was a seven foot tall, golden, pornographic living statue. Unfortunately, Kingfisher needed to sit in that freaking torture chair so it could accelerate my mending. You try sitting for hours on end as you're being shocked, while half busted to pieces.

  However, I did try not to whine too much. The 82nd Airborne took their worst losses since WWII and the 218th heavy brigade was shattered. There were a whole lot of grieving families, and that wasn't counting the city of Asheville being a battle zone. The total number of dead might never be known.

  The big thing was we had stopped them.

  The Sha'leians promptly went and hit San Diego and Tijuana.

  Landing in the mountains to the east of the city, they had put down and had stayed down. The aliens had their beachhead despite all the USA could do. Just to show it wasn't a fluke, they went on to do the same thing in Spain, Ukraine, the Congo and India. The Germans had smacked down the attempt on them flat, as had Brazil.

  Pantheon Teams were in the forefront of the defense of Los Angeles, as well as assisting Mexico with protecting Mexicali. Our neighbors South of the Border were having a hell of time since, before the invasion, they didn't have anything that could rightly be called a main battle tank.

  Their French built light tanks and Panhard armored cars carrying a 90mm main gun had put up a tough fight, but the alien 'bots and drones had taken a horrible toll on them. Things had gotten so bad that, when talk of nuking the alien fortress where once San Diego and Tijuana had stood, protests had grown very quiet.

  With the autofacs in the San-Tijuana Fortress, their forces on the ground had grown to an estimated Ten T-Rex Command Tanks with a thousand 'bots and drones. Recon units daring to get close enough reported worker 'bots collecting abandoned cars and trucks and feeding them into the factories in a constant stream. Best guesses said those numbers would double in a week.

  That's taking into account the expected Sha'leian losses on
their advance to LA. The Battle for Oceanside was one hell of a bloody affair, and one which we, humanity, had lost. Right now just about every piece of ordinance, and persons able to carry them, were on their way to the City of Angels.

  News from overseas said that the situation was much the same in Spain. Just about every damn tank in the European Union was heading to Balboa. The Basque had fought like hell, but courage doesn't make up for not having the tools and weapons to do the job.

  The Germans just maybe had the right tools. Using the alien shotgun like plasma burners, the Brits had refitted them into usable plasma cannons. They had more than triple their old range, making them a very practical medium range weapon system. The cannons lacked the ability of rail-guns to strike targets damn near in orbit, but with the rugged territory the Sha'leians were favoring lately, that kind of reach wasn't needed.

  What the German had done was, while everyone else was working on a fighter-bomber using the alien technology, they had designed a whole new tank that had a pair of heavily modified quantum drives packed into it.

  Named the Griffin, after a legendary half-eagle half-lion creature, it continued on with the German tradition of naming their tanks after large cats.

  Yes, the damn thing could fly!

  Not well, and not fast, but it could go anywhere. From what we could gather, its performance was rather like a 1960's helicopter. Its advantages were clear cut. With the plasma cannon and fusion power plants, it never runs out of ammunition and only needed good old H2O for fuel.

  Perhaps in some parts of the world that might be a problem, but certainty not in Europe. That meant a good chance the Balboa beachhead could be lanced. The Ukraine was more problematic, but given the urgency, it looked as if Russia would come to their assistance. That was important because it seemed they were developing their own version of the German Griffin. Being Russian, details were being kept close to their chests, but it was still good news.

  India was working with China since the Aliens had set down almost right in the middle of a troubled area both countries claimed as their own. The area was rugged enough that getting forces there was a bitch and a half, but neither one was taking this lightly. The thinking was that India would offer up the disputed territory which they really didn’t want anyways for the help.

  The Congo, including both capitol cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa and Brazzaville was a different story. Being right across a river from each other, I suppose the two cities were too much of a temptation for aliens. The Sha'leians were virtually unopposed, and while a UN led force from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and others were trying to get their act together and get forces to the scene, the alien autofacs were working full time at increasing their numbers.

  A large part of the problem was trying to get permission to move their forces through other countries just so they could get to the battle. There was just too much distrust for that to come easily in a place where most people still identified themselves by the tribes they belonged to, rather than a country.

  A very small glimmer of hope had appeared in the form of a Project Rebirth ex-military general. While in active service with the Marines, General 'Hammer' Hobbs had more than one 'disagreement' with the politicians and bureaucrats in charge. He was, however, very respected by our allies and beloved by the men who followed him. Hammer Hobbs had proved on more than one occasion he wasn't afraid to lead from the front.

  Unable to regain his commission, despite getting his youth back, he'd instead offered his services to the UN. The General Secretary had immediately taken him up on his offer, over the protests of two of the five permanent members of the Security Council. China and the United States had protested, but all ten of the non-permanent members had agreed with the General Secretary.

  In theory, Hammer was only the UN's military adviser to their Alien Invasion Crisis Committee. However, in reality he was the Chief of the UN's military arm. He was the one doing his best to coordinate the entire world's efforts, instead of everyone looking after their own interests.

  Of course, the United States and China made it harder when they refused to participate, but the United Nations Military Commission was getting results. The joke was UNMC really stood for the UN Marine Corps, but let's face it. There are worse role-models out there.

  Hammer was the one that got Russia moving into the Ukraine and was behind the African force trying to relieve the Congo. His secret was recruiting other military professionals that were respected in their part of the world, as his deputies. So, while he might be mistrusted because he was American, the people who worked for him weren't and were able to get past that.

  Hell, the United States objecting to the UNMC could even be helping Hammer's credentials. The thing was we, the Earth, were beginning to finally pull together. That mass nuke strike, Operation Nutcracker, just before Christmas, was the first sign, and this was another. The bad news was that it just might be too late to make a difference.

  What was left of the 40th Infantry Army National Guard and the 1st Marine Divisions after a month of combat was on the front lines. The Army's 1st Armored Division had joined it and others were on the way. As a matter of fact, any unit that was remotely combat effective was headed west.

  That left the rest of the country just a little bare. Pantheon Team Epsilon had taken the most suitable, read that as 'most likely to survive' candidates from the training teams, Alpha and Beta, for OJT, On the Job Training. That was the sole team defending the Eastern USA. That included me with my 'walking' wounded status.

  The bombardment eased up, and I could see everyone visibly relax. Sighing, I gave Cpl. Sloan the nod to 'hit' me. The jolt was not pleasant, but I sucked it up. Come on, I mentally urged myself, HEAL!

  Athena kinda winced, seeing my discomfort. Anyone else would be doing the 220 volt dance. The insulated guardrails kept anyone from getting too close and getting some of what I was getting. Trust me. They wouldn't like it!

  I let the medic do his job and push me along. Just two more weeks of this, Doc had promised. I just prayed that he was right. Now, however, it was time to go home.

  MacDill AFB

  Sheila's enthusiastic hug didn't fool me. She was still more than a little mad at me for my suicide run into the Asheville mountains. Maybe peeved was a better word, but I was not forgiven, not yet.

  I scared her half to death the first time she saw me mostly encased in plaster and with tubes in every exit and entry. That sort of thing is not easy to get over, but I do understand. If she was in a similar situation, I would be going nuts, too.

  At least, I was able to step off the plane as Halcyon. This wouldn't last all that long before I was back in the Chair again, but I would enjoy my 'break-time' while I could.

  However, we didn't have a lot of time for reunions. Dean, and our meetings with our Sha'leian friends, had caught the attention of the high mucky-mucks. The Intel Center had generated useful data for the first time, as well as establishing some kind of rapport. For that matter, we had given warning, for what little good it did, for the Christmas attack on Asheville.

  Through the same channels as before, Dean, who was still talking with Tash, reported they had an interest in meeting again, curious this time about Valentine’s Day. This time we weren't going to be able to get away with doing a 'get to know you' dinner unnoticed.

  I really dreaded the coming meeting on the subject. Unfortunately, it was with good cause.

  “Excuse me, Sir,” I spoke as respectfully as I could to the three star general, “even if you do succeed in killing them, you accomplish nothing, but destroying what little credibility we have with this contact.

  “At best, we're talking about two, maybe four, members of their crew.” Explaining, I kept my voice even and as emotionless as I could. Calling Lieutenant Generals stupid idiots usually didn't do much except land you in the stockade or worse.

  “At our best guess, after going over everything we can
find in the material they themselves have given us,” I continued. Being hurt had given me plenty of time to explore the Sha'leian library icon on my tablet, “they have a crew of between one and two hundred. Losing even four members is not going to make them stop and go home. Capturing them might be even worse, from a certain stand point, since they would either launch a kinetic strike or drop a rescue mission on wherever they were being held.

  “Additionally, there is the matter of possible hostages,” Dean spoke up, “There are, at a minimum, several hundred thousand people still alive in their San-Tijuana Fortress. We know there are captives and, from reconnaissance, they appear to be decently treated. If we do as you suggest, that could change.”

  Honestly, the row of Big Brass sitting before us was intimidating as hell, the freaking Secretary of State himself, about half the Joint Chiefs and a few Three Letter Agencies' representatives. However the most, at least to me, was a certain UN 'consultant' by the name of 'Hammer' Hobbs.

  He'd been invited to 'sit in', although he had no official representation. The UN had always been aware of our 'meetings' since it was their communications channels we'd been using. It was kinda hard to exclude them.

  “What do ya'll suggest?” His soft accent was deceptive. He might sound like he's being polite, but there was plenty of steel behind that soft southern courtesy.

  “As much as I know, everyone wants to make the most of what we've done,” Sheila took her turn bearding the lions, “Sergeant Elder is correct that any type of direct confrontation with their 'landing party' will not be advantageous. If anything, having those communications is even more important, since they have taken, and are holding, not only territory, but citizens of several countries.

  “We need to build on that as best as we can,” She was doing her best to be diplomatic, I could tell, “The last thing we want to do is to appear untrustworthy or duplicitous. So far, both parties have kept their word. Let's not be the ones to break, even these small temporary truces.