“Tell me this, sir. How come these ugly no-mouth having aliens don’t have no weapons? Not one alien we killed, and captured, had a weapon.”
I shook my head, searching the field. “Maybe their weapons were destroyed when their ship crashed.”
I thought I saw a body on the side of the barn.
“How do you think they talk to each other, Sarge? Sign language?”
“Negative. My guess is they used some kind of telepathy.”
“Telepathy, huh? Wow, they’re kind of big and scary looking—don't look smart enough to have that kind of brain power. Well, whatever, okay, Sarge. We're all clear. Let's get out of this torrent rain, and get on back to base. Killing makes me hungry. I'm starved.”
I thought I saw something on the side of the barn. By the drag marks in the mud, I could tell that someone had drug this body back behind the barn, as if they didn't want me to see this one. Why? I walked up to the body and realized it wasn't another one of the aliens. It was a young Black kid, dead.
“What the hell happened here?”
“I don't know, Sarge.”
“You were the scout. What do you mean you don't know?”
“Alright, Sarge,” Jacobs said, and chuckled nervously. “You got me. Um, well, the kid kind of ran out of the barn—surprised us.”
“Jesus, and you killed him, Jacobs?”
“No, sir. One of the guys coming out of the farmhouse shot him. He got caught in crossfire”
“Son, don't lie to me.”
“Sir, he—he looked suspicious. What can I say? He was in hostile territory. What was he doing out here, anyway? With them aliens? Okay, I-I shot him. I bet he was helping Them—helping Them hide.”
“Dammit, Jacobs.” I turned him over, and upon seeing NASA across his hooded sweatshirt, immediately recognized him. “Aw, sonofabitch. Jacobs, you just shot and killed Tyrone Washington—the kid we just watched on the news the other day, who had run away from home because his father wanted him to follow his football scholarship instead of chasing some improbable dream of becoming an astronaut.”
“That's who that is, sir? Jeez, I swear to you when he ran out of the barn, I panicked. I didn't mean to shoot him—thought he was one of Them—one of them aliens.”
“Jacobs, he's black, They're bluish-skinned.” I looked over my shoulder to make sure that no one had eyes on us. “Come on, grab his legs.”
“What are we going to do, Sarge?
“Look, this area will be quarantined for the next several weeks until we are sure that all alien life is exterminated from this area, and our planet. Let's just throw his body behind the barn in the high weeds, and high-tail out of here before any more of the men come snooping around back here.”
THE END
THE TWO NATIONS ARROW by Henry Brasater
Larson wanted to live. Life drained from his body by the second. The river’s rushing waters, rain, winds, were all conspiring to hypnotize his mind into accepting that death would give him the greatest pleasure that he had ever experienced. He was deciding to succumb to eternal rest. One last thought stabbed at his brain: it would be satisfying to pass his information on to Washington that war was not inevitable, if….
“Grab hold!” came a voice penetrating his thoughts.
“Man! Grab hold, for God’s sake!” came the voice, piercing the forces of nature in which Larson was enveloped, and on the verge of loosening his mortality.
Larson opened his eyes as best he could. Through rain, and muddy-fetid waters in which he was being tossed, submerged then bobbing up and down, he saw a mirage on the Mississippi. It was the first that he had ever seen. A sorrowful looking steam freighter was being tossed hither and yon like a giant, dead tree trunk.
A man. Two men. Three. Maybe more, leaned over railings on the forward main deck of a freighter being thrown its hellish way southward on the river. A ship out of control, all aboard would be accompanying him to Hell, forthwith.
Something hard smacked Larson by the side of his head. His brain felt slightly scrambled. He did not care, because his mind told him that he was quickly sliding into an eternal, painless nothingness.
“That’s it! Grab hold, man! For t’love a’God! Grab it!”
Larson attempted to open his rain pounded eyes wider. There was some recognition to what was pounding against him. The words finally came to him.
A yawl buoy struck his face and shoulders in the muddy, unmercifully churning Mississippi waters. A yawl buoy—half of an upside down grammar school bench, with part of its end leg sawed off, with rope wound crazily about it, and minus its rock anchor—was now an inanimate companion on his way to oblivion.
“Grab! Grab hold’er!” came voices from the steamer.
His innate sense of survival, was slow to kick in. He looked beyond the crazily bouncing buoy toward his constantly interrupted vision of the steam freighter.
Do it! A voice in his mind told him. Why bother? Followed yet another thought. Near to drowning, Larson was conflicted. With death came eternal peace. There was still much work left if he chose to live.
The last thing that he saw was a young man, perhaps a boy leaning over the railing with some of the buoy rope in his hand and other men holding portions of the same rope to the side and behind the youth. “Grab hold! Got one God damned chance, mister! Take it, er die!” the youth yelled.
Larson then used the last of his energy to sling his right arm around the board.
Regaining his senses, he found himself lying on the freighter’s deck, coughing, spitting, gasping, taking in air. A brief, sharp feeling of disappointment caused his body to shudder at still being alive; meeting his maker may have been the most interesting event of his life! And he had missed the chance. This time. Instead of the God Almighty, an all too human and youthful face was almost touching his nose. “Name’s Sam Clemens!” the youth yelled through the tempestuous storm. “Pleased t’meet you, sir! Let’s git you inside, out’a this inhospitable weather!” Several arms went about him, pulling Larson under cover of the main deck. The steam freighter kept bobbing to and fro, alternatively pointing its bow to starboard then to port, as though the pilot house had been abandoned.
Not more than an hour after Larson was rescued from the mighty Mississippi’s deadly rampage, the John J. Rowe’s pilot decided to stop. The captain gave his permission to tie up amongst willows bordering a small cove on the Missouri side of the river south of Chester, Illinois. There, the freighter would ride out the deluge with more protection than fighting boiling river currents carrying their death defying debris. Hopes were that the steamer could continue on down to Cairo the following day.
In dry and ill-fitting clothes, coffee laced with whiskey, and some food, Larson regained his normal self. The Union spy thanked captain and crew profusely for saving him from the torrents of hell. He rested. He dozed. He thought. During the night, winds subsided, with rain coming down in a more equitable manner for man and beast. Larson slipped over the freighter’s port side, and into a marshy mess that led to more solid ground in Missouri. He would take his chances with river moccasins and varied critters expelled from their homes during the storm’s rage. His secret message must be delivered.
Larson made his way northward toward St. Louis, and a plantation called White Haven. There, he would submit a report to his contact, a retired military officer by the name of Ulysses Grant. In a previous meeting, Grant had alluded to “the right person” at nearby Jefferson Barracks to whom Larson’s reports would be given, then forwarded east. Larson surmised that the forwarding would be sent by telegraph; currently, St. Louis had the farthest western frontier telegraph terminal. After delivering his written and coded report, Larson planned to stay in the area—not as Grant’s guest—to await further instructions from his superior in the nation’s capital. His information for Washington was so important, that Larson was reasonably confident about being called back to the East, thus, ending his dangerous Midwest odyssey.
The Grant family was
entertaining guests when Larson arrived at White Haven. He enlisted the aid of a black servant to fetch Grant. Behind the plantation house, the two men met briefly. Food was given to Larson in a gunny sack. The two agreed to wait till morning before Larson placed the secret message on paper. The Negro servant then led Larson to Grant’s nearby vacant Hardscrabble log cabin. There, he dried himself before a small fire that he built in the fireplace. He ate. It had been a long time since the spy felt safe enough to relax. He stretched out on the floor in front of the fire. He felt proud. He was probably the only person who carried in his mind information to stop a threatened civil war in the United States. He slept.
The following morning, Larson headed toward the privy a few yards from the cabin’s back door. An arrow pierced his chest.
A wizened figure emerged from nearby scrub. He had spent many years escaping Removals from Missouri. An ancient bow was in his left hand, a tip of which dragged along behind him. Through a rope tied about his waist, two unused arrows were secured against his side. A white scalplock ran down the back of the old one’s otherwise shaved head. He grimaced while walking away on thin, unsteady legs. Pleasure filled his heart while heading toward a hidden cave in nearby woodlands. A last kill had been made before joining his ancestors—as he planned to do—with the setting of the day’s sun. The old warrior had fought long enough. To no avail. He worried whether or not there would be a spirit world welcome for him, after a life-time of failures in stopping the persistent white men. Had this old man but known, his single arrow was to make way for revenge aplenty. Subsequently, more whites killed one another—through civil war—than any Native American uprising had done to date.
Later that same morning, Larson was found by his host. Larson’s information that would surely prevent a war among the states, died with him.
THE END.
CHILDREN OF SACRIFICE by Jim Lee
Wormhole technology came less than 150 years after the first crude human ventures into space. It opened virtually the entire galaxy to hole-punching scientists and their swarms of robotic survey-drones. But operational realities, especially the Time Incongruity Factor, put frustrating limits on manned travel.
These restrictions slowed, but never stopped, development of the Trans-Solar Colonies. The outward push, inevitable from the day the first habitable world was located, was shaped by the strangely incomplete and yet profound isolation the TIF enforced on each new world. And so humanity advanced, in fits and spurts, hopping from one earth-like world to the next and then the next.
Few people thought about this much—these were simply the rules by which the wormhole game was played. Fewer still, by far, saw any reason for concern.
Then the alien moonship came gliding past the local Oort Cloud and the outer planets of Alpha Carinae. Curious, but not suspecting it was more than a natural oddity, the colony on Zahir’s Planet directed two patrol craft to investigate.
They were the first human ships destroyed, but hardly the last. For five days, the rest of humanity did what it could to help—sending a stream of combat-drones and automated supply vessels full of arms, ammunition, spare parts and medical supplies into every outbound hole which reached the Confed’s most distant member.
In return, a series of info-drones carried back words of thanks and increasingly dismal battle reports.
The one thing Zahir’s Planet needed most, its sister colonies and the distant homeworld could not provide.—all but one, that is. Surabhi was barely close enough to pull it off—and they had one old colonizer ship in reserve there.
It was taken over, given a hasty overhaul and crammed full of equipment. Supplies and the precious cargo were added; a crew was picked. Colonial defense gave the old ship a brave new name and hurried it to the mouth of the Alpha Carinae hole.
The shipload of young heroes fired up its fusion drives and disappeared behind the well-marked event horizon. It a galaxy-striding neutral observer had been possible, said super-being would’ve seen the rescue ship reappear, a split second later and almost 20 light-years away, to play its key role in the first all-out space war in human history.
That was one perspective. But the view from aboard the S.S. Hakata Bay was quite . . . different.
><><
Celeste Luang moved from one set of readouts to the next, mechanically running through the pre-insertion checklist they’ve shoved into her hand. Like her crewmates, she was a combat pilot and a volunteer. There were only eleven of them, so all would be spending numerous shifts like this, tending the irreplaceable cargo. But Luang wished this shift had found her in the fighter bay, on the bridge or even at one of the engineering stations. This place, for reasons she could hardly express, made her uneasy.
She moved to the intercom and waited. Like her crewmates, she was young and unattached—this was a dangerous, one-way mission. She was also newly promoted—it wouldn’t do to have a junior warrant officer leading a full attack squadron into battle. In peacetime, Colonial defense had always been stingy about advancement. But this was war—and a special case at that.
By the time they popped out on the Alpha Carinae side of the wormhole, Celeste Luang would be pushing 40, from the wrong side.
A telltale flared on the intercom, accompanied by an attention-grabbing whine and quickly followed by a male voice. Leo Pasto’s tone was one of stern command, though he was but a few years older than the rest of them.
“Cargo Bay 3, report status.”
“Lt. Luang here, sir. All breeding chambers functioning normally, all units of cargo read within specified levels.”
“Very good. Standby.” Capt. Pashto left the circuit open as he called the fourth and final cargo bay. Lt. Montenegro responded from there, in the same routine fashion. “Very well,” Pashto said and opened all remaining intercoms so that the entire crew could hear. “We’re ready, ladies and gentlemen. We have our orders—an invasion to repel, a human colony to save. Let’s get to it! Lt. Silveira, signal escorts that we’re going through. Comdr. Schaerbeek, main drives ahead, 2500 kph. Straight down the pipe, Des . . .”
><><
“Has it really been 9 months already?” Kochi Silveira was asking for the third time. When nobody seemed inclined to answer, she shook her head. “Sure doesn’t seem like it. Not that long. Not to me. Nope.”
Silveira was one of those nervous types who couldn’t stand an extended period of silence. Her compulsive chatter had seemed almost endearing at first.
Almost.
And at first.
But the charm was wearing thin for Celeste Luang. It was fortunate for all concerned that Luang had a steaming mug of coffee to wrap her lips around. Even so, she made a face that had nothing to do with the bitter brown liquid. Her eyes remained focused on the far wall, visible just beyond her jabbering crewmate’s shoulder—as if she was expecting the ship to suddenly open and blow them all out, into the black grey interior of the wormhole.
Or maybe she was just hoping it?
At her side, Al Brewster grinned and nudged her. He still found Silveira amusing—but then Al had a disgustingly good-natured personality of his own.
“They deserve each other,” Luang thought, taking another long draw on her coffee.
Lt. Comdr. Cotonou chose that moment to poke her shaved head into the galley. Her given name was Batavia—Bat, for short. She was third in the ship’s pecking order and the most accessible of the ranking officers. You could even kid around with her a little, if Pashto or Schaerbeek weren’t in earshot. Cotonou made a face that was all her own—half-sympathy and half-amusement.
“Bad news, young heroes—duty calls!”
Everybody groaned, except Silveira. She gave her head a shake and insisted, “Can’t be 9 months.”
Luang moved past, dumped the balance of her coffee into the ‘cycler, put the mug aside for later washing and paused at the irritant’s side. “Hey, Bat? Permission to strangle her?”
A grin tempered Luang’s remark, almost against her will.
&
nbsp; Cotonou shook her head. “Denied. Unless, of course, she repeats herself again. Then I might just help you! Now, everybody into line—the Skipper wants us all present for the first one.”
“Right,” Luang grumbled as they marched single-file down the corridor. “Time to start hatching the ugly little buggers out!”
Behind her, somebody snorted. “You’d make a terrific mother, know that?”
Luang snorted back, though the elbow she dug into Brewster’s gut was of the strictly playful variety.
><><
“I don’t know about this, Al.”
Fran Plovdiv spoke for the both of them, but that didn’t stop her from sliding her butt down to one side of the bench with him and then taking the slow-squirming bundle from Brewster. Fran looked worried, uncertain.
“I don’t wanna hurt him. Pashto will have our hides, if we damage the cargo.”
Al Brewster gave her a look of contempt. He refused to call them anything but what they were—babies, infants, kids. But he swallowed his anger and showed Fran the proper way to support the tiny, vulnerable head.
“They need to be touched and held,” he explained patiently. “Could grow up anti-social, if they’re not. And we want them to be able to work together, right? Function as a part of a team?”
His eyes left Fran and searched Luang’s face for agreement.
She found herself nodding. It made sense. It was a rationalization, she also knew.
But it did make sense.
Hesitant arms came out and Al filled them with the next gurgling lump of humanity. “This one’s Calvin Sing,” he told her.
><><
She wasn’t sure if she should be angry or amused or what. Wasn’t it Pashto and Schaerbeek who were always going on about not getting too attached, too close?
So what the hell were they doing now?
The so-called educational skit had nothing to do with learning—and everything to do with bringing smiles to the faces of a legion of 6-year-olds.
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