by Greg Keyes
2
AUGUST
“Oh, no you did not,” Steve Hiller shouted, banking hard to the left as a surface-to-air missile tore through the space where his F-18 would have met it, had he not noticed it in time. He needed to yank the stick back immediately to avoid colliding with the pilot who was supposed to be his wingman, but who was apparently oblivious both to the missile and Hiller’s maneuver.
“Wake up over there, Williams,” he shouted. “Do you see what you almost did? Do you see? Nearly banged up my sweet ride.”
“I’m sorry, Knight One,” Williams came back.
“Sorry, huh? Oh, well, that’s okay then. I ain’t mad.”
“Sir,” Williams said. “I—”
“It’s alright,” Hiller said. “We’re all okay. Just—try and have a little situational awareness over there. Know what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir.”
Just then a spray of green energy stuttered by, nearly hitting his wing, and Williams turned hard to the left, even though he was in no danger from the attack.
“Newbies,” Hiller muttered under his breath. Most of the experienced pilots were long gone, killed trying to take out the destroyers—alien ships fifteen miles in diameter surrounded by energy shields that could stop a nuke. He had been among the first to attempt to take one down, and it hadn’t gone so well, but when it became clear it was a pointless exercise, the president had called off the attack.
Here, in Russia, they hadn’t accepted defeat as quickly, sending squadron after squadron at the alien craft, so by the time the city killers were finally taken out, they had no air force left to speak of.
That might have been one thing if their July 4th victory had been complete—but it hadn’t been. It still wasn’t certain how many aliens the ships had carried. Based on what he had seen in the mother ship, it might have been millions, and of those millions some fraction survived the crash, at least in some cases.
So his vacation—damn, his honeymoon—had lasted less than a day. Pilots were just too few and valuable to be idle.
Fortunately, the aliens that survived were pretty poorly organized, and with a little air support the infantry had mopped them up fairly quickly back in the States, killing or capturing the vast majority of the aliens in just a few days.
Other places—like here—things weren’t going as well. The city killer that destroyed Moscow had moved on to a more-or-less secret military installation, a holdover from Soviet times. A few thousand of the aliens were dug in, and without air support the Russian infantry was having a hard time cracking their perimeter. The destruction of the mother ship had deprived the enemy’s aerial fighters of power, but hadn’t affected their small arms, so they were still shooting green shit at him. That he was used to, but the surface-to-air missile—that was new.
They must have learned how to use human weapons.
He circled back in time to see another missile rise up from a mobile launcher.
“Gotcha,” he said. He painted the launcher with a laser and then fired an air-to-surface missile.
He watched it detonate with a satisfying bloom of smoke and flame.
“Okay, fellahs, let’s make another pass,” he said. As they made the turn, the surface-to-air fire intensified exponentially, becoming a hard green sleet. He heard Alvarez swear.
“Hang in there,” Hiller said.
“I can’t see anything,” Alvarez said. “My cockpit is compromised.”
“Pull up,” Hiller advised. “Get clear.”
“I can’t—” the other pilot’s voice cut off abruptly, and off to Hiller’s four o’clock, he saw Alvarez’s plane shred apart.
“Damn it!” he snarled, launching another missile into one of the buildings from which much of the enemy fire seemed to be coming. Then he pulled up. “Everybody get clear and regroup,” he said. “We need to think about this here for a second.”
“Knight One,” Control said. “Be advised. You have incoming.”
“Incoming? Incoming what?”
“Medium range surface-to-air missiles. Big ones, Krugs maybe, four of them.”
He checked his radar. “Yeah, I see ’em. Damn, talk about big guns.”
“I’ve got visual,” Williams said. “Holy crap.”
“One’s got a lock on me,” Knight Four said. He was trying to keep the panic out of his voice and not doing a great job of it.
“Keep your head,” Hiller said. “You’ve got a brain, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, sir.”
“See,” Hiller said. “One has a lock on me too. You don’t hear me gettin’ all panicky, do you?”
In fact, he didn’t feel too good about it. The damn thing was fast.
He made a hard break down and back toward alpha target, deploying flares as he did so. With any luck, flying back into the maelstrom would confuse whatever guidance system the thing was using. It also increased his odds of being fried by alien energy weapons, but at the moment that was the lesser threat.
He went so low he nearly plowed into the ground, then pulled up so hard the g-forces put black spots dancing before his eyes. It was worth it, though, because the damn thing went off in an airburst that leveled half of alpha target.
“Yeah,” he shouted. “That’s what you get!” His elation was short lived, however, when he realized that two more of his pilots were gone.
“Alright,” he said. “Where’d that come from?”
“Near the big hangar, your beta target,” Control informed him.
“Yeah, well beta just became alpha,” he said. He turned and sped toward their second target, about four klicks away. He was halfway there when another missile leapt up to greet him. “Well, this is gettin’ way too real,” he said.
He got a lock on it, launched one of his air-to-surface missiles, and broke hard to the right. This time he really did almost pass out, but he knew he couldn’t stop pushing. Without knowing exactly what the other missile was, he couldn’t be certain of its capabilities—but it was big, much bigger than his Maverick, which meant that it should be slower and less maneuverable.
It also had a head start.
He banked again, as he saw the blips on his radar rush toward convergence. Then he knew he had to eject. He was reaching to do it when the concussion hit him.
His first thought was that it was all over.
His second was that he was still thinking, and the F-18 was in the air, albeit completely out of control. He managed to kill the roll, but the stick was half dead in his hand, and the plane was becoming increasingly less responsive. He was in a dive and had a date with the dirt in about ten seconds.
Cursing, he ejected, knowing he had probably waited too long.
Jasmine, he thought. Dylan.
There hadn’t been enough time.
* * *
“Okay, Munchkin,” Patricia’s father said gently. “I think it’s time for bed.” He reached for the remote on the bedside stand.
“Please, Daddy,” she pleaded. “Just one more?”
“You’ve already said that twice,” he said, “and I’ve given in twice. Anyway, you’ve seen all of these ten times.”
That was true. Patricia remembered that, not so long ago, there were all sorts of things on TV. Now they just had a few video tapes they watched over and over again. She liked it anyway, and looked forward to nightly TV with her daddy, because it made her feel safe. Like nothing had changed.
Even though everything had changed.
He turned off the television.
“Can I stay in here with you?” she asked. “I don’t want to go to my room. I don’t want to be alone.”
He nodded, sighed, and tousled her hair. “Sure,” he said.
“And can we leave the bathroom light on?” she pleaded.
“Yes ma’am,” he said. He got up and turned off the bedroom light, turned on the bathroom light, and half closed the door.
“Daddy?” she said. “When do we get to go back to our old house?”
&nb
sp; “Patricia,” he said, very gently. “Haven’t we talked about this?”
“I know,” she said, “but I really want to go back there. I’m tired of being underground.”
“But we can’t, sweetheart,” he said. “Not yet. Our old house is gone—but you know what? We’re going to build a new one, right where it was before. You just have to wait a little while.”
“How long?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve already talked to some very important people about it, and we should get started soon.”
“Nobody is more important than you, Daddy,” she said.
He smiled. “Well, I’m glad you think so, but everyone is important, you know. Now get some sleep.”
She settled under the covers, closed her eyes and tried to imagine what their new house would be like. Maybe they could have a trampoline room this time. But no matter what else the new house had, there was one thing it wouldn’t have.
Mommy. Because Mommy was asleep, and she wasn’t going to wake up.
Patricia wept a little, but quietly. She was tired, and soon fell asleep anyway.
What woke her, she wasn’t sure at first, but then her father screamed again, and she knew. He was sitting straight up in the bed, and his eyes were open, like he was staring at something horrible, but there was nothing there.
“Daddy!” She grabbed his arm, and felt her heart pounding in her chest. He didn’t look at her, but he didn’t scream again—he just sat, breathing hard, looking at nothing. His lips were moving a little, but he wasn’t saying anything.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Are you okay, sir? Sir?”
“Daddy!” Patricia said again.
He blinked, and put his hand to his forehead. He looked down at her, and over to the door.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Just a nightmare. I’m alright.” He patted her arm. “I’m okay,” he said.
* * *
Hiller was still trying to sort up from down when something tried to knock all of his guts out. Everything went very white, like an overdeveloped photograph, and for a moment he couldn’t remember what was happening. Then it came back to him and he groped for his sidearm. The air was thick with the stink of burning jet fuel.
As his sight came back and the spinning in his head slowed a bit, he managed to detach his parachute and begin to get his bearings. With any luck, he had come down on the Russian side of the situation.
No, it seemed he’d used up a lot of his luck escaping the alien mother ship.
He had landed on the roof of a two-story building, which was probably the only reason the ETs weren’t swarming all over him. He lay flat, trying to assess the situation. The air was so full of smoke, there was at least a chance he hadn’t been seen yet, and he wasn’t in a hurry to help them spot his location.
He didn’t see any F-18s. He hoped they hadn’t all been blown out of the sky.
Through the smoke, he saw aliens, lots of them, decked out in their exoskeletons. Still no sign that they knew of his whereabouts, or that he had even survived. Maybe he hadn’t used up all of his luck after all. Now all he had to do was travel unseen through a few hundred aliens, reach the perimeter, and not get killed by friendly fire.
All good.
He scooted closer to the edge of the roof for a better look, and found himself looking down on the roof of a lower part of the building. For a few seconds he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Part of it was an anti-aircraft rocket launcher—not an alien weapon, but Russian-built. The launcher and its operator were facing away from him, but as the weapon swiveled to the right, he understood.
The operator was human, but an alien crouched behind him, holding him with the tentacles that sprouted from the back of its exoskeleton.
In 1947, an alien craft had crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, and for forty-nine years scientists had been studying the alien craft and the bodies of the creatures that had piloted it Because the creatures lacked vocal cords—and for several other reasons—the investigators early on speculated that they communicated by some sort of voodoo-telepathy bullshit.
They were only too right.
Not only could the aliens use it to communicate, they could use it as a weapon. The alien Hiller himself captured had nearly killed President Whitmore and put the lead scientist on the project—Dr. Okun—into a catatonic state he still hadn’t recovered from. This one was flat-out controlling a guy, like a puppet master.
He reconnoitered the rest of the rooftop and found that the other four sides presented him with a two-story jump. He was banged up enough as it was, without risking a twisted ankle or even a broken leg. He would do it if he had to, obviously, and the clock was ticking, because it was already well past noon. The aliens could see better at night than he could, due to night vision built or grown into their suits—the science guys were still trying to figure that stuff out. So he had to make a move sooner, rather than later.
* * *
He’d been waiting no more than ten minutes when he heard jets coming. When he saw them, he felt like whooping for joy, but then he noticed that of the nine they’d had at the start of the day, he now counted only three.
He was a little less excited when it occurred to him that they were coming to finish the job they had begun before the missile attack—and he was sitting pretty much on the bullseye. Moving quickly, he checked his sidearm and scrambled over to where he could see the anti-aircraft gun and its hybrid operating team.
The “crew” was in motion, tracking one of the approaching Knights.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” he said. He dropped the ten feet down to the lower roof and started sprinting toward the launcher. It felt good—he was tired of hiding. The alien started to turn at the last second, whipping a tentacle toward him, but he already had it in his sights. He put four bullets in its face before it went down.
The man slumped to the rooftop. Hiller was afraid one of the rounds had hit him, but the Russian was still alive, and Hiller didn’t see any wounds. He grabbed the fellow and started dragging him across the roof. When he got to the far edge, he heaved the soldier onto his shoulder.
“This is gonna hurt,” he said, and he jumped just as the F-18s screamed overhead. A missile took out the rocket launcher and most of the building. Hiller hit the ground with the weight of two men—a sharp pain in his ankle caused him to buckle and fall. Debris rained down, but he and the Russian were protected from the explosion, which hadn’t taken down the far end of the structure.
“I knew it,” he groaned. “I knew that was going to happen.” He rolled over and tried to stand, hoping the ankle wasn’t broken.
The Russian was already on his feet. His eyes were wide, ice-blue. His hands were gripped into fists.
“Tchort!” he screamed. “Tchort v moi golovye!”
Then he backed away, turned, and ran.
“Yeah,” Hiller said. “You’re welcome.”
The F-18s had made their pass—smoke and flames were everywhere. Hiller began to limp as fast as he could toward the allied lines. After about a hundred yards he hunkered down behind what was left of a wall and looked back.
The flash of green energy that disintegrated the concrete about six inches from his face wasn’t encouraging, and he ducked way down. He couldn’t be sure how many were following him, but thought he’d spotted as many as three.
“It’s a cakewalk,” he said. “Ain’t nothin’ but a cakewalk.”
He sprang up and ran for the next cover, a cluster of buildings another twenty yards away, trying to ignore the grinding pain in his ankle. If it wasn’t broken, he thought it was doing a damn good imitation.
He came under fire just as he ducked behind the nearest structure. He looked back and saw them coming over the first wall, about ten of them. They were gaining on him.
“Oh, no, fellahs,” he said. He picked one and started squeezing off rounds. His first two kicked up the dirt, but then he got two solid hits on one of them, and it st
aggered. The others came on.
He looked toward the United Nations positions. All that separated him from them was about two hundred yards of open ground. About a hundred and ninety-nine too many.
He changed clips and waited for the aliens to get closer, determined to take a few more with him.
Then he heard the thunder of low-flying jets. He threw himself flat behind the building as the oncoming enemies vanished in a blaze of napalm. Even with concrete protecting him, the heat was shocking. He smelled something burning and realized it was his own hair.
When it was over, he climbed painfully to his feet and continued toward the Russian lines, turning now and then to make sure none of the aliens had survived to follow him.
They hadn’t and they didn’t.
As he approached the allies he lit his cigar, thinking that lately he had spent way too much time walking away from fires.
3
AUGUST
The sea the Romans had once called “Our Sea” had been a busy place for millennia, but now it was dangerously awash with craft from aircraft carriers to rafts made of plastic jugs strapped together.
Dikembe shuddered to think how many hundreds or thousands must be dying daily there on the Mediterranean, fleeing death and destruction only to encounter more. The captain of the yacht, a Belgian named Jaan, gave orders to rescue those nearest to drowning, but drew the line at a hundred, a quota they quickly filled.
Without Hailey and the crew, Dikembe was acutely aware that he would probably be among those masses doomed to reach the bed of the Mediterranean rather than the farther shore they sought. When it was time for him to go, he expressed his thanks to her as best he could.
“You could just stay on with us,” she suggested.
“I appreciate that…” he said, “and everything else. But—”
“You need to get home,” she said. “I know. If I knew where my parents were, I’d be there so fast…”
“I truly hope they’re okay,” he said.
“Me too,” she said. She leaned up and kissed him.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got a little present for you. It’s not really mine to give, but in the shuffle, I don’t think it will be missed.”