by Peter David
Perhaps it is some sort of human ritual for a person of rank to commit suicide in front of its enemy, thus acknowledging that it is supremely overmatched. There is still much to be learned about human culture before it is wiped out. Every little bit helps.
Or… is it possible that humans are capable of surviving in water? Perhaps some of the higher-ranking ones are partly aquatic? It is certainly something that needs to be discerned.
He walks over to the rail to make sure. He bends over it and looks down.
There, in the murk, is the human. It is not in the water. Instead it is hanging about forty feet above the water, clutching on to some sort of metal projection from the ship’s hull.
No point in leaving it dangling there.
He brings his second phase blaster online, but just as it snaps out into position and starts to power up, he hears something behind him clicking into place.
He turns.
Not fast enough.
* * *
Raikes, in the CIC, watched in satisfaction as she lined up the crosshairs of the bow deck’s 5-inch gun squarely on the back of the alien’s head. Since the dumb-ass monster had been generous enough to stand still so she could draw a bead on it, she felt that thanking it for doing so would be only polite, even though it couldn’t hear her.
“Mahalo, motherfucker.”
She fired.
The alien was just starting to turn in the direction of the gun when the projectile punched through its head, in through the already cracked faceplate and out through the back. The now headless alien actually continued to stand there for a moment, its arms out to either side. Then it slumped backward and tumbled over the railing.
“Just in the Nearly Headless Nick of time,” said Raikes, whose deepest, darkest secret was that she was a fan of Harry Potter.
Nagata had lowered a rope down to Hopper and now he was climbing it hand by hand, back up to the bow deck. He made it all the way up to the railing, but then almost lost his hold on the rope. Nagata reached over and gripped him by the wrist, hauling him to the deck with an impressive display of strength. Hopper had a huge bruise on the side of his head where the alien had struck him. “You all right?” asked Nagata.
Hopper managed a nod and then looked at Nagata levelly. “Thank you,” he said.
Nagata shrugged as if it were no big deal.
Suddenly bright light illuminated them both. Oh God, what now? Hopper looked up and saw that another of those weird alien airships had risen up and was now shining light upon him. Or maybe it was the same one as before; there was no way for him to genuinely be sure.
It’s going to blow us to hell and gone. After all that.
The ship instead did nothing. It just hung there, seeming to…
“It’s studying us,” Nagata said softly. “And I don’t think it’s done yet.”
As if it had heard him, the ship pivoted in midair, and then hurtled away through the skies, heading toward the setting sun.
Darkness fell upon the John Paul Jones.
SADDLE RIDGE
It had taken long minutes for the three of them to get the Jeep that was on its side down onto all four wheels. Sam, Mick, and Cal had to rock it back and forth repeatedly until they finally succeeded in tipping it over. Unfortunately it had fallen straight toward Sam, and she had nearly wound up getting herself pinned under it. Luckily she had thrown herself backwards and the Jeep thudded to the ground, bouncing a few times before settling down. Sam had then clambered into the driver’s seat, Mick riding shotgun—literally—and Cal crouched in the backseat, looking around nervously as if sure that something was going to leap out at him any minute.
Sam was driving as carefully as possible, given that it was night, the road was uncertain, and she was worried that attackers might be hiding anywhere in the darkness around them. And the nature of the potential attackers? Unwilling to accept what her common sense was telling her—because it just seemed too nonsensical to be “common” sense—or what Cal had just “explained,” Sam asked softly, “Are they Chinese? Hopper always said if we go to war, it’s going to be with the Chinese.”
Cal Zapata stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “They’re not Chinese.”
“What are they?” she screamed. When both Cal and Mick lunged toward her frantically, desperate to get her to shut up, not to mention that in her franticness she could crash the Jeep, she put up one hand to indicate that she had regained her composure. Very quietly, she repeated, “What are they?”
Sounding both portentous and pretentious, Cal said, “I think it’s safe to say we have successfully made contact with a life form from another world.”
“Yeah. Some success.” Mick looked at him with disdain. “I hope you guys threw yourselves a big end-of-the-world party.”
The Jeep jostled Sam as she fought to compose herself. Dad would have no patience with me freaking out. He’d be disappointed in me. He’d tell me to assess the situation, keep a cool head, try to understand the enemy…
“What are they doing?” said Sam over her shoulder to Cal.
“I don’t know for sure…”
“Best guess.”
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “they’ve sampled soil, vegetation—and I’m guessing they like what they see.”
“That would be just our luck,” said Mick. “That being the case: what are we looking at?”
“Well, we’re talking colonization,” said Cal. He sounded astoundingly matter-of-fact about it, as if he were discussing someone else’s problem. There was apparently a lot to be said for scientific detachment. “Look at history: explorers become invaders and if any indigenous people live, they’ll be servants, slaves, or museum pieces.”
“Thanks, Mick,” said Sam, making no effort to hide her annoyance.
“Me? What did I do?”
“You asked him. I actually would have been perfectly happy not knowing.” She sighed. “Why the hell couldn’t it have been the Chinese?”
“Yeah,” Mick said. “You get invaded by the Chinese and a half hour later, it’s like you didn’t get invaded at all.”
Sam stared at him. Then, shaking her head, she turned back to Cal. “So… what, exactly, are they doing up there?”
“Everyone in my field knows that spectrum isn’t the problem with inter-stellar messaging,” said Cal.
“Was that remotely an answer to my question?”
“All I’m saying is that we all have a shot at open sky. Frequency boost power is what dictates how fast and how far your message travels.”
To Sam’s surprise, she actually understood the implications of what he was saying. “So those things they were flying in… I mean, bringing in up there…”
He nodded, actually looking proud that she was picking up on it so fast. “Power cells.”
“Like giant batteries?”
He nodded again.
Mick turned in his seat, looking at Cal suspiciously. “And what is it you do up on this mountain?”
“Send and monitor deep space for messages. Why?”
“Well,” said Mick, and his voice slowly became filled with a vague dread, as he understood what was happening and clearly wished he didn’t. “When I was on Ops behind lines, first thing I did was try to make comms. Could they be…?”
“Using our gear to communicate with wherever they came from? Seems likely to me. I’m guessing reinforcements. Occupational forces.” Cal was way ahead of him. It made Sam wonder if the scientist had actually figured out everything the invaders were up to and was simply letting the two of them catch up at their own speed so they’d have an easier time both understanding and accepting it.
“Oh, so ET wants to phone home,” said Sam. “Except they need something a little more sophisticated than a Speak & Spell.” She looked at the bewilderment on Cal’s face. “What?” she said impatiently.
“I have no clue what you’re talking about. Is that a cultural reference? Because I don’t really do well with—”
Her m
outh moved but words failed to materialize. “Forget it,” she said finally.
“We can’t let that happen,” said Mick firmly. “Stop the car.” When she failed to do so, he raised his voice and repeated with fierce determination, “Stop the damned car.”
The Jeep skidded to a halt, the tires churning up dirt under them.
“No! Are you crazy? We shouldn’t stop,” said Cal. He pointed toward the darkness ahead of them. “Drive straight for the Marine base, maybe they can—”
“There’s no more Marine base,” said Mick. He started checking the rounds in not only the rifle, which he was cradling, but the other weapons he’d managed to extract from the crumbled Jeep.
Cal slowly began to understand what Mick was saying. “We’re not going down the mountain, are we?”
“Mick, that’s… that’s insane. That’s Looney Tunes.” Sam was shaking her head so vigorously it seemed as if it might tumble off her neck. “Doctor, doesn’t that sound Looney Tunes to you?”
“I’m not sure. What is—?”
“Never mind. Mick… we can’t do this on our own. We have to wait for someone who can handle—”
“You know what waiting around gets you?” he said coldly as he continued to check his ammo. “It gives the enemy time to find you, and target you,” he looked bleakly at her, “and blow your goddamn legs off.”
A deathly silence fell upon them, broken only by the soft click-clack of Mick chambering rounds in every gun to make certain he was ready to shoot anything that moved and wasn’t born on Earth.
“Okay, so… what do we do first?” said Sam.
Minutes later they had driven the Jeep as near to the site of the initial attack as they dared. Then Sam pulled it over toward a small cluster of trees. They climbed out and proceeded to cover the Jeep with whatever branches and brush they could locate.
Sam was breathing heavily, scratching at bug bites and scrapes she’d gotten from the branches. The branches also kept snagging her hair, and finally she pulled it back into a tight ponytail and wrapped a rubber band around it that she’d had in her pocket. She stepped back and studied the camouflage. It looked to be a pretty good job.
“I need to call Hopper,” said Sam abruptly.
Cal appeared confused, as if he was being presented information he should have but didn’t. “Who’s Hopper?”
“My fiancé.”
“Semi-fiancé,” Mick volunteered, laying some more branches over the Jeep for good measure.
She fired him an annoyed look. “He’s my fiancé,” she said firmly.
“Oh good. You need to call your semi-fiancé,” said Cal, sounding decidedly snide. “I want to call my mother.”
Sam was starting to feel as if Zapata was more in need of a good slap in the face than anyone she’d met in a long time. Mick, however, put a calming hand on her arm as he said to Cal, “He’s also a weapons officer on a guided missile destroyer that has the resources to take a whole installation out.”
“Oh.” Cal suddenly seemed to realize how he had come across when he’d spoken so disdainfully. Sounding vaguely apologetic, he said, “That makes sense.”
Sam decided it would do little good to berate Cal for the way he’d replied to her. Yes, it was dumb, but she hadn’t exactly covered herself with glory every minute of the last hour or so. Better to just let it go and move on. “You work with all that high-tech gear. Can you get us in touch with the ship?”
Cal gave it some thought. “They’re using an electromagnetic field to block our signals. An alien version of a Faraday shield.”
“A what?” said Mick.
“A Faraday shield. Invented by Michael Faraday back in the early part of the 19th century. You use a conducting material to form an enclosure to block out static and non-static electrical fields. Think of it as a sort of ideal hollow conductor.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.” Mick glanced at Sam. She shrugged.
“But in any electrical field,” Cal went on, oblivious to their confusion, “no matter how powerful, there’s no such thing as a solid or an absolute. And perhaps they’re using some momentarily unencrypted frequency among themselves, unless, of course, they use ESP or some other advanced, non-oral form of communica—”
Sam’s head was starting to spin. “What is he saying? He’s speaking English, right?”
“Could be,” said Mick. “I’m a little rusty on my science.”
“Sorry,” said Cal, looking embarrassed that he had left them behind. He thought a moment, trying to come up with a simpler way to pose it. “What they’re blocking frequencies with is like… a pulse. Not a brick wall. This means there are gaps. So if I can get to my spectrum analyzer, I can, theoretically, discover a frequency we can broadcast on for—I don’t know—thirty, forty-five seconds, before it rotates and gets jammed again.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” said Sam. “Can you get us in touch with the ship?”
“Your semi-fia—I mean, your fiancé’s ship?” he said, quickly correcting himself when he saw Sam’s expression. “If they flicker…” He nodded and then added, “I need to get to my lab.”
“Then that’s where we’ll get you,” said Sam. “If they’re left unchecked, how long before they can make their call?”
Cal glanced at his watch. “Five hours and fifteen minutes. That’s when our deepest satellite orbits into range. It only does it once a day. They’ll use it to slingshot the transmission to wherever it is they’re from…”
“Then we’ve gotta hurry,” said Mick.
Rifles slung over their shoulders, they set out to save the world.
THE HIMALAYAS
Doctor Nogrady had fantasized about moments like this. The notion of being face-to-face with high-ranking officials, and their hanging on his every word. Being accorded the importance that he felt a scientist of his status and achievement was due.
Never had he dreamed, even in his wildest imaginings, the circumstances that would lead him to this “achievement.” His mind flew back to the conversation he’d had with Cal Zapata about being wary over what you wish for, since you might well get it.
Zapata. Zapata, with whom they’d lost contact, along with the entire Honolulu base. Have they taken it over already? Have they destroyed it? And are we next?
He returned his attention to the image of the Secretary of Defense on the viewscreen in front of him. “And what,” the Secretary was saying, “is the update of the fragment that crashed in China?”
“Scientists have been scouring the debris field,” Nogrady said, consulting the latest updates. “And the pieces they’re recovering suggest they were designed for multi-spectrum data transmission across every electromagnetic wavelength from visible to x-ray.”
The Secretary nodded. Apparently he understood. Nogrady was impressed.
“What does that mean?” asked the Secretary.
Nogrady was less impressed.
Normally Chinese scientists weren’t quite so forthcoming with information they gathered, particularly with findings on their own shores. The Chinese government was relentlessly territorial with such things. But the Beacon Project was an international endeavor and all the scientists involved were sharing up everything they learned, whether the governments liked it or not. “It is the strong belief of the Chinese,” Nogrady said, “that what crashed down in Hong Kong was some sort of communications ship.”
“You’re saying a flying telephone cratered and took out two hundred and fifty people?”
“Like most death tolls, I’m sure that number will increase exponentially as they find bodies. My point is, what I’m saying is that our visitors appear extraordinarily concerned with establishing a line of communication home.”
“But if they lost their ship, how can they do that?”
“The same way we did. Our communication station on Hawaii has the ability to send a message to deep space through our LANDSAT 7 satellite. I believe it’s for that asset that they’ve domed the islands.”
“So if we can’t get into Hawaii, why don’t we just take out the satellite?” The question wasn’t being directed to Nogrady. There was doubtless some general or other army officer sitting just out of sight in whatever secured bunker they were communicating from. Maybe the Situation Room, maybe the Pentagon. It wasn’t Nogrady’s business to know; just provide information.
From nearby the Secretary, a gruff voice said, “Well, sir, that’s orbiting seventy-eight thousand miles out. We don’t have a weapon in our arsenal we can launch that distance at a moving target and be assured of hitting it. In fact, I can almost guarantee we won’t. It could take weeks of trial and error for our weapon to reach it.”
“Do we have a… I don’t know… some sort of self-destruct button we can push and just blow up the satellite from here?”
Nogrady didn’t quite trust himself to answer that question. Fortunately enough the unseen general did it for him. “Mr. Secretary,” and he was clearly trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice, “we’re not talking about a spy plane. We don’t build self-destruct mechanisms into everything.”
“Well, assuming we survive, we should look into that.”
“I’ll get right on it, Mr. Secretary.”
The Secretary shifted his attention back to Nogrady. “Speaking of survival… what happens if they establish communications?”
“Based upon the destruction we’ve seen them uncaringly rain down upon us…” He paused and then said, “In scientific terms: we’re looking at an ELE, an extinction level event.”
“Less scientific terms?”
“We’re history,” said Nogrady.
If Calvin is alive, thought Nogrady as he watched the Secretary of Defense contemplate the end of mankind’s time on this planet, then he’s doubtlessly coming to these same conclusions. At least he’s in a position to do something about it.
Although I wouldn’t hold my breath.
USS JOHN PAUL JONES