I knew that vacation time was over. I also wondered who the hell the Freds were.
Williams let us have it right between the ears. “Over a year ago, before I joined the team, this installation received a coherent signal from space. No other radio telescope picked it up. At first the men who received it thought it was mechanical failure or someone playing a joke on them. It could have come from a small radio a couple of klicks away, but it didn’t.”
He took a moment to check the notes on his clipboard. We all listened in rapt attention. I was ready to learn something new about the enemy, anything to speed up their final defeat.
“They analyzed the signal,” he continued, “and established that it was a narrow-beam microwave transmission. There were variations and holes in the message. We did a sophisticated computer analysis using the Dornburg system, the best satellite-and-astronomy program ever developed. We were receiving a complex billiard-shot message that had been successively bounced off seven bodies in our solar system on its way to Earth. When we connected the various holes and occlusions, the result was an arrow leading straight out of the solar system, a line that could not have been faked. The message had to have originated outside the orbit of Pluto-Charon.”
The director smiled. “Sorry if that was a bit technical, but it reminds me of what Robert Anton Wilson said: that if we find planets beyond Pluto, they should be named Mickey and Goofy. Charon is so small it’s really only a moon of Pluto.”
The admiral cleared his throat and stepped into the act: “There was an unexpected snag in the, er, handling of the data. The previous director decided not to tell the government about the message. The members of his team were divided in their sympathies as well.”
Williams picked up the thread. “They were afraid the military-industrial complex would turn the whole thing into a big national security problem.”
Arlene was standing right next to me and whispered in my ear: “That sounds almost as bad as the Hollywood industrial complex.”
“Hush,” I hushed her.
The director continued. “The scientists spent months decoding the signal, but they made slow progress. Then they ran into a little interruption: the invasion came.”
“Duh!” said Jill in my other ear, so I hushed her, too.
Williams didn’t hear their sarcastic remarks, and the brass seemed to have been struck with temporary deafness, which was fine with me. I hoped there would be Q&A. I wanted to ask about the Freds.
Williams wasn’t deaf, though. He reminded me of the nuns when they caught us whispering during a lesson. He frowned in our direction and became very serious. “In the wake of the invasion, my predecessor committed suicide. He blamed himself for not having passed the information on to Washington. In his defense, we might remember how certain agencies of the government turned traitor and collaborated with the Freds. Imagine selling out your own species to things you’ve never seen, about which you know less than nothing.”
So that was it. The Freds were what they called the alien overlords behind our demonic playmates. I wondered how that name got started.
“I will never forget the traitors,” Albert spoke from depths of a personal suffering I hope never to experience. The director didn’t mind this interruption. He smiled and thanked Albert for his contribution.
That was all the invitation Arlene needed to get into the act. “Did we ever break the code?” she asked.
“That happened after Director Williams took over,” the admiral volunteered.
“Many members of the original team are still here,” the director quickly added. “They weren’t held responsible for my predecessor’s decision.”
“We no longer enjoy the luxury of wasting our best brains,” Kimmel added.
“We broke the code,” said the director, returning to essentials. “The message was not what we expected. The alien message was a warning.”
“A warning?” Arlene echoed him. “You mean a threat, an ultimatum?”
“No,” Williams continued softly. “The aliens who sent the message were attempting to warn us about the impending invasion. You understand, don’t you? There are friendly aliens out there, enemies of the Freds who warned us about these monsters who’ve invaded Earth. There’s more.”
I could tell that he was enjoying this, but I couldn’t criticize him for his scientific joy. Part of his pleasure came from the discovery of an attempt to help the human race in its hour of need. But if he didn’t get to the point real soon, I was prepared to change my evaluation of his character . . . sooner.
He continued: “These friendly aliens seem to be saying they are the ones who built the Gates on Phobos; but we’re not certain of that. We are certain that they are inviting us to use these Gates to teleport to their base. We have the access codes. We even have the phone number. I mean to say they’ve sent us the teleportation coordinates. So the next step is obvious. We think it would be a good idea if certain experienced space marines delivered a return message—in person.”
* * *
At first I was afraid they’d leave me behind. I’m a marine, but I’ve never been off-planet before. Of course, that shouldn’t keep them from using me. No one else in the solar system has the experience of Fly and Arlene. They need two more people on the mission. I might as well be one of them.
Arlene and I have agreed not to mention my marriage proposal to the brass. We don’t intend to keep it a secret from Fly or Jill, though. There’d really be no point to that. But I feel there was little point to my proposal in the first place. I’m honored that she is wearing my ring with her dog tags. I just hope it doesn’t end up hanging from her toe along with the tag that goes there when a marine dies . . . and there’s enough of a body left for identification.
I never dreamed I’d go into space. Now they’re talking about our leaving the solar system. I don’t know what to think. The brass, in their usual sensitive way, told me there’s nothing to hold me on Earth except the law of gravity.
Right after Director Williams dropped his bombshell about the friendly aliens—and I’ll believe it when I see them—the brass told Jill and me they had something important and personal to discuss with us. Fly and Arlene were still reeling from the bombshell, and the colonel wanted to see them privately.
So the director turned us over to a woman aptly named Griffin, who took us to a little room where she proceeded to give us a pop quiz. “Do you understand seismographic readings?” she asked.
“They show earthquakes,” Jill piped up. “Do you understand decimal points?” she threw back at the woman in her most sarcastic voice.
The woman named Griffin had a stone face worthy of a Gorgon. She turned on a computer screen and started bringing up charts and numbers. “I won’t bore you with the numbers,” she said wearily. “Seismographic labs in Nevada and New Mexico detected five jolts that could only have been the result of a nuclear bombardment. The probable ground zero is Salt Lake City.”
Jill and I looked at each other and saw our emotions reflected in each other’s faces. Jill tried so hard not to cry that I couldn’t stand it. I cried first, for both of us.
I thought about all those old comrades—Jerry, Nate, even the president of the Council of Twelve. They couldn’t all be gone! I remembered two sisters who seemed to have been touched by the hand of God: Brinke and Linnea. I had helped them with their study of the Book of Mormon. They couldn’t be gone, could they?
I hadn’t admitted it to myself but until now an ultimate vindication of my faith was my certainty that Salt Lake City had been spared. That seemed to be incontrovertible evidence of the hand of God at work. We were, after all, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints. The whole point was our belief that the time of God’s direct intervention was not over. His hand must still touch the world, else how could we be preserved after such a holocaust?
The Book of Mormon was still only a book, like the Bible or the Koran or the Talmud. Surviving in a world of real demons provided a sense of the supernatural t
hat could barely be approached by every word of the First and Second Books of Nephi, Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, the Words of Mormon, Book of Mosiah, Alma, Helaman, Third and Fourth Nephi, Book of Mormon, Esther, and Moroni. The scientific explanations carried only so much weight with me. That we could witness today’s events made every holy text in the history of the human race seem more relevant to modern man.
If the Tabernacle had just been nuked, however, I needed to seriously rethink the prophecies.
* * *
Arlene looked fit and trim and beautifully deadly as we went to Colonel Hooker’s office. This was no time for ladies first. I outranked her. I enjoyed outranking a woman who was fit and trim and beautifully deadly.
The door was already open, and the colonel was sitting behind his desk when I reached his threshold. It had been a long time since I’d pounded the pines. I stood in the doorway, raised my hand, and rapped on the doorframe three times, good and hard.
Colonel Hooker looked up with a grim expression. God only knew how many of us were left in the world. The best thing about being a marine is the pride, which gets back to the question of how a rabid individualist chooses to serve. When you’re a marine, you choose; and men you respect must choose you, and respect is a two-way street paved with honor. Pity the poor monsters who got in our way.
“As you were,” declared Hooker.
“Thank you, sir!” Arlene and I responded in unison.
We went into his office, and he offered us each one of his Afuente Gran Reserva cigars. They were big suckers. Too bad neither Arlene nor I smoked. He lit up and ordered us to become comfortable.
“I want to be certain you both understand the full implications,” he said. “This is a four-man mission. The director has already pointed out your unique qualifications. We might as well be frank about it. This is not a mission from which anyone is expected to return.”
I glanced over at Arlene without being too obvious about it. Her face was an impassive mask. She looks that way only when she is exerting superhuman control. It didn’t take a telepath to read her thoughts: Albert, Albert, Albert.
The colonel must have had a telepathic streak himself. The next word out of his mouth was “Albert.” Arlene’s mask cracked to the extent that her eyes grew very wide. “Albert is my third choice for this mission,” Hooker went on. “I’ve chosen him because of his record before the invasion and also because he’s a veteran of fighting these damned monsters. Frankly, I don’t think there are three other human beings alive who have had experiences to match yours.”
“Probably not, sir,” I agreed.
“If I were superstitious,” he went on, “I’d say you lead charmed lives. We’ve come up with a mission to test that hypothesis. It will take a bit of doing, but you will have a ship and a navy crew to fly it.”
“You said the marine operation is a four-man mission,” Arlene reminded our CO. I loved the fact that she didn’t say “four-person”—she never worries about that kind of junk.
“You’ll be joined by another marine, a combat veteran,” Hooker told us. I was glad to hear that. “Only marines go on this one. But we couldn’t find anyone else with your particular background. Before you get acquainted with the new man, I have a present for you.”
He reached into a desk drawer and took out two white envelopes with our names on them. My turn to be telepathic. The little voice in the back of my head hadn’t worried about this kind of stuff for a long time. We’d been kind of busy staying alive and saving the universe.
But as I opened that envelope and saw the three chevrons of a sergeant, I felt a kind of quiet pride I’d almost forgotten. Those thin yellow stripes carried more meaning than I could have crammed into a dictionary. Arlene held her promotion out for me to see, trophies of war. A PFC no more, she had a stripe now: she was a lance corporal. Both the promotions carried the crossed swords design of the space marines.
Man, I felt great.
11
I didn’t feel so great when I met the fourth member of our team. He was an officer! After all the big buildup about our unique status as space marines, they go and saddle us with a freakin’ officer whose experience couldn’t compare to ours, by their own admission. After mentally reviewing every joke I’d ever heard about military intelligence, I cooled off. Some wise old combat vet once said not all officers are pukeheads. Funny, I can’t remember the wise old vet’s name.
Captain Esteban Hidalgo did bring some assets to the mission. He was a good marine, with high honors from the New Mexico war. That was on the good side. Plenty of combat experience, but mainly against humans.
On the debit side, there was everything else. In five minutes I had him down in my book as a real martinet butthead. Admittedly, five minutes does not pass muster as a scientific sampling, but Hidalgo didn’t help matters by the way he started off.
“One thing you both need to know about me up front,” he barked out. “I don’t fraternize. I insist upon military discipline and grooming. I demand that uniforms be kept polished and in good repair.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was as if the past year had just evaporated. Never mind that the human race was facing the possibility of extinction. We had rules to follow. Throughout history there have been examples of this crap. If an outnumbered army starts to have success, it is essential that the high command assigns a by-the-book officer to remind the blooded combat veterans that victory is only a secondary goal. Respect for the command structure is what’s sacred.
I could feel Hooker’s eyes on me, watching every muscle quiver. Maybe the whole thing was a test. Fighting hell-princes was a walk in the park, obviously. Defeating the ultimate enemy could go to a fellow’s head and make him forget the important things in life, like keeping his shoes spit-polished. I could just imagine us in the kind of nonstop jeopardy Arlene and I had barely lived through on Phobos and Deimos while Captain Hidalgo worried about the buttons on our uniforms.
“I’ve studied your combat records,” he said. “Exemplary. Both of you. A word for you, Sergeant Taggart. On Phobos and Deimos, you almost made up for your insubordination in Kefiristan.”
Why was Hooker doing this? I wanted to rip off Hidalgo’s neat Errol Flynn mustache and shove it down his throat. But I took a page from Arlene’s book and arranged my face into an impassive mask equal to anything in a museum. Hooker scrutinized me throughout this ordeal. So did Arlene.
Finally hell in Hawaii ended, and we were dismissed. We had a lot to do before the final briefing. We had to go rustle up Albert and Jill. Turned out she could be part of the first phase of our new mission, if she wanted to be. She was a civilian and a kid, though, so no one was going to order her. And I was certain we would all want to say our good-byes to Ken. Mulligan, too.
I insisted that Arlene and I take the long way around to finding our buds. It may only be residual paranoia from my school days, but I felt better about discussing the teacher outdoors. They don’t bug the palm trees this side of James Bond movies.
“So how do you feel about our promotions?” Arlene asked.
“Every silver lining has a cloud,” I replied.
“I could feel how tense you were in there about our new boss.”
“You weren’t exactly mellow about Albert.”
“Mixed feelings, Fly. I’m weighing never seeing him again against his joining us on another suicide mission.”
“If Hidalgo has anything to say about it—”
“Let’s talk, Fly. I know you as well as I know myself, and I think you’re overreacting. Just because the man is a stickler for the rules doesn’t make him another Lieutenant Weems. Remember, Weems broke the rules when he ordered his men to open fire on the monks.”
She had a point there. Arlene had been on my side from the start of the endlessly postponed court-martial of Corporal Flynn Taggart.
My turn: “There’s nothing we can do if this officer is a butthead.” I’d never liked officers, but I followed orders. It annoyed me a litt
le that Arlene got along so well with officers.
“I’ll tell you exactly what we’re going to do,” she said, and I could tell she’d given the problem considerable thought. “You are too concerned over the details, Fly. I don’t care if Hidalgo wants my uniform crisp so long as it’s possible to accommodate such a request without endangering the mission. All I care about is that the captain knows what he’s doing.”
“Fair enough, but I’ll need a lot of convincing.”
Arlene chuckled softly. “You know, Fly, there are some people who would think we’re bad marines. Some people only approve of the regulation types.”
“We saw how well those types did on Phobos.”
“Exactly.”
“Now we’re going back. So stop holding out on me. You were gonna say something about Captain Hidalgo.”
She frowned. “Simple. While he’s deciding if we measure up to his standards, we’ll be deciding if he measures up to ours. This is the most serious war in the history of the human race. The survival of the species is at stake. My first oath of allegiance is to homo sapiens. That comes before loyalty to the corps. We can’t afford to make any mistakes. We won’t.”
I got her general drift, but I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What if Hidalgo doesn’t measure up to our standards?”
We’d been walking slowly around the perimeter of the building. She stopped and eyeballed me. “First we must reach the Gates on Phobos. We weren’t the greatest space pilots when we brought that shoebox from Deimos to Earth. You may be the finest jet pilot breathing, but we can learn a few things about being space cadets. We’re just extra baggage until we’re back on our own turf. That’s when we’ll really become acquainted with Captain Hidalgo.”
“God, who would’ve thought there’d come a day when we’d think of that hell moon as our turf!”
She gave me her patented raised-eyebrow look. “Fly, we’re the only veterans of the Phobos-Deimos War. And the only experts.”
She was keeping something from me. I wasn’t going to let this conversation terminate until she fessed up. “Agreed. So what do we do about Hidalgo if he doesn’t measure up?”
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