Final Assault

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Mickelson felt his shoulders stiffen. Again, Franklin was off the script. He wasn’t going to mention the Tenth Planet Project, was he? Conspiracy nuts would hate to know just how many people were involved and how coordinated the effort was.

  “Because of our planning,” Franklin said, “we have found ways to attack the alien ships. We have conducted tests on the downed alien crafts and know that our plans will work. Every plane that can be equipped to fight will be in the air in the coming battle with the new technology and weapons. The aliens will not know what hit them.”

  “Good,” one of the reporters near Mickelson whispered.

  Mickelson suppressed a grin. He hoped other people were having the same reaction. Across the room, he saw Tavi Bernstein glance at him. Apparently, she, too, had been worried that Franklin was going to mention the Project and was relieved that he hadn’t.

  Franklin’s intensity seemed to have grown. “Our plan is defensive—we will protect our people and we will attack any ship that comes into our atmosphere— and offensive. We will fight the aliens from space.

  “Let me say this again: we will win this fight.”

  Mickelson actually found himself nodding. He felt like he was in a high school pep rally and he felt the president’s magic working on him.

  Franklin paused for a moment as if he were going to say something grave. Mickelson’s heart pounded. He hoped that Franklin wasn’t going to ruin the mood he had just created.

  “The only way for us to succeed in our plan is to work together,” Franklin said. His tone was both gentle and chastising. “All rioting must stop immediately. We need cities to house all of our people. Our enemy is coming from space. We must work together, as one race, the human race, to fight back. We do not have the time or the resources to fight among ourselves.”

  Mickelson nodded. That was well done. It wasn’t too harsh and it wasn’t too specific.

  Franklin had already declared martial law when the rioting started, but now he was going to enforce it to the fullest of his powers. He was going to use the armed forces to keep the peace and set up shelters. Anyone caught looting or rioting would probably be shot.

  The argument was that people needed to know this in order to stop. But Mickelson had said that U.S. policies would distract from the international nature of the speech. Mickelson knew full well that some countries would think the U.S. response too harsh, while others would think it too soft.

  This issue had been settled before Franklin got frustrated. The U.S. policies would be announced after the speech, not by Franklin—who didn’t want to dilute his message—but by the vice president. The vice president’s presence would send a subtle message to Americans that while the president was tending to world business, the vice president would watch over the home front.

  It was supposed to be reassuring. Mickelson hoped that the people of the U.S. trusted the vice president more than he did.

  “Until now,” Franklin was saying, “you had only vague promises that we were working on solutions. Tonight, I have shared our plans with you. Our goals— the goals of every citizen on Earth—are exactly the same.

  “Whenever you find something difficult—and the next few weeks will be difficult—look at the sky. Remember what you saw last April. And do your part to defeat our joint enemy.

  “For the next twenty-nine days, we are not individuals. We are a race, united against a common enemy. We must do everything we can to save our planet—our home. We have the plans in place. Let’s work together to achieve them.”

  With his left hand, Franklin turned over the hard copy he had been holding.

  “We will win this battle. We will preserve the Earth for our children and our children’s children. Our planet will be ours once again.”

  Franklin stared into the cameras, and after a moment, the lights shut off.

  The silence echoed for the longest time and then someone in the press corps started to clap.

  The clapping continued and grew throughout the room. No one was getting this on tape. This was a spontaneous outgrowth of the speech.

  Mickelson found himself clapping, too.

  In this room, filled with the ghosts of ex-presidents and a history so deep that he didn’t like to contemplate it, Mickelson had just experienced something he had never thought he would feel again.

  He had felt hope.

  October 12, 2018

  5:28 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  29 Days Until Second Harvest

  Leo Cross had two reactions to the president’s speech: one was an overwhelmingly positive emotional reaction—he wanted to get up and cheer at several points in the speech—and the other was a cool intellectual reaction, filled with skepticism and doubt. He didn’t say anything, though, as President Franklin spoke. Instead he watched Britt, who stared at the screens intently.

  They were in his new office on the second floor of Britt’s lab. The office was small and had clearly been cleaned out just for him. Dozens of screens covered the small walls, and he had access to even more screens through his desk. He had never been in a place so wired in his life. There were several systems here, each with a different level of security hardwired in. He could have several different conversations, at several different security clearances, all at the same time.

  Britt had assured him that the systems were easy to use. He hoped so. He didn’t have the time to catch himself up on the newest technologies. If it got too complicated, he’d go to his own media room at home.

  The room smelled faintly of dust and fresh plastic. There were boxes outside the door—apparently from the room’s previous occupant—and some of the details hadn’t been finished before Cross arrived. His lamps hadn’t been plugged in. Someone had not finished assembling his chair and he had nearly fallen off the loose seat onto the floor. But those were minor irritations.

  He had spent the afternoon getting ready to coordinate the largest information feed in the history of the project.

  And then he had tuned all of his screens to Franklin’s speech. After a few moments of that, though, he had shut off most of them. He liked Franklin; the man was a bit too charming and too political, but he was a good president. But more than one of him repeated on various screens was completely overwhelming.

  As the speech started, Britt had joined Cross. He liked being this close to her. If he hadn’t gotten this assignment, they would have been watching the speech in separate parts of the city.

  When the speech ended and the maps appeared on the screens, she touched his desktop and muted the sound. She knew the systems here better than Cross did.

  “What’d you think?” Her reaction was obvious. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. She had been inspired.

  Cross wasn’t sure he wanted to ruin that reaction. Britt had been getting increasingly morose the longer this had gone on.

  “I thought it was an effective speech,” Cross said. “I think it’ll accomplish most of Franklin’s goals.”

  Britt must have caught the skepticism in his tone. “Are they different from ours?”

  Cross let out a small sigh. They had had these kinds of conversations before. A large part of his archaeology training had included a study of history, and a large part of the study of history had included analysis of political systems.

  Politicians in times of crisis had several jobs, but their main job was to rally the civilians behind the cause, to make certain the troops remained loyal, and to stem unrest at home. Franklin’s speech did all three of those things.

  “Leo?” Britt put her fingers on his arm. They were warm and dry, and felt good against his skin. “What’s bothering you?”

  “Some things he said.”

  The brightness in her eyes dimmed slightly, just as he was afraid it would.

  “Not,” he said quickly, “because he’s wrong or anything. I think we have a good shot at fighting back. I think this speech will go a long way toward settling the unrest and I think we’ll be able to keep people loo
king toward the skies. I think all of that’s good.” “Me, too,” Britt said. “So what else is going on?”

  Cross put his hand over her fingers. “When a politician gives a speech you have to listen to the words he chooses and the details he leaves out. He’s going to try to grab your emotions—”

  “Franklin did that.”

  “Yes, and he needed to,” Cross said. “This was probably the best speech of his career. But he also gave out what seemed to be a large amount of information.”

  “You mean it wasn’t?”

  He wasn’t going to be able to get out of this conversation. Cross sighed. “Well, I got a piece of information out of Franklin that I couldn’t get out of Maddox.”

  “What was that?”

  “That we are going to fight in space. That the fight will be an offensive one. But he hasn’t told us the plan.”

  “Why should he? This was a speech to the general public.”

  Cross nodded. “My point exactly. You and I feel like we got a lot of information out of the speech because we already know a lot of this information. I’d love to know how other people reacted to it.”

  “I’ll poll the lab,” Britt said, standing. Apparently she didn’t want him to spoil her reaction to the speech either.

  “You don’t have to. We’ll find out public reaction soon enough.” Cross stood, too, and kissed her gently. “I’ve got a lot of setting up to do. I want to be able to contact most of the group later tonight. Maybe you and I can catch a bite of pizza together when the lab does its nightly order?”

  “We haven’t been able to do that since the rioting started. We’re stuck with canned cafeteria food.” “Uck,” Cross said. “All right. How about a date over Spam?”

  She grinned. “You’re on. Maybe I’ll make you my special Spam and tuna surprise.”

  He grimaced and ushered her out. Then he leaned against the door, letting the disquiet that had begun during the speech settle in.

  Franklin had sworn that people would be safe in the cities. But Cross had done some checking after Portia’s plea to the Project that morning. Even her best-case scenario wasn’t quite accurate.

  The factories making the nanorescuers were working at full capacity, but they weren’t producing the numbers needed. The other factories that were coming on-line in the next few days would help, but they wouldn’t get up to full speed right away. It was going to take luck to provide enough nanorescuers to cover every major city, its suburbs, and the twenty-mile radius around that.

  He ran a hand through his hair and looked at his new, sterile office. He longed to go outside and listen to the people on the street. He wanted to know if anyone else had figured out what Portia caught so quickly in the meeting that morning: that the president was saying that most of the planet would be undefended. The cities combined were only a small area. The rest of the planet, from the rain forests to the veldts, would be unprotected.

  And then there was the issue of the current unrest. Franklin purposely hadn’t touched on the U.S. response, but Cross had been hearing the announcements all afternoon. The president had declared martial law and he hadn’t been the only leader to do so. For the first time in Cross’s lifetime, most of the governments around the world had declared martial law. Freedoms that most Americans—most of the civilized world—took for granted had suddenly disappeared.

  If the world survived—and Cross had to believe it would—it would come out of this battle a place he no longer recognized.

  He pushed away from the door and walked to his desk. So much work and so many decisions. He was still in the center of it all. In fact, he was probably more in the center than he had been since the first attack.

  Maddox had done him a favor. She had given him control again. She had trusted him more than she had let on.

  He hoped he was worthy of the trust. He was going into this tired and stressed, and worried that no matter what they all did, the aliens would have some surprises that they couldn’t plan for.

  It was his job to make sure there were no surprises.

  He would do all he could.

  At least Britt was nearby.

  A dinner of Spam and canned tuna was worth suffering through if he had Britt across from him. He smiled. In fact, all of this was worthwhile as long as Britt was at his side.

  October 12, 2018

  5:18 p.m. Central Daylight Time

  29 Days Until Second Harvest

  Kara Willis hung up and put her hand over her wrist’puter. She wanted to keep talking to her father, but knew that it would be better to wait in silence. Let him drive. Let him get here.

  She sat on a rusted swing in Rogers School Park. A breeze from nearby Lake Michigan caught her, bringing the scents of fish and brine. Still, that was better than the smoke she’d been smelling all day.

  The park was mostly empty, although the bundles of garbage and the remains of campfires showed her that a lot of people had slept here the night before. She suspected they would do the same thing tonight.

  She didn’t want to be here when they did.

  Kara had managed to walk here, nearly to Evanston, dodging looters and rioters along the way. The day had been difficult. She was tired and sore from sleeping on the ground; her feet hurt because she was wearing the wrong shoes; and she was incredibly hungry.

  She had found water fountains along the way, especially in the parks near the lake. Fortunately the fountains hadn’t been turned off for the winter yet. At the first one, she drank and drank and drank, thinking she would never get her fill.

  But water wasn’t a great substitute for food, and her stomach ached. She had never gone without eating this long before—and she had certainly never walked this much before.

  She had made it to Rogers Park just south of Evanston before she decided to call her father again. He said that he probably could get that close to the city and that she should stay put and wait for him. Watch the president’s speech, he said.

  Kara hadn’t known the president was going to make a speech. She didn’t know if she cared about it either. But she had a choice between watching the speech and counting the seconds until her father arrived, so she turned on the video/audio on her wrist’puter and watched as best she could.

  A few blocks away where Rogers met Ridge, she could hear screaming and more breaking glass. She had thought all the glass in the city had been destroyed by now, but she had been wrong. Gunshots echoed and she noticed that she had stopped cringing. She was actually getting used to them.

  She noted all of that during the speech, and yet she found herself involved in the president’s words. Not enough to get up and tell those crazy people a few blocks away to settle down. But enough to hope that they would listen and look toward the skies.

  The president believed they could win. He knew more than she did. She hoped he was right.

  When her father picked her up, she really didn’t want to look in his eyes and see that hopelessness, that sorrow that he had even brought her into the world. She couldn’t face any more despair.

  When the president finished, she realized that the entire neighborhood was silent. Did everyone else hear him? Or were other people coming out now, telling the rioters that it was over, that they had a job to do?

  She didn’t know.

  But things were slowing down around her.

  Then she heard some more breaking glass, and a loud male laugh that sounded out of control or drunk and she realized that the people on the street hadn’t all gotten the word.

  With shaking fingers, she had dialed her father again. And this time, she caught him on the road. He was taking back streets, he told her, and it would take longer than usual, but he would be able to pick her up. She warned him about the noises at Rogers and Ridge, assured him that she was safe, and hung up.

  And ever since, she had been rocking back and forth on the swing. She would look at the sky—deceptively blue and pretty above her—and the lake, also blue and pretty on this sunny October evening.
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  When she was little, her parents had taken her on a Great Lakes cruise, and they had stayed at a hotel on Mackinac Island. She had taken a bike ride around the island, fascinated that people lived there, stunned that the only way off was by boat or small plane. She had wondered how people had allowed themselves to be trapped like that.

  She hadn’t realized, until yesterday, that Earth was an island, too. If someone wanted to hurt the Earth, she couldn’t leave it. She didn’t have the power.

  She was trapped here.

  She sighed and clutched the rusted chain of the swing. The president said that they would survive. They were in a city; they would be safe. He had promised.

  But, a few months ago, he had said that the attack on the tenth planet was a victory. That had felt like a promise, too. One he had failed to keep.

  She wrapped her hands around the chain, feeling the cold metal dig into her skin. The breeze off the lake felt good. It tickled her face and caressed her skin.

  A gunshot echoed off a nearby building. The sound was close, but not that close.

  Yet.

  Her father would be here soon. She could hang on until he arrived.

  She glanced at the lake again, and then at the sky. She believed her father would come, no matter what the odds. She believed he had the power to save her.

  She had to have that same kind of belief about the president. He knew more about what was happening than she did. He said he had hope.

  She had to believe him.

  Section Two

  FIRST BATTLE

  4

  November 9, 2018 4:23 Universal Time

  1 Day Until Second Harvest

  Commander Cicoi clung to his command post, his upper tentacles flat on the controls. He had changed the view shown through the walls of the warship. Instead of magnifying the target, it showed the actual space around them.