Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  Markus Wilhelm had felt some of the shared panic. Nukes had been the fear of humanity for so long that the news of New York had sent the world into a tailspin of pure panic, playing a role – as much as anything could be said to have played a role – in the collapse of the global economic system. The taboo against using nukes had faltered in space – they provided the only way of ensuring the destruction of a target through a near-miss rather than a direct hit in space – but on the surface of the planet, only Wreckers used nukes. Even President Culpepper had resisted the temptation to pick an Islamic city after New York and just blast it. The aliens…

  The aliens didn’t need nukes. Wilhelm suspected that that was fortunate; they didn’t seem to share humanity’s racial terror of nuclear weapons. They’d recovered neatly and continued their work, whatever that had been; the number of aliens in the camp seemed to be swelling rapidly as more and more came down the space elevator, along with some of their equipment and weapons, heading out God alone knew where. Space-driven advances in medicine had provided all kinds of treatments for radiation damage, and it was logical to assume that the aliens had similar treatments for their own people, but could they be trusted to know just what was needed for humanity? The handful of doctors in the camp knew almost nothing about radiation; none of them had been rated as space-trained or military-trained. It was enough to make him sweat; the aliens had not only brought him to a place where they could threaten him with instant death, but they had also exposed him to an uncertain amount of radioactive poisoning. It was…

  “They’re asking for you again,” Mitchell Sartin said. The FEMA official looked tired and haggard; he had spent most of his energy trying to convince everyone in the camp that panic was not only futile, but likely to draw a violent response from the aliens. The aliens had punished looting and rape by death; who knew how they would punish rioting or civil disobedience? “What do they want this time?”

  “I have no idea,” Wilhelm said. The aliens – in particular Yehaka-Researcher-Earth, as she had identified herself to them – had talked to them almost every second day, with questions that centred around his relationship with Carola, some of them the kind of questions that would normally have been asked by someone who was secretly jealous and intent on breaking up the relationship. The aliens couldn’t be having thoughts like that – the very idea was ridiculous – but few of their questions seemed to make any kind of sense. “Did they give any clues?”

  They’d asked personal questions; they’d asked the type of questions only a close friend could ask, and then they’d tried to understand it all. They hadn’t understood; they seemed perfectly willing to accept that Wilhelm and Carola could be friends, but they seemed to have nothing in common. An insurance salesgirl and an economist who worked for a corporation that wanted to know the general trends of the future? Why hadn’t they fallen in with their own kind – a statement that had puzzled both of them until they understood that it meant their co-workers – and… mated from that group? Alien friendships were apparently centred around their work and interests; it was very different to human sexual patterns.

  “None,” Sartin said. He looked at Carola, who had been on the rug trying to sleep. By now, everyone was used to running around naked; the men weren’t even showing that much interest. “Are you coming?”

  “We don’t have a choice, do we?” Wilhelm said. He held out a hand to Carola. “Come on, love; the sooner we get this over with, the better.”

  The first surprise came when they were showed into one of the alien buildings. Apart from Yehaka-Researcher-Earth, who gave them what they had come to recognise as an Oghaldzon sign of greeting – it consisted of waving together three hands in a mixed pattern – there were three other Oghaldzon in the room, all wearing soldier uniforms. They had looked comical from time to time; they didn’t look comical now, as the aliens studied them with interest… and they heard, right at the edge of their hearing, the clicking sound of the alien language.

  “It has been decided that you will be moved from the camp,” Yehaka said, shortly. She was normally prepared to be friendly with them, albeit a friendliness that had very clear limits, but the presence of the soldiers seemed to be forcing her to be formal. “You will come to no harm, but your cooperation is strongly encouraged.”

  And that was a threat if Wilhelm had ever heard one. “I understand,” he said, meeting Carola’s nervous eyes grimly. Any change in routine was worrying for prisoners, he’d heard; it certainly worried him now. “Where are we going?”

  Yehaka didn’t answer his question. “You will put these on,” she said, picking up a pair of silver bracelets and passing them to him, before passing a second pair to Carola. Wilhelm examined them quickly; they might have looked silver, but the metal almost felt like a living thing in his hand. They gave him a creepy feeling, as if he was touching a spider, but there was no choice; he put them on, one on each wrist. They seemed to shrink until they were touching his skin; the feeling wasn’t painful, but it was strange and terrible. “Place your hands behind your back.”

  Wilhelm complied…and the two bracelets seemed to leap towards one another. He gasped in pain as the sudden tug pulled at his arm; the bracelet metal linked into its counterpart and melded them together, trapping his hands firmly behind his back. A glance at Carola revealed that her hands had been similarly secured behind her back; he realised, as the pain faded, that something had definitely changed. The aliens had never worried about securing them before.

  He met her eyes and tried to give her a reassuring look. It didn’t work.

  “You will accompany us,” one of the soldiers said. His – or maybe her; Wilhelm couldn’t tell – had a dispassionate voice, without even the hints of feeling that had slipped into the voice Yehaka used to talk to them. “Do not attempt to deviate from the path.”

  One of the soldiers led the way; the other two prodded the bound humans into walking after him, heading through the long alien corridors and back into the open air. Wilhelm tried to think, trying to understand; something had changed, but what? The aliens weren’t taking chances; he had been arrested once before, during a political protest as a student, and the handcuffs the police had used had been flimsy compared to the alien equipment. It was more comfortable than human handcuffs, but he had the strangest feeling that no human technology would suffice to break them… and even trying could cost him both his arms. He wished he could hold Carola’s hand; both of them were frightened, but it would have been easier if they could have comforted each other.

  He wondered, as they walked along ground that was still warm from having been melted and burned by fusion fire, what had happened to their old apartment. The city had been almost completely destroyed, first by the tidal waves and then by the aliens; the high-rise that had been their home for the past few years had been brought down by something, perhaps one of the missiles tossed into the area by the human forces, perhaps by an alien bulldozer-like vehicle. He could see several moving about as the alien settlement expanded; they weren’t playing games on the ground. The sheer scale of the activity was terrifying…

  They think they can win, he thought, and shuddered. The nuke had suggested that humanity was still fighting back, but what if that had been the last gasp of resistance? A line of alien hovertanks floated past with eerie silence; what would happen if they advanced now against wherever the government was, assuming the government had gotten out of Washington. Was the President even alive? Wilhelm had voted for the other guy, but the President was the President; was he somewhere trying to coordinate the war, or was he lying dead in the ruins? It wasn’t the kind of question he dared ask the aliens.

  He rubbed against Carola, trying to comfort her; they both needed that little touch.

  The alien space elevator rose in front of them as they walked closer, a massive shape built on the ground and reaching high up into space. It looked far too thin to be real, like something out of a fever dream; he couldn’t imagine it being more than a few inches i
n diameter, even though cold logic suggested that it had to be much bigger. It glittered a kind of trellis pattern towards him; was it a fence leading up to space, instead of a simple cable?

  Carola understood first. “You’re taking us up to space?”

  “That is correct,” Yehaka said. Wilhelm had almost missed the fact that the female Oghaldzon had followed them and their escort. “Your presence is required on one of the starships.”

  “I don’t want to go into space,” Carola said, starting to inch backwards from the guards. Wilhelm tried to reach for her and almost toppled over; walking was harder than it seemed with one’s hands tied. “I don’t want to leave my family…”

  “There will be time to talk to them later,” Yehaka said. Wilhelm privately doubted it, not out of any sense that the aliens were malicious creatures, but because they would almost certainly not understand the requirement. Alien biology was still a closed book to them, but they had picked up enough to know that it was very different from human biology. “However, you must move.”

  “Come on,” Wilhelm said, as encouragingly as he could. He understood her concern, and yet… part of him was fascinated with the concept of taking a ride on the space elevator. “We’ll be together, won’t we?”

  The aliens marched them into another Aztec-like building right under the cable itself; they passed through massive corridors and finally reached a large craft, sitting in the centre of the room. It almost reminded him of an oddly-shaped aircraft… and then he understood; he was looking at a capsule for travelling up the elevator. The aliens marched them in and ordered them to sit against one of the sides; there was a moment of strange sensation from their bound hands, and then the bindings were fixed to the side of the capsule.

  Yehaka looked down at them. “Do you wish to see out as the capsule rises?”

  “Yes,” Wilhelm said, quickly. Yehaka touched a control and a side of the capsule went transparent, revealing the dull metal of the room. The guards spread out, watching them carefully; there was a moment’s pause as the door hissed shut, and then the capsule moved along a sliding tube, almost like an Underground station, until it reached the base of the cable. Up close, it was a wonderful sight; the cable was a line of silver reaching down from heaven to touch the surface of the Earth. Wilhelm almost forgave the Oghaldzon everything, just for what he was seeing; it was fantastic…

  Carola had a more important question. It was a question that Wilhelm had been trying to avoid thinking about. “How does it stay on?”

  “Magnetic field,” Yehaka said. The alien had sat down, horse-like, and seemed unconcerned by the imminent ascent. It was as if riding into space was a perfectly normal event for her, something that she did every day of the year… which she might do, at that. There were spacers who spent far more time in space than they did on the ground, but the sheer costs of launching people had ensured that large populations had been encouraged to remain in space. “There are only a few seconds…”

  The capsule seemed to leap into the air. It passed out of the building and up the cable at a speed much faster than anything Wilhelm had imagined; he barely had time to examine the ground as the capsule rose, revealing the camp, the ruins of downtown Washington around it, the extent of the devastation caused by the tidal waves, and the alien settlements on the surface of Earth.

  Detail faded rapidly as the capsule kept rising; he stared, with all the enthusiasm of a teenager who had just seen his first bare breast, as the curve of the Earth came into view, the capsule seeming to slow as it rose higher and higher. Other capsules, moving far too fast to be seen as more than streaks of light, flashed past in the other direction, heading down towards the surface of Earth. The sight was so impressive, he forgot to be scared.

  Time seemed to pass quickly; his body insisted that they had been sitting in the uncomfortable position for hours, but he was sure, because of the speed of the journey, that it had only taken minutes at most. He glanced up as something came into view, a massive spinning shape, not unlike Orbit One – which had been destroyed, or captured, he assumed – hanging above his head… and it was falling, they were going to be crushed under the weight of a space station…

  His sudden attack of panic faded as logic and reason took control. The space station had to be right at the end of the cable; it already seemed to be slowing as it plunged towards them – an optical illusion, he knew; they were rising towards it – and a hatch was opening for the capsule. Another capsule fell out of the space station, flashing down towards the surface of the Earth; he barely had time to notice it before it was gone. The space station became a black maw… which became a grey room, surrounding them. He realised, with a shock of surprise, that there had been no sense of acceleration at all.

  “Welcome to the support structure,” Yehaka said. One of their guards did something and Wilhelm found himself bobbling into the air, his stomach turning as he realised that there was no longer any gravity. The aliens didn’t seem to care; one of the guards caught hold of him and pulled him through the air and out into the space station, another pulled Carola along as if they were just packages. Other aliens, clumping by on magnetic boots, seemed to turn to look at them as they passed; they might never have seen a human before, let alone had any chance to get used to human presence. “You won’t be staying long.”

  Wilhelm looked around frantically as the aliens pulled them though corridors that seemed depressingly mundane; the only strange element was the presence of the aliens themselves. They reached a second capsule and he wondered if they were going back to Earth, before the capsule launched itself into space, gliding towards another spacecraft – no, he corrected himself, a starship – as if it was the easiest thing in the universe. The starship itself was awesome; it was massive, a spinning mixture of rings and a long tube reaching out towards the planet below. It grew closer, and closer…and then they were docking at the port at one end of the tube.

  Despite himself, he was starting to suffer from information overload; there was just too much to see. Carola wasn't doing much better; as more aliens appeared to look at them, she pressed herself against him, looking more aware of her own nakedness than she had been after the first few days in the camp. Their escort marched them past the new aliens, and then into yet another capsule, which spun through a series of tubes; their escort pulled them down against the floor of the capsule, moments before gravity suddenly returned and pushed down on them. It was Earth-standard, as far as Wilhelm could tell, but it was a shock after being in zero-gravity for so long… and he had never been in space before, not even a holiday on the moon. Now, he was on an alien starship…

  “Welcome on board the Habitat Thirty,” Yehaka said. They walked through yet more corridors… and then out into the open air. He almost panicked again, before realising that they were in a habitat ring; the region was strange, dim to human eyes, but full of life. He could almost sense things moving in the foliage. “We will be moving, for security against further ground-based weapons, to the stable gravitational point you call Earth-Moon Lagrange One. It will be your home for the foreseeable future.”

  “Our home?” Wilhelm asked. Yehaka seemed almost to nod, a human mannerism that looked very strange on her great domed head as she bowed it slightly. “Why have you brought us here?”

  “You will become the first humans to be integrated with Oghaldzon society,” Yehaka said. “As I have taught you, you will teach me, and you will become part of the life on this ship.” The guards removed the handcuffs and faded away, leaving the two humans alone with Yehaka, rubbing their hands and staring at her. “Your children will become part of the united society.”

  Carola stared at her. “You are going to raise our children?”

  “We – you and I – will raise your children and ours together,” Yehaka said. “In a hundred of your years, there will be a united society of humans and Oghaldzon, living together in peace and harmony. For the future of both races, you must assist us.”

  Chapter Forty-Five: Th
e Face of the Enemy

  United States National Command Centre

  America was dying.

  President Cardona could see it all, though the reports coming in to the National Command Centre; he could feel his country disintegrating. America had once been a small group of states, cast adrift on the global stage after the War of Independence; a year ago, it had reached from the very tip of Argentina to Alaska. Now… now, Cardona wasn’t sure at all just how long America could survive, even without the presence of the aliens in orbit and the ever-present threat of more asteroids crashing down onto the planet below. The entire system was slowly breaking apart.

  The failure to destroy the alien encampment had only hastened the decline and fall of America. The aliens hadn’t bombarded indiscriminately, but that almost made it worse; each KEW they dropped from orbit fell precisely on a target that added to the growing chaos. Bridges, dams, interstate junctions, canals… the growing breakdown of transport only meant that the United States was becoming slowly cut up into dozens of separate sections, not all of them capable of survival. They could feed the population, through the miracle of algae farms and the tasteless food that they produced, but there were so many refugees that Cardona almost despaired of putting the country back on its feet. In some places, the megadeath figures were terrifying, and the toll was only going to rise further; diseases that no human had suffered from in decades had made a reappearance… and medical services were being pushed to the limit.

  It just didn’t seem fair, the President thought coldly; they had been making real progress. The Wrecker War was slowly being won and humanity had taken space itself, they had started to use clean and safe methods of energy production, they had made very real progress on ensuring that there would never be a Great Power War…

  And the aliens had smashed it all. Cardona knew that the loss of the moon meant, whatever else happened, that there would be an energy crisis for at least a decade, unless the mines that had been designed to orbit Jupiter and Saturn managed to make up the shortfall… and that, of course, depended on the aliens allowing the Helium-3 through to Earth. It had become a question of which of the remaining Great Powers would surrender first; the Caliphate, Europe, the Commonwealth… even Russia or America? The alien offer might even be sincere; they would exercise a degree of limited control, in exchange for energy and support in recovering from the disasters and the war. The President wondered, in a depressed mood, if the aliens had hit upon the way to actually win without taking massive losses; which state would surrender first?