by David Weber
He was. He brought his fighter down to within meters of the ocean and crept in slowly, tasting the radar pulses, seeking out chinks in the electronic fence. He found one and slid through it, crossing the coast in darkness at the mouth of the Rogue River. He settled into the Cascade Range just south of Crater Lake National Park and activated his servomechs to camouflage his vessel. He would not be here long, he hoped, but until he departed he could not afford to be disturbed.
He programmed the servomechs carefully, then turned to his other task. He shaped a careful mental hook and cast it out into the world about him, questing for prey. Somewhere out there were minds he could touch. Minds he could strip of the information he required.
He only had to find them.
"You mean to tell me we've been invaded by monsters from outer space?" the President of the United States demanded, staring at Vice Admiral McLain and the pudgy, rumpled commander beside him. "Are you serious, Admiral?"
"By one monster, Mister President," McLain corrected. He shrugged. "When Commander Morris came to me with it yesterday, I was only half-convinced. After speaking to Colonel Leonovna last night and seeing the artifacts she brought with her, I no longer doubt any of it. In my considered opinion, she's telling the exact truth."
"My God." The President stared at the admiral, but the initial shock was passing. He'd been astonished when the Atlantic Fleet commander requested a personal meeting to discuss "a grave national emergency," and even more when he discovered that neither the Chief of Naval Operations, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nor even the Secretary of Defense knew anything about it. Had it been anyone else, the President would have refused with a curt, pointed comment about normal channels, but President Armbruster knew McLain's reputation well enough to know he was not given to fits of temporary insanity.
That faith in the admiral had been sorely tried when he heard what McLain had to say, yet it had been enough to get him a hearing. And now, to his own considerable surprise, Armbruster found that he was actually inclined to believe him.
"A question, Admiral," he said finally. "Why didn't you go through channels with this? Admiral Jurawski and Secretary Cone are a bit upset, you know."
"Both the CNO and the Secretary have expressed their disapproval to me, Mister President," McLain said with a faint smile. "Unfortunately, while I have not been able to examine Admiral Jurawski's EEG, I have managed to get my hands on Secretary Cone's. He's not on the safe list, Sir."
"I see." The President leaned back in his chair and nodded. The admiral was right—always assuming that he was not, in fact, insane. If there was a particle of truth in this fantastic story, absolutely no risks must be run. "But I am 'on the safe list'?" he asked wryly.
"You are, Sir. Unfortunately, however, the Vice President isn't."
"Shit." President Armbruster reminded many people of Harry Truman—verbally, if not physically—despite his staunch Republicanism.
"Yes, Sir. The Surgeon General provided me with your records—most reluctantly, I might add."
"I can believe that," Armbruster snorted. "The old bastard has a nineteenth-century code of honor. It goes with the job."
"I realize that, Sir. Fortunately, he knows me rather well and I was able to convince him . . . eventually."
"If—and I say if, Admiral—this story holds up, the neurologists of Washington will be doing land-office business in the next few days," the President said.
"Yes, Sir."
"All right." Armbruster slapped his desk explosively. "Bring me this Colonel Leonovna, Admiral. Tonight after supper—say about eight. I'll have a word with the security types and see to it that she gets in." He snorted at a sudden thought. "I'd better come up with another name for her, I suppose. Something non-Russian." He thought for a moment, then grinned. "Ross, Admiral. Miss Elizabeth Ross."
"Yes, Sir."
"And, Admiral," Armbruster said softly as the officers rose to leave.
"Sir?"
"You'd better not be blowing smoke up my august presidential ass on this one, Admiral."
"Understood, Mister President."
"I'm glad, Admiral. Good day."
Late afternoon sunlight coated the hidden fighter in glory and gold, but the Troll paid no heed. His attention was on things far more important, for his mind had touched another he might probe. He started to stab out, then forced himself to pause. He must take more time with this one, feel his way more cautiously. And that meant he must bring the mind to him, so that he might dissect it at leisure.
He "listened," refusing to open the two-way link just yet, and surface impressions trickled into his brain. He studied them carefully, seeing the face of a male human inches from his own and trying to understand the warm tingle of excitement as the face bent closer, pressing its lips to those of the one he'd reached.
It was a pity the male was blocked to him. He could have used them both, but one would do—for now. He took careful note of direction and distance, then activated two of his combat mechs.
They departed noiselessly, drifting through the forest shadows on silent anti-gravs, and the Troll returned to his tenuous link. Fascinating, he thought. So this was what the human mating ritual was like.
Annette Foreman sighed happily, snuggling against her husband in their shared sleeping bag. She always felt deliciously wicked making love on one of their camping trips, especially when they pitched camp early. She felt Jeff's hands stroking her flanks and nipped the side of his neck gently.
"Ouch!" He laughed, and pinched her firm bottom in retaliation. She squealed happily. "That'll teach you!" he said, as his hands did other, magic things. "And so will—"
He broke off, and she felt him stiffen. Her eyes flared open in sudden anticipation of embarrassment. Oh, no! She'd always known someone might interrupt them, that was part of what made it feel so wicked, but—
"What the hell?" Jeff raised himself on his elbow, and she turned her head, staring in the direction of his gaze.
She stiffened herself as she saw the two strange shapes emerging from under the trees, and her eyes widened. No! There was no such thing!
The two shapes floated a yard above the ground, sweeping closer with snakelike speed, yet so silent they seemed to drift, and the two humans watched in frozen disbelief as they climbed the slope towards them.
Jeff Foreman reacted first. Everything about those alien shapes—from their silent movement to the strange, golden alloy and stranger curves of their forms—roused a primal terror within him. He didn't know what they were, but he didn't have to. The caveman in his soul smelled danger, and he hurled himself out of the sleeping bag, heedless of his nudity, and reached for the short-hafted camp ax.
"Run, 'Nette!" he ordered, and his wife rose to her knees in shock. She'd never heard such harsh command in his voice.
"No! Come wi—"
"Shut up and run, goddamn it!" he shouted, and Annette stumbled to her feet in automatic response.
"Jeff—" she started, and he shoved her furiously.
"Get the fuck out of here!" he screamed, and the terrible fear in his voice—fear for her, she realized sickly—compelled obedience. She turned to flee further up the hill, stones and twigs harsh under her bare soles, and her mind whirled with fragmented images of terror as she pounded up the slope. Her thoughts came in jagged shards, lacerating her with their cruel edges, and the liquid spring sunlight gilded her horror with surrealistic beauty. What were those things? What did they want? How could she leave Jeff behind?! But his desperation could not be gainsaid, and she fled as he commanded . . . even as a part of her told her coldly that he must know it was futile.
She'd made it almost to the tree line when a burst of cold, green light exploded about her. The world pinwheeled, slivering her vision like some Impressionist nightmare of a kaleidoscope, and her scream of terror was a whimper as her voluntary muscles spasmed with a horrible, agonizing, twisting sensation. She smashed to the ground on her naked breasts and belly, barely conscious of the pain as ligh
t roared and howled in her head.
She thought she heard the clang of metal on metal, but her senses were hashed by the staticlike impact of the capture field. She fought the terrible paralysis, a prisoner in her own body, pounded by panic. There might have been another clang of metal, but then she heard a sound she could not mistake. One that drove her savagely abused awareness into the darkness on a gibbering wave of horror.
It was a scream—a dreadful, dreadful scream of agony. An inhuman sound, wrenched from a human throat she knew too well. . . .
"Colonel." Jared Armbruster held out his hand with the smile which had captivated millions of voters, but despite McLain's prior briefing, he was astonished by how young she looked. This was a fighter pilot? A superwoman from the distant future? The last hope of mankind? Preposterous!
But then she took his proffered hand, and he saw her cool, dark-blue eyes. In his political career, and especially in the last three years of presidential power, he'd seen many eyes. The eyes of people who wanted something, of people who feared the power of his office, of people who hated him or admired him. But never quite like these. Even foreign heads of state were aware of the power he wielded. It was there between them—a challenge to his adversaries, an invisible cloak of authority to his allies. He was surprisingly self-honest and self-deprecating, considering the driving ambition a man must have to seek the office he held, yet he'd become accustomed to seeing the reflection of presidential prestige in the eyes of those he met.
But not in these. These eyes measured him confidently—measured him, not the larger-than-life stature of the presidency—with the cool, distant impartiality of a cat. And it was in that moment, when he saw the lack of awe in Ludmilla Leonovna's face, that he truly began to believe.
"Mister President," she said simply, and her grip was stronger than that of any other woman he had ever met.
He held her hand a moment longer than protocol demanded, and she met his gaze calmly. Then he shook himself internally and smiled once more, releasing her to be introduced to Aston.
Ludmilla watched him shake Dick's hand. So this was the most powerful man on Earth. Despite her interest in history, she'd read very little about Jared Armbruster in her own time, for there had been neither wars nor major scandals to make his administration important to a military historian. Given the ominous international rumblings Dick had described to her, Armbruster must have been either very good at his job or extremely lucky to avoid the former, which seemed like a good sign. She hoped it was, at any rate, and she'd picked Dick's brain for every detail she could get about him. It hadn't been easy. Dick obviously respected Armbruster deeply, but perhaps because he knew he did, he had gone out of his way to be painstakingly honest and evenhanded in his analysis of the President.
Physically, Armbruster was about midway between her and Dick in height, his dark hair dramatically silver at the temples, and she rather liked the laugh wrinkles around his eyes even if he did seem to smile a bit too easily, with just a shade too much "spontaneous" charm. But he was a politician, she reminded herself, and it was the nature of the political animal to be charming. On the other hand, she'd asked Dick—and Mordecai—to describe the last presidential election to her in some detail as the best way to get a feel for the man who'd won it, and two things had stuck in her mind.
The first had been Mordecai's caustic description of the political insiders' reaction to the electorate's decision that presidential character mattered after all. None of the analysts had given the little-known junior senator from Montana any chance at all when Armbruster first decided to run, but that was because none of them had realized what he truly was: an honorable man whose tendency to speak his mind, sometimes just a little too colorfully but always bluntly and honestly, had resonated with the voters. It had actually convinced them to take one more shot at electing an honest President, and his campaign had crushed first the front-running candidate in his own party's primary and then an incumbent president who'd confidently anticipated that voter boredom would assure his reelection.
The second thing to stick in her mind was something Dick had said. Jared Armbruster had inherited a badly damaged office, one whose moral authority had been savagely wounded by the last two administrations, and whose prerogatives and power base had been severely curtailed by brutal infighting with the legislative branch. But he had dug in and begun the painstaking process of rebuilding with a combination of shrewdness and a determined effort to make good on his own campaign promises. He was also a staunch internationalist, who had somehow managed to convince an American public which had been intensely focused on domestic matters both to support his diplomatic initiatives and to accept that an effective military—and the investment necessary to produce one—was a vital necessity in a world which seemed determined to go to hell. Unlike Armbruster or the people who had elected him, Ludmilla knew what was waiting (or had been, in her own past, at least) less than ten years down the road . . . and that by the time the wars had finally hit in Europe, the United States' military had sufficiently recovered from its late twentieth-century nadir to keep them contained to Europe. Much of that recovery had occurred during Armbruster's administration, and the foresight and determination which had made that possible were impressive.
She had been inclined to agree with both Dick and Mordecai, based on that information alone, that Armbruster was both a good and honest man and a much more skilled politician than his defeated adversaries had allowed for. It remained to be seen whether or not he was also enough of a statesman to handle a situation like this one, yet she remembered the firmness of his grip and the intense, evaluating light in his eyes and felt a tinge of hope.
Armbruster turned away from her to shake Aston's hand, and this time he confronted something he understood. The captain was built like a defensive lineman, he thought, only bigger, and he was dauntingly fit for a man his age. He had the assurance of a professional military man, flavored by an instinctive but confident deference toward his commander-in-chief. The President was an ex-Marine, with the inbred, more-or-less tolerance for naval officers of the breed, but he recognized the tough, confident self-respect of thirty or forty years spent exercising command over one's self and others. It was something the true professionals never lost, he thought, and something the amateurs never gained.
"Captain."
"Mister President."
Armbruster liked the deep, resonant voice. He flattered himself on his judgment of men, and this one felt solid. Dependable. Above all, truthful.
"Admiral. Commander." He greeted his other guests courteously, then gestured at the chairs arranged in a comfortable conversational circle. "Won't you be seated?" he invited.
They sank into the chairs, and he offered refreshments. Of necessity, the conversation was light and inconsequential until they'd been served and the servants had withdrawn. But as the door closed—and every surveillance device, much to the unhappiness of the Secret Service, was switched off—the President turned his brown eyes to Ludmilla, and they were no longer the smiling eyes of a politician. They were dark and thoughtful, challenging without being hostile, and Ludmilla felt a surge of relief as she met them.
Yes, she thought. This man was a statesman.
"And now, Colonel 'Ross,' " Armbruster said with a slight, wry smile, "suppose you tell your story in your own words."
The Troll's vision receptors watched the planet's single moon drift among the clouds. It was a large moon, compared to the small, red-tinged satellites of the planet where he'd been assembled, and he wondered if he felt any kinship for it. This was the world of his genetic forebears, after all, but if the silent, silver orb meant anything to him, he could not find it.
He turned his attention inward, considering his newest information. It had been . . . entertaining to acquire it. So much more enjoyable than that whimpering, broken thing he'd sampled first. This one—this "Annette" one—had been different. Terrified, yes, but not broken. Not at the start.
If the Troll had
possessed lips, he would have smiled . . . and not pleasantly. The female had been frightened when the combat mech delivered it, naked and bruised, bleeding from the abrasions of its fall. Frightened, but filled with a hate that almost matched his own. An ignorant hate, one which didn't begin to understand, but a savage, knife-edged emotion he understood.
It had pleased him.
Yes, he thought happily, its defiance had pleased him. It was almost like the Shirmaksu's stimulation of his pleasure centers, only brighter, sharper . . . stronger. He had encouraged it to fight by varying the power of his probe, letting it think it had driven him out and then driving in once more until it screamed in agony. Such a frail thing, compared to the endless web of power which backed his own organic component, and so delicious. He had toyed with it, delighting in its frantic resistance and the lovely essence of its hate, hurting it and savoring the exquisite bouquet of its terror and despair.
He tasted the pleasure once more in memory, then put it firmly aside. He had recorded it; he could return to its sweetness whenever he wished.
Yet there had been more than pleasure. He'd learned much—more of technique than of substance, to be sure, for the female had known little of immediate use. But what little it had known, he knew. He had stripped that lovely, hate- and agony-filled brain to its quivering core, raping away its knowledge, and his cruelty had been more than merely an end in itself, for he had refined his technique. If he wished, he probably could brain-strip his next subject without inflicting any damage at all.
If he wished. If he wished. He savored his self-direction. The heady power to act as he chose against these puny, fragile humans and their ignorance. To exert his omnipotence upon them.