“My job, among other things, is to issue military advice,” General Hastings said, calmly. “At the moment, our capability – ours and the combined forces of free humanity – to launch a liberation of the Middle East or Australia is effectively non-existent. The Navy is sunk or in hiding. The air force is wrecked and useless in an alien combat zone. The remains of the army can barely hold the line. The same, more or less, goes for our allies. The fighting would be effectively hopeless. It is hopeless.”
“I know,” the President said. “The responsibility is mine.”
The alien voice issued suddenly from the speaker. “We will abandon the Texas Foothold if you agree to provide us with transport to the other footholds and recognise our control of those territories,” the alien said. “We will recognise your independence, providing only that you allow missionaries to pass among your people and seek to lead them to the Truth. The precise details can be decided by our subordinates. Do you accept those terms?”
The President looked up at the display, and then back down to the speaker. “The responsibility is mine,” he repeated. “We accept your terms.”
***
“They’re getting closer,” Simon said, grimly. The parasite ships would be entering laser range – effective laser range – within minutes. The laser link to Earth would probably break the moment they opened fire. “Your orders?”
“We wait,” Gary said, sharply. They could have targeted the remaining parasite ships with the rail guns and perhaps destroyed a handful before they could react, but the remainder would probably blow the damaged shuttles out of the sky. If the aliens really were talking, however, how could they open fire and ruin the fragile truce? The wreckage of the Guiding Star’s battle section, drifting down and burning up in Earth’s atmosphere, was a potent reminder of how quickly the situation could change. “We…”
The radio buzzed once. “This is Mission Control,” it said. “The aliens have accepted our terms. The war is over!”
“Right on,” Simon said. “Bugger me, we actually won! What now, sir?”
“We’re going to have to ask them to help us get down,” Gary said, looking up at the icons of the alien ships. It was funny how they suddenly didn’t look so threatening. “See, you’re a hero! I told you it would work out fine.”
“No, you didn’t,” Simon said. “You told me to make sure I took out extra life insurance.”
“But you survived,” Gary said. He lit an imaginary cigar and pretended to take a long drag. “Once we get down, we’ll be heroes. They’ll be naming spacecraft after us.”
***
“Did I do the right thing?”
“There was no choice,” Paul said. He pushed as much conviction into his voice as he could. “We couldn’t have won a second outbreak of hostilities. This way, part of the human race remains free and can build up our own space capabilities. New spacecraft, bases on the moon and the outer planets, asteroid mining…within a few years, we’ll outstrip them completely.”
“Maybe,” the President said. His tone became pensive. “I have the feeling, however, that some of the electorate won’t understand that. Why should they?”
Paul considered it. “When has the electorate ever been right about anything?”
“When they elected me,” the President said, and grinned. Paul decided not to point out that he had voted for the other guy. “I think that was a good choice, don’t you?”
“They sit in their chairs and got fed soundbites by talking heads,” Paul said. “They looked at the world through a prism held up by people with dubious agendas. They swallowed all sorts of crap because it came from someone with a bright smile, or because they didn’t want to appear racist or sexist or whatever other kind of bad buzzword of the month, or because it was easier than thinking for themselves. They got whatever they wanted when they got it and forgot that it came with a price – a heavy price, one that they didn’t have to pay.”
He shrugged. “I guess we’ve had it too easy for too long.”
The President smiled. “Rich democracies are soft?”
“No,” Paul said. “Rich democracies just have a habit of forgetting how cold and harsh the universe can be. They might crucify you for…abandoning the Middle East, but everyone who knows anything about it will know that you had no choice. The world is in chaos and…well, we have our own reconstruction to go through, again. I think they’ll probably forget what’s important by the time the next election comes around.”
“How true,” the President said. “The war is over. Now, all we have to do is win the peace.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
-Helen Keller
“He was scared,” Joshua said.
Loretta looked up at him. A month in captivity hadn’t dulled her much, although the aliens hadn’t set out to really break her. “Who was scared?”
Joshua watched the lines of collaborators, some willing, some unwilling, as they were escorted towards the holding camps outside Austin. They would be held there until they could be tried, but plenty of people weren't waiting for the trials before extracting revenge. Several hundred collaborators, some of the worst, had been lynched before the insurgent network – what was left of it – had finally regained control and taken the remaining collaborators into protective custody.
“Mr Adair,” Joshua said. “I had wondered if he hated me, or if he thought I didn’t deserve a hot babe like you, but he was merely scared. Scared that one day the aliens would discover me, break in and take his children away. He betrayed me and he didn’t even have the decency to be a secret arch-enemy or something.”
Loretta elbowed him. “Stop complaining,” she said, with a wink. It was the type of wink that would have gotten a young girl arrested or whipped in a more repressive country. “You’re alive, you survived the occupation, you have a pair of quickie book deals lined up…”
“How many people are going to be buying books in the next few years?” Joshua asked. “The country’s a wreck. The war was little more than a stalemate. Millions of people are dead – do you know they’re saying that the total death toll is over one and a half billion? Half of America barely has enough to eat. The economy is a shambles and…”
“I thought I told you to stop complaining,” Loretta said, firmly. “Come on, think of all the new vistas opening up in front of you.”
“I used to think that getting the Pulitzer would have been the greatest day of my life,” Joshua said. “I never had a hope of getting it…and now, what remains of the committee is falling over itself to offer it to me, and I find it hard to care. What does getting the story mean now?”
He looked at the retreating collaborators and then around at the damaged city. “The entire country has been shaken,” he said. “What’s the point any more?”
“You beat the odds,” a voice said from behind him. Joshua jumped and spun around to see Tessa standing behind him, wearing, for the first time in his experience, a standard uniform. “You get to carry on living when armed and dangerous people wanted to kill you. What better victory can you have?”
“Damn it,” Joshua said, with feeling. “Do you have to keep sneaking up on me like that?”
“It’s good for your heart,” Tessa assured him. “It gets the heart beating and the blood pumping – I’ve probably put your heart attack off by a few extra years. You ought to be paying me for such a great service.”
“I’m broke,” Joshua said, and laughed. “Whatever I had in the banks vanished when the banks folded. God help the insurers when the claims start coming in.”
“I’m sure their lawyers will claim that they don’t cover damages by aliens,” Tessa said. Her face twitched into a smile. “Of course, all those people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens and even took out insurance against it are going to be laughing.”
She sobered up rapidly. “The Captain died up there,” she said. “
That’s not common knowledge, but I thought you should know.”
Joshua winced. He’d liked Brent, in his way, even if the soldier had been reluctant to have a reporter anywhere near him. It would have been easy to take refuge in hating him for censoring his posts, but it had been Joshua’s life on the line as well; a single mistake could have killed them all…and Loretta. Brent had deserved better than death, even if he had lied to Joshua about his destination when he left the safe house.
“I’m sorry to hear about that,” he said, sincerely. “What are you going to do with your life?”
“Have a long one,” Tessa said. She shrugged. “Plenty of people are a…little upset to learn that the United States maintained insurgency groups and stay-behind units, even if they came in handy when they were needed. I imagine that there’ll be inquiries and suchlike before too long, and people questioning the rightness of our cause.”
Loretta scowled. “Can you imagine the President agreeing that the alien missionaries could travel through America?” She asked. “What about freedom of religion?”
“I doubt that many of them will survive the experience,” Tessa said. “Oh, there were a few converts who maybe actually mean it, but most people seem to be shrugging it off now and abandoning it. Freedom of religion does include freedom from religion.”
She winked. “The Captain would have wanted you to have a nice life, so have one,” she said. “I’m going to take a long vacation somewhere.”
Joshua blinked. “You’re going to take a vacation?” He asked. “Where can you go in these times?”
“Yep,” Tessa said. “They tell me that Saudi is very nice at this time of year.”
She walked off. “So, what do we do now?” Loretta asked. “You know what that meant…?”
Joshua grinned at her. “It meant nothing,” he said, and took her arm. “We’re going to cover the return of American forces to Texas, the surrender of the alien ground forces, and the end of the war. Once that’s done, we’re going home.”
***
“And what are we going to do with them?”
Sergeant Oliver Pataki looked over at the speaker. “I dare say most of them could be charged with something, but that’s not going to be easy,” he said. “What do you want to do with them?”
Corporal Myers blinked. “They’re guilty of crimes against humanity!”
Pataki watched the remaining alien warriors as they waited in the holding camp. Rumour had it that the ports were already being repaired so that most of the aliens could be repatriated to the Middle East, or Australia, but there were plenty of humans who wanted to extract bloody revenge on the aliens. A handful were waiting just beyond the face, glaring at the soldiers who were standing between them and the aliens. They might not have taken part in the insurgency – and Pataki wouldn’t have bet money on it – but they sure wanted revenge now.
“I don’t know if we could charge them with anything,” he said. “They might have broken the Geneva Conventions, but they certainly didn’t sign the treaty. They could be charged with breaking their own laws of war, except they didn’t…even if we find their laws of war harsh. They make the Soviet Union look nice and polite. They even punished a few of their own for being excessive…”
“And one for crimes against their own religion,” Myers added. The sight of the alien body hanging among a group of human bodies had been a surprise. “Sarge, they have to be guilty of something…”
“I imagine it will make a lot of money for lawyers,” Pataki agreed. “The normal definition of a war crime is anything the loser did that the winner didn’t like. That’s pretty much everything, but this lot have plenty of friends who are armed to the teeth, so simply punishing them all isn’t an issue. Once we get them over the waters, well…fuck them. We’ve got a country to rebuild.”
***
“You expected this outcome,” Philippe Laroche said, as they sat together in the conference room. “Not everyone is happy with it.”
“I know,” Francis Prachthauser agreed. Europe was, in some ways, much worse off than America, even though there hadn’t been a direct invasion. The shortages of food alone had cost them thousands of lives. The civil unrest had cost more, even though thousands of young Muslims were being encouraged to leave for North Africa and the Middle East to fight the aliens. “Does the French military have any better ideas?”
“None,” Philippe admitted. “They agreed that the aliens couldn’t be dug out of the Middle East, or Australia. The Brits aren’t happy about that, and there are going to be millions of humans wanting to leave Australia, but…it can’t be done. Maybe once we build up a space force of our own we can…renegotiate the agreement.”
“Maybe,” Francis agreed. “On the plus side, it was one hell of an argument for international cooperation.”
“Yeah,” Philippe said.
“Russia, China, Europe, America…all working together,” Francis said. “Don’t you think that we might actually have a hope of surviving the next few hundred years?”
“You think the human race has a chance?” Philippe asked. “Us, with all our prejudices and hang-ups, our silly loves and lusts and hates and fears? Now I know you’re dreaming.”
Francis laughed as the two men went down for dinner.
***
“It might be possible to find a cure,” Paul said. “You don’t have to be stuck that way forever.”
Femala, who by now was getting practiced at reading the human expressions, frowned. “I don’t know if I want to have children,” she admitted. “I don’t have a real clan now, apart from your people, and I really don’t want to join the Yankee Clan.”
She watched Paul’s expression shift slightly. Over five thousand Takaina had chosen to remain behind in America, mainly converts to the American way of life, although there were a handful of religious converts in the mix. They’d been moved, for the moment, to a sparsely-populated region of Nevada, but they were rapidly becoming part of the area, almost as if they had been born human. The weeks and months since the Battle of Earth and the destruction of the Guiding Star’s battle section had brought in a lot of changes. Takaina who were – legally – citizens of the United States, by Act of Congress, were merely the least of it.
The Middle East was still a hotbed of insurgency, but the Takaina had dug in under their new High Priest, who had accepted the truce and stalemate. That wasn't too surprising; the defeat of the old High Priest had been accepted as a sign that he’d been doing something wrong, and so there had been a few changes. Femala suspected, however, that the destruction of so many human religious sites wouldn’t dampen the insurgency, but would instead fuel the flames of resistance. The Takaina might never be able to relax in their new conquests, let alone start conquering the remainder of the world. Worse, new ideas had started to enter the matrix, despite whatever the High Priest and his Inquisitors would do…and she suspected that it wouldn’t be long before there was a major social upheaval. The old system wouldn’t survive…and, now, she had a feeling that it hadn’t survived on other worlds. What was really happening out there, among the stars?
“You don’t want to be immortal?” Paul asked. “You don’t want children who could carry on your name?”
Femala laughed. Her position was a puzzle. The High Priest might have regarded her as a traitor, but not a willing traitor; the Takaina biology would see to that. The standard way of treating captured females would be to breed them with enemy warriors, but that wasn't possible with humans. The only possible fathers were in Nevada, with the Yankee Clan, and they…were something new.
But her dispassion and her intellectual freedom had come from her sterility.
“I don’t think so,” she said, finally. She had long ago resigned herself to life on Earth. The human space program alone would keep her busy for a long, long time. The humans had come up with ideas that even the Takaina hadn’t invented, although they had been remarkably slow about actually putting them into service. It puzzled her still; if th
e humans had developed their own technology, they would have won the war within hours and captured the remains of Guiding Star. “I think I’m happy the way I am.”
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