Alien hostiles, p.15
Alien Hostiles, page 15
A nurse in starched whites entered the compartment and gave Bucknell a sour look. “Off the bed, Lieutenant,” she snapped. Her rank tabs showed she was a lieutenant commander, and Bucknell came to her feet immediately.
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
“Time to take your vitals,” the nurse told Duvall. “Glad to see you’re with us again.”
“My head hurts like a son of a bitch. Ma’am.”
She shoved a thermometer into his mouth. “I’m not surprised. No skull fracture, but you do have a concussion. Of course, your blood alcohol levels suggest another reason for a headache.”
“Ah,” he mumbled around the thermometer. “You noticed.”
She held his wrist, looking at her watch as she took his pulse. “Of course.”
After taking his temperature, she checked his blood pressure. “Okay, Lieutenant. You’ll do.”
“Good. Do for what?”
“Probably for your court-martial,” she told him, and he honestly couldn’t tell from her tone of voice if she was joking or not.
“Court-martial!” he said after she’d left. “That seems a bit extreme for a bit of a hangover!”
“It’s a bit worse than that, Double-D. Drunk on duty. AWOL . . . you missed morning assembly. Violating the Rules of Engagement . . .”
“Hey! I did no such thing!”
Bucknell shrugged. “The bad guys hadn’t shot at us.”
“They were screwing with my mind!”
“Be sure you tell them that. But that might not count as an attack.”
“It sure as hell was an attack!”
“Hey, the skipper thought they were inviting us to talk. That’s why the squadron was going with them, okay?”
“I don’t buy it.”
“Well, what you buy doesn’t really matter, sweetheart. You’ll have a chance to explain things at the captain’s mast. After that . . .”
“What?”
“Either the mast hands out nonjudicial punishment . . . or you get passed up the line for a general court. I hope they have lawyers on board the Big-H. Good lawyers.”
At the moment, Duvall didn’t really care.
Sweetheart. She’d called him sweetheart. . . .
Maybe he had a chance after all.
At least . . . he might have a chance before they locked him up and threw away the key. . . .
Lieutenant Commander Boland was keenly aware of how badly his squadron had been depleted in the fight with the Nazi Haunebu saucers. Almost half of the squadron was gone, and he didn’t know how he was going to make up the losses short of returning to Earth and bringing more replacements on board.
Sixty-seven light-years was a hell of a long way to be out in the Void with no replacement pilots.
The CAG had told him this was strictly a volunteer op. He could pass on this mission and nothing would be said. But he felt as if he’d let the team down. He still remembered how reasonable that voice had seemed, drawing him toward the planet ahead, promising . . . what?
You come with us.
Boland’s own mind had supplied the justification, something about opening negotiations with the Lizards.
Damn it, was he really so easy to manipulate?
Only then, Duvall had gotten into a firefight and that had collapsed the fantasy. Deep down, Boland felt a wavering note of fear. What if he heard the voice again? Could he fight it if he was now aware of what it was—an insidious and roundabout attack?
“Okay, Hawks,” he transmitted to the six other ships remaining in the squadron. “We stay dispersed. We move fast, in, out, and done. And if you hear voices in your heads, we ignore ’em. Got that?”
“Copy, Skipper,” Tomlinson replied, and the others chimed in.
The gas giant, currently nicknamed “Charlie” for Aldebaran c, was an orange-hued beacon up ahead, and as they journeyed on, that beacon grew from a bright star to a world, banded like Jupiter and marked by storm swirls bigger than Earth. Like Saturn, Charlie sported brilliant rings, though they were almost invisible when viewed edge on. Several satellites were visible, tiny bright pearls in a straight line across the face of the world.
“Anybody see anything yet?” Boland called.
“Nothing in orbit,” Cotter replied. “Lots of microwave radiation from Charlie . . . or it might be one of the moons. Can’t tell if it’s natural or otherwise.”
“Probably natural radiation,” Kolinsky put in. “Gas giants are lousy with the stuff.”
“Okay . . . Cotter, Whitehead, hang back and stay above me. Not too close, but remain in my wake and cover me, okay?”
“Gotcha, Chief.”
“Affirmative.”
Lieutenant Jason Whitehead was Boland’s usual wingman; Duff Cotter had been Duvall’s. With an odd number left in the squadron, Boland had grouped the two of them with him, leaving two other pairs trailing farther astern.
“No hostiles yet, Skipper,” Boland’s RIO, Lieutenant Dick Voight reported from the Stingray’s back seat. “Where the hell are they?”
“We scared ’em off,” Boland said. It was a weak joke. In fact, the aliens’ motives and tactics were still a total unknown. They could be planning anything . . . and the Starhawks could easily be flying into a trap.
“Boosting speed to twenty-nine thousand,” he called, nudging the velocity controls slightly. With gravitomagnetics, there was no sensation of acceleration. The Stingray could accelerate to near-c or pull a ninety-degree turn, and the people on board would not feel it.
His targeting computer had picked up the target of interest—Daarish—a planet-sized moon with atmosphere, clouds, and seas.
“Okay,” he called. “Duff, Whitey, on my mark . . . execute Charlie Two in three . . . two . . . one . . . break!”
The three Stingrays split out of close formation, continuing to run parallel with one another but spreading out so that they would pass Daarish with as much coverage—low left, low right, and over the north pole. After all this planning, it would suck big-time if they passed over one hemisphere and what they were looking for was hidden on the other side.
Daarish grew swiftly dead ahead. Boland was taking the low-left approach, which would take him between Charlie and Daarish. “Okay. Start recording,” he told Voight.
“Cameras running. Lidar engaged. We’re good to go, Skipper.”
“And here we go!”
So much was happening that Boland didn’t see much of the world whipping past their starboard side. Charlie filled the sky to the left, bands of color—reds and oranges and pale salmon pinks—the clouds and storms blurring with the Stingray’s speed. To the right, Daarish flashed by in a sudden shrill scream of atmosphere and was gone.
And as they emerged, the Nazi saucers were back.
Dozens of them. . . .
“Boland reports that they’ve engaged the enemy,” Wheaton said. “We have data coming back.”
Admiral Winchester nodded, but said nothing. Groton opened the line between the flag bridge and PryFly. “Our people just got jumped, CAG. I suggest you deploy the other squadrons.”
“I will take that under advisement, Captain,” Macmillan shot back.
Macmillan and Groton held equivalent commands—Groton of the ship, Macmillan of the air wings on board. Groton couldn’t give the CAG orders, not in the traditional sense, though he could make requests or suggestions. If orders needed to be delivered, those would come from the admiral.
The stress was getting to both of them. It was always tough to make the correct calls, knowing that this command might lead to those deaths, while another order could result in the deaths of others. The trick was keeping your losses as low as possible while still carrying out the mission, but it was always rough. That was the burden of commanding.
Winchester seemed detached or simply unwilling to deploy the entire aerospace wing. He would be concerned about losing the Hillenkoetter—as was Groton—but that might be tough on the poor bastards flying past Daarish right now.
Of course, the Starhawks currently were ten light minutes away from the carrier, which meant that any help the Big-H sent would be at least twenty minutes in arriving. Hell, Boland’s report notifying that they were engaging was ten minutes old by the time it reached the Hillenkoetter. The battle over Daarish might well already be over.
He wondered who had won. . . .
Julia Ashley’s remote viewing was not limited by the speed of light.
She didn’t understand how that was possible, but experiments back on Earth and at the lunar base had proven that a remote viewer could see what was happening now in a way that violated the absolute laws of Einstein’s universe. The fact that she could also see through time suggested a possible mechanism for how that could be, but her understanding of physics was rudimentary.
All she knew was that in her mind she was there, in the middle of a dogfight as saucers and a dwindling number of human-piloted Stingrays tangled in a flame-blossoming atmosphere, the ringed gas giant hung vast and ponderous above a tiny world that looked vaguely like Earth.
There were only four human fighters left.
“I think our people are trying to flee,” she said aloud. “I can’t hear the orders . . . but four of our fighters look like they’re making a run for it.”
Hargreaves, standing across the compartment, nodded, but said nothing.
“Oh . . . that’s another one,” she said. One of the Stingrays visible in her mind’s eye had just exploded as a stream of tracer rounds ripped through it from behind. “Just . . . just three of them left.”
She could hear Hargreaves murmuring into a microphone, transmitting what she was seeing up to the bridge and to the ship’s combat center.
“See if you can take a look inside one of the saucers,” Hargreaves told her after a moment. "The guys in CC want to know what we’re up against.”
She tried and slid off. She tried again. “I—I can’t,” she said. “I think everything’s moving too fast. I get the impression that time is running . . . running slowly. Is that time dilation?”
“Could be. Don’t interpret. Just observe.”
She picked up a pencil by her hand and began sketching rapidly on a sheet of white paper. She was getting something, but she wasn’t sure what.
She sketched out a pair of eyes . . . eyes with narrow vertically slit pupils like a cat.
Or a reptile.
“I think I’m picking something up from near the planet. Most of those saucers are traveling way too fast for me to see . . . but the ones back at Daarish are in orbit, I think.”
She continued to sketch. Beneath the eyes, she’d drawn a straight-armed cross, blackening the inner part and outlining it, so that it was black inside a slightly larger white cross.
“Julia . . . Captain Groton wants to know . . . are there humans on board those ships?”
“No. Not that I can see, anyway. I can’t get a clear look, but whatever is piloting those things is . . . is dark. Angry. Cold . . .”
“Cold-blooded?”
“No. Dark and cold . . . like a dark, cold mind. Huge, golden eyes, like . . . like a crocodile. I think whatever it is, though, is warm-blooded. I can . . . I can feel its heartbeat.” She hesitated. “It’s . . . It’s watching me. It sees me . . .”
Like the monstrous form inside Oumuamua, the pilots of those saucers were telepathic. At the very least, they were aware of her mental probing. She wasn’t being blocked, not exactly, but they were watching her closely, and . . .
Those eyes!
With a shriek, she broke the mental connection. She again was sitting in the compartment with Hargreaves, sweat drenched and with several pieces of paper in front of her covered with scribbled notes and crude sketches.
“What is it, Julia? What happened?”
“I’m not sure. It was like . . . like it was reaching for me. . . .” She shuddered. “Dr. Hargreaves, I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’m scared.”
He sighed, then nodded. “Okay, Julia. We’re terminating the program. I’ll tell the admiral.”
“Thank you.” The sheer relief was overpowering. She felt weak, unable to move, unable to think.
God, what had happened to her? Ever since she’d brushed minds with those things inside Oumuamua, it was as though her psychic abilities had been dialed up to full on.
But she didn’t want to end up like poor Eric, strapped down and babbling incoherent word salad.
Somehow, she managed to stand up and make her unsteady way back to her quarters.
The stars spun wildly through a full circle with Boland at the center. He was tumbling . . . tumbling . . . and there seemed to be no way to regain control.
He hadn’t even been aware of being hit. One moment he’d been accelerating hard, boosting for the distant Hillenkoetter and the next, his Stingray had been reduced to tangled junk, with him trapped in the cockpit unable to get out. Voight . . . Boland was pretty sure he was dead. Everything aft of Boland’s seat was just gone.
And so was his squadron. The Starhawks had been wiped out, leaving him its only survivor. And that, he was sure, would not last for much longer.
His radio and laser coms were out of course. So was life support. His suit would give him air for another hour and a half, at most. Power . . . what power? Voight had taken the power plant with him. Boland seriously considered opening his helmet to vacuum and getting it over with.
Funny, though. His IFF was still broadcasting. It was a small unit located under his cockpit seat, battery powered and self-contained. It was still sending out his ID and vector. Hillenkoetter could be tracking him.
He hoped.
Reaching for the switch on his control panel, he flipped it off. Then on. Then off.
On-on-on. On. On. On. On-on-on . . .
It would take long minutes for the signal to reach the Big-H of course. He was no longer sure how far out she was. He’d been flying in the Hillenkoetter’s direction, and at a fair percentage of the speed of light too, so he should be close. The first question was, were they even tracking him? And, second, could they do anything about it if they recognized his forlorn-hope SOS?
The stars continued to pirouette around him as he tumbled. At least the Haunebus were gone.
He wondered if they’d gotten the squadron’s transmissions from the planetary pass?
And if the information would make any difference?
“He’s alive, sir,” Mason, the radioman first-class, reported. “That signal can’t be automated. He’s doing it by hand.”
Captain Andrew Macmillan watched the screen over Mason’s shoulder.
“How far? How fast?”
“Range is about three AUs, sir. Call it twenty-five light minutes. Speed . . . a bit under ten percent c.”
“Christ. Is he going to hit us?”
“Can’t tell with this equipment, sir, but probably not. They’ll know for sure up on the bridge.”
“Okay . . . but the pilot is definitely alive, right?”
“Has to be, sir. He’s flipping his IFF on and off, using it to transmit an SOS.”
“Well. We can’t leave him out there.” Macmillan picked up a nearby microphone. “Nelson, this is the CAG. I want a utility in space now. . . .”
Chapter Ten
“Remote Viewing is space-shifting without leaving your chair. It is a convenient shortcut for a miracle, therefore relatively high numbers of humans were able to achieve it.”
Lada Ray, Web blog, 2013, quoted by permission
15 March 1942
The Ides of March. How fucking appropriate.
Caldwell looked at the orders in his hands once more and shook his head. His orders, newly arrived from Washington, directed him to proceed to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, by military transport. There, he would join the 206th Coast Artillery, a National Guard unit from Arkansas. That suit had warned him that talking about what he’d seen would end his career. This very much indeed looked like a career-ending transfer.
Dutch Harbor, of all godforsaken holes!
In 1941, Caldwell had been G-2 at the brand-new Fort Leonard Wood in the Ozarks of Missouri, a post built the previous year as an Army training center. On April 12th, something had crashed in a farmer’s field eighteen miles southwest of Cape Girardeau, not too far from the small town of Chaffee.
Initial reports had called it a plane crash, and Caldwell had gone out there to see if it had been an Army aircraft. He found that an Army intel and Military Police team had already arrived from nearby Sikeston Army Airfield, cordoning off the entire area and swearing everyone there to secrecy, both military and civilian. Caldwell hadn’t been allowed close enough to see what had come down, but there’d been this one young Army sergeant . . .
The guy wasn’t supposed to talk about it, but he was badly shaken—terrified, in fact. He’d described a silvery disk-shaped object in a field . . . and bodies. Freaks, the sergeant had called them . . . and he was trembling as he said it. Child-sized bodies . . . big heads, skinny limbs, enormous dark eyes. . . .
Not human at all.
The sergeant told him about this civilian pastor, Reverend Huffman, who was brought in by the local sheriff to administer last rites. That part was just too weird for words . . . but it added a kind of uncanny, background realism to the story. Why would that sergeant make something like that up?
And why would it bother him so much?
It sounded like the cheapest brand of pulp sci-fi . . . or like the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. Caldwell didn’t believe in life on other planets, and the thought that he might be wrong was deeply unsettling. Ever since then, the idea that aliens might be in Earth’s skies left him uneasy, even paranoid.
The sergeant’s testimony had been in the back of his mind during the Battle of Los Angeles, as he’d watched the thing illuminate above. When the secretary of war had wired Caldwell asking if the battle might pertain to so-called “celestial devices,” he’d mentioned Cape Girardeau.
Those two suits had destroyed his first report but he’d written another, more certain than ever that there was something to all of this nonsense.
