Alien Alliance (48 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said snuggling into his
pelt.

“What for?”

“Chickening out.”

Az laughed, “I’m not complaining. That was
fun. I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

Li punched him.

“Ouch, bully.”

“I am sorry though. But I’m not used to
this.”

Az started to laugh again. Li punched him
harder, “Stop laughing at me!”

“I’m not. I’m not used to this either. This
is the furthest I’ve ever got.”

“What do you mean?” she looked up at
him.

“It’s true. I’ve only been out with two
girls and only kissed one.”

“How come?”

“Li there are six males to every female.
Think about it. That’s why Kaz and I were mercenaries and trying to
earn a ship. A ship is an income. It can also be a home, status and
a lifestyle. Lots of girls would love to try it. Girls are taught
by their parents to go out only with men with good jobs or
prospects. My parents aren’t rich and I had no prospects! Neither
did Kaz. That was until Kaz and I decided to go and fight for the
Zeobani. The Nashi invaded one of their planets, Oberterk. But the
Zeobani lost. The Nashi took over the planet and everything in it.
Including all my savings and all Kaz’s savings. We nearly had
enough to buy a spaceship. Another two or three months and we would
have taken our money and left. But it all belongs to the Nashi now.
And now, I have almost nothing.”

“Do the girls all obey their parents?”

“No. But they are very choosey. They can
afford to be!”

“Oh.” She was silent a while. Then she
started to laugh, “And I thought you knew what you were doing!”

“Well I know the theory. I know what goes
where. The practical experience I lack. I’m real keen to learn.
Don’t hit me again.” he ducked laughing. Li laughed too. A few
minutes later she said smugly, “At least I’ve got further than
Stella.”

They lay in silence for a while, then Az
realised she was asleep. He yawned. Good idea. It only seemed a few
minutes before there was a loud banging on the door. Li and Az
scrambled out. They heard noise everywhere. Groaning, they headed
for their respective bathrooms and then to the kitchen. As they got
their breakfast, Az heard a loud argument between Sarah and
Alan.

“I don’t care! We’re not having this
conversation again! You’ve no puff, you can’t run, you
baby-sit!”

“But I’m getting better. I’ll soon be
younger than you woman. Ludmilla’s going and she’s 76.”

“Ludmilla has military experience. And she’s
fit. She can run and she can shoot. And very accurately. You can’t
run. You puff on walking far which we will have to do tomorrow. You
can’t fight. You wont even be able to keep up!”

Sarah stalked away leaving Alan fuming.

*

Within half an hour, Az was finished
checking his plane as the first people were ready to board.
Shocked, he saw Simone. He had been aware all the women were
training. And intellectually, he understood they all intended to
fight. But somehow he had thought that Simone wouldn’t, because of
Dieter. Now he understood the babysitting remark. He also truly
understood, finally, no reserve. No plan B for the adults. How
could these People do this? How could they let their women fight?
It was driving him crazy but he understood the odds. They were
unfavourable to say the least. He climbed into the cockpit. Mathew
was the last on board.

As the four planes were ready they lifted
off, all to different cities. They left behind Helkmid and his
staff in their lab, still working flat out bottling up the last of
the anti virals and the placebos (fake cures). Also left behind was
a tearful Dieter, a bad tempered and disgusted Alan and a huge pile
of dirty dishes…

*

During the several hours of the flight,
Mathew worried. Outwardly calm, inside he was second guessing
himself over every decision. They could be pathetic little groups
of eight to ten people trying to kill 200+ at each site. But what
choice did they have? They had run out of time. He was worried
about his Teams. His Team was almost all women and many not young.
But his father had always told him where possible to let the Teams
choose themselves. So he had. His father said trust, loyalty,
mutual respect and compatibility often mattered more than ability.
Those with children had agonised over what to do and then decided
to split up to hopefully increase the chances of one of them
surviving to look after their children.

His father said you never knew what people
would do when they were backed against a wall. Most fought. Some of
the littlest women in his father’s battalion’s had fought the
hardest. Some of the biggest men froze. In hand to hand combat the
men were generally better but add weapons and the playing field
tended to level out. And Kelly, Stella and Li had been a shock with
their ability in unarmed combat. Steve was a wild card and likely
to be reckless but the others might be able to steady him and keep
him focussed.

Con’s Team of Bert, Dan, Nial, Steve, Karl,
Little Ali and Ilse had been delegated the city Mathew thought
would be hardest to take as the armoury was in an awkward place to
get at, in the centre of the city. A pity any bodies were kept
inside. They had no idea how many were killed or incapacitated
except where some had been seen being flown up to the spaceships.
And that was only the Keulfyd. How ill were the other Races?
Helkmid was predicting that his bugs would have killed or
incapacitated at least half the targeted Races. He further insisted
that sick people didn’t fight if they were mercenaries. They
weren’t required to. They could surrender and still get paid. It
wasn’t as if they were defending their homes and families. This was
a job to them. And unlike most Terran armies, only soldiers fought.
Cooks, clerks, medical and all the other support staff were not
trained nor expected to fight. That meant a huge number of People
that could be discounted. That came off the total of 200. Mathew
had found this hard to believe. How could an army not use all of
its resources? He had not taken them off the total. He thought if
an attack happened, they would fight. He would. He was. Mathew was
one of the few in his family not formally army trained. But he had
been trained. Through osmosis. He absorbed military training simply
by living with his family. Tactics and strategy were normal
dinnertime conversation. His family talked tactics, watched war
films and documentaries, laughed at the absurdities and
inaccuracies. Yelled at the screen when what was shown was wrong.
One of his descendants, in the 1920’s had stood up in a cinema and
angrily stated that the film was a mockery. Horses couldn’t run
that fast.

Mathew had been suspicious of Helkmid. He
seemed to know an awful lot more than he should, of military
matters in general and of Biological Warfare in particular. When
Mathew gently hinted at this, Helkmid cheerfully repeated what he
had told Donny which was that medical people had the knowledge to
be the best killers and he had lived long enough to have had a lot
of experience. While there was truth in that, Mathew had suspected
it was not the whole truth. Subsequent revelations had proved him
right. Helkmid had been well prepared in his little bolt hole. Too
well prepared. Mathew wondered why. He wondered what his plan had
been and why none of the other Okme in other cities had survived.
And Helkmid had a way to hide from the scanners. A shield of some
kind? Had he expected something to happen? Donny said there was a
cache of food and beverages, and some securely locked rooms or
cupboards. They had also had bedding. Helkmid had explained this
away as preparing for major disasters or epidemics. It hadn’t
entirely rung true to Donny either but with Donny’s loyalty, Mathew
had had to push him for that hunch.

Akira’s Team of Miyuki, Sally, Jolene,
Mayling, Nanelle, Pieter, Rani, Bella and Alia was another he was
worried about. But the city designated to them, according to the
Cats, had had a lot of fatalities. Hopefully, they had no fight
left in them so long as they could get the Relogs before the fight
started. And the armoury was easily accessible being on the
outskirts of the City. Mathew wondered what type of idiot had
achieved that neat piece of brilliant military planning.

Ali’s Team was looking good. He was a good
leader. So were all the others. His Team of Sarah, Kaz, Stella,
Kelly, Mahmoud, Tue, Donny and Harsha were cohesive and reliable.
So he had given them a difficult city with what appeared to be a
low death count so far.

His own Team was Az, Li, Minka, Simone,
Anne, Helene, Julia, Ludmilla, Tasha and Bea. Just as well because
their city did not appear to have a lot of casualties. Julia had
originally been on Con’s Team but had switched so she could guard
Bea and to increase her children’s chances of having at least one
parent alive after this day was over. He had left the numbers as
they were rather than juggle the Teams. Another decision that could
have unseen consequences. Again, he hoped he was right.

He sighed. The blow guns were good stealth
weapons but with their short range they wouldn’t be much good once
fighting started. According to the Cats, the main weapons they were
up against were what was called field standard, a combination stun
or kill weapon, or blasters. They could be armed with both. He had
heard Bert, Kelly, Sally, Pieter and Ludmilla plan what they would
have to deal with in the way of injuries from the information Kaz
and Az had given as to the types of injuries caused. If disrupters
were used, there was no treatment.

But they had planned for survivable
injuries. Blasters cauterised the wound so there would be very
little bleeding. Field standard, he still hadn’t figured out quite
how they worked but he thought they were a projectile weapon which
used a battery, not explosives. Kaz had tried to explain. The main
point was that you must carry a spare battery as well as the
projectiles they threw. Hits from them mimicked hits from bullets
so not necessarily fatal. That was if any survived to treat
them.

Helkmid had all the Healing Machines ready
to deal with the worst injuries. But there were only eight of them.
Mathew knew there would be more casualties than that. And one Team
had no doctor (he was counting Ludmilla as a doctor), but he had
put Sally and Pieter on it. Both were good. Sally was an
experienced and competent nurse. Pieter had some medic training.
Their role was to keep people alive until they could be got to a
doctor or a Machine. Or maybe not. Sally said she could do a lot
that was beyond her scope of practice. There were no laws here they
had to abide by. Kelly had told her to do whatever she thought she
could do and to go beyond that if she had nothing to lose; if
someone was dying. Kelly told her to follow her instinct. They had
no proper medical facilities. And they had only eight Machines.
Mathew realised with some amusement that his own safety was of
little concern to him. This was his battle, his planning, his
responsibility. He was far more afraid of getting it wrong than he
was of dying. He was chewing over what he could have forgotten or
not known.

What a pity the other survivors would not
join in. There were a lot of Kepis, almost 60 adults. Ali had done
his best but they refused to fight. In one of the cities almost 500
of varying Races had survived because most had been in a spaceship
at the time of the gas attack. Incredibly, not only would they not
fight, many had walked out into the gas, from this and other
planes. Mathew could not understand that attitude. And there must
have been others. An airplane would eventually run out of air but
anyone in a spaceship could survive indefinitely. And why hadn’t
some tried to get away? Why had they given up?

But there were still the Cats. The Cats
might help. But they hadn’t helped with getting the planes. They
had said they would help but they hadn’t. Their leaders had been
racked by indecision and in the end had refused to let the young
ones help. They had thought it was hopeless and not worth the risk.
Their society was torn over the wish to help and the need to keep
their sentience secret. There were millions of them. If they would
just help. It was a badly kept secret that some were determined to
help this time. How many was some? Mathew, if pushed, would have to
admit he was counting on help from them, counting on many dead
Aliens, counting on the blowguns getting the Yakkidimux and Relogs.
Counting on a lot of variables. If the count wasn’t good enough
they were finished. But they had nothing to lose. Damn the delay
before a battle. Too much time to think!! This was Mathew’s first
battle. He wondered how others coped. He couldn’t exactly ask.

It all depended on how many were already
compromised and how many they could incapacitate before the attack
began. And they had to get the armouries. They needed decent
weapons. The blow guns were good as a stealth weapon but they were
slow to load, cumbersome, slow to incapacitate and slow to kill.
Worse, they lacked the range and were useless at shooting up. If
the Aliens got up above them in those skyscrapers, they were
finished. There was so little cover. Almost nothing to hide behind
or under. They would be sitting ducks.

*

Several hours later, nearing his target
city, designated City 72 by the Keulfyd, Az saw a line of lights.
He lined up the plane and touched down a little roughly as the
distance to the ground was hard to gauge. As he passed the lights,
they went out. The Cats were being careful. He shut the plane down
and got out into the moonlight. He immediately noticed a large
number of Cats. He moved over to Mathew who was breathing a sigh of
relief as his count reached 20 or so. Not nearly as many as he’d
hoped for but a lot better than nothing. Things were looking
better.

“Did you know they’d be here?” asked Az.