Defeat (4 page)

Stanley finally put his hand on
top of the panicking man’s hand.

“
Give them a few
minutes to answer.”

“
Yessir.”

The mostly quiet came as a relief,
the faint static from the console and the whirring of fans the only
sound until Irina shifted in her seat.

Stanley ignored her until she
shifted obviously again.

“
Yes,
Commander?”

He sought to appease her a little
by calling her by her rank.

“
You know it’s
the aliens.” She should have added a sir, and she knew it and
Stanley knew it. She thinks aliens have destroyed the world and
she’s being petty, Stanley thought.

“
I don’t know any
such thing.”

“
What else could
it be? Have we ever lost communication before?”

“
Of course we
have. When we’re on the far side of Mars we have no communication.
And when the sun comes between Mars and Earth, we’ll lose contact
for over a week.”

“
We’ve never
completely lost contact before. Relays through Spirit or
Opportunity or satellites, even the unmanned supply ships, have
always kept us in one form of contact or another, and we’re a long
time away from a solar blackout.”

“
You’re
panicking, Irina.” If she wasn’t going to call him sir, he wasn’t
going to use her rank.

Purcella stopped their
argument.

“
Opportunity base
wishes to speak to you, sir,” the lieutenant commander said,
removing a headphone he had cocked on one ear. Stanley nodded and
Purcella flipped a toggle that allowed the radio to be heard over a
speaker.

“
Beagle
, any luck contacting
Houston?”

“
Negative,”
Stanley replied. It seemed like such a cliche to use words like
‘Negative’ and ‘Affirmative’, but it did actually make a difference
in understanding over a staticky radio.

“
Folks are getting worried down here,
Beagle
.” The voice, probably Major
Crayton, sounded just as worried. Why couldn’t these military types
keep it together?

“
Let’s just wait
and see what’s going on, Opportunity.”

“
We can’t stay here forever without support from Earth,
Beagle
.”

Stanley glared at Commander
Samovitch. Why did the military people insist on telling him things
he was quite aware of? Well, he could tell them something they
should already know.

“
Three unmanned
resupply vessels are on their way. They wouldn’t be affected by
anything that might have happened on Earth, which is probably just
a temporary communications interruption anyway. That’s enough food
and supplies for both bases for over a year.”

“
A year’s not as long as you might think,
Beagle
.”

Why couldn’t the man just call him
Stanley, or Captain Russell?

“
A year can be an
eternity, Opportunity,” Stanley said.

There was silence for a few
minutes at the other end, then the speaker crackled.

“
Just keep us
posted if you hear anything. Opportunity out.” Major Crayton
sounded upset.

“
You should be
more understanding, sir,” Irina said. “They don’t have a vessel
they can return home in, like you do.”

Stanley crawled up out of his
chair and headed for the doorway. He turned and looked back at his
second-in-command and the communications officer.

“
Didn’t Napoleon
say something about keeping your head when everyone else around you
is losing theirs? You military types should heed his advice.”
Stanley turned quickly and pushed himself out the doorway and down
the connecting corridor to the main part of the ship. He could hear
Commander Samovitch’s muttered words behind him as he floated
away.

“
Napoleon
lost.”

“
I think it was a
poem by Kipling, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Purcella added, but
Stanley ignored them, bumping his head and cursing as he floated
along the passageway.

Captain Christina Owenby walked
purposefully down the concrete corridor, trying not to jostle those
around her, clutching her computer and lunch to her chest should
someone jostle her. She would never be able to pick them up off the
ground if she dropped them, so crowded was the mass of evacuating
military personnel.

She and the rest of 614th had
watched satellites dropping like flies. She realized that the
pattern of destruction meant there were at least three Hrwang
vessels, not one. They had only detected one and the Hrwang
ambassador, the Admiral Commander, had not told them any different.
But before she had assembled enough data to present her findings,
the evacuation alarm sounded and the Colonel told them they had
bigger problems.

Nukes were dropping.

“
Jada!” Jayla
screamed from the deck of her Daddy’s cabin.
“Jada!”

She ran back inside, watched the
monitor for as long as she could, then ran back to the deck. She
screamed for her little sister, but the sixteen year old didn’t
respond. Jayla was eighteen and nominally an adult, but she felt
like a scared child.

“
Jada!”

Her sister had taken off hiking.
As if hiking mattered when aliens visited the Earth and suddenly
their shuttle disappeared from its parking place in front of the
United Nations. More video showed the delegation hurrying on to the
craft and it simply winking out of existence. How was that
possible? It had entered the Earth’s atmosphere like any human
shuttlecraft, but now it simply disappeared.

Reporters had been speculating for
hours, repeating all sorts of theories they didn’t understand,
including wormholes, star drives, jump technology, and the like.
Experts were brought in, science fiction writers who were also
scientists were popular, but no one knew anything. They had learned
very little about Hrwang technology in the weeks since the aliens
arrived.

They looked human and acted
human.

The old science fiction shows,
like the one where the aliens were lizards wearing human skins,
became available again on-line and were popular. Everyone
speculated as to the origins of the Hrwang, and theories abounded.
America was faking it to draw attention away from the second Cold
War, the one it started with the Soviet Republic after the so
called fifth Russian revolution, the aliens were weird and
disguised themselves as human, the aliens had the ability to morph,
like chameleons, and only appeared human.

Jayla had thrown the bs flag on
that one, looking up chameleons. Chameleons couldn’t really morph
and they weren’t even capable of the kind of color changes many
people ascribed to them. They didn’t blend in with just any color
that was in the background. They only changed to match certain
ones. They were limited.

If the Hrwang were living,
breathing mammals, like humans, they would have similar
restrictions, wouldn’t they?

Jayla couldn’t stand it any longer
and ran back out to the deck and screamed her sister’s name. How
far had that girl gone, anyway?

Wolfgang never felt any blast
wave. Perhaps it hadn’t been a nuclear device. Who would be crazy
enough to use them anyway? They contaminated soil and water and
air, leaving territory useless.

If it were the aliens, the Hrwang,
surely they would have more effective weapons than nuclear devices.
If they knew how to travel light years to get to Earth, surely they
had more advanced technology than nuclear bombs.

That line of reasoning didn’t make
him feel any better.

The American soldiers were
speaking rapidly and he couldn’t keep up. Leah held him tightly,
still sobbing into his side, and he didn’t want to leave her to
stand closer to them.

When several of the other hikers
began arguing with them, Wolfgang decided he was in charge of the
group and he needed to do something.

He peeled Leah off of himself and
she looked like a lost kitten, but he told her everything would be
fine. He approached the arguing group, trying to fathom what they
were saying.

He asked, in German, the hiker who
had translated before what was going on. The woman told him the
soldiers wanted to head back to Ramstein as soon as
possible.

“
No!” Wolfgang
said in English. Everyone stopped and stared at
him.

“
No. We take best
hikers and run to top of dragon rock. We look and see what’s
happening. Towers up there.” He didn’t know the words in English,
so he said to the interpreter, “If the network is still up, they’ll
get a signal on their phones up top. And we can see for miles.
Perhaps we can figure out what’s going on before we head
back.”

The interpreter translated for the
Americans.

“
How long will it
take?”

“
Good runners.”
Wolfgang tried to estimate. “Twenty, thirty
minutes.”

“
I’ll go, sir,”
one of the younger Americans said.

“
You don’t think
I can run thirty minutes?” the oldest American
replied.

The younger one stayed
silent.

“
You’re probably
right.” He turned to Wolfgang. “Take whoever you want, but if they
can’t keep up, they drop out. We need to get into network coverage
as soon as possible. You make sure Captain Wlazlo makes
it.”

A Polish name? Americans came from
every nationality, didn’t they? Wolfgang thought.

He turned to the group and
explained in German that a few volunteers would need to run up to
the top of the mountain and back down again, and that they might be
running for an hour. Most of the group looked down at their feet
and their packs, but two of the men and one of the women
volunteered. Wolfgang reviewed the path they would take.

“
Okay, then,
let’s go,” he said in English.

“
I’m coming,
too,” Leah said.

“
You stay here.
We will be back soon.”

“
I can run,” she
replied and stood resolutely next to him.

He shrugged his
shoulders.

The argument about what to do had
taken longer than ten minutes. It had been more like twenty since
the flash of light had passed by them. After being cooped up in the
small cave, running felt good to Wolfgang for the first few
minutes. A chance to stretch his legs and breathe fresh
air.

But after too short a while,
running up the steep hill tired him. It had the same effect on the
others. One of the German men stopped suddenly, bending over and
putting his hands on his knees. The American stopped also, but
Wolfgang shook his head.

“
We keep
moving.”

The soldier started running again,
but the other man remained bent over.

They left him behind.

But the American ran slower, so
Wolfgang slowed to match his pace. Leah looked back at him and he
worried she thought he was weak. He nodded at the American, and she
seemed to understand. She moved over to the man’s other
side.

“
You can do it,”
Leah encouraged the soldier, in English. The girl barely spoke
German and Wolfgang was surprised she could speak English. Perhaps
her English was better than her German. He asked
her.

“
A little,” she
answered between breaths.

The path grew steeper.

After twenty minutes they were
trudging up the steep slope, no longer running, but still out of
breath. At the top of a particularly steep climb, the American
collapsed on the ground, clutching his side and gasping.

“
Do we leave
him?” the German woman running with them asked.

“
Of all of us, he
must make it to the top,” Wolfgang said. The others nodded
understanding.

Wolfgang watched the man. The
American opened his eyes when he seemed to finally catch his
breath.

“
Mountain running
very hard,” Wolfgang said to him, sometimes amazed at the English
words he remembered. He had spoken more English today than he had
since Gymnasium.

“
You ain’t
kiddin’, pal,” the soldier replied and held his hand up. Wolfgang
pulled him upright.

The German woman moved close to
him and got in the American’s face. She grinned and said in German,
“Tell him he doesn’t want to get beaten by a girl.” She turned and
sprinted off.

Wolfgang translated and the
soldier laughed.