Final Assault (24 page)

“What?” Britt turned on him. “You know what’s going on?”

He grinned at her. He couldn’t contain himself. The phrase “blowing up alien ships” was beginning to sink in. “I have an educated guess.”

“Then educate the rest of us,” Britt snapped. “They’re atomic charges,” he said. “Shaped charges, aimed from a mile or so away at the alien ships. Nothing could withstand such a blast. It seems that General Maddox finally got to use her nukes.”

Someone whistled behind him. “That explains my readings.”

“And mine.”

“Is that right?” Britt asked, glancing at her people, then back at Cross. “Are we destroying alien ships?” “Well,” Roosevelt said. “Something’s exploding out there and it’s not what’s sending off those charges. They’re hitting something. And correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve seen a lot of technical wizardry for those aliens, but we ain’t never seen no nukes.” “That’s right,” Cross said.

The screens were still flaring around them. Cross wanted to get closer, to see more, but he knew this was a battle being fought in skies far from him. Even if he went outside, he wouldn’t be able to see anything. And if he were on the ground below the battles, the best thing he could do was be inside.

“How many alien ships have we destroyed so far?” Cross asked.

“It looks like half,” Roosevelt said.

“Twenty,” Britt said, looking at her own screen. “The rest are climbing back toward orbit.”

“You’re kidding,” Cross said, staring at the monitor. It wasn’t telling him anything.

“I’m not,” Britt said. “The aliens are retreating. The ships in orbit are breaking out of orbit, headed for the tenth planet.”

There was a moment of stunned silence around the room.

Cross had never felt anything like it before. It was as if every nerve in his body was about to explode.

Then everyone shouted at once.

Cross felt that silly grin he’d been wearing grow.

And grow. He hadn’t felt like this—maybe ever.

Maybe he, too, had thought they were going to lose this battle.

He turned to Britt and gathered her in his arms.

She wrapped herself around him, pulling him close.

It was the best hug he had felt in his entire life.

And for some reason, neither of them wanted to let go of the other.

November 15, 2018
12:06 Universal Time

Second Harvest: Fourth Day

Commander Cicoi stood at his command center, his eyestalks floating free, his upper tentacles splayed on the center’s controls. His lower tentacles were wrapped on the command circle, and he was forcing himself to stand as tall as possible.

He had failed, and he could not put himself into the recycler. He was fighting every bit of training he had ever had to keep himself here, in charge of what remained of the fleet.

If he had not stood up to the Elder, all of the harvester ships would have been destroyed. There would have been nothing left to feed his people.

If he had not stood up to the Elder, the explosives the creatures of the third planet had sent toward Malmur would have destroyed it.

He had succeeded as well. But not in the ways he had planned. He had hoped to feed all his people, to defeat the creatures of the third planet, and to return home triumphant. Now he would have to defend himself and his leadership until the time for sleep.

The Elder had disappeared. As the strange explosives—similar in energy signature to the ones that had hit Malmur in that surprise attack—had destroyed ships, the Elder had slowly faded away. Cicoi kept expecting him to reappear, but he hadn’t.

The Elder was smart enough to know that he had ordered this destruction. If he had led this command entirely, Malmur would be a dead planet, with the remains of a once great civilization.

As it was, the Malmuria would struggle with the greatest disaster they had faced since they lost their sun. Only it wasn’t as great a disaster as it could have been.

And Cicoi had learned something else. The ancient knowledge was valuable. The Elders had ideas and weapons and experiences that he could never have.

But they did not understand modern Malmur. They had lived in a time of great wealth and privilege. Until this disaster, the Elder had not realized how fragile Malmur was.

And it was very fragile.

But it was also very strong.

Cicoi moved his first upper tentacle and checked on the fleet. They were heading home now, lighter than they had come. He had ordered the retreat because he knew they had no way of fighting the creatures’ weapons.

The creatures were living through the same prolonged period of wealth the Elders had lived through.

The creatures had unlimited resources—or so it seemed—and the determination to use them.

Cicoi could not fight that.

So he had stopped trying.

He was limping home with sixty ships, more than half of the 108 he had started with. Enough, as he had said to the Elder, to feed his people starvation rations. Or to keep half of the population healthy, depending on the decision made by the Council.

Cicoi was not part of the Council and would not make that decision. He was glad of it. He had made too many decisions as it was.

Although he would argue for another, and he suspected he would win.

He was going to argue that recycling Commanders was not the way to cope with failure, not in a time of limited resources. For the Commanders learned from failure.

He had.

He had learned that the creatures of the third planet were as determined to protect their home as he was. He had also learned they would stop at nothing to do so.

It was a valuable lesson.

And one that had to survive the long sleep. For in addition to repairing Malmur, readying the ships for the next Pass, and preparing for the sleep, his people had another task.

They had to plan for the days when they faced the third planet again. To them, that day would come very, very soon.

Cicoi could only hope that the creatures of the third planet made the mistakes so many other sentient beings made. He would hope that they were no longer in existence when he returned.

But, seeing their determination and their resourcefulness, he doubted that would happen. He suspected his greatest fears would come true.

When he returned, after the long sleep, the creatures would have had countless generations to figure out how to fight the Malmuria. While the Malmuria slept and did not change, the creatures might grow in power just as they had in the last sleep.

Right now, they were capable of defending their home.

They might become capable of attacking his home while the cold sleep continued.

He had to prepare the leaders for that.

The long period of simple harvesting and sleeping had ended. The Malmuria were in a new period, one made up of war and struggle. The sooner they realized that, the better their chances for survival.

Cicoi was determined to be part of that survival.

He would not make the same mistakes in the future. Next time the creatures would not stand in his way. And he would not underestimate them again.

November 13, 2018
11:54 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Second Harvest: Fourth Day

Leo Cross looked out the windows of Britt’s apartment. The quiet neighborhood stretched before him.

Cars were moving as if it were a typical workday. People were outside, rebuilding, working on preparing for winter. Trying to resume their normal lives.

So quickly. So very quickly.

That told him that everyone missed the world as it had been.

Even though it would never be the same.

He turned. Britt’s cat Muffin guarded the door to the kitchen. Cross was Muffin’s arch enemy: he always took her time away from Britt. And Muffin was even more determined now than ever to have time with Britt. Muffin had no idea what had taken Britt from her these last few months, but Cross suspected that Muffin blamed him.

Interspecies communication didn’t work on this planet. He wondered why he had ever thought he could comprehend a species from another planet.

He sat at the dining room table. He couldn’t remember ever being this tired in his life. Part of the exhaustion was physical—he hadn’t had more than eight hours of sleep total in the past week—but the bulk of his exhaustion, he knew, was relief.

There was no way the aliens would return in his lifetime. He would never see them or their ships again, never again view the tenth planet in real time.

Of course, its arrival, the war, the downed ships and the harvesters, as well as the few glimpses of the planet itself, would give scientists, researchers, and people like Cross enough work to last the rest of their lives.

“Did you microwave the potpies?” Britt asked as she came into the room. Her other cat, Clyde, was following her like a lost puppy. The cats hadn’t received much attention since the planet was discovered. They didn’t know yet that they would have Britt with them more often.

Cross looked at Muffin who sat in front of the kitchen entry. “I value my shins too much to try.” “Well, frozen potpies aren’t the best dinner, but it’s what I have.” She worked her way around Muffin, who followed her, purring, into the kitchen. Britt was humming. She was clearly as relieved as Cross, and probably even more tired.

After a moment, he heard the hum of the microwave. Britt came out with two apples and tossed him one. It was shiny and red, but he checked it for brown spots all the same. He had no idea when Britt had last had a chance to shop for food.

She sank into the chair across from him. Fie smiled at her. He’d been in the apartment a lot since he started working in the lab, but he hadn’t been there with her. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her in her own home.

“I feel like I should be working,” she said.

“Me, too.” He took a bite out of the apple. “We’ll have plenty to do after we get some rest.”

She nodded, then turned her apple over and over in her hands. “I keep thinking about that map of the world, the one with all the dark spots on it.”

“All the people who died,” Cross said softly.

Fifty million was the rough estimate. People who didn’t understand the threat, like some of the native tribes in the Amazon; people who had refused to evacuate; and then the people who had fought against the aliens.

Fifty million out of a population of ten billion was statistically a huge success. But statistics weren’t helping Cross.

Fifty million people, all of whom were known by someone, and probably loved by someone.

That was a lot of lives. A lot of lives lost to a war that no one had ever expected.

Too many lives for him to face comfortably. The relief work and the level of mourning worldwide was going to be huge.

“The people who died.” Britt sounded reflective. She shook her head, and he recognized the movement. It was the one she made when she surprised herself. “You thought of the people who died. I was thinking about the food. We’re going to have a lot of shortages, aren’t we?”

“Not here,” he said. “Once again, the United States lucked out. We were heading into spring the first time, and they only hit a section of California. This time, we’re heading into winter, and the areas they hit in the U.S. were mostly forest. We’ll have enough food. We’ll probably have to go into full production for the first time in a hundred years so that we can meet the worldwide demand.”

“Other places will starve then,” she said.

“Africa. Parts of Europe.” He set the apple down. It suddenly wasn’t as appealing. “I don’t know enough about the current economy of Central and South America to know what the loss of the rain forests will do to them ”

“How long?” Britt asked.

“Will they suffer?” He shrugged. “Depends on how the governments handle it. You’ve heard the reports. The dust that the nanoharvesters left is nontoxic. Stuff should be growing in it next spring.”

“And the nukes?” she asked softly. “What about the fallout from them?”

She apparently hadn’t believed Franklin’s speech just an hour before about the “cleanliness” of the nuclear attack.

“The president was right,” Cross said. “The radiation will circle the Earth fora few years, but compared to the damage that the aliens would have done—” “That’s minimizing, Leo.” Britt rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. “We’re going to suffer something from it.”

He nodded. “You know the drill, Britt. You don’t need me to tell you.”

“Increased cancers. Climate problems.” She got up. “Those aliens have left us with a mess.”

“It could have been a lot worse.”

The microwave dinged in the kitchen. Britt went to get their food. The plan was to eat and then go to bed. To sleep. Cross doubted he had enough energy for anything else. They actually had time for that later.

All the time in the world.

He heard drawers open and a cat meow. Muffin and Clyde were probably circling Britt, hoping for treats. During their brief meal, he had to get her to talk about other things. He didn’t want to talk about what was going to happen next. He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about it.