Oblivion

by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Cicoi felt his own upper tentacles rise slightly. He forced them back down. “What is it, Second?”

  “I am getting readings that indicate many more cylinders,” his Second said.

  “How many more?”

  “At least eighty in this first group. Some had simply arrived in advance of the others,” his Second said.

  “First group?” Cicoi did not like the sound of that.

  “I am getting shadows, readings from at least two more groups,” his Second said. “They are larger than this first group. And very close behind.”

  “Larger?” Cicoi knew he shouldn’t repeat, knew it made him sound powerless, but he had not expected this.

  The Elder had, though.

  “And you believe them all to be weapons?” Cicoi asked.

  “I am confirming this now,” his Ninth said. “I have run the materials and the speculations about them. The weapon inside is crude, but extremely powerful. If all of those weapons hit Malmur, we will lose everything.”

  Cicoi nearly lost his grip on the circle. How could these creatures have gone from such a primitive place to having the ability to destroy Malmur in the time it took to do one Pass?

  “Send this information to the fleets of the North and Center. Have the Command on Malmur launch our harvester ships. We must absorb energy from these cylinders,” Cicoi said.

  “Some of the energy in these cylinders is dormant,” said the Eighth. “Many of the cylinders have been propelled here, and are approaching us with momentum only.”

  “Surely the weapons have energy signatures,” Cicoi said.

  “Not enough for us to use,” said the Eighth.

  “We can absorb some of the energy, Commander,” his Second said, “but not all of it. We do not have enough ships.”

  “Then we must divert ” Cicoi said. He pressed the controls with the tips of his tentacles and saw what was causing his staff to pocket their eyestalks. Even with all the harvester ships deployed, even with the fleets of new warships, they did not have enough power to attack all of the cylinders.

  Some would get through.

  He felt his own eyestalks wilt, but it took all of his composure to make certain that he did not pocket them. He had to think.

  He straightened his eyestalks, and pointed one at his Second. “I want you, and the Third through Fifth, to see which of these cylinders have the smallest weapons. Those we will not pursue. The others we will handle as best we can.”

  They raised a single eyestalk in response.

  “Remember,” he said, “make your measurements accurate. The ones we ignore are the ones that will hit our homes.”

  His voice shook at that last. He wished the Elder had come with him, but the Elder had not. The Elder had said it was up to Cicoi to greet this threat.

  But, as had been the case with the third planet, the threat was greater than expected.

  And, Cicoi worried that no matter what he did, the threat would destroy them.

  August 16, 2018

  7:32 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  86 Days Until Second Harvest

  The lab was full. Scientists, guests, dignitaries, and of course, the actual researchers who belonged there. For the first time, Cross felt like one of the gang. He at least got nods of recognition from the researchers who seemed to view everyone else with suspicion.

  Britt was at one of the control stations. She was working on several things at once, and Cross knew better than to ask what they were. He was staring at the large monitors scattered around the room, the flat screens holding the key to the future.

  Today was the day. The papers and newscasts for the last few days had alternated between images of the bombing at the Capitol Building and the attack coming on the tenth planet. The attack on the Capitol had been put down to one lone extremist who thought the aliens were fake and the government had killed her kids in California.

  At the moment Cross wished the aliens were fake. Or that he would just wake up from this nightmare. But neither seemed to be the case.

  He kept staring at the screens.

  The images coming back from the tenth planet were somewhat strange. Cross thought he caught glimpses of black alien ships in space, and so did several of the researchers, but it was tough to confirm. They were almost impossible to see, and the readouts that the lab was getting from the missiles gave conflicting information.

  Two of the six monitoring missiles had gone dead in the last hour, which Cross saw as. confirmation that the aliens were out there in space trying to stop Earth’s attack.

  He didn’t like that.

  But it was expected. It was the reason so many missiles had been sent, why some were to explode on impact, with no energy source onboard for the aliens to drain. The aliens trying to stop the attack had been expected. Cross just had to remember that.

  His stomach was jumping, and it wasn’t from the four cups of coffee he’d had since he arrived.

  This time, when Britt had gotten the expected middle-of-the-night call, he had come with her.

  Cross had answered. He’d been lying there, unable to sleep, as he had for the past two nights.

  Everything rested on those missiles.

  Everything.

  For the first time, when he said the fate of the world was in balance, he meant it. If the missiles didn’t strike, didn’t wipe the aliens out, Earth’s chances of survival were poor, even with Portia’s rescuers.

  Now a number of the monitoring missiles had gone dead, and there were alien ships out there.

  It was expected, he knew. He kept reminding himself, yet he was getting a horrible feeling that all this waiting, all this planning, had been for nothing.

  Then, on the screen before him, a blinding flash.

  The screen seemed to go white.

  The entire lab lit up with the intense light from the screens.

  The tenth planet showed up for a moment in relief, like a shiny black surface catching the reflection of a flashbulb.

  That image was frozen in his mind.

  Black screens covering the entire planet, and one explosion ripping a massive hole in those screens.

  “Oh, my God,” someone said.

  “Was that—?” someone else asked.

  Then there was another flash.

  This time the second flash lit up the glowing mushroom cloud of the first before the planet disappeared into blackness again.

  And then another flash as a third atomic blast hit the tenth planet.

  And then another.

  So much light was coming from such a far distance away that Cross had to shade his eyes from the screens.

  “We’re doing it,” Britt said. Then she shouted it. “We’re doing it!”

  Two more bombs exploded.

  Cross watched.

  Stunned.

  He’d never seen nuclear bombs go off in real time.

  His reaction was mixed. Stunned shock, and a weird elation. He hadn’t thought it possible.

  He had thought they would fail.

  No, he had believed they would fail.

  Three more flashes, and then, abruptly, the pictures got cut off.

  There was a moment of silence.

  People continued to stare at the dead screens.

  Researchers pushed buttons on their monitors. Britt checked to see if the satellite relays were working. They apparently were, for when she turned around, a grin was on her face.

  “We did it,” she said again.

  And a cheer went up, the loudest cheer Cross had ever heard.

  It took him a moment to realize his own voice was in the mix, raspy and joyful and full of relief.

  They had done it.

  They.

  Had.

  Done.

  It.

  They had attacked the tenth planet.

  They had fought the aliens in a second battle. And this time, Earth won.

  11

  August 16, 2018

  17:42 Universal Time

&
nbsp; 86 Days Until Second Harvest

  Cicoi was the last to leave his warship. He took the glide path to the staging area, his tentacles drooping, his eyestalks hanging near his torso in complete disgrace. He should have listened to the Elder. He should have listened sooner. He should have planned for this.

  Fifteen of the cylinders had gotten through the ships and had hit Malmur.

  Fifteen.

  The destruction was more than he could think of.

  The images of those explosions sending odd-shaped clouds into the atmosphere were burned into his memory.

  Two pods were gone.

  An entire sleeping chamber, with thousands of unawakened Malmuria, had been vaporized.

  Eight harvest ships were destroyed and, in some ways, worst of all, vast areas of energy collectors had been ruined.

  And none of that counted what the radiation released by the cylinders might do. It was unfamiliar to Malmur and possibly toxic.

  His planet was in flames.

  The black surface of his home was lit by fire for the first time in any memory.

  He had seen some of the fires from orbit as he returned home.

  In disgrace.

  He would offer himself to the recycler, and try to serve his people as best he could by converting himself to energy.

  No.

  He wilted farther.

  His Elder was here.

  Waiting.

  We cannot lose more of our kind, particularly to a misplaced sense of shame. You did listen to me. You diverted or destroyed all but fifteen of their cylinders. There were at least three hundred. Imagine if they had gotten through.

  The Elder appeared in front of him, tentacles floating. Cicoi thought such a cavalier attitude at this time was almost as bad. Thousands had died. Thousands more probably would die once it became clear that the energy reserves were gone.

  As if the Elder had heard the thoughts, it said, We cannot mourn. We are not done fighting yet. Yes, we have lost thousands. But millions still live. And for their sakes, we must go to the third planet and take what we need. Only then will Malmur survive.

  Cicoi knew that. There was logic in it. “But we have no way to defeat the creatures of the third planet,” he said.

  You think they are great because they've attacked us? You know nothing of war. They were primitives when we first came here. They are nothing compared to us. The Elder moved closer to him, waving eyestalks in front of him. They have probably used all of their weapons to attack us. And they are no match for the Sulas. We must get to the planet. We must take everything we can. And then we must never return.

  “But how can we do this now?” Cicoi asked. “We have lost Malmuria. We have lost ships. We have lost recyclers, and energy collectors, and storages. We do not have time for repairs.”

  We make the time, the Elder said. We cannot rest until we have what we need. We will defeat them, and we will do it my way.

  Cicoi let his eyestalks droop even farther. He knew that he did not deserve to live. His curse was that he could not have an honorable death after this great defeat.

  He had to live on.

  He had to live on with the memory of those explosions ripping his world apart.

  He had to live on with the memory of the fires burning.

  And in living on, he would do everything he could to save his people—and his home.

  August 16, 2018

  8:18 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  86 Days Until Second Harvest

  “All that pessimism, Bernstein, and we won,” Shamus O’Grady said.

  Doug Mickelson eased himself away from the conversation, but not so far away that he couldn’t hear. They were in the Oval Office at Franklin’s invitation, along with the other Cabinet members, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a few of Franklin’s closest advisers, and the First Lady. Despite the champagne, this gathering was not billed as a celebration. It was, instead, something else. What, exactly, Franklin hadn’t made clear yet.

  “I wasn’t pessimistic about the bombs,” Bernstein said. “I told Mickelson that. That’s why I’ve been talking about the domestic situation.”

  Mickelson moved even farther away from the conversation. The Capitol Building had been attacked. In many ways, Bernstein had been exactly right, yet they had all done what they had needed to do.

  He glanced around. There weren’t any real conversation groups he wanted to join. He heard a lot of discussion of policy, for the first time in months—and a lot of laughter, also for the first time in months. From various groups, he heard “Ka-boom!” as someone’s hands rose.

  The papers were running picture after picture of the atomic bombs exploding on the black, panel-covered surface of the alien world. Pictures with headlines saying WE WON!

  It had become clear to him that the moment when the missiles hit the tenth planet would become one of the defining moments of this generation.

  Maybe of all human history.

  Franklin’s approval ratings in the nation and worldwide couldn’t be higher. The United States suddenly was the most popular country on the globe for organizing and carrying out this mission. Even though other governments were involved, everyone knew where the credit belonged.

  “You’re not drinking your champagne,” Maddox said softly. He turned. She looked both tired and relaxed. This had been an incredible strain on her. “Neither are you.”

  She shrugged. “I have made it a policy to never toast a successful bombing raid.”

  He started. He hadn’t thought of it that way. “It does seem like bad form, doesn’t it?”

  “When you think of it in those terms,” she said. “But that’s really not why everyone’s celebrating.”

  “We struck back,” he said.

  She turned her head slightly. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve spoken to who actually understands the difference.” “Between what and what?”

  “Winning a battle and winning the war.”

  He set his glass down. She did the same as the door from Franklin’s private secretary’s office opened. An aide came in, and handed Franklin a downloaded hard copy. Franklin squinted at it, then had the aide close the door.

  The room grew silent. This, then, was what they had been waiting for.

  Franklin took an extra moment, and then looked up. He waved the paper. “It’s a damage assessment report,” he said.

  Mickelson felt his shoulders stiffen. A hard look came over Maddox’s face.

  “It seems,” Franklin said, “that it’s better than we thought. We thought that if the aliens fought back—and it’s now clear they had spaceships in the area, attempting to destroy our bombs—we’d be lucky if one or two hit the surface. Fifteen— or five percent—of the missiles we sent up there hit and exploded on their planet.”

  Mickelson found himself breathing shallowly.

  “We’ve hurt them,” Franklin said. “We’ve hurt them badly. Let’s hope they’ll think twice before coming to us again.”

  Everyone in the room cheered.

  Franklin raised his glass and proposed a toast.

  Mickelson grabbed his and feigned a sip, but he felt unsettled.

  He made his way through the crowd, to Franklin’s side. “Mr. President,” Mickelson said, as usual finding it uncomfortable to greet an old friend that way, “you know as well as I do that they will still come back.”

  Franklin nodded.

  “Then why did you say that?”

  He turned to Mickelson. “Because we need hope, too, Doug.”

  “Hope won’t prevent the tenth planet from coming close to the Earth again in eighty-six days.”

  “No, it won’t,” Franklin said. “But it just might give us enough energy to fight the next battle—and win it, too.”

  August 16, 2018

  9:51 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

  86 Days Until Second Harvest

  The sounds of celebration echoing over the city were dying down. Leo Cross sat on a lawn chair in the enclosed yard o
f his D.C. house. Britt sat beside him. They’d finished one of Constance’s wonderful dinners and a bottle of wine, and this time, when they went to bed, Cross was unplugging the phone.

  The world could do without Britt Archer for one night.

  “Sounds like people are getting tired of partying,” she said.

  “Sounds like,” he said.

  When the images of the bombs exploding on the tenth planet were broadcast all over the world, people took to the streets in joyous celebration. Confetti fell, fireworks went off, there was screaming and shouting and general mayhem. It reminded Cross of the pictures he’d seen of New York City the day that someone declared World War II had ended, only this time, the celebrations happened worldwide.

  In Washington, a cheering crowd had gathered outside the White House, ignoring the damaged Capitol Building. But Cross knew that the damage was part of this battle. And that there was going to be more before the war was over.

  “I would have thought the celebration would continue for days,” Britt said.

  “People know,” Cross said. “The tenth planet still has to orbit close to us. There’s still a threat.”

  He looked up at the clear sky. Stars winked against the blackness. Who’d’ve thought that something that happened so far away would affect them like this at home.

  “At least now those damn aliens know how it feels,” Britt said.

  Cross looked at her. She seemed fiercer than she ever had. “They’re just trying to survive like we’re trying to survive.” “I don’t give a damn about their reasons,” Britt said. “They hurt us. We hurt them. Maybe they’ll go away now.”

  “They can’t, Britt,” he said. “They need Earth’s resources. Those aliens are going to come back even stronger. We didn’t destroy them, we only hurt them, just like they hurt us. Just like they have been hurting us every two thousand years.”

  She sighed. “I know you’re right. I just wish you weren’t.” “I wish I wasn’t either.”

  They both stared at the stars for a long moment.

  “So we fight,” Britt said finally.

  “We fight,” Cross said. “And it’ll be the most important battle we’ll ever fight. We have no other choice. The planet can’t support both races.”