Blackout

by Edward W. Robertson

  "They reflect lasers."

  Raina scowled at him. "What are they? Magic?"

  "Lasers are composed of light. And heat. Mirrors reflect light. Not perfectly, mind you. They'd still take on some heat. But if you arrange a shield wall of them, they might last long enough to get you in massacring range."

  "You got thousands of mirrors right here in town." Wendy twirled her hand to take in the night. "They'll be heavy, though. We'll need to secure them to something. Wagons. Shopping carts. Anything light enough to be pushed."

  "This will help," Raina said. "But it will be slow. And it will be easy for them to maneuver to fire on the sides where our warriors have no protection. I'd like more cover."

  "You'll have it." Lowell got out paper and started sketching rectangles and boxes. "The tarmac isn't empty. They've put buildings on it. Picture the layout here. You're charging them with the mirrors from the north. You're firing on them from the terminals to the south. What are they doing?"

  "Withdrawing to cover. Meaning we can seize some of their structures for cover ourselves."

  "Particularly if we hit them brutally hard right out of the gates," Mauser said. "It looked as though you found a pair of bazookas in Anson's treasure trove. What if our first act was to fire those at their parked jets?"

  "It would be chaos." Raina gazed down at the sketches and maps. A grin spooled across her face. "These are the bones of our plan. We have two days to make it so. On the third day, we march."

  The following day was one of preparation. Men and women cleaned their guns and sorted gear for a long march and a quick fight. Others gathered mirrors from every house in town and secured them to the fronts of wagons and carts, creating mobile firing stations. It pleased Raina to see her warriors drilling with them, one person pushing the carts while two to four others strode behind their safety, mirrors flashing sunlight across everything.

  The submarine was docked across from the ancient American battleship. Raina spoke with Ness and Tristan regarding the use of the sub to withdraw in a hurry should the aliens launch an immediate counterstrike from the mothership. Tristan had reservations about putting the sub so close to harm's way, but Ness vowed that if it could save lives, then it could have no better use.

  Dragoons cleaned their bicycles. The Sworn groomed their horses. Scouts loped into the hills, bound for the airport and everywhere between. Raina doubled the presence of her pickets to the northeast, ensuring that none of the Swimmers entering the city via overland routes could stumble upon her works. By midnight, no aliens had been seen in that area. Raina fell asleep to the rap of hammers and the rasp of saws.

  The second day was one of refinement. The mirror-wrights stripped all non-essential pieces from the wagons and carts, lightening them, attaching the mirrors more tightly. The scouts at the airport returned with updated maps and head counts of the enemy. Another transport had delivered some thirty additional Swimmers to the grounds. Some might have considered this bad news, but Raina welcomed it. More of the enemy simply meant there was more of the enemy to kill.

  The map was detailed enough for Raina and her council to shape specific tactics. Doing so calmed her. It made the aliens look smaller. Their jets and their lasers—what did those matter? Their flesh was flesh. Their blood was yellow and thick, but it was still blood. When she fell upon them in the company of scores of her warriors, the Swimmers would die just as those who'd preceded them had died.

  She sent a runner to find Walt. Hours later, the girl still hadn't found him. Raina had too many duties to spare any worry for him. If she was the moon, then he was a comet, mercurial and rare. But like comets, he would return in his time.

  The day was as quiet as the one before. It was as if the aliens were preparing, too. Or were they so haughty that they thought they could take as much time as they needed to overtake the Earth?

  As darkness fell, Walt remained no more than a name. Raina moved between her citizens, informing them personally about tomorrow's march.

  "It will be twenty miles of travel," she said. "We'll be carrying arms. Wagons. Supplies. If the jets come, we'll have to hide until they pass. Before night, we'll camp a few miles from the airport. We will rest. After the darkness comes, we will finish the march—and we will kill them."

  She measured their words. Their faces. And she knew they were ready.

  She slept. Hours later, a hand shook her awake. She darted her hand for her sword, but she knew the smell. Becka.

  "Walt Lawson has returned," Becka said. "Do you want to speak to him?"

  Raina inhaled through her nose and rolled from the pallet she had set up for herself in the Home Depot's back room full of cut stone. "Show me to him."

  Becka led her south toward the Dunemarket. The tavern at the market's north entrance was as black as the tar that washed up on the beaches. The road beyond held no stalls, no blankets. Becka hiked up the eastern hill. Walt sat on its peak, facing the ocean, a bottle glinting in his hand.

  "Raina." Without standing, he offered her the bottle. "What's up?"

  She didn't accept it. "Are you drunk?"

  "It was either tonight or tomorrow. I thought you'd prefer tonight."

  "I've been looking for you all day. Where have you been?"

  He tipped back the bottle with a glassy slosh. "Dicking around with the balloons."

  "And?"

  "Good job on them. They fly."

  "How long will it take you to get from here to the ship?"

  Walt shrugged, gazing out to the sea. The moon was as thin as a fingernail clipping. "Can't say."

  "I thought you were a warrior," she said. "A warrior must know her weapons as if they are her own limbs."

  "As far as weapons go, hot air balloons are pretty dumb ones. But that's why they work. It'll depend on what kind of winds I find up there. If they're strong, it'll take me an hour to get to the ship. If they're weak? It might take three or four."

  "Every minute you're up there is another minute for the Swimmers to see you. I will pray for strong winds."

  She turned and walked back down the hill. After three steps, she stopped and turned. Walt's back was hunched. He was wearing a ridiculous knit cap. He didn't look her way.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "You don't act like I expect from one who has accomplished what you have. Yet there's no denying what you have done for humanity. So it is not you who is wrong, but me."

  He laughed, shoulders bouncing. "Did that make as much sense as I think? Or am I much drunker than I thought?"

  Raina's mouth twitched. She walked back up the hill toward him. "Give me that bottle."

  "You're not going to dump it out, are you?"

  "I said hand it over."

  He stood, smiling with half his mouth, and obeyed. She tipped it back. The liquor was much spicier than the clear, sharp fluid Mauser often swilled.

  "When you took down the first ship," she said. "What was it like?"

  "You know what you sound like? A freshman asking their older friend what it was like to lose their virginity."

  "Shouldn't I be excited? Weren't you?"

  His laughter was much deeper than normal, as if it had been trapped in a place inside him that was rarely unlocked and was happy to be freed. "It was the craziest, most intense, most thrilling thing I've done in my entire life. And if you want to give it a shot this time, you're welcome to take my place."

  She took another drink and handed him back the bottle. "If I could, I might join you. But I have an army to lead."

  "How did you come to be in charge of this whole mess, anyway?"

  "Because I took it."

  "From who?"

  "From the man who killed my father and stole my mother. He led the barbarians from Catalina. His name was Karslaw."

  "Oh, I knew that guy. He was such a son of a bitch!"

  Raina snorted in surprise. "How did you know Karslaw?"

  "He tricked me into coming back up here to fight the aliens. Then again, if he hadn't done that, I'd still be do
wn in the Yucatan sweating my balls off on a pyramid."

  "I'll thank him next time I see his skull. In those days, he was raiding the coastline. Enslaving the free people here. No one would stand up to him. So I did. I took his lands because I had to. That's all."

  "That's the same reason I took on the ship," Walt said. "Nobody else was doing it. Figured I'd better take up the reins."

  The liquor had made Raina's mind feel at ease. She considered the ocean glimmering under the cloud-patched stars. "Is that all it takes to find greatness? The will to do what others won't?"

  "Either that or to be too crazy to know any better."

  "Is that what describes you?"

  "The first time? Hell yeah. Now? Man, I should be dead a dozen times over. I stopped caring ages ago. If I die tomorrow night, I'll have gotten away with seven more years than I should have."

  She had heard such words from drunk men many times. For once, she believed them.

  * * *

  A warrior woke her in the darkness. By dawn, her troops were assembled in the Dunemarket. Between her warriors, the conscripts from Catalina, and the absorption of the Sworn, they were four hundred strong. The greatest army the land had seen since the plague. She watched them from the hill where she'd spoken with Walt the night before. She knew that every minute counted. As it had been in the city, though, she knew this moment might be the last time she saw them like this.

  She gave herself sixty seconds, then descended to a shelf of rock twenty feet above the soldiers below.

  "Today, we march into battle," she said, her voice ringing between the hills. "It's far from the first time we have done so. But it is my hope that it will be the last. When the night comes, and we fall upon the aliens, fight for the world that was. Fight for the world that we still have. And fight for the world we will build tomorrow. Fight for the spirits of your ancestors. Your descendants. And for yourselves!

  "I will not tell you to fight without fear, for all men feel fear when lives are tested against each other. But I will tell you to fight without regret. Without mercy. And without doubt. Can you do that?"

  She gazed across them. After a brief hesitation, they pumped their fists in the air. "Yes!"

  "Then we will be victorious. And when we return here, we will be forever free."

  She climbed down to the road. Her warriors bawled orders, starting the wagons forward. Mauser strolled up beside her, hands in the pockets of his jacket.

  "Good speech," he said. "I suppose at this point you've had plenty of practice."

  "I would drop dead of delight if it was the last one I ever had to make."

  She moved to the front of the column. The wagons were covered in tan sheets to prevent the sun from gleaming on the mirrors. Some had departed the night before and were already miles up the road. Riders ranged ahead on horses and bicycles. As they marched north from San Pedro, the column broke into a number of small pieces, the better to conceal themselves if a jet were to fly overhead.

  They took their first break at mid-morning, resting and continuing on. The wagons proceeded more easily than she'd feared, but made more noise than she liked. Clouds scudded in from the sea. Shade for them—and, with any luck, cover for Walt.

  Early that afternoon, the scouts came in with an update. The cargo ship had launched that morning, returning with an additional thirty Swimmers. They now estimated the enemy total to exceed 150. The aliens had scattered their motion-sensing eyes around the perimeters, but they hadn't yet had time to make their coverage comprehensive, and the scouts had discovered several routes through the surveillance network.

  As the afternoon waned, a jet screamed across the sky. Warriors scattered into empty houses. Riders hurried their horses into garages and porches. The vessel passed to the south, circling slowly. Raina called a long rest, declaring they would move again after dark. Knowing she needed to sleep, she did so.

  When she woke, it was night, but there was no moon. It had shrunk to nothing. It would be at its hungriest.

  "One last meal," she murmured. "Then you can feed yourself."

  "What was that?" Mauser emerged onto the porch.

  "I said it's time to move."

  They resumed the march. The skies were quiet, cloudy. It smelled as though it might rain. Two miles later, with the airport nearing, she called another stop and met with Bryson and Carl. Each would command eighty warriors. Bryson was to come up through the terminals and cover them from there. Carl would infiltrate the buildings to the east of the runways, acting as a reserve force. And Raina would circle the remaining 240 troops around to the north, accompanied by the mirror-wagons.

  "I will need time to get in position," she told them. "Bryson, wait two and a half hours, then move in through the terminals. We believe they can hear now. Do your best to kill any Swimmers there with arrows and blades. Only use your guns if your lives depend on it."

  "Scouts claim they don't have much presence there," Bryson said. "Should be doable."

  "Flash the light once you're ready."

  "See you on the battlefield."

  * * *

  Two hundred fifty men and women pulled into position behind the houses north of the airport. Across a half mile of shrubs and bare dirt, dim lights shined from the runways. Swimmers moved between seven-foot-high orange boxes. Three jets were parked there, their engines long cooled.

  "We made good time," Mauser murmured. "Thirty minutes until Bryson hits the terminals."

  Raina glanced from the aliens to the clouds. "And less than an hour before we fight. Bring me the radio. It's time to unleash Walt."

  Mauser beckoned to the keeper of the radio. She bore it to Raina, handing her headphones and the handset.

  She held this to her mouth. Static buzzed in her ears. "Walt. Are you there?"

  His voice fritzed over the line. "What's up?"

  "We'll attack within the hour. Are you ready to launch?"

  "Been waiting on your word."

  "Then make it so." She smiled. "The next time I see you, you will be covered in glory."

  "Beats what I'm normally covered in," he said. "See you in San Pedro. Bring booze."

  She handed the handset and headphones back to the keeper of the radio. Wind stirred the waxy leaves of the magnolias spaced along the road. Her heart beat, but her mind was calm.

  Ten minutes later, beams of light swept across the eastern edges of the runway. Alien silhouettes moved through the shadows, at least twenty strong.

  "What have we got here?" Mauser put his binoculars to his eyes. "Please tell me they haven't discovered Bryson's reindeer games."

  "They aren't moving like they expect a fight," Raina said.

  Those at the front carried lasers in their claws, though. They wore symmetrical uniforms with many straps and pouches, a crisp pink color with occasional touches of green or purple. They carried themselves as proudly as their colors.

  The uniformed aliens formed an organized ring around an inner core of jumbled, grimy Swimmers. These aliens moved in stuttering steps. Rubbery fetters bound their legs. They wore dingy brown straps around their bodies. Some wore dayglo backpacks tied to belts or bungee cords. Their tentacles drooped wearily. Raina didn't see a single weapon among them.

  She frowned. "Are those slaves?"

  "Kind of looks that way," Mauser said. "But I've never heard of Swimmers using their own kind as slaves. My understanding is they respect each other too highly for anything like that."

  "Look how filthy the captives are. They're survivors from the first ship. Like the ones we fought in the hills of Glendale."

  They watched in silence as the uniformed Swimmers marched the others across the runway. As they approached the alien structures, a pair of aliens with unaccented pink uniforms moved between the closest of the large orange boxes, tapping them with blunt tools. The lids of the boxes peeled open. Another pair produced a ramp, setting it against the side of one of the boxes.

  The uniformed Swimmers separated four of the fettered aliens
from the others and brought them to the ramp. After a moment's hesitation, the four captives ascended the ramp and lowered themselves into the box. The pink-uniformed soldiers sealed it over their heads.

  "Backflipping Christ." Mauser's voice was choked. "The Swimmers from the first ship. I think they're being…arrested."

  She swung to face him. "The boxes they've built here. They're not barracks. They're prison cells. Why?"

  Mauser's face had gone pale. "What if we've misinterpreted everything? What if the second ship isn't here to destroy us—but to capture and punish those who tried to exterminate us?"

  "That can't be. They've been attacking us!"

  "Only after we've threatened or attacked them."

  Her mind froze like a mouse beneath the owl. He was right. The survivors from the first ship had attacked them without provocation. But the Swimmers from the new ship had only done so in response to violence from the humans. They weren't working together here any more than she and Anson had done so.

  "Bring me the radio," she said. "We have to tell Walt to stop."

  9

  The balloon bobbed on its tethers, its clown-colored envelope swollen to the gills. With the damn things taking so long to prep and inflate, Walt had had everything ready well in advance of Raina's call.

  He swung open the wicker door. "Milady?"

  Carrie took his hand and stepped inside. "Thanks for not trying to make me stay home."

  He closed the basket's door, latching it shut. "You really think I'd try to do that to you?"

  "You do have a certain attitude of 'This is far too dangerous for anyone but me.'"

  "No way. If I'm going down, you're going with me."

  She glanced at the pile of supplies he'd left in the grass. "You're not taking the radio?"

  "Every pound counts," he said. "Besides, we're in ninja mode now. If we use that thing while we're airborne and the aliens pick up the signal, we'll be floating ducks."

  He flipped on the burner. Flame whumped toward the envelope, carrying a strong whiff of propane, which had held out just fine in the years since it had been manufactured. Carrie unclipped the tethers and flung them over the side. The balloon lifted.