Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  “They have no sonar,” Gafalae said. “Do you believe that we will fail?”

  He glared at her. A Speaker was intended to serve as the voice of conviction and truth; Yehaka was challenging his views just by speaking out.

  “Humans are not Oghaldzon,” Yehaka said. “I do not believe that we will fail. I warn you that we may never succeed completely.”

  She paused. “We have discussed, endlessly, the possible effects of human biology on their societies,” she said. “We know that their…sexuality forms strong social bonds between human mates. They cannot interbreed with us on any level; they will always form their own subgroups based around mating, if nothing else. In the long term, I believe that we will have humans working beside us as equals, but there may be a major change in how the joint society functions. Humans, as just one example, want to pass on what they have done to their children.”

  Dataka frowned. It wasn’t impossible for an Oghaldzon to work out which particular male had emitted the sperm and which female had caught it to make him, but it was considered distasteful, if not downright eccentric. It generally meant nothing; the parents would have their own social groups, while the children would be brought up – once they developed intelligence – by the Teachers, and then they would find their own niche in Oghaldzon society. There was no concept of…willing everything he owned to his children; he didn’t even know which of the primal children running around in the ship were his children. Why would he?

  He looked at her. “Why?”

  “Because it represents a form of immortality to them,” Yehaka said. It was quite possible that she’d caught his sperm and had his children; there was just no way to know. “They do not share our concept of ideas living on as the sole means of immortality.”

  Gafalae stamped one of his forelegs against the ground. “We can integrate them to the best of our ability,” he said. “If nothing else, we can press them into joining with us as far as they can.”

  “Regardless,” Chars said, “what happens if the human force comes from the Belt to engage us?”

  Dataka allowed himself to emit confidence. “Unless they have more ships than we knew about, hundreds more ships, we will be able to defeat them in a set-piece battle before they even get near the motherships again,” he said. “It is to be hoped that they will try something like that, because we could destroy their ships and then counterattack against the belt before they can build up again. Every human life seems to be important out there; they need their manpower desperately. If we can defeat them in open battle…”

  He allowed his words to trail off. What was left unsaid… could stay that way.

  * * *

  The odd thing was that Markus Wilhelm was starting to get used to living on the alien ship. The gravity had seemed higher than Earth’s, he’d felt a bit heavier, but it was normal now. It had the natural tilting landscape of a space habitat and more space would have been nice, but it wasn’t that unpleasant. After they’d convinced the Oghaldzon, through Yehaka, that yes, humans did prefer brighter surroundings, it had actually become quite nice. Under other circumstances he could have almost enjoyed it…

  He glanced down at Carola as she played with one of the children, and winced; whatever the aliens had done, it had been clever. Not only had they awoken her maternal instinct by bringing children up from the surface, but they had somehow destroyed her contraceptive implant, restoring her fertility. He had wondered if it had been a wild coincidence – implants had been known to fail before – but the other women living in the habitat ring had suffered from their own menstrual pains. The aliens had awoken their fertility…and he could think of only one reason why they would do anything like that. They wanted Carola to have a child.

  It had been hard enough to explain the concept of marriage – an "exclusive mating arrangement," as Yehaka had put it – to the aliens. They hadn’t understood the concept of bastard children at all – but then, on a certain level, all of the aliens were bastards. They had seen Yehaka bud children and drop them off, creating starfish-like creatures that swarmed around the habitat like movie spiders; eventually, he’d been told, the surviving creatures would find a place to hide, create cocoons around themselves, and awaken as newly-intelligent Oghaldzon. He couldn’t understand how they tolerated it in their own biology; how did they endure knowing that they had all once been brainless beasts? He had done some pretty stupid things when it came to chasing girls, but he had never been brainless…or at least he had always had the ability to think, even if he hadn’t used it.

  They hadn’t understood the concept of orphaned children either. They left their children in the care of teachers, once they emerged as sentient Oghaldzon; they had wondered, at first, if human children were feral. That had caused Wilhelm some amusement; there was a case to be made that human children were always feral. The idea of someone abandoning their children made sense to them, but the idea of putting them in homes or even just leaving them to die horrified them – once they had realised that human children were born able to think and grow.

  They’d brought up several hundred children…and Carola, and the other women, had fallen in love with them. If he understood Yehaka correctly, the latest crop of young Oghaldzon would be bursting out of their cocoons soon, and then the real effort would begin. Their children would end up being taught with the Oghaldzon children, something he dimly remembered from his own history… ah, yes; the European Federation had, starting in the 2030s, forced integration on its unruly immigrant populations by requiring their children to learn with native Europeans and closing their own schools. Would the Oghaldzon try that for all of humanity?

  He wandered down toward Carola, who was holding a small girl in her arms; the girl had dark skin and darker eyes and didn’t seem to know a word of English. It was a mystery where the aliens had found her; Wilhelm guessed that it had been somewhere in Africa. It was ironic; her life would probably be far better on the mother ship than back in Africa, where she might have ended up a slave, a prostitute, or a Wrecker suicide bomber. Given time, she would learn to speak English, along with some understanding of the Oghaldzon tongue. The device he wore behind his ear proved that; it provided a limited translation of the clicking noises the Oghaldzon made…and allowed him to hear them all to begin with. He would never be able to speak their language himself but maybe, just maybe, the girl would grow to speak directly with the aliens.

  He placed a hand on Carola’s shoulder. “Have you thought of a name for her?”

  “Summer, perhaps,” she said. She had been determined to take care of all the children; the growing human population on the mothership would rapidly become as mixed-race as the Rockrats themselves. It no longer carried any stigma in America, but there were still places in the world where mixed-race children were rare. “It would be a good name for her, don’t you think?”

  “In the future… is this all the future holds?” Wilhelm asked her. The note of despair in his own voice shocked him; he no longer recognised the young man who had been certain, oh so certain, that the aliens were friendly. “Is this where it all ends?”

  “I have no idea,” Carola said, passing Summer over to him.

  Wilhelm held her in his arms, grateful that the aliens had consented to provide at least some clothing for their human captives; he wouldn’t have felt comfortable with the child otherwise. “But really, is there anything we can do about it?”

  Chapter Fifty-Two: One Last Chance, Take Two

  United States National Command Centre

  “They’re coming over us, they’re coming over us, they’re…” The transmission cut off in a burst of static.

  “That was our last line of defence north of the Atlanta suburbs,” General William Denny said grimly. The aliens had been advancing deeper into the country, tearing America apart through sheer force and determination. The glowing red area of the Occupied Zone was growing larger almost every day as the aliens expanded. When they found resistance they simply dropped kinetic weapons
from space and rolled over it. “They’re falling back in disarray.”

  Cardona felt cold despair. The aliens had spread out of the Northeast as far south as Atlanta, where the city’s defences were barely slowing them, and east to the Mississippi, where they had – for now – paused. Millions of people were dead, millions more under the aliens’ control, and countless industry had been wrecked – destroyed in orbit by the aliens in their initial strikes, or on the ground by the tidal waves and subsequent fighting.

  Defensive lines were being formed west of the Mississippi, particularly around Memphis, Vicksburg and St. Louis, but nobody really expected those to hold once the aliens pushed. The only question was when they would, how long they’d spend consolidating their southern lines first.

  “There are some bright spots,” Denny said. “They don’t have anything like complete coverage yet; we have Special Forces and civilian resistance units spreading through their territory and generally making the day unsafe for them. We have small teams sabotaging everything that they might find useful, slipping in, landing blows against their forces, and then falling back before they can react. We’re hurting them, but…”

  Cardona said nothing. He’d read the reports; the aliens had captured vast numbers of Americans, some of whom had later tried to offer resistance and been shot down. The electronic infrastructure in the Occupied Zone had largely remained intact – he silently blessed the internet’s Cold War designers for their focus on ensuring survivability; packets simply routed around lost nodes, and there were plenty of ground-based cables and relayers from the cellphone networks.

  Intelligence agents, bloggers, and common citizens had all filed reports on alien behaviour. They were acting almost like the army that had gone into Pakistan in America’s last major war; they had surrounded towns and cities, forced the population to register, then offered them algae-grown food.

  In time, he suspected, resistance would probably fade. Some would try to fight and get smashed, some would try to escape the alien areas of control and most would just try to get on with their lives to the extent they could. The aliens seemed to be here to conquer, not to exterminate, and he strongly suspected the majority of the population would, over the long run, adjust to that. Those who resisted would die.

  “It’s not enough,” he said. “Janet, have we heard anything from overseas?”

  The Secretary of State shook her head. “The Europeans are taking a beating; apparently, there was a pro-alien rising in North Africa, spearheaded by the Wreckers, and they lost badly in the chaos following their twin defeats,” she said.

  “North Africa has more or less fallen to the enemy; there’s a good chance that the remainder of their forces have been reduced to small underground units and resistance forces, such as they are. The Caliphate is on the verge of disintegration; they and the Israelis are trying to hold a line along the Suez Canal. The aliens look to be building up on their side of it, though, and we don’t expect it to survive a serious push.

  “Russia and Japan are saying nothing, but the Japanese might just break ranks and sue for peace; we have suspicions that several countries are actually communicating with the aliens, looking for terms.”

  “Bastards,” Denny said. “Don’t they realise that the only hope of victory is to bleed them?”

  “We’re the ones getting bled,” Richardson said. “What happens when the aliens come towards this place?”

  Cardona had wondered about that. The location of the National Command Centre was a secret…which probably meant that the other Great Powers would at least have a rough idea of its location. The aliens hadn’t bombarded it from space, like they had picked off a handful of other command centres across the world, which suggested that they didn’t know…unless they were keeping him alive for some reason. They hadn’t hesitated to try to decapitate the other powers, so logically they didn’t know, unless they were screwing with his mind. Had they captured information from Paris, or Moscow? Both of the cities would have served as a repository for information that their governments had collected; had they had a chance to destroy the information, or was an alien intelligence team digging through it, piece by piece? There was no way to know.

  “We evacuate,” Denny said. “We have had some minor successes in defeating the aliens; the problem is that we need to pull off a major victory and we can’t do that, short of massing forces to carry out the attack…and if we do that, the aliens kick our butts from orbit.”

  “Two billion of them,” Cardona mused. “How many of them can we kill?”

  Richardson looked at him. “They can’t all be soldiers,” she said. “The real question is, just how many of them have to die before the aliens get the idea of talking to us on even terms?”

  “We’re not on even terms,” General Denny said. He sighed and rubbed his cheek; the dark stubble stood out against his pale face and tired eyes. “That’s the overall problem, Mr. President…”

  He stood up and looked down at the map. “We never considered a land invasion seriously, not since the Mexican Civil War,” he said. “Even during the First Cold War, we never seriously believed that the Russians could land a force that could actually…threaten the integrity of the United States, while the Japanese back in World War Two could not even take Pearl Harbour, let alone the remainder of the United States. We always saw ourselves as having a permanently safe rear area – short of nukes being used, blowing up the world, and resulting in a draw.”

  He snorted. “The idea of the other Great Powers invading was equally silly,” he continued. “Unless someone made a major breakthrough and produced something that invalidated the entire defence network, it was impossible that any Great Power would succeed in taking uncontested control of LEO and using it against us. We were secure…until now, when the aliens, who existed outside strategic planning sessions, came and knocked us out of space. That gives them advantages; not only the advantage of orbital weapons, but the ability to see things in real time and react to them, bugger up our communications and countless other things that hurt us. The blockade alone, Mr. President, drains our power, which hurts our morale, which…

  “The bottom line is simple,” he concluded. “We can hurt them and we will continue to hurt them, such as using the tactical nuclear grenade like we did near Richmond against one of their tank columns. Their scanners are damn good; several other attempts to repeat that trick ended in disaster for the SEALs involved. What we cannot do is defeat them, not completely.”

  The President winced. “Are you suggesting that we surrender?”

  “I am suggesting that it may not be possible to produce a victory on equal terms,” Denny said. The President gave him credit for not flinching. “We may have to consider discovering what terms the aliens will offer us.”

  Richardson blinked. “But we have won insurgencies before,” she said. “Can’t we use that experience to help here?”

  Denny laughed harshly. “We were playing the aliens, then,” he reminded her. “We won in Iraq after nine years of fighting…and victory, in that case, was far from perfect. Pakistan was a second nightmare, but in that case we had a great deal of experience to help us and we had just lost New York, which made actually taking the gloves off much easier. Our staying power was considered to be weak by our enemies – hell, by some of our allies – and we had to hold on until we could win. It was the draft that made that possible…but here, we simply lack the ability to wear the aliens down. We never lost a major battle in Iraq or Pakistan; it was the small battles that wore us down, and by the time we won, the country was devastated.”

  He shrugged. “Do the people of America have the…determination to fight an underground war for years?”

  Cardona never knew what he would have answered, because at that moment, his desktop communicator chimed. “Mr. President,” Admiral Oshiro said, “we just received a very important message forwarded to us from the moon. I need to see you at once.”

  “Come to my office,” he said shortly. The m
oon as a whole had apparently decided to step out of the war, but there were still some American agents there, as well as loyal civilians who hadn’t yet had a chance to get back in touch. “I’ll see you there.”

  He lifted an eyebrow at Denny, who shrugged.

  Admiral Oshiro looked excited as Captain Schaefer showed him in, or at least as excited as he ever got; the man had a reputation as a natural poker player. But now he was almost visibly agitated:

  “Mr. President,” he said. “We received a compressed data burst from Area 51.”

  “It was forwarded through the moon?” Denny asked. “What was Admiral Waikoloa thinking?”

  “I think there was little choice,” Oshiro said. “It had to be relayed through our series of laser relay posts and one of the posts was on the moon, where we still have access, probably because the lunar government is either hedging its bets or doesn’t know that the outpost is there. The important news, however, is that there was an encounter with a small alien force near Freeport One…and they won! They beat the aliens in a ship-to-ship duel!”

  The President smiled for the first time in what felt like years. “How bad was it?”

  “The Rockrats lost several ships, but the aliens lost their entire force,” Oshiro said. President Cardona’s smile grew wider. “That’s twenty of their smaller warships and one of their transports, blasted to wreckage. No survivors; the aliens lost – and this is the interesting piece – the aliens were finally exterminated by a Chinese force from a secret asteroid base.”

  Cardona laughed. “Does everyone have a secret asteroid base these days?”