Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  Maybe she should take it all and walk away. But she was so tired. So very, very tired…

  * 13 *

  “Nein, Mylord Feldmarshall, I do not permit it,” said Isabella coldly.

  “You will not throw away my heavy armor and my best men to no purpose.

  “Yes, you can roll back their bridgeheads after the nuclear strikes. But in the process you will lose half of the Response Force and Heaven knows how many Volunteers.

  “The Leaguers have retreated. The Faerie have fallen. Admiral von Rennekampff will not hold on much longer. The integrated orbital defense network will buy us a few days, at the most. After that, the enemy will have total orbital supremacy. Should we roll back his bridgeheads, he will simply punish us from orbit and land more troops. Then we will be right where we are now, but with no tanks and no men.

  “Contingency plan Burning Stone will be followed to the letter. You have your orders. Do your duty!”

  “Jawohl, Mein Freifrau!”

  Field Marshal von Himmel’s boot heels clicked together as he bowed his head before his queen. With that red face and bulging eyes, he looked like a puffer fish about to burst, reflected the Baroness of Miranda. Except that puffer fish did not have mustaches.

  As the old man began to turn, Isabella stepped forward and rested a hand ever so lightly upon his sleeve. Beneath the resplendent gold braid and field gray of the uniform the muscles jumped at her touch. She fixed his gaze with her eyes. The field marshal’s nostrils flared as he took in her scent.

  “Eager as a hound, this one,” thought Isabella.

  “A hundred and eighty years old he is, and still the head below rules the head above.”

  She stroked his cheek, softly, and felt the old puffer fish preen at her touch.

  “How eagerly they die for me,” she thought, “How easily.”

  It had taken only one kiss. He had never even seen her naked.

  “Bleed them, my Otto,” she whispered to him in that whisper they all thought was theirs and theirs alone, that perfect mixture of appeal and command, desire and adoration that so stroked their egos.

  The whisper that made them feel indispensable. The one that drew them, like moths to a flame, to throw away everything, for the mere dream of a single night with her. For a dream alone, not even for a promise.

  “Bleed them hard, my splendid champion. I have given you Treasures upon Treasures, even the Golden Age meme dispensers. Since the days of the Defiant Baron, no field marshal has held so much in his hands. Do not disappoint your Baroness.

  “Strike and withdraw, and strike again, until you have expended the last missile. Make them howl. Make them pay for every meter. Make every town, every village, into a graveyard for them. Litter the ground with their corpses.

  “But no pitched battles in the open field. No heroic last stands. Preserve my forces. Do not lose my best men and machines. We will yet need those troops.”

  “My Lady,” replied the old puffer fish, eyes burning with devotion and desire and boundless ambition all at once, “I will not fail you! You can count on me, even unto death and hellfire itself!”

  Isabella van der Rijn stood up on tiptoe and kissed the old field marshal on the cheek.

  He smelled of expensive cologne, and even more expensive tobacco. The way Junker grandfathers were supposed to smell, she supposed. But now her scent would linger in his nostrils and upon his skin, to spur him unto death.

  “Go with God, my hero!” she whispered into his ear, “Go with God!”

  * 14 *

  It was warm. Really warm. A hot, dry summer day. She was lying on her bed at home. It was really soft and nice and she didn’t want to get up at all, even though she was pretty thirsty and kind of needed to go to the bathroom.

  For some reason, the room smelled like old fur needles.

  Her dad was shaking her. He wanted her to get up for school. But it was too late for school, and it was Sunday, anyway.

  She didn’t want to get up. She’d been having this horrible nightmare, with aliens and stomps from the barrios and Leaguers, but it was all just a dream. It was a warm, dry summer and she was in her bedroom at home, and everything was all right.

  “Leave me alone, Papa,” she muttered, “There’s no school on Sundays.”

  Papa chuckled and said: “Come on, wake up, girl.”

  He was speaking in Hebrew.

  There was a rush of cold air, and her mattress turned into a pile of damp, prickly fur needles.

  Mirabelle woke with a start.

  The Leaguer was squatting next to her under the fur tree. He had turned off her invisibility cloak.

  “It looks like Mamzer ben Zonah didn’t have any friends after all,” he said.

  Her chance to escape was gone. She almost started crying.

  He’d left her alone, with an invisibility cloak and a rucksack full of guns and food and who knew what else, and she’d slept away her chance. And now he would hurt her. He had her all to himself; and no one would hear, and no one would help, and he would strip her naked and hurt her until she died, just like the stomps had done with mom and Annie.

  “I expected that any friends of his would try to follow us as soon as they found him. But I guess he was alone after all.

  Still,” the Leaguer continued, “we shouldn’t stay here. We left too much of a trail, and who knows what might follow it.”

  With that, he picked up the rucksack and flipped it onto his shoulders.

  “Your poncho,” he said, “has a stealth-independent counter-tracking mode. I’m going to turn that on so you have a bit of time to cool off. We’ll go full stealth up by the top of the ridge, and use the stream to completely obscure our tracks from there. Don’t worry, we’ll go slowly and I’ll help you through the water.”

  Mirabelle felt tears welling up in her eyes. Her whole body felt limp as a rag. She couldn’t imagine going into that stream again. But if she didn’t, he would hurt her. He would. She was lucky he hadn’t done anything already.

  “P-please,” she begged, stuttering, “can I go to the bathroom?”

  Her knees shook as she said it. Maybe she could at least get a couple more minutes. Just a couple more minutes, please, God!

  “Good God!” the Leaguer snapped back at her with exasperation, “What, am I going to eat you, or something? I don’t eat little girls! Go around the tree, on the other side, where I can’t see you.”

  Now she’d made him mad! She almost ran around the tree to escape his glare.

  The invisibility cloak was a shapeless bag with holes for arms and a head again. It covered her down to the knees, but it felt cold and slick, very plasticky. She had to go right now, or she’d go in her shorts.

  It was horrible, foul-smelling black slime, just like the last time around. The same as it had been every hour or two for the past day and a half, ever since she’d eaten those berries. She’d thought that her guts would fall out with it.

  There was nothing within reach to wipe herself with. It was all fur trees and dry needles up here. And she’d gotten the slime all over her shorts, this time.

  She just couldn’t take it anymore; all the filth and the dirt and the mud and the shit and the stink. She couldn’t. It would be better to die, she didn’t care. It would be better if the Leaguer killed her. At least she wouldn’t be sick and hungry anymore.

  She could feel little droplets of slime running down her legs as she stood up. The loose, sick feeling percolated through her stomach, like her intestines were melting, just dissolving away into a filthy black puddle. Her whole body hurt.

  Mirabelle kicked the shorts away and sobbed uncontrollably.

  There was nothing left, nothing except the shoes.

  Mom, dad, sister, brother, house, food… Even her clothes were gone now. If it wasn’t for the dead man’s invisibility cloak, she’d be naked.

  She would die here, in these woods. The Leaguer would hurt her until she was all used up, and then he’d kill her, or just throw her away like
those dirty shorts, to die all alone, bleeding and starving, under some cold, wet tree.

  Needles crunched. The Leaguer had come around the fur. It must have been the sobbing.

  He glanced at the mess on the ground and the filthy shorts.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” he growled.

  Would he leave her now? Why would he want to deal with her, all sick as she was?

  Her stomach contracted into a little quivering ball of despair and tried to climb up her esophagus, sending a wave of shivers all the way out to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  “Please,” she sobbed, “Please just kill me. Just kill me. Make it stop. Please. I can’t. It hurts so much and the filth and… I just can’t, anymore…”

  The tears were rolling down her cheeks in a constant stream now. She could feel her lips quivering in time with her shaking knees. Her nose was dripping. She hadn’t felt this completely helpless since she was about three years old.

  She expected him to kill her, she really did. Either that or just walk away and leave her to die. They despised weakness. Like wolves. That’s what everyone said.

  The Leaguer’s face just changed, like removing a mask. The cold, angry glare went away and there was this odd guilty look in its place, the way Brandon would look when he’d been caught sneaking cookies out of the kitchen or drawing on the living room wall with a crayon, or something. It was as if someone had thrown a switch and turned him back into a human being.

  He felt pity? Pity for her? Because she was crying? Did they even do that, feel pity for other people? Dad had said that they were just psychotic killing machines, like sharks; that they felt pity for no one.

  “Don’t cry,” he said.

  His voice was all soft and kind all of a sudden.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. You poor thing, I’ve been such a jerk to you, haven’t I?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’ll take care of you. Everything will be just fine, you’ll see.”

  There was a small rectangular box in his hand.

  Wipes of some kind. Kind of like napkins. They were soft and white and wet to the touch and smelled funny, like the vodka she’d tried at Maria and Enza’s party last month, but also kind of soapy.

  He was wiping her legs with them. He got about halfway up her thighs and then kind of stopped. And blushed. Actually blushed, like he was embarrassed to touch her any higher. She was so surprised, she stopped sobbing.

  “I… I can finish. It… it’s ok,” she said, sniffling.

  He was feeling guilty. Really, he was. Like a normal person.

  Maybe… maybe he wouldn’t hurt her? Really?

  Maybe he really didn’t mean it. Mom had said that they weren’t insane, just different. She’d said that there were rules; that if you learned the rules, everything would be ok.

  He cleared his throat and handed her the box.

  “You’ve been drinking untreated water, haven’t you?” he muttered, kind of to himself, as he cleaned his hands with a wipe.

  “Of course you have. And you haven’t eaten for how long?”

  “Three days,” she sniffled.

  “Except for some berries. I think the berries made me sick.”

  “The bad water made you sick, girl,” he replied.

  “Never mind just the bacteria and the parasites; we’re above the toxic line. I’ve seen beaver dams all over the place up here, and there’s gray algae growing all over the rocks in the streams even without Li’s Beavers to tend it.”

  He stuck a pill between her lips. It was huge, almost as big around as her index finger and half as long. His invisibility cloak extended a tube out of his shoulder.

  “It’s clean water, sweetie,” he said softly, “Just bite down on the valve a little bit and suck.”

  To help swallow the pill, right.

  The water was warm and flat and almost completely tasteless. Like distilled water, she thought.

  “Come around the tree when you’re done,” continued the Leaguer. “I’ll make you some food.”

  “Food!” she thought.

  “Oh my God, food!”

  * 15 *

  The Broken Warble sounded different somehow when you knew it was for real, mused oberleutnant Dieter Stieglitz as he cradled the oxygen bottle in his lap. Erich would always hook the Old Man up with an oxygen bottle at the Broken Warble.

  Good boy, Erich. Dutiful. Good with the wrenches, too. He would have made stabsfeldwebel someday. Maybe even feldwebel-leutnant, chief of maintenance for the Squadron. Pity he wouldn’t live out the day.

  Down by the next launcher, the rest of the flight crew busied themselves with communion wafers and wine and the priest’s censer. But Old Man Dieter would rather pre-breathe extra oxygen.

  Whatever Heavenly Powers there might or might not be, they would take care of him or they would not, according to their liking. But the oxygen would come in handy, either way.

  He was sixty-two now. Way too old to fly a fighter, most would say. It was a kid’s game, atmospheric combat. Once you hit thirty, you weren’t supposed to be any good, anymore. Or so the common wisdom went.

  Which just proved that commoners didn’t have much wisdom, thought Dieter. Old age and guile beat youth and strength any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. He was living proof.

  He glanced down at the grass growing through the launcher’s flat tire.

  The launchers were supposed to be mobile, but in his thirty-eight years with the Squadron they had never moved. Now that it was for real, they couldn’t move. Not that it really mattered.

  Dieter patted the warm skin of the bird on the launch cradle. Good old Hilde, number seventy-two. His from the first day he’d reported in.

  Same old resting display as back then. Air superiority gray. Red triangles with golden crown and wreath on wings and fuselage. Squadron number on the tail, in big black letters. Shark mouth art around the air intake.

  When the Mad Baron’s grandfather had bought her toward the end of his reign, she’d been a shark indeed, a terror of the skies. When she’d flown against Palmer’s invaders and the Pretender’s goons, she hadn’t been much of a much, but she’d done all right. Now, the old girl was tired. Ready for the boneyard, same as he. But one more dance before the end.

  You had to give credit to Her Ladyship, he thought. Her father she was not. In all his time with the Squadron, he had never seen so much training as over these last six years, or so many spare parts. She’d even scraped together funds for replacement fighters. Shiny new Shomers. Really new, not refurbished. Straight off the production line on New Israel. Too bad they weren’t scheduled to arrive for another five years.

  Well, that was life. You went to war with what you had, not with what you wished you had. Besides, he was going to go off active flight status together with old Hilde anyway. So it was all for the better. No need to worry about career changes now.

  The Commander and the feldwebel-leutnant had done their best, the past two weeks. Where and how they got all those parts Dieter didn’t know, but they got them. The ground crew near killed themselves, but every bird in the squadron would fly today, and every bot.

  Every launcher was in working order. They couldn’t move, but they would push out the birds. In all his years with the Squadron, it was the first time this had happened.

  They’d even fixed Old Longtooth, the extra launcher that had sat in the far hangar since the Pretender’s War had ended.

  Somehow, the Commander had dug up four old broken bots somewhere, and the mechanics had worked extra hours to cobble together two working ones for Old Longtooth to launch. They’d fly with him today. Ulrich was the only weapons officer in the squadron who could handle a pair of extra bots.

  It was only a matter of time now. The asteroid fortresses of the Faerie had fallen. The Leaguers were pulling out while they still could, and the Kriegsraumvloot would not hold on for long by itself. The enemy was coming.

  That�
�s why the Broken Warble had sounded. The signal to ready the birds for launch. Because nothing more would soon stand in the aliens’ way but for the Jump Boundary, where the dead hand of Herr Einstein reasserted its tyranny.

  The enemy would come, and gigawatt lasers would stab up at him. And missiles would leap from the armored silos of Diederhoff and Gotterburg, and Sassnitz, and Stavoren, and of a dozen lesser fortresses, to swat the invader out of the sky. He would strike back, but still more laser batteries would join the battle, and still more hidden silos would release their arrows, and still more mobile launchers crouching eagerly in a thousand secret tunnels would sally forth from their burrows to fling their cargo against the foe.

  And then the enemy would know that he could not silence the fortresses from his precarious perch beyond the sky. Not unless he stripped the forests bare and leveled the mountains and boiled the oceans, and burned this world to slag.

  But that one thing he would not do, for he wanted this precious blue marble shining in the cold dead blackness. He wanted its air that he could breathe and he wanted its water that he could drink and he wanted its precious ecosystem that would recycle his wastes for free.

  And so the enemy would send his best-trained and his toughest, his strongest and his bravest, the elite of his elite, down to the surface of this precious blue marble, to march across the green hills, through the forests and the jungles, and the villages, and the cities, and silence the great fortresses from the ground.

  The Junkers would unleash their Treasures against him, and their men at arms would meet him, and the men of Her Ladyship’s Army would do their duty. But none of that would be enough.

  And then, in the hills and in the forests, in the streets and in the fields, only the Volkswehr would be left to face an enemy who shot at escape pods, who took no prisoners, who refused to even respond to hails, except with a demand for unconditional surrender.