Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  A grand name, that. Volkswehr. Shopkeepers and clerks, and farmers, and schoolboys; aye, and schoolgirls and housewives, too. Most of them with naught but two weeks’ training, if that. Armed with whatever Her Ladyship could provide, or whatever they had brought with them from their homes. Against the enemy’s bravest and toughest. Against the elite of his elite.

  Willem had volunteered for the Volkswehr, and that was all well and good. He was eighteen, a man grown, and his grandfather’s rifle and armor would serve him well. But Heinrich had volunteered also, and they took him, too, for all that he was sixteen. He got his father’s submachinegun and the spare poncho from the attic. And Ulrike was fourteen. When she’d volunteered, there had been no real weapon left in the house to give to her. She’d snuck away in the middle of the night, and called from the recruiting station. After Ulrike, his Greta would have gone, too. But she had the baby to care for.

  And that is who would meet them, the enemy’s bravest and toughest. Willem and Heinrich and Ulrike, and their neighbors, and their school friends.

  But before they did, the bastards would have to get past him. Past the man who would have long ago been forcibly sent packing if he didn’t have a standing bet with every incoming squadron commander that he would leave active flight status when any four pilots working together could best him in the air. Past the man who would have long ago commanded a squadron of his own, if it wasn’t for the missing “von” before his last name. Past Old Man Dieter, and Ulrich the weapons officer, and faithful old Hilde, number seventy-two.

  The enemy’s best and toughest, the elite of his elite, crammed like sardines into lumbering assault shuttles and awkward drop capsules, crushed by twenty-gee decelerations, bruised and buffeted by evasive maneuvers, weak and vulnerable for only a few short minutes as they hurtled across the narrow blue band between the cold dead blackness of Sky and the lush living greenery of Earth. The narrow blue band where the men and machines of Luftvechtseskadron 1463 would stand and fight, and die.

  Beams would stab down from above. Enemy fighters would hurl themselves at him by the score. There would be no base left to return to. But none of it mattered.

  A dozen in each drop capsule. A hundred in each assault shuttle. That is what mattered now.

  As long as old Hilde could still fly, as long as her lasers still worked, as long as the great fortresses kept the enemy’s warships from sitting steadily in orbit and swatting him out of the air like a gnat, Old Man Dieter would face the maelstrom, and he would take his toll.

  The Scramble Bell. Crew to cockpits.

  Erich was there to take the oxygen bottle, and Ulrich was climbing into the rear cockpit already. Old girl Hilde smelled of ozone, the way she always did before launch. The outside view flickered for a second as Hilde’s computers recognized his presence. The launcher tilted upward, swinging around and pointing at the cloudless blue sky.

  The preflight checklist ran through like the summer breeze, and then there was nothing left to do but pre-breathe oxygen and wait for the launch icon to light up.

  It was a beautiful summer day. Warm, but not hot. A little wind to liven things up. Just the way he liked things. A good day for a picnic. A nice day to die.

  Her Ladyship was speaking. They’d piped the video into the cockpits over the secondary command channel. It was a nice speech. You had to give it to Her Ladyship, she was no coward. She’d had a chance to flee with the Leaguers, but here she was, with her people to the last. No running off-world for her.

  You could almost see her personally leading a charge, waving that submachinegun.

  She would, too. She really would. Imagine that!

  And a promise of knighthood for any who could win it. Wasn’t that something?

  If you didn’t have a patent of nobility going all the way back to the Founding, the Mad Baron wouldn’t even look at you. Nope, nothing like her father, this one. Didn’t act like him, didn’t even look like him, or her mother, either. Made you wonder, it did.

  A good ruler, Her Ladyship. A just ruler. Tough on the Junkers, but good to the common folk. A rare thing on Miranda, that. Worth defending to the last. Worth dying for.

  Well, perhaps Willem would win himself a knighthood. Or maybe Heinrich. Willem was the brave one, but Heinrich had always been the cleverer.

  The Solid Tone now. Bots away. You could see the contrails streaking upward. The launcher status icon popped into life.

  Red light.

  Amber light.

  Green light.

  The summer sky filled suddenly with bright blue stars, and a giant hand slammed him back into the seat as faithful old Hilde rushed toward them.

  * 16 *

  It was soup. Hot and white, and salty, and kind of fishy-tasting, with little white cubes and green sheet-like things and tiny slices of carrot. There was a whole steaming container of it, maybe half a liter. It tasted like heaven.

  She gulped it down so fast that it burned her throat.

  “Easy, girl, easy,” smiled the Leaguer as Mirabelle spooned every little bit of edible stuff out of the container, “You’ll make yourself sick.”

  Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Can I please have some more?” she asked tentatively.

  “Let’s give it a few minutes and see how this batch settles down,” he replied, but reached into a pocket for a soup packet all the same.

  The container she ate from turned out to be a mini-kettle. There was a cooking interface on one side.

  He was eating something himself; some kind of oily-looking thing, light pink with thin white stripes. It came in a bar, wrapped in dark brown plastic. Mirabelle felt her mouth filling with saliva at the sight of it.

  Her eyes met the Leaguer’s. She would do anything for more food. Really, anything, she thought.

  Until now, she hadn’t realized how hungry she really was. She had kind of gotten used to being hungry, she supposed.

  “Oh, hell,” said the Leaguer guiltily, “don’t look at me like that, girl!

  “Fine, come here. I’ll give you some of it. But slowly, all right? Little pieces. Just a bit at a time. And then some more soup, ok?”

  Mirabelle nodded eagerly. A little thrill of fear ran through her chest as she scooted up next to him.

  He towered over her like a huge, muscular boulder, even when they were both sitting down. And he killed people. But she wanted the food so much…

  “What is it?” she asked.

  It wasn’t bad at all. The soft little pieces almost melted in her mouth, releasing little bursts of fishy, oily goodness.

  “Alien assault ration,” he replied, sliding another little piece between her lips.

  “They’re very filling. Best I can tell, this one is supposed to be something like salmon sashimi.

  “It’s a fish dish. You don’t have salmon on Paradise,” he answered her unspoken question.

  “Goes pretty well with the instant miso soup, huh? All it needs is some wasabi, some soy sauce and some pickled ginger to go with it.”

  It was kind of weird, thought Mirabelle, the way he wouldn’t let her touch the bar. He would tear off a piece and eat it, then tear off a piece for her, then another piece for himself, and then another piece for her…

  One spring, a pair of little blue birds had built a nest in a tree next to her bedroom window. They would fly back and forth between the nest and the ground all day long. Every time one of the little blue birds landed on the nest, the chicks would all stick out their necks, open their mouths and squeak as loudly as they could. Maybe they thought that whichever chick squeaked the loudest would get the most bugs. Now she knew how those chicks must have felt.

  “How come you have alien food?” she asked.

  “Met some,” shrugged the Leaguer, “Killed them. Took their food.”

  Mirabelle’s breath froze in her throat. The little bit of ration bar was suddenly stuck in her esophagus. Just like that. Met some, killed them, took their food.

  She heard da
d’s voice again, clear as the day he had shouted at mom over that Israeli Hebrew tutor.

  Psychotic killing machines. Like sharks. Pity for no one. Nothing in common with normal people. Don’t want anything to do with them.

  Every little bit of her was quivering, from her insides to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  “Oh, stop it!” said the Leaguer casually.

  “It’s war, girl. That’s how it is.”

  “Speaking of all that,” he continued, “that pig did quite a number on your face, didn’t he? You see stars when he hit you?”

  Mirabelle nodded weakly. She had to bite down on her tongue to keep her teeth from chattering. Her stomach was churning.

  She had to keep down that soup, she had to! It was the first real food she’d had in two weeks.

  “You feeling dizzy? Nauseous? Seeing double? Ears ringing?”

  She shook her head, weakly. The soup was threatening to come up any second.

  “Well, no brain injury, then. Let me see if he broke anything.

  “Sit still! I’m not gonna hurt you!” he snapped as she flinched away from his touch.

  It took all of her willpower not to scream in terror. Only a little terrified whimper escaped as her fingers dug into the dirt.

  A hand held her softly under the chin. Fingers carefully palpated her face.

  He was trying to be nice, she thought.

  But all she could think of was: “Met some. Killed them. Took their food.”

  The casual way he said it. The way dad would talk about ordering groceries.

  “Well, nothing seems to be broken,” said the Leaguer.

  “He hit you anywhere else? Punch you in the stomach, kick you in the ribs?”

  Mirabelle shook her head.

  “He just grabbed me and threw me on the ground and jumped on top of me,” she replied.

  The Leaguer paused for a second, like he was considering something.

  “Oh, the heck with it!” he muttered.

  “Take off the poncho.”

  Mirabelle jumped back as if he’d tried to bite her.

  “No!” she cried pleadingly.

  The Leaguer fixed her with that cold, carnivorous stare. Her knees quivered at its touch.

  “Now, girl,” he said.

  Her hands almost jumped to obey on their own at his tone, before she stopped them.

  Mirabelle shook her head.

  “No,” she said with a sob.

  “Please, no.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you,” replied the Leaguer icily, standing up.

  “Do what you’re told or you can stay here and starve to death.”

  “So this is how it works!” thought Mirabelle, “He’ll feed me, but I have to… I have to…”

  She couldn’t finish the sentence, not even as a thought in her mind. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pulled off the dead man’s invisibility cloak and dropped it at her feet.

  “Please,” she begged, “please don’t hurt me. It’s my first time.”

  “Oh quit it, girl,” said the Leaguer mildly, “What do you think I am?”

  He had wipes in his hand. He was cleaning her body as he looked at it. His voice was soft and kind again.

  “I can’t always take the time to explain things to you, sweetie,” he said, almost apologetically.

  “I’m sorry. You have to do what I say first, immediately when I say it, and ask for explanations later. Your life and mine might depend on it.

  “Look,” he continued, embarrassed, “I’ve never had to deal with a little girl in the field by myself, ok? There were always older girls to deal with these things. I have to look you over. You’re such a fragile-looking little thing. That savage might have cracked a couple of ribs, or who knows what else. And you’ve been sleeping rough in the woods.”

  Now he was just annoying, thought Mirabelle. Like that new coach at the field hockey tryouts last year, the one who thought that she was too scrawny to be on the team. And she had a name, dammit! He was treating her like she was five!

  “I’m not that little!” she snapped at him.

  The Leaguer smiled at her.

  “All right, you’re a big girl. Twelve, right? Thirteen?”

  “Sixteen!” snapped Mirabelle, clenching her fists and grinding her teeth in frustration, “I’m sixteen!”

  “Sixteen?” the Leaguer raised an eyebrow at her, still smiling.

  Clearly, he didn’t believe a word of it.

  Mirabelle felt tears welling up in her eyes again. He was so… unbearable.

  But if she started crying, he’d definitely believe that she was twelve. Probably revise that down to eleven if she started screaming and stomping her feet, too. Either that or bend her over and spank her, like an unruly five year old.

  He would!

  She balled up her fists tighter to keep from growling at him.

  “Well, big girl, you’re tougher than you look. Nothing broken. A few scratches and some bruises aside, you’re none the worse for wear. Looks like the tree leeches like you, though. You’ve got bites all over. You must be sweet.

  “And speaking of tree leeches, this guy found a nice warm place with a good blood supply, didn’t he? Spread your legs a little and hold still. Let me get the royal tweezers out for His Majesty…”

  He held up the green, wriggling, slimy thing for her to see. It was a good five centimeters long, and as big around as her index finger. Mirabelle didn’t know what was more gross, the leech or the thought of where the Leaguer had pulled it from. She thought she would melt into the ground on the spot from embarrassment.

  That’s when the soup came up.

  * 17 *

  The girl was down on all fours, heaving over a little white puddle, sobbing dejectedly between heaves. She was all bones, thought Yosi, just skin and bones. Up close, you could see the loose skin where she’d lost weight. He’d felt it, too, when he was washing her. No fat left at all.

  He’d asked her the wrong questions, hadn’t he? The difference between here and back home didn’t simply end with a foreign language and a demented culture that didn’t respect the fundamental human right to self-defense. There was no Preparedness Law here. No year’s worth of emergency rations in every home. No backup wells. Unshielded water pumps. No Civil Defense Corps caches.

  Paradise wasn’t all that poor. Certainly this girl hadn’t come from a poor family. Her Hebrew was way too good for that. In her world, the store bot would deliver whatever her parents had ordered; the Chef would cook, the Butler would serve. The refrigerator would always be full if you wanted a snack.

  But what happened when the bots stopped and the refrigerator didn’t work anymore? How much food would these people have in the house, even if they had some means to cook it without the Chef, and knew how? Enough for a day? Two? And then what?

  There were the warehouses where the bots got the food, and the corner stores where people got the occasional snack when they were out and about. Maybe three days’ worth of stuff in there, for those who could get to it first. And then…

  There were almost six million people in greater San Angelo.

  Six million. With no food. With no functioning sewage systems. Drinking unpurified water from the river. No police bots. No government. The only ones with guns are the criminals, the League tourists and the couple of hundred foot-bound human cops, assuming that there were enough military firearms to issue to the cops in the first place.

  Two out of three cops at the spaceport in San Cristobal had stunners. Cheap Imperial crap he wouldn’t give to a ten-year-old boy to play stunner tag with. Those wouldn’t have survived the EMP.

  Good God!

  And he’d almost walked into that hell, by himself, with nothing but a double load of ammo and a few grenades.

  “Sweetie,” asked Yoseph softly, “what have you been eating for the past two weeks?”

  The girl paused between dry heaves.

  “What?” she asked, wiping her mouth.


  “What have you been eating, honey? Be exact, as best you can remember. This is important,” repeated Yosi.

  “There was a tub of chicken salad in the fridge and some tomatoes and a couple of liters of milk. That lasted a couple of days,” she said hoarsely.

  “Then I had a bag of tortillas, and a box of crackers, and some Squeezy Cheese. You know, the kind that comes in a can?

  “I found a packet of vacuum-sealed guacamole next door, and some apples. Six, I think. Then…”

  She paused, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. A shudder ran up and down her body, like an electric shock.

  “There was a man. They killed him for a bagful of pears. One rolled away where I could get it. And I found a bag of chips in the basement of a burned-out house in the suburbs. I tried to make them last, but they ran out three days ago. I found some berries on a bush, the other day. And that’s it, that’s all.”

  Starvation, thought Yosi, there was something special about starvation. Too much food too quickly made you sick.

  Of all the things! First aid for wounds he knew, but this… He was no doctor, dammit!

  There was the extended first aid library in his poncho. Bought it last year, just in case. Leo had laughed at his paranoia, as usual. Who the hell needed a reference on recognizing and treating beriberi, right?

  Quickly, Yosi brought up his poncho’s medical AI. Dumb thing couldn’t do much except monitor breathing, pulse, blood pressure and blood ox, and apply tourniquets, splints and bandages and whatnot. But it could search a medical library.

  There it was!

  What the hell was “refeeding syndrome”?

  Oh, crap, he’d done everything wrong!

  Ok, there was a diet calculator.

  “How much did you weigh before all this?” asked Yosi.

  “Forty-four kilos or so,” replied Mirabelle.

  “And you’re how tall?”

  “One fifty-five.”

  “Ok,” said Yosi, “I’m going to pick you up for a second, don’t freak out.”

  He guessed she weighed about thirty-nine or forty kilos now.

  The girl was shivering again. No telling if she was just cold or if she was about to go into shock. Either way, he needed to get the poncho back on her, and morph it into something that would keep her warm. Mix some of the rehydration powder from the first aid packet and give her that, and then maybe a quarter-liter or so of miso soup, if the rehydration fluid stayed down. She needed another Magic Pill, too. She’d probably thrown up most of the other one. And he should look into the dead bastard’s rucksack. See what was in there besides a Znamensky and five thousand rounds of ammo. Maybe there was some sports drink mix.