Homicidal Aliens and Other Disappointments

by Brian Yansky

  The next day, I have a training session with Catlin, Zack, and Michael. Gradually, more and more people manage to find their way over to us until there’s a large group — and not all New Americans.

  Even the colonel comes by to watch for a while. He doesn’t say anything, but after the workout, one of his soldiers comes to get me. He says the colonel wants me to stop by his tent.

  The soldier tells me how lucky we all are that we found our way to this camp, where there’s a real military leader.

  “Colonel Hamilton is a good commander. He’s built a real community here. A place to fight for.”

  When we get to the tent, the colonel is sitting at his desk, smoking a cigar. He has me take a seat. He asks if I’ll have a hard-boiled egg.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hen laid it this morning.”

  He hands it to me, and I peel it and take a bite.

  “Good,” I say. “Very good.”

  It is. It’s been a long time since I’ve had an egg of any kind.

  “We have a thriving community here. We’ll be self-sufficient before long. We won’t need to go scavenging. We’ve got chickens and twelve micro vegetable and fruit gardens. We’ve captured deer, and we’re breeding a herd. We’ve got two goats. We’re doing a lot of positive things.”

  “I see that,” I say. And it’s true; walking around the camp yesterday, I did see that this little camp feels like people have settled in.

  “But all that we’re doing here could be taken away in a day. I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “No, sir,” I agree.

  “So you understand why I’d be concerned when a disruptive element comes into my camp.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “I’m just trying to prepare people to fight.”

  “I’m hearing from my men that many of your people think you have the Warrior Spirit in you. Then I see you teaching fighting skills without authorization.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I needed it.”

  “Everyone has to learn quickly. I realize this is all new to you, but if you break the rules again, there will be consequences. You need to get authorization for everything beyond tying your own shoes. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now I need you to tell me you don’t believe in this Warrior Spirit nonsense.”

  “I don’t believe in it,” I lie.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he says. “We need to make that clear to everyone. There’s no Warrior Spirit. There’s just us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can be an inspiration to the men and women here. You have certain skills. You will help morale if you fight even half as well as I’m told you do.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m going to need better than your best, son.”

  He smokes his cigar thoughtfully, but then I notice that he’s trying to push past my shield and read me. He’s subtle, but I feel him. I strengthen my shield, and I feel him back away.

  “Tell you what,” he says. “You have authorization to continue your training sessions. Only you’ll do them with my sergeant. His name is Haley. He’ll coordinate a schedule. We’ll post it.”

  A soldier excuses himself for interrupting when he steps into the tent. He says Captain Franks is back from scouting. He’s ready to make his report.

  “I want a written report on your talents,” he says to me. “Everything you’ve used them for. I’d like to have an idea what you can do.”

  He makes me sound like a machine, like a weapon.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “By tonight,” he says.

  Colonel Hamilton dismisses me then. He promises me we’ll talk more later. I can hardly wait.

  I admit I’ve always struggled with authority, but I don’t feel the immediate trust with Colonel Hamilton that I did with Doc. I’m not even sure joining him was the best move. Anyway, it’s done now.

  I find Catlin in the hospital tent, helping to organize supplies. They’ve got stuff that I haven’t seen since before the invasion, including an EKG machine and an X-ray machine. I’m impressed, but I also can’t help thinking that Catlin’s never needed a machine to heal. Her talent is that strong.

  We step outside the tent, and I tell her about my conversation with the colonel.

  She’s frowning. “An egg?”

  “That’s what you focus on? I tell you I’m worried about the colonel, and you’re focusing on the egg?”

  “You know how long it’s been since I’ve had an egg?” I can see her trying to remember, but she can’t. “Anyway, what is it about him that worries you, exactly?”

  I try to put my concerns into words, but nothing I can think to say sounds all that convincing. Maybe I’m not being fair to the colonel. He’s career military. He’s tough. That’s not necessarily bad. Maybe this world needs tough.

  I tell Catlin not to worry about it. I tell her I’m just adjusting. I try to believe myself.

  We have some free time before dinner. We go for a little walk in the woods. We try to forget everything that has gone on and will go on. We try to be in the moment. It’s not a bad moment to be in, the two of us in the woods alone. I kiss her. She kisses me. We have more good moments, a bunch of them all in a row.

  That night after dinner, Sam, Catlin, and I are called to the colonel’s tent, the command center. I’m starting to feel like it’s my second home here at the camp.

  Colonel Hamilton has his three captains there. He tells us to take a seat.

  “We’ve had some news from other units. There’s an increase in activity in the alien security centers. I had scouts investigate up in Santa Fe, and they report the same thing. The aliens seem to be gearing up for something. We think maybe they’re going to try some kind of major strike.”

  “The settlers,” I mutter, flashing back to that endless fleet of alien ships. “They must be about to start shipping them down.”

  “It would seem so.” The colonel sits up straighter. “We’ve been an irritation to them, and now they want to land those settlers and they’ve decided they need to do something about us. I think they might be changing their strategy. They’ve decided they need to act now, take the risk of exposure, rather than risk further attacks by us. If that’s the case, we might be down to our last chance to stop them.”

  He looks each of us in the eye: Sam, Catlin, me. He lingers on me.

  “A few miles from here is a sensitive target. We’ve scouted it. A small force of aliens is there, and the enemy has set up some sort of security wall around the perimeter. We need to get through that wall. From your report, Jesse, you and your friends got through such a wall when you escaped from your captors in Austin.”

  Catlin and I both nod.

  “Why is this place the target, sir?” I ask. I can’t imagine how getting into any place, no matter how sensitive, could help us right now.

  The colonel takes a long drag from his cigar. “The target is a missile facility. A nuclear missile facility,” he stresses.

  “You want us to —” I start to say.

  “I’m ordering you to, soldier. We’re going to get into that missile facility, and we are going to deliver some hurt on those aliens. For once we are going to take the battle to them.”

  “You think the missiles can get to their ships?” I feel uneasy. Nuclear weapons. He wants to fire nuclear weapons.

  The colonel tosses his cigar on the ground and puts it out with his boot. “Unfortunately, we can’t be sure they would make it. And we can’t take the risk of being wrong. We need a plan we can be sure of. As I said before, this could be our last chance.”

  I glance at Catlin and Sam. If they’re making sense of this, they’re pretty good at hiding it.

  “What are you saying, sir?” I ask.

  “They love our green earth and our blue skies. It’s what makes this planet desirable to them. So we have to take away those things, make them want to settle somewhere else.
I’ve got thirty-six nuclear missiles in my facility — my former command, I should say. Thirty-six. We can hit thirty-six major cities where the aliens have bases. I believe that hitting those thirty-six cities, besides doing major damage to the settlements, will cause a nuclear fall. It will send them packing for good. No more green. No more blue. No more aliens.”

  Catlin says, “But that would . . . I mean, wouldn’t that destroy everything?”

  “We’re not talking about a nuclear winter,” Colonel Hamilton snaps, clearly frustrated by our reactions. “This would be a carefully orchestrated attack, the effects of which would be strictly limited to a nuclear fall.”

  He goes on to explain just what this “nuclear fall” would look like. Within a few days, the world would be covered in smoke. It would be so heavy it would block the sun. Temperatures would cool a few important degrees, killing off those lush green plants the aliens love so much. Rainfall would decrease, drying up all but the biggest rivers. Earth wouldn’t be destroyed, though. It would be harmed. It would be wounded. But like a wounded soldier, it would heal, and when it did the aliens would be long gone.

  “We’re talking five or six years, tops,” the colonel says. “And the effects might even be less than those I’ve described. We can survive it. Earth will take a hit, but it will survive, and so will we.”

  “Bomb our own cities,” Catlin says. “Kill everything that’s alive? What about the animals and the plants?”

  “I don’t like it, either,” Colonel Hamilton says. “I’ve thought about this long and hard, and the truth of the matter is that we have no choice. If we don’t act now, we won’t have a chance. Humankind will cease to exist. We’re in a unique position here. This was my missile facility. I know the codes. We’ve got a chance, but we can’t afford to get it wrong.”

  “There has to be another way,” I say. “If we fire some missiles at their ships, even if they miss, the aliens will at least know about us. Know we’re here. If others know besides just those in the company, maybe the settlement will be stopped.”

  “And what if they don’t care?” Colonel Hamilton says. “We can’t take that chance. I’ve made my decision. We will carry out our mission tonight. We leave at oh-one-hundred.”

  Then he dismisses us.

  Catlin is really upset. “We can’t do this,” she says once we’re outside the colonel’s tent. “We can’t let him do this.”

  Sam says, “I don’t like this any more than you, but think about two things: One, he’s given an order. If we don’t follow it, there are going to be serious consequences. Two, what if this is our only chance to defeat the aliens? It looked impossible before. This is a way to do it. This is a way to save humankind. Maybe this is the third way Running Bird was talking about.”

  “But —” Catlin says.

  “No buts. We have our orders.” Sam says she’s going to get some rest before we go and we should do the same.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Catlin asks me. “This can’t be the third way. The price is too high.”

  We go back to our tents. We talk it over. What about drinking water and food supplies and people close to those cities? And fallout? And what if it isn’t just a nuclear fall but a nuclear winter?

  There are too many what-ifs.

  But there’s one big what-if in favor of acting. What if we do nothing? What if all those new settlers land?

  If they land, there is no what-if. It will all be decided.

  We leave at exactly one o’clock. It’s dark and cool, and the stars fill the sky. There are thirty of us. We take a jeep and three trucks down the mountain, a caravan, with lights on. Catlin and I ride with Captain Wilkes in the jeep. Sam and Michael are farther back, in one of the big trucks loaded with armed soldiers. Somehow Sam managed to convince the colonel to let Michael come. I can’t decide if I’m glad to have him along for what might be our final mission or if I’d rather he stayed back at the camp, where he might be safer.

  Captain Wilkes orders Catlin and me to weave a cloak around the caravan, and so we do. The captain is impressed, though I can feel him trying not to show it.

  We get to the site, which looks like a storage unit for army trucks and jeeps.

  “Doesn’t look like much of a facility,” I say.

  “That’s the idea,” the captain says.

  We gather in front of a chain-link fence. The colonel orders some men to use the wire cutters.

  “Their security wall is about three feet inside the fence,” he says.

  We squeeze through the opening in the fence and get to the wall. It’s high and thick. It looks a lot like the one at Lord Vertenomous’s, but it might be even stronger. I can feel that more than one alien made it.

  This is a really bad time for me to travel to another moment, but I do. It’s the world turned gray, ash floating everywhere. We live here, at the missile facility, Catlin and Michael and me. Others live here with us, but not many. We live here because it’s easier to defend ourselves. Outside, the world is poisoned. The water isn’t drinkable and there isn’t much food and people are killing each other for what little there is. A lot of people want what we have, our supplies. They’re constantly trying to breach our security. We’ve killed many of them, and many of our own have died, too.

  The aliens are gone. I feel that. But the world is dark. It’s so dark that it’s always night. Fierce winds whip at us from all sides when we step out of one of the buildings. And it’s cold, so cold I can’t remember what it’s like to be warm.

  “Jesse?” Catlin says.

  I’m back in the present moment, standing in front of the wall. Catlin looks worried. “Is everything okay?”

  I nod, even though it’s a lie. Everything is most definitely not okay. Because I know — I know — that the future I just saw, the future with the nuclear fall, is not the future that leads to me and Catlin and Cat in our cozy home. The nuclear winter doesn’t clear up after a few years. That world stays dark.

  But I still don’t know how to stop it. I try again to trace my steps back from the future with Catlin and Cat, but that future feels like a dream. I see us there; I don’t see the way back to here.

  “Colonel Hamilton,” I say, “this won’t work. The nuclear fall won’t work.”

  Everyone stares at me. The colonel’s expression hardens. “What’s this now?”

  “I saw it. Just now. I saw a glimpse of the future.”

  “Seeing the future is not a talent, son. And this is not the time for this discussion.”

  “I saw that we make nuclear winter.”

  “You couldn’t see,” Colonel Hamilton says. “Your nerves are getting to you.”

  “Were there aliens?” Captain Wilkes says.

  Colonel Hamilton glares at him.

  “No,” I admit. “The aliens weren’t there.”

  Captain Wilkes looks at Colonel Hamilton. “Sorry, sir, but we in the House of Minerva believe the Warrior Spirit has the sight. But I’m satisfied. I’d take winter over the aliens any day.”

  “That’s enough!” Colonel Hamilton snaps. “I don’t believe the boy can see the future. And I certainly don’t believe he’s the Warrior Spirit! But it doesn’t matter. We’ve got a mission to accomplish, and by the gods we’ll accomplish it.” He swings his rifle toward Catlin and me and tells us to break the wall now.

  I want to argue some more, to make him see that there has to be another option, but I know it won’t do any good. Catlin and I join. The wall isn’t weak, but I see how to get through it, and I can tell that Catlin does, too. It takes us five minutes to crack it, and once we do, it’s easy to punch a hole. There’s no denying that our power together has increased.

  The colonel sends his scouts through the hole in the wall to check out the compound. They mindspeak their reports, which I pretend not to hear: There is a small number of aliens in a barracks at the other end of the compound. Apart from that, the place is deserted.

  Colonel Hamilton leads the way across
the grounds and past several offices and barracks. Suddenly I sense two alien soldiers nearby; they’re sleeping in the plane hangar, which is probably how the scouts missed them.

  They must sense us, too, because they wake up in time to raise an alarm but not in time to fight. I kill one of them, and Sam, Michael, and five of the colonel’s soldiers manage to kill the other. None of us are killed or even wounded.

  Captain Wilkes says, “So it’s true. You can kill like they kill. It’s a hell of a talent.”

  I can feel the colonel’s disapproval even as he’s thinking how glad he is that we killed the aliens so quickly. He’s thinking I’m more danger than asset and once this mission is over he’s going to rethink his decision about me. I’m tempted to tell him the feeling’s mutual, but I keep quiet.

  We follow the colonel to an office in the plane hangar. The office hides a second room behind it, this one with a steel door and a retina scanner. A computer takes a scan of the colonel’s retina before a panel pops out with a keyboard. The door slides open after he enters a code. Then he uses a key for the elevator.

  “We go down in two groups,” Colonel Hamilton says. “Captain Wilkes, you stay here with your men and guard the doors. Jesse, Catlin, Sam, and Sam’s friend — you hold back and come down with the second group.”

  The first group is all soldiers, plus Captain Sanderson and a sergeant whose name I forget. The colonel disappears through the doors with the first group.

  This is wrong, I mindspeak to Sam.

  Shut up, she says.

  Catlin is right. Destroying the world to save it — to save us — is wrong.

  Not destroy. Wound, Sam mindspeaks.

  It’s going to be worse than Colonel Hamilton thinks. I’ve seen it.

  We have no choice. She is getting frustrated with me. She is a soldier following orders. You don’t question orders.

  We do have a choice. I’ve seen a future where the world has not been wounded. It’s our world, our beautiful, green, healthy world, and the aliens are gone. It has to be a future where we didn’t fire the missiles.