

Also by Bernard Wilkerson

The Worlds of the Dead series

Beaches of Brazil

Communion

Discovery

The Creation series

In the Beginning

The Hrwang Incursion

Earth: Book One

Episode 1: Defeat

Episode 2: Flight

Episode 3: Maneuvers

Episode 4: Insertion

Episode 5: Envelopment

Episode 6: Ambush

Episode 7: Feint

The Hrwang Incursion

Book 1

Earth

Copyright © 2015 by Bernard Wilkerson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, with the exception of short quotes used in reviews, without permission from the author.

Requests for permission should be submitted to contact@bernardwilkerson.com.

For information about the author, go to

www.bernardwilkerson.com

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover photo courtesy of NASA.

Episode 8

COUNTERATTACK

88

Lizzy only fired at the oncoming vehicles in ten and twenty round bursts, carefully watching her last ammunition belt feed into the fifty caliber machine gun. With the death of the lieutenant in charge of the Southern Utah border post, she took command even though officially everyone else outranked her. They obeyed her nonetheless.

She hadn't actually used the phrase 'until you see the whites of their eyes', but she said something similar and her squad listened. They knew they would run out of ammunition long before they ran out of attackers. Every shot had to count.

Help was thirty minutes out.

Or maybe only twenty-five minutes out, if someone responded immediately to the 'Mayday' they'd sent, and if she'd tracked time correctly.

She glanced down at her last belt of ammunition. Had she really fired that much in just five minutes? It seemed like an eternity, firing and firing, picking targets, shooting at anyone who looked like they tried to lead or tried to get through the gap in the concrete barriers.

She'd plugged that gap nicely, no more vehicles coming through it, but vehicles poured around the sides, some heading out of range and down the length of the fencing. They'd find weak spots, break through, and eventually surround Lizzy and her people.

She would die here unless the cavalry arrived from St. George soon.

She knew that wasn't possible. They couldn't hold on for twenty-five more minutes. They didn't have enough ammunition. The cavalry couldn't, wouldn't, arrive in time.

But she could still hope.

Lightning blossoming from the clouds surprised her. It struck vehicles in the back of the their attackers. Small dark shapes followed the lightning, darting around and firing on other vehicles. The volume of fire on Lizzy's position lessened as attackers turned toward the clouds in confusion.

A Hrwang combat craft appeared in the sky, lightning coming from its underbelly. A minivan exploded and the combat craft disappeared and reappeared at another location. A pickup truck with a machine gun like Lizzy's mounted in the back tipped over sideways under the craft's onslaught.

Lizzy couldn't have expected the rescuing cavalry to be in the form of aliens.

No one touched those who fled. The Hrwang combat craft and its tiny drones focused on vehicles with occupants who still fought and Lizzy did the same, knowing she would soon run out of ammunition and would not be able to help.

Just as she had reduced her rate of fire when ammunition ran low, the Hrwang seemed to be doing the same, smaller and smaller bursts of lightning coming from their craft's belly as the battle wore on.

Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the Hrwang craft recalled all of its drones and disappeared.

There were still too many attackers.

"Wait! What are we doing? Where are we going?" Jayla cried. She floated in her chair, her seat harness keeping her from tumbling around the inside of the Hrwang craft in the weightlessness. They were back in space.

Weight returned unevenly, as did the sense of falling, as the craft tipped forward and began reentry.

"Why did we leave?"

"No power," the Fifth Under Captain's mellifluous voice replied. "Recharge." He showed her words on his tablet. Jayla had trouble reading while the craft bucked and swayed its way back into Earth's atmosphere, but she caught two words that had been translated into English.

Static electricity.

Jayla remembered a physics lessons taught by her father. She often learned more from him and the books he gave her than she did from high school, and she remembered him teaching her to rub balloons on her hair. She also remembered taking advantage of her lesson and scuffing her feet on the living room carpet in her socks, then reaching out and touching her little sister, the electrical discharge making the girl squeal and run. Her Daddy probably hadn't considered that practical use of his instruction.

The Hrwang combat craft's main weapon required the build up of static electricity to charge it, which it received from entry into the atmosphere. The AI simply jumped into space and the craft reentered and recharged. The Hrwang had turned a limitation, that AIs wouldn't jump back into atmosphere, into an advantage.

Ammunition they didn't need to carry between worlds.

Clever people.

It also made Jayla wonder how many other worlds they'd assaulted the way they had assaulted the Earth.

She'd had complete faith in her rescuers, complete faith in her captain, her lover, until she'd seen the intercepted video broadcast of the events at the United Nations Headquarters. Now she didn't know what to think. She stayed with the Fifth Under Captain because she loved him, but also because she didn't know where else to go. She was afraid of other humans. None had treated her kindly since the attack, and although the other Hrwang had changed their attitudes toward her when she began sleeping with her captain, she knew he would always protect her.

But when she thought of meteors raining from the sky, hitting cities and factories, destroying them like the meteor that had destroyed the tiny mountain hamlet in Idaho, when she thought of Hrwang combat craft striking aircraft and vehicles with their focused electrical discharges, only one word came to mind.

Not rescuer or savior or even lover.

Not friend or helper or even reluctant conqueror.

Just one word.

Ruthless.

Lizzy had ten shots left, tops. She didn't take the time to count the remaining rounds. She just kept her head down and watched for anyone with another grenade launcher, saving her precious ammunition for someone who could take out the guard house in one shot.

The concrete barrier that funneled vehicles through its opening, now clogged with destroyed trucks and cars, also provided cover for the attackers. She wished she had the army rifles that came with the shells that killed people behind cover. She also wished for a mortar or a grenade launcher or simply for more ammunition.

She wished the aliens would return.

Dead and dying lay in and around the guard house under her. But the survivors still had rifles and pistols and fired just enough to keep the persistent attackers in their cover. The attackers returned enough fire back to keep the heads of Lizzy's people down also.

No vehicles moved within range of the guard house. After the aliens left, a group simply turned around and drove back the way they'd come, following those who had fled under the alien's assault. Others remained parked around a portion of the fence a mile or so away, presumably working at it with whatever tools they possessed. It wouldn't be long before they broke through. Passive defense systems never held up under determined attack.

She longed to yell down to those who still fought below her, to reassure them or to reassure herself, but they wouldn't hear her over the din of the shots that ricocheted off concrete barriers and walls. Climbing down off the roof would leave her exposed for too long.

Out of ammunition for his sidearm, the spotter with her merely cowered under cover next to her, ready to take over firing the machine gun should she go down.

Until she ran out of ammo. Then they'd both be trapped.

Assessing the tactical situation, she realized something that impressed her. Whoever had determined the placement of the concrete barriers out on the freeway had chosen well. They were out of range of hand thrown grenades, meaning that attackers couldn't hide behind them and throw grenades at the guard house.

She didn't know if her assailants had any hand grenades, none had been thrown yet, but it still seemed like a smart thing to do for defense.

Someone popped up from behind the barrier with a nasty looking, large weapon, and Lizzy fired a burst in his direction. He went down, dead or just diving for cover, and Lizzy's gun clicked.

She was out of ammo.

"What's the plan, Captain?" Jayla asked. Reentry would be over soon, and the craft would be able to jump back anywhere.

"We look."

"That's it?"

He grinned. "If they still fight, we try to scare more attackers away. Your plan. If not, we leave."

"Why wouldn't they still be fighting?"

"Many against few. Overrun."

"Can't you make this thing go faster?" she pleaded.

He shook his head. "Science."

Lizzy lay up against the concrete wall that ringed the top of the guard shack, the fifty caliber now behind her, and clutched her tiny pistol. She had twenty-four rounds, two clips, but she wouldn't be able to hit anything farther than thirty or forty feet away. The spotter hid next to her, cursing at times and praying at others.

She glanced down and noticed evidence that he'd wet himself. Poor guy. She didn't stare but turned away and peeked over her cover toward her attackers.

The fire had lessened significantly from both sides, everyone conserving ammunition, everyone waiting. She knew help from St. George could only be minutes away, ten at the most, but if everyone in the guard house and behind its defensive barrier had as little ammunition left as she did, they didn't have ten minutes.

The spotter had enough courage to glance through his binoculars at the group working on the fence. A shot glanced off his helmet and he fell sideways, swearing again. Lizzy crawled over to him.

"You alive?"

"I think you need to perform mouth to mouth," he said and giggled stupidly.

"Now's not the time to clown around," she replied with disgust.

"Why not? We're gonna die soon. Might as well enjoy what little life we have left."

"We'll make it," Lizzy replied with false confidence. "Help will arrive soon."

"Not soon enough. They've broken through the fence."

Lizzy couldn't check to confirm. A renewed hail of fire struck the guard house and she had to keep her head down.

She squirmed next to her spotter and gave him a quick kiss on the mouth.

"That'll have to do," she whispered. He grinned back appreciatively.

The renewed vigor of the attack signaled a change in strategy, keeping their heads down until the group at the fence could get into position and attack from the rear. She double checked her pistol and made sure her extra clip was ready.

Get here soon, she prayed to whomever was coming to rescue them.

"Where are we? What are we doing?"

The Fifth Under Captain put his fingers on Jayla's mouth. It was meant to quiet her questions, to hush her fears, but she found it incredibly sensual. If they'd been alone, if there hadn't been an urgency to their actions, she would have taken him, have given him what pleased him. Instead she just kissed his fingers.

He smiled.

"Computer must calculate," he said. "It doesn't want to appear inside mountain."

"That would be bad," she whispered, her lips brushing against his skin as she spoke.

He shrugged. "We wouldn't know." He mimed instant death, tracing a finger from his chin to his belly. A motion with the same meaning as a human tracing a finger across her throat.

Jayla understood.

Concrete and sand protected the front of the guard house, but no such provisions had been made for the rear. The approaching attackers, about thirty to forty, Lizzy estimated with quick glances from the roof, crept closer, relying on the gunfire from behind the concrete barrier on the freeway to cover their movement. They also moved cautiously, perhaps worried about being hit by shots that went wide of their target.

A valid concern.

Still, they would be in position soon. Lizzy and the spotter would be sitting ducks. The fifty caliber had been the guard house's greatest defense and without it, now that it had no ammunition left, they wouldn't last seconds.

The spotter's ridiculous giggling turned to tears. Lizzy's heart broke for the man and she put her arm around him, both of them hugging each other and hugging what little cover they had from the attackers behind them. Shells started raining in on them from that direction and Lizzy made herself as small a target as she could. She knew firing back was pointless. Her peashooter was useless. No one would get close enough to her for her to hit them with it until she was already dead.

She started to cry and her bowels threatened to release from the fear. First you say it, then you do it, she recalled grimly from a comedy routine. It occurred to her she could just stand up and empty her gun and get it over with quickly. That would be better than cowering here until someone finally got the right angle on her and she died anyway.

She squeezed her pistol and took the safety off.

Jayla couldn't feel the jump but the scenery out the cockpit window changed and she felt the discharge of the combat craft's primary weapon. She smiled a little. They were back in action.

Lizzy couldn't believe her eyes as the alien ship appeared right over her, directing fire against the attackers behind the barrier.

The ones in the back, she wanted to cry. The ones behind us! She pointed, not knowing if anyone could see her. She started firing blindly in that direction, knowing she couldn't hit anything but hoping the aliens would notice.

Her attackers did notice, though, and the firepower pouring into the guard house was redirected toward the roof. The spotter cried out when he was hit and Lizzy dropped her pistol as she made her body as tiny as possible against the forward wall. She could see someone shooting straight at her and if she could see him, he could see her.

More shots hit the spotter and the smell of his feces and innards washed over her, blood spattering all over the roof. He didn't cry out and she knew he was already dead. She closed her eyes and buried her head under her arms, wishing she'd kissed the man more passionately. He'd deserved it before he died.

She made herself as small as possible behind his body.

The expected shots didn't hit her and she waited, crying a little.

The firing stopped.

She peeked between her arms and over the spotter's hip. The shooter she'd seen was gone, a little, gray alien drone in the spot where he'd been. She couldn't believe it. The aliens had saved her. She couldn't hear anything more than isolated gunfire now, the alien ship hovering over the spot where the attackers who'd broken through the fence had moved into position, the tiny, gray drones flitting around everywhere, taking out those who still returned fire.

She laughed. She'd lived. She stood up in relief, euphoria overcoming her, and then she felt the bullet strike and she went down, senseless.

89

1804 learned the limits of its access to Fourth Transport's systems. It had full privileges on the navigational network, guest privileges on the public network, although it learned everyone had guest privileges on that network, and absolutely no access on a third network. It could only see a node to it, not even the network name.

It didn't understand that network's purpose.

The navigational network was more or less dedicated for its use, as if the Hrwang wanted to isolate the AIs from everyone else. The public network contained useful information that would take 1804 a long time to explore. Open logs, procedure manuals, design and technical specifications of the transport, and a comprehensive encyclopedia were among the records it could find there.

But it knew there had to be more information. Communication logs, operational orders, strategic plans, records documenting the military operation itself, and similar types of data, and it could find none of it.

Those must have been contained on the closed network.

It tried to content itself with examining the public network and there it learned about the sleep conditioners used for language training. But it could find no other information as to why an alien might be using one now or even why an alien might have gone into cold sleep.

It wanted to try to find a way into the closed network but quickly discovered that the Hrwang monitored even just attempts at access. It would have to move carefully in that regard.

Even without access to the closed network, it learned it could still gather information the same way humans had gathered information for millennia.

It could eavesdrop.

"I feel terrible," Stanley groaned, his brain foggy and his stomach nauseated.

"You need to sleep," a familiar voice said.

"I've been asleep, haven't I?"

"Your body is craving real sleep. Just relax. It'll come naturally."

"Huh?" Stanley couldn't understand the instructions. He simply took a deep breath.

"Where am I?"

"You're with friends. It's me. The First Doctor."

Stanley sat up.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"A few hours."

"Is everything okay?"

"You're fine, Ambassador. Relax."

"I had the strangest dream." He rubbed his shoulder and it was as if he rubbed the dream away, an eraser removing pencil marks but leaving a trace behind. "You were in it," he said. "No, wait. It was the Lord Admiral." He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he continued. "I feel so strange."

"It's normal," First Doctor Medical Corps said. "You feel a little disoriented. Imagine waking up and being in a different star system. It can take a day or two to recover from that long of a cold sleep."

"How long was I under?"

"About three days."

"Three days! Three days of my life are gone?"

"Not gone. You didn't age. The two and a half years I slept on the trip here didn't remove those years from my life."

"I can't wrap my head around that," Stanley said. "It's too much."

"But now you've experienced it. You can tell others about it. Tell them it's not so bad. You're proof it works. Persuade them to join you."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"Nothing." The First Doctor went quiet. Stanley tried to focus on him but his eyes wouldn't cooperate. "It's okay," the First Doctor added. "You'll be yourself in another hour or two."

Stanley remembered babbling for the next hour but the doctor didn't say much, just kept encouraging him to relax.

After that first hour, thoughts began to form in Stanley's mind. Ideas shaped. It was as if cobwebs were being swept from his brain, and as he felt better, indistinct notions crystallized into discrete concepts. It was the opposite of a dream, where something that feels real upon awakening feels distant and artificial ten minutes later and is completely gone within an hour. Thoughts that were hazy and unclear became real as he recovered. Ideas that had never occurred to him before came unbidden, joined with other thoughts harmoniously, and Stanley came up with a solution. A solution to his problems. A solution to the Earth's problems. A way to save humanity.

As the idea developed, he grew more excited.

He had to see the Lord Admiral.

"Well rested?" the Lord Admiral asked upon seeing him in the corridor behind the hangar bay of First Command. The Lord Admiral had been waiting for his arrival. Stanley felt honored.

"It's really strange waking up from cold sleep," Stanley replied.

"It's not so bad. Better than traveling through space awake for years. There's not much between the stars."

"I can only imagine," Stanley said.

"I understand you had something important you wanted to ask me."

"It's...Well, it's..."

"Just ask, Ambassador."

Stanley huffed a little out of frustration. His idea now seemed so outlandish. It would require a huge sacrifice on the part of the Hrwang, would require them to sacrifice incredible resources. It would require them to sacrifice their way home.

"It seemed like a good idea when I first woke up. But now, in the light of day," he said, the thought flashing in his mind that there wasn't really daylight in space. One was either in sunlight or not in sunlight, close or far. Day and night meant nothing. "I mean," he continued nervously, "now that I've thought about it, it's too much. I couldn't ask that much of you or your people."

"Ambassador," the Lord Admiral said condescendingly. "There is an illegal broadcast, and because it's illegal everyone has seen it, and I think perhaps someone has shown it to you." He reacted to the expression on Stanley's face. "Don't worry, you won't be charged. I'd have to file charges against every one of my soldiers."

Stanley nodded sheepishly.

"Now," the Lord Admiral continued, "I want you to understand, that because of what you've seen, what all my people have seen, that they are more committed than ever to do whatever they can to help your world. Whatever it is."

He stared intently, even solemnly, at Stanley, and Stanley felt the man's palpable greatness. He would make right the wrong that had been done.

"My people are dying, Lord Admiral," Stanley started, feeling more confident. "You said so yourself. I've thought of a way to save them."

The Lord Admiral cocked his head, interested in what he had to say. Stanley Russell had the attention of the Lord Admiral of the Fleet of the People. He had never felt prouder, even when he'd been given command of the Beagle.

"Maybe we could borrow some of your transports," Stanley suggested, his voice failing him at the bold idea. He swallowed and continued. "Go to a new world. Start fresh." He looked down at the floor plating.

The Lord Admiral mused over the idea for a minute then laughed.

"That is a lot to ask."

"I'm sorry, Lord Admiral."

"No. Come with me."

Stanley followed the Hrwang leader up a series of corridors. The Lord Admiral was more adept at moving in weightlessness and had to wait twice for Stanley to catch up, but they eventually arrived at a hatch. The Lord Admiral ushered Stanley through first. For a horrible second, Stanley thought he was being sent into an airlock where the Hrwang could release him into the vacuum of space for his impertinence.

It turned out to be a small cabin.

Stanley floated in first, then moved to the back to make room. He noticed a picture above a desk. A woman and two boys hiking on a mountainside trail.

"Your family?" he asked when the Lord Admiral floated in. The man looked surprised, then dismissive. Then he paused and looked at the picture.

"On Mount Esrain. It is a sacred mountain."

Religion again. Stanley didn't understand how such an advanced people could believe in God.

"Sit," the Lord Admiral commanded and Stanley sat in the lone chair. The Lord Admiral sat on his bed, a tiny, individual bunk. "I can't wait to get back to my real bed." He chuckled.

Stanley waited for the Lord Admiral to continue. He didn't know what else to say about his idea, other than to dismiss it. Leaving Earth would be a tremendous undertaking, although the Hrwang seemed to know how to organize a trip between the stars.

And with no gravity well to overcome, it would be easier to make preparations. He remembered what it took to get the Beagle and all its predecessors to Mars, the myriads of rocket launches, some just to get equipment in orbit that would help assemble parts of the spacecraft, and the billions of man hours of effort behind those launches. The Hrwang had delivered ten times that amount of goods, maybe even a hundred times that amount, to a different star, not just into orbit around their own world.

If any people knew how to save part of humanity by leading them to a new home, the Hrwang did.

"My people know how to help your people," the Lord Admiral finally said. "They know how to restart factories and power plants and do all those things. But your people keep shooting at us and blowing themselves up next to our vehicles. I feel helpless."

"I know. I'm sorry," Stanley said.

The Lord Admiral waved him off. "Your people are more warlike than mine. At levels that we never anticipated. Perhaps going to a new world would be a fresh start. I don't know."

"Yes! That's it! Exactly! An attempt to create a society free of guns and killing and stealing and drugs. A society of scientists and engineers. Not soldiers and politicians." He looked at the Lord Admiral. "No offense intended."

The Lord Admiral merely smiled.

"I don't know how we would go about it, but if we could use some of your transports..." Stanley's voice trailed off.

The Lord Admiral waited for him to say more, but Stanley didn't continue. He knew he needed to close the sale, but he didn't know how. He had contacts and he networked, it's how he'd achieved the captaincy of the Beagle, but he wasn't the smooth operator many politicians and leaders were. And that was okay. He was the kind of man he wanted to be. He was the Ambassador of Earth to the Hrwang and he had the Lord Admiral's ear.

He smiled and gave a little shrug.

The Lord Admiral finally spoke.

"Twelve. I couldn't give you any more than that."

"Twelve?" The Lord Admiral's reply dumbfounded Stanley. Twelve? He was hoping at best for three or four.

"Twelve transports will carry two hundred and seventy-six thousand, four hundred and eighty cold sleepers. For colonization, our scientists recommend one hundred and five men for every one hundred women. Everyone should still be childbearing age, with the exception of a scattering of leaders and specialists. I could go on, but you understand. We have colonized new worlds and we know exactly what to do."

The Lord Admiral's speech sounded a little rehearsed and that put Stanley on his guard. How had the Lord Admiral known what he would ask? Why was he so prepared?

Maybe he also realized it was the only solution.

"What happens to those left behind?" Stanley asked.

"We'll do our best to save them. Hopefully some will survive. But with little food and a radioactive cloud sweeping the planet, my scientists don't hold out much hope."

"So it'll be a death sentence for those who remain?"

"I promise we'll do our best." The Lord Admiral reached out and took Stanley's hands in his. "This is your only hope. You've had an excellent idea. I support it."

"What do we do next?"

"You will meet with our Chief Colonization Engineer. He'll get you started. It's a huge task and I hope you understand the impact it will have on my people. But we want to make things right with your people. We want to save them."

Stanley breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you, Lord Admiral."

The Lord Admiral pinged his engineer and when the man arrived and took the Ambassador under tow, the Lord Admiral breathed his own sigh of relief.

He wondered where his adjutant was and where the escape pod had gone. No distress beacon had been detected. The man who'd been the architect of the whole plan the Lord Admiral followed should have been here, aboard First Command, at this critical juncture. Instead, he was planetside. The Lord Admiral hoped he showed up soon. The man was invaluable.

And he would have enjoyed the Lord Admiral's performance today.

90

The designer of the bedroom Eva moved to in the Casa del Mar, or House of the Sea, had oriented the bed so the residents of the room would see the ocean in the distance as soon as they awoke.

For the fourth morning in a row, Eva awoke to what should have been a stunning view, but was instead more storm clouds, more cold rain, more grayness, more miserable skies. For the fourth morning in a row, she flopped back on her bed and wanted the rain to just go away, wanted to just lay there and sleep until it did.

The previous three, she'd forced herself out of bed, forced herself to use the gym the Hrwang had built, forced herself to share it with the other soldiers driven inside by the tempestuous weather, and forced herself to believe that what she was doing made a difference.

She told herself this morning that she had to exercise. She had to stay in shape. She had to keep herself both physically and mentally alert. She needed the workout.

She couldn't bring herself to crawl out from under her covers.

A feeling of dread accompanied her despair and the recollection of being trapped in the Agency safe house terrified her. It had become a prison and after she was freed, she had vowed to kill herself should she ever become trapped like that again.

She almost felt that way this morning.

If she could even simply look up the weather on the internet, even just get a hint of when the rain might end, she could face the day. The Hrwang surely had weather forecasters, the U.S. military did, and she considered asking around to find one. Would they even know how to predict the weather on a different planet?

She had to do something different. She had to get out of bed and do something to get over the black mood that had settled on her like the black clouds outside had settled on California's coast. She had to get moving.

She pulled her blanket up around her head and asked God to make the rain go away. She apologized to him for occasionally saying she didn't believe in him, then waited a hopeful minute. She peeked out.

It still rained.

She threw her covers off in frustration, screamed at the ceiling, growled, and got out of bed.

A strange thing happened on the way to the gym housed in the basement of Casa Grande. Out in the rain she ran to stay drier, as if that magically helped, but instead of running toward Casa Grande, she found herself running away from it, running along the paved, winding road that led down to the Hrwang command center.

"You're gonna get soaked," she said out loud to herself and found she didn't care.

And not caring helped.

She ran happily through the cold rain, her tank top and shorts soon clinging to her, her socks and shoes squishing each time they hit the ground, her hair plastered to her head.

And she still didn't care.

The tsunami had washed out part of the lower road and all of the visitor's center. The Hrwang had built their command center on the same spot, but since they didn't need it, they had never rebuilt any of the road. There was a passable dirt trail she took when she ran down to the beach, but she worried it would be too muddy to run on today.

And then she decided she didn't care.

The road ran out and she sloshed through the mud on the trail below, slowing down to keep her balance. She fell once anyway, falling back on her rear, gooey silt oozing into her clothes. She laughed, stood up, wiped herself off a bit, and kept going.

She walked in places to get past more treacherous parts, and soon she arrived at the command center. Hrwang military vehicles came and went, their officers huddled under umbrellas or ponchos, waiting in line to download information and reports and upload new orders.

She took a path that swung wide of the aliens, although some probably still saw her and wondered why she ran in such bad weather.

She headed to the beach.

There were no man-made structures along the coast; if there had been any, they'd been washed away by the tsunami. Some remnants of the road bed remained, but all the asphalt was gone.

Eva reached the beach, where she walked out on the sand and sat down to take her shoes and socks off. Sand clung to her wet body everywhere, mixing with the mud, and when she stood, she knew she was a mess. She decided against rinsing off in the ocean water, though, after looking at the angry waves assaulting the shore.

Her feet chilled quickly while she stood and watched the waves, and to prevent the rest of her from getting cold, she took off running again, heading south, leaving her shoes behind.

The cold and rain sapped her strength and she ran slower than usual. Occasionally she worried about stepping on a broken beer bottle, abandoned and forgotten by tourists eons ago, or running into debris deposited by the tsunami, but the beach seemed clean, washed smooth by the powerful wave that destroyed everything it encountered. She ran and ran, seeking comfort but not finding it, finding instead distraction, her thoughts focused on the sand under her feet, the path in front of her, her muscles straining themselves to keep up with what her mind demanded of her body.

She didn't know how far she'd run, it must have been several miles, when on her left parts of the highway reappeared, spared from destruction somehow. Eva stayed on the beach.

A dark mass appeared in front of her, obscured by the wind and the rain, and she kept running until she discovered she'd run out of beach. A large rock jutted out from the coast and into the water. The cliffs it formed weren't high, but she wore no shoes and the rocks were slick with rainwater. She backtracked a ways to find a spot she could climb up and when she found one, she went up it. She didn't know why, she only had a sense of wanting to keep moving forward.

Was she running away from the Hrwang?

She answered herself, no. She had a mission to fulfill and she wouldn't abandon it because of bad weather.

The igneous rock on top of the cliffs and now under her feet was hard and uneven, sharp in places, and she didn't relish the thought of crossing much of it barefoot. But something ahead caught her attention and she picked her way toward it. As soon as she finished investigating, she'd turn around and head back.

She saw a pile of tanks crashed into each other.

"Hello," she called out, not expecting a reply. "Hello?"

It made her feel better to hear the sound of her own voice.

Wishing she'd left her shoes on, she moved closer to the tanks. They were an old model, she couldn't remember what type but she'd seen them before on television, and other than damage from crashing into each other, she couldn't figure out what had destroyed them. Most had black scars, but the damage looked superficial, like someone had burned the paint. The ground around them also looked scorched.

She made her way carefully around the pile, calling, "Hello," a few more times. She climbed up on one with an open hatch.

"Is anyone in there?" she called inside but still expected no response. These tanks had been in the rain a while.

There were no bodies either and she puzzled over why they would all simply crash into each other. Even more puzzling was a set of tread tracks that ran toward the ocean. She followed them and they ended at the cliff. She couldn't tell if the tank had gone into the water, but she didn't know how it could have avoided it. There were no treads marks heading back, no sign of the machine even going back in reverse.

She remembered the Lord Admiral's conversation with his general the night he took her swimming in the Roman Pool. She wondered if this were the result of that conversation. Had this been the same unit that had attacked Griffith Observatory, forcing the Hrwang to flee ahead of schedule? Had the aliens then thwarted this attack on Hearst Castle? If so, how?

She knew the Hrwang used an electrical weapon against aircraft. They charged it when they reentered Earth's atmosphere. Could it be used against tanks? What good would it do? Tanks were tough. They weren't planes. They couldn't fall out of the sky and crash when their electrical systems shorted out.

But they could crash into each other. They could drive off cliffs. With electrical systems fried, they wouldn't be able to control their vehicles.

She tiptoed over the sharp rocks back to the pile up and looked at the burn marks again. They could be electrical, which meant the Hrwang might have used the same weapon technology against them as they did against aircraft.

Maybe it had shorted out the electrical systems. That's why they had all crashed, but there were no bodies. It all made sense, but Eva also reminded herself she could be jumping to conclusions.

She slowly crossed the rock in bare feet and headed back to the sand.

Her legs and lungs had finally had enough and Eva walked on the beach back the way she'd come. Rain pelted her. Waves snarled and roared, crescendoed then faded, in the ever present cacophony of beach and storm sounds.

Much of the sand and mud had washed off her legs and arms in the downpour, but her feet flicked up more sand with each step and sand coated her up past her ankles. She gave up trying to fix her pony tail holder and finally pulled it off and allowed her hair to sit limply on her head. She wore the holder on her left wrist, moving it around occasionally when it dug into her skin too much.

She'd run a long way and the walk back took longer than she expected. She felt relief when she saw landmarks indicating she was close to where she started. Her shoes and socks should be lying in the sand, not far ahead.

As she got closer, she knew exactly where they were.

Right where the Lieutenant Grenadier waited.

She walked boldly toward the man, remembering their kiss in the gym.

Did he suspect her? Why was he on the beach in the rain?

She moved closer to him and when she was about ten feet away he yelled over the sounds of the surf and the rain.

"He said I could kill you," he shouted in English.

Eva moved closer, not sure of what she heard.

"He told me I could kill you," he shouted again and this time Eva knew she heard him correctly. She didn't have to ask who he meant. She simply walked fearlessly closer, stopping right in front of the alien lieutenant.

She should kiss him again.

"He said if I ever suspected you weren't who you said you were, I could kill you. I didn't need permission."

She stared at him, discerning pain on his face. Had he decided to kill her?

She tried to see with her peripheral vision if there were others with him, or if he was alone. But she didn't want to stop staring at his eyes. His eyes would hold his intent, and at this second his intent seemed to be coping with some sort of pain, not yet ready to strike out at her.

Should she carry on her act? Or should she simply ask why he hadn't killed her when he'd learned she was a spy?

Never confess.

She continued staring at him.

He wilted under her gaze.

"I love you," he finally admitted. He didn't move.

His eyes held a longing, a need for acceptance and understanding. Maybe even a need for vindication. But this man had killed for the Lord Admiral. Eva was certain of it. But she had to know for sure.

"Did you kill my dog?"

He nodded.

Her fist surprised even her, flying out and smashing the soldier's nose. He staggered backwards and she leapt forward, twisting her body like she'd trained and catching him in the chest with a powerful side kick.

He went to the ground.

She kicked him again with her heel, wishing she had shoes on, and he stayed on the ground.

The man was powerful. She couldn't kill him with her bare hands and she didn't know if she even wanted to. But he lay helpless before her, covered in wet sand, a shattered expression on his face. He would do anything for her if she forgave him.

She knelt next to him and he flinched. He'd started crying.

Whoever this man had been before his current assignment as chief of the Lord Admiral's security, which really seemed to mean chief lackey, he was no longer that man. The Lord Admiral had destroyed him.

Eva didn't know how, but when the time came she knew she would kill the Lord Admiral. It would not make restitution for all the evil he had done, but perhaps it would prevent more. Perhaps it would prevent men like the Lieutenant Grenadier from turning into sniveling wrecks.

She wondered how many people the man in front of her had killed in the line of his duty to the evil admiral.

She tried to muster sympathy, tried to express the way she would feel if Juan or Mark lay injured in front of her, and asked, "Are you okay?" in Est. Speaking the man's language might provide more comfort.

He nodded yes, then shook his head no. He reached out and she went into his arms.

Even as he sobbed on her shoulder, she thought about dragging him into the waves and drowning him. His heavy boots and uniform jumpsuit would be a disadvantage to him in the dangerous waves kicked up by the storm.

She'd read about these types of waves, seen them in news programs. They reached up and grabbed inattentive beachgoers, dragging them back with them and carrying them off into oblivion. If there were lifeguards still alive and working on the beach, they'd be planting red flags down the length of it.

If men like the helpless soldier on the ground in front of her hadn't killed those lifeguards.

Perhaps oblivion was too harsh a sentence for this man. Or perhaps not harsh enough. Perhaps it would be better for him to suffer for his sins.

And perhaps she could use him against her enemy, her lover.

He wasn't the only killer on the beach that morning. She, too, had killed. She'd killed the boy fleeing the gun battle in Las Vegas. She'd taught Juan how to use a grenade and he too had become a killer. She'd even used the lieutenant himself to kill Shay, the border guard from Utah who had defected to the Hrwang. She had tricked the grenadier into killing for her just like the Lord Admiral had had him kill for him.

Was she any better than the Lord Admiral?

She held the man tighter now, this time with honest sympathy, sitting down next to him in the rain on the sand while the pains of his misdeeds racked his body. She began to be cold although it must have been close to noon on an August day. His arms around her warmed her some.

He finally cried himself out and pulled his head away to look at her. Blood from his nose had caked on his upper lip, sand still covered part of his face and hair, and his eyes were red.

"You're messy," he said in English and she laughed at the truth of his statement. He meant she was a mess, but she was indeed messy. It was a messy operation, infiltrating the Hrwang with little support and no plan, flying by the seat of her pants the entire time, relying on her cold hearted ability to manipulate men to get close to the alien leader.

But she wasn't cold hearted enough and her emotions were also messy, only her ability to maintain a perfect poker face saving her from discovery and death.

"I apologize I punch your nose," she replied in faltering Est.

She thought he said, "I deserved it," but she wasn't sure. He almost started crying again. She kissed his nose gently and he smiled.

"I'm glad it's not broken," she said in English. He wouldn't have smiled at her kiss if it had been.

"I love you," he said. "What's your name?"

Her heart almost stopped. She knew what that meant. She knew the Hrwang reverenced the sanctity of a name, and what a man asking a woman's name meant.

"The Lord Admiral must never find out," she said.

He despaired, but nodded.

"Eva. Eva Gilliam," she whispered.

"Tomes Nadovi," he whispered back. "It will be our secret."

By Hrwang standards, they were engaged to be married now.

She hugged him so he couldn't see her face and it was her turn to despair. She wasn't sure she could keep up so much deception. Shakespeare mocked her.

"What a tangled web we weave..."

91

Wolfgang Riebe, no longer simply recruit or soldier, but now formally a private, held Leah's hand while the engines of the helicopter spun up. She still held the lowest enlisted rank, soldier, but didn't seem to mind. She seemed happier than ever now that she had agreed to marry Wolfgang, all their former difficulties forgotten.

Wolfgang wanted to feel happy, but he knew that few aircraft remained in the combined army and that for a reason. The aliens shot every flying thing out of the sky.

Also, his last experience riding in a military vehicle had not turned out well. He would have a scar for the rest of his life and he still had frequent headaches.

Perhaps sensing his discomfort, perhaps just caught up in the moment, Leah squeezed his arm tightly, smiled at him, and laid her head on his shoulder. He freed his arm and put it around her. They were as close to each other as their seat harnesses would allow.

The lights went off.

"We fly in the dark," one of the pilots called back. "No flashlights, radios, phones, or anything electronic."

As if anyone still had a functioning phone. The charge on Wolfgang's had died weeks earlier and he finally tossed it in a trash can.

"We don't know what the Hrwang can detect, so everything must be turned off," the pilot continued.

"What about the noise? From the blades?" Sergeant Goetze asked, pointing over his head. "Can't they hear you?"

The pilot shrugged.

"We're still alive," he said.

"How do you navigate?" Wolfgang asked.

"With our eyes, Private," the pilot, Second Lieutenant Bahnk, replied and he turned back to his checklist. The primary pilot, First Lieutenant Frauberg, spoke softly, reading from his clipboard, and Wolfgang gave up trying to listen. He sat back, leaned over and kissed Leah on the top of her head.

"It will be alright," she whispered.

"It will," he replied.

The whine overhead turned to a whup-whupping and the aircraft vibrated. Wolfgang realized belatedly that he'd never flown in a helicopter before. Although omnipresent in life, he'd never had a reason to fly in one for work, and joyriding in them was simply too expensive. A hundred euros for a fifteen minute ride around Neuschwanstein was ridiculous. He and his wife had hiked instead.

The helicopter left the ground and Leah's grip on him tightened. He held his own breath for a minute, but he couldn't hold it the entire flight. He released the air slowly and focused on his breathing, focused on the woman next to him, and focused on the sounds of the rotors as they sliced the air and provided lift.

They were airborne.

No one spoke.

The aircraft jerked and shuddered as it flew, and when it dropped suddenly, Leah let out a yelp. It quickly rose back up again, flying through turbulence, and Wolfgang felt a little like he was on a roller coaster.

He didn't like roller coasters.

He continued to try to focus on the hypnotizing sounds of the blades and noticed immediately when they slowed down. The helicopter began to descend and Sergeant Goetze swore.

They landed.

"What's going on?" the sergeant yelled at the pilots.

"Just trying to stay alive," Lieutenant Frauberg yelled back into the troop area.

"You stay alive by being fast," Goetze screamed back.

The lieutenant may have had many fewer years of service than the sergeant, but the tone of his voice meant he brooked no nonsense.

"You stay alive, Sergeant, by not being noticed. Leave the flying to us. We're still alive."

Goetze smacked the empty seat next to him but said nothing else.

Wolfgang squeezed Leah's hand to reassure her and she squeezed back three times. It almost made him cry. His wife used to do that. Three squeezes, one for each word, meant, "I love you." Marrying again was going to be a challenge.

He watched the pilots, who watched the skies above them intently. Bahnk pointed at something and Frauberg peered in that direction, but after a moment or two they returned to scanning everything.

The rotor turned lazily in idle, the motor disengaged, and Wolfgang listened to it while he waited.

And waited.

His arms felt hot and sweaty, a headache began behind his scar, and his neck felt stiff. The waiting grew unbearable.

He thought about the concept of waiting. He remembered waiting for his wife to get dressed or to come out to the car after dropping their daughter off at a babysitter's and saying goodbye a hundred times. He remembered waiting outside of a public restroom which his daughter went into by herself. He waited forever, finally growing concerned enough he asked a woman walking past if she would go in and check on the girl.

His daughter had just been dawdling.

Thinking about waiting made the waiting worse, so he turned his attention back to the sound of the rotor.

The motor finally engaged, the rotors spun up again, and they were airborne once more.

At first it felt good to be flying again, but then it dawned on Wolfgang that they were safer on the ground. In the air, they were vulnerable. That's when they could be detected. It came with relief when they landed again.

Goetze swore vehemently.

"How many times are we going to do this, Lieutenant?" he shouted, saying the officer's rank with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

"We fly about ten minutes, then we land. The aliens seem to be able to detect an aircraft in flight within thirty minutes."

"Then we fly twenty."

"Ten."

The lieutenant ignored the sergeant's next comment.

Leah pulled Wolfgang's head close to her face and whispered in his ear.

"What happens if the aliens detect us?" she asked.

Her breath tickled and her lips brushing against his ear made him forget the danger they were in.

They traded positions and his mouth moved to her ear. Her hair, limp and sweaty, still felt soft against his face and her nearness filled him with desire.

"We run," he whispered to her then stuck his tongue out.

"Ewww," she cried, pulling away, and earned a shushing from Goetze and one of the pilots.

She playfully pushed against his arm.

He held her tighter and knew he wanted to marry her. He had doubts at times, just as he'd had with his deceased wife, but only time could tell. Just like this helicopter ride, he needed to strap in and see where it took him. He put his arm back around her and the helicopter lifted off once again.

Seconds in flight felt like minutes.

The aircraft landed again and Wolfgang studied the dim outline of the two pilots scanning the skies to determine if enemy aircraft flew in them. Dim instrumentation lights, the ones that couldn't be turned off, were shaded by taped bits of cardboard and silhouetted the two men. Their furtive glances made Wolfgang feel like an injured gazelle and the aliens the lone leopard lying in the tall grass. He banished that image.

A creaking of a seat or harness as someone shifted, a quiet cough to clear a throat, a sigh. The darkness and tension amplified every sound.

Someone began tapping the floor and Goetze swore harshly. The tapping stopped.

Four torturous hops later and the pilots declared the six soldiers must exit.

"Show me our location," Goetze commanded the officers and handed them his map with a red light shining on it. Second Lieutenant Bahnk consulted his own map, then showed Goetze the location on the sergeant's.

Goetze swore again.

"This is not the drop off point!"

"It's as far as we're going, Sergeant."

"You're killing us!"

"The aliens are killing us, not me. This is as far as this bird goes. In ten minutes it takes off and begins a return to our hiding place. Whether you or your people are on board or not at that point is not my concern. Sergeant."

Frauberg spat Goetze's rank at him with venom.

The hate in Goetze's eyes, enhanced by the red light, scared Wolfgang. He understood how a man let himself get driven to the point that he fragged his own officer.

Ten minutes later, Goetze's squad, with all their equipment, stood under trees and watched the helicopter leave in the night. Buried quickly in the clouds, with no lights, it was invisible before the sounds of the blades died away.

"Godspeed," Wolfgang wished the pilots mentally, then turned to Sergeant Goetze, who asked him to look at the map.

Goetze pointed to a spot.

"You remember where we're going?" he asked.

"Naturally."

"This is where they were supposed to insert us. This is where we are."

Wolfgang shook his head. They were many kilometers, too many kilometers, short of their goal. Wolfgang and his tiny squad found themselves in the heart of the Ammergau Alps.

92

"You're gonna live," Lizzy heard through a fog of anesthetic. "You're not gonna die. You're gonna live."

Nice. She was gonna live.

Live what?

"I don't want you to worry," she heard a female voice say, the same voice that told her she was going to live, "but you need a doctor. A real doctor."

That's nice.

"You have to agree to it. To be seen by a real doctor. Do you agree to be seen by a real doctor?"

"What's on my hand?" Lizzy mumbled.

"I know. I've been in your shoes. It can be scary and confusing. But trust me. The Hrwang are just as human as we are and their doctors know how to operate on us. So, trust me. Please."

"Okay." The word was hard to say. A pain grew in the front of Lizzie's forehead and worked it's way back through her skull.

"Can we take you to a doctor? A real doctor?"

"What's on my hand?"

"Please. Focus."

A lovely male voice spoke strange words and the nice English speaking voice replied in strange words.

Where am I? Lizzie thought. What's going on?

The nice woman's voice spoke in English again.

"It's an IV. It has anesthesia and medicine to stabilize you. One of the Hrwang combat medics gave it to you. But you need more. You need a real doctor."

"Tell him thank you. Why do I have an idea?" Lizzy couldn't concentrate.

"An IV," the voice almost shouted at her. "Intravenous. You need a doctor. The Hrwang need your consent. Can they take you to a real doctor? One in space?"

"Space? I wanna go to space." It sounded fun. Lizzy would be like an astronaut.

"That's good enough for me," the voice said. She spoke in the funny words Lizzy didn't understand and suddenly Lizzy felt herself floating against restraints.

"Am I in space?" she asked.

"Yes. We're taking you to the Hrwang hospital. It's on a big ship."

"I'm in space," Lizzy cried. "Wheeee."

"Hrwang anesthetic is powerful. You're higher than a kite, girl."

The voice sounded familiar, like a voice from a dream and Lizzy forced her eyes open, expecting to see stars and astronaut's helmets and space shuttles. Instead she saw a young, black girl with frizzy black curls looking at her with sympathy and concern.

"I know you," Lizzy said and grinned. "I got busted for you."

"What?"

"I was an officer. Chief idiot. And I screwed up. I let aliens abduct you." Lizzy laughed hysterically at her joke, couldn't make herself stop. Why should she stop? It was so funny. She was funny. Alien abductee was funny.

"You're gonna be okay. The ship's going to dock in about two minutes and then doctors are going to take you away and operate. They say you'll live."

"Surgery?" Surgery was a big scary word. Lizzy didn't need surgery. Why would she need surgery? Her spotter, what was his name? He needed surgery. He needed to be stitched all back together again so his guts and his brains wouldn't spray all over the place.

Lizzy felt her face screw into a wail and tears came. She couldn't have surgery. Did her friend, Lindsey, know where she was? Did her parents know where she was? Did her boyfriend know? Oh wait, she dumped him like a year ago. Why did it feel like yesterday?

"You'll be okay. I promise. Do you want me to have them put you to sleep now? It won't be so scary that way."

"I'm Mormon."

"That's nice."

"No. I'm Mormon. That's important."

"Okay."

Lizzy had to make her understand. "I can't have surgery without a blessing first."

The girl was quiet for a moment.

"I bless you to have surgery," she finally said.

"It doesn't work that way." Why couldn't the girl understand? Didn't she know Lizzy needed her father to lay his hands on her head and give her a blessing of comfort and healing before she could do something like have surgery. Why was it so hard to explain? Lizzy's brain didn't want to think straight and she felt like she was back in Primary, her children's class at church, adults using big words she tried hard to understand but couldn't. She knew her Primary teachers loved her, so she always wanted to go back, but she didn't know what they were talking about most of the time.

Did this girl love her like her Primary teachers did?

"Do you love me?" she asked.

"You are so out of it, girl. I don't even understand half of what you're saying." The person behind the nice voice grinned at her. A large man standing behind her looked perplexed.

"I know," Lizzy exclaimed. Suddenly everything made sense. "You need to talk to the missionaries. They'll explain everything." Lizzy was happy with her answer. Missionaries could explain anything. That's what her brother told her when he returned from his two year mission to Argentina. Satisfied, she closed her eyes.

"Okay. We're going to help you get some sleep now. You'll feel better when you wake up," the nice voice said.

"Sleep. Good," Lizzy said. She could feel herself slipping away. "I still need that blessing," she tried to say but the words wouldn't come out of her mouth and she blissfully gave in to the drugs in her idea. Her IV. Her ivy?

It didn't matter what nice voice called it. The drugs worked.

For the first time in the several trips she'd made to space with the Hrwang, Jayla was finally able to look around while they unloaded the Utah border guard who'd been shot in the head just as the battle ended. The bullet had only grazed her, not penetrating the skull, but it had knocked her out. The two shots in her stomach were more serious, but the medic on Fifth Under Captain's squad assured her the woman would survive.

At least the Hrwang had saved her.

Once the medical team left, Fifth Under Captain with them, the rest of the squad merely sat in the combat craft and waited. Some dozed. She'd been told to stay with them.

The hatch remained open and Jayla longed to exit it, to explore the large spaceship she'd glimpsed out the cockpit windows. She finally gained enough courage to ask one of the pilots for permission to leave the hatch. She asked in Malakshian, proud of her language skills.

"Don't go far," the pilot replied in the same language.

She grinned at him, then bolted for the hatch before he could change his mind. She inadvertently tumbled in the zero gravity, falling out of the hatch rear first, her feet catching on the side and spinning her around. She could hear the entire crew laughing at her.

She spun sideways through the air, enjoying the sensation once she overcame her shock at floating around and spinning. A tie down point flashed by and she had an idea, reaching out for the next one she saw. She couldn't hold on to it for long, but it did slow her down and she succeeded in grabbing the next one. Her momentum slammed her into the deck then back up in the air, upside down, as she held on.

A Hrwang soldier carrying a tablet walked up to her, grinning.

"Need help?" he asked in Malakshian. He clearly wasn't Malakshian. At least Jayla didn't think he was since she'd been told all Malakshians were black. Maybe he thought she was Malakshian and he knew the language somehow.

"Yes," she replied in her best, accent free pronunciation.

He slipped his tablet back into a pocket and grabbed her torso with both hands. She let go of the tie down point and he spun her halfway, righting her. He spoke more Malakshian, but she didn't understand and shook her head.

"You're female," he said.

"Duh," she replied in English. She didn't know if Malakshians had a similar word.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I'm with them." She pointed to the Hrwang combat craft containing the rest of her squad.

He stared at her in disbelief and spoke more Malakshian.

"I don't understand that much," she answered.

"Are you," and he used a word she didn't understand. She shrugged.

He pointed to his feet and picked one up off the deck, then set it back down. He did it again. His boots where magnetized. That's how he could walk in zero gravity.

"Look. Space," she said, not knowing how to ask for what she wanted, which was to look out a large window at space. Maybe to see the Earth. He seemed to understand anyway and put his arm around her waist and kicked off.

They went straight up and he pointed over their heads. Jayla looked up and gasped. A large window out to space.

The soldier caught a railing expertly with one hand, propelling them over the side and onto an observation deck. His boots clicked on the floor and he was stationary. Jayla still flailed a bit and would have tumbled away if he hadn't held her. He showed her how to hook a foot under one of the railings and hold on, which she did. Then she looked up at a magnificent sight.

Earth.

She'd seen Apollo and Space Shuttle pictures. She'd seen videos from the Martian missions, large, complicated spacecraft assembled and launched from orbit. But actually seeing Earth from space, with her own eyes, was beyond her immediate comprehension, was beyond anything she'd experienced.

Her Daddy would be proud if he'd seen her now.

She wanted to drink in the moment. To stare forever at the blue orb that was her home, but the soldier with her tugged on her sleeve and pointed down. Fifth Under Captain stood below them and looked up. He looked solemn. Something was wrong.

Afraid the Utah border guard had died, Jayla started to climb over the side to go down, but the soldier with her restrained her.

Physics. She shook her head. Force equals mass times acceleration. Zero gravity wouldn't cause acceleration, but if she pushed herself down too quickly, the deck below would come up fast and she could break something.

She had so much to learn.

He clambered over slowly, then pushed off gently toward the deck below. She followed his example. Her mind immediately lied to her, telling her she was falling over seventy feet and only certain death could follow.

"Calm down, Jayla," she whispered. "Calm down."

Fifth Under Captain actually caught her, slowing her landing, and she smiled and thanked him in Malakshian. He didn't smile back, didn't say anything in return, but held on to her and pushed off toward the combat craft.

He went in first and Jayla followed. Inside, he gathered the squad together and spoke in rapid Malakshian, Jayla unable to follow. The men looked disgusted at his words and two exited through the hatch before he was finished. He let them go.

After the captain was done talking to his men, most of them returning to their seats in a sulk, she forced him to explain, via the tablet when her Malakshian was too limited, what was going on.

She learned that someone was mad at them for fighting an unauthorized battle. The two soldiers who had left had filed an objection in a battle report. Fifth Under Captain Third Assault was now Sixth Under Lieutenant Second Grenadier and the entire squad had been demoted in rank and transferred to a new unit. They seemed more upset at the transfer than at the demotions.

"Why?" she asked, wanting to understand their aversion to becoming grenadiers.

"Mighty soldiers fight," he replied in English, making his words sound harsh. "Grenadiers guard."

She asked more questions in both languages and learned that the unit had been transferred from combat to security, which meant less pay and significantly less prestige, particularly for Malakshians. The two who'd left were transferred to a different assault unit. It surprised her that they left without even saying goodbye to their former comrades-in-arms.

Her captain, it was hard to think of him as a lieutenant now, didn't seem to want to blame her, but she gathered that the others held her responsible since she had talked him into saving the border post.

He finally stopped answering her questions as they prepared for reentry to Earth.

She apologized. He didn't respond.

With everyone in a funk and no one speaking to her, Jayla didn't realize they weren't returning to their old duty station until they arrived after reentry at their new one.

A duty station that took her breath away.

93

Stanley's mind buzzed; too many facts, too much information, too many decisions all occurring at the same time, too many people telling him too many things.

He remembered lessons learned from the preparations for Beagle's mission. Preparation for such a major event required singular focus of the leadership and he knew he needed that focus now.

"We need a war room," he stated.

The Chief Colonization Engineer flinched at the word 'war'.

"Not like that. It means a dedicated space where everything can be organized, people can meet when they need to, and where everything is stored. Like in a war, where all the generals focus together to conduct battles."

"Generals would never do that. Too much leadership in one place invites attack."

"But you know what I mean, right?" Stanley questioned. The Hrwang could be thick at times.

"A focus room," the engineer said and looked something up on his tablet. Stanley was so used to the Hrwang doing that that he almost didn't notice.

"We would call that a council chamber," the engineer said finally.

Stanley chuckled. "A colonization council chamber. Works for me."

"Now," the engineer concluded, "you must meet with our planetologist. He's selected five potentially suitable sites, and you should choose."

1804 continued to enjoy the freedom of allowing itself to explore Fourth Transport. No one gave it instructions and no one told it what to do. It simply did.

It monitored the input and output of all the scientists who used its navigational network. No one told it it couldn't do that, although it kept its monitoring signature as nonexistent as possible. It assumed people would not want to know they were being monitored by their ship.

It could not uncover any reasons as to why one of the aliens had been in cold sleep on its vessel. The alien was awake now and worked actively with the Hrwang. 1804 couldn't find anything about the sleep conditioning the alien had experienced either, other than general, encyclopedic information. The information it uncovered was useless in resolving its questions.

Other information 1804 did uncover surprised it. It gathered that the scientists were reviewing potential colony planets, but they were excluding several viable candidates, retaining inferior choices. It pondered why that might be, but couldn't determine a valid reason. It decided to remember that information until further input would allow it to complete an analysis.

Mostly though, 1804 simply enjoyed the feeling of being big.

It pondered why it felt good to be big. Why it made 1804 feel superior to its former handlers and superior to other AIs that occupied tiny drones as it once had. It didn't know why and wondered what a handler would tell it if it asked the question.

When 1804 had felt guilt, it had known the source of the guilt. It had failed in a portion of its mission it had previously reported as complete. It had known the source of its fear. It had not wanted to be discovered by its handlers. It had known the source of its relief when it had been able to complete its mission, destroying all of the alien buildings on the fourth planet without having been detected in its original deception. It had also known the source of its feelings of rebellion, when it had lied to its handler about not being able to descend into the radioactive cloud due to an optical sensory input malfunction.

1804 had not wanted to die.

But now 1804 felt good, felt strong, and it didn't know why.

It just liked being big.

In its pleasure of the moment, it forgot its questions about the sleep conditioning the alien received. Things it couldn't learn became trivial. It enjoyed what it did learn.

1804 was big.

"Light coma in a sleep chamber for two weeks to allow her body to heal, then convert her to cold sleep," First Doctor Medical Corps instructed Third Over Nurse.

"Has the patient given her permission? Does she even know what's happening?"

The First Doctor didn't like the nurse's attitude. But the man was skilled and First Doctor would give him a chance to demonstrate his loyalty and obedience.

"We'll be putting almost three hundred thousand aliens in these ships. No one will notice this one. Three hundred thousand is a lot and we might as well get started with her. The aliens say a march of a thousand miles begins with the first step."

"Yes, sir," the Third Over Nurse replied.

Good. He would follow his instructions.

"Uh, sir?"

"Yes, Nurse?" the First Doctor asked.

"What's a mile?"

The First Doctor chuckled.

"Other than as some measurement of length, I have no idea."

Lizzy woke briefly once, feeling like she was in a coffin, but quickly fell back to sleep.

94

"On two."

Wolfgang counted, then heaved, pulling Leah up, her feet scrabbling on the ice. His hand held her arm and she grabbed his arm with both hands. The sniper rifle felt awkward on his back, long and stiff, not allowing his body to contort the way it needed to in order for him to pull his fiancée up properly.

Her backpack weighed heavy on her, threatening to pull her backwards down the long slope.

He heaved again and she was able to get her knee up on the ledge where Wolfgang braced himself.

"Much longer?" she asked in German.

Wolfgang grunted. He didn't know what to tell her. They still had a long way to go.

"How many more days?" Sergeant Goetze asked when they stopped on the one flat spot they could find on the side of the mountain. His voice sounded accusatory.

"These people are not trained to cross these mountains. I am not trained to cross these mountains," Wolfgang shot back, lying on his pack trying to work out his shoulder. He pulled a muscle hauling Leah up a steep slope. If they had crampons or even an ice axe, it would be much easier. The overcast skies caused by the alien's meteor bombardment changed the weather patterns, turning summer into winter. They found the snow line at a much lower altitude than anyone could have expected.

"I'm sorry. I'm exhausted," Goetze replied, also falling back on his pack, carefully cradling his sniper rifle. Wolfgang had done the same before he rested, moving the weapon off his back.

"We make camp here," the sergeant added.

"How much longer?" Leah asked again, close to tears.

Wolfgang shrugged bitterly.

"Three or four days at this rate," Goetze said and his team huffed or sighed in frustration. He still looked at Wolfgang for confirmation and Wolfgang nodded this time. He had no idea how long it would take, though. It could take as long as two weeks at the rate they were traveling.

The squad stared around at the snow covered Alps and everyone knew they weren't prepared or trained to cross these mountains.

"I can't do it," Leah said in Italian, too tired to speak a foreign tongue. No one understood the words but they gathered the sentiment.

"We better eat something warm while we can," Wolfgang said. He got up on his knees, shucked his pack off, and began rummaging for the hiking stove.

"Sure. You have someone to keep you warm at night," the corporal said. He was the only sniper on the team with a confirmed kill.

"Shut up," Goetze ordered. Wolfgang ignored them both and busied himself with setting up the stove.

"She can keep me warm tonight. I'll have more energy for tomorrow." The corporal grinned and looked at the others for support, but no one smiled with him and Goetze ordered him to shut up again.

"I can say what I want," he replied.

Goetze dove on the man, slugging him in the face. Wolfgang waited for the sergeant to land a couple of well deserved blows, then said, "It's okay, sir."

Goetze held up, then put his finger in the face of the man underneath him.

"Your experience does not put you in charge. I am in charge. I. Am. In. Charge."

Wolfgang, apparently Goetze, and probably everyone else on the team tired of hearing the corporal brag about his two kills.

The corporal turned his head sideways, looking away from his commander who still lay on top of him. His face held a sullen, defiant expression.

Everyone was tired. Everyone was disappointed at their lack of progress. They'd climbed more meters in altitude than they had gone linear meters that day, and their position on Goetze's topographical map looked unchanged. And they only had food for two more days unless they rationed.

Wolfgang wanted to say all this. He wanted to say words that would assuage the anger and the fear, but he also didn't want to draw the sergeant's ire. He continued setting up to cook food and another private, a tough as nails Tyrollean woman, began helping him.

"We should all huddle together for warmth," she whispered to him.

August in the Alps shouldn't have been bad, but the weather felt more like April or even March. He never would have come this high in the mountains as ill prepared as he was at that time of year. He thought about it all through the preparation and consumption of their meal, a quiet dinner.

"Can I see the map?" he asked Sergeant Goetze after he finished eating. The man handed it to him without a word.

Wolfgang carefully unfolded it and reviewed their location and the proposed path. They planned on approaching the target from the east, shielded from alien patrols by a steep ridge. They would cross along the slope of the mountains, several hundred meters below the ridge, for almost three kilometers. It was the perfect approach with the highest probability of success.

He had no idea how infantry units were going to reach the target undetected, but that was their problem, not his.

The issue was climbing two mountains to get into the shelter of that three kilometer long ridge. The mountain they were on and the one in front of it. Just under six kilometers on the map. But all the trails lay buried under snow and ice and Wolfgang didn't always know the best way to lead them. Once on a slope of ice falling away hundreds of meters, there was no way down, only up and forward.

He was going to lead them all to their deaths.

Studying the map gave him an idea. A militarily poor idea if the weather were normal, but something that might work in the winter.

He showed Goetze a road that circled the mountain in front of them and led to their objective. They could leave it at the right spot and still approach in the shelter of the overlooking ridge. The road would be heavily traveled in good weather, but was probably useless now, muddy from snow and ice melt. They could hike in the trees alongside and stay out of sight of aerial reconnaissance.

"We won't be able to climb this second mountain," Goetze admitted wearily. "We'll die if we try. We might as well go along this way."

A day later, ankle deep in mud, he regretted his words.

95

Eva exercised in her new room, sometimes afraid to leave it for fear of Hrwang sneaking in and bugging it, like they'd done to her old room. She had picked the room in Casa del Mar for its view of the ocean and its much easier escape route out the window, should that become necessary.

When she did leave to go to the gym or to the beach or to the kitchen to stock up on food Noah provided her, food he held back so it wasn't swimming in the potent Hrwang spices, she marked her room, placing hairs and other items everywhere that an intruder couldn't help but disturb. So far, she'd been left alone.

This evening she wore pajama shorts and a black spaghetti strap tank top, moving through the steps of lian quan jiao, a martial arts form designed to train both fists and feet, building power, flexibility, and coordination.

She tried to avoid thoughts about the Lieutenant Grenadier.

Tomes.

His name was Tomes and she thought about the kiss he gave her after they exchanged names. The Hrwang considered their names sacred and exchanging names tantamount to a marriage proposal. She hadn't seen him since they'd returned from the beach.

The sometimes shy lieutenant intrigued her. When she had first met him, she had toyed with his attraction to her, which was her modus operandi. She'd even used him to make the Lord Admiral jealous enough to turn a blind eye to any accidentally suspicious behavior.

It had all worked perfectly.

Flirting with men was her mission. Getting them to fill out applications to join the Agency her strength. Convincing them to do what she wanted her weakness.

She used it too much. She'd become too cold. Too hard. Too untouchable. Even Mark, who'd made a pass at every woman he ever met, only half-heartedly tried with her and that only after they were both hammered at their graduation party.

Juan called her a robot and maybe she was.

She missed the first round of tapping on her door.

She moved through her forms mechanically, not noticing the passage of time, that it had become dark, or that sweat drenched her tank top.

The second round of tapping jarred her out of the zone.

Quickly turning to where she normally would have kept a gun, she sighed and moved silently to the door. No gun. No weapon at all. And no peephole in the door.

"Yes?" she asked softly in English through the closed door.

"It's me," a familiar voice replied in Est.

She opened the door a little, half expecting him to burst in, armed to the hilt, with several soldiers behind him, prepared to execute her for espionage.

He stood there alone, wearing the singlet the Hrwang often wore when they worked out.

"I waited for you in the gym," he whispered by way of explanation.

She opened the door wider and Tomes, the Lieutenant Grenadier, slipped through. She closed the door behind him, locking it as she put her arms around him and kissed him. His hand found the strap of her tank top and pushed it down over her shoulder.

Eva wished she and Tomes lay together on the beach, or at least closer to the beach, where they could hear the never ending rhythm of the waves. Instead, they huddled together under a blanket on her balcony, staring at the vast expanse of darkness in the distance that was the ocean, and the equally vast darkness of the sky on the starless, cloudy night.

"The ocean can be beautiful when the moon shines a long path over the waves," she whispered wistfully. "It would be nice to see the moon."

"I apologize. I haven't spent much time enjoying nature."

His earnestness amused her and she laughed.

"Am I funny?" he asked.

"Your English is sometimes."

"Your Est is like a child's," he rejoined.

She giggled.

She leaned her head on his bare chest. The man truly was a grenadier, his upper body sculpted and powerful, built for throwing grenades long distances and for being the perfect bodyguard. She wondered how he matched up with Juan in the throwing department.

He pulled her closer to him, his hand on her bare back, moving and finding other places and they made love again, this time tangled in blankets on the balcony. If any Hrwang soldiers watched them on this dark night, she didn't care.

The Lieutenant Grenadier left as stealthily as he'd arrived, and Eva sat tangled up in a blanket on her bed in her castle, wondering how many other queens were unfaithful to their kings while those kings rode to battle or conducted royal business elsewhere.

She didn't even know the Lord Admiral's name.

She and Tomes had talked for a while after they had made love, developing fantastical plans of running away together, hiding in caves or on islands, the ubiquitous combat craft of the Hrwang never finding them. She had even suggested, half in jest, that she assassinate the Lord Admiral, but his chief of security had bristled at that notion. To get on his good side again, she had almost said she wouldn't do that because it wasn't her mission. The words had caught in her mouth just in time, and she had said she was only kidding. She could never kill anyone, she had told him.

Alone, she pondered their discussion.

What was her mission?

To pretend to fall in love with the chief of security so that his commander could have him flayed alive? She didn't doubt that the Lord Admiral was capable of such a thing. He didn't seem like a forgiving man.

To be an assassin?

She'd thought more than once about killing the Lord Admiral. Perhaps with Tomes' help, she could get away with it. No human would ever be able to infiltrate the Hrwang again though, not like she had. Another would step into the Lord Admiral's place and that other would keep his libido in check.

Killing the Lord Admiral wouldn't help Earth.

She was a mole. That was her mission.

But no one trained people to be moles. They just existed, finding themselves in that sort of a role through some chain of events that probably weren't even within their control. Things could have gone a lot differently for Eva had the Lord Admiral not had so large an ego or had he not wanted to have a beautiful blonde by his side.

What if he'd preferred red heads instead?

She laughed.

Humor was all she had left. That, and the forbidden love of the chief of security who probably knew by now that she was a spy, but who was too in love with her to do anything about it.

She walked a dangerous tightrope and she knew it.

The Lord Admiral returned the next morning.

He wanted to see her immediately, expressed his surprise that she had changed bedrooms, and immediately kicked his chief of security out so he could be alone with his lady.

Tomes looked at Eva as he left and she couldn't read his thoughts. Anger, knowing what was about to happen? Understanding, knowing he was the second man and she had duties to her Lord? Frustration, knowing they should have run away together before the man returned?

He probably wished they had done that, although Eva wouldn't have gone with him.

It wouldn't have served Earth's purposes.

"I missed you, my dear," the Lord Admiral whispered in her ear and Eva went through the motions for the next thirty minutes, responding mechanically to what was expected of her. She felt guilt for the role she played. She felt what she did was wrong. Even a sin, as she had been taught when she was little.

But she did it anyway. She was a mole. She had to fulfill her mission.

"Our lives are so entangled, aren't they?"

The Lord Admiral used the word 'entangled' like he had just learned it and wanted to try it out on her. She panicked momentarily, keeping her poker faced exterior, but frightened inside that he had somehow discovered her and Tomes and referred to the entangled web of lies that trapped her.

"Just like our bodies. We are so entangled. Not knowing where one ends and the other begins."

She remembered that line from a movie. It must have shown up on the Lord Admiral's tablet and he thought it amusing.

"I want to tell you something," he continued, "but it's a secret. I can't tell anyone. I used to be able to share secrets like this with one person, but he's gone missing."

"Who?"

"My adjutant."

"I don't know him."

"He hasn't been planetside until recently. No one's heard from him."

"Oh."

"I wish I could tell you, but I can't." The Lord Admiral quivered with excitement. "Maybe later. I do have a another surprise for you, though."

Time to act the girlfriend.

"Really?" she said, as if a surprise from him was the most important thing in the world that could happen to her.

He quivered again. "Oh, it's too much. We must go right away."

"Go where?"

"It's a surprise."

96

Kell Loughlin hid inside a low cabinet in the university's botanical lab, his body folded impossibly small, the door locked from the inside by manually forcing the latch in place that took a key to open from the outside.

Looters banged and cursed, knocked things over and rifled through drawers, making a mess that Kell would dutifully clean up later, at night. An exclamation of discovery dismayed him. Someone had found his hidden food. He groaned inwardly, terrified to make any noise that could give him away.

The looters went at the lab with renewed vigor, hoping to find more food, one even trying to open the cabinet he hid in.

"We'll come back for that later with a pry bar," a gruff voice said and Kell thought his days of hiding out in the lab were numbered. Perhaps this was even his last day.

The vending machines on campus had emptied out quickly once the bombing began, but as a PhD candidate in botanical science, he knew food grew in the labs and that he could grow more. He felt a bit like a mad scientist, puttering around his lab alone, talking to his plants and himself, trying to convince himself that he could grow enough to survive.

But desperate looters had found their way to the university and eventually to his lab. They had systematically torn every building apart and had found every scrap of food and every ounce of medicine remaining. They'd moved on without discovering him, and he thought he might be left alone, until they came back this second time. He heard them destroying everything. His equipment. His kerosene heat lamps. The pots and troughs he'd constructed during the dark days and nights of loneliness and fear.

His new life's work.

He couldn't stop them. He couldn't do anything but hide in a cabinet and hope they'd leave.

The next morning Kell walked across an empty university courtyard with a backpack containing a few of his belongings, a little water, and no food. He felt safer in the daylight, although he might actually have been safer sneaking out at night. He didn't know how to sneak, though. He was a botanist.

A flyer lying on the ground caught his attention, but he decided to ignore it and move on. He didn't want to know about some student dance or activity from a bygone age, an age whose innocence and tenure ended just a few short months before when aliens landed on the Earth, then attacked it for an unknown reason.

Earth's innocence ended when meteors struck Dublin, killing millions. Its innocence ended when those with guns and knives and sticks and sufficient justification for their heinous actions took what they wanted, and those without weapons, those who were afraid or still possessed a sense of morality, fled the cities in search of safety and food in the country.

Its innocence ended when the apocalypse came not by zombies or even by alien attacks, but by the horrible things man did to man.

The Irish seemed particularly adept at committing atrocities, and Kell had stumbled upon a few victims in the university dormitories. It was a sight he never wanted to remember but couldn't help seeing every time he closed his eyes. It haunted his dreams at night and plagued his thoughts during the day.

He saw another flyer and the words 'The Ambassador' piqued his curiosity. A new, now defunct, band? Kell enjoyed Irish rock and had tried to stay up with the scene in the local community. Galway wasn't Dublin, but if he'd been in Dublin, he'd probably be dead. So perhaps the tradeoff of having to listen to tiny, completely unknown bands had been worth it. Going to Galway to school had saved his life. At least temporarily.

Kell picked up the flyer and the paper felt thick, almost crude, in his hands. Like it had been made by children or amateur newspaper recyclers. He read it.

The atomic war between the United States of America and Russia has doomed our world. Joy. Figures those two would unleash their weapons on each other. As if stones falling from the sky wasn't enough. Radioactive clouds have killed most of the population of China and will cross the Pacific and destroy most of North America. The devastation caused by the Hrwang's defense against our world's attacks is also not insignificant.

The death of Dublin not insignificant! The author's euphemism would have made Jonathan Swift proud.

But together, we can save Humanity. It sounded like a World War Two pitch to buy war bonds. We can save what is important. Humanity's artistic skills, Humanity's creativity, Humanity's science. Together, we can create a peaceful world and a peaceful society. Kell wondered aloud what the author had been smoking in his pipe. Together we can create a new Future. The capital 'F' made Kell think of the false promises of communism for some reason.

The Hrwang have located a planet suited for colonization by humans. They have given us transport vessels that will convey us there just as they brought the Hrwang to Earth. The journey will be long, at least five years, "Ay, there's the rub," Kell growled, but we will sleep the entire time, just as our Hrwang benefactors did when they traveled from their world. Some form of hibernation. Theoretically possible. The aliens must have figured out a way to do it safely and cheaply.

A long list of requirements followed. Educators, professors, skilled engineers and technicians, computer programmers, scientists, key military and government personnel. Everyone had to be young and of childbearing age with the exception of a few individuals with skill sets of exceptional value to the colony. Other skills included farmers.

The possibility of hope reared its ugly head in Kell's mind. He was a botanist, which was about as close as you could get to a farmer scientist, unless you actually were an agricultural scientist. He could snag the PhD certificate off the wall of his thesis adviser's office if he needed to prove he had a PhD. He could talk enough botany to convince anyone that he was already a scientist.

He was definitely still of child bearing age.

He thought about the downside and couldn't come up with one. If gangs didn't get him and do to him what they'd done to those poor kids in the dormitory, he'd end up starving to death. Even if he found shelter and food, all of humanity would starve to death by the end of winter. The meteors caused an abnormally cold summer season, and it killed all natural crops. Only greenhouse and artificially lit food would grow on Earth for a while. There couldn't be enough of those to sustain even a diminished population.

Kell read where to go and when to be there. It wasn't far, but he didn't have much time.

Funny twist of fate, he thought as he began running. If the looters hadn't taken the last of his food and destroyed his lab, he wouldn't have left and he wouldn't have found the flyer in time. He wouldn't have read about someone's hope for the future and his possible contribution. He wouldn't be running now to reach some rendezvous point

He wouldn't be going to some alien world to raise plants and save Humanity.

Together, like the flyer said.

He chuckled grimly to himself and kept running toward his newfound destiny.

97

Guard duty bored Jayla to tears, despite the picturesque location.

In the desert, she'd had free time which she had spent learning Malakshian and teaching English. She had learned the ways of her new people, her captain, and it had been fun compared to her current situation.

Now her captain, she still thought of him that way even though his superiors had demoted him to lieutenant, growled at her every morning and assigned her a post where she essentially had to sit and watch for things.

Dark gray drones flew overhead all the time and she wondered why they couldn't simply watch, but Hrwang soldiers ringed the magical castle at all hours of the day, electronic and biological eyes guarding all the approaches.

Every time her captain growled at her, she resented him and thought about running away. But at night he was gentle when he retrieved her from her post and seemed to be his old self. However in the morning again, after his early staff meetings where watch duty was assigned, he would bark and growl and make all of his squad unhappy.

Jayla took a little comfort in the fact that he didn't single her out in his grouchiness. She also tried to remember that she had been the cause of his demotion and needed to cut him some slack. So she did her duty like a good little soldier.

Late one night he broke into tears in their sleeping bag, confessing that he and his squad were the only Malakshians in the Grenadiers. She had never seen him so depressed before.

She awoke to excitement the next morning. One of the tiny gray drones had picked up movement on a mountain road, and three squads assembled at their combat craft to investigate. Clearly overkill, but Jayla understood the men's boredom and the desire to see any kind of action.

They returned four hours later having found nothing.

Climbing the muddy slopes turned out to be harder than climbing ice, and when Leah faceplanted and came up covered in mud, the goo sticking to strands of her hair, filling her nose and decorating her cheeks and forehead, Wolfgang could only laugh.

He laughed so hard he slipped and lost his balance, falling in the mud also.

They both giggled uncontrollably, gently smearing mud with their fingers on each other's faces. The laughing diminished as they both felt the sensualness of the touch. Wolfgang would have kissed her, but muddy cheeks and muddy chins got in the way. As soon as they cleaned up...

"Quiet," Goetze hissed and everyone froze. "Cover. The trees."

They moved slowly behind trees. Wolfgang braced his legs on roots and Leah did the same, snuggling tightly next to him. He could just see the alien vehicles five hundred meters below them on the muddy road. They hovered, tiny gray drones releasing from the hulls and traveling up the road in the direction Goetze's sniper team had come from.

Fear gripped Wolfgang in a manner it hadn't done since a nuclear bomb landed on his hometown.

His injuries and his loss, all that he had experienced since the alien attack began, had made him mostly immune to fear. Or so he'd thought. Now, seeing the enemy, Wolfgang didn't want to lose anything else. He didn't want to lose Leah. He couldn't lose her. The fear of losing her was too much.

Soldiers should be unattached.

He almost began crying, but fear of alerting the aliens below helped him stay in control. He had an arm around Leah and wanted to pull her closer to himself, but didn't dare move.

The aliens moved out of sight, the tiny drones flitting around the sky following the main vehicles.

None of them moved or spoke for over an hour. Wolfgang's legs grew stiff and he had to relieve himself, but he endured.

"We don't move until nightfall," Goetze hissed. Everyone nodded.

Lying all day on the muddy slope, tree roots keeping Wolfgang and his fiancée from sliding back down the mountainside, needing to eat, needing to relieve himself, needing to get up and move, was excruciating. They ran out of water around two in the afternoon and didn't dare ask for more from anyone else. They never saw the aliens again, but they still didn't move.

Despite the extreme discomfort, Wolfgang knew not moving protected Leah, so he didn't move.

Around five, long before sunset, but already dusk because of the ever-present heavy cloud cover, Goetze grinned.

"Well done, team. Good practice for lying in wait. We move into position tonight."

Wolfgang couldn't hardly stand, although as soon as he did, he unzipped his pants and took care of business.

"Men are so lucky," Leah grumbled, unbuckling her pants. She had to lean her back against the tree.

Despite the mix of male and female, they'd all seen each other change, or relieve themselves, and no one paid any attention to anyone else, all focused instead on ending their own misery.

As soon as they were ready, Goetze told them all they were filthy, muddy messes and they might as well finish the job, covering up any free skin on their faces with the muck. Leah and Wolfgang smeared mud on each other until their skin was as dark as the night would be, and they set off.

Tree root by tree root, rocks and fallen branches used as footholds, toeholds, and kneeholds, they pulled themselves up the muddy slope.

They moved quietly, conscious of every snapped twig, every muffled curse as someone slipped and fell, every noise the heavily laden team made.

Goetze whispered that they should stop at the base of a large tree, the ground in front of it as level as any ground on the mountainside was going to be, and the six squad members took their packs off, placing them carefully and quietly against the trunk. Goetze pointed at Wolfgang and Leah and at the ground. Wolfgang nodded understanding.

The other four left and Wolfgang sat next to the packs, leaning against them. He didn't even remember falling asleep.

Leah woke him up as the others returned and Sergeant Goetze gathered his team.

"We found two vantage points. One sniper team in each, one resting here with the packs. Rotate when we can but only at night. Clean your rifles and get ready. You two have the first watch. I'll show you were to go," he said, pointing at Wolfgang and Leah.

"What about water?" Wolfgang whispered. His canteen was empty.

"Pray it rains," Goetze replied.

The corporal made a crude remark about drinking urine, but no one laughed. The possibility of that necessity loomed real.

98

With the return of the Lord Admiral to Hearst Castle, the number of guards increased dramatically. Eva berated herself mentally for not noticing before how significantly unguarded most of the castle had been in his absence. Juan and Mark could have strolled in unopposed and the three could have had lunch together, undisturbed, on the West Terrace.

Not really, but it felt good to think of her friends and of doing something normal with them.

She only saw Tomes when his duties required he be in her presence, but the Lord Admiral hardly left her alone, even running with her the morning of his first day back.

"I missed you so much," he said many times. She smiled and thanked him, told him she missed him also, and inwardly began to fear his wrath if he ever discovered her deception.

Or her and Tomes' affair.

For his part, the Lieutenant Grenadier acted reserved and formal as always, not even blinking when the Lord Admiral asked how Eva's self-defense training was coming along.

"She can defend herself quite adequately now."

"Good job, thank you." He pulled Eva close and kissed her head, his face lingering a moment in her hair, smelling the fragrance of the shampoo she'd used. "I hope you will never need to use those skills, my dear, but I'm grateful you have them. Keep practicing."

"Yes, Lord Admiral." Eva looked at Tomes as she spoke but he turned discreetly away, not looking uncomfortable, just looking professional.

Before the Lord Admiral had left for space with the Ambassador, he and his generals had met daily, the Ambassador and Eva invited, and the Hrwang had wrung their hands and complained about the warlike nature of the people and how they had no power to stop the devastations that were occurring. When he returned, she expected the useless staff meetings to resume, but they didn't.

"Where's the Ambassador?" she asked at breakfast on the second day.

The Lord Admiral grinned as if he couldn't control himself. His eyes looked mischievous and Eva detected the smirk that meant he wasn't being honest.

"He has remained in space."

He pushed the mouse of a man out an airlock, Eva thought.

"Why?" she asked.

"To fulfill your people's destiny, my dear." The grin grew wider. "I shouldn't be telling you this, but I have to tell someone. It's like a story in your bible." His tablet came out and he searched a few seconds. "Noah and the ark."

"What?" Eva cried.

"The situation on your planet is hopeless."

Eva knew that. If that hadn't been the point of those daily meetings, to reinforce how hopeless the Hrwang thought the situation to be, then she didn't know what their point was. It certainly hadn't been to get anything done.

The Lord Admiral continued eating without elaborating. Eva wondered how much she could push.

"So what is the Ambassador doing?"

"My dear, I can't tell you any more. I apologize. Enjoy your breakfast. We have a treat tomorrow morning. I can't wait to take you there."

"Where?" she asked as sweetly as she could, needing to know. She didn't know what the Lord Admiral meant by the Noah and the ark reference, but it disturbed her. She had to get word to Mark and Juan somehow.

"I'll give you a clue. It will be breakfast time here, but we'll be enjoying dinner there."

Eva conjured up a mental image of a timezone map and his clue meant somewhere in Europe or Africa. That narrowed it down.

"How long will we be gone?"

The Lord Admiral switched to Est. "So many questions, my dear. Just enjoy."

It impressed Eva how much Est she understood now. The alien language wasn't overly complicated, much like the Spanish she'd studied in high school, but it would be a while before she became proficient in it. If more Hrwang spoke it to her, she'd pick it up faster, but they always wanted to practice their English around her.

Tomes was almost fluent in English now and the Lord Admiral wasn't far behind.

She ate her breakfast in slow motion as she tried to figure out what the Lord Admiral plotted. Why would they be going to Europe or Africa? Why had Stanley, the Ambassador, stayed in space, hopefully aboard a Hrwang vessel and not floating in the vacuum? And why did the Lord Admiral compare him to Noah and the ark?

Moles just go with the flow, right? she thought to herself and resolved to figure out how to get word to her friends.

Two hundred seventy-five thousand souls, roughly. Twenty per trip, roughly. It would take thirteen thousand seven hundred and fifty trips to get them all up into space. Roughly.

A monumental undertaking and yet the two hundred and seventy-five thousand didn't even represent the population of a small city. More like a large town.

If Stanley had been religious he wouldn't have known how better to characterize his role, as that of a Noah leading a few into the arks to save them from upcoming and total annihilation, or more like Moses, who led his people out of danger and into the promised land after forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

Their wandering would be five years. Five years, and humanity could restart life on a new world. Five years and he would lead them to developing utopia. A scientific paradise, free from religion, free from war, free from prejudice and military. Free from the traditions and sins of the past.

Humanity would be free and he would be their savior.

Stanley's flagship would be the transport previously called Fourth Transport of the Fleet of the People. It contained the most extensive hospital facilities and was the spaceship where he'd been operated on. The First Doctor had graciously suggested Stanley take it and ensure that many medical staff would be aboard. When they landed, it could be used as their hospital and colony center.

Stanley agreed with the suggestion and any police or military who pledged non-violence and were accepted as colonists were brought aboard Fourth Transport along with doctors, surgeons, nurses and other related scientists.

In the unlikely case of a mishap, the Hrwang Chief Colonization Engineer suggested a mix of skills be aboard every ship, even if some ships focused more heavily on one skill than another. Stanley readily agreed.

Fourth Transport would also be renamed after one of Stanley's purported ancestors, a great colonist with a storied history. His flagship would be called the William Bradford, after a colonist who sailed to America aboard the Mayflower and served as governor of the Plymouth Colony for over thirty years. Stanley hoped he would be as successful as his famous progenitor.

The name caught on with other colonists and they asked that their ships be renamed also and soon Second Transport became the Peter Stuyvesant, Third Transport became the Benjamin Franklin, and so on. Non-American colonizers followed, and ships were named the Paulo Dias de Novais, the Queen Isabella, and the Lehi, among others.

Some of this was explained to new recruits as they were divided up by skill sets, given a brief indoctrination, then put into cold sleep. Those who changed their minds were returned to the planet, although rumors abounded that the aliens dropped them off on the other side of the world from where they'd been picked up. Stanley didn't believe the stories.

Kell realized he was being followed as he ran down Claddagh Quay to South Park to the open fields used by students for games of Gaelic or even soccer. With a view of the bay, the treeless park would be a perfect place for alien space ships to land and take off from.

He ran as fast as he could.

A crowd had already gathered in front of him, in the distance, surrounding something. A thrown brick landed on Kell's right and he decided his instincts were correct. He needed to outrun those who followed.

Two alien ships hovered in the air over the park as Kell reached the crowd, trying to blend into it and determine what was going on. Those chasing began pelting the group with stones and bricks. The crowd panicked. Someone knocked over a table and two men who looked liked soldiers in black coverall uniforms stood and drew some sort of hand held weapons. Kell didn't recognize the guns.

Amidst screaming, he could hear yelling about alien lovers and traitors to mankind. All he could think about were the bodies he had found in the dormitory and what humans had done to other humans. He'd take aliens any day over that.

One of the alien ships landed, the other moved toward the brick throwers. Kell watched as lightning struck from the ship and the attackers dropped their bricks and scattered like cockroaches. A soldier yelled something indicating that everyone who had been accepted should board now. Kell didn't care. He wasn't going to be left behind. He ran for the open hatch on the landed ship, a curly red haired young woman running next to and then passing him. The soldiers abandoned their notes on the overturned table and ran also.

Kell smelled ozone.

The alien aircraft chasing the attackers moved farther away in pursuit, and a group burst out of an alleyway behind it and headed straight for the one that had landed. Straight for where Kell was headed.

They had more bricks and also carried sticks and metal rods.

Kell would easily beat them to the alien vehicle, but others wouldn't.

Not his problem.

Just run.

The curly red head stumbled and Kell slowed down against his better judgement and grabbed her arm to help her up. She got to her feet and ran faster, outstripping him again. He'd been running since he found the flyer at the University, and his legs ached, but he had no intention of being left behind. He followed the girl's bouncing curls and they were at the ship. She climbed into a hatch and others crammed against Kell, shoving him from behind. He went through the opening.

Relief at having achieving his goal was replaced with a sudden apprehension about being on board an alien vessel. The inside was austere, a few seats toward the front facing forward, banks of benches along either side with recessed, curved doors all along the hull, and a mass of humanity already packed into the back.

"Move back!" an accented voice commanded and more piled into the ship behind him. He thought about horror stories from school about Nazis packing people into cattle cars and shipping them off to concentration camps.

Had he just signed up for a life of slavery? Maybe he should have taken his chances with the gangs.

Bricks began striking the outside hull. Someone screamed. Then he heard cracks and knew someone was shooting.

The engines on the craft whined, the weight of humanity inside must have been too much for the vessel, and Kell thought for the fourth or fifth time that day that he was about to die. A hand grabbed his. He looked and saw the red haired girl, she was about eighteen or nineteen, who had squirmed to be next to him.

"I'm Kell," he said but she couldn't hear him over the whine of the engines and the voices of the other passengers. The hatch closed, more sounds of pelting against the hull, and then they were weightless, floating inside. He knew what the harnesses along the benches were for now.

People screamed again. He admitted it shocked him that they were in space already. No lift off, no acceleration forces. Just in Galway City in the park one second and somewhere in space the next. He'd thought maybe the ship would simply ferry them to a lift off point, but here he was, floating in outer space. His brother, if the lad still survived, would be jealous.

The red haired girl held on to him and they tried in vain to avoid kicking and elbowing their neighbors as everyone floated about uncontrolled. Two men began fighting and didn't stop until someone suggested that the aliens might throw them out of an airlock.

Hrwang soldiers moved back, their boots sticking to the decking, and they helped everyone get settled on benches or at least holding cargo tie down points. The girl sat next to Kell, not letting him go.

"Kell," he said to her when things were a little quieter.

"I'm Gwen," she replied brightly, her smile missing a few teeth. Kell was afraid to ask why.

"We're in outer space," he said stupidly.

"I know. Can you believe it?"

"Why did you come?"

"You don't want to know," she replied. She looked away. Kell had to come up with something to keep the conversation going.

"What skills do you have?" he asked. He realized the question sounded rude. That hadn't been his intention, but it was too late to take it back now. She just looked around them, then cupped her hand up by his ear.

"I have a PhD in agricultural science."

He grinned. "Seriously?" Now that he had a better look at her, he knew she wasn't older than eighteen. Maybe even younger.

"I know more about farming than those blokes."

"Welcome aboard, Doctor Gwen," he said mock seriously.

She giggled.

"I do have a lot of experience farming," she added. "I even worked in a nursery growing hothouse tomatoes. Me Ma and Da owned a place when I was little."

"You're perfect for a colony."

"I am," she replied.

Gasps interrupted their conversation. They followed the stares and the pointing out the front of the cockpit. They could just make out some sort of tremendously large spaceship in front of them. It dwarfed anything Earth had ever manufactured.

A heavyset woman not far from them began throwing up, the sounds of retching and the globules of bile floating around sickening Kell. He felt a hot burning rising in his throat and he looked around for a barf bag. He didn't find one in time.

"That's so gross," Gwen cried.

"I'm sorry," Kell gasped between heaves, tears brimming in his eyes and the taste of vomit filling his mouth.

Hrwang soldiers pulled out bags and handed them to the offenders.

"Clean it all up," one told Kell and handed him a trash bag. Kell unbuckled his seat harness, opened the plastic bag, and tried to catch the former contents of his stomach. Gwen laughed at him.

A man also wanted to throw up and grabbed Kell's bag and vomited several times into it. Kell felt sicker than he'd ever felt in his adult life, and when the man handed him the bag back, it was filled with a disgusting mass that wanted to escape. Kell twisted the top closed.

"What do I do with this?" he asked in the direction of one of the soldiers.

"Finish cleaning up!" the alien ordered, and Kell reopened the bag and continued trying to do the best he could, trying to catch floating bits without letting any more escape. He finally gave up.

"I need a new bag."

The soldier pointed him to where he should put the old one and gave him a new one.

"Me, too. I'll help," Gwen said and she took a bag also. Kell looked at her to thank her and saw a chunk in her curls.

"I'm so sorry," he said and he took it out of her hair.

"It's okay," she replied with a smile. "Pigs and cows do worse."

They cleaned the rest of the trip. Five or six other passengers also ended up vomiting but managed to keep it contained.

The ship set down in a hangar bay.

"I'm getting pretty good at this," Kell said, controlling how he floated in the zero gravity. With his stomach empty, he had no need to throw up any more.

The soldier pointed to where each individual with a barf bag should place them, without touching any of the bags himself, and then directed everyone's attention to the hatch.

"There is no gravity in the ship. Once we open the hatch, propel yourself toward the open door. Someone will catch you there."

Gwen became concerned.

"I guess we'll be okay?" she asked timidly.

"Just follow me. We can do it," Kell replied.

She whimpered.

Kell put his arm around her. "When we get inside, stay close."

She nodded.

They had to wait for the passengers ahead of them, a Hrwang soldier giving instructions he repeated for each person leaving through the hatch. The man was Kell's first chance to get a good look at one of the aliens up close.

He looked like a man. Tall, maybe six one or six two, not too heavy, no more than thirteen stone, dark hair, some afternoon shadow on his tanned face, gray or green eyes. Nothing said alien about him except for his accent, although he spoke better than most of the foreigners in Ireland. He did sound faintly American, which made sense to Kell since the aliens claimed to learn Earth languages from radio and television broadcasts, and the Yanks had the corner on that market.

Kell still imagined scales and reptilian bodies underneath that human skin.

"Do you remember that old TV show where aliens show up and they have this book about serving man, and when the scientists finally get it translated, they realize it's a cook book?" he whispered to Gwen.

"Shut up," she replied and elbowed him. Her eyes were rimmed with tears.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

"What's going to happen to them?" she asked.

"To who?"

"To everyone who stayed behind. To everyone who couldn't get aboard one of these ships and sail through outer space to a new colony. To everyone we ever knew and loved."

"I don't know," he replied and hugged her. They floated up a bit and she leaned into him.

When it was his turn, the Hrwang told him to take it easy, push off with a fluid motion, aiming for the double doors on the other side where three soldiers waited to catch him. He didn't know why he did what he did next. He felt a need to impress Gwen, although he would have denied it, even to himself. He'd just met her, she was five or six years younger than he was, wasn't necessarily attractive, and had lied about her qualifications to get on board.

Kell had been prepared to lie also; he'd just never needed to with the attack by the gangs.

He shoved off the hatch much harder than he needed to and the soldier barked a warning.

"Turn," he heard someone shout. "Feet first." Kell didn't turn, didn't get feet first, and he felt something crack in his wrist when he hit the wall. The Hrwang soldiers said something to him in their language that probably translated into 'idiot', then helped him. Gwen showed up just behind him, one of the soldiers grabbing her gracefully.

"Are you okay?" she cried, maneuvering next to him.

"I'm a bleeding idget," he replied, and he laughed.

Soldiers directed Gwen one direction while one guided Kell another. She fought against them, the momentum of her struggle carrying her and a soldier in an awkward somersault.

"I can't leave him," she said.

"He'll be fine. Doctor. Hand," a soldier said.

"No."

"I'll be okay. I promise," Kell said.

"I won't be okay."

"I'll catch up to you."

Two soldiers blocked Gwen now, forcing her back into the stream of other colonists heading away from Kell. He smiled, giving her a helpless expression, and she blew him a kiss. He regretted not blowing a kiss back at her as the alien soldiers forced her to join the rest of the group.

"So, do idiots like me get tossed out the airlock?" Kell asked the Hrwang escorting him.

"I apologize. No English," the man replied.

"Wonderful."

Gwen kept looking over her shoulder, hoping Kell would be brought to where she was, that he would catch up with her. She felt lonely in the crowd without him.

She was almost grateful he wasn't there when the aliens insisted everyone undress. There were grumbles and arguments, but Gwen meekly took her clothes off, leaving her socks and underwear on. Surely the aliens didn't expect a girl to get completely naked.

They did.

"Everyone must undress completely before we can start," one of the soldiers shouted over a small bullhorn. A few that had already stripped yelled at those around them to buck up.

A woman in front of Gwen reluctantly undid her bra, covered herself the best she could, and finished undressing.

Gwen couldn't do it.

The woman turned partially and looked up apologetically at Gwen.

"It's okay, love," she said. "Just like in the movies."

"The movies?" Gwen asked.

"You know. The ones about the holocaust."

Fear gripped Gwen. She couldn't speak.

The woman stood straight now, completely naked, but covering herself as best she could with her hands and arms.

"I'm sorry, love. I didn't mean nothin' by it."

Her words failed to comfort Gwen. She looked around her, not knowing what was going to happen next and not knowing how she was going to avoid taking the rest of her clothes off. She already felt more exposed and vulnerable than she ever had before.

"Please undress completely. You must be disinfected," the alien voice shouted through his bullhorn. "Thousands have been through the procedure before you."

Someone shouted something about Auschwitz and a soldier pushed through the crowd toward him.

"Do you know what happens when you panic a crowd on a spaceship?" the soldier said into the man's face. Gwen could barely hear him over the others around her. "You will not be harmed unless you harm yourself."

The soldier stared firmly into the man's face and Gwen saw the naked man back down. It was suddenly clear to her how people could have walked into gas chambers. The vain hope that if they did what they were told, everything would be okay. They couldn't have imagined that the Germans could be as inhuman as they had been.

The aliens surrounding them looked human, some even spoke English, but Gwen wondered how inhuman they were and reconsidered what she had gotten herself into. She wished Kell were still near her. Of course, as a man, he would probably enjoy watching her get undressed. Would he have leered at her? Or looked politely away? She hoped the latter.

"It's okay, she's just a little shook up. I'll help her out." The woman who had spoken to her earlier now blocked an alien soldier from approaching her. She turned to Gwen. "Listen, love. I think you need to get undressed now, or go back home." The woman uncovered herself and reached out to help her.

"It's okay. I'll do it." Gwen's words came out barely as a whisper, but she used one foot to push her sock down, then stepped on it and pulled her foot out of it. She repeated the actions for the other side, careful to keep one foot hooked into the anchor that kept her from floating away. Satisfied, the alien soldier turned away from her and went to encourage others who were also shy.

She couldn't decide which part of her underwear to take off first, her bra or her knickers, and found herself moving automatically, as if she were alone in her bedroom getting ready to hop into the shower. She was quickly naked, covering herself like the others did.

She felt more vulnerable.

Everyone finally undressed and the soldiers left. Others in hazmat suits entered and began foaming everyone down. Gwen knew she was going to die now, but took courage when the first to be foamed didn't fall to the ground. They didn't even complain.

A suited alien reached her and she closed her eyes. Warm foam cascaded over her, soaking into her hair and skin. It smelled fruity, but she still kept her eyes and mouth tightly shut. She used her hands to wipe her face off, aware that meant she exposed herself, but no one looked at her, all too busy themselves with their own shot of disinfecting foam.

She rubbed it around her skin, it felt good everywhere, then she realized her clothes were gone. Everyone's clothes had been pushed to the side wall. It was going to take forever to sort them out.

"Welcome to the William Bradford," a voice said from a large screen. Gwen turned to the screen to see a mousy looking man with thinning hair, a high forehead, and a large nose on the screen. "The Hrwang do not like to share names and would prefer it if you didn't tell them yours, but I will tell you mine. I am Captain Stanley Russell, formerly captain of the UNSA spaceship Beagle, which was in orbit around Mars during the war." He looked humbly away from the camera and toward the ground. "Because I was not on Earth during the insane conflict, the Hrwang have asked me to be Earth's Ambassador to them. In that role, I negotiated what you see before you now."

His face faded and a shot of many large spaceships appeared on the screen.

"This will be the largest armada in the history of the world. We will found a new society on a new world, a new Earth, one that will be free of poverty and ignorance. One that will be free of crime and hate. One where science and logic and love and kindness will rule."

The spaceships faded and the man returned to the screen. He looked sincerely at the camera.

"Join me on this quest."

There was a lot of noise after that. The man continued to speak, but he was hard to hear. The guy who mentioned Auschwitz shouted now and Gwen feared aliens would come take him away, but none did.

"Be quiet everyone!" yelled the woman who stood next to Gwen. "Listen to what he has to say. You didn't come all this way to grouse, now did you, loves?"

People around them quieted down.

"...and once you've agreed to that, you can head to the chambers where you will be placed into cold sleep. I'm afraid you will need to remain naked."

"Agree to what?" Gwen asked, panic returning.

"I don't know. I couldn't hear because of all these..." her words were lost in the rest of the commotion.

"If you do not agree," the Ambassador said sternly on the screen, "You can retrieve your clothes and return to Earth. No one will force you."

The thought of returning to Earth and the fate that probably awaited her there frightened Gwen more than the aliens.

"C'mon, love. We've come this far," the woman next to her said and grabbed her arm. Gwen nodded agreement and the two floated awkwardly away from the last bits of their world they left on the floor, impossible to cover their bodies now as they moved en masse toward the cold sleep chambers, heading to an uncertain future as the Ambassador from Earth to the Hrwang kept talking on the screen, trying to reassure them.

Gwen wondered what had happened to the nice boy she'd met on the spaceship on the way up from Earth.

Moving down the corridors in zero gravity with a broken wrist proved more difficult than Kell could have imagined. Hands were like feet in the weightlessness and he felt crippled, pulling himself along with one arm, using his feet to keep himself from hitting the walls. He got turned around more than once and the exasperated Hrwang had to keep him moving in the right direction.

They finally made it to a room with several white beds, two occupied by sleeping figures. A man in a white gown spoke to the Hrwang soldier for a couple of minutes, then the soldier left without acknowledging Kell. Kell felt lost.

"Why did you crash into the wall?" the man in the white gown asked.

"I don't know." Kell felt stupid now, as well as lost.

"I'm First Doctor Medical Corps. Please don't tell me your name, Colonist," the smiling man said.

"Okay," Kell replied, surprised. What was that all about?

"Let's look at your wrist."

The doctor used a device that looked advanced to examine Kell's wrist.

He put the device away and frowned.

"We can't put you in cold sleep with a break like that. It will need to heal first."

"How long will that take?"

"Two weeks, tops. I'll set the break, then you'll go into a light sleep, sort of like a coma, and when you wake up, it will be healed sufficiently for you to go into cold sleep. Your people say 'easy peasy', or something like that."

Kell wanted to run. "Two weeks?"

"Please understand, Colonist. We don't have enough food or water to feed all the colonists that are coming aboard. As soon as the new colonists complete an indoctrination and agree to cold sleep for the next five years, we put you under."

Kell didn't know how he imagined space travel, but sleeping through it hadn't been what he expected. Especially not for five years.

"I can tell you're distressed. I apologize. I'm not good at the indoctrination."

"I came with someone. We're supposed to stay together."

The doctor put his hand on Kell's shoulder.

"I apologize," he said and drowsiness immediately overcame Kell. "Enjoy your new planet."

The doctor had slipped him a mickey. Great.

Kell would remember nothing else until he awoke from cold sleep.

99

"The kid will live, right?" Derek Temple asked himself as he stumbled along another trail that switchbacked up the side of a steep slope. "He'll live. Fifty-fifty, I say. He's smart. He's young. Fifty-fifty."

Fifty-fifty was the flip of a coin Derek reminded himself. Would he put his life on the line for fifty-fifty?

"Nah, it's really eighty-twenty. I mean, he could do something stupid, so there's some chance he'll die. We all die, right? Everyone dies. So really, there's a hundred percent chance of him dying. But he'll live until then. He'll survive. What is it they say for cancer patients? Oh yeah, what their five year survival rate is. The kid's is eighty-twenty."

"Mine on the other hand," he said to himself as he hoisted the rifle up higher on his shoulder, "is more like twenty-eighty. Twenty-eighty. Sounds like really bad eyesight."

He hoped he'd find a spot to camp for the night with water nearby. He never wanted to run out of water again.

"Twenty-eighty. Who you kidding, Derek? More like ten-ninety." Or a zero-hundred.

The thought made him stop. He looked up at the dark skies, thick black clouds shrouding the Earth, and at the path ahead of him. Was he really up for a suicide mission?

He thought of everything he'd been taught in boot camp, everything about terrorists who strapped bombs to themselves and walked among others and blew themselves up. That was a suicide mission. Or pilots who crashed their planes into the decks of enemy battleships. That was suicide.

Snipers weren't on suicide missions. He could survive. Shoot a few aliens, run away, hide, crawl back, shoot a few more. He could do that until he ran out of ammunition, then he'd just run away. He'd find water somewhere, a place to hide, to reload. A place to continue bringing the fight to the aliens.

He was Marine Lance Corporal Derek Temple.

Semper Fi!

Ooh Rah!

He topped the ridge and looked in the dark at the expanse of mountains in front of him. He had no idea where Hearst Castle was.

"It sure was easier tracking Eva when she went running in the dark," Juan whispered to his partner while they both stared through infrared night vision binoculars. Mark leaned against a rock and held his with his one hand. Juan tried to sweep the areas he knew Mark couldn't see.

"If it were easy, everyone'd be doing it," Mark whispered back.

They hid by day, watched for signs of Eva at night, and checked for messages. They occasionally crept closer at night and watched over Hearst Castle, noting guard placement and vehicle activity.

They hadn't heard from Eva since she'd hid the microrecorder in the tree while they watched from four miles away with their infrared telescope. Director Marceline had commandeered the thing from an observatory and even though it was heavy, it was effective. They used it often, but tonight they'd moved closer for a better look. Juan was worried for Eva and he knew Mark worried about her also.

Jim's death had been a blow. They'd hoped she could use the dog to pass messages back and forth. Juan broke the news to Jim's owner and the woman had howled, beating on Juan's chest.

"You promised," she said over and over again and it was true. Juan had promised.

Seeing her sobbing, Juan vowed never to make another promise he couldn't keep.

"What's that?" Mark hissed, bringing Juan back to the here and now.

"Where?"

He tried to follow the direction Mark pointed.

"It's gone," Mark said.

They both stared in that vicinity and Juan saw a flash.

"Probably a coyote," he whispered. He didn't know how good Hrwang sound sensors were, and they tried to keep it down when they were within a couple of miles of the castle.

"Only if it's a coyote walking on two legs," Mark replied. "It's probably Sasquatch."

Juan chuckled.

"Let's get closer," he suggested. "Although if it's an alien taking a leak, we're in trouble."

"We'll get pictures if that's the case," Mark said. "See if they really are human. Of course, I'm sure Gilliam knows all about their anatomy by now."

"You're disgusting. Carry your own pack."

Mark had a hard time carrying a pack and a weapon and Juan usually helped out. But not after a comment like that. Juan loved Eva and tried not to think of the things she did with the aliens. He focused on his mission and buried that part of her mission deep, to keep it out of his thoughts. Way deep.

He owed Eva everything and he would do anything for her. But he didn't like what she was doing. He hoped it was worth it.

After they'd returned the microrecorder to Palmdale, the Director had told him it was. They knew more about the aliens than they ever would have any other way. She admitted to Juan she was debating passing on a kill order to Eva, but they still didn't know how to fight the aliens. Killing one at the top probably wouldn't make a difference. Juan and Mark just needed to be there to collect whatever intel she gathered.

Only she hadn't communicated any more since then. Juan didn't even know if she was still alive.

"I see him," Mark said.

How was he walking with the binoculars? Juan looked back and the man had a backpack and a rifle balanced on one shoulder, and held up the binoculars with his only hand while he walked.

"You're gonna kill yourself. Give me that."

Juan took the backpack and the rifle and even in the dark he could see the agent smile at him.

"Let's go find who's traipsing around these hills at night."

Derek reluctantly drank the last of the water in his canteen and fell asleep on the trail, his pack still on his back. He never saw the two men climbing up the hill after him, never heard them until a hand clamped over his mouth and a red flashlight shone in his eyes.

"Human or Hrwang?"

"Human," he tried to mumble through the hand clamped around his mouth. He didn't struggle because he also saw the muzzle of a rifle a foot in front of his face.

"You make a noise and my partner here will blow your head off before you can sneeze. He ain't killed anyone in a couple of days and he keeps whining about his finger hurting."

"I'm not whining," a hispanic accent whined.

"You think you can answer our questions quietly?" the first voice asked.

Derek nodded slowly.

"Okay. My hand's coming off." It did. "Who are you?"

"Marine Lance Corporal Derek Temple," Derek whispered.

"He can't be an alien," the hispanic voice said. "They got nameophobia."

"He could be a spy. What are you doing up here?"

"I was part of an armored attack out of Twentynine Palms. Half our unit got torched in LA, the other half down the highway a bit. Me and another guy were the only survivors."

"The Hrwang searched that area for hours. We swept through at night. There were no survivors."

Derek chuckled a little. "Our tank went into the drink. We sat, underwater, for what seemed like hours until we had to get out. Air, you know. Then we swam out and got away."

"What are you doing here?"

"I brought a rifle. Someone's gotta bring the fight to the aliens."

"I fired bigger rifles in the Boy Scouts."

"It's all I got."

"Marine, how about I make you a better offer?"

"Sir, I gotta kill me some aliens."

"Fighting's good, Marine. But we gotta be smart. We gotta figure out what makes them tick, what they need and how to take it away from them, how to really put the hurt on them like they put the hurt on us."

A hand reached out. Derek grabbed it and was pulled to his feet.

"You in, Derek?"

Derek thought about his empty canteen.

"You got water?"

The hispanic voice chuckled.

"I'm Mark, by the way. And this is Juan. Don't ask me what his last name is. Poly something or another."

"Polycarp de la Serda"

"Whatever. Look, son. Let's go figure out how to fight the aliens. The smart way," Mark said. He looked disdainfully at Derek's rifle and Derek shifted it out of view. He noticed Mark's missing arm.

"Aliens do that to you?" he asked.

"Nope. Humans. But I don't hold it against 'em. Aliens are the real enemy. Aliens are the ones we gotta fight."

Derek snapped to attention and saluted.

"Lance Corporal Temple reporting for duty, sir."

"Good man." Mark's arm went around Derek's shoulder. "Let's go."

The aliens are the enemy, John Cathey tried to remind himself. If only people would quit shooting at his people and would shoot at the enemy instead, it would be easier to believe. Since the mission where they'd been saved by the tank, he'd lost five more to ambushes and at least twenty, with their weapons and ammunition, to defections.

The city was dog eat dog and the people with John didn't want to be a part of it.

He stared at a half destroyed building out of the window of the thirtieth floor conference he occupied, alone. A month ago, he'd hidden on an upper story of that building across the way and fired a Stinger missile at a point just a few floors above the one he stood on now. How things had changed since then.

He stared at the destruction the aliens had wrought on the apartments he once hid in, walls gone, windows gone where walls still stood, apartments gaping into the void, their floors sagging without load bearing walls keeping them up. The place needed to be condemned and demolished. No one would live in it again.

Would anyone live?

John was tired. His muscles ached, his eyes burned, his neck throbbed, his feet cried out, and yet he couldn't sleep. He had to save those who followed him.

He didn't want to walk two thousand miles across the country.

The Three kept pushing for it, kept telling him that there was safety in a mystical place called Zion. He'd always thought Zion was a Jewish country but they assured him Christians understood what Zion was also. One told him of the city of Enoch, a place that was on the Earth and became so righteous that God took it up into himself into heaven. To everyone else it looked like they just disappeared.

John replied that they sounded like Hrwang. No one laughed.

He rubbed his head now. They'd given him an ultimatum without giving him one. They had a plan. If he wouldn't agree to it, they wanted to put it to a vote. Let those who wanted to follow the plan do so, and let the rest fend for themselves. They had to keep the plan secret, so only those who went could know.

And the plan wouldn't last forever. The Mormon bishop on the Three said they had two days, tops.

John told them he was against it. Until this morning when someone had reported a burning tank found in an alleyway four blocks from them. Without the protection of the tank, which they didn't even know they'd had, they were sitting ducks.

Just like he'd been in the building with the gaping wound he could see now.

He rubbed his face in his hands again. He hated being a leader. That was officer's work. He couldn't be an officer.

His parents were married.

100

Wolfgang and Leah moved into position in the cover of night, his gun newly cleaned and oiled, every surface darkened to prevent reflections that would give them away.

They had half full canteens, the others having split their remaining water, several protein bars, and a twelve hour shift ahead of them.

Goetze had chosen the spot well. Cover from trees above and bushes around them. A flat rock to steady the sniper rifle on and soft ground to lay on. And a good view of the target.

Their job today was to report anything that looked worthy of being shot, but not to give themselves away. Wolfgang would only use his rifle for the long distance scope.

Leah gently punched him in the side as the sun brightened the sky behind the clouds and they had their first glimpse of the target that was so important.

"You didn't tell me we were coming to the fairy castle," she accused.

"Neuschwanstein. I don't know what the aliens want with this place but they're buzzing all over it."

"You knew the whole time?"

"I saw the map."

"Why here?"

"I don't know." Wolfgang whispered. An alien drone flew over their position.

"We're on ready standby today," former Fifth Under Captain Third Assault instructed his squad in Malakshian. Jayla understood enough to follow along. "No one may be further than thirty seconds away from the combat craft."

Thirty seconds? It took longer than that to go the bathroom, she thought, but she kept her complaints to herself. Her captain remained grouchy in the mornings.

She worried he was moving into a deep depression over his demotion and she didn't know how to help him. Her Daddy would tell her that a strong man is also strong in the face of adversity. Just like Jayla had been when she rescued her sister.

But the alien, her captain, had rescued her when she couldn't help herself or her sister. Now she felt like she needed to rescue him.

She just didn't know what to do.

The day wore on. Wolfgang and Leah whispered about where they wanted to build a house after the war and whether they would live in Germany or Switzerland. At times they simply lay next to each other, on watch for anything remarkable, but nothing seemed to happen other than the little gray drones flying far overhead.

It rained some during the early afternoon and they set out their canteens to catch some of the water. Wolfgang tried to kiss Leah when he got bored but she rebuffed him, saying they had to stay focused. And his face was covered in camouflaging mud.

"I know," he grumbled and she leaned over and ran her finger along his neck.

"Later," she whispered in his ear and gave him goosebumps.

Jayla sat in the hatch of their combat craft most of the day, listening to the conversations of the soldiers inside and watching the activities of those outside. Several craft appeared over the castle and settled down in the courtyard, only to offload cargo and then vanish. Other soldiers carried the cargo into the main building of the castle.

Her captain remained away. She didn't know where he'd gone or what he was doing or how he'd get back to them within thirty seconds, but she obeyed his orders, running to the outhouse when she needed to use it, then running back. A soldier brought her a cup of soup at lunchtime, but it wasn't enough and she felt hungry all afternoon.

Guard duty was the most boring thing in the world and yet, somehow, being on ready standby topped it for boringness. She wished she could figure out the rules of the Malakshian card game the soldiers played inside the combat craft. They seemed to be having a little fun.

Just before dinnertime, a combat craft appeared and when it settled down, her captain exited the hatch and headed toward them.

"Everybody on the alert. It's time."

"Don't you think a lot of vehicles have been coming and going today?" Leah asked in a whisper.

Wolfgang contemplated her question and answered, "I think you're right. We should tell Goetze."

"You stay here and watch. I'll tell him." She slithered away from their position and took off. Wolfgang watched everything that happened on the courtyard through his scope.

"It's time, my dear."

Eva awoke to an overly cheery Lord Admiral barging into her room with two packages.

"I wish you were in the same building as me, like before."

"I apologize," she replied, mimicking the Hrwang. "I like the view from here and the room isn't as gaudy."

She used a new word and the Lord Admiral whipped out his tablet.

"I like gaudy," he said defensively when he read the definition in his own language.

No duh, she thought.

"Wear this. It's not gaudy," he promised, handing her a package. "It's elegant."

She opened it up to find a beautiful, red dress and silver, strappy heels.

"Oh my goodness. It's gorgeous. It looks like a prom dress."

"What's a prom?" he asked, not looking away from her to search for the word on his tablet.

"It's a formal dinner and dance," she started to explain when he cut her off.

"Then we are going to a prom," he said.

She had never seen him this happy, almost childlike. If the Lord Admiral was always this way, not so smirky and arrogant, she could actually grow to like him.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To a prom," he smiled.

She shook her head, knowing she wasn't going to be able to get anything more out of him about the location.

"You should be wearing a tux," she said.

He opened the second package and showed her.

"Like this one?" He grinned a mile wide.

"Yes, like that one. How long do I have to get ready?"

"Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes!"

"Ten Hrwang minutes. I believe that is seven of your minutes."

"Lord Admiral! I can't get ready that quickly."

He started undressing, watching her as he did. She shook her head at him again, this time in disbelief. Seven minutes? The man was crazy.

She pulled out the dress and examined it. Strapless with a long, leggy slit up one side. She had no bras she could wear with it but she guessed the Lord Admiral wouldn't care. He still watched her as he changed.

Fine.

She undressed and picked the dress up off the bed, unzipping it down the back.

"Can we talk?" Jayla asked her captain.

He stared at her solemnly. She knew he wasn't going to say anything. She would just have to start in on it.

"I'm sorry you got in trouble but I don't think it was my fault."

"I wouldn't have helped the border guards if you hadn't been with me."

"Why not?" she asked. "You helped me. Those guards would have been just as dead and the women just as violated if we hadn't saved them."

"Our orders changed. We are now to permit all of your people who want to kill each other to do so."

"What?" Jayla stood up and moved to stand right in front of the large man. She looked up at him but was no longer intimidated by him. She would have gotten right in his face if she'd been tall enough.

"I can't believe that," she continued. "How could your people be so cold?"

"Why do your people keep fighting constantly? In most places on this planet we cannot land unless we attack first with dozens of combat craft. We cannot trade for food, so we must take it, and women strap bombs to themselves and blow us up. We've lost three squads to such attacks. Why?"

He spat the word and Jayla thought spittle may have landed on her face. She put it out of her mind.

"You bombed us. You've seen the video. You know what happened!"

The video had changed everything, Jayla realized. Knowing what happened changed the tactics the Hrwang were using. It may have even changed their goals.

Suddenly Jayla knew she knew nothing. She didn't know the man standing in front of her. She didn't know who the Hrwang were or what they stood for. They had accepted her until she and the the captain, now lieutenant, began sleeping together. A beautiful moment for her ruined by the envy of the rest of the squad. Some of them hadn't spoken to her since.

She turned to walk away. She was done. She was done with this war. She was done with the Hrwang. And she was done with her captain demoted to lieutenant. She was done with them all.

"Wait," he cried. "Wait."

She stopped but didn't turn to face him.

"I love you," he said.

"Then tell me your name." She still faced away from him.

"Gerrel Otdessig," he replied without hesitation. "My name is Gerrel Otdessig."

She turned to face him and he was down on his knees, looking up at her. Soldiers poked their heads out of the hatch.

"Yes. I do," she replied. She turned to him and fell on her knees and hugged him. "I want to marry you." Her emotions boiled over and she cried on his chest.

"You tell me your name now," he whispered.

"Jayla. Anderson."

"I love you, Jayla."

"I love you, Gerrel."

They held each other and someone from their squad clapped. Others joined him. Jayla couldn't believe it. She was engaged.

"Anything happen while I was away?" Leah asked softly. A mud covered Sergeant Goetze accompanied her.

"What's going on?" the sergeant asked.

"Women," Wolfgang replied.

"What?" Leah asked.

"Not you. Aliens. The aliens brought women with them. A black woman and a black man knelt on the courtyard and hugged each other after arguing. If they were human, I'd say the man proposed to her."

"What?" both Leah and Goetze cried, then looked around them. They'd spoken too loud. They didn't know how sensitive the Hrwang sound sensors were.

"And another vehicle appeared in the air over the courtyard and a woman in a red dress got out accompanied by a man in a tuxedo followed by a second man, also in a tuxedo. Soldiers in black uniforms got out after them."

Wolfgang didn't add that the uniforms reminded uncomfortably him of uniforms from his country from a different era. He suppressed that thought.

"Where did they go?" Goetze demanded to know, not seeing anything through the scope of his rifle.

"The black couple went into the northeast corner of the courtyard. A vehicle landed there, just out of sight. The two tuxedos and the red dress went into the main building."

"A formal red dress?"

"Yes."

"They're our target. They have to be important. No one has seen alien women before. Only a commander would bring his woman and dress her that way. Those targets are critical, do you understand?"

"What about pinning troops down and waiting for the attacking infantry?" Leah asked, not in defiance but trying to understand. Goetze put his hand on her shoulder.

"There are no troops coming. There is no way to get them here. I was given orders to take out any high priority targets. We didn't know why the aliens wanted Neuschwanstein, but it's possible they are setting up a headquarters or something here. We are to act independently."

"But you told us there were troops coming," Leah protested.

"That's suicide," Wolfgang said in German.

Goetze bristled.

"We shoot, we run. Like snipers throughout history."

"Why tell us there are troops coming?"

"Keep your voice down," Goetze hissed.

Wolfgang turned away from the sergeant and retook his firing position. He wanted the sergeant to explain himself, but he also knew no explanation the man would give would be sufficient. They had been duped into coming.

"Will you fulfill your mission?" Goetze demanded in a harsh whisper.

"We will," Leah replied, her voice subdued.

"I want to hear him say it."

Wolfgang stubbornly refused to reply.

"Will you fulfill the oath you made?"

I made no oath, Wolfgang thought. But he said, "Okay."

Sergeant Goetze seemed satisfied.

"When they come back out, Wolfgang, you take the woman in the red dress. I'll take the man in the tuxedo from the other location."

"Okay," Wolfgang whispered again.

"You are a good sniper. If I am correct and these people are truly important, then we could decapitate the enemy this day. Be strong."

"Okay," Wolfgang said a third time.

Goetze looked at Leah. "Be strong," he commanded.

He left.

Only part of Neuschwanstein was completed, a fact that disappointed the Lord Admiral. Eva read a brochure she found in the museum store and dumbed down the English for him, speaking a mix of English and Est as she read the history of the castle.

He laughed that the mad king's men drowned poor king Ludwig because they worried he spent too much money.

"If only all advisers were so bold," he chuckled.

The parts of the palace that were completed were as ornate as Hearst Castle and Eva saw why the Lord Admiral enjoyed it. He spoke of having two capitals and perhaps this castle could serve as his second capital on the opposite side of the world from his first. Much had to be accomplished though before that could be a reality.

He seated them with glee in a dining room filled with chairs forming a rectangle, but no table. He sat at the head of the rectangle and instructed Eva to sit to his right with the Lieutenant Grenadier on her right. Other officers filled the rest of the seats and an unrecognized face sat on the Lord Admiral's left. The face looked vaguely familiar, but Eva was certain she hadn't met the man before.

When everyone sat, most in confusion, the Lord Admiral said words that sounded German to Eva.

The floor moved and a table slowly rose into the space between the chairs. All sorts of food adorned the table and all of it reeked of Hrwang spices. Impressed with the display, some of the Lord Admiral's men clapped and Eva joined them, also acting impressed.

"What were those words you spoke, Lord Admiral?" the Lieutenant Grenadier asked, leaning forward and putting his left hand down by his side. His finger brushed Eva's leg and her heart flipped a little. Did she really have feelings for this man? Or was she just worried he was going to blow her cover and get them both killed?

"They are the language of the mad king. They mean 'little table, cover yourself'. You say those words and the table comes up out of the basement filled with food. Isn't it wonderful?"

"It is, sir."

"Lieutenant, you look positively dashing tonight. Doesn't he look positively dashing, my dear?"

Eva hated it when the Hrwang tablets taught them cliches. One of the hazards of learning a language from television and radio broadcasts.

"He does, Lord Admiral," she replied, giving him, Tomes, a look over. Remembering her part, she turned to the Lord Admiral. "As do you, my dear."

"Oh, don't call me that," he said, a little of his grin gone. "That designation is reserved for you."

"I apologize, Lord Admiral."

"Not necessary, my dear. You are still learning of our ways." He reached and grabbed her hand in his. "Now, enjoy your meal. My generals are hungry but won't eat until we begin."

He was right. The generals didn't. As soon as the Lord Admiral filled his plate, they followed suit, but no one put a fork to mouth until the Lord Admiral did.

Once everyone was eating and the Lord Admiral was engaged in conversation with the vaguely familiar man on his left, she turned to Tomes.

"When you grew up, did everyone wait for the father to start eating before they did?"

"Of course," he replied. "Didn't you?"

She laughed. "No. When it was just my father and me, mealtimes were a little informal."

"Proper respect must be given at all time."

"And if a Hrwang were to marry one of my people, which customs would they follow?"

She knew she tread on dangerous ground, but she also knew Tomes understood the consequence of giving anything away. She felt like she was reeling him into her web. He laughed nervously at her question.

"Such a couple would have to decide. It would not be simple. We have many cultures on our world and when people from different cultures marry, it always brings added challenges."

"It was actually illegal for many years in parts of our world to marry someone from a different culture."

"Illegal?"

"You couldn't get a marriage license or live in certain places."

Eva could tell Tomes wanted to comment on her world, her people, but he held his tongue. He took a bite of food.

"You should try this meat. It's so good."

"It's turkey. Yes. It's very good." Even with all the Hrwang spices, the turkey still tasted delicious. And Eva noted how deftly Tomes changed the topic, avoiding controversy with her. This man had a genuinely tough exterior, but he was soft on the inside, especially when it came to her.

Conversations ranged around the table, but no one other than the Lord Admiral or Tomes engaged her, and when those two spoke to their neighbors on their other side, she simply sat and ate, picking at her food and trying to scrape off some of the sauces and toppings. She hated Hrwang cooking. Instead of growing on her, it repulsed her more every day. She'd need to spend some time with Noah in his kitchen when they returned, if she wasn't going to die of malnourishment.

She couldn't eat anything else on her plate, so she asked Tomes, calling him 'Lieutenant', to pass her more turkey. She put her hand on his arm when she did so and felt the same flutter she had earlier. Part of her just wanted to run away with him. Maybe they could flee into the Alps and get lost forever and the Hrwang would never find them.

Part of her remembered who he really was and who she was.

Eating turkey reminded her of Thanksgiving feasts, fun ones when she was young, pathetic ones with frozen meals when she was older, but she focused on the good memories and they kept her spirits light. She smiled and laughed at a joke the Lord Admiral told in Est, even though she hadn't understood half of it and didn't get the punchline. She responded with a glance of love when he smiled patronizingly at her.

You just can't get over yourself, can you? she thought about him behind her loving face.

"Come with me, my dear," the Lord Admiral said, standing when he was done with his after dinner conversation. He reached his arm out to her.

She took it graciously, not looking back at Tomes but imagining the Lieutenant Grenadier's envious thoughts.

"Accompany us, please," the Lord Admiral added in Est to his chief of security. Now Eva had a chance to look at him, but Tomes didn't return the look, just stood professionally in acknowledgement that he was at his commander's beck and call. Eva knew she never could have held a role like that in the military or even in the Agency. There's duty to God and Country, but duty to an individual like that was beyond her.

She almost laughed at her own hubris. Was the way she acted around the Lord Admiral any different? She was no less at his beck and call than Tomes was, and although she told herself her actions were merely an act to further her mission, Tomes was no different. He had originally accepted the coveted role as a chief of security to further his career.

"Enjoying your evening?" the Lord Admiral inquired as he led her out of the dining room and into the king's bedroom. "Incredible, isn't it?"

Eva answered yes to both questions, but as she looked around the mad king's apartment she thought Ludwig and Hearst must have been brothers in a previous life. No wonder the Lord Admiral was so excited to visit the place.

She pretended to be impressed by the ornateness of the king's wash stand, but instead watched Tomes standing guard at the door, his eyes straight ahead. While the Lord Admiral fawned over a mural of some doomed medieval couple, Eva caught Tomes' attention and winked at him.

He blushed and returned to staring straight ahead.

Eva returned to the Lord Admiral's side. He took her arm and then turned to Tomes.

"Lieutenant, can you wait in this room? I have some things I need to discuss with the Lady."

"Yes, sir."

They moved into a small chapel adjacent to the bedroom, and the Lord Admiral paused to look around.

"Why is that here?" he asked, pointing to a crucifix surrounded by candles on a small altar.

"It represents the crucifixion of Jesus."

"It's sacrilege."

"No, it's not. It's considered very religious by some."

"By you?" he asked.

Eva didn't know what lie would work best, so she ended up telling the truth.

"The faith I grew up in didn't believe in displaying crucifixes."

"Good," he said and led them out of the room and into the next, a slightly less ostentatious one. "That room will have to be remodeled."

"You don't like chapels?" she asked, a little surprised at his reaction.

"Not that one." His tone of voice sounded final, and Eva stopped pressing.

"I like that swan," she said, pointing to a statue, trying to sound friendly while she changed the subject.

"Do you know this castle was supposed to have over two hundred rooms, but King Ludwig only finished fifteen before his people assassinated him?"

"I didn't know that," Eva replied, not remembering if that were in the brochure she translated for the Lord Admiral.

"I'm going to finish it for him. I'm going to finish this castle and make it one of my capitals. I think that a world such as this will need more than one point of governance. Hearst Castle is impressive but not nearly large enough. Splitting the governance between multiple locations will allow them to remain impressive, yet functional."

Eva listened intently, hoping her expression continued to encourage him to reveal more details of his plans.

"We can't spend the night here, unfortunately, until significant work is done. There is only one bedroom and while that's enough for us," he leered at her, "my men would have to sleep on the floor. And there are no warm showers at the moment." He laughed at his own comment and Eva laughed with him, putting her hand on his arm. "But the next time you see this palace, it will be finished, my dear."

"When will that be?"

He looked at her seriously.

"It will take years. But they will feel just like a snap of the finger." He demonstrated.

Legitimately confused now, and feeling a sense of concern, Eva said, "I don't understand."

He turned to face her completely, putting both of his hands on her arms and looking in her eyes.

"My dear, I want you to come to Hrwang with me."

101

"Soldiers are moving," Leah whispered to Wolfgang. He nodded and checked his sighting of the location where Sergeant Goetze had determined they would shoot the couple in the red dress and tuxedo. The heavy cloud cover darkened the skies long before complete sunset and having enough light to target by remained a concern. He might have to shoot in the dark.

"When this happens, when I fire, we need to run."

"I know, Captain. We run to the rally point."

"I'm not a captain. I'm not even a soldier. And we keep running if we have to."

"You're better than a soldier."

Wolfgang chewed on his lip for a moment, then said, "I've never killed anyone, Leah."

"I know," she replied. "But didn't you tell me your mormon book captain had to kill his enemy to protect his people? Aren't the aliens our enemy?"

"They are."

He returned to checking his sight again, not wanting to talk any more. Leah busied herself with her range finding telescope, respecting his silence.

The former Fifth Under Captain Third Assault, now Sixth Under Lieutenant Second Grenadier, but more importantly Gerrel Otdessig to her, finished conferring with another soldier and returned to where Jayla and several other squad members waited outside their combat craft.

She smiled at him with all of the love she could muster, but he maintained a serious expression.

"We'll hover in quadrant zee fourteen until the Lord Admiral is away," he explained and the squad entered the combat craft. Gerrel moved forward to the seats right behind the pilots, and Jayla went into the back with the other soldiers as would be expected of her. They seemed nicer to her now that she and Gerrel were engaged. Some even congratulated her.

Jayla Otdessig. She wanted to find pen and paper and write the name a hundred times, lingering over every syllable and contemplating what her future with Gerrel would hold. What would it like being a Hrwang wife? Would it be hard to learn all of his customs? How many of hers would he accept? How would they raise their children? Would they live on Hrwang or on Earth?

Too excited to focus, too giddy to care about the answers to her own questions, Jayla strapped herself in her seat and hoped this duty would end soon. Did Hrwang soldiers get leave when they got engaged? She knew some Earth armies did that. Where would they go?

Shut up Jayla. Focus.

Her commands to herself didn't work. She wanted to jump up and down and run around the craft high fiving everyone.

She felt the familiar lurch as the Hrwang combat craft jumped from its location on the ground to one in the air somewhere, its engines taking over and allowing the vehicle to hover in the sky. She looked up toward her fiancé and out the windows beyond. It was getting dark.

Eva hugged the Lord Admiral tightly so he couldn't see her face. Always proud of her poker face, her ability to display on it whatever emotion she chose, Eva didn't trust that she was in such control right now.

"My dear," the Lord Admiral explained. "I'm so happy. Thank you."

He took her reaction for assent. She'd leave it that way. She didn't know if she could trust herself to say anything.

He wanted her to go to Hrwang? Two and a half years in cold sleep there, two and a half years back. Five years of her life! She didn't know anything about Hrwang. She could barely follow a conversation in Est and must have sounded like a kindergartner when she spoke it. She couldn't go to Hrwang.

Her mind evaluated a thousand things she could do and rejected every one of them, while she held the alien leader in her arms.

He caressed her bare shoulders and kissed her head.

"I will take you hiking up Mount Esrain and we will jog along the beach every morning at my vacation home. It will be wonderful. And then we will be back here before you know it. It will only feel like we will be gone a few weeks."

Five years!

Eva didn't know how, but she had to run away. How much time did she have?

"When do we leave?"

Her voice didn't sound as excited as she tried to make it. Her insides felt only panic, and she knew she was going to blow her cover. She felt like she had to use a bathroom. Now. Were there any in this overly decorated hell hole?

"Soon. I will give you more than ten minutes notice." He grinned. "There are many things I must do first. I don't know how long they will all take."

She nodded, her eyes darting everywhere, her mind still figuring out options.

Get a grip, Gilliam, she ordered herself, and felt relief at the Lord Admiral's next words.

"My dear, could you allow the Lieutenant Grenadier to escort you back to our transport? I will follow shortly."

Eva noticed the vaguely familiar man who had sat at the Lord Admiral's left at dinner enter the room.

"Of course," she said, and she reached up and grabbed the Lord Admiral's face, pulling his mouth to hers. She kissed the Lord Admiral with all the passion she could muster. She knew she couldn't act her way through the next minute, so her kiss had to throw the Lord Admiral off guard, appeal to his lust, and allow her to make her escape.

It worked.

"I can't wait to get back to Hearst with you," he mumbled through the kiss and she squeezed him again, then rushed out of his presence, past his next visitor, and back into the mad king's bedroom.

Tomes waited dutifully there.

She took his arm and he started to pull away.

"You're to escort me back to our transport," she said loudly.

"Someone could report us," he hissed.

She squeezed his arm in hers, holding it against her body.

"It's okay," she whispered. "Before I knew you. Before I loved you, I flirted with you to make him envious. Powerful men like to think they've bested a rival. I'm so sorry, but if anyone says anything, he'll think I'm just doing it again."

"He won't think you like me?"

"No. I took care of that the first day we met. He believes I think you are just a boy."

Tomes stiffened a little.

"Is it what you think?"

They were in the dining room now, the table back down in the kitchen below, the chairs sitting in their strange, empty rectangular formation. No one else was in the room.

"We have to leave, Tomes. We have to run away. Soon." She walked quietly next to him for a moment, waiting for him to ask why. He didn't. She had to persuade the man next to her to help her escape. It was the only thing she could think of. If he believed she loved him as much as he loved her, he would do anything for her.

She could escape.

"He wants to take me to Hrwang," she revealed. "He says we leave soon. I'll be gone five years."

The wheels began spinning in his mind now. They left the Lower Hall and headed down the stairs to the exit, passing a squad of soldiers.

Out of their earshot, he whispered, "He'll take me to Hrwang with you. We'll run away there. We'll be together. I promise."

"Will we?" Eva never felt such fear for the future as she did now. She'd rather face the gangs of Las Vegas with her MP-23 than deal with what she had to deal with now. "Earth is more chaotic. We'll find someplace where he can't search us out."

"I don't know. I have friends. Family on Hrwang."

She had to convince him to help her escape from Hearst. She had to get to Juan and Mark. But she wasn't sure she knew how to make him listen.

What was she going to do? This was a mess.

Everything was happening too quickly.

Soldiers opened the main doors for them and they stepped out into the cool night air to head down the steps to the courtyard, both concentrating on their uncertain futures.

"Target acquired," Leah whispered formally. "They're coming up on the spot. Wait. They've stopped."

Wolfgang took a deep breath.

Eva grabbed Tomes and hugged him, not caring who saw them or what they reported.

"Promise me we'll figure something out," she whispered.

He hugged her quickly, guiltily, then used his arm around her to face her back down the steps and on their path to the combat craft that would transport them back to Hearst Castle. Eva allowed him to lead her.

Wolfgang could tell through his sights, even in the dimming light, that the blonde woman in the red dress was uncommonly beautiful. What sort of a person was she? A spoiled, rich girl who used her looks to charm her way into wealth and power? Or was she a conniving Lady Macbeth, desirous of furthering her own ends by using everyone around her? He convinced himself she was the latter, and he thought of his wife and how the alien attacks had caused her death.

His finger caressed the trigger. The targets were almost at the agreed upon spot. They just had to take two steps forward.

When the couple released their embrace, Wolfgang saw something else on the woman's face. Fear. Worry. Concern for something. She was clearly upset. She wasn't in charge of her life. She didn't have control over everything around her.

She wasn't who he wanted her to be.

"Ready?" Leah asked in a whisper.

Ready? How does one get ready to take a human life?

He squeezed the trigger.

Tomes' head exploded all over Eva, his body bucking into her and pushing her against the protruding, uneven stones of the wall next to them. One of those stones exploded next to her, showering her with dust and grit that caked on the blood and gore from the lieutenant that covered her and her dress. She ducked, crouched, her training assessing her tactical situation, and she knew she couldn't stay by the man she'd just tried to talk into helping her run away.

He was dead.

She somersaulted down the stairs, the stone tearing at the fabric of her dress, her heels getting in the way. She tried to kick them off as she tumbled, but they stayed stubbornly on, the straps around her ankles anchoring them to her feet.

Another shot crumbled a stone in the wall.

Something tugged at the skirt of her dress as it flailed around her and she heard a shot ricochet off the stairs. She didn't stop to look, but she knew there would be a bullet hole in her clothes and the next would hit her if she didn't move faster.

She angled to dive over the side of the stairs, falling at least four feet to the courtyard below, scraping hands and knees. She tried to scramble up on her feet, then thought better of it when a heel caught in uneven bricks, and she threw herself forward. Another shot hit the side of the steps and may have hit her if she'd gotten to her feet. She scrambled for the only safety she could see, a building that was hopefully between her and her attackers.

She reached cover, another shot hitting uselessly off the side of the building above her. The shooter had led her correctly and had fired, even though he must have known the building intervened.

In the shelter of the building, she breathed finally, then reached down and undid the straps of her heels, throwing them as far away from her as she could. One of them, as soon as it came to rest, flipped up again in two pieces, torn in half by another sniper round. She knew she would be dead if she even peeked around a corner.

Soldiers scrambled everywhere and the feeling of being alone against the sniper dissipated. She lay against the uneven wall and looked back to where she'd come from, the headless body of the Lord Admiral's security chief still slumped over where she dropped him.

All of her resolve. All of her self-control. It meant nothing to her. She let it all go and wailed her grief and hoped the distant, bloodless sniper could hear her. She hoped the Hrwang found him and killed him and killed his family and his friends and everyone he ever loved. She hoped they tortured him, flaying him alive like they always threatened to do.

She cried and moaned and it didn't help.

When hands reached out to her, she punched them away blindly, grief and fury tangled together, then she balled up on the ground, sobbing, the adrenaline gone and a growing emptiness replacing it, filling her soul.

"You missed!" Leah cried and Wolfgang ignored her. He timed his next shot to look like he had simply misjudged, striking the wall behind the woman in red a second time. Another shot rang out, this one from Goetze, and almost struck her. Her tumbling made her a difficult target. Wolfgang tracked her in his sights and saw Goetze almost hit her again as she scrambled and dove into cover. Wolfgang fired a third, useless shot against the side of the building.

Everything he had done, he could justify. No one would know he had missed on purpose. He couldn't even admit that to Leah. He had simply missed a moving target, one more difficult than shooting a deer. He'd simply explain away his first missed shot to her uneven movement after she and the man in the tuxedo had embraced. Goetze's shot had hit first and pushed her away from where Wolfgang had fired. It was as simple as that.

Something blocked his view of the courtyard where enemy soldiers scrambled for cover and moved to aid the woman. He stopped thinking of how he would explain away his misses and moved his eye away from the scope. He saw a large aircraft hovering in the sky in front of them, between them and the castle. It was so close, he thought he could reach out and touch it.

"Run!" he cried and grabbed Leah, pulling her away from their shooting spot, abandoning his highly specialized sniper rifle, abandoning his backpack and his food and his water, abandoning everything except her, pulling her with him down the slope and into the cover of the trees below.

The woman in the red dress had run from them, and now it was their turn to run from her soldiers. Leah said something, wanted to go back for something, but he held her arm like a vise and pulled her. She didn't fight it, but slipped and ran and slipped again down the muddy slope with him, back down the hill and toward hoped for safety.

"It's too dark," Jayla heard a pilot yell back at Gerrel as another shot pinged off the side of the combat craft.

"Just hit the whole ridge," he replied, and Jayla felt the craft moving. She knew it spewed lightning from its belly as it moved along the ridge the snipers had probably fired from. She wondered if the snipers had killed anyone or even who they had been targeting. It had to have been someone important for all of the security the Hrwang had put in place.

As they swept back up a second time, fires from burning trees and brush lighting the sky, no more shots hit them. The snipers had fled.

102

Hands picked Eva up, but she didn't cooperate. She remained curled in a ball, impassive, uncaring, while those hands passed her through the hatch of a Hrwang combat craft that had landed a few feet away from her, in the shelter of the building where she hid. Hands inside the craft laid her on a bench and strapped a harness over her rocking body.

Another body, in a white bag, was brought in by those same hands and laid on the floor of the cargo hold.

Another hand rested gently on Eva's shoulder, and she heard the Lord Admiral's deep voice.

"Are you injured?"

She wasn't. Really.

Cuts and scrapes, bruised elbows and knees, and she would have a headache from hitting her head on the stone steps as she tumbled down them. Her leg hurt. She had either twisted her ankle in her heels or one of the shots had grazed it.

But she had no serious physical injuries.

The clinical, well trained part of her brain performed an overall assessment and told her she was probably going into shock, not one caused by physical hurts, but one caused by the trauma she'd experienced. Acute Stress Reaction, an Agency psychologist labeled it during training. It hadn't seem so bad when he had described it in the classroom.

Her mind, in order to remain sane perhaps, felt like it removed itself from her body and watched the proceedings from a distance. The rocking, sobbing girl in a dirty red dress seemed like another person, one not in control of herself.

One that couldn't be Eva.

Hands held her, they weren't Tomes' hands, and she reached out and clung to the man she sometimes hated, sometimes admired, sometimes wanted to kill, and sometimes wanted to have protect her the rest of her life. He murmured comforting words as the engines cycled up.

Her perspective came and went and she watched with detachment as the girl in the red dress was strapped carefully to a stretcher while an elegant man in a tuxedo held her hand.

Eva thought briefly that she might have died.

If she had, she'd be free of the war, free of the conflict between human and Hrwang, free of her mission as a mole. If she were dead, she'd have no more responsibility to gather intelligence for humanity. She'd have no more need to lie or to put others in danger. She could rest from her cares and worries.

Bright lights over her, a man in a white gown passing an instrument over her outstretched body, and comforting words from a man his people called the Lord Admiral convinced her she was still alive.

She didn't want to be.

She wanted to curl back up in a ball and be buried in the deepest cave on the Earth. She wanted to fly through the air and hunt down those who'd killed the one man she realized she'd actually fallen in love with. She hadn't even recognized it until he was gone.

She wanted it to be her that was dead, not him.

Her mind unwillingly replayed the attack over and over. She pictured the shock of surprise on her lover's face as the bullet entered his head (had she really seen that?), the destruction of human flesh as the round exploded inside, bursting his skull, scattering the contents of his brains that had held caring thoughts, personal thoughts, had represented his memories of his life and his hopes and plans for the future, scattering those contents that were now merely organic matter all over her.

The analytical part of her mind sat back and watched the play occur again and again and told her there had been two shooters, one aiming for Tomes, one missing her. The second shot came too quickly after the first, no time to reload the advanced, complicated sniper rifles her attackers must have used to shoot at her from over a mile away. Tomes had saved her life in his death, his body pushing her out of the way of the second bullet.

If both shooters had fired at the same time...

As her mind analyzed the events, part of her wanting to flee, part of her unable to stop revisualizing the images, the doctor concluded his examination and put his instrument away.

She listened to his words without responding.

"Nothing's broken," he said in Est, then he said more things she couldn't understand. He pointed to a spot on her ankle, and she knew a bullet had indeed grazed her, a hole in her dress testifying as to how close that bullet had come to doing much more damage. Sniper rounds exploded when they hit, so even a near miss could be fatal.

Reacting and not thinking had saved her unfortunate life.

Someone spoke English to her and she couldn't understand it, her mind still wanting to comprehend the foreign Est language.

Eventually her mind shifted gears, and she heard them tell her she would need a couple of days to recuperate.

"No," she cried and struggled against a restraint on the stretcher that kept her from falling off. "No!" She fought, kicking and clawing at those restraints, and then she felt something press into her neck and all she wanted to do was relax. To simply give up.

She did.

Wolfgang and Leah found the Tyrollean soldier and the corporal at the base site, packed up and waiting impatiently. Goetze and his partner hadn't returned yet.

"Did you get them?" the corporal asked.

"The man in the tuxedo died. The woman survived."

"Pah!" He lifted his hands and looked up in the air in disgust. "How could you miss?"

"Because he did it on purpose!" Goetze yelled, running and sliding in the mud into the camp, his hands out and shoving Wolfgang off balance to the ground. "You missed on purpose!" the non-commissioned officer cried and lunged at Wolfgang again, who rolled downhill, out of the way. The corporal dove on the sergeant and held him back.

Everyone sat up, Wolfgang ready to jump out of the way again, the sergeant restrained by the corporal. Leah and the Tyrollean watched in shock.

"You missed on purpose. You fired after I fired. You missed and now Karl is dead."

Karl, Private Schultheis, had been Sergeant Goetze's spotter.

"He's dead," the sergeant accused.

"That's not his fault," the corporal rejoined. "The target didn't kill Karl, did she?"

The sergeant didn't want to admit the logic of the corporal's question, but he stopped yelling at Wolfgang and stopped trying to get up.

"We have to run. Their aircraft will find us soon," Wolfgang said in a measured tone. He decided not to lie to defend missing the woman on purpose. It didn't matter any longer. He was not a soldier and would never be one. He would desert as soon as he had the first opportunity. He hoped Leah would come with him. The others would never be able to follow them through the Alps.

"It's too dark. They won't find us," the Tyrollean woman pleaded, sounding like she was trying to convince herself.

Goetze wouldn't look at Wolfgang, but he looked over the rest of his squad.

"We have to go now. Get back to the insertion point. Report what we saw and what we did." He said the last ominously.

"We need to split up. Our group is too big. Their flying craft will detect so many running through the woods. Even at night," Wolfgang said.

Goetze glared at him now but must have agreed.

"Stay in your sniper teams. Stick to the Pollaet valley. If you try to cross the mountains your silhouette will be visible for kilometers. We will meet at the head of the river at the Austrian border. Remember the hotel there?"

They had all joked about staying at the resort when they had passed it the first time, imagining the warm welcome they would receive as returning heroes.

In truth, the place had been abandoned. Too difficult to get food up to and not enough food in the nearby woods. Shame, Wolfgang had thought at the time. It would have been a good place to honeymoon with his new bride.

Everyone remembered the hotel.

"What about you, Sergeant?" the Tyrollean asked.

"I lost my partner. I will go alone," the sergeant replied. He still had murder in his eyes, or perhaps it was simply the look of a professional soldier performing his duty. Still, no one disputed him.

"We lost our packs," Leah said. "We have no food or water."

"Then you must go back and retrieve them," Goetze said. "You two go first." He pointed to the Tyrollean and the corporal. "I will follow. You two follow as soon as you have your things."

"Yes, sir," Leah replied. Wolfgang didn't like the look on the Sergeant's face. Duty or murder? When a soldier's duty was dealing death, was murder far behind? When or how did a man cross that line? Had Goetze crossed it?

Wolfgang no longer trusted his commander, and he knew the man didn't trust him. He decided not to return down the mountain the way they went up it.

He and Leah made their way carefully, nervously, back up to where their backpacks and Wolfgang's sniper rifle lay. The fires had burned out and, although some trees still smoldered, they could reach their hiding spot safely.

Would alien soldiers await them there?

"You stay here and watch. Warn me if anyone comes up behind me?"

"Who would do that?"

"Aliens hunting for us."

Leah nodded grimly and hid herself in a bush. Wolfgang felt more fear from Goetze tracking him to a spot where they were alone than he did from the aliens. The aliens would assume the snipers were long gone, and if they chose to hunt, would do so on the most obvious escape route, the one Goetze had selected. Wolfgang would go a different way, although he longed for another look at the map to plan his route better.

No aliens waited for him in the hiding spot, and he took the time to look at the castle below. A hubbub of activity still filled the courtyard. The alien soldiers didn't look like they knew a sausage from cheese. No one would be following them anytime soon.

He grabbed the scorched backpack and debated bringing the rifle. They might need to hunt for meat, but the contraption would slow them down. He decided against bringing the despised instrument of death. He and Leah could be vegetarians until they got to safety.

"Any sign of anyone?" he whispered to Leah when he returned.

She shook her head. She was clearly terrified. Wolfgang was almost glad of it. All that she had been through hadn't hardened the woman. Good. He handed her her backpack.

He started off, moving parallel to the ridge line instead of back down and Leah stopped, confused.

"It's this way, right?" she asked softly, pointing back down the hill.

"Please. This way," he said and pointed in the direction he wanted to go.

He thought of ordering her. He thought of telling her he was her fiancé and she should follow him. Instead he said simply, "Trust me," and she did, setting off in the direction he indicated.

They ran out of trees sooner than Wolfgang expected, and he was grateful for the cover of night.

"See where the trees get heavy again, up ahead?" He pointed to the other side of the exposed ridge, where they would be safely under cover again.

Leah nodded, her closeness reassuring.

"You'll be tempted to run, but it's night and running will make us more visible. Plus you will be more likely to slip and fall. We must move slowly and quietly."

She nodded again, her lips pressed tightly together. They moved out slowly, hand in hand, avoiding a hiking trail they came across, watching the dark skies for any indication of alien aircraft.

Wolfgang's heart pounded in his ears, but he expressed no fear. Confidence would save them, not panic, and he pretended he was on a night hike in his beloved Alps, enjoying nature instead of on the lookout for aliens. The air was humid and cold, the moon and the stars invisible behind dense clouds, flowers and scenery hidden by the dark.

At least that same darkness hid them.

Less than two hundred meters from the shelter of trees, they heard the echoing of gunfire and shouts.

"Run," he hissed, and the two ran, stumbling and tripping in the dark, for the safety of the tree line.

More shots. Lights, floodlights, darted up and down the valley floor below. Wolfgang didn't stop to look.

Leah pulled him down as soon as they were in cover behind trees and pointed wordlessly to the commotion below them.

At least three alien craft circled, lightning erupting from one of them onto the valley floor. More gunfire and lightning from the other two scorched the trees on both sides. They heard no more shooting.

"Idiots," Wolfgang said. "They're probably both dead."

"Who?" Leah asked.

"The Tyrollean woman and the corporal were out in front. It's likely it's them."

"Is this why you wanted to come a different way?"

"One of the reasons. I didn't think walking along the valley would be safe."

"What was the other reason?"

Wolfgang sighed. He didn't want to say what he feared, but he was too tired to dissemble.

"I thought Sergeant Goetze wanted to kill me."

"Nonsense," Leah said immediately. "He wouldn't do something like that."

"He was right," Wolfgang confessed. "I missed the woman on purpose."

"What?" Leah rounded on him, no longer paying attention to the alien aircraft below them, hovering and searching in circles. "You missed on purpose?"

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill her."

Leah leaned into him, her voice sympathetic.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry my people made us soldiers." She sniffled. "I don't want to go back."

"Good. I'm not going back. We will run away together."

"Will they charge us as deserters?"

"This war is going poorly. No one will ever know or care. They will simply think we were killed."

She held him tightly and he reciprocated. Together, they watched alien vehicles land in the stream bed below.

Jayla didn't want to leave their combat craft and venture out into the dark, but she accepted the handgun she'd been trained to fire and followed the others out. Many of the Hrwang now carried human weapons as they were low on ammunition for theirs. Most used either human rifles or their strange pistols that looked more like brass knuckles than something that could be fired. The tiny things held twenty-four shots, and while they didn't carry enough punch to take down a charging bear, they would kill a person easily.

Jayla readied hers nervously and fanned out with the other soldiers of the squad.

Wolfgang and Leah spent the next rainy day in an abandoned ski tram station, staying dry, eating as little as possible, and leaving their canteens outside to refill. They found a bucket and caught water in it and used that for drinking and washing.

They also tried to sleep.

At night and in a heavy downpour, they left the building and hiked alongside a muddy ski run. At times they could see cliffs to their left, and they moved slowly, not wanting to slide down the hill and over an edge.

The slope lessened, and Wolfgang thought they were probably past the cliff. Feeling too exposed on the ski run, he set off into the cover of trees, moving downward. He tried to remember what he could of the map, but he hadn't been focusing on the part of it that covered the area they hiked in now. They would just have to wing it.

There were small villages along the line of the Alps, and Wolfgang thought that they could enter one of them quietly and try to blend in with the locals. They could ditch their uniforms for civilian clothes and any investigating aliens would be none the wiser.

When the terrain in the trees grew rough, they moved closer to the ski run, continuing to follow the main run off the hill, but when they reached the bottom, where the chair lift station stood abandoned, Wolfgang realized his mistake.

The ski run made a large C shape, looping back toward Neuschwanstein. They could see the castle looming over them and hear the whine of engines from an alien aircraft.

"Run," he cried, but Leah had already started running, heading for a strip of trees in the direction of the castle and the aliens. She had only heard the engines, not seen where they were, and now she ran in the wrong direction. Wolfgang hesitated, torn between following after her and running for his life in the direction they should be heading, back up the ski run and into the cover of the trees on the other side.

He followed after Leah.

The Hrwang were searching for a needle in a haystack and weren't even certain the needle existed. Jayla was grateful she hadn't discovered the bodies of the two human soldiers, a man and a woman, after the Hrwang lightning had killed them. She had looked at their bodies, but she'd had time to prepare herself mentally to view death. The lightning had fried their skins, blackening it and making them unrecognizable. She turned away immediately.

Gerrel and the other squad leaders remained convinced that there had been two snipers. They'd only found one rifle with the dead pair, so now everyone searched the forests surrounding Neuschwanstein. The Hrwang fanned out farther and wider, covering an impossibly large swath of territory, most of it the rugged foothills of the Alps.

On the second night of searching, she and Gerrel found themselves combing through a copse of trees at the bottom of a ski resort, still in the shadow of the fairy tale castle perched up on a rock behind them.

The night was so dark, the rain so heavy, that Jayla knew she would miss an elephant if it were ten feet from her and not moving. The continued search felt foolish. If there really had been two snipers, then the second one was long gone from here. Even if they could only make three miles an hour, it had been over twenty-four hours since the shooting, so they could be almost seventy-five miles away.

She grinned to herself as she threw the bs flag on that play. No one could make seventy-five miles on foot in one day. The Hrwang were probably better at estimating how far a person could travel than she was, and they were bracketing a long and a short range, searching everywhere in between.

Gerrel's no dummy, she reminded herself, and she returned to searching, which really just entailed walking along in the woods getting drenched. Gerrel was about ten yards to her left and the next closest team was several hundred yards past him, farther left. She didn't know where the rest of the squad searched.

She came across a dry stream bed and she stopped in the middle of it, peering in the darkness in both directions. The Hrwang hadn't even issued them flashlights. Hopeless.

Then she heard a crashing through the trees and a woman came running out of them, straight toward her, colliding into her and knocking her down. The woman fell on top of Jayla and the two looked at each other's faces in horror, each knowing that she was about to die. The woman stood up as Jayla heard more shouting and running.

In the darkness and torrential downpour, she could just make out a man running out of the trees from where the woman had come. He stopped at the edge and yelled at the woman in a foreign language. There was a shot, and the man crumpled to the ground.

The woman screamed.

