Final Assault (10 page)

Franklin had sworn that people would be safe in the cities. But Cross had done some checking after Portia’s plea to the Project that morning. Even her best-case scenario wasn’t quite accurate.

The factories making the nanorescuers were working at full capacity, but they weren’t producing the numbers needed. The other factories that were coming on-line in the next few days would help, but they wouldn’t get up to full speed right away. It was going to take luck to provide enough nanorescuers to cover every major city, its suburbs, and the twenty-mile radius around that.

He ran a hand through his hair and looked at his new, sterile office. He longed to go outside and listen to the people on the street. He wanted to know if anyone else had figured out what Portia caught so quickly in the meeting that morning: that the president was saying that most of the planet would be undefended. The cities combined were only a small area. The rest of the planet, from the rain forests to the veldts, would be unprotected.

And then there was the issue of the current unrest. Franklin purposely hadn’t touched on the U.S. response, but Cross had been hearing the announcements all afternoon. The president had declared martial law and he hadn’t been the only leader to do so. For the first time in Cross’s lifetime, most of the governments around the world had declared martial law. Freedoms that most Americans—most of the civilized world—took for granted had suddenly disappeared.

If the world survived—and Cross had to believe it would—it would come out of this battle a place he no longer recognized.

He pushed away from the door and walked to his desk. So much work and so many decisions. He was still in the center of it all. In fact, he was probably more in the center than he had been since the first attack.

Maddox had done him a favor. She had given him control again. She had trusted him more than she had let on.

He hoped he was worthy of the trust. He was going into this tired and stressed, and worried that no matter what they all did, the aliens would have some surprises that they couldn’t plan for.

It was his job to make sure there were no surprises.

He would do all he could.

At least Britt was nearby.

A dinner of Spam and canned tuna was worth suffering through if he had Britt across from him. He smiled. In fact, all of this was worthwhile as long as Britt was at his side.

October 12, 2018
5:18 p.m. Central Daylight Time

29 Days Until Second Harvest

Kara Willis hung up and put her hand over her wrist’puter. She wanted to keep talking to her father, but knew that it would be better to wait in silence. Let him drive. Let him get here.

She sat on a rusted swing in Rogers School Park. A breeze from nearby Lake Michigan caught her, bringing the scents of fish and brine. Still, that was better than the smoke she’d been smelling all day.

The park was mostly empty, although the bundles of garbage and the remains of campfires showed her that a lot of people had slept here the night before. She suspected they would do the same thing tonight.

She didn’t want to be here when they did.

Kara had managed to walk here, nearly to Evanston, dodging looters and rioters along the way. The day had been difficult. She was tired and sore from sleeping on the ground; her feet hurt because she was wearing the wrong shoes; and she was incredibly hungry.

She had found water fountains along the way, especially in the parks near the lake. Fortunately the fountains hadn’t been turned off for the winter yet. At the first one, she drank and drank and drank, thinking she would never get her fill.

But water wasn’t a great substitute for food, and her stomach ached. She had never gone without eating this long before—and she had certainly never walked this much before.

She had made it to Rogers Park just south of Evanston before she decided to call her father again. He said that he probably could get that close to the city and that she should stay put and wait for him. Watch the president’s speech, he said.

Kara hadn’t known the president was going to make a speech. She didn’t know if she cared about it either. But she had a choice between watching the speech and counting the seconds until her father arrived, so she turned on the video/audio on her wrist’puter and watched as best she could.

A few blocks away where Rogers met Ridge, she could hear screaming and more breaking glass. She had thought all the glass in the city had been destroyed by now, but she had been wrong. Gunshots echoed and she noticed that she had stopped cringing. She was actually getting used to them.

She noted all of that during the speech, and yet she found herself involved in the president’s words. Not enough to get up and tell those crazy people a few blocks away to settle down. But enough to hope that they would listen and look toward the skies.

The president believed they could win. He knew more than she did. She hoped he was right.

When her father picked her up, she really didn’t want to look in his eyes and see that hopelessness, that sorrow that he had even brought her into the world. She couldn’t face any more despair.

When the president finished, she realized that the entire neighborhood was silent. Did everyone else hear him? Or were other people coming out now, telling the rioters that it was over, that they had a job to do?

She didn’t know.

But things were slowing down around her.

Then she heard some more breaking glass, and a loud male laugh that sounded out of control or drunk and she realized that the people on the street hadn’t all gotten the word.

With shaking fingers, she had dialed her father again. And this time, she caught him on the road. He was taking back streets, he told her, and it would take longer than usual, but he would be able to pick her up. She warned him about the noises at Rogers and Ridge, assured him that she was safe, and hung up.

And ever since, she had been rocking back and forth on the swing. She would look at the sky—deceptively blue and pretty above her—and the lake, also blue and pretty on this sunny October evening.

When she was little, her parents had taken her on a Great Lakes cruise, and they had stayed at a hotel on Mackinac Island. She had taken a bike ride around the island, fascinated that people lived there, stunned that the only way off was by boat or small plane. She had wondered how people had allowed themselves to be trapped like that.

She hadn’t realized, until yesterday, that Earth was an island, too. If someone wanted to hurt the Earth, she couldn’t leave it. She didn’t have the power.

She was trapped here.

She sighed and clutched the rusted chain of the swing. The president said that they would survive. They were in a city; they would be safe. He had promised.

But, a few months ago, he had said that the attack on the tenth planet was a victory. That had felt like a promise, too. One he had failed to keep.

She wrapped her hands around the chain, feeling the cold metal dig into her skin. The breeze off the lake felt good. It tickled her face and caressed her skin.

A gunshot echoed off a nearby building. The sound was close, but not that close.

Yet.

Her father would be here soon. She could hang on until he arrived.

She glanced at the lake again, and then at the sky. She believed her father would come, no matter what the odds. She believed he had the power to save her.

She had to have that same kind of belief about the president. He knew more about what was happening than she did. He said he had hope.

She had to believe him.

November 9, 2018 4:23 Universal Time

1 Day Until Second Harvest

Commander Cicoi clung to his command post, his upper tentacles flat on the controls. He had changed the view shown through the walls of the warship. Instead of magnifying the target, it showed the actual space around them.

The third planet was a small bright ball in space. They were headed directly toward it. The blue-and-white planet seemed so harmless from this distance, yet thinking of it made Cicoi’s eyestalks quiver.

He had no idea what the creatures of the third planet planned this time. As the ships traveled, he had asked his command staff to come up with suggestions. They had used information gathered from past harvest Passes about the nature of the creatures.

As primitives, the creatures had been aggressive and inventive, once burning an entire small section of their own planet instead of allowing the Malmurian harvest on its Second Pass. In those days, long ago, the creatures had been willing to destroy their own home rather than let anyone else do so.

Cicoi wondered if they would do that again. Only this time the creatures had developed into a space-faring society. Would they think to destroy the entire planet so that the Malmuria would not get food?

The attack on Malmur suggested that the creatures were still aggressive. And not willing to give up easily. Cicoi wished he had the luxury of unlimited energy. If he did, he would bring the creatures to submission first and then harvest the planet.

But he did not have that luxury, and so he had to follow a carefully ordered plan.

The Commanders of the North and Center would move their ships to their assigned positions. Center would harvest one location in the third planet’s northern hemisphere, while North and Cicoi would harvest two different locations in the southern hemisphere.

These locations had no creature population centers. Cicoi believed that to be a mistake.

Still reviewing decisions already made?

The whisper inside Cicoi’s mind belonged to the Elder. Cicoi hated the way the Elder slipped inside him and heard his innermost thoughts. Cicoi had learned, on this trip, to answer the Elder silently. The first few times he had spoken aloud and startled his own staff.

I believe we must attack the creatures first,
Cicoi thought. His upper tentacles floated slightly in his distress. He had to work to bring them down.

He did not see the Elder, but that meant nothing. The Elder often camouflaged his dark ghostly shape against the blackness of space.

They will expect that. We must take food first.

We have two other harvests on this Pass. We can take food after we subdue them.

You have never fought a war
, the Elder said.
The greatest weapon is surprise.

How can we surprise creatures we do not understand?

Cicoi felt an amusement not his own touch him.
We understand them. You have been analyzing them. We have observed them for many Passes now. We know what they are.

Yet they managed to surprise us,
Cicoi thought.

Because they developed rapidly during your last sleep. We had not expected that. But they are still the same creatures. Only their technology differs.

I hope you ’re right
, Cicoi thought.

But you do not believe that I am.
The Elder floated in front of him, a darkness blotting the small blue-and-white planet at the cone of the ship.

What I believe does not matter
, Cicoi thought, pocketing all but two of his eyestalks in respect.
I will follow orders.
/
will complete our mission.

Food first.
The Elder moved closer to him.
Survival before all else. That is your strategy. Survival first. Revenge second.

You think I want revenge?

Don’t you?
The Elder’s thought was a cold one.
It is only natural.

And then he floated away.

Cicoi removed the eight eyestalks from their pockets and sent them in different positions so that he could monitor his staff. The Elder always unsettled him. He hated it. He wanted to feel in command of himself as well as the mission. He needed certainty now, not doubt.

Revenge. Cicoi turned his front four eyestalks toward the blue-and-white planet. The creatures—primitives not one sleep ago—had destroyed pods, ruined nestlings, hurt brood females. They had caused severe damage to Malmur, something he thought could never happen.

And they had prevented him from carrying out his duty as a Malmuria. They had destroyed so many of his people that he had to live with his failure instead of recycling his energy as he should do.

Perhaps he wanted revenge. But even more, he worried about another failure. His first had cost Malmur so much.

Maybe that was why the Elder was unsettling him, so that Cicoi would think along the correct track when he began the attack.

It would happen soon. The trip was almost over. And he had to make the right choices.

Survival first.

Revenge second.

But there would be revenge. Even the Elder had promised that.

November 9, 2018
10:23 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

1 Day Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross had a headache. And his stomach, filled with caffeine and the remains of the world’s greasiest burger, was making sounds of distress. He had a report on the aliens to finish and send to General Maddox, and he had a lot more information to collate. Then he had to oversee the last few hours of work in the Tenth Planet Project.