J.M. Dillard - War of Worlds: The Resurrection (42 page)

Deb giggled. "And thank
you,
Mr. Kensington."

Mrs. Pennyworth rose and began clearing away the empty dessert plates.

"Here." Deb rose, swallowing the last bit of pie. "I'll help you, Mrs. Pennyworth."

"What a kind girl." Mrs. Pennyworth winked at Suzanne. "I think she really wants to learn how to make that pie." The two of them carried stacks of dishes to the kitchen as Kensington went over to tend the fire.

Ironhorse, dressed as usual in fatigues, took a sip of his coffee. He had refused to join the other adults in a glass of champagne. "General Wilson is taking care of the Joint Military Forces Board of Inquiry," he said after Debi and Mrs. Pennyworth were well out of earshot. "I'm told—unofficially, of course—that the board is predisposed to lay all the blame on an unnamed terrorist organization."

Norton, next to the colonel, snickered and studied the fire through his champagne. "Actually, that's probably a whole lot closer to the truth than they'll ever realize."

Ironhorse nodded, and gazed into the fire.

Suzanne set her glass down on the table. "Well, I for one am glad this is all behind us." She turned to Harrison. "When this is all over, I'd like to continue to work with you—that is, if you still need a microbiologist. I figure there's a lot of analysis yet to be done on the aliens, and with Uncle Hank's help—"

Harrison regarded her with weary, bloodshot eyes. "What makes you think it's going to be over anytime soon?" His voice was soft, but there was a hostility beneath the surface that confused her.

She was a bit taken aback by his attitude. Somewhat stiffly, she replied, "Excuse me, but I seem to be laboring under the notion that destroying the three ships constituted a major victory. A number of aliens were killed—and now they won't be able to recover their weapons." She glanced at Ironhorse for support. "Isn't that right, Colonel?"

Ironhorse looked down into his coffee to avoid meeting her eyes. "There are an awful lot of barrels still missing. The army was never able to track down the tractor-trailer rig. I counted twenty people who boarded that ship, but there were more than three hundred barrels stolen from Jericho Valley."

"But they can't get to their ships or weapons now," Suzanne persisted as a cold sense of despair slowly began to settle over her, replacing her exuberance. "That was the real danger. And as soon as they contact their home planet again, we'll be able to find them and stop them for good."

"It's unlikely that the three ships warehoused at Nellis were the only three ships in existence," Harri-

son countered quietly. He took a swallow of his drink as if to draw courage from it for what he had to say.

"I know we're all tired, exhausted, ready for this thing to be over with. And I'm not asking anyone to stay." He stared into her eyes with a gaze so intense she wanted to look away. "God knows, we deserve to celebrate something. But—oh, hell, maybe I shouldn't talk about it now. I'm sorry. I'm ruining the party." He stared down into his champagne.

"You've already broken the mood," Suzanne said flatly, "so you may as well say what you were going to say."

He didn't look up. "All right. .." He sighed and squared Ms shoulders. "We already know 'the aliens are capable of inhabiting human bodies—the perfect cover, which allows them to roam freely, and makes them extremely dangerous. Plus there are probably other ships. And Jericho Valley wasn't the only place where the alien barrels were stored. There were lots of other places, other barrels."

Suzanne stared at him, aghast, unwilling to understand what she had just heard.

Harrison's lips stretched into a thin line as he waited for his words to sink in. "Clayton Forrester was not privy to most of the locations," he continued after a pause. "There aren't hundreds of barrels, Suzanne—there are hundreds of
thousands
of them, and we don't even know where they are. Most of the documents relating to their location have long since been destroyed." He drew a hand wearily across Ms eyes, then shook his head. "I'm sorry ... I wish it
were
over. But I'm afraid it's just beginning for us."

The room fell silent.

In the comfortingly dark recesses of the cavern, Xana regarded the other two members of the Advocacy with disdain. They had just received another message from the Mor-Tax Council, this one a stern, almost threatening message which berated them for their defeat and reminded them that the Earth had to be prepared in less than a year's time for the arrival of the colonists.

It was all bluff, and Xana knew it. The Council could not touch them from such a great distance, and if the Earth were not prepared when the colonists arrived, what would be done about it? They would not kill their own soldiers as punishment.

Of course, they might take action against the Advocacy, but Xana no longer cared... at least, not for the moment. She was still grieving over Xashron's death at the hands of his human enemies, and could not be bothered with concerns about her own safety.

Horek, the idiot, seemed surprised by the Council's anger. "We were told the humans were primitive, unintelligent creatures," he said, trying, as usual, to defend his mistakes. Always ready with twenty-seven excuses, that was Horek. "But they have proven themselves unexpectedly clever. And without our ships— "

"Enough of your whining, Horek!" she snapped. "With or without our ships we will find a way to defeat them. They may be clever, but their cleverness cannot save them. We will improvise."

"As long as we meet the deadline," Oshar remarked mildly.

"We have no choice," Xana replied heatedly. "Our fellow colonists are on their way. Earth will be prepared for them when they arrive."

And by the Power, she swore silently, it would, for in her sorrow she had but one thought: to find those humans responsible for Xashron's death, and to take her revenge on them.