Battleship

OAHU

Vera Lynch exited Interstate H-1 and guided her minivan onto Route 92, also known as the Nimitz Highway. She’d rather not have left her parents alone while they were watching all the news reports about the worldwide insanity, but she really didn’t have a choice. She had a PTA meeting that evening and, what with being the recording secretary, there was simply no way she could not be there.

The PTA. People around the globe are being hammered by debris from some shattered space station or whatever the hell they think it is, and we’re busy getting worked up about bake sales.

Still, the simple fact was that life goes on in all its massive trivialities, even if people a continent away are dying.

Her twin boys were in the back, buckled into their booster seats. Emmett, the older by ten minutes, was pushing against the restraining straps. Walsh, the younger, had fallen soundly asleep, which was something of a relief. It was always easier to handle the twins when one of them was unconscious. She was grateful for the fact that her father never tired of playing with the boys and he’d managed to wear Walsh out completely. Emmett, by contrast, seemed to be an endless fount of energy. I wish I had that much.

They drove past the Pearl Harbor shipyards. From where she was, she could see that the harbor was empty of vessels save for the docked Missouri and some utility boats. It made her wonder briefly how Walter’s ship was doing during the war games. Putting some of her random thoughts together, she suddenly worried that a piece of space debris might have fallen on the John Paul Jones. As quickly as she could, she dismissed the notion. If anyone was in a position to elude damage as a result of debris, it would be Walter. (Why do they call him “Beast” anyway? Stupid nickname. The sweetest man in the world.)

Certainly the John Paul Jones’s radar would detect any incoming objects long before they got there, and Walter’s engines would immediately steer the vessel to safety. The most they’d have to deal with would be a big splash when it came down.

“I really have to go,” Emmett piped up suddenly. He was holding a juice box and sucked on the straw, which produced a hollow sound to indicate that it was empty. “I mean, I might go in this juice box.”

“That’s nasty,” said Vera in her brisk, “we are not amused” voice—even though secretly she kind of was. “You’ll hold it.”

He fidgeted in his seat. “I’m gonna need a second juice box once I get started.”

She saw that traffic was slowing in front of her. Probably tourists clogging up the arteries because they were heading to the Missouri to check it out. Freaking tourists. She decided to exit off 92 and seek an alternate route through the surface streets.

That was when she perceived a distant, humming sound. She’d never heard anything quite like it before. It wasn’t the whistling sound of a bomb being dropped, something she’d never actually experienced but had certainly heard enough times in movies. Instead it sounded more concentrated, like a swarm of angry bees. But not even quite that. It was different, and disturbing, and it was getting louder.

She glanced around to make sure the windows were rolled up. If it was some sort of insects, she sure didn’t want the damned things in the van. As she guided the car under an overpass, Emmett suddenly shrieked, “Mom!” and pointed. Normally when Emmett felt the need to draw her attention to something, she never looked, because it meant taking her eyes off the highway and it was invariably something fairly inane, like a billboard announcing some new television program. But there was such confusion and fear in his voice that her head snapped around to see what he was indicating.

There were two bizarre metal spheres heading in their direction.

They were tearing down 92 right above them, smashing through the traffic as if it was nothing. They tore the tops off vans, knocked cars aside, and the air was alive with a combination of the humming of the spheres, the shrieking and wrenching of metal and the screams of the people.

One of the spheres angled downward and smashed into the overpass just as the minivan was about to drive under it. Vera screamed and slammed her foot on the gas, correctly intuiting that if she hit the brakes, the van would have skidded to a halt right under the overpass. The speed limit sign indicated that maximum speed in exiting should be twenty miles per hour. The minivan leaped to fifty, springing forward like a vaulting puma, and tore along the off-ramp just as the overpass blew apart from the impact of the sphere. Debris rained down—huge chunks of concrete—and one of them ricocheted off the rear of the van, surely creating a big dent but otherwise leaving them unscathed. The overpass collapsed and, to Vera’s horror, a Ford 4×4 tumbled with it. The last thing she saw was the terrified expression of the driver, an old man, visible through the windshield of his vehicle before more debris crashed down upon him and obliterated him from her sight.

Emmett was howling in fear, great wracking sobs seizing him and tears rolling down his face. “Ma! Ma! I peed my pants! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“It’s all right, honey! It’s all right!”

“Don’t be mad!”

“I’m not mad, it’s all right!”

She kept shouting it over and over, like a mantra, as the van sped away from the site of the wreckage. For an instant she thought about jumping out, about trying to help, but all she cared about at that moment was getting her two sons away from the scene of devastation and death. Maybe it makes me a bad person, but at least I’m a good mother.

The van sped away in one direction while the metal spheres went in the other, obviously unconcerned with the damage they’d already done, and clearly prepared to do more. Emmett’s mortified howling continued and Vera kept saying soothing words to make it clear to him that she really didn’t give a damn that he’d lost bladder control. Truth to tell, she’d almost done so herself. But she didn’t feel that this was the time to share that particular piece of information.

Meanwhile Walsh the imperturbable snored peacefully, dreaming about his recent visit with grandpa.

There was an old Hawaiian legend about an angry and frustrated woman who complained about the brutality of her husband, whose cruelty was—by her description—as sharp as the edge of cutting bamboo. The eventual fate of the husband and wife were unknown. Perhaps he had tossed her into a volcano; perhaps she had stabbed him to death in his sleep with a spear fashioned of bamboo. Either way, her unhappiness had achieved a sort of immortality in the naming of Kaneohe Bay, since Kaneohe (or Kane’ohe, as it was more properly spelled) meant “bamboo man.”

One of the more notable residents of Kaneohe Bay was the Marine Corps Base (MCB) Hawaii. MCB Hawaii maintained key operations, training, and support facilities and provided services that were essential for the readiness and global projection of ground combat forces and aviation units, and the well-being, morale, and safety of military personnel, their families, and the civilian workforce. They managed installations and natural resources situated on a total of forty-five hundred acres throughout the island of Oahu, including Camp Smith, Marine Corps Training Area Bellows, Manana Family Housing Area, Pearl City Warehouse Annex, Puuoloa Range Complex, and of course Kaneohe Bay.

The MCB was under high alert because of what was transpiring globally, but no one could have been prepared for what was about to happen.

Sirens sounded throughout the MCB as unknown, incoming objects showed up on the tracking instruments. Marines immediately scrambled, charging out of hangars, off drill fields, everywhere and anywhere, to defend the base.

Within seconds the twin metal spheres tore through MCB Hawaii. Initially they zeroed in on the airfield, ripping through helicopters and airplanes as if they were wet tissue paper. Huge pieces of metal were sent hurtling in all directions and the first thing the Marines needed to do was fall back, take shelter, lest they wind up being gutted or beheaded by flying shards. As soon as they managed to find cover, they then opened fire with their rifles and guns upon the spheres.

It proved to be ineffectual. For the most part the spheres were simply too fast. It would have been impossible to get a bead on them with anything short of computer tracking, and even then it would have been challenging. A few shots did strike them, more by luck than anything else, but all that happened was the bullets pinged off them without inflicting the slightest bit of damage.

Once every vehicle that could potentially have gone airborne was reduced to nothing but scraps of twisted metal, the spheres headed for the weapons depot. Seconds later the base was wracked with explosions. The air became thick with vast plumes of black smoke, and fire crackled through the MCB. And as the Marines struggled to find ways of containing it, the spheres—as if their assault had barely been worthy of their time—hurtled away, heading for Camp Smith and anywhere else that seemed as if it could provide even the slightest airborne military threat.

From the deck of the Missouri, populated mostly by tourists, old salts, and a grizzled gunner, they could see smoke rising in the distance from the MCB.

There had been no Japanese aircraft, no howling of bombs or staccato assault of bullets from diving Zeroes. Nevertheless the parallels to times long past were unmistakable. Men who were in their eighties now remembered being brand-spanking-new recruits, thrilled to be assigned to Pearl Harbor, only to wind up witnessing firsthand the assault that wound up waking the sleeping giant and sending the United States howling for payback into World War II.

They were seeing history repeating itself, and within their hearts, sleeping giants roared to life once more.

The wind was blowing steadily east. Sam and her client, Mick, were climbing up the hill, going west, and as a consequence didn’t see any of it. Sam did catch, briefly, the faint whiff of something burning. But she heard no trees crackling, no indication of anything on fire. And then, with a slight shift of the wind, the smell was gone, and she chalked it up to somebody barbequing around a campfire somewhere.

The shirt she was wearing under her light jacket was thick with sweat as she walked along a dirt road. It was an access road, probably to accommodate park rangers, and so wider and a bit easier to maneuver. She needed it since she was starting to have trouble keeping her footing on the uncertain side paths, plus she was still worried that Mick might stumble and fall. She was certain he could physically withstand any bumps and bruises he might incur, but she didn’t want his ego to take a battering.

She needn’t have worried, though. His confidence seemed to be growing with every step. Plus, she realized, he might actually be having an easier time of it in some respects because her heart had to push blood throughout her entire body. Since his legs were truncated, there could well be less strain on his system than there was on hers. “You sure can climb the hell out of a mountain,” she said.

“This is not a mountain,” he said disdainfully.

“It’s more of a mountain than that chair you had your ass parked in this morning when I found you.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You got a little attitude on you there, Miss Admiral’s Daughter.”

“I don’t have an attitude.” She reached down, picked up a large rock that was in her path and tossed it to the side of the road. “I’m just not real big on strong, competent men not living up to their potential.”

Mick snorted at that. “You talking about me or the part-time fiancé that’s got that vein on the top of your forehead going like a freight train?”

His casual reply annoyed the hell out of her, mostly because she despised the notion that she was that easy to read. In point of fact she had indeed been concerned about, and fretting over, Hopper. She just hadn’t thought that it was so obvious.

Sam was about to tell him that her personal life was none of his damned business. Her job was to make sure he pulled his head out of his ass and made proper use of those extremely expensive legs taxpayer dollars had bought for him. Considering he’d spent the past months alternating between feeling sorry for himself and taking out his anger on physical therapists who were just trying to help him, he hardly had license to be judgmental about Hopper. It was high time he started getting his act together. She was prepared to unload this and more on him, but all of that vanished from her mind when something hurtled past just overhead, with an ear-splitting howl that reminded her of the old stories about banshees her grandmother used to tell her. When you hear the howl of the banshee, death is near. It froze her for a moment, and then the ground beneath her feet vibrated violently in response to whatever the hell it was that had shot past right over their heads, flying so low that it created a massive suction in its wake. Branches, stones, and dirt were all yanked into the air after it, and Sam and Mick—taking refuge behind some large trees—barely managed to avoid being hauled up along with all the detritus.

Seconds later the noise and jet wash subsided. Sam’s hair was completely askew and she made vague attempts to tamp it back into place, having little to no luck. “What the hell was that?” she said.

“No idea.”

“A low-flying jet? Something from the MCB at K-Bay?” That made no sense to her, though. Why would a jet be flying that low? It was insanely unsafe for both the pilot and anyone who might be in the area.

She knew there was a ridge nearby that would provide them a view of the base. It wasn’t terribly likely that they’d get any answers from this distance, but at least they’d be able to see if fighters were scrambling. Sam clambered toward the ridge, Mick right behind her. No words were exchanged between them as they made their way up to the vantage point: a few minutes later they were staring down in astonishment toward the distant base.

They couldn’t make out a damned thing. The entire base was blocked by black smoke, blowing away from the ridge.

“What’s going on down there?” she said.

“Don’t know. Fire, maybe.”

“Fire definitely. But what caused it? Maybe we should go down and—”

“And what? Put it out? I left my fire truck in my other pants.”

She nodded, silently acknowledging the absurdity of the notion. A couple of additional bodies weren’t going to do any good down there. The base was filled with marines who were trained to handle any situation. They didn’t need a civilian and a soldier with a couple of artificial legs inserting themselves into the middle of it.

So they returned to the road they’d been hiking and continued on their path. The conversation between them became somewhat muted as they speculated on the cause of the fire at the base, wondering if that was somehow connected with the unseen jet that had hurtled past them at a dangerously low altitude.

Then they heard the sound of tires coming up the dirt path and they moved to one side, giving way, assuming it was some sort of official vehicle heading toward them. They turned out to be correct, as a police Jeep Wrangler cruised up quickly behind them and then pulled over.

There was a cop at the wheel who looked like he’d grown up watching reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger, and had modeled himself on them accordingly. Armed to the teeth, he had a name tag that read “Blake.” He looked at Sam and Mick as if they had no business being there.

“You’re going to need to get off the mountain and find cover,” he said brusquely. He acted as if he was irritated that he needed to take the time to tell them this. “The roads are cut off and we’re evacuating the area.”

“What’s happening?” said Sam.

Mick pointed toward the sky. “Something just did a flyby. Does this have anything to do with—?”

The cop didn’t even let him complete the sentence. “The island is under attack.”

They were stunned into silence for a moment. “From who?” Mick finally managed to say.

“We don’t know for sure. They’ve taken out the Marine base. Some people are…” He paused, looking for all the world as if he felt he was insane even for thinking the next words. “… using the word ‘alien.’”

“Alien?” Mick didn’t understand. “You mean, like… Mexicans?”

Sam didn’t know if she should feel more sorry for Mick or for the cop. She couldn’t keep the skepticism from her voice. “I think he means like little green men from outer space.”

Mick snorted at that. “Oh, well, that’s not so bad, then. I mean, when they start giving me rectal probes, maybe they can check my prostate while they’re up there.”

“I’m glad you think this is some sort of big joke,” said Blake. “Meanwhile the Navy’s engaging off the coast—”

“Wait… what?” Oh my God… Hopper… Stone… Dad…

As Sam tried to reorient herself around the bombshell that the cop had dropped on her, another Jeep came skidding to a hard stop behind Blake’s. There were three cops in that one. Two cops, with name tags indicating they were Officers Burns and Strodel, were in the front. A third, Kline, was crunched in the back. He hopped out and came around to the Jeep that Blake was driving, hopping into the passenger’s side. He was carrying a shotgun and chambered it meaningfully as he climbed in. It wasn’t a gesture meant to be threatening to Sam or Mick; instead he was simply preparing for whatever it was that lay up the road.

Sam was still working on processing what Blake had told her. “The Navy? What do you mean ‘the Navy’? Which ship?” She had her cell phone in her hand but wasn’t getting any signal. The bars were flatlined. Piece of crap phone. “Please, can I use your phone? I need to make a call.”

Blake shook his head. “No service. Phones, radios, everything is dead. Miss,” and he was clearly at the last of his patience, “we need you both off the mountain. Now.”

“Okay, well,” Mick said, “can you give us a ride down to—?”

The only response the cops provided was to shift the Jeeps into gear. Seconds later both of them raced up the road, leaving Sam and Mick in a cloud of dust.

“Well, I feel so much safer now,” said Mick. Then, realizing where Sam’s head must be at, he turned to her and said, “I’m sure semi-fiancé is just fine—”

She put up a hand, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “Mick, could you just… not. Right now. Just not.”

“Right. Okay.” He actually sounded borderline contrite.

She needed a few moments to compose herself. It was one thing if she’d known in advance that Hopper was being deployed to an active war zone. She would have had time to mentally prepare for that and hope for the best. But this had caught her flat-footed. It was just supposed to be war games. Now all of a sudden they were… What? Battling alien invaders? She was suddenly feeling nostalgic for when the biggest problem they had was that Hopper was looking at a court-martial. My God, what’s going to happen next?

The thought barely had time to cross her mind when there was a hellacious noise from where the cops had gone. The screaming of human voices was combined with the screaming of metal, becoming one huge cacophony of destruction.

Every bit of common sense would have dictated that Sam run in the opposite direction. Instead she ran toward the source of the upheaval, Mick doing his damnedest to keep up with her. The road curved to the right and suddenly a hand clamped onto her shoulder. She was about to let out a yelp when another covered her mouth and turned her violently around.

It was Mick, and the perpetual look of annoyance was gone, replaced with total focus on Sam’s safety, not to mention his own. It was easy for her to forget that this was a trained soldier, a man who had been dropped into the middle of life and death situations and come through them… well, alive, if not in one piece.

He dragged her to the side of the road and whispered fiercely in her ear, “Are you stupid or something? Little Miss Admiral’s Daughter should know better than to go running into the middle of a fight without a clear idea of what she’s getting into. Now stay behind me, got that?”

She nodded, her eyes wide. Slowly he removed his hand from her mouth. She looked up at him and said quietly, “You caught up with me. That’s… wow.”

“Yeah, well, stopping someone from doing something incredibly idiotic can be a huge incentive.” Then he put a finger to his lips to indicate they should stop talking. He moved slowly down the road, Sam following behind him.

Unfortunately stealth was a slight problem because the servos in Mick’s legs continued to whir softly. He winced visibly at the noise and endeavored to keep his legs as straight as possible. If he didn’t move his knees, then the noise was minimal.

Having taken the lead, he made his way to the bend in the road, gesturing for her to stay back and keep her mouth shut. Whatever the hell had caused the ruckus was gone, but Mick was determined not to run headlong into an unknown situation. Mentally Sam scolded herself; she should have known better and, if he ever heard about it, her father would have something to say.

Assuming he’s all right.

Mick peered around the corner, minimizing his own exposure, and then he turned to Sam, looking utterly shaken. He gestured for her to join him, and she did. When she saw what he was looking at, her jaw dropped in astonishment.

One of the Jeeps was lying on its side. The other had been ripped into a grotesque shape, little more than shredded pieces of metal that wouldn’t have been recognizable as a vehicle if there weren’t tires lying on the road. There were no signs of human bodies in either of the vehicles.

She saw a large branch of some sort lying on the road, and it was only when she spotted blood seeping from it that she realized it was a human arm. There was a leg nearby, and a piece of a torso—not even the whole thing—that had the name tag “Blake” still attached to it.

For a moment she forgot where she was, forgot everything except the horror of what she was seeing. Reflexively she opened her mouth to scream, but Mick heard the sharp intake of air and fortunately turned fast enough that he could once again clap a hand over her mouth. He pulled her to the ground behind a tree in order to get out of the sight line of whatever it was that had done this, especially if it was still around. Sam screamed nevertheless, but it was severely muffled by his hand. “Shut up!” he hissed into her ear.

She breathed heavily. Again. Her eyes were still wide with terror, but she managed enough of a nod that he slowly removed his hand from her mouth.

“What… what the hell did this?” she said. Speaking too loudly wasn’t a problem; she could barely get any words out at all.

“I have no idea.”

Then something stepped into view, something that—although Sam could not have known it—was of the same race as the creature that Hopper had seen standing atop a vessel three hundred miles away.

The alien being was studying the dead police officers—or the remains of them—with what seemed to be a clinical detachment, as if trying to figure out how they had fit together in the first place before they’d been butchered.

Then, slowly, its attention turned toward Sam and Mick’s hiding place.

At which point, Sam completely lost it.

Her body began to convulse and Mick had no choice but to cover her mouth again. In fact, he had to do more, because her impulse was to scramble to her feet and run like hell. Such a move would have been suicide. She didn’t dare draw that degree of attention to herself.

But it was as if Sam had completely lost control. She was trembling violently, her eyes were bugging out of her skull, and tears were pouring down her face. It wasn’t just her own safety that was tilting her into the throes of hysteria. It was the realization that the absurd claims the cop had been making were true, and that Hopper was facing a completely unknown enemy that, for all she knew, had already killed him and everyone on his vessel.

She tried to tear away from Mick but he only held her closer. He said, “Shhhh,” into her ear, and that noise was enough to cause the alien’s head to whip around and look in their direction again.

Mick quickly wrapped an arm under her chin with the crook of his elbow over the midline of her neck. Then he pinched the arm together and Sam suddenly felt dizzy, as if something had shut off the flow of blood to her brain. And she blacked out.

She came to some time later, jolted awake by the deafening sound of something else flying low overhead. Sam looked up and saw a vessel that was unlike any air vehicle she’d ever seen. It was huge, and appeared to be composed of two sections. The upper one was long, wide, and flat, like the top of an aircraft carrier. There didn’t appear to be anything atop it, although she couldn’t be sure from this angle. But the front was open, as was the back, allowing for the possibility of smaller vessels flying into and out of it. The lower section, the underside, was two-thirds the length of the upper, deeper than it and with what appeared to be a series of oversized clamps running along either side.

She was still in the exact same place that she’d been in when she’d passed out.

The alien was gone. So was Mick.

She felt a resurgence of the panic that had seized her earlier. Convinced she was alone, Sam had never been more terrified in her life. Then she heard soft movement from up ahead, and for a moment she came close to freaking out again before she heard the telltale sounds of Mick’s hydraulics. Sure enough, there he came around the bend. He looked stunned, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen.

So distracted was he that he nearly stumbled over Sam, who was just now sitting up. He crouched in front of her, his eyes flickering with concern. “Are you all ri— ow!” The last was a result of the fact that she’d just punched him in the solar plexus. Not hard, but enough to get a startled exclamation out of him.

“You put a sleeper hold on me?” she demanded. “You dick!” With no sign of the alien and Mick now speaking in a normal tone, she wasn’t attempting to keep her voice down. “You could’ve killed me if you hadn’t done the hold correctly!”

“Yeah, I know.” He didn’t seem particularly concerned over her ire, although he was rubbing where she’d struck him. “Because I’ve used it to kill people. So I know how to do it right and I know how to do it dead. Which is what we would’ve been, thanks to the Predator over there, if I hadn’t done something to shut you up. You okay now?”

She nodded, although doing so made her neck sore. “What happened after you—?”

“Dropped you like a bad habit? Well, he was looking right where we were hiding, and he took a couple of steps toward us, and then suddenly that ship showed up and he lost interest. I guess he had bigger fish to fry.”

“Or bigger planets.” The entire thing seemed demented; she felt like she was running to catch up with events as they were unfolding, except she was on a treadmill, getting nowhere fast while the world sped along without her. “Where did you go?”

“I followed him. He seemed pretty distracted by the new arrival. I saw others like him, setting up some kind of… I don’t know what it was.”

“But… what are they?”

“You mean our new pals? I have no idea.”

“What are they doing?”

“If I had to guess… considering that they seemed to be setting up shop with some kind of satellite dishes ahead a ways… they’re building something.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Everyone? You mean our armed forces? Our Navy, who’s out fighting them in the ocean? Our marines, who just got the crap blown out of their nearby bases? Gee… I don’t know.”

“Where’s my father? Where’s Hopper?” Tears, uncontrolled, started running down her cheeks.

Mick was clearly running out of patience. “Stop,” he said firmly, and there seemed a chance that he might wind up knocking her unconscious again if she didn’t get ahold of herself. She gulped deeply and snuffled a few times, doing the best she could.

“Mick?”

“What?”

“Am I dreaming?”

His face softened, but only a little. “I don’t think so. I know I’m not, because I know that when I’m dreaming about gorgeous women, there’s no scary aliens around.” Despite the seriousness of the situation, that last comment actually made her smile slightly. “Can you pull it together, Sam? Can you?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m okay.”

She got to her feet, dusting herself off. Almost as an afterthought, she said, “Thanks for saving my ass, by the way. I shouldn’t have lost it like that.”

“I’ve seen professional soldiers lose it over far less. And you’re welcome.” He glanced in the direction of the Jeep. “We’re gonna get some guns.”

Sam looked at Mick and realized what he was talking about. The prospect of going over to the scene of such carnage, getting within range of those severed body parts… It wasn’t as if they could hurt her, but still…

She shook her head. “No. I can’t.”

“You can.” He pushed her firmly toward the still drivable Jeep. “Move. You’ll thank me if you’re holding a weapon when something jumps out at us.”

Steeling herself, she stayed beside him as they crept toward the site of the destruction. She tried to ignore the blood that was seeping everywhere and stepped carefully around a stream of it that was staining the dirt dark red.

Mick made it to the nearest Jeep. It had been torn to pieces, but Mick could still access the backseat, where a shotgun was sticking out. He gripped it by the barrel, standing clear of the business end just in case, and slowly extracted it from the vehicle. He looked it over carefully to make sure that nothing was bent, which Sam thought was a smart idea. The last thing they needed was to have the thing blowing up in their faces if they had to use—

Suddenly there was a crashing sound and a streak of movement in the brush nearby. Mick spun, training the shotgun, ready to open fire on what Sam was certain would be an oncoming alien. We were idiots to come out into the open like this, oh my God, we’re going to die…

And then a dark-haired, bearded man staggered out of the thick brush, covered in dirt and sweat. He took one look at the gun, and the man who was holding it, and let out a terrified shriek. He put his hands up in the air.

“Don’t shoot! Are you trying to get away? If you’re leaving, take me with you!”

“Why should we?” Mick kept the gun level. “How do we know you’re not one of them? This could be one of those Body Snatchers deals.”

“I swear to you, I’m not!”

Mick paused and then said challengingly, “What’s your favorite football team?”

“What?” The man blinked and then said, “I’m… I’m not into football, really.”

Mick chambered a round.

His voice going up an octave, the man cried out, “I like baseball, though!”

“Which team?”

“The Cubs!”

Mick took this in and then lowered the rifle. “He’s legit. An alien conqueror would have said the Yankees.”

Sam wasn’t entirely sure she understood the reasoning, but it seemed to satisfy Mick, and he was the one with the field experience. “Who are you?” she asked the stranger.

“I’m Calvin Zapata. Doctor Calvin Zapata. We…” He tried to wipe the dirt from his face and only succeeded in smearing it around some more. “We sent out a beacon. To contact intelligent life in deep space. We monitor it from an outpost on top of the mountain.”

It took Sam a few moments to fully process what Zapata was saying to her, and when she did, her eyes widened in shock. “So you invited them here?”

He started to nod but then quickly shook his head. “Not me. Them. Others. I mean, yes, I work for the Project, but I tried to tell them this could happen. The program really just hoped that if we ever made contact, they were going to be…”

“Nice?” said Mick.

Zapata nodded.

“Yeah, well,” and he nodded toward the remains of the police officers. “They’re not.”

Understatement of the year, thought Sam.