Final Assault (3 page)

She had come up beside him and he caught a whiff of shampoo and coffee. “I heard about the riots.”

She sounded almost defensive. That meant she heard about them, but hadn’t paid much attention to the news. He understood: she had been using the telescopes to monitor the tenth planet. She’d been dealing up close and personal with the very cause of the riots—the launching of the alien ships.

“The riots are bad, aren’t they?” she said into his silence.

He shrugged. “They’re pretty isolated. The problem is that they’re unpredictable. An area is stable one minute and the next some kids or idiots or someone comes in and start looting stores. Edwin and I were forced onto several back roads to get here. That’s why it took longer than I expected.”

She blinked, then looked away, and he realized that she had even been too preoccupied to notice that he was late.

He took her into his arms and pulled her close. Her body felt frailer than it had even six months ago. This work was eating her from the inside. If he had been surviving on four hours sleep, she’d been surviving on two.

“I wish we could take one day,” he whispered into her hair.

She leaned into him. “I wish we didn’t have to think about the aliens at all. I wish we were back to the way we were two years ago, when I had to write proposals explaining to Congress why continuing to fund the telescopes was important.”

He put his finger under her chin and raised her head so that he could look into her tired eyes. Then he smoothed his hands over her cheeks and kissed her.

“A promise,” he said. “For the future.”

She smiled. “You’re such an optimist, Dr. Cross”

“That’s why you’re with me,” he said, and he wasn’t joking.

He knew that they all—the entire human race—had to survive this, because he couldn’t allow himself to think of the alternative. He was an archaeologist by training. He had delved into all of human history, had literally touched it with his hands. He knew how deep it went, how old the species was, how inventive and miraculous human culture could be.

He didn’t want it to end. Not in thirty days. Not in thirty million days. Not ever.

“I thought we were late,” Britt said.

“We are.” He let her go. She stepped away from him and the loss of her warmth made him feel odd. Maybe the back of his brain was counting the seconds left after all. Maybe deep down inside he knew that the world was in its final innings.

While he was waiting for them, Bradshaw had climbed into the back of the car. Cross smiled. It was just the kind of nice gesture that Bradshaw usually made.

When his initial tasks on the Tenth Planet Project had been completed, Bradshaw had taken it on himself to become the volunteer grandfather of Portia Groopman, the nanotechnology whiz kid who, Cross hoped, would help with the next battle against the aliens. Bradshaw made sure that she ate regularly, and he actually goaded her into an occasional night’s sleep. He threatened to rent her an apartment when all of this was over—even though, Cross knew, Portia Groopman was worth enough that she could buy a city block.

Bradshaw believed that there was still time for the niceties of life. Perhaps it was his perspective as the older member of the team. Perhaps it had always been his way. Or perhaps he had learned it during the years when all of his work had been discredited, before Cross proved that Bradshaw had built the foundation for the discoveries that Cross eventually made. Discoveries that led to the discovery of the tenth planet.

Now Bradshaw was supervising a group of graduate students who were delving into the archaeological record to see if there was a time when the tenth planet hadn’t come to Earth.

Cross had discovered the tenth planet using the combined fields of archaeology and astronomy—essentially using the record buried in the Earth to learn the history of the universe. He had found a “soot layer” that repeated every 2006 years, and in trying to understand it, had realized that it had come from space. That soot layer, which he had now seen in real time in California, had been the first and best sign of a long history of repeated occurrences.

The tenth planet had an elliptical 2006-year orbit around the Sun. For all but a year of that orbit, the planet was in the cold and dark. Life did not form in such conditions, and Cross and the other scientists speculated that once upon a time, the tenth planet revolved around a different sun, in a more standard, Earth-like orbit.

Something had changed, had brought the tenth planet to this sun and led the inhabitants of that planet to use Earth as its food source. They visited Earth twice each orbit, first as their planet passed Earth’s orbit on the way in toward the sun, then again as it passed Earth’s orbit on the way out into the cold of deep space. Each time the aliens dropped nanomachines on areas of the Earth to harvest organic material. The nanomachines left behind a black ash that eventually compressed into the soot layer.

The aliens never denuded Earth—they apparently understood the need to keep things growing—but they had never been attacked before either. Cross had gotten the idea that the archaeological record might carry more information than he thought, so he’d assigned Bradshaw some of the best archaeological minds on the university level and sent them out to study the past again.

The point was to see when the tenth planet had first arrived in this solar system. Cross wasn’t sure yet what that information would gain him, but he had learned a long time ago that his hunches were worth following.

Britt climbed in the passenger seat, Cross in the driver’s seat. He put the car in reverse and backed out. Britt braced herself with a hand on the dash. Her knuckles were white and he wasn’t even out of the parking lot yet.

“I could reprogram the autopilot,” she said again. “While you’re driving.”

Cross wasn’t going to argue with her—and he wasn’t going to let her touch the navigation system while the car was in motion. They still had a lot of driving to do, and he knew that the unrest would get worse the closer they got to downtown Washington.

Ever since some nut had blown up the main entry to the Capitol, that building, with its blackened center, had become a rallying point for other crazies. The rioting had been worse there.

The meeting for the Tenth Planet Project had been moved from its location near the Capitol, but they hadn’t gone too far. Most of the major members of the Project worked in that area, and these days they didn’t have time to travel large distances.

Britt let go of the dash and let her right hand hover over the navigation system. Cross took her fingers in his own. “We have more important things to worry about,” he said.

“Leo—”

“How many ships launched, Britt?” he asked. She probably thought he wanted to distract her, but he didn’t. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to her, really talk to her, in days. He didn’t want to get all of the news at the meeting. He wanted to be able to discuss some of it with her. “The news never said.”

“On purpose.” She slid her hand from his then eased his fingers back on the steering wheel. She was younger than he was, just enough to trust a computer’s driving skills over a person’s. He, on the other hand, never completely trusted a computer and could never quite overlook the glitches they used to cause.

“People are already rioting,” Bradshaw said from the backseat. “How much worse could the news be?” Britt turned toward him, the look on her face both weary and old. With Bradshaw’s question, she had clearly forgotten the driving debate; somehow that alarmed Cross more than her initial response had.

“Britt?” Cross asked again. “How many ships left the tenth planet?”

“A hundred and eight.” Her words were soft. Cross felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. The aliens were using a few more ships than they had used the last time they had attacked Earth. Then they had sent one hundred one. The coming attack would be at least as bad as the first one. And that one had left whole chunks of the planet devastated.

“I don’t understand,” Bradshaw said. “People know ships are coming toward Earth. Why not tell them how many?”

“It’s not my decision.” Britt turned around and slumped on the passenger side.

The car was entering a new neighborhood, and as it did, Cross saw a gang of men setting fire to a building at the end of the block. He looked away. He certainly couldn’t get out of the car and help. In fact, all news outlets had been warning people to stay away from the rioting area.

“Britt,” he said, “use your phone to report a disturbance down here.”

She glanced at him, then used her wrist’puter to dial the emergency number. The computerized dispatch took the information but did not promise a response time. The police and emergency response units were already stressed to the breaking point. Cross and Bradshaw had called other disturbances in and had received the same responses.

Finally, Britt shut off her link and ran a hand through her hair. She sighed. “What about you guys?”

“What about us?” Cross saw smoke near the Beltway. He sighed. They’d have to take more back routes.

“What have you found?”

He knew the tactic. Britt didn’t want to talk about the ships anymore.

“We know more about these aliens than I ever thought possible,” Bradshaw said.

Cross nodded. “We’re going to lay out most of this at the meeting. We’ve put a lot together in the last few weeks.”

He was amazed at how little he had been able to share with her lately. When they got together, they often ate a late meal and fell asleep in each other’s arms, too tired for anything else.

They had to save the world, he thought wryly, just so that he could have a day off with Britt.

“Fill me in” Britt said. “I hate surprises at meetings.”

The street ahead was blocked with two ruined taxicabs. All of the buildings’ windows were broken, and glass covered the concrete. Cross turned down a side street.

“We’ve learned,” he said as if nothing were wrong, “from the doctors working with the bodies recovered from the alien ships we shot down, that the aliens evolved on a stable, warm planet, covered with oceans. They have a methane-rich atmosphere, and a gravity about one tenth lighter than ours.”

“We know from using a special dating of material from their ships,” Bradshaw said, “that the material has been frozen and thawed at least six thousand times. And the aliens themselves show signs of slight cell damage caused by repeated freezing and thawing.”

“Six thousand?” Britt asked, turning to stare at Bradshaw, clearly shocked.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Cross asked. “It seems they have developed a way to hibernate for all but a year of the two thousand and six years of their planet’s orbit. Then when their planet comes in close to the sun, they revive, harvest supplies from our planet, and go back into cold sleep for another two thousand years.”

“But six thousand times?” Britt asked. “How is that possible?”

“We don’t know,” Cross said. “That number matches what Edwin’s archaeological grad student group has come up with in Earth records, and orbital changes caused by the arrival of the tenth planet into the system. We know for certain that the tenth planet came from outside our system, and the aliens have been visiting Earth every two thousand and six years for the last twelve million years.”

“Twelve million years?” Britt said. “Wow.”

“We must have been a real surprise to them when they thawed out this time,” Bradshaw said.

Cross grinned. He hadn’t thought about it that way before. After thousands of years of fairly primitive response, humans had finally come into their own.

Humans finally had the ability to defend themselves—not just on the ground, but in space.

“Let’s just hope,” Britt said, “we have enough to surprise them one more time.”

Cross glanced at her. Her wan features seemed determined.

“I think we can,” he said, as much to reassure her as himself.

October 12, 2018
14:37 Universal Time

29 Days Until Second Harvest

Cicoi, Commander of the South, stood at his command post, his upper tentacles resting on the controls, his lower tentacles wrapped around the command circle, and his eyestalks extended. The warship glided smoothly beneath him, heading toward the third planet.

The visuals were on, so that the walls seemed to have disappeared. Instead it looked as if he and his staff were floating, unprotected, through the vastness of space.

Ahead of them was the third planet, its ugly blue-and-white mass looming in his imagination. He wondered what surprises it would bring this time. He knew that it was his job to make certain that the surprises did not hurt Malmur.

Unlike the last time he took out this warship, this time he was prepared for any contingency. His staff was well trained and used to the unusual configuration. They were scattered throughout the large command center. They stood on circles that extended from the walls according to rank. If he looked down, he could see them, seemingly unsupported, against the darkness of universe.

Round balls, representing information feeds from the third planet, floated before most of his staff. The energy use still astonished and worried Cicoi. All of it was precious and all of it could be used to survive the next period of darkness. But, he had to remind himself, there might not be another period of darkness if he did not subdue the third planet.