Xenophobia (6 page)

The radio crackled.

“I’ve got movement on the road,” said a disembodied voice over the radio. Bower recognized Bosco’s nasal twang. “Lone truck. One occupant, driver. Headlights off. Moving slow.”

“Looks like they’re delivering my spare parts,” another voice replied. Bower thought it was Smithy, but she wasn’t sure.

“It’s about bloody time.” That was Elvis. There was no mistaking his voice over the static.

Jameson spoke into the radio. “Warning shot. Single burst. Tracers over his head. Let them know we’re here. We’ll give them the opportunity to pull back.”

“Roger that.”

Jameson peered out over the low stone wall. He’d flipped his night-vision goggles down from his helmet, making him look more of a machine than a man. Bower couldn’t help herself, she had to look. She turned around, kneeling as she peered over the rough rocks. Kowalski stayed where he was.

Looking out through the night, Bower could see the landing zone to one side on a flat expanse before the dark jungle canopy. The truck Smithy had been working on had been moved into the village, hidden from the road by the crest of a small hill.

Her eyes struggled to make out any detail in the murky grey darkness. She could hear the rebel truck, but it still sounded several hundred yards away.

The night lit up briefly. For a second it was as though lightning had struck. Gunfire streamed out away from the village into the darkness. Tracer rounds snapped through the air, leaving reddish phosphorescent trails cutting through the pitch black of night. Thunder rolled around them. It took Bower a moment to realize the chesty thump was that of the machine gun firing and not the storm breaking. She was surprised to see the faint outline of one of the Rangers illuminated briefly by the outgoing tracer rounds. He was lying prone not more than thirty yards away. She’d expected him to be hidden rather than lying flat on the landing zone. No sooner had he fired than he was on the move.

“Spotting,” came the call over the radio. “Elvis, you are clear. Eleven is stationary. Looks like an observation post. One occupant.”

“I’ve got movement at three,” and Bower was able to pick out Smithy’s voice.

“I’ve got movement at seven,” another voice added over the radio.

“The truck’s conducting a three-point turn, pulling back,” Bosco said, his voice breaking up with static.

“Stand by,” Jameson said into his radio.

Bower was impressed by the clinical detachment
Jameson
had, reminding her of some of her senior lecturers at medical school, and how calmly they’d describe a complex procedure like a heart by-pass. She liked to think of herself as pretty calm and collected in the operating theatre, but the reality was that if an operation deteriorated on her she struggled under the pressure. She hadn’t lost a patient, but she’d come close enough to walk out of theater with her hands shaking. In Africa, though, not losing a patient was nothing to brag about, the serious cases rarely made it as far as a field hospital.

Out of nowhere, a machine gun opened fire, raking the village.

Bower ducked, even though she knew it was technically too late. If she’d been the target she’d already have become a casualty, and that thought alarmed her. She’d treated plenty of bullet wounds and understood the damage a small piece of lead could do when accelerated faster than the speed of sound. Bower didn’t fancy lying on a stretcher undergoing surgery in the middle of Africa and figured she’d keep her head down. Although she felt an impulsive desire to watch what was unfolding she knew there was nothing to see, just fleeting flashes in the darkness.

Jameson held his finger up.

“No zing. No ppft. This is a bluff, a fake, intended to draw us out and get us to expose our positions.

“They might be amateurs, but they’re not dumb enough to mount a frontal assault across an open grassy field. Don’t worry about this. It’s a diversion while they conduct a flanking maneuver. They’re trying to keep us preoccupied with a frontal attack while the real action comes from three and seven.”

He was pointing as he spoke.

“Three is on the move,” came as a crackle over the radio.

“Eleven is open,” said another voice.

“Take him,” Jameson replied, talking into the radio with no emotion at all. He could have been ordering pizza.

A single crack resounded through the night.

“Eleven down.”

Bower struggled to swallow the knot in her throat. In those few seconds, she’d witnessed the death of a rebel. There were no theatrics, no drama. If anything, life seemed cheap; an entire life had been snuffed out as one would swat a fly.

As a doctor, Bower found herself wondering about ‘eleven,’ wondering if the shot had been instantly fatal. She’d didn’t want to second guess the Rangers, but she doubted the man was dead just yet. There were very few places on the human body that would kill a man in an instant, and she found herself wondering about a rebel bleeding to death in the jungle foliage. Her interest wasn’t some form of pseudo-emotionalism. Bower understood he’d brought this on himself, and yet she was trained to save life, it was hard to ignore that. In her heart, she’d never really made the connection that soldiers were trained to kill. Intellectually, she knew that, but reality struck her hard in those few moments sheltering there in the dark, leaning against the rough stone wall.

Jameson spoke into his radio. “I am en-route to three.”

Bower breathed deeply. Jameson rested his hand on her shoulder as he spoke, reassuring her.

“You’ll be fine. This will be over before you know it. Trust me.”

Bower nodded as Jameson slunk away, melting into the night.

One of the nurses appeared crouched in the doorway to the stone hut.

“I’ve got it,” said Kowalski, staying low as he darted over and into the hut, and with that Bower was alone.

Sweat ran down her forehead, soaking her collar. Her gloves were sticky and uncomfortable. The ground was rough. She shifted her weight, trying to clear away some of the smaller, gritty stones to make sitting there bearable.

Sporadic gunfire erupted around the outskirts of the village. Each shot felt as though it was directed at her. She winced, trying to curl up into a ball as she sat there, wanting to become so small as to disappear. There were no zings, no ppfts, she reminded herself. Wasting ammo, that’s how Jameson described it, just like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

A flash of lightning lit up the brooding clouds. Bower expected the crash of thunder to break a few seconds later, but the resounding boom was almost instantaneous, breaking directly over the village, shaking the ground. Bower jumped as the thunder rattled the village.

Large drops of rain began falling. At first, just one or two, but they struck her hat with unusual force. Within seconds, torrential rain fell. The temperature plummeted. Another bolt of lightning arced through the sky, followed by a thunderous crash that shook her to the bone. It seemed the heavens were at war with Earth, competing with the Rangers and the rebels. Through the deafening downpour, Bower could hear the crack of gunfire increasing in its tempo. An explosion erupted from the far end of the village, from what Jameson had labeled seven o’clock.

Bower wanted to run.

Even the relative safety of the dry hut held no allure. She wanted to run from the village and she struggled to control that compulsion.

Bower pulled off her hat, allowing the rain to wash over her hair and face. Sitting there in a puddle, tears rolled down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure why she was crying, and she doubted anyone would have noticed in the rain, but still she cried. Perhaps it was the release of tension brought on by the storm, but Bower felt silly, and that made her cry even more. She felt small, insignificant, helpless as the storm raged around her.

The rain eased a little, allowing the sound of the battle to reach her ears. She turned instinctively at the roar of an engine and saw the rebel truck bounding up the muddy track. Flashes of light burst from the open flatbed. Ppfts and zings raced past her, but in the confusion she was powerless to do anything other than watch.

The truck lurched toward her, bouncing out of a rut and careening up the embankment towards the village. Dirt and mud flew through the air, being dislodged by the truck’s bumper as it caught the soggy ground. Bower found herself sprayed with mud as the truck slammed into the low stone wall and came to a thundering halt.

The door to the cabin of the truck swung open. A rebel slumped to the ground, dead. His body landed in the puddle on the other side of the low wall.

Bower jumped at the nightmare unfolding before her, her body repulsed by the shadow of death looming over the village.

A bloody arm hung down off the back of the flatbed truck.

Bower watched as the arm twitched.

Slowly, the wounded rebel on the back of the truck got to his feet. He staggered against the cabin, using it for support as he stood on the wooden deck. Through the sound of the rain, Bower could hear him swearing, cursing some African god.

Their eyes met.

Neither the darkness nor the rain hid her from his gaze. He saw her crouching there beside the stone wall, paralyzed with fear. His eyes widened. Smiling, he grabbed an AK-47 from where it lay on the deck of the truck.

A flash of lightning illuminated the village, turning the night into day for the briefest of moments.

Bower watched in horror as the rebel brought his rifle to bear, pulling back on the bolt to load a round into the chamber.

The crack of thunder shook the earth as the rebel’s chest exploded, a bullet tearing through the muscle, sinew and bones, coming from somewhere behind him. The rebel fell into the darkness, disappearing from sight. Demons moved around her, dark specters sinking back into the night.

Her heart raced. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. She looked around and as suddenly as it had come the violence was replaced with the soft patter of rain.

Bower stood there in the drizzle.

She shouldn’t have stood. She wasn’t even sure when she’d stood up, but somehow she was standing there by the low, stone wall. Something told her to stay down, and yet terror seized her muscles, refusing to let her crouch close to the earth.

Someone was screaming, a woman. The pitch of the woman's voice was unearthly, piercing the night, a banshee howling with the wind. Bower felt a sense of dread washing over her, an expectation of the worst, that she would die here in Africa.

A hand grabbed her shoulder and she jumped.

“Hey, it’s OK,” said Kowalski. “It’s me. Come with me.”

And Kowalski led her away into the hut. It was only then that Bower realized she’d been the one screaming.

Bower didn’t know what time it was when she woke, but the sun was rising in the sky, creeping across the mud floor of the hut. She was lying on a blanket, with a rolled-up jacket as a pillow. The ground beneath her felt uncomfortably hard.

The hut was empty. Bower could hear Kowalski outside talking with one of the patients. Her neck was sore. She sat up, feeling stiff.

“The axle’s fucked,” yelled one of the soldiers. “Goddamn it, Bosco, can’t you do anything right. You fuck up the radio, you fuck up our transport. What is it, man? Are you determined to bury us in Africa? Those nice rebels deliver us a perfectly good truck and you shoot it to shit.”

Several other soldiers laughed, making fun of Bosco.

Bower staggered to the door of the mud hut and saw Smithy examining the truck that had crashed into the wall the night before. The front wheels had ridden up over the crushed stone wall, dropping the chassis down onto the rocks and breaking the front axle. Hydraulic fluid mixed with oil as it seeped out on the ground. Already, the sun had dried the puddles of water lying around the village. Cracks formed in the hardening mud.

“Hey,” Kowalski said, coming over to her and offering to help her walk to where Jameson was sitting on the remains of the wall.

“What the hell happened to me?”

“You were shaking, mumbling. Your eyes were dilated.”

Bower was silent, she knew what he wasn’t saying, ‘You were in shock.’

Kowalski handed her a water canteen.

“I gave you a sedative.”

“You gave me a headache.”

“That too. I thought it was best to let you sleep.”

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Jameson said as Bower wandered past. It must have been somewhere between ten and eleven judging from the angle and heat of the sun.

Bower was in no mood for small talk. She splashed water on her face, running her hands up through her hair, feeling a matted tangle on one side. She tried not to think about what she looked like, knowing she must look a mess.

“Sleep well?” Jameson asked.

“My head feels like someone’s been hitting it with a jack-hammer. I have a hangover without touching a drop of wine. Is there any fate worse?”

Bower squinted, noticing her backpack sitting on the grass beside the soldier’s gear. After rummaging through her pack she found a pair of sunglasses and a hat.

“Oh, that is so much better,” she mumbled.

Stretching her back, she looked around at her patients. One of the nurses had cooked up some maize and was dishing out bowls to the patients. They were merrily chatting with each other. Kowalski went back to examining the premature baby, listening to its heartbeat and respiration with a stethoscope.

“Did I miss something?” Bower asked, sitting beside Jameson.

The bodies were gone. There was no blood. If it weren’t for the holes where bullets had punctured the thin sheet metal on the side of the truck, she’d never have known there had been a firefight the night before. Villagers crashed trucks all the time, normally not this badly, but it was a common sight. This could have been any other day.

“We routed the enemy around 0100.” Jameson was clinical in his description of what had happened the night before. “Fourteen combatants neutralized. We estimate the rebel strength at no more than forty.”

“Was anyone hurt?” As the words left her lips she realized the assumption in her question, that it was only US troops that could feel pain. The enemy was depersonalized, as though they felt no more pain than a cow being led to slaughter. And yet she didn’t correct herself. He had to know what she meant. He had to agree.

“We came through the fight with little more than scratches. Bosco’s radio, though, didn’t fare as well. It took some shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade.”

Elvis was rummaging around under the hood of the rebel truck. Although Bower had seen him running wires back to the flatbed trailer, it never occurred to her to ask what he was doing. She assumed he was doing something to help Smithy, who had brought the other truck over and was trying to salvage parts.

Elvis stood on the back of the damaged truck holding a microphone. A cable led down to an old metal speaker, the kind used on military parade grounds.

“
Bright light city gonna set my soul on fire
,” resounded from the speaker. Bower was surprised by the resonance in his voice. Singing a cappella, without any accompaniment, Elvis sounded surprisingly good. His voice had a natural vibrato, wavering softly as he sang the Elvis Presley classic.

“
I’ve got a whole lot of money that’s ready to burn, so let those flames reach higher
.”

Bower laughed, he was getting the lyrics wrong, but that didn’t seem to bother him.

Elvis was posing as he sang, with one arm out stretched and his legs shaking in time to some unheard beat.

“
There’s a hundred thousand pretty ugly women waiting out there, and they’re all living, but I don’t care
.”

“Goddamn it, Elvis,” yelled Jameson. “If you’re going to torture us, at least get the words right.”

Smithy cried, “Get your ass down from there before someone shoots you.”

“Before I shoot you,” Bosco added.

“
And I’m just a devil with a dollar to spare, so show me Las Vegas.
”

Smithy yanked the wires from the battery, killing the microphone.

“Oh, not fair,” Elvis cried.

“You stupid, dumb, hick, fuck farmer,” Smithy yelled, her hands set firmly on her hips. “What the hell are you trying to do, bring in every goddamn rebel for miles around?”

“Hell no, he was scaring them off,” Bosco replied.

Elvis laughed, dropping down off the truck and landing with a thud, his combat boots crunching on the ground.

“Is he all right?” Kowalski asked softly, his head appearing between Jameson and Bower as he leaned forward from behind them. “Post-traumatic stress?”

“Oh,” Bower replied. “I’d say this is a baseline normal response from Elvis.”

“Yee-haw,” yelled Elvis, grabbing his hat and his sunglasses from the front of the truck. “Come on, Smithy, we need to get this show on the road. There are tour-dates to be kept. Fans to please. When are you gonna get me mobile?”

“You're an idiot,” Smithy replied, laughing. Elvis didn't seem to mind.

Kowalski headed back over to the patients. Jameson sat there grinning.

“I don’t know how you guys do it,” Bower said. “I mean, I was terrified last night, but you can just switch this on and off at will.”

“You get used to it,” Jameson replied. “But the team needs to blow off some steam from time to time. It’s healthy.”

“As healthy as you can get in the midst of madness,” Bower added.

Jameson never replied, and Bower knew she’d struck a raw nerve. There was only so much bravado one could hide. She may not have handled combat well, but she understood hers was an outward meltdown. Soldiers had inward reactions every bit as crippling, it was just easier for them to wear a mask and walk away.

“We’ll be ready in about an hour,” Smithy said, grabbing some unrecognizable part from the rebel truck. Wires and fine tubes dangled from a rusting metal cylinder.

“So what do we do without a radio?” Bower asked.

“We stick to the plan,” Jameson replied. “Ordinarily, we’d stay in the area and wait 48 hours for a lost comms protocol to kick in, but I doubt they’ll send choppers into a hostile LZ. Within 48 hours this place is going to be crawling with rebels. If we don’t get on the move, and soon, we’re not going to have to worry about forty rebels, we’ll have four hundred to deal with.”

“Hey, I’m getting a fresh signal on the commercial band,” said Bosco, staggering past with the shattered remains of the military radio slung over his shoulder and the small public radio in his hand. He dropped the damaged military radio on the grass beside the other backpacks and sat down with the small, blue radio.

“It’s the BBC,” he said rather triumphantly.

“
Although we have no idea about the nature of our celestial visitors, we can infer some valuable information from what we have observed so far
.”

The reception was much clearer than the night before.

“
I have here a bullet, just the lead projectile that comes flying out of a gun, not the casing with its powder and detonation cap. And, as you can see, I can toss this bullet in the air and catch it without any concern for my safety. But why? Bullets are dangerous, right? Well, no. Bullets are only dangerous when they’re traveling at high velocities
.”

He wasn’t wrong there, thought Bower.

“
Standing here before you, I can toss this bullet up and down, catching it in my hand without any danger at all. But, if I fire this bullet from a gun, imparting a massive amount of kinetic energy into the metal and lead, accelerating it to a thousand feet per second, it would pass straight through my hand, probably straight through my body.

“
In the same manner, the alien craft had to decelerate as it entered our solar system. Just the tiniest speck of dust or rock would be damaging. Given the sheer amount of kinetic energy within the alien craft, if they meant us harm, they need only have continued on at high speed. Even a small craft, perhaps the size of this building, traveling at three-quarters of the speed of light, would be enough to destroy all life on Earth. There’s just so much energy involved. But they slowed to a stop relative to Earth. That act in itself tells us something of their intentions. They intend to come in contact with us, not to destroy us
.”

Bower was fascinated. It was clear they’d dropped into the middle of an ongoing technical discussion about the alien spacecraft. Some of the details were a repeat of what they’d heard the previous night, but with additional insights. For a second, all her cares dissolved. The tension of the previous night dissipated like a dream.

“
Question from the floor: Ambassador Philip Cohern, Canada
.”

“
Where have they come from?
”

“
Unfortunately, we don’t know. As the craft passed Neptune, some four light hours from Earth, it conducted a course correction, aligning with the ecliptic within our solar system, allowing it to move on the same plane as the planets. As best we understand its current trajectory, this would have been one of a number of course corrections to slowly orient with our solar system. We have a rough understanding of its origin in the southern hemisphere, but only a rather vague notion of either Triangulum, Pavo or Telescopium
.”

“
Are those real constellation names?
” the ambassador asked. “
I thought the constellations had names like Aries or Gemini?
”

“
These are real names,
” the speaker confirmed. “
Triangulum may not have any exotic meaning like Scorpio, but it is a legitimate constellation, first identified by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy well before the birth of Christ
.”

“
So this ... this thing
,” the ambassador asked. “
Tell us more about what NASA observed as it approached Earth
.”

“
The craft did not approach Earth directly. It passed through the inner solar system, swinging around behind the sun and slowing before it approached Earth.
At the phenomenal speed with which it initially approached our solar system, the alien craft would have arrived here within a few hours, perhaps a day or so. But it slowed its approach, shedding its kinetic energy, taking over six months to reach us. But I must stress, covering this kind of immense distance in less than several years is phenomenal in itself. As it was, the craft arrived at Lagrange point five trailing Earth just eight days ago and has remained stationary in that location since then
.”

"
Could you expand upon what a Lagrange point is for the assembly?
"

"
Sure
," the scientist replied. "
We think of outer space as empty, but it's not. Gravity shapes space, molding it into what could be figuratively described as different forms, different shapes. Think of a street map. Maps show us how to get from one place to another, but maps are flat, they don't reveal the hills and gullies that define the land, and so we make topographical maps, maps with wavy lines to indicate the contours of the land. In much the same way, we see space as flat, but the gravitational attraction of the Sun, Moon and Earth means we need a topographical view of space, something to show us the gravitational hills and gullies. A Lagrange point is an area that acts like a hilltop. From a Lagrange point, any which way you move is down, moving under the influence of gravity in one way or another.
"

"
And so this is expected?
"

"
I don't know about expected, but it's smart. They're sitting a way off, in a place from which they can easily go anywhere. They can come to Earth, go to the Moon, or retreat into interplanetary space with ease, with a minimum of effort.
"

"
So you'd say this is a defensive position rather than an offensive one?
"

"
I ... I don't know,
" the scientist replied. "
I don't know that it makes any sense to draw military parallels with their location. It could be neither offensive nor defensive, just practical.
"

"
What do you think their next move will be?
"

"
Well, I doubt they came here for sightseeing. They didn't just happen to cruise into our solar system, they were always headed for Earth.
They knew exactly where they were going long before we ever saw them.
I think it only makes sense to assume they'll make contact.
"