Primary Targets (Earth at War Book 2) Read online

  “Just like this?” I repeated, laughing softly. “You bought a ranch so you could decide whether to use our starship to help aliens defeat an invasion?”

  I thought maybe I’d overstepped my bounds, but Crenshaw smiled broadly.

  “Well, let’s just say occasions when I’d have to make momentous decisions and I needed time to think.”

  “We need your help desperately, Mr. President,” Joon-Pah told him, not sharing our amusement. “Helta Prime, our homeworld, is well defended, but a concerted Tevynian attack would test us, perhaps to destruction. Hundreds of thousands could die, perhaps even into the millions. The Tevynians show none of the restraint a civilized race might, either in consideration of our casualties or for their own. They will hammer at us until we break, without your aid, your advice, your leadership. They are born for war and we are not.”

  “Were they born for war?” Crenshaw wondered. “Or were they made that way?”

  “You mean by the Elders, sir?” I presumed.

  “Two thousand years ago,” he said, nodding, his expression sober. “I don’t know why I find that so disturbing, but I do. It’s one thing to consider that aliens came here in our prehistory, tens of thousands of years ago, and did all this. Two thousand years ago…” He shook his head, staring into the dawn sky. “The time of the Romans, Caesar, Jesus. They’ve interfered in our history.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Olivera pointed out. “They took some people from a Gallic tribe of Celts sometime after Alexander and before Julius Caesar and transplanted them on the Tevynian homeworld. That’s all we can say for certain.”

  “Just being here is interfering in our history,” Crenshaw insisted, and I couldn’t disagree.

  “The real question,” I added, “is whether they’re still around somewhere.”

  All eyes settled on me and my ears got hot.

  “I mean,” I clarified, “the Helta and the Tevynians and everyone else in and out of the Alliance all seem to think the Elders disappeared tens of thousands of years ago, but we know now that isn’t true. They were around as recently as 300 BC and maybe 50BC. They didn’t tell the Helta or anyone else about it, but they were active in our galaxy. Everyone’s assuming they’re long gone, but what happens if they’re still hanging around out there, watching all this?”

  “To what end?” Joon-Pah asked, and I had the thought too late that I might be offending him. The Elders were, after all, the closest thing his people had to gods, and some of the races in the Alliance worshiped them as such. “Why would they hide from us? Are we not their children?”

  “All this,” Julie said, her manner subdued, her voice quiet, “could be like a huge science experiment to them. Like putting lab rats in a maze and seeing whether they make friends or tear each other to pieces. They could be observing us out of curiosity, scientific or otherwise.”

  “Is that what you think, Andy?” Crenshaw asked me.

  I stifled a sigh, wishing he wouldn’t keep putting me on the spot like this.

  “I’m a Marine, sir, and a science fiction writer, not a sociologist or a biologist, but I think we should try not to assign human motivations to an alien race. It’s one thing with the Helta or the other species of the Alliance, because they, at least, are from Earth, based on the same DNA as us, guided in their development by a species who knew of humans. I think it’s not too much of a stretch to think that, when the Elders gave sentience to the Helta and the other races they engineered from Earth life, they based their experiment around the design for intelligent life they had handy: us.”

  “You really believe this is possible?” Joon-Pah asked, with a bit of what I thought was horrified disbelief in his tone. I could guess why. He didn’t want to think his people had that much in common with the Tevynians, and with us.

  “I do,” I affirmed. “And even then, there are significant differences in how we think. But the Elders….” I shook my head. “They weren’t from here, they probably aren’t DNA-based life. We don’t even know if they were biological. They could have been machines, or some sort of blending of cybernetics and biology. My point is, none of us can guess why they did this. If it were a human, it might be scientific curiosity or even religious fervor. For an alien, it could be anything. We might never be able to understand how they think, even if we run into them tomorrow.”

  “As fascinating as all this is to speculate about,” Olivera interjected, “we do have something more pressing. We have to decide whether we’re going to risk contacting the Helta government.”

  “I don’t understand why we haven’t done it already,” Julie said. “I thought we intended to send a mission out their way months ago.”

  “We did,” Olivera said. “But a decision was made to gather more intelligence first.”

  A decision was made. I loved that shit. You could tell when a politician or a senior officer thought someone had fucked up because all of a sudden, they started using the passive voice. Not the President made a decision, because then you might be interpreted as criticizing that decision, which could be suicide for a military career. Instead, it was a decision was made, like the choice to avoid talking to the Helta had emerged out of thin air and presented itself to us like Venus emerging from the sea.

  “I’m not going to bullshit you, Captain Joon-Pah,” Crenshaw said, obviously not missing the significance of the turn of phrase. “We wanted independent intelligence on this before we proceeded. Not that I don’t trust you on a personal level, but I answer to the people of an entire country and, to some extent now, an entire planet. I had to do my due diligence and make sure you weren’t pulling us into something we weren’t going to be able to handle.”

  Which was much more eloquent than I would have been able to put it. I suppose that was why he was President of the United States and I blew shit up for a living.

  “I understand, Mr. President,” Joon-Pah said, and I wasn’t yet a good enough judge of Helta facial expression and voice inflection to know for sure if he was being honest. “But now, we have no choice. It is not just a matter of having one more ship to help in our defense. We came to you because of your experience in war. We need your leadership if we are to prevail against the Tevynians, and for that to be possible, the Alliance government must accept your leadership. And there is not much time left.”

  “What about the hyperdrives we found?” I asked. “Is there any chance of getting any of the ships we’re building around them ready in time to help?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Crenshaw said. “I called Gatlin about it the minute I got your report and according to his team and the Helta engineers, it’s going to be a minimum of three months before those ships are combat ready.” He shrugged. “I think one of them has the reactor and the hyperdrive installed and most of the life support, but no shields, no weapons and no redundant systems yet. We’re going as fast as we can on them, or so Daniel tells me, but the equipment we’re using is a lot more primitive than the Helta are used to.”

  “We can go with what we have,” Olivera said. He cocked an eyebrow at Crenshaw. “If we’re going.”

  Crenshaw made a show of considering it, but I’d gotten to know him well enough to realize he’d made up his mind long before he called this meeting.

  “We made a deal. We have to keep it. Can you be ready to go in forty-eight hours?”

  “Definitely. Who’re we bringing along to handle the diplomatic end of things?”

  “Delia Strawbridge,” Crenshaw told him. “Deputy Secretary of State Strawbridge as of a couple weeks ago, so be nice.”

  “Oh, we’ll be nice.” Olivera regarded Joon-Pah. “Though I wonder what the hell we’ll do if the Helta don’t want to go along with this.”

  “They will,” Joon-Pah insisted, and I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince us or himself. “They have no other choice.”

  “That’s it, then,” Crenshaw said, offering a hand to Olivera. “Good luck, Michael.”

  “Thank you, sir. We’ll get the
job done.”

  The Secret Service escorted the President back into the ranch house and called a driver to take us back to the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor waiting for us out in the pasture.

  “We got forty-eight hours,” Olivera said to Julie and I. “I have to be back upstairs now because I’m a general and the job sucks, so don’t either of you ever take it if you get the chance. But you two could visit your families if you want, catch a shuttle up say, four hours before we’re scheduled to break orbit?”

  “My daughter and my ex are in Hawaii for Thanksgiving break,” Julie lamented.

  “Why don’t you come with me, then?” I invited her. “I’m going to visit Zack in Austin. I think he’d get a kick out of meeting a real-life starship pilot.”

  “You inviting me to meet your kid, Clanton?” she asked, the corner of her mouth turning up. “Is it that serious?”

  “You tell me,” I shot back, trying to keep it light but feeling heat in my chest.

  “Whoa, now,” Olivera said, raising his hands. “I would tell you two to get a room, but it’s clearly beyond that. Come on. Car’s here.”

  “Is there some subtext in this conversation I’m missing?” Joon-Pah asked me, speaking softly right at my shoulder as started up the path to the driveway. “There are certain human social norms I have yet to grasp, but I sense something happening between you two.” He moved his hand in a purely Helta gesture toward Julie, a step ahead. “Are you mating?”

  “My, isn’t it a beautiful sunrise?” I said, and broke into a trot to get out of the conversation.

  Julie didn’t even try to hide her laugh.

  ***

  “You know how long it’s been since I’ve visited Austin?” Julie said, ducking out the passenger’s side of our rental and throwing the hood of her up jacket against the rain.

  “You know how long it’s been since it rained here in November?” I replied, shutting my door.

  Together, we jogged through the puddles in the long driveway and up to the front door. Paul’s house was some style I would have been able to identify if I wasn’t such a Philistine. The only title I could put on it was expensive. I had made a pretty good living as a writer and Vegas wasn’t an expensive a place to live if you didn’t gamble, but I couldn’t afford anything near what Paul Franklin’s house cost. And this was just one of them.

  He was waiting for us on the covered porch, a tall man, a few years older than me—and looking much older now that I’d had the retelomerization treatment—but still what I might have called ruggedly handsome if I were describing him as a character in one of my books. He’d known we were coming because he’d had to buzz the guard shack to let us in. The armed guard shack. I wondered if the shotgun was to put the residents’ minds at ease or if Austin had just gotten that bad.

  “You guys picked a great night to visit,” Paul said, offering me a hand.

  “Not much choice, Paul,” I said, gripping it tightly, not quite a contest, just enough to prove we were both carrying a respectable load of testosterone. I motioned to Julie, who was shaking water off her hood. “Paul Franklin, this is Julie Nieves. She’s the helm officer on the James Bowie, our ship.”

  “That means I drive the thing,” Julie explained, smiling as she shook Paul’s hand. “Nice place you have here.”

  “Thanks, come on inside.” He pushed the door open.

  We stripped off our rain jackets and Paul took them, hanging them up on a rack just inside the front door, the excess water dripping down onto a rubber mat strategically positioned beneath the feet of the coat rack. It was dim inside, the lights off despite the gloom of the rainy afternoon, and I almost didn’t see the eighty pounds of German shepherd bounding at me across the heart-of-pine flooring.

  “Hey, boy!” I said, laughing as the dog leaped up and put a paw on each of my shoulders, doing his best to lick me in the face. I held him back and ruffled the fur on his cheeks, then set his head on my shoulder and gave him a hug. “Who’s a good boy, huh? Who’s a good boy?”

  “Was the dog…” Julie hesitated, then tried again. “Did the dog used to be yours?”

  I laughed at that, then deposited the big German shepherd back on the floor where Paul kept him from jumping again with a firm hand on the back of his neck.

  “No, he’d have to be a damned long-lived shepherd for that. Bear is Zack’s dog, and he has excellent taste in people.”

  “I bet he does,” Julie said, kneeling to pet Bear, who was almost as big as she was. “He’s a cutie, isn’t he?” Bear’s tail slapped against the floor with wild abandon and he strained against Paul’s hand to try to lick Julie.

  “Dad!” Zack said, running up to me.

  He was about as tall as I am but still at that lanky, awkward, early-teenage stage where I outweighed him by at least thirty pounds. I could have picked him up and given him a huge squeeze, but he was also at that age where he didn’t want to be treated like a kid, so I just pulled him into a more sedate, restrained hug, slapping him on the shoulder.

  Warmth filled my chest, the same contentment and joy I’d experienced every minute I’d been able to spend with my son since Allie agreed to let me see him again. A part of me had been missing and I hadn’t understood how big a part it was until it returned.

  “I had a day to kill before we leave again,” I told him, “and we were in the state, at the President’s ranch, so I hopped a V-22 over here to see you. This is Julie.” She was still petting the dog. “She’s my….” Words ran out and I tried to think of a way to describe our relationship.

  Girlfriend? Hell, no. She’d string me up by my balls. Lover? Incredibly pretentious. Friend? Inadequate and possibly insulting. Sometimes it sucked being a writer and knowing the power of the right word…or the wrong one. Thankfully she noticed and came to my rescue.

  “I’m the pilot of the James Bowie,” she said, standing and offering Zack a hand.

  “The starship?” Zack said, eyes lighting up as he grasped her hand carefully, like she might turn to dust if he squeezed too hard. “You pilot a starship?”

  “It’s a living,” she said, shrugging. “It was more fun the first time I flew the Truthseeker. That’s the Helta starship. We didn’t have anyone else to do it, so I got to fire her main gun at the Tevynian ship out past the Moon.” She sighed heavily. “Now, when we go into combat, the tactical officer does all the shooting. It’s just not fair.”

  “Oh, my God!” Zack exploded, both hands gripping hers. “You’re Julie Nieves! You were on the Selene! I didn’t recognize you ‘cause you look so much younger now!”

  “The miracles of modern medicine.” She squinted at Paul. “I’m surprised you haven’t taken advantage of the retelomerization drugs, Mr. Franklin.” She dimpled. “Not that you look bad. On the contrary, you look—”

  “Ruggedly handsome,” I supplied.

  “Yes, that, exactly.”

  Paul laughed, a very charming sound and I had to remind myself that I hadn’t been married to Allie for some time and I definitely shouldn’t feel jealous anymore.

  “Oh, I suppose we’ll get around to it sometime,” he said. “No real hurry, and I’m not what you might call an early adopter. I’ll wait a few years and make sure they got all the bugs out before I let them stick that stuff into my genes, if you don’t mind.”

  “You blew up the Tevynian ship in the Battle of Luna?” Zack asked Julie, as if the intervening conversation hadn’t happened.

  “Good God, are they really calling it that?” Julie laughed, a raucous, sound from such a short, slender woman. “That sounds so Japanime.”

  “Our lives sound Japanime,” I reminded her. “Is your mom home, Zack?”

  “Oh, no, not right now,” he told me, shaking his focus free of Julie for a moment, which I knew had to be hard, both because she was the first human to pilot a starship and also because she was smoking hot. “She got called in to work.”

  “Big deal going down with Gatlin Aerospace,” Paul said. “All her deal, I just
sign the checks. Say, Zack, why don’t you go give Julie a tour of the house and she can tell you all about flying that ship?”

  “If you want?” Zack said, unsuccessfully trying to act cool about it and hide his eagerness.

  “Sure, lead on,” Julie invited, shooting me a smile.

  “He doing okay in school?” I asked Paul once they were out of earshot.

  “Oh, yeah,” Paul said, and I thought I detected a note of pride in his voice. “Straight A’s. He’s a great kid.”

  “He is.” I almost tripped over my next words because they sat stubbornly just shy of my mouth, unwilling to be spoken. “Thank you for taking such good care of him. I’m…I’m sorry if me coming back into his life got in the way of you two being as close as you could have been.”

  “Oh, Andy, don’t be an idiot.”

  I blinked, wondering if I should take offense, but Paul was smiling broadly.

  “You’re his father,” he expounded. “And I love him with all my heart, and he loves me, but he will never not need his father around.” He sobered and a troubled look came over his face. “I told Allie, those years she was shutting you out, I told her over and over that it wasn’t right. Not just because of the visitation rights and the courts, but because Zack needed you. But in the end, it was her decision.”

  I was speechless. You think you know someone and then, boom.

  “Wow,” I said and couldn’t think of anything to accompany it for a minute. “I appreciate that, Paul. I really do.”

  “Tell me something,” Paul said, with a shift in tone that told me we were changing the subject. “Are you heading back out? I mean, out of….”

  “Out of the Solar System, yes,” I confirmed. “I can’t say exactly where, but yeah.”

  “Oh, I get that,” he assured me. “I just wondered, what they’ve been talking about, is it true?” He leaned closer, glancing around to make sure Zack was nowhere within earshot. “Is it true that there’s going to be a war?”

  I didn’t snap at him, but it was difficult to restrain myself, and I had to remind myself t I’d just been feeling all warm and fuzzy toward him. But holy shit! The government had been doing interview after interview, putting out one documentary piece after another, interviews with the Helta, videos of the Battle for Luna—and no, I had not been the one to call it that. And we still got questions like this.