Primary Targets (Earth at War Book 2) Read online

  “Joon-Pah told us all that the day we first met him,” she said, sounding impatient for me to get to the point. I have that effect on women.

  “Yeah, but here’s where I think their understanding of things falls off.” I shaped something in the air in front of me with my hands, like I was molding an idea from nothing. “The Helta think the Elders put the Tevynians on their planet at the same time as everyone else, but that’s obviously not true. It was thousands of years later, maybe even tens of thousands. So, the question is, why would they bother? We were on Earth. We had civilization, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the early Romans…it wasn’t as if shit wasn’t happening here, like we were still hunting mammoth on the plains with wooden spears.”

  “They grabbed the Tevynians from Europe,” Julie mused, “maybe around 300 BCE, and put them on….” She frowned. “What’s the name of their world again?”

  “Tevynia.” I shook my head. “The Helta aren’t big on originality, I guess. The linguists apparently think the word has Lithuanian roots, by the way. Yeah, the Elders dumped them on Tevynia and then they sat around and waited a while, and watched, and then, a couple hundred years ago, the Helta suddenly develop the science for the gravimetic field.”

  “You think the Elders gave it to one of them.”

  “I sure as hell do. They’re still out there. This is all a big Petri dish and they’re squirting new shit in and seeing what happens.”

  “Well, that’s a depressingly paranoid theory,” she said. “You tell anyone else about this?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I’ve been putting it together in my head and I thought I’d tell you first because you’re sleeping with me so you probably don’t take me seriously anyway.”

  She laughed, as I’d hoped she would. It would have been awkward otherwise.

  “Are you gonna tell General Olivera?”

  “At some point. Maybe not until after this mission. I think he’s got enough on his mind.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Remind me why we’re doing this again?” I said, arms crossed over my chest in what I abruptly realized was passive-aggressive stubbornness. I uncrossed them, but left the question hanging like the dual moons hanging over us in the frost-hazed night.

  It wasn’t exactly cold. After spending a winter in Idaho, I didn’t use the word “cold” lightly. If I’d had to guess, I would have said that it was either early spring or late autumn on this half of the planet. The leaves in the trees hadn’t changed colors, but I didn’t know what species they were, or whether they had been engineered to fit the place by the Elders, so I wasn’t sure that was a valid indicator. I tried to concentrate on the trees and the moon and not the walkway. The shuttle landing pad being constructed on thirty-foot-tall pylons had seemed eccentric, but I hadn’t had to land the thing. The walkways though, they were thirty feet above the shadowy, murky ground and the Helta did not believe in guardrails.

  “I’m aware you’re not crazy about the plan, Andy,” Olivera told me, the undercurrent of a sigh beneath the words. He straightened his class A jacket, playing with the brass buttons in some sort of unconscious tic. I was wearing one too, and I hated the thing. Why couldn’t we just wear ACUs? The Helta wouldn’t know the difference. “But this is how Joon-Pah says it has to go down, and these are his people.”

  “I’m just not crazy about leaving the Jambo, most of our shuttles and all our Rangers sitting here eight or nine light-years away while we go to the Helta hat-in-hand.” I was grumbling and I tried to stop.

  Julie looked back at me from the front of our procession and I envied her the confidence to look away from our narrow, wooden path through the treetops. Something buzzed by my ear and I didn’t swat at it for fear of losing my balance.

  “As I am constantly reminded,” she said, “the distance isn’t important, it’s the number of gravimetic lines of force between two systems, and Forestglen is only one jump from Helta Prime.”

  “That’s another thing, Joon-Pah,” I said, daring a half-second glance at the alien walking beside me. “What’s with the names you guys give planets? Wellspring? Forestglen? Those sound awfully generic.”

  A few months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to read the Helta’s expression, but I’d had a little practice since then. The tilt of his head, the shift of his shoulders, the wiggle of his ears was the Helta equivalent of a chuckle.

  “They are direct translations into English,” he reminded me, his own English perfect and unaccented. “Your country has many names that would sound just as bland if you translated them. I read on your internet that your state of Wyoming means ‘Big River Flat’ in English.”

  “Fair enough,” I allowed. “But we name cities and sometimes states even after people. Don’t you guys do that?”

  It was dark here, which might have explained the lack of Helta civilians on the walkways and platforms of the small city…or there might be another reason. I saw two Helta soldiers watching us intently from the eaves of a something that might have been a bus stop combined with a gazebo. Their laser rifles weren’t exactly pointed at us, but they weren’t exactly not pointed at us, either.

  “That would run counter to our…” Joon-Pah trailed off as he tried to answer my question. “Not our religion, I don’t think you would say, but our philosophy of life.”

  “Do you guys have a religion?” Julie wondered. “Or maybe hundreds of them, like we do?”

  “We used to have beliefs you might characterize as a religion,” he explained in his overly wordy manner of speaking. I thought maybe it was because he’d learned English listening to our TV broadcasts. “But those were mostly cast aside when we discovered the truth about the Elders. There seemed no need of insubstantial spirits to explain our origin when we knew exactly who created us. ” He hesitated, walking in silence for a moment toward the towering treehouse-like structure across the vertigo-inducing span. “There are some,” he said, and it sounded like a confession, “who view the Elders in such a way that one might not be mistaken in calling it worship.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “Is that how you think about the Elders?”

  “I think,” he said, pointing, “that we are here.”

  The building was nothing any human would have ever constructed, at least not for other humans to live in. The walls were twisted and naturalistic, as if they were made to look like they were part of the trees, right down to leaves I wasn’t completely sure were fake decorating the edges. I couldn’t even begin to describe the shape of the thing, as gnarled and trunklike as it was, and even the doorway was twisted and narrow. No one waited for us outside it, and I wondered if that meant we weren’t welcome or if I was just misinterpreting Helta culture. Or if we were sneaking in and no one even knew we were coming.

  The entrance hallway curved one way and then another and I had a nightmare vision of the whole thing getting narrower and narrower until we were trapped, shoulder-to-shoulder. But it finally widened out into a chamber lit by what I thought were chemical strip-lights, glowing with the sort of soft luminescence you’d expect from a glow stick, though I assumed these lasted longer. The light was dim enough I couldn’t make out the dimensions of the room, and above us, the roof narrowed again as if it were rising into the upper trunk of a tree.

  A single Heltan waited for us in the center of the room, dressed in a variation of the Napoleonic drummer boy outfit they wore on board the Truthseeker, different only by a degree, yet I knew by now it meant she was a civilian, and a female.

  Joon-Pah approached her at an angle, the way a professional MMA fighter might circle an opponent in the ring, searching for a weakness, a place to strike the first blow. She circled as well, keeping him in front of her, hands rising, dark, sharp fingernails almost thick enough to be vestigial claws bared and ready to claw out his eyes. A low, mewling sound filled the air and I wasn’t sure if it came from one or both of them.

  “What the fuck?” Julie blurted, and I wondered whether I should have car
ried a sidearm.

  They met with a grunt of expelled air and I took an instinctive step forward to break up what I was sure was going to be a blood-soaked ursine brawl, but instead, they rubbed muzzles and foreheads, their hands clasping, fingers intertwined. They spoke to each other in low tones, in their own language, and even though I’d picked up a little of it over the last few months, I couldn’t follow their conversation.

  Finally, Joon-Pah turned and faced us, one arm draped over the female’s shoulder.

  “My friends, this is Garran-Dol, one of my oldest companions and governor of this outpost.”

  “Thank you very much for allowing us to land and speak with you, Governor Garran-Dol,” Strawbridge said, her words translated immediately by the device affixed to her shoulder. “I am Delia Strawbridge, a representative of the government of the United States of America and many of the other nations of Earth. This is General Michael Olivera, the master of our ship, the James Bowie.”

  “It is a pleasure to know you, Ms. Strawbridge, General Olivera.”

  The computer simulated Garran-Dol’s voice as a contralto human female in my earbud, the translation coming from the cell phone on my belt, and it only took me a moment to suppress the singsong Helta language and ignore the offset of her lips moving and the human voice. Okay, so it wasn’t really a cell phone. Its official name was a comms unit, and we’d all been issued them, but it basically did everything a cell phone did, only it worked off other signal sources—laser line-of-sight, microwave, satellite, whatever. I still called it a cell phone if I wanted to annoy Colonel Brooks.

  “I have seen proof from my comrade Joon-Pah that the humans are on our side,” Garran-Dol went on, “and I thank the Elders for it, because They must have known we would need you as allies.”

  “We were just discussing the regard in which you folks hold the Elders,” I said, earning a glare from Strawbridge. I ignored it, as I usually ignored her dirty looks.

  “They are our creators,” the female Helta said, the translation matter-of-fact, as if this was something everyone knew. “Surely that is something worth admiring, emulating. It’s why the first thing we did once we developed the hyperdrive was to spread civilization and technology to the other races, to form the Alliance with them.”

  “I wonder how you reconcile that,” I asked her, “with the fact that the Elders put the Tevynians out among you? Isn’t that what caused all this trouble in the first place? Bringing your technology to them?”

  “Our failing was not in trying to match the Elders’ generosity and ambition,” Garran-Dol countered, “but in failing to match their judgment and wisdom. We overreached, which is why we find ourselves in need of your aid.”

  She waved at what looked more than anything else like a cluster of bean bag chairs from my grandparents’ house mixed with those miniature trampolines people use for aerobics.

  “Please, sit down and be comfortable so that we may speak.”

  I sat, or tried to, but I made no promises about comfort. I don’t know how the Helta didn’t all have spinal curvature from trying to sit on those damned things for more than a few minutes at a time, but I resolved then and there to devote my life to making sure Helta furniture was never imported to Earth.

  “Out here,” Garran-Dol continued, “only one jump from home yet also at the crossroads of so many gravimetic lines of force, I have worried these last few years that we would see the Tevynians in the full weight of their force. This system makes sense as a staging point if they were to strike at Helta Prime. But we lack the ships to station a substantial fleet here and I am left with only orbital platforms and ground-based defense grids for a shield against them. And they have shown an appalling willingness to overwhelm such systems by simply throwing themselves at them and letting us kill them until we are overrun. I can only hope that the Facilitator and his cabinet sense the danger as keenly as I do.”

  “That is the word we hope to bring to him,” Joon-Pah said. “And we will bring our allies along to offer their aid in preventing the attack we know is coming.”

  “You know this for a fact?” The female leaned forward, her hand going to Joon-Pah’s. They weren’t human so I didn’t know the significance of the touching and nuzzling, but I felt an urge to repeat the Helta’s rude question from back on the President’s ranch and ask him if they were mating.

  “Our allies the Americans were able to capture a Tevynian prisoner alive, something we had not been able to accomplish. They questioned him—”

  “You questioned him,” Olivera reminded in gentle reproof. “We merely observed.”

  “He may have been boasting,” Joon-Pah went on, ignoring the correction, “or merely repeating rumors, but he told us the attack would come in weeks. And I believe him.”

  “Where is the prisoner now?” Garran-Dol wondered. “If you brought him to the Facilitator…”

  “We left him in the custody of our government back on Earth,” Olivera said. “We have our own allies to convince of the severity of the threat, and it was thought seeing the enemy with their own eyes would aid in this.”

  “We do have extensive recordings of the Tevynian soldier,” Strawbridge added. “It should be enough to show your leaders he at least meant his threat, whether it was accurate or not.”

  “I do not know how any of us could take the threat of the Tevynians as anything but deadly serious,” the Helta female said, “after all we have lost to them these last few years.”

  “We would not enter the home system with the human cruiser along,” Joon-Pah explained. “We do not wish to alarm them with the strange ship so soon on the heels of trying to convince them that the people of Earth are not like the Tevynians despite being of the same species.”

  “Our intent,” Strawbridge interjected, “with your permission, is to leave the James Bowie, our ship, here in your system, with most of our people aboard. Which will achieve a twofold objective, first, not alarming your people by showing our full strength, and second to offer a measure of protection to this system until we return. We will take one shuttle with myself, the flight crew, Major Clanton and a small honor guard to entreat your leaders to accept our aid in this war.”

  Which was the part I was not fucking crazy about at all. It was, in my opinion, a mistake not to go in force, to let them see at least an indication of our strength. If we went there with a few people offering nothing but words, where was the proof we could even help them? But Strawbridge had shot the idea down and she was a Deputy Secretary of State where I was just a Marine Corps major attached to the Space Force.

  “This seems a wise approach,” Garran-Dol agreed. “You are, of course, welcome to leave your ship here with us. No harm will come to it and we would appreciate its protection.” She hesitated, long enough I sensed something amiss. “You could even have your troops visit our world if you feel it would be wise.”

  And I didn’t have to be either a Helta or human psychologist to intuit her opinions on that matter.

  “No, I think they’d probably be better off staying on the ship,” Olivera said, apparently picking up on the same vibe I was. “But we thank you for the kind offer, and we thank you for allowing us to take shelter here in your system.”

  “May your mother’s mother smile on your endeavors,” Garran-Dol offered him by way of a “you’re welcome,” I suppose. It was an odd translation and I wondered if it was one of those things that just didn’t carry over well from Helta to English. “I insist that you all stay here this night and experience our hospitality before you leave. I would not have you skulk out in the dead of night.”

  “I wish we could,” Strawbridge lamented, and I could believe her regret as much as I liked, “but it would be awkward for Joon-Pah if news of his contact with us preceded him back to Helta Prime. And the longer we stay, the greater the chance of that.”

  “Then take my good wishes with you. And may the Elders grant you a successful journey.”

  “You guys hear that?” I murmured, eyes
rolling upward. “If you’re still out there, we could use all the help we can get.”

  Chapter Eight

  I traced a finger down Julie’s bare shoulder and smiled. Somehow, in the dim light of my cabin, she saw it.

  “What?” she murmured, shifting in the bed, the foam mattress murmuring a protest beneath her.

  “I was just thinking how lucky I was,” I confessed. I shivered, my sweat beginning to dry under the aggressive air conditioning, and I pulled the sheets over me.

  “Lucky because you get to visit an alien homeworld and General Olivera doesn’t?” she asked. “Or lucky because I convinced them to let me pilot our shuttle and since we’re the ranking military officers on this little mission, there’s no one to tell us we can’t share a cabin together?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, all those are incredibly lucky,” I allowed, setting my head back against the pillow. “But I just meant I was lucky because I found someone who knows how fucked up I am and wants to hang with me anyway.” My smile broadened. “And that I live in a day where we both are old enough to have our shit together and know something about life, but we also both look like we haven’t hit thirty yet.”

  “I think there are some other, unforeseen side-effects of the wonder-drug,” she said, nibbling at my ear with a playful giggle. “I haven’t been this randy since I was in college.”

  “Oh, I think that’s going to be a big selling point,” I said. “You should get with the marketing team back home.” I motioned at the cabin, which was comfortable enough but a bit generic, mostly because these quarters went unused when they were no humans riding on the Truthseeker. Helta sleeping quarters looked something like a jungle gym inside a cave and they all bunked together. “It’s funny, I’ve probably spent more time on this ship than I have the Jambo.”