Battleship

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?”