Battleship

Sam realized that out-and-out threatening the guy hadn’t occurred to her. I’ve just got to broaden my repertoire of techniques for dealing with stubborn people.

They started moving down toward the workstation.

Their stealth served them well. They covered the distance to the simple, square building in a fairly short amount of time, or at least in as short a time as possible when one was crawling on one’s stomach, propelling oneself via elbows. Sam had to think she would never freak out about snakes again, considering they had to live like this all the time.

They froze at one point, when one of the bulky aliens walked by. It stopped and stood there for a moment, seemingly inspecting the air. Sam wondered if it had somehow caught wind of them, and perhaps was even about to open fire. But then, seemingly satisfied that it was alone, it went on about its business. It was all she could do not to breathe a sigh of relief, which would most certainly have been audible. Once the alien was gone, Cal and Sam got to their feet, remaining hunched over as if that would do them the slightest bit of good, and ran quickly to the side door of the darkened structure. Mick remained where he was, keeping his weapon at the ready. If this thing turned into a firefight, he was definitely prepared for it. Sam even wondered briefly if he was hoping it would turn out that way, because these monsters had destroyed a military base and she was sure that Mick was itching for some payback.

Once inside, Sam continued to stay crouched, keeping an eye on things. She saw Mick propped on his elbows, shotgun at the ready. Cal was rooting around in the work area, which more or less took up the entirety of the building. They didn’t dare turn on any lights since that would unquestionably catch the attention of the aliens. Instead Cal was employing a flashlight that they’d taken from the Jeep, but was doing so as judiciously as possible. He kept low to the floor, making sure not to get anywhere near a window that would allow the light to be seen from outside.

And then, as she peered around the corner, she saw the taller alien, the one she took to be the commander, slowly striding their way.

Reflexively she sucked in air sharply between her teeth. The alien didn’t hear her, but Cal did, and he froze where he was, near stacks of equipment. Even in the darkness she could see the panic in his eyes. She frantically gestured for him to keep his mouth shut.

The alien stopped a few feet away and slowly removed its helmet, accompanied by a hissing of air. She saw the creature’s hideous, inhuman face and bit down on her lower lip not to let out a loud screech. There was no reason for her to be startled at this point. She knew what she was dealing with. Freaking out upon seeing it so close up wasn’t going to help matters in the slightest.

It brought some manner of narrow tube to its mouth, closed its eyes and then lit the tube with a blue flame.

Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me. Of all the things that these creatures and humanity could have in common, that’s where we overlap? On cancer sticks? Really?

Cal had stopped what he was doing so that he could peer out the nearest window as carefully as possible. When he saw what was happening, he scuttled over to Sam and said, practically in her ear, “I do not wanna die from secondhand alien smoke.”

“One thing at a time,” Sam shot back under her breath. “How long is this going to take?”

“I’m on it.” Moments later he had gathered coiled cord and batteries and brought them over to Sam. “I tuck it away for safekeeping.”

“You mean, like, in case of an alien invasion?”

“Actually, most of this stuff’s for gaming.” Leaving it with her, he crawled under a desk that was piled high with hard drives and CD-ROMs, reaching for what looked to Sam like a pretty high-tech-looking box in a corner. He managed to get a grip on it with the fingers of one hand. “Got it.”

“Great,” said Sam. “Just don’t make any noise extracting it.”

He endeavored to do as she instructed as he began to pull. This nudged the box forward toward him, close enough that he was able to get a second hand on it. Then, slowly, he began to back out from under the desk, hauling the box a few inches at a time and then moving with greater confidence.

That confidence cost him when his back leg bumped into another desk nearby. It had a towering pile of stuff on it, and the impact from Cal’s leg jolted it. Sam tried to lunge toward it, to catch the pile before it fell, but she wasn’t even close to getting there in time. The pile tilted, slid and crashed to the floor. Cal whipped around, a look of wide-eyed fear on his face.

The Land Commander finds that he cannot take even the slightest break without being disturbed.

He hears the crash within the nearby human structure. It is as frail and poorly put together as any human shelters are… indeed, as much as actual humans are. It could easily be falling apart all by itself. Nevertheless, attention must be paid, in the unlikely event that any of the creatures are lurking inside.

He summons two of his subordinates and they approach hastily even as he tosses away his salt stick. They await his orders. He gestures for them to head into the structure, to determine just exactly who or what it was that caused the things inside to fall over.

Each of the soldiers is carrying a cleeb, a bladed instrument that could slice any human in half with the slightest contact. They head toward the structure, their cleebs at the ready. When they approach the structure, the door is shut. Without hesitation the foremost grunt kicks it open and enters with full confidence that nothing inside can possibly pose a serious threat. They are warriors in the service of the Land Commander, and there is nothing they cannot accomplish. Nothing they cannot defeat. Nothing—

—in the room.

The first soldier steps in, the second right behind. They clear the corners, making sure that no one is hiding there.

The rear window. It is hanging open. They move to it and look out.

No sign of anyone.

They report their findings—or lack thereof—to the Land Commander. He considers the information carefully. Which seems the most likely? That some random stack of human leavings tumbled over because of a possible gust of wind, or maybe it had never been properly aligned in the first place and had eventually given way to gravity? Or that some human or humans had braved all manner of threat just to search around in an empty building and had barely managed to escape out the back window before they could be seen?

The answer is self-evident.

He orders the two back to work and resolves to give it no further thought.

Sam had come to think of the area where the first contact had been made—the spot that was now occupied by the overturned Jeeps—as her own personal Ground Zero. The place where her view of the universe, her understanding of reality itself, had been upended.

Now she and her companions had taken refuge on a hill overlooking it and were doing everything they could to take down the creatures that had performed the actions of total destruction. God, I show up at someone’s place, I come with a bottle of wine, maybe some dessert, and if it’s a party, I offer to stay after and help with the cleanup. These guys come a bazillion light-years to our place and the first thing they do is blow shit up. I swear, some people…

Calvin Zapata had worked with surprising speed and confidence—surprising, Sam reasoned, because thus far she had only seen him out of his element. Now that he was operating within his area of expertise, he was all efficiency. He had effortlessly set up the spectrum analyzer and rigged it to batteries. Then he had put on the headphones as if he were crowning himself and, with complete certainty, snapped on the analyzer.

That was where his confidence came to an abrupt end. Needles, dials, readouts—all of it just lay there, unmoving. Dead.

“You doing this right?” said Mick.

Cal shot him an annoyed look and started double-checking the connections.

Speaking as much to herself as anyone else, Sam said softly, “Yesterday my biggest fear was that my dad