Battleship

wouldn’t accept my boyfriend. Now…” Her voice trailed off and then she looked back at Mick. “You?”

“I thought I couldn’t climb a little mountain. Good one?”

Suddenly they both jumped at a nearby surge of sound. Sam automatically thought it was some sort of weapons blaster aimed at them, about to blow her head off. Judging by Mick’s expression, he’d probably thought it was the same thing. She relaxed when she realized it was just the analyzer humming to life. Cal looked at them with an expression of smug triumph and then began adjusting the dials. “Oh, I should have mentioned this before,” he said in an offhand manner, “but if this works, and we get a good frequency—”

“We’ll only have a few seconds to communicate. You already told us,” said Sam.

“Yeah, that. But…” He was trying to sound casual about it and wasn’t being terribly successful. “Also those monsters are pretty much guaranteed to get a lock on our position, too. So we’ll only have a few seconds to get out of here.”

Sam took in this new information. “I almost wish you hadn’t mentioned it.”

He shrugged and returned to the spectrum analyzer, fine-tuning the dials so delicately that he seemed like a safecracker trying to discern the combination through subtle clicks of tumblers. Sam mused that, in a way, that’s exactly what he was doing: he was trying to crack into a wave band in order to gain access to it.

“Anything?” said Mick.

Cal shook his head and continued to adjust and refine it. The needles and dials were now flitting about, bouncing from one side to the other. And then, all at once, they stopped their twitching and became rock steady, pointing straight up with only the most minute of quivering. As they remained steady, Cal whispered in amazement, “I hear them. I’m listening to aliens communicate.”

“What’s it sound like?” said Sam.

He pulled a headphone free so they could hear it, too. To Sam, it sounded like a steam wand on a giant cappuccino machine. Apparently it came across that way to Cal as well. “Starbucks,” he said.

Great. Thanks to him, now I’m craving a latte.

Mick nudged Cal, who made a final adjustment, getting the patched-together device online with where they needed it to be. Then he took the police radio they’d salvaged from the Jeep, plugged it into the spectrum analyzer and handed the microphone to Sam.

Sam worked to keep herself calm. She needed to be all business. There wasn’t time for histrionics or sounding like the frantic girlfriend in one of those horror films.

“John Paul Jones, this is an urgent message for the USS John Paul Jones, do you read?”

No response was forthcoming. She repeated it again and again, and with utter despair crushing in on her, she heard a familiar voice come with an excited, “Sam? Sam, is that you?”

It was Hopper. His voice was static-filled and phasing in and out, but it was most definitely him. “Sam, what the hell are you doing on the naval emergency channel?”

She didn’t have time for a back and forth. For all she knew the aliens were detecting the transmission. Plus the horizon was beginning to redden—the sun would be coming up soon, making her feel even more exposed. Without even acknowledging him by name, she got right down to business. “Three items. One: these things are here and their immediate goal is the satellite array on Makapu’u Head above the watershed, near Saddle Ridge. Two: at 10:30 a deep-space satellite will orbit by, which they’ll use to slingshot a message home. And you can guess what that means.”

His voice was still laced with static, but at least she understood him. “Millions of ’em. Everywhere. What’s the third?”

She paused, and for the first time, she allowed emotion to fill her voice. “You better stop ’em, because we’re getting married and they’re not invited.”

“Sam! Sam, get out of there! You’ve got to get out of there! I love—!”

The static overwhelmed the clarity of the transmission, and Sam winced from the feedback as she removed the headset. “He’s gone.”

“I know,” said Mick, “we could pretty much hear his side of it leaking out of the headset. We better get gone, too.”

They rose to their feet. The spectrum analyzer having served its purpose, they left it behind. As they moved quickly away from it, Mick said, “By the way, I’m pretty sure that the last word he was going to say was ‘you.’”

“Pretty sure?”

“Well, it might’ve been ‘pizza.’ Or ‘baseball.’ Or maybe ‘being a semi-fiance and we shouldn’t make it any more serious than th—’”

“Shut up,” she said as they disappeared into the rain forest.

USS REAGAN

Seated behind his desk with a phone to his ear—which was where he felt like it’d been forever—Admiral Shane was starting to have trouble recalling a time when he didn’t think he was losing his mind.

I’ve had meals with this man. Hell, I’ve golfed with this man. He seemed sane and reasonable all those times. When did he turn into such a flaming asshole? Guess it takes an alien invasion to bring out one’s true character.

As Shane’s aide, Ensign Chavez, came in with a cup of coffee, Shane tried a different approach. “I’m asking you to reconsider, Mr. Secretary…”

“And I’m asking you,” came back the Secretary of Defense’s voice over the phone, “to keep following orders, something I’d think I shouldn’t have to ask. Your orders were to continue trying to find a way through that water obstruction they’ve tossed up.”

“We’ve already lost two planes and a fully manned attack sub trying to do just that—”

“And we’re willing to lose more if we must.”

Shane’s voice was low and flat, an unmistakable tone of screw you in his response that not only could he not hide, but he wasn’t even trying to. “Are we.”

There was a pause on the other end. Message sent. Message received. Message rejected. “Just scramble the jets, Admiral,” said the Secretary in a way that drew the divide between them in stark relief. “Circle that barrier. Find a hole in it. We need to get in there—”

“We need to get in there?” Calm. Stay calm. He’s not one of us, he can’t understand, he answers to the President, don’t say what you’re thinking. His mind split down the middle, one side listening to the very solid advice being presented by the other side. After listening, the other half of his mind completely ignored the first, and Shane said what he was thinking. “While you sit six thousand miles away, I’m on the enemy front line, with four hundred of my men and my only daughter trapped inside that dome! I am far more aware than you of the need to get inside there, but wasting lives will not help.” He paused, and heard the Secretary inhaling on the other end, about to speak, but the admiral steamrolled right over him. “You want me to send up another plane? I’ll do it the second you come up here and sit your ass in the copilot seat!”

He slammed down the phone, killing the uplink. Waves of anger radiated from him, and it was that moment he realized that Chavez was still standing there, waiting to hand him the coffee. In a fit of uncontrolled rage, he snatched the mug from Chavez’s hand and threw it with all his strength. It shattered against the wall.

Chavez stared at the mess in shock. Shane looked directly at him, his eyes like twin thunderstorms. Chavez gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I… I’ll get you another cup.”

He got out of there as quickly as he could.

USS JOHN PAUL JONES