“We’re going to have to ask them to help us get down,” Gary said, looking up at the icons of the alien ships. It was funny how they suddenly didn’t look so threatening. “See, you’re a hero! I told you it would work out fine.”
“No, you didn’t,” Simon said. “You told me to make sure I took out extra life insurance.”
“But you survived,” Gary said. He lit an imaginary cigar and pretended to take a long drag. “Once we get down, we’ll be heroes. They’ll be naming spacecraft after us.”
“Did I do the right thing?”
“There was no choice,” Paul said. He pushed as much conviction into his voice as he could. “We couldn’t have won a second outbreak of hostilities. This way, part of the human race remains free and can build up our own space capabilities. New spacecraft, bases on the moon and the outer planets, asteroid mining…within a few years, we’ll outstrip them completely.”
“Maybe,” the President said. His tone became pensive. “I have the feeling, however, that some of the electorate won’t understand that. Why should they?”
Paul considered it. “When has the electorate ever been right about anything?”
“When they elected me,” the President said, and grinned. Paul decided not to point out that he had voted for the other guy. “I think that was a good choice, don’t you?”
“They sit in their chairs and got fed soundbites by talking heads,” Paul said. “They looked at the world through a prism held up by people with dubious agendas. They swallowed all sorts of crap because it came from someone with a bright smile, or because they didn’t want to appear racist or sexist or whatever other kind of bad buzzword of the month, or because it was easier than thinking for themselves. They got whatever they wanted when they got it and forgot that it came with a price – a heavy price, one that they didn’t have to pay.”
He shrugged. “I guess we’ve had it too easy for too long.”
The President smiled. “Rich democracies are soft?”
“No,” Paul said. “Rich democracies just have a habit of forgetting how cold and harsh the universe can be. They might crucify you for…abandoning the Middle East, but everyone who knows anything about it will know that you had no choice. The world is in chaos and…well, we have our own reconstruction to go through, again. I think they’ll probably forget what’s important by the time the next election comes around.”
“How true,” the President said. “The war is over. Now, all we have to do is win the peace.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
– Helen Keller
“He was scared,” Joshua said.
Loretta looked up at him. A month in captivity hadn’t dulled her much, although the aliens hadn’t set out to really break her. “Who was scared?”
Joshua watched the lines of collaborators, some willing, some unwilling, as they were escorted towards the holding camps outside Austin. They would be held there until they could be tried, but plenty of people weren't waiting for the trials before extracting revenge. Several hundred collaborators, some of the worst, had been lynched before the insurgent network – what was left of it – had finally regained control and taken the remaining collaborators into protective custody.
“Mr Adair,” Joshua said. “I had wondered if he hated me, or if he thought I didn’t deserve a hot babe like you, but he was merely scared. Scared that one day the aliens would discover me, break in and take his children away. He betrayed me and he didn’t even have the decency to be a secret arch-enemy or something.”
Loretta elbowed him. “Stop complaining,” she said, with a wink. It was the type of wink that would have gotten a young girl arrested or whipped in a more repressive country. “You’re alive, you survived the occupation, you have a pair of quickie book deals lined up…”
“How many people are going to be buying books in the next few years?” Joshua asked. “The country’s a wreck. The war was little more than a stalemate. Millions of people are dead – do you know they’re saying that the total death toll is over one and a half
“I thought I told you to stop complaining,” Loretta said, firmly. “Come on, think of all the new vistas opening up in front of you.”
“I used to think that getting the Pulitzer would have been the greatest day of my life,” Joshua said. “I never had a hope of getting it…and now, what remains of the committee is falling over itself to offer it to me, and I find it hard to care. What does getting the story mean now?”
He looked at the retreating collaborators and then around at the damaged city. “The entire country has been shaken,” he said. “What’s the point any more?”
“You beat the odds,” a voice said from behind him. Joshua jumped and spun around to see Tessa standing behind him, wearing, for the first time in his experience, a standard uniform. “You get to carry on living when armed and dangerous people wanted to kill you. What better victory can you have?”
“Damn it,” Joshua said, with feeling. “Do you have to keep sneaking up on me like that?”
“It’s good for your heart,” Tessa assured him. “It gets the heart beating and the blood pumping – I’ve probably put your heart attack off by a few extra years. You ought to be paying me for such a great service.”
“I’m broke,” Joshua said, and laughed. “Whatever I had in the banks vanished when the banks folded. God help the insurers when the claims start coming in.”
“I’m sure their lawyers will claim that they don’t cover damages by aliens,” Tessa said. Her face twitched into a smile. “Of course, all those people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens and even took out insurance against it are going to be laughing.”
She sobered up rapidly. “The Captain died up there,” she said. “That’s not common knowledge, but I thought you should know.”
Joshua winced. He’d liked Brent, in his way, even if the soldier had been reluctant to have a reporter anywhere near him. It would have been easy to take refuge in hating him for censoring his posts, but it had been Joshua’s life on the line as well; a single mistake could have killed them all…and Loretta. Brent had deserved better than death, even if he had lied to Joshua about his destination when he left the safe house.
“I’m sorry to hear about that,” he said, sincerely. “What are you going to do with your life?”
“Have a long one,” Tessa said. She shrugged. “Plenty of people are a…little upset to learn that the United States maintained insurgency groups and stay-behind units, even if they came in handy when they were needed. I imagine that there’ll be inquiries and suchlike before too long, and people questioning the rightness of our cause.”
Loretta scowled. “Can you imagine the President agreeing that the alien missionaries could travel through America?” She asked. “What about freedom of religion?”
“I doubt that many of them will survive the experience,” Tessa said. “Oh, there were a few converts who maybe actually mean it, but most people seem to be shrugging it off now and abandoning it. Freedom of religion does include freedom from religion.”
She winked. “The Captain would have wanted you to have a nice life, so have one,” she said. “I’m going to take a long vacation somewhere.”
Joshua blinked. “You’re going to take a vacation?” He asked. “Where can you go in these times?”
“Yep,” Tessa said. “They tell me that Saudi is very nice at this time of year.”
She walked off. “So, what do we do now?” Loretta asked. “You know what that meant…?”
Joshua grinned at her. “It meant nothing,” he said, and took her arm. “We’re going to cover the return of American forces to Texas, the surrender of the alien ground forces, and the end of the war. Once that’s done, we’re going home.”
