Hands picked Eva up, but she didn’t cooperate. She remained curled in a ball, impassive, uncaring, while those hands passed her through the hatch of a Hrwang combat craft that had landed a few feet away from her, in the shelter of the building where she hid. Hands inside the craft laid her on a bench and strapped a harness over her rocking body.
Another body, in a white bag, was brought in by those same hands and laid on the floor of the cargo hold.
Another hand rested gently on Eva’s shoulder, and she heard the Lord Admiral’s deep voice.
“Are you injured?”
She wasn’t. Really.
Cuts and scrapes, bruised elbows and knees, and she would have a headache from hitting her head on the stone steps as she tumbled down them. Her leg hurt. She had either twisted her ankle in her heels or one of the shots had grazed it.
But she had no serious physical injuries.
The clinical, well trained part of her brain performed an overall assessment and told her she was probably going into shock, not one caused by physical hurts, but one caused by the trauma she’d experienced. Acute Stress Reaction, an Agency psychologist labeled it during training. It hadn’t seem so bad when he had described it in the classroom.
Her mind, in order to remain sane perhaps, felt like it removed itself from her body and watched the proceedings from a distance. The rocking, sobbing girl in a dirty red dress seemed like another person, one not in control of herself.
One that couldn’t be Eva.
Hands held her, they weren’t Tomes’ hands, and she reached out and clung to the man she sometimes hated, sometimes admired, sometimes wanted to kill, and sometimes wanted to have protect her the rest of her life. He murmured comforting words as the engines cycled up.
Her perspective came and went and she watched with detachment as the girl in the red dress was strapped carefully to a stretcher while an elegant man in a tuxedo held her hand.
Eva thought briefly that she might have died.
If she had, she’d be free of the war, free of the conflict between human and Hrwang, free of her mission as a mole. If she were dead, she’d have no more responsibility to gather intelligence for humanity. She’d have no more need to lie or to put others in danger. She could rest from her cares and worries.
Bright lights over her, a man in a white gown passing an instrument over her outstretched body, and comforting words from a man his people called the Lord Admiral convinced her she was still alive.
She didn’t want to be.
She wanted to curl back up in a ball and be buried in the deepest cave on the Earth. She wanted to fly through the air and hunt down those who’d killed the one man she realized she’d actually fallen in love with. She hadn’t even recognized it until he was gone.
She wanted it to be her that was dead, not him.
Her mind unwillingly replayed the attack over and over. She pictured the shock of surprise on her lover’s face as the bullet entered his head (had she really seen that?), the destruction of human flesh as the round exploded inside, bursting his skull, scattering the contents of his brains that had held caring thoughts, personal thoughts, had represented his memories of his life and his hopes and plans for the future, scattering those contents that were now merely organic matter all over her.
The analytical part of her mind sat back and watched the play occur again and again and told her there had been two shooters, one aiming for Tomes, one missing her. The second shot came too quickly after the first, no time to reload the advanced, complicated sniper rifles her attackers must have used to shoot at her from over a mile away. Tomes had saved her life in his death, his body pushing her out of the way of the second bullet.
If both shooters had fired at the same time...
As her mind analyzed the events, part of her wanting to flee, part of her unable to stop revisualizing the images, the doctor concluded his examination and put his instrument away.
She listened to his words without responding.
“Nothing’s broken,” he said in Est, then he said more things she couldn’t understand. He pointed to a spot on her ankle, and she knew a bullet had indeed grazed her, a hole in her dress testifying as to how close that bullet had come to doing much more damage. Sniper rounds exploded when they hit, so even a near miss could be fatal.
Reacting and not thinking had saved her unfortunate life.
Someone spoke English to her and she couldn’t understand it, her mind still wanting to comprehend the foreign Est language.
Eventually her mind shifted gears, and she heard them tell her she would need a couple of days to recuperate.
“No,” she cried and struggled against a restraint on the stretcher that kept her from falling off. “No!” She fought, kicking and clawing at those restraints, and then she felt something press into her neck and all she wanted to do was relax. To simply give up.
She did.
Wolfgang and Leah found the Tyrollean soldier and the corporal at the base site, packed up and waiting impatiently. Goetze and his partner hadn’t returned yet.
“Did you get them?” the corporal asked.
“The man in the tuxedo died. The woman survived.”
“Pah!” He lifted his hands and looked up in the air in disgust. “How could you miss?”
“Because he did it on purpose!” Goetze yelled, running and sliding in the mud into the camp, his hands out and shoving Wolfgang off balance to the ground. “You missed on purpose!” the non-commissioned officer cried and lunged at Wolfgang again, who rolled downhill, out of the way. The corporal dove on the sergeant and held him back.
Everyone sat up, Wolfgang ready to jump out of the way again, the sergeant restrained by the corporal. Leah and the Tyrollean watched in shock.
“You missed on purpose. You fired after I fired. You missed and now Karl is dead.”
Karl, Private Schultheis, had been Sergeant Goetze’s spotter.
“He’s dead,” the sergeant accused.
“That’s not his fault,” the corporal rejoined. “The target didn’t kill Karl, did she?”
The sergeant didn’t want to admit the logic of the corporal’s question, but he stopped yelling at Wolfgang and stopped trying to get up.
“We have to run. Their aircraft will find us soon,” Wolfgang said in a measured tone. He decided not to lie to defend missing the woman on purpose. It didn’t matter any longer. He was not a soldier and would never be one. He would desert as soon as he had the first opportunity. He hoped Leah would come with him. The others would never be able to follow them through the Alps.
“It’s too dark. They won’t find us,” the Tyrollean woman pleaded, sounding like she was trying to convince herself.
Goetze wouldn’t look at Wolfgang, but he looked over the rest of his squad.
“We have to go now. Get back to the insertion point. Report what we saw and what we did.” He said the last ominously.
“We need to split up. Our group is too big. Their flying craft will detect so many running through the woods. Even at night,” Wolfgang said.
Goetze glared at him now but must have agreed.
“Stay in your sniper teams. Stick to the Pollaet valley. If you try to cross the mountains your silhouette will be visible for kilometers. We will meet at the head of the river at the Austrian border. Remember the hotel there?”
They had all joked about staying at the resort when they had passed it the first time, imagining the warm welcome they would receive as returning heroes.
In truth, the place had been abandoned. Too difficult to get food up to and not enough food in the nearby woods. Shame, Wolfgang had thought at the time. It would have been a good place to honeymoon with his new bride.
Everyone remembered the hotel.
“What about you, Sergeant?” the Tyrollean asked.
“I lost my partner. I will go alone,” the serg
eant replied. He still had murder in his eyes, or perhaps it was simply the look of a professional soldier performing his duty. Still, no one disputed him.
“We lost our packs,” Leah said. “We have no food or water.”
“Then you must go back and retrieve them,” Goetze said. “You two go first.” He pointed to the Tyrollean and the corporal. “I will follow. You two follow as soon as you have your things.”
“Yes, sir,” Leah replied. Wolfgang didn’t like the look on the Sergeant’s face. Duty or murder? When a soldier’s duty was dealing death, was murder far behind? When or how did a man cross that line? Had Goetze crossed it?
Wolfgang no longer trusted his commander, and he knew the man didn’t trust him. He decided not to return down the mountain the way they went up it.
He and Leah made their way carefully, nervously, back up to where their backpacks and Wolfgang’s sniper rifle lay. The fires had burned out and, although some trees still smoldered, they could reach their hiding spot safely.
Would alien soldiers await them there?
“You stay here and watch. Warn me if anyone comes up behind me?”
“Who would do that?”
“Aliens hunting for us.”
Leah nodded grimly and hid herself in a bush. Wolfgang felt more fear from Goetze tracking him to a spot where they were alone than he did from the aliens. The aliens would assume the snipers were long gone, and if they chose to hunt, would do so on the most obvious escape route, the one Goetze had selected. Wolfgang would go a different way, although he longed for another look at the map to plan his route better.
No aliens waited for him in the hiding spot, and he took the time to look at the castle below. A hubbub of activity still filled the courtyard. The alien soldiers didn’t look like they knew a sausage from cheese. No one would be following them anytime soon.
He grabbed the scorched backpack and debated bringing the rifle. They might need to hunt for meat, but the contraption would slow them down. He decided against bringing the despised instrument of death. He and Leah could be vegetarians until they got to safety.
“Any sign of anyone?” he whispered to Leah when he returned.
She shook her head. She was clearly terrified. Wolfgang was almost glad of it. All that she had been through hadn’t hardened the woman. Good. He handed her her backpack.
He started off, moving parallel to the ridge line instead of back down and Leah stopped, confused.
“It’s this way, right?” she asked softly, pointing back down the hill.
“Please. This way,” he said and pointed in the direction he wanted to go.
He thought of ordering her. He thought of telling her he was her fiancé and she should follow him. Instead he said simply, “Trust me,” and she did, setting off in the direction he indicated.
They ran out of trees sooner than Wolfgang expected, and he was grateful for the cover of night.
“See where the trees get heavy again, up ahead?” He pointed to the other side of the exposed ridge, where they would be safely under cover again.
Leah nodded, her closeness reassuring.
“You’ll be tempted to run, but it’s night and running will make us more visible. Plus you will be more likely to slip and fall. We must move slowly and quietly.”
She nodded again, her lips pressed tightly together. They moved out slowly, hand in hand, avoiding a hiking trail they came across, watching the dark skies for any indication of alien aircraft.
Wolfgang’s heart pounded in his ears, but he expressed no fear. Confidence would save them, not panic, and he pretended he was on a night hike in his beloved Alps, enjoying nature instead of on the lookout for aliens. The air was humid and cold, the moon and the stars invisible behind dense clouds, flowers and scenery hidden by the dark.
At least that same darkness hid them.
Less than two hundred meters from the shelter of trees, they heard the echoing of gunfire and shouts.
“Run,” he hissed, and the two ran, stumbling and tripping in the dark, for the safety of the tree line.
More shots. Lights, floodlights, darted up and down the valley floor below. Wolfgang didn’t stop to look.
Leah pulled him down as soon as they were in cover behind trees and pointed wordlessly to the commotion below them.
At least three alien craft circled, lightning erupting from one of them onto the valley floor. More gunfire and lightning from the other two scorched the trees on both sides. They heard no more shooting.
“Idiots,” Wolfgang said. “They’re probably both dead.”
“Who?” Leah asked.
“The Tyrollean woman and the corporal were out in front. It’s likely it’s them.”
“Is this why you wanted to come a different way?”
“One of the reasons. I didn’t think walking along the valley would be safe.”
“What was the other reason?”
Wolfgang sighed. He didn’t want to say what he feared, but he was too tired to dissemble.
“I thought Sergeant Goetze wanted to kill me.”
“Nonsense,” Leah said immediately. “He wouldn’t do something like that.”
“He was right,” Wolfgang confessed. “I missed the woman on purpose.”
“What?” Leah rounded on him, no longer paying attention to the alien aircraft below them, hovering and searching in circles. “You missed on purpose?”
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill her.”
Leah leaned into him, her voice sympathetic.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry my people made us soldiers.” She sniffled. “I don’t want to go back.”
“Good. I’m not going back. We will run away together.”
“Will they charge us as deserters?”
“This war is going poorly. No one will ever know or care. They will simply think we were killed.”
She held him tightly and he reciprocated. Together, they watched alien vehicles land in the stream bed below.
Jayla didn’t want to leave their combat craft and venture out into the dark, but she accepted the handgun she’d been trained to fire and followed the others out. Many of the Hrwang now carried human weapons as they were low on ammunition for theirs. Most used either human rifles or their strange pistols that looked more like brass knuckles than something that could be fired. The tiny things held twenty-four shots, and while they didn’t carry enough punch to take down a charging bear, they would kill a person easily.
Jayla readied hers nervously and fanned out with the other soldiers of the squad.
Wolfgang and Leah spent the next rainy day in an abandoned ski tram station, staying dry, eating as little as possible, and leaving their canteens outside to refill. They found a bucket and caught water in it and used that for drinking and washing.
They also tried to sleep.
At night and in a heavy downpour, they left the building and hiked alongside a muddy ski run. At times they could see cliffs to their left, and they moved slowly, not wanting to slide down the hill and over an edge.
The slope lessened, and Wolfgang thought they were probably past the cliff. Feeling too exposed on the ski run, he set off into the cover of trees, moving downward. He tried to remember what he could of the map, but he hadn’t been focusing on the part of it that covered the area they hiked in now. They would just have to wing it.
There were small villages along the line of the Alps, and Wolfgang thought that they could enter one of them quietly and try to blend in with the locals. They could ditch their uniforms for civilian clothes and any investigating aliens would be none the wiser.
When the terrain in the trees grew rough, they moved closer to the ski run, continuing to follow the main run off the hill, but when they reached the bottom, where the chair lift station stood abandoned, Wo
lfgang realized his mistake.
The ski run made a large C shape, looping back toward Neuschwanstein. They could see the castle looming over them and hear the whine of engines from an alien aircraft.
“Run,” he cried, but Leah had already started running, heading for a strip of trees in the direction of the castle and the aliens. She had only heard the engines, not seen where they were, and now she ran in the wrong direction. Wolfgang hesitated, torn between following after her and running for his life in the direction they should be heading, back up the ski run and into the cover of the trees on the other side.
He followed after Leah.
The Hrwang were searching for a needle in a haystack and weren’t even certain the needle existed. Jayla was grateful she hadn’t discovered the bodies of the two human soldiers, a man and a woman, after the Hrwang lightning had killed them. She had looked at their bodies, but she’d had time to prepare herself mentally to view death. The lightning had fried their skins, blackening it and making them unrecognizable. She turned away immediately.
Gerrel and the other squad leaders remained convinced that there had been two snipers. They’d only found one rifle with the dead pair, so now everyone searched the forests surrounding Neuschwanstein. The Hrwang fanned out farther and wider, covering an impossibly large swath of territory, most of it the rugged foothills of the Alps.
On the second night of searching, she and Gerrel found themselves combing through a copse of trees at the bottom of a ski resort, still in the shadow of the fairy tale castle perched up on a rock behind them.
The night was so dark, the rain so heavy, that Jayla knew she would miss an elephant if it were ten feet from her and not moving. The continued search felt foolish. If there really had been two snipers, then the second one was long gone from here. Even if they could only make three miles an hour, it had been over twenty-four hours since the shooting, so they could be almost seventy-five miles away.
She grinned to herself as she threw the bs flag on that play. No one could make seventy-five miles on foot in one day. The Hrwang were probably better at estimating how far a person could travel than she was, and they were bracketing a long and a short range, searching everywhere in between.
Gerrel’s no dummy, she reminded herself, and she returned to searching, which really just entailed walking along in the woods getting drenched. Gerrel was about ten yards to her left and the next closest team was several hundred yards past him, farther left. She didn’t know where the rest of the squad searched.
She came across a dry stream bed and she stopped in the middle of it, peering in the darkness in both directions. The Hrwang hadn’t even issued them flashlights. Hopeless.
Then she heard a crashing through the trees and a woman came running out of them, straight toward her, colliding into her and knocking her down. The woman fell on top of Jayla and the two looked at each other’s faces in horror, each knowing that she was about to die. The woman stood up as Jayla heard more shouting and running.
In the darkness and torrential downpour, she could just make out a man running out of the trees from where the woman had come. He stopped at the edge and yelled at the woman in a foreign language. There was a shot, and the man crumpled to the ground.
The woman screamed.
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