Also by Bernard Wilkerson
The Worlds of the Dead series
Beaches of Brazil
Communion
Discovery
The Creation series
In the Beginning
The Hrwang Incursion
Earth: Book One
Episode 1: Defeat
Episode 2: Flight
Episode 3: Maneuvers
Episode 4: Insertion
The Hrwang Incursion
Book 1
Earth
Bernard Wilkerson
Copyright © 2015 by Bernard Wilkerson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, with the exception of short quotes used in reviews, without permission from the author.
Requests for permission should be submitted to
[email protected].
For information about the author, go to
www.bernardwilkerson.com
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Cover photo courtesy of NASA.
Episode 5
ENVELOPMENT
46
“I understand your concern for my safety, Lieutenant Grenadier, but given your other concerns, don’t you think it wise that you stay planetside and accompany the lady to inspect her castle?”
The Lord Admiral and his officer were inside the Lord Admiral’s shuttle, away from listening ears. Medics outside prepared the Ambassador for his trip into space.
“Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant Grenadier agreed. He played with the cuff of his uniform, not looking his superior in the eyes.
“But you have something to add. You may say what you need to,” the Lord Admiral allowed.
“Sir, I...” He’d been through this argument with the Lord Admiral earlier. He didn’t know how to phrase it differently now to get his superior to understand. “It may be irrational, sir. But I just don’t think you should trust her.”
“The girl? I know. You think she’s a spy.”
“It’s a possibility, sir. I just want you to take precautions.”
The Lord Admiral smiled gently at his personal chief of security.
“I will take this precaution. If you find incontrovertible evidence that she is a spy, anything at all, you may kill her. Immediately. You don’t even have to ask my permission.”
“Yes, sir.”
“But, Lieutenant, the evidence had better be incontrovertible and you will have to make a full accounting afterward.”
The Lieutenant Grenadier understood the warning.
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded to his superior and climbed out of the craft. He indicated to the medics they could bring the Ambassador in now.
The stretcher was carried in quickly, and the Lord Admiral acknowledged his Lieutenant through the open hatch with another nod. The hatch cycled shut and the craft disappeared, on its way to space and medical facilities.
The Lieutenant Grenadier pondered what to do next, walking alone back to his quarters in the Observatory.
Stanley, floating in and out of consciousness, awoke weightless. The Hrwang shuttles really did jump up into space, just like they said they did. He never felt the high gravity of liftoff. The vehicle sat on the ground one second and was in space the next, cheating the gravity well that had to be overcome to leave a planet.
The opportunities available to mankind with this technology were endless. He had to learn more about it and how he could obtain access to it. How to achieve his legacy with it.
Asleep again, awake again, he couldn’t comprehend where he was or what was happening.
He thought he might be inside a bigger ship now, although the ceiling wasn’t much farther away than the one inside the Lord Admiral’s shuttle. It just looked different. He couldn’t decide if he’d been operated on or not. The pain medication the Hrwang gave him was powerful and he felt disjointed in time. Sometimes memories seemed like they were happening at the moment, and other times, reality seemed like a dream.
It had been lucky for him that another human had been there when he had been coherent enough to give her the data drive. He didn’t even know what was on it, but right before the Hrwang had taken him away from the UN Headquarters, President Hollis had slipped it to him. She had whispered that he had to watch it.
He just hoped the girl he’d passed it to would hold it for him until he got back to Earth.
He’d originally planned to simply try to keep it concealed in his clothes, but he had worried that someone would find it on him when they prepped him for surgery. As soon as he had seen the human girl, he knew she had to be human because the Hrwang had brought no women with them, Stanley had known he needed to give the drive to her. There was something about her, something about her presence near the Lord Admiral, that had made him think he could trust her not to expose him, that she wouldn’t be stupid enough to hold it up in the air and ask everyone, “What’s this?”
She hadn’t. She’d kept it concealed.
Stanley felt like he’d just pulled a fast one on the Lord Admiral and that made him feel a little giddy. Or perhaps that was just the pain meds.
The Lieutenant Grenadier greeted Eva in the Lord Admiral’s room. She’d just finished unpacking, her thoughts on Juan, hoping he got safely back to Palmdale.
The Lieutenant acted differently than he had earlier, nothing Eva could immediately identify, but she felt uneasy. It wasn’t how he spoke or what he said. It was the way he looked at her, like he was trying to dissect her.
She pretended not to notice.
He told her they needed to leave immediately, so without asking why, she dropped the rest of her things on the bed and followed him as he led her outside to one of the smaller Hrwang aircraft, with just room for a pilot, a copilot, and eight passengers.
There was only one pilot inside and he held out a tablet for Eva, a map of central California on it, but with no borders or city names. The Lieutenant Grenadier asked her where the palace was and she pointed out the general location of San Simeon on the screen. The pilot selected a spot in the vicinity of where she indicated and set the tablet down into a small receptacle.
“This thing flies above the clouds, doesn’t it?” Eva asked, keeping her voice innocent but trying to keep it free of the fake Southern accent she’d slipped into earlier.
“It fly in space,” the pilot replied proudly. Eva could feel the Lieutenant Grenadier’s eyes boring into her back like he was trying to figure out what she was up to.
The pilot smiled at her.
“Right,” she said. “But when we, like, appear and disappear, can we appear high enough to get up above the clouds? I want to see some sun.”
She pictured herself as a six year old asking her parents to take her to see Santa Claus, hoping that the slightly vacuous effect she conveyed would help her cover story, the innocent girl caring more about sunning herself than all the destruction in the valley that surrounded her.
It was true, though, Eva realized. She did crave the sunlight. Even the beautiful view from Griffith Observatory was spoiled by the constant cloud cover. However, she also wanted to see what the aircraft could do.
The pilot looked skeptical. Eva thought about trying to sweet talk him, but with the Lieutenant Grenadier watching her like a hawk, she knew anythin
g she did or said would be reported to the Lord Admiral.
So flirting with the pilot didn’t seem smart.
She debated for a second dropping a reference about the Lord Admiral to see if that would persuade the pilot. Such things often worked in certain circles, but she decided it wouldn’t please the Lord Admiral if he found out she was peddling influence with his name.
The Lieutenant Grenadier, of all people, saved her from her dilemma. He spoke a few words in the alien language.
“Okey, dokey, artichokey,” the pilot replied in English and gave her a thumbs up. Eva contained a laugh. She wondered where he had learned that phrase but assumed he meant they were going to fly above the clouds.
She went back to a seat next to the lieutenant, turned and crossed one leg over the other. She had changed into shorts before she had returned to Griffith, and the man couldn’t help but notice her legs.
She thanked him for giving permission to the pilot.
He turned his eyes away, obviously in discomfort, and said, “You’re welcome.”
Bright blue sky appeared outside the cockpit window.
The vehicle hovered midair, somewhere high above the clouds, and Eva jumped up out of her seat and moved back to just behind the pilot to get a better look.
It was disconcerting how simply the Hrwang vehicles seemed to travel from the ground to the sky.
She craned her neck around, but seeing blue sky through a cockpit window wasn’t enough for Eva. She forgot her mission momentarily. She wanted to lay out in the sun, to soak in it, to drown in it. She longed for it. Craved it. Two weeks of gray skies were too much.
“Do any of these plane thingies have bigger windows? Or open decks? Like a ship?”
Not following what she said, the pilot shrugged and the Lieutenant Grenadier remained quiet.
She plopped herself into the vacant copilot's seat and no one forbade her.
“Let’s stay here a while, okay?”
“Okey, dokey,” the pilot started and she waved him off before he got to ‘artichokey.’
“Don’t say that again. It’s what children say.”
The pilot looked chagrined. He picked his tablet up and said something into it.
“I apologize,” he said to Eva when he finished.
She put her hand on the side of his arm.
“It’s okay. No worries.”
He smiled again at her.
Ostensibly watching the blue skies outside the window, Eva actually watched everything the pilot did.
He placed the tablet in its receptacle to provide the target coordinates, but he didn’t need to leave it there. He slipped it into his flight suit pocket after recording that his favorite phrase was something children said.
There was no stick or yoke. It was as if the things he entered onto touch screens told the ship what to do, not how to do it. Like it flew itself. The Lord Admiral had called the computers on board artificial intelligences. How smart were they?
The pilot gave minimal input, all of it via the touch screens. At one point, Eva innocently looked over his shoulder at the screen.
“What’s that little squiggly thing?” she said, pointing at a symbol that stood out from the others.
“I don’t know English words,” the pilot replied. He held his hand up in the air and moved it, tipping the fingers forward then back up.
“Attitude control?” Eva asked.
The pilot shrugged and pulled his tablet out. He held it up for Eva and she spoke into it. He looked at what came back.
“It doesn’t know either.” He shrugged again and put his tablet away. He said something to the Lieutenant Grenadier and the lieutenant replied with a single, terse word.
“What did he say?” Eva asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
“No more sun,” the pilot replied, and with a few touches on the controls, the craft dipped into the clouds.
White, cottony beauty under a bright blue sky turned to gray haze. Eva’s heart sank as fast as the aircraft they flew in. The sky turned dark below the clouds, black and heavy, like a storm rolling in. But these clouds never went away.
“Where is it?” the pilot asked.
Eva looked out the cockpit window for Hearst Castle but couldn’t see it. She tried to remember the geography around the area from maps, not having ever been there before.
She hoped belatedly that the place wouldn’t disappoint the aliens.
She continued searching but still didn’t see anything anywhere that could be Hearst.
“Can you bring up the area on your tablet?”
The pilot pulled his tablet out, touched it for a minute, then handed it to Eva. She tried to scroll it out to get her bearings, but nothing happened. The pilot reached over and showed her how. She had to hold her finger in the middle and make a widening circle, not use two fingers moving away from each other. The Hrwang weren’t smart about everything, she decided.
English labels suddenly dotted the map, along with Hrwang script, as she zoomed out.
“How did you get this map?” she asked.
The pilot smiled. “Your computers. Wonderful maps. We have your encyclopedia also. What does ‘wiki’ mean?”
Eva shook her head in surprise.
“I don’t know.”
She scrolled along the coast until she found San Simeon. She then put her finger on the screen and circled inwards until she thought she saw the castle. She adjusted it to the center and zoomed in more.
Hearst Castle.
“Right there. Go up the coast until you see this,” she said, pointing out a spit of land.
The pilot shook his head in disagreement.
“Touch your palace,” he instructed.
Eva touched the screen where Hearst Castle was.
The pilot spoke in a foreign language to the tablet, then set it in its receptacle. The craft made a sharp right bank and headed across a mountain range. Eva quickly made out Hearst Castle sitting on a hilltop.
It didn’t disappoint.
She could make out tennis courts and a monster swimming pool. The craft descended slowly, circling the group of buildings without getting close.
“How many soldiers does this base hold?” the Lieutenant Grenadier asked over her shoulder. He’d moved forward, holding onto the back of the copilot's chair Eva sat in. Rather forward of him, she thought.
“It’s not a base. It’s not really even a castle. Some rich dude built it about a hundred and fifty years ago or something. The inside is supposed to be even more impressive than the outside.”
“It look like small town,” the pilot offered.
The craft banked around the north of the complex, and the layout became apparent, the main building with its twin towers dominating the whole, other scattered buildings paying homage to it, the large pool lower than the rest, off to one side, and the focal point of the entire arrangement a magnificent view of the ocean.
“There are a lot of people around the buildings,” the Lieutenant Grenadier remarked.
Eva looked down and saw clumps, barely discernible as clusters of individuals.
“Refugees?” Eva asked aloud, not meaning to. The thought that there could be refugees at Hearst made her anxious. She hadn’t known anybody would be there. It was normally a tourist location, not occupied by residents, but as she considered it, it made sense that people might seek shelter there. That thought had not occurred to her before.
Her anxiety grew.
What had she condemned these people to when she had offered Hearst Castle to the Lord Admiral?
As they flew closer to the complex, they now could clearly see many people, some of them pointing up at them.
What would the Hrwang do? Eva worried.
With humans, you couldn’t tell.
Some would leave the castle to those who had already
taken refuge there. First come, first serve.
Other humans would go in, guns blazing, and slaughter everyone.
What kind of humans were the Hrwang? What kind of human was the Lord Admiral?
Could he be brutal?
“You can’t kill them,” she blurted.
“What?”
“You can’t kill them,” she repeated.
“Your people always fire on our aircraft. If the Lord Admiral wants this for his headquarters, we will have to fight,” the Lieutenant Grenadier replied grimly.
What have I done? Eva thought. She controlled her face to keep it from displaying her emotions, but she looked down at the refugees below with sorrow.
Images of California tourists dying under a Hrwang assault kept Eva from sleep. She paced the Lord Admiral’s room that night, finally gave up on sleep, and went to the converted gym where she and the Lord Admiral had danced. Equipment had been returned and Eva started into a workout, several Hrwang soldiers pointedly trying not to let her see them staring at her.
What she had done bothered her. It made her feel guilty. She had no right to just give up Hearst to the aliens. She hadn’t even considered that at the time. She’d simply acted without thinking, trying to impress the alien commander, trying to get on his good side.
It seemed to have worked.
But now she understood the possible consequences and she had to prevent the Hrwang from killing all those people. Somehow.
A weight dropped heavily on the ground and one of the soldiers stepped away from it.
He left the gym and, watching him, Eva felt a flash of inspiration. She knew what she could say and the idea elated her. She had to speak to the Lieutenant Grenadier immediately. Right away, before the Hrwang attacked Hearst.
She approached the remaining soldiers, one a barrel-chested man lifting an impressive amount of weight. Did they speak English? Did they know where the Lieutenant Grenadier was?
The men responded nervously, like fifth graders at a dance trying to talk to a girl for the first time, and then one of them pointed behind her.
The Lieutenant Grenadier had arrived.
She ran up to him. Got close.
“Go to Hearst Castle with overwhelming force,” she said.
“It’s late, Lady. Why are you in the gym?” he responded.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep. I know those people at the Castle are refugees from the tsunami. I don’t want you to have to kill them. If you don’t land enough troops, they’ll fight and you’ll have to fight back. But if you land enough soldiers, you’ll frighten them into surrender.”
He looked at her curiously but didn’t say anything.
“Please?” she asked.
He mulled over his response, considering something, while he stared directly at Eva, making her nervous. She didn’t beg again; she just waited for his answer. He finally spoke slowly.
“What you said is what First Over Colonel of Third Assault suggested.” He paused. “He’s a highly trained soldier. A strategist. It worked perfectly. We assumed control of Hearst Castle an hour ago without a single weapon discharge.”
Eva allowed her relief to show on her face. She exaggerated it a little.
“I find it interesting,” the alien soldier continued, “that you had the same idea as a man who will soon be a General.”
An alarm went off in Eva’s head.
“Thank you for sparing all of those people,” she said, pretending to ignore his comment. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt them.”
“Lady, we were sparing the buildings.”
She suddenly didn’t like the Lieutenant Grenadier. At least her comment deflected his inquiry about her strategic knowledge. She worried she’d given herself away. She had to be more careful and act more innocent in the future.
“Whatever,” she huffed, now acting offended. She went around him, careful not to bump into him, and said, without turning, “Good night.”
“Good night, Lady,” he called after her.
She went back to her and the Lord Admiral’s room, relieved that no one had been killed at Hearst but worried for another reason. Worried that the Lieutenant Grenadier suspected her true identity.
47