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
Episode 5: Envelopment
Episode 6: Ambush
The Hrwang Incursion
Book 1
Earth
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 7
FEINT
72
Eva paced her room in her running clothes, the microrecorder hidden in her shoe, waiting to see if anyone returned. The Lord Admiral had told her to wait while they searched for a device. If only he knew where it really was. She almost hoped he’d burst into the room and accuse her, and she could finally simply kill him, be killed, and all of the pain and suffering would be over and the Earth would have one less enemy.
She looked at her mattress where her only weapon, a kitchen steak knife, lay hidden. She’d never get to it, wouldn’t be able to use it anyway, and if she were killed, everything she’d learned would die with her.
Fantasizing about killing the Lord Admiral was a waste of thought. She had to record something useful on the microrecorder and get it back to the Agency.
She paced more.
That the Hrwang could detect a passive listening device surprised her. Normally, advanced listening devices could only be detected when they transmitted, not when they simply recorded. Eva couldn’t even picture a way that a passive listener could be detected. Its energy signal? But that would be too small to know that it was a listening device. The vibration of the microphone? She couldn’t think of any other moving part, anything that might be detectable, although the level of technology required to detect the sophisticated Agency microrecorder was far beyond anything possessed by Earth. And it was far beyond her understanding.
But how closely she’d dodged this bullet scared her. It wasn’t hard to imagine how things might have gone down if she’d used the recorder in her room.
The fear of being discovered with the recorder, the realization of how close she’d come to giving herself away, the memory of the border guard’s eyes as an alien bullet entered his head, her actions in tricking the man to make it look like he was assaulting her, all the images, memories, thoughts, and anxieties confused Eva, making her pace back and forth more quickly until she was whirling around at each end of the room, her ponytail flipping around and hitting her in the face each time.
“Get a grip, Gilliam,” she whispered to herself.
She tried to picture the face of her Pursuit and Evasion instructor yelling at her, conditioning her, training her, preparing her for the stress of capture and torture.
She hadn’t been captured yet. She had to get rid of the microrecorder, though. And she had to get everything recorded on it first. And she was supposed to stay in her room.
Casa Grande’s floor plan was deceptively simple. Essentially a main building with two wings and two more wings off the ends of those, looking a little like football field goal posts laid on the ground. But it’s simplicity made escape from it challenging. She didn’t know how she could get out while it was being searched by the Hrwang.
Frustration only made her pace more frantically.
Eventually a knock on the door stopped her in her tracks. She didn’t know how late it was, but it was late. The Lord Admiral poked his head in.
“I’m sorry to intrude, my dear,” he said, that slight smirk on his face that let Eva know he was probably lying. “My security team wants to check your room. Just in case. It’s only a precaution. We already found the device the spy was using.”
Liar! The microrecorder was still hidden in her shoe. She resisted the urge to reach down and check it or to even look down at her feet. She watched the Lord Admiral instead, watched how he acted when he lied so blatantly. His tell was minimal. She didn’t think anyone who wasn’t aware of his tiny smirk would notice.
“So your men were right. He was some kind of a spy?” she asked, only partly rhetorically, hoping he’d give something away.
He came completely into her room now, looking tired, his hair more gray than ever.
“Who else would have a listening device?” he asked in reply. He turned over his shoulder and spoke in Est, but he spoke too quickly for Eva to catch any words she understood. Two men entered after him, each with a small detector they used to sweep the room.
Eva held her breath. It was her tell, her involuntary action that could give her away at this moment if anyone were paying attention.
She concentrated, forcing herself to breathe normally, forcing herself to watch the men as they checked her room, and forcing herself to display innocent curiosity. If her face gave anything away, the Lord Admiral didn’t notice.
One soldier checked around her bed, waving the detector under it, and she decided it wasn’t a simple metal detector. It didn’t find her knife. Thankfully she hadn’t hid the microrecorder with it.
If they checked her, if they found the microrecorder hidden in her shoe, she could feign innocence, say perhaps that the spy had planted it on her. But she hadn’t been wearing her running shoes. She’d been dressed formally, which would mean Shay had been to her room, which would arouse a host of suspicions. She had to have a better excuse.
She couldn’t think of anything.
Her heart stopped when one of the men exclaimed something near a vanity that sat in the corner.
He opened a drawer and waved the detector over it, pulling out a small square. He handed it to the Lord Admiral who held it up and showed it to her.
“Do you know what this is, my dear?”
Eva truthfully shook her head. She had never checked the vanity drawers. Foolish. She should have inspected every centimeter of her room.
Reluctantly, she walked toward the Lord Admiral. She didn’t want her shoe to get too close to one of the detectors. It also felt terribly wrong to move farther into the room, away from the door, her only exit. She wanted to run away instead.
But moving toward him was the only way to remain above suspicion.
She stopped just within arm’s reach of the Lord Admiral, but as far away from his soldier as possible. She reached her hand out confidently, ignoring the weakness in it caused by her fear. The Lord Admiral handed her the device.
“I wouldn’t bet money on it, but I think this is an old playback device. For music.” She pushed some buttons. “The battery must be dead. There could be a lot of old, abandoned things in those drawers. I never looked through them.”
She handed it back to the Lord Admiral, forcing her feet to stay in place and not to run for the door like they
wanted to.
He took the device back, looked at it like it was a curious antique and not a threat, and handed it back to his soldier.
“It’s too big to be a listening device anyway. I believe we are safe here.” He spoke to the men in Est and they turned their detectors off, nodded at him, and left without complaint. They had missed half her room. Eva wondered if they would return when she was gone.
At least she’d hid the microrecorder on her person. She had to get it out of the building. Now.
“I apologize, my dear,” he said sincerely. “I may have been a little over zealous in bringing in outsiders. People from your world are...” He left the words hanging.
Eva nodded agreement. “It’s hard to vet new recruits.”
He clearly didn’t know what she meant, but he ignored that, probably not wanting to admit his ignorance.
“It’s been a long day, my dear,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“The others?”
He shrugged. “We’ll probably release them.” He seemed like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. He told her good night instead and turned to leave.
“I didn’t get dinner,” she said quickly, before he could go. “I’m just going to go down to the kitchen for something, if that’s okay?”
“Of course, my dear. Will you be okay alone? I’ll call security. The Lieutenant Grenadier can accompany you.”
“No, I’ll be fine. It’s just to the kitchen. Your chief of security has had a long day also.”
He looked at her earnestly.
“You’re safe now,” he said.
“I know. Your men did their job. Thank you.”
He nodded, looked thoughtfully at her again, then left. Eva thanked the Universe again that she had selected separate bedrooms and that he’d gone along with it. She paced a few more times, not knowing how long she should wait, but also knowing she’d just won a free pass. She couldn’t wait forever.
She opened her door quietly, looking down the hall. There were no Hrwang nearby, so she left her room. She eventually passed several guards, nodding to them, but not saying anything as she wound her way through the building, down the stairs, and to the kitchen. No one challenged her.
Fortunately, Noah was the lone staff member in the kitchen, finishing cleaning up.
“Scut duty?” she asked.
“Pardon?” he replied, noticing her.
“I just meant you must have gotten the short end of the stick to have to finish cleaning up alone.”
“Oh, we’re done. Been done for a while. I just got nothing to go back to. An empty bed in an empty room. I figure I might as well straighten things up here a bit.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure everyone has a tragedy to share.”
Eva nodded a little, staring at the ground. Noah looked like he wanted to talk. She needed his help, but she didn’t have time to listen to his story at the moment.
She reached out and put her hand on his arm.
“Could you do me a little favor?” she asked.
His eyes brightened.
“I’m starving. I got sort of sidetracked during the banquet and didn’t get to eat.”
“It was you?” he asked incredulously. “You were the one that guy attacked?”
“Yes.”
He brazenly reached up and touched her chin, turning her face to get a better look at the bruise on the side of her head. He let go and shook his head.
“It’s my turn to be sorry. Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine. I just need to eat something. And I need to go run for a bit to clear my head.”
“Now? At night?”
“Just for a bit. Running is my therapy.” Eva wasn’t fanatical about running like some people she knew, but the bit about it being therapy wasn’t a lie. Running helped her stay focused the rest of the day.
“Okay. Don’t be gone long. I’ll have something for you when you get back.”
“Thank you. I know it’s late.”
“No, it’s my pleasure. Anything for another biblical character.”
She smiled at the joke.
“Leave out the alien spices, if you don’t mind.”
“Done.”
“And, uh, if anyone comes snooping around, just tell them I’ll be right back.”
“My lips are sealed,” Noah replied. At least he didn’t do that stupid thing with the imaginary zipper over his lips. Eva smiled at him, squeezed his arm, and started to leave.
“Wait,” he said. Eva stopped. “You could use this.” He pulled a small flashlight out of a drawer and handed it to her. She smiled sincerely at him.
“Thanks.”
Outside the building, Eva suddenly felt empty. Lying to and manipulating Earth’s enemies was one thing, but she hated lying to and manipulating good people like Noah.
Alternating shadows cast by light from the windows and from a few floodlights the Hrwang had installed forced her to dart from spot to spot, trying to stay out of sight, but not trying too hard. She didn’t want to look obvious. Few Hrwang would be out at night and all she had to deal with was a ring of guards and hovering drones. Used to her running at all times of the day, although not usually at night, they normally left her alone.
She still tried to avoid being seen.
The slinking in the shadows accentuated the guilt she already felt. She made a break for it when a lone guard at one of the checkpoints turned his back, and she entered the inky blackness of the desert hills outside the compound. She walked carefully along her usual running trail, another pang of regret and guilt hitting her when she passed the spot where Jim lay buried.
If she didn’t run, she knew she would never make it to the boulder, her drop location, and back in a reasonable amount of time. But with the perpetual cloud cover, the night was too dark to risk a full jog. She was afraid to use the flashlight until she was out of line of sight of Hearst, so she walked along in the dark, remembering.
Her father had taken her camping sometimes, and on a desert night with a full moon, no trees, and bright ground, she hadn’t needed a flashlight, the moon’s reflection on the desert landscape lighting her way, casting an eerie glow that sparked the imagination. She’d grown up thinking one could always see at night in the desert.
But with no moon, the desert seemed darker than anywhere but a dense forest, and without even the stars to light the sky tonight, Eva could hardly see a thing in front of her.
She stumbled several times, scratching a shin once on a scrubby brush of the variety that would eventually dry up, break off from its stem, and end its existence as tumbleweed. She cursed it silently.
Running during the day, her drop, the place where she found the orchids and the spy dog, didn’t seem far. It wasn’t much more than three miles away from the Hearst Castle compound, although it was well out of sight behind the hills. But now, walking, stumbling in the dark, it seemed an infinite distance.
How long would it take to walk three miles anyway?
She did the math, figuring it to take almost an hour. Then an hour back. That was too long. She would be caught. It would make the Lord Admiral or the Lieutenant Grenadier suspicious. She might take a wrong path in the dark and never find the drop point and get caught with the microrecorder when she returned.
There were too many ifs, too many doubts.
She could stash the recorder in the desert somewhere and then plant it later at the drop point.
But where? It was so tiny that a critter could swallow it whole and then all her efforts would have been in vain. She could attach it to something, like a piece of clothing, but then if patrols found it and returned it to her... Best not to go down that road, she decided.
The puzzling over what to do helped. Somewhere deep in her mind something wanted to screa
m at her, to yell at her for getting a man killed. For getting a dog killed. For endangering her own life. For killing a Las Vegas teenager.
Trying to decide how to stash the microrecorder helped her keep those thoughts at bay.
Trails, some wider and used by jeeps, some narrower and used mostly by animals, snaked all around the mountains surrounding Hearst Castle. Sometimes Eva took a trail and it simply dead ended and she would set off across the desert and find another.
Tonight she tried to stay on the ones she knew, periodically using the flashlight close to the ground to remain oriented.
She came across a brackish pond, its edges almost green with deposited minerals, and Eva decided it would be a good enough landmark. She found a likely tree, bent and scraggly with a torn up bark, and she hoped it would look the same in the daylight. She sat under it, hoped she wasn’t sitting on an ant hill or coyote scat or something worse she couldn’t see, like a rattler den, and began recording.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about what you heard at the end of the first part of this recording. It all worked out. I just wanted to record the Lord Admiral’s voice for you. I want you to know your enemy.”
She paused, licking her lips to moisten them and to give herself a second to reflect.
“He’s...He’s a megalomaniac. He had Jim killed. I’m sorry.”
She paused again. This was going to take a long time, more time than she probably had.
She explained the Hrwang hierarchy and the Lord Admiral’s position at the top of it. She gave them her estimate of between two hundred and five hundred thousand troops.
“The aliens will lose a war of attrition. It takes two and a half years for travel between here and Hrwang. Reinforcements aren’t coming or won’t be enough. It’s how we defeat them.”
She told them about the suicide bomber, adding that although she couldn’t condone the person’s actions, it had been effective. The math was simple, if brutal. One human for three Hrwang and the humans would win. Even ten humans for one Hrwang and the humans would still win.
“You can’t congregate, but you know that. They can still drop meteors at will.”
She told them about Stanley Russell, the Ambassador.
“He’s a moron,” she added after she finished. “The Hrwang treat him like one, but he doesn’t know it, he’s so besotted with them. I don’t talk to him at all. I don’t trust him.”
She told them what little she knew about the Hrwang combat craft, that they could jump straight to space but had to reenter like a human spacecraft would. She told them how they recharged their main weapons during reentry somehow and that they didn’t bring much ammunition with them.
She also told them about the Hrwang efforts to recruit humans.
“That’s how they would win a war of attrition. If they can keep us fighting each other, then we aren’t fighting them. I think they know that. It’s probably part of an operational plan. I don’t think they’re happy with their first attempt, but they’ll probably try again.”
She took a deep breath. She’d already been at this too long.
“Good luck, guys. I’ll try to keep learning more. No more listening devices, though. They can detect them, even passive ones. I don’t know how. In a few weeks I’ll try to meet you out here, or something. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll use pen and paper.”
She let out a hoarse laugh.
“Alright, I’m done. Take care. Recorder off.”
She buried the recorder in the tree trunk, hoped again she could find it in the daylight to bring it to the drop point, and headed back to Hearst Castle. She sneaked past the guards again and found Noah slumped over, asleep, on a table in the kitchen. Eva put her hand on his shoulder and he sat up instantly, his eyes bleary.
“Where have you been?” he asked as if he had a right to know.
“Sorry. I got a little lost.”
“No, you didn’t. You know these trails too well. You run them twice a day.”
“It’s dark.”
“Fine. Don’t tell me.”
He went to one of the ovens, pulled something out, and threw it down on the counter.
“Enjoy. I’m going to bed.”
The potatoes and meat, left over from cooking for the banquet, were still warm and not heavily spiced. Eva’s hunger grew, displacing the other emptiness she still felt, and she ate more in one sitting than she could recall having ever done before. It made her feel sick and bloated, but satisfied.
She put the flashlight back in its drawer and looked for some paper to write a thank you note, but she couldn’t find any. She took a platter and spelled ‘Thanks’ with the food she hadn’t eaten. She smiled at how silly it looked.
As she trudged up the stairs back to her room, she felt grateful for the exhaustion that washed over her. She knew other nights she would lie awake and think about the events of the past few days, but at least this night she would sleep.
Entering her room, she found the Lord Admiral already there, in her bed. He looked refreshed, like he’d showered.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
She almost laughed out loud that he’d used the exact same words as Noah.
“I talked to the kitchen staff for a while, then went for a little run, just around the perimeter. I ate when I got back.”
“Did the guards say anything?”
“They didn’t see me. I didn’t want them to worry.”
“You shouldn’t do that,” he admonished. “It’s dangerous.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just...” She shrugged her shoulders, then reached down and grabbed the bottom of her running shirt, pulling it up over her head, knowing her actions would take his mind off any suspicions. “I just didn’t want to be alone in my room.”
“You never have to be alone, my dear.”
She thought of the words she used on the microrecorder to describe the man before her. She certainly felt that way about him when he wasn’t around, but he was charming when he was with her. She finished undressing.
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