“I don’t believe it. It’s a hoax,” Fifth Under Captain Third Assault muttered after the third time they’d watched the intercepted broadcast. Jayla’s translations into a few Malakshian words and also into simplified English didn’t help. “Your people made that,” he said. He pointed at Jayla.
What could she say?
She felt her whole world turning to ash. Some of the captain’s men agreed with him, some seemed to disagree, and the rest didn’t seem to care. A few argued with the captain for hours, their words heated at times, and Jayla understood none of it.
At dinner no one served her, but they didn’t prevent her from helping herself. No one spoke to her and she didn’t even try to hold an English class afterward.
She crawled that night into Fifth Under Captain’s sleeping bag, but he didn’t join her, remaining in one of the camp chairs all night.
In the morning, arguments began again among the squad. The way some of the men spoke to their commanding officer made Jayla feel he had lost prestige with them. They treated him as an equal, as another soldier, not as their officer. Jayla’s father wouldn’t have approved. He taught her that a commander had to command, had to lead and demand respect. Fear was always an element.
Jayla could tell the argument the Fifth Under Captain made, that the video had been faked, was losing sway among the rest of the squad. The Fifth Under Captain didn’t let go of the argument to his own detriment.
Two more days passed and Fifth Under Captain spent most of his time alone. Jayla felt just as isolated from the others.
When the Hrwang had rescued her and her sister, she had seen them as saviors, her captain as her own personal hero. When he fell in love with her, she didn’t think she could be happier and didn’t think she would ever want to be anywhere else but with him.
But now?
The men who had looked out for her, who had treated her like a mascot until she started sleeping with their commander, treated her cooly then and coldly now. Was she in danger? Should she be afraid?
Everything had changed when they watched that video. She didn’t understand the full import of it, she didn’t understand the Hrwang, didn’t understand their motives, didn’t know why the people in the video did the things they did, but she did know her captain had rescued her, had put his life in danger for her and his men, and he had loved her.
Did he still love her?
They hadn’t shared a sleeping bag since they’d seen the video. She considered asking the aliens to take her back to the Utah border guards where they’d brought her sister, but she saw the genuine pain in her captain’s eyes when he watched the video. Did he truly believe Earth had started the war and simply couldn’t accept that his people had been at fault? Or did he still blame Earth?
How did Jayla fit in?
Maybe he still loved her, but he couldn’t trust her. He was sleeping with the enemy, after all.
On the fifth day of her emotional isolation from her captain and the rest of the squad, one of his soldiers approached her warily.
“We have intercepted another broadcast, audio only,” he said in simple Malakshian. Jayla nodded to indicate she understood what he said.
“What does ‘Mayday’ mean?” he asked.
Her rapid ascent to lieutenant and just as rapid fall back to private amused Lizzy in a dark, grim way. After spending two weeks of debriefing about the alien contact and her allowing the girl to stay with them (as if Lizzy had had a choice), she found herself back at her old guard post on the Southern Utah border, now the lowest ranking soldier on the entire team.
No one gave her grief.
Lindsey just hugged her, and it was as if nothing had ever changed.
A new lieutenant already commanded the unit when she returned, but the man barely spoke to her. She decided he was embarrassed.
Watches came and went and Lizzy found herself bored. After the responsibility of command, she didn’t find sitting around as a private appealing. She thought about resigning, although she knew she was doing good, protecting the borders of her homeland.
Feeling bored made her want to quit and wanting to quit made her feel guilty.
She tried to stay entertained.
The authorities north continued to exile malcontents and criminals, buses dropping them off at the border and Lizzy and the other guards made sure they didn’t try to sneak back in. Around meals and card playing, the guards speculated about why someone would do things that would get them deported. As far as they knew, Utah was the only stable state left in the country and refugees pored into it from the north, east, and west. Just not from the south. Las Vegas, sin city, lay to the south (well, southwest to be exact), and no refugees came from that direction.
Until one day they did.
It was on a chilly August afternoon, Lizzy wearing a long sleeve t-shirt under her uniform and feeling like the seasons were off about six months, when a spotter reported dust on the horizon.
The column of vehicles that approached made Lizzy nervous. It was too many, especially coming from the direction of Las Vegas. Many had gone that way but no one had returned since the war with the aliens began.
She locked the chamber and readied her weapon for firing.
“Stand down, private,” she heard the lieutenant yell up at her. “These are refugees.” She didn’t reply but didn’t change her weapon status either. The spotter next to her watched through binoculars.
“I’m not sure about the whole refugee thing. They look pretty well armed,” he whispered to her. She made sure her feed belts were clear. Her machine gun could fire more ammo in five minutes than they had, so she had to conserve it for destroying important targets.
“Everybody take it easy. I’ll go talk to them. Get them to stop at a safe distance and figure out what’s going on.” The lieutenant took a guard with him and they jumped into the only truck the group had available to them. Someone inside the guard house, probably Lindsey, raised the barrier and lowered the tire shredders. The truck headed out.
“I wish I was in that truck going the opposite direction,” the spotter said, no need to whisper with the lieutenant gone.
“I hope you’re wrong,” Lizzy replied.
She watched the lonely white truck head south on what used to be I-15, severely outnumbered by the armada of vehicles coming toward them.
“Someone go wake Carl and the others up,” she yelled down to no one, hoping someone would think it was a good idea and do it despite the fact she was no longer their commander. Lindsey listened to her and left the guard house, running back toward the building where the guards ate and slept and played cards and tried not to get on each other’s nerves at the lonely outpost.
“Make sure they’re locked and loaded,” she called out after her friend. Lindsey raised her hand in the air in acknowledgment as she ran.
“It’s gonna come to shootin’, ain’t it?” the spotter asked.
“Keep your eye on what’s going on,” she replied.
The white truck stopped about a quarter of a mile down the freeway, turning sideways to block the lane that led to the guard house. Concrete barriers blocked the rest of the lanes and the lieutenant had angled the truck to complete the wall.
He’s not a complete moron, Lizzy thought.
The concrete barrier created a choke point, and Lizzy thought if she directed her fire at vehicles trying to come through it, she could gum it up. It wouldn’t stop anyone from jumping off the freeway and coming up the access roads, or even simply four wheeling it through the desert.
But at least she had a plan. She hoped the lieutenant standing behind his truck had one also.
“I’m seeing a lot of weapons,” the spotter commented.
She took the binoculars and looked herself. Weapons from the lead vehicles pointed at the white truck.
“I guess we could run away,” the spotter said.
/> “We wouldn’t get far without that pickup truck. I hope he brings it back,” Lizzy said.
“We could head for the hills.”
“Good luck,” Lizzy replied bitterly. They’d never survive on foot. St. George was too far, the mountains not steep enough, and the guards not prepared enough.
The spotter took the binoculars back and watched the proceedings. Lizzy could see enough to know what was going on. Three lead vehicles, a pickup truck and two jeeps, slowed about a hundred yards before they reached the lieutenant’s truck. He raised his hands in the air, indicating they should stop. They did, and the vehicles behind them slowed also, crowding the freeway and each other.
The spotter swore.
“What?” Lizzy yelled.
“The guy in the back of the gray pickup. Shoot him. Do something. Quick.”
It was too late.
The rocket propelled grenade launcher the guy in the back of the gray pickup hoisted up over his shoulder fired before anyone could react. The border guard’s white pickup truck, their commanding officer, and their colleague who’d had the bad luck to be selected to accompany the lieutenant, all blew apart in the blast. The truck flipped upwards, rolling over in the air and landing on the parts of the lieutenant that remained relatively intact. The blast blew their colleague sideways, his body separating into at least five distinct pieces.
Hopefully their attackers didn’t have too many more of those weapons.
Lizzy began firing the fifty caliber before she could even think. The bullets tore into those three lead vehicles, shredding them like the rocket propelled grenade had shredded their only means of escape.
She hoped she got the guy who killed her men.
She hoped the bravest and foolhardiest of the mob in front of them were in the first three vehicles and the rest would turn and flee when they saw what her machine gun did to them.
She hoped she could kill enough of them to stop the attack before she ran out of ammunition.
She hoped in vain.
Jayla watched a view screen with the Fifth Under Captain as they hovered, hidden in the clouds above the guard post where they’d dropped off her sister. The Hrwang had jumped immediately to the location of the ‘Mayday’, just high above it.
Jayla jumped when the white border guard truck exploded.
She couldn’t hear the shooting but could tell from the running around, the ducking and aiming and falling, that both sides had unleashed a barrage of ammunition at each other. She knew her sister wouldn’t still be there. They should have sent her to a hospital by now and hopefully Jada was being well taken care of.
Those who had helped her now faced an onslaught. She needed to help them. Somehow.
She said so in a mix of English and Malakshian, trying to make her Hrwang lover understand.
He did.
He spoke rapidly to his men, his Malakshian formal and military, and Jayla couldn’t understand the words.
Some of the men looked dubiously back at their captain and Jayla turned to them.
“Please,” she begged.
The Fifth Under Captain snapped at her and then at his men. The men quickly moved to duty stations.
“There are too many,” he said to Jayla coldly.
“We have to try. They won’t expect us. We’re like air support. ‘Death from above’,” she quoted.
“We have limited power. We won’t succeed.”
“We can help,” she insisted and the Fifth Under Captain’s face crumbled under her words.
“I will give the orders,” he said, subdued. For the first time in her life, Jayla felt the power a woman could yield over a man. With great power comes great responsibility, she reminded herself.
“Don’t put your men in danger. Just try to scare the attackers.”
The Fifth Under Captain still looked at her, but cocked his head in thought. She started to reexplain her suggestion but he put his hand up, quieting her.
He turned and barked Malakshian to the rest of the men in the combat craft, then gave instructions to the pilots. He turned to Jayla when he finished.
“Good plan, Private,” he said and put his hand on her knee. Jayla blushed at his touch and his compliment.
85