Defeat (3 page)

“
Let’s go,” he
bellowed, first in German, then in English, but the Americans
didn’t move. Other set off, and he moved towards the
three.

“
We must go,” he
said in English. His accent was not too heavy; when one grew up
near Kaiserslautern and the massive air base nearby, one learned
English, but the group of Americans either didn’t understand him or
weren’t paying him attention.

“
It’s time,” he
said, pointing after the others who had already left. “We must
hike.” The Swiss girl stood nearby, watching him, and he felt a
need to show his authority in front of her. “Now,” he
added.

“
We’ve been
ordered back to the base,” one of the Americans said in Wolfgang’s
general direction. Well, if they had to leave, at least they had
driven to the train station in a separate vehicle. No one would
have to go back with them.

“
Fine,” Wolfgang
said. “You will miss good food.”

They ignored him.

He looked at the Swiss girl, her
name was Leah, and she looked back at him and gave him a half shrug
and a half smile. The rest of the trip would be better without the
Americans and their grumbling anyway. He smiled back at
Leah.

He turned back to the Americans to
wish them a farewell and perhaps to give them one more opportunity
to change their minds, when a harsh, staccato tone began coming
from their phones. His phone, on silent and tucked safely deep in
his pack which he had left on the side of the trail, began making
the same noise. So did Leah’s.

“
Take cover,” one
of the Americans said calmly. “That’s the take cover
signal.”

Take cover? From what? He went to
his pack to dig his phone out but one of the Americans grabbed his
shoulder to stop him.

“
We must take
cover. Now,” the man insisted. He pointed to the cave big enough to
enter.

Wolfgang shook his head as he
shouldered his pack.

“
It is small,” he
said.

“
It’s better than
nothing.”

The Americans headed towards the
cave and Leah looked at him nervously.

“
Go with them,”
he said, pointing to the soldiers. She didn’t move. “I must get the
others. I’ll join you quickly.” The harsh tones from their phones
irritated him, grating his nerves. “Hurry.”

She nodded, a tear forming in her
eye, and she reached out and touched his arm. He nodded at
her.

“
It will be
okay,” he said, keeping his German simple. “Just a silly American
war exercise.” She nodded and he wasn’t sure she completely
understood, but she followed the Americans into the
cave.

Wolfgang caught up to the others
quickly and convinced them to return to the tiny cave. As they
followed him, they heard air raid sirens from the nearby town. Fear
gripped Wolfgang. This was not a drill.

One of the Americans sat at the
entrance to the cave trying to speak with someone on his cell
phone. He was yelling at the phone, then stopped when he saw
Wolfgang with the others. He waved them inside.

“
I’m not sure how
much time we have,” he said in English.

“
Until what?”
asked one of the other members of the club whose English was better
than Wolfgang’s.

The American shook his head and
pointed up in the air at the sound of the sirens.

“
Your guess is as
good as mine.”

The hiking club huddled into the
cave. Leah looked up at Wolfgang expectantly, but he moved to sit
next to two men, thinking about his wife back in ‘Slautern. He
wanted to comfort the girl, but it seemed wrong. She would have to
seek comfort elsewhere.

The American suddenly swore,
startling Wolfgang. The man seemed to throw his phone, then
himself, diving into the middle of the cave.

Another American yelled, “Cover
your eyes!” and Wolfgang obediently buried his face in his arms. He
sensed a bright flash of light and there was a scream. No noise
accompanied the light. The explosion, or whatever had caused it,
seemed distant; they were almost forty-five minutes by auto from
Kaiserslautern, a city never called by it’s real name. It was known
as ‘Slautern by the local Germans and K-town by the American
soldiers from the nearby Air Force base. Wolfgang feared what had
caused the bright light and worried about his home, his
family.

When the bright light faded, he
looked up at the American who had thrown himself into the cave, who
now knelt over his phone as if his life depended on it.

“
No signal,” the
man cursed but kept jabbing at the screen.

“
Nuclear?”
Wolfgang asked timidly, afraid, terrified of the answer. He didn’t
want to frighten any of the others, but he had to
know.

“
I don’t know.
Maybe,” the American responded, not looking at him, still focused
on his phone.

No one said anything, but several
cried now. They all watched the American jabbing at his
phone.

“
What comes next,
sir? A blast wave?” one of the other Americans asked. Wolfgang
barely understood their English.

“
How am I
supposed to know? Do I look like a nuclear physicist?” the central
American replied gruffly.

The woman with good English
translated rapidly into German for the others and one of the other
hikers explained to her that if it was a small, tactical nuclear
device targeting Ramstein, the name of the Air Force base outside
Wolfgang’s hometown, then they were too far away to be affected by
the blast wave. If it was bigger, they might feel something within
a few minutes. She translated into English for the
Americans.

“
Then we stay
here for at least ten more minutes,” the American in charge said.
The woman translated and the hiker who seemed to know what he was
talking about nodded his head in agreement.

Ten minutes.

Every second seemed like agony to
Wolfgang. When he was hiking in nature, hours were not long enough
and he always had to return home too soon. But when he was hungry
and food took three minutes to cook, every second ticking off on
the microwave oven clock seemed endless. Now was worse. Did his
family survive the blast? Would there be radiation? Which way was
the wind blowing? Would it blow the fallout away from ‘Slautern, or
towards it? Why would someone drop a nuclear bomb? Would he ever
see his wife and daughter again? Would he wish he had been close
enough to the blast to have been killed instantly rather than
surviving a nuclear war and dealing with the consequences, living
like the characters in hundreds of science fiction and horror
movies?

Lost in fear, he felt someone grab
his arm and he looked to his side to see the Swiss girl, Leah,
squeeze up next to him. Tears streaked her dusty face and she
looked like a little child. He put his arm around her and pulled
her to him tightly with both his arms. She sobbed into his
chest.

Another unanswerable question
occurred to Wolfgang. Had the aliens been responsible for this? If
so, why had they carried nuclear bombs all they way from their home
to Earth? And why would they target Ramstein? How would they even
know of its existence?

He thought about the beautiful
mountains and forests surrounding the cave they huddled in. He had
hiked through most of them, becoming a hiking guide for a small
remuneration from the club members who paid dues that hardly
covered his transportation costs but gave him an excuse to claim
business expenses. He loved his forest, and now it would be ruined,
contaminated by man’s destructive stupidity. Or an alien’s
stupidity.

Why couldn’t the aliens have shown
up during someone else’s lifetime?

2

Contact with aliens has been
dreamed about, imagined, told in stories and on stage, in films and
novels for centuries. And yet when it finally happened, it was
unlike anything anyone ever expected.

Eleven weeks on
station over Mars, the large drop pods filled with supplies long
since sent on their way to the twin Martian bases, and
Beagle
had received a
cryptic message from Houston, sent via Spirit
base.

“
E.T. has
arrived.”

The next few hours had been filled
with panic, excitement, fear, and questions. Captain Stanley
Russell and his second-in-command, Commander Irina Samovitch,
rounded up the entire crew into the climatology lab, the only place
on the ship capable of holding all ten of them at once, and told
them to focus on the remainder of their mission, which was to spend
the next four months continuing to analyze the Martian atmosphere
and landscape. Only so much data could be collected from rovers and
land bound bases, and they needed to learn as much as possible
before a larger colony was attempted.

But the questions continued, no
one focused on their work, and Houston finally began beaming video
highlights of the first contact with the Hrwang. Everyone watched
the two hour daily summaries and were able to, more or less, keep
up with their work, although Stanley felt responsible for every
missed deadline and worked twice as hard to try to keep up with the
analysis.

It was unreasonable. Thousands,
even tens of thousands, of scientists spent their entire lives
studying Earth, and yet Stanley’s crew of ten, along with
assistance from the ground bases, were expected to learn just as
much about Mars in six months.

Even without the distraction of
the aliens, it was an impossible task.

And yet Stanley watched the videos
with the rest of his crew. It was the most important thing that had
ever happened to Earth, and he wanted to know as much as anyone
else.

The Hrwang had contacted Earth,
claiming their vessel was just past Saturn and making its way
towards the inner planets. It would arrive at Earth in a few
days.

The message was
in English, which the aliens claimed to have learned by monitoring
broadcasts since they had entered Earth’s solar system.

And they claimed to be
human.

In response to repeated questions,
responses delayed by many hours due to the distance to Saturn from
Earth, the Hrwang said they were just as human as the people from
Earth, and just as human as every other intelligent race in the
galaxy, and even went as far as transmitting the genome map of the
Admiral Commander of their vessel, which so closely matched a human
genome that conspiracy theorists decided the Hrwang had abducted
humans and used them to generate the map and to translate their
messages into English.

The aliens claimed the only viable
translations of the word ‘Hrwang’ into English were Human and
Earth, as it was also the name of their planet. When questioned
what star their planet orbited, they simply replied, “The
Sun.”

The approach of aliens to the
Earth generated the expected hysteria, and the video summaries
included footage of riots and looting. Other messages came to
Stanley from his friends at Houston, and he knew that militaries
all over the world were on high alert, survivalists had gone to
ground, stock markets had crashed, grocery stores could no longer
stock shelves, and news pundits claimed they knew more than they
really did, as always. Some predicted a new renaissance in human
history as new technologies were learned from the visiting aliens,
who were obviously human, while others predicted it was all a
trick, and the aliens came in false guise and would seek to enslave
the world.

Stanley had seen those movies as
well.

He advised his crew to wait and
see, and when the video summaries of the actual contact came in and
the Hrwang seemed friendly, seemed human, and communications
between them and the United Nations Secretary-General seemed to go
well, Stanley felt relief.

He tried to share his relief with
his crew, but their feelings were mixed. Commander Samovitch, of
all people, expressed the most doubt and concern. Stanley had hoped
she would keep a ‘stiff upper lip’ and be a good soldier, but
instead she had sown discontent.

Now, in
Beagle’s
cockpit with
Samovitch on his left and Lieutenant Commander Purcella on his
right trying to contact Earth nonstop, Stanley had nothing better
to do than sit in his command chair and stew.

After an hour of
listening to Purcella repeat, “Houston, this is
Beagle
. Come in, Houston. Houston,
this is
Beagle.
Come in, Houston,” Stanley wanted to scream at the man, to
tell him to shut up for two minutes. At their current orbital
position it would take over fifteen minutes for the response
anyway.

“
Come in, Houston. Houston, this is
Beagle
, come in,
please.”