Indian Hill (38 page)
“Ah, I can tell from your face you know something about
it
.”
“I’ve heard rumors,”
Moirane
lied.
“We have an amateur astronomer in Maine, a good friend of mine that just happened to be checking out weather patterns on the planet of Venus when right before his eyes a huge ship, roughly the size of
his home state
or so I’m told, materialized and then just as suddenly dematerialized. Now my friend also likes to partake of the funny left handed cigarettes on occasion so I was prone to believe that he had witnessed one mother of a hallucination. But lucky for him and for us I guess, he always videotapes his sky watches, as he calls them. So there he was cleaning up that videotape for two days before he had the gumption to call me with it. He sent me a copy before he called the U.S. government, who by the way summarily confiscated that tape and all of his sky watching apparatus.”
“You still have that copy?”
“Oh that copy and a hundred just like it scattered across the country for safe keeping.”
“What’s to say that this ‘ship’ isn’t some sort of anomaly on the master tape?”
“Well you see my friend began to have those same doubts. It’s kind of hard to swallow the fact that a huge alien ship has literally parked at your doorstep. So before he made the fateful call to the powers that be, he studied the planet’s atmosphere with a little more scrutiny. You see apparently when something that big orbits around a planet it tends to have minute gravitational effects.”
“Which he recorded.”
“Right you are.”
“And you have a hundred or so of those tapes scattered across the country.”
“Again correct.”
“But that still doesn’t explain your whole military campaign here.”
“Well you see Mr.
Moirane
, I do not believe that these aliens have come to our fine planet on the up an
d up. If they had come in peace
, I don’t believe that they would have come and scooped up literally thousands of our people. My theory, and trust me I have doubted myself far too often, my theory is that they are studying those people. I am fairly certain those unlucky souls, my best friend included, are being subjected to the cruelest form of inhumanity. And therein lies the bulk of our problem, how could an alien civilization be deemed inhuman? They are by their very nature inhuman. They are alien. I am not one hundred percent sure they have come to annihilate us, just yet. But Mr.
Moirane
, I fully intend to go down kicking and screamin', not crying and whimpering.”
And beyond his better judgment
Moirane
began to like this renegade. “Then why not tell the whole world what you know, show those tapes.”
“
Moirane
, I’ve watched those tapes over two hundred times each and I still don’t believe what I saw. And you know as well as I do, John Q. Public is not ready for this type of information. The average Joe is concerned with the monthly mortgage bill and who the Bears are playing on Sunday. I have no desire to start riots in the street. The government knows what’s going on, they have their hands full. I do not intend to throw any fire on that flame. I also am not waiting idly by to wait for them to get their act together. It’s not like they know what to do either. This isn’t standard operating procedure these days. I had fully hoped that they would have called back all of our troops, but I guess they don’t want to destabilize world power at this crucial time either. So there it is my friend. We are a new style military force for these times. We do an unbelievable amount of conditioning and combat training, we’re getting prepared. So we put the word out there very subtly, people know something’s going on, they’re just not too sure what it is. If they come up here and they want to stick around then we let them.
I
t’s not a free ride
though
; everyone up here becomes part of the fighting force. If and when the shit hits the fan Mr.
Moirane
, this just might be the safest place to be in North America. If those aliens come down to start something they are going to hit military targets first. This place won’t even be on their map. And once we get a glimpse of them, then we can go into action ourselves.”
“I’m impressed, Colonel. I really thought I was going to come up here and run into a little Hitler wannabe. But you really seem to have your gear stowed away up here. If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to stay awhile.”
“How does the rank of Captain sound, Mr.
Moirane
?”
“That’ll do just fine, thank you.”
“Great, then if you can just give me a few minutes Captain, I need to get a few things out of the way and I’ll introduce you to the rest of the officers.”
“Yes sir, Colonel, very well.”
“Dismissed, Captain.” And with that Captain
Moirane
did an about face and left the command tent.
Orbiting Venus
Durgan was next, there was no possible way to avoid that fact. His time, or more likely my time had come. He was an animal, no not quite. The aliens,
they
were animals. Come to think of it I’d rather take on one of the guards than Durgan. Sure they were bigger. But pound for pound Durgan was meaner. He was hopped up on some sort of go-go juice from the Progerians. Apparently he had big drakka backing his move for champion. If the aliens pulled another stunt like last time, having no weapons in the arena, even I personally would bet on Durgan winning. The women tried their best to be uplifting and consoling. They even tried an intervention. It was a couple of weeks before the match and they tried to coax me out of my room. Which by the way I hadn’t left in the previous two weeks. I saw no reason to leave now, I knew my ranking and I knew Durgan’s ranking. I knew his style, raving mad psychotic lunatic. What more was there? All of my exercise equipment was in my room, and food came whether I ate it or not. I had no desire to be amongst the living when I felt so dead. Deb tried her best but I wasn’t having any of it. I’m certain she was the one who arranged the ‘intervention.’ What a pile of you know what that was. All the women came into my room with candles, I had no desire to get all touchy feely and find my inner femininity. If anything I was attempting to go even farther down the other path, and I let them know in no uncertain terms who the boss was around here. Now I know that this wouldn’t have flown at home, but alas this wasn’t Earth and therefore I wasn’t bound to those rules. I kicked each and every one of them out including Deb and I told them that if they weren’t bringing food or water into my room then they had absolutely no place there. I had really expected some sort of rebel uprising, but not a one of them even so much as whispered some disparaging remark. I’m sure they waited
un
til I was well out of earshot before they attempted anything along those lines. No sense in pissing off the unchained lion. Even Frertek had come, I suppose in some alien way to say his goodbyes. The odds of my winning the next bout were at best one hundred to one. If this were pro football I would have been spotted twenty-eight points. Frertek had become more than a little peeved when I had not taken up his invitation to lunch. He had even gone so far as to strike Stephanie when she had blocked his path to my room. For me to interfere would have been fatal for us all, I didn’t t
hink that a purplish bruise on
he
r
cheek was worthy of all of our lives.
Wh
en he had slammed open my bedroom door, I was in the semi-catatonic state that I had adopted since the end of my last bout. He stared at me for what seemed like minutes, ranting away, and it was at this time I wished that I had known some Progerian speech because I would have sworn that he was swearing. Maybe he bet his next paycheck on me and now saw no way to recoup his losses. I truly looked insane, and the funny part was that not even I was sure whether or not I had crossed that line. It’s a scary time in one’s life to look inward and find a completely different person looking back. Frertek stopped by one more time about three days before the big dance. Stephanie did not, however, place herself in harm’s way this time. He sauntered into my bedroom like he owned the place, which I guess he did in some fashion, it was clear to him that I had not stirred an inch. Even the spittle on my chin was meticulously placed to look as if I hadn’t even the desire to clean myself off. And there it was, it definitely sounded like the last long string of alien profanities, if he had stood there any longer I might have started laughing. The true problem would have been that I most likely wouldn’t have been able to stop. Would Durgan get the same enjoyment out of killing me if I was laughing like a raving madman? Probably. I don’t think he’d care if I was cradling kittens in my hands, a kill was a kill. I called Deb and Steph into my room the night before the bout, and I pretty much laid everything on the line. They were all ears. Although I believe some small dark well hidden place deep inside Deb hoped for my demise. For if I lived, she would lose. But the good part of her, which included the vast majority, outwardly rooted for me and my victory. Stephanie was more the pragmatist, she saw the inherent dangers and risks of my plan, but the rewards far outweigh
ed the negatives. This was the
rock and a hard place, it was our turn now. We would take hold of that rock and throw it at the hard place and see what happened. Ninety nine times, no make that nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of one thousand that rock would merely bounce off, but maybe, just maybe in this instance we would be able to crack either the rock, or the hard place, or more unlikely but much more desirable, both of them.
Closing in on Venus.
“USS Liberation, this is Ground Control. USS Liberation, this is Ground Control, do you copy?”
“We copy loud and clear Ground Control. Nice to have you back Major Hatfield,” the colonel said with true delight in his heart.
“Oh you know me Colonel, I just can’t stay away too long,” the major said, and the funny part was that he couldn’t stand to be away from his post for too long. He had over six months of leave time built up and had been promising his wife for ten years they would go on vacation, but every time he got close to it he would get cold feet and back out. The military was his life and these men and women around him were also his family. He would lay down his life for any of them, as he knew that they would do for him. He was so concerned that the one time he left would be the one time they needed him the most. So for ten years he had placated his wife with three-day weekends and the occasional 96er. That’s four days to you non-military types. A Friday and a Monday wrapped around a weekend.
“How are the wife and kids, Butch, do they still like piggyback rides?” Butch knew the code well enough, piggyback meant was any one listening in on the transmission.
“Well you know, Colonel the entire country likes piggybacks and especially our new friends, it seems that they’ve always liked piggybacks. Emphasis on always, Colonel.”
“Hey Butch, any chance that once they got off of the piggyback ride that they’d kick our ass?”
“That’s doubtful Colonel, if someone was going to get off of your back and then kick you in the keester they would have done it a long time ago.”
“That’s good to know I think. Any luck with our last request?” the colonel asked hopefully.