The Mouse Who Sang for Paradise

Chapter 8

[Liz]

I did not want to make this call. The thought of stranding some of our people on the spaceport left a sickening feeling in my gut. I arranged to speak to the port director privately over the wired link.

I opened up the link viewer on the first beep. His dark face and trimmed black beard appeared on the display. But the usual jovial smile was gone, replaced with a grim expression fitting of the situation. I took a deep breath. "Ahmad, you know what I am going to tell you."

He looked straight into my eyes. "Yes, Governor." We were friends. His use of my title, rather than my first name, cut right into my heart.

"I've ordered the climbers locked down at ground level. If this is an invasion, we cannot allow them to use the space elevator."

The space elevators were by far the safest and most efficient way to shuttle people and cargo between the surface and the spaceport. A pair of climbers rode cables that stretched from the equatorial ground base here in Paradise City up to the spaceport just past geostationary altitude. If the aliens meant us harm, I was not going to make it easier for them.

His face held rigid. "I understand."

"How many people do we have up there?"

"Eleven, including myself."

A recent unspoken incident weighed on both our minds. We had sent out a small delegation from the spaceport in a shuttle to meet the aliens. They fired on it, destroying the shuttle and killing all four aboard. Some of them were my friends as well.

"Ahmad, they are coming to you. When they try to dock, let them. Don't try to resist. You will not be successful. With almost all of our satellites gone I need you and your people to be our eyes in space. Regardless of their intentions, I believe they will want to preserve the spaceport."

"I pray that you are right, Governor."

"Also, let me be clear, I will not release the climbers until we know they are non-hostile. May God be with you, Ahmad."

He nodded solemnly. "May God be with us all." He walked away but left the connection open.

I turned around to find Gan behind me, his lips tight and straight. Mora stood behind him clutching the hand of their youngest daughter, Nova. He said, "How are you holding up Liz?"

I shook my head and rubbed my eyebrows. "I just abandoned eleven of our people in the spaceport. I don't know..."

Gan put his arm around me and let me lean my head on his shoulder. "Liz, I've always trusted your judgment and I still do now."

I stepped back and wiped my moist eyes. "Gan, I must ask something of you too. I need you to stay here with me and monitor our infrastructure systems. They might target those and I want you to assess any damage and work up potential repairs. Our satellite communications are already gone. Per the protocols, we have fallen back to the hard-wired systems we installed between the communities just for this contingency. For other areas, we will use couriers and short-wave radios."

Gan drew his lips tight and nodded.

I turned to his wife. "Mora, I need you to evacuate to a safer place. If the worst happens, you are third in the line of command succession. By my authority under the emergency decree, I am placing you in charge of food and medical relief for our displaced population. Work from your southwest agriculture research center. Take your girls with you."

Nova's eyes grew large with concern. She pulled on her mother's hand. "Mom, what about Ben? Where will he go?"

I knelt down before the sweet girl and placed a hand on her shoulder. Her innocent eyes pierced me, pleading to make things all right. "I think Ben will be okay. He is in a safe place and far away from danger."

*****

I sat alone in the back of the space operations center, hidden in the darkness. There were almost eight thousand souls on Paradise. And now their lives were in my hands.

Years ago we had developed systems and protocols in case a space-faring alien species came here. Gan's estimates of the timing turned out to be fairly accurate. Part of our strategy was to spread out. Concentrated infrastructure and population centers make for easy targets. I ordered evacuations of our four towns to a multitude of small sheltering sites set up just for this contingency. Infrastructure that could be moved was distributed. Each site had a cache of preserved food and temporary housing. Nonetheless, many people refused to leave their homes, but I could not judge them harshly for that.

But would we ever be truly prepared? We had no idea what to expect from these aliens. And now that they have arrived, we still know very little about them.

Long ago I resisted any planetary weapon systems development, reasoning the aliens would be advanced enough to make them meaningless. Or worse, they might actually trigger a devastating preemptive strike. Some even wanted nukes. One of the stark lessons from Earth was how perilous even their mere presence was to civilization. A momentary breathless feeling gripped me as I second-guessed my past decisions. I hoped I was right, but regardless, it was too late now.

Jack's voice came to me. "Liz, Ahmad is on."

I gazed at his face again as he cowered on the screen as if afraid they might find him doing this. "They've docked and boarded. I'm sending some footage of them. Many carry some sort of lance-like weapon. The first alien that entered killed one of my people with it. There were no more attacks after that. Perhaps they realized we were not going to physically threaten them."

Grainy images appeared sequentially in the corner of the display screen. The aliens were tall, lanky, with rough bluish-green skin. Some sort of dark helmet covered their head and they carried those lance weapons. They wore some sort of black uniform with tunic style tops. Soldiers, perhaps. I could not tell much more due to the quality of the images.

I asked, "Did they try to communicate?"

Ahmad shook his head. "Not that we could determine. They made a series of chirps and tones that might be some sort of language. I need to tell you, the mother ship did launch smaller vessels, shuttles of some sort. We could not count how many but there were a lot." He turned his head. "I have to go. I managed to slip away while they rounded us up. I'll keep this channel open but there may not be much time before it is discovered."

I dipped my head. "Thank you, my friend. Do what you can to keep you and your team safe."

Ahmad nodded solemnly and disappeared from view.

Gan peered over my shoulder. "They may be pissed that we won't let them use the elevator."

"If they are truly as malevolent as they seem, it doesn't matter."

An operator shouted out. "Multiple craft are entering the atmosphere." The room suddenly went silent.

Gan blew out a breath. "It seems we will discover their true intentions soon enough."