“They have an embassy?” I asked.
“Remember the building I staked out just outside DC?”
“You said it was a Mogat base,” I said. In the weeks before the Mogat invasion, Freeman located a building on the outskirts of Washington, DC, that employed the same advanced shielding technology that the Mogats used to protect their ships.
“I was wrong,” Freeman said. “The shields around that building did not shut down when we attacked the home planet.”
“Brocius says they want us to evacuate planets before they arrive,” I said. “He believes that is the reason they sent us their plan. Think he’s right?”
I was sure he did not know the answer, but I hoped he would guess.
Guessing, however, was no more a part of Freeman’s nature than telling jokes or showing mercy. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Lieutenant Harris, you’d better have a look at this,” Thomer called to me over the interLink. He and several of the men from the platoon had gathered around the edge of a small clearing.
They stood in a thirty-man semicircle, M27s in hand. Freeman and I came to join them.
Not expecting to hear much more than standard patrol chat, I switched to the platoon-wide frequency to eavesdrop on what the men had to say. I was doing more than snooping, though—this gave me a chance to gauge their morale. As their voices came labeled inside my helmet, I knew that the first conversation I locked in on was Thomer contacting Philips.
Can you guys see what’s going on? Thomer asked Philips, whose fire team was flanking the platoon somewhere twenty or thirty yards away.
It’s all trees and branches around here. What you got? Philips responded.
The sky is full of light. It’s just like Mogatopolis all over again. Thomer sounded depressed as he said this.
At least the planet isn’t on self-destruct this time, Philips said. I still have nightmares about that specking invasion.
Yeah, me too, Thomer said, still sounding down.
There it was, the phenomenon that Admiral Brocius had called the “ion curtain.” During the invasion I had mistaken it for some kind of benign glare; now I knew that it was a luminous barrier, a wall of light designed to cut planets off from the rest of the galaxy.
Staring at the edge of that light, which loomed high above the trees, was like gazing into the spark made by an arc-welding machine. The light was beyond white, platinum—white with a gold tint hidden deep within its translucence. As I stood there staring into it, the lenses in my visor switched from night-for-day to tactical view with tint shields to protect my eyes.
The dome had spread more quickly than I expected. It was only a mile away at best.
What’s it like once the light spreads over you? Corporal Trevor Boll, who was not with us during the Mogat invasion, asked Thomer.
It’s nothing. It’s just a bright light; don’t worry about it, Thomer answered. He tried to hide the concern in his voice but failed.
Ah, speck. I didn’t ever want to go through this again, Philips said.
I’m sending you an image, Thomer said to Philips. Our helmets had imaging equipment that not only allowed us to view the world through different lenses, it let us record and transmit what we saw. Corporals and up could control the gear to capture video and send it over the interLink. You don’t have to open it if you don’t want to.
Oh, hell no. I don’t want to see it. A moment later. Ah, shit, Thomer. I didn’t want to see that. I still have nightmares from last time.
Brocius called this “sleeving” the planet. That was what it felt like—as if some sort of material closed around us. It certainly did not act like light. The leading edge of the brightly lit curtain did not shine into the sky around it. Where the curtain had spread was bright, while the sky just beyond was still dark. Shimmering waves of elemental colors—pure hues of red, yellow, and blue—showed in the light like an aurora borealis.
Is it radioactive? one of the men asked over the general frequency. He sounded nervous.
No, several voices answered at once. We had a rudimentary Geiger counter in our visors as well.
The light won’t hurt you. That was Thomer.
The light won’t hurt you, but whatever’s inside of it might specking eat you for lunch, Philips, always the charmer, said. At least he had the good sense to say it over a private frequency that only sergeants and higher would hear.
“Well, boys, it’s safe to assume that the enemy is at hand,” I said. “Any suggestions on a good hiding spot?”
“There’s a nice ridge over here. Might make a good place to dig in.” The message came from Private First Class Steven White, one of Philips’s men.
“We’d have the high-ground advantage,” Philips added.
“Set a beacon,” I said. Philips created a virtual beacon—a red spot that appeared in all of our visors showing us the direction to follow, and I ordered the rest of the platoon to follow. As we headed toward the beacon, I spoke to my men. “The light will not hurt you, but we don’t know what else it might be able to do. It might have some kind of sensor ability, like a radar. It might be able to detect our body heat or our breathing or the chemicals in our bodies or the electrical impulses in our brains.”
“Want me to stop thinking?” Philips asked over a private channel.
“I’d be glad enough if you’d stop talking for a change,” I said.
“Sorry, sir,” Philips said in a slow drawl that told me he was not.
We reached the beacon. It marked a low-slung hill. The trees did not grow as close together on this hill, opening the way for a thick layer of snow on the ground.
The dome of light was closing in. At this rate it would spread over us in another minute. So long as the light did not have some sort of radar or sonar to detect us, I thought we might be able to hide. With our white armor, we would be nearly invisible in the snow, and our armor would shield the heat from our bodies.
“Man, this shit is blinding,” one of my Marines said.
“Things are going to be bright for a while, so you might as well get used it,” Philips said.
“Stow it, you two,” I said. We didn’t have time for a philosophical discussion about alien lights. “Gentlemen, the fun is about to begin, you better find a good place to hide and dig in.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I did not know much about physics, but I knew enough to see that the light around the alien landing did not behave like natural light. It didn’t move, it spread like a viscous fluid, slowly flooding the forest and engulfing everything it touched in a bright silvery blanket. Light shining from a source like a star or a bulb casts shadows. This light seemed to turn the very air into a light source so that there were no shadows anywhere.
The light mesmerized my men. Private First Class Harold Messman summed it up best when he said, “Holy specking shit.”
Burrowing through a three-foot mound of snow on the side of the hill, I tried to forget about the phantom light and concentrate on the aliens. We were directly between the origin of the light and Valhalla. Somewhere in that light, an alien army was headed our way.
Most of my men hid behind trees. Up the slope from me, an entire fire team crouched behind a stand of fallen logs. A few feet ahead of me, Ray Freeman concealed himself behind a boulder that was about the size of a large dog. Big as he was, he had to lie chest down in the snow to keep from showing, and even then it was a tight fit. At least his combat armor protected him from the cold.