That was all she had wanted to hear from them.
She did not go to bed that night. She stayed up in her quarters, working, working at the little desk, tapping away at her computer, making the occasional scrambled phone call. She would let no one into her office but people from the cafeteria, who she called every now and then to have them bring her sandwiches and coffee. This she did several times. The cafeteria staff were bemused, for she ate the sandwiches. “She’s enjoying herself,” one of them said to the others, “whatever she’s up to. Maybe it’s that the colonel’s coming back in the morning…. She’s trying to get the paperwork done so they can have at least one hot night without business intruding.” This explanation was widely accepted, with much good-natured snickering.
Jonelle did not come out until about nine that morning, when she went straight to the number-one hangar. There she found a newly arrived Firestorm waiting, with maintenance people working around it. She said to them, “Is he here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of them said. “Went down to the living quarters to get his place set up. “
Jonelle headed in that direction and, opening one of the “blind” solid-metal security doors that led to the living quarters, actually bashed right into Ari, chest to chest, so that they had to grab each other to stay upright. The two of them reacted to one another, then burst out laughing while the people down the corridor hooted and applauded appreciatively. Ari backed off and saluted, Jonelle returned the salute, and they walked down together into the living quarters.
“Well, Colonel,” Jonelle said. “How are you feeling?”
“Very well, Commander,” Ari said. “I have something for you.”
“Not right now,” Jonelle muttered, with a slight smile.
“Not that kind of something. If the Commander will indulge me—”
“That’s what I do mostly, I believe,” Jonelle said.
Ari sighed. “I have a note for you.”
“I would have thought we were past the note-passing stage,” Jonelle said cheerfully, as they came to the door of Ari’s quarters.
“Not from me,” Ari said with exaggerated patience. “One of the people in the labs, in Xeno, asked me to give it to you.”
“Why so hush-hush?”
“How should I know? I don’t read your mail.” They stepped through the door of Ari’s quarters, and with it half-closed behind him, Ari took an envelope out of his uniform jacket pocket and handed it to her.
Jonelle looked at it, seeing her name written there in Ngadge’s bold print. She opened it, pulled out the several sheets, and stood there in the doorway with her back mostly to the hall, reading them.
When she looked up at Ari again, she was feeling physically weak. “What is it?” he said, seeing the unnerved expression on her face. “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”
She took a long breath, looked up at Ari, and shook her head, doing her best to get her composure back in place. “I can’t discuss it,” she said, folding the letter and putting it in her own jacket pocket. “It’s probably not incredibly important in the big picture…and believe me, Ari, we’ve got more important things to think about. I’m going to need to talk to everybody here, and everybody at Irhil M’goun, at nine tonight, and I’ve still got to get the final wrinkles worked out of my script. You can help me best by telling everyone who asks you what this is about that you don’t know.”
“I don’t know. I just got here!”
“Good. But one thing you could do for me that I would really appreciate—”
“Sure,” he said, “what?”
“Make an appointment with me,” she said, “for a few hours in the next twenty-four when we can get really, really physical.” She smiled at him, a sad smile. “Because it’s going to be a good while before we get another chance.”
He looked at her, sobered by the tone of her voice. “I’ll check my appointments calendar,” he said, “and get back to you.”
“Good,” she said. “You do that.”
That evening, about nine, Jonelle called the base complement of Andermatt together in the hangars, there being no other place that could hold them all. She also had a camera stationed to transmit her image into a scrambled link that would be shown at Irhil M’goun, where DeLonghi had also assembled everyone in the main hangar to hear what Jonelle had to say. Only DeLonghi knew what the content of the announcement was going to be. She had had a long, quiet talk with him about it earlier in the day.
She stood up in front of the camera and tried to look easy, though she didn’t feel so. Public speaking was not one of Jonelle’s great gifts. “This is Commander Barrett,” she said. “X-COM Main Command has asked me to make the following announcement to you, as many other X-COM base commanders will be doing to the bases under their control about now.
“X-COM has located what may be one of the oldest alien bases on Earth, hidden away in a location where its presence has been unsuspected for what may have been years—we don’t know for sure. Preliminary reports— based on analyses of all spacecraft trajectories that have occurred over the last year and a half—have identified the base’s location as somewhere in the Carnic Alps between Austria and Italy, in a spot that I’m not going to identify exactly to you at the moment because there’s no need.
“X-COM has decided that as soon as Andermatt Base is fully operational—which will be about three weeks from now—we will be the staging area for an assault on the alien base. This is going to be an assault of considerable size and difficulty, since we suspect that base to be ‘dug in’ to a mountain, similar to the way Andermatt is.
“This assault will have to be swift and well-organized to be effective. Planning of the details has already begun and will be complete by the time Andermatt Base is ready to stage it. That said, I intend to bring both Andermatt and Irhil M’goun bases to their highest possible levels of readiness by the approximate assault date three weeks from now. This announcement is in the nature of an early warning, to help you start work on achieving that readiness. Unusually rigorous drills and exercises, to prepare us for this assault, will be starting next week. I will be publishing details within the next day or so.
“You are all going to be asked to work very hard. Not harder than you’re able to—and I refuse to work you harder than I’ll be working myself. But you know how I work.” Jonelle grinned, and a good-natured groan went up from the listeners at both Andermatt and Irhil M’goun.
“We’re doing a good thing here,” Jonelle said. “Many of the alien attacks that have so bedeviled us for the past year are thought to have come from this hidden alien base. By destroying it, we’ll be buying ourselves and other bases time to prepare ever more effective weapons and strategies against the invaders…and to follow them, eventually, to other hidden bases, and possibly even to their base out in the solar system, wherever it is. But that’s for the future. For the meantime, you’ll liaise with your captains and sergeants to find out what each of you needs to do during this preparation period. And I want you to know that I’m going to be leading this assault from the front. We will go in together; as many as possible of us will come out together—and the aliens will come out only as prisoners, or corpses. That’s the goal.”
Jonelle looked briefly uncomfortable. “We have a planet to protect. A lot of our friends have gone out to do that, come up against the aliens, and not come back. This will be our chance to even the score a little, on their behalf— for the failed interceptions counted as much toward finding this hidden base as the successful ones did. So—lets get on with it.”