“I’ve been burning all my money, with flames so high they’ll never go out.”
Bower laughed, he was getting the lyrics wrong, but that didn’t seem to bother him. She wasn’t sure if it was nerves or not, but she couldn’t imagine Elvis didn’t know the lyrics. Perhaps he wasn’t the extrovert he made himself out to be.
Elvis was posing as he sang, with one arm outstretched and his legs shaking in time to some unheard beat. Then again, she thought, perhaps he is an extrovert, but he’s pulling a mental blank with everyone staring at him.
“There’s a hundred thousand pretty ugly women somewhere the hell out there, and they’re all living, but why should I care.”
“Goddamn it, Elvis,” yelled Jameson. “If you’re going to torture us, at least get the fucking words right.”
It was then Bower realized, Elvis knew the lyrics, he was teasing them, tormenting his squad with his ham-acting.
Smithy cried, “Get your ass down from there before someone shoots you.”
“Before I shoot you,” Bosco added.
“And a devil like me’s got money to spare, so take me to Las Vegas.”
Smithy yanked the wires from the battery, killing the microphone.
“Oh, not fair,” Elvis cried.
“You stupid, dumb, hick, fuck farmer,” Smithy yelled, her hands set firmly on her hips. “What the hell are you trying to do, bring in every goddamn rebel for miles around?”
“Hell no, he was scaring them off,” Bosco replied.
Elvis laughed, dropping down off the truck and landing with a thud, his combat boots crunching on the ground.
“Is he all right?” Kowalski asked softly, his head appearing between Jameson and Bower as he leaned forward from behind them. “Post-traumatic stress?”
“Oh,” Bower replied. “I’d say this is a baseline normal response from Elvis.”
“Yee-haw,” yelled Elvis, grabbing his hat and his sunglasses from the front of the truck. “Come on, Smithy, we need to get this show on the road. There are tour-dates to be kept. Fans to please. When are you gonna get me mobile?”
“You’re an idiot,” Smithy replied, laughing. Elvis didn’t seem to mind.
Kowalski headed back over to the patients. Jameson sat there grinning.
“I don’t know how you guys do it,” Bower said. “I mean, I was terrified last night, but you can just switch this on and off at will.”
“You get used to it,” Jameson replied. “But the team needs to blow off some steam from time to time. It’s healthy.”
“As healthy as you can get in the midst of madness,” Bower added.
Jameson never replied, and Bower knew she’d struck a raw nerve. There was only so much bravado one could hide. She may not have handled combat well, but she understood hers was an outward meltdown. Soldiers had inward reactions every bit as crippling, it was just easier for them to wear a mask and walk away.
“We’ll be ready in about an hour,” Smithy said, grabbing some unrecognizable part from the rebel truck. Wires and fine tubes dangled from a rusting metal cylinder.
“So what do we do without a radio?” Bower asked.
“We stick to the plan,” Jameson replied. “Ordinarily, we’d stay in the area and wait 48 hours for a lost comms protocol to kick in, but I doubt they’ll send choppers into a hostile LZ. Within 48 hours this place is going to be crawling with rebels. If we don’t get on the move, and soon, we’re not going to have to worry about forty rebels, we’ll have four hundred to deal with.”
“Hey, I’m getting a fresh signal on the commercial band,” said Bosco, staggering past with the shattered remains of the military radio slung over his shoulder and the small public radio in his hand. He dropped the damaged military radio on the grass beside the other backpacks and sat down with the small, blue radio.
“It’s the BBC,” he said rather triumphantly.
“Although we have no idea about the nature of our celestial visitors, we can infer some valuable information from what we have observed so far.”
The reception was much clearer than the night before.
“I have here a bullet, just the lead projectile that comes flying out of a gun, not the casing with its powder and detonation cap. And, as you can see, I can toss this bullet in the air and catch it without any concern for my safety. But why? Bullets are dangerous, right? Well, no. Bullets are only dangerous when they’re traveling at high velocities.”
He wasn’t wrong there, thought Bower.
“Standing here before you, I can toss this bullet up and down, catching it in my hand without any danger at all. But, if I fire this bullet from a gun, imparting a massive amount of kinetic energy into the metal and lead, accelerating it to a thousand feet per second, it would pass straight through my hand, probably straight through my body.
“In the same manner, the alien craft had to decelerate as it entered our solar system. Just the tiniest speck of dust or rock would be damaging. Given the sheer amount of kinetic energy within the alien craft, if they meant us harm, they need only have continued on at high speed. Even a small craft, perhaps the size of this building, traveling at three-quarters of the speed of light, would be enough to destroy all life on Earth. There’s just so much energy involved. But they slowed to a stop relative to Earth. That act in itself tells us something of their intentions. They intend to come in contact with us, not to destroy us.”
Bower was fascinated. It was clear they’d dropped into the middle of an ongoing technical discussion about the alien spacecraft. Some of the details were a repeat of what they’d heard the previous night, but with additional insights. For a second, all her cares dissolved. The tension of the previous night dissipated like a dream.
“Question from the floor: Ambassador Philip Cohern, Canada.”
“Where have they come from?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t know. As the craft passed Neptune, some four light hours from Earth, it conducted a course correction, aligning with the ecliptic within our solar system, allowing it to move on the same plane as the planets. As best we understand its current trajectory, this would have been one of a number of course corrections to slowly orient with our solar system. We have a rough understanding of its origin in the southern hemisphere, but only a rather vague notion of either Triangulum, Pavo or Telescopium.”
“Are those real constellation names?” the ambassador asked. “I thought the constellations had names like Aries or Gemini?”
“These are real names,” the speaker confirmed. “Triangulum may not have any exotic meaning like Scorpio, but it is a legitimate constellation, first identified by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy well before the birth of Christ.”
“So this… this thing,” the ambassador asked. “Tell us more about what NASA observed as it approached Earth.”
“The craft did not approach Earth directly. It passed through the inner solar system, swinging around behind the sun and slowing before it approached Earth. At the phenomenal speed with which it initially approached our solar system, the alien craft would have arrived here within a few hours, perhaps a day or so. But it slowed its approach, shedding its kinetic energy, taking over six months to reach us. But I must stress, covering this kind of immense distance in less than several years is phenomenal in itself. As it was, the craft arrived at Lagrange point five trailing Earth just eight days ago and has remained stationary in that location since then.”