John Scalzi - The Last Colony

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Think about it," Jane said. "When you have a BrainPal, it learns to read your thoughts. That's how it works. Using it to read other people's thoughts is just a software issue. Generals in the Special Forces have access to their soldiers' thoughts, although Szilard told me most of the time it's not very useful, since people are thinking about pointless things. This time, it came in handy."

"So anyone who has a BrainPal can have their thoughts read," I said.

Jane nodded. "And now you know why I couldn't come to Phoenix Station with you. I didn't want to give anything away."

I motioned toward the door Rybicki had just stepped out of. "You just gave it away to him," I said.

"No," Jane said. "He doesn't know I've been enhanced. He's just wondering who on his staff leaked, and how it got to me."

"You're still reading his mind," I said.

"Haven't stopped since he landed,' Jane said. "Won't stop until he's gone."

"What's he thinking now?" I asked

"He's still thinking about how I knew that information," Jane said. "And he's thinking about us. He's hoping we succeed. That part wasn't a lie."

"Does he think we will?" I asked.

"Of course not,' Jane said.

The beam turrets focused on the incoming missiles and fired, but there were too many missies to focus on; the turrets went up in excessive blast that flung debris across the fields in which they were located, some distance from Croatoan.

"I'm getting a message," Jane said, to me and Trujillo. "It's an order to stop fighting and to prepare for a landing." She paused. "I'm being told that any further resistance will result in a complete carpet-bombing of the colony. I'm being asked to acknowledge the message. Failure to reply within about a minute will be taken as defiance and bombing will proceed."

"What do you think?" I asked Jane.

"We're as ready as we're going to be for this," Jane said.

"Manfred?" I said.

"We're ready," fie said. "And I hope to God this works."

"Kranjic? Beata?" I turned back to where Jann Kranjic and

Beata stood, the two of them fully decked out in reporter gear. Beata nodded; Kranjic gave a thumbs-up.

"Tell them that we acknowledge their message and that we are ceasing fire," I said, to Jane. "Tell them we look forward to their arrival to discuss terms of surrender."

"Done," Jane said, a moment later. I turned to Savitri, who was standing next to Beata. "You're on," I said.

"Great," Savitri said, in an entirely unconvincing tone of voice.

"You'll be fine," I said.

"I feel like I'm going to throw up," she said.

"I'm afraid I left the bucket back at the office," I said.

"I'll just throw up on your boots," Savitri said.

"Seriously," I said. "Are you ready to do this, Savitri?"

She nodded. "I'm ready," she said. "Let's do it."

We all went to our positions.

Some time later a light in the sky resolved itself into two troop transports. The transports hovered over Croatoan for some small amount of time before landing a klick away in an unsown field. The field had originally been sown; we had plowed under the early seedlings. We'd planned on troop transports and we hoped to convince them to land in a particular spot by making it more appealing than other places. It worked. In the back of my head I imagined Jane smiling grimly. Jane would have been cautious about landing in the one agricultural field that didn't have plants sticking out of it, but that's one of the reasons we did it. I would have been cautious, too, when I was leading troops. Basic military competence was going to matter here, and this was our first clue as to what sort of fight we had on our hands.

I took my binoculars and peered through. The transports had opened and soldiers were piling out of the bays. They were compact, mottled and thickly skinned; Arrisian, all of them, like their leader. This was another way this invasion force differed from General

Gau's fleet. Gau spread the responsibility for his incursions among the entire Conclave; Eser was saving the glory of this attack for his own people.

The soldiers formed into platoons; three platoons, thirty or thirty-five soldiers each. About a hundred overall. Eser was definitely feeling cocky. But then, the one hundred soldiers on the ground were an illusion; no doubt Eser had a few hundred more back on his ship, not to mention that the ship itself was capable of blasting the colony from orbit. On the ground or above, Eser had more than enough firepower to kill us all several times over. Most of the Arrisian soldiers slung the standard Arrisian automatic rifle, a slug-thrower known for its velocity, accuracy and high rate of fire. Two soldiers in each platoon carried shoulder-mounted missile launchers; given the incursion, this looked like they were going to be for show more than anything else. No beam weapons or flamethrowers as far as I could see.

Now came Eser, flanked by an honor guard. Eser was dressed in Arrisian military gear, a bit of show because he'd never served, but I suppose if you're going to try to show up a general in a military mission, you'd best dress for the part. Eser's limbs were thicker and the fiber tufts around his eyestalks were darker than those of his soldiers; he was older and more out of shape than those who were serving him. But inasmuch as I could figure out any emotion from his alien head, he seemed pretty pleased with himself. He stood in front of his soldiers, gesticulating; it looked like he was giving a speech.

Asshole. He was only a klick awa)', motionless over flat ground. If I or Jane hac the right rifle, we could have taken the top of his head clean off. Then we might be dead, because then his soldiers and his ship would flatten the colony. But it would be fun while it lasted. It was moot; we didn't have the right kind of rifle, and anyway, no matter what happened, we wanted Eser alive at the end of it. Killing him was not in the cards. Alas.

While Eser talked, his guard was actively scanning the environment, looking for threats. I hoped that Jane, in her position, was making note of that; not everyone in this little adventure was entirely inccmpetent. I wistfully wished I could tell her to make a note of it, but we were in radio silence; we didn't want to give away the game before it had begun.

Eser finally stopped with his talk and the whole company of soldiers began to walk across the field toward the road that linked the farm to Croatoan. A squad of soldiers took the lead, looking for threat and movement; the rest moved in formation but without much discipline. No one expected much resistance.

Nor would they find any on the road to Croatoan. The entire colony was awake and aware of the invasion, of course, but we warned them all to stay in their homes or in their shelters and not to engage while the soldiers passed into Croatoan. We wanted them to play the part of the cowed and frightened colonists they were supposed to be. For some of them, this wasn't going to be a problem; for others it was going to take effort. The former group we wanted to be safe as possible; the latter group we wanted contained. We gave them tasks for later, if there was a later.

No doubt the forward squad were scanning the surroundings with infrared and heat sensors, looking for sneak attacks. All they would find are colonists up and at their windows, staring into the darkness as the soldiers marched by. I could see in my binoculars that at least a couple of colonists stood on their porches to see the soldiers. Mennonites. They were pacifists, but they sure as hell weren't scared of anything.

Croatoan remained as it was when we had begun: a modern-day take on the Roman legion camp, still ringed by two sets of cargo containers. Most of the colonists who had lived there had long abandoned it for homes and farms of their own, but a few people continued to live there, including me and Jane and Zoe, and several permanent buildings stood where the tents used to be. The recreation area at the center of the camp still remained, in front of a lane that passed along it and behind the administration building. In the center of the recreadon area stood Savitri, alone. She would be the first human the Ariisian soldiers and Eser would see; the only one, hopefully, that they would see.