Star Valor

Laura tried to talk to Caleb during the hike back to the ISSCV, but he remained sullen. She guessed she would eventually get him to open up, and so she had let him have his reticence.

They hadn't had to tie the alien; it had come at gunpoint peacefully, as Earthlings are wont to do. Rimal had recorded the position of the downed alien craft and had sent the data to the IDF garrison at Bet Olympus Mons, an Israeli colony located just south of its namesake. Laura wished she could have seen the looks on the comtech's faces. News of their discovery would become a global event....

Now, with the sun rising over Gledhill crater in the distance, burning off a thin morning fog, Laura stood near a porthole in the troop cylinder, rubbing eyes that yearned for a good night's sleep.

"It probably thinks we're gonna kill it," she heard Batra say from somewhere behind her.

She crossed from the window to the doorway of the supply room. Inside, the alien sat in the middle of the room, tied with cargo cord to a storage crate. The others, save for Caleb, were gathered at the threshold, grimacing and covering their mouths and noses at the bizarre pilot, fascinated by the ancient Egyptian flavor of its armor.

The alien's head was bowed submissively, as it had been all the night. Though Laura had her hopes up that it would remove its helmet and reveal its true face, it simply refused to do so. It was like a human male; she was certain of that. The body shape was unmistakable, with well-formed muscles and leg calves. The design of the helmet itself, a bird with sharp beak, suggested a representation of Horus, the Egyptian divinity of kingship and the sky. The neck looked as if it could rotate at unheard of angles, every part of its body was covered with elaborate armor. But it was the eyes that scared Laura most of all: they glowed with an eerie blue light, as if meant to instill fear in the enemies of its master(s).

"We're gonna kill it?" Abebaw asked, clamping his nostrils. "I think not. It's gonna kill us with that smell."

"Or at least it's going to make us puke," Cross said, her eyes tearing as she waved the air in front of her face.

"Smells like too much cologne," Rimal observed.

Cross took another look at the prisoner. "My guess would be a scout. Going towards Earth it had to crank the chicken switch over Mars."

"Probably sent a distress call," Batra added.

Laura glanced soberly at Cross, then at Batra. "That means there'll be more coming."

Spitzer edged a bit towards the enemy creature, crouching for a closer look at the thing's head. "There's got to be some way to figure it out."

"Maybe it's in the mission briefing," Abebaw said sarcastically, then sniffled and strode away from the doorway to return to his bunk.

Berkson stepped gingerly past Spitzer and got so close to the alien that Laura felt the sympathetic racing of her heart. The being seemed to tense, its helmeted head lifting a little. Berkson held up his palms, trying to indicate that he wasn't going to hurt it.

"Don't get any closer," Laura told him. "It could carry some disease."

He tossed her a cocky grin. "I never had a mother, but you sure sound like one." Then he focused back on the alien. "It's wearin' an armored warsuit, I think."

"I would hope we're not at war with a naked enemy," Batra said.

"Suppose that armor is its skin," Spitzer proposed. "That would make it virtually impossible to kill in an unarmed hand-to-hand.

Abebaw sat up in his bunk. "Why don't we let it loose and you two can go outside."

Jacobs brought himself up to full height. "I'm up for it."

"Cut the crap," Cross said. "Hey, Jon. Watch it there."

Berkson's nose was a mere thumb's length above the back of the alien's head. Indeed, he was breathing down the thing's neck. "All right, that's enough," Laura complained. "Don't tease it."

"No.....I think I.....see something," he said, distracted.

The alien awkwardly shook its head no.

Cross gasped. "It knows some of our nonverbal gestures.

Laura's gaze was very sobering. "Well, considering the design of its armor, the way the spacecraft we found seems to work, and the technology necessary to build such things, and adding that headshake..."

"Yes?" said Caleb impatiently.

"There may be something to the Von Daiken theory," Laura concluded. "We're looking at an 'ancient astronaut'. These aliens have visited Earth before, studied it."

"Yet we know nothing of them," said Caleb.

Berkson was reaching down towards a straight metallic line on the alien's right bicep. Laura couldn't bear any more of the tank's interrogation. "Get away from it, Berkson!"

But her words were lost on him. He lifted a small metal card from what now revealed itself as a slot in the alien's armor. The card had raised points and gleamed in the cabin's artificial light.

A noise on the order of excessively loud speech burst from the alien's helmet:

"ZROV ER! ZROV ER OL BEO! E NEFAE E SED AEMAENU!

Berkson had obviously pissed it off. Jacobs started to draw his pistol from his holster as everyone else stepped back.

Laura glared at Jacobs. "Don't do that!"

The soldier smirked and complied.

Berkson studied both sides of the card before holding it up.

Laura had a thought immediately. "Perhaps it operates the vehicle, just like a key."

Cross took the card from Berkson and ran her finger over its surface. "There's some kind of encoded information here."

Berkson snatched the card back from Cross, then stepped around the prisoner and dropped to one knee before it. He shoved the card into the enemy's face, and, in a commanding tone, asked, "What is this?"

The being did not move, its head hanging. Though it surely couldn't say it, Laura imagined the thing rattling off its name, rank, and serial number in answer to Berkson's query.

Shaking the card, Berkson raised his voice. "Explain."

"'NA!"

And this time even Berkson was startled. He fell onto his rump and retreated crablike from the thing. Then he pulled his sidearm and pushed himself back up onto a knee. He took aim at the alien's head.

Laura swallowed. "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....."

Strangely, the alien seemed to look to the weapon, then, with a tip of its head, indicated towards Caleb, who'd just joined the group in the doorway.

"Him?" Berkson asked the creature while pointing at Caleb.

Laura's heart nearly hit the floor as the alien nodded.

Berkson waved the card. "What does this have to do with him?"

Once more, the alien gestured towards Caleb with its head. Berkson moved to Caleb, and an expression of understanding came over Berkson's face. Caleb's flight suit was zippered down to his navel, and his photo tags had become untucked.

Berkson grabbed the tabs and turned back to the alien. He shook the card. "This"---he lifted the photo tags----"is this?"

It took one second, but finally the creature nodded, a sad nod, Laura thought. Then, curious about the card, she took it from Berkson.

Batra leaned over her shoulder. "It's like a picture of its family or somethin'."

The mood in the cabin grew dour. The home planet of the aliens was probably light-years away, yet they, like Earthlings, took along reminders of home, of family, of a life they probably fought for. Laura felt an ironic sense of pity as she pictured the prisoner as a father with little ones praying for its safe return.

Yet when her gaze met Caleb, who had fallen back onto his bunk, he stared back at her with a countenance of ice.

"Maybe we should give it something to eat or drink," Rimal suggested.

Moving its head right, the alien focused its attention on a section of shelving that contained a lone canteen. It nodded repeatedly, pleading in its odd way and pulling at its bonds.

"It wants water," Batra said, awestruck.

"Right," Cross tossed in. "Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. It makes sense that water's the one thing we have in common."

Laura glanced down at the card, then, not trying to hide the melancholy in her voice, amended, "But not the only thing. Give it some water."

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Caleb springing to his feet. Her head wasn't turned fully in his direction when he stuck his face in hers like a D.I. hellbent on making his point. "What the hell's the matter with you? We're low on rations already. We're all cut to 30% oxygen flow and you're gonna waste water on this thing?" He shook his head, a crazed lilt in his voice. "No! No way!"

Then he abruptly shifted away from her, elbowed his way into the supply room and spat on the alien. He glimpsed back at everybody, his mouth curled downward, his eyes pained. "This thing killed Counter!" Then he shot a malevolent look at the alien. "God knows who else it's killed."

The card fell from Laura's grasp. She eyed the floor, ashamed. But part of her still knew that showing mercy to the alien was the right thing to do. It was a first step. The aliens might have murdered, but maybe they were ordered to do so. Maybe they were the slaves of an unreasonable dictator. She could speculate for a thousand years, but mankind would never learn the truth if it failed to communicate.

Teeth gritted, face flush, Caleb slapped on his helmet before stomping into the airlock.

After listening to her own breath trip over itself several times, Laura picked up the alien card and went to her bunk. She fetched her helmet and hustled off after Caleb.

Outside, the sun was 5 degrees off the horizon, the distant crater summits crowned in a scarlet haze. If not for her mood, Laura would have taken time out to enjoy the Martian sunrise, maybe a once-in-a-lifetime chance?

Caleb stood 20 or 30 meters from the vehicle, a lone violet silhouette staring into the sun. At his feet lay Counter. They had zipped the Israeli's body into one of the black body bags Batra had found in the supply room when they had first checked the gear. Batra had chided the IDF, saying that they didn't have much faith in the recruits---and the presence of the body bags was proof of that. Caleb had argued that every soldier should pack a body bag in consideration of the others, but nobody had taken him up on his idea. Actually, if they had had the bags during the dust storm, they could've used them as makeshift shelters.

Laura stepped carefully to Caleb. Once at his side, she kept quiet, respecting his thoughts. She could only see his profile, but it was enough to reveal that she shed no tears. He might be numb, beyond crying.

Stealing a glimpse at the body, she had to right away shut her eyes and fight off a chill. The darkness took her to another time, a time when Miri and Tam had been crying. Uncle Ira and Aunt Sarah, IDF friends of her parents who were not true relatives, had been bawling even more fiercely than her sisters. There had been the blinding flash of rotating lights, the shrill wail of sirens, and the popping of gunfire in the distance. The pungent scent of faraway fires had been carried on the night wind.

Mama and Papa had been zipped into black bags.

After blinking several times, she put her hand on Caleb's shoulder. "Caleb, you're out of control. It's more than just Counter...."

Slowly, maybe embarrassed, he faced her and slipped the alien card from her hand. He studied it.

Laura took in a long breath before speaking. "We're at war. It killed Counter because it had to. I hate what happened, you hate what happened. But maybe if we show what it means to be an Earthling...who knows....one day the killing might stop. It can communicate. We've already proven that."

"Its kind communicates with weapons. With death," Caleb retorted. He handed her the card. "You think it cared about those colonists on Brashita, or those on the Tammuz ship?"

"I...."

Caleb cocked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the ship. "It represents them. And their actions tell me all I need to know."

They both looked back at the sound of the airlock door lowering to the ground. Berkson, Rimal, Cross, and Batra struggled forward out of the lock, and, at first, it was hard to see what they were dragging.

Then Laura realized it was the alien. She jogged to them, calling out, "What happened?"

Berkson dropped the arm he was holding. "It killed itself."

"How?" Caleb asked, slowing to a stop before the corpse.

"I gave it a drink. That green foam over there spilled from a slit in his helmet. Then it keeled over." She huffed. "I don't know, I just...I can't believe it would be that scared of us." Cross stared grimly at the creature.

Caleb went to the recruit and stuck his face in hers. "We're the enemy."

Cross shoved Caleb away. "Don't be so glad that it's dead. We could've learned something."

Laura wasn't the only one who stared accusingly at Caleb; the others had him under their spotlights.

"Look, I'm just trying to make you people understand what we're dealing with. Now, c'mon."

Laura folded her arms over her chest and watched the five drag the pilot next to Caleb's body. Alien and human lay side by side, a haunting prophecy framed in rust-colored sand.

"This is the first time I've ever seen a corpse," Rimal admitted.

"Stick around," Berkson told her. It won't be the last."

Once more, the wondrously surreal landscape was marred by the horrifying reality of death. Laura would be hard-pressed to remember the beauty of Mars. She watched as Caleb returned the alien's card to its bicep pocket, then he straightened and focused on Counter. Laura did same.

Wasn't it just yesterday that she was listening to the funny, obsessive Israeli?

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Star Valor

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