Fear, aggression, courage, uncertainty; you could smell the strain in the air, see it in the stances of the warriors assembled within the small, harshly-lit room. Some were outwardly calm, some were openly agitated; there was not a little anxiety, and more than enough barely-controlled, very tense energy. Two lean, older soldiers were knocking back cigarette after cigarette; none of the other high-ranked officials paid it any attention, and none of the support staff were about to point to the “no smoking” sign, less out of concern for their jobs, more out of fear that the wiry longtimers would gut them like fish and leave their bodies where they fell, unheeded amongst higher priorities.
Up in front of the room, Lieutenant General Townshend was pacing, her swagger stick snapping back and forth, as if she were warming up to fight a lion, carrying nothing but a cutlass and a few anger management issues. And then it happened in a rush: the remaining stragglers streamed in; they were high-ranking officials themselves, but their heads were down, and they avoided her eyes. A wise move, since otherwise, her glare might have struck them dead on the spot. Everyone in that room was busy as Hell, everyone had vital work to do, everyone was working nonstop; but nobody should have been late. Then again, they’d probably been pulled into yet another meeting with yet another group of chowderheaded civilians who wanted to know that the military was going to put its collective bodies between them and destruction. And it would; every armed force in the world was throwing troops into this. They had to.
“Soldiers!” she barked.
Without exception, every person in the room felt themselves going ramrod-straight in their seats. These were senior officers, blooded veterans, and but was something in the Lieutenant General’s voice that brought them right back to boot camp. They listened like professionals, but inside, most of them felt hints of the now long-gone raw recruits they’d once been. This was not an ordinary briefing. Even the translators looked strained, as they murmured into microphones for the benefit of those for whom English was not a native tongue.
“If you’re in this room right now, recognize that the survival of the human race depends on you. You, personally and individually. You, yourself, right here, right now, live or die, everyone, you.
“Because it’s war. Not World War; bigger. And you know that. You’ve read the reports. You’ve seen the footage. A few of you have even been through some of the initial skirmishes and survived, and we salute both those of you who came back to give us vital information, and those who did not make it. Ordinarily, we’d take a moment to honor our fallen comrades; but today we will honor them in the truest way we know: by spilling an ocean of filthy extraterrestrial blood!
“The stakes here are no human ideology, no country. We have many things which divide us, and some of us have fought, sometimes bitterly. This is beyond borders, beyond ideologies, beyond even individual desire. This is the fight for the whole damn mudball. This is a fight with no rules except ‘victory at any cost’, and no reward but survival.
“You know what’s happened. Fermi’s Paradox be damned; we’d found them, another sentient species, starfarers, aggressive. They say the military doesn’t have respect for the diplomatic forces; well, all those here are experienced enough to know better, and we wish diplomacy had worked. But the last ambassadorial mission just ended. We recognize: there can be no quarter given between flesh-eating monsters and a Humanity that wants to survive and grow.
“I won’t talk around the problem. I’m no pencil pusher or bureaucrat. I’m one of you. We’re all Warriors here.
“There’s a lot we don’t know. We know they have spacecraft; we don’t know their capacity. We have only a limited idea of their offensive capabilities, their full speed, the workings of their armor. We don’t even know how many boots they can put on the ground. We could be facing foes whose technology is vastly superior to our own, whose numbers are far greater than our own.
“But we WILL fight! And we WILL win. Because we must win. Because when the chips are down, there’s one thing I know: it doesn’t matter what the foe is. The indomitable human spirit has no limitations! And that is the thing which drives us. It pushed us through the pain when we were just recruits, still teaching our bodies how to be the tools of the soldier mind. It pushed those of us who’ve seen combat—which is almost everyone in this room, and that’s no coincidence—to keep going, despite wounds, despite incredible danger, despite horrifying losses.
We would have avoided war, if we could. But we cannot. So there is one thing we can do, and must do, and that is press onwards. The human spirit cannot be defeated!”
* * *
The aliens never held postwar tribunals. Perhaps that’s not a part of their culture. Perhaps they simply felt all humankind was guilty. Perhaps they felt that there was no point in inflicting further injury upon a completely-subjugated populace. They were not unkind; they were likely more gracious than we would have been, had we won.
It turns out that the superior numbers, technology, and military capabilities were all on one side: ours. It was a plucky and relatively small group of alien forces, outgunned, outmanned (out-aliened?)—starving, desperate—who looked deep within themselves, screwed their courage to the sticking point, and overcame the outlandish invaders, despite incredible odds.
A mathematician could have told General Townshend, if she had asked:
The human spirit is infinite. But one infinity can be larger than another (“infinity” itself is smaller than “infinity plus one”, after all.)
The human spirit has never been defeated by humans fighting other humans, because that would be impossible. If two or more groups of humans fight, they all possess the human spirit. Obviously the human spirit cannot defeat the human spirit; to think otherwise is to be surprised if, in a three-dog race, the winner is a dog.
The alien spirit turns out to be slightly larger than the human spirit.
But that’s okay, because, in the end, the right side won the war.
At least, that’s what the aliens say. And since they’re now the only ones with communication technology, they’re the only ones you can ask.
So they (the aliens) all lived happily ever after.
__________
[I write things. You can find some of them on Amazon.]
