Accidental General

Desperate people do desperate things. Jen convinced herself that what she was doing was desperate rather than insane. If anyone had the cure for her mother, it would have to be the aliens.

They’d arrived on Earth a few years ago, spending an inordinate amount of time dealing with human governments, greed, and tribalism. In the end, they were given places where their trade vessels could land, sell goods, and buy from the local populace in dozens of countries. One of those alien port markets happened to be just a hundred kilometers or so from her home.

Humans weren’t allowed near their ships, and they were very careful to not let anything they called “forbidden for primitive trade” out of their sight. They had no use for precious metals, human currency, or gemstones. They traded what they brought for other goods.

Jen had been lucky, in that a large part of the recent trades at her “local” port market had been live chicks, ducklings, goslings, and rabbits. She’d bluffed her way to the back streets of the market, nearer to where their ship lay hidden, by explaining to the aliens in detail how to care for the baby birds and rabbits.

When she’d finally been shooed away, she managed to hide in the back streets, creeping ever closer to the ship. Which is how she made her way to the cargo hold with the animals, where she found herself wondering what her next step would be.

She hadn’t felt anything other than a slight reduction in her weight when they left. She knew from the spate of news stories and documentaries that the aliens came from a system nearly eight-hundred light-years away. That they could cross those distances meant they had to have the technology to cure her mother’s cancer.

How long it would take, though, she wasn’t sure. Water was taken care of, as the tank carrying it for the animals was easy to get to. For food, she carried a case of two dozen meal bars, and a couple kilos of mixed nuts. It wasn’t ideal, but it was what she could find spur-of-the-moment when her desperation turned to action.

Jen guessed they’d taken off about two hours earlier, but she hadn’t eaten at all that day. She unwrapped a meal bar and took her time with a bite of it. When she was about to take the second bite, she heard movement, and large cargo door began to open.

She ducked behind the water tank. One of the aliens was probably coming in to check on the animals. A peek around the side of the tank, though, showed that the outer doors were open as well. A dim, red sun illuminated a world no other human had ever seen.

Panic began to set in. She hadn’t planned for what came next, beyond begging for help. She ducked back behind the water tank and calmed herself. Deep, slow breaths brought her heart rate down, and helped her settle her mind.

One of the aliens ducked behind the water tank with her, holding a bundle in their arms. “You’re finally here. Put these on and I’ll get you out of the port,” the alien said in perfect English.

The bundle contained clothes like those the aliens wore, with a head covering that was somewhere between beekeeper and hazmat. The gloves only had three fingers and a thumb that sat too low and was far too long. Still, she did her best to cover herself.

She followed the alien out of the ship, through the port, and into what must be a city, though there were no cars or analogues. The roads themselves, if they could be called that, moved. Everywhere she followed the alien, the other aliens gave them space, many bowing or holding up a single, long, middle finger. For a brief moment, she thought they were flipping her the bird, until she reminded herself that these grey-skinned, black-eyed, three-fingered aliens were not human and not given to human gestures.

They finally stopped in front of a low building with a yellow glass roof. The alien led her inside, then straight through the open main hallway beneath the skylight to a back room. There, the alien unlocked a panel on the wall and led her down a winding staircase to a dim basement.

More aliens waited for them in the basement. A map on the wall showed symbols she didn’t understand.

“Is that the human?” some of them asked.

Jen stripped off the gloves and lifted the headpiece off to the astonished gasps of the other aliens. “It’s true! You’re here!” they called out.

“I am Renthion,” the alien that had led her said.

“Hi. I’m Jen. What’s going on, and how do you speak English?”

“We do not speak English, Jen, but the devices we wear around our waist translate for us.” The alien that spoke raised a middle finger. “I am Abalorth, and I am honored to be in your presence, great general.”

“Um, wait, great what?” Jen asked.

“We understand you will want to secure payment,” Renthion said. “What is your desire?”

“Oh, I, uh, I just came here to find a cure for my mother’s cancer.”

They turned off their translators and spoke among themselves. Their speech sounded more like the murmur of water in a stony brook than anything else.

Finally, they turned back on their devices and Abalorth said, “We accept the price.”

Renthion pointed at the map and began explaining what all the symbols meant. It was a war map, with different troop types and sizes and terrain on display. It reminded her of the strategy games she regularly played, right down to “this unit type is weak to that one and stronger than that type.”

“We are badly scattered, as you can see. But we have it on good authority that the human great general that will stow away on a government ship will know how to turn things around for us.”

“But I’m not a great general, I’m just—”

“Your modesty is appreciated, but unnecessary. We will leave you alone with the map for a while to make your plans. Writing materials are just there, by the map.” They filed out of the dim room and Jen sighed.

She didn’t know who they were fighting, or what was their cause, or whether it was even just. No matter what she did, though, someone was going to pay the price for what she decided. Either this group meeting in secret, or the others that had them outnumbered.

She paced the small room, stopping in front of a mirror. “What are you doing, Jen?” she asked her reflection. “Are they trying to overthrow their government? Probably, judging by the huge amount of armored type units on the other side. Does their government need to be overthrown, or are these guys religious fanatics?”

She groaned and paced some more. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the look on her mother’s face when the doctor told her they’d have to stop the chemo because it wasn’t working and there were no more options.

“Screw it,” she said to herself, “mom’s worth whatever price I put on my soul.”

Jen studied the map as if it were one of her strategy games and began scribbling out early plans and options for each unit. Then she addressed any actions the enemies might take with counteractions by the troops.

If it was her favorite strategy game, she’d have the seemingly overwhelming army defeated within twenty turns and lose at most a tenth of her own armies. She was still looking for any stupid moves the enemy might make — she’d addressed every smart, logical move — when the door opened ant the aliens came back in.

Abalorth looked over the pages of notes she’d scribbled on the smooth paper. “Can you explain your plans?”

“Sure.” Jen picked up her notes, in order, and stepped in front of the map. As she pointed to units on the map and explained their best course of action, those unit markers would move on the map. As she talked through the action-reaction portion of the combat, the enemy markers would move, and the friendly markers would follow her recommendations. She detailed everything, including the possible need to sacrifice two units in order to bring down four to six enemy units.

After an hour of explaining what took her twenty minutes to figure out, she looked at the aliens. They all sat in silence for a long minute before Renthion raised a hand, his middle finger up. “It is as our spy said, the general is a genius.”

“I’m not really—”

Abalorth and another alien cut her off with a bow, holding out a large case. “This contains an automated healing machine. It is not allowed for trade with your people, but since you held up your end of the deal, we will uphold ours.”

“But I haven’t really—”

“The troops began moving quite a while ago. It was as you said.” Renthion pointed at the map. The units reset themselves to a position in what Jen considered the “late early game.” The enemy troops were responding in some cases in the most obvious way, in a few cases the second or third most likely she’d expected.

She heard explosions outside as one of the enemy armored units barreled past their location, getting themselves trapped in a kill funnel at the edge of the city. Explosions could be heard further afield as well. Units began disappearing from the map.

Four armored units and two light mounted met up at the edge of a clearing. Jen felt sick. This was the point where the purpose of two entire light mounted units was to draw them out and get obliterated while infantry closed in from behind to mine their escape from the heavy artillery that would begin to pound them from the far tree line.

The alien numbers depicting the size of the sacrificial units began to fall until they pulled further out into the clearing. Jen found herself sweating, silently urging the enemy units to take the bait. They did. She watched them advance in formation, while infantry units moved behind them to mine their escape.

The bait units continued to maneuver and dwindle until one blinked out existence on the board. The other made a beeline for far trees when artillery began raining down on the pursuing forces. They pulled back in a hurry, almost running into the infantry units that were scattering in the woods behind them.

As the enemy retraced their steps, their unit numbers began falling, until three had blinked out of existence, and the remaining three were trapped by the damaged vehicles. The infantry reformed around them, and those three enemy unit markers also soon disappeared.

There were battles happening in other locations on the map but watching that one closely left Jen feeling sick. She’d just sent a bunch of people to their death, and she didn’t even know what for. She clutched the case with the healing machine. Was her mother really worth that many lives? What gave Jen the right to decide?

She stared at the map in stunned silence over the next hours, watching more and more of the previously outmanned units coalesce and claim more of the map. The final push was for the center of the city, where the halls of government lay.

Jen said a silent prayer to any god or gods that might be somewhere out there, to forgive her weakness. Tears ran down her face unbidden for the unknown lives that were lost. The room grew silent around her, and then exploded in sounds of joy and celebration. “What have I done?” she muttered under her breath.

The map changed to show video from the government building. Grey aliens like the ones around her celebrated as massive, reptilian aliens were led out of the building in chains. With the devices on the aliens around her, she could understand what the alien shouting into what must have been a microphone was saying to the crowd.

“We have thrown off the shackles of the bordlenorb and now are masters of our own destiny. Freedom for the people, freedom for Rorbenthor” The translators didn’t translate their word for the reptilian aliens or the planet’s name, but it was enough that Jen understood what was going on.

She didn’t feel quite so bad about the dead enemies any longer, but it didn’t assuage the guilt she felt for trading so many lives for her mother’s. She dropped the case and fell to her knees, sobbing.

Renthion sat on the floor near her. “Are you injured?”

“No. Yes. I mean, not physically, but I just caused so much death, and for what?” She forced herself to look Renthion in the eye. “I am selfish, and thought only of my mother, not what my actions would cost.”

Renthion put a hand on her arm. “Do you know why we were not allowed to trade that device?”

“No.”

“It would mean that humans would live far longer, healthier lives, and likely reach the stars sooner. The bordlenorb, our previous lords, forbade us to help any ‘primitive’ world advance.”

Abalorth helped her to her feet. “You may have only been thinking of your mother, but what will others do with this?”

“Is this something we have the technology to recreate?” she asked.

“Maybe not today, but very soon.” Renthion stood, picked up the case and handed it back to her. “Your scientists and materials experts have the know-how, it will just take some time.”

Jen sighed. “Only governments and big corporations have the resources for that, and it’ll be limited to the ultra-wealthy in the end.”

Abalorth bowed slightly. “Scarcity economy, of course. Perhaps if you had the resources, it could be shared in a fair manner?”

“Yeah, but that’s not happening any time soon.”

They turned off their devices and burbled among themselves again, checking the alien script on the map screen while they directed it to do something. After they reached a consensus, Abalorth turned back to her and asked, “Would thirty-two-thousand kilograms of gold be enough resources?”

Jen stared. “Would what? That’s — a lot of gold. Like a billion dollars’ worth? Two billion?”

“Would that be enough?”

Jen nodded. “Yeah, yeah it would.”

“Well then, general, we have an agreement, and we expect to see great things from humans in the near future,” Renthion said.

“Like I said, I’m not—”

“Nonsense. You figured out how to best use our remaining troops in almost no time at all. All of our field commanders are taking your lessons as they move forward to clearing out the last of the bordlenorb.” Renthion motioned for her to follow but didn’t make her put on the clothing again.

As they passed through the streets on their way back to the port, the passersby cheered and held up a middle finger. Renthion’s translator caught their cheers for the human great general that had freed them all.

She rode back to Earth in a comfortable seat, then was taken in a smaller craft to her home along with a vault that opened only to her touch, crammed with gold. She bid the aliens goodbye and brought the healing machine to her mother.

While the machine did its work, she began researching how to set up a non-profit research organization and how to hire top talent scientists. She would not feel at ease with her actions until she had saved at least a hundred times as many people as she had condemned to death on Rorbenthor.

Something Renthion had said on the return trip echoed through her mind. “Only a great general weeps for the cruelty of war, even after winning it.”