Alien hostiles, p.26
Alien Hostiles, page 26
Her hand found a pen and a clipboard at her side. She would record what she saw on paper. By this time, she was pretty good at freehand drawing and even writing on the paper without looking at what she was doing.
In her mind’s eye, she began with the coordinates she’d used before, three sets of alphanumerics representing a spot on the surface of Daarish’s globe. She’d read the transcript of the after-action report, and knew to travel north to northeast from that spot . . . toward the loom of Charlie and the aurorae flaring in the predawn sky.
The last time she’d remote viewed the area, it had been daylight—evidence that she’d been viewing back in time a bit. Now the landscape was shrouded in shadow, with hard, bright stars filling the sky. She saw a few of the bipedal riding beasts as she flew over them, as well as some stranger creatures, indistinct in the near darkness.
She tried to hold Hunter’s words in her mind, using them to direct her. The Saurian supreme headquarters, he’d said. A military base. A city.
She was aware of the light up ahead, a harsh light that wiped the soft neon glow of the aurorae from the sky. Opening her mind, she arrowed in that direction.
An army base.
She saw something like an airfield in one direction, acres upon acres of flat concrete surface with dozens of the Saurian flying disks parked in tight little groups. Nearby, long, flat buildings were arrayed in neatly spaced rows; a large, paved field opened in the middle, and there were people occupying it.
Thousands of people . . . humans in black uniforms of some sort . . . black or dark gray, and they were standing in tight ranks, facing a stage where several more humans sat listening to a speaker at a podium. At the back of the stage, an immense wall as broad as a football field rose high into the air, with spotlights illuminating three red, black, and white flags hanging against it.
Swastikas . . . Nazi flags.
Julia had seen old films of prewar Nazi rallies at Nuremberg, of a vast arena packed solid with cheering, sieg-heiling crowds beneath banners exactly like these.
She couldn’t hear the speaker and was glad for that. The scene was making her a bit queasy. It would have been funny, if it wasn’t so sickening. Some things were best left dead and buried in the past.
She was beginning to doubt the experience, however. Was it possible that her mind was filling in details from those old films?
Don’t analyze. Simply record . . .
She kept moving.
Nowhere did she see any of the horrible little reptile aliens. So far as she could see, this was a base built by and for humans. Many of them carried weapons. Some appeared to be officers giving directions, their uniforms glittering with medals and emblems of rank and authority.
They certainly didn’t look like slaves.
She wondered if Commander Hunter could possibly have been mistaken.
She noted the presence of . . . machinery, of huge machines the size of buildings, of underground rooms packed with electrical equipment and with massive devices of purposes she could not begin to grasp. She noted them on her pad . . . and as she did so she began to sense, to feel what much of it was for.
Daarish was too far from its star to be as warm as it was. These were titanic pumps belching gasses into the atmosphere; carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapor.
Greenhouse gasses. They’re warming their planet by deliberately putting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. . . .
How long, she wondered, could they keep doing that before they poisoned the air?
Where would the Saurians be? In this vast, teeming hive of activity, among these titanic machines . . . where were they?
She felt a tug in one direction as she asked the silent question and let herself be drawn that way. There was a structure that she immediately labeled in her mind as a fortress . . . a sprawling collection of massive domes interconnected by what looked like tunnels—six domes in a circle, with a single huge, elevated dome at the center.
She drifted inside. . . .
At last . . .
Ten Saurians sat at consoles arrayed in neat circles around the interior of the main dome. There were humans here as well, a lot of them, but the Saurians clearly were the ones in charge. She couldn’t tell what they were doing, but she had the impression that the screens the aliens were watching with their impassive golden eyes showed views of different parts of the complex—of a vast, open pit mine; the spaceport with its fleets of saucers; the interiors of homes and barracks; and of humans going about their business, perhaps the ultimate expression of the surveillance state.
Was she seeing what was actually happening, or was her mind filling in details pulled from books or TV or her own imagination?
Don’t analyze. Simply record. . . .
Drifting down, she slipped like a ghost through the control center’s floor, becoming aware of a vast maze of tunnels spreading out from the complex in all directions. She saw armories filled with weapons, warehouses filled with supplies and, most disturbingly, rank upon rank of clear tubes, many of them holding nude humans, apparently unconscious. Or were they dead?
She pulled back from that nightmare, emerging again in the open. She continued to drift, somewhat aimlessly, prying and watching and recording.
She found more warehouses filled with crates of goods and supplies.
She found rows of neat, dome-shaped barracks, each housing dozens of men and women.
She found the mining pit, with some thousands of slave laborers working under the watchful eyes of hovering human guards.
She drifted above the spaceport, noting guards, both human and Saurian, and the neatly arrayed ranks of grounded saucers on the tarmac and in the hangars.
She—
Icy terror gripped her, and she started. She felt eyes on her, eyes examining her minutely, passionlessly, and she felt something like cold shadows closing in around her.
What are you? What are you doing here . . . ?
The voice, clear and guttural, pounded within her skull as she yanked herself back.
And the voice followed her.
Terror gripped her, clawing at her mind. It was like being caught in a nightmare from which she could not awake.
Where do you belong . . . ?
She screamed, then, a wail of raw terror that went on and on until Hargreaves entered her room and dragged her from the bunk.
Hunter unrolled the large hand-drawn map out on the table at the back of the CIC, as Groton, Winchester, Wheaton, and Elanna watched. Ashley and Hargreaves stood nearby; Hargreaves was glaring, while Ashley was looking down at the deck. Neither looked at all happy.
“We are convinced,” Hunter told the others, placing books on the map’s corners to keep it open, “in light of this new intel, that we have no choice but to prosecute a combined ground and air attack against the Malok base on Daarish.”
“I don’t suppose you would care to explain yourself, Commander?” Winchester said.
“Of course, sir.” In tight, ordered sentences, Hunter began laying out the bare bones of what the tactical working group had determined. “Based on Ms. Ashley’s observations, we believe that the actual number of Saurians on Daarish is quite low . . . a few hundred at most, perhaps only a few dozen. The slave population is controlled by something like a few thousand collaborators working for the Saurians. Our biggest problem is a large army . . . a human army that may be preparing to launch an attack on Earth.”
“You can’t be serious,” Winchester said. “You want us to attack a planet based on this remote-viewing hocus-pocus?”
“Admiral,” Hargreaves said, “what Julia has offered is not genuine remote viewing. She has broken the standard protocols and worked without controls or proper oversight. In her defense, she has been extremely stressed lately, but she seems to have drifted away from the dictates of her training. Her data cannot be independently verified.”
“Damn it, I know what I saw!” Julia put in.
“Yes, dear, I know you think so. And it’s okay . . .”
“Stop being so damned patronizing, Hargreaves,” Hunter said. “Admiral . . . whatever you might think about remote viewing, this young lady had a . . . a vision of events on Daarish that exactly matched what we encountered. She has convinced me that these data are genuine.”
“An army of Nazis about to invade the Earth?”
“Admiral, if I may offer an observation,” Elanna said. “What Julia saw on Daarish would fit the preferred mode of operations for the Malok. We know that there is some sort of a connection with the THG in Europe, a group that believes that a fleet of flying saucers will arrive at any time to help them establish an Earth-wide imperium. This army that she described would not be enough to conquer a planet, no. But it would be enough to control a fairly large portion of Germany and Austria with help from local militias. And it would engender a war, possibly a global war, between opposing factions all over the Earth.”
“What factions?” Winchester demanded.
“Admiral, there is no shortage of factions within your civilization! The entire planet is polarized, dry tinder for a conflagration! Neo-Nazis and communists in Europe. Socialist radicals and far-right militias in the United States. Leftist progressives and rightist conservatives. Radical Muslims and radical Christians. Christian fundamentalists and humanists. Globalists and libertarians. Greens and industrialists. Socialists and capitalists. Rich and poor. You’ve had all of these factions and more at one another’s throats for decades . . . and the polarization has been growing more bitter, more angry, more intransigent, more shrill. Can you deny this?”
“We’re not perfect, Elanna . . .”
“No. You are not. And you’ve been becoming less perfect year by year as you slide into a morass of endless arguing, dividing beliefs, and fearmongering. Now imagine a hundred thousand disciplined and well-trained soldiers marching forth from a fleet of flying saucers, proclaiming that they are the New Order here to save you from yourselves.”
“I would think everybody on Earth would put aside their differences to face this new threat. . . .”
“Then you do not understand the passionate, stubborn, and often irrational nature of our species, Admiral.”
“I cannot believe a few thousand invaders could conquer a civilization of eight billion people.”
“They don’t have to conquer you, remember.” Elanna shook her head. “They need to trigger your existing polarizations to instigate a planet-wide war, a war in which there would be no winners, except for the Malok who would step in at the end as saviors.”
“What Elanna is saying, Admiral,” Hunter said, “applies to the situation here on Daarish, too. Based on what my recon team saw down there, an attack targeting the Malok at the top should trigger a massive uprising at the bottom. Not every slave will join in . . . but by the same token not every Uber will fight for the masters. If we decapitate them, we can dictate to the survivors.”
“How many personnel are in the 1-JSST at the moment, Commander?” Winchester asked.
The 1st Joint Space Strike Team had numbered forty-eight at Zeta Retic, but nineteen men and women had been killed or otherwise incapacitated. Upon their return to Earth, seventy more volunteers had joined the ranks, so the total now was ninety-nine.
Hunter said so.
“Ninety-nine people to take down a planet,” Winchester said.
“Plus our air wing, Admiral, and the cruisers. We’ll be depending on them for our deployment, for close support and keeping those saucers off our backs.”
“And you’re convinced this strike is necessary?”
He gestured at Elanna. “What she said earlier, sir. All the evidence suggests that they’re going to launch some sort of operation on Earth. What did our rescued local call it? Projekt Rückkehr. ‘Operation Return.’ It’s probably going to take place soon . . . especially now that they know we’ve discovered them. Sir . . . even if we can’t free the human population here, we damned sure could disrupt their plans. Set them back . . . I don’t know, years, maybe. Far enough that Solar Warden could put together a real fleet and take this system down.”
Winchester stared for a long moment at the hand-drawn map on the table. It showed the distillation of what Ashley had seen plus the report of the recon team—mining pit, space port, manufacturing areas, quarters, and the all-important central command complex.
“One question,” Winchester said after a moment. “You saw . . . what? A few dozen saucers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Julia . . . you saw the same?”
“I can’t give you an exact number, Admiral, but there were a lot of them.”
“A hundred? A thousand?”
“Closer to a hundred, sir. Fewer than that, I think.”
“Those saucers are about thirty-five, forty feet across?”
“Yes, sir,” Wheaton said.
“Then can anybody tell me how in blue blazes they’re going to get a hundred thousand troops from here to Earth?”
“Sir,” Groton said, “I can’t imagine the Saurians would have put this thing together if they didn’t have adequate transportation lined up and ready. They’re not stupid.”
“We know they can teleport directly, Admiral,” Hunter added. “At least small numbers, and across short distances.”
“Yes . . . but a hundred thousand troops across sixty-seven light-years?”
“Admiral, at this point we don’t know what the Saurians are capable of.”
“Yes, and that’s what worries me.” He straightened up. “Okay, Captain. What did your working group come up with?”
“We’re calling it Operation Push Back.” He pointed to the map and began laying out the broad strokes of the operation that Hunter and Wheaton had already worked out before passing it up the chain to Groton’s tactical staff.
“I don’t like tying up all five cruisers,” Winchester said after a while. “I think we should hold two in reserve and protect the Hillenkoetter.”
“Yes, sir. But we do need heavily concentrated firepower on the target.”
“I understand that. Commander Hunter . . .”
“Yes, sir.”
“You seem to have a penchant for collecting stray humans in glass bottles. I seem to recall you getting a pretty serious dressing-down for your actions in that regard at Zeta Retic.”
“Yes, sir. But our remote viewer saw a large number of humans in suspended animation underneath the dome, exactly like what we found at Zeta Reticuli. If Push Back succeeds and we manage to free the local population, I doubt they have the technological know-how to revive or care for those people. I suggest we bring them back to Earth instead.”
“You’re a glutton for punishment.”
“Yes, sir, I suppose I am. But . . .”
“What?”
“Sir, the Man in Black who gave me my dressing-down wasn’t there. He doesn’t know what those people went through . . .”
“Your compassion does you credit. I’m not sure it speaks well of your tactical acumen. We will leave that part of the plan on hold until we actually reach these people. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Winchester straightened up. “Okay. I need to go over this with my staff. I’ll tell you what I’ve decided . . . probably tomorrow. Dismissed.”
Hunter left the CIC with the distinct feeling that everything now rode on a single toss of the dice. Everything. . . .
Hillenkoetter’s movie theater was fairly spartan—a large and empty room with folding chairs that doubled for church services and training lectures. Lieutenant David Duvall was sitting in the back with a scattering of other personnel, watching a true classic—Hugh Marlow and Jean Taylor in the 1956 black-and-white blockbuster Earth vs. the Flying Saucers. At the moment, Ray Harryhausen’s genius was on full display as a fleet of alien spacecraft cruised past the Washington Monument.
While they showed a variety of movies in the Big-H’s theater, 1950s sci-fi was especially popular with the crew, with hoots and catcalls punctuating the sillier scenes and more egregious gaps in the plotlines. Last week, the featured film had been the original 1951 version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which Duvall actually thought was pretty good. Superadvanced aliens land on Earth, worried about humans tinkering with nukes.
It sounded kind of familiar. . . .
Two men took seats to either side of him, startling him. In the darkness, he recognized Commander Hunter on his right and Captain Macmillan on his left.
“So . . . studying their tactics?” Hunter said sotto voce.
“Sir!”
He’d spoken aloud, and several people toward the front turned and shushed him.
“Let’s step outside for a moment,” Macmillan whispered. “We need to talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the passageway outside, Hunter grinned at him. “Sorry to take you away from your tactical research, Lieutenant. We were looking for you, and someone said you were at the movie.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You did an excellent job with the TR-3S, getting us to and from Daarish. Thank you.”
Before he could reply, Macmillan said, “I’ve talked things over with Commander Hunter, son. We want to put you back on active flight status.”
“If,” Hunter amended, “you’ve learned your lesson. No drinking on board ship, no getting so shit-faced you can’t show up for roll call.”
“Yes, sir! No, sir! I mean . . . thank you, sir!”
“Don’t thank us yet, Lieutenant,” Hunter said. “Not until you’ve heard what we want from you. We want you available for an upcoming mission, and it’s not going to be easy.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir. We’re going to hit those bastards on Daarish.”
“How the hell do you know that, Lieutenant?” Macmillan asked.
Hunter raised an eyebrow and looked at Macmillan. “Shipboard scuttlebutt, CAG, the only thing without a gravity drive that travels faster than light.”
“I should have known.”
“I have learned my lesson, sir,” Duvall said, putting as much contriteness into his response as he could manage. “I swear to God.”
“That’s good, Duvall,” Macmillan said, “because if you pull a stunt like that again I will personally kick your ass from here to Andromeda. Understand?”
