Alien Empire

by Anthony Gillis

  “Correct, Professor.”

  “Then I suggest you board and capture the Vigilant.”

  “A boarding action? Professor, these aren’t exactly designed for it. Not to mention the Vigilant is in midair, AND if I recall, there are over nine thousand crew and marines aboard!”

  “Many of whom are now dead or incapacitated, General, and most of whom are crewmen, not combat troops. They sent the bulk of their marines on the unsuccessful attack on Ais, and none made it back aboard. We’ve got their guns tied up dealing with our fighters, and you’ve got a landing bay open and waiting for you. They will be as surprised to receive a boarding action as you are considering it. We can end this fight quickly.”

  “Well… slag! We’ll try it!”

  ///

  Out in the Baccharan desert, yet another Elder shuttle was still very much active and under Elder control.

  It was nearly invisible, even in the light of day. Its surfaces projected whatever was on the opposite side. From the ground, it looked like a patch of sky. From the air, save for the slightest blur, it looked like the ground underneath it.

  The shuttle was silent, even by Elder standards. It was barely detectible to radar, and flew close enough to the ground to avoid it entirely. The shuttle came to a stop, hovering silently, at a ruined village above a desolate dry oasis.

  Six shapes, invisible as the shuttle itself, moved silently out.

  30

  “Nabeda, did you see that?” said a large man in Baccharan to his shorter, thinner companion. In front of him was a desk with monitors, and beyond that, the reinforced steel door to the upper entrance corridor.

  “See what?”

  “The front door, the false brick door, slid open and shut on its own.”

  “I don’t see anything in the hallway. Maybe it malfunctioned.”

  “Check motion sensors, sound, and infrared.”

  “Nothing, all round. No shadows in there either. Maybe it was Hadeb’s ghost.”

  The bigger man paled for a moment. “Don’t even joke about that.”

  Then the steel door opened on its own.

  Both men froze, only for an instant, before reaching for their weapons and the alarm buttons. It was long enough. Invisible hands covered each man’s mouth. Barely visible blades with monofilament edges pierced each heart. Two bodies quietly dropped to the ground.

  Silent forms, less visible than glass in water, moved deeper into the complex.

  ///

  Karden and Neem sat at a bank of computers, closely monitoring the battle on the surface. Karden was speaking with commanders. Viris, next to them, was busy running encryption routines in an ongoing race of secrecy against the Elders. Jat, twenty feet away, had grown bored with combat and was working on something else entirely. Tayyis, weary and sick of watching killing, joined him.

  Colonel Deba sat nearby in full body armor, an automatic rifle at his side, two pistols at his hips, and knives tucked in his boots. He scanned security monitors. From time to time, his eyes turned to Viris. He had twenty six men positioned throughout the complex, and kept in regular touch with them.

  “Neem, Professor Jat,” he said, “did either of you authorize use of the upper entrance?”

  Jat grunted a negative noise.

  “I didn’t,” added Neem

  Neem turned to Karden, “Did you?”

  “No,” said Karden, “Why?”

  “It opened. First the outer, then the inner,” Deba opened an intercom to the guard room at that entrance. “You men! What is going on out there? Did you open the doors?”

  There was no answer. Deba pushed a couple of buttons.

  “Professor Karden, the guards aren’t at their posts.”

  Karden looked up, a worried expression on his face. “Colonel, collectively, what does all that tell you?”

  Deba thought for a moment, “Intruders!”

  “Then I think we’d better…”

  The lights went out.

  Computers, on their own circuit, remained on. There were quiet noises, muffled screams, off at the far end of the lab, then silence. Auxiliary lights, dim and reddish, activated. There was the slightest noise as of something rolling across a floor, then a hissing sound.

  Deba watched in shock as one of his men staggered backwards, clutching his throat. He turned to the others, “Fall back! Get breathing gear on now, please!”

  Several of Deba’s men started firing wildly into the darkness.

  “Stop, you fools! There are scientists over there! Don’t shoot until you see something.”

  But they didn’t see anything.

  Other men fell, clutching their throats, their eyes wide and faces purple. There were more noises, as of bodies falling out in the darkness, closer. The rest of the men started firing again, reckless full automatic fire in all directions. Lab equipment shattered in the spray of bullets.

  There was another small noise, and more hissing. Smoke, a thick black oily smoke, started filling the lab. Off somewhere past the smoke, even the emergency lights were going out. Here and there could be heard screams or groans, suddenly silenced.

  One of Deba’s soldiers jerked suddenly, his body arching as his eyes rolled back lifeless. Something was briefly visible, protruding through his heart. Acting on instinct, Deba fired a long burst at the spot. Something he could hear, but not see, fell to the ground along with his soldier’s body.

  Other men were falling, dying.

  Wide-eyed, Deba took a step back.

  ///

  Further back in the complex, alarms blared and red lights flashed. Neem and Jat handed out breathing masks to Karden, Tayyis, Viris, and several terrified scientists. Karden grabbed Neem’s arm.

  “We need to defend ourselves! Neem, whoever or whatever is in here seems to be invisible, or nearly such, but I suspect they aren’t immune to bullets.”

  Neem nodded. “We’ve got guns… and other things. Here, in this locker…”

  They all took guns. Neem grabbed a heavy-looking pack and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Let’s go!” said Karden.

  And they crept forward, toward the advancing darkness.

  ///

  Deba roared at his surviving men. “Fall back, now! Form a line. Keep your fire in front of you. Curse you, fall back!”

  At last, a ragged line of six formed alongside Deba. They spread arcs of fire across the ground in front of them, slowly retreating.

  Deba thought he heard something slump and fall in the field of fire, somewhere partially behind a rack of storage shelves.

  To his left, a man’s head exploded, destroyed by a singled powerful, silent shot. The others turned their fire to where the shot seemed to have come from. Another man fell, his throat suddenly replaced by a red spray. All around them, lights were continuing to go out, shattering as if hit by invisible, silent guns.

  A thought occurred to him.

  He grabbed an anti-fire device, ducked down for cover, and sprayed powder across wide spans of floor up ahead. He rolled and darted crouching back to a new position as a shot smashed through the spot where he’d been. He stopped, breathing hard. Another of his own men cried out and then fell silent.

  “All right,” he thought to himself, “I must do this, they are counting on me.”

  He peeked around the corner. Yes. Footprints, barely visible, were advancing from one point of cover to another across his anti-fire spray floor. He aimed for a spot a step or so above them, and took a shot, then ducked his head and darted for new cover without stopping to see whether he’d succeeded. Across an aisle was Neem, holding a gun in one hand and a cylinder in the other. He threw the cylinder, it landed somewhere off away with a clang.

  There were other clangs, then a strange sensation like static electricity.

  “Aha!” Yelled Viris.

  Ahead of them, four forms were dimly visible in the darkness under varying degrees of cover. They wore full body-covering armored suits, which until shorted out by blasts fro
m the EMP grenades, had provided something close to invisibility for their wearers.

  A scientist popped his head over the cover he’d been hiding under, and raised his gun. He promptly lost his head, and the gun fell from lifeless hands.

  A shot came from somewhere further back, and went right into the head of one of the shadowy figures. It dropped. Two of the others darted with swift silent grace back toward the entrance. The third moved more slowly and awkwardly, as if hurt. Numerous shots rang out and the wounded figure dropped, shortly followed by one of the others.

  Deba charged after the other, leaping over bodies and dodging debris as he ran.

  Ahead of him was pitch darkness. He turned on the light attached to his helmet. A shadowy form was racing toward the guard room, the front door, and escape. It looked as if it were already starting to turn invisible again. He raised his rifle, but found he was out of shots, tossed it aside and grabbed a pistol, fired, and got what he thought was a lucky shot. The shape stumbled, slowed, turned around a corner.

  Deba advanced. Some instinct told him to draw a knife in his free hand.

  He turned the corner, and felt the kick that sent him flying. The strength of it was frightening. He lost his pistol, spun, jumped up, and somehow dodged another kick. He slashed with his knife, felt it contact flesh, and then grabbed with his other hand, but instead was thrown backwards by a trip. He felt a knife cut through his armor, miss his vitals, but still fill his world with agony. He caught himself, spun and kicked with all his might, shoving the now invisible thing into a wall. Smears of blood showed it starting to get back up.

  Shots cracked toward that wall, hit whatever it was. There was a slump, and a low wheezing sound. He looked over his shoulder, to his shock, there was Haral Karden.

  Karden looked down at him, a grim smile on his face, “Even old men can be dangerous with guns.”

  Deba smiled through his pain, “And that deadly head shot?”

  “That was Neem. He does a lot of weapons testing personally. The practice seems to have paid off. Now let’s go see who or what we’ve got.”

  They walked over to where the spreading pool of blood showed a body would be. Karden activated another EMP grenade, and the suit became visible again. Deba walked over to it, and without any gentleness, pulled the helmet off.

  Under it was an Elder, his hard-lined face neither young nor old. He looked at them without fear or hatred, reached a twitching hand to a small panel in his suit, pressed two buttons, and waited…

  Too slow, Deba and Karden reached forward to stop him.

  Whatever was supposed to happen, failed to. There was a bullet hole through a corner of that panel. The Elder’s face adopted an impassive expression, and he feebly shifted his body to what was perhaps a more comfortable posture. The eyes watched them calmly, until their light went out.

  ///

  Survivors reconnoitered, with bleak expressions. The losses had been horrific.

  “Twenty-three scientists and staff are dead… twenty three friends!” said Neem, his body sprawled in a chair, his voice cracking with emotion. The surviving scientists sat in chairs or on the floor around him, some crying, others staring silently into space.

  “All but one of my twenty men are dead, as are all six of the regular guards,” stated Deba, grimly.

  Tayyis had her head in her hands, sobbing. Jat, his face pale, was performing little sleight of hand tricks, over and over. Viris on the other hand, was pacing back and forth in rage.

  “Who, WHAT were they?” she snarled.

  “I would guess they were Special Forces or assassins of some kind,” replied Karden, “sent to quietly, and permanently, take all of us out of the war.”

  “The war!” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry, if you will excuse me.”

  The others in the room looked at him in shock. But there were others yet, outside with their lives on the line, who were counting on him. He raced to his station and opened communications.

  “General Sellis. What news of the Vigilant?”

  “We captured it, with hardly a fight! You were right! There were only fifty or so marines left on the ship, and they were scattered. The Elders were completely surprised to see us. Some of the crew tried to fight, but most were unarmed, and when we got to ‘em they just stood there, hands folded behind their backs. Fatalistic, I suppose. It was eerie.”

  “Great news! Thank you General.”

  Karden made more calls. The news was the same. Victory on all fronts! His mind rejoiced, then reeled. The emotions and the pain hit him at last. He staggered over to Tayyis, slumped down hard next to her on the couch, and took her in his arms.

  31

  The Vigilant floated over the brilliant turquoise sea. It was being towed toward Ais harbor, slowly and carefully, by long cables attached to Elder shuttle craft. Other shuttles were methodically transporting prisoners to the surface, with plans to distribute them around the world.

  In the windy open space that had once been the Vigilant’s bridge and navigation rooms, Karden, Tayyis, Neem, Jat, Abida, and military officers from several nations stood on a hastily-rigged platform amidst the wreckage. With them was Engineer Diplomat Mitchell, once again performing his duty of guide, albeit with much greater reluctance. He was speaking to Karden in Elder.

  “As I said, Historian Professor Karden, I won’t give you the kind of information you are asking for, particularly not on the first contact mission.”

  “Engineer Diplomat,” replied Karden in the same, “we’ll find out most of what we need to know soon enough, from your communication transcripts and computer databases. The things I’m most curious are subjective assessments and value judgments.”

  Mitchell stared at him in tense silence.

  Karden continued, “One of the most perplexing is that this ship carries nuclear weapons, yet rather than use them to wipe out our leadership here easily and from a safe distance, you made a conventional attack.”

  A strange expression crossed Mitchell’s face.

  “Why don’t you ask Deputy Ambassador Hsien that?”

  “The Deputy Ambassador refuses to answer any questions at all, even what he wants to eat. He sits in a state that is either meditative, or uselessly depressive, depending on one’s assessment.”

  Mitchell put his hands behind his back, and took a deep breath.

  “Very well, I can tell you this. We didn’t use nuclear weapons on Ais because we are not savages. However much you may not see it, we’re here to help you. Nuclear weapons are a very drastic step reserved for the corrective process known as Retrogression.”

  “Engineer Diplomat, I’m aware of what Retrogression means.”

  Mitchell eyed him. “We knew someone on your side did, given the videos that got loose on your nets. It was the first warning we had you’d hacked our communications…” he stopped, reconsidered what he was saying, and continued in another direction.

  “Specifically, use of nuclear weapons requires authorization for what is called Level Two Retrogression, and that authorization can only come from the Galactic Central Presidium itself.”

  “So therefore, Engineer Diplomat,” continued Karden, “your entire attack failed because of adherence to a bureaucratic or diplomatic rule.”

  “I couldn’t say, sir… Historian Professor Karden.”

  Karden was wryly amused that his use of the Elder’s own tone and address of command was unsettling Mitchell, as hoped. Tayyis was quite correct about that one. He studied Mitchell. Something about the man’s attitude told him he, Mitchell didn’t think it had been a good idea to adhere to the rules about use of nuclear weapons.

  Sarcasm aside, Karden had worries of his own. The Elder’s attack might have failed, but only barely. Of the more than five hundred aircraft the Grounders had brought to the battle, scarcely a hundred still remained operational, they had suffered hundreds of dead on the ground, and hundreds more still with the annihilation of the Jayesthiri naval squadron.

  Inwardly, he shudd
ered at how things would have gone if the Elders had brought their original fleet of twelve ships to bear, as opposed to one vessel, on diplomatic duty, operating under constrained rules of engagement, and stripped of most of its fighter complement.

  Or how it would have gone, for the world, if the Elders were really determined to destroy them, as opposed to, from a haughty perspective, help them.

  He returned from his reverie, subjectively long however brief in time. Tayyis and most of the others had been closely watching his discussion with Mitchell. Neem, Jat and a few military officers, however, were busily discussing how to refit the Vigilant for war, on the Grounder side.

  ///

  Somewhat later, the group was deep within the interior of the ship. In a large storeroom, a special group of prisoners was quartered. Of the nearly ten thousand ships company, all but two hundred and fifty-one were Elders. Those others were gathered here.

  Most were Ara’kaa, four were of the tall, thin reddish-skinned race Karden and the other had seen in the Elder history disc. Forty-six were of a new and unknown species. Shiny bronze-skinned beings about the height of Elders, though not otherwise like them in appearance. They had slender builds, hands with six sinuous fingers like tentacles, low wide heads, and wide set eyes and mouths.

  Karden surveyed them, turned to one of the Tadine Special Forces on guard, and spoke. “You gathered them all here together simply because they’re not Elders?”

  “Yes sir. None of them speak Tadine, and none of us spoke Elder, outside of a few memorized phrases to encourage them not to fight. It seemed like something you and the rest of the leadership should see. We have no idea if they are part of the crew, or prisoners.”

  “Thank you Sergeant. I think you acted correctly,” said Karden, wondering at the idea of being considered part of the leadership.

  He turned back to the assembled aliens, and spoke in Elder. “So, are you prisoners?”

  Three of the Ara’kaa stepped forward. Karden immediately noticed that while all the rest of the Ara’kaa were in the most basic form of the Elder military uniform, these three had some gold and decoration. The one in the center spoke in harsh-sounding Elder. For some reason, Karden assumed it was a male.