by Hatchett
Mason led him into the hallway, closed the door and then moved off towards the first room on the right. Joshua had been here before and he knew that they were heading for a fairly large sitting room.
As he entered, he saw that Mason had company; people Joshua knew very well but didn’t care for very much. There again, he’d never had much time for those in authority, especially those he believed were inferior to him and nowhere near his equal.
“You know Declan, Archie and David of course,” Mason observed as the three men nodded in Joshua’s direction, “can I get you something to drink?”
“Water will be fine,” Joshua replied, nodding back and eyeing the crystal glasses sitting on the low coffee table filled with some dark liquid and wishing that he could have one. But he’d already had a couple that evening and needed to keep a clear head. Especially as he was now in the presence of the ‘Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ as they were referred to, or just ‘Horsemen’ for short.
They were in fact the four leaders of the Laakuu, pronounced ‘Lack-ooh’, in the UK; Archie from Scotland, David from Wales and Declan from Ireland. Mason, of course, was the leader in England and the most senior of the quartet. Other than Mason, the other three were all very similar; unforgettable nerdy types between five and a half feet and six feet tall, all in their forties or fifties, all in suits, all going to seed due to their extravagances. Why the hell they picked these shitty bodies Joshua could not understand; it must have been purely for their positions in society because he wouldn’t been seen dead wearing any of them, not for all the tea in China as some humans liked to say. At least Mason had picked a handsome body, just like himself; it made the sacrifice far more bearable.
Joshua was handed a glass of water and offered a seat as he thought about his kind and how he came to be where he was now.
In Earth terms, the Laakuu had journeyed to the Solar System for the final time at the beginning of the twentieth century, although they had visited the planet many times over the preceding centuries. The planet had been earmarked by them as one of many in the known universe which could sustain life and was not too far away from their home planet.
Their earlier visits had been purely scientific, watching the development of the planet, seeing what resources it could offer and witnessing the rise of homo sapiens as the dominant species. Where possible, they kept themselves to themselves and strived to avoid detection. Other than a few mistakes, they had largely succeeded in their aims, although some of the events recorded in the Bible, in ancient Egyptian scrolls, Mayan lore and other religions might suggest otherwise.
In the early 1900’s a large group on three spaceships had come for good; they hadn’t wanted to come, but they had no choice. Life on their planet, many light years from Earth, was coming to an end. Their planet had been sustained by a yellow dwarf similar to the Sun, but it was billions of years older and fast running out of hydrogen at its core. Once the hydrogen had been depleted this sun would effectively implode and shrink under its own gravity. The increased density would cause atoms to collide and put out significantly more energy and cause the temperature of this sun to increase. It would then swell to hundreds of times its original size and become a red giant, effectively swallowing any planets too close and making others once at a habitable distance, completely devoid of all life.
This impending doom had led to a breakdown of civility and wholescale warfare on their home planet; most Laakuu had died during this war and, of those that were left, there were divergent opinions on what they should do or where they should go.
In the end, this group of around five thousand had commandeered a huge Mothership and two slightly smaller inter-galactic spaceships and just left and never turned back; they had no idea what had happened to the rest of their species.
The three spaceships contained Laakuu from all walks of life; their equivalent of politicians, physicians, scientists, engineers, soldiers; the list goes on. Of course, the politicians had quickly taken charge and formed a ‘Council of Elders’. This Council determined that they would head for Earth, a planet which they knew and understood…to a degree. It would only take them the equivalent of around five years to get there.
In the meantime, the Laakuu reproduced at a significant rate, encouraged by the Council to replenish their numbers. The females of their species had a reproduction cycle of just a couple of months, and they tended to give birth to anywhere between two and six offspring. These offspring developed quickly and within a couple of years they were what humans would consider adult. It did not take long for the Laakuu numbers onboard the three spaceships to increase at a rapid rate.
When they first reached Earth with the intention of staying and taking over, they kept their spaceships closer to Mars than the Earth so they could not be detected. They watched and they waited and tried to work out how best they could take over the new world. Although they were significantly more advanced than humans when it came to certain things like space travel, they encountered a number of naturally occurring problems which could not be easily overcome.
The first major problem was the huge variety and coverage of diseases on the planet, something which their bodies were simply not used to – in the early days, some visits to Earth had led to significant casualties back on board the spaceships when those deployed had returned with diseases. They soon learned to employ a quarantine system for those returning.
The second major problem was the equally huge variety of plant species, some of which made the visitors ill or worse.
The third major problem was the huge variety of living creatures, not least the barbaric and war mongering humans who would not go down without a fight.
The Laakuu had maintained a watching brief over the Earth for the first fifty years or so, making the odd visit to the planet to collect samples for testing. Whenever the Laakuu went on a visit to Earth they carried tracking devices on them which showed their location. If the body died for whatever reason, the tracker would become inert and self-destruct leaving no trace that it was ever there.
During this time, they learnt languages, witnessed various wars including Word War I and World War II and tried to understand how humans operated and what drove them. They were especially interest in the weapons and tactics used by the humans and the rate that they made new scientific discoveries. They were particularly concerned by the emergence of the atomic bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945; there was no point in trying to take over a planet if it was reduced to an uninhabitable wasteland. They decided there and then that if they were to take over, it would have to be done by stealth rather than brute force.
Following World War II, the humans seemed to take far more interest in space and by the 1960’s were launching missions into space; missions to the moon, launching telescopes, satellites and probes. The Laakuu realised that they had to take stricter measures to avoid being detected and had moved their three spaceships further away from Earth, hiding behind other planets in the Solar System like Jupiter, then Saturn then Neptune as human missions and technological advances became more commonplace.
However, the Laakuu were also developing and discovering new technologies of their own. One of their major breakthroughs towards the end of the 1960’s enabled them to ‘cloak’ their spaceships and this allowed them to move back within a few thousand miles of Earth without being seen. From this, they were able to cloak their shuttles and other craft, and this allowed them to significantly increase the number of their visits to the planet with a higher degree of certainty that they would not be detected. Of course, many shuttles crashed or malfunctioned so the increase in UFO sightings and reports on the planet increased significantly.
It was clear to the Laakuu that some people on Earth were well aware that there was intelligent life ‘out there’, although it was obvious that they were clueless as to where ‘out there’ might be. The Laakuu were confused that the various leaders on the planet kept quiet about their discoveries and yet at the same ti
me encouraged initiatives like SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) when they already knew the answer. Homing beacons on their shuttles showed that many of the missing craft were unlikely to be discovered anytime soon, especially when they had crashed into one of the oceans, seas or large lakes. But some had crashed on land; again, most were unlikely to be found but some most definitely had been as their homing beacons showed them being moved to various installations including the notorious Area 51, the USA’s supposedly secret air force base in Nevada.
The increasing number of visits in the late 1960’s were mainly used to bring back even larger quantities of Earth samples for testing such as soil, plants, water, food and medicines. By the early 1970’s the Laakuu had advanced to abducting animals and some humans in their bid to find a way forward. These samples and abductions allowed them to experiment and develop their own medicines and inoculations against the threats the Earth posed.
The Laakuu lived for roughly twice as long as humans on average but were not totally unlike them in terms of appearance; quite by chance they had one head, albeit a larger elongated shape, they had two eyes a nose and a mouth, although the eyes were oval, the nose ribbed and the teeth razor sharp, they had two arms and two legs, both longer than the average human with hands and fingers, although they were more claw-like. Their torso was outwardly similar, although internally it was very much different. And they had no body hair. There was no doubt that they could never pass for humans in their normal state.
The second major breakthrough came in 1974, and it came about purely by accident. The Laakuu had always possessed the ability to allow their consciousness or spirit to leave their body for an hour or so at a time and go wandering; it generally happened when their bodies were ‘sleeping’, although they could do it at will at any time. They couldn’t go far from their body and the distance lessened the longer they were in this state, so that eventually their consciousness or spirit was automatically drawn back into their body, like it was attached by an invisible elastic cord. Effectively, it was an ‘out of body experience’ which sometimes happened to humans, but usually only when they were in a heightened state of injury or close to death.
The ‘accident’ occurred when one of the Laakuu on an out of body experience got too close to one of the human specimens in the laboratories aboard the Mothership. The Laakuu consciousness was pulled into one of the humans that resided there and began reading the thoughts of the human and feeling its pain and confusion. Within seconds, it knew everything the human had known.
It didn’t take long to realise that the Laakuu spirit could override human consciousness and effectively take control of the body. The human was still aware of everything that was going on but could do absolutely nothing to stop the Laakuu controlling it. The Laakuu in question panicked and eventually managed to remove its consciousness from the human and return to its own body. It then recounted the adventure to its superiors, adding that the humans were a severely confused species.
At first, the claims were met with scepticism, but it didn’t take long to ratify that they were indeed correct. Different Laakuu consciences invaded the human bodies they held and learnt what it was like to be human. They found that they could reside in the human body for as long as they wanted, although it had a detrimental effect on their own body. It seemed that the lack of a spirit within their own body made it age and weaken far quicker. One Laakuu who stayed in a human for a whole month as an experiment went back to its own body to find that it was now decrepit and there was nothing that could be done about it. The Laakuu quickly developed cryogenic chambers to freeze their bodies while they were away, and this seemed to solve the problem.
The other thing they found was that once they had entered another body, they were unable to enter a different one; it was as if they had established a direct link between their own body and the new human host and once set, it could not be changed unless the human body died, and the link was severed. Again, this was found purely by accident; as soon as the human died, the Laakuu consciousness was immediately pulled back into its own body and allowed the Laakuu to choose another host.
However, there was one problem which they could not resolve; a landing party of Laakuu had gone down to Earth, taking one of the Laakuu-controlled humans with them. The ‘human’ had gone back into a heavily populated area, and the locals had no idea that this person was any different to themselves. The ‘human’ had wandered around, tried talking to some people, and was generally getting a feel for its surroundings and how things worked. All the time, the human inside was screaming in horror but outwardly looked totally serene. The Laakuu blocked out the screaming and even taunted the human a little, but it was weird trying to assimilate and integrate with this foreign species. The humans were all walking around going about their business like a horde of worker ants and the Laakuu had no option but to return to the shuttle to report back, rest and think things through.
On the second sortie, the Laakuu-controlled human was more confident and entered a bar and ordered a drink. The Laakuu received some funny looks but had no idea what was going on. The drink tasted funny and the next thing he knew there was a scantily clad female sitting on his lap and licking his ear, talking to him and asking questions. The Laakuu searched the human’s mind to come up with the correct responses, one of which was to agree to buy the woman a drink. When the woman suggested going to a private room, the Laakuu panicked, a very human reaction, and decided it was time to leave. This was when the problems really began; when the Laakuu didn’t have any money to pay for the drinks and the company of the woman, the bouncers of the club didn’t take too kindly to having the piss taken and delivered a vicious beating outside the back door. The Laakuu, in pain and disorientated, tried to crawl back to the shuttle but the beating had been so bad that coordination was difficult. As the Laakuu finally managed to get to its feet, he shuffled into a road without looking and was hit by a van. The human was killed instantly trapping the Laakuu spirit inside. After a few moments of utter agony, where the Laakuu spirit could not locate its own body, it also died, leaving an oily residue in the brain of the human. The human was taken to the morgue as a ‘John Doe’ and the coroner eventually got around to carrying out an autopsy. As with every procedure, he extracted and weighed the brain, and whilst he noted the oily substance, he omitted to mention it in his report and the body was signed off for cremation.
The Laakuu learnt what they could and couldn’t do; they understood that if they were in a human body when it died, then they needed to be close to their own body otherwise they would die as well. This was not a problem on the ship, but it meant they had to be extremely careful down on Earth. They tried unsuccessfully to build cryogenic chambers into the shuttles carrying Laakuu-controlled human’s back to Earth, but the shuttles were too small and didn’t not have sufficient power. Therefore, once on Earth and in disguise, they were effectively on their own and had to take care of the human body in which they resided. Injuries were not a problem, they’d just return to the Mothership, transfer back to their own body and wait for the human to recover, or die in which case they’d select a new host.
During the late 70’s, 80’s and 90’s the Laakuu began their long-term goal of taking over the Earth; they carefully selected humans to abduct, transfer their consciousness and return back to Earth to live as those humans. Bit by bit they integrated themselves into all levels of human society and took over important roles and positions without a single drop of blood being spilt. Well, not much blood anyway. They built up their own society within the human race and started acquiring land and buildings so that they could bring some of their technology, like the cryogenic chambers, down to the planet. And, they always knew their own, even when disguised in their human hosts – they could literally smell them.
And now, after years of patience and hard work, and just when the Laakuu were getting closer towards their end goal, a new and unexpected threat had arisen.
“So, Joshua, I have updat
ed Declan, Archie and David about your reports, and they decided they wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”
“I’m not sure there is much more I can tell you,” Joshua said.
There was no way he was going to tell them about his last antagonistic conversation with the girl and he certainly wasn’t going to mention that he wasn’t sure if she had actually spoken to him. They would think he was losing it.
“As I have previously told you, I believe there is something remarkable and dangerous about this girl. She’s remarkable because she has woken up from injuries that should have killed her and she’s dangerous simply because of the way she is.”
“That is hardly anything to get worked up about,” suggested Declan with a sarcastic smile. “Her waking up might be a miracle, but we’ve seen many of those over the years and even caused a few ourselves. As for her being dangerous, how can a crippled girl cause us any trouble?”
“As I’ve said, I can’t explain it but every time I’m near her I feel alarm bells going off in my head and when I’ve touched her, she didn’t feel right,” Joshua explained.
“We all know how many of the female species you have touched in your time Joshua,” Archie pointed out to laughs from his colleagues. “Perhaps this one just isn’t your type, although admittedly she would be the first of her kind to achieve that. Another miracle some might say,” to more smiles from his colleagues.
Joshua was beginning to lose his temper. How these pampered pricks had the nerve to question him was beyond belief.
“I think she can detect us,” he blurted without thinking.
The room went silent, all merriment disappearing in an instant and four pair of eyes staring straight at him.