by Nick M Lloyd
Peterson had asked for the raw data, not the interpretation. She’d gone on to challenge him: could the data be stolen by the Ankor, given they’d shown themselves to be capable of subverting Earth’s systems? In reply, MacKenzie had said they couldn’t and that he’d take Colonel Martel’s team through the security once they were on site – but if anyone had doubts then he was prepared to simply switch off the systems.
At that point, the prime minister had stepped in and diffused the tension by accepting MacKenzie’s offer of the data and the walkthrough.
MacKenzie tapped his desk, gathering his thoughts. Of course, on arrival, the Ankor would likely be able to subvert his own systems in Anglesey and take anything they wanted. Currently, with the Ankor in the outer solar system, and given his security processes, the four-hour time lag on transmissions was far too great a distance for them to hack him. They got what he sent them and nothing more … as they had done now for fifteen years.
Fifteen years.
MacKenzie smiled to himself. The initial deal negotiations had taken four years; he’d held out for rewards that justified the risks. And to ensure the Ankor delivered those rewards, he had to ensure they continually needed him for this, the final month of the plan.
Eventually, of course, the balance would switch and MacKenzie would put himself entirely in their power.
Fundamentally, they would always need him for the physical elements of the plan.
Although … not necessarily me.
The risk remained that another Earth-based space agency was also secretly working with the Ankor.
Am I the only game in town?
MacKenzie looked over to a series of network ports embedded in one of the concrete walls. Port B3 was a simple access point to the internet. He only ever plugged in a unique computer tablet that he used for browsing social media sites across the world. The internet access point had dynamic IP scrambling; the computer tablet had no wireless capability and was locked in a safe when he was not using it. Each time he used it there was a complex set of checks to ensure the tablet had not been tampered with. It was as secure as it could be given that it had to connect to the internet to function.
Every day, often more than once, MacKenzie browsed photos from a seemingly arbitrary selection of his three hundred favourite nature bloggers.
His moles.
Each of them had a different background and different job. There were cleaners, cooks, security guards and even a few conservationists. Many of them thought they were working for a foreign government. Certainly, none of them were traceable to MacKenzie in any way. Their job was to post photos – incongruous photos – every day or so.
The photos were of birds, landscapes, and trees.
All totally innocent. An interest in nature and nothing more.
Even if someone looked closely, that was all they would think. Every single photographer had a different set of targets and unique codes. None of them had received instructions electronically. Eighty percent of them were decoys, photographing areas of no interest to MacKenzie.
The current information he was getting from his moles indicated greatly increased military presence close to each of Earth’s space launch facilities.
Not surprising, and not worrying.
It was, however, something to keep an eye on.
Rather than putting the tablet back into the safe, he transferred it to the secure crate he’d been gradually filling for the transfer of his most critical belongings to Anglesey. Having been in Anglesey for much of the weekend it was clear that his place was there.
MacKenzie looked around the room, considering what else he would take.
His walls were mostly bare concrete but there was a painting he’d decided to take: a Scottish Highland scene with a stag crouched down amongst the heather. It was clearly exhausted and had gone to ground. In the distance, a pack of hunting dogs, slavering wildly, was closing in. The painter had left it open to interpretation whether the stag – only moments away from a densely wooded copse – had one more burst of energy left to take it to safety.
MacKenzie knew what he thought. The deer should never have sat down. That was the motivation he took from the painting – fight to the very last, standing.
Which reminds me …
MacKenzie initiated the primary video link into Xandra Kusr’s new laboratory. Simultaneously, he switched on the data security analysis module and initiated a second hidden camera in the corner of the laboratory. An image of her side profile appeared on the split screen. In tandem, the security module returned a green status, satisfying MacKenzie it was a real-time feed of Kusr and not a simulation.
The kidnap had gone as well as expected – in that Kusr had been secretly transferred into the depths of SpaceOp without any serious physical damage.
Since then, it had not been so good. MacKenzie had expected to explain her choices to her in a reasonable way: continue with the experimentation and be paid handsomely, or suffer daily physical and emotional abuse until she changed her mind.
She’d feigned acceptance … and then smashed up the first laboratory.
MacKenzie had been a little impressed.
That feeling had quickly faded when she smashed up the second one too.
So, we’re doing it the hard way.
The real-time video feed showed Kusr sitting on the floor of her laboratory looking directly at the camera. With one eye lightly bruised and a shallow weeping cut on her cheek, Kusr’s stare did not waver.
In the background, the laboratory equipment appeared to be intact. Movement in the cages on her right indicated that her experimental subjects had survived her two rebellions.
And the nerve-grafting experiments need to be complete.
Xandra Kusr was one of the world’s preeminent neural experts, both surgical and theoretical. She’d been working on various elements of MedOp for a few years, all related to harmonisation of biological and non-biological technology.
For the first eighteen months MacKenzie had allowed her to progress all her own bespoke investigations, but once the Ankor had provided initial TechMeld data earlier that year, MacKenzie had brought her full-time into secure MedOp facilities. He’d passed the data on, telling her it came from a highly sensitive national programme, whilst implying it had been stolen from the Chinese.
A few months earlier, Kusr had successfully created a stable two-way interface between a group of nerves and a simple computer. Before the kidnap, she’d been trying to replicate it on live mammalian brains – thus the need for the extreme dexterity of a world-class neurosurgeon.
Apart from Kusr’s current impromptu sit-in, the main obstacle for MacKenzie was that the Ankor were still withholding two pieces of critical information: the exact concentration of the enzymes required to control the reaction pace in a live working brain, and the protein distribution on the cellular membrane that controlled the flow of ions across it.
The buzzer on MacKenzie’s desk sounded.
Charles Taylor had arrived.
MacKenzie switched on the relevant CCTV screen.
Taylor looked pensive.
Deciding to make him wait – Taylor was susceptible to a little bullying – MacKenzie returned his attention to his workstation.
There were two items waiting for him.
FTL Refutations
Professor Trent
MacKenzie clicked through on FTL. To his satisfaction, the reports indicated that the universal feeling, sourced from news articles, academic papers, and social media, was that the Ankor did have faster-than-light travel available to themselves.
‘The masses believe, and the physicists want to believe,’ he said to himself. The ‘masses’ simply sucked up the twenty-four-hour news cycle, and the physicists had had precious little new to believe in during the last few decades. They were fertile.
Trent …
Professor Trent had been the resident alien communication expert at his Colombian Radar Array – the site MacKenzie had used to comm
unicate to the Ankor during the early years. He’d been a showpiece. He’d been employed based on his alcohol addiction and his generally poor scientific capability. He’d never been allowed anywhere near anything even potentially related to the Ankor.
After the Radar Array had been destroyed in 2011, on MacKenzie’s orders, Professor Trent had tried, and failed, to salvage his own precious data from the site. Surprised by Trent’s tenacity, MacKenzie investigated and found that Trent did harbour a feeling that Colombia had received some interesting signals. MacKenzie had wanted to have him killed immediately but Charles Taylor, on behalf of elements within the Ankor, had pleaded for clemency: no-one would believe a scientist as discredited as Trent, especially if he had no data. So Trent had been framed and imprisoned. Now, MacKenzie simply kept a watchful eye on him. For as long as he said nothing inflammatory, he would be left to serve out his jail sentence. His full sentence. Through backchannels, MacKenzie had ensured the Colombians only agreed on extradition based on the strict condition that there would be at least eight years before parole was considered. Almost everyone had considered it entirely reasonable to honour that – after all if the UK government gave Trent early release, it would be a slap in the face to the Colombian government and then the UK would struggle to repatriate other criminals with more sympathetic backstories … like eighteen-year-old backpackers tricked into being drug mules.
MacKenzie clicked on ‘Professor Trent’.
Nothing new.
Luckily for him.
MacKenzie turned to his head security guard, Juan, who was standing silently in the corner of the room, carefully placed so he could not see any of MacKenzie’s workstation screens.
‘Please bring Taylor in.’
As Taylor came into the office, MacKenzie saw old bandages sticking out from under his right sleeve. ‘I wouldn’t let Kusr anywhere near you with a knife for a little while.’
Taylor nodded. ‘No improvement?’
MacKenzie showed Taylor the feed of Kusr, still sitting resolutely on the floor of the laboratory, staring into the camera.
‘I can live without the final procedures.’
MacKenzie snorted in derision. ‘But I can’t.’
Irrespective of Taylor’s piety and submission to the Ankor, unless Kusr completed all the tests to MacKenzie’s satisfaction the deal would be off.
‘Her family are making noises about the last missed appointment,’ said Taylor. ‘I told them she’d moved to Anglesey for security reasons and there were communication issues but she would call them by the end of the week.’
‘She will. Assuming she starts to cooperate. If she doesn’t, then she’ll be seeing them even sooner,’ said MacKenzie staring hard at Taylor. Of course – in reality – he’d be unlikely to order the slaughter of the entire Kusr family, but it didn’t hurt to have Taylor think there was a chance of that happening. Taylor needed to be more supportive of encouraging Kusr’s participation in meeting MacKenzie’s goals.
In fact, the kidnap had been rushed. They’d brought it forward a few days because they’d found out that Colonel Martel had been about to shakedown the MedOp buildings.
‘Assuming she comes round,’ said MacKenzie, moving on to the next subject, ‘she’ll need the final TechMeld specifications.’
Taylor squirmed. ‘They’re not due for a few weeks; the original—’
‘They’re due now,’ insisted MacKenzie. ‘Kusr needs them to finish the tests before I authorise the first release.’
Taylor remained silent.
MacKenzie knew he’d only been promised the data on Ankor arrival day – four days away. However, it didn’t hurt to turn the screws a little.
The information the Ankor had promised concerning TechMeld was a critical factor. It would feed into MacKenzie’s final choice: betray Earth and join the Ankor, or throw away fifteen years of planning and reverse the deal.
Given the amount of evidence the authorities would undoubtedly find following an Ankor betrayal, MacKenzie was under no illusions. He would be going on the run forever, and the later he left his escape, the more chance there would be of being found.
He’d planned for that too. From his earliest considerations, MacKenzie knew that in the event of a reversal it would be impossible to return to his previous life on Earth. He’d put in back-up plans to ensure a life of anonymous comfort.
Of course, until a final decision was made, the Ankor would never be given reason to doubt his loyalty. And his preferred option, by a wide margin, was to stick with the main plan.
MacKenzie continued. ‘Also, as predicted, Colonel Martel is installing people on-site. I want you in Anglesey as the point liaison.’
Martel’s observation team would be a distraction but, given they would all be tagged and tracked around Anglesey, there was limited risk. There were already three thousand people in Anglesey who had no idea what was really going on.
‘I’d like you to prepare an accident for one of them,’ said MacKenzie. ‘Just to keep them unsettled.’
Taylor’s face fell. ‘I don’t … Juan usually …’
‘We’re all in this together,’ said MacKenzie. A tightness in his chest betrayed his rising anger. Taylor was too quick to use Juan for his dirty work. ‘It’s time for you to step up.’
‘I’ll have to think,’ said Taylor, clearly struggling to process the request. He shared a complex set of ethical beliefs with the Ankor. Some truly violent decisions came easily, whilst others appeared to be anathema to them. The Ankor also perceived an enormous moral difference between torturous suffering, physical sacrificing, and simple killing. Theoretically, MacKenzie could see there may be distinctions, but in practice the last two came down to the same thing for him personally.
Dead is dead.
‘Just get it prepared. We can all discuss whether to trigger it later,’ said MacKenzie. He recognised that, whilst he wanted Taylor’s hands bloodied, there was little point pushing him far enough to break him at the moment.
‘They won’t approve of sacrilegious waste.’
MacKenzie knew that, for all the Ankor’s efforts in presenting a united view, not all of them felt similarly.
‘Let’s just wait and see what they approve,’ he said.
Taylor took a few breaths and mumbled a meditative devotion under his breath. Then his face cleared of all stress.
Not for the first time, MacKenzie wished he had the level of faith that allowed Taylor to dispense with his worldly concerns so easily.
CHAPTER 9
Butler Street, Monday 15th April
Aware that any emails could be routinely read by ‘authorities’, Tim had a series of coded messages that would be triggered if MIDAS was compromised. When an email entitled free coffee for deep thinkers popped into his spam folder on Saturday night, he knew someone had been tampering with the encryption servers. A few checks assured him the hacker was Sam – it was not her first offence.
Arriving at the office, Tim caught the tail-end of an exchange between Sam and Toby on video conference, Toby having dialled from his house.
‘I give a shit!’ Toby shouted out of Sam’s monitor, clearly quite agitated, before killing the connection.
‘A what?’ said Tim, looking quizzically at Sam.
‘I said: Mrs Fowler, living at 124, Okal Road, has an ant farm … it may be one of them is the leader … she doesn’t give a shit.’ Sam pointed to the smart screen covering the ‘alien invasion’ meme. The percentage was still low, but rising – twenty percent now believed the Ankor meant some type of harm to Earth.
‘Who’s Mrs Fowler?’ asked Tim, scanning the other feeds on the wall. One was constantly searching the internet for new images of the alien craft – it was still just a blurry lattice of red ping-pong balls due to arrive in a few days.
A five-mile-wide blur …
‘I made her up,’ said Sam. ‘I was making the point that the Ankor probably think of us in the same way. We’re bugs to be stood upon.’
; Tim pointed at the blank screen. ‘And Toby disagrees?’
‘Actually, I think he agrees,’ said Sam. ‘But he doesn’t like to think about it.’
‘He’s unlikely to come back to the office any time soon.,’ said Tim. ‘His dad’s been listening to some of the judgement day doomsayers and Toby’s worried he’s going to set fire to the house.’
‘He told me,’ said Sam, smiling. ‘I asked him if there was any chance he could be inside when it happens.’
‘What are you up to?’ asked Tim, looking at Sam’s other screen.
‘Watch,’ said Sam. She typed briefly on her keyboard, the window blinds closed, and the office wall came to life. Three smart screens showed live feeds of data provided by MIDAS. The central one was focused on the ‘alien arrival’ search criteria.
On the left of the ‘arrival’ screen was a series of graphs of constantly fluctuating red, green, and blue. ‘Is that your improved media hype section?’ asked Tim, remembering that a few weeks previously, Sam had told him it was one of her development projects.
‘It’s the all-new media hype truth-meter,’ said Sam. ‘MIDAS picks up data on stories that are receiving serious media coverage and produces a graph for the major subjects. The red shows intensity of coverage. Next, it cross-references on that subject with expert commentary. This can be sourced from many sites, but they must be certified as experts.’
‘Not all opinions are equal,’ said Tim. ‘So, experts are represented in the green?’
‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘Although experts is a pretty loose term.’
‘And the blue?’ Tim asked.
‘The blue is primary evidence. Much harder to source, requiring seriously intense data validation calculations,’ said Sam, typing on her keyboard. ‘Here’s an example I’ve got saved.’
Digging nuclear fallout shelters