There was a long moment of absolute silence.
Taylor broke it. “There are some friendly aliens?”
“Yes,” Santini said. He briefly ran through the entire story. “In short, they provided us with the cure, which they admitted hadn’t been tested properly, some tactical data and a means to send messages back to them. We have tested the cure ourselves and discovered that it works, at least to some extent. The question now, ladies and gentlemen, is simple. Do we trust them – or do we assume that we are dealing with an alien sting operation?”
Jane frowned. “They gave us the cure to the Walking Dead and yet you think they might be plotting to betray us?”
“It's a standard intelligence trick,” Taylor said. “You give the enemy a piece of intelligence he can verify, then add a piece of information he can't verify, having used the first piece to prove your credentials. In this case ... they’ve given us something that we want dearly, but it’s too limited to allow us to use it properly. And in return they want ... what?”
“An alliance,” Santini said. “I had the files they sent us copied, then transmitted to another location and printed out. Extreme precautions, perhaps, but you all know the dangers of discovery. However ... if this is genuine, it could be the turning point of the war.”
Alex lifted a hand. “What do they actually want?”
Santini blinked. “I told you,” he said. “They want an alliance.”
“From what they told us, they literally cannot go to another star system, or even to Mars,” Alex said. “If we work with them, what is going to happen to the alien population? Are they going to cut their throats after the war so that we don’t have to deal with them?”
“I see your point,” Santini said. “We have to think about what the world will look like afterwards, after the war.”
Alex nodded. “If we had willing allies, combined with the other tech we’ve been designing in Britain, we might be able to turn the tables on them,” he said. “We’d have far more of a chance at victory than we have now, to be precise. But I don’t think we can expect some of them to turn on their own people so completely. I think we’d need clarification of their terms beforehand.”
He shrugged. “At the very least,” he added, “it would make their story more believable.”
Santini put his hands together, fingertips touching. “And if they had terms,” he said, “what would we consider acceptable?”
Jane snorted. “I believe you only get to dictate terms once you win the war,” she pointed out, snidely. “We have yet to win, or even to make more than a dent in their forces.”
Alex nodded. “I’d suggest that we asked for alien tech and for the complete evacuation of the American mainland,” he said. “They can keep the Middle East – God knows that we got nothing, but trouble from there. Hell, offer to let them keep China if they want to land and restore order there too.”
Jones coughed over the communications link. “You don’t think we’ll want the oil?”
“It will be useless once we get the alien tech into production,” Alex said. “Demand will certainly be much reduced.”
He’d been giving alien tech some consideration, once some of the mysteries had been unravelled at Area 52 and Torchwood. Their batteries alone would make electric cars actually practical ... and, combined with their spacecraft drive fields, the world would change overnight. America’s demand for oil would fall sharply, until domestic production could meet every one of its demands. It would be bad for the oil monarchies of the Middle East, but the aliens had already crushed them. None of the Western-backed states had lasted more than a day when the aliens had attacked. Iran had put up a far more determined fight.
The thought made him scowl. Throughout history, populations had been displaced by invaders who were also colonisers. The Native Americans had eventually ended up a despised, effectively powerless minority. If the Europeans hadn't eventually decided that they posed no further threat, they might have been wiped out entirely.
“The President will have to make the final decision,” Jones said. “However, I want you all to start looking at possible options for making use of this new intelligence. In particular, we should see what we can verify by talking to our captive. Maybe he can tell us something that supports their claims.”
Alex grinned. “Did they ask about him?”
Santini shook his head. “Not according to the report,” he said. “I’ll forward you all copies, but they never mentioned a prisoner ... I don’t think they realise that we’ve got him.”
“An independent source,” Taylor said. His face twisted into a smile. “He might be worth his weight in gold.”
“That wouldn't actually be very much at today’s prices,” Jane pointed out.
Alex rolled his eyes in her direction.
“Children, please,” Santini said. “The adults are talking.”
“Let’s hope so,” Jones said. “I’ll communicate with the President. After that, he can make the final decision. Until then, you know what to do.”
On that note, the meeting ended.
Chapter Seven
Mannington, Virginia, USA
Day 198
“Every so often, you have to gamble,” Pepper said. She tapped her naked breasts to illustrate the point. After they’d started sleeping together, they’d both largely abandoned clothes in the bunker. “But is it worth the risk?”
President Andrew Chalk couldn’t help wondering if she was actually talking about the alien contact or their new relationship. People who were pushed close together, without any space to be themselves, either became very close or they wound up hating each other – or both. Normally, it was a mistake for the President to get close to anyone – Bill Clinton should certainly have proved that – but he had never anticipated being on the run. No one had seriously imagined the President of the United States being a wanted fugitive, with a single Secret Service agent for protection.
He was, perhaps, the most powerless President in history. Buchannan had been unable to avert the Civil War, Nixon had been impeached for bad conduct, but neither of them had been on the run. If the aliens had their way, President Chalk would go down in history as the last President of the United States, assuming they bothered to keep recording human history. He hadn't been able to help wondering just how they would slant it, when they wrote it down – if, of course, they bothered to do so. There had never been any sign that they troubled themselves with the same search for self-justification that was a hallmark of human politics.
The President knew that he had to remain underground, literally. If he went out to fight, he would be nothing more than another resistance fighter, while if the aliens caught him, it would be a propaganda coup of the first order. A quick visit to their brainwashing chambers and he’d be their greatest ally, helping them to unravel the resistance network and crush the remains of the American nation. Whatever had turned the VP into a drooling wreck might not save him from becoming an alien slave.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. The bunker was tiny, barely large enough to house the communications gear, a large amount of foodstuffs and a handful of people. Even with just two of them in permanent residence, it was starting to seem claustrophobic. He wanted out – and he knew that urge was pushing him forward. “If they’re telling the truth, this could be the turning point in the war. If not ...”
He picked up the tablet PC and ran through the data the alien rebels had provided. They’d been remarkably frank, which led him to wonder just how much they thought the human race had already discovered for itself. The alien caste system had been understood – at least in the vague outline – but other details had been a mystery. It seemed that the aliens had avoided both sexism and racism, yet had their own problems based on caste. And that had been true even before the Rogue Leaders had set out to make themselves the undisputed rulers of alien society.
The President had been a politician as well as a military officer and he understood the value of persu
asion. Simply barking out orders might work in the military, where everyone had volunteered to join, but it was far more useful for a politician to have people helping of their own free will. Many of his volunteers had done far better work than the paid cronies so beloved of political candidates. But if the alien leadership caste was just better at convincing others to go along with them ... he couldn't help thinking that it would have warped their society anyway. And if the Rogue Leaders wanted to prevent the other castes from being able to disobey ...
He shuddered as he looked down at the long-term plan for Earth. The Rogue Leaders had been experimenting for years, searching for ways to create a human-alien hybrid – or a human who would be subordinate to the Rogue Leaders. It was chilling to realise just how many humans had been abducted permanently and taken to Antarctica, where they’d been used as test subjects and then killed, but it was worse to realise just what the aliens had in mind. Once they had proved that the new human race was viable, they would ensure that it replaced humanity. Details were fuzzy – it seemed that the Rogue Leaders were keeping their options open – but there was no doubting their intent. The twilight of humanity was at hand.
“There’s never been anything like this,” he said, softly. “Compared to this, Hitler was nothing more than a stupid asshole and Genghis Khan a piker. They’re talking about replacing the human race with an improved model and then exterminating the old breed.”
“Or just waiting for it to die out,” Pepper pointed out. She’d read the reports too. “Or maybe they think they can alter our DNA so that all future children will be their servants.”
The President shuddered. He understood politics, or tanks moving into battle, but this was different, an assault on a scale so vast that he found it hard to comprehend. How could anyone work on such a scale? Even the Holocaust, an act so shocking that it was hard to understand how anyone could calmly plan and carry out, wasn't so all-encompassing. But then, the aliens had already killed vast numbers of humans, directly or indirectly. Why shouldn't they seek to destroy whatever threat humans posed once and for all?
He frowned as he looked down at the latest data forwarded from Area 52. If the aliens were so intent on using Earth as their new homeworld, he was surprised that they chose to tolerate the presence of humanity at all. It would be child’s play for them to unleash an unstoppable plague on Earth, killing most of the human race, without ever showing their hand. God knew that they’d been probing Earth for years without ever being detected. If it hadn't been for one of their craft suffering a malfunction and crashing on American soil, the mothership might have managed to get much closer before being detected.
It wasn't as if humanity could claim the moral high ground. The President had seen the evils humans practiced on other humans; the religious, sexual and racial discrimination of the Taliban and the Middle East, the refugee camps in Africa and Palestine, the imprisonment of entire countries in North Korea or Iran ... hell, there was a case to be made that the aliens were more moral. They hadn't distributed smallpox-infested blankets to the locals in the hopes that the disease would do the hard work of exterminating them. How could humanity complain if the aliens warred in the same way humanity warred on itself?
But instead the aliens seemed to need humanity for some reason. It puzzled the President – and most of his analysts. There were a billion aliens, if they accepted their claim; they didn't really need humanity at all. And yet, instead of simply wiping out the human race, they seemed intent on turning them into slaves. Could it be that they simply wanted people to do the grunt work? Or did they have a darker motive?
The alien rebels wanted an alliance. Right now, the President would have made a deal with the devil if it kept the human race alive.
He looked over at Pepper, naked and lovely, and smiled. “I think it is worth the risk,” he said, seriously. “I also don’t think that we have much choice.”
The message he’d been sent from Area 52 had discussed their possible choices in some detail, although thankfully it was more concise than the bureaucratic reports the President had had to read in the White House. If the alien rebels were genuine rebels, humanity needed their help – and could make a deal with them. But if it was a trick of some kind ... humanity risked exposing the underground network to their enemies. The result could be disastrous.
Pepper listened as he summed it up, then smiled. “At the moment,” she said, “what are our odds of actually winning?”
“Point,” the President agreed.
The thought galled him, but he faced it squarely. America had been reluctant to take a single casualty in war, something that had caused its enemies to view the country as weak, unwilling to pay the price for using force. Body-bags coming home could always be relied upon to dampen the country’s enthusiasm for war. It was far easier to fight from a distance, to rely on air power and indigenous forces to do the job ... and if that meant that matters weren't settled in the long term, it wasn't ever noticed by the chattering classes.
But the aliens didn't seem to care about casualties – and they had the Order Police, spearheaded by the Walking Dead. Hell, they’d used Arab forces in the attack on Chicago that had crushed the entire city. No matter how many collaborators the humans killed, there would always be replacements, an infinite supply of manpower for the aliens to deploy as they saw fit. And then there were the alien warriors ... it didn't seem as if the human race could inflict enough damage to get the aliens out of the country, let alone kick them off the planet.
There was no shortage of guns and ammunition in America. He’d signed orders for production plants to be hidden around the country, just to ensure that the resistance didn't run out of bullets and bombs. But, if the aliens were prepared to keep fighting for years, eventually they would grind the insurgency out of existence. The ID cards, the mass registrations, the human labour departments ... piece by piece, they were rebuilding American society to suit themselves. If the underground fighters were fish in the sea of the people, what happened when the sea turned poisonous?
He had no doubt that the underground would keep fighting for years. But how effective would they be?
“Our chances of victory are low,” he admitted. There was the prospect of new weapons from Britain, but could they produce enough to make a difference? Most of America’s vast industrial base had been locked down by the aliens now, with the workers given orders to start producing items for the aliens. “But that’s why this offer is so tempting.”
“Then we need to make use of it,” Pepper said. “What happens if the alien leadership discovers that they have rebels in their midst?”
The President nodded, sourly. No government could take the presence of traitors lightly – and he had no doubt that the Rogue Leaders would regard the alien rebels as traitors. There was no way to know what sort of punishment would be meted out to them, but the President suspected that it would be something ghastly. They’d want to discourage others from following in the rebel footsteps.
“So we contact them, using the instructions they provided,” he said, wishing – once again – that he’d stayed a simple soldier. Cloak-and-dagger work wasn't his forte, even if he had been given a crash course when he’d become President. “And then we ask for something that proves their bona fides.”
“If they can give us something,” Pepper said, darkly. “I don’t think a signed paper is going to impress anyone.”
The President nodded, ruefully. No doubt the rebels wouldn't want to write anything down.
It struck him a moment later and he flicked through the files on the tablet, looking for the latest updates from Area 52 and Torchwood. The British, not having to hide their activities so extensively, were making considerable progress on unravelling the secrets behind the alien ships, but there were still hundreds of unanswered questions. One analyst had even wondered if the aliens had taken technology from another race and written a paper to that effect, something that had made the President laugh when he’d read it. Anyone diss
ecting the 3rd Infantry Division would have wondered the same thing.
He smiled, remembering the paper. Guns were simple, easy to understand, but the network of GPS satellites, battlespace monitoring systems and other advanced technology was far more complicated. A soldier from 1940 who saw the 3rd ID would find himself confronted with a mixture of understandable technology and technology that might as well be magic. The best scientists of that era wouldn't have been able to make the jumps to understanding its existence, let alone figuring out a way to duplicate it. They might not even have recognised a stealth bomber if one happened to crash right in front of them.
But if they’d had help ... who knew what they could have achieved?
“We’ll tell them that we want technical data,” he said, as he started to write out a response. “Something that tells us how to parse out the rest of their technology. And that we want to know what sort of post-war world they envisage.”
Pepper crossed her arms under her breasts. “You might also want to ask them to refine the process for liberating the Walking Dead,” she said. “If we could get something that worked very quickly, with a high success rate ...”
The President could see the possible advantages easily. It was clear that the aliens trusted the Walking Dead – and their trust was not misplaced. After all, the reports agreed that the Walking Dead simply couldn’t be disloyal. But if there was a way to break one free when he was right next to the aliens ... the President looked over at the organisational chart he’d composed, piece by piece, for the collaborator government. A liberated Walking Dead in the right place could do one hell of a lot of damage to the alien cause.
And they wouldn't be able to trust the others either, he thought, with grim amusement. They might find themselves forced to purge them completely.
“We’ll have to see if it is technically possible,” he said, flatly. The glimmerings of a plan were starting to form in his mind. “And we will need to get out of here.”
Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory Page 7