Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  The technician was breathing hard as he caught up with Nicolas. “All there?”

  “I think so,” Nicolas said. He pulled his rucksack off his back and started to load the alien supplies into the bag. “I just need to take it back to the bunker and then run tests before we take it for granted.”

  He scowled, inwardly. The supplies would have to be inspected first, before they went anywhere near the bunker. Oldham and his people were still paranoid, with reason; if the alien rebels intended to betray them, or were caught by the Rogue Leaders, the results would be disastrous. A single homing beacon in the alien tech would bring the alien warriors right down on top of them. Nicolas understood, even though it was irritating. They didn't dare take chances.

  “See you back at Point Delta,” he said, as soon as his bag was loaded. “Good luck.”

  ***

  “According to the briefing notes, this version of the nanites should cause fewer problems,” Nicolas said, three hours later. Everything in the bag had been thoroughly inspected by the security officers and cleared, although they had been at pains to point out that they might have missed something. There were aspects of alien tech was still largely unknown. “But they are prepared to offer a doctor to assist us in streamlining the technology.”

  “That would be useful if we knew all about them,” Oldham muttered, gazing down at the alien devices. “As it is, might we be bringing a serpent into our lair?”

  “It’s possible,” Nicolas said, “but they seem to be advising us on how best to keep our guest concealed.”

  The list of requirements was staggering. Unless the resistance had a secure bunker, which they did, the alien doctor was to remain inside a sealed box, blocking all radio transmissions as well as whatever the aliens used for their own communications. The alien would not see the light of day until the war was over, one way or the other. Hell, if the alien warriors ever attacked, the humans were warned to kill the alien rebel and then destroy the body completely. It seemed remarkably elaborate for a trap.

  But then, any trap has to look good, he thought, sourly. You can't catch fish if you bait the lines with shit.

  “It’s risky,” Oldham said, “but we’ve moved most of our operations out of the bunker anyway. It's a shame we can’t use the other bunker for this ...”

  Nicolas nodded. It was an open secret now that the President had been concealed in Mannington – and that the assault on the garrison had been intended to free him, to allow him to go elsewhere. The aliens didn't seem to have realised, but when they did they would have hard questions for their local collaborators. Did they let the President hide in the middle of an occupied town through incompetence or had they deliberately betrayed their alien masters?

  “They’ll start tearing the town apart as soon as they know,” he agreed. “For the moment, don’t you think we should test the new nanites? Then we might have some hard data to base our judgement on.”

  Oldham scowled. “Go set up the examination room,” he said. “And be damn careful with those devices.”

  Nicolas nodded, picking up the devices and putting them back in the sealed box before he could take them out of the compartment. The alien notes had stated that the devices were intended to help monitor the person’s reaction to the nanites, allowing the alien rebels to streamline the technology further. But the devices were largely incomprehensible to human scientists and there was no way of knowing if that was all they did. It was quite possible that the devices also monitored their own location and reported back to the aliens using a technology humanity had yet to imagine.

  The resistance had captured two more Walking Dead in the time since they’d tested the first batch of nanites, bringing them to the bunker and holding them in the cells. Nicolas glanced at their files – one had been a troop leader in the army, the other had been a scout master – before ordering the troop leader brought into the interrogation room. The doctors fussed around the man’s body, inspecting the alien devices as Nicolas placed them against his temple, then took the nanite injector tube and placed it against his forehead.

  “Do it,” Nicolas ordered.

  The doctor triggered the injector tube. Unlike human technology, there was no visible sign of the injection. But then, the nanites were so tiny that even a cloud of them would be invisible to the naked eye. The technology was so easy to abuse, according to science-fiction, that Nicolas couldn't help wondering why the aliens hadn't pushed it much further. Whatever else could be said about them, they didn't lack imagination.

  But they were largely in cultural stasis as they crawled from their homeworld to Earth, he told himself, slowly. Maybe they decided that further innovation could wait.

  He shook his head. There were often limits that were not immediately obvious. He’d once asked why humanity couldn't produce an aircraft the size of a navy transport ship and his tutor had pointed out, dryly, that there were absolute limits on how large an aircraft the human race could build. Computers hadn't hit the limit, yet, but aircraft had – at least until the human race duplicated the alien antigravity technology. Perhaps the alien nanotech had problems of its own.

  The Walking Dead man jerked against his restraints, then relaxed, falling into a deep sleep.

  “The brain activity seems to be returning to normal,” the doctor said, slowly. “Say, you can't see what those devices are seeing, can you?”

  Nicolas nodded. “Let me interface it with a laptop,” he said. It might have been quicker if he’d linked them into the bunker’s own network, but that would have been a security nightmare. The only way to keep a system completely safe was to avoid making any links to the outside world at all. “Then you can see if it’s any good.”

  It took longer than he’d expected to link the two systems together. The alien tech seemed bent on overwhelming the laptop or pushing it beyond its design specifications. In the end, he had to call for a pair of army computer geeks and leave them to work on it before they produced anything useful. The doctors studied the results, marvelling at how detailed the alien readings actually were, before concluding that they would have to wait and see how the patient was when he awoke. There was no other way to know if they’d succeeded.

  “And how long will that be?” Nicolas demanded. “An hour?”

  “Go get something to eat,” the doctor ordered, tightly. “I’ll call you the moment something changes.”

  ***

  It was four hours before the doctor finally called him back to the room. “He’s awake,” the doctor said, as soon as Nicolas entered and closed the door behind him. “And he seems normal.”

  Nicolas nodded and looked down at the patient in the bed. The guards hadn’t been taking chances; they’d cuffed his hands and feet to the bed anyway, just in case the procedure hadn't worked properly. Other than that, the patient looked remarkably normal, apart from a haunted look in his eyes. And he seemed pleased to see Nicolas.

  “I told him that you found the cure,” the doctor said. “I suggest you talk gently, at first ...”

  “I’m not deaf,” the patient insisted. “I’m Lieutenant Hammond.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Nicolas said, dryly. He didn't recall meeting any Lieutenant Hammond in the past, although the military had been so big that he could hardly expect to know everyone who had served. “Where did they catch you?”

  “I was at Fort Hood when the bastards hammered us from orbit,” Hammond explained. “The CO had ordered us to disperse; we took our guns and weapons and scattered into the surrounding area, just in time to save our lives. A week later, we hit an alien convoy and did some damage, before they shot the shit out of us. When I woke up, I ...”

  He stopped, gasping for breath. “I ... they did something to me,” he added. “I ...”

  “Emotional trauma,” the doctor said, studying Hammond’s brainwaves. “Quite considerable, in fact. It’s wired right into his brain.”

  Hammond stared at Nicolas. “After that, everything becomes a hazy dream,” he said.
“Like I was seeing the world through a pane of dirty glass. They gave me orders and I followed them, helplessly. And then I ... I don’t recall. How long has it been since they landed? A week?”

  “Several months,” Nicolas said, grimly. Hammond seemed to have survived treatment better than the first test subjects, but his memory had clearly been damaged. Or maybe he was trying to block out the worst of his experience. God knew that there were parts of BUD/S Nicolas would have preferred to forget – and he’d volunteered for the training that had made him a SEAL. “I’m sorry to have to keep asking questions, but we do need answers.”

  “More trauma,” the doctor said, as Hammond started to hyperventilate. “I think we’re going to need a different approach.”

  Hammond started to reach upwards, before the cuffs caught his hand. “What did they do to me?”

  “They used a form of brainwashing,” the doctor said, flatly. “I think we need to work on ways to access your blocked memories, without causing you additional problems.”

  Nicolas frowned. “What are you giving him?”

  “A sedative,” the doctor said. “He needs to relax.”

  Nicolas shivered at the terror in Hammond’s eyes as the doctor pressed the needle against his flesh. The sight seemed to bring back memories for the young man, memories, perhaps, of when the aliens had implanted him with their controlling implants. It wasn't a pretty sight. A smell reached his nostrils and he grimaced. Hammond was so terrified that he’d wet himself.

  “There,” the doctor said. “You can rest now.”

  He looked up at Nicolas as Hammond’s eyes closed. “I think hypnosis is the best possible solution,” he added. “Right now, it’s clear that talking about anything connected with his period of enslavement will bring on a panic attack. The experience was utterly traumatic, beyond anything I have ever seen. I’ll start working out a program immediately.”

  “See that you do,” Nicolas said, tiredly. “See that you do.”

  He walked back to Oldham’s office – noting how half of the bunker’s staff seemed to have vanished – and reported to his superior. Oldham listened quietly, asking only a handful of questions, as Nicolas outlined everything that had happened. Hypnosis, he concluded, might provide a way to access those memories, but it didn't provide a way for the former Walking Dead to operate normally in alien company. Something could cause a flashback and then the game would be up.

  “No one ever saw one of the Walking Dead traumatised,” he concluded. “We need to solve that problem before we can risk exposing ourselves.”

  Oldham nodded. “And we need an alien doctor to do it, right?”

  “I think so,” Nicolas said, wishing he knew more about medicine. The battlefield medical skills he’d learned were painfully inadequate to deal with massive mental trauma, let alone provide an accurate judgement of medical advice. “Taking a lone alien into our base doesn't raise the risk level any further.”

  “Matter of opinion,” Oldham growled. He nodded towards the map he'd hung on the wall. “Do you realise that we’re seeing the largest concentrations of Order Policemen outside the cities? They’re up to something.”

  Nicolas shrugged. “If they had a sniff of this bunker’s existence,” he said, “they would have come down on us by now.”

  “Or they might be trying to see who might come visit and why,” Oldham pointed out. “God knows we left terrorist hideouts alone in Pakistan just so we could monitor their movements and identify more terrorists. Tracking couriers was how we caught Bin Laden, after all.”

  Nicolas had his doubts. The vast array of monitoring systems had partly depended upon cell phones – and the aliens, in the interests of breaking up the human population, had taken down all of the cell phone networks in America. It hadn't stopped the resistance finding imaginative uses for the devices – they could certainly trigger bombs – but it did mean that they couldn't be used to coordinate the resistance. If the aliens had been inclined to be subtle, they might have left the cell phone network alone just so they could track the resistance.

  “I don't think we have a choice,” he admitted. “The best result we have, so far, is someone who seems relatively normal, unless something happens to remind him of his servitude to the aliens. At that point, he has a panic attack. We may not pull any useful information from him at all, let alone be able to use him as a spy. I think we need more direct help from the alien rebels.”

  Oldham looked down at the desk for a long moment, then looked up and met Nicolas’s eyes. “I read their message,” he said. “Can we meet their conditions?”

  “Yes,” Nicolas said, flatly.

  “If you get it wrong, they will be exposed,” Oldham warned him. “They’d have to destroy themselves to avoid capture and interrogation. It would drive a wedge between us and the alien rebels, assuming the rebels aren't rounded up and eliminated in the aftermath. Are you sure that you can pull it off?”

  “Give me a good team and we can do anything,” Nicolas said. After crawling through a sewer pipe to carry out a snatch and grab raid that was still officially denied, there were few limits for the SEALs. “All we need is some grenades, a pair of secure coffins and a little luck.”

  “The coffins won’t make for pleasant transport,” Oldham said. “But there isn't much of a choice.”

  He stood up and tapped the map. “We may have to move operations from this bunker, if they keep moving troops into the area,” he added. “Or pull in our horns, depending on their deployment. Plan your operations around that constraint.”

  Nicolas nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. That was a problem. The aliens would have a rapid-reaction force far too close to the LZ. But he'd always assumed as much, if only because of the speed of the alien craft. “Maybe we can move the LZ somewhere further away from the aliens.”

  “If it’s possible,” Oldham said. “I get the feeling that the alien rebels can't do much without being noticed by their enemies.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nicolas said, remembering the briefings. The alien rebels had worked hard to conceal the fact that they’d diverted himself and Abigail to the alien command ship. “But if we pull it off properly, there should be no clues left behind to warn the alien leaders that they have rats in their walls.”

  “And if you don’t, we’re all screwed,” Oldham said. He gave Nicolas a wintry smile. “Try not to fuck up.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mannington, Virginia, USA

  Day 212

  “There's even more of the bastards now,” Judith muttered. “What are they doing?”

  She peered through her binoculars towards the farm the Order Police had taken over and turned into a base. Some poor farmer had been evicted so that the Order Policemen could set up tents, rather than take over buildings in Mannington itself or another nearby town. It was hard to be sure, but she thought she could count over two hundred Order Policemen on the farm, as well as dozens of others moving over the countryside.

  “I think they’re getting ready for something,” Jack McVeigh muttered back. “I think I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Judith couldn't disagree. She knew next to nothing about the military – or the police, for that matter – but there was a level of organised chaos that suggested that the Order Policemen were frantically getting ready for something. They were clearly nervous too; she’d heard shots fired at night, while they’d refused to allow anyone to come near their base if they were in vehicles, no matter who they were. And the camp followers, the small army of whores that followed in their wake, was nowhere to be seen.

  She scanned the campsite, wondering just what they thought they were doing. Most Order Police bases refused to allow their men to carry weapons, except when they were on deployment or rushing to stand off an insurgent attack. Judith couldn't blame them either; she’d seen Order Policemen hurt themselves through making simple mistakes, mistakes that had been drummed out of her by her first shooting lessons. What sort of idiot tried to stick a pistol in his be
lt with the safety off? Here, though, everyone was armed ... and getting in plenty of shooting practice in the makeshift range. It bespoke a level of competence that was quite atypical for the Order Police.

  A dull roar echoed through the air as a small squadron of LAVs made their way along the road, backed up by a pair of heavy tanks. Or at least they looked like tanks. Judith hadn't known much about military vehicles before the aliens landed and after that the resistance had been too concentrated on fighting to teach the new recruits about the vehicles the Order Police had pressed into service. All that mattered was that she could plink away at them all day with her sniper rifle and it wouldn't slow them down for a second.

  “That’s worse,” McVeigh muttered. “We’re running short on antitank ammunition.”

  Judith scowled. The insurgents had littered some of the interstates with IEDs – they were only used by collaborators these days – but it was impossible to rig all of the smaller roads with bombs, even if it wouldn't have been disastrous. If the insurgents accidentally killed a civilian, the rest of the civilians would swing towards the aliens – and the insurgents would be betrayed. Judith had some difficulty in imagining why anyone would want to work with the aliens – most of their collaborators were either monsters or brainwashed into servitude – but it was a valid concern. The locals knew the area far better than the aliens. They could easily betray resistance camps.

  “Nine trucks coming afterwards,” she added, as she saw them moving into view. “Whatever they’re doing, I think it's starting.”

  Someone barked a command and the Order Policemen dropped whatever it was they were doing and hastened towards the farmhouse, where they formed into neat rows in front of their superior officers. Judith’s hands itched, wishing that she could just start shooting; she was sure that she could drop most of the officers before the armoured vehicles started shooting back at her. Hell, the officers seemed to have forgotten the basics of survival in a world that included snipers; they wore fancy uniforms and accepted salutes from all and sundry. If Judith hadn’t identified them already, she would have known when she saw the salutes.