Alien Secrets

by Ian Douglas

  It was all they could do for the man at the moment.

  Minkowski, meanwhile, came back with a report. They’d found five more Grays in several of the surrounding rooms, plus another Reptilian. This dome, he volunteered, might be private sleeping quarters. There were slabs in those rooms that might, conceivably, be beds.

  You cannot win. The voice in Hunter’s mind was dark with menace. Hunter spun, looking from one Saurian to the other, trying to determine which one had transmitted that.

  And at that moment, he felt the compulsion, the insane compulsion, to press his pistol against the side of his own head and pull the trigger. Several of the other men appeared dazed, and stared at their own weapons as though trying to decide what they were for.

  One of the Saurians was looking at its feet; the other was watching Hunter with a deeply malevolent glare. Hunter slowly removed his helmet, then stepped up to the malevolent one and as loudly as he could screamed, “Arrrr!”

  Startled, the being blinked, and the mental compulsion was broken. “Get out of my head and stay out,” he bellowed, bringing his pistol up until it lodged beneath the Saurian’s chin, pointed up. “If I feel even a hint of you messing with my head, I pull the trigger immediately, got it?”

  “I . . . have it.”

  Hunter noted with grim satisfaction that the alien spoke the words, rather than use telepathy.

  “You are going to open those tanks below,” he continued. “You will revive the occupants, all of them, and bring them safely out here.”

  “And what will you do with them? Three hundred fifteen specimens, wet, naked, cold, and requiring food and water within a very few hours of decanting. At the very least, they will require environmental suits to leave these domes. Do you have what they require?”

  “Do you have the code to open those tanks?” The being didn’t reply, and Hunter jabbed the muzzle of his pistol harder against its neck. “Do you?”

  “I . . . do.”

  “Then you will open one of those outsize aquariums and revive the occupant, and you will show several of us how to do it. You have a problem with that?”

  “No . . . problem.”

  Good. One step at a time.

  Boland got a solid radar lock on one of the towers and thumbed the trigger on his control stick. Invisible light lanced out from his hellpod and struck the alien device dead center, creating a dazzling spot on the tower shining brighter than a sun. He flashed past, banking left to follow the curve of the force dome. He couldn’t tell if he’d damaged the alien structure or not.

  His Stingray relied primarily on its gravitics for lift, control, and maneuvering, but the aerospace craft was flat with a curved upper surface—a perfect lifting body—and Boland could use that to good effect as he shed yet more speed.

  He could see aliens on the ground—big dark gray humps covered with segmented armor; the ground seemed to be moving as they crawled forward in a living mass. Beams of coherent light strobed from the ground as the massive creatures fired weapons at the diamond-shaped craft that had appeared above them. The coating of his fighter’s outer hull absorbed laser energy as well as radar waves, providing at least some protection. He wondered, though, what had taken Selby down. Massed lasers? Missiles? Or something unknown as yet to humans?

  He skimmed low above that horribly moving surface, triggering his hellpod laser in a long strafing run. An explosion erupted into the sky ahead, momentarily lighting the dark terrain. He’d hit something down there. He had no idea what it might have been, though.

  Continuing to hold his craft in a tight left turn, he flashed past the force dome on top of the hill. He could make out lots of the big, armored aliens down there . . . and then he saw something else, a ship grounded on the side of the slope.

  In that instant, his fighter was hit, and he was tumbling toward the surface in a vicious roll.

  “I’m hit!” he yelled. “This is Hawk One, and I’m hit!”

  He slammed into the ground two seconds later.

  They’d pulled her from her tank more or less at random. The alien code was simple enough—three light taps on an inconspicuous panel at the base triggered an automated release procedure that drained the liquid from the tank, then popped open the side, at which point the captive dropped to her hands and knees, coughing violently. Someone found her a blanket—a thermal survival blanket made of a kind of light, silvery foil. “Thank God,” the woman gasped, clutching the foil around her shoulders. “Thank God. I was in there forever!”

  “Who are you?” Hunter asked, kneeling next to her. “Where are you from?”

  “Judi . . . Judi Clarke. I . . . I’m from Tulsa. Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was . . . I was . . .” She saw the Saurian behind Hunter and screamed, dissolving into hysteria.

  “Get her into one of the rooms!” Hunter snarled. “Nielson! Stay with her! Don’t let any of the aliens come near her!”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The Saurian had been right, damn him. What the hell were they going to do with this person? Worse, what were they going to do with three hundred–some of her fellow captives?

  Thoughtful, Hunter donned his helmet and called Ralph Colby. He and Briggs were outside, in contact with the fighters circling the hilltop.

  “We’ve lost two fighters out here, Commander,” Colby said over Hunter’s suit radio. “The others are hammering the sons of bitches.”

  “Any chance of survivors?” Hunter asked.

  “Not sure, sir. One of the ships exploded going in, but the other kind of skidded in on its belly. The pilot might be alive.”

  “Okay. Mark the position. We’ll check it out later . . . if we can.” Hunter turned to face one of the two captive Saurians, who was being firmly held by Miguelito Herrera. The man was a big and powerful Marine with the build of a football linebacker and the body mass of five or six of the skinny little Grays. Taylor stood nearby with his laser, ready to act if Herrera said the alien was inside his head.

  “What are those bugs out there?” Hunter demanded of the being. “Why are they attacking?”

  “We call them ‘Dreams of Xaxki,’” the Reptilian said, its voice a soft hiss. “We believe they are projections created by the sleeping Xaxki population.”

  “Uh-huh. And how can dreams harm those of us who are awake?”

  “You would not understand.”

  “Try me.”

  “We believe the Xaxki possess a—call it a kind of psychic technology. One that gives form to their mental imagery. They demand that we leave this system.”

  “Okay. And why are you in this system? Doesn’t sound like you’re wanted.”

  “Again, you would not understand.”

  “I’m getting pretty damned sick of your condescending—”

  Hunter was interrupted by a burst of radio static. “This is Hunter. Go.”

  “Commander, this is Lieutenant Billingsly,” a voice said. “We’re in control of Dome Three.”

  “Well done! We have One and Two. What happened?”

  “Those creepy lizards suddenly went berserk, Commander. They attacked us. No provocation, no warning . . .”

  “They’re telepathic, Lieutenant. They were probably warned by the lizards over here. Or . . . some of the lizards here fled this dome. Did you have any of them showing up over there?”

  “Several, sir.”

  “That was it. Anybody hurt?”

  “One dead—Carpenter. And Warner is pretty badly hurt. But the reptiles are all dead. We have about twenty Grays prisoner, but they haven’t tried anything yet.”

  “The Grays—I think they’re under Saurian control. Mind control. Ours are acting kind of blank. Empty.”

  “That’s what ours are like.”

  “Well, keep a close eye on them. The Saurians can get inside their heads. They can get into your head, too. If you feel anything weird, a kind of compulsion to do something you don’t want to do, that’s what it is.”

  “We’ll be on our toes, sir.”

&nb
sp; “Any word from Arch’s platoon?”

  “Negative, sir, but we know where they are. We’re putting together a strike force to go give ’em a hand.”

  “Okay. Do you need help?”

  “I think we can manage, sir. We’ll give a yell if we run into anything we can’t handle.”

  “Copy that.” He hesitated. “Have you explored the basement yet?”

  “Yes, sir . . . we’ve seen it. We were going to deploy down there to assault the other domes.”

  “So you’ve seen the prisoners?”

  “What prisoners, sir? I saw something down there that might be a spaceship. And a lot of aluminum crates, it looked like.”

  Hunter carefully told Billingsly about the tanks holding human captives.

  “Those alien bastards. . . .” Billingsly growled.

  “We’re looking at how we can get them back to the Big-H. The underground section is huge, but if you’re moving around down there, you’ll probably see them. Don’t touch any of them until I tell you to.”

  “Roger that, Commander.”

  “Let us know if we can help.”

  “Copy.”

  Hunter was powerfully tempted to send some of his people over to help Bravo Platoon, but in tight quarters like the ladders leading up to the domes, more troops could be a liability, not an asset. Besides, if the bad guys were monitoring human communications right now, they would be on the alert. He would hold Alfa in reserve until he knew what they were up to.

  Overall, things were going better than Hunter had had any reason to expect. Billingsly and Bravo Platoon had rolled with the punches and neutralized the Saurians in their dome. The JSST now controlled three of the six domes on the hilltop. Except for the minor logistical problem of getting all those people downstairs out of their tanks and back to the Hillenkoetter, things were freaking great. . . .

  They were outnumbered by a technologically superior enemy, and a second, unidentified enemy was hammering at the walls of the kinetic shield outside. Forty light-years from home and not a clue as to what they were supposed to be doing here.

  A typical day, he decided, for the Navy’s SEALs.

  Hunter confronted the Saurian again. He was beginning to think of it as a leader, the equivalent of a senior officer. Nielson took up a position just behind the alien, ready to act if it attempted another mental attack.

  “We’re going to have to move a large number of humans up to the Hillenkoetter, okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know the Saurians have technology that lets them teleport. Disappear in one place, reappear someplace else. Correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we use that system to get these refugees up to the Hillenkoetter?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your ship is in orbit around this planet, traveling at nearly fifteen thousand miles per hour. The relative difference in velocities is extremely hard to compensate for.”

  Hunter stared at the creature for a long moment. Was it telling the truth? He found it impossible to read emotions in the face or manner of the being. It appeared that it was being cooperative now, but he didn’t trust it by seven thousand light-years.

  “Okay,” Hunter said. “‘Dreams of Xaxki.’ What can you tell me?”

  “Only that there are more forms of reality—what you would call ‘reality’—than you can possibly imagine. Realities which we can access through the mind.”

  “What . . . like telepathy?”

  “No. In this case, through dreams. Through various forms of altered consciousness. What we see in the world around us, or what we think we see, is not always what is . . . or all that it seems.”

  “So, the sleeping Xaxki are dreaming up these beasts.” A puzzling thought intruded. “With breathing gear?”

  “The dreams can become real beings, within a fairly broad meaning of the word real. Xaxki thoughts within their artificial reality can manifest, can take on substance in this reality. The attackers may be representations of some life-form the nomads have encountered elsewhere in the Galaxy. That life would not be able to breathe this atmosphere, hence, breathing gear.”

  Hunter shook his head. “It sounds too much like magic.”

  “Was it not one of your philosophers who stated, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’?”

  Hunter had heard the saying, though he didn’t remember who’d said it. Nielson, standing watch behind the Saurian, nodded. “Arthur C. Clarke, sir,” he said. “A writer, not a philosopher.”

  “So why haven’t the Saurians talked with the Xaxki? Found some common ground?”

  “You people seem obsessed with the idea of negotiations and treaties,” the Saurian told him. It almost sounded amused. “Why would anyone allow such exchanges to dictate their actions?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe to foster trust and understanding between different peoples?”

  “Trust,” the alien said, “is a human concept.”

  Hunter thought he was beginning to get a true sense of the Saurians’ alienness. They did not think like humans, were different from them on a deep and fundamental level.

  “Niels,” Hunter said, turning from the alien. “Lock them all up in one of the rooms. All of them, Grays and Saurs.”

  “What are you thinking, Boss?” Minkowski asked.

  “First we’re going to help Billingsly secure the entire complex. I don’t want to have these critters in our rear.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “And after that we need to put together a combat team to go rescue those pilots outside the dome. If we can. Colby!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “What’s going down out there?”

  “Nothing right now, Skipper. The fast movers are gone. The bad guys seem to have pulled back.”

  “Okay. Get hold of Big-H and tell them our situation. Tell them we’re going to need at least three TRs down here . . . and some way of moving a lot of people without EVA suits through the airlocks without killing them.”

  Maybe someone up there would have an idea . . . because he was fresh out.

  Captain Groton was standing on the flag bridge with Admiral Carruthers. Seated next to the admiral were Ambassador King and Ambassador Kozlov, along with several senior staff officers. The diplomatic personnel were looking grim.

  “We can not afford to get into a shooting war with the Xaxki,” Carruthers told him. “Think of it as the equivalent of a land war in Asia. We can’t win!”

  “But we can’t just leave our ground combat team down there on the surface!” Groton insisted. “Hunter’s last message confirmed that the attackers down there are Xaxki constructs, some kind of artificial projection. I don’t understand the details. Carter and McClure are working on that now. But we need to get the Xaxki to call off their dogs, and if that means parking a space carrier in their backyard, so be it!”

  “No, Captain,” King said. “We are going to respect Xaxki protocols and policies, and that includes their deployment of this imaginary army.”

  “It’s not imaginary if our people are being killed by it, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “You should have your people cease their attacks immediately,” Kozlov said with a scowl. “They should sit tight, and wait for us to resolve this situation peacefully.”

  “Order the fighter squadron to return to the carrier,” Carruthers added. “Do not deploy them again, unless I give you a direct order to do so.”

  “We have at least two pilots on the surface,” Groton said. “They may still be alive. What about them?”

  “Regrettable,” Carruthers said. “But we did attack them.”

  “Look, Admiral—I’m not suggesting we start a war with those creatures. But there’s got to be a way to convince them to stand down. All I’m asking is that we talk to them about stopping the fighting!”

  King shook his head. “We did suggest it, Captain, pointing out that our people were inadvertently caught in the cross fire do
wn there. They insisted that there is no war, no fighting. Further attempts to communicate with them were ignored.”

  “Who were you talking to, Mr. Ambassador?” Groton asked. “The Dreamers? Or the Guardians?”

  “We don’t believe that matters. We communicated by radio with something that called itself the Xaxki Instrumentality. Exactly what this Instrumentality actually might be is still an open question. It may be the Guardians, or a Guardian faction in a leadership role. It may represent a kind of leading council or government within the body of Dreamers, communicating with the outside world through electronic avatars. Or, they could be an artificial intelligence running things—or possibly something so completely beyond our experience that we have no chance of ever understanding what it might be.”

  “I think it does matter, sir. Trillions of individuals are not going to be a monolithic whole. There will be factions, probably a lot of them. And some of them might not be on speaking terms with the others.”

  Carruthers chuckled. “My, but you are a cynic, Captain,” he said.

  Groton glanced at Kozlov. “Earth doesn’t speak with one voice, Admiral. Why the hell should they?”

  “Nevertheless, Captain,” Carruthers told him, “the landing force is on its own, at least for now. They are to stand down, avoid provoking the locals, and await further orders.”

  Groton left the flag bridge, seething.

  Somehow he was going to have to change an admiral’s mind, and that was always a pretty scary evolution.

  “Tell me about the Reptilians, Judi,” Hunter said. “What happened?”

  “I . . . they . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t think about it! I won’t think about it!”

  Hunter and Lieutenant Bader were in the dome compartment that had been reserved for Judi Clarke. Bader had been brought over from Dome One, and Hunter’s team was getting ready to move out, but he’d wanted to try to find out what the abductee knew about the aliens first. He was glad he had Simone Carter looking over his shoulder via Skype. She might be the expedition’s senior xenopsychologist, but she’d been a human psychologist first. She would be able to guide him in the questioning.