We've Seen the Enemy

by Paul Dayton

  Behind him were the ordinary people of the tribe, ones who were also curious about the ‘evidence’ Rat had talked about. Naomi was well loved by all, and a devotee of the faith. Pliny bristled at the idiocy of Rat’s traps that had mistakenly killed her, but did admit that this opened the door to events that would bring an end to Timothy and Ruth. It was unfortunate that the Tribe was following, but perhaps that would work out in the end too.

  ***

  Timothy and Ruth decided that the only way they would reach the site in time to do what they had to do was by Gravplane, one of those sleek, black craft in the base hangar. They were stealthy, quiet, and very fast, impervious to attack by any of the ‘Tests of Faith’.

  They were embarrassed by that phrase now that they knew the truth about them. According to the history lesson, the alien attack lasted over twelve years. Any surviving humans still left had by that time either gone underground in the shells of the cities where the aliens had trouble rooting them out, or high up in shelters on the hills, scattered about and difficult to find. The aliens themselves had persisted, but had suffered massive losses and dwindling resources.

  In the meantime, Bases established for Earth defense had started manufacturing self-replicating machines, drones with weapons that could hide patiently while waiting for an alien life form to come by. These traps were so effective that the aliens, at first unsure of whether to proceed after the initial war, now decided that it was no longer worth the resources. Better to poison the Earth with a chemical that was inoffensive to them and come back later, then to linger on in a war that they wouldn’t win. So they left, expecting to one day find an Earth wiped clean of most human life. What did happen was the result of pure human tenacity and stubbornness, with people clinging to life in areas no one thought possible, where they grew and adapted.

  The aliens lost a tremendous amount of resources during the invasion, and most of the Hives in the quadrant surrounding planet Earth had become dormant. But with the earlier human migration, those Hives on the migratory routes were found and destroyed. This destruction of dormant Hives alerted the aliens who regrouped and retaliated with such ferocity that they nearly destroyed most of the attacking ships, but the humans buried deep, spread out wide in the galaxy, proved resourceful and changed tactics. Worse, the aliens found that the humans didn’t forget, and seemed to attack over an event fought far in their past for reasons they could not comprehend, one that defied logic. Some of the attacks were not logical and didn’t result in any advantage to speak of, which completely perplexed the aliens. They ended up categorizing these attacks as ‘Instinct Attacks’ in their memory banks.

  Back on Earth, Timothy and Ruth learned that the traps left behind by their forefathers somehow changed and started to attack humans. Whether the changes were done by aliens or humans HAL refused to say but these replicating machines had been very effective at culling human life. Ruth asked why HAL hadn’t destroyed them but he refused to answer yet again. They definitely had to do something about these things.

  Ruth looked out the ‘window’ of this incredible machine. Although it was bigger than the rest, from the outside it still had looked small. But once one of the panels opened, they could see that the machinery needed to keep this craft ‘flying’ was extremely compact and well organized.

  As she looked, she immediately recognized what each part did, as if she put it together herself. But now, as the forest below passed quickly by and the experience of flying dulled, her mind focused on the task at hand. It wouldn’t be easy, and people were stubborn, but what they had in mind was the only chance they had.

  The Gravplane guided them to an opening in the forest canopy just slightly bigger then the plane itself. Timothy could see the path he needed to take to walk to the clearing where Rat had set up the ambush, and HAL had told them that at the present rate of progress, it would take Rat and the elders less then one hour to reach it. They hurriedly left the Gravplane and walked over to the hollow, watching out for any replicators along the way. There were none. Rat must have used all of them in the vicinity for his ambush.

  HAL had told them that Rat had collected 22 replicators and marked their relative positions on a monitor back at the base, so Ruth and Timothy stood just outside of the trigger area and spotted all the replicators one by one.

  One of them appeared as a large rock in the center of the clearing, the other seemed to be a large gnarl on the side of a tree trunk, the third was a Jack in the Box at the edge of the clearing, and so on. They counted them down until they had spotted all but one of them. It was easy to guess where it should be, but all they saw in the area was dense foliage without the telltale hint of a thermal sensor.

  They circled around the side hoping the sun would glint off the sensor but they still saw nothing. They did see a disassembled replicator in the middle, and some of the same kinds of things Timothy saw earlier outside the base – bullets, old weaponry and such. There was also a neat collection of old tools that Timothy was certain had come from the base, together with some data disks, medical tools and things of the sort. He also recognized some of his own tools, and it was obvious Rat had been stealing them. Timothy ignored this, knowing he only had time for the replicators for now.

  “Well Ruth, there’s only one thing to do. Go in there and try to find the primary replicator so we could shut them all down.”

  Ruth agreed and they jumped in.

  She hurried to one while Timothy went to the other. They were all linked together, set off by the same primary motion sensor but firing individually, so they had to hurry. From what HAL had told them earlier, they both knew they had triggered the delay Rat hat set into the units, but they didn’t know how long the delay was.

  “Timothy, I can’t shut it off! Rat must have done something!” Ruth said.

  “Neither can I Ruth! He’s encrypted it. I had no idea he knew how to do this.”

  As Timothy kneeled there he was surprised by Rat’s resourcefulness, but his attention was brought back to the reality of the digital timer counting down.

  “I found the primary. Rat’s set the delay for three minutes. I can’t turn it off but I can set it to the maximum, one hour.”

  They hurried from one to the other until they reset the timer on all 21 replicators. Timothy and Ruth were counting down the seconds in their heads as they hurriedly searched for the final replicator.

  As they ran up to the area, Ruth noticed that a tree limb had fallen, and underneath it was the replicator, still functioning but well hidden by the foliage. They both attacked the unit, prying the timer cover off and quickly working their way through the menus and sub-menus until they came to the activation timer section. Panicking, they both could see they wouldn’t make it as Ruth furiously hit the buttons. Out of desperation Timothy jumped behind the replicator and grabbed the turret, ready to force the direction of the Maser into the ground if it fired, and just as he felt it start to activate, Ruth let out a yell and moved out of the way. Timothy looked over at the display and saw the counter reset. He looked at Ruth and said: “How close…?”

  “I reset it just as it counted to zero.” They both laughed in relief over the close call, and then Timothy said, “We have to go.” They hurried off before the Elders and representatives of the Tribe reached the site.

  Rat was in an ecstatic mood, but he tried hard not to show it. It wouldn’t fit in with the grave moment and his injuries. He found it almost impossible though and caught himself about to whistle on more then one occasion.

  ‘Today’s the day!’ he thought. He was already making plans on what he was going to do. First he would savor the moment as he got injured and the tribe would huddle around the lone survivor of Timothy and Ruth’s ‘trap’. He giggled at this thought. Then, they would feel even worse as they realized he had just lost his father in the same ‘tragic accident’ as Pliny ‘slipped’ into the hollow; and then they’d realize that he was a veritable hero seeing as he was the one that brought Timothy and Ruth’s
‘unfaithfulness’ to light.

  Rat could see the glory, just hours away. This would be the beginning of a brand new life. It was true that Sam and some others had to be taken care of somehow, but perhaps he could find an opportunity for it today too.

  The group soon reached the outer edge of the clearing, and just before they entered, Rat said his little prepared speech: “Dear Elders and my fellow tribal brothers, it pains me to do what I have to do now, for I love Timothy and Ruth as much as everyone else here.”

  Some snickered, while Pliny watched him with barely concealed anger. Rat knew that his father didn’t like surprises, but he would soon get one of his own.

  “I don’t know why they accumulated these artifacts, but it seems they were trying to understand its secrets. In this clearing you will also find the evidence I mentioned back at the meeting room.” He stood aside to let them enter, and they filed past him one by one into the clearing.

  Rat smiled, thinking that very soon, in a little over a minute in fact, they would all be dead. He casually walked through the clearing up to the rise that overlooked Timothy and Ruth’s supposed work area, hoping he wouldn’t look too out of place speaking to the tribal elders from up above. Still, he knew that if anyone complained he could just use his short height as an excuse. His father soon joined him.

  The elders milled about, looking intently at the old artifacts. None of the military items were touched, although they did pick up and inspect obvious tools. They all knew they were being closely watched by both the tribe and Pliny. A few looked up at Sam, Peter and the others, standing at the edge of the clearing and looking intently at them, but most concentrated on the objects.

  Rat counted down the seconds until the units started up. He was hoping that Sam would come into the clearing too, but he kept a respectful distance while the elders were at their duty.

  He watched as some started casting doubts on what they were seeing. The others milled about, shaking their heads side to side and looking sorrowful as they inspected the ‘evidence’. A gasp went up from a few when they realized that what they were looking at was a dismantled Test of Faith, now useless but still appearing dangerous. To make matters worse, near the Test of Faith were a few tools with Timothy’s name engraved on them, and once that was seen the two elders there called the others over to inspect this new evidence.

  Rat smiled at the action, but he quickly got upset when they stated among themselves that there was yet no evidence that Ruth was involved, and that this didn’t in any way prove that Naomi died through Timothy’s hands.

  ‘No matter’, Rat thought. Once they died and he got ‘injured’, the onlookers would surely believe him. He counted down the seconds with barely concealed glee. Looking down, he could see that all were in a perfect position for the event. The one Maser hidden by the fallen tree trunk was almost perfectly camouflaged, although it seemed to Rat that the foliage hiding it seemed to have been disturbed. ‘Must be animals,’ he thought.

  He waited. Seven, six…Rat counted down until he reached zero, and nothing happened.

  ‘Must have miscounted,’ he thought, but it should be any second. Time passed, and Rat started getting edgy. He looked to the other units, the one that had blended into the tree trunk, looking like a gnarl. It was still there, something only he would have noticed. He looked over to the one shaped like a stone, half buried in the very edge of the clearing, and that one was still there too. What was going on? Rat couldn’t figure it out, because he had checked and double checked all units. Perhaps the trigger hadn’t been properly set, or wasn’t tripped, he thought. But that was impossible too. They were self-repairing as well as self-replicating, and he was sure he had reset the trigger properly.

  When he looked back at the elder group still inspecting the site, he noticed Sam eyeing him closely and he started to feel uneasy. Sam then suspiciously looked over to where Rat had just looked. Now Rat was really worried. Pliny came close to Rat, being careful not to touch him and quietly asked, “I thought it was supposed to have happened already…”

  “It was,” Rat, clearly upset now, answered back in a forced whisper. “I double checked everything myself!”

  Just at that moment, Ruth and Timothy walked to the edge of the clearing from the other side and stood there, watching Rat. Rat was furious! He realized instantly that it was them that had done something to the Replicators. He was so incensed he couldn’t think straight, until his father nudged him in the back and calmly said out loud, “Ruth and Timothy, how nice of you to join us here.”

  “I’m sure you were expecting us, Elder Pliny.” Timothy looked at Ruth, and before Pliny had a chance to reply, Timothy said, “I know why you are all here.”

  By this time, he had commanded all their attention. Even Rat had stopped hopping around in anger to watch Timothy in a malevolent stare.

  “You have been brought here to inspect a site that you were told was mine and Ruth’s, and you were told that Naomi’s death came as a result of my actions. That’s not true!”

  Pliny knew he was losing control of the situation, so he calmly said, “Timothy, we have not judged anything yet. Some allegations were brought up, and we came here to investigate only. Trust us when we say that we wish you no harm.”

  Most of the elders nodded their head in agreement. Only Sam and his group stood there detached, watching everything closely.

  “Elders, brothers! I come here in openness, with nothing to hide,” Timothy said.

  “Neither do I,” added Ruth.

  “You have known both of us for a long time. We’ve been part of this Tribe since the very beginning of our lives. I grew up playing with you Peter, and we both chased girls through the swimming hole! Even Raymond was there, a young sickly boy whose mother never allowed him to play outside out of worry and love for him. Sam, you know me better than anyone here, as you do too, Elder Pliny.” Timothy hated working the crowd like this but had no choice.

  “And because of this I come to you now, because I stand accused of the most evil of actions, things that you know I could never commit, accused by someone who stands there in an attempted position of authority, by someone who wants all authority and power for himself!” Timothy was looking straight at Rat, and Sam, Peter and the others followed his gaze.

  “Now hold on, Timothy!” said Saul, one of the elders. It’s true we heard some things, but we’re coming to investigate only! You know very well the Naomi’s death is a serious matter, as are these accusations!”

  “And you could actually entertain the thought that we had something to do with it?” Ruth said. She was livid in anger as she spat out her next words.

  “Saul, I nursed your mother in her final days, took care of her right to the moment of her death because no one else would, afraid to catch the disease she died of! Even you refused to come close as she died in my arms! And yet you could actually believe that it’s necessary to investigate the possibility that we wanted to kill Naomi, let alone others here too?! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  Pliny interrupted, “Ruth, no one disputes your good works. But we must investigate these things here and the allegations brought forth!”

  Rat watched everything slowly spiraling out of control, upset that he had somehow lost the upper hand. Yet, he didn’t say anything, allowing his father to take the fall on this, if it was indeed coming.

  “Well, Elder Pliny, If you want something truly significant to investigate, forget baseless and malevolent accusations and INVESTIGATE. You can start by investigating the Tests of Faith that Rat planted all around this clearing! But do so from the edge, because Rat intended to kill you all!”

  Pandemonium erupted from that whole group. The only people still quiet were Sam and those with him as he smiled and watched the events unfold. The tribal members appeared divided – some doubting Timothy and Ruth, others unsure of the whole situation, and everyone now clearly looking for the Replicators that Timothy had talked about.

  Timothy himself was wat
ching Rat. He looked at his chronograph that HAL had supplied, noticed he only had 23 minutes to go, and was about to warn them again when Rat, furious with the whole situation, blared out in a voice that surprised him: “The only way he’d know that there are Tests of Faith here is if he planted them himself! Elders, look for the evidence! Look, there’s one,” and Rat pointed to a corner where the rock-like replicator sat.

  The elders were now unsure of themselves, not knowing what to do. Apprehension was clearly on their faces, and Timothy knew that if he were to get their attention he had to make himself heard. “If I wanted you all dead, I wouldn’t have said anything! Why should I speak up? You all know who I am, you know I have no desire to harm anyone!” Timothy said.

  “Tell me that you never disagreed with any elder, Timothy! We all know that you rarely saw eye to eye with them, and we also know you were always tinkering with the Tests of Faith God sent down to judge us by! And here is the proof!” Rat swung his arm around to encompass the scene below.

  “Raymond, you’re absolutely right.”

  That quieted Rat down as he stood there unsure of where Timothy was heading.

  Timothy spoke up, louder this time, saying, “Raymond was right when he said that I have questioned the elders’ comments before.” Rat took advantage of the break to say, “It’s settled then. He admits himself that he’s questioned the elders…”