It was easy to know what the humans were doing. They wanted — needed, desperately — to get back into space. They had the services of a tech expert, one of the foremost in the system, and they would be foolish not to use her. It gave her value and even a few bargaining chips; she’d traded her assistance for more human books and even entertainment. The humans seemed to be more imaginative than her own people, even though she’d watched several episodes of human science-fiction and couldn’t stop herself laughing, and yet… was it really something unique about them, or could her own people match it, under the right conditions? Her position had been permanently uncertain under the Theocracy… and yet, was that a natural law, or something invented? Had God really decreed that all sterile females were to die?
The thought blazed through her head. The High Priest had kept her alive… and, in doing so, had broken that law… if that law existed! He wouldn’t have got away with it, High Priest or no, not when there were hundreds of other Priests who wanted to be High Priest themselves. One of them would have used it against him, or the Inquisitors would have taken action; they couldn’t allow such open breaking of the rules, not by a High Priest. Femala’s existence and nature was hardly a secret either; it wasn’t something that could be covered up, so why had he been allowed to keep her? The only reason that made sense was that there was no such law!
And yet… it happened. Free, now, from restrictions, she wondered at her own society. The humans had so much and her own people so little, when it should have been the other way around. She knew how to extract wealth from asteroids, gas giants and comets; the Takaina should have been able to give each of their people a life-style they could only dream about, and yet… they didn’t. All resources were bent towards the task of expanding and spreading the faith across the universe. In time, Guiding Star or a replacement built on Earth would continue onwards, leaving a massive settlement behind. Earth would become part of the Theocracy… but for how long? What effect would it have on her society if this, the knowledge of how another race acted, became common knowledge?
They kept us down, she thought, and felt her delight at making the connection turn to rage. She hadn’t seen it because she had had nothing to compare it to. She hadn’t been part of society because society had shunned her… and even the one who had saved her hadn’t been able to give her what she needed. She’d been held down by her own society… and, she saw now, the same was true of all of them. The males went to become warriors, where they died, or priests, where they became part of the system, while the females were held down by the self-perpetrating clans. How could they escape when they were trapped in chains that held their minds?
Humans had escaped, in part of their history, and others had remained trapped. It was possible to escape, but how could she spread the word to the rest of her people? How could she get them to believe and change when there was no way that they would listen to a sterile female who was a prisoner? Everyone knew that someone who had been a prisoner could no longer be completely trusted… and she was honest enough with herself to admit that her mind might not be what it had been. The High Priest wouldn’t be able to spare her this time, even if he wanted to spare her; she would be burned alive by the Inquisitors.
And why had he spared her anyway? The humans had attributed it to unsavoury motives, but while the Takaina males had sex for enjoyment as well as procreation, they wouldn’t have it with a sterile female, one who was unable to join them fully in the act. Or was that, too, a part of their conditioning? The humans seemed to believe all kinds of silly things about sex and there was no reason, on the face of it, while the Takaina could not be the same. What possible use had he had for her?
She was still mulling over that question when the human, Paul James, was shown into her quarters. She’d grown to like him, along with the other humans, even though she wasn’t sure of his duties. A person who had been in charge of preparing for an alien invasion should be able to do more than the Takaina had faced, but if the humans had had the idea that an alien invasion should consist of massive flying saucers with impossible beam weapons and even more impossible force shields, they probably hadn’t been able to come up with a proper defence. Amazing special effects, though; the Takaina had never come up with anything like them.
“Hi,” she said, suddenly aware of her manners. He was, technically speaking, senior in the clan to her, although that had required some mental adjustment as well. No male was normally of any position within the clan. That was a female role. “How have you been?”
She was starting to recognise some human emotions, but the look on his face was beyond her. “Washington has been destroyed,” he said, grimly. The liquid that had appeared in one eye couldn’t be healthy. “Your people took out an entire city.”
“Mass slaughter is forbidden by the Truth,” Femala protested, honestly shocked. The High Priest had to have gone mad. The only justification for such slaughter was to prevent the spread of heresy. Earth, being largely unaware of the Truth, didn’t count as a legitimate target. “What happened?”
He explained, bit by bit. “The High Priest had to be more than a little worried about your sudden willingness to use nukes,” Femala said, when he had finished. “How many of your people were killed?”
“No one is sure, yet,” Paul admitted. “The preliminary figures are high, but they’re always high; all we know for sure is that there were several million people under the footprint of the nuke when it went off. Why did they hit Washington, of all places?”
“Your capital doesn’t mean much to them,” Femala said. Now she understood the system that she had been a slave to her entire life, she felt little in the way of loyalty towards it. “The intention was to settle your world and bring your people into line with their own.”
“We don’t want that to happen,” Paul said, rather dryly. It was so hard to pick out and understand human tones, but Femala was getting better at it. “We want to stop it.”
So did Femala — now. She needed the humans to awaken her own people. “It won’t be easy to stop,” she said. “They’ll have started the settlement by now — or they will soon start it, and that will bring lots of their people down to the planet. How is the shuttle-building program coming along?”
Paul started. “How did you know about that?”
Femala explained, unable to keep her disappointment out of her voice. The human probably didn’t notice. Why else would anyone ask her about them? She might have been a victim all her life, without even the very human consolation of knowing that she had been a victim, but she was far from stupid. The humans had to be working on ways to recover control of space.
“Yes, I see,” Paul said, finally. “The building program is fine. It’s getting up into orbit that’s going to be the problem.”
Femala thought about it. Anything boosting to orbit, unless they discovered something so completely out of the box that the High Priest wouldn’t have the slightest idea it was even possible, would be very hot. The orbiting sensors would detect the rocket flame and react at once. Missiles and spacecraft would be shot down as soon as they were identified as such. It wouldn’t be easy to build enough craft to get some into orbit in the face of such firepower… and failing to retake control of space would be fatal in the long run. She could help them build thousands of shuttles, if that was what they wanted from her, but it wouldn’t solve the overall problem.
She tossed it around in her mind. They couldn’t get into orbit, therefore they would lose… and that was unacceptable. She couldn’t allow the opportunity to pass, and yet, unless they could get into orbit, it would pass. They needed to clear space of hostile ships first, but even with the most powerful ground-based weapons, it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, it was probably going to be impossible. Unless…
“I want to make a deal,” she said. “I have, I think, a way of getting you into orbit, something that will give you a chance at victory. In exchange, I want something.”
Paul looked at her, his hu
man face unreadable. “What do you want?”
“I want you to help me educate the remainder of my people,” she said, and explained her epiphany. She wanted, she needed, to share it with her fellows, male and female alike, and give the dissidents something to rally around. They could bring down the Theocracy, at least in one tiny system. “Will you help me?”
Paul leaned forward. “How do you intend to get us into orbit?”
Femala smiled and explained.
* * *
“Do you think we can trust her?”
Doctor Jones shrugged. “Intellectually, she’s probably the smartest person in this base and certainly among the captives,” he said. “The various Redshirts are comparable to us, but she is very definitely the smartest… and she has practical experience that no one on Earth can match. As for trust…
“We kept a close eye on them and watched, carefully,” he continued. “As far as we can tell, her conversion seems to be genuine, hers and the other prisoners as well. It’s impossible to be sure, but I suspect that she means what she says, which doesn’t mean that either of her plans will work. It’s quite possible that we’ll run into a security check she didn’t know existed, or another trap intended to snare heretics… and that’s exactly what they’re going to regard her as being.”
“But she’s becoming human,” Paul protested. It was an interesting concept, and, if it was true, a handle on her. “Surely…”
“No, she’s adapting,” Jones said, firmly. “She isn’t human; do not forget that. Such behaviour is not unknown among humans, but it is rather unreliable. Stockholm Syndrome can kick in at the oddest places, but it is also not unknown for captives to pretend to be converted, just to get lighter treatment and a chance at escape. You know how many people are capable of fooling parole boards?”
Paul nodded. “Point taken,” he said. The thought was a galling one. Time and time again, dangerous criminals were released because they fooled parole boards into believing that they were reformed. “Still, it’s the only plan we’ve got.”
“She’s very smart, yes,” Jones said. “I’m very smart as well, but I couldn’t build a spacecraft and she couldn’t perform surgery. Just because someone is smart doesn’t mean that they’re… street-smart, or even capable. How many soldiers do you know who look like total assholes and have a string of degrees longer than mine? Her very cunning plan could be a complete disaster just because we don’t know everything we need to know about her people.”
“The President will probably agree with you,” Paul said, remembering the threat of possible impeachment. “It could be that this plan is a complete fuck-up waiting to happen. It could be that she intends to betray us… but, like it or not, it’s the only plan we’ve got and I intend to recommend to the President that we proceed at once.”
“Of course,” Jones said. “Good luck.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy.
— Anon
Riyadh, Ambassador Simon Carmichael had decided, hadn’t changed for the better under alien rule. It had been a repressive environment in so many ways, with the religious police watching for the slightest hint of un-Islamic behaviour, and the political police watching for anti-government attitudes, but it had been fairly safe, provided that you were an Arab male. Now, aliens patrolled the streets, the Burka was banned and every mosque in the city had been destroyed. The entire city was waiting nervously for the penny to drop.
The aliens had rounded up, with the help of a number of senior princes and government officials who had fallen into their hands, every member of the religious police they could find and transported them out into the desert somewhere. Rumour, never the most accurate source in the world, claimed that the aliens had simply made them dig their own graves and then shot them, but given that rumour also claimed that the United States had been destroyed and that Mecca was burning rubble… well, it wasn’t very helpful. The only piece of truth that had been spread had been that Tel Aviv had been destroyed by the aliens… after Israeli nukes had fallen on several of their formations. The aliens now ruled from the Mediterranean Coastline — they’d overrun North Africa in a week — to the rapidly dissolving Pakistani border. They had not been short of ideas, this time, on how to treat the people who were suddenly under their control and a full-fledged insurgency was underway.
It wasn’t going well. The Iraqi Insurgency had benefited from dozens of factors, including the misuse of the Iraqi Army, the presence of literally millions of weapons in the country and plenty of outside support. The Saudi Army — and, for that matter, every other army in the region — had been destroyed. Those soldiers who had been captured — or, so rumour said, surrendered rather easily — had been placed in prison camps and carefully kept away from the cities. Insurgents had managed to break one of them open, but the aliens had rounded up most of the prisoners, leaving only a handful on the loose. Experienced fighters were rare among the new insurgency… and the learning curve was steep. The supplies being smuggled in from outside, mainly from Europe, weren’t enough to tip the balance, although the commandos and Special Forces were very helpful. The irony was thick enough to slice with a knife — they’d spent blood and treasure on suppressing radical Islam, and now they were trying to support it — but it still wouldn’t be enough. The aliens had learnt from Texas as well.
Worst of all, they’d found allies. Carmichael wouldn’t have believed that anyone brought up in a strictly religious environment would have been willing to work with the aliens, but he’d underestimated them. The Saudis had imported tens of thousands of guest workers to do all the shit work… and treated them, well, like shit. They’d taken the opportunity offered by the aliens to get some revenge on their former masters and taken an unholy delight in exposing insurgents wherever they found them. There were even some Shias from the oil-rich regions who were willing to join the aliens. They had to know that that would merely put them last on the alien list for conversion, but perhaps they just didn’t care. It wasn’t as if the Saudis had offered them anything better.
Carmichael scowled as he peered down over the city. A rising column of smoke announced the detonation of another IED, although it was anyone’s guess as to what — if anything — it had destroyed. The insurgents were still learning, while the aliens were becoming much quicker at rooting out and destroying insurgent cells before they could become active. Part of it was through collaborators, but judging from what Captain Harper had said, the aliens used sensors to sniff for explosive residue and other signs of insurgent activity. They were probably using such methods in Texas too, now, and perhaps they would win there as well.
Bastards, he thought suddenly, clenching his fists in helpless rage. He’d known people in Washington who had vanished somewhere under the mushroom cloud. The not knowing was worse than any report of their deaths. They might have survived, or they might have been killed, but there was no way to know. The single communications line to the government bunker had to be reserved for important matters. A question regarding the dead, however important, wouldn’t go through. It was a complete mystery why the aliens had allowed the embassy to continue to exist, without either throwing them out of the country or dumping them all in a POW camp, but it would be selfish not to take advantage of their generosity.
Captain Harper appeared, as always, perfectly silently and cleared his throat. “Welcome back,” Carmichael said, refusing to give the impression that he’d just jumped. His ears were good… and yet the Marine managed to sneak up on him all the time. “Did you find them?”
“Yes, Mr Ambassador,” Captain Harper said. The aliens had wanted the Americans to stay mainly in their embassy, but with so many other diplomats around, they had reluctantly agreed to allow the foreigners to talk with each other, if not the insurgents. It wasn’t much, but it allowed a great deal of mischief, much of which was taking place right under the aliens’ noses. The aliens might not be willing to respect the embassies forever, but for
now — covertly — they could be used to help the insurgents. “They’re in place.”
So were four of the Marines, the ones who could pass for Arabs, but neither man mentioned them. Officially, they weren’t there. “Good,” Carmichael said, finally, looking back towards the rising sun. The aliens were in for a surprise. “And the equipment?”
“Untraceable, I hope,” Captain Harper said, dispassionately. His face showed none of the difficulties in smuggling in large quantities of weapons into territory the aliens controlled. “If anyone, they’ll blame the Russians…”
Carmichael wanted to laugh, but it wouldn’t come. The Russians had retreated completely inside themselves, not taking part in the insurgency, or even fighting the aliens. They’d engaged the aliens during the first battle, back when it had looked like Earth could do more than kick and scratch on its way to the gallows, but now they were almost completely uncommunicative. News from Russia was very sparse and talked, in worried tones, of tanks in the streets and chaos at the highest levels. Langley had wondered if the Russians were in the middle of a civil war, but with so little intelligence leaking out, it was impossible to tell. They’d grown too used to intelligence being available at the push of a button.
“That would be fitting,” he said. He knew that some European governments were shitting bricks after Washington, even though they had lived with the threat of nuclear war since the fifties, because the aliens had proved that they could and would strike cities. The destruction of Tel Aviv had only reinforced that impression. He worried that some of them would back off from supporting the insurgents, but now… it was much harder to call off an operation just because it was politically inconvenient and might embarrass a major government. “Perhaps they’ll go invade the Russians instead.”
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