Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

by Warwick Gibson

  "Now, let me tell you about the Gaddafi column . . ."

  26

  Mount Weather underground complex

  Washington, USA

  "Thanks for seeing me at such short notice," said the stocky man in the black suit with a comms links trailing from one ear. He was standing in the middle of Cleet Anderson's office.

  Cleet thought that was an odd statement. The man had appeared beside him just down the hall, and told him they needed to talk. He was Presidential security, had to be, and what the President wanted, the President got.

  Cleet was sitting at his desk, where he'd gone to file some papers. He made to rise, but the man motioned him down and took a chair himself.

  "The President is going to authorise a strike force against one or more of the alien citadels at this afternoon's Chiefs of Staff meeting, right?"

  Cleet said nothing. He had not expected to have this sort of conversation with a man who was basically enforcement muscle.

  "Okay, if not at this meeting, then soon," said the man. The name tag on the front of his suit said Lawson, but when thousands of people were thrown together in an underground bunker, most of them were strangers. Was this guy even legit?

  "You have to stop him," said the man suddenly, as if he'd crossed a bridge of some sort, a point of no return. Cleet sat up straighter, properly alarmed now.

  "No, nothing like that," said the man hurriedly. "You're in no danger. Just hear me out, then I'll do whatever you want me to do."

  He seemed resigned to placing himself in Cleet's hands, and Cleet believed he meant it. He even smiled at the man.

  "All right, Oddjob," he said, "spit it out."

  The reference to the movies seemed to go straight over the man's head, but he settled his elbows on his knees and looked at Cleet.

  "There's another way to deal with the citadels," he said. "I can't give you any details, but some of our covert agencies around the world are building up a resistance. One that will last, and one that we hope will be effective – given time."

  "Does the President know about this?" said Cleet, surprised, and the man shook his head.

  "These agencies are all from friendly nations," said the man, "but they do grey ops, stuff governments don't want to dirty their hands with.

  "The thing is," he continued, "attacking the citadels will only hasten the destruction of our own forces. We think the citadels are building up their strength – which gives us time to do the same – and they don't want a confrontation yet. But if we force their hand . . ."

  "So there's a 'we' now, is there?" said Cleet, not sure who the man was ultimately working for.

  Lawson drew himself up. "I'm a US patriot and proud of it," he said flatly, "and my record is impeccable. Check it out for yourself!

  "But the truth is the planet has a resistance in place now, whether you like it or not, and I think it's worthwhile keeping them as well informed as I can."

  Cleet mulled it over. If the man was right, it did improve the chances of human survival. He wasn't sure about a resistance that was acting outside of government channels, but guerilla tactics might prove more effective than regular forces against a technologically superior enemy.

  "Why don't your people approach the President directly?" queried Cleet. A frown flickered across Lawson's face, and Cleet realised they were not 'his' people, but the man let it pass.

  "I think I understand," said Cleet, answering his own question. "Too much red tape, too many chiefs engaged in a pissing contest, and a great deal of confusion for us indians."

  The man in the suit grinned at that, and nodded his head.

  "But why me?" said Cleet. "There's a lot of people with access to the President."

  "Because you're not military," said Lawson. "Military have a certain mindset, and this problem is bigger than that. I thought you might be more . . . flexible in your thinking."

  Cleet took that as a compliment.

  "Got to check you out, you know that," he said, and the man shrugged his shoulders. "If you're not in the brig or on an APB inside an hour, you'll know you've passed muster."

  The man nodded, once, and Cleet spent some further time considering the situation.

  "The subject you mention is top of the agenda for this afternoon's meeting," he said at last, "and I can tell you now I won't be able to change anybody's mind.

  "I could put your point of view as if it were my own, but it won't carry much weight when the Chiefs of Staff don't know anything about your resistance movement."

  Then Cleet came to a decision.

  "Hell," he said, "you're security, you'll know the results as soon as the meeting's finished. I'd say we're going to nuke the bastards within a week."

  The man managed to look crestfallen and resigned at the same time.

  "That's the end of our military then," he said quietly. "But hey, if you can try and convince them otherwise, I'd appreciate that."

  He got up and headed for the door.

  "You have my word on it," said Cleet, before the door closed behind the man. Then he started running a check on a stocky security man in a black suit called, apparently, Lawson.

  27

  Berber village

  Atlas Mountains, North-west Africa

  "Let me get Mosha," said Don, but Izem shook his head.

  "You can decide whether to tell your men when you've heard the whole story. You might just walk away from this."

  Don couldn't imagine that happening, not when the world was under the knife and there were desperately few options, but he understood Izem's caution. He nodded, and the Berber leader told him a most unusual tale.

  "There have always been stories about an American cargo plane going down in the desert after the Second World War," said Izem.

  "A lot of planes have crashed in this area over the years, mostly twin-engined propeller planes from the time Algiers was a French colony. Sandstorms would jam the engines, and sometimes the planes couldn't get above the bad weather. A good windstorm still uncovers a new carcass from time to time."

  Don settled back to listen. Where was Izem going with this?

  "Gaddafi came to power in Libya in 1969. By the end of the 1970s he was on the back foot with everybody – all his Arab neighbours, and most of the Western nations. That's when he became obsessed with the idea of an American cargo plane that had crashed in the desert loaded with nuclear warheads.

  "At first it was just his agents asking questions across the Sahara, and the Bedouin didn't mind telling them what they knew. It led Gaddafi's men to a few old wrecks, and places where the sands had already reclaimed what was there, but not the nuclear warheads they wanted.

  "So Gaddafi sent troops to rough up the locals. He must have thought someone was hiding something. It didn't matter to him that he was invading another country, and the French rulers in Algiers didn't do anything about it. Then columns of soldiers started coming across the Sahara into our lands, and it was our people getting killed."

  He looked at Don with his eyebrows raised. Don nodded. He knew what the Berbers had done. It was exactly what he would do.

  "So someone did something about it," said Izem. "A rumour started that an American plane had been uncovered in the mouth of a gorge this side of the desert. You would have passed the place on your way here."

  Don found the story interesting. It must have been in Izem's grandfather's time, and he would take any bet that the orders came from this valley.

  "The soldiers came straight for it," said Izem. "Like bees to honey. A full company – almost a hundred men – and strings of camels to carry all these newfound warheads back to Libya in soft cradles. They didn't stop for a moment to think the mouth of a gorge is a great place for an ambush."

  Izem stopped, as if to put his thoughts in order, or maybe build the suspense. He was a natural story-teller.

  "You might think there was a hell of a fight, but there wasn't. Not a single Libyan soldier escaped, and when the bodies were discovered later they were all in
marching formation. As if they'd been surprised, and had no time to put up a fight.

  "The bodies were left there long enough for a few travellers to stumble on them, and for Gaddafi to learn his lesson: there was no plane, and he wasn't welcome on this side of the Sahara.

  "Then the bodies, most of them mummified by the desert winds, disappeared, and another rumour started. This one denied there had been a first rumour, and said that nothing had happened in the gorge.

  "But a few people had seen the bodies, and it was impossible to keep that quiet. Men dead without a mark on them, but their bones turned to jelly. Bodies cut in half with surgical precision. Burns that covered most of a man but left part of him untouched.

  "Those stories were what your man Cal stumbled on. His question to us was a simple one. Did we know what had really happened, and if it's what it looks like, now would be a good time to join him in a fight to save our world."

  He settled back in his chair, signifying the story was over. Don leaned forward.

  "You've got alien weapons, you sneaky bastard!" he said.

  Izem smiled. "Why, Mr Don," he said enigmatically, "how could you possibly reach such a conclusion from a random piece of folklore like that?"

  Izem was toying with him, but Don didn't mind. He felt like hugging the man. This was what Cal had sent him half way round the world to find. The question was, would the Berbers share?

  "I think today would be a good day for you to expand your horizons," said Izem, rising from his chair. "Come," he said, "there is something I would like you to see."

  He led the way out of the room and Don followed, barely able to contain his excitement. This was going to be a damn sight more than just 'interesting'.

  The two men left the village and headed for the lowest part of the valley. The sun was descending in the sky, but they were soon warm from the exercise. It wasn't long before they came upon a shallow basin beneath the cliffs. Most of the basin was now crop lands.

  "Marshland originally," said Izem, "until it was drained, more than two hundred years ago. The springs now feed into huge cisterns excavated into the base of the cliffs. It's our water supply."

  There was no citadel that Don could see, but it was the sort of place the invaders had so often chosen. Governments had given up trying to keep the citadels a secret from the public, but most people were too busy re-building from scratch to worry about the strange new additions to the landscape.

  "My people found something interesting, once the marshland was drained," said Izem. They were now approaching a steel grille set in the side of a concrete bunker. He unlocked a padlock on the gate, and then they were out of the sun and inside the bunker.

  "Take the handrail and follow me," he said, and Don noticed the steps leading down off an initial platform. Izem relocked the gate, and they descended into the tunnel.

  Sunlight from the entrance diminished behind them, and Don slid his hand along the rail while he felt for the front of each step, keeping a pace or two behind Izem. Flagstones had been laid over the softer sandstone, and they felt level underfoot.

  His senses adjusted, and the sound of their steps lit up the descent like sonar. He could 'feel' the ceiling above them, and the walls, and the dead spot where Izem absorbed the echoes. Cal trained his elite troops to use more of their senses than most people ever thought possible.

  The concrete of the bunker was replaced by rough sandstone walls. Any slumping from the quakes must have been cleared away, though the walls had rough new alcoves in places. A faint glow came from a point ahead, and it grew steadily brighter as they descended.

  Don's last step took him onto an uneven sandstone floor. The light came from everywhere now. Izem moved to one side, so the tall man could step up beside him, and Don knew they had arrived.

  "As far as we know," said Izem quietly, "this site doesn't contain alien life – except for Al Majnun, who doesn't count."

  Don didn't ask any questions. There were more important things on his mind. What could he and his team learn here in the days ahead? Could they find a way to drive the invaders off the planet?

  Then he refocused. This moment was his own personal bridge between worlds. He looked up, his senses fully alert.

  28

  Tangiwai caverns

  North Island, New Zealand

  Doug looked up from his desk as Cal entered. The SAS man went straight to one side of the room and started looking through a filing cabinet. He had insisted on paper backup for everything, in case the electronics got fried. The caverns had their own hydro scheme, but an electromagnetic pulse was always a possibility, and that would make any sort of modern technology useless.

  The Waiouru centre of operations had finished moving to the Tangiwai caverns a few days ago, and the two bosses – one civil and one military – were still settling in. A crisis room had been set up just down the corridor from Doug's office, and so far they hadn't needed it.

  "What's this I hear about a new United States rising from the ashes?" said Doug, and Cal looked up.

  "Thought you didn't want to know how badly things were going out there," he said, flicking through pages as he spoke.

  "Not so," said Doug, maintaining a straight face. "You told me it was very un-SAS to ask, and I told you I wanted to know anyway, and you said, well, I could know since I was the civilian boss, and then you said you wouldn't make the mistake of ever giving me a choice like that again."

  "I did not!" said Cal, looking sharply at Doug. Then he paused.

  "You're having me on, aren't you?" he said.

  Doug smiled. "Bit of humour. Makes people forget the problems of the world for a moment. That's got to be good for us, right?"

  Cal smiled back, and returned to looking through the files he'd taken out.

  "I don't really want to know how bad it is out there," said Doug, at last. "But I want you to share. You're the only person who knows the whole plan, and that must weigh heavy."

  "Don't get all pop psychology on me," said Cal, with a grin. "Anyway, who said there was a plan?"

  Doug's face dropped, and Cal laughed out loud.

  "Yes, there is a plan – of sorts," he said, "but there are big chunks of it that are still missing. I wouldn't go so far as to say there's even much of a resistance. You can't call it a resistance when so far we don't have any sort of ability to resist anything."

  "Well, that's what everyone is calling us," said Doug. "The resistance."

  Cal acknowledged the point with a shrug.

  "Look, if I need to unburden myself I'll come straight to you," he said. "We got close when you first joined the SAS, and I couldn't have asked for someone who complemented me better. Then you did your Civil Defence training, and that gave you a lot more depth.

  "You've grown up, Doug. You really have. Your type of leadership is different, I'll say that, but you've turned out just as good at this sort of stuff as I am."

  That was a long speech for Cal, and Doug let it soak in.

  "And to answer your question," said Cal, changing the topic hurriedly, "the Presidential plan for the United States has worked out best in Illinois, below the Great Lakes. It helps that the state had an unusually high 24 thousand reservists, and most of them were in small communities.

  "But there are geographic reasons too. Illinois has few large cities, and it has the most fertile soil in the country. Latitude is high enough to freeze pests in Winter, and that's doubly helpful when people don't have bug sprays anymore.

  "There is a new government, of sorts, and it's promising free elections sometime in the future. The northern part of Illinois has been lost to the Badlands that spread out from Chicago, but the government has taken over St Louis in the south, and they're incorporating large parts of Iowa and Missouri now.

  "It's simple maths. Once there's a large enough area, the length of border per person gets less. The new borders are starting to stabilise, along naturally defensible positions, and they have the manpower to keep them well patrolled. Gravel roads
are being built, maintained by pick and shovel, and production and trade should start increasing soon.

  "The new government is using the last of its fuel and resources well. There's even talk of a White House in St Louis. If they can stabilise their society at a horse and cart level, I would call that a win in the present circumstances."

  Cal paused for a moment. Then he looked across at Doug.

  "Unfortunately, things are going to get a lot worse, for everybody. The old US government, sitting out the devastation in the Mt Weather bunker, still has control of a large number of conventional and nuclear missiles. Some of the military airfields have been made serviceable again too, though the number of planes is a fraction of what it was.

  "There's a military strike planned against the citadels for today or tomorrow, and that's going to be like sticking your hand in a hornet's nest. The old US still has contact with other world powers, so I think we can expect a planet-wide attack.

  "That means we're about to lose what is left of our armies, air forces, and navies. The citadels will hunt them down and destroy them. There will be civilian consequences too. The military bases were the de facto police force in many countries, and we're likely to lose them. I'm also expecting everything that looks like an industrial site to be levelled.

  "So, not so good for governments, and not so good for us, either. We're about to lose comms when every satellite circling the planet is destroyed."

  Doug hadn't thought of that. How would Waiouru keep in touch with the rest of New Zealand, let alone centres overseas?

  "Short wave," said Cal, reading his mind. "Got people on it already, and others learning Morse Code, and some trying to hide a signal inside white noise."

  "We'll be okay," he said finally. "I think."

  Then Doug looked at his watch. "You said the Fiordland team would lift off at 1300 hours, right?"

  Cal nodded.

  "Well, Cathy's one of my people, and Jeannie wants to be there too. You want to see them off?"