by Mark Lingane
“Was he that clever?”
“He said so. Although he didn’t seem as belt-and-braces clever as the young Indian he was presenting. Now he was a smart young man. I’d swap fifty Poundriffs for him any day of the week.”
“We could look for the young guy. He’d have friends, family, a partner maybe.”
“Have you got a partner, Kevin?”
“Um … yes.”
“You don’t seem too sure. She hasn’t been taken in all this destruction?”
There was a considerable pause. “Alex hasn’t. He’s safe on the south coast in Hastings.”
“Sorry. I didn’t … that was tactless of me. I’m from a different age, but still I should know better,” Norton said.
“You said you’d been inside his house, sir.”
“Poundriff’s? Yes, I’ve been unfortunate enough to be lured into the snake’s den.”
“What was in the attic?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Could it have been an office, or a secure place where he had a fireproof safe, maybe even bombproof?”
“Why do you ask?”
Norton turned to see what the young soldier was doing. Jackson was running his hand over the dusty and dented surface of a fireproof and bombproof—although not invasion-proof—safe. The door was ajar, its lock smashed.
“My God, Kevin. Jackpot.”
Jackson forced open the bent door and scooped out a small notebook. He opened it to the middle. “He’s written down the names of companies with some numbers next to them. ‘Lockheed: 10m Boeing: 10m Toshiba: 2m.’ The list goes on.”
“At least now I know how the satellites were modified. Poundriff bribed the companies.”
“Listen to this,” Jackson said, reading aloud. “‘Abstract voices of the city provide the messages. I must constantly listen to the ramblings of passing strangers. The task is exhausting, physically and emotionally. Listening to words rather than meaning directly conflicts with human nature.’ Is he saying instructions were delivered to him via random words on the street? That would be madness.”
“It is madness,” Norton said.
“‘And the numbers count. One day up. One day down. I would’ve cherished the opportunity to see what their resolution would bring. What falls beyond the horizon of nothing? What lies at the heart of zero?’ That’s quite poetic.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a purple line of treacle. You want poetry, read Yeats.”
Jackson continued reading. “‘Something has happened with Hanson. He has refused. Carter will need to be recalled, but his age is problematic. He failed before. Shame about the child.’”
“I’m concerned about those names being mentioned,” Norton said. “I knew both. What did Hanson refuse? What are they failing at? And what child?”
Jackson pulled out a photograph. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, my, DCI Tracy Hanson.”
Jackson turned it over. Kill.kill at all costs was written across the back in red chalk.
52
NORTON AND JACKSON approached police headquarters. The main structure remained intact, although the glass fascia had been obliterated. Norton knew the damage was too low for the robots to have done, and it was too messy for the silver craft and their lasers. That meant people had done this, probably looking for weapons.
“Why are we here, sir?” Jackson asked.
“DCI Hanson wrote a report. The last person who had it was the police chief, Percy Booker. I’m hoping we can find it here. It could be crucial to our survival.”
“But it’s pitch black inside. How will we see to find it?”
“We need to find some kind of light.”
One of the hinges on the front door had been smashed off, and the door hung at an angle. They shifted it aside and made their way into the trashed building. Glass and rubble crunched under their boots as they felt along the wall to the stairs leading up to the second story. The floor was still dark, despite some light spilling in from the moon.
“Everything electrical is dead.” Jackson flicked the light switch on and off.
Norton tapped his fingers against the wall. It made a metallic sound. He glanced up. In the gloom he could make out a red cross. He smashed the tiny glass panel and fumbled with the latch. The cabinet door swung open. He let out a deep chuckle and grabbed the chest, upending it on the floor.
They sat down and worked their way through the items. Gas masks, first-aid kits, and a box of flares. Jackson opened the box, revealing four flares of various sizes.
“Grab one, Kevin. A small one.”
“What do we do with the other stuff?”
“We’re taking the first-aid kits. That’s a no-brainer. I’m not sure about the gas masks … no, bring them. It never hurts to be over prepared.”
“I read a book once with one of these on the cover. It was about zombies set a thousand years in the future. It was pretty scary.”
“At least that’s something we don’t need to worry about. Imagine if we had space zombies running around. Don’t panic. It’ll never happen.” Norton pulled the release tab on one of the flares and it spluttered into life. A dull red glow radiated out a few feet.
“Is that wise, sir? You know what these robots are like when they see something glowing.”
“No choice. We’ll be as quick as we can.”
They crept through the building, the flare illuminating the way and casting everything in a red tint.
“I’ve been here once before,” Norton said. “The chief’s office is in the far corner.”
They made their way through the broken chairs and desks, Jackson trailing behind Norton. The contents were scattered over the floor, filing cabinets had been pushed over and dented on all sides, and drawers were ripped open.
The door to the corner office had been ripped off its hinges and thrown aside. Documents were strewn over the floor. Derogatory words about the police were spray-painted on the walls.
Norton held up the fizzing flare and inspected the writing. “Odd how even when we’re being attacked by aliens, people still feel the need to take out their petty vendettas against the authorities.”
They searched through the office wreckage. The desk was toppled on its side. A half-empty cup of coffee had been knocked over, the fluid staining the scattered documents. A plant in the corner of the room had been ripped out of its pot, the dirt scattered over the floor.
Norton dropped to his knees and peered at random pieces of paper. He pulled out his reading glasses and perched them on his nose. Jackson worked his way through the files remaining on the shelves. He picked up a thick document, raising the flare to read the title.
“Careful with the light,” Norton said.
Jackson instantly lowered the beacon. “This might be something, sir.” He handed the document to Norton and raised the flare so the field marshal could read the front cover.
Norton licked his finger and turned the first page, then the next. The red light reflected off his lenses. A smile broke out on his face. “Exceptional, Kevin.”
A low hum could be heard.
“There’s some very interesting information about the original crash site. This is exactly what we were looking for. No need to let out a contented hum, though.” He patted the young soldier on the shoulder.
“I’m not, sir.”
Norton shrugged. “Well done, Kev—” He slowly turned his heads toward the window. In the distance was a yellow streak of light. It was heading straight for them. The hum turned into a whistle.
“Run!” Norton shouted.
They had barely taken a dozen steps before the window exploded and the room erupted in a giant fireball, throwing them to the ground, and flames roared over them.
The oxygen was burning up and smoke filled the room. He threw a gas mask to Jackson, who was already coughing, and quickly pulled the other over his own head. The pages of the report began to turn brown and burn. He grabbed the pages and held them to his chest.
&nbs
p; On hands and knees, they crawled forward through the flaming furniture. Another rocket impacted the floor above, buckling the ceiling above them. Sections began to fall and crash around them. They scrambled to their feet and charged out of the office as the walls around them erupted in flames. Fire raged around them, blowing them forward. They tumbled to the floor, struggling to continue against the extreme heat.
Norton grabbed Jackson’s arm and they struggled toward the fire exit. The paint on the door was bubbling and peeling. Norton reached for the handle and it burned his skin. The door swung open and they tumbled through. Norton slammed it shut behind them, and they were left in cool darkness. Smoke was drifting into the stairwell under the door, so they ran down the stairs and out into the alleyway behind the building.
Norton lifted up his gas mask. “Does anything strike you as odd about what just happened?”
Jackson removed his mask and coughed. He gave Norton a sideways glance. “Fire. Explosions. Near death. Did I mention fire?”
Norton smiled and patted young Jackson on the back. “Yes, fire. Have you seen the enemy firing anything like that? It’s all been EM weapons—stuff based on waves—and bullets. Nothing that big.”
“Are you saying it wasn’t the enemy?”
“Something to think about—”
There was a burst of gunfire. Shouts echoed down the alley. Flashlights flickered over them, and the shouting intensified.
“—but another time.”
They dashed out of the alley and into a mall. Their feet echoed across the shop-lined tiled floor, but the noise was lost in the shouts of their pursuers.
“Did you see them? They were wearing our uniforms,” Jackson said.
Norton nodded. “I wonder who ordered the aboveground raid, or search, or whatever it was. And what else is going on without my approval?” He ran his hand over the report. “Hopefully we can find out the answers to these questions in these pages. I have a feeling young Tracy is a highly important person. I hope she knows it and she’s hiding in a good place. But we’re going to need some men to find her.”
“How do we find one person in London without any comms?”
“Well, there are a lot fewer people now than there was a week ago. I’m guessing survivors are congregating in familiar places. Where do we always go in times of trouble, when we’re attacked from the skies?”
Kevin shook his head.
“Down.”
53
“MICHAEL, I’VE FOUND Kerry Ng. She’s professor of linguistic cohesion at Oxford,” Mason Jones said to Braxton as she entered the control room.
The middle-aged woman following behind Jones sniffed the air cautiously and gave Braxton a distrustful stare.
“Professor, I’m glad you could join us. We have a problem,” Braxton said by way of explanation.
The professor gave him a slight nod but offered no hand. “I was told you have a language issue.”
Braxton offered her a chair. She sat down awkwardly and folded her hands in her lap.
“This will sound odd, but we have a chance to talk to a dying, well, dead alien,” Braxton said.
Ng blinked at him.
“She, the alien, is wearing a special kind of armor that can animate her body. It appears to be plugged directly into her brain. We don’t understand the technology yet.”
“How do you know it can speak?” Professor Ng said, ignoring Braxton’s use of the female pronoun. “Or if it even wants to?”
“We don’t.” He indicated the room. “As you can see from the wreckage, she can attack. But we’re hoping—an experiment, if you will—that if she can’t attack, she might try to communicate. But we don’t have much time because it won’t be long before her brain is completely dead.”
“But it’s an … alien language. I won’t be able to make head nor tail of it in such a short period of time.”
“If you could just look, please. Mason will show you the written examples.”
Jones escorted Professor Ng to the images they had copied down from the silver craft, which were spread out across a table. The letters sat before Ng, making no sense to her. They were incredibly and impossibly familiar, but at the same time entirely alien.
She shrugged. “The symbols look like a logographic language, similar to Kanji ideology. But that can only be coincidence.”
“I like how this one’s got a face in it,” Jones said, pointing to one of the characters.
Ng followed Jones’s finger and stared at the image. “Could you call Braxton for me, please?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the pictures.
Braxton bustled over. “Success already?”
“You’re not going to like this,” Ng said.
“What am I not going to like?”
Ng pointed to a row of characters. “At the center of each letter there’s a pictogram. At the core of all languages on our planet is icon-based typography. Egyptians, Aztecs, Chinese. Everything we’ve learned about communication starts with a symbol that represents a concept.”
“These are similar?”
“They’ve got emojis in them.”
“Do you mean emoticons? Smiley faces?”
She sighed and crossed her arms. “For the uneducated, an emoji is nothing more than a smiley face. Even the term itself can be misunderstood as being an abbreviation of ‘emotion,’ but e-moji is Japanese for picture character. A simple character that represents a scene or abstraction.”
“But they’re only used by students wishing to be rude or suggestive to each other.”
“They’re a little more complicated than that. In the same way that we still struggle with Egyptian icons, we could probably never fully understand these. But they’re combinations of pictorial words. I don’t know how they fit together or what they mean, but there’s a pattern. I ask you, is it a coincidence that this language seems to have a similar evolution to our own, or have they been watching us for a long time and adopted the concept?”
“If they’ve learned this from us, maybe they’ve also been listening to the way we speak. They may know how to talk to us, too,” Jones said.
“You’re a smart but optimistic young woman, possibly to the point of delusion,” Ng said.
“I say, there’s no need to be rude—” Braxton started.
“I wouldn’t be a scientist if that weren’t the case,” Jones said, “and neither would you, Michael. Are you ready to talk to our visitor?” she said to Ng, then smiled and led the way.
Two researchers wearing full body suits to prevent contact shifted the alien into a sitting position, and strapped restraining cuffs around her limbs. They stepped back and placed a set of round sensors on her temples.
Braxton, standing well clear, turned the dial on a small battery unit. The current flowed onto the alien’s exoskin. She snapped upright, her eyes flicking open to reveal the same dead, navy-colored pupils. Her body shook as she tried to move. The shaking receded until it became a faint twitch. She stared straight ahead.
Braxton coughed. The alien’s eyes flicked sideways at him. Everyone gasped.
“What should I say?” Braxton said.
“Welcome to Earth?” Jones suggested.
“You have been captured,” Braxton said to the alien. “Can you understand me?”
The lips of the alien moved wordlessly.
“Why can’t we hear anything?” Braxton said.
“There’s no air in her lungs,” Jones said. “If air can’t pass the vocal cords, then no noise can come out. In space, no one can hear you scream. Remember that?”
“Is she strapped down tightly?” Ng asked. The other two nodded. She moved directly in front of the face of the alien. “Show that you understand me.”
The alien’s head nodded. The corner of her mouth curled up in a sneer.
Ng’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my God, what do we ask?” she stuttered.
Braxton looked around at the debris that littered the corners of the laboratory. As a researcher for the military, one
question seemed obvious to Braxton. “Why are you attacking us?” he asked the alien.
There was no response.
“What is the objective of your assault?”
Again, no response. Ng and Braxton looked at each other.
“What can you tell us?” Ng asked.
“She can’t speak,” Braxton said, “but can she write?” The twitching in the alien’s body lessened. “We need to be quick.”
Ng placed a piece of paper next to the alien’s hand and put a thick whiteboard marker in her clasping hand. As soon as the alien’s fingers closed around the pen, she manically drew on the paper. The twitching erupted into a fit, and she thrashed against her restraints before slumping forward.
“I think that was it,” Jones said.
Braxton pushed the resister all the way to open, but there was no response from the current being supplied to the body.
Ng rotated the paper and her eyes popped open. “It’s a date and time and one word. In a matter of days, something is going to happen. Something important. Something bad,” she said, unable to draw her eyes away from the word.
Die.
54
FIELD MARSHAL NORTON had retreated to Piccadilly Station, where central command had been established. He could hear the hum of life echoing through the tunnels, which covered all parts of London. They had built acoustic amplifiers—great cones—at the underground stations, allowing communications. Norton had laughed when he heard. When the electronics had failed, they had simply reverted to classroom penny-ideas, and they worked.
He’d put out the call, station to station: find Tracy Hanson. Now he sat pouring over the confused but illuminating prose of Hanson’s report until his head ached; he knew he needed her here after reading the first page.
An officer stopped in front of the field marshal’s desk and coughed politely.
Norton looked up. “Captain, today is a day I need you to bring me some good information.”