“Yeah, we’re disobedient sons of bitches,” he replied, then looked up curiously. “Who told you?”
Your neighbors.
“Is that what they think of us, disobedient? After how many years of spying on us?”
Studying, not spying.
“So, you’re not from around here?”
No, I am not.
“Where are you from?”
This ship is my home.
“I meant what planet. How far away?”
Our origin system ceased to exist before your star had formed. The supernova remnant that remains is in a distant galaxy.
It took Beckman a moment to realize what the tall alien was telling him. “I guess that makes you the top dog around here.”
We were one of the First.
“The first what?”
The first to know, to think, to create.
Beckman studied the slender alien, noting the tiny fold of his ear, the smooth pure white of his skin, the absence of hair and the smoothly shaped ellipsoidal head. He wore a simple maroon jumpsuit that hung loosely in places and white skin tight gloves. His arms and legs were spindly under his clothes, yet Beckman guessed he must have been a good deal stronger than a man, considering the higher gravity he preferred.
“So, did we win the war?”
The Intruders have been returned to their proper place.
“But you’re going to go kick their butts, right? Teach them a lesson?”
That would be unnecessarily aggressive.
“They kicked ass out there. All those ships destroyed. I saw the movie. You can’t let them get away with that.”
There shall be no punitive retaliation. We have no desire to damage their civilization. They are young. In time, they will develop. The penalty for not doing so would be severe.
Beckman looked surprised. “Wait a minute. You said, they’re young? I thought we were young, and they were old?”
They are old, from your perspective, young by ours.
“So what are we? Amoeba?”
You are younger.
Beckman was irritated at the thought of being younger than young, but that was fate and he’d been taught over and over again, no matter who you meet, there’ll always be someone older. He put it out of his mind. “Suppose they attack again? Suppose they attack Earth?”
They have no interest in your world.
“We’ve got their ship. They’re going to want it back.”
The Biologist took a step towards the wall. It vanished, replaced by an image of space. Hundreds of kilometers away, a shining rounded cylinder floated above the pristine blue and white globe of Earth. It was unlike any ship in the battle he’d seen from the mothership’s log room. Beyond the cylinder was another ship that was its twin while three more held formation to the rear.
“Nice window.”
It is a view. The Biologist pointed toward the lead ship closest to them. You see, you need not be concerned, they will not come looking for their ship.
Beckman leaned forward, studying the massive cylinder. Floating beneath the central section was a tiny gray sliver, with a row of silver specs floating either side of it.
“Wait a minute!” Beckman said in disbelief. “That ship was huge.”
Size is relative. For now, your perspective is small. In time, that will change.
The Biologist issued a thought and the area of the gray sliver expanded. The wrecked Intruder mothership floated in space, surrounded by small silver elliptical craft. Beckman swallowed, his mind spinning as he realized each cylindrical ship was hundreds of times larger than the Intruder ship.
“That ship was a wreck. How’d you get it off the ground?”
We isolated it from your world’s gravitational field.
The derelict mothership drifted toward the cylinder. Beckman thought they were going to collide, but the intruder vessel slid through the hull of the cylinder and vanished. A moment later, the smaller elliptical ships streaked away from the big cylinder and the view returned to the wide angle perspective. He could just make out the silver ellipses, now no bigger than dots, as they dived toward the Australian land mass.
“What are you going to do with their ship? Study it?”
Their primitive technology is of no interest to us.
“But you captured that sphere thingy?”
We assisted your neighbors in capturing it, so they may study it, and come to understand the Intruders as we do. It is the first Command Nexus to be taken with its consciousness intact. It will help involved civilizations contain future aggression.
“Involved? In the war?”
Involved in relations between developing civilizations.
“Developing? Like us?”
You are not involved. Neither are we. Your time of involvement is yet to come. Ours has long passed.
“Right,” Beckman said thoughtfully, trying to fathom the tall humanoid’s meaning. “But you’re here now, so you are involved.”
We have reset the balance, nothing more. This is not our responsibility.
“But you set the rules. Right? So when we get out here, you’ll be setting the rules for us too?”
You will not have to concern yourselves with that for a long time.
Beckman gave the Biologist a surprised look. “We’ll be out here one day, soon.”
Not soon. You greatly underestimate the difficulties.
Beckman furrowed his brow. “How tough can it be?” He turned to the Biologist. “What do we have to do to get out here, with you guys?”
Evolve.
“So we’re too dumb for space?”
No, your species will become an interstellar civilization in five hundred to a thousand of your Earth years – if you do not destroy yourselves first – but you will need to advance your understanding of your place in the universe, and your tolerance of difference. If you cannot live in peace with yourselves, how can you live peacefully with others not of your world? It is something every species must learn. In time, when you are ready, your neighbors will help you.
“Help us? How?”
The resources you need no longer exist in this system. They were mined out long before your species came into existence.
“Damn! You mean someone stole our stuff?”
There was no sentient life on your world at that time.
“So even if we figure everything out, we’re still stuck here?”
Your neighbors will give you the resources you need, when you are ready.
“We’re ready!”
They will decide that, not you. It’s why they have been studying you so intensively. They know your time is coming, and are preparing for you.
Beckman scratched the back of his neck. “But they don’t understand us, right? Our emotions, how we work. So how can they judge?”
It is a vanity of your species that you believe you are not understood.
“But they’re aliens. You’re an alien, no offence. No one is supposed to understand anyone. Isn’t that how it goes?”
Everything you are, they once were. They know more about you than you know about yourselves. We are the ones your neighbors do not understand.
Beckman looked surprised. “Why is that?”
The greater encompasses the lesser. The lesser cannot encompass the greater.
“Deep! So what’s going to happen now? Everyone down there is going to know for sure you guys are out here.”
Nothing will change for your civilization.
“I don’t mean to be telling you your business, but satellites were destroyed, planes were shot down, nukes exploded. People tend to notice stuff like that.”
There will be no proof.
“There’s alien crap everywhere.”
We are gathering all Intruder artifacts from your southern continent. Nothing will remain.
“We tried to nuke them. Something must have happened to make us do that.”
The view adjusted. The northern tip of Australia appeared, rushing up to meet them. Ahead and t
o the right was a silver ellipse diving toward Arnhem Land, towing a much larger rocky object. The view swerved up away from Earth as the craft providing the images pulled up, performed a complete circle and stopped. Off to the right, the other craft performed the same maneuver. The two small asteroids tumbled towards the Earth, beginning to flake tongues of fire as they punched into the atmosphere while the tow craft tracked their trajectories.
“What are you doing?”
Impacting two asteroids onto your planet. The first will land on the military base the Intruders destroyed, the second on the crash site itself.
“Are you nuts!”
The asteroids will not seriously affect your climate. Global temperatures will fall slightly for less than a decade, but your planet will recover.
Beckman’s mind swam. “You can’t hit us with asteroids? Whose side are you on?”
It is for your own good.
The two small asteroids became engulfed in flames as they tore down into the thicker atmosphere, side by side.
“Suppose you miss.”
There is no possibility of that.
The twin asteroids become brilliant white stars as they dived toward the vast tropical forest of northern Australia. They struck seconds apart, the first one precisely on the ruins of Tindal Air Force base, the second in the center of the Goyder River Valley. Two brilliant white flashes bloomed like fusion bombs, sending shockwaves expanding in circular patterns around both impact sites and launching millions of tons of debris into the atmosphere. Beckman watched stunned, chilled at the prospect that they could easily do the same to Earth’s cities.
“They’ll detect the shockwaves,” Beckman said. “They’ll know they hit days after the ship crashed.”
We have disabled your world’s energy supply, rendering your seismic sensors inoperable.
“You did what?”
At this moment, there is no electricity generation anywhere on your world.
“How could you black out our entire planet?”
Your technology is fragile, easily neutralized. We have also collapsed all Intruder mine shafts, making them appear to be subsidences caused by the asteroid impacts.
“No one’s going to believe two asteroids hit the Earth at the same time. The odds of that would be insane.”
They will think it was one asteroid, that broke up as it entered your atmosphere. Analysis of the asteroid debris will prove that beyond doubt.
“What about the satellites? And the planes that crashed? I suppose the asteroids bounced off them on the way down?”
Your star is currently experiencing what you call sunspot activity. It is the most severe such event in your recorded history. It has already disabled all of your satellites and will be seen to be the cause of your planet wide power failure.
Beckman looked puzzled. “Kind of coincidental, isn’t it?”
No. We stimulated your star to produce the required activity.
Beckman was shocked. “You can do that?”
The inner planet you call Mercury has been slightly damaged, but it is a lifeless world, and the damage will not prevent you utilizing its resources when your civilization is more advanced.
“Tough break for Mercury.”
The image returned again to the wide angle view of the fleet floating above the Earth. The two brilliant points of light in northern Australia turned slowly to brown clouds that mushroomed up through the stratosphere.
“You’re forgetting one thing. I know. The people with me know.” Beckman glanced down at the Earth with a sinking feeling. “That’s why I’m up here, isn’t it? You’re not letting us go back?”
You have been brought here for cleansing. No trace of contact will remain within your cellular structures. That is all.
For the first time, Beckman remembered the plasma wound that had burned his chest. He looked down confused, finding no trace of the wound. He rubbed his hand across the perfectly healthy hair and skin on his chest, wondering if the self inflicted wound had been a bad dream, then he stared out at the technological leviathans floating above a beautiful and ignorant world. “But I’ll still know.”
The Biologist’s response was a long time in coming.
No, you won’t.
* * * *
Dr McInness stood on a rocky outcrop, peering at the dust cloud ten kilometers away. It filled the western sky, obscuring the last rays of sunset as it was carried away to the north by the prevailing winds. In spite of the long hot hike from the coast, he felt remarkably fit, even refreshed. He was surprised that his fitness had held up so well. He had no idea that just a few hours earlier the bones in his ankle had been crushed.
Standing beside the scientist, Beckman peered through his binoculars toward the base of the asteroid impact. The debris cloud was still too thick to see the impact area, but it was clearing. “We should be able get in there tomorrow.”
“We should wait another day,” Dr McInness said. “The air is like soup down there.”
“No, I want to get this over with. I have letters to write,” Beckman said grimly, glancing uncomfortably at the four freshly dug graves laid out under a white limbed gum tree. Burying Markus, Steamer, Cougar and Timer had been grisly work. He wasn’t even sure if they’d put the correct body parts in the right graves, but they’d done the best they could. At least, that was what the implanted memories told him. He didn’t know why Steamer’s fatboy had exploded, killing all four, but the sight of his men being torn apart was something he’d never forget. No autopsy would ever discover that the body parts in the graves had been synthesized from DNA samples and irradiated as if exposed to a weapon overload. He kept telling himself it was an accident, but even so, he was going to kick some egghead’s butt when he got back to Groom Lake. They should have known the damn things were unstable.
We should have stuck to the weapons we understood. This alien crap is too unreliable.
Beckman would fight hard until the day he died to make that policy. It was an implanted drive programmed by a quantum electrical device buried deep within the cellular structure of his brain. It isolated some memories from his conscious mind, but otherwise did not interfere with his functioning. The quantum implants that he and his companions now carried would function only while they were alive. Once their core temperatures cooled, the implants would dissolve into the surrounding tissue, leaving no trace of their existence. “We’ll hike in tomorrow, evac tomorrow night,” he said, then started down the slope to the camp.
Virus had his headphones on and was channel surfing the short wave. It was an exact, indistinguishable copy of the radio that the seeker had blown out of Hooper’s hands. Care had been taken to ensure that even the impurities in the metals were copied, to prevent any indication that the radio had been fabricated by a vastly superior civilization.
“You established contact yet?” Beckman asked.
Virus shook his head, motioning towards the southern sky. “It’s a total shut out.”
“Keep trying. I want those choppers here in forty-eight hours.”
Beckman walked over to the Australian zoologist standing near the campfire with her husband. The aboriginal trackers and a group of local hunters sat around the fire watching a big kangaroo roasting in the flames. Laura was gazing up at the colored lights winding across the darkening sky with a puzzled expression. Beckman glanced up at the waves of color streaking the heavens, impressed. He’d heard they were similar to the northern lights but now that he saw them, he realized they were much bigger and brighter.
“They’re beautiful.”
Laura looked confused. “They are, but I’ve never seen them this far north.”
“What do you call them?”
“Aurora Australis. You normally have to be way down south to see them. And they’re never this spectacular.”
“It’s the sunspots,” Xeno said.
“Bloody big sunspots,” Slab said from the fire. He sat beside Dan pushing the kangaroo into the flames with a stick. He was still s
ilently cursing Bill’s lousy navigation. If Bill hadn’t hit that submerged rock and sunk their boat, he’d be downing his favorite beer now, not drinking tasteless water full of purification tablets.
Guess it’s better than dying of thirst, he thought miserably.
Sergeant Hooper looked at the roasting kangaroo dubiously. His right side felt strangely stiff, a side effect of the accelerated cell regeneration that had healed his burns. In a day, the stiffness would be gone and forgotten, although it would not be until he returned to base that he would discover the inverted dagger tattoo on his right shoulder had inexplicably vanished. His left arm, by contrast, had no indication that the bones had ever been broken. “What’s it taste like?”
“Chicken!” Wal declared with a grin.
Bill smacked his lips together in anticipation. “Very lean beef.”
“I don’t care what it tastes like,” Nuke said eagerly, “I’m starving.” Like Hooper, he felt stiff, although it would take almost a week for his cloned lungs to fully meld into his system. Even though his chest had been opened by the surgeons, there were no scars, while the synthetic blood flowing through his veins would significantly increase his life span.
“You don’t mind eating your national symbol?” Hooper asked.
“Meat’s meat, mate,” Slab said.
“Slab would eat boot leather,” Cracker said, “if he had a cold one to wash it down with.”
“You should try tiger shark,” Dan said. “Now that really is like eating leather.”
“I’d eat fried eagle, if I was hungry,” Tucker said, fingering his knife impatiently.
Hooper sniffed the aroma rising from the roasting meat, deciding it smelt like beef. He was hungry enough to eat half a dozen steaks, but then increased appetite was a common side effect of the treatment he’d undergone.
Bandaka pointed to the western sky. “Look.”
Beckman and the others turned in the direction the hunter indicated. Approaching barely a hundred meters above the ground were three brilliant lights. Two were spheres of glowing white light, dazzling against the darkening sky and the debris cloud in the distance, while darting back and forth between them was a much smaller, brilliant red light. The red light zigzagged erratically, making acute angle high speed turns, while the two glowing white orbs floated in formation as they glided towards the east. The leading white light was slightly higher and ahead of its trailing companion. When they were almost due south of the camp, the two white balls of light hovered motionless, while the small red light performed several more acute angle turns, then came up into formation between its two larger companions. For a moment the three lights floated in the sky, then in perfect unison, they streaked away to the south, curving up vertically, to shoot straight up out of the atmosphere.
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