Robert Wilson and the Invasion from Within

by Scott Ruesterholz

  Anton Frozos had taken control of the League of Planets nearly five years ago, after a brutal and bloody civil war. The League now controls over 140 planets, up from ninety when Frozos had taken power. To this point, Nayan has avoided involvement in the League. Intergalactic wars and politics are not a priority for the Nayan people. Originally, they traded minerals with any other planet, but as more and more planets had fallen to Frozos, their trade was increasingly being done with members of the League.

  There was increasing chatter throughout villages like this that the League would take over Nayan. Alongside this chatter, there were rumors of the brutality of Frozos’s rule in mineral-rich planets, with the populace turned into slaves to boost production as much as possible. Frozos’s vastly growing imperial ambitions required a constant supply of raw materials to enhance his military power and feed the ever-growing citizenry. Frozos had dubbed his planetary growth project the “Invest to Trade Initiative.” New entrants to the League would benefit from promised substantial investment from the League to enhance their technologies, which would enable them to trade more and boost the living standards of their citizens.

  In reality, there would be substantial investment, but this investment came with strings, often a League military presence. Frozos was essentially working to secure supply lines throughout the galaxy in key products and the promised “investment” was really just a purchase of influence and natural resources. With his influence, by paying off the right leaders, and on-the-ground military presence, political freedoms were quickly and easily tramped and forced labor became the norm.

  While Frozos had been in power for five years, there are still rumors of a resistance. These rebel forces had been nearly snuffed out, but are said to survive on the piracy of League resources. Their reported leader comes from the water planet, Aquine, which had been the last holdout in the League Civil War, before falling and being completely destroyed by Frozos. Little does young Robert know that through this village they were smuggling minerals and supplies to resistance fighters from the mine fifty miles away. Indeed, his parents are among the leaders of the effort.

  Driving past the downtown center of their village—which is really little more than a coffee shop, diner, and general store—Marcus’s friends turn off the main road to head to their homes. He continues, having about a half mile to go. As he bikes along, it suddenly goes dark. Marcus looks up, confused. There hadn’t been any clouds in the sky all day after all. Above him, there are no clouds but three massive spaceships, similar to the tankers Marcus had seen, which were used to ship minerals and other goods, but it was unusual for them to visit his town. Coming out of these tankers are a few dozen smaller planes, maybe twenty or thirty feet long.

  Suddenly, there is a loud explosion behind him, and he’s thrown from his bike.

  He gets up, covered in dirt, his elbows and knees scratched up and bleeding. Fortunately for him, he is wearing a helmet, but his ears are ringing from the shock of the explosion. He turns around and sees the downtown on fire, while planes are circling and firing on the buildings. Another one lands, its back door drops down and a dozen troops of species he doesn’t recognize walk out, firing upon the crowd. Screaming and crying, he runs towards his house, less than a quarter of a mile away.

  As he nears his house, he sees his mother running towards him. Her usually warm, welcoming face is pinched with worry. As they meet, Robert asks, “Mommy, what’s happening? I’m scared!”

  “Shh, don’t worry, Marcus, you’ll be safe,” she reassures her son as she picks him up into her arms and sprints towards the house.

  Next to their home is a storm cellar—they hurry down the stairs. Marcus’s mom places him on the floor and tells him, “Shh, stay absolutely silent. Not one sound. Remember that your father and I love you deeply.”

  Aware he may never speak to her again, Marcus takes in her long brown hair, tied back from her face; her black tunic and apron. He whispers, “I love you,” nods, and she closes the door to the cellar and locks it.

  Through a crack in the wooden door, Marcus can see her, walking away, then standing by the mailbox at the end of the property next to the main road, maybe fifty feet away. A voice booms, “The planet of Nayan is now part of the League of Planets. Come peacefully, and you will be treated justly. Resistance is futile. The planet of Nayan is now part of the League of Planets.” The recording plays over and over again.

  Marcus’s mother is waiting anxiously; he can see her shifting from foot to foot as a column of troops marches down the street toward the house. Only later does Marcus realize that his mother knows if she stays it is a death sentence, but if she runs into the house, she worries that they will search throughout and find her son. She’d rather die than lose him. And so, she stands her ground, hoping beyond hope to see her husband, coming silently to terms with the inevitable.

  There are a dozen troops, in orange camouflage with the blue League of Planets insignia on their right soldier.

  “Nayan is now part of the League of Planets. We know this village was smuggling goods to the rebels. Tell us what you know,” a soldier demands. As he asks, behind the column, another small craft lands.

  “I know nothing,” Marcus’s mother responds, defiantly.

  “Come with us then.” As the soldier attempts to grab her, she pulls a small laser gun from her apron pocket, and fires at the soldier. She shoots again at another as she runs away from the house, continuing to fire. They fire back, and she is hit in the left thigh and right shoulder, falling to the ground, bleeding.

  Marcus is terrified. He clamps his jaw shut, his hands over his mouth to keep it closed. Tears stream down his face as he sees his mother crawl on the ground, but he is determined to make her proud and stay absolutely silent. He sees a massive pale-blue figure walk out of the nearby spacecraft.

  The blue man grabs his mother by her wounded shoulder and pulls her up as she shrieks in pain.

  “Your wounds don’t have to be fatal. Tell me, are some strangers who are doomed to defeat really worth dying over.”

  Marcus can barely hear her, as she has lost most of her strength, but staring into his evil red eyes, she is undeterred and responds clearly, “Yes, Frozos.”

  “So be it.” He throws her to the ground and fires two shots.

  Robert jumps awake. He is in his underground office, sitting back in his chair in front of the large monitors and next to the black sphere. It’s nearly 5:00 AM. He must have fallen asleep down here for a few hours, awakened only by that nightmare of the past. For nearly thirty years, he had been haunted by the memory of his mother’s death at Anton Frozos’s hand. More than anything else, he wants to avenge her and kill Frozos. As he matured, he has realized that to truly avenge his mother’s death, he needs to destroy Frozos’s ideology, which distilled to its simplest form is that “might is right.” Regardless, he still thirsts for Frozos’s blood.

  On his monitor, he notices an unread message. He clicks into it and reads:

  “Message received. Understood. Act as necessary.

  —VL”

  Robert is comforted by that note, exits, and looks to his live space camera feed. There is still just the one transport destroyer; he wonders how long until Frozos’s other ships arrive. There is an untidy mess of papers on the desk, notes he was collating and adjusting ahead of the 9:00 AM deadline to turn over the towers. He pushes all the papers into a neat stack and opens the top left drawer. As he is about to put the papers in, he is notices a browned envelope, a bit worse for wear—after all, it is fifteen years old. He pulls out paper from inside the envelope. Typed on the page was the new name he was given, “Robert Wilson,” and in red ink lies the message he had written himself, “REMEMBER THE MINE.”

  Taking a moment to reflect, he then puts the paper back in the envelope and back into the desk drawer. He is certain what he must do next.

  Chapter 10

  Jersey
City

  April 5, 2029

  Robert Wilson stands in his underground office, his back to his powered-down computer monitors. It’s 8:45 AM, and he’s neatly dressed in a navy-blue suit and red tie with an American flag lapel pin. The black sphere is just to his right, but it is outside the view of the camera several feet in front of him. Given the security needs of the underground facility, Robert would not permit a live camera crew into his bunker. Instead, one cameraman—a balding, heavy-set man in his forties—was escorted into the room blindfolded. Robert is prerecording his remarks ahead of President Neverian’s 9:00 AM deadline. When he finishes his remarks, the cameraman with the recording will be rushed back upstairs, once again blindfolded. Unlike his last remarks, there is no teleprompter to provide notes for him to refer to. On his desk behind him, Robert has etched out a rough outline of what he was going to say. It’s just Robert and a lone cameraman on behalf of global media networks. After the two men nod to signal their readiness, the camera light flashes red, signaling the recording has commenced.

  “Good morning. I won’t bury the lede. I will not be turning over control of the force field or any critical Arbor Ridge property to the United States Government or to any other government. This technology was created by Arbor Ridge employees, paid for by Arbor Ridge shareholders, and it is the private property of this company. We do not seek to profit from it any more than we seek to profit from our annual charitable giving. That does not make it any less ours. I’ve consulted with our attorneys, and we see no legal authority under which the government could take it.

  “Now, I will not pretend that my stand is purely a principled one on property rights grounds; I make this point to furnish this company’s legal opinion should it prove necessary to fight for it in a court of law, not the court of public opinion. We cannot permit a crisis to lead us to ignore the rules and framework that have built a society that is worth saving.

  “The primary reason I choose to exercise my legal right not to comply is that I do not trust the intentions of our government. As I said to you yesterday, there is never just one spy. I was trained in an elite military school on an isolated planet in Frozos’s empire. We were never told how many schools on the planet there were, but there were several. I always assumed there was an obsession not to cross-pollinate because multiple people were being sent to each planet, perhaps with different missions, and Frozos wanted to avoid a cross-mingling that could lead us to conspire with each other against him.

  “I was valedictorian of my training camp, and my greatest proficiency was in technology. I believe the force field above our heads is a testament to this fact. It was my assumption that Frozos would send spies with different skills to fully invade a planet from within, going after its education institutions, governments, private sector, and technological networks. I had always sworn to myself I would fight Frozos at any cost. Once here, I realized the best way to do this would be to follow the plan, use my technological knowledge to gain wealth and influence, hence my focus on defense contracting. I provided Frozos updates on my progress as scheduled right from here.”

  Robert points to his right, and the cameraman turns to focus on a black metallic sphere. Robert punches a few keys, a hole opens and a ramp extends to the floor. Robert walks over.

  “I leveraged my spaceship’s communications network to offer updates to Frozos or his advisors. However, like I said, technology, is my strong suit, so after about five years or sometime in 2020, I wired a system to track the frequency of the pulse of our messages and used that data to find other spies.”

  Robert now walks back to the computer monitors, punches a key and a monitor flashes on with a world map and bulging red circles emanating across the United States, Western Europe, and East Asia.

  “This is every pulse I successfully tracked as a Frozos communication. Now, some emanate from the same spy who travelled. I have found at least twenty spies, myself included. Several amounted to nothing, two have died, but several achieved successes in various industries.

  “As CEO of Arbor Ridge, I was criticized for seemingly random acquisitions beginning in 2022. In actuality, the pattern was simple. I bought companies run by a Frozos spy; yes I bought a few others as well, just to cover my tracks to Frozos. That’s why I kicked out every CEO; I wanted to purge individuals potentially loyal to Frozos. I did not even make my co-founders, Mark Morrison and Chris Bailey, aware of any of these facts until last November.

  “The spy CEOs were people who rebounded to occupy seats of power today: Attorney General Braddock, World Bank President Johnson, Commerce Secretary Clemons, UN Ambassador Sayers, America’s Council of CEOs Chairman Stewartson, the Affiliated Workers Union President Paulson. There was another who went on to enjoy life in retirement, Bill Williamson.

  “I stopped all contact with Frozos in 2026, having developed enough data to track outgoing communications. There was one spy I never could identify and that one was from Washington D.C. This individual only sent written reports, most of which I was able to intercept, including one last July, saying the invasion target date was early spring 2029. By January, the date was narrowed to between March twentieth and April tenth.

  “It concerned me that President Neverian appointed so many officials to his government who were Frozos spies. My concern grew on April second and April third when he proposed such a cowardly policy and yet was so confident. He did not seem like a man in a state of panic. It seemed so inconsistent. Then on his meeting with leaders April third, the retired Bill Williamson, a former Frozos spy, was in attendance—a completely forgettable man. Why would he be there?

  “Last night, I looked through every communication with Frozos and noticed two that came from Beijing—there had never been a communication with China before. Unlike those in Washington, these were two-way video calls, not text reports. President Neverian was meeting Chinese President Li in Beijing when both these pings were sent. Of course, China has been actively supporting Neverian’s surrender strategy while amassing its military at its border with Russia.

  “In summary, I believe Frozos has compromised our government to its very top. I believe President Neverian is a spy, and that he wants our force field so he can turn it off. And I believe they have bribed the Chinese government with a promise they could rule over much of Asia. Put clearly, President Li had negotiated to be slave driver on behalf of Frozos over much of the world.

  “There is only one person in government I trust—Vice President Victoria Larom, because she was outside of Washington when messages were sent, and because President Neverian has kept her at such a distance. At 2:00 this morning, I transmitted every piece of data I have to her. For transparency, I have posted at 9:00 AM on Arbor Ridge’s website every interaction I have had with Frozos while on Earth.

  I will never hand over control over the force field to an entity I fear is corrupted by Frozos. If that makes me a hypocrite, so be it. I have also developed a plan I am prepared to present in an open forum at the appropriate time, that I believe can defeat Frozos and secure our planet. Thank you and God bless you.”

  The red light turns off. Robert walks over to the door to let in Mark and Chris as well as two security officials. As the security guard walks over to the cameraman to put on his blindfold, he turns to Robert, “Well, sir, if it matters, you convinced me. And I voted for the guy!”

  Robert pats the man on the shoulder and thanks him. He, Mark, and Chris follow the security guards who are guiding the cameraman to the elevator. Once back in Robert’s seventieth floor office, the cameraman’s blindfold is taken off, and he rushes off to get his recording ready for live television.

  “Take a seat, guys,” Robert gestures to his two friends. “It’s not often you get to watch a speech with the guy who gave it. Plus, it will be fun to watch your facial reactions in real-time.”

  Right at 9:00 AM, the television cuts to Robert’s speech. In households across America and the world, every
one is watching the speech, except in China, which has opted to air the speech on a fifteen-minute delay so that the government could monitor the content before determining whether to permit Chinese state media to broadcast the remarks. Robert closely watches Mark and Chris’s every reaction, the slight nod or frown, to gauge their true feeling of the remarks. He can sense their rapt attention and feels more confident that the speech did in fact rise to the occasion. As his remarks conclude, his two friends turn to him and say together, “Well done!”

  The sentiment on air is one of disbelief as pundits ponder the implications of the allegations against President Neverian, phrases like “Manchurian Candidate,” “Constitutional Crisis,” and “treason” are being thrown around. There seems to be unanimity, at least among these talking heads, that the force field is best kept in Arbor Ridge’s control. As this banter goes on, Robert’s phone rings; someone from the Arbor Ridge control room is calling him.

  “Hello…I see,” Robert nods along. “No surprise,” and then pausing a moment, he says, “Well, I just bragged to the world about our technological genius. I’d like to think we could hack into their networks and force it into their broadcasts.” Robert hangs up the phone, annoyed, as Mark and Chris turn to him.

  “The Chinese aren’t airing the remarks; just showing a snippet of me on the force field and talking about Neverian.” He bounces up out of his chair with nervous energy. “They’re complicit in the whole damn affair and trying to sweep it under the rug. But the dirty secrets always find their way into the light.”

  Mark looks up at Robert from his seat, “But is it our place to shine the light? You basically ordered a cyberattack on one of the world’s most powerful nations.”