“There's nowhere to run,” Jeff said.
The one way out was back to the elevators. Jeff took a look around the corner, head low. A half dozen Bunnie marched down the hall towards them. The invaders checked under desks and behind every piece of equipment. A few grumbled, and there were sighs of displeasure at not finding anyone else to shoot. The group of Greys appeared behind them. They stopped after stepping out of the grav lift. They were carrying on a whispering argument amongst themselves. The Head Grey appeared behind them, prodding them along with his distinct sickly white hands and pinched excited voice.
Jeff found a wall switch and shut the first security door. It hissed closed. Something magnetic clicked inside the walls.
“Awesome!” Jordan said.
“Not really. We have to assume the Grey can get in,” Jeff said. “This buys us very little time.”
Jordan got up and busied herself at a waist-high bot that stood dormant against a wall of the room. She turned dials and knobs and pushed buttons. “Wake up,” she said, but it didn't respond. “Defend this place!” She kicked it.
A screen next to the security door lit up, displaying the room on the other side. Four of the Bunnie came to the other side of the sealed door, touched the open button. When it ignored them, one tried to force the door by prying at its sides. Jeff examined the wall switch. A tiny readout read, “Locked.” The door didn't move and the Bunnie gave up. Next, the Head Grey appeared onscreen. An audio relay transmitted the voices from the other side of the wall. Jeff backed up. The small room around him felt like it was pressing in. There was no way forward and no way back. The air tasted thin. The Grey would open the door, and they would once again be captured, or worse. Or maybe Jordan would turn him over to the Grey once again.
“You stink, Grey,” Not-Kim said. “You smell like rotten eggs.”
“And your soldiers let the humans seal themselves inside the security chamber,” the Grey said.
“There was resistance,” Not-Kim said with a hiss.
“Stunners. All they have are stun weapons. Why can't you get that through your simple heads?”
“That's all we have as well. That's all you gave us.”
“Jeff,” Jordan said, grabbing his arm. “Look.”
She pointed to the black vault. It stood open. They hadn't heard a thing, but for some reason the door to the last chamber of the security office awaited their entrance.
“What did you do?” Jeff said.
“Nothing, I swear,” Jordan said. She looked closely at the screen and at the Grey. “You know, he doesn't look so good.”
The Grey stood prominent onscreen as it got close to the other side of the door. Its face looked pale, especially when the other Greys fell in behind it to provide contrast. Sweat beaded the Head Grey's bulbous face. The Head Grey's fingers vanished out of sight, working unseen controls.
“He'll get in soon,” Jordan said. “We need to get in there.”
Jeff turned and hesitated before the open vault and the dark space beyond. Could this be the origin of the intrusion on his life, how the Grey spied on him, robbed him of peace, the very source of his paranoia? If the Commons had tech that could transport people and aircraft and even thoughts across the galaxy, what could it do with data?
“Jeff, you need to figure something out,” she said.
Jeff nodded. Beyond the vault door would be just a room with just another computer system. Any system had a limit to its abilities. Anything finite could be quantified. Thus the system could be understood. He went inside.
***
Jordan watched the Grey continue to tinker with the controls outside the door. The tiny creature looked frustrated and muttered to itself. The D-bag was angry. A grin crept across Jordan's face.
“Hey, Grey!” Jordan said.
The group of Bunnie on the opposite side of the door looked about, startled as Jordan's voice came over a speaker. They started to bob up and down on their knees. One reached over the Grey and tapped at the door.
“Ignore her,” the Head Grey said. It kept working. Jordan detected a musty smell from the communication relay that remained untranslated, but Jordan caught the drift. Irritation. The Grey's face mirrored the pheromone chain, twisting in an expression beyond rage as the door resisted its efforts and refused to budge. The other Greys appeared behind their leader, careful not to touch the Bunnie standing around them. Not-Kim stood in the rear of the group.
“Hey, Greys! Are you as a species throwing in with the Bunnie?” Jordan said. “Why are you helping them? You know they're invading your city.”
“Shut up, Jordan,” the Head Grey said. He ground his teeth.
The other Greys looked to either side at the large invaders towering over them.
“You're helping them bring down this entire place,” Jordan said. “Too bad. It seems like a nice city. And have you noticed anything strange about your leader? Look at him. His skin color. His face. Does he look healthy to you?”
“Shut up; shut up; shut up,” the Head Grey said. An invisible cloud of Grey stink no doubt full of expletives wafted from the other side of the door.
“What did your leader tell you?” she said. “What did he promise you? And ask yourself, what might he have promised the Bunnie? Maybe you're fine with all of this, and you want to see your city torn down.”
Something inside the wall clicked. The security door whooshed open. The Head Grey stood there smiling, and with the wave of a hand, two Bunnie stepped inside. One of them reached for her, his long arms darting forward and pinning Jordan to the wall. The impact jarred her, her head knocking hard into the unyielding metal. Jordan’s head rang, and the room spun around her.
“Wait,” another of the Greys said. It was indistinguishable from the others, with a short, bulbous head, and skin a rich, medium grey without blotch or blemish. It entered the room along with the rest of its brood. It gave the Head Grey a look. “We are interested in what the human has to say.”
“Whatever for?” the Head Grey said. “She is a human. Humans always lie. Thus, she is lying.”
“I'm not lying,” Jordan said with a strained voice. She fought for breath, one Bunnie arm firm under her throat. She pawed at the appendage, but it held her fast. “Something is wrong with him, you know. Does your kind get sick? He looks sick.”
“I'm not sick,” the Head Grey said. It swatted away one of the Greys that got too close. Other Greys started to inspect their fellow. The air filled with multiple scents, contrasting and uncomplimentary and unexcused.
The Bunnie looked confused. Their heads cocked, and they got jittery as the Greys started to mill around the Head Grey, no longer speaking aloud but secreting their scents amongst themselves. Some of the Grey gestured expansively. The Head Grey waved dismissively at them, intent and annoyed by the silent argument that was bringing matters to a standstill. Their little neck glands puffed. A few of the Grey pointed at the Bunnie. The pantomime family squabble dragged on.
Jordan looked at the Bunnie that held her. The grip on her throat had slackened enough to allow her to take in air. “I think they're talking about you.” He didn't react, just kept his eyes on the Greys and on Not-Kim.
“Enough,” Not-Kim said. With a signal from him, the other Bunnie opened fire. The Greys were struck by multiple yellow flashes from the Bunnie weapons. At point-blank range, the Bunnie couldn't miss. The Greys wiggled and trembled and fell to the floor in a circle around the Head Grey.
“That settles-” the Head Grey started to say when Not-Kim shot him. When the Head Grey hit the ground, Not-Kim fired a few more times into the Grey's twitching body.
Not-Kim snarled. “Talk too much,” he said. “And you stink.” The other Bunnie clicked their mandibles and tapped their arms and legs together in a soft thumping of applause.
“Can't argue with that,” Jordan said.
“And now for you,” Not-Kim said. He got close to her and leaned in, face-to-face. Jordan had been near the Bunnie, fought them, run f
rom them, seen them in disguises that looked like rent human skins, and yet still found herself trembling as the giant, sixteen-legged thing with the hairy face and mandibles and mirrored, faceted eyes breathed in her face. She gulped, tried to move away, but the Bunnie that held her kept her still.
“Get us to the central security terminal,” Not-Kim said. “And tell me, where is Jeff Abel hiding?”
Jordan managed to look towards the black vault door. It was closed again with Jeff inside.
CHAPTER 41
“WELCOME, KNAVE,” a mechanical voice said, dripping with snooty affectation.
The dark room behind the vault door lit up before Jeff like a cityscape under a canopy of night. Yellow and orange lines streamed from a single terminal that also sported a red eye, the lines carrying a pulse of energy that flowed to and from the center. Thousands of tiny pinpoints of light came to life on floor and walls and ceiling, giving the illusion of vast space. The black vault door whispered shut behind him.
Jeff got close to the terminal and looked into the red eye. It looked back into him. The voice reverberated throughout the enclosed space, making it impossible to know from where it had originated. Yet the eye remained the focal point of the entire room.
“Computer, who do you think I am?” he said to the eye.
“You are the knave. You are Jeff Abel. You are the designate first contact target for the human species. You are the infection to be watched for and the parameter for this system's alarms.” The voice and speech pattern sounded different than the translation computer from the bunker. This system had to be more advanced as it had just assigned a value to Jeff, and not a good one. It reminded Jeff of his fifth grade recorder teacher Carmine Garibaldi, a man who had taken his music teaching way too seriously to the detriment of his students. “You are tone deaf,” he would say. “You have no sense of rhythm. You cannot play and are a bad musician.”
“Have we met before? How is it that you know me?”
Buzz. Click. A distortion filled the room. There came a whirring sound from the walls, like a computer printer that had run out of paper. After a moment, the sound stopped. Jeff felt for his translator to see if it was actually vibrating, but it wasn't.
“Translation services,” the voice said. “Commons archives. Happy Alien Welcome Committee minutes. Now listing points of contact with knave.”
One display listed the departments and services the voice had just mentioned, the stream of data all readable and translated. More items appeared, hundreds, all tagged with Jeff's name in bold. On the list, Jeff even saw Commons Sewage and Disposal Services. This machine was connected to everything, and in everything it found some of Jeff. What had the little Grey done?
“So I'm famous,” Jeff said. “Or infamous. Why do you keep calling me knave?”
“Because you always lie.” If a machine could sneer, this one would.
“Come on, now. Not always.” Jeff felt the eye. Cool to the touch. It didn't react, and the computer didn't respond. The eye just stared at him.
“If I'm so bad, why did you let me in here?” Jeff said.
“Access is denied,” the computer said.
“Yet here I am. So who actually has access?”
The monitor blinked, and a list ran top to bottom, winking once and then projecting the data into the air as the translation computer had done, data streaming up towards the ceiling and sideways towards the walls. Jeff examined the information. The list was alphabetized. Each entry was a collection of letters and syllables that was pronounceable but with no exact translatable meaning. But his translator did tell him each entry was a group of some sort. On another list, similar entries had their own building. Jeff snapped his fingers.
“These are all individual alien species, members of the Commons?”
“These are the member races with access to the central security terminal and this program.”
“Which is this thing,” he said, looking at the terminal. “And this is you.”
The machine had a variety of input devices, none of which looked familiar. There was some kind of keyboard that didn't have any rhyme or reason to it, with hundreds of keys along with dials and pads and unlabeled buttons and a strange square filled with what looked like orange marmalade. The eye watched him carefully.
“And what about Captain Flemming with the Commons police?” Jeff said. “Does he have access?”
“As indicated on the list,” the computer said as if it was obvious which of the thousands of entries might be Flemming or his member species.
“But he couldn't get into this place,” Jeff said.
“He has access,” the computer said. “His species has access. He is a knight, and the knight tells the truth.”
“You're crazy,” Jeff said softly, shaking his head. The comment didn't faze the computer. More to himself, “So what does my non-access get me? Activate security procedures.”
“Security is active.”
“Like hell it is. Okay then, deactivate security.”
“That requires secondary authorization,” the computer said as if Jeff should have known that.
If Jeff slapped the side of the computer, would it snap the computer to its senses like his old television with the erratic vertical hold control? He fought for control over his voice.
“Who else in the Commons does not have access that could give secondary authorization?” Jeff asked.
At first it looked like the computer screen went blank. The thousands of entries above and to the sides of the monitor vanished. Something onscreen blinked. Jeff looked at what was now a single item on the computer's display. He touched the line of data, and it expanded into an individual dossier, along with species notes, with the picture of a blank, almost-featureless face of a Grey. This Grey had a sly grin on its face. The image mocked Jeff, and its pupil-less eyes stared straight at him like a creepy portrait.
There came a faint tap on the vault door.
“Can you show me what's going on out there?” Jeff said.
The screen lit up, and the projection above the screen expanded. It showed a picture of the outer room, where Jordan was being held up like a doll by one of the Bunnie. The invader passed her between his arms and dangled her about by her arms. She kicked at him wildly. The Greys lay about the floor in a small circle. Another Bunnie tapped again at the vault door with one of his pistols.
“Let her go,” Jeff said.
The red eye blinked once. Then, over a speaker, Jeff heard Not-Kim answer and say, “Let us in.”
“It won't do you any good,” Jeff said. “This machine in here only wants to listen to me. So if you want my cooperation, put her down, and I'll open the door.”
To the computer, Jeff said, “Kill the microphone, please. Are the Bunnie in any way shape or form in your system? Are they knaves?”
“Negative,” the computer said.
“Is that negative negative or positive?”
The computer didn't respond. Outside, the Bunnie put Jordan down in front of the vault door. A pair of hairy arms rested on her shoulders. Jordan looked up at the eye and straight at Jeff through the monitor. She shook her head slowly, mouthed “No.” Not-Kim caught the gesture and smacked her.
“She is here and currently unharmed,” Not-Kim said. “That will change if you don't open the door. Now, human!”
“Okay, fine, just hold on.” Jeff put a palm to the red eye, wondering if the authentication was even necessary. “Open up.” The vault door responded, moving slowly and silently. The Bunnie on the opposite side backed up, weapons pointing towards the vault. The one holding Jordan kept her close and pulled her along. Not-Kim came through the door, fast for so large a creature. He knocked Jeff away from the terminal. Jeff tumbled to a wall and went limp to the floor, his hands up to protect him from any more blows, but the Bunnie leader didn't pay him any more mind. Not-Kim looked about the room with its illuminated lines and points of light as if it were a most wonderful thing.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes, yes, yes.”
Not-Kim's hairy tarsal claw ran along the surface of the security terminal.
“Come see,” Not-Kim said to his soldiers. “It's time.”
The other Bunnie crowded in, whispering to themselves or echoing their leader's refrains of, “Yes,” and, “It's time.” Jordan was shepherded in among them, half walking and half carried, her captor not wanting to miss out. He shoved her to a corner and kept a claw on her. The room became quite cramped with the invaders. One pair of Bunnie unable to enter peered in from the vault door's portal.
“Congratulations,” Jeff said. “You guys won. It seems the city is yours.” He got himself up and rubbed a forming bump on his head. He tried not to touch any of the Bunnie, but that proved impossible. The room grew warm with so many bodies. “So what are you going to do now?”
The group of Bunnie clicked and muttered and looked to Not-Kim.
“We're here,” Not-Kim said. “We did it.” He turned to the other Bunnie. “It has taken generations. First, the Generation that suffered the Great Rejection. Then, the Generation that was contacted by the Grey. After that, the Generation that laid out The Plan, followed by the Generation that ate the Generation that laid out The Plan, and the Generation after that one that fixed things and adopted a more sensible diet. And the three generations of space travelers that took us to Earth. Now us. We are the Generation that wipes away the stain of the Great Rejection.”
His audience hissed approval and shouted. They pumped their claws in the air, hitting the ceiling. As irritating as the Bunnie were, Jeff couldn't fault them on their sense of determination. Pyramids had been built in less time than it had taken the Bunnie to execute their plan.
Not-Kim examined the terminal that was the heart of the Commons security. He clicked at a few of the keys and knobs and switches. He even touched the sticky orange pad and gave his claw a sniff. The red eye had grown dim, and the computer ignored him.
“How do I work this [piece of technology that isn't working], human?” Not-Kim said.
Buzz. Click.
A Beginner's Guide to Invading Earth Page 28