The Trojan Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  Who benefited? General Thomas had been the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – right up until the point when he’d resigned, over the belief that the Galactic Federation’s terms were unacceptable. Who benefited from his death? The aliens, of course; who else? And that meant, added to the deaths of various anti-alien bloggers, that they were eliminating their opponents one by one. But surely someone would notice a pattern…

  Maybe they had. Maybe someone in the government was doing what they could to defeat the aliens. Or maybe they just didn’t care.

  Shaking her head, she started to walk away from the scene. There was work to be done.

  ***

  One of the more curious aspects of the Presidency was that a single question, asked absently, could spur Washington’s colossal bureaucracy into action. If the President happened to ask about a minor matter, a full report would rapidly be generated and produced for his eye, often surprising the President who might have forgotten the whole issue by the time the report was produced and ready. Toby, as the President’s Special Assistant, was cleared for all kinds of information – and, very rarely, he could slip a query into the system under the President’s name. He hadn’t needed to run the risk this time, however; the President was also very concerned about General Thomas.

  The report made curious reading. Trained interrogators had spoken to all the witnesses and tried to put together a picture of what they’d seen, while expert forensic teams analysed the physical evidence. Only years in politics had kept Toby’s face under control as he read the report, knowing that a single piece of physical evidence that led back to his father would also lead back to him. And yet…there was nothing. No sign of any blood traces that could point the way to Blake Coleman and his friends. Someone had sanitized the crime scene and done it at terrifying speed. What the hell had they done?

  He skimmed through the final sections of the report, very carefully. The Washington PD had suffered a series of minor computer malfunctions that had managed to steer their cars away from the crime scene for a few minutes, long enough for the terrorists to make their escape. Toby – who didn’t believe in coincidence – had a suspicion that he knew what had happened; the aliens, hacking into police databases, had somehow manipulated the police control system to gain as much time as possible for their assassins to escape. There were no clues that would lead the police to either the resistance or the assassins. The FBI was investigating, of course, but all they’d found so far was little more than a motive. General Thomas had long been targeted for death by several terrorist groups and someone had taken advantage of his resignation to attack him before the General could organise additional security.

  It was believable, Toby knew, but he also knew that it was inaccurate. The only body found on the scene belonged to the General’s wife, yet no one was asking what had become of the General. All of the media reports so far had merely reported that the General’s home had been attacked by terrorists. By the time any questions were raised, the lie would be planted so firmly that it would be almost impossible to dislodge. And if anyone happened to turn up claiming to be the General, they might not be believed. Or they’d be believed and someone would call the aliens. Toby felt the noose tightening, almost imperceptibly. Didn’t anyone else want to question the aliens?

  The second report in front of him made grim reading, even for Toby. The American forces based in Afghanistan and the Middle East were preparing to pull out, honouring the agreement the President had signed with the Galactic Federation. Behind them, they left a seriously uneasy Middle East; the anticipated switch to fusion power had sent oil prices plummeting across the world. The United States, China and several other nations were taking the opportunity to increase their stockpiles of oil, but there were dire rumours that Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq were already considering an oil blockade against the Western powers. Without oil money flowing in, the regimes that ruled Saudi Arabia and Iran would be unable to stand against their own people. And then chaos would consume the Middle East.

  He shook his head, bitterly. Soon, it wouldn’t be America’s problem any longer. No one would care about the Middle East without oil. Let them kill each other, the average American would say, and they might even be right. Except...the United States had escaped – was escaping – one dependency in exchange for accepting another. And the aliens were too big and strong to threaten with military force.

  The reports made that clear. Already, soldiers were being told that their enlistments were on the verge of being terminated. The Pentagon was struggling with the need to cut the military down to only ten percent of its former self, while the economic shockwaves from cancelling military contracts and laying off support personnel were already starting to bite. Only a few days had passed since the President had signed the treaty and the counter-protests were getting more organised. They’d be much more organised if they realised just how badly some of their politicians had sold out the entire country.

  He glanced at his email. Gillian had emailed him a light flowery email, the kind that would cause little more than raised eyebrows if anyone happened to intercept it. Toby picked out the underlying meaning without difficulty; Gillian wanted a meeting within the next twenty days. Who knew, he wondered; she might have found something that would give them hope.

  If not, Toby had no idea what they were going to do next.

  ***

  The Colonel disliked funerals as a general rule, but he had always made a point of attending the funerals of his friends, comrades and former subordinates. Blake Coleman had definitely been a friend and it gnawed at the Colonel that they hadn’t been able to recover his body from the streets. They’d had to take Coleman’s wife into effectively protective custody, removing the guns, ammo and other supplies from Coleman’s house in Mannington, expecting the FBI and BATF to turn up at any moment. So far, no one had appeared to follow up the lead, something that puzzled the Colonel. Coleman’s fingerprints and DNA would be on file with the military authorities. A quick cross-check and the FBI would know exactly who had died in front of the General’s house.

  “Blake was a good man, a loyal servant of his country,” the Colonel said. Coleman had always said that he wanted a small funeral, although he’d also joked that he wanted dancing girls and plenty of booze to cheer up the mourners. It hadn’t been a very edifying conversation. “He risked his life countless times to protect the innocents and kill the fuck-heads who believed that they had the right to wage war on civilian women and children. I do not believe that he deserved to die.”

  Coleman’s wife was weeping soundly, held by her eldest son. Jack Coleman had been talking about signing up with the Marines and following in his father’s footsteps, but the Colonel suspected that that plan had already crashed and burned. The politicians would probably eliminate the Marine Corps entirely when they started slashing the defence forces to meet the alien demands. God knew that Congress had always been trying to eliminate the Marines.

  “He was the first to die in a war that threatens everyone on this planet,” the Colonel continued. “He will not be the last. But we will not forget him and we will remember him as he was in life; a brave man, a loyal husband and a good father to his children. We will not forget him.”

  The group broke up slowly, the mourners heading back to the farmhouse for the wake. Coleman’s will had given specific instructions; he’d put money aside for beer and ordered the Colonel – who had been named as his executor – to invite as many of his friends and former comrades from the Marines. The Colonel knew that he couldn’t invite anyone outside the circle, but he’d silently promised himself that he’d hold a proper wake once the war was over – assuming he survived the coming struggle. If the aliens were prepared to launch a hit on a famous General, they were clearly preparing to come into the open.

  “I’m sorry, Blake,” he said, quietly. It was a long tradition that American forces never left their comrades behind, dead or alive. He’d had no choice, but it still left him feeling as if he�
��d failed Coleman – and Toby. God alone knew what kind of shit would fall from high above – quite literally – if anyone drew the line between Blake Coleman and Toby Sanderson. They’d been careful not to leave any written notes lying around that could have attracted attention, but what if they’d made a mistake. The Colonel had no illusions. If the FBI had enough clues, they’d put the rest together in very short order. “Go with God, my friend. Perhaps you can remind Him whose side he’s supposed to be on.”

  Leaving the unmarked – and empty – grave behind, the Colonel started to walk back to the farmhouse. There would be a wake. And then they would have alien butt to kick.

  ***

  The first impression was blinding white light, so bright that it seemed to burn into his skull. He closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but the light poured through, sending daggers of pain plunging through his eyeballs and into his head. It moved almost like a thing alive, shivering into his mind and burning through his thoughts. Blake Coleman screamed in pain as his eyes snapped open. The light seemed to be coming from everywhere, all around his body. He couldn’t even tell if he was lying on something, or floating in the air. His body seemed to have lost all sensation. Once, long ago, he’d volunteered for a session in a sensory-deprivation tank. It had been eerie and thoroughly unpleasant, but this was worse. The light seemed almost alive, flowing into his mind. And could he hear something…?

  Hell, he thought, as the noise finally registered on his troubled mind. A high-pitched whining note, so loud that he honestly couldn’t understand why he hadn’t heard it at once, was tearing through his ear drums. Slowly, so slowly, a shadow appeared against the light, inching its way towards him. Discovering that he could move his eyeballs, even if nothing else, Blake turned his eyes and saw a form silhouetted against the light. It was so bright that he couldn’t make out any features, but it was clearly not human. The movements were all wrong.

  Understanding dawned. He’d been hit – he’d known at once that the shot was fatal – and he’d been taken prisoner. Somehow, they’d saved his life. Had the Colonel’s son been wrong about the aliens, or did they merely want someone to interrogate? Blake had undergone extensive Conduct after Capture courses, but he knew that everyone broke eventually. The aliens could probably reach into his mind and extract the memories directly…

  A new sound appeared from high above him. Blake’s eyes whipped away from the alien form and stared upwards, squinting into the light. A long thin needle was slowly emerging from high above, reaching down towards his skull. Absolute panic overcame him and he struggled desperately against the unseen restraints, but it was no use. His body simply refused to obey his orders. Inch by inch, the needle lanced down until it was right above his forehead. Blake braced himself as best as he could, watching helplessly as the alien form peered down at him. A hand touched his forehead – it felt almost like touching a lizard – and pushed his hair away from his face. And then the needle came down.

  There was a long moment of absolute pain…and then nothing, nothing at all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Washington DC

  USA, Day 35

  “…Gives me great honour to declare that this building is now open,” Jeannette McGreevy said. Sitting in a seat at the front, which he’d been assured was a great honour, Jason somehow managed to avoid looking at his watch. McGreevy had been talking for at least half an hour, touching on all the benefits the Galactic Federation would bring to Earth and how it would improve the quality of human life all over the planet. Beside her, a handful of smaller alien devices sat and waited for inspection. One of them cleaned and purified water; another broke down waste food and turned it into chewy bars that tasted funny, but provided all of the essential nutrients for human life. “It is my fervent prayer that the Welcome Foundation will assist the entire human race in uplifting itself to the stars…”

  Jason snorted, inwardly. It was his fervent prayer, right now, that McGreevy would shut up and finish, allowing him to get some work done. Even before the Welcome Foundation had been officially announced, they’d been swarmed with lobbyists and lawyers demanding everything from a private look at advanced alien technology to bans on the spread of alien technology that might put humans out of work. Congress had voted the Welcome Foundation a huge budget – they’d used it to buy up a set of buildings in Washington and convert them to their use – but Jason had a suspicion that Crenshaw, Professor Cavendish and the remainder of the Board would have to use the budget merely to hire administrators to handle all the requests. And lawyers; Jason was already thoroughly sick of lawyers. Even being the Discoverer didn’t seem to deter them from calling him at all hours and nothing, including threats of dire retaliation, seemed to deter them.

  He glanced over at the aliens and smiled inwardly. It was hard to read the expressions on their faces, but he was learning – and if he was reading them correctly, they were as bored as Jason himself. The bracelets they wore to denote rank glittered brightly in the sun, but their faces were twitching, unlike the inscrutable expression that normally showed to the human race. He knew that he could have just been imagining it, yet he was sure that he was reading them correctly. Maybe they could be talked into convincing McGreevy to keep her speeches down to thirty minutes only. He wouldn’t have bet against half the crowd needing the toilet.

  There was a cough from the chair behind Professor Cavendish and Jason hid a smile that threatened to turn into a yawn. The Professor had brought along a young intern from the Witnesses called Vanessa Dawlish and she was clearly just as bored as himself and the aliens. Jason suspected that the Professor was studying something other than alien science with her – biology, perhaps – but in the end it hardly mattered. The Professor was the kind of tutor he’d loathed when he had been at College, a person more interested in his politics and grading classes by ideology, rather than concentrating on actual learning. He allowed himself to wonder if he might win Vanessa away from her tutor. Imagining sleeping with her was more entertaining than listening to a thoroughly boring politician.

  “And with that in hand,” McGreevy finished, “I call upon the Discoverer, the person who made First Contact, to cut the ribbon and open the building.”

  Jason stood up. They’d had four rehearsals before they’d invited the press and he could do it in his sleep. The cameras clicked loudly as he stepped towards the red ribbon, picked up a pair of silver scissors and snipped through the tape. There was a loud cheer from the crowd as it fell back, allowing anyone who pleased to enter the building. The Welcome Foundation had decided that one of the buildings would be always open to be public, allowing them to study the history of SETI on one side and drink in the promises made by the Federation in the other.

  “Thank you,” the Secretary of State said. “And now we will proceed to the lunch.”

  It was several hours later before Jason managed to get into his new office and sit down. The Welcome Foundation might be paying him, but they didn't seem to want him to actually do anything apart from exploiting his status to promote the Foundation to anyone who cared enough to listen. Jason didn’t feel special at all; the Discovery had been nothing more than a massive stroke of luck. He wasn't cut out to be a celebrity, rubbing shoulders with world leaders and the most eminent scientists on Earth. On the other hand, there would be more access to the aliens. Perhaps he could actually convince them to tell him more about their society, or their world. The chance to walk on an alien planet was something he wouldn't pass up for anything.

  There was a cough at the door. Jason looked up guiltily, meeting the eyes of one of the CIA agents he’d met in the weeks since the Discovery. Like pretty much everyone who had contact with the aliens, he’d been debriefed extensively after each meeting by a mixed committee of representatives. The ones who had bothered to introduce themselves were from the CIA, the FBI and the DIA. He had no idea which particular agency employed the others. They were literally nothing, but silent listeners.

  “I wasn't sleepi
ng,” he said, not entirely truthfully. He’d been on the verge of dozing off. The agent, who was a brown-haired young woman who was remarkably intelligent, grinned at him. “What can I do for you?”

  “There’s a meeting in a nearby building,” she said. She’d introduced herself as Daisy, but Jason wouldn't have put money on it being her real name. “I think you might be interested in attending.”

  Jason shrugged and stood up, retrieving his coat and donning it in one quick motion. One thing that had been made clear to him was that failing to cooperate with the intelligence agencies would carry very heavy penalties. Jason wasn't sure what they could do to the man who had discovered intelligent life in the universe – apart from humanity, of course – but he didn't want to find out the hard way. Surprisingly, Daisy led him down the back staircase to avoid the crowds and into an unmarked car waiting for them at the rear entrance. Jason frowned as the car headed through official Washington, the driver taking every short cut he could find, before it pulled up outside a regular office block. They were a long way from Langley.

  “Come on in,” Daisy said. “I think you’re expected.”

  The interior of the building was unremarkable, a simple suite of apartments housing smaller corporate offices in Washington. Jason noted that the security guard looked bored, as if he wasn't paying any attention to what was going on about him, but there was armour plating on the walls and cameras everywhere. Security was a premium in Washington, yet it seemed a little excessive. But if the CIA had a presence in the building, or owned the whole building, they would want security. Daisy confiscated his cell phone, MP3 player and his watch, checking that he wasn't carrying anything electronic with him. He was mildly surprised that they hadn't insisted on a strip search before they entered the elevator and it took them down into a basement. Daisy held up a hand when it reached its destination and motioned for Jason to go ahead of her.