The Trojan Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  And no weapon built on Earth could even reach the ships.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, finally. “They don’t let humans onto their ships.”

  “We need to find a way to get onto their ships or we may as well run up the white flag and surrender,” Sanderson said quietly, but forcefully. “How can we do that?”

  Jason thought, desperately. The entire human race depended upon their managing to take a ship; one ship, if what Sanderson was saying was true. But the ship was the one they would never even consider allowing humans to board, not as long as it was their ace in the hole…

  He stopped. A thought had just struck him. “The aliens have taken over Andrews AFB,” he said. The Welcome Foundation maintained an office on the base, now that the surviving human military personnel had deserted or been converted. “They use it when they send people down to talk to the President.”

  “True, although it’s more a case of talking at the President,” Sanderson said. “McGreevy is not in the best of mental states.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Jason admitted. There had been a time when he’d thought highly of McGreevy – although she’d been a scheming politician, she had seemed devoted to the Welcome Foundation and the dream of Federation. Now…now she was just another collaborator, more highly-placed than most. “What are they doing to her?”

  “I don’t think the aliens are actually doing anything to her,” Sanderson said. “I think she’s realised that she’s made a mistake and is too stubborn to admit it.”

  Jason shrugged. It wasn't his problem. “They fly a shuttle down from their flagship to the base, every week,” he said. “They seem to do it regularly, no matter what trouble or strife seems to be affecting the area. If you could get a team onto the shuttle, you might be able to get up to orbit…”

  “This isn’t Independence Day,” Sanderson pointed out, dryly. “I don’t think that we could fly one of their shuttles. They’re not exactly built for human bodies…”

  “We have at least one alien ally,” Jason said. “Couldn’t he fly the shuttle?”

  “Possibly,” Sanderson said. He stroked his chin. “But there are a lot of things we don’t know about their security, or what codes the shuttle has to exchange with the flagship before it’s allowed to dock, or…”

  He shook his head. “And we’d still have to get a team through the base’s defences and take the shuttle,” he added. “They’d have plenty of time to alert the flagship that the shuttle has been hijacked. One blast from the laser cannon or whatever they have to defend their ships and the shuttle will be nothing more than flaming ash.”

  Jason stared down at his empty cup. Sanderson was right. Too much could go wrong, even considering the inside knowledge they had – and the alien leadership didn’t know they had. It was a secret weapon, but what good was it if it couldn’t be used? How could they hope to pull off a victory if they couldn’t get into orbit…he thought, carefully, about everything he knew about the aliens or thought he knew about them. What did they value? They probably cared about their own lives or at least the lives of their senior officers. They seemed much less concerned about their juniors and soldiers, preferring to vaporise their bodies rather than run the risk of allowing them to fall into enemy hands.

  What did they value…?

  He looked up, suddenly. “I know what we can use,” he said, grimly. “The one thing we have that they won’t want to throw away in a hurry. They won’t want to lose their collaborator of a President so quickly, will they?”

  Sanderson nodded, slowly. “They have already been nudging at her to accept their protection,” he said. He smiled, sardonically. “For some reason, they believe that her life may be in danger – or they want to remove the rest of her independence of thought. Or maybe they think she’s worth more as an independent entity rather than a pod person.”

  He considered. “If she happened to be at Andrews when the base was attacked,” he added, “what would they do?”

  “Try to keep her safe,” Jason said. “And where could she be safer than their flagship?”

  Sanderson smiled. “I’ll take this to some others and try to put an operation together,” he said. “I suggest that you don’t worry about this for a while. What you don’t know you can’t tell.”

  Jason nodded, although part of him felt excluded. “I should come with you,” he said. “I already know too much.”

  “I know,” Sanderson admitted. “And if we had someone else in your position, I’d pull you out and take you somewhere underground. But we don’t; we have to balance the risks here and the benefits we gain from having you where you are.”

  “Someone who can see what the Welcome Foundation is doing,” Jason said, dryly. “Right now, I cannot think of anything we’re doing that is actually what we were promised before Tehran. We’re not even installing new fusion plants or medical centres or even food kitchens…”

  “You’re doing good work,” Sanderson assured him. “The country won’t forget you afterwards, whatever happens.”

  Jason snorted. “Winners write the history books, remember? The aliens will remember me as a collaborator if they win and so would most of humanity if the human race comes out of it with even limited independence…”

  “The record will be set straight eventually,” Sanderson said. “Besides, you’re assured of a good mention whoever writes the history books.”

  He nodded to Jason and left the room. Behind him, Jason took one last look at the mess he’d made on the floor and then turned to go to bed. He’d clean the mess up tomorrow, before the shit hit the fan – again. And then he would find what Sanderson needed to know, betray the aliens, and maybe – just maybe – escape with his own life.

  ***

  Washington was burning.

  Jeannette McGreevy, President of the United States of America, stood at the window in the White House and watched it burn. The Secret Service – whose agents regarded her with contempt when they thought she wasn't looking – had warned her that there might be snipers in the area, who might just take a shot at the President. She’d been told that the windows were supposed to be bullet-proof, but why take the risk when it wasn't necessary? And yet…if one of the snipers did end her life, perhaps it would be a good thing. All her dreams had turned to dust and ash.

  She’d wanted power – but now all the power she had was enforced by the aliens. If they wanted to dispose of her and put someone else in her place, they could do it. She’d believed that she could ride the Galactic Federation’s coattails to power and a place in human history; now, all Americans would remember about her was that she had been a worse traitor than Benedict Arnold. He’d only plotted to surrender West Point to the British, a long time before anyone had even dreamed of alien life forms. Jeannette McGreevy had handed over her country to an alien power. The future would curse her name.

  The portraits on the wall seemed to mock her. Every President was depicted, from the moment of America’s birth as an independent country to Patrick Hollinger’s predecessor, whose dark face seemed to scowl down upon her. George Washington, the father of his country; Abraham Lincoln, who’d unified it even as he’d purged the nation of slavery – and died for his beliefs. Even Richard Nixon, who had disgraced the office of the President, seemed to be glowering at her. Tricky Dick had wanted power too, but he’d never sold out the country. There were those who even believed that the United States would have benefited from a further Nixon term. And Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush…they would have loathed her.

  She swallowed two pills without glancing down at the small container in her pocket. The drugs kept her stable, for whatever it was worth now. She told herself that she should fight back, that she should find a way to turn the Presidency into a weapon, but there was nothing she could do. The aliens had explained – without quite gloating – that she was under constant surveillance. If she did anything they didn’t like, they’d warned, the heart attack that had struck down her predecessor would be
nothing compared to what they would do to her.

  Turning, she strode back along the plush corridors to her bedroom. The Secret Service agents kept a discreet distance. McGreevy was unmarried – there had been no room for a First Husband in her life, or the White House – and had never regretted it, until now. Having someone to hold her while she cried would have been nice. She’d wanted power. Now she was nothing more than a figurehead, a helpless watcher as Washington burned and the country fell apart. The country she had done so much to destroy.

  She should have killed herself, she knew. But she didn’t have the nerve.

  Lying down, she closed her eyes and felt the drugs take effect. Sleep crept up over her, just before she could start to toss and turn. Her eyes closed and she fell back into nightmares. And in the morning, she thought just before she fell asleep, she would have to do it all over again. Be their figurehead. Sell out her country. The despair rose up over her and she almost cried as she fell into the darkness. She had betrayed the entire world. And now she was their puppet, their helpless slave.

  What else was she good for, now?

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Washington DC

  USA, Day 66

  The sunlight was creeping up over Washington as Jayne finished typing on the cheap laptop she’d picked up for bargain price. It had once been a top-of-the-range machine, but now it was nothing more than obsolete, even before the aliens had arrived with the promise of newer and better computers. The computer revolution had just kept moving forwards and the primitive junk left in its wake was simply thrown out to rot. Jayne had only had to pay twenty dollars for a machine that had once cost in excess of five hundred dollars.

  She’d taken the precaution of ripping out the wireless section to ensure that it couldn’t accidentally log onto the internet. The aliens had actually improved the internet by establishing newer and better servers in Washington, boosting signals to an order of magnitude above humanity’s best equipment, but she knew better than to believe that it was a gift. They’d be able to monitor the internet through the equipment, reading every email and webpage that passed through one of their servers. And they might be able to track someone down by following their cell phones or anything else they might have on their person that logged onto the internet.

  The story was the best thing she’d ever written, or so she told herself. All the evidence she’d stolen from her would-be Casanova had checked out, at least as far as she could tell. The files linked the aliens to a hundred different lobbyist organisations and a number of prominent politicians. And the most prominent of them was serving as the President of the United States. Jayne rubbed tired eyes and asked herself if she was really certain she wanted to upload the story. It would mark her out for death if the aliens caught up with her…

  She shook her head. The aliens had already tried to kill her – and they would not relent just because she’d withheld a certain story. They’d probably expect that she’d flee from Washington, but that wouldn’t stop them hunting her down. Killing her before she had a chance to break the story would keep it buried forever, or at least long enough to ensure that it no longer mattered. If they’d been prepared to destroy an entire city to avenge the death of one of their people, they would certainly be willing to kill her to prevent her from blackening their name still further.

  “No,” she told herself firmly. “The die has to be cast.”

  Opening her suitcase, she produced her second computer. It had taken nearly an hour to set the program up the way she wanted it, but with the aliens in control of much of the internet there was no other choice. Humans tended to believe that the internet was nothing more than a vast mass of computers – and in one sense that was perfectly accurate – yet most messages and postings went through a series of servers. The alien-built servers would almost certainly hold her message while waiting for the aliens to check it for themselves, or simply wipe it from the system. They used a similar capability to eradicate junk mail, something that would have made them folk heroes if they hadn’t been trying to enslave the entire world.

  Smiling at the thought, she pulled a USB stick from the first computer and jammed it into the second. The program she’d created went online at once, starting the long process of distributing the message to every underground forum and news hub she knew existed. It would be picked up and redistributed by other computer experts, who would alter the message slightly to prevent the aliens from tracking all copies down and eradicating it from the internet. And if the aliens did, by some dark miracle, succeed in wiping all copies off the known net, the copies she’d sent to hidden forums would survive and start being distributed again in a week. They’d have no way to block the message permanently.

  Standing up, she picked up her bag and headed for the door. The money she’d taken from the oaf had bought her a reasonably good room, in a building that didn’t ask too many questions. She had actually booked in for three days, something that might keep them from recognising that she was gone until it was too late. They’d been paid in advance for the room, anyway, she reminded herself; a price that would have been outrageous in gentler times. There was no need to feel guilty over leaving them to explain themselves to the police or the aliens when they turned up – and they would. Jayne had no doubt of it.

  She walked out of the elevator, nodded to the doorman, and strode out onto Washington’s streets. She didn’t look back.

  ***

  Julius Davenant pursed his lips in annoyance when the call came through from his superiors. He’d been busy enjoying a nice period of R&R when they’d called him, but he knew better than to defy the aliens. Now he knew who he’d been working for, he knew that any failure to follow orders – or to fail in his task – would have serious consequences. And besides, the target was a young woman. He always enjoyed chasing and killing young women. It was just a shame that only a handful of assignments included that particular chore.

  The message had told him her exact location – a motel called the Abbot Belfry, whatever the hell that was – but he knew better than to expect her to stay there. This wasn't the days when bloggers hadn’t known that someone was tracking them down and killing anyone who was too outspokenly anti-alien; these days, they knew to run and hide as soon as they posted to the internet. It had, according to some of the forums he’d visited from time to time, improved the general tone of internet debates no end. Davenant just couldn’t see why anyone would bother getting worked up about what someone else said on the internet. It wasn't that important or significant.

  Standing just outside the motel, he mentally put himself into his target’s shoes. Where would she go? According to the briefing, she had had the sense not to go anywhere near her friends, family or people she might have known from the BAN. It was wise of her, as they were all being watched by remote bugs. He was still considering possible options when his cell phone rang again. The target had been spotted by a CCTV camera in a nearby eatery, the owner blissfully unaware that his security system had been hijacked by the aliens. She probably thought that she was safe.

  Checking the gun and ID badge in his pocket, Davenant started to walk slowly towards the eatery. There’d be time to check it out carefully before he went into the place and finished off his target. And then he might even stop off for some lunch.

  ***

  Jayne had been lucky to find the eatery. It seemed that one of the owner’s sons worked for the aliens – directly or indirectly, no one seemed to know – and he had the pull to organise delivery of fresh food and drink. Jayne polished off a plate of bacon, eggs and sausages, feeling slightly guilty as she finished eating and smacked her lips together. There were people in Washington who had never known a day’s hunger in their lives, but were starving now. A few more weeks of this and any will to resist the aliens would be broken.

  Someone – she couldn’t remember who – had died because he’d had his back to the entrance and his enemy had shot him before he’d even realised that he was there. She hadn
't made that mistake. She’d taken a seat that allowed her to see whoever was coming into the building, long before they could hope to see her. Jayne was just on the verge of leaving when she saw someone approaching the door. Somehow – she wasn’t sure how – she knew that he was dangerous. Standing up, she headed for the toilets, silently praying that he wouldn't recognise her from her back. She felt a tingle at the back of her neck as she heard the door opening behind her, but the blow she was half-expecting failed to materialise. Instead of going into the toilets – where she knew she could be trapped easily – she headed to the third door, which opened into the kitchen. A young man – barely old enough to shave – looked up at her in surprise. Customers were not supposed to enter the kitchen.