Humble Beginnings

by KA Hopkins

  Once we had the locations of the bases worked out, we needed a means to defend them as we had no idea if the Grays were bold enough to openly attack one of our bases. To play it safe, most bases were located near heavily populated areas, to minimize the chances of attack with anything like nuclear or chemical weapons. Just in case, at each site, we installed a point defense energy system that could stop multiple simultaneous airborne attacks. Getting hold of the defense systems was slightly complicated, as they were in storage on the alien Moon base. Surprisingly enough - as long as the supply requisition went through the right channel, there was no problem in having the alien defensive systems delivered to Earth. That’s something about a modern bureaucracy that’s mostly automated - if the paperwork is correct, no one really questions what you are doing.

  It was not just government bureaucracy we were counting on to mask our group’s activities. In the black security world, above top secret, classified projects compartmentalization is both an advantage and disadvantage. You may have the security clearance, but not the “need to know,” so you don’t get to join the club. Due to this, proper governance becomes tricky - it’s awfully hard to control something you don’t know about. This was one of the reasons Earth got into the mess with the Draco. The Draco were never present in large numbers; theirs was a stealth attack, spread over many years, wherein they took control of key members of select classified organizations and government departments. Before anyone knew, they had control over most classified programs, using humans to do their dirty work. The human race was setting up its own demise - all in the name of National Security.

  If the aliens could use National Security to hide behind, so could we. I had Guide set up a classified cover story so that only the Chief of Defense was included in our chain of command. With everyone below the Chief of Defense not cleared for “need to know” and the chief being very busy, in command of 2.4 million regular and reserve soldiers, our small unit simply disappeared into the depths of military bureaucracy.

  Military bureaucracy also made it relatively easy to get hold of supplies. As long as Guide submitted the correct supply requisitions and paid for them using the thousands of accounts we set up, the regular military supply chain would pick up what we ordered and move it to clearing houses specified by us. Once at a clearing house, the shipments were checked for any form of tracking equipment, repacked and sent to another clearing house, where it would be checked and repacked a second time. Everything moved through at least two different storage sites to obscure our supply routes.

  The price for all this was not cheap, but I am proud to say that none of our activities were taxpayer funded. We created the money out of fiat currency - the same as the government. Since fiat money is based on a promise and is just numbers in various databases; Guide who is arguably the best computer hacker in the world, in short order created the necessary funds and financial histories required. Why go through the effort of trying to counterfeit currency, when all the hassle can be avoided by creating it electronically? We decided on a yearly operating budget of eighty billion dollars, which several friendly major banks were only too happy to help administer for large service fees - no questions asked.

  While it was easy to create money out of thin air, dealing with taxes was a completely different challenge - there are more controls on tax revenue than on currency creation. There are approximately 100,000 IRS tax employees compared to 18,000 Federal Reserve employees (which despite the name is a private company). The men in black might not be able to find us, but the IRS agents would never give up.

  Necessity being the mother of creativity, forced us to create our operating budget electronically, as the physical volume of money required was staggering. A million dollars in hundred dollar bills consists of a hundred packets, each containing a hundred one hundred dollar bills, and will fit in a large shopping bag. A billion dollars is ten pallets of four by four by four feet. If you need virtually unlimited funds like we did, you would need a warehouse big enough to store eight hundred pallets of one hundred dollar bills. Another good thing about electronic currency creation is that, even if you are caught, the amount of data to support a burden of proof conviction in court makes it very difficult to prosecute. Mind you, being convicted on counterfeiting charges was small potatoes compared to our other crimes.

  We used a significant amount of the newly created money to build safe-houses located in each of the cities where we had a major base. These were all small buildings on large lots, for a couple of reasons. Mansions are magnets for attention; large lots with small houses on the other hand leave lots of room for clear fields of fire, underground safe rooms and escape tunnels. At each of the safe-house locations there was never any visible security measures, but no uninvited person could get within a five mile radius without being detected. Each compound was surrounded by hidden smart sensors capable of detecting movement, monitoring power usage, electronic emissions and cell phones, for at least a five mile radius. Through monitoring these parameters, we built up a pattern of normal activity, something hostile surveillance or a pending attack would disrupt. No matter how carefully the attackers planned their approach, we would be forewarned. It was a lot of data to gather and sort through; within a five mile radius you might have tens of millions of readings over a twenty-four hour period. Computing requirements were huge in order to collect, sort, analyze and detect possible threats, but we could tap into tens of thousands of parallel-processing network-linked computers using Guide. Nothing happened within the surveillance zone that we did not know about in real time.

  With bases for future operations and funding secure, we had to ensure the teams were rested, fit and trained. To prevent burnout, each of the ten-man teams were placed on a rotation schedule of six weeks on, two weeks off.

  During team downtime most operators, including those with families, went on trips. Popular activities were mostly focused around extreme sports: climbing the seven peaks, exploring hidden jungle cities, sport parachuting, hiking the outback of Australia, kayaking the Grand Canyon, or flying aerobatics. No one seemed to opt for a lifestyle of sex, drugs, alcohol and doing nothing; it just was not their style and did not fit with their type-A personalities. Few of the operators spent much time planning for retirement; they were pretty much of the attitude, “live every day like it is your last, and one day you will be right.”

  This attitude didn't imply the operators had a death wish - quite the opposite. The team’s approach to death was pragmatic, based upon their experiences. Since only shooters with combat experience were recruited, each team member had seen death in many ugly and horrible forms. Untimely death held no mystery to them. They understood the universal truth that, once born, eventually everyone has to die, and try as you might, there is no way to cheat the outcome. Birth and death are non-negotiable; what you do in between is up to you. Far from being carefree and footloose, every operator understood that life is sacred. Everyone tried to take away something positive from each day, making the best of what was given to them, accepting that some days are worse than others. Either you learn to roll with it, or like ocean waves hitting a breakwater, it eventually wears you out.

  Now, with the day-to-day logistics of the team members taken care of and secure bases of operations up and running, it was time to see how many monkey wrenches we could throw into the Draco’s pacification plans.

  Chapter 21 - A side trip to London

  Regardless of the stories one hears, the real world does indeed revolve around money, power and influence. Corporate human resource personnel love to quote “money is not the number one driver for motivating people.” Maybe that’s true for someone who has lots of it, but for those who are forced to live pay-cheque to pay-cheque, money tops the list. If we were to have any hope of slowing down the alien invasion, we needed to disable the system that allowed the Global Elite to buy whatever or whoever they required. With Guide’s help we developed a series of algorithms that analyzed a range of breakthrough technologi
es, newly moneyed individuals, weird social trends and changing media influences, to identify where out-of-the-blue, unusual advances and changes occurred. Once these were identified, a deep dive into the financial background and history of a company or institution was all it took to discover the heavy hand of outside, more often than not alien influence.

  Since the various National Security agencies monitor nearly everyone in the world, Mother had Guide tap into their networks and downloaded the dirtiest secrets on anyone of interest - secrets provide potential leverage. Our favorite technique to turn alien collaborators was to put them under surveillance and wait for an opportunity to approach them. The best place was usually at home, where they felt safest. Posing as federal officers investigating fraud in the workplace got us through the front door every time. Once inside, we laid out all of the damning evidence collected by Guide. Some took being caught and exposed well, relieved to give up the charade. Others gave us every possible excuse as to why they were doing what they were doing to their fellow man; it was especially galling to hear how they justified becoming über-wealthy on the pain and suffering of others. Some were apologetic for their actions and were willing to do whatever we asked to make amends; some demonstrated the height of arrogance, real pieces of work that felt no compulsion to atone for their seditious behavior.

  The sense of entitlement the very arrogant ones demonstrated was demoralizing; if these were the elite of the human race, then as a race we are in big trouble. Then again, many of those we investigated were considered the elite of society mainly by the virtue of their money and power, not necessarily for their kindness and generosity to their fellow man. On the surface, they all supported a few well-chosen charities and their pet social causes; but if you looked carefully, their support usually involved loads of other people’s money.

  Thankfully, most conversations were short and to the point. They had to be, as the blocking technology used to disrupt the government surveillance technology was effective for only ten to fifteen minutes. If we took longer than that, the loss of coverage would cause someone to investigate. The short conversations were a blessing - if I had to listen much longer to their arrogance after causing the death of so many innocent people for nothing more than profit, I would have lost it. They were saved by the fact that too many high profile murders would blow any chance of us preserving operational security.

  Since we did not have time for comprehensive discussions with the targets as to their roles in pushing the alien pacification agenda, we kept the message short and to the point. They were traitors to Earth and as such their lives were forfeit. No trial, no day in court, just the same justice given to those condemned to the alien experimental labs. For those who admitted their crimes against humanity and agreed to change their ways, we asked that their day-to-day activities change only slightly. What we needed was for them to be just a little less efficient and slow down the corruption and active recruiting of other government departments and company leaders. The heartbreaking part was that we could not really stop the atrocities against our fellow man; our only hope was to slow down the alien takeover enough to give us time to get to the ULIR and seek help before the entire planet was lost. There was nothing the ULIR could do if mankind openly welcomed the alien invaders.

  More heartbreaking was the fact that most individuals who gained access to the Global Elite club were more willing to sell out their fellow man for the perks of wealth and privilege than to help create a better society. In some ways I could identify with their feelings. To steal a phrase from Star Trek, “resistance is futile.” If the target went along with the aliens’ demands, they received riches and power beyond imagination; if they tried to stop or expose what was happening - nasty things happened to themselves, their families and friends. Fear from personal harm aside, the real reason why the Global Elite sold out their fellow man was more selfish - they believed that the Draco possessed such advanced technology that it was a question of when not if the aliens would win the battle for Earth. When this happened, their future would be significantly better as slave-masters than slaves.

  Alien recruitment always started off innocently enough and by the time the target understood the real consequences of their actions, it was too late - they were already in over their heads. It was not just about lacking moral courage, but also about not having much choice. Once trapped, what would you do - knowing that even if you committed suicide your entire family and all of your friends would end up in an alien experimentation lab? Potential targets were always placed under tight surveillance before any contact was initiated; they had no opportunity whatsoever to contact anyone who might be able to help them oppose the aliens. On top of this, alien recruiters made sure to show graphic examples of what happened to those that chose not to cooperate. Genghis Khan would have approved of the methods employed. They were text book examples of “divide and conquer” and being absolutely fearless in the pursuit of victory.

  We had no mercy for those that demonstrated unwavering loyalty to the aliens. If the individual had a history of heart disease, a five second blast from an alien energy beam weapon could simulate a heart attack. If the individual was the picture of health and fitness, the interview team would inject the target with a memory loss drug. The drug wiped out the last hour of memory, allowing the team to break contact and arrange for a future accident. Accidents included car or plane crashes, natural gas explosions and my personal favorite, “the celebrity drug overdose.”

  Since the National Security Organizations in many countries were the first to be taken over by the aliens, they became our primary target. At the top of our list was the NSA Director, who controlled the largest organization of its kind in the world, with over 18,000 employees. If we could turn him into a double agent, it would significantly hamper the alien collaborators from blackmailing other corporate and government Global Elite. The downside: if we screwed this up, the aliens and their human collaborators would quickly know something was afoot.

  Guide hacked the NSA Director’s agenda and found when he would next be away on travel. His next trip was a one day meeting with his counterpart in the United Kingdom Government Communication Headquarters, staying overnight at the London Portobello, flying back the next day. The travel schedule presented a number of options for his capture. Safest for us was to hit him during the transit windows between the airport and hotel; least safe was to attack at the meeting site or at his hotel. Given that his trip was in less than twenty-four hours, Marc and I were the only two available for the mission and without the support of a full team we had no hope of getting sufficient surveillance to catch the Director on the move. We were going to have to hit his hotel and take on his entire security team. The good news was that the close protection detail comprised of only four humans; those were the best odds we had faced in weeks. Marc gave the coordinates to Mother and had her plot the quickest route to London.

  Since the trip from Los Angeles, California to London, England is around 5,200 miles, Mother took us into low Earth orbit, otherwise the sonic boom and the plasma fireball from the deflector field would be easily detectable. Despite taking the indirect route, we were over the United Kingdom in twenty minutes, with an average speed of 20,000 mph.

  We arrived in London at night and had the option of jumping the T10D parachutes or having Mother land. “What will it be - do we jump, or are we going to have Mother land and drop us off so that we can walk into battle like gentleman - it is England after all?” I asked Marc.

  He laughed at my discomfort. “It’s your call. Had enough of jumping out of space ships at night?”

  “I really don’t like being that scared, new improved body or not.”

  “Since, I'm such a considerate person - we'll walk into battle like gentlemen.”

  Mother set down in a park near the middle of London with the neutralizing beam and the cloaking shield up to hide the landing. We were off the ship in seconds; no one appeared to notice our sudden appearance in the middle of the park. O
nce we were clear of the ship’s ramp, Mother ascended to 500 feet with the cloaking shield on, making the ship invisible against the night sky.

  We waited a couple of minutes to ensure our arrival did not raise any alarms, and then jogged over a couple of streets to hail a black cab. It was not a great neighborhood and brought back memories of the last time I had ventured onto someone else’s turf. Thinking back to the seven street hoods I killed, I hoped we could avoid a repeat performance.

  Settling back into the taxi’s leather seats, which had seen better days, I relaxed and enjoyed the ride through the streets of London. I reflected on how my personality had changed from IT geek to bag man about to take on a four-man, highly trained, close protection security detail to question the NSA Director, with the intent of making him a double agent or killing him. I was indifferent to the outcome; I guess you can get used to pretty much anything. To pass the time, I asked Omni to point out points of interest and landmarks. All in all it was a very pleasant half-hour ride.

  Once at the hotel, Guide uploaded the room number, floor plan, entry-log and surveillance systems to Omni. According to the entry-log, our target was in his room on a restricted floor. Restricted floors pose problems. Normally we would have to wait until he called room service or a bell hop and intercept the individual on the way up, to relieve them of their access card. Guide suggested a simpler approach, use a universal hotel keycard, which Guide reprogrammed to grant access to the NSA Director’s floor.

  Once we gained access to the NSA Director’s floor, our entire plan hinged on a single assumption: with no immediate threat to keep the guards alert, routine sets in. The protection team was probably bored.