Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  The Prime Minister knew he was gaping, all reserve gone, but he couldn’t help it. The chaos in the Middle East had stopped the oil tankers from moving, ensuring that Europe was on the verge of freezing in winter. The price of petrol had already skyrocketed despite heavy rationing and shortages were setting in everywhere. The Government had established a vast underground storage network for oil in calmer times, yet even that would run out eventually. The European Union had been giving serious thought to putting together a multinational force and seizing the oil wells in Saudi Arabia, perhaps with the help of the remaining American forces in Bahrain. The EU normally moved very slowly, yet they were desperate. The worst that could happen was that the oil wells would be destroyed. They weren't getting any oil from them anyway. Rumour had it that the Russians were even considering invading Iran and taking their oil by force.

  “I see,” he managed finally. “And the catch?”

  “We do not wish you to become involved with our operations,” Ethos informed him. “We wish you to remain uninvolved. We will be extending comparable offers to other governments and forging ties with them. You can join us or not, as you please. Your refusal will not change anything for us, merely for you.”

  The Prime Minister could read between the lines. Which other governments had been approached? The French? The Germans? The Russians? The Japanese? The Chinese were in the middle of a civil war, so they probably hadn’t been contacted, yet perhaps the aliens were backing one side, or both. The alien approach was sneaky, in a way. The nations that had access to alien tech in one form or another would face immense pressure from the other nations to share, or else. The aliens might be hoping that Europe would go to war over their technology, weakening them for a later invasion. It would make sense from a cold-blooded point of view.

  “I understand,” he said, finally. “How long do we have to decide?”

  Ethos reached into a pocket and produced a small black device, barely larger than a walkie-talkie. “You can contact us on this at any time,” he said. “If you do not get in contact with us within a week, we will assume that you do not intend to accept our offer and will consider other steps. Thank you for your time.”

  The Prime Minister watched as the alien wheeled around and marched back to the alien craft. A moment later, the hatch had flowed closed and the craft floated slowly off the ground. It seemed to pause at about five meters, then simply vanished, rocketing out of the area so fast that the Prime Minister didn’t see it go. He shook his head in awe and nodded to his aide. The young man was flushed and very pale.

  “Say nothing for now,” he said. The black box in his hand might transmit everything he said back to the mothership. He turned it over and over in his hands and discovered a button marked PUSH THIS. The aliens, he realised suddenly, had a sense of humour. “Once we get back to London, we’ll discuss it with the Cabinet.”

  He passed the black box to one of the RAF staffers, who’d take it to a research lab and study it as much as they could before it was used, and headed off towards his car. Their next destination was half an hour away and he intended to use the time to think, carefully. The alien offer came with strings attached. Just because they were invisible, as any good diplomat knew, didn’t mean that they didn’t exist.

  ***

  Normally, in the mid-afternoon, Britain’s motorways would be utterly jammed up with cars, lorries and other vehicles. The Prime Minister had attempted to promote public transport in the hopes of cutting down on pollution and congestion, but even he had to admit that the efforts had failed. One of the more ironic side effects of the alien invasion and the resulting economic chaos was that thousands of cars had been forced off the roads and the air was cleaner than it had been in years. The Prime Minister’s car and its police escort rocketed along until they reached a mansion house belonging to one of Britain’s noble families, although one with dire financial issues. The British Government had stepped in with an offer the family couldn’t refuse and, in exchange for having their home designated as an emergency government facility; their home had been saved from being sold. It had never been used for its intended purpose, until now.

  The Prime Minister passed through the security check impatiently, but knew better than to push matters. He still remembered going to the Russian Embassy for a diplomatic gathering and coming back to his office with no less than five bugs attached to his person. It was all part of the game, he'd been assured, but he’d taken security very seriously since. The aliens might have taken the opportunity to put him under surveillance as well. No one knew the extent of their capabilities.

  The Home Secretary and the secondary Chief of Joint Operations were waiting for him. The British Government had been dispersed around the countryside to avoid a single strike decapitating the entire government, although a handful had had to remain at PINDAR, the command and control bunker under Whitehall. The primary Chief of Joint Operations was at the Permanent Joint Headquarters, watching and waiting for the first sign of an alien attack on the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister didn’t envy him. Northwood had to be high on the list of alien targets if they chose to invade.

  “Listen carefully,” he said, and ran through a brief outline of the meeting. His aide had transcribed everything despite his shock and they read it quickly. Now that the shock had faded, the Prime Minister found himself getting angry. Who did the aliens think they were? “So, what do we do about it?”

  “From a national point of view, accepting the offer works in our favour,” the Home Secretary said. He had been Deputy Prime Minister until the mothership had been detected, whereupon a coalition government had been formed and the Leader of the Opposition had accepted that position. Collective responsibility, the Prime Minister considered, otherwise known as sharing the blame. “We need what they’re offering desperately. The country is on a knife-edge.”

  “There’s also the other aspect to consider,” the CJO said. “I think they’re not warning us about the Middle East at all. I think they’re warning us about not interfering with America.”

  The Prime Minister frowned. “Explain,” he ordered. “Why would they care?”

  “They may be aliens, but their tactics are understandable,” the CJO said. “They went after the most powerful nation on Earth to scare the shit out of the rest of us…”

  “Succeeded too,” the Home Secretary injected.

  “And they probably intend to invade America directly once they’ve finished tearing the USAF apart,” CJO continued, ignoring the interruption. “We and Canada could provide material support to any resistance movement in American territory, play host to American refugees and their military equipment, even accept and promote an American government-in-exile. That has to concern them unless they intend the wholesale extermination of America’s population.”

  “It wouldn’t bother them that much,” the CJO said. “Look, I’m a soldier. The politics of the situation are beyond me and they’re hardly my responsibility anyway, but I have to tell you that if the aliens can eat the Americans for lunch, they’re not going to have problems eating us for dinner. The entire combined force of Europe couldn’t match what the Americans are throwing at the aliens – and losing. We’d get in a few solid hits – we’re outfitting our own aircraft to benefit from the Yanks’ experiences – but we’d lose. There is no question of that. We just don’t have the numbers to stand up to the aliens.”

  The Prime Minister stared down at his hands. “So…we’re already making preparations to give the Americans what covert help we can,” he said, thoughtfully. “Do we continue with that, or do we accept the alien offer and refuse to help the Americans any further?”

  “It may not matter,” the CJO pointed out. “The level of material support we can offer to the Americans is actually quite low. We couldn’t fly the RAF over there to help out without the aliens taking countermeasures. We could accept the alien offer and continue to help the Americans at the same time.”

  “You’re talking about a double
-cross,” the Home Secretary said. “If they catch us at it…”

  “They’ll be…rather annoyed,” the CJO agreed. “The problem is simple. I think that the aliens have come to invade, and they’re not going to be satisfied with just America, the Middle East and Africa. Just by what they’ve done so far, they’ve hurt the entire world badly. I think that we might get Britain moved to the final place on their list of targets, but eventually we would be targeted, or kept in permanent subordination. They won't risk us developing to the point where we could threaten them and drive them off the planet.”

  “It does make a change from waiting for the Yanks to put together a plan and lead us all against the aliens,” the Prime Minister agreed, ruefully. “Very well. We slip them as much help as we can. Something totally covert – and deniable. If they find out…”

  “I understand,” the CJO said. “It’s all my fault.”

  “A rogue operation,” the Prime Minister said. “Don’t get caught.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  International Space Station, Earth Orbit

  Day 69

  The mothership was showing up clearly now, even through the small telescope that had been mounted on the ISS. It was a massive structure, so vast as to be beyond human comprehension, yet somehow it was now hard to get a clear image of its actual shape. It seemed to be surrounded by a vague field that obscured the telescope’s view, concealing vital hull details. There were countless theories on how it was somehow slowing down and preparing to inject itself into Earth’s orbit, but none of them mattered a damn. It could be matter-antimatter propulsion or a drive field out of a science-fiction nightmare – NASA had had a research program into advanced propulsion concepts for over twenty years – yet all that mattered was that it was finally entering orbit. The alien colonists had arrived at their new home.

  Captain Philip Carlson watched from the International Space Station as the mothership seemed to grow larger on the screen. No one knew why the aliens had spared the ISS – the current theory was that it would have spoiled their claim to come in peace, although Philip thought that was ridiculous – and the five-man crew had had a perfect view as the aliens had systematically dismantled America’s defences. He’d expected the call to action to come at any moment, when he and Felicity would have cut loose from the ISS and steered Atlantis right into the path of the alien mothership, but it had never come. Intellectually, he supposed that he should have been relieved, but emotionally he would have sooner tried and failed than been kept out of the fight. He’d lost friends and family down on Earth, some from the massive air battles raging over America, others from being too close to the alien targets and killed in the attacks. He wanted to strike back at the aliens, yet cold logic told him that it would be futile. Atlantis carried exactly eight nuclear-tipped missiles and two laser cannons that might as well be popguns, for all the harm their bigger brothers on Earth had accomplished against the alien craft. They might take out a handful of alien craft – the shuttle was primitive compared to their ships and it might make them overconfident – but the outcome was inevitable. The shuttle would be smashed and their lives would be lost, for nothing.

  “I wonder what they’re using as a power source,” Colonel Irving Harrows said. There were only three men left on the ISS as permanent crew, the remainder having been evacuated after the alien mothership had been detected. Philip suspected, reading between the lines, that the Russians and Europeans had been quite happy for the Americans to have the ISS as an observation platform. The two shuttle crewmen had fitted in quite nicely. “They can’t be using anything we’d recognise as a power source without leaving a massive drive trail behind.”

  Philip nodded sourly. The alien craft seemed to have problems manoeuvring in the atmosphere at high speeds, yet such constraints didn’t seem to bother them in space. He’d seen alien craft racing past the ISS at speeds well over Mach Twenty, taunting the humans before flying down to continue the war. They flew their craft like starfighters out of a bad movie, daring the humans on the station to open fire and see their missiles hopelessly outmatched by the alien craft. Whatever tech the aliens used, it was fantastically advanced over anything the human race had deployed, or was it? He’d followed the Advanced Propulsion Program as closely as he could – his security clearance was high enough to at least get the gist of what was going on – and he’d heard rumours of breakthroughs that would change the face of space travel forever. Nothing had ever materialised, however, and NASA’s attempts to develop a replacement for the shuttle had kept floundering. The agency couldn’t have found its rear end with terrain-following radar and a map for dummies.

  The Director of NASA had been forced to resign – more accurately, he had been unceremoniously sacked – after the alien attack had begun. Congress had been looking for a scapegoat and NASA had been an easy target, with reports of trillions of dollars being funnelled into the agency, producing little usable hardware. Philip knew that the problems ran much deeper than the Director and the horde of yes-men he had surrounding him and was doubtful as to what had been achieved, apart from covering Congress’s collective butt. The aliens hadn’t hit NASA’s centres – cruel rumours had suggested that they didn’t need to bother – but everyone agreed that it was only a matter of time. The United States was not going to be saved by something coming out of NASA’s endless paper-generation programs.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. He would almost have preferred to face the Death Star, or perhaps an alien mothership from a more primitive group of aliens. The Death Star had had a massive design flaw that had allowed the rebels to destroy it – the Second Death Star hadn’t even been completed when it had been destroyed – yet the heroes had also had the help of the scriptwriters. He doubted that even the most insane Hollywood scriptwriter could write the United States a way out of its current predicament. “It’s going to enter orbit any time now.”

  He hoped – prayed – that plans had been made for a massive nuclear strike by all of Earth’s nuclear powers, yet he knew that it would be lethal. The mothership might be powered by antimatter, resulting in an explosion that would have catastrophic effects on Earth, or it might be shattered and the debris would crash down onto the planet. The entire human race now knew what the aliens had been doing to human victims at the South Pole – even if none of the humans had been identified by various police and intelligence services – and Philip hoped that there would be an alliance against the aliens, yet nuking them wasn't the answer. It would have ensured the destruction of both races. No, the humans would be exterminated. The aliens would still have their homeworld and however many other worlds they’d colonised.

  The thought had taunted him over the past couple of weeks, while the alien attacks had been underway. There was no reason to assume that the aliens had only headed for Earth. Their technology was so advanced that even the mothership might only have required a tiny fraction of their resources, allowing them to build hundreds of the ships and launch them in all directions. The astronomers were still unsure which of the many stars near Earth had birthed the alien mothership – there were a handful of possible candidates – yet there were plenty of possible other destinations. The human race might fight off one invasion to discover that the stars belonged to the aliens.

  Philip winced. Back when he’d been a kid, his father – a space buff himself – had told him that he might be on the first starship leaving the solar system. He’d kept it to himself in the USAF and NASA, but he’d always been fascinated with the idea of travelling from star to star. He had studied it obsessively and concluded that the human race could have populated all of the nearby stars within a hundred years. It had never happened. NASA had become a bureaucratic monster, the Russians and Chinese had cut back on their space programs…and humans had never returned to the Moon.

  And now it was too late. The human race had told the universe that it wasn't interested. The universe hadn’t taken the hint.

  Philip no longer expected to have chi
ldren, but if he had had kids, they would have grown up in a universe where humanity played second fiddle to a mysterious alien race that had laid claim to all the real estate. The human race might continue to exist as slave labour, or pets, or…human history showed a wide range of possible precedents for natives when the colonists arrived. The human race might be enslaved, or exterminated, or pushed into reservations, or…perhaps treated as equals. It was a possibility Philip found hard to believe. He’d seen debates on internet discussion forums over the ethical implications of committing genocide against the aliens and while he liked to believe that humanity would never commit such an act, there was no reason to believe that the aliens shared humanity’s conception of morality. They might regard extermination or enslavement as perfectly moral solutions to the human problem. They might regard humanity as too primitive to control its own destiny…

  “I’m picking up an unusual energy signal from the mothership,” Doctor Melvyn Heights said. He’d been on the ISS to conduct a series of experiments – he’d once tried to explain them to Philip, but he hadn’t understood a word of them – and had insisted on remaining on the station to observe the mothership when it arrived. Philip would have sent him down to the planet with the remainder of the crew, but apparently Heights had friends or enemies in high places, who’d authorised his remaining on the station. “It’s fluctuating…”

  The mothership exploded.

  For a long moment, Philip wondered if someone had fired on the mothership after all, or if another alien faction had joined the battle on humanity’s side, or if one of NASA’s secret programs had led to workable hardware after all. He’d read a set of novels centred around the idea of a top-secret fleet of interstellar-capable warp ships being based on the Moon and had found the idea rather insulting – he wanted to fly such ships, if they existed – but perhaps they did exist and they’d destroyed the mothership. He braced himself for the expected shower of debris and recoiled as he realised the radars were picking up hundreds of chunks…no, they were moving spacecraft. The mothership had launched hundreds of spacecraft as it entered Earth’s orbit, rather than exploding. Many of them were bigger than anything humanity had yet seen other than the mothership itself.