by Iain Benson
London was shocked. “I’m sorry for being flippant. How do you cope?”
“It was a long time ago,” Vera said. “I have put my energy into locating him. I have scoured two galaxies.”
“Any luck?”
“He is in this galaxy somewhere. I will locate him.”
“What does he look like?”
“I do not currently know,” said Vera. “He’s a shape shifter.”
“Like a werewolf?”
“Like were-anything-he-damn-well-pleases,” Xia quipped.
“How on Earth will you recognise him?” London asked.
“I will recognise him by his eyes,” said Vera. “I will never forget his eyes. He cannot alter those.”
“So you have searched two galaxies looking for eyes,” said London. “Tough. How many?”
“How many what?”
“Eyes.”
“Two, he has two eyes.”
“Shame he doesn’t have more,” said London.
“For what reason?”
“Four eyes would be twice as easy to find,” said London cheerily.
“You are incorrect,” said Vera. “Regardless of the number of eyes, they would all be on the one body.”
“Yes, of course,” said London, wanting to change the subject. “So how did you lose your ship?”
“I had been told that he was on Phu Tung,” Vera said. “We went there looking for him. It transpired that he had moved on.” Vera shrugged. “There was a local crime gang. A few of them attacked us as we were getting back into my ship.”
“A few?” scoffed Xia. “There were forty of them.”
“Forty?” said London. “I’m not surprised you lost your ship.”
“One of them got a lucky blow,” said Vera.
“He took out most of them,” said Xia. “I’d say he’s being modest, but I honestly don’t think he has the concept. It’s probably more that he can’t count.”
“I can count very well,” said Vera.
“He’s high-gee,” said Xia.
“Is that like a martial art or something?” London asked.
“Vera’s planet has a higher gravity,” Xia explained with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. “It makes him stronger than most of the beings round these parts.”
“I see,” said London.
“So do you,” Xia said to London.
London realised that of all the beings he’d seen, they were either much shorter than him, or the spindly insects.
“That’s handy to know,” said London. “How many races are there in the galaxy?”
“Kurian you’ve met,” said Xia. “There’re a lot of them. There’re Twirps, there’s even more of them. They’re the tall spindly ones. Gluphs, they’re slimy and I don’t like them. Bonbon is a Bulbol.”
“We’re quite rare,” Bonbon said, even though it still looked asleep. “We don’t spawn like – to use your colloquial brain – rabbits.”
“Then there’s Julips who look like beavers, Diphthongs who look like beetles and Tryfles, who are weird. You’ll know them if you see them. Knowmes, they’re red dwarf things, and did I mention the insects?”
“So a lot of space-faring species,” London said. “And us? Humans?”
“Oh, there might be others species that aren’t in space,” said Xia. “Not just us. There’re a lot of planets and life forms pretty easily. Heat, water and a few basic chemicals, after that, it’s all about not dropping a comet on it before it gets properly going.”
“So do they have rules about not contacting primitive races then?” London asked. “What, with them knowing where we are, but hiding.”
“Oh, no,” Xia laughed. “The only reason they hide from us is the milk. Earth is a profitable planet. The last thing they want to do is hand us the keys to the galactic drug trade.”
“I’m going to get some food and sleep,” said London. “For some reason, thinking I was dead has made me hungry.”
“You have a while before we get to Phu Tung,” Vera said. “I think we should all get some food and rest.”
London awoke some hours later, discovering why most sentient beings avoided sleeping near to a telepath.
“Did you dream about frisking around the purple trees of Bulbol?” Xia asked as they faced each other in the kitchen.
London missed coffee. He missed toast. It was a little unfair. He’d only just got bacon back. Drinking water and eating hazelnut and broccoli flavoured chewy bars was no substitute.
“Yes,” said London. “That grey-white fur-ball kept getting away.”
“I may have to come up with something to block the telepath,” said Vera. “I do not appreciate dreams. I prefer my nights to be light of thought.”
“Sounds good,” said London. “Can you make three?”
“I only need to make one,” said Vera.
“That’s a little selfish,” London pointed out.
“I will make one for Bonbon,” said Vera. “Not us.”
“Good idea,” said London. “I might teach Conspiracy Theory, but I’ve never really rocked the conspiracy theorist look of foil hats.”
“So what shields telepaths?” said Xia.
“With questions like this,” said London, “I’d normally check with Google.”
“Who’s Google?” Xia asked.
“The internet?” said London.
“What is that?” asked Vera.
“Do you not have that out here?” London looked at them aghast. “No super galactic network of all knowledge available to everybody all the time?”
“No,” said Vera. “That does sound quite useful though.”
“How do you do pub quizzes? Answer the obscure questions like ‘what was he in before this…?’ or remember birthdays and find your way around?” London was quite shocked.
“We don’t,” said Vera.
“In that case,” said London, “when humans get into space, I’m buying shares in every internet company. Meanwhile, instead of asking Google, let’s ask Bonbon.”
Bonbon was still asleep, looking like the fluff from a tumble drier.
“How do you wake up a telepath?” asked London. “I’m assuming it’s deaf? Alarm clocks would be a problem? And fire or car alarms.”
Vera leant really close to Bonbon.
The fluff ball snapped awake, its eyestalk rising like a submarine periscope.
“Are we nearly there yet?” they all thought simultaneously.
“No,” Vera said.
Bonbon gazed around at them. “My apologies,” it thought, obviously picking up on what had transpired during the night. “My dream was particularly vivid it would appear. Aluminium makes an effective telepathic blocker. James’s thoughts are correct.”
London looked sheepish. “I was thinking of the foil hats conspiracy nuts used to wear,” he said.
“I do not believe we have any aluminium,” said Vera. “We will pick some up from Phu Tung.
“Meanwhile,” said Bonbon, “I shall stay awake until some is obtained.”
“In that case,” said London. “I’m going back to sleep for an hour or two.”
As the smoke and dust cleared from the air, Mary Curr looked at the secret service officer on the other side of the corridor.
Further down the corridor, the grenade launcher had stopped one of the soldiers. The other three, however, continued on down the corridor with a look of complete ambivalence to the loss of their comrade, or that one of them only had half a head.
“I’m not sure we can fire more of those grenades,” said Mary to her colleague.
“I have two more,” he replied.
“It’s not that,” Mary told him. “That last one took out an eighteenth century Turner, a bust of William Harrison and seriously weakened the ceiling. We’re losing more than we gain.”
“So what do you suggest?” Johnson snapped.
“Falling back,” Mary said. “Get President Cruise out of here.”
“Never,” said Johnson. “We
fight here!”
Mary shook her head, and dashed off down the corridor. She had no worries of the soldiers firing at her. They were not carrying weapons, although when they took them off people, they were very deadly with them. Mary dashed into a side room mostly filled with a table and associated chairs. She found an intercom and smashed her thumb into the call button.
Through the tall French windows onto the manicured lawns, Mary could see the path of destruction the few dozen soldiers had wrought an hour before. Gun emplacements added after 9/11 were mangled smoking wrecks, dead National Guard and Secret Service personnel lay scattered around. There was a still smoking crater near the gates where the roof top anti-tank missile had fired its last shot before becoming embedded in the stone work in front of the main doors.
“Hello,” said a voice on the intercom. “You have got through to the inter White House communications centre. I’m afraid all of our operators are currently busy, but your call is important to us, please hold, somebody will be with…”
Mary slammed the handset back onto its cradle so hard the whole lot came off the wall.
There were shots from the corridor, followed by a gurgling cut-off scream. Presumably Johnson had now understood what bulletproof meant.
Mary dived over a table, taking her gun out; knowing full well if the soldiers came in it would be as effective as a hydrangea. Possibly less effective, as the unstoppable soldiers might have allergies. She looked through the legs of a nineteenth century chair at the legs of twenty-first century clones as they walked past the room, not pausing to check it.
Mary remembered the previous day’s phone call she’d received on her cell phone. It had been Wishbone letting her know it was America’s turn. He’d been so confident that he’d told her the time they’d been arriving. She’d done it by the book, beefed up security, brought in the army and the National Guard, all now scattered, weaponry destroyed, and they’d taken out maybe half a dozen of Wishbone’s men.
They had to have been already in the country, because they just turned up at the gates at precisely noon, and wasted no time in breaching outer security, inner security, roof top security, underground security. Mary didn’t think that they knew where all the armaments were, nor the policies for protecting the President. It wasn’t relevant. None of it. Wishbone had sounded confident, because he had known nobody could stop his army. They didn’t use guns, because they jammed, ran out of ammo and reduced attack and defence options to firing a gun.
She looked at her watch.
Wishbone’s last words to her had been that the President would surrender at half past one.
She wished that he’d followed her advice and left immediately. He was a stubborn ass who’d been in so many Hollywood blockbusters he believed them to be how attacks on America would go. He was probably half expecting the good mutants to turn up and save the day.
She had half an hour.
“If he suggests flying a plane into anything, I’m voting for the independent candidate next time,” she muttered, peering down the corridor at the backs of the soldiers. The other way she could see Johnson slumped at an unnatural angle against a wall. The corridor’s carpet was fortunately red, so wouldn’t require that much cleaning.
There were a lot of doors that looked like walls in the White House, Mary ran up the corridor after the soldiers the moment that they turned a corner. She peeked around. There was a set of double doors further down that had been barricaded shut, which should hold the three soldiers for a little while. As they reached the door and discovered that pushing and banging were largely ineffectual, one of them turned and came trotted towards her. Mary stepped across the corridor, pushed at the rag-rolled wallpaper and went through, closing the hidden door behind her. From this side, it looked like an ordinary door.
It was a service stairwell. She mentally reviewed the floorplan for the White House, trying to work out where she needed to be, and where she was. Sadly, mental maps never come with a big arrow and the phrase “You are here.”
Down, she needed to go down.
A muffled explosion that rattled the door and sent dust falling from the ceiling like snow, signalled the fall of the barricaded door. The soldier must have gone back for Johnson’s grenade launcher and used it as a key. Mary sighed. Had he followed the suggestion the soldiers would have had to go all the way back to the main door to get a grenade launcher.
“Machismo,” she muttered.
The staircase was utilitarian grey with metal steps that clattered as she trotted down them, holding the cool metal handrail. She went down three flights, which was impressive, as she’d been on the ground floor. Mary went through the door at the bottom of the stairs into a white painted corridor with forty armed soldiers in green fatigues arrayed down it.
“Whoa!” she said as she felt forty fingers tighten on forty triggers.
“Hold,” snapped a voice from the far end. “She’s one of ours.”
“Easily identified as such,” she said, “on account I’m not nearly eight feet tall and in a blue jumpsuit.” She walked down the corridor tutting at the weaponry. “You lot do know this enemy is bulletproof, don’t you?”
“Depleted uranium rounds, ma’am,” said one of the soldiers. “They’ll stop a tank.”
“I saw one of those soldiers stop a tank,” Mary replied. “I think it swung it around using the gun muzzle and used it to take out a gunship.”
At the end of the corridor was the nerve centre.
The whole of the White House was covered with CCTV. A President couldn’t get a blow job these days without it being on a hard-drive somewhere. Thirty screens filled the far wall, with a bank of ten desks in front of it, each occupied by a suited Secret Service employee with their own personal screen, checking on whatever they’d been told to check on.
“Mary,” said Jules Murray. His large frame took up much of the spare space in the nerve centre.
“Jules,” she replied. “We’re losing. We need to get the President out of here and onto Air Force One.”
“Air Force One is grounded,” Murray winced. “They destroyed it.”
“Any plane is Air Force One if we can get the President onto it,” Mary pointed out.
“He won’t go,” Murray said. “I tried. He’s stubborn.”
“Yes,” Mary replied. “He seems to think that the White House is worth defending.”
“It’s a building,” Murray agreed. “Although I have to admit, it’s quite nice one. I liked the cafeteria in the East Wing.”
“Do they still do the caramel cups?”
“I had one this morning,” Murray said. “It was perfection. I’m quite glad I got to have one, as the cafeteria has gone now.”
“The enemy took it out a cafeteria?” Mary was appalled.
“No,” Murray sighed. “One of their soldiers used a jeep to deflect a shoulder mounted missile from one of ours, and the cafeteria was collateral damage.”
“I’m going to miss those caramel cups,” Mary lamented.
“Section five breached,” said one of the technicians, a portly balding man in a white shirt.
“Where’s section five?” said Murray. “How many sections have we got? Are they in order?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the technician. “I monitor section five only.”
“I’m guessing there are ten sections?” Mary suggested, her arm sweeping to take in the ten consoles and ten chairs. “Hands up if your section has been breached?”
Eight hands rose.
“Hands up if you’re a section between the enemy and the president,” she said.
One hand rose.
“You’ve got to ask the right question,” said Mary to Murray. To the Secret Service agent, she added: “You can put your hand down again now.”
On the wall of screens, they watched as the President’s bunker was breached.
“We’re doomed,” said Mary. “The President’s taken.”
“I think the phrase is Olympus has fall
en,” said Murray.
“In the movies maybe,” Mary replied, absently watching the blazing fire fight taking place in silence on the screen in front of her. It didn’t last very long. Mary had a professional admiration for them. She half-wondered about an army of them working for America, and then dismissed the idea. “I don’t think Gerard Butler will come along to rescue us.”
“Who?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Mary tapped an analyst on the shoulder.
“Could you bring up the bunker?”
All the screens changed to show the bunker.
Bodies were strewn around the room. They looked like they had been defending the President with their bare fists. Half a dozen enemy soldiers were standing in the room. President Cruise had his hands beside him, his head bowed.
“Do you think we could get him out?” Murray said.
“It’d be an impossible mission,” said Mary.
“Now is not the time for his election slogan,” Murray had obviously never been to the movies.
“No,” Mary said simply. “I don’t think we could. There were twenty men there, with emphasis on the ‘were’.”
Flanked by the monstrous regiment, President Cruise looked smaller than usual. They led him from the bunker towards the elevator.
The analysts followed their progress on the monitors.
“They’re going to the Oval Office,” said Mary.
“Good,” Murray replied. “We have sound in there.”
“Major,” said an analyst.
“Yes?” Murray and Mary both said, together.
“There is a helicopter approaching.”
“Is it one of ours?” asked Murray hopefully. “Reinforcements?”
“It’s not responding to air traffic control,” the analyst replied, listening to the words coming through his ear piece.
“Do we have any air support?” Mary asked.
“Two minutes out,” said the analyst. “They will be here in time.”
“Tell them to blow the helicopter out of the sky,” Mary said, grimly.
“It’s coming over residential and office buildings,” the analyst said.
“Blow the bastard out of the sky,” said Mary. “That will be Wishbone, coming to gloat, or getting the President to surrender. That cannot happen.”