by Geoff Wolak
It was over quickly, the RAF peering over shoulders at screens. A dozen small craft, little bigger than cruise missiles, had appeared from nowhere, bearing down on the airfield at high speed.
Operation Trigger Happy’s conditions meant that the very instant that any movement, optical recording, or EM signal was received by any one of over fifty sensors - from any drone that was airborne, some four hundred small missiles would be fired off, many of those missiles to be fired in random directions. Where a missile picked up a target, that target’s information would be passed to any fellow missile that was close by, and those missiles would change course.
Those missiles were already part-way through their three-stage acceleration process, and had been fired out of tubes at speed to start with. Every second counted in this game, and less than two seconds after the contact signal was given several missiles were striking each enemy mini-craft, and striking them in a particular way.
First, the ground-fired missile would release a narrow but powerful EMP pulse. A fraction of a second later, timed to be in close proximity to the enemy craft, the missile head would explode, the force directed backwards, three pointed darts projected forwards at great speed, and with great kinetic energy. The darts did not contain any ordnance, their aim being to puncture, and to disperse the contents of the enemy craft – such as a nuclear warhead.
Twelve seconds after the contact signal had been given, and dozens of missiles had penetrated each enemy craft, even as those craft fell to the ground in pieces. They were hit repeatedly.
‘All incoming craft have been downed,’ came a voice. ‘No secondary explosions.’
‘Confirmed radiation,’ someone shouted.
‘They carried nukes, sir,’ a Kenyan office said towards Jimmy, a nod given back.
‘Status of Operation Payback?’ Jimmy called.
‘Four missiles penetrated the portals used to deliver the craft, sir.’
‘So, we may have killed a few hard-working portal operators,’ Jimmy stated. ‘OK, how far apart were the portals?’
‘Five to ten miles, sir. None closer than five miles.’
‘Now, if I was a clever alien, I would have opened a portal right here, shoved a nuke through and detonated a second after closing the portal.’
‘They don’t know this exact location, sir,’ the Kenyan officer suggested.
‘No, they don’t, and they waited for the press to transmit from here before they attacked. Odd, very odd.’
Twelve hours passed, night having descended, and no further attacks had materialised. Jimmy held a press conference, the reporters a little worse for wear after the day’s harrowing activities.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of this Earth. We anticipated today’s attacks, and we successfully dealt with them. If we had not … many of you would not be hearing this broadcast.
‘Peoples of Earth … you are not alone, and we stand with you, shoulder to shoulder in this fight. I brought with me an army, and that army will stay here as long as it takes. They carry advanced weapons, and our soldiers and technicians will stand and bravely fight for their brethren. I ask that you make them welcome, and provide houses and barracks. They came here to fight, and to die, for you.
‘Peoples of Earth: we do not know what further attacks may occur here, but we anticipate that there will be future attacks. Today, a great many alien craft were shot down, and they must be hurting, and they must be wondering if it’s worth it. Maybe … we’ve turned the tide with the losses we inflicted upon them today. Let’s hope so. If there are further attacks, and more aggressive attacks, a larger army will arrive here.
‘People’s of Earth: if necessary I’ll bring here a million men armed with sophisticated weapons and missiles, and dozens of orbital craft. As they punch harder, so we’ll punch harder, and we have vast resources.
‘Peoples of Earth: please go about your business, go to work, hold your heads up high and get on with your lives. Take a holiday, enjoy yourselves, and be defiant in the face of adversity. Your greatest weapon … will be your ability to continue to live and to function. If society falls apart … the aliens win. Do next week what you would have done if the attacks had never taken place. Go out, have a drink and a meal, and relax; don’t let the aliens win by changing our way of life.
‘Peoples of Earth. Never forget that you are part of a family, and family of many planets, and we will never leave you alone in a time of need. I … will be close by, and I will be watching. If you fall, we will lift you back up. If you are attacked, we will bring so many soldiers here that there will be standing room only – and a long queue at the bar. Thank you for your time.’
Command review
The security ministers of various countries, consortiums, and worlds met at Manson, 1938-world, just two weeks after their last crisis meeting, the subject again being the Zim.
I sat with Baldy, who again put in a personal appearance, and Jimmy stood ready to address sixty men – and three women I noticed as I took in the crowd. Seems that being a security minister was still predominantly a male pastime.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Jimmy began. ‘You’ve all been briefed on what happened on the world where Toby Holton is currently stationed. Since most people -’ He glanced at me. ‘- refer to it as Sandra’s World, I guess that reference will do for now. What we’re here to discuss … is a common defence policy, and the best form of defence … is trying to figure out just what the hell is going on. To aid with that, we have with us today Mobius, the artificial intelligence created on my old world to assist with the smooth flow of projects. Can you hear me Mobius?’
‘Indeed I can, sir, loud and clear,’ came a mechanised voice that was very hard to distinguish from a native human voice. Its greatest giveaway was that it was very polite, and often sounded like a 1950s college professor. I had images of someone in a tatty old brown jacket with leather elbows. All it needed was a pipe to smoke.
‘OK, Mobius has been given all of the relevant information regarding the Zim, and the behaviour of the Zim, all events, dates and times, tactics, even combat tactics employed. The rest of you also have that information, yet I somehow doubt that you’ll process it as fast as Mobius.
‘We’re here today … to try and figure a few things out. Now, when I first met the alien known as Slumber he told me a story about how a split timeline had led to a conflict within his own people. I discounted that story … since it was a cover story, created to justify their attacks. That story … had all the hallmarks of having been created by a political dictatorship, possibly a military dictatorship. I would like to think that – when mankind finally meets a few aliens worth meeting – that our people are more upfront and polite about it.
‘What we do know … is that they possess advanced craft and operate portal technology. What we also know … is that we’re here today, and not dead or enslaved. Given that they do have portal technology and space-faring stealth craft, we should be dead or enslaved. Something … does not add up. Why have they not gone back to our early history and destroyed us, and why have they not found us – our linked worlds?
‘They found the Seethan world, and had a spy in place. That spy may well have assisted with the development of the flu virus, we’ll never know, or he may have just been there to keep an eye on mankind. At some point they sent further ships to the Seethan world to alter that planet’s history. So, they must have known about that planet’s future, and that Slumber had failed. They obviously didn’t have a portal permanently open to some future Seethan date, since they would have been caught up in their own paradox, and left scratching their morphic heads.
‘So, they appear to be launching missions - and then testing the effectiveness of those missions at a later juncture by dialling in, and then … sending another mission when the first one failed, incrementing as they go – an odd policy. It’s almost … an emotional policy.
‘Now, when you have portal technology, and you have an enemy, you go back to when that enemy
was young – and kill them. Problem solved. But we’re still here, and so are the Seether. So, there’s a good chance that the worlds are linked somehow, us linked to the alien world’s timeline; they wish to alter the past, but only selectively. As I commented to Paul previously – the one with hair, it’s as if there’s a dictator controlling things at their end, and that he would never risk sending a mission that would remove him from office, even if such a mission benefited his species. The dictator … cares only about his political career in the here and now.
‘So, it seems that … over a period of months or years, this individual or group have been sending ships to the future to take samples, and then sending ships back to alter things. And, right about now, they must be very confused as to why they’re not succeeding.
‘Now, we saw on the Seethan world a single spy put in place – a commendable and professional approach, if I say so myself.’
People smiled.
‘If we say that he arrived around 1960, we’ll call that date Year Zero for the Zim interest in things outside of their own paranoid little world. A few decades later - within the Seethan timeline, at human time index 2038 and some eighty years after Slumber had arrived, his backup mission turned up. That was a long gap, a very long gap.
‘The only explanation … is a paradox. The Zim sampled that world’s future, saw that the Seether had only developed slowly, and went away. The later Seether, much later, then altered their own past and created a paradox. Something then happened to cause the Zim to re-sample the Seethan timeline, and to be annoyed at what they found, thus sending more ships. That in itself is a paradox that I don’t fully understand.
‘Given what happened on Sandra’s world, my guess would be that the Seethan world will see an incremental attack in the decades ahead. That Seethan time line should record that the human ancestors assisted the Seether, but then left, and that the Seether grew at their own rate. That, ladies and gentlemen, is still the plan.
‘But on Sandra’s world we saw a ramp-up and escalation in the Zim attacks, and they were clever – but still working in threes. They sent in six ships, a second wave just a few hours behind – as if anticipating failure, and finally fired missiles through portals at the base where I was holding a press conference. And there they made a mistake, a fatal mistake, and the kind of mistake that I was hoping for.
‘To explain that mistake, let’s consider how the Zim generally attack. They fly their ships through portals that take them back in time – say six to twelve years, then fly six years across space to a portal on an asteroid, going through to an unknown date, and then on to Earth six years later. I had assumed that they were six to twelve light years away, but I had an idea given to me by Pleb.’
‘Pleb?’ I queried, a few faces creasing. ‘My Pleb, or the intelligent one married to Sandra?’
‘Your Pleb,’ Jimmy said with a grin. ‘He told me a story about how he stopped the bachelors from neighbouring hostels from pinching his apples, which he used to feed his pigs with. He buried those apples in a box, right outside his bedroom window, but every day carried a sack of rubbish to a wood, making sure that people saw him. He even boasted to those trying to pinch his apples that they would never find them. So, whilst the apple-pinching Seethan pig farmers were wondering just where in the woods Pleb buried his apples, the good apples had never gone anywhere.’
Jimmy took a moment. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I think the six year flight, and the portal on an asteroid, to be a very elaborate ruse.’ People exchanged looks. ‘I think they’re on a parallel Earth.’
Hushed conversations broke out.
I said, ‘On a parallel world? They’d have to be crazy to fly six years just to throw us off the scent.’
‘Would they?’ Jimmy posed. ‘Why would anyone go to such lengths?’ He held his hands wide.
‘They’re afraid,’ Baldy put in.
Jimmy nodded towards him. ‘So why, ladies and gentlemen, would an advanced race - with stealth craft and portal technology – be afraid of us? Mobius?’
‘The most logical reason for such fear would be the result of a future sampling, where they discovered that they fought a war with us – and lost.’
‘Any other scenarios, Mobius?’ Jimmy asked.
‘Any future event where their existing political structures would be dismantled or altered – against their wishes.’
‘And that brings me back to the dictator at the centre of this. Mobius, theorise about their grasp of temporal mechanics.’
‘They obviously have portal technology, but that technology may not have been developed by them,’ Mobius stated.
I was on my feet. ‘They’ve grabbed a human world with portal technology.’
Jimmy nodded as hushed conversations broke out. ‘I keep thinking of Dr Singh.’
‘Singh?’ I queried.
‘Singh made the breakthrough, but didn’t want the jarhead military having control over it. What if … the portal scientists and operators are human – who know about us?’
A loud chorus of whispered comments broke out. Jimmy took a moment, exchanging a look with me, and I stood looking shocked. But I understood the premise, and somehow agreed with it; our alien friends had a limited understanding, or use, of portal technology.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Jimmy loudly called, and I sat, a look exchanged with Baldy. ‘We have taken future samples from the Moon.’ He turned to my alter-ego. ‘Paul?’
Baldy stood, and stepped forwards. ‘We didn’t listen-in to any of the various EM signals, we just checked that there were signals, and I can report that the linked worlds are all still talking some sixty years ahead – and not under alien control.’ He sat.
‘Thank you,’ Jimmy offered Baldy, always more polite with my opposite number than when talking to me. ‘So, we must assume that there is another human world, with portal technology, that we don’t yet know about. As of two days ago, I instructed Paul -’ He gestured towards Baldy. ‘- to commence a search for that world using the Moon base, or rather using a version of our Moon base, since we don’t want them finding us anymore than they want us finding them.’
‘What about the portals they used on Sandra’s world?’ came a voice from the audience.
‘Unfortunately, no signal frequency was grabbed,’ Jimmy reported. ‘But the portal operators would have got a shock, many killed, as our missiles flew into their portal openings. That – in itself – may be significant, since they’ll think twice about using portals. They’ll also be scratching their heads as to how we did it. We’ve created a paradox – or two – on that world, and we’ll see what happens next. My guess is that they’ll change tactic, and get desperate. But, since they are plodding along through time, maybe we’ll get a break before then.’
‘And when we do?’ I asked.
Jimmy considered my question. ‘If they have captured a human world, then our populations may have issues with us nuking the principal cities, or releasing a virus. And, their time line is linked to ours at several points, not least via the Seethan world. We could never attack them in their past, we’d have to go at them in the here and now.’
‘Given the level of technology they have,’ Baldy began. ‘Such an encounter would be … violent, to say the least.’
‘It would,’ Jimmy agreed. ‘Still, first we have to be correct in our assumptions, and then we’d have to find them. Mobius, what do you think is their situation?’
‘I agree with your suppositions, Mister Silo, in that they are on a version of Earth, and not many light years distant. But there is one topic that you have not covered, and that is where they came from originally. Their DNA is known to be very different to all life found on Earth. I would theorise that they have a home world, or once did. If those colonising a human world – as you theorise – arrived at that world by ship, then we may assume that there are other ships attempting to colonise other worlds, and in different time lines. A solution for one colonised world would not be a solution for all colonise
d worlds.’
‘A good point,’ Jimmy agreed. ‘But I think that in order to quell a human world that possessed and operated portal technology - they would have needed a massive armada of ships to start with. After all, that world could have gone back and warned themselves.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Mobius cut in. ‘If they had arrived on your original world at a juncture when Dr Singh was experimenting with portal technology, they would have found little organised resistance.’
‘The chances of that accidental timing are slim,’ Jimmy stated. ‘Still, there are plenty of post-apocalyptic worlds out there. We just need to find one where Dr Singh is alive and well, and experimenting, a large and menacing alien craft sat in orbit.’
‘And when we do find it?’ a delegate asked.
Jimmy faced the man, and took a moment. ‘There could be harsh language used.’
After the meeting, Jimmy and Baldy accompanied me across to the house in Trophy, greeting Susan and the boys. The boys found Baldy to be something of a curiosity, and puzzled his face. They also tugged at his beard. We enjoyed a good meal of ribs, but soon got back onto the topic in hand as wine was served.
Susan asked, ‘A human world? Captured by aliens?’
‘Yes,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘It all makes sense, especially the use of portals to make that final attack. Those portals were sat on an alternate Earth, not some distant planet. They made a mistake when they got desperate. And, I would guess that they’re stretching their budget a little.’
‘They’ve lost a lot of craft,’ Baldy pointed out. ‘And they’re not cheap, not even with alien technology. Whoever is in charge over there must be feeling the heat.’
‘Either that,’ I began, ‘or he’s a dictator with a stranglehold.’
‘Even a dictator needs support,’ Baldy countered. ‘Fear is good up to a point, but his generals must support him.’
Susan put in, ‘Maybe, in their alien culture, he’s a king.’
‘Or a queen,’ Baldy added. ‘Supreme power, divine power.’