Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse (14 page)

When we shuffle our feet, yet remain for the most part unconvinced, he tries again, “Maybe a better insight can be gained by remembering our own Earthly history.  What does a more advanced human culture do when it first encounters a less advanced culture that could make trouble and interfere with their intended exploitation of it?  When your people first traded with American aborigines, for example, you exchanged harmless trinkets with them.  Beads.  Ribbons.  Perhaps a steel knife blade or two.  They obtained firearms only by occasionally using their flint weapons to ambush your hapless ancestors to murder and steal from them.  You certainly never gave away muskets, repeating rifles, revolvers or Gatlin guns.  If you had, this would still be the land of Apaches, Comanches and the Blackfoot.  Yes?”

One by one, we nod, accepting his thesis, if only for the moment.  He turns to continue on his way, leading us forward again, and we see the right-angle turn looms only meters away now.

Directed at his back, I query, “Is that what Russian troops are doing underneath Area-51?  Ambushing the interlopers with stone-tipped arrows?”

The Russian tips his head ruefully to one side, “Oh, the conflict has gone much further than that, by now.  After nearly a century of global guerilla warfare, we have learned a thing or two about our opponents.  For many reasons, my previous comparison of human beings to cockroaches was wrong.  It made the point at the time, but now I will use it to make another point.  When it comes to their experience with humanity, they have learned much to their misfortune that we are not cockroaches.  Perhaps more accurately, we might refer to ourselves as army ants.  Numerous.  Highly organized.  Territorial.  And, above all else, violent.

“Fortunately for us, we think the bugs are none of these things.”  Once more, he stops in the middle of the hallway.  That left turn lingers at his back.

I review, “So you’re saying they are few, disorganized, non-territorial, and non-violent?”

“Some of that.  They are organized, at least.  Indeed, they seem to devote their most threatening technology to communications and intelligence collection.  Our greatest difficulty is the concealment of our intentions, plans and preparations, because our enemy has an uncanny ability to anticipate our every action.”  He presses a lopsided grin to his face.  “In most of your science fiction movie plots, human beings defeat the sinister aliens for their lack of emotion or their inflexible reliance on logic.  The truth of this conflict is a bit different.  Apparently, the one thing they can’t wrap their considerable intellect around… the one thing about our kind that they find completely… alien, if you will pardon my word play… is our individuality.  Like obscene insects, they are all connected via some invisible capacity to network their thoughts.  At all times, each is intimately aware of what the other is thinking and doing.  This allows them to work and, more importantly to our cause, attack and defend themselves as a single creature.”

“A superorganism,” I whisper.

“What’s that you say?”

“It’s a biological term.  It refers to any mass of individuals that act as a single organism.  A superorganism.  Ants.  Bees.  Termites.  Slime molds.  That kind of thing.  We know of a few mammalian examples, too.  Mole rats come to mind.”

“Yes,” agrees The Russian, “this is the idea.  As you say, they act as a superorganism.  It’s not much of a weakness.  Really, it’s more of a strength.  Nevertheless, like any strength, it offers certain flaws, which we can exploit.  Occasionally, they make mistakes.  This place… this Area-51… is one such mistake.  Your American leaders attempted to erase all knowledge of it from the general populace, and they have been consistently surprised by the fact that the very attempt to do so often achieves the opposite effect.  Simply by claiming it doesn’t exist, they pique the curiosity.  We human beings naturally conclude it must exist, by virtue of the lie.”

He pauses.  He smiles.  His hands extend to make that familiar gesture of supplication.

The Girl’s left hand strays to the pommel of her big knife.  Chief’s right hand flexes inside his pocket around one of his knuckledusters.  While The Engineer fondles his collapsible baton, The Kid his icepicks, and The Guide his garrote.

Chief asks the question occupying all our minds, “What’s waiting for us around the bend?”

The Russian’s sly grin broadens.  “Nothing to fear, I assure you, though you might have found it most… alarming… without my long introduction.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” I pontificate, shifting my flashlight from my right hand to my left.

“Russians.  Chinese.  Iranians.  A few Pakis.  That’s it.”

“That’s all?” demands an incredulous Engineer sarcastically.

Our host spreads his gesture of supplication a bit wider, “Had you stumbled onto them without knowing what you now know, what might you conclude?”

“I see.”  Moving cautiously past The Russian to peer around the corner, I am disappointed to confront more hallway.  Another door.  “Down there?” I ask.

“Yes.”  He turns to address me, as my companions press close.  “We make preparations to trade our flint-tipped arrows for one of their repeating rifles.  So to speak.”

“A spacecraft?”

“Yes.”

“The one back in the hangar?”

“Yes,” supplies the Russian, “because it is a blend of human and alien technology, a leftover from before Terminus.  The Americans used it to monitor the rest of the world and, occasionally, drop kinetic weapons on it.  From space.  We call them earthquake bombs.”

“You’re going to bomb the aliens?”

He starts down the last fifty meters of corridor toward the final doorway, concluding, “No… not exactly.  By now, we cannot hope to dislodge them from our planet this way.”

“You tried that already,” I guess, “and Terminus was the result.”

Chagrined and somewhat apologetic, The Russian hedges, “Before I answer, my American friends, let me tell you how the entire world suffered from that abomination.  None of us escaped it.  As you know.”

“But you caused it,” growls Chief, “you and all your pals!”

“Yes,” replies The Russian cautiously, “and no.  We believe they had always planned to implement that assault, sooner or later.  We simply tried to prevent it while we still had time.”

“Tried,” I supply, “and failed.”

“Obviously.  This is how we know any attempt to drive them from Earth is doomed to failure before it starts.”

“What?  They can do worse than Terminus?” mumbles The Kid unhappily.

“In fact, as far as we can determine, that any of us survived the event must have been, to them, a surprising failure.  Another oversight chalked up to their clonal, collectivist mindset.  Naturally, we fear another attempt, and we are certain none of us will survive next time, for all their hasty reformulation of the technique.”

By now, he stands before the final barricade.  We can hear a low murmur and rumble of continual activity transpiring beyond the double doors.  Gratefully, we learn these are human voices and human footsteps, rather than the clatter-clack of alien exoskeletons.

When he pushes open the door, we see a large chamber strewn with oddly familiar equipment and foreign uniformed personnel.  Those nearest the doors pause their work to turn and stare, but only for a second.  Then they are back to work, their hands moving furiously, though with great deliberation.

“This,” announces The Russian, “is humanity’s last gasp.  We are nose-up in the quicksand and desperately reaching for a rope.  This is that rope.”

“Are they…,” hedges Chief, “…are they bombs?  Atomic bombs?”

Black, conical devices dot the room, each surrounded by a small team of technicians and equipment.  From my experience with museums, I vaguely recognize those geometric shapes.  For several long seconds, I struggle to order my thoughts, arrange my memories, and name them.  “MRVs.”  Pronounced ‘mervs’.

The Russian smiles, “Now you get it.  In fact, these are hydrogen bombs.  Three hundred of them.  Each offering a ten-megaton yield.”

Leading us deeper into the bustling chamber, he pauses to allow our observation of one and the preparations underway to configure and arm it.  I note it rests on a convenient cart, a sort of pallet lift.  This one, they have apparently completely prepared, because they close and refasten a small data port inset into its base as they begin clearing their gear.  One of the Iranian technicians positions herself behind the cart and then groans to push it forward past us, into the aisle.

Following her sedately, we ultimately arrive at a loading area, where they have begun bundling the warheads in groups of six, each grouping stacked atop another larger cart.  By now, a small train of these wheeled sledges awaits final transport through a set of double-doors that penetrate into the hangar hidden behind the wall to our left.

Engineer clears his throat and asks, “What are you going to do with them?”

“We’re going to load them into the spacecraft you saw earlier, then fly them into orbit and beyond.  Come.  This way.”  Offers the foreigner confidently, “I’ll show you.”

“Show us what?” demands an impatient Chief.

“Everything.  We have no need of secrets.  Not now.  By tonight, we will either succeed or fail.  There will be no going back or recovering from failure, and, if we succeed…,” he shrugs.  “Who knows?”

Engineer petulantly retorts, “Succeed?  Succeed at what?  You said yourself any attempt to dislodge from the planet is doomed to fail.  So why try?  Why risk the lives of every survivor on the planet for a lost cause?”

The Russian continues leading us along the aisle, waggling one forefinger chidingly while facing away from us, “To be sure, I said from the planet.  This time, we will not stage a ground attack against them.  What’s more… about your last question… since Terminus, do any of you care what happens to the world?  Really care?”  The big man’s voice breaks, “I don’t know about you Americans, but I had a family back home.  A wife.  Two kids.  After… what I did to them… I don’t mind what happens next.  If I can do something… anything… to kill aliens, then any risk is worth an attempt at success, however small the chances might be.  Do you not agree?”

I growl, “We all agree.  Or we wouldn’t be here.”

“I thought so,” he responds, now turning right before the rear wall of the chamber, obviously bound for a glass-encased control room inset into the center of it.  “Anyway, all indications inform us they are about to revisit the Terminus assault.  After five years, they have no doubt refined their technique to a state of near-perfection.  We don’t expect another failure on their part, and another failure on our part won’t make a difference.  Within days, we’ll all be finished.  Game over, as you say.”

“Extinction,” I offer soberly.

“What then?” garbles The Kid.  “What will they do with the planet after?”

The Russian shrugs again before he pushes through a glass door leading through the glass walls of the smaller observation chamber, “Who knows?  Who cares?”

A squat, stocky Chinese female standing on a raised stage behind a bank of computer monitors at the rear of this cramped, equipment-filled space adds in choppy English, “We think, nothing.  They have not come for resources or living space or anything else useful.  We think they have come simply to exterminate us.  Nothing more.”  Addressing The Russian, she makes a harsh demand in Chinese.  Then, in English once more, she asks, “Is this them?”

He nods curtly and bows slightly, stiffly.  “It is.  I didn’t bother to get their names.  I didn’t think you would care.”

“I don’t.  Just make certain they stay out of the way while we finish our work.  They will touch nothing!”

“Of course,” he returns, pointing toward a flimsy rectangular table surrounded by uncomfortable folding chairs.  To us, he says, “She wanted me to lock you up.  I thought you might better enjoy the view here, though.  I know I have your assurances of good behavior.  Do as she says, please.  Touch nothing.  Do not interfere.  Otherwise, watch.  Witness.  Learn.  No matter what happens this afternoon, we are making history.”

Where indicated, we sit.  He joins us, folding his hands on the tabletop, his face fixed forward into the chamber and his delighted expression glowing from the light of a hundred flashing computer displays.  Anticipatory and hopeful, his slate gaze sparkles dully.

THE ELEVENTH-HOUR

After we spend some time absorbing our change in condition and our new surroundings, to The Russian, I say, “This isn’t what we expected to find coming here.”

“Oh?” returns the foreign soldier, “What did you expect to find?”

I open my mouth to reply, but catch myself.  After our encounters with the Clans and the space bugs, I realize my expectations were never aligned with the discovered reality.  Ultimately, I say, “I don’t know.”

“I know,” asserts Chief angrily, “aliens.  The sons of bitches who did this to us.”

“We did it to ourselves,” reminds The Kid, his garbled pronunciation scarcely decipherable.

“You’re saying you would have normally murdered your family… your friends… your neighbors… whatever you did during Terminus?  Without… them?”

“Of course not!”

“Then they did it to us!  What else can it be?”

“You have all the answers,” prods Engineer, leaning forward across the tabletop on his elbows toward our foreign host, “what do you know about Terminus?”

The Russian’s face blanches pale.  He glances away.  “Perhaps it is best not to talk about that.  Nothing I say will help you.”

“How can you know?”

“It never helped me,” he sniffles and rubs the corner of his eyes with his thumbs.  “Besides, it is bad manners these days.  Dredging up the sordid past and no way to change things.”

“I’m afraid we can’t let you off so easily,” I growl.  “If it can’t help, then it can’t hurt. Either way, we don’t care any longer.  We don’t care about anything.”

He sighs, and for the first time his expression waxes angry.  For all our ambivalence these days as pertaining to everything from our selection of meals to our preference for life or death, the stark realities of human emotion remain constant.  Some things make us happy.  Some sad.  Others angry.  Terminus will more often be of the latter brand, rarely the second, and never the former.

“You called it ‘the war on terror’.  Ha, what a joke!”  The Russian’s tone is sarcastic and spiteful.  “In reality, it was nothing more than a continuation of the cold war and what everyone else calls ‘the war for earth’.  As I said before, every lie grows from a kernel of truth.  The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent end of your cold war is no exception.  Understand, this was not a failure of economics or politics.  Rather, it was a failure of human institutions confronting alien institutions.  My countrymen held out as long as they could.  In the end, American success forced us to adapt, and the result was a flood of western products, goods and services into our markets.  We were nearly overwhelmed by the resultant influx of alien technology, all of it containing embedded ‘sleep technology’, which the bugs use to propagate their lies and deceptions.  Very quickly, our people began to question everything they knew about reality, and we soon began to encounter bugs infiltrating every level of our political and social control systems.

“Then, just as our nation hung over the very precipice of destruction, the Indians stepped in to save us.  During the struggle against their English overlords, their extremely clever scientists had secretly developed an entirely human device capable of defeating the alien sleep technology.  Unfortunately, to preserve its secrecy we could never use it overtly or globally.  Instead, we employed it judiciously at a tactical level to decapitate their insidious grasp on or leadership.”

“And then you installed your latest strongman,” I guess.

“Correct.  Of course, this is your interpretation of a much larger truth.  We knew the man you reference was safe, free from the contamination of alien influence, and we knew he could get the job done for all his cunning guile and ruthlessness.  More importantly, he detested the bugs like a fat woman hates a diet!  Believe me, such qualities are rare among men these days.”

Here, The Russian is momentarily distracted by a bustle of activity in the work room beyond the windows.  By now, the last series of weapons have been prepped for deployment.  They are now being wheeled through the aisles and stacked against the hangar-side wall before the broad doorways of the prep-room, where each six-pack of H-bombs awaits eventual delivery into the hold of the spacecraft.

“Through the following years, we understood how the Indian Device had provided a final opportunity to defend ourselves.  It represented our best hope for freedom.  We knew we must form a hidden alliance among all the free nations to counter the alien influence, and we used the ID as currency to purchase the necessary loyalty.  Once we opened the eyes of select political and economic leaders, we obtained the funding and infrastructure to act.  Security was our number one priority, but this was a difficult undertaking due to the sheer depth and breadth of the resultant project.  We layered it many concentric levels deep, hoping the exposure of the project’s outer shells would delay discovery of its inner and most vital shells, those requiring more restrictive resources and, thus, supporting reduced redundancy.”

The Russian points through the windows to the collection of MRVs, “There you see the focus of the enterprise.  The center.  These are not American weapons.  In fact, they belong to no nation.  Rather, they belong to The Enterprise, our global conspiracy of freedom.  In reality, these were never more than failsafe devices, holdbacks to be used in case our primary strategy failed.  This was to be a targeted assault on all the alien strongholds scattered around the planet, most of these so-called Sleeper Stations, installations activated to maintain the alien influence on human society through some unknown broadcast signal that we could never hack.

“When all was prepared, we engaged this assault.  Within the first two hours, we nearly succeeded.  I swear to you all,” he smashes his fist down upon the table, causing us and several of the nearby technicians to jump, “we had them by their balls!  How could we know?”

“You might have guessed,” growls Chief, rising abruptly, confrontationally.  “You couldn’t honestly believe they would let you simply kick them off the planet!”

When the big Villager jumps to his feet, knuckledusters fixed to his fists and his crazed eyes burning madly, I expect The Russian to respond by drawing his pistol to defend himself.  It seems the nihilistic aftereffects of Terminus are universal, however, as the soldier remains calmly seated, daring the assault.  Our eyes flick back and forth between the two of them, but none of us seem bound to intervene.

Exposing his palms slowly, his face apologetic and pleading, The Russian responds, “Please, hear me out.  Kill me if you will when I finish, but hear me out.  You must understand something you do not know about our alien overlords.  Recall, I told you they are few.  This was the truth then, and it remains so to this day!

“Something about their method of space travel limits the numbers they can send.  We believe the individuals present among us now represent an advance expeditionary force dispatched here to purge the planet of potential competitors.”

“Competitors to what?”

The Russian shrugs, interrupted, “A larger faction to come.  Or none.  Competitors to their long-standing control of this portion of our Galaxy, fearing our inevitable rise to a local space-based power.  Who knows?”  He motions with his hands to ease our hulk of a police chief back into his seat, and the big man complies.  “May I continue?  Yes?  Fine.”

He clears his throat and crosses his legs, relaxed and at ease.  “As I said, we think they came here not to conquer or tax, but merely to exterminate.  Therefore, they were
always
going to execute their version of Terminus.  Always.”

Pondering the obvious flaws in his rendition thus far, I interrupt again with, “Then why should they wait nearly a century to do so?”

“We think they had not anticipated the Industrial Revolution.  When they last observed us, that being when they left their home base or whatever, we were still a rather primitive, isolated, and, consequently, easily controlled species.  Unfortunately for their plans, however, when they arrived they found a global population rapidly expanding and dispersing around the planet.  Although our technology advanced greatly after first contact, we were already well on our way to developing the basic technology required to put us into orbit.  After the First World War, we would have done so with a greater international harmony than ever existed after they arrived.

“No, we surprised them by presenting a much more complicated problem than they originally envisioned, and this is the reason why they waited nearly a century.  They had no choice.  Think about it.  No matter how you feel about our intervention, Terminus failed.  Believe me when I tell you it was intended to eradicate all of us.  To a last man, woman and child.  That it did not speaks to the difficulty of the undertaking.  By forcing their hand, we might have saved the world.”

“Or condemned it,” retorts The Engineer.

“Perhaps.  Nevertheless, we did what we did with only the best of intentions, and it almost worked.  When we began shutting down their Sleep Stations as a result of multiple rapidly coordinated strikes, we could see the, as you say, lamp at the end of the tunnel!  We almost succeeded.   Unfortunately, a handful of these operations were delayed.  Apparently, this was just enough of a toehold for them to initiate Terminus.  We still don’t know how it worked, any more than we understand how the Sleep Signal worked.  Like you, none of us experienced any sort of change prior to inception of the event.  One minute, we were a normal cadre, staging our various assaults, and the next… mass murder.  The end.”

“And now?”

“Now?  We have patched ourselves back together again.  We are also few, but it is a big planet.  These people you see here,” he waves across the control room and the floor-to-ceiling windows, “Are all of us.  Nearly.  And this is our last hope.  Terminus was certainly a lopsided conflict, although we did manage to learn many new things about our enemy.  We learned they truly are few.  Fewer even than we, despite Terminus.  More vital to our current mission, we know where they have staged themselves out there,” he pauses to wave through the ceiling, thus encompassing the unseen heavens with a single gesture, “and we know how to get here.

“Even as we planned those failed assaults, we continued to build the center shell of our revolt.  This would be humanity’s last gasp… our ‘Eleventh-Hour’ project.  We dug a deep tunnel beneath the Bering Strait beginning in Russia and ending at the mount head of the Alaskan Pipeline.  Through the years, using altered maintenance pigs-.”

Chief interrupts, “Ah, maintenance pigs?”

“Small semi-automated devices they use to clean, examine and repair a pipeline from the inside,” supplies The Engineer.

“Right.  Pipeline operators periodically shoot them down the tube under high pressure like bullets.  These devices fill the pipe and scrub it free of gunk and buildup as they go.  Anyway, they’re rather large, you know, large enough to carry one of those,” he points to a MRV, “with some room left over.  One by one we brought those warheads down to the continental U.S. this way.  Then we deposited them in another tunnel that runs from the pipeline terminal to a spot in the desert not far away from here.  Of course, we had to use the ID on a select few Americans to accomplish this phase of the operation.  This phase of the effort posed no small risk, but somehow we managed to choose the right people at the right time.  We managed to build our backup stockpile.  When the time came, we planned to hack a short tunnel from the stockpile into this hangar.  There.”  He points to a crudely rendered opening in the far wall of the prep room, its rocky walls rough-hewn and hastily finished.

“Then Terminus hit.  It nearly decapitated The Enterprise.  Only a handful of our upper echelon personnel survived, and only two of those remained psychologically fit for duty.  Me.  And her.”  Now he points to the stocky Chinawoman, who has been continually occupied overseeing the arming and placement of all those hydrogen bombs.  “So, here I am,” he waves expansively, “here they are, and here you are.  That’s about it.  If you still prefer to do so, you may beat me to death now.  I assure you, I won’t mind.”

Chief grinds his teeth so the muscles of his cheeks flex with vicious ripples.  Ultimately, he relents, returns his knuckledusters to the twin scabbards at either hip, and then relaxes into his seat.

“All this time… it’s been… them?”

The Russian shrugs.  “Mostly.”

“What about MLK?”

The Russian tips his head.  “What?”

“Dr. Martin Luther King.”

“What about him?”

“You know what I mean,” hisses The Engineer.

“No,” answers The Russian.  “Not them.  That was just plain old bigotry.  Of course, all the other assassinations probably didn’t help to discourage that act of madness.”

“Korea?  Vietnam?”

“Strategic attempts to support and widen the American-led alien overrun of Japan.  We believe these were attempts to infiltrate China and, through them, the former Soviet Union.  Fortunately for us all, you failed there.  You chose badly, perhaps on purpose.  After all, the Koreans and the Vietnamese have been notorious xenophobes for millennia.  Even the Khans had trouble there.”

The Kid mumbles, “Xenophobes?”

I reply, “People who hate foreigners.”