The Trojan Horse (31 page)

***

Toby still felt filthy an hour later, when the Cabinet filed into the room to discuss the situation with the new President.  McGreevy’s old post as Secretary of State had been filled by one of her creatures, as had two other posts, both resigned in disgust after the attack on Iran.  Toby was sure that McGreevy would be able to portray both men as betraying her, or being reluctant to serve under a female President, or whatever other charges could be used to blacken their names.  They wouldn’t be allowed to rock the boat too much…he remembered the dead reporters and shivered.  The chances were that the deserters were already being targeted for elimination.

He took a seat in the corner and listened carefully, without saying anything.  McGreevy didn’t seem inclined to replace the Directors of either the CIA or the NSA, which was lucky as both men were involved in the resistance.  Without them, it would be much harder to coordinate action against the aliens and a federal government that was being increasingly subverted by the aliens.  The situation appeared to be the same in the rest of the First World states, while chaos was sweeping across the Middle East after Tehran had been struck.  There was fighting in Palestine, civil war in Iraq and unrest in Saudi Arabia.  Toby was tempted to believe that the aliens had planned everything; the sudden oil shortages forced the United States and the rest of the First World into becoming more dependent on fusion, hence strengthening the Galactic Federation’s position.  But they hadn’t known that an American assassin was going into Iran, had they?  They were powerful, yet he was sure they were not gods.

“Madam President,” Barney Koch said.  He was the replacement FBI Director, although Congress hadn’t confirmed him yet – and might never confirm him, depending on what happened in the impeachment proceedings.  “I regret to report that we have encountered considerable difficulties in implementing the anti-militia program.”

Toby smiled, inwardly.  Militias generally didn’t keep membership lists, which left the FBI dependent upon inserted agents and following up family trees.  Anyone who had ever got into trouble with the government on illegal weapons charges was regarded as a potential militia member – and therefore their families were targeted for arrest.  Sometimes it worked, but many of the people who’d been rounded up were innocents – and some of them chose to go down fighting rather than surrender to the government thugs.  And if that wasn't bad enough, local police were reluctant to get involved, often pointing out that the targets were actually decent people.  The State Governments were feeling the heat from the media, but they were also feeling the heat from their own people – careers were at stake. 

“Then call in the army and declare martial law,” McGreevy snapped.  “I want this problem uprooted before it’s too late.”

General Williamson, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, scowled.  “I regret to say that we have been having
considerable difficulties
of our own,” he said.  “The pullout of the Middle East has been delayed as our units are coming under fire from rioting citizens in the region.  Back home, thousands of soldiers have been discharged – including thousands of soldiers who happen to have family and friends targeted by your purge.  I’m afraid that what remains of the military is not suitable for deployment as a police force.”

McGreevy purpled, alarmingly.  “Are you refusing an order from your Commander-in-Chief?”

“I am pointing out that we do not have the tools to carry out your demands,” General Williamson said.  “The military is not in a good state right now.  I’m telling you that if you issue orders to join what is effectively a thoroughly illegal purge of American citizens, you will have a mutiny on your hands.  The soldiers have friends and family who have been targeted by your purge.  They are not happy.  I have already had reports that a number of units have simply deserted.  I suspect that the remainder of the military will soon follow.”

“Then we will call on the Galactic Federation for help,” McGreevy said.

“That will simply cause the mutiny to happen faster,” General Williamson said.  “Look, Madam President, the general perception right now is that Washington is doing the bidding of the aliens and hunting down innocent American citizens.  If you put alien soldiers into the mix, there will be an explosion.”

“We cannot afford to allow the aliens to suspect the worst of us,” McGreevy said.  “They have offered to help us.  I think we shall accept.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

Chapter Thirty-One

Wanderer
, Near Norfolk

USA, Day 56

“You’re clean,” the NSA officer said.  “You can go inside.”

Toby nodded as the sealed door opened, allowing him access to the interior of the prison ship.  Coming out here had been a risk, but McGreevy had ordered him to inspect the various CIA and NSA facilities after she’d invited the Galactic Federation to send ‘peacekeepers’ down to Earth.  The reports Toby had received suggested that the aliens had landed at most military bases, taking over with or without human permission.  As General Williamson had predicted, there had been a number of clashes between human and alien military units, resulting in an alarming number of soldiers defecting from the federal government.  The entire country was coming apart at the seams.

Silence descended as the sealed door banged closed behind him.  The interior of
Wanderer
was cool, almost antiseptic, although Toby knew what happened within the ship’s cavernous holds.  Terrorists, the ones who organised and plotted the missions that sent foolish young men out to die, were brought to the ship and systematically interrogated until they had spilled all they knew.  Once they were drained of everything they knew, they were executed and their bodies were cremated, before being dumped overboard.  There would be no burial ground to serve as a shine for fundamentalist groups.  The terrorist leaders would simply vanish.

”Right this way, sir,” a voice said.  Toby looked up to see a man dressed in a plain seaman’s outfit. 
Wanderer
was no USN vessel.  Ideally, she would pass muster as a tramp freighter, one of hundreds that piled the world’s oceans.  The crew were all CIA officers, committed to blowing up the ship, along with her prisoners, if she were to be boarded by an unfriendly power.  “They’re ready for you.”

The upper levels of
Wanderer
were designed for defectors, people who didn’t need rigorous interrogation before they spilled everything they knew.  Toby was escorted into a metal room, decorated in a style that might be described as American office.  It was easy to forget that he was on a ship, even though he could feel a faint motion underneath his feet.  The alien sitting at one end of the room, half-reclining on an alien-designed chair, dominated everything.  There was no mistaking his inhuman origin.  Toby felt his skin crawl as he met the alien’s bright red eyes.  He’d seen nothing to alter his first impression.  The Snakes were
predators
.

“Coffee, sir?”

Toby glanced back at the young steward.  “Yes, please,” he said.  The two interrogators looked up at him from where they were sitting.  They’d reported, not without some reluctance, that the alien had insisted on talking to one of humanity’s leaders.  Toby would have taken the risk of removing the alien bugs from the President’s body and asking him to listen to the alien defector, but McGreevy couldn’t be trusted.  She might be willing to listen, yet he doubted she would risk her new power base by turning against the aliens.  “I understand that you wanted to talk to someone in authority?”

The alien leaned forward, drawing in a raspy breath.  “Do they believe I am dead?”

Toby almost flinched at the alien’s voice.  It couldn’t be easy speaking English through an alien mouth, one designed more for hissing than shaping human words.  The aliens used technology to translate their words, but it had become apparent that the devices were also a way to monitor their activities on Earth.  Toby was starting to suspect that the alien society was totalitarian in nature, rather than the democratic Galactic Federation they’d been promised.  The aliens acted more like Russian KGB agents overseeing the Soviet Union’s sports teams rather than friendly visitors.  There was a good chance that they’d monitored the defector until the explosion.

“They have not pressed the matter,” Toby said.  The aliens had sent a shuttle to the scene of the explosion, thankfully after the submarine had escaped.  As the Coast Guard had watched, they’d flown over the area several times and then withdrawn back to orbit.  Toby suspected that they believed that their explosive implant – like the one that had detonated in Iran – had obliterated the body beyond any hope of recovery.  They certainly hadn’t seemed inclined to drop a rock on New York to remind the human race of their power.

But maybe that wasn't too surprising.  Iran produced nothing, but oil, terrorists and trouble; the United States was a powerful industrial nation.  If the aliens were after humanity’s technological base, as they seemed to be, they wouldn’t want to smash the United States flat.  But Iran was worthless to them, or perhaps it was worth more as an object lesson rather than anything else.  And it had even helped their cause by pushing humanity to become more dependent on fusion power.

“That is good,” the alien rasped.  “The High Lord would not wish me to speak with you.”

Toby nodded, taking his coffee from the steward and placing it on the table.  The alien had eaten and drunk a very little, but most human foods seemed to be unpleasant to the alien’s palate.  They did buy some processed foodstuffs from Earth, yet few of their choices made any sense.  A number of American farmers, it seemed, had been hired to plant an alien food crop.  There were even reports that suggested that farmers in Africa were being paid to grow food for the aliens. 

“My name is Trahs-pah,” the alien continued.  Toby leaned forward with suppressed excitement.  The aliens rarely gave their names to any human, even if they appeared to be friendly.  Only the Ambassador had shared his name with the world.  “Your world is in terrible danger.”

“That’s what you told Jason,” Toby agreed.  He wished that they’d been able to bring the young Welcome Foundation official to the meeting, but it would have been too risky.  “What sort of danger are we in?”

“The worst,” Trahs-pah said.  “The High Lordship has come to your world.”

Toby felt his eyes narrow.  “They told us that they came from the Galactic Federation,” he said.  “How much of that was a lie.”

“Everything,” the alien said.  “There is no Galactic Federation.  There never was.”

For a moment, Toby felt a sense of overwhelming loss.  He’d known, right from the start, that the aliens were too good to be true.  The whole idea – the ideal – of the Galactic Federation had been lifted from the most utopian science-fiction novels and television shows.  They could hardly have picked a better cause to appeal to large sections of the human race.  And yet…there had been something in the dream that had appealed to Toby.  Losing it wrenched at him, even though he knew that it had been an illusion.  How would the rest of the human race, the ones who had welcomed the aliens and believed their lies, react if they knew the truth?

And McGreevy, he asked himself.  Did
she
know the truth?

“I see,” he said, finally.  “I think you’d better start from the beginning.  Why did your people come here?”

“We didn’t mean to come here,” Trahs-pah said.  “We discovered your world by accident.”

Toby must have looked blank, for the alien continued without delay.  “You must understand that our species has been torn between two poles – freedom and tyranny – for almost as long as we have been intelligent,” he continued.  The raspy voice added a note of unreality to the entire discussion.  “Our version of your Cold War was won by the Emperor, who took the technological base both societies had built and used it to start expanding across the stars.  It was not long before we managed to devise a way to create wormholes that would allow us to cross from star to star without having to travel in normal space.

“What the Emperor knew, but dismissed, was that elements of the other side remained active.  The Pacifists – as he calls them – still hoped to overthrow the Emperor and restore liberty.  It was those Pacifists who attempted to sabotage a wormhole generator and send the High Lord’s fleet into nothingness.  I volunteered for the mission fully aware that it would mean my own death, or torture and ritual execution if I were to be discovered.  Unfortunately, our maths were not as perfect as I had been told.”

Toby frowned.  “You made a mistake?”

“There is a slight shortage of volunteers to test certain theories,” the alien said.  There was no change in his tone, but Toby suspected that he’d just heard alien sarcasm.  “We believes that the wormhole would desynchronise and destroy the fleet, reducing it down to hard radiation.  The loss of a conquest fleet would certainly make the Emperor look weak and give encouragement to his foes.  We calculated that there would be a good chance to overthrow him in the wake of a disaster.  I inserted the modified commands into the flagship’s computer core and prepared myself for death.

“What happened instead was unexpected.  The fleet was hurled across thousands of light years.  Many ships were destroyed in the unexpected malfunction.  Others were badly damaged, leaving only seventeen starships reasonably intact.  The High Lord ordered the others ships to be cannibalised in order to repair the seventeen ships, but there was no hope of rebuilding the wormhole generator.  In his wisdom and paranoia, the Emperor had not provided us with a tech base capable of producing a generator without a great deal of work.”

Toby smiled.  “So you were stranded,” he said.  It sounded reasonably believable, although he had to remind himself to be careful.  American Intelligence services had been taken in before by false defectors.  The aliens could be lying...through Toby was hard-pressed to understand
why
they might be lying.  Their other actions made a certain kind of sense, particularly when one realised that they’d been lying about their reasons for visiting Earth.  “What happened then?”

“We picked up your radio transmissions,” the alien said.  “The High Lord was paranoid; your transmissions appeared to indicate that you were more advanced than ourselves.  We probed in very carefully, eventually establishing a listening post on your moon.  Eventually, we realised that many of your television programs were fictional, even though some of your people appeared to believe in them.  Your tech base was primitive compared to the Empire’s, but you could rebuild and repair what you had.  The industrial ship that survived the wormhole implosion couldn't possibly keep pace with expenditures if we invaded openly.  It was the High Lord who devised the plan to take control by offering the tech your race desperately needed – tech that would come with some unseen surprises.  Once your race had been tamed, we could hammer out a tech base that would allow us to start expanding back towards the Empire, or into unexplored space.”

“I see,” Toby said.  “Why hasn’t he just invaded?  Your race just destroyed an entire city.  Millions of humans are dead.  Many more will die in the coming weeks.”

“Controlling humanity would be difficult for a small force,” the alien said.  “There are only a few hundred thousand warriors left in the fleet.  The High Lord chose to use a subtle plan, rather than risk an open conflict that would destroy what we needed to build a technological civilisation.  Your race seems far too capable of believing honeyed promises from people you know nothing about.”

Toby nodded, impatiently.  The alien was right; indeed, he was starting to suspect that the alien had been one of the ones who had studied humanity closely.  Adolf Hitler had once remarked that people were more inclined to believe a big lie, because they didn't want to believe that anyone would lie about it.  The High Lord had drawn up a brilliant plan and applied it with consummate skill.  Right now, Toby suspected that there wasn’t a First World military capable of fighting if the aliens took over – and the pod people would ensure that the aliens would have all the manpower they needed to hold the planet.  It wasn't even as if they
needed
to hold all of Earth.  The Middle East, most of Africa and even East Asia could be left to fester on its own.  They might even systematically exterminate the human population, just to ensure that there was no trouble from the region.  And in the meantime, the aliens would build their own tech base and return to the stars. 

But how long could it hold?  Maybe the aliens would open themselves and humanity would strike them down, but how could they do that when the aliens held the high ground?  What rebellion could succeed if the aliens could smash it from orbit?

“It’s a constant problem,” he admitted.  “Why did you come to us?”

The alien looked up at him.  “I am not the only...Pacifist in the fleet,” he admitted.  “I believed that your race represented the best chance for freedom for our own.  Your technology is primitive, your mindset is beyond our understanding, and yet you have a spark that we have lost.  The Emperor does not seek to develop independence of thought, not when someone might question the need for the Emperor.  No, we are bred to obey.  There hasn't been a major development in the last three hundred of your years.  You may be behind us, but the gap is smaller than you think.