The Trojan Horse (32 page)

“You were lied to by the High Lord, lies told so smoothly that you accepted them as truth.  I hoped that if I told you the truth before it was too late, you would be able to help us to escape the High Lord and take control of the fleet.  Without that, your world is doomed.  The High Lord will not accept defeat lightly.  If you beat the fleet, he will turn your world into ash and ensure that you do not become a threat to the Empire.  He has the power to obliterate your world.”

Toby had never doubted that.  Everything that had never quite made sense suddenly slid into focus.  The aliens had never invaded openly because they lacked the force needed to take and hold humanity’s cities, even the First World alone.  And they’d refrained from mass bombardment because they wanted the industrial base intact.  And...a plan was slowly coming together in his mind.  If there was only one way to defeat the aliens, it would have to be risked.  The entire world was at stake.

For a moment, he considered collaboration.  Perhaps the High Lord or his descendents would grow lazy, accustomed to humanity’s servitude, unaware that the human race was plotting their overthrow.  But it wouldn't work out that way.  Any human selected for use by the aliens would probably be turned into a pod person, particularly if they were in sensitive positions.  Lose once...and the human race would be lost for all time.  Perhaps later generations would accept their servitude as natural and right. 

“I have a question,” he said.  “Your High Lord has been brainwashing humans to serve his cause.  How did he learn how to do it?”

“A number of humans were taken from Earth before we made formal contact,” the alien said.  There was an odd moment of hesitation, even embarrassment, before the alien continued.  “They were examined; experiments were carried out on their brains.  The Emperor and his lackeys have always preferred to brain-burn their servants to ensure that they could not plan rebellion.  Once a reasonably safe method was developed, it was used to create loyal humans in high places.  You have no comprehension of just how many there are now.”

Toby scowled.  “Can they be freed from their servitude?”

The alien hesitated, just long enough for Toby to know the answer.  “No,” he admitted.  “The damage to their brains is too great for any recovery.  They will eventually collapse and die with massive brain trauma, by which time they will be replaced with other loyal servants.”

Toby felt sick.  How many others would lose their minds to the aliens, turned into unwilling traitors?  And could it be stopped?  Could human scientists discover a way of preventing the alien technique from brainwashing someone?  There was no way to know, without experimentation...and if the aliens discovered that someone had defected, they would demand his immediate return.  They’d have to think very carefully about how to handle it.  He would have to talk to his father. 

“I have a different question,” he said, suddenly.  “How do you tell the difference between males and females among your race.”

The alien produced a hissing noise, rather like a boiling kettle.  It took Toby a moment to realise that the alien was laughing.  “Your race seems to spend most of your time studying reproduction,” he said.  “We puzzled endlessly over the vast collection of mating videos on your computer network.  It took us a long time to realise that your young did not need instructions on how to mate.  But it would have always been hard for us to understand.  We are very different biologically.”

There was a long pause.  “I am not a male or a female,” the alien added.  “I am a functional hermaphrodite, to use the human term.  When I mate with another, the exchanges goes both ways.  He will fertilise me and I will fertilise him.  Of course, depending on the timing, one or both of us will not get pregnant.”

Toby almost found himself giggling.  “So you’re both male and female,” he said.  “Our doctors will be fascinated to study you.”

“You may study me once the war is over,” the alien said.  “The High Lord is moving into his endgame now, while you have yet to comprehend the rules of the game.  If you lose, our race will be lost along with yours.  You must not lose.”

“We won't,” Toby said.  He knew it was a promise they might not be able to keep.  “We’ll keep asking you questions while working on a plan.  We won’t let him win.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Near Mannington, Virginia

USA, Day 61

“So they lied to us right from the start,” the Colonel said.  “I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised.”

He smiled, thinly, at Toby.  His youngest son was perched on the end of a comfortable sofa, just close enough to Gillian that it was clear that he admired her.  The Colonel allowed himself a bigger smile, even though it risked betraying his awareness of what was going on – they deserved some happiness together.  And maybe he’d been wrong about his son for a long time.

“Unless the defector was lying,” Toby said.  He shook his head.  “No; everything he’s told us fits what facts we have.  They’re not friendly at all.”

“I suppose it would be too much to expect an alien race to be monolithic,” the Colonel mused.  “They would have their own factions and nations, ideals and religions – I wonder what kind of religion they have.  Maybe they worship their Emperors rather than a single omnipresent God.”

He pushed the thought aside.  “How many others know about this?”

“Hardly anyone,” Toby admitted.  “Given the dangers of them deciding to…convert me, I’ve ordered the alien defector to be moved to another location.  I won’t see him in person again until this is all over, and trusted men are watching to ensure that I haven’t become a pod person.  If they do…”

The Colonel shivered.  He’d called his son a betrayer and a traitor when Toby had gone to Washington, hot words spoken in anger.  But now…the aliens could turn Toby into their slave, their devoted servant…and everything Toby knew would become theirs.  And what would happen to the resistance then?  Toby knew too much to be allowed to fall into enemy hands, but he was also their only window inside the White House.  Without Toby, they would have to rely on lower levels…and many of them had become pod people.  What remained of the federal law enforcement system was in chaos.

Toby looked up.  “If they discover that I have been converted, they have orders to shoot me,” he said.  He sounded reluctant to admit it.  If the aliens managed to improve their process, Toby might become a pod person without any outwards signs – or one of his men might believe that he had become a pod person and shoot him down, quite by accident.  “I suggest that you start making plans to evacuate the farm.”

“Already done,” the Colonel assured him.  He wasn't going to give Toby any more details, not when he was going to walk back into the lion’s jaws.  “How long do you think it will be before McGreevy wakes up and smells the shit?”

Toby hesitated.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  “Everything is in chaos at the moment.  I think she probably knows that she’s nothing more than a figurehead for the aliens right now, but she’s reluctant to admit it.  She controls so little now; between the pod people and the desertions, we’re seeing the collapse of Washington’s authority.  The aliens may choose to end the farce at a moment’s notice.”

The Colonel scowled.  He’d longed for the day when Washington, overburdened by massive economic problems and politicians who needed maps to tell the difference between their asses and elbows, collapsed, leaving him and his survivalists to pick up the pieces.  And yet without Washington, there was little else holding the country together.  The aliens might very well win by default as the country fragmented, leaving them as the sole remaining authority.  It might be what they had in mind.

“I got the impression that the aliens are very much a hierarchical society,” Toby added.  “They may have expected us to follow McGreevy after she became President, even though she was working for the aliens.  I think they will have been surprised by all the resistance.  They may start feeling that they no longer need to keep her, or that flattering her pretensions is no longer worth the effort.  I’m sure she’d be less trouble as a pod person.”

The Colonel leaned forward.  “Does she have any influence at all?”

“It’s hard to say,” Toby admitted.  “I’m not privy to her discussions with the aliens, so I don’t know just what she is saying to them.  I do know that the aliens have taken over most of our military bases and have been running highly aggressive patrols around them.  The bastards don’t hesitate to call down strikes on anything that even
looks
dangerous.  I think they’re making themselves as unpopular as we did in Iraq.”

“Right,” the Colonel said.  “But we still won in Iraq.”

He looked down at his hands for a long moment.  “That leaves us with one simple issue,” he added.  “How do we get up to the ships?”

“One ship,” Toby said.  It had been the most startling piece of information from the alien defector, the piece of information that had caused him to wonder if they were being hoaxed.  The aliens had left their homeworld with a formidable fleet, but only one warship had survived the wormhole’s implosion to escape back into normal space.  No wonder the aliens had been reluctant to allow humans to board and investigate their ships.  They had seventeen ships, yet only one of them was armed.  The remainder were freighters and troop transports.  “If we could get onboard that ship…”

“But they don’t let anyone – anyone human – board their ships,” the Colonel said.  If there was a single point failure source in the entire alien fleet, it was their warship.  But there was nothing human that could reach high orbit, let alone shoot down an alien starship. He considered, just for a moment, a scheme to build an Orion spacecraft before dismissing it as worthless.  There was no way it could be built without alerting the aliens.  “Do you think we could find other…Pacifists?”

“Perhaps,” Toby said.  He didn’t hold out much hope.  Very few aliens talked to humans and he suspected that those who did were trained and authorised to do so.  The other Pacifists might be able to make contact, or they might be terrified of being detected and remain in hiding.  He doubted that the High Lord would be very kind to any Pacifist discovered onboard his fleet, not after what they’d done.  An entire fleet wrecked and stranded thousands of light years from home.  No human resistance force had ever pulled off a comparable feat.  “We’d have to take an alien shuttle…”

“We’d have to force them to get their people down on the surface first,” the Colonel said.  He looked over at Gillian.  “Didn’t you manage to get into the alien system?”

“We’re still analysing it,” Gillian admitted.  “The Snakes hacked into our internet through the secure military satellites in orbit.  Quite clever of them, in a way; once they were inside, they could go anywhere and their computers could crack any secure database.  Of course, it opened a path for us to hack them back, but we’re still working on making sense of how their computers work.  On one hand, they’re actually more intuitive than anything we’ve designed for ourselves; on the other hand, whoever programmed them was programming for really stupid people.  The interface appears to be simplistic to the point of absurdity.  It might just be worse than Microsoft…”

“Or maybe they want it to be secure,” the Colonel said.  “I bet you that they don’t teach their children anything about computers, unless they have a pressing need to know.  Just like a woman driver knowing nothing about how a car actually works – most of the time, she doesn’t
need
to know how a car works to drive.  But when she has a breakdown, she’s in deep trouble.”

Gillian smiled.  “It has been my observation that many male soldiers don’t know the first thing about computers either,” she said, sweetly.  “Do you know how often I’ve been able to break into secure databases because someone set their password as PASSWORD?”

Toby chuckled and tried to hide it.  “We’ll find a way in,” the Colonel said.  He couldn’t share any more with Toby, not when there was a chance he could wind up serving the aliens.  “Why don’t you two youngsters go for a walk?  The days are drawing in and it will soon be dark.”

If Toby resented being excluded, he didn’t show it.  But then, he’d been the one to raise concerns about the possibility of being turned into a pod person, someone enslaved to the aliens.  He stood up and Gillian followed him, slipping her hand into his as they left the room.  The Colonel allowed himself a smile as the door closed behind them, and then he stood up.  Bob Packman was waiting in the next room.

“You heard all of that,” the Colonel said, without bothering with any preamble.  “What do you think?”

The former CIA analyst frowned.  “It’s either true, in which case we will get a single shot at beating the bastards, or it’s the neatest lie any defector has ever told us,” he said.  “Personally, I’m inclined to believe that it’s the truth.  I cannot imagine anything that the aliens stand to gain by telling us such a lie.”

“Are you sure?”  The Colonel pressed.  “What if they’re lying to us?”

“I don’t see what they gain from it,” Packman said.  “They lied to us about the Galactic Federation to get us to let down our guard.  That makes perfect sense.  Everything they did was concentrated on weakening us until they could land on Earth and take over without much resistance.  They took control of the military – what was left of it – and started taking guns from the local population.  And they took control of the media and bombarded us with propaganda about how they came in peace.  But what do they stand to gain by convincing us that they’re weaker than we believed?”

“They’d bring us out into the open,” the Colonel said, slowly.

“They don’t gain from that,” Packman said.  “They don’t need to provoke us into doing anything else, do they?”

The Colonel couldn’t disagree.  “Our first priority has to be to get onto one of their shuttles and get it up into space,” he said.  “I think we need to talk to the General.”

“I already have one idea,” Packman said.  “I may just require Toby to risk his position a little.  Actually, maybe a great deal.  He’s the only one in place.”

“I know,” the Colonel said.

There was nothing else to say.

***

Once, as a child, Toby had stood in the small orchard of apple trees and picked the fruit from the branches before they were ripe.  His father hadn’t been pleased with him and had made many sardonic comments when the young Toby had complained of a stomach ache.  Now, standing with Gillian under the stars, he felt the same sensation of unease.  The night sky was no longer safe for humanity.  High above, a winking light signified the presence of one of the alien ships, gazing down with lofty dispassion on the darkened continent.  They could come down and strike at any moment and they knew it.  They ruled the night.

He hadn’t let go of Gillian’s hand, although he wasn’t quite sure how he’d come to hold it.  She’d been living with his father, giving her ample opportunity to learn about Toby’s childhood – if she were interested.  Other men seemed to be able to pick out and seduce girls with an ease Toby could only envy, a feeling only partly migrated by the awareness that everyone else had the same problem.  The grass was always greener on the other side of the hill.  But then, Gillian had the same problem as he did.  Neither of them knew what to say.

“I’m sorry,” Toby said, finally.  “I didn’t mean to have to send you out here.”

“Better than having me turned into one of the pod people,” Gillian said.  Fort Meade had been overrun by pod people a day after Tehran had been hit.  Luckily, most of the staff and records had been moved to concealed locations, but it was still a nightmarish blow against the federal government – and humanity’s freedom.  Inch by inch, the noose was tightening around humanity’s collective neck.  “I wish there was something we could do for them.”

Toby nodded.  The alien defector had said that the pod people couldn’t be freed, but he intended to try anyway.  If they found a way to liberate the pod people from their shackles, they could run riot in the alien rear – or make the aliens distrustful of all pod people.  The aliens had limits to their manpower; forcing them to rely more on their own people would drain their strength.  Knowing that the aliens couldn’t risk destroying Earth’s technology base – if they ever wanted to see home again – made it easier for the resistance to plot, but if the aliens realised that it was hopeless they were likely to blow up the planet and call it a draw.  Or go into suspended animation and wait for their Empire’s slow expansion to reach Earth.  The defector had warned that even if humanity beat the High Lord, they would still have to worry about the Emperor and his Empire.  Toby wasn’t so concerned.  If his figures were correct, there would be hundreds of years until the Empire stumbled over Earth, long enough to develop a technological base that would dwarf anything the Snakes possessed.  And then there would be revenge for the dead, and those brainwashed by the aliens.