The Trojan Horse (12 page)

“Thank you all for coming,” she said.  They were all reporting bloggers, rather than political analysts and commenters.  Most of them had real journalist experience that they used to ensure that their reports were as clear and factual as possible.  “I won’t mince words.  I’m onto something that could be the biggest story in the entire history of journalism, but it could also get us all killed.  Those of you who agree to work with me won’t just have non-disclosure agreements to worry about – this could be more dangerous than Jonny Russell’s scoop four years ago.”

She watched as it sank in, slowly.  Jonny Russell had been an investigative reporter in California who’d discovered that the Governor of the state had close links with a Mexican criminal organisation that had been terrorising Northern Mexico and Hispanic regions in America.  He’d nearly been killed four times before the FBI put him in a secure witness protection program; the story had ended the Governor’s career and gone a long way towards cleaning up California.  And if he had been just an inch less lucky, he would have died and no one would have known the truth.

“We will have to assume the absolute worst,” she added.  “There will be very powerful vested interests out to stop us.  We may well end up dead – or worse.  Do you have any objections to this level of danger?  If so, you may as well walk out now. 
Nothing
will be disclosed without your agreement.”

She’d carefully picked friends without families, without anyone dependent upon them.  One left, a man she knew to be courting a girl at the office; the others remained where they were.  It was the closest she’d get to agreement, she knew.  Bloggers rarely trusted one another too closely.  Besides, any official agreement might be detected by the aliens.  The dead blogger’s name and address had been stored under tight encryption at a data haven in England and the aliens had still tracked him down.  They had to assume the worst – and that meant that anything placed in a computer might be read by unfriendly eyes.

“I believe that someone is manipulating the world,” she said, and outlined everything she’d dug up over the past hour.  The suspicious deaths, the media slant, odd trading on the stock market...and alien technology being hyped as the cure for all mankind’s ills.  “And that someone may not be from this world.”

There was a long aghast pause.  “My god, Jayne,” one of her friends said, finally.  “Are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be,” Jayne admitted.  “We need to do a hell of a lot more grunt work before we have anything more than suspicions – and then we need to decide what to do about it.  Until then, no one is to put
anything
on computers; we’ll go back to the days when we used real notebooks and pencils.  I want you to remember how the NSA hacked our computers last year; the aliens could be a great deal worse.”

“My sister’s kid loves the aliens,” one of her older friends said.  She sounded stunned, as stunned as the rest of them.  They had all read the posted blogs, they all knew about the discrepancies in the alien statements, and yet...learning that they might all be lies was shattering.  “He was talking about joining the Witnesses after they set up a recruitment booth on campus.”

“I suggest you don't say anything to your sister,” Jayne said, firmly.  “This is what we’re going to do.  We’re going to follow the money; we’re going to find out who is benefiting from the alien presence and why.  And then we’re going to try and figure out what they actually want on Earth.”

It had only been a few decades since the Soviet Union had tried to manipulate the Western media into convincing the West to let down its guard.  Jayne had been a child when the Berlin Wall fell, but she’d heard about it in the years she’d studied journalism.  So many had been profoundly shocked when Communism had fallen apart and its moral bankruptcy had been exposed for all to see.  And so many had refused to believe the truth.

“And then...”

She shook her head.  “God knows what we will do.”

Chapter Twelve

Near Mannington, Virginia

USA, Day 20

Toby was long gone by the time the Colonel returned from his wife’s grave.

His mind was spinning, both with the realisation that his country was under threat – and that his son had trusted him enough to bring him in on the counter-conspiracy.  Maybe he hadn’t gone so badly wrong in raising Toby after all.  The thought didn’t last long; if half of what Toby said was true, he’d endangered his old man and hundreds of other people.  His entire clan of survivalists could have been targeted because Toby had unwittingly led the aliens right to their base.  Not all of them had volunteered to be targeted by the aliens.

Night was falling rapidly and the stars were coming out.  The Colonel remembered when his father had told him about the day they’d looked up and seen a Russian satellite crossing the heavens, high overhead.  They’d felt naked that day; naked and defenceless, even though the Russian satellite was hardly dangerous.  And now seventeen alien starships orbited the Earth, poised to do...what?  The uncertainty was far more worrying than discovering that they were facing the Death Star; no one, but no one, knew what weapons the aliens might have to use against a defenceless world.  It begged belief that they would be defenceless.  The idealists might believe that the Galactic Federation was peaceful and war was a thing of the past, but the Colonel knew better.  The key to survival was beating one’s enemies and he found it impossible to believe that the Federation had never had to go to war.  If nothing else, they might have encountered a race so alien that communication was impossible and the only option was war to the knife.  No one had any
right
to survive in an uncaring universe.

An object was moving across the heavens.  The Colonel shivered, wondering if it was one of the alien starships – or perhaps the International Space Station, a bold effort dreamed up in the days before the aliens had taught the human race just how inadequate its imagination actually was.  He stared at the blinking light, wondering if the aliens were looking back at him, before shaking his head and entering the farmhouse.  The die had been cast the moment he’d agreed to allow Toby to speak to him and a handful of his most trusted associates.  He could no more refuse to help form the resistance than he could refuse to serve his country in its hour of need. 

Bob Packman met him in the sitting room.  The others would have gone to eat – the Colonel’s daughter had promised them a feast and had been disappointed when Toby hadn't stayed – but he’d waited for the Colonel.  He looked haunted, his eyes constantly glancing around like a man with a guilty conscience – or a man who felt terrified beyond belief.  The Colonel couldn't blame him.  The CIA trained its officers to look at the big picture and the big picture was terrifying.  How could anyone hope to stick a spanner into the alien plan to take over the Earth?  And what did the aliens really want?

“I'm terrified,” Packman admitted.  The Colonel shrugged.  He’d been terrified back in the Gulf, when Saddam had looked like a viable threat and the pundits were touting the Iraqi Republican Guard as the latest version of the
Waffen
SS.  And then Desert Storm had rolled over the Iraqis and Saddam had survived by the skin of his teeth.  The only thing preventing the Allies from removing his vile regime right there and then had been politics.  “What do they want?”

The Colonel sat down beside him, ignoring the smell from the next room.  A memory rose up inside his mind, mocking him.  Every time she’d given birth, Mary had insisted on a full Thanksgiving dinner the moment she’d recovered enough to cook it.  It might have been nowhere near Thanksgiving, but the Colonel had known better to disagree with her – and besides, she had cooked a wicked turkey.  And then she’d died in childbirth and the Colonel had ordered the Turkey they’d bought for the feast thrown out, knowing that there was little to give thanks for.  Mary had deserved better than to die giving birth to her youngest son.

“It isn't what we prepared for,” Packman said, softly.  “We told ourselves that when the Crash came, we’d run away up here and hide from the chaos.  We had guns and ammo and food – enough to ensure that we lived through the first few months.  And we told ourselves that the only things we had to fear was mutant zombie bikers and government agents coming to take our food to feed the starving grasshoppers from the big cities, the fools who depended on the government to take care of them.  How we laughed when we thought about lynching the government agents, hanging the fools who tried to tell us that the Second Amendment didn't apply to us – and standing in judgment over who we would let into our new paradise.

“We told ourselves that by running away and hiding, we would inherit the Earth,” he added.  “And now there’s nowhere to hide.  No hiding place down here.”

The Colonel didn't disagree.  In truth, there had always been a degree of fantasy surrounding survivalist preparations, but having the ability to imagine the disasters that might consume the nation was a vital part of the survivalist mentality.  And running away and hiding?  There were some disasters so great that the only thing one could do was bunker down and hide, waiting for the chaos to subside and the vast starving hordes to die off.  The Colonel’s Christian faith told him to help the helpless, but not at the cost of one’s own chances of survival.  And besides, he had no faith in the vast masses who depended on the government for their daily bread to behave when the government fell apart. 

“Look at us,” Packman said.  “We’re just as dependent upon modern society as the rest of the world – and that makes us vulnerable.  Every single goddamn cell phone is a potential spy.  Anything we post on the internet – anything we download from the internet – becomes something they can use to track us.  They can probably slip into our databases and alter details as they see fit, making it impossible for us to even
remember
the truth.  How can we fight when we can’t even trust our own weapons or memories?”

He shook his head.  “They’re carrying out a goddamned soft coup and half of our population is probably quite prepared to welcome the New World Order,” he concluded.  “And what’s going to happen to us then?”

The Colonel nodded.  He’d seen the studies.  The Chinese Government had spent most of the Clinton Administration stealing every piece of computer software they could get their hands on, sometimes aided and abetted by members of an administration the Colonel considered a national mistake.  And some folks in the CIA had wondered if that couldn't be turned to their advantage, if they couldn't penetrate systems the Chinese didn’t fully understand and take control of them.  If they could do that, they’d thought, they could effectively control the Chinese nation – and no one would ever know what they’d done.  How could the Chinese fight back when they couldn't trust their weapons?

Nothing had ever come of the plan, of course.  There were too many risks involved for it to be anything other than a theoretical study.  But he could see how it applied to their situation.  If Toby’s friends were right and the aliens had calmly hacked their way into every government database, they’d know everything they needed to know to draw up plans for the invasion.  The implications were devastating.  A poker player couldn't hope to win if his opponent knew what cards he was holding in his hand. 

“I’m in shock,” Packman said.  “Twenty days ago, the world changed forever ; nothing has changed on the surface, but you can feel it moving underwater.  This is the calm before the storm.  God alone knows what will happen when the storm finally hits.”

The Colonel shrugged.  Packman had always had an imagination.  It was one of the reasons his superiors had asked him to leave.  “We’ll need to think about it carefully,” he said.  He disliked cell phones personally and insisted that they be turned off in the house.  He’d even ordered his guests to leave them behind when Toby had briefed them, something that might have saved their lives.  It was quite possible to turn a mobile phone on remotely and transform it into a spy.  “And we need to find a way of operating under their radar.”

Susan stuck her head through the door.  “Are you not coming?”  She demanded.  “The food is getting cold!”

The Colonel knew better than to defy his daughter over her cooking.  Like her mother, Susan was tough and very determined to control the female sphere – which included cooking and wedding planning.  If he’d skipped dinner, she wouldn't have forgiven him for months, just like Mary.  At least Mary had understood when he’d been called back to his unit for an emergency drill that had led nowhere.  Susan’s husband was on the other side of the world.

“Coming,” he said, hauling himself to his feet.  He’d kept himself in peak physical condition for a man of his age, but he was suddenly chillingly aware that he wasn't anything like as strong or active as he’d been before his retirement.  “Come on, Bob.  You don’t want to get her angry at you.”

“Quite right,” Susan agreed.  Standing against the light, she looked terrifyingly like her mother.  “And if you don’t eat a full plate of stew, you won’t get any desert.”

***

They reconvened in the
living room after the dinner.  The Colonel rubbed his stomach – he’d eaten more than was good for him, but it had tasted so good – and started to pour the coffee into a number of mugs.  Susan and everyone else not directly involved with the resistance – for the Colonel had already determined to resist, whatever else happened – hadn't been invited to the meeting.  There was no point in risking the lives of anyone who hadn't already committed themselves to the fight. 

He thought, just for a moment, of Toby.  His youngest son was right in the heart of enemy territory, Washington DC.  The Colonel, like many survivalists, treated Washington with great suspicion, an attitude that had only hardened over the years that Washington's politicians had fiddled while the country burned down around them.  It was one thing to talk – and political leaders could talk the hind leg off a donkey – but it was another thing to act...and nothing he’d seen had convinced him that Congress could pass an act to save its life, let alone the entire country.  The first step in solving a problem was recognising that there actually
was
a problem and Washington’s stable of politicians would prefer to avoid admitting that for as long as possible.  Who knew where the blame might fall?

“Let’s be clear about this,” the Colonel said.  “We are at war with a force of unknown power.  We don't know what they are, we don't know what they want and we don't know what they can actually do.  They have most of our politicians in their pockets and large parts of our society trust them more than they trust any human.  All of our data consists of little more than wild-assed guessing.  If there is anyone here who wishes to back out and hide, rather than try to fight, say so now.  It will not be held against you.”

“Respectfully suggest,” Coleman grated, “that you stop insulting us and get down to business.”

The Colonel smiled.  “Right,” he said.  “The aliens are telling us to disarm.  There’s only one logical reason for them to want us to disarm and that’s because they intend to invade – and intend to deprive us of the tools needed to resist them effectively.  We are staring down the barrels of an alien invasion.  God alone knows what they want from us, but I doubt they think that it is anything that we would give to them willingly.”

“Perhaps they want to eat us,” Packman suggested.  Food seemed to have restored his good humour, although his eyes still looked haunted.  “Maybe diced human is the food of choice among the stars.”

“Doubt it,” Coleman said.  “Does anyone here believe that the Chinese or the Russians or the Arabs wouldn't take the opportunity to sell troublemakers to alien butchers if it meant they would have access to alien technology?”

The Colonel couldn't disagree.  There were plenty of governments on Earth that didn't put the well-being of their own citizens on their list of priorities, let alone anywhere near the top.  It was one of the many reasons why he was glad to be an American.  If African governments were prepared to allow famines to take place because the people starving belonged to hostile tribes, they wouldn't hesitate to sell living humans to the aliens.  Africans had been selling their fellow Africans into slavery long before there had ever been a United States of America.  And the Chinese...if they were prepared to carry out a religious and ethnic genocide in Tibet and other regions, they wouldn't hesitate to sell them off to butchers.  Hell...he wouldn't have put it past his own government.

“No,” the Colonel said.  “They want something and the only answer that makes sense is that they want humanity’s industrial base.  Anything else they could get by wreaking the planet or exterminating the human race.”

“No offense, but that can't be right,” Packman said.  “Why would they want humanity’s industrial base when we can barely lift a few tons into orbit?  Building a ship like theirs would take at least fifty years; we’d have to build the tools to make the tools long before we even started work on the ship.  What the hell do they want from us?”