The Uninvited

Chapter Sixteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Is armed resistance possible? At first it seems that resistance is futile, and yet the only resistance ever offered to the aliens comes from the abductees, who are held under hypnotic control. What would happen if a SF team ambushed the aliens when they came to pick up their targets? We don't know.
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Kansas, USA

“I’m following them now,” Gaby said, as the aliens appeared. Charlotte was walking between them, naked. It was hard to tell in the light, but it seemed as if her body was marked by scars that appeared to be focused around her thighs and lower belly, where her womb would be. Jon clenched his teeth as the aliens kept advancing, walking their prisoner back to her home. This time, they’d learn that they couldn't kidnap a human woman without a harsh response. “I wonder how they’d react to a bullet in the head.”

Jon ignored her, concentrating on Mick and Mack. Both of them had used Stinger missiles in action and had been preparing the launchers for action. Mack would fire the first missile; Mick would fire the second one, if the first one failed to damage the craft sufficiently to force it down. Anderson had pointed out that they knew nothing about what powered the craft – it could be powered by something that would go up with the force of a baby nuke, or something more powerful – but Jon had decided to gamble. Besides, if there was a nuclear-level explosion, it would prove that something had taken place in Kansas.

“Get ready,” he said. The aliens were opening Charlotte’s door again. It looked wrong to his eyes, although he wasn't sure why. It hit him a moment later. When they’d abducted Sharon, they’d walked right through the walls, but when they’d come for Charlotte they’d chosen to go in through the door like normal people. It puzzled him. Why would they be able to do it in one place, yet not in others? He filed the question at the back of his mind. The aliens, unaware that they were in the middle of his gunsights, were pushing Charlotte into her house. A moment later, they were inside...

“Fire,” he snapped.

Mack pulled the trigger and the Stinger missile roared off the launcher, heading right for the alien craft. At such short range, it would be almost impossible for the missile to miss, unless the craft shot it down. The brainstorming sessions had raised the spectre of the craft being protected by an Independence Day-style force field that would render it immune to conventional weaponry, or perhaps a laser weapon that could shoot down incoming missiles. Nothing attempted to bar the missile’s path; it roared towards the alien craft and struck it amidships. Jon, who had seen a helicopter explode when it had been struck by a ground-launched missile during some of the tougher fighting in Afghanistan, covered his eyes, but the alien craft was clearly studier than that. It didn't explode; instead, it swayed from side to side, before heeling over and crashing into the ground. The thunderous noise almost deafened Jon. He was sure that it would have been heard for miles around.

“They’re coming,” Gaby snapped. Jon looked back towards the house as Gaby fired two quick shots. One of the tiny aliens was moving out of the house, before it flinched back when a shot struck right between its legs. A second later, it up and ran towards the crashed ship, moving with astonishing speed. Jon stared in disbelief, seconds before its head exploded as Gaby put a round right through the oversized target. The other two had remained within the house.

“Cover me,” Jon snapped. He cursed his own oversight as he heard screams coming from the farmhouse, angry female screams. “Mick and Mack; cover the craft!”

He pulled himself to his feet and ran towards the farmhouse, ignoring the alien body lying on the ground. The door was still open and he ran inside, towards the sound of screaming. He was totally disorientated as he ran right into darkness – his goggles couldn't pick up any ambient light at all – and he cursed again as he switched on his flashlight. Below the screaming, there was another sound; someone – or something – making rasping noises. Jon ran up the stairs, barely aware of the young preteen boy coming out of his room and right into the family bedroom. Charlotte was wrestling with one of the grey aliens, while the other seemed to be completely stunned, running from corner to corner as if the end of the world had come while it wasn't listening. Its hands were clasped against its oversized head and its tiny mouth seemed to be screaming silently.

“Let go of her,” Jon bellowed. The flickering light was disorientating. He could make out the grey alien in his flashlight, but the other one kept moving in and out of the light. “Let go of her...”

The grey alien pushed Charlotte back and turned on Jon. An instant later, moving far faster than any human, it was on him, throwing him back to the ground. It was astonishingly strong for something its size and Jon rapidly realised that he was fighting for his life. Somehow, as it came in, it had broken his rifle. Eerie black eyes gazed down into his as the alien reached for his throat, somehow seeming to peer right into the back of his mind and soul. Jon tried to push the alien back, but its arms were as hard as steel. It was slowly, but surely closing in on his neck.

“No,” Jon gasped, trying to throw the creature off him. The alien ignored his struggles – its expressionless face was terrifying - until he tried to bring up his feet, and then it pushed down on them hard. Jon felt his leg twist and realised that he’d come within a hair’s breadth of having it broken, casually, by the alien. “Let go of me...”

The alien’s head exploded and green blood and brain matter splattered everywhere. Jon gasped as he was drenched in the stuff, and then looked up. Charlotte was standing there, holding an axe in one hand and another flashlight in the other. She said something Jon didn't quite catch and her son turned on the light. Jon looked up. The third alien had collapsed and appeared to be shaking. In a human, Jon would have unhesitatingly called it whimpering.

“You...” Charlotte gathered herself, staring down at him. “You did something to them?”

Jon pulled himself to his feet. His leg hurt and he was wary of trying to stand on it, but there was no other choice. Outside, through the window, he could see flickers that suggested that the alien craft had set fire to the surrounding land. There was no way, Jon suspected, that the aliens could prevent the locals from sending out a fire truck to help, which meant...

“Yeah,” he said. His body hurt, badly. He wiped the alien blood off his face – all of Anderson’s warnings about possible infections echoed through his mind – and turned to look at the other alien. “Do you have something we can use to tie the little bastard up? Duct tape would be wonderful and...”

He cursed again as he touched the alien. The grey skin felt leathery to the touch, yet it was still. He braced himself and turned the alien over, feeling a flicker of terror as he stared down at the inhuman face. The black eyes had no lids – it made him wonder how the aliens slept – yet there was no life behind them. Jon checked the alien’s heart – or where he assumed the alien would keep its heart – and scowled. As far as he could tell, the alien was dead. Charlotte returned with some duct tape and Jon tied the alien up anywhere, just in case. It wouldn't be the first time someone had tried to fool him by pretending to be asleep or dead.

“You’ll have to come with us,” he said, flatly. He wanted a shower and a chance to rest, but that wasn't going to happen in a hurry. “William sends his regards.”

Charlotte blinked at him, and then reached for a bag she’d left in the corner before shouting for her son. Up close, Jon realised, there was clear proof that the boy’s unknown father had been Arabic, or perhaps Indian. The boy clearly had non-white blood in him, something else that would probably have been held against his mother. At least he looked capable and competent, which was a pleasant change after dealing with Karen.

“I’ve got an overnight bag,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“Away,” Jon said. He wasn't going to share details with her just yet. “Come on outside before the fires spread to the house.”

Outside, the wreckage of the alien craft was definitely on fire, sending strange and unpleasant flumes into the air. Jon wondered if any of the aliens had survived long enough to run into the countryside and hide. If they had, he wondered what would happen to them. Did they have some alien version of a Personal Locator Beacon or would they be completely alone, hoping that the hybrids would come to rescue them before their supplies ran out? Or would the aliens launch a rescue mission? Perhaps they’d hesitate before acting, wondering how many other teams might be hiding in the general area, waiting for them to expose themselves.

“We need to get out of here,” Gaby snapped, when they reached the OP. “The counter is reporting high levels of radiation coming from the wreck.”

Jon scowled. It wasn't dangerous – at least, it wasn't immediately dangerous – but it was definitely alarming. It was also well above background levels, which would present anyone trying to cover the incident up with a few interesting challenges. He wondered, idly, how the infiltrators would cope with it. If the fire department got here first, they'd call for support from the National Guard and that might make it impossible for the infiltrators to stop information from leaking out.

“Agreed,” he said. He passed Charlotte and her son to Gaby, who scowled at him. “Take them to the base camp and get them both cleaned up.”

“Aye, sir,” Gaby said. “And what are you going to do?”

Jon looked back at the wreckage. Perhaps he was imagining it, but he was sure that there was something moving deep within the darkness. The fires were making it harder to see, while the heat threatened to drive them further back from the wreckage.

“I’m going to check the wreck and then help Mack and Patrick pick up samples,” Jon said, shortly. He had no plans to have children, but Patrick had mentioned wanting kids and the radiation wouldn't do him any good at all. Gaby was probably in worse danger. The radiation might kill her ovaries. “Get them out of here, now.”

He turned back to the wreck and walked towards the debris, holding up his hand to protect his face from the blistering heat. Common sense was screaming at him to run, but he had to know what was inside the alien craft, even if it cost him his life. As he stepped closer, the smell of burning grass and wheat was replaced by something eerie and inhuman, something that sent a chill down his spine. Roasting human flesh smelled like burned pork; what, he wondered, did roasting alien flesh smell of? There was no way to know. Up close, the rents in the hull were easily large enough to allow him to slip inside. Perversely, the flames seemed to recede from the interior of the craft.

Something moved in front of him and he jumped back, cursing. A tiny grey alien was lying under a falling bulkhead, green blood leaking onto the deck. It was flailing at the air, rather like a ladybird or crab that had been turned upside down and found that it unable to right itself. Its wounds, if Jon was any judge, were lethal. Even if he had had the time to try basic medical care, he didn't have the slightest idea how to begin treating the creature. He hesitated, then pointed his gun at the creature’s head and pulled the trigger. It was a mercy killing, or so he told himself.

The interior of the craft seemed to be completely wrecked, but as he pushed forward, he could see parts that had remained more intact than others. If he recalled what William had told him correctly, he was in the waiting room, where abductees had been held prior to the aliens beginning their experiments. There were, thankfully, no abductees within the room, but as he pressed onwards he realised that the craft had had several unwilling passengers. The second room held four examination tables and, when he checked, three of them had had humans lying on top when the craft had been shot down. Jon winced as he saw them – he’d killed them himself, even if he hadn't known that they were there – and checked their bodies anyway. There was nothing he could do for them. They were all dead. Two of them had been women, but the third was a man; no, a teenage boy. He must have been terrified when the aliens had taken him onto their craft...

He glanced up as he heard the sound of a crying girl and walked into the next chamber. It was surprisingly intact, unlike the rest of the ship, suggesting that it had been protected specifically. There was a young girl sitting in a cot, crying helplessly. Jon felt his heart go out to her and he picked her up, checking her quickly for injuries. She was, by his best estimate, around six years old. It occurred to him that she might be a hybrid, but there was no way to tell for definite. It would have to wait until they took a blood sample. Sheen or another of his handlers might insist that she be left to die, yet Jon had no intention of abandoning her. He wasn't going to lose his humanity, even if they were confronting aliens.

Please help me...

Jon looked up, sharply. The thought had intruded itself into his mind. His memory was fading, but it had felt...inhuman. The girl, who was still crying, quietened suddenly, so quickly that Jon suspected outside influence. He cocked his gun and looked around, peering into the semi-darkness. The lights were failing as the craft lost power.

“Who’s there?” He demanded. The room appeared to be empty, yet it was impossible to dismiss the feeling that he was no longer alone. “Show yourself!”

The next thought felt alien. Over here, it said. Jon turned, somehow reading directions into the thought, and peered into the darkness. He took a step forward and saw the alien. It was tall, taller than him, with dark eyes that seemed to capture Jon’s attention. He shook his head angrily as he felt something enter his mind, pushing the influence out with an effort. The alien seemed unaware of his resistance. I mean you no harm. Help me.

“Stop doing that,” Jon snapped. The sense that he had been violated on some deeply fundamental level boosted his anger. He pushed the gun forward and the alien flinched back. Unlike its smaller counterparts, it didn’t seem to be capable of running away at superhuman speed, or perhaps it was just too seriously injured to move. “You do that again and I will blow your ****ing head off, do you understand me?”

Help me, the alien sent. A wave of feelings swept into Jon’s mind, almost overpowering him. A sense that the alien was somehow worthy of help – no, more than help, of servitude – washed through his brain. He'd learned to be patriotic, to place his body between his country and her many enemies, but this was different. It was overwhelmingly powerful, yet he could recognise it as outside influence. Put down the gun and help me...

Jon, his hand shaking, pulled the trigger and splattered the alien’s brains out over the bulkhead. The instant the alien died, the curiosity that had brought him into the alien craft faded away, to be replaced by a sudden awareness of the danger. The alien had been reaching out to him, he realised, poking his way into Jon’s mind and trying to twist him into a creature that would do his bidding. The child started to cry again as Jon turned and ran for the tear in the hull, fleeing out into the darkness.

“Sorry,” he apologised to the child. “I’ll get you back to your parents somehow, if I can.”

He passed the little girl to Charlotte and jumped into the truck Anderson had brought up to the crash site. Anderson, who had loaded the back of the truck with the samples they’d taken, gunned the engine and they rocketed off into the distance. Jon felt himself sag in relief as they made it away from the towering inferno, which was rapidly spreading out of control. The absence of any response from the local population was surprising, but it wouldn't be long – he was sure – before someone arrived to investigate. He was mildly surprised that no one had tried to intercept them as they fled the scene. The trip back to the farm passed without incident.

“Good God,” Patrick said, in disbelief. “We got away with it!”

Jon had to smile at this faces. None of them had really believed in the aliens, not deep down inside...not until now. And now they all knew the truth...

“Maybe,” Anderson said, as they stopped outside the farm. “What’s that noise?”

Jon blinked in surprise. In the distance, he could hear the sound of helicopter blades thrashing through the air. Someone was clearly responding at last. He would have bet his last cent that Majestic was moving to recover the wreckage and prevent the general public from seeing the crashed UFO.

“Get the samples into the sealed containers and then begin your tests,” he ordered, flatly. If they were lucky, they wouldn't have been tracked back to their base camp. “I think we’d better keep our heads down for a few days.”

 

I picked it on purpose for various reasons.

Chris

 

Awesome story, thanks !

 

Chapter Seventeen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

Despite strenuous efforts, very little physical evidence of alien abductions has been recovered. There are a handful of strange devices that were apparently inserted into the victims for uncertain purposes, a few samples of a mysterious gel, but very little else. The aliens, it seems, are very good at concealing their mere existence from the general public...
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Kansas, USA

“Just for the record,” Anderson said, “you’re an idiot.”

“Thank you,” Jon returned dryly. “And for which of my demented schemes have I earned the title of idiot?”

“This one,” Anderson said. He checked the blood sampler and sat back with a sigh. “You’ll be pleased to know that having children may be permanently out of the question. You picked up a shitload of radiation from that craft and your biological cells may be badly affected. I really need to take you to a proper clinic and have you checked out, but I guess that’s not possible, is it?”

“No,” Jon said, pulling himself up from the small table. Anderson had converted it into a makeshift examination table with the use of a sterile cloth and some hot water. Compared to some of the field hospitals he’d had to use while on active duty, it was paradise on Earth. “It won’t be possible until I get my name cleared and that may not happen for years.”

He sighed inwardly as Anderson started clearing up his medical tools. Like all youngsters, Jon had believed himself immortal, at least until his elderly aunt had passed away when he’d been seven and William had been twelve. As a soldier, he had known that violent death was a very likely possibility, all the more so for those who joined the Special Forces and put themselves at the front end of the spear. Jon had thought himself used to the possibility, but the thought of death by radiation poisoning – an enemy he couldn't see to hit – was chilling. He felt oddly numb, as if the news hadn't quite sunk in yet.

“You’ll be fine for a while yet,” Anderson said, flatly. “I wish I could say the same for the girl. I think she’s been hit with a bad dose of radiation poisoning and she’s well beyond our ability to cure.”

Jon shivered. They had no idea who the girl was, or where she had come from, for she hadn't spoken a single word. Gaby and Charlotte had spent time trying to coax her to speak, but she’d just stared at them with wide traumatised eyes. Jon had found himself seriously considering trying to slip her into a hospital, yet that would have risked exposure to the force that had arrived at Charlotte’s farm. The danger of discovery was very real.

The morning after they’d shot down the UFO, they’d been awakened by an emergency broadcast on the local radio network, warning all inhabitants to remain indoors until further notice. The message had warned that a Chinese nuclear-powered satellite had fallen out of orbit and crashed on American soil. The black helicopters that could be seen from time to time, buzzing around Charlotte’s farm like angry wasps, were flown by NEST – the Nuclear Emergency Search Team. All traces of radiation would be removed and anyone who felt as if they were suffering from radiation poisoning was advised to contact their local medical clinic at once. Jon had to admire the story. It accounted for everything, from the black helicopters and the flames to the roadblocks the feds had thrown up around the area. No one, not even the media, was being allowed into the sealed zone.

Patrick was frying bacon and eggs on the stove when Jon stepped back into the living room. The remainder of the team – and Charlotte and Joseph – had gathered in front of the television, where they were watching an update on the crisis. The talking heads were blathering away as usual, trying to convince the public that there was no reason to panic. Jon had a private suspicion that quite a few local residents were panicking and were seriously considering trying to run the roadblocks and get out of the sealed zone. Back when he’d been on active duty, he’d seen pictures from the day Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station had melted down, pictures of Russian citizens – some of the most tightly controlled people in the world – trying to escape. God alone knew what American citizens, some of whom were armed quite heavily, would do if their path to safety was blocked by armed troops.

“But don’t you think it is unusual,” the talking head said, “for a satellite to be powered by a nuclear reactor?”

Doctor Tracy, a short balding man with a pair of oversized glasses and a fixed grin, shook his head. “The Russians and Chinese have often had to resort to nuclear-powered systems in order to power their satellites in orbit,” he assured her. “You have to understand that most space installations require a vast amount of power, while generating that power in space can be tricky. The Chinese simply took the most effective method they had to hand and used it.”

The talking head frowned. Back at the barracks, Jon knew, the soldiers had often speculated that she was, in fact, a computer-generated personality. No one could have such large breasts, a completely vapid smile and an IQ no larger than her shoe size. There had been much debate over how much of her body – assuming that she was really flesh and blood – was actually as God had created it. The eventual conclusion was that she was probably too dumb to understand the facts of life.

“But,” she asked, “would that not be rather dangerous?”

“Of course it would be,” Tracy said. His tone dripped droll amusement. “The Chinese didn't expect to suffer a blow-out that altered the satellite’s course and eventually sent it spiralling down into Earth’s atmosphere. Luckily, the satellite was tracked and a NEST team was dispatched to secure the wreckage and recover the nuclear debris.”

Jon hit the remote and the television died. “You have to admire them,” he said, dryly. “The Chinese will get the blame and the more they deny having anything to do with it, the more people will believe that it was their fault. By tomorrow, most of the country will probably be convinced that the Chinese intended to drop a nuclear bomb on America and was only stopped by sheer luck.”

“I’m sure that that would lead to war,” Gaby said. “I don't think that any President could allow the Chinese to bombard our territory with impunity.”

“I guess it depends on how they present it to the world,” Patrick said, tartly. “You’ll be surprised to discover that both CNN and Fox have put the affair on the back-burner. The affair is over, no one was seriously harmed and it won’t happen again. End of story – now onto a program about which politician can't keep it in his pants this month.”

“Odd,” Gaby said. “I’d expect Fox to be demanding war...”

“Yeah,” Patrick agreed. “And CNN to be calling for love, not war, and saying that if we tried to understand them, we’d understand that they were justified...”

Jon tapped the remote against the back of Charlotte’s chair. “Leaving the political debate aside for the moment,” he said firmly, “does anyone have any other suggestions than hiding here and waiting till it blows over?”

“It will have to blow over soon,” Charlotte claimed. She looked shocked...and at the same time, oddly delighted. She’d killed one of her tormentors and seen a second die, apparently of shock. Anderson had poked and prodded the alien body, but had had to reluctantly admit that determining the cause of death was beyond him. “They can't keep the entire area sealed up forever.”

“Perhaps they can,” Gaby said. She nodded towards the laptop in the corner. Unlike a civilian laptop, it held a number of programs intended to determine if anyone was tapping into the communications network. “The local internet is being fuzzed by someone with a hell of a lot of computing power and damn-all in the way of morals. I think that any email sent out of the zone will be automatically routed through a buffer so it can be checked for classified information, while local bandwidth has fallen so far that live chat or internet streaming is impossible. I’d bet anything you care to put forward that the local cell phone network and even landlines are being systematically tapped and degraded as well.”

“But someone is bound to notice,” Charlotte protested. “I mean...they can't do that in America. This isn't some godforsaken state ruled by a goddamned dictator...”

“They have done it,” Gaby said, flatly. “The facts speak for themselves.”

“Someone has activated Operation Blackout,” Patrick said. “Luis was telling me about it – it was why he decided to join the Clan in the first place. Blackout was a federal program intended to cut part of the country out of the communications grid, isolating them from the rest of the country. The official reason was in case of civil unrest, but I wonder – now – if they had other motives. Perhaps...if there was a UFO crash, they wanted to make it impossible for word to spread.”

“But it has to spread,” Charlotte said. She looked up at Jon, desperately. “Surely the entire world will know that something happened here...”

“They will know that something crashed,” Jon said, grimly. “The Men in Black are busy up there and anyone who tries to get too close will be arrested. Ten gets you twenty that by the time they allow reporters through the cordon, there will be nothing to see, but burned fields and a ruined house. Or perhaps they will leave a few fragments of debris with Chinese writing on them, just to make sure that the blame goes in the right direction. They won’t see a UFO.”

He shrugged. “There weren't any witnesses to the crash, so there will be no reason to suspect foul – fouler – play,” he added. “The reporters will take home the party line – if there is any dissent, it will come in bitching about the government not issuing a warning in time or about the dangers of allowing the Chinese to launch nuclear reactors into space.”

“Yep,” Gaby agreed. “I tried to slip up there and the place is sealed tighter than a drum.”

Patrick scowled. “I could try to slip up there myself,” he said. “Perhaps we could get some additional footage...”

“I tried to get up there and I almost got caught twice,” Gaby snapped. “Me – I almost got caught, and you’re a lot bigger and louder. I think we’ll just have to wait for the bastards to give up and go. If nothing else, they can't keep people penned up forever or the area will start to starve. What will happen then?”

“Nothing good,” Jon agreed. The real worry was that the Men in Black would start searching nearby farmhouses, using whatever forced identification they required, and stumbling across the alien in the freezer. A secondary concern was Charlotte herself; what if the aliens had implanted her with a tracking device? She might, quite by accident, lead the alien forces right to the farm, where they could recover the remains of their lost comrade. “We have enough food stockpiled for several weeks. We can wait and see what happens.”

“Of course, sir,” Patrick said. He grinned, adopting an obsequious attitude. “Do you have any other orders, sir?”

“Go to blazes,” Jon said, shaking his head. “I'm going down to look at our captive.”

One of the reasons why Jon had been keen on the farm – one of the reasons they’d selected it among the handful of likely prospects – was that the farm’s original owner hadn't just slaughtered his own animals, he’d butchered them and stored the meat in a vast set of underground freezers. Jon suspected, from a brief examination, that he’d actually sold the meat without worrying about federal law – regarding it as interference in his private affairs. The yuppies had inherited the freezers and just abandoned them; Jon and Anderson had turned one of them into a storage space for the dead alien. The cold air wafted up at him as he scrambled down the ladder and into the basement. The light kept flickering alarmingly, chilling him to the bone.

The alien had been placed in a small freezer that could probably have held a sheep’s carcass. Anderson had checked the alien blood and – after confirming that the aliens were definitely related to the hybrids – decided that the chances of cross-species infection were minimal, although he had also insisted that they continue to take every precaution. Jon opened the freezer slowly and gazed down on his prize. The alien’s lidless eyes seemed to gaze back at him, chilling him to the bone. He’d seen some convincing special effects in his time, fantastic depictions of alien life and planets, yet the alien – as oddly mundane as it was – was far more convincing. It had an atmosphere of otherworldliness that the fictional aliens had lacked.

“I wonder,” Jon whispered, his voice echoing in the vault, “who you are. Do you even have a name?”

There was no response from the dead alien. Jon leaned closer, staring at the grey leathery skin. In death, it seemed to cling closer to the alien bones – rather more bird-like than humanoid – and dared him to reach down and touch it. It reminded Jon of a dead crab he’d seen as a child, a memory that had remained with him for the rest of his life, all dead and yet otherworldly. He couldn't bring himself to reach down and touch it. There was something about the alien that repelled him as much as fascinated him.

He shook his head slowly, studying the oval skull. The alien would have been doomed to remain expressionless, its tiny mouth seemingly incapable of smiling or conveying any other emotion. Indeed, Jon found himself wondering what the alien ate. The mouth suggested that it could only eat glop or perhaps it was restricted to a liquid diet. There was no way to know.

And where had the alien come from? Had it been born on a far-distant star, only to come to Earth and die at his hands, or had it been born much closer to home? It was a pure alien – there seemed to be no trace of human DNA within the alien’s green blood – and yet, the odds against any alien creature being humanoid seemed to be low. Perhaps it had been designed to operate on Earth’s surface...with the aliens, anything seemed to be possible.

“You know,” a voice said from behind him, “in a horror movie, that alien would come back to life and attack you.”

Jon started, and then tried to pretend that he had known that Anderson had been there all along. Somehow, he doubted that Anderson was fooled. “Very funny,” he said, shortly. “Do you have anything interesting to say, or are you just going to make snide remarks?”

“Or perhaps a little worm would burst out of its chest and grow into a monstrous beast that would rampage through the ship and kill us all – going after the extras first, of course,” Anderson added. “I hope that you’ve been sleeping well after all this. I know that I’ve been having nightmares...”

“I think you should stop watching television,” Jon countered, dryly. He took a final look at the alien and then stepped back, closing the freezer lid. “Can you tell me anything interesting about the aliens, anything I don’t already know?”

Anderson shrugged. “You do know that I’m not a proper medical doctor, I assume,” he said. “I can tell you some things about it, but nothing too special...”

He shrugged. “Would you be interested in knowing that the alien is actually decaying rapidly, far faster than I would have believed possible. Human bodies decay too, of course, but this is much quicker. I’ve had to freeze the remaining blood samples in hopes of stopping the decay from getting any worse. I think that we’ll just have to keep the alien frozen or our prize – our proof that the aliens really exist – will just melt away.”

Jon turned, alarmed. “How is that possible?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Anderson said. He shrugged. “Patient One over there is definitely dead, yet the body is rapidly decaying; Patient Two, the one that Gaby shot, is actually decaying even faster. The blood samples decayed fastest of all. It could be that they reacted badly to something in the Earth’s atmosphere, or it could be a safety measure. If they lose an alien, they won't have to worry too much about it being recovered by humans.”

He frowned. “You want to know something else? That alien, as far as I can tell, is sexless. There doesn't seem to be any penis, or vagina, or anything else that seems to be related to sex and reproduction. Maybe he’s just their version of a prepubescent adolescent, someone whose balls haven’t yet dropped, but I don’t think so. I think that this fellow was always – and will always be – sterile. In fact” – his voice dropped – “I think he was made.”

Jon stared at him. “You mean...like the hybrids?”

“Exactly like the hybrids,” Anderson said. “We – the human race – have shied away from genetically engineering ourselves, although our genetic engineering tools are nowhere near capable of creating superhumans – or genetic slaves. These guys, on the other hand, have warped and mutated their own forms to create these drones. I could be wrong – I hope I am wrong – but it seems that they don’t care about any ethical or moral implications. Add that to the hybrids and the entire abduction program and...”

He shrugged again. “I think that the sooner we beat these guys, the better,” he concluded. “No one, not even Hitler, had this sort of capability. The aliens seem to consider us little better than sheep.”

 

Chapter Eighteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

...And even when we do collect evidence, it has an alarming habit of vanishing. Consider the case of Elspeth Muller of San Francisco. After a series of painful nosebleeds, she had her nose x-rayed and discovered that a tiny item had been inserted into her body. On the way to have it removed by a doctor, she was abducted and the device was removed by the aliens. She is far from alone. Dozens of others have had the same experience.
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Kansas, USA

Jon shook his head as he stepped into the bright sunny morning. Five days of remaining inside had left him feeling irritable, but a moment outside made him feel much better. The others clearly agreed with him, as – he suspected – did the local population. The black helicopters had vanished as suddenly as they had arrived, leaving dire warnings scattered around Charlotte’s farm of the danger of radiation leakage. Judging from the convoy of trucks that had passed through the area two days ago, most of the incriminating evidence would have been removed, leaving the area thoroughly sanitized.

He had to smile as he contemplated the news, but his smile dropped away as he considered the implications. The mainstream media – left and right – had given the whole affair a small amount of attention and then moved on, while the more extreme shows – and the internet – had put forward all kinds of crazy conspiracy theories. It hadn't been a Chinese satellite at all, one talk radio host had suggested, but an American nuclear power core that had been placed in an aircraft and transported to a new location. Jon thought that that was utter madness, more than enough to discredit the talker’s reputation once and for all. No one in their right mind would carry an active nuclear reactor on an aircraft. And then there were the internet articles claiming that it had actually been a top-secret American aircraft that had crash-landed, or a Russian spy plane...very few had actually mentioned UFOs and they had been soundly rubbished by everyone else.

It bothered him, for he suspected he knew who was behind it. If Majestic had been operating since 1947, they had had plenty of time to get into a controlling position in all of the major media outlets, perhaps even foreign media companies. Given such a controlling position, they could put their own spin on anything that took place, or kill a story without needing to expose their hand. And they had the resources of much of the federal government behind them. They could use the government’s clout when they couldn't influence the newspapers and television channels behind the scene. The endless series of talking heads paraded in front of the public only confirmed his fears. Very few of them had been interesting; most of them, he noticed, had bitten the Chinese satellite story hook, line and sinker. And then the story had been buried behind yet another crisis in the Middle East.

Jon scowled, understanding why so many UFO researchers became ardent conspiracy theorists. It was easy to believe that everyone was out to get you; it was easier still when you found yourself the target of a smear campaign that seemed determined to rubbish everything you said or did. UFOs were already regarded as fringe science at best; it was hard to get anything past the scorn, disbelief and outright lack of concern that most people showed the subject. Jon would have bet good money that the only UFO studies that got funded were ones that aimed to prove that UFOs didn't exist and the abductees were just people who wanted attention from the media. There was no better way to bury an embarrassing or dangerous truth than by covering it with a mountain of ********.

“So,” Charlotte said, “can I get a cent for your thoughts?”

He turned to see the abductee standing behind him. “I’m just thinking about the trip,” Jon lied. It wasn't that far from the truth, actually. He intended to shut down the farm as an operations base; Patrick, Gaby and he would escort the dead body to another location, while Anderson would take the recordings and make his way home separately. If David had succeeded in recruiting his old commanding officer, they would have proof that could be taken to the White House, to the President himself. “Are you sure that you want to stay here?”

David had bought the farm from the yuppies, but he hadn't intended to keep it. Charlotte had proven to be surprisingly wealthy – she’d apparently invested money in various banks, rather than ploughing it back into her farm – and had offered to buy the farm off David. Jon had been surprised that she wanted to stay in the area, knowing that if Majestic realised that she was still there they would almost certainly come for her, but Charlotte had been insistent, pointing out that there was nowhere she could hide from the aliens. Besides, after losing a craft trying to abduct her, they might just back off and leave her alone. Jon just hoped that she was right.

Anderson had told him something worrying, though, something that had had him considering simply taking Charlotte with them, even against her will. He’d taken a blood sample from both Charlotte and Joseph and had warned Jon that Joseph wasn't a bastard child. He was a hybrid, one that had grown to term in Charlotte’s womb and then grown up at a normal pace, posing as a human child. It opened all kinds of possibilities, Jon had decided, yet it was impossible to determine the significance of the discovery. Had the aliens impregnated Charlotte by accident, as William had believed, or had they made a mistake? And, if they had made a mistake, would they come back for Joseph one day?

“Yes,” Charlotte said, firmly. “I love the countryside. I wouldn't stay in the cities if you paid me.”

Jon frowned. The aliens used hypnotic controls to influence human minds. Could they have programmed Charlotte to remain in the countryside for easy access? Again, there was no way to know, at least not without focused hypnotic sessions. William had admitted that the hypnotic tools at his disposal were insufficient to detect and undo much of the alien programming.

“Very well,” he said, finally. They’d scouted the area. Sending in another covert team to watch Charlotte wouldn't be difficult. “Stay here; try and stay out of trouble. We’ll send someone to sort out the land ownership sooner or later...and stay away from your farm. They’ll be watching it.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said. “Good luck.”

Jon watched her walking back to the farmhouse, and then turned to the truck. Dragging out the freezer and installing it in the rear of the truck had been a nightmarish task – he had no idea how the farmer had managed to install the freezer in his basement – but in the end it had been accomplished, creating a safe hiding place for the dead alien. The ID cards they’d obtained through their contacts should deter any policemen from checking the truck, although if anyone working for Majestic was still manning the roadblocks, they’d have to shoot their way through or risk losing their prize.

“Everything’s set up to work,” Anderson assured him. “I installed extra batteries as well, so if something happens to one of them...”

Jon nodded, impatiently. “Mount up,” he called to the other two. “You know the way to the cabin?”

“Don’t teach your grandmother to suck cock,” Anderson said, dryly. “I know the way. See you in a week or two.”

Jon nodded. Anderson would be going the long way around, first heading south, and then catching the interstate that would take him east, before turning and heading back up towards Virginia. It would be a pleasant drive, away from the aliens and anything that would link him to Jon – apart, of course, from the CDs concealed in his car.

“Come on, boss,” Patrick called. “Let’s go!”

Jon smiled and ran for the cab. “Let’s go,” he agreed. Patrick gunned the engine and the truck lurched forward, heading back into the wheat fields. Gaby, sitting next to Jon, winked at him as Patrick took them forward too fast for safety. “Slow down, you fool; are you trying to get us killed?”

“Of course not,” Patrick said. “I’m only trying to get you killed.”

Jon gave him a one-fingered gesture and settled down to enjoy the ride.

The first part of the journey passed smoothly. By shared agreement, they decided to avoid the interstates where possible and make the trip on smaller roads, knowing that they would be less likely to be blocked. The landscape rapidly grew boring and Jon found himself yawning as they headed further north, further away from any human settlements. The occasional car drove past on the other side, but apart from that, they were alone.

Patrick hit the radio and turned it on. “...And I ask you, my friends, what is the government hiding?” A thick Southern voice demanded. “Why are they so reluctant to confront the communist dictators in China? Is it because of our trade deals with China, or is it because they’re communists themselves and...”

There was a screech of static and then another voice came through. “The prospects of peace in the Middle East took another downturn today as Israel rejected the Joint Security Plan put forward by the United Nations Commission on Palestine,” it said. “The Israeli Government claimed that the plan would involve dismantling Israel’s security apparatus while failing to guarantee security for the Jewish population. The United Nations called upon the American Government to...”

Jon scowled as static blared out again, followed by a burst of music. A second later, the radio died, followed rapidly by a choking noise from deep within the engine. Jon barely had any time to react before the engine cut out completely, leaving them stalled on the road. There were no cars in view, thankfully; Patrick swore as he twisted the key in the ignition, to no avail. Whatever had happened to the engine had killed the entire vehicle.

“****,” Gaby said. She had been listening to her MP3 player, her eyes half-closed as the music flowed over her. “My MP3 player isn’t working...”

Jon stared at her, and then pulled the small electronic terminal from his pocket. A quick check revealed that that wasn't working too. Nor was his watch, or the handful of electronic devices he'd hidden in his pockets. Everything that was even remotely electronic in the truck had been killed. A nasty thought struck Jon and he looked out of the window, up into the air. Just for a second, he could see nothing, but blue sky...and then it was suddenly there, flying towards their position.

“****,” Jon shouted. It looked as if the aliens intended to simply strafe their position and kill them all – and they were sitting ducks. “Get the hell out, now!”

He kicked open the cab door and jumped down to the road, glancing around desperately. The only cover anywhere within reach was a ditch, one probably inhabited by snakes and other unpleasant creatures. He ran for it anyway, followed rapidly by Gaby, while Patrick ran the other way. He could feel a strange pressure in his ears as the alien craft grew larger, until it started to blot out the sun. Surely someone else would see it, he told himself, even if the alien killed them all. It was too big and powerful to remain unnoticed.

It was a massive black triangle, oddly angular. There was no sign of anything holding it in the air, the mark of a technology far more advanced than anything the human race could deploy. The pressure grew stronger as the craft came to a hover over the truck, just before a brilliant white light shone down towards their positions. Jon cringed back as the light – it didn't behave like light, more like a viscous fluid – passed over their heads and focused on the truck. He stared up, shielding his eyes with one hand, and saw strange dark figures moving within the light. Some of them seemed identical to the body they had in the truck; others seemed taller and somehow even more inhuman. He found himself praying that they hadn't seen the humans hiding beside the road, yet it seemed impossible that they hadn't been seen...

He blinked as Gaby’s hand reached out and took his. They had no weapons that could take out the alien craft, not now. The other Stinger was still in the truck, out of their reach. He doubted that firing his Sig Saur at the alien craft would make much of an impression on the creatures. Perhaps he could pick off a handful, if he could make them out in the blinding light, but that would merely anger the rest.

Gaby pulled him closer, her lips close to his ears. “How did they find us?”

Jon shook his head. There was no way to know. If the aliens had been able to find them by tracing the wreckage, why had they waited so long to move in and recover their dead comrade? They could have used their hybrids to recover the body from the farm, or their allies in Majestic could have pushed the local sheriff into cooperating with the feds in recovering the body...there was no need to wait and then take the risk of snatching the body while it was in transit....

Had they been wrong about Majestic? They’d come to believe that Majestic was working for the aliens, aiding and abetting whatever they were doing on Earth. Were they fighting the aliens instead, a covert war that had just spilled out into the open? Jon considered the possibility for a long moment and then shook his head. Majestic could have appealed to his loyalty and brought him inside, or convinced him and William to stay quiet. Instead, they’d tried to kill him and declared him rogue, or...he shook his head, confused. He wanted a nice honest battlefield, where he knew who was trying to kill him and why.

The light grew brighter as a high-pitched whine started to echo through the air. As Jon pressed his hands against his ears – and Gaby did the same – the entire truck started to shake, and then rose off the ground. The aliens were pulling it off the road and into their craft! Jon stared in disbelief, forgetting the danger, as the truck rose higher. It tilted alarmingly and for a moment Jon thought that it would crash back to the ground, before the aliens caught it and continued to lift it up into their craft.

“No,” a voice shouted. Jon stared in horror, unable to intervene, as Patrick rose to his feet, both pistols in hand. He lifted them, pointed the weapons towards the alien figures, and opened fire. The gunshots seemed tiny, almost muffled, against the noise of the alien craft, yet – as far as Jon could see – none of the bullets hit their targets. Aiming a handgun wasn't anything like as easy as the movies claimed – and firing two handguns accurately was pretty much impossible, although it did help force targets to keep their heads down – but he should have hit something. The aliens seemed unperturbed by the incoming fire. The truck floated into the alien craft and vanished within the light.

“Get back,” Jon shouted, but it was too late.

A spear of white light stabbed down from the alien craft and struck Patrick. He went limp, letting go of both weapons and allowing them to fall to the ground, but somehow he couldn't fall himself. Before Jon could do anything – as if there was anything he could do – the light grew brighter and Patrick was hauled into the alien craft. He rose far quicker than the truck, vanishing into the haze of bright light and disappearing, perhaps forever. Jon closed his eyes, just for a second. He’d lost men in combat before, friends and comrades who had been killed in action, but this was different. He’d never felt so helpless in his life. After their success, after they’d brought down a smaller alien craft, it was a crushing feeling...

“Get down,” Gaby snapped, as the white light shaded to a dark, ominous red. A second later, a wave of heat passed over Jon’s head as the aliens swept both sides of the road with their weapons. The bushes caught fire instantly, while the ground was pounded into a blazing desert. If they hadn't been in the ditch, they would have been burned to a crisp; even so, Jon felt as if his skin was on fire. He hadn't felt so hot since the day a terrorist had tried to kill him with an IED and a great deal of luck. He’d been able to escape the burning vehicle with seconds to spare. “Stay down...”

The pressure in his head eased as the alien craft rose up and rocketed into the distance. Again, there was no hint of a sonic boom, or any noise at all, not once it had finished its mission. Jon pulled himself to his feet and stared around him. They were surrounded by burnt ground and ashes, miles from where they wanted to be...and their prize, their proof that aliens were real, gone.

“My God,” Gaby said. The rear of her shirt was tattered and she had been badly burned. There was nothing Jon could do for her, apart from a painkiller injection. All of their medical supplies had been in the truck. “What do you think they will do to him?”

Jon stared at her. The answer was obvious. What would anyone do with an enemy captive? Somehow, he doubted that the aliens considered themselves bound by the Geneva Convention, on the entirely reasonable grounds that they’d never signed it, or even been invited to sign it...

“We have to find a phone,” he snapped, grimly. Everyone broke eventually and the aliens, if half of what William said was true, would have no difficulty extracting information from their captive. And Patrick knew far too much about the Clan. “We have to tell David to run.”

“Yeah,” Gaby agreed. Being burned hadn't done anything for her disposition. “Now tell me...where is the nearest phone?”

Jon cursed. She was right. Both of their cell phones, even if they dared to use them, were useless. They didn't even know where to go.

“We’d better start walking,” he said, feeling the bitter taste of defeat. “You need medical attention, if nothing else.”

 

Chapter Nineteen<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

If the aliens become interested in something, they are almost always able to extract the information from the abductees. This process is seemingly irrespirable; the one report we have of an abductee resisting the alien probes took place when the abductee was drunk. The aliens seemed particularly annoyed with their victim, as – after an unsuccessful attempt to break free – they dumped the abductee about a mile from his home, stack naked.
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Unknown Location, Alien Craft

Patrick opened his eyes.

He was surrounded by blinding light. It seemed to shine all around him, making it impossible to see anything, apart from the light. He tried to move and discovered that his arms and feet were secured by restraints, making it impossible to move. A rubber collar seemed to have been placed around his neck, keeping his head flat on the table. He could move his head from side to side, but little else. He was trapped. Patrick had gone through the dreaded Escape and Evasion course, as had most of the American military, yet none of their trainers had put them into such a hopeless position. He didn't even know where he was – no; that was obvious. He was on one of the alien craft.

A dull humming sound echoed in the air, as if the craft was breathing in and out. He guessed that it was the craft’s engine, and for a moment, lost himself in wondering how it flew. The aliens clearly had access to technology far beyond humanity’s; Patrick, who was a closet science-fiction fan, found himself considering likely possibilities. Perhaps they had developed an antigravity drive that allowed them to perform the impossible, or perhaps it was a drive field that griped local space, or...the possibilities were endless. Perhaps the aliens drove their craft using mental powers and the humming he could hear was the sound of the aliens powering their own drive. There was no way to know for sure.

The light shifted slightly and he found himself suddenly surrounded by dark figures. He could only make out their silhouettes against the light, but it was clear that they were very far from human. The oversized heads and inhumanly thin bodies proved that. Some of them were tall, while others were smaller, the size of the bodies they’d recovered from the crash site. They were all staring down at him, studying the human prisoner. He was sure that he could hear them talking, a dull murmuring that seemed to echo through his skull, yet he couldn't make out any of the words. Patrick cursed his own mistake in the privacy of his skull. He could have spent time reading the books Jon’s brother had written, instead of trying to chat up Gaby; he might have known what lay in store for him. Or perhaps it wouldn't have helped, not when Charlotte had clearly been traumatised by her repeated abductions.

He cried out as a burst of pain flared through his head, followed by a wave of other sensations. Just for a moment, he felt happy and safe, then angry and depressed, finishing up with a shockingly powerful wave of sexual excitement. The aliens didn't seem to be touching him, but they were doing something to him, playing with his emotions. It occurred to him that they could be fine-tuning their devices before they started the torture, or perhaps they could be playing games with him, just for shits and giggles. He twisted his head, pressing his neck against the collar, and looked up at one of the taller figures. It was hard to tell, but he was sure that it was looking back.

There was a sudden uncomfortable tickle at the back of his head, followed by an insistent thought boring into his skull. You will tell us who you are.

Patrick recoiled. The aliens were telepaths! Logic told him that they couldn't be perfect telepaths, or they wouldn't need to bother interrogating him when they could pull the details out of his skull; emotion told him that he was naked before their gaze. He fought for calm, despite the subtle insistent pressure he could feel in his head. Someone – or something – was trying to compel him to talk.

He gathered himself. “James Kirk,” he claimed, finally. It was hard to keep his mind focused enough to concentrate on a lie, but there was no other choice. “My name is James Kirk...”

You lie, one of the aliens sent. The mental pressure grew stronger, as if a fist was squeezing his brain. We know that you are lying. You will tell us who you are...

Patrick gagged and spluttered. The pain was burning through his head, pulling apart his thoughts and tearing into his mind. He tried to hold himself together, but it was impossible. Slowly, unwillingly, his lips moved, shaping the answer that the aliens sought.

“Patrick Kent,” he said, finally. The words tasted of bitter ashes, the taste of defeat. The pressure in his head eased slightly, yet he was sure that the aliens were still poking into his skull. They could probably see him thinking about lying, even trying to lie. No wonder they’d picked up on his lie so easily...unless they watched Star Trek and knew that James Kirk wasn't real. They’d probably found Earth by homing in on the human race’s radio and television transmissions. “My name is Patrick Kent, Green Beret...”

The aliens seemed to move closer. Why did you attack our ship?

Patrick almost laughed, despite the pain in his head. “Because you kidnapped an American citizen from her home and tortured her,” he shouted. The aliens, just for a moment, flinched back. “Why are you doing it anyway? What do you hope to gain from taking people against their will and...”

They have consented, the alien sent. It is for their benefit. We mean them no harm.

There was another spike of pain. Patrick tried to laugh, but it was too painful. “How does that help them?” He demanded. “They live in terror because of you...”

The alien ignored the question. Patrick found himself wondering just what they thought had happened. If the aliens had made a deal with someone in the American government, might they believe that that automatically extended over the entire American population? Might they believe that the government granting them the right to abduct American citizens made it permissible? Or perhaps, he considered as the pain grew worse, they were just sadistic bastards. It was hard to believe that there was anything good in them when they were torturing him.

You will tell us how you came to attack us, the alien sent. Patrick shook his head, wincing as the collar cut into his neck. It dawned on him that if he pushed hard, he could maybe cut his own throat before they could stop him. It dawned on the aliens in the same moment. They did something and his entire body, apart from his lips, just froze. Patrick struggled against the invisible bonds, but nothing worked. He had never been so helpless in his entire life.

“I won’t talk,” he said. It was hard to move his lips, harder still to hold himself together. He’d been told that sensory deprivation was a near-perfect form of torture, but he suspected that the aliens had found a better one. Patrick had always considered himself an active person – he’d played football in school, before deciding to join the army – and being trapped in his own body was nightmarish. “Whatever you want to know, I won’t talk. I won’t tell you anything so you bastards can just go **** yourselves.”

Absurdly, the pain lessened. Patrick allowed himself a moment of relief, even though he suspected that the aliens were trying to make him feel better, perhaps even grateful to them for lowering the pain. It seemed weird to think that anyone would believe that – after all, the aliens had caused the pain – but the human mind was capable of adapting to almost anything to survive. Stockholm Syndrome was a very real condition these days. Patrick had rescued hostages from kidnappers who had wanted to believe the best of their tormentors.

You will talk, the cold emotionless alien voice said, in his mind. It dawned on him just how alien the aliens actually were. They just probed into his skull and whispered into his mind. If you refuse to talk now, we will be forced to use extreme measures.

Patrick started to laugh. A moment later, a high-pitched whine started up, high above him. His eyes suddenly became able to move, allowing him to peer upwards, squinting against the light. There was something glittering up there...something coming down towards his forehead. It was a thin needle, barely visible against the light. Patrick tried to struggle, realising that the aliens intended to drive it into his head, but his body refused to move. His lips had locked up and he couldn't even speak. The needle touched his forehead and there was a brief spark of pain, then nothing. He couldn't even feel the needle inside his head.

And then his life started flashing in front of his eyes. He saw his first memory; the birth of his brother two years after Patrick had been born. He saw his first day at school and the friends and enemies he’d known back then, girls and boys he’d long since forgotten, even in dreams. The first girl he’d kissed appeared in front of him, followed by a memory of the day he’d reached under her shirt and touched her breast, only to be caught and thrown out by her father. His later girlfriend, the one who had taken his virginity, danced in front of him, only to be pushed aside by the memory of the day he’d joined the army. The aliens seemed to have no rhyme or reason in their search, yet somehow he knew what they were doing. They were digging through his memories for information.

He saw Jon, telling them his absurd story, and Anderson, confirming that it was true. He saw the trip down to Kansas and the farm they’d built, before the scene shifted to the night they’d engaged the alien craft. He hoped the aliens enjoyed seeing their craft destroyed by a single missile – the thought was reassuring, because if a Stinger could bring down an alien craft, so too could the missiles carried by fighter jets – and almost laughed as they focused on the dead body. And then, finally, there was the memory of being lifted up into the air by the aliens and swallowed up by the blinding light.

It made no sense to Patrick. If they could pull memories out of his mind, why bother with the interrogation? The aliens seemed to sense the question and pulled closer, one of them – in particular – staring into his eyes. He was so close that Patrick could make out the detail, the strange black eyes and tiny mouth that seemed to mark all the aliens.

The process causes complete mental collapse, the alien sent. Patrick realised in horror that the aliens had casually sentenced him to death. Your mind is collapsing under the violation. We assure you that your death has not been in vain. We will prevent your allies from preventing our operation from continuing. And we promise you this; your DNA will become part of the New World. You will not be forgotten...

Patrick wanted to say something, but the pain in his head was growing stronger. It was growing harder and harder to think, let alone do anything else. The alien touched his forehead and a memory seemed to flare through his head, the memory of standing with other aliens, looking down at the handful of aliens who could still bear children. The alien, Patrick realised, was trying – in its own manner – to explain. The memory wasn't his, but something the alien was trying to show him. It struck him just how human the aliens were, in some ways; they were desperate, desperate to survive. Other memories flared through his head; there had been a war against an overwhelmingly powerful foe, and then...

The memories all started to blur together. Patrick couldn't pick out individual memories, apart from one, a face he recognised. It was President Truman, standing with a handful of other men, all facing the aliens and talking to them. Truman, Patrick knew, was long since dead, but his legacy lived on. He knew, now, that he was staring at the founding of the Majestic Committee...

And then the memories started to fade, shifting back to a memory from the past, the day he’d taken his girlfriend to a cabin in the hills and they’d just stayed there for a week, having sex and little else. It was a memory that had kept him warm at night. Now, it brought him comfort and joy. The alien, in his own fashion, was trying to help comfort him...slowly, as his thoughts slipped away into nothingness. His mind simply came apart.

***​

Sharon lay on the medical table, wincing against the pain. Sven was beside her, staring down helplessly as two of the smaller aliens poked and prodded between her legs. Sharon wasn't sure what they were doing, or why, but it was painful. She knew that the aliens could block the pain, that they could do something to numb her body, so why didn't they? It seemed that they were purely interested in tormenting her.

She wanted to take Sven’s hand – at least he was company, of a sort – but the aliens had restrained her as soon as she’d lain down on the table. It was odd for them to use any kind of physical restraints and Sharon had tried to tell herself that it was a sign the aliens were worried about losing control of her, yet somehow that didn't seem too likely. She might have been spending most of her time on the craft – however long it had been – with Sven, but the aliens had lost nothing of their control over her. There had been times when she’d seen them watching as Sven made love to her, their mental pressure urging her on. It was growing harder and harder to remember her husband, let alone their children. She had no idea what the aliens had done to them...

The aliens did something inside her and Sharon screamed in pain. It was too much. Her entire body convulsed as a hot needle seemed to reach up through her vagina and into her heart. She would have preferred to be beaten or raped, rather than face the pain. It just went on and on, a stabbing pain that she was sure would kill her. The little aliens ignored her screams. They just paid no attention.

“Get that out of her,” Sven said. He sounded terrified. He had never sounded terrified before, not since they’d been introduced. “Get it out of her now!”

There was a pause. The tiny aliens seemed to stop; the pain remained, but grew no worse. Sharon shuddered helplessly against the bonds, feeling as if she had been penetrated – violated – by something cold and alien. Sven stepped forward, waving his hand in the air until a holographic control panel appeared in front of him. The grey aliens turned to look at him, and then looked away as his hand stabbed at the console. The pain faded away as the needle – whatever it was – withdrew out of her body. Sharon found herself almost crying with relief.

She looked up as one of the taller aliens appeared at the side of the room. It walked over to Sven and made gestures at Sharon’s naked body, while – she guessed – communicating with Sven telepathically. Sven was having none of whatever the alien was saying, insisting aloud that there was no need to torment Sharon, trying to override the alien’s objections through sheer noise. Sharon suddenly found herself very scared for him as a new memory, one she’d repressed more heavily than anything else, flickered up in her mind. A hybrid had tried to rape her, only to be removed and killed by one of the taller aliens. They seemed not to tolerate defiance or disobedience very well.

The discussion raged backwards and forwards, and then the taller alien stepped back, conceding the point. Sven walked back to the table and undid her restraints, helping her to her feet. The stabbing pain between her legs faded away as she stood up, even though she knew that the memory of it would never fade. Sven took her arm and escorted her through a maze of twisting corridors, back into the room they had come to share. He held her tightly as soon as the door hissed closed, the first truly selfless gesture she’d seen. He’d risked his life to save her from torture, or death.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her ear. “I didn't know what they wanted to do...”

Sharon stared at him. “What do they want to do?”

“They want us to make a relationship and a baby,” Sven explained. He held his lips close to her ear, a warning that the walls might have invisible ears. “They want us to be a couple...”

At first, Sharon didn’t understand. A human woman didn't need to be in love to have a baby, as her mother had warned her years ago. And then she understood. Sven was being prepared for his role as a hybrid and developing a working relationship with a pure human was clearly part of that...and if they could have babies, the hybrids could be inserted into human society and, soon enough, the entire human race would be replaced by hybrids.

“I understand,” she said, “but they’re going to keep hurting me. We have to get out of here...”

She'd said that before, but Sven had always disagreed. This time, however, he seemed inclined to take her words seriously.

“I know,” he said, slowly. “We’ll get out of here somehow.”

“And my daughters,” Sharon added. “We have to get them out of here too.”

 

Chapter Twenty<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

As far as we can tell, researchers into alien abduction have never been threatened as a result of their investigations. They just get mocked and derided by the chattering classes. The cynics claim, naturally, that that proves that there is nothing to the abduction experience at all, let alone all the conspiracy theories about the government being involved in alien abduction.
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Near Mannington, Virginia, USA

“Thank you for the trip, Uncle David,” Kimberly said. “It was wicked!”

David had to smile. He’d gotten back to the farm two days ago and discovered that Kimberly, at least, had been behaving herself. It was a shame that the same couldn't be said for her mother and older sister; Mariko had told him that Mary spent most of her time complaining, even when she was given the simplest of tasks to do. Her husband wasn't much help either; he couldn't convince his wife to behave, or even to accept that they couldn't go home. It was one of the reasons David had sworn never to get married. Marriage put too much power in the hands of the woman, who would be backed up by the courts.

“You’re welcome,” he said. The farm tried to produce everything it needed, but that was clearly impossible in the modern age – although David felt that if there was a crisis, they would ride it out with only a few rough spots. The shopping trip had served two purposes; it had given Karen a reward for her good behaviour and taken her father out of the farmhouse long enough for Mariko to have a...discussion with Mary. “And you, William? Did you enjoy the trip?”

The psychologist nodded, absently. Mannington wasn't large, not by the standards of New York, but it did have an excellent public library. It also had a bookshop with quite a few interesting sections and William had had a good time looking for new UFO-related books. David had checked the selection and paid for them in cash, as William no longer had access to his bank account or any other source of money. Paying in cash was necessary anyway if one was trying to hide. The government could and would track card purchases over the entire world. David had been quietly stockpiling cash for years and using it to hide everything he’d purchased for the farm. With the remainder of the Clan contributing, it allowed them to build up a remarkable amount of supplies that no one knew they had.

He blinked as his cell phone started to buzz. Unlike Jon, who was a wanted suspect, David hadn't abandoned his cell phone. Only a handful of people had his number and very few of them would have called him or sent an instant message unless it was urgent. He blinked when he realised that he didn't recognise the number displayed on the screen and keyed the switch. A moment later, he swore aloud as the message displayed itself on the screen. ROOK TAKES KING, TWO MOVES; GREEN ONE.

William looked up in surprise, shocked at hearing such language. “What is it?”

“Trouble,” David snapped. “Get in the car now!”

There was no way of knowing what had happened, but Jon was the only person who could have sent that message. David had known from a brief and innocuous email that Jon had succeeded in bringing down an alien craft, yet something had clearly gone badly wrong. The message warned that Patrick Kent had fallen into enemy hands and would almost certainly be interrogated. They’d know about the Clan and, worse, they’d know about the farm. David didn't waste time assuming that Patrick would resist his interrogators. They’d get everything out of him, sooner or later.

He opened the phone, removed the battery and then tossed the phone into a nearby garbage disposal unit. Ignoring William’s increasingly frantic questions, he jumped into the car and gunned the engine, racing out of Mannington at the very edge of the speed limit. The last thing he needed was to be caught by a police officer now. If he could get back to the farm in time, they could grab their emergency bags and start running. His mind tossed endless problems at him, questions he couldn't answer. How long had it been since Patrick had been captured? How long had it taken for Jon to find a phone?

“Look at that,” Kimberly said, pointing ahead of them. A swarm of black helicopters had come into view, racing towards the farm. David stared at them, knowing that he was too late. The farm was about to be raided. He wanted to race to the farm to join the fight, but he knew that it would be futile. They wouldn't get there in time to make a difference and they didn't have firepower to take on a small fleet of helicopters. Majestic would have taken the farm by the time they got there. “Uncle David?”

“I’m sorry,” David said. He stared down at his hands, cursing himself for a fool and a coward. Mariko was in there, along with the remainder of Jon’s family and a handful of Clan members. They were all going to be captured or killed – and he could do nothing to help them. At least he'd discussed contingency plans with Jon, contingency plans that Patrick had known nothing about, but...he wanted to run to the farm anyway. Turning tail and fleeing wasn't the Marine way. The General would spit in his face. “I’m so sorry.”

Turning the car, he drove down a side lane, away from the farm. There was a vantage point not too far away, a place where they could watch without – hopefully – being seen. And if they were wrong about not being seen, perhaps they’d get caught up in the fight anyway. He could always hope.

***​

Mariko prided herself on never losing her temper. It hadn't been an easy lesson to learn, but she’d mastered it. On the other hand, her parents had never met someone as irritating as Mary before, let alone her spoiled elder daughter. Mariko, who wanted kids of her own one day, had been quietly compiling a list of what not to do, using Mary as her model. Somehow, she had managed to resist the temptation to tell Mary that, or to slap her across the face. The woman needed a wake-up call, or possibly a sound spanking.

“And I am telling you,” she said, as calmly as she could, “that you will peel those potatoes and that you will help me to clear up afterwards. You don't get hired help here.”

Mary stared at her, even though they’d had the same discussion only two days ago. She just didn't understand how it worked on a farm. Everyone worked, from the youngest to the oldest, just to keep the place running. Mariko found herself hoping that if there had been a disaster, the sort of emergency David had expected, Mary wouldn't find her way to the farm. At least now, when she was a semi-fugitive from the people who had tried to kidnap and kill her and her family, they could bring in supplies from the outside if necessary.

“And if you mess it up, you won't be fed tonight,” Mariko added, and stormed out of the kitchen. Karen was in the living room. She was meant to be cleaning the room, but instead she was lolling on the sofa, watching television. Mariko opened her mouth to deliver a stinging lecture when she heard the sound of helicopters high overhead. A moment later, as the sound grew louder, she realised that they were coming down on the farm and ran for the window. A small fleet of black helicopters were hovering over the farm and settling down to land on the fields. A moment later, they disgorged a small army of men who fanned out and advanced towards the farm.

Mariko looked back as two of David’s friends ran into the room, carrying assault rifles. They knew what was at stake, just as Mariko did. The black helicopters weren't carrying the IRS, or the ATF, but troops working for Majestic. After they’d tried to kill Jon and presumably William, it would be foolish to expect them to take anyone alive. David hadn't set the farm up as a small fortress for nothing, although he hadn't expected a helicopter assault. A single Hellfire missile would wreck most of the building. Mariko looked back at Karen, who was staring at the helicopters with an open mouth, and scowled. She supposed she should try to get the girl out of the firing line.

“Get down into the basement,” she ordered, as she pulled her small pistol from its concealed holster. Mariko had been a fair shot when she met David and years working with him had turned her into a sharpshooter, but she doubted that they had enough firepower to repel the assault. “No; take your mother and get down into the basement.”

She headed over to the laptop and opened it up. As David had expected, the local internet and landlines had gone down, preventing them from getting a word out. The cell phone networks were being jammed. David had anticipated that, however, and somehow created a system that was designed to circumvent jamming. Mariko wasn't sure how it worked – he’d tried to explain it and she’d ended up with a headache – but it allowed her to get a handful of instant messages out. The remainder of the Clan would be warned. Not all of them were involved with the resistance against the aliens, but she doubted that that would matter to Majestic. And then there was the issue of the illegal guns and supplies that David had built up over the years. He’d hidden them reasonably well, but she knew that a thorough search would find them.

A voice bellowed out from the direction of one of the helicopters. “COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR,” it thundered. “WE WILL USE DEADLY FORCE IF YOU REFUSE TO SURRENDER.”

“Interesting,” one of David’s friends muttered. “They should identify themselves and they don’t...”

Mariko heard the sound of gunshots and winced. The advancing men – wearing black assault uniforms, she noted – had seen a target and opened fire. At first, she didn't know who they were shooting at, until she remembered that one of David’s friends had been in the apple trees and had suddenly made himself a target. As if that was a signal, both of David’s friends started to open fire, concentrating on the advancing men. Mariko stayed low and crawled over to a locked case on the wall, opening it and pulling out a hunting rifle and ammunition. She crawled back, wincing as a handful of bullets smashed through the windows and ricocheted around the room, and found a firing position. Several of the enemy had been hit and lay on the ground, bleeding to death; the others were staying low, but still advancing. A rear section had found cover and was systematically peppering the house with bullets to force them to remain low, although Mariko wasn't sure what they were actually shooting at. They’d already shot out all the windows. She took aim at one of the advancing soldiers and fired once, then blinked in surprise as a man who had been loitering at the helicopters stepped forward, holding up a thin pencil-like device in his hand. There was a brilliant flash of light and the front of the farmhouse exploded.

Mariko found herself picked up and tossed across the room by the force of the explosion. She hit the ground hard enough to hurt, feeling pieces of plaster and wood crashing to the ground as the farmhouse continued to disintegrate. Whatever they’d been hit with – and she had no idea what that weapon had been – it had shattered all the careful work David had done on the house’s structure. She reached for her small pistol – a ladies gun, David had called it – only to discover that she’d lost it when the building had been hit. The sound of nearby gunfire was growing louder, although she was unable to imagine who was offering further resistance. Both of David’s friends had been caught up in the same blast that had struck her.

She pulled herself to her feet, wincing at the pain, and crawled towards the far door. If she could escape into the interior of the farmhouse, she could find another weapon or perhaps a way out...no, they would have surrounded the house, just to prevent anyone from running out the back door. There was another explosion, louder than the first, and a wooden beam crashed down from high above. Mariko was thrown to the ground by the explosion and landed so hard that she was convinced that she had broken something. A moment later, she heard the sound of running feet and tried to flee, just before a foot came down on her back. She cried out in pain and tried to move, but it was impossible. Strong hands caught her arms, wrenched her hands behind her back and wrapped a plastic tie around them. She was pulled to her feet, half-carried back outside, and unceremoniously dumped on the grass. At least she was alive, she tried to tell herself, but somehow she suspected that she would have been wiser to go out fighting.

The invaders kept searching the house. One of them brought out a body, horrifically burned, and dumped it in front of her. Mariko recognised one of David’s friends and realised that he must have been caught by the blast that had wrecked the house. Another body seemed to be in pieces, followed by a third that had clearly been shot to death. She found herself hoping that Mary and Karen had escaped detection, but she knew it was a fool’s hope before the two women were brought out – their hands tied as well – and dumped in front of her. She looked up at the farmhouse and shuddered. The entire front section of the building had been devastated. David would be heartbroken when he came home and discovered that it had been wrecked. He’d poured a lifetime’s work into the building...

She twisted her neck and turned to look at the invaders themselves. They looked human – but then, so had the hybrids who had tried to kill Jon and his family. She tried to memories their suit markings and numbers, yet it proved impossible. They carried no markings, not even anything to mark out command rank or medics; there was no way to tell who was in charge. And, weirdly, they all looked very similar. Mariko had met enough soldiers to know that they didn't look identical, whatever the less well-informed might claim, but these men looked as if they had been cloned from the same genetic stock.

One of them walked over to her and helped her to her feet. “You are our prisoners,” he said, flatly. There was no emotion in the voice; no heavy satisfaction, no regret...nothing. Mariko shivered at the gross inhumanity within his words. “Behave yourselves and you won’t be hurt.”

“But we have rights,” Mary protested, as she was helped to her feet. “You can't treat us like this...”

The man slapped her across the face, splitting her lip with a single blow. “Understand this,” he said. “You have been defined as terrorists. You have no rights. If you cooperate, we will make this as pleasant as possible; if you refuse to cooperate, we are authorised to make it as unpleasant as necessary. Do you understand me?”

Both Mary and Karen still looked stunned, so Mariko had to answer. “Yes, sir,” she said, grudgingly. Even terrorists had rights, which meant...they’d probably fallen right into the hands of the aliens. Or perhaps Majestic considered itself so far above the law that it could launch the raid without fear of repercussion. The hell of it was that they might be right. “We understand.”

A moment later, they were pushed towards the helicopters and thrust into one of the nearest vehicles. Mariko felt her heart turn over as the rotor blades started to spin up, leaving her convinced that she would never see David – or West Virginia – again. Whatever was in store for them, she knew, their treatment wouldn’t be very pleasant.

Karen started to cry, blubbering out words between tears. “But what are they going to do to us?”

Mariko would have comforted her if she could, but she couldn't move. “I don't know,” she admitted. Karen knew nothing; perhaps they’d realise that and let her go. “I just don’t know.”

***​

“We have to get out of here,” David said. They'd watched the entire raid from their vantage point. He’d been relieved beyond measure to know that Mariko was safe, but God alone knew where they were taking her. How Majestic intended to cover up the raid was beyond him. The entire country would know that something bad had gone down at the farm. “Get back into the car, now!”

“But where are they taking mom?” Kimberly asked, frantically. “What will they do to her?”

“I don't know,” David admitted. Mariko knew too much. The chances were good that they’d made her talk – just as they’d made Patrick talk – and learn everything she knew. On the other hand, she didn't know everything and there was still at least one place to hide. “Get back into the car. We have to start moving before they realise that they’ve missed us and come looking for us.”

He gunned the engine and swung the car out onto the road, silently working out the route in his head. If they were lucky, they could be at the cabin by sundown. It wasn't in his name, luckily; his paranoia at the time was paying off. Or perhaps he was driving them right into a trap.

“All right, you bastards,” he said, more for Kimberly’s benefit than his own. “Now it’s ****ing personal.”

 

Hi, everyone
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />
Owing to my girlfriend and I having plans for a short and much needed holiday – stress at work, don’t ask – there will be a short hiatus. I thought I’d timed it better – actually, if things had gone precisely to plan, you would have been left with the departing UFO in CH18.

The Uninvited will be back soon. Please don’t hesitate to comment and offer suggestions. Our heroes ain’t seen nothing yet...

Chris

 

Enjoy your time off, but understand, you have us on the edge of our seats ! Thanks again.

 

Enjoy the vacation! This is excellent. I am waiting for MOAR!

 

Great Story!

You certainly deserve a break.

I hope that stress level takes a serious and prolonged dive, ASAP.

Enjoy your "time off;" I'll be looking forward to more of this great story!

 

I'm back!

Chapter Twenty-One<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

We know, for reasons unknown, that the aliens are interested in families. If a mother or a father is an alien target, the odds are good that their children – and grandchildren – will also be targets. This raises all kinds of interesting possibilities. Are their families that have been formed, effectively speaking, by the aliens?
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Washington DC, USA

“Good God, David, what the **** happened?”

David shook his head tiredly. After reaching the hidden cabin and meeting up with Jon and Anderson, he’d made his way to Washington using false ID, something that had probably saved him from being picked up by the police and transferred into Majestic’s custody. The media had been hammering away at the Clan ever since the raid on his farm, calling them everything from right-wing militia nuts to illegal gunrunners and terrorists. A number of people who had had nothing to do with the Clan had been arrested, while the media kept beating the same drum time and time again. It was enough to make him wonder if Majestic controlled the media as well as everything else.

“They took Kent prisoner,” he said, shortly. Setting up the meeting with General Bruce Nicolas had been tricky – the normal contact procedures had to be assumed compromised – but they’d finally met up at a USMC safe house in suburban Washington. If Kent had known that he’d made contact with Nicolas...David, who had to assume that everything Kent knew was also known to the enemy, silently thanked God that Kent hadn't known everything. He hadn't even known every other member of the Clan. “And, we assume, he was interrogated and they learned about the farm from him.”

He outlined everything that had happened from the last time they’d spoken in person, covering the UFO Jon and his team had shot down to the recovery of the alien bodies and some – not all – of the evidence. Anderson had made it to the cabin without being abducted, along with his samples of alien blood and tissue, all of which had been passed on to a team of scientists he’d assembled prior to heading to Kansas. The loss of the farm – and Mariko, who had been taken by the federal agents who had raided the farm – had come as a body blow after their successes. He’d never realised how bad a defeat could feel if it came after a victory.

“I see,” Nicolas said, finally. “You do realise that your freedom of movement has been badly circumscribed?”

“I assume that that was what they had in mind,” David said, tiredly. He’d been put through Escape and Evasion courses before, back when he’d joined the Marine Corps, but he’d never – in his worst nightmares – considered having to hide from the federal government. The slightest mistake could set the hounds after him, the vast resources of the government brought to bear on him and his friends and allies. He’d contacted the remaining members of the Clan and warned them to go underground, but several of them had already been out of touch. He feared the worst. “Why doesn't anyone ****ing notice?”

“The media is solidly behind the government,” Nicolas said. He grinned, humourlessly. Few in the military trusted or respected the mainstream media. “They’re branding you as – and I quote – Evil Fundamentalist Racist Terrorists. Why in the name of God did you name your organisation the Clan? They’re calling it the Klan...”

“I was never one to bow to political correctness,” David said. He shook his head, tiredly. He needed a long sleep and a chance to plan. The chances were good that he wasn't going to get any of either, at least for a while. “And the media is just swallowing the government’s line completely?”

Nicolas nodded to one of the other men in the office. He was in plain clothes, but even in uniform, few would have believed that Colonel Waterford was anything other than a poser, a pretender who claimed to be a Marine. He was short, dangerously overweight and one of the smartest minds in the Marine Corps. Whatever his official title said, he was effectively the Marine Corps Press Secretary, working endlessly to ensure that the Corps received positive PR from the media. It wasn't a task that David envied him. His predecessor had been fond of claiming that, after the Marine Corps had taken over the task of defending the Earth in Independence Day, enlistment in the Marine Corps had doubled. Like all statistics, it was of dubious value. PR was a fickle servant and, in David’s view, a poor master.

“I’m afraid so,” Waterford said. “I’ve been making covert enquiries with reporters and press agents I know, including many who have been embedded on deployment with Marines and even Army units. They’re saying that many reporters have their doubts about what actually went down at the farm, but they are all under orders from higher up the food chain to follow the party line and don’t make waves. Apparently, a handful of reporters who have tried to disobey orders have been suspended – and perhaps they will be dismissed for questioning the party line.”

He shrugged. “There are plenty of politicians who are questioning the party line – the Governor of West Virginia, for one – but the full weight of the federal machine is being brought to bear on them. Whoever launched the first raid was replaced by a...”

David blinked. “They don’t even know who raided the farm?”

“Apparently, and I confess that information is limited, the farm was raided by a covert SWAT team belonging to Homeland Security,” Waterford said. “There is apparently a media blackout on all details relating to the SWAT team, for reasons of national security. Or so we have been told. The secondary team, however, was a rather tarnished unit from the ATF, one with a history of busts under dubious evidence and a reputation for framing innocent victims to avoid having to admit that they were wrong. I suspect that they will find enough illegal guns, drugs and whatever to fully justify any measures they may take against you.”

David winced inwardly, trying to keep his grief and rage off his face. “They took prisoners,” he said, bitterly, remembering watching helplessly as they were removed from the farm. “What happened to them?”

“That’s the bad news,” Waterford said, grimly. “According to the news broadcasts, there were no prisoners. Everyone in the farm apparently killed themselves when they discovered that resistance was futile.”

“But...” David broke off and stared at the General. “Can’t you find out what happened to them?”

“I’ve been able to turn up nothing,” the General admitted. “Even at JCS level, all information relating to the raid has been highly compartmentalised – and I cannot show them a good reason to know without tipping our hand. David...I’m sorry, but I have no idea what has happened to your girlfriend.”

David fought to control himself. Even as a raw recruit, he had never felt so helpless in his life. He hadn't been looking for love when Mariko walked into his life, yet she’d fitted into his world and his life perfectly. And he’d even told her that he could never marry her! What, he asked himself silently, had he been thinking? He should have been ashamed of himself for fearing that she would turn on him one day – as his mother had turned on his father – and tear his life and career apart in a messy divorce. He’d told her that he didn't want to invite the government into his relationship and... He ground his fists together, hard. It had become more than personal now. He would track down Majestic and kill them all, along with their alien allies – or masters.

Nicolas changed the subject. “I tried to reintroduce mandatory blood screening at the Pentagon,” he said, “using the reprogrammed DNA readers. I was blocked by, I should warn you, the chief of security himself. He said, and I quote, that requiring everyone to recertify once – let alone every time they returned to the building – would impose unacceptable strains on his officers.”

David snorted. “And that’s his excuse?”

“It would appear so,” Nicolas confirmed. “I think we have to assume that he’s been compromised, somehow. The only people who benefit from preventing mandatory blood screenings are the aliens.”

“Yeah,” David agreed. “Who else benefits?”

He scowled. In bad spy movies and worse fiction, the enemy would be able to use plastic surgery to turn one of their agents into a dead ringer for the President, or a military officer, or even a businessman. The altered spy would be able to walk into the Pentagon, pass the victim’s closest friends without them noticing that anything was wrong, and issue orders in the victim’s name with ease, or read classified files that the victim was allowed to read. In real life, such missions were almost impossible. Passing for someone – particularly someone who had friends who knew him well – was extremely difficult. And that assumed that the enemy could somehow circumvent security protocols and retina scanners.

“There was another interesting point,” Nicolas said. Only a person who knew him well would have been able to detect the undertone of cold anger running through his voice. “Did you know Major General Haussler?”

David shook his head. “No,” he said. “Why...?”

“Haussler was wounded in combat back during Operation Iraqi Freedom,” Nicolas said. “The wound was bad enough to prevent his return to active duty, so he was shuffled into the 1<SUP>st</SUP> Marine Logistics Group and then into Headquarters Marine Corps. While he was working for my predecessor, he was placed in command of the ambassadorial unit – ah...that’s the unit that vets Marines for service on foreign soil, as embassy guards and suchlike. And, four days ago, he died.”

David frowned. Four days ago would place it as just after the raid on the farm. “How did he die?”

“According to the report, he had a massive stoke while jogging in the park and collapsed,” Nicolas said. “I don't believe a word of it. Haussler was healthy and in good shape, apart from a limp; he shouldn't have suffered a stroke, of all things.”

David followed his logic. “And you think that Majestic killed him?”

“It’s a possibility,” Nicolas said. He frowned. “Haussler wasn’t part of our little cell, but he held a very important position. The State Department has been trying to take the responsibility for selecting Marines off our hands for the last few years. Haussler was...very involved with keeping it in our hands. If Majestic gained control of the selection process...”

He shook his head. “God damn it,” he snapped. “I hate this – it’s like fighting shadows! How the hell do we tell what’s important and what’s just a red herring?”

“If someone is going to move into Haussler’s former position,” David said slowly, “it might be a good idea to make sure that their blood is checked first...”

“I thought of that,” Nicolas said. “Trouble is...at that level, it isn't just a matter for the Corps. Haussler’s replacement will have to be vetted, and then approved by all of the people involved, and then confirmed by the President and the Pentagon. It’s a hassle we don’t need at the moment.”

He smiled, thinly. “The good news is that I have been able to insist on blood checks on all stateside Marine bases,” he said. “Every so often, we do a spot check for drugs anyway – so we just run every Marine though a DNA reader and see what pops up. The bad news is that we seem to have a large number of alien hybrids in the Corps.”

David wasn't deceived by the evenness of his tone. General Nicolas was angry.

“****,” he said. “How many do we have in all?”

“We tested around seventy-nine percent of the Marines in the States,” Nicolas said, coldly. “We found upwards of six hundred people who failed the test, ranging from raw recruits to several Colonels and a Major General. So far, we haven’t challenged them, but...how the hell are they doing it? Some of these people have the best efficiency reports in the Corps!”

David felt as if he had been punched in the belly. The Marine Corps was a brotherhood, a band of men who would always be there for one another. And now it had been tarnished by the aliens, their half-humans inserted into positions that – one day – would have them making the decisions. And what if it wasn’t just the Marines? There was no reason to believe that the other services were immune...

Jon’s brother’s book – and the other books David had read on alien abduction – suggested that the program was vast. Given enough time, and patience, the aliens could produce hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of hybrids. And if they were all inserted into human society, their path smoothed by Majestic, they’d be in a position to take over one day, without the need for a violent invasion that would ruin the planet.

“I think we need to have a few words with that Major General,” David said, coldly. “Can we get his file?”

“I think we need to have a few words with the President,” Nicolas said. “What if he’s an alien hybrid?”

“Half the country probably thinks that he’s an alien hybrid,” David joked. He had scant respect for politicians – Republican or Democrat, for both political parties seemed to insist on their representatives undergoing a mandatory lobotomy before running for office – and it struck him as an easy way for the aliens to take over. “I thought that you had access to him...”

“I do,” Nicolas said, “but we need proof. If we have proof, the President can sign an Executive Order that will allow us to run everyone in USSOCOM through the blood screeners, then brief them in and use them for security while we carry out more blood screenings and uncover Majestic, tearing them right out of the shadows. At the moment, operating like this, we’re skirting the law pretty badly.”

He shrugged. “It will take some pretty heavy proof to offset resistance to the concept of an alien invasion...I wish you hadn't lost that body, David. An alien body would have been very convincing...”

“Yeah,” David agreed, bitterly.

Nicolas frowned. “How did they even track it down?”

“Anderson’s best guess was that the alien had a tracking implant inserted within its body,” David said, slowly. “He figured that when the alien was stored within the freezer, the signal was blocked out by the metal, but once we took it out of the farm and into the truck...the bastards tracked the signal and waited for their chance to swoop in and steal the body back from us. It might explain why Anderson himself wasn’t molested...”

“Are you sure of that?”

David blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Anderson was alone, right?” Nicolas said. “How do you know that the aliens didn't abduct him, recover the samples, wipe his memory and then just let him go?”

“The samples were verified,” David said, slowly. The thought was an alarming one. It honestly hadn't occurred to him to doubt Anderson’s word. But then, if the aliens played their usual games with the minds of their captives, Anderson wouldn't have known that he was lying. “Sir...we do have the original samples. I could find a hundred scientists who would be prepared to swear that the samples contained non-human DNA.”

“And I have no doubt that any one of the President’s political enemies would be able to produce a thousand scientists who will mock the whole idea of creating hybrid creatures,” Nicolas said, flatly. He shook his head. “Get me some real proof, please. Something I can show to the President before all hell breaks loose.”

David quirked an eyebrow at the General, puzzled. “They were prepared to kill a Senator even before your friend caught video footage of them at work,” Nicolas said. “Now they tipped their hand and revealed that they control human forces in the United States – and, perhaps, they were willing to start killing others to clear the way for their hybrids. And I bet you that they’ve never lost a craft before.”

He placed his fingertips together as he spoke. “Why would they bother with an abduction program if they had any other choice?” He asked, thoughtfully. “Why not just take over? Why bother trying to slip their people in through the backdoor if they could just invade and take over with ease? Their greatest defence was their secrecy and that’s being torn away...”

Nicolas looked up, sharply. “It strikes me that they’re slowly coming out into the open,” he concluded. “I think that they have all of their pieces in place now, or they will have very soon. And when they’re ready, they’ll launch a formal takeover and claim our world for themselves. I think that time is running out. They have to act before we find proof and rip their secrecy to shreds once and for all.”

David nodded. In truth, he’d already drawn similar conclusions. “They lost a craft to a Stinger missile,” he pointed out. “Perhaps a jet fighter wouldn't have any difficulty shooting down a UFO.”

“Perhaps,” Nicolas said. “And yet...they shorted out the truck, didn’t they? We’ve been trying to generate focused EMP pulses for years – it would make one hell of a weapon. And what would happen to one of the intrepid birdman if his fighter, a multibillion dollar machine, was struck by an EMP? It would just fall out of the sky.

“And what if they can produce a much larger EMP on cue? Perhaps that’s how they intend to take over the world – wreak our society and then walk in and pick up the pieces, using the hybrids as their vanguard.”

He took David’s hand as he stood up. “Find us that proof, David,” he said. “I think that time is running out for us all.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Two<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

What is the overall aim of the hybrid program? We don’t know, but one thing seems clear. Why bother creating humanoid creatures that can pass for human, perfectly adapted to living on Earth, if settlement is not intended. And if invasion and colonisation are on the cards, what do they intend to do to the resident population?
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

New York, USA

“I was trying to locate Majestic’s core membership,” Madiha explained, as she poured coffee for Jon. “Like I said, this wasn't an easy task – their files don't actually show them as members of Majestic, but you know what? I think I’ve found a handful of current members.”

She sat down opposite Jon and crossed her legs. “The really interesting thing about the Pentagon is that even the people who have access to the building don’t have access everywhere within the building,” she said. “You get cleared by one department to enter the building, cleared by a second department to enter a certain part of the building – and God help you if you enter a part of the building you’re not cleared for without permission. So I started listing out the hundreds of different compartments and found four that didn't seem to correspond to anything else.”

Jon frowned. “Right...”

Madiha grinned at him. “They may be twilight people who never come out into the light, but they have to be listed somewhere, or they couldn't get into the building in the first place,” she said. “If they’re not on the Authorised List, they’re not going to get in, even if they have the highest level of clearance in the world. You can just imagine a Majestic member, cigarette drooping from his lips, being unable to enter because a guard doesn't see him on the list. Are you with me so far?”

Jon nodded, slowly. “Good,” Madiha said. “It struck me that someone who had full clearance – a person who could go anywhere within the building – would be able to access the sealed compartments. So I pulled a list of ‘access-all-areas’ users from the system and studied it. There were only fifty-seven people with current ‘access-all areas’ clearance and seven of them – seven – don’t have any names attached to the file.”

“I see, I think,” Jon said. “And who are the named ones?”

“The Pentagon’s Top Secret Security Team, a handful of very senior government and military officers and the President himself,” Madiha said. “It seems that only a few of them can use their clearance without escort; even the President has to be escorted while in the Pentagon. I think that the system is set up to prevent abuse; very few people can move within the Pentagon without being escorted, although unofficially. The seven unnamed officers, however, seem to have complete clearance. My guess is that they escort each other, which would avoid raising a few suspicions.”

She smiled. “I couldn’t pull their names out of the files, because they’re not listed,” she said. “Their fingerprints and retina patterns, however, are listed. Are you familiar with the Pentagon’s security database?”

Jon shook his head. “They’re paranoid about people like me breaking in and rearranging the furniture a little,” she explained. “Not entirely without reason, I should admit – they’ve had quite a few hackers breaking in to cause trouble. And so the entire system is a ROM database – you can read it, but you can't alter it. The system administrators can create a new file on top of the old one – when a person gets promoted they get a new file – and the old file remains buried within the system. They’ve got records dating all the way back to the Korean War within that database.”

Madiha tapped her laptop and spun it around. “I ran a comparison; the fingerprints in the unnamed files against the fingerprints in the ROM database. And look what I found – I have names and headshots on five of the seven unnamed bastards!”

Jon nodded slowly. “And how do you know that these guys are connected to Majestic?”

“If you want certainty, I cannot give it to you,” Madiha admitted. “However...the five I have names for have all served on committees that were clearly connected to the Majestic codename at one point or another. They’re also very long serving officers from the intelligence community; the only military officer in the five was connected to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.”

She picked up a sheaf of printouts and passed them over to him. “I’m going to run a full data miner on them tonight,” she said, slowly. “I just wanted you to have the notes beforehand, just in case...they’ve tightened up their security quite a bit over the last two days. I may have to back off for a while until they settle down again. They’ve got some really hotshot code monkeys out there playing for their team.”

Jon frowned. “Can they track you down?”

“I don't think so,” Madiha said, slowly. “They have taken down several of the networks I was using as proxy servers, though, so they may be able to break through and locate my fortress of solitude here.”

She frowned and then looked up, smiling brightly. “After I pulled out the names, I took the limiters off the search and settled back to see what might happen if I probed through the entire database,” she said. “I found a handful of people who had clearance and then lost it – clearance just like the Majestic Committee. You won’t be surprised to hear that most of them are dead – all apparently died while in office or shortly after retiring – but a couple stand out.”

Jon stared at her. A single glance at the names had told him that kidnapping one and asking him a few questions would be difficult. Anyone with that level of clearance rated secure accommodation and a personal protective team. A person who had had such clearance, and then retired, wouldn’t be entitled to the same level of protection. It would be a great deal easier to kidnap a former Majestic officer than one currently on the committee.

“The first one is Taylor Dee,” Madiha said. “I know exactly where she is, but getting in to talk to her might be difficult.” She paused, dramatically. “She’s in prison.”

“She’s in prison?” Jon repeated. “Why?”

“Good question,” Madiha agreed. “It turns out that after nearly twenty years of service to her country, Taylor Dee was found guilty of something so heinous that she was tried in secret session and transferred to ADX Florence, the so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies. And, it turns out upon investigation; ADX Florence is supposed to be male-only. What did she do and why was she sent there? I don't know.”

She frowned. “Only the most violent male prisoners are sent there, the mass murderers, serial killers and terrorists – not female prisoners with sealed records. I’ve never been there, but I think, judging from what I can pull out of their files, it wouldn't be impossible to house a female prisoner there. The prisoners are kept separated and quite a few of them have sealed files.”

Jon scowled. If he’d had a Ranger unit under his command, he would have considered breaking into the prison to speak to Taylor Dee, but the handful of people he had left wouldn’t be able to break into the prison. Perhaps David’s meeting with General Nicolas would turn up new options, yet unless they received some kind of official support, it was hard to see how they could proceed.

“And she may not be there at all,” Madiha added. “The records are sealed. She might have been moved away or quietly released...either is possible.”

“****,” Jon said, rubbing his forehead. It was just too confusing. Majestic had shown no compunctions about eliminating threats to their secrecy, let alone their existence, so why had they transferred one of their former officers to a prison some called Hell on Earth? “What about the other person?”

“That,” Madiha said, “is far more promising.”

She turned the laptop again, pressed a handful of keys, and then turned it back to face Jon. It was displaying a recruitment picture from the fifties, showing a young man wearing a USAF uniform. “Meet Colonel – retired – Paul Howard. No medals, at least as far as I can tell, but ‘access-all-areas’ clearance at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1994. And guess what – Colonel Howard started life in the USAF, moved to the AFOSI, served a term at NASA, spent five months as an exchange officer in – get this – Russia, of all places – and, at some point along the line, he acquired Majestic clearance.”

Jon scowled. “A colonel would be a coffee boy at the Pentagon,” he pointed out. “And if he had such clearance, they shouldn’t have let him visit England, let alone Russia. The Russians were our enemies back then.”

“Yep,” Madiha said. She picked up another set of printouts and handed it to Jon. “And Howard is now living in San Francisco.”

“Right,” Jon said. “Is he still working for Majestic?”

“As far as I can tell, no,” Madiha said. “He doesn't leave much of a data trail, but he isn't on any reserve lists – in fact, his only political association was with the National Rifle Association, back when they were campaigning against Proposition H in San Francisco. I’m not sure why he bothered – with the level of clearance he held, he could have amassed a legal arsenal – and I can’t tell if he’s still a current member. The NRA is a little twitchy about releasing membership lists these days.”

Jon shrugged. “Never mind that,” he said. “I think we need to pay Mr Howard a visit.”

“I have the details on the other person you wanted to visit,” Madiha said. “I know everything about your former boss, for a start, and then I know about his son...”

“Good,” Jon said. Charlie Sheen was a loose end, one that had to be tied up. Either he could be convinced to join them, or he had to be eliminated to make it harder for Majestic to point the Army of Northern Virginia at them. Jon was surprised that they hadn't tried that already, but it was probably just a matter of time.

Madiha started to say something, and then stopped. The lights had flickered, once. “****,” she muttered, as she jumped to her feet and tapped the computer. “Jon, I think...”

The big screen flicked on, displaying the take from a security camera in the hall. A single figure wearing a black suit was moving through the building, holding a weapon in one hand. Jon had seen firearms from all over the globe, but he didn't recognise the weapon the figure was holding. The camera kept twitching, as if the signal was somehow being interfered with, even though it should have been impossible. Madiha was staring at the screen, unable or unwilling to move.

“Get up,” Jon snapped. He stood up and drew his own sidearm, checking his spare magazines. The screen flickered once more and died, followed rapidly by the lights and the main power. The ever-present hum of Madiha’s vast collection of computers faded away. She cried out in shock, just before Jon caught her and hauled her to her feet. “Come on, quickly...”

He was straining his ears, but it still came as a surprise when the door was kicked in by the newcomer. Jon levelled his Sig Saur directly at the figure, puzzled. The newcomer wore a black suit and tie, as if he was yet another federal agent, but his face was somehow blurred and indistinct. The more Jon stared, the harder it was to pick out features. It would be impossible, he realised suddenly, for him to identify the figure later on

“Get out,” Madiha said, shakily. She had lived in her apartment, hardly ever leaving for anything, for years. It had been her sanctuary, but now...it would be her tomb if they didn't get out quickly. “Get out and...”

The figure moved with blinding speed, lifting the weapon in its hand and shooting a bright beam of light towards Jon. Jon jumped to the side, but enough of the beam touched him to shock his entire left side numb. He pulled the trigger twice and fired towards the newcomer, but he either missed or – somehow – the bullets were deflected away. The newcomer advanced with blinding speed, heading right towards Jon, who somehow managed to lift his pistol and fire again. The figure was sent jerking backwards by a direct hit to the chest, but somehow the figure stayed upright and alert. Jon fired again and hit the weapon in the figure’s hand. It exploded, sending weird flashes of light through the air.

Not human, Jon realised, suddenly. It seemed impossible, but then – nothing human could have survived being shot in the chest at such close range, even with the best body armour the human race had been able to invent. He tried to lift his pistol to shoot the hybrid right in the head – the smaller greys hadn’t been able to survive being shot in the head – but the numbness was creeping up over his entire body. A wave of dizziness threatened to overcome him, leaving him helpless. The creature stepped forward, moving with a more purposeful humanoid stride than the strange dancing movements of the tiny aliens, and reached for his throat. Jon managed to pull the trigger, somehow, but the bullet went wide and struck one of the dead computers. A moment later, he felt an inhumanly strong grip around his neck and he was hauled to his feet.

The holographic disguise popped as he found himself eyeball to eyeball with the alien hybrid. Up close, it was impossible to believe that it could pass for human. There was something very wrong about the bone structure in its face and its eyes were dark and shadowy, without any trace of colour. It smelled too, a strange inhuman smell, almost animalistic. And it was strong. Jon knew, without false modesty, that he was in the top one percent of the human race and the alien seemed to be far stronger. The analytical part of his mind wondered if the alien had been enhanced in some way, perhaps with augmented muscles or implanted boosters. There had always been rumours about boosted soldiers in the military, but nothing had ever been confirmed.

Jon tried to fight as the grip around his neck tightened; slowly crushing the life out of him, but it was impossible. The numbness refused to let him move. He braced himself for death, just before the alien threw him to one side and turned with astonishing speed. Crisco had come up right behind it, intent on crushing its skull before it could turn. The dark-skinned soldier was an expert in sneaking around, but the alien had sensed him and turned to deal with the new threat. Jon realised that Crisco must have seen that something was badly wrong and come to save the day. Like most of the Clan, he was now officially AWOL and a wanted fugitive.

The alien lashed out at Crisco, who fought back with a mixture of skill and violence. He’d been called upon to arrest Delta Force commandoes or Rangers before, yet the alien seemed almost a match for him. Jon cursed inwardly as the alien struck Crisco a blow, sending him staggering back, despite the body armour he wore under his shirt. The alien was simply inhumanly strong and resistant to damage. Crisco recovered and came forward, yet the alien was already there, blocking him. Jon fought to stand up, but his body refused to obey until a piercing scream cut through the air. Madiha was screaming...

Crisco didn't hesitate as the alien turned, just for a split second, towards Madiha. There was a sudden glint of metal and a knife was buried in the alien’s chest. Dark red blood, far darker than human blood, poured out onto the carpet. The alien tried to say something, but blood spouted out of its mouth and it collapsed on the ground. Crisco ran over to Jon and pressed an injector pad against his neck. A moment later, Jon found himself able to move again, although his body felt as if he were on a three-day bender.

“We have to get out of here,” Jon gasped, pulling himself to his feet. The alien body seemed to be decomposing, breaking down rapidly into dust. Majestic would be on the way, he knew, and they had to be gone by the time they arrived. His mind raced, puzzled. His Why had the aliens risked using one of their hybrids, rather than a human ally? Could it be that they were desperate?

“Right this way, my love,” Crisco said, catching Madiha as she collapsed into his arms. Jon rolled his eyes. It wasn't the time. “We could take the body.”

“No time,” Jon said, flatly. Walking was a pain, but somehow he managed to stagger down the stairs without collapsing. The van had already been moved to the front of the building and it was easy to climb inside; luckily, as his fingers were refusing to cooperate. “Get us out of here.”

The van roared to life and drove off down the street. A moment later, the ground shook violently, leaving the vehicle swaying from side to side. Jon pulled himself up and peered out of the rear windows, staring at what remained of Madiha’s apartment block. It was a towering inferno, so hot that nothing could survive. The computer network she’d built up over so long was gone. He looked back towards her – Crisco had dumped her on the rear seat – and silently apologised to her prone body. He hadn't meant to drag her into this nightmare.

He gritted his teeth as the numbness started to overwhelm him again. They had a safe house in New York, one they could visit and rest up, and then...it was time to call on an old friend.

 

Hope the time off was good! Glad you are back in business!

 

Chapter Twenty-Three<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

What happens to the hybrids that are incapable of passing for human? The reports of ‘sickly’ babies don’t seem to last into adolescence. Given the apparent lack of emotion shown by the aliens, it seems likely that the unviable hybrids are simply terminated.
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

New York, USA

“So, what is all this, then?”

Charlie Sheen scowled at the policeman who was supervising the handful of other NYPD police officers who had secured the perimeter and cleared civilians out of the area with quick efficiency. The NYPD wasn't too happy about having Blue Cards waved in their face and told to cooperate – and Charlie had heard, purely on the quiet, that the Mayor was raising hell in Washington. There were just too many rumours filtering through the city for easy control.

And the truth was that he didn't really know himself. Barely thirty minutes ago, there had been a colossal explosion in New York, one that had taken out an entire apartment block. Charlie, who had been in his office at the time, had been astonished when his phone had started to ring. His superiors had issued very specific orders. Charlie was to go down there with a small CI team, take control of the area and await a representative from Langley who would take over the operation. Charlie hadn't even known that there was a CIAS operation underway, nor had the NYPD. Their protests had been silenced by the Blue Cards, and a very precise phone call to the Police Commissioner from Langley, but it was clear that they were not happy.

“Terrorists,” he said, finally. Langley had clearly been caught by surprise too. The cover story – that a group of terrorists had been experimenting with explosive compounds and had a nasty accent – was rather imprecise. The small team of men, wearing HAZMAT suits, suggested something a great deal more worrying than terrorists trying to prepare explosives in the bath. Coming to think of it, the CIA’s involvement suggested something worse to the imaginative mind. “I’m afraid I can’t say much else.”

The cop snorted and walked away, leaving Charlie alone – and staring at Langley’s special representative. Jeremiah Smith – he’d announced himself without the slightest hint of irony – had clout, more clout than Charlie had ever expected to see, let alone wield, in his life. Langley had made it clear to him that Smith’s orders were to be obeyed without question, implying that failure would not be tolerated. Charlie had a nasty suspicion that someone up in Langley’s upper sections doubted his loyalty. It was unlikely that the quiet questions he’d asked over the last few months – ever since he’d seen that damned video – had gone unnoticed.

Smith turned and peered towards him. Charlie shuddered deep inside and hoped that Smith would look away before Charlie threw up. He was used to dealing with dangerous men – the Army of Northern Virginia included a number of men who had been kicked out of the army for use of excessive violence – but Smith was something else altogether. He didn't look that impressive – he looked like a minor Washington bureaucrat – and Charlie hadn't been that impressed, until he saw Smith’s eyes. They were grey and seemed to peer deep into Charlie’s very soul, as if his every thought and deed were exposed to Smith’s view. Charlie wasn't used to feeling so vulnerable and he’d been trying to avoid Smith as much as possible.

No such luck; Smith lifted a hand, beckoning Charlie over to his side. Charlie concentrated on remaining calm as he strode over to the CIA officer, out of earshot from the police lines. Up close, Smith’s gunmetal grey hair – cut short in an almost military style – seemed as if it had been dyed, although Charlie couldn't imagine who would want to dye his hair grey. He preferred to keep his hair black and no one would know that it was slowly shading towards grey – at least as long as he had money in his account for dye.

“Officer Sheen,” Smith said. His voice was curiously dry and quiet, almost as if he was speaking in a whisper. “What did the policeman want?”

Charlie blinked at the question. “He wanted to know what happened here,” he said, taking a gamble. “What did happen here?”

It was, he felt, a valid question. The entire apartment block had been shattered – there was nothing left of it, but a pile of rubble – and yet the neighbouring buildings hadn't been badly damaged, or even scorched by the heat of the explosion. He wasn't even sure who owned the building! It should have been listed, yet ownership of the building seemed to reside in a collection of dummy corporations and shell companies that only existed on paper. Someone had bought it and spread around enough money and influence to hide its true ownership, not an easy feat in the post-9/11 world. And what did it have to do with the CIA? If someone had been running an operation in New York, he should have known about it.

“Classified,” Smith informed him. “You will ensure that the policemen remain silent. It is a matter of national security.”

“They’re going to want answers,” Charlie pressed, as much as he dared. “There are already speculations on the internet that terrorists were attempting to produce a biological weapon here and...”

“Silence them,” Smith ordered. Charlie stared at him in disbelief. “You will use your authority to prevent any further speculation from leaking out onto the internet.”

“Sir...” Charlie stammered. Doing something secretly in the middle of a city was nearly impossible, even with the NYPD keeping the public and media well back. He was sure that the media were already using commercial satellites to look down on them from orbit, or accessing videos taken by cell phones and uploaded onto the internet. “Sir, with all due respect, we cannot silence the chattering bastards. They will demand explanations or they will make an issue of not getting explanations.”

There was a long pause. Charlie had the odd sense that Smith was communing with someone else, yet he didn't touch a cell phone or a CIA-issue radio. “I understand,” Smith said. “Langley will deal with the issue. You will relay all requests for information to Langley.”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said, with a sigh. The CIA was not supposed to operate on the American mainland – and his role in the city should be secret. By now, the NYPD knew he was a CIA officer and, he suspected, the foreign intelligence operatives in the UN knew it as well. His cover would be thoroughly blown. “I will see to it personally.”

He looked up as another man, one wearing an opened HAZMAT suit, stamped over from the wreckage and crashed to a halt in front of Smith. “We have swept the area, sir,” he said, gruffly. “All biological residues were destroyed in the blast.”

Charlie couldn't help himself. “Is there any danger to the public?”

The man seemed surprised by the question. “No,” he said, warmly. It was almost as if he were amused by the question. “The...”

“Classified,” Smith said, sharply. He turned to look at Charlie, who fought hard to avoid cringing. “You will oversee the transfer of authority here to the NYPD. Langley will handle the public relations aspect and ensure that the cover story remains in place.”

He turned and strode away, back towards the small group of federal vehicles. Charlie let out a long breath and then turned back towards the NYPD Mobile Incident Control Vehicle. The NYPD could be informed and then Charlie could go home for the night. Smith’s words had seemed to promise trouble in the following days and Charlie wanted some sleep before Langley summoned him for ‘consultations.’ Besides, they’d probably transfer him out of New York and assign someone else to handle the local ANV, now that his cover had been blown.

His cell phone vibrated in a particular pattern and he blinked in surprise. He’d specifically told Janet never to call him while he was at work. Langley knew about her existence – he wouldn't have been allowed to rise up through the ranks without disclosing everything about his life – but the less she knew about him, the better. Charlie had told her that he was an insurance investigator and so far, the cover had struck. The less glamorous it seemed the better, as far as he was concerned. The last thing he wanted was for his mistress to write a best-selling book about her life as a CIA officer’s lover.

“Hi,” he said, as he clicked the phone. “Honey, I said...”

“You have to come home,” Janet said. She sounded scared, which was odd. Janet was never scared. “It’s Rudolph; you have to come...he’s been hurt and...”

Charlie caught his breath. Rudolph Jameson had been a surprise; he’d never expected Janet to get pregnant, let alone keep the baby. And yet, even though he couldn't marry his mistress or acknowledge the boy, he had to admit that fatherhood was a surprisingly positive experience. There were times when, watching his son smile or run after the ball, he wished he could slip into a normal life and be there all the time for his son. If Rudolph was hurt, there was nothing – not even Smith – that could come between a father and his son. He walked over to the federal car he’d used to reach the destroyed building, waved goodbye to the NYPD officers and drove out of the police lines. The media, camped outside the barriers, would take photos of the vehicle, of course, but they wouldn't be able to make out his face. That would have blown his cover beyond repair. He would have to take up a desk job at Langley, if he wasn't dismissed on the spot.

The drive to Janet’s house took forty minutes and he was sweating every inch of the way. Janet hadn't been wealthy even before he’d knocked her up, but Charlie paid her over half of his monthly salary to take care of his kid. It was nice to think that he had a wife and child, even if it sometimes felt as if he was renting them out for a weekend, rather than having them permanently. If Rudolph was hurt...he didn't know what he would do.

He jumped out of the car as he parked it in the driveway and ran up the path to the house. There was no answer when he rang the doorbell, so he pulled out his own keys and opened the door, running into the house. He heard a grunting sound from the living room and followed it, all kinds of scenarios running through his head. As he entered the room, he stopped dead in astonishment. Janet was tied to a chair, there was no sign of Rudolph...and Jon Sonnenleiter was pointing the largest handgun Charlie had seen in his life at him.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” Jon said, calmly. Charlie was frozen, too shocked to move. “I think we need to talk, don't you?”

“Don’t hurt her,” Charlie pleaded, finding his voice. “What have you done to my son?”

“Nothing,” Jon said. “He’s in school at the moment, is he not? We should have at least an hour to have a little chat.”

***​

Jon watched, keeping his pistol pointed directly at Sheen’s head, as Crisco frisked him and removed anything that could be a threat. The CIA had a whole department devoted to turning out gadgets that could help an intelligence operative and Charlie, a senior operative, could have claimed the best. On the other hand, he hadn't been expecting trouble, or the NYPD SWAT team would have descended on their heads, out for blood. Or perhaps the Army of Northern Virginia...there was no way to know how many of its operatives believed the ******** story about Jon having gone rogue.

“We need to talk,” he said, once Sheen had been cuffed to a chair and his mistress removed to another room. “Why was I declared rogue?”

Sheen stared at him. He had never impressed Jon with his fortitude, yet somehow he seemed to be avoiding collapse, or panic. On the other hand, even if he’d never seen active service, he’d probably gone through all kinds of training exercises at Langley. He might have hidden depths.

“Orders from high above,” Sheen said, finally. He looked as if he were caught between two fires. Jon scowled. He’d assumed that Sheen had issued the orders, but in hindsight...he glanced over at Crisco, who pressed a DNA reader against Sheen’s neck. A moment later, the results came back negative. Whatever else he was, Charlie Sheen wasn't an alien hybrid. “I passed that video you showed me up the chain, as you wanted. A few hours later, they ordered me to declare you rogue and burn your cover...”

Jon’s eyes narrowed. “Who ordered me to be declared rogue?”

“I don’t know,” Sheen admitted. Jon, oddly, believed him. The problem with working in a super-secret intelligence organisation, particularly one that had a heavy dose of paranoia since a number of embarrassing leaks, was that few were ever sure where their orders were actually coming from. Unlike the military, where there was a clear chain of command, the intelligence community was cloaked in darkness and shadow. Majestic had probably made good use of it to remain undercover. “We – ah, CIA Station Chiefs – were given specific orders for what to do if someone reported a UFO sighting to us. We had a number to call and I did...”

Jon leaned forward. “I see,” he interrupted. “And what have you been doing since I left?”

Sheen took a deep breath. “Something’s very wrong,” he said. “I...nothing’s been said overtly, but something is changing. I...I feel like the man who knows that he’s about to be fired, even if no one has said anything publically. I wish...what the hell is going on?”

“We’ve been invaded by aliens,” Jon said, flatly. “You saw the video I took, back before all hell broke loose. Charlie...you’ve been taking orders from the aliens.”

“********,” Sheen said. Jon had to smile. Sheen had clearly forgotten the gun. “Those little grey bastards on your video couldn't pass for a human being. They’re too small and hairless and...”

“And they’re using the abductees to produce hybrid children who they’re infiltrating into our country – hell, probably the entire world,” Jon snapped. “These children can pass for human easily and they’re slowly taking over the country. Answer me this – what did I do that ensured that I was declared rogue? What happened? I caught footage that proved the existence of alien life – and that they were abducting American citizens from their homes and performing experiments on them. Why would they declare me rogue unless they had something to hide?”

“They took Sharon Mack,” Sheen admitted. Jon nodded. He was mildly surprised that Sheen had even bothered to check up on her, but he had to admit that it was a good sign. “I have been using the surveillance network to try to locate her. She is not to be found.”

“I doubt the surveillance network extends into alien craft and bases,” Jon said, dryly. He lowered the pistol and returned it to the concealed holster. “We are trying to organise a resistance network to deal with these bastards. We need you...”

Sheen’s brow furrowed. “Your friend David Crawford is part of the movement, right?”

Jon blinked in surprise. “Yes,” he admitted. “How...?”

“I ran his name through the network when the whole Klan-Clan business exploded,” Sheen said. “It threw up several matches between you and Crawford. You took a nasty blow there.”

Jon didn't bother to deny it. “Do you know where they took the prisoners?”

“No,” Sheen said. “I can make enquiries if you wish, but I suspect that they will have been transferred to a black prison or...”

“...Handed over to the aliens,” Jon concluded. At least Sheen seemed more receptive to the concept than he had expected. But then, Sheen had seen the video that had started the whole godforsaken mess. “We need you. Will you join us?”

***​

Charlie considered for a long moment. He knew what Langley would say if he reported the contact; they’d tell him to arrange a second meeting, with an assault force waiting to capture or kill Jon Sonnenleiter. It was his duty and yet...he knew that something was very badly wrong. Smith and his ilk...somehow, it was easy to believe that Smith might be an alien in human form, or worse. What if Jon was right? Where did his duty really lie?

And if the aliens really did have hostile motives, as unbelievable as that seemed, what sort of world would his son grow up to join?

“I can help,” he said, finally. “What do you want me to do?”

“Good,” Jon said. He leaned forward. “How have the others responded to my banishment from grace?”

Charlie wasn’t surprised by the question. “Poorly,” he admitted. “The ones who knew you refused to believe that the charges were anything, but a fraud. The others, the ones who didn't know you personally, were more inclined to accept them at face value.”

“Right,” Jon said. He smiled, in a manner that Charlie didn't like. “I may have to ask you to pass on a message to them. And then...”

“I have a condition,” Charlie said. “Whatever happens, whatever we do, you leave my wife and son out of it.”

Jon stood up and paced forward, looming over Charlie. “You do realise that everyone’s wives and children are under threat?”

“Yes,” Charlie said, flatly. “I just don't want my family involved in this mess.”

There was a long pause. “Very well,” Jon said finally. “We will do our best to keep them from getting involved.” He smiled, rather unpleasantly. “Now, let me tell you about some folks called Majestic...”

 

Chapter Twenty-Four<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

It is far from clear why the aliens insist that the abductees handle the hybrid children. The children, many of whom revolt the abductees at an almost visceral level, are far from normal, particularly in their emotional development. It seems likely that the alien upbringing does not allow for emotion, perhaps a reflection of the true nature of the alien society.
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Northern Georgia, USA

“You know, a man could fall in love with this country.”

David took a deep breath as he gazed down from Springer Mountain. As a young man, he had hiked the Appalachian Trail many times, even taking his friends from his Marine Platoon along the trail during a long leave prior to returning to Afghanistan. The air was crisp and clear, for the cabin – a small hut that belonged to one of his old friends – was far from the tourist campsites. Hopefully, no one would be looking for the remains of the Clan there; there should certainly be nothing linking them to the cabin. The old friend in question had agreed to remain quiet if anyone came along asking questions.

He shook his head at the absurdity of speaking aloud. Kimberly Sonnenleiter was in her bed, sleeping restlessly, while her father and uncle worked on their plans. Crisco and the Indian girl Jon had brought back from New York had gone off on a short hike, while the other two Clansmen had gone to the nearest town to stock up on supplies. There was no one to hear him speak, yet...he’d spoken aloud. It helped remind him that the peacefulness of the surrounding area was an illusion. The stars, slowly flickering into existence high overhead, were no longer friendly. There was something dangerous up in the dark skies.

The thought was a bitter one. David had risked his life for his country, and yet his country was slowly being invaded by an outside force, one of stupendous power and dark intentions. In many ways, it was already under occupation, without even knowing that it had been conquered. He heard the sound of a helicopter in the distance and shivered, reaching down to touch the pistol he’d holstered at his belt. There were other heavier weapons in the cabin, yet if the black helicopters had tracked them down...the sound faded away into nothingness and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. They wouldn’t have to fight for their lives tonight.

It hadn't gotten any easier. The hate campaign against the Clan had spread out of control, with other survivalist groups coming under heavy pressure to disband or reveal their membership lists. Given how informal most of those groups were, it was an uphill struggle, one that wasn't helped by radicals warning that it was the beginning of a government crackdown that would consign the American population to slavery. The media bias had never been so obvious. CNN – and even Fox – were running back-to-back specials about how dangerous militia groups could be. One group – dismissed as a Christian Fundamentalist Radical Militia – had been singled out for special attention. David had no idea why – he regarded most militia groups as being controlled by would-be soldiers and posers – but it hardly mattered. Or perhaps the group – which believed that a secret conspiracy had been subverting the American Constitution for years – had actually been founded by someone else who had discovered the truth.

Or perhaps...he didn't want to think about the other possibility, but it had to be faced. The aliens knew that they’d been discovered and that human weapons could bring down one of their craft. Perhaps it was their first shot in taking over the country, and then the world. He could see how it might appeal to an alien mind; start measures intended to crack down on gun ownership and keep pushing, until the gun-owners started pushing back. There were millions of gun-owners in the United States and most of them would refuse to be disarmed. He could see chaos spreading out of control easily, with the police, federal agents and military being turned against their own population, pushed into war by their puppet masters. The country would be devastated. It made sense. Lets you and him fight was a tactic as old as war itself.

He took one last look up into the darkening sky and turned, walking back into the hut. Crisco and the girl had returned and, somehow, David could tell that he hadn't been lucky. Back when they’d first met, David had been awed at Crisco’s luck with the ladies, but he wasn't always lucky. The younger David had envied him; the older and wiser David had been glad of the companionship Mariko had provided. God alone knew what was happening to her. William Sonnenleiter’s stories of alien abduction were terrifying.

“Council of war,” he said, as he closed the door behind him. Jon looked up from where he had been sprawled on the floor, reading one of his brother’s books. “We need to decide what to do now.”

It was Anderson who spoke first. David had invited him specifically, although not without a few hints of trepidation. What if Nicolas had been right and the aliens had abducted the lone Anderson and returned him with a tracking implant, or worse? David had considered refusing to invite him, but there really was no other choice. He was the closest thing to an expert on alien biology they had.

“I have assembled a team of researchers who are studying the alien blood and tissue samples,” Anderson said, shortly. He hadn't been happy about being called away from Massachusetts at such short notice, even by David and the Clan. The mystery of the alien samples was a siren call to any scientist worthy of the name. “The scientists were all cleared to work on government projects and believe that they are actually working on a project right now. They all know how to keep their mouths shut.”

Jon frowned. “Are you sure of that?” He asked. “Don’t scientists want to publish first and to hell with who reads their papers?”

“They’re all cleared and believe that they're working for the government,” Anderson assured him. “Eventually, most work in the classified field does tend to be allowed to slip out into public view – quicker than you might expect. They’ll be allowed to claim credit when it does get released, which may be a long time.”

He shrugged. “I’m not expecting them to leak anytime soon,” he added. “Sooner or later, we will have to take it public...”

“Never mind that,” David interrupted. “Do you have proof we can show the President?”

Anderson hesitated. “I can give you thousands of scientists who will take one look at the blood samples and swear blind that they’re alien,” he said. “What I can't give you is anything spectacular, like a live alien or a dead body. They were quick to recover them once we took them back into the open.”

“Wonderful,” William said, sourly. “We have proof that the President will refuse to accept.”

“Calm down,” David said, seriously. “I know that...”

“Calm down?” William demanded. The frustration and rage in his voice made David wince. “My wife and child – and your girlfriend – are gone! The bastards have them and you tell me to remain calm! How can you be so calm?”

Jon placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. David understood, better than he cared to admit, just what William was going through. Jon’s brother had a civilian mindset, while someone in the military learned to push away such feelings and concentrate on the matter at hand. He worried about Mariko – he hadn’t slept peacefully since the raid – but there was nothing he could do about that, except concentrate on exposing the aliens and convincing the President to take action against them.

Anderson smiled, thinly. “The scientists don’t have a working baseline for the alien cells, so it’s hard to be sure how...accurate their results are, but they did turn up a number of odd points. The first one is that the alien cells seem...more decayed than one would expect, as if they were decaying even when we were transferring them for safekeeping. I wondered if it was a safety mechanism to prevent us from learning from the cells, but some of the researchers believe that the cells were already in a high state of decay.”

There was a long pause until William broke the silence. “And what does that mean?”

“It seems that the theories about why the aliens abducted humans might have some basis in truth,” Anderson said. “The aliens may be a dying race and may need to inject human...virility into their bodies to continue to exist.”

Crisco shrugged. “I'm no biological expert,” he drawled, “but is that even possible?”

“I’d have said no,” Anderson said, thoughtfully. “The aliens, however, have clearly created hybrid beings, so obviously it is possible, even if we don’t know how it’s done.”

He grinned. “The second point is that there is a remarkably high concentration of metals within the alien blood tissue,” he added. “That may be the remains of considerable levels of augmentation or perhaps its part of their natural state. I don’t know what it means, but it is interesting. And the third part...”

“Yes?” David demanded.

“I did a preliminary x-ray of the alien bodies before leaving you at the farm,” Anderson said, seriously. “The smaller aliens were hard to x-ray properly – their bodies seem less inclined to allow x-rays to pass through than our bodies – but from what we could tell...their brains are tiny, despite the size of their heads.”

Crisco frowned. “Are you saying that they’re stupid?” He asked. “It strikes me that a race that has crossed uncounted billions of light years to reach Earth wouldn't be stupid!”

“I’m just telling you what the evidence suggests,” Anderson said. “The smaller aliens may be nothing more than drones, biological robots. The larger aliens might be the brains behind their operation.”

Gaby stared at him. “If they can do that to themselves, no wonder they don’t hesitate to abduct humans and exploit them; they must think of us as nothing more than farm animal... Is that the fate they have in store for us all if they win?”

“They may have,” Anderson confirmed. “There’s no way to know for sure...”

“Colonel Howard may know,” Jon said. He stood up and walked over to the fire. “Me, Crisco, Gaby and Madiha will go to San Francisco tomorrow. We’ll hot drive” – he ignored the groans from Crisco and Gaby, who knew what was in store – “and get there in three or so days. We’ll take measures to ensure that we’re not tracked or picked up by the cops. Once we get there, we’ll approach Howard and see what he knows.”

“He may be unwilling to tell us anything,” David warned. He tapped one finger against his chin, feeling the uneven marks of a shaved face. He’d had to shave after he’d become Public Enemy Number One. “What do we do then?”

“If necessary, we pick him up and take him somewhere where we can get answers out of him,” Jon said. He shrugged, dangerously. “We’ll take truth drugs with us and, if worst comes to worst, we can always resort to torture.”

David heard the edge in Jon’s tone and winced. The Ranger was taking the whole affair personally – too personally. David himself was worried about Mariko, but that was different – or so he told himself. Being willing to put his life on the line for his country – with or without its approval – was one thing. Being willing to torture someone was quite another.

And yet, what if Colonel Howard refused to talk? What could they do about it? They would have tipped their hand by visiting him and Majestic would act quickly to remove the Colonel from reach. Whatever had happened, whatever the reason he’d left Majestic and retired to San Francisco, they’d have to act. His mere existence threatened their secrecy.

“As a last resort,” he said, finally. He shook his head tiredly. What a world it was where they had to make such decisions, fighting to save their country while most of the population believed them to be the darkest of villains. “Why do you want to take Madiha along?”

Jon shrugged. He’d brought the computer hacker out of New York after the aliens had traced her back to her apartment, while finally explaining to her what was going on. Madiha had put most of it together already, but the rest had surprised and shocked her. She wasn't used to the violence, any more than William was, and really should have been transferred to a safe house with a new set of computers and the information that Jon had obtained from Charlie Sheen. If nothing else, it would allow them to verify Sheen’s claims. David understood Jon’s reasoning, but trusting a CIA officer went against the grain.

“We need a second woman in the car and we need someone who can handle computers,” Jon explained. “We can probably set up a safe house in San Francisco and allow Madiha to start hacking into the CIA’s deepest secrets...”

“Maybe,” David said. “Be careful, understand?”

Jon nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. David opened his mouth to point out that soldiers weren't supposed to call their Sergeants sir, and then closed it without speaking. “And what will you going to be doing while I’m enjoying sunny San Francisco?”

David looked down at the list of suspected Majestic members. “I’m going to start tracking these guys down,” he said. “Once we locate them, we might be able to pick one of them up and sweat a few answers out of him.”

Jon scowled. “They’ll be well-protected,” he warned. “If they have that level of clearance, they’ll probably have bodyguards, armoured cars and plenty of electronic security systems covering their asses...”

“They’re richer than Bill Gates as well,” Madiha added. She still sounded shaken, but her voice was level. She’d gone through more in her life than one would expect, looking at her. “Four of them are rather more than just filthy rich; they have billions invested in everything from banks and the media to aerospace corporations. I’d be prepared to bet that they have far more than I picked up, hidden away through cut-outs and all the other tricks rich men use to prevent their wives tracking down all of their assets.”

Crisco chuckled. “Does that happen a lot?”

“One of my first clients was a woman who wanted to confirm her husband’s claims that he was a millionaire,” Madiha said. “You’d think that she would have confirmed that before getting married, but I digress. It turned out that he was actually richer than he’d told her; he’d buried the rest in numbered Swiss bank accounts and shell corporations to prevent her from even knowing that it existed. You’ll be surprised to hear, I’m sure, that that marriage didn’t last longer than a year.”

She snorted. “They’re frighteningly rich,” she said, returning to the matter at hand. “They’re so rich that they will never appear in lists of the rich and famous, not like the latest celebrity of the week. I have no idea how they acuminated so much, but it gives them one hell of a lot of clout in Washington. Money talks...”

“I wasn’t going to shadow them myself,” David said, dryly. “I was going to hire private detective agencies to handle the task.”

“Why not speak to Nicolas?” Jon asked, thoughtfully. “I’m sure a Marine team could be assigned to track them down...”

“The General won’t want to involve anyone on active service,” David admitted. “He’s leery enough about getting involved with us, even though he knows the truth. He’s bending all kinds of regulations right over backwards to help us – technically, he should have reported us to his superiors at once.”

“They don’t have to know what’s going on,” Jon said. “They could just be told that it’s another test...or don’t they put jarheads through the toughest of exercises?”

David smiled at the challenge in his tone. “Whatever you Ranger punks can do, we jarheads can do better,” he countered. “We can do anything.”

“Boys, boys,” Gaby murmured. “Are you going to get them out and compare lengths?”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Crisco bantered.

William coughed before anyone else could speak. “And what do you want me to do?”

David scowled. He hadn't considered anything for David – or his daughter – to do, apart from remaining in the cabin, safe and out of the way. “You find us another abductee we can use to lay a second trap,” he said. “If the President needs proof...”

“The abductions have stopped,” David said, flatly. He nodded towards Madiha, who smiled in nervous agreement. “We logged onto the UFONET – ah, the bulletin board used by serious researchers...”

“And easier to get into than a rich man’s bank account,” Madiha injected, with a sneer. “I’m surprised that you don't have a thousand trolls banging on the door and bringing down the server.”

“With some of the posters,” David admitted, “it’s hard to tell the difference.”

He shook his head. “I checked in with some of the other researchers,” he said. “They’re all reporting that there has been a total lack of abductions over the last two weeks, after the crash in Kansas. The aliens had stopped their abductions, it seems...”

“But that’s wonderful news,” Crisco said. “We punched them in the nose and made them cry uncle. We wanted to stop them and we succeeded.”

“Maybe,” David said, darkly. “Or maybe they’re planning their next move.”

“Or maybe they’re just gathering their nerve before resuming the abduction program,” Jon added. “We could stake out other abductees and see what happens...”

“Later,” David said. He stood up. “Get a good night’s sleep, gentlemen and ladies. It may be your last for a very long time.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Five<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

It is clear from abductee reports that the aliens are not good at responding to new situations. The smaller beings, in particular, seem unable to handle anything out of the expected. When an abductee acts up – i.e. refuses to follow orders – they have to call in the taller beings to handle the situation. It makes this researcher wonder – how would the aliens act if their cover was torn away? Would they be able to react?
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

Unknown Location, Alien Craft

Something had happened.

Sharon had no idea what – and Sven had been unable or unwilling to tell her – but it was clear that something had gone badly wrong. The taller beings had been more...intent than usual, while even the smaller beings had been scuttling around as if someone had lit a fire under their behinds. And there had been fewer abductees brought onto the ship; indeed, apart from three females who had been taken through the craft and immediately placed in the stasis chambers, there had hardly been any other humans onboard at all.

She stared into one of the stasis chambers now, trying hard to keep from crying. Her daughters were suspended in a field of glowing light, like flies caught in amber, and she could do nothing to free them. Sven had been unable to free them, or so he had claimed. Sharon suspected, sometimes, that he simply didn't care. His emotional state ranged from childlike innocence to temper tantrums more appropriate for a five-year-old than a grown man, tantrums that would have been terrifying even from a child. She was surprised that he’d allowed her to see her daughters at all; he certainly didn't want to think of her husband. Being with him was like being with an over-privileged rich brat; he could be loving, even caring, but only on his terms. She was surprised that he had even agreed to help her escape the alien craft.

Sharon shivered at the remembered memory. The aliens hadn't stopped their painful tests; indeed, she suspected the only reason they allowed her what limited freedom she had was so that she had time to recover from one set of tests, just in time for the next set. Sven seemed worried enough to risk going against his superiors and help her escape, but she had to keep reminding herself that he might change his mind at any moment. He could be mercurial and had often told her to get ready, only to change his mind at the last moment. He seemed terrified of the taller aliens, even if they had brought him into the world. Sharon, who had worked out that unsuccessful hybrids were simply terminated, didn't blame him. She just wanted to go home and bring back help.

A hissing noise in the corner sent her scurrying back into the corner of the room, where Sven joined her a moment later. The main hatch was opening, revealing a small group of aliens and a pair of humans wearing military uniforms. One of them looked enough like Sven to pass for his older brother, although he seemed to have trouble walking. The tiny aliens seemed unaware of her presence, but then they never paid attention to her unless they were working on her or she got in their way. Up close, with a new courage born of desperation, Sharon realised that they barely seemed to have any intelligence at all. They were rote workers, dependent upon their masters for more complex instructions.

As the aliens headed into the interior of the craft, Sven caught her arm and pulled her rapidly through the closing hatch. She made it with seconds to spare and caught her breath as she found herself staring down from a balcony into a landing bay. There were hundreds of smaller craft littered on the hanger deck below her, ranging from a number of craft that looked like stealth bombers to a handful that were clearly conventional human aircraft. The black helicopters, their angular shapes somehow projecting ominous intent into the air, were surrounded by small groups of humans, carrying out basic maintenance. Or perhaps, she realised, they were preparing for war. A small robot trolley, carrying missiles, was making its way from helicopter to helicopter.

“In here,” Sven hissed. He pulled her into a small room and threw a bundle at her. “Get dressed, quickly!”

Sharon pulled open the bundle and discovered a shapeless tunic, clearly designed by an alien. There was no underwear or anything else remotely human, but she discovered – as she struggled to put it on – that it clung to her skin and moulded itself to her body. She let out an involuntary squeak as she felt something soft moving against her groin – almost like she’d sat down in jelly – before the sensation faded away. She understood, suddenly, what Sven had had in mind. Naked, she could hardly have avoided being noticed by one of the other hybrids, but wearing their uniform...they should take her for one of their own.

Sven cast his eyes over her and she saw a familiar expression developing on his face. He wanted her now, just as he had wanted her dozens of other times – she’d lost count – since the aliens had mated them together. Sharon wanted to scream in frustration. Sven had no control over his reactions at all and would happily break off whatever he was doing and screw her if he felt like it. Somehow, he gained control of himself and shook his head, with an expression of bitter frustration. Sharon kept her mouth under control with an effort. Even a smile might set him off again.

He lifted a hand and beckoned to her, leading her out of the small chamber and out into the hanger bay. There was a faint tingle as they passed through...something in the air and her ears were suddenly assailed by a deafening racket. She could hear screeching and scrapings from the workers and even engine noises from the human vehicles, but she couldn't hear any chatter at all. Humans, trying to work on machines, would have been chattering away happily, yet the hybrids weren’t even talking to one another. Or perhaps they were speaking telepathically and they’d know that something was wrong the moment she didn't answer a simple mental query. She felt herself start to hyperventilate and fought hard to regain control. If she panicked in the midst of so many aliens and hybrids, they’d recapture her and eliminate Sven...

The hanger bay seemed endless as they passed hundreds of vehicles, but finally they reached a smaller alien craft that had been parked in one corner. Sharon realised, with a sense of awe, that she was looking at one of the craft that the aliens used to abduct her – and finally kidnap her entire family. It was a massive black triangle, as large as a passenger aircraft from a commercial airline. She couldn't understand how it fly, let alone avoided detection. Or perhaps the military uniforms she had seen were proof that the aliens controlled the military...her thoughts raced in circles, even as Sven pressed his hand against a black panel and the hatch hissed open. They stepped together into the interior of the craft.

She’d always been disorientated when the aliens had abducted her before, but now she was aware and determined to learn as much as she could. The craft felt...weird to her mind, the dull humming sound thrumming through the hull sounding almost as if the craft was breathing, as if it were alive. She pressed her hand against the bulkhead and felt, not metal, but something that felt more like warm plastic. It almost made her feel as if she was plunging into the craft.

“We have to be hidden,” Sven muttered, as he pulled her through a network of passages she’d only seen in her nightmares. Without the alien mental influence, it was clear that the interior of the craft was actually smaller than she’d believed; the aliens had created an interior that reminded her of playing laser tag as a younger girl. The humans who had been brought onboard the craft would have believed that it was massive, large enough to cover an entire city. “We don’t want the Mind to notice us.”

He pointed one long finger down a set of corridors towards a figure standing in glowing right light. At first, all Sharon could see was a silhouette of one of the taller aliens, but as her eyes grew more accustomed to the light, she could see glittering strands of light connecting the oversized head to a glowing sphere floating in the air over the alien’s head. The alien had been wired right into the craft’s controlling systems, directing it by mind alone. She couldn’t tell if the alien had volunteered for the task or not – there was no way to know – but she felt sick as she took it in. The Mind was the first alien, she decided, for which she might have felt a shred of sympathy.

Sven pulled her away from the alien and down into a smaller examination room. Sharon almost broke and ran when she saw the examination table, but he held her until she had calmed herself, pulling her into an isolated corner. The entire ship was lighting up around them, with the dull humming growing louder...she realised, suddenly, that the craft was preparing to depart. A clattering noise in the distance announced the arrival of a set of smaller aliens, who paid absolutely no attention to the two stowaways. She huddled into Sven’s arms and prayed that none of the taller aliens arrived. They would realise that something was wrong at once.

The hum grew to a high-pitched crescendo that made Sharon cover her ears – Sven seemed completely unaffected – and then there was a faint sense of...wrongness running through the air. It wasn't hard to realise that the craft was finally in motion, heading down towards the planet below. Sharon had rarely travelled on aircraft – she’d been terrified of them, for her buried memories had likened them to her involuntary transport on alien craft – but the alien craft flew with barely a hint of motion. The aliens might have picked her up, carried out their tests while the craft flew around the world, and then returned her without her ever knowing that they had flown away from her home. Her head started to spin suddenly – Sven, again, seemed unaffected – and she moaned. The feeling faded as quickly as it had arrived.

Sven tapped his lips – warning her to be silent – and then motioned her forward. A second later, he held up his hand sharply as a pair of hybrids marched past the door. One of them, a tall man with gunmetal-grey hair, was carrying a small medical bag in his arm. Sharon thought, for a horrified second, that he had seen them, but he raised no alarm. Sven, clearly agitated himself, pulled her onwards, into the receiving room. Sharon hesitated, feeling oddly unwilling to enter, but Sven caught her arm and dragged her inside.

“We have to do this quickly,” Sven said. “The Mind is currently concentrating on avoiding detection by Earth’s radar systems. It shouldn't notice a brief disconnect, but the automatics will catch us if the disconnect lasts more than a few seconds...”

He pressed one hand to a panel and, a second later, Sharon recoiled as right light flared over his arm – no, coming from beneath his skin. She stared in mixed fascination and horror, realising that the aliens had implanted Sven with all kinds of augmentation – including a tracking device? Why had they created Sven in the first place...? The floor shifted suddenly and she found herself falling at colossal speed towards the ground below. A green field rose up sharply towards her and...

There was a jerk, her entire body shuddered with pain, and then she found herself on the ground, alive. Sven was landing right next to her. She looked up into the dark sky and saw no trace of the alien craft, but she knew it had to be up there somewhere. Sven caught her arm, pulled her to her feet, and started to run. Sharon’s legs started to move and she followed him, barely aware of her surroundings. It looked as if someone had dumped them on a tiny farm – she didn't even know if she was in America! She could be in Britain, or Russia, or anywhere.

She caught her breath as Sven pulled her into the trees. “They shouldn't be able to find us unless they start looking for us,” Sven said. He looked up at her. “And now we have to get back to your home. How are we going to do that?”

Sharon stared at him in disbelief. Of course! Sven had been born on one of the alien craft and clearly had very little experience of Earth. He’d brought her out, all right; brought her out with no money, no credit card and no idea of where she actually was. He probably thought that Moscow and Washington were right next to each other – and on an interstellar scale, he would be right. On a planetary scale...she couldn't just walk up to a random stranger and ask for a lift. Even with Sven next to her, wearing the skin-tight uniform he’d given her was just asking for rape. She started as she saw lights coming towards them from the other side of the trees, where a small road ran up towards the farmhouse. They were about to be discovered, she decided, and took a breath. Perhaps they’d find someone willing to help them.

“Let me do the talking,” she said, as the vehicle drew closer. Bright lights zeroed in on her as she raised her hands and started to wave. It was a battered old pickup truck, driven – she realised with an unspoken curse – by a leering man who was clearly half-drunk. “Don’t say a word.”

The vehicle halted and the man climbed out, carrying a shotgun in one hand. Sharon wasn't terrified of weapons – not like some of her social friends from New York – but it was clear that the man was definitely drunk. The shotgun swayed unsteadily in his hands and Sharon winced inwardly. The man might just decide to shot them while under the influence.

“You,” he said. His voice was a great deal steadier than his hands. “What are you doing on my land?”

“We got lost, sir,” Sharon said. She concentrated hard on appearing strong, confident – and innocent. “Where are we?”

“On my farm,” the man grunted. He managed a chuckle that seemed the most alarming sound he’d made so far. “I finally caught you – both of you. I told the sheriff that you damned kids kept breaking onto my farm and using it...well, I'm going to have to punish you and...”

He pointed the shotgun at Sven. “Get your hands in the air,” he ordered. He laughed again, nastily. “I have to clear up the mess from every time you damned kids...”

His voice broke down into a gurgling sound. Seconds later, he collapsed to the ground. Sharon, pushing aside the relief flooding though her mind that he hadn't pulled the trigger as he collapsed, ran over to him and checked his body. He was clearly dead. Sven shrugged, unconcerned, and walked over to the pickup truck. Sharon gaped at him. What the hell had he done?

“Inbuilt weapon,” Sven said, when she asked. He clearly didn't understand how to drive a vehicle, so Sharon took the driving seat. The drunken farmer had invested in a GPS system that allowed her to realise, finally, that they were only two hours from New York. The sense of relief that flooded through her body almost made her faint, just before she started the engine and checked the gas. She was nearly home.

She pushed the thought of the dead farmer out of her mind as she drove back towards New York, trying to convince herself that no one would find his body before they reached New York and could abandon the vehicle. It beat thinking about her children or her husband, all three of whom she’d abandoned on the alien craft in the desperate hope that she could escape and find help – or, for that matter, the possibility that the aliens were tracking Sven down. They’d definitely want to recover him...she tried to avoid that thought as they drove into New York, praying that the gas would hold out long enough to reach home.

The houses seemed welcoming – almost normal – until she reached her own house. There was a police line around it and a sign warning that anyone who entered the house would be subject to arrest for trespassing. Sharon felt the fight go out of her and she almost collapsed. It had simply never occurred to her that there was no such thing as normal any more. She tried to think, yet her mind refused to work properly. What could she do? She couldn't think of anything she could do. She might as well wait for the aliens to track her down and take her back to their craft...

And then there was Sven. What was she going to do with him? Maybe, for his own good, she should urge him to signal for rescue and return with him. At least she’d be reunited with her family, until the aliens ran out of experiments to perform on her and put her out the airlock.

No. She shook her head angrily at the stupid thought. Whatever happened, she was not going back onboard the alien craft. She smiled suddenly as she thought of one person who would believe her, whatever she told him. And she even knew where to find him. By the time she started the engine, she was almost happy again. William Sonnenleiter would know what to do.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" />

The silence of the government makes little sense to the dedicated researcher. If the alien abduction experience is mass hysteria or shared delusions, it poses a clear threat; if it is real, it poses a greater threat. Why, then, is there so little official notice?
-William Sonnenleiter, Accounts of Abduction, 2015

San Francisco, USA

“Stupid bastards,” Crisco growled. “I always feel sorry for the police in the midst of a ****ing protest.”

Jon shrugged. They had arrived in San Francisco – after a marathon drive that had left them all tired, too tired to confront Colonel Howard at once – just before a mass protest against ‘hate.’ It had turned out to be a vast protest organised by student groups, anarchists, socialists and ethnic representation groups, which had turned into a riot. The San Francisco police had eventually quelled the riot, but it was clear that the streets weren't going to be entirely safe for several days to come. It posed another problem. San Francisco had a handgun ban and, even though they carried ID that should have allowed them to carry weapons anywhere, it would attract attention. The last thing they needed was the cops insisting on a routine DNA scan.

“Never mind,” he said. They’d visited Colonel Howard’s shop yesterday, checking it out from a distance. He’d been on the alert for anyone who might have been running a counter-surveillance operation, but the shop had seemed – on the surface, at least – exactly what it claimed to be. Who knew – maybe they had the wrong Paul Howard and the real Colonel Howard was elsewhere. “Do you all know your places?”

“Gaby and I will wait outside, armed and ready,” Crisco said, in a sing-song tone. He sounded bored and frustrated, not a safe combination. “If you run into trouble, we burst in, lay down hot lead on anyone holding you, break you out and we all run for our lives. We try not to shoot the hot little honey on the desk because she’s too hot to die.”

“Close enough,” Jon said. They all felt frustrated, although he felt a little hope. Perhaps Colonel Howard would have the answers they needed. “Grab your coats, then. It's time to go hunting.”

The internet had said relatively little about what kind of shop Colonel Howard ran. After his brief political involvement, Jon had expected a patriot’s bookstore, packed with anti-government and pro-constitutional tracts, perhaps including the one he’d picked up at a gun show that claimed that driving licences were unconstitutional. Instead, Colonel Howard ran a science-fiction bookstore, one that sold science-fiction books from all over the world. Jon had taken a brief look and had been surprised to discover books by both right-wing and left-wing authors, along with several that defied easy categorisation. It was both a new and second-hand bookshop, one that Jon would have enjoyed visiting under other circumstances. Poking through stacks of older books was a guilty pleasure, one that he shared with his brother. The thought was a bitter one. He’d had to abandon William to his own devices at Springer Mountain, leaving him with his younger daughter and the memory of his missing wife and older daughter.

“Keep in touch,” he subvocalised. Fitting the mike – and teaching Madiha how to use hers – had taken up too much time. Crisco and Gaby would hear every word spoken within the bookshop and would know if they ran into trouble. “Here goes nothing.”

He pushed the door open and stepped into the bookshop. A gust of cool air – a welcome relief after the boiling temperature outside – struck him in the face, reminding him of days in Afghanistan. The girl at the counter – a young black girl of seventeen years old, working her way through college – smiled up at him, her white teeth bright against her dark skin. Crisco had called her beautiful, but then, Crisco called every woman beautiful. Jon couldn't see the attraction himself.

“Welcome to Strange Harbours,” she said, cheerfully. Jon liked her on sight. “Are you looking for anything in particular or do you just want to browse?”

“No, actually,” Jon said. “I want to talk to your boss.”

The girl blinked. “Is this about the incident with the pet rat and the university lecturer?” She asked. “I thought that everyone had agreed to bury that and forget it...”

“No,” Jon assured her. “It’s personal business.”

“The boss sees no one personally, apart from me,” the girl said. She winked. “He doesn't even have a romantic friend in his life. I can take a message...”

“Call him,” Jon said. He pressed his hand to the table, feeling the cool counter against his skin. When he lifted his hand, there was a hundred dollar bill on the table. “Tell him that Mr Majestic wants a word with him.”

The girl gave him an odd look, but she pocketed the bill with the ease of long practice and picked up an old-style internal phone. Jon watched her like a hawk as she spoke into the microphone, wondering just what Colonel Howard would do. Using Majestic’s name was a calculated risk; he might agree to see them at once, or he might be climbing out the back window. Jon had had a look at it and it seemed impossible for anyone to actually escape that way, but Colonel Howard might have had some Special Forces training down the line. There was no way to know.

“He says he’ll see you,” she said, looking up from the phone. There was an odd expression on her face. “And then he told me to shut up the shop and go home for the day.”

“Good advice,” Jon said. He saw the door leading to the stairwell and walked towards it. The girl, her spooked expression refusing to fade, opened it and then stepped aside. “Go out and have fun – everything will be fine.”

The interior of the stairwell would have worried him back in Afghanistan, for it was too slim for two people to walk up side by side. A man with a grenade could have tossed it down at him and caught them both in the blast. He heard the sound of the girl closing down the cash register behind him, but he ignored it, wondering what he’d see at the top. The door was already open and he stepped through, into a single apartment room. It didn't strike him as an apartment inhabited by a military professional. It looked more like the apartment of a man obsessed. There were piles of books everywhere; the wall was covered in charts and photographs – some photographs clearly of alien craft, while others were of American aircraft – and there were a handful of scale models of tiny spacecraft.

“You’re not from Majestic,” a voice said, from behind him. Jon turned slowly to see a man sitting at a bare table, watching him. A handgun lay on the table in front of him. “What are you doing here?”

Jon smiled. “Colonel Howard?” He asked. The man nodded, impatiently. “My name is Jon, Jon Sonnenleiter.”

Colonel Howard shrugged, apparently unconcerned. He was in his eighties – the files Madiha had unearthed had stated that he’d been born in 1942 – and looked older, although Jon could tell that he was clearly still healthy. Short grey hair surrounded a rugged face that spoke of too many fights in his younger days, although Jon suspected that he would have been handsome when he’d been twenty or even thirty. One of his hands was scarred, as if it had been burned in a bad accident, yet they were steady. Jon realised that Howard, despite his expression of unconcern, was...concerned.

“Your name means nothing to me,” Howard said. His accent sounded as if he’d come from Texas originally, although it had been smoothed down over the years. He sounded like a man who had once wielded vast authority and might, one day, wield it again. “And Majestic would have had more sense than to send an operative who threw the name around as if it was meaningless.”

He paused, waiting for Jon to say something.

“We need to speak to you,” Jon said, feeling oddly out of his depth.

“Then speak,” Howard said, flatly. “What do you have to do with Majestic?”

Jon took a gamble and spoke for nearly twenty minutes, while pulling out the DVD he’d produced of the alien abduction – and the later ambush of an alien craft – and passing it to Howard. As the videos played, he explained how he'd witnessed an alien abduction and filmed it – and everything that had happened afterwards. He was careful not to mention names – apart from his own – but kept the rest accurate. Howard watched the video with little apparent reaction, apart from a sharp glance at Madiha. Jon found the expression unreadable.

“You’re probably the luckiest or stupidest bastard on Earth,” Howard said, finally. He sounded as if he was trying to avoid breaking down into laughter. “Or perhaps you’re both.”

Jon frowned. “So you understand why we have come,” he pressed. “We need to know what you know.”

“Too much for my peace of mind and too little to do any damned good,” Howard said. Jon had the odd sense that Howard had wanted to talk for a long time. “They...I told them that I’d keep my big mouth shut and they just let me go. I thought that some of my former allies on the committee had helped cover my ass, but now...they’re not a very imaginative race, you know. I sometimes wonder if they monitor our writers and TV producers to steal their ideas...”

He stood up and paced over to a cupboard on the wall. “You can't hear this tale sober,” he said, as he produced an unmarked bottle and three glasses. “I drink in the hope that it will let me forget. Kissy downstairs keeps telling me that I shouldn't drink so much bootleg rotgut, but it helps keep my body nicely pickled...”

“No, thank you,” Jon said. Madiha shook her head beside him. “I just want to hear the story.”

Howard poured him a generous measure anyway and passed him the glass. “Black Skull Vodka,” he explained, as he poured his own glass. “The guy who makes it claims that he actually distils it from brake oil. Apparently he learned how to do it in the Red Army. And then his army melted away and his children invited him to America. And all he does now is make the Vodka and sell it to his friends, dreaming of past glories, of the days when communism seemed the hope of the world and Mother Russia was strong and powerful, at least on the surface. They didn't see the rot creeping into the system when he was a young man. I know how he feels.”

He sat back down and turned his face so that he could peer out of the window. “I never knew my father,” he said, suddenly. “Mom decided to give her young man her greatest gift the day before he left to ship out on the Enterprise. It didn't bring him any luck. The carrier went into battle and my father died at Midway. My grandparents collaborated on revisionist history – my parents were retroactively married, just in time to save me from being branded an official bastard. Not everyone believed the cover story, but they all upheld the reputation of a war hero and his bride. It was a different age back then.

“I grew up determined to join the navy, but my mother had other ideas and insisted that I went into the air force instead. I wanted to be a pilot, like my father, but fate intervened. I crashed on the final day of flight trials and ended up with a permanent limp. It turned out that the air force had plenty of room for a grounded would-be pilot and assigned me to the Foreign Technology Division. Back then, everyone was **** scared of the Russians – we knew that they had some German scientists working to stay out of the gulag and we were terrified about what they would produce. It turned out that the Russians were the least of our worries. And then someone dumped some very weird stuff on my desk.”

There was a long pause. “And what happened?” Jon asked, finally. “Was it alien stuff from Roswell?”

Howard’s voice was bitter. “I asked questions,” he said. “I should have known better. I asked questions and I got noticed. And then I got recruited into Majestic.”

He stared down at the table and then downed the entire glass in one gulp. “I’ll give you the story as it was given to me,” he said. “Back in 1947, something crashed at Roswell, far too close to Roswell AFB. It used to house the only atomic-armed squadron of bombers in the world, back then. They thought that the Russians had produced something new and decided to bomb us before we could build more atomic bombers. So the base sends out a team of armed MPs and they see the bodies. The moment they saw the bodies, they knew that the craft wasn't Russian.”

Howard stood up and stumbled towards a filing cabinet in one corner of the room, pulling it open and digging through the files. He finally produced a set of old yellowed photographs and passed them over to Jon, who studied them thoughtfully. They showed the remains of an alien craft – like the one that had crashed in Kansas – and a handful of alien bodies. No one could have mistaken them for human.

“So they start moving the wreckage somewhere classified,” Howard said. “The President is informed and he gets into a right tizzy. Truman was always a very hands-on President and he flips out. Aliens could mean the end of the world on his watch. He orders the whole thing hushed up and the creation of a program to unlock the secrets of the craft, as soon as possible. They think that the world would panic if they knew the truth. They’re still pulling together the first Majestic Committee when the Greys make contact.”

Jon leaned forward. “What did they tell Truman?”

“They told Truman that they were a dying race and they needed human DNA to reinvigorate their society,” Howard said. “Back then, there was no way to actually verify their story. They give the President a mixture of threats and promises; they tell him that if the United States helps them, the aliens will return the favour. If we cover up their presence and provide them with supplies, they will give us technological help to aid us beat the Russians; if we refuse, they will make contact with the Russians and make the same bargain. Truman knew that Uncle Joe Stalin wouldn't hesitate to throw half of his population into the alien maw if it meant the world being made safe for communism. So he agrees to the bargain. Majestic – the first Majestic – ends up being charged with keeping our side of the deal.”

He grinned. “Except that Truman doesn't trust the Greys very much, so Majestic’s secondary task is to develop a viable defence against the little bastards,” he added. “We refused to return the craft that crashed and the Greys didn't push the issue – which encouraged us. Majestic started to farm out the craft’s components to civil and military personnel who might be able to unlock their secrets and develop human versions of alien technology – which is where I came in. I asked too many questions and Majestic recruited me. I worked my way up through the ranks and ended up with a seat on the Permanent Committee.

“You really should have been there. We believed that we could do anything. The secrets we unlocked boosted the entire world forward. We boosted computers, material science, nuclear research, lasers...we had these grand plans for a moon base that would serve as a forward defence against the Greys. You have no idea how much of the modern-day world owes its existence to the Greys and their crashed ship. I told you that they weren't a particularly imaginative race – I think that they believed that we wouldn't be able to unlock its secrets at all and chose not to press the issue. We looked forward to the day when we would be able to tell them to take their paws off Earth and talk with us as equals.”

His expression darkened. “Majestic left its scars on everyone’s soul,” he admitted. “I personally saw to it that many civilian UFO researchers were mocked and derided as fools. It was easier for the military witnesses; we brought pressure to bear on them through their superiors to keep their mouths shut. And it helped that most UFOs had nothing to do with the Greys. Sometimes they saw lights in the sky; sometimes they saw secret military craft like Snowbird or the F-117; sometimes they were just making it up. I told myself that it was necessary, that the population would panic if they knew the truth...”

Madiha frowned. “People would panic?”

“Did you ever listen to The War of the Worlds?” Howard asked, dryly. “It was a radio show, with frequent reminders that it was a radio show, and yet large numbers of people panicked, believing that it was real. How do you think the average American would react if he was told that aliens were taking people from their homes and the government was not only powerless, but covering up the alien deeds?”

“Badly,” Jon said, tightly. He remembered his own shock when he’d seen Sharon Mack being taken by the Greys. “I see your point.”

“We believed we would eventually be able to beat them,” Howard said, slowly. “It turned out that we underestimated the bastards. They had their own plans for Planet Earth. God alone knows how long they spent drawing up their plans against us, but it all hit the fan in the 1980s. That was when we found out the truth.

“And that was when it all went to hell.”

 

OK, I'm off the edge of my seat and in the floor now.

 

Excellent story,thanks