The Trojan Horse

Chapter Three

Near Mannington, Virginia

USA, Day 3

The alien ships hung against the inky darkness of space. They were illuminated only by reflected earthlight, hinting at rather than revealing their alien contours. The Colonel studied the latest images from orbital satellites with interest, noting that technology had clearly improved since he’d left the military, but also that the aliens had positioned themselves just far enough from Earth to limit the amount of detail that could be picked up by human cameras. Every telescope on Earth was tracking the alien ships, yet little detail could be put together. The alien ships were massive — the smallest was easily two kilometres long — but there was something oddly unimpressive about them. They were blocky misshapen forms, rather than the more elegant ships humans had designed long before they had the ability and will to build them.

And there was something about them that worried the Colonel. It wasn’t something he could have put into words, yet it nagged at the back of his mind. On one hand, the mere presence of any alien starships in orbit around Earth was worrying; they portended vast change in the near future, even if the aliens didn’t come with bad intentions. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he wanted to encounter any culture that considered the blocky starships to be the highest expression of their artistic skills. But then, he reminded himself, Imperial Japan or the Ottoman Empire had produced quite remarkable buildings… and he wouldn’t have freely chosen to live in either country. The aliens might have a reason for the strict utility of their ships…

It clicked, suddenly. A car might be designed to look elegant — the Colonel still fondly recalled the Dodge Viper he’d bought years ago — but a military tank was designed for function over form. Anything built for the military had to do the job first and look spectacular second — a very poor second. The A-10 Warthog might be an ugly airplane when compared to the F-22, another military aircraft, but the Colonel knew which one he would have preferred to be flying over him when he was on the ground, with enemy troops closing in from all directions. The aliens had built their ships along military lines. It was possible — he reminded himself firmly — that they might just have nothing reassembling a human sense of aesthetics, but yet he couldn’t escape the thought that he was staring at alien warships.

He clicked the remote and the channel shifted to another program. A presenter — a dark-skinned woman with a brilliant smile — was interviewing a set of religious types, all wearing their chosen faith’s clothing. The Colonel counted several Christians, a Jew, a Muslim and a Hindu, the latter three seemingly less comfortable than the former. Or perhaps he was just imagining it. No one with any sense liked being interviewed, even by a friendly interviewer.

“And what,” the woman was asking, “does the Church make of our new visitors?”

“Well, we’re very excited,” the priest said, in a strong Irish accent. He had short white hair and an affable smile, although it was clear that he spent most of his time behind a desk, rather than in the open air. “We have always known that there are other entities out there — angels and devils, for example. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the aliens shared the same belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, or in the death and resurrection of the Son of God? Would that not prove that the Church was granted access to a fundamental truth that transcended religion and politics?”

The interviewer frowned, and then smiled brilliantly. “I assume, then, that you don’t agree with the Witnesses?”

“I cannot claim to be an expert on the claims of Erich von Däniken,” the priest said, with some irritation, “but I find it hard to believe that the Galactics meddled with our genes to create the modern human race. The only father our world has is God.”

“Precisely,” the Mullah injected. “The Prophet Jesus was a real historical person. His existence is not disproved by the claims that he was the Son of God. God was the only one to create life — we must accept that he created the aliens as well as ourselves.”

The Colonel rolled his eyes as the discussion turned acrimonious. Years ago, when he’d been very bored, he’d read one of Erich von Däniken’s books claiming that ancient alien astronauts had created the human race. The claim had never been proven — extraordinary claims required extraordinary evidence — and indeed it was fairly easy to refute most of them without resource to specialist knowledge. He would have sooner snoozed his way through Atlas Shrugged than pick up another book about ancient space gods from the stars.

But some people did believe his claims, as if the absence of any real proof only illuminated the truth hiding behind the falsehoods. They’d taken the arrival of the Galactics as proof that there were benevolent space gods watching over the human race, taking it for granted that the Galactics had arrived at Earth to introduce a whole new post-scarcity society. The Colonel hadn’t watched many science-fiction serials on television in his life, but even he had heard of the utopian United Federation of Planets, or the ultra-advanced Culture. There was just no proof that the alien Galactic Federation intended to bring anything to Earth, or that their gifts — if indeed they brought gifts — would be helpful. Introducing any new technology risked upsetting the previous applecart, an excuse that had often been used to retard development.

The television picture changed to a live feed from New York. There were still two days to go before the aliens landed at the UN, but the city was already buzzing with life. A massive crowd of teenagers — hippies, the Colonel thought in disgust — had gathered at the edges of the security cordon, screaming out a welcome to the alien diplomats. The cynical side of the Colonel’s mind wondered if the NYPD had allowed the protesters so close because they might have shouted themselves out by the time the aliens finally arrived.

He scowled as the camera focused on a group of youngsters — and middle-aged men wearing long hair and handmade clothes — bearing signs proclaiming the aliens to be gods. It seemed absurd, to him, to claim that the aliens were anything other than another tribe, although one a little different from most. The Witnesses — many of whom claimed to have been granted visions of aliens long before the starships had arrived — were inviting others to believe as they did. New York being New York, other groups had arrived to protest their blasphemous claims. The camera focused in on a punch-up between a group of Witnesses and a handful of locals, with NYPD cops moving in to separate the two groups and impose order.

Irritated, he clicked the channel again. “…Arrival of the aliens has caused some unrest within the Middle East,” a different announcer said. “The belief that the aliens were a Western hoax has faded, with mass marches on the streets of Cairo, Riyadh and Baghdad demanding that the Middle East be fully-represented in talks with the aliens. Official statements from Middle Eastern Governments have failed to quell the protests, but it is notable that terrorism and violent unrest has actually fallen sharply…”

“Colonel,” a voice said, “they’re ready for you.”

The Colonel nodded, smiling up at his youngest daughter. Susan was in her late thirties, but still a beauty, so much so that he’d worried every time a neighbouring boy had come around to ask her for a date. He’d made a point of polishing an assault rifle on the kitchen table, reminding the young hopeful that he wouldn’t wait for the cops if he believed that his daughter had been hurt. And then he’d had to resist the temptation to kick young Albert in the shins as he escorted Susan down the aisle to give her away. Albert might have been a Marine, but he was a good man. And their children were lovely.

“Thank you,” he said, with the unfailing courtesy he always showed to the fairer sex. “Have you heard from Albert?”

Susan was from a military family. She’d known what it was like to wait at home while her father and brothers went off to war before she married Albert. Even so, she couldn’t conceal her concern — her fear for his safety — from her father. Albert’s unit had been stationed near Helmand in Afghanistan and he’d been due to rotate home for leave, but no one knew what was happening now that the aliens had arrived. All military personnel had been called to duty and there were even stories that the reserves would be called up, although so far nothing had been made official. The politicians were still too worried about making the wrong impression to the aliens. They wouldn’t want to convince the Galactic Federation that humans were too violent to be trusted in space.

“Nothing since his last email,” she said. “They were saying that they might be redeployed stateside, but nothing concrete…”

The Colonel nodded. Rumours spread through the military faster than anything else, but very few of them were reliable. But then, if the balloon did go up, Albert and his unit would be isolated and unable to return home. The aliens would bombard their positions from orbit, if they bothered themselves with a handful of American troops on the other side of the planet. Afghanistan had been unimportant to the United States for decades, before the Russians had invaded; how much less important would it be to aliens who had crossed uncounted light years to reach Earth?

“I’m coming,” he said. “Tell Jennie to send in the food in an hour or so.”

“Of course, Father,” Susan said, sardonically. “I hear and obey.”

“You’re not so old that I can’t wallop you,” the Colonel said. He started to walk out of the room, and then paused. “Tell Albert that we are thinking of him and praying for his safe return.”

Shaking his head, he walked down into the common room. He had no idea what the farm’s original designers had intended for the room, but it served as a convenient place for the group to meet. They’d never given themselves a name or a purpose. It had suited them better to remain an amorphous group with no official standing of any kind. Official positions meant that they would be noticed and notice meant trouble. It hadn’t been that long since another survivalist group had run into trouble by possessing weapons that were — technically — illegal. The fact that the difference between legal and illegal weapons was minor hadn’t impressed the judge. Colonel Sanderson loved his country, but if there was ever a long period of civil unrest he would take unholy delight in shooting down some of the agents of the federal government. Didn’t anyone ever read the Constitution anymore?

There were seventeen men and five women in the room. Each of them was the head of a family, either elected by his family or simply the oldest and most experienced man in the group. Like the Colonel, they mostly were ex-military, with only two exceptions; a former cop from Chicago and a former officer in the CIA. The Colonel was not generally inclined to trust the intelligence services — there had been too many incidents of imprecise or outright inaccurate information served up to allow him to feel any respect for the CIA — but he made an exception for Bob Packman. Packman had quit the CIA when the Agency had become infected with the disease known as political correctness, where restrictions handed down from Congress and an untested President had crippled the Agency’s ability to react to foreign threats. The entire country had paid a price for their foolishness on 9/11.

“Thank you for coming,” the Colonel said, as they rose to greet him. It struck him as slightly absurd, but as the one who had shaped their little group, they tended to give him considerable respect. “Please — be seated.”

It struck him, sometimes, that he had shaped something not unlike the insurgent cells that proved such a bane to American and European military and police forces. The group didn’t share the same farm; that would have been absurd. Those who didn’t farm were positioned in Mannington and a handful of other towns, with little apparent connection between them. The outer edge of their families barely knew anything of the group. Toby hadn’t been the only youngster to abandon the farming life for the bright lights of the city.

“I got a dozen or so friends staying with me,” he said, once he had opened a can of beer and took a swig. There would be more serious drinking later, but any discussions would be had without more than a can or two of beer. This was no time to drink himself senseless. “How many did you all get?”

He smiled at their responses. They all had relatives who lived in the cities — and had fled, following the arrival of the alien ships. Some of their relatives provided money for the farms without ever understanding the true purpose of the survivalist group and had a fair claim to stay, provided they worked on the farm. Others had no real claim, but couldn’t easily be turned away. Family was family. They all knew that.

“I think we won’t bring them into the group,” he continued. “Does anyone see a problem with that?”

There were none. Those relatives who had had military training and experience had already been recruited, apart from a couple with suspect political views. The Colonel respected a man’s right to make his mind up about anything he liked, but if someone had a political view that the Colonel found suspect — communism or transnational progressivism — he wouldn’t allow them to know anything about the group. He knew what he would do if he discovered someone planning an attack on America — being a patriotic American was part of what he was — and someone who truly believed in communism, or that the federal government was always right, would follow their own conscience. They might not be bad people, but they couldn’t be trusted.

“Vanessa may be a problem,” Lucas Dawlish admitted. He was the oldest in the room, a Ranger who had served in Vietnam as a young man, before returning home to raise children and farm his parent’s farm. “I think she truly believes that the aliens are here to help.”

The Colonel winced. Vanessa Dawlish had been a charming child and a beautiful young woman, with enough intelligence to enter any university in the United States. She’d plumbed for Berkley, in California, right on the other side of the country. And there the trouble had started. Like so many other young girls, she’d fallen under the spell of a radical professor who had taught her that communism — however disguised — was the only path to a fairer new world order. Her parents hadn’t known what to do and — given her willingness to lecture her family and friends on her new beliefs — they’d been devastated when she’d decided to move in with her former teacher. Professor Cavendish had, in just three days, earned himself a place in the spotlight as one of the foremost supporters of the Galactic Federation. The fact that no one knew much about the Galactic Federation — beyond the fact that it existed — had largely passed unnoticed.

“I think that we would be wise to deny her entry, if she returns to Virginia,” the Colonel said. Even as he spoke, he knew it wouldn’t be easy. Dawlish wouldn’t be keen on abandoning his grandchild and her parents might be willing to take her back in, as long as she wasn’t escorted by her lover. There was no way that anyone as impractical as Professor Cavendish could be trusted. Besides, with at least two wives in the past — one of whom was still, legally, his wife — his morals were highly suspect. “If she does…”

He looked around the room and briefly outlined his conclusions about the alien ships. “I may be overreacting,” he concluded, “but I think we have to prepare for trouble. They may simply intend to demand our surrender in New York… or they may be overtly friendly.”

Some of the group looked puzzled, so he hastened to explain. “They may not mean us harm, but what happens if they give us… oh, I don’t know — perhaps a way of producing synthetic oil? It sounds great — we’d finally be free of the ragheads — until we realised that most of the oil companies would go out of business. The economic effects would put millions of Americans out of work. Businesses would go bust, banks would crash, ordinary people couldn’t put food on the table… it would be nice to believe that the Galactics would wave a magic wand and all our problems would be solved, but can we rely on it?

“We founded this group because we all believed that a crash was coming,” he added. “We disagreed about why the crash was coming, or what form it would take, but we all knew that something would shake the foundations of the entire world. And now we have been confronted by the existence of alien life. The Galactics may be hostile, they may be friendly, yet their mere presence is going to shake us worse than anything else in recent history.

“And we’re the ones who prepared. We may end up fighting an insurgency against the aliens, or merely struggling to survive while the world is reshaped into something adapted to the post-Contact world. I need to ask; will you all stay with the group, bearing in mind that we didn’t prepare for this?”

“I reckon we didn’t prepare for anything specific,” Packman said. “I’m in.”

The Colonel didn’t relax afterwards, not during the dinner prepared by his daughters or during the brief drinking and swapping lies session that followed. At base, survivalists worked to survive; they would emerge from their hiding places and remake the world after the crash had been and gone. Not very brave, perhaps, and maybe not very patriotic…

But against the Galactics, against a race that could build starships over five kilometres long, it was all they had. And no one really knew anything about Earth’s visitors. What did they really want?