“Why?” Philippe asked bleakly. “They don’t have to worry about little details like internal revolt from their own… and if we do, we’d be crushed. At best, we will be second-class citizens. At worst… at worst, we will be their slaves forever.”
“A powerful argument,” LePic concluded. There was a bitter helplessness in his voice. “But then, really, what can we do? If we fight, we get squashed. If we surrender, we get melded into their self-image. What can we do?”
The High Priest and his immediate subordinates gathered below a massive image of Earth, floating in space below the Guiding Star. It had been a busy few cycles, but once the main thrust of the American assault had been blunted, the warriors had been able to cut up the remaining insurgents who dared to show their faces. The occupied zone was peaceful again, for now.
“We have studied the human writings extensively,” the researcher informed him, after they had briefly discussed the situation on the ground. “The human religions, their dominant religions, all appeared in the same general area, here.” She touched a place that humans would have identified as the Middle East. “Their dominant religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — are actually related and have their centres in that area, apart from this centre here.”
Her finger touched Italy. “Other religions exist on Earth, but they are less likely to conflict directly with the Truth,” she added. “They can be dealt with later. This part of the world has an added advantage in that it is the source for much of their oil, although it escapes us as to why they have allowed the dependency to continue when they could build solar platforms in high orbit and get all the power they need…”
“Humans are more inclined to consume resources than ourselves,” an Arbiter said. The scorn in his voice was unmistakable. He might have been awed by how much each individual human had, but as a race, they were remarkably poor. “They do not practice self-discipline when it comes to deciding what they want and what they need. Their failure to ensure proper use of resources has crippled their development as a race.”
The High Priest said nothing. He could never have admitted it to anyone, least of all her, but he missed Researcher Femala badly. She hadn’t been afraid to tell him what he needed to know; after all, she had a certain freedom from most consequences. The researchers were right about how important the Middle East was to the humans, but it wasn’t as if there was much else there to recommend it, apart from the holy cities. The Inquisitors would demand that they were occupied or destroyed, in order to continue the task of destroying the human religions, but what would that do to the human determination to resist? Captured humans down on the surface of Earth had sworn that they intended to avenge attacks on their religious buildings… and if they went after the very centres of their religions, what sort of attacks would that provoke?
The Inquisitors, of course, wouldn’t care. They would see it as a chance to root out more human fanatics and burn them all down. The High Priest believed in the mission as much as anyone else, but he didn’t want to rule over a charnel house, with millions of humans slaughtered without being given a fair chance to convert. It was possible that the ambassadors would convince their respective nations to convert en masse, but that didn’t really seem to be a human concept.
But there were no other places that held such significance. “We will move against their Holy Cities,” he ordered, finally. He looked over at the War Leader. “You will prepare the secondary landing force for deployment and the capture of their Holy Cities and oil wells. Once they are secure, we will begin the conquest of their hearts and souls.”
“Yes, Your Holiness,” the War Leader said. “It will be done as you command.”
“And we should also begin the conquest of hearts and souls in the occupied area of America,” the Inquisitor added. There was a conceited tone in his voice that was at odds with the seriousness of his purpose. “We have been lax in our duty there, I fear, and thus we have been punished with many attacks and many deaths.”
“Of course,” the High Priest said. They still held the advantage over the humans. As long as they held space, they were unbeatable. Even if they lost people like Researcher Femala, they would still win in the end. He missed her… but she was lost, somewhere in the chaos of the American attack. They’d probably blown her out of the sky without even noticing. “We would not want to fail in our duty, would we?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alien life can take many forms… but some are more likely than others.
“I think this is your stop,” the trucker said, as the truck pulled to a stop outside a warehouse complex in the middle of nowhere. “Good luck, buddy.”
Paul thanked the driver as he slipped out of the vehicle and down onto the tarmac. The destruction of the railroads and aircraft had left most of the transport network in the hands of truckers, who risked the chances of sudden death from high above in order to keep things moving across the United States. The gas was heavily rationed now so that the truckers could keep moving, which in turn kept the country going… until the gas ran out as well. The United States had built up a massive reserve of fuel — and other vital raw materials — but no one had really anticipated such a cut-off. The results in other parts of the world were even worse.
It wasn’t that America was suddenly a poor country, but that it was much harder to move items around… and almost nothing was coming in from the outside world. There might be a surplus of one item in California, but not in Maryland, where it was needed. Some places had more than enough food to eat, other places were starving… and still others were in a state of anarchy. Two weeks after the failure of Operation Lone Star, the country was struggling to pull itself back together, a procedure marred by constant specific bombardment. The truckers, statistically, didn’t face many risks, but the odds mounted up over time. His driver had been asked to carry a single passenger… and anything out of the ordinary tended to attract attention. If the aliens had seen him getting onboard the truck, would they have blasted him on general principles?
The warehouse complex was as dark and silent as the grave, but he knew where to go, pausing long enough to see the truck vanishing off into the distance before climbing quickly up to the complex. It had been created, originally, to serve as a shipping hub for some trucking company that had gone out of business, and then Uncle Sam had taken it over. The CIA, working through a front company, had bought the entire complex and developed it for their own purposes. From the outside, it was just another bunch of warehouses… and there were plenty more of them across America. Inside, it was a very different story.
“Welcome,” Doctor Jones said, once the guards had checked Paul’s ID and fingerprints. The CIA, he’d been told, had once used the place for defectors from the USSR and, later, terrorist groups, a perfectly secure compound where they could be interrogated and debriefed in private before being given their reward. No one would think twice if a helicopter landed in the complex, or a truck pulled up to it, which kept everything secret. “You’ll be pleased to hear that we’re ready for you.”
Paul followed him down a flight of stairs into an underground complex that wasn’t on any of the publicly-available plans. “We didn’t bring the craft itself here, I’m afraid, but we were able to move it to another complex, where NASA’s best engineers have been working on it,” the Doctor continued. “We did bring the alien captives here, although alas, without Captain Kirk to court the pretty alien babes, we didn’t learn much at first.”