As though perfectly orchestrated, he saw three thousand pairs of eyes widen in fear and realization. By pressurizing the breeding facilities, it was clear that all those outside of the buildings would perish when the atmosphere changed. But they knew better than to question him.
“Atmospheric metrics are being downloaded to your systems now,” Augustus added, “Once complete, activate the protocols. As for yourselves, I want to thank you personally for your work and tireless dedication. Without you, humanity would not be able to continue. Your sacrifice has ensured the continuing survival of our noble race.
“Each and every one of you will be remembered in the records. I will see to it personally. In its current state, Earth has but a few more days left. Say your goodbyes and perform any last rituals you need. The end has come. Thank you, and good luck in the journey of your afterlife.”
One by one, the individual video links to the farms glowed yellow as the data packs downloaded. The ones that turned green indicated they had activated the pressurization process, sealing off the breeding facilities and, so doing, sealing their own fates.
Augustus took a great deal of joy from watching his orders being executed, as the large screen became a sea of green squares. Hundreds activated at once and within a few seconds the entire farm network had activated the protocol… although… he leaned forward and noticed that there was one that was still yellow.
Of course. It had to be that one. He expected as much.
“Engage Farm 1038.”
The sickly image of Vlad, one of Gregor’s old gang members came up on screen. The revolting man’s face was grey and puffy. His eyes were rimmed with red sores and his brown hair lay lank and greasy against his scalp. He reminded Augustus of the street peasants back in Rome. Even then, they never looked after themselves. Some things never change. Some humans are just not as worthy as others.
“Mr. Augustus, sir, I…” Vlad began to say. A girl appeared behind him, the one he remembered as Alex. She was barely more capable than Vlad.
“Why haven’t you activated the pressurization protocol?”
Vlad looked to Alex. Her face tightened. It was clear they were hiding something. The tension of their bodies said it all.
“What’s going on there?” Augustus asked. “Do I need to send a squad down there to take over?”
“No, sir, it’s erm, fine, really, just a few minor issues with the livestock, we’ve got it in hand.”
“Then activate the procedure.”
Augustus kept the channel open and waited. Vlad fussed at the console and looked up through his lank hair. But he wasn’t fooling anyone.
“There’s a problem with our mainframe, sir, I’ll get it fixed right away.”
Augustus brought up a second console window on his desktop screen, patched into Farm 1038’s system and ran a diagnostic. In hindsight, the croatoan hierarchy should have made everything automated from the mother ship. It was too risky to have left any procedure in the hands of the humans, but the aliens were hot on trust. They said many times over the centuries since being on the Earth that trust was always the first way to cooperation. Force should only come if that trust was proven to be less than optimal, and that force could fix anything that trust broke.
Looking down at the diagnostic report, he felt the bounds of trust just retreat from the breaking point. It appeared that Vlad was indeed telling the truth. The mainframe was reporting an error in one of its processor cores.
“I’ll give you an hour to fix it before I send help,” Augustus said, emphasizing that last word.
“Thank you, sir, we’ll send a report right away when it’s done. Sorry to delay things.”
“I’ll expect a report within the hour.” With that, Augustus closed the connection and shut down both screens. Immediately a new session started, this time, the screen filled with the image of his old friend.
Hagellen smiled on screen, stretching his wide turtle-like mouth, his ancient face shown in super-high definition. Augustus didn’t know how old he was, but from his stories, calculated he must be at least five hundred thousand in Earth years. The compound had made his leathery skin look almost like bark.
The alien was one of the hierarchy members. Although Augustus would never fully understand their cultural organization, the mother ship had a clear organization structure. There was Hagellen and three others that made up a command module; they decided what happened here on Earth and set the schedules.
Beneath them was a council of five others who oversaw various aspects of planetary colonization. Augustus was an honorary member of that council with his role earmarked as taking over the planet once the terraforming was complete.
The idea was that once things were running well, they would move a population of croatoan citizens to live on Earth while the mother ship and its hierarchy would head off to their next project, which could be thousands of years in the making, with Hagellen and the others going back into their stasis pods until whatever planet they had found would be ready for the same procedure.
“Hagellen, old friend, to what I do owe this pleasure?”
“Valens, my friend.” the alien said in his clicking language. Augustus had picked it up over the years. Although he would never fully understand the nuance, he knew enough to be able to translate on the fly. “The terraforming ship is one of your days’ away. We’ll soon dock and initiate the final procedure. Is all well with your systems?”
“All working as expected. There’s a small delay on one of the farms but nothing that will prevent the plan from going ahead.”
“I noticed that you ordered Baliska to the surface. That seems a drastic action at this time. Is there something I and the council should be aware of?”
Baliska was the hunter Augustus had ordered down to deal with that meddling little bastard, Charlie Jackson. Seeing as Gregor couldn’t cope with him, he needed to do something. Though in the grand scheme of things, Jackson wasn’t a huge problem. “There’s a tiny resistance on the surface. Baliska hasn’t been hunting in three decades. After he arrived here from his sojourn on your jungle planet, he wanted a new challenge, so I decided to take advantage of his desire to find and eliminate this resistant human before he had the opportunity to become a bigger issue later.”
“That’s understandable,” Hagellen said, shaking his head side-to-side slowly which was the croatoan way of agreeing. The aliens had a complicated set of body language that Augustus had never quite got the hang of. It seemed to change on so many different nuances, and with him not understanding the language at a fundamental level, he was never exposed to those nuances. With a race as ancient as the croatoans, he didn’t expect to learn all that in just a few decades of waking time.
“Was there anything else, old friend?” Augustus said.
“Not far now. Inform me when the final farm has initiated the pressurization. I’ll inform you when the terraforming ship has successfully docked with us.”
“Will it take long, the atmospheric change?”
“Everything is but a blink of our eyes, Valens. You know this.” Hagellen squinted his large, black eyes slightly, which meant that it was a lighthearted phrase. The croatoans never laughed as such, rather via their eyelid movements, they indicated acceptance or rejection of the attempt at humor.
Augustus never bothered to figure out what made them ‘laugh’, there was too much risk of insulting them. He’d lasted this long by usually only speaking when spoken too and keeping his interactions with them strictly about business. To get personal with a croatoan was to go into a battle with a multi-headed hydra with the ability to kill you faster than you could blink.