“Then they might catch the common cold and drop dead,” the Colonel snarled. He wasn’t in the mood. Besides, the aliens wouldn’t have made contact if they thought there was a chance of being infected with human diseases. And they’d helped cure humans, showing off their medical science. The diseases that terrorised humanity wouldn’t hold any fears for them. “And they could probably have convinced the Chinese or the Russians to see them a few hundred thousand undesirables in exchange for technology.”
He stalked into the sitting room and sat down, reaching for a can of beer and popping it open. Mary would have disapproved of him drinking so much, but Mary was dead. The question echoed through his mind, mocking him; could the aliens have saved her life? She’d died in childbirth, but their medical science might have been able to save her. Or could they resurrect her from the grave?
The thought made him shudder. There were already too many humans who worshipped the aliens. If they actually started resurrecting the dead, they’d be taken for gods — who knew, if they could do that, they might well be gods. The temptation tore at the Colonel’s heart, before he pushed it aside, angrily. Mary’s body would have decomposed by now, leaving the brain a useless mass — and besides, Mary would have cursed him for being a fool if he sold out his country to get her back. She’d always known what was important.
He shook his head, bitterly. There was no way to get her back. He would just have to have faith that she was in the arms of Jesus, waiting for him in Heaven. One way or the other, the Colonel knew that he didn’t have much time left. His body was aching after his crawl, where once he would have crawled for miles with enemy bullets whipping through the branches over his head. The thought of growing old, of becoming senile, was terrifying. He couldn’t face it.
Susan bellowed for dinner and the Colonel stood up. Old or not, he could still fight, and he intended to fight. And if his time finally ran out, he would die in a manner that would make Mary proud. It was all he’d ever asked for from his country.
The Colonel had once heard a joke about American dinnertimes. There were three subjects that should never be discussed over dinner; politics, religion and sex. And there were three subjects that were always discussed over dinner; politics, religion and sex. The joke had gone on to claim that most fractured households came from disputes over dinner, but the Colonel hadn’t seen the joke. Most people had more important things to worry about than politics, religion and sex.
Dinner was a subdued affair. He briefly explained what he’d seen at the Rawson Farm and Packman explained what he’d seen on the internet. The official story from the Feds was that the Rawson Family had been linked to a terrorist plot against the President and vast quantities of explosives and illegal weapons had been removed from their farm. Given that he hadn’t seen the Feds bother to search the house, the Colonel suspected that some scriptwriter had simply pulled it out of his ass. Or maybe they’d conveniently assembled the evidence beforehand in some federal warehouse where they’d shown it to tame journalists.
Afterwards, he got together with a handful of the others and started outlining possible courses of action. They couldn’t allow the feds — and the pod people, and the aliens — to have it all their own way. And yet, the Colonel hesitated from the prospect of causing more human deaths. Many of the Feds would be honest men, unaware that they were actually working for the aliens. But then, if they’d gone to work destroying the Constitution — did they really deserve to survive? Making a moral choice was hard enough at the best of times, but when the economic climate was so low and jobs were scarce… who would want to lose one by standing up to his superiors?
“We have to find a way to put a spoke in their gears,” he said, finally. Bitter frustration coloured his voice. He hated feeling helpless, at the mercy of others. “There has to be some way of making them sit up and take notice that we won’t allow them to wreak havoc on innocent people.”
And slowly, very slowly, a plan started to come together in his mind.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Norfolk, Virginia
USA, Day 51
“Remember to slouch, dudes.”
Sergeant Mathew Bracken snorted as the SEALs instantly transformed themselves into the very picture of slobs and layabouts. Red Squadron of the Joint Special Operations Command’s United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group was used to insane missions — they’d spearheaded the killing of Osama Bin Laden — but this had to be one of the weirdest. Officially, one of the Snakes wanted to experience life on a boat. Unofficially, the real objective of the mission was a great deal harder. And after the raids carried out by the federal police forces, there was a very distant possibility that an outraged patriot would take a pot-shot at the Snake.
The yacht looked civilian. They’d used it before for trawling missions along the coast of Somalia, looking for pirates who were preying on Western shipping. When the pirates boarded, they found themselves staring down the guns of Navy SEALs who knew how to handle them and were quite prepared to hand out rough justice if they didn’t surrender instantly. Mathew had little truck with the suggestion that the pirates were only trying to feed their families and communities. They could have done that without capturing innocent shipping, let alone mistreating their crews or holding them for ransom. One day, he hoped, the SEALs would be able to go in and clean the nest of pirates out from beginning to end. Until then, they would have to make do with patrols — and strange missions like the one they were about to start.
There was a popular perception that SF soldiers were stupid. It was untrue; SF soldiers had to be trained to a very high standard, pushed right to the limits of their capabilities, before they could be sent on missions that would often never come to public attention. They’d been taught to use their initiative and think about what they were doing — and never to forget that their ultimate purpose was to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And many of the SEALs had family within the so-called right-wing community. The raids on their farms and imprisonment of many people who had no connection with any terrorists had angered them. They’d agreed, if they were ever ordered to into action against innocent American civilians, they would refuse. The orders would be thoroughly illegal.
And now they were going to vanish. Mathew still remembered the grim briefing from senior authority. It was irregular, so much so that he’d almost contemplated refusing the mission. But then he’d encountered one of the pod people and realised that the situation was far worse than it seemed. The Galactics were slowly taking over and all hell was about to break loose. It seemed that every military base in the United States — and presumably over the entire world — now had its own force of Galactics. No one expected them to remain peaceful for long and with so much of the military disbanded, no one knew who would win when they came out into the open. And there were still seventeen starships orbiting the Earth. They could simply bombard the human race into submission and everyone knew it.
His radio buzzed. “Alpha is entering the base now,” it said.
He keyed the switch. “Understood,” he said. He nodded to a couple of his guys, who started lowering the gangplank. The ship had been isolated from the remainder of the Naval Base, for reasons that he hadn’t been made privy to, but he suspected had something to do with the two aircraft carriers that were on their way back home. “We’re ready when they are.”
The convoy rolled into view and came to a halt on the dock. A team of security officers jumped out and looked around nervously, although Mathew couldn’t imagine what sort of threat they expected to find here. None of them knew what was really going on, he reminded himself, and they probably feared that one of the Navy’s crewmen would take a shot at the alien. They looked clownish compared to the SEALs, but that was something of the point. A show of security was often enough to deter most attackers. Those it didn’t deter were the ones who didn’t care if they lived or died, as long as they took out their target. They were the worst.