McGreevy purpled, alarmingly. “Are you refusing an order from your Commander-in-Chief?”
“I am pointing out that we do not have the tools to carry out your demands,” General Williamson said. “The military is not in a good state right now. I’m telling you that if you issue orders to join what is effectively a thoroughly illegal purge of American citizens, you will have a mutiny on your hands. The soldiers have friends and family who have been targeted by your purge. They are not happy. I have already had reports that a number of units have simply deserted. I suspect that the remainder of the military will soon follow.”
“Then we will call on the Galactic Federation for help,” McGreevy said.
“That will simply cause the mutiny to happen faster,” General Williamson said. “Look, Madam President, the general perception right now is that Washington is doing the bidding of the aliens and hunting down innocent American citizens. If you put alien soldiers into the mix, there will be an explosion.”
“We cannot afford to allow the aliens to suspect the worst of us,” McGreevy said. “They have offered to help us. I think we shall accept.”
On that note, the meeting ended.
Chapter Thirty-One
Wanderer, Near Norfolk
USA, Day 56
“You’re clean,” the NSA officer said. “You can go inside.”
Toby nodded as the sealed door opened, allowing him access to the interior of the prison ship. Coming out here had been a risk, but McGreevy had ordered him to inspect the various CIA and NSA facilities after she’d invited the Galactic Federation to send ‘peacekeepers’ down to Earth. The reports Toby had received suggested that the aliens had landed at most military bases, taking over with or without human permission. As General Williamson had predicted, there had been a number of clashes between human and alien military units, resulting in an alarming number of soldiers defecting from the federal government. The entire country was coming apart at the seams.
Silence descended as the sealed door banged closed behind him. The interior of Wanderer was cool, almost antiseptic, although Toby knew what happened within the ship’s cavernous holds. Terrorists, the ones who organised and plotted the missions that sent foolish young men out to die, were brought to the ship and systematically interrogated until they had spilled all they knew. Once they were drained of everything they knew, they were executed and their bodies were cremated, before being dumped overboard. There would be no burial ground to serve as a shine for fundamentalist groups. The terrorist leaders would simply vanish.
”Right this way, sir,” a voice said. Toby looked up to see a man dressed in a plain seaman’s outfit. Wanderer was no USN vessel. Ideally, she would pass muster as a tramp freighter, one of hundreds that piled the world’s oceans. The crew were all CIA officers, committed to blowing up the ship, along with her prisoners, if she were to be boarded by an unfriendly power. “They’re ready for you.”
The upper levels of Wanderer were designed for defectors, people who didn’t need rigorous interrogation before they spilled everything they knew. Toby was escorted into a metal room, decorated in a style that might be described as American office. It was easy to forget that he was on a ship, even though he could feel a faint motion underneath his feet. The alien sitting at one end of the room, half-reclining on an alien-designed chair, dominated everything. There was no mistaking his inhuman origin. Toby felt his skin crawl as he met the alien’s bright red eyes. He’d seen nothing to alter his first impression. The Snakes were predators.
“Coffee, sir?”
Toby glanced back at the young steward. “Yes, please,” he said. The two interrogators looked up at him from where they were sitting. They’d reported, not without some reluctance, that the alien had insisted on talking to one of humanity’s leaders. Toby would have taken the risk of removing the alien bugs from the President’s body and asking him to listen to the alien defector, but McGreevy couldn’t be trusted. She might be willing to listen, yet he doubted she would risk her new power base by turning against the aliens. “I understand that you wanted to talk to someone in authority?”
The alien leaned forward, drawing in a raspy breath. “Do they believe I am dead?”
Toby almost flinched at the alien’s voice. It couldn’t be easy speaking English through an alien mouth, one designed more for hissing than shaping human words. The aliens used technology to translate their words, but it had become apparent that the devices were also a way to monitor their activities on Earth. Toby was starting to suspect that the alien society was totalitarian in nature, rather than the democratic Galactic Federation they’d been promised. The aliens acted more like Russian KGB agents overseeing the Soviet Union’s sports teams rather than friendly visitors. There was a good chance that they’d monitored the defector until the explosion.
“They have not pressed the matter,” Toby said. The aliens had sent a shuttle to the scene of the explosion, thankfully after the submarine had escaped. As the Coast Guard had watched, they’d flown over the area several times and then withdrawn back to orbit. Toby suspected that they believed that their explosive implant — like the one that had detonated in Iran — had obliterated the body beyond any hope of recovery. They certainly hadn’t seemed inclined to drop a rock on New York to remind the human race of their power.
But maybe that wasn’t too surprising. Iran produced nothing, but oil, terrorists and trouble; the United States was a powerful industrial nation. If the aliens were after humanity’s technological base, as they seemed to be, they wouldn’t want to smash the United States flat. But Iran was worthless to them, or perhaps it was worth more as an object lesson rather than anything else. And it had even helped their cause by pushing humanity to become more dependent on fusion power.
“That is good,” the alien rasped. “The High Lord would not wish me to speak with you.”
Toby nodded, taking his coffee from the steward and placing it on the table. The alien had eaten and drunk a very little, but most human foods seemed to be unpleasant to the alien’s palate. They did buy some processed foodstuffs from Earth, yet few of their choices made any sense. A number of American farmers, it seemed, had been hired to plant an alien food crop. There were even reports that suggested that farmers in Africa were being paid to grow food for the aliens.
“My name is Trahs-pah,” the alien continued. Toby leaned forward with suppressed excitement. The aliens rarely gave their names to any human, even if they appeared to be friendly. Only the Ambassador had shared his name with the world. “Your world is in terrible danger.”
“That’s what you told Jason,” Toby agreed. He wished that they’d been able to bring the young Welcome Foundation official to the meeting, but it would have been too risky. “What sort of danger are we in?”
“The worst,” Trahs-pah said. “The High Lordship has come to your world.”
Toby felt his eyes narrow. “They told us that they came from the Galactic Federation,” he said. “How much of that was a lie.”
“Everything,” the alien said. “There is no Galactic Federation. There never was.”
For a moment, Toby felt a sense of overwhelming loss. He’d known, right from the start, that the aliens were too good to be true. The whole idea — the ideal — of the Galactic Federation had been lifted from the most utopian science-fiction novels and television shows. They could hardly have picked a better cause to appeal to large sections of the human race. And yet… there had been something in the dream that had appealed to Toby. Losing it wrenched at him, even though he knew that it had been an illusion. How would the rest of the human race, the ones who had welcomed the aliens and believed their lies, react if they knew the truth?