“But they don’t let anyone — anyone human — board their ships,” the Colonel said. If there was a single point failure source in the entire alien fleet, it was their warship. But there was nothing human that could reach high orbit, let alone shoot down an alien starship. He considered, just for a moment, a scheme to build an Orion spacecraft before dismissing it as worthless. There was no way it could be built without alerting the aliens. “Do you think we could find other… Pacifists?”
“Perhaps,” Toby said. He didn’t hold out much hope. Very few aliens talked to humans and he suspected that those who did were trained and authorised to do so. The other Pacifists might be able to make contact, or they might be terrified of being detected and remain in hiding. He doubted that the High Lord would be very kind to any Pacifist discovered onboard his fleet, not after what they’d done. An entire fleet wrecked and stranded thousands of light years from home. No human resistance force had ever pulled off a comparable feat. “We’d have to take an alien shuttle…”
“We’d have to force them to get their people down on the surface first,” the Colonel said. He looked over at Gillian. “Didn’t you manage to get into the alien system?”
“We’re still analysing it,” Gillian admitted. “The Snakes hacked into our internet through the secure military satellites in orbit. Quite clever of them, in a way; once they were inside, they could go anywhere and their computers could crack any secure database. Of course, it opened a path for us to hack them back, but we’re still working on making sense of how their computers work. On one hand, they’re actually more intuitive than anything we’ve designed for ourselves; on the other hand, whoever programmed them was programming for really stupid people. The interface appears to be simplistic to the point of absurdity. It might just be worse than Microsoft…”
“Or maybe they want it to be secure,” the Colonel said. “I bet you that they don’t teach their children anything about computers, unless they have a pressing need to know. Just like a woman driver knowing nothing about how a car actually works — most of the time, she doesn’t need to know how a car works to drive. But when she has a breakdown, she’s in deep trouble.”
Gillian smiled. “It has been my observation that many male soldiers don’t know the first thing about computers either,” she said, sweetly. “Do you know how often I’ve been able to break into secure databases because someone set their password as PASSWORD?”
Toby chuckled and tried to hide it. “We’ll find a way in,” the Colonel said. He couldn’t share any more with Toby, not when there was a chance he could wind up serving the aliens. “Why don’t you two youngsters go for a walk? The days are drawing in and it will soon be dark.”
If Toby resented being excluded, he didn’t show it. But then, he’d been the one to raise concerns about the possibility of being turned into a pod person, someone enslaved to the aliens. He stood up and Gillian followed him, slipping her hand into his as they left the room. The Colonel allowed himself a smile as the door closed behind them, and then he stood up. Bob Packman was waiting in the next room.
“You heard all of that,” the Colonel said, without bothering with any preamble. “What do you think?”
The former CIA analyst frowned. “It’s either true, in which case we will get a single shot at beating the bastards, or it’s the neatest lie any defector has ever told us,” he said. “Personally, I’m inclined to believe that it’s the truth. I cannot imagine anything that the aliens stand to gain by telling us such a lie.”
“Are you sure?” The Colonel pressed. “What if they’re lying to us?”
“I don’t see what they gain from it,” Packman said. “They lied to us about the Galactic Federation to get us to let down our guard. That makes perfect sense. Everything they did was concentrated on weakening us until they could land on Earth and take over without much resistance. They took control of the military — what was left of it — and started taking guns from the local population. And they took control of the media and bombarded us with propaganda about how they came in peace. But what do they stand to gain by convincing us that they’re weaker than we believed?”
“They’d bring us out into the open,” the Colonel said, slowly.
“They don’t gain from that,” Packman said. “They don’t need to provoke us into doing anything else, do they?”
The Colonel couldn’t disagree. “Our first priority has to be to get onto one of their shuttles and get it up into space,” he said. “I think we need to talk to the General.”
“I already have one idea,” Packman said. “I may just require Toby to risk his position a little. Actually, maybe a great deal. He’s the only one in place.”
“I know,” the Colonel said.
There was nothing else to say.
Once, as a child, Toby had stood in the small orchard of apple trees and picked the fruit from the branches before they were ripe. His father hadn’t been pleased with him and had made many sardonic comments when the young Toby had complained of a stomach ache. Now, standing with Gillian under the stars, he felt the same sensation of unease. The night sky was no longer safe for humanity. High above, a winking light signified the presence of one of the alien ships, gazing down with lofty dispassion on the darkened continent. They could come down and strike at any moment and they knew it. They ruled the night.
He hadn’t let go of Gillian’s hand, although he wasn’t quite sure how he’d come to hold it. She’d been living with his father, giving her ample opportunity to learn about Toby’s childhood — if she were interested. Other men seemed to be able to pick out and seduce girls with an ease Toby could only envy, a feeling only partly migrated by the awareness that everyone else had the same problem. The grass was always greener on the other side of the hill. But then, Gillian had the same problem as he did. Neither of them knew what to say.
“I’m sorry,” Toby said, finally. “I didn’t mean to have to send you out here.”
“Better than having me turned into one of the pod people,” Gillian said. Fort Meade had been overrun by pod people a day after Tehran had been hit. Luckily, most of the staff and records had been moved to concealed locations, but it was still a nightmarish blow against the federal government — and humanity’s freedom. Inch by inch, the noose was tightening around humanity’s collective neck. “I wish there was something we could do for them.”
Toby nodded. The alien defector had said that the pod people couldn’t be freed, but he intended to try anyway. If they found a way to liberate the pod people from their shackles, they could run riot in the alien rear — or make the aliens distrustful of all pod people. The aliens had limits to their manpower; forcing them to rely more on their own people would drain their strength. Knowing that the aliens couldn’t risk destroying Earth’s technology base — if they ever wanted to see home again — made it easier for the resistance to plot, but if the aliens realised that it was hopeless they were likely to blow up the planet and call it a draw. Or go into suspended animation and wait for their Empire’s slow expansion to reach Earth. The defector had warned that even if humanity beat the High Lord, they would still have to worry about the Emperor and his Empire. Toby wasn’t so concerned. If his figures were correct, there would be hundreds of years until the Empire stumbled over Earth, long enough to develop a technological base that would dwarf anything the Snakes possessed. And then there would be revenge for the dead, and those brainwashed by the aliens.