Invasion

Chapter Eight

The aliens, as enigmatic and faceless as ever, escorted their human prisoners down the middle of a long shaft. It could easily have been a corridor or a vertical shaft, Francis realised; the absence of gravity only meant that people could swim through the corridors in any direction. The shaft was as dark and featureless as the aliens, hidden behind their armour, but he could see signs of construction that suggested that the aliens hadn’t bothered with finesse. There were hints of welding scars and maybe even battle damage on the passageway, while the aliens themselves seemed bright and new. There was an uncertain crudity about the entire construction, as if the aliens had decided that ‘good enough’ was better than ‘the best,’ at least for their starships. There was a certain something about it that, somehow, reminded him of Soviet and Russian machines.

He caught Gary’s eye and watched as the former commander studied the alien technology. Francis would have given his right teeth to share observations with someone who might actually know more than pop science and speculations based on vague recollections of various stories of the space age that had never been, but they didn’t dare take the risk. Even if the aliens didn’t understand English now, they would in time, and then they would play back the recordings of everything the humans said to each other, testing their captives. Resistance was probably futile, but looking at the aliens, it was evident that they were taking no chances. Stark naked, weaponless, defenceless, they were helpless… but the aliens were still treating them as dangerous opponents.

Bastards, Francis thought, looking up towards one of the aliens. The featureless helm gazed back impassively. He tried to see some hint of the alien’s features under the black mask, but it was hopeless; the alien mask didn’t even show his own reflection. The alien, attached to the floor by obviously magnetic boots, merely gave him another push down the shaft… or perhaps it was along the corridor. It was growing harder to maintain a sense of reality as they were pushed further into the alien spacecraft.

“That’s an airlock,” Gary said suddenly, as they reached a massive hatch, set into what was now obviously the corridor wall. The airlock looked more like a typical safe door from an old movie about bank robbers, but Gary was almost certainly right. The gunmetal construction had the same crudeness about it as the rest of the ship, but there was no denying that it was actually capable of carrying out its task and keeping the air inside the ship. It opened, automatically, as the small group approached and the aliens escorted them into a small chamber, and then into a second.

“We’ve docked with a larger ship,” Francis guessed, as they passed through a third chamber. The aliens seemed to have a very practical approach to their space technology; they showed strength in depth, redundancy and over-design. He resolved not to allow the crude appearance of the technology to lure him into a sense of complacency, even though it was more than a little galling; the ISS had looked more advanced than the alien ships, and yet it was the ISS that was flaming debris falling down towards Earth. “I wonder if…”

The third airlock opened, revealing a much larger chamber, almost large enough to hold an entire squadron of space shuttles. It was almost empty, save only for pieces of wreckage that had, at a guess, come from the ISS… and a line of aliens waiting for them. Most of the aliens wore the same featureless black battle armour — he guessed that they were the guards and soldiers, protecting the leadership — but others… others wore nothing but the bare minimum. He felt sweat prickling out all over his body — the interior of the alien starship was warmer than the desert, definitely — but the sensation was swept away as he came face to face with an unshielded alien. The creature…

A sense of pure… unreality swept over him, again, as he took in the alien form. The alien was almost disappointing, in a way; it was humanoid… and yet, just looking at it, it was impossible to escape the knowledge that it was alien, that it had grown up under the light of a very different star. It was wearing nothing, but a loincloth and a golden amulet around its neck… and it was hairless. Its skin was an eerie red shade, mottled slightly around the forehead; it’s eyes were dark ovals, darker than the alien helms. It stood slightly taller than Francis himself, but it seemed almost childlike, a child’s body blown up to unrealistic proportions. Just looking at the alien, it was impossible to escape a sense that he was staring at a being that was, somehow, fundamentally wrong.

A second alien, standing behind the first, took a step forward. This one was shorter and, he had the impression, weaker than the first. It also seemed to have uncovered breasts, although they looked very different to human breasts, and he decided to assume that it was female unless corrected. The male, if male it was, seemed to be in charge, but that said nothing. Human societies might have been based, more often than not, around the principle of female subordination — however expressed — but the aliens might be a matriarchy, instead of a patriarchy. Or, maybe, they were complete sexual equals and the aliens facing them just happened to have a male leader. He looked into the dark eyes, feeling a chill running down his spine when he met the pupil-less eyes, and wondered, grimly, what they were thinking.

Another of the females stepped forward. “You are welcome onboard our ship,” she said, her voice odd, but not unintelligible. Her English was precise and finely tuned, but with an odd accent that spoke, somehow, of alien worlds. Francis had half-expected to speak to them in English — they’d had plenty of time to listen to human radio signals and several groups down on Earth had transmitted entire dictionaries to them when their starship had been detected — but still, it was a shock. “We will learn from you and you will learn from us.”

The alien leader, if he was the alien leader, watched impassively. Francis was certain, looking at him, that he was the one who was calling the shots, but how much did that mean? A democracy had its checks and balances built into the system, but a dictatorship had far fewer checks on the leader’s powers… and there was no way to know how the aliens governed themselves. They could be anything from a human society to something so alien that it would make no sense to human observers.

Francis spoke, finally, his voice soft and weak. “What do you want?”

“To spread the word,” the alien female said. Francis stared at her. The answer made no sense at all. “We have come a long way to spread the word.”

Gary drifted forward, slightly. “Why did you attack us?”

“To establish our superiority and the folly of resistance,” the alien female said. Francis felt more than heard Gary’s gasp of shock. The aliens, far from bringing technology and gifts to Earth, seemed to want conquest. Why? He had thought that there was nothing on Earth that the aliens would want that they couldn’t get from the solar system, or through trade. A single one of the alien ships, offered to the great powers on Earth, would have netted the aliens an astonishing amount of trade goods. “This system will be brought into the word.”

Francis frowned. “The word?”

Sophia unbent herself from her crouch. Nakedness had forced her to try to cover herself and the aliens had just pushed her where they wanted her to go. Her voice was shaky and weak, but she managed to speak clearly, perhaps understanding that the aliens wouldn’t understand a frantic human voice.

“I am the representative of the United Nations of Earth, the Parliament of Humanity,” she said. Francis might have questioned her claim to superiority, but he was more curious about how the aliens would react to the claim. If they had been intercepting human transmissions, they probably had a very weird view of the UN, or, for that matter, anything else. The old jokes about the Fox or CNN generation no longer seemed funny. “If you want to talk to the human race, you must talk to the United Nations, to Earth as a whole…”

“We will send you to pass on our message to your leaders,” the alien leader said, cutting her off. The male spoke, for the first time, and Francis listened carefully; his voice was darker, more emotional, than the females. “You will convoy our messages to your people so that they might all be saved.”

Francis blinked. It sounded almost like a religious concept. Humans had conquered in the name of religion before; he couldn’t think of a religion that hadn’t, at one time or another, tried to convert or exterminate its enemies. The Crusades, the Spanish Armada, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the ongoing global Jihad against the secular West… all of them had been fuelled, at least in part, by religion. Had the aliens come all that way just to spark off a new religious war?

“Saved?” Sophia asked. “Saved from what?”

“Themselves,” the alien said, flatly.

Philippe, like the remainder of the humans, found the entire concept rather… unbelievable, but he suppressed the suicidal urge to laugh while he listened to the alien leader and Sophia arguing backwards and forwards. It was easy enough to dismiss the alien concept, and yet… there was no denying that the aliens were powerful enough to make their presence felt. He was pretty certain that the spacefaring powers were attacking the aliens in orbit, but the mere fact that they were still alive — and prisoners — suggested that the war wasn’t going well. The United States and Russia had the capability to launch attacks on orbital targets, but compared to what the aliens had shown, it was puny. The real question was simple enough; were the aliens telling the truth about their aims?

He mulled it over as the aliens carefully separated the humans, a pair of guards pulling him through the vast hanger bay and into a smaller connection tube, trying to ignore some of the human protests. Philippe kept himself calm and docile, for the moment; the aliens would probably punish resistance, if they really were religious fanatics. He’d dealt with more than a few human fanatics, but most of them had known — or at least had believed — that France would punish any offence to his person… and, besides, he was more use to them alive. The aliens were far too powerful for the United States to hurt, let alone France… and somehow, he doubted that the French Government would seek recompense for any harm that occurred to him. It was better, by far, to act docile… and seek to profit from the situation, somehow.

The alien guards finally pulled him into a smaller room. Despite the absence of gravity, it was set out as if it was normally used in a gravity field, with none of the modifications the ISS had had to take advantage of the lack of gravity, which suggested that the aliens would spin up the ship to generate gravity, sooner or later. It didn’t help him now — and it was a good thing that he’d recovered from his bout of space-sickness after a day on the ISS — but it was interesting to note. The aliens were advanced, sure, but they weren’t magicians who could generate gravity on tap. Everything they’d shown so far could be explained, or even matched, by human technology. The aliens pushed him over to a table, pushed him down on the table surprisingly gently, and secured him down with straps. Philippe felt, despite himself, panic stirring at the back of his mind; the aliens could do anything to him…

…Suddenly, all those stories of alien abduction and medical experimentation seemed very real…

“Remain calm, please,” an alien voice said. He found himself looking up into a featureless alien face. The aliens seemed to have far fewer differences between themselves than a comparable number of humans, although maybe they thought the same of humans; the only thing he could see to distinguish this alien from the other alien females — he was sure that the breasts meant that it was a female — was a tattoo mark on her hairless forehead. Name? Rank badge? Fraternity pledge? Or merely the alien version of ‘mom?’ There was no way to know.

He caught his breath as the alien moved a set of ominous-looking medical equipment over his naked chest. It would have been easy to speak to the alien in French, to see if she understood, but if not… why give up a possible advantage? Two of the other ambassadors spoke French as well as English and Sophia, he was sure, would have some French herself. He resolved to keep speaking in English until he was with the other humans.

His voice caught in his throat as he spoke. “What are you going to do to me?”

The alien didn’t answer at first. “We must know how your race works,” she said, finally. It had the air of a brief answer intended for a child, not a serious answer, accurate and yet entirely useless. There was little point in vivisecting a live human — the odds were that they had recovered bodies from the remains of the ISS and perhaps the American space shuttle — but he doubted it was going to be pleasant. “We must know if we can live on your world safety.”

“Odd,” he observed. “You’ve started a war against us and you don’t even know if you can live on our world?”

The device lit up before the alien could answer. She moved it, carefully, over his body, paying careful attention to the implanted plate he had in his forearm, where he’d broken his wrist years ago while showing off to a girl. He couldn’t even remember her name now — she’d married someone from the army, if he recalled correctly — but at the time, impressing her had been much more important than it should have been. The alien spent an hour studying him through her sensors, the medical technology displaying a hologram in front of her of his insides, and then moved on to more invasive procedures.

“Ouch,” he said, as she started to draw a little blood from his arm. She either hadn’t heard of anaesthetic, or, more probably, she hadn’t wanted to risk an alien drug on a human. God alone knew what an alien painkiller would do to him. A normal blood sample wasn’t painful, even though most humans maintained an irrational fear of needles, but the alien either wasn’t gentle or simply didn’t have the right tools. It hurt. “Can you stop doing that, please?”

The alien female ignored him, examining the human blood through a microscope, picking it apart for information. The tests grew more invasive — she probed into each and every one of his orifices — and painful, but he tried to keep the protesting to a minimum. He would have sold his soul for another human in the room, even someone he disliked personally, but he was alone. It was another example, he suspected, of alien paranoia. They didn’t want their prisoners comparing notes.

Idiots, he thought, eyeing the alien out of the corner of his eyes. They would probably have learned more from what their prisoners said to one another. Instead, they’d separated them, just to keep them meek and helpless. Did they really think that they would break free of the alien guards and attack the crew?

“You will come with us,” the guards said finally, as the doctor — although that wasn’t a title he would have willingly given to the alien medical expert — released him from his straps. The aliens seemed to have plenty of people who understood English. The guard caught his arm as he drifted into the air and pulled him out into the corridor, through a twisting maze marked only by alien writing, which looked like a dyslexic’s attempt at joined-up writing, and propelled him into a small cabin. It was almost empty, with only a sleeping pallet, a small toilet, water tap and a constant flow of air, blown through the ceiling to keep the air in motion. The door closed with enough force to send little shockwaves through the air; it only took a moment to check it and realise that it was locked.

Trapped, Philippe thought, and wondered what had happened to the others. He hadn’t seen them as the alien guards pulled him through the corridors. They had probably gone through the same examination as he had and then… then what? What did the aliens intended to do with them? Would they be given a message and sent back down to the planet, or would it be worse than that, or… what? Humans had done horrible things to prisoners of war in the past and the aliens might have worse things in store for them.

The wall lit up and revealed itself to be a display screen, showing an image of Earth taken from space. “You will answer our questions,” an emotionless alien voice said. It seemed to come from everywhere. “You will give us full and complete answers to our questions. Where on your planet do you come from?”

Philippe sighed and started to answer.