The Trojan Horse

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?

And McGreevy, he asked himself. Did she know the truth?

“I see,” he said, finally. “I think you’d better start from the beginning. Why did your people come here?”

“We didn’t mean to come here,” Trahs-pah said. “We discovered your world by accident.”

Toby must have looked blank, for the alien continued without delay. “You must understand that our species has been torn between two poles — freedom and tyranny — for almost as long as we have been intelligent,” he continued. The raspy voice added a note of unreality to the entire discussion. “Our version of your Cold War was won by the Emperor, who took the technological base both societies had built and used it to start expanding across the stars. It was not long before we managed to devise a way to create wormholes that would allow us to cross from star to star without having to travel in normal space.

“What the Emperor knew, but dismissed, was that elements of the other side remained active. The Pacifists — as he calls them — still hoped to overthrow the Emperor and restore liberty. It was those Pacifists who attempted to sabotage a wormhole generator and send the High Lord’s fleet into nothingness. I volunteered for the mission fully aware that it would mean my own death, or torture and ritual execution if I were to be discovered. Unfortunately, our maths were not as perfect as I had been told.”

Toby frowned. “You made a mistake?”

“There is a slight shortage of volunteers to test certain theories,” the alien said. There was no change in his tone, but Toby suspected that he’d just heard alien sarcasm. “We believes that the wormhole would desynchronise and destroy the fleet, reducing it down to hard radiation. The loss of a conquest fleet would certainly make the Emperor look weak and give encouragement to his foes. We calculated that there would be a good chance to overthrow him in the wake of a disaster. I inserted the modified commands into the flagship’s computer core and prepared myself for death.

“What happened instead was unexpected. The fleet was hurled across thousands of light years. Many ships were destroyed in the unexpected malfunction. Others were badly damaged, leaving only seventeen starships reasonably intact. The High Lord ordered the others ships to be cannibalised in order to repair the seventeen ships, but there was no hope of rebuilding the wormhole generator. In his wisdom and paranoia, the Emperor had not provided us with a tech base capable of producing a generator without a great deal of work.”

Toby smiled. “So you were stranded,” he said. It sounded reasonably believable, although he had to remind himself to be careful. American Intelligence services had been taken in before by false defectors. The aliens could be lying… through Toby was hard-pressed to understand why they might be lying. Their other actions made a certain kind of sense, particularly when one realised that they’d been lying about their reasons for visiting Earth. “What happened then?”

“We picked up your radio transmissions,” the alien said. “The High Lord was paranoid; your transmissions appeared to indicate that you were more advanced than ourselves. We probed in very carefully, eventually establishing a listening post on your moon. Eventually, we realised that many of your television programs were fictional, even though some of your people appeared to believe in them. Your tech base was primitive compared to the Empire’s, but you could rebuild and repair what you had. The industrial ship that survived the wormhole implosion couldn’t possibly keep pace with expenditures if we invaded openly. It was the High Lord who devised the plan to take control by offering the tech your race desperately needed — tech that would come with some unseen surprises. Once your race had been tamed, we could hammer out a tech base that would allow us to start expanding back towards the Empire, or into unexplored space.”

“I see,” Toby said. “Why hasn’t he just invaded? Your race just destroyed an entire city. Millions of humans are dead. Many more will die in the coming weeks.”

“Controlling humanity would be difficult for a small force,” the alien said. “There are only a few hundred thousand warriors left in the fleet. The High Lord chose to use a subtle plan, rather than risk an open conflict that would destroy what we needed to build a technological civilisation. Your race seems far too capable of believing honeyed promises from people you know nothing about.”

Toby nodded, impatiently. The alien was right; indeed, he was starting to suspect that the alien had been one of the ones who had studied humanity closely. Adolf Hitler had once remarked that people were more inclined to believe a big lie, because they didn’t want to believe that anyone would lie about it. The High Lord had drawn up a brilliant plan and applied it with consummate skill. Right now, Toby suspected that there wasn’t a First World military capable of fighting if the aliens took over — and the pod people would ensure that the aliens would have all the manpower they needed to hold the planet. It wasn’t even as if they needed to hold all of Earth. The Middle East, most of Africa and even East Asia could be left to fester on its own. They might even systematically exterminate the human population, just to ensure that there was no trouble from the region. And in the meantime, the aliens would build their own tech base and return to the stars.

But how long could it hold? Maybe the aliens would open themselves and humanity would strike them down, but how could they do that when the aliens held the high ground? What rebellion could succeed if the aliens could smash it from orbit?

“It’s a constant problem,” he admitted. “Why did you come to us?”

The alien looked up at him. “I am not the only… Pacifist in the fleet,” he admitted. “I believed that your race represented the best chance for freedom for our own. Your technology is primitive, your mindset is beyond our understanding, and yet you have a spark that we have lost. The Emperor does not seek to develop independence of thought, not when someone might question the need for the Emperor. No, we are bred to obey. There hasn’t been a major development in the last three hundred of your years. You may be behind us, but the gap is smaller than you think.

“You were lied to by the High Lord, lies told so smoothly that you accepted them as truth. I hoped that if I told you the truth before it was too late, you would be able to help us to escape the High Lord and take control of the fleet. Without that, your world is doomed. The High Lord will not accept defeat lightly. If you beat the fleet, he will turn your world into ash and ensure that you do not become a threat to the Empire. He has the power to obliterate your world.”

Toby had never doubted that. Everything that had never quite made sense suddenly slid into focus. The aliens had never invaded openly because they lacked the force needed to take and hold humanity’s cities, even the First World alone. And they’d refrained from mass bombardment because they wanted the industrial base intact. And… a plan was slowly coming together in his mind. If there was only one way to defeat the aliens, it would have to be risked. The entire world was at stake.

For a moment, he considered collaboration. Perhaps the High Lord or his descendents would grow lazy, accustomed to humanity’s servitude, unaware that the human race was plotting their overthrow. But it wouldn’t work out that way. Any human selected for use by the aliens would probably be turned into a pod person, particularly if they were in sensitive positions. Lose once… and the human race would be lost for all time. Perhaps later generations would accept their servitude as natural and right.

“I have a question,” he said. “Your High Lord has been brainwashing humans to serve his cause. How did he learn how to do it?”

“A number of humans were taken from Earth before we made formal contact,” the alien said. There was an odd moment of hesitation, even embarrassment, before the alien continued. “They were examined; experiments were carried out on their brains. The Emperor and his lackeys have always preferred to brain-burn their servants to ensure that they could not plan rebellion. Once a reasonably safe method was developed, it was used to create loyal humans in high places. You have no comprehension of just how many there are now.”

Toby scowled. “Can they be freed from their servitude?”

The alien hesitated, just long enough for Toby to know the answer. “No,” he admitted. “The damage to their brains is too great for any recovery. They will eventually collapse and die with massive brain trauma, by which time they will be replaced with other loyal servants.”

Toby felt sick. How many others would lose their minds to the aliens, turned into unwilling traitors? And could it be stopped? Could human scientists discover a way of preventing the alien technique from brainwashing someone? There was no way to know, without experimentation… and if the aliens discovered that someone had defected, they would demand his immediate return. They’d have to think very carefully about how to handle it. He would have to talk to his father.

“I have a different question,” he said, suddenly. “How do you tell the difference between males and females among your race.”

The alien produced a hissing noise, rather like a boiling kettle. It took Toby a moment to realise that the alien was laughing. “Your race seems to spend most of your time studying reproduction,” he said. “We puzzled endlessly over the vast collection of mating videos on your computer network. It took us a long time to realise that your young did not need instructions on how to mate. But it would have always been hard for us to understand. We are very different biologically.”

There was a long pause. “I am not a male or a female,” the alien added. “I am a functional hermaphrodite, to use the human term. When I mate with another, the exchanges goes both ways. He will fertilise me and I will fertilise him. Of course, depending on the timing, one or both of us will not get pregnant.”

Toby almost found himself giggling. “So you’re both male and female,” he said. “Our doctors will be fascinated to study you.”

“You may study me once the war is over,” the alien said. “The High Lord is moving into his endgame now, while you have yet to comprehend the rules of the game. If you lose, our race will be lost along with yours. You must not lose.”

“We won’t,” Toby said. He knew it was a promise they might not be able to keep. “We’ll keep asking you questions while working on a plan. We won’t let him win.”