Outside Context Problem: Book 03 - The Slightest Hope of Victory

by Christopher Nuttall

  Nicolas scowled at him. He was fairly good at reading humans, but reading the aliens was almost impossible. No one really knew how they showed emotion, even though he’d heard that some of the aliens were practicing human expressions. If an alien chose to tell him a bare-faced lie, would he realise it before it was too late?

  “Carlson believed them,” he said, reluctantly.

  “But he has been a prisoner ever since the ISS was destroyed,” Oldham pointed out, mildly. “How do you know he isn't one of the Walking Dead?”

  “He was emotional,” Nicolas said. He’d spent time undercover in Afghanistan and he knew something about blending into a foreign country, but it would be harder to blend into an alien crew, even if he wasn't trying to hide. “There was none of the ... coldness that marks the Walking Dead.”

  “But, you see,” Oldham said, “he could be a new kind of Walking Dead? He might be able to project a human face, without actually being a collaborator instead of just another victim ...”

  Nicolas shook his head. “I don’t think that’s possible,” he said. “If they could do that, we’d all be dead by now.”

  Oldham lifted both eyebrows, inviting him to continue.

  “A Walking Dead cannot pass for a normal human,” Nicolas said. “They appear cold and inhuman; their previous emotional connections and ties are all gone. Even if confronted with their families, or offered sex, they remain disinterested. We can pick them out easily, even without talking to them. There’s no point in them sending one of them to try to infiltrate our group. We’d know immediately.

  “If they could control someone like me, someone who could still laugh and cry and make love, without leaving any signs, they would have done so,” he continued. “There would have been hundreds of prisoners released, or allowed to escape, and they would have led the aliens straight to the resistance bases. If I’d been implanted, do you think I would have sent you a message that was bound to raise your suspicions?”

  “It did happen once,” Oldham said, quietly. “To a Jihadist cell in Iran. One of the women was apparently implanted.”

  Nicolas blinked, then nodded in understanding. “Just how many connections did she have to the men there?”

  Oldham smiled. “Point,” he said.

  Devious bastards, Nicolas thought. Just because their technology had limits didn't stop them from figuring out ways to overcome those limits. How very human of them. A woman in a complete veil would be almost invisible, particularly to men who thought of women as being good for nothing more than doing housework and making babies. And she would have been there, listening, as all of their plans were discussed. The aliens must have been laughing.

  “There were quite a few devices on your person,” Oldham said, changing the subject. “Would you care to talk about them?”

  Nicolas nodded. “One of them is a recorded message for the President, proposing an alliance,” he said. “Another is a small collection of tactical data, also for the President or for the analysts. The others ...”

  He took a deep breath. “The others are designed to free someone from their clutches,” he explained. “We can free the Walking Dead.”

  Oldham stared at him. “And are you sure that it would work?”

  Nicolas smiled. “I think we can test it,” he pointed out, dryly. “And if it works, we can decide what to do next.”

  There was an almost hungry expression in Oldham’s eyes. “Tell me how it works,” he ordered. “Now.”

  Nicolas explained as best as he could. “The implants themselves are designed to interface comprehensively with the human brain,” he said. “Attempting to remove them through human medical techniques will destroy the host’s brain; attempting to shut them down will inflict crippling damage too. However, they can be taken to pieces from the inside. Each of the vials contains enough nanomachines to liberate one person from the Walking Dead implants.”

  Oldham’s eyes narrowed. “And what happens after that?”

  “They weren't certain,” Nicolas admitted. “They were confident that the implants would be disabled without killing the host, but they weren't sure about what would happen afterwards, once the person was free. There might be permanent damage, sir, or they might be able to walk and act normally. The whole process is apparently more risky than they were prepared to admit.”

  He hesitated. “The VP, sir, was a failure,” he added. “The implant process didn't work quite right. Right now, he’s effectively a drooling idiot. They have to puppet his body directly when they parade him in front of the cameras.”

  Oldham scowled. “That doesn't explain why he was the only failure,” he said.

  “He wasn't,” Nicolas said, flatly. “The process apparently fails at least once in every ten attempts, no matter how they refine their implants. He’s ... just the unlucky bastard who can't simply be reduced to his component atoms and disposed of.”

  “Which explains their reluctance to implant everyone,” Oldham mused. He looked over at Nicolas for a long searching moment. “You do realise that this will have to be tested?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nicolas said.

  “And if it fails, we may have to consider the fact that you are lying?”

  Nicolas nodded impatiently.

  “I shall discuss it with higher authority,” Oldham said. He tapped the table, loudly enough to be heard outside the room. A moment later, both of the guards walked into the compartment. “Until then, I’m afraid that you will have to remain a prisoner.”

  Nicolas rolled his eyes, inwardly, but understood that Oldham had no choice.

  “Take me back to prison, guys,” he said, to the two guards.

  ***

  Abigail’s interrogation was much the same as Nicolas had described his own, although there were three people – all masked – facing her. It bothered Abigail that they didn't seem to trust her, even though she would probably have done the same thing in their shoes. She was a reporter, a person who would always be in search of the next hot scoop – never mind how many lives might be put at risk by what she published. It was impossible to think of a way to explain that she knew better, or that she’d risked her own life challenging the aliens. All she could do was answer the questions and hope that what she told them was actually useful.

  “Your ideas for spreading the word were inventive,” one of her interviewers said, afterwards. “They appear to have spread.”

  “Good,” Abigail said. They might no longer have been able to trust the internet, or any accredited reporter now that the aliens were pulling their strings, but there would be ways of getting the word out. “That’s what I meant it to do.”

  “However, you will have to remain here for a while,” the interviewer added. “We cannot risk word getting out, not now.”

  “I understand,” Abigail said. “I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

  She allowed them to show her back to their room, then sat down on the bed. “I think they want to believe us,” she said, “but I can't blame them for being suspicious.”

  “War is Darwinian,” Nicolas said. He didn't seem too bothered by the fact they were effectively prisoners, somehow. “The smarter ones survive by not taking chances.”

  Chapter Four

  Alien Base, Near Casper, Wyoming, USA

  Day 193

  “What have you done to me?”

  The alien doctors – or so she thought of them, for the alternatives were even more frightening – ignored her. They rarely answered her questions; indeed, she had a feeling that only a couple of them could even talk. Instead, they examined her body, injected her with a tailored regime of drugs and otherwise left her to wander her room while her child grew inside her. No, not her child. Their child.

  Dolly had lost track of how long it had been since she’d been taken prisoner, then transferred to the alien base and impregnated. It seemed like something out of a bad movie and there were times when she thought that it was all a nightmare, from which she could wake up if she only tried hard e
nough. But maybe that wasn't surprising. The aliens drugged her regularly, leaving her utterly dependent on them. It might easily have been six months since she had been impregnated, or more. There was no way to know.

  She put a hand on her belly, feeling the child growing inside her. It seemed to be developing awfully fast, although she was no doctor or midwife. The few sex education classes she had taken hadn't been very detailed on just what happened as a child grew in the womb, but she did recall that the average child took around nine months from conception to birth. Had she been a prisoner for nine months or was the alien baby growing faster than a human child?

  One of the aliens pushed at her gently and she lay down on the examination table. The first few times, she had tried to resist or even to bargain, but they’d simply done ... something ... to her and she’d lost the will to try to fight. They didn't seem inclined to cause her pain deliberately, unlike the human collaborators who had captured her, yet they didn’t allow her objections to stop them from doing what they needed to do. Grey leathery hands touched her flesh lightly, as if the aliens were marvelling over the feel of human flesh, then they started waving sensors over her body, concentrating on her belly. No doubt they wanted to see how the child was developing.

  Dolly looked over at one of the taller aliens, trying to get its attention. The alien seemed disinclined to pay any attention to the human on the table; they didn't seem to recognise her as anything, but a surrogate mother for their child. Dolly had puzzled over that, when she’d been able to think relatively clearly; what sort of evolutionary process would produce a race that needed another race to carry its children? She’d heard of birds that laid eggs in nests that belonged to other birds, but how could that work when the two races came from very different ecosystems? Surely there weren't humans on the alien homeworld.

  They could have been coming here for years, she thought, numbly. They could have had centuries to plan their invasion.

  She remembered, dimly, all the hope and optimism that had swept the globe when the alien mothership had been detected for the first time. Humanity had hoped that the aliens would have all the answers and that they would share them with humanity, a hope that now seemed naive and pointless. Dolly could see, now, that the aliens had lied to them long enough to convince humanity to lower its guard, then they’d attacked with stunning force. For all she knew, they could control the entire world by now, directly or indirectly.

  One of the aliens stepped in front of her, holding a medical tool that looked alarmingly like a dagger. Dolly tensed, wondering if they literally intended to cut the alien baby out of her womb; the alien touched her forehead and her panic faded away into nothingness. A numbness fell over her body, broken only by a faintly unpleasant sensation from between her breasts. Moments later, that too was gone and she fell into blackness.

  When she opened her eyes, she found herself in what she thought of as the alien recovery room. It was a plain and unadorned as the rest of the alien complex – there were no paintings, or artworks, or anything else that humans recognised as decoration – but it seemed to have been designed specifically for humans. The table and chairs were just right, unlike most of the alien furniture.

  Sitting upright, unsure of just how long she had been out of it, she patted her body looking for the scars. The child was still inside her, she realised, but there was a faint pain between her breasts that was slowly fading away. Dolly peered down, trying to see what they’d done, yet her skin was unblemished, utterly unmarked. If it wasn't for the pain, she would have wondered if she’d imagined it all.

  She looked up – and almost jumped out of her skin. One of the aliens was standing there, facing her ... how the hell had she missed his presence? He didn't seem to have slipped through a hidden door, although it was hard to find the doors in the alien complex. One of the more normal prisoners, the ones who hadn't given up hope yet, had even suggested that the aliens saw colours differently from humanity. It was quite possible that the doors were clearly marked as such, but the human eye couldn't see the markings. Or, for that matter, that the walls were covered in invisible artworks.

  “Our child is growing as predicted,” the alien said. As always, there was no hint of emotion in its voice. “You have no reason to fear.”

  Dolly tried to glare at the alien. It could never have been mistaken for human, no matter where it went. The creature was inhumanly tall and thin, with an oversized head, dark eyes and long fingers that seemed designed for precision work. It wore a simple white tunic, but there were no bumps or protrusions that might have indicated sex ... at least in humanity. For all she knew, the aliens might pollinate like flowers, rather than the messy lovemaking of humanity.

  “Thank you,” she snarled. “What have you done to me?”

  The alien seemed utterly unaffected by her tone. “You are bearing the future in your womb,” he informed her. “Your child will be the first of a new era.”

  Dolly gritted her teeth. Every woman had the nightmare of being raped, of being forced into sex against her will ... and of carrying her attacker’s child to term. The thought of being raped by aliens was absurd, surely, and yet it had happened. They’d impregnated her, turning her into a brood mare ... she would almost sooner have dealt with a human rapist. The cool clinical approach of the aliens didn't disguise the fact that they’d treated her like a piece of meat. They didn't even have sexual lusts to drive them forwards.

  “I don’t want the child,” she said, although her feelings were mixed. How could she refuse to accept a child from her body? But was it really a child of hers? A rapist’s child would still be partly hers, yet the aliens ... was she anything more than a host mother? She wished that she had spent more time paying attention in biology class. “How could you do this to me?”

  The alien seemed surprised, although that could have just been her imagination. “You do want the child,” it insisted. “You must want the child.”

  Dolly scowled. “Go away,” she snarled, “and leave me alone.”

  They normally ignored her when she shouted insults or demands at them. This time, the alien turned and walked out of the chamber. Dolly watched him stepping through a door that hadn't been there a moment ago and sagged, feeling hot tears prickling at her eyes. The alien might have left, but she had no illusions about her fate. She was still their captive and she was still carrying their child. And God alone knew what they would do to her after she’d given birth. For all she knew, they might just put another child in her – and continue the process time after time.

  She touched a belly and thought, again, about killing herself. But the thought refused to focus. They’d done something to her mind, she realised dully; there had been plenty of times in the past she’d considered suicide as a possible escape hatch from pain and suffering. Now, the very thought was repulsive ... even though she was far worse off than she’d been as a child. How could she have seen the problems of her teenage years as the end of her world?

  Because I was young and stupid, she thought, answering her own question. And because I didn't know just how bad it could get.

  ***

  “You think that they know we’re here?”

  “I hope not,” Edward muttered, in response. “But if they did, they’d come after us.”

  They’d spent most of the last two days hiding cameras near the alien city, although they hadn't been able to actually set them to transmit their signals to a nearby receiving station. It was terrifying to realise just how much they’d lost, now they were fighting with a far more advanced opponent. There were no longer drones to orbit target complexes so high in the sky that they couldn't be seen, let alone combat radios and other ways to coordinate a large force as it advanced against the enemy. Using radios would have brought the aliens down on them like the hammer of God.

  He shook his head. No, they would just have to carry out the surveillance operation the old-fashioned way. Every few days, they would go to the cameras, recover the memory cards and take the
m back to the tent, where they could attach the recordings to emails and send them out over the hidden cable network. Edward would have preferred to attach the cameras to the cables directly, but it was an unacceptable risk when the discovery of one camera could lead directly to the others – and the cable network. Given enough time, the aliens could disable it – or use it to track down the other resistance cells.

  A faint hum echoed through the sky as another alien transport passed overhead, dropping down towards the city. As always, the sight evoked wonder and terror in him; the aliens just seemed to ignore the laws of physics as humans understood them. No aircraft he’d ever seen could just stop dead and hang in the sky, not even a helicopter. It gave the aliens a tremendous advantage when it came to dogfighting with human aircraft, an advantage they’d utilized ruthlessly. The once-mighty USAF had been battered out of the sky in barely two weeks of fighting.

  “That's the camera in place,” Georgina assured him. “They should get plenty of pictures of the alien city.”

  “Excellent,” Edward said. “Time to move on to the next vantage point.”

  He’d wondered, while lying awake at night, just what was the point of gathering so much intelligence. The only plan he’d been able to think of for attacking the alien city involved smuggling a tactical nuke into the area, then detonating it – the aliens would have no idea who to blame for the attack, or how to hit back. But the resistance had learned the hard way that the alien sensors were much better than humanity’s systems. It was quite possible that they would detect a nuke in transit and either capture it or destroy it from a safe distance.

  The only alternative was to put together an infantry force to attack on the ground, but that would be an operation fraught with risks. There were hundreds of alien warriors in view around the city at any one time, while there were no doubt others in the buildings or nearby, ready to come to the city’s aid. Unlike humanity, they could keep their rapid reaction force in orbit or on the other side of the globe and they’d still be able to get it into attack position within minutes.