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

by Christopher Nuttall

  But what did it matter? If he was with her, or not, they could still come and take her away at any moment. Hell, what would happen when they reopened the schools! Would Nancy keep her mouth shut, or would she say something indiscreet? She was smart, but she was still a child. It was easy to imagine her saying something innocent that told the world what her stepfather had done.

  He looked back outside at the alien craft and shivered. Once, hanging in the air with no visible means of propulsion, they would have excited his sense of awe. Now, they brought nothing, but terror. And the aliens inside them were even worse. They didn't even care about human life. That was easy to learn from their actions.

  Scowling, he looked over at his drinks cabinet. The Order Police had taken everything, naturally, even the expensive whiskey he’d brought home from Scotland. It was just another reminder of how powerless he truly was ...

  And of just how much danger he’d brought into his stepdaughter’s life.

  Chapter Ten

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 200

  “Wake up,” a voice hissed. “Karen?”

  Karen opened her eyes, quickly. She was lying in her bed in Washington’s Green Zone, the heart of the collaborator government. Jasmine, one of the maids, who’d somehow become her lover, was whispering to her.

  “What ...?” She cleared her throat and started again. “What’s happening?”

  “You received an emergency call from Director Fairchild,” Jasmine said. The maid gave her a worried look. “She wants to see you, immediately.”

  Karen sat upright, reaching for her watch. It was 6 o’clock in the morning.

  “Oh,” she said. “Did she say why?”

  Jasmine shook her head.

  “I see,” Karen said, as she pulled herself out of bed. “I’ll be along in a moment or two.”

  The bedroom had belonged to a congressman, she’d been told; the sheer luxury of the room had stunned her when she’d first seen it. Nothing, but the best for the collaborator government and their assistants; they had the best food and drink the country could provide, even foodstuffs that were in short supply elsewhere. Karen could drink as much coffee as she liked and no one would bat an eyelid, even though coffee was scarce outside the walls. And that was merely the tip of the iceberg.

  She briefly considered, as she pulled on her shorts and shirt, using her emergency escape plan. There were ID cards that should get her out of the guarded part of the complex and into the rest of Washington DC, where she could link up with the remainder of the resistance. A second set of cards should get them through the checkpoints and out into the countryside. If they knew that she’d been spying for the resistance ...

  No, she told herself. If they'd known, they would have kicked down the door, grabbed her and implanted her with controlling implants. And then she would have been Daisy’s slave, as well as being used to mislead the resistance. It was a great deal harder to detect one of the Walking Dead on the other end of an email. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, shivered at her haunted eyes, and then gave Jasmine a quick kiss. Moments later, she was outside the door and heading downstairs. There would be a car already waiting for her.

  Despite the early hour, the lower floors were very active, with dozens of collaborators moving around helping themselves to the food. The aliens and their servants knew how to indulge themselves, Karen had to admit; almost every chef in Washington was employed by the collaborators to prepare their meals. She’d wondered why none of them tried to poison the collaborators, before discovering that their families had been rounded up and were held in a POW camp. If a single one of them poisoned the collaborators, every family would suffer and die – if they were lucky. There were fates worse than death.

  She kept her expression blank as she looked over at the buffet table. There was fresh milk, cereal, bacon and eggs ... even fresh bread and meat. It was staggering, even by the standards of pre-invasion America – and now it was a shocking display of conspicuous consumption. There were people starving on the streets of Washington, or being forced to eat the tasteless slop the aliens provided as their daily rations, but the collaborators were living large. It was their reward for serving the aliens.

  It wasn't the only one, Karen had discovered. The aliens provided drink, drugs and women to anyone who was interested. It was sickening to realise just how many tastes they were prepared to satisfy, as long as someone remained loyal. The half-naked maids serving breakfast were merely the tip of the iceberg. Karen had heard rumours that some of the collaborators had truly perverse tastes. She wasn't sure what she would have done if she’d being confronted with proof. What could she have done?

  Karen walked outside into the cold air and climbed into the waiting car. That was another sign of luxury, she knew; apart from the Fire Department and a handful of medical services, no one had fuel unless they were collaborators. She yawned as the driver took her away from the commandeered mansion and down towards the block of buildings that had been converted into the country’s administrative centre. The aliens had occupied the White House and the Pentagon for themselves.

  She smiled, briefly, as she saw the towering ship of the crashed alien ship in the distance, still looming over the city. The resistance had done ... something to bring it down, even though it might have crashed on Washington and crushed the city under its weight. As it was, even the force of the impact had been enough to cause an earthquake and knock down dozens of buildings in Washington. No one knew how many people had died in the chaos. It was tragic, but at least it showed that the aliens were far from invincible. They could be bested.

  The car stopped outside the administrative centre and Karen climbed out, nodding goodbye to the driver. Two guards came to meet her; they scanned her body with alien designed sensors, before reluctantly agreeing that she seemed harmless. Karen couldn't blame them for being paranoid, even though it was annoying. The resistance had never stopped testing the defences of the Green Zone, even going so far as to use suicide bombers. And none of the collaborators expected mercy if they happened to be captured by the resistance.

  She shivered as she was escorted into the building and up nine flights of stairs. The resistance leadership might know who she was, and what she’d done for them, but none of the rank-and-file would know a thing. It was quite possible that a resistance fighter might kill her, without ever knowing who he’d really killed. Karen hadn’t fully realised it when she’d committed herself to spying for the resistance, but there was no escaping it now. She might well wind up being targeted by both sides.

  The core of the collaborator government was assembling in a large conference room that overlooked Washington DC. Karen peered through the window, wondering quite why she’d been summoned, and looked down towards the darkened city. There were no lights at all outside the Green Zone, no suggestion that Washington had once been the most powerful city in the world. Now, it was effectively a prison camp, with thousands of homeless people squatting in abandoned buildings. And many of them had joined the resistance.

  “Karen,” Daisy Fairchild said. “I want a full record of this meeting.”

  Karen nodded and pulled her notebook and pen out of her pocket. Daisy had been appointed the Director of Human Resources, the alien-backed organisation that determined how human manpower would be utilized to serve their purposes. She was an ambitious person, Karen knew, and wouldn't care if she sold out the rest of the human race, as long as she achieved her aim of power and responsibility. And, unfortunately, she was genuinely competent. SETI had made good use of her, before the aliens arrived. They had even more reason to be grateful for her.

  She scowled, inwardly, as General Howery walked into the room. His face had been warm and expressive when she’d first met him, but now he was an emotionless monster, one of the Walking Dead. The imprisoned emotions she had once seen in his eyes were gone, leaving behind a soulless shell. If someone hadn't insisted that he shave and look reasonably presentable, he wouldn't have cared
about his appearance at all. All he cared about was pleasing his alien masters.

  The thought chilled her to the bone. If she was discovered, she could expect no less. And then she’d be a helpless slave too.

  Karen clamped down on her emotions as the final person walked into the room. The alien was inhumanly tall and thin, with dark eyes that seemed to stare right into a person’s soul. Karen suspected that she was imagining it – if the aliens could read minds, surely they would have known about her treachery – but she still had as little to do with the aliens as she could. Daisy didn't seem to mind; the more she monopolised their attention, the more effective power she held in her hands.

  “Be seated,” Ethos said, in his whispery voice. “We have work to do.”

  Karen leaned against the wall – a mere assistant was hardly allowed to sit at the table – and watched the committee members as they sat down. None of them seemed very pleased that the alien was there, or that they were under scrutiny. Karen wasn't too surprised; the aliens didn't seem to care about their collaborators enriching themselves, as long as it didn't impinge on their activities, but quite a few of the bastards were breaking that rule. If they pushed the aliens too far ... well, they could just look at Howery and know what was in store.

  She tried to avoid looking at the alien, even though her eyes kept creeping back towards the strange creature. Ethos wore a one-piece suit that covered everything below the neck, but it was still easy to see the shape of his body – and to realise that there was nothing that might be recognised as genitals. There was no penis between his legs, no breasts ... not even a hint of a vagina. Was Ethos male or female? There was no way to know.

  “Five hours ago,” Howery said, “there was a major attack on a series of garrisons near Mannington, Virginia. The attack used a level of force we have not seen for quite some time.”

  Karen winced, inwardly. America might have had a reputation for having more guns than people, but those were pistols and rifles, not antiaircraft missiles and machine guns. The President might have cancelled all of the gun control laws, yet there just hadn't been time to distribute heavier weapons all over the country. It would be years before the resistance ran out of small arms, but heavier weapons were harder to replace.

  The aliens had leaned heavily on America’s former allies and trading partners, threatening dire revenge if they were caught shipping weapons into America – or any other occupied territory, for that matter. Karen suspected that Europe and Russia were quietly ignoring the alien demands, working through middlemen to keep the resistance supplied. Both powers would have good reason to want to keep the aliens tied down. Even so, it was unlikely that they could meet the resistance’s requirements. Unlike Afghanistan, when the US had supplied man-portable antiaircraft missiles to the insurgents, their countries were under direct threat.

  “The question before us,” Howery continued, “is if the attack was meant as a sharp blow in its own right or if they were trying to keep us distracted from something else.”

  Daisy frowned. “Surely they intended to hit a vulnerable force,” she said. “How could something so large be a distraction?”

  “There's no reason why the distraction force can’t be larger than the true threat,” Howery pointed out, his voice still toneless. “In this case, they may well have wanted us to look elsewhere while they did something else.”

  “Throwing away men and equipment to do it,” Daisy pointed out. “Inefficient.”

  Karen rolled her eyes, silently relieved that she wasn’t expected to offer her contribution to the debate. Daisy might well have a point, she decided, but liberating Mannington – or anywhere else for that matter – wouldn’t have benefited the resistance at all. The aliens would just move forces over to seal off the liberated town, then attack, hoping to take out as much of the resistance force as possible. Any time the resistance got into a stand-up fight with overwhelming alien firepower, the outcome was inevitable.

  No, the resistance hadn't been trying to liberate the town. They’d had something else in mind.

  The debate went on for what felt like hours as everyone competed to have their say – and impress the silent alien. Karen kept notes, as per her orders, wondering why Daisy didn't simply record the meetings. But then, records would have been easy to share with the others and Daisy, a past mistress of bureaucratic infighting, knew better than to let them see her notes.

  “Steps must be taken to prevent a repeat of the attack,” Ethos said, finally. “I want the entire area cleared of humans, then razed to the ground. If there was some other purpose in mounting the offensive, we will disrupt it by ripping the area apart and searching it thoroughly. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Daisy said.

  Karen shivered. She'd known how the aliens had been evicting human settlers from the lands near their cities, forcing them into refugee camps as the first step in moving them away from their former homes, but she hadn’t realised that they were prepared to do it elsewhere. But why not? If there was a reason the resistance had targeted Mannington, forcing the population to move might expose the resistance – or disrupt whatever they were planning before it could come to fruition. The fact that the decision was cold and heartless – and that it would cause no shortage of misery – didn't seem to worry anyone.

  General Howery had an excuse; his emotions had been torn out of him and replaced with unwavering dedication to the alien cause. The rest of the collaborators had no such excuse. They were prepared to do anything to maintain their power and claim alien protection, anything at all. And if that included forcing humans off their lands, just so the aliens could move in ... they’d do it without a second thought.

  “It will take several days to set up the camps and provide a source of food and drink,” Daisy said. Her department had rounded up FEMA experts, but it had also collected every scoutmaster or military logistics officer it could find. They were all experienced at taking care of people who had been forced to leave their homes. “Once that’s done, we can start clearing the area.”

  The alien bowed his great head in an exaggerated nod. No one really knew what their body language was like, or how to read it. The only caste that showed anything close to human emotions was the warriors, who seemed to lack the reserve of their fellows. They were so much like humans that some posters on the internet had wondered if they were humans, the results of alien experimentation with human DNA. It didn't seem likely.

  “We shall discuss other considerations,” Ethos said. It was hard to pick out any emotion in the alien voice, but he certainly sounded accusatory. “The supply of components for lunar operations has been delayed.”

  “We’re working on solving the bottlenecks as fast as possible,” Daisy assured him, quickly. “There were just too many dependencies on China ...”

  Karen concealed her amusement with an effort. The United States had gotten into the habit of purchasing far too much from China, a source that had collapsed into civil war after their economy evaporated into nothingness. She suspected that the aliens were relieved that they wouldn't have to fight the Chinese as well as the rest of the world, but it had accidentally put a crimp in their plans. It would take time to rebuild the industrial sectors that had been allowed to wither, even without the resistance destroying everything they could. She privately doubted that the aliens would see a return to full production in less than ten years.

  But it was a mystery why the aliens even wanted human production. Compared to their craft, the space shuttle was a sick joke. The craft could barely get up into orbit and NASA had been on the verge of cancelling the whole program before the aliens had arrived. Humanity had sent a handful of men to the moon; the aliens had sent a billion colonists from one star to another. There was no comparison. If the aliens had met humanity in space, perhaps they would have been inclined to give the human race more respect.

  She’d added that question to the emails she’d sent to the resistance, but there was no reply. They rarely told h
er anything ...

  “I think we’re finished here,” Daisy said, brightly. Only someone who knew her well could see how frayed she was around the edges. “I shall be hosting meetings to discuss specific subjects later on.”

  Karen watched as the room emptied itself, the alien leaving through a separate door that led up towards the craft resting on the roof. For whatever reason, the aliens rarely slept in human dwellings, preferring to use their own ships and buildings. Maybe they just found them a little uncomfortable. The melted plastic design they used for their own cities didn't attract humans either.

  “You can type up the notes on the computer and then forward them to me,” Daisy ordered Karen, as soon as they were alone. “And then I want the manpower reports from Mannington and the surrounding areas. There have to be people there we can use.”

  Karen shivered. She wanted to ask if Daisy cared about the people living in the area, but she already knew the answer. Daisy’s sole concern was maintaining her own position – and if that meant that Mannington and its inhabitants were to be sacrificed, it didn't matter to her. All that mattered was herself.

  “Yes, Director,” she said. “I shall see to it at once.”

  And I shall pass on the warning, she added, in the privacy of her own mind. Maybe the resistance can do something to stop them.

  But she couldn't think of anything they could do. The aliens might even be hoping that they would try, just so they could deal with them once and for all. A chance to catch the resistance was certainly worth sacrificing a whole town.

  And there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Alien Command Ship #2

  Day 200

  “This would be beautiful, if it wasn't so dangerous,” Felicity Hogan said. “The flying aircraft carrier.”