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

by Christopher Nuttall

  A doctor caught his arm. “We’re going to be moving her into a recovery room,” he said. “We’ve done all we can for her now; we just need to let her have time to heal up and recover from the abuse those bastards heaped on her. I’ve delivered babies by c-section before, but this was worse. I don’t think that any of the others are going to be able to give birth without medical assistance.”

  Edward shuddered. He’d wondered if some of the other girls, the ones who hadn't come with them, had fled into the mountainside on their own. The aliens might just have hunted them down – God knew they’d spent the last few days sweeping the area with a fine-toothed comb – or they might have found shelter elsewhere. But without proper medical attention, they would die when the time came to give birth.

  “They want them dependent upon medical aid,” he said, slowly. “Do you think that some of the babies will be female?”

  “Some of them definitely are,” the doctor said, as a pair of orderlies pushed Dolly’s bed into the next room. “But I don’t know if they can give birth without medical assistance either.”

  Edward shuddered. He’d heard of humans who had given birth in the wild – hell, until humans had realised what germs actually were, every childbirth was risky to both mother and child. Pompey the Great, for all of his vast wealth and power, hadn't been able to save his wife from an infection that had killed both her and her child. These days, there were parts of America where childbirth was hazardous once again.

  But if the hybrid females couldn't give birth without medical assistance, what did that mean?

  Control, he thought, numbly. They want control over the birthing process.

  On deployment, he’d read a series of books about a very inhospitable world, where the ruling power had kept control by occupying the places where women could give birth to children safely. If the alien hybrids needed medical attention to survive giving birth, they’d have a stake in society beyond the obvious. No doubt the aliens had assumed that there wouldn't be any independent human medical centres for much longer.

  I can just imagine one of them trying to use a hospital controlled by the collaborators, he thought, as he followed the trolley into the next room. They’d be handed over to the aliens at once.

  Oddly, the thought made him hopeful. If they felt that they needed to keep the hybrids under control, it suggested that they weren't as confident of dominating them as they seemed. And that meant ... he had no idea, but it was something to pass up the chain. Maybe someone smarter would have a better idea of how it could be turned to humanity’s advantage.

  ***

  Dolly opened her eyes, dazed.

  Her body felt ... tired, as if she had run a long race, but there was no pain. Wonderingly, she reached down towards her chest and touched the folds of skin that remained after she had given birth. Part of her thought that they looked ugly, as if she'd lost weight too fast for her own safety, part of her was merely relieved to have given birth at last. And then she tried to sit upright and discovered that there was a heavy series of bandages and tubes wrapped around her waist.

  “Welcome back to the world,” Edward Tanaka said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Funny,” Dolly admitted. One of her arms had a tube stuck in it too, she realised suddenly. “What happened to me?”

  There was a long pause. “There were ... complications,” Tanaka said, finally. “I’m not sure that I know exactly what happened ...”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Shanna’s voice said. The overweight midwife marched into the room and sat down at the end of the bed. “Don’t scare the child. She isn't so ignorant of what happened to her.”

  Dolly scowled at her. “So,” she said. “What did happen to me?”

  “The baby’s head was too large to get out without medical intervention,” Shanna said, briskly. “They cut into your skin to widen the gap, allowing the child to be pulled out without further complications. After that, they drugged you so that they could repair the damage as best as they could.”

  She nodded towards the bandages. “You should be fine,” she added, “but we’d really prefer you to have several months to rest and recuperate. And try not to get pregnant for another year or so.”

  Dolly shuddered. “I don’t think that would be possible,” she said, looking at the bandages. “What are the tubes for?”

  “Piss and shit,” Shanna said, dryly. “We need you to stay as still as possible. Don’t worry, we have a rich selection of DVDs and we can bring you a laptop, if you would prefer. The only thing missing is an internet connection.”

  “Naturally,” Dolly said. She hesitated, then asked the question she hadn't wanted to ask. “My baby?”

  “Is currently being held in the ward,” Shanna said. “Don’t worry, we are taking good care of the little tyke, but we’re not quite sure what to do with him in the long run. The doctors who analysed the placenta said that there were quite a few alien genetic markers in the blood. God alone knows what that means in the long run.

  “And then there’s the head,” she added. “Do you know that a baby’s skull is normally soft and that it takes several days to harden? This child was born with a hard skull. On the other hand, his emotional development seems to be normal ...”

  “Bring him to me,” Dolly said.

  Shanna hesitated. “You do realise that ...”

  “Bring him to me,” Dolly snapped. “He’s my child. Or is he?”

  “We’re not sure what, if anything, you contributed,” Shanna admitted. “Normally, we would be able to run a paternity test at once, but his genetic code is a little scrambled ...”

  She broke off as Tanaka laid a hand on her arm. “Nurse, Dolly gave birth to the child,” he said. “He’s hers, as much as he is anyone’s. And I don’t think you can ask the other partners to come and visit him in the ward.”

  Shanna gave Dolly a long look, then stood up. “I’ll ask the doctors,” she said, shortly. “And see what they have to say.”

  Dolly watched her waddle off, then looked over at Tanaka. “Will they let her bring the child in here?”

  “Perhaps,” Tanaka said. He frowned, thoughtfully. “Most of the fears of airborne infection were proved to be groundless. Even so ...”

  It was nearly thirty minutes before Shanna returned, accompanied by several doctors and a pair of armed guards. Dolly barely noticed the guards; she only had eyes for the child in the basket, the child who looked up at her with dark alien eyes. And yet the flesh tone was very human ...

  “A hybrid, it would seem,” Tanaka said. He seemed equally fascinated by the child. “What are you going to call him?”

  Dolly hesitated. “Matthew,” she said, finally. “My grandfather was called Matthew.”

  One of the doctors snorted. “You can't take ... Matthew home and introduce him to your parents,” he said. “He’s ...”

  “He’s my child,” Dolly said tartly, “and I will thank you to take that into account.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Washington DC, USA

  Day 242

  The aliens must be pleased about something, Nicolas thought, as he wandered through Washington’s suburbs. They’ve gone and turned the power back on.

  He pushed the thought aside as he approached the building the local resistance had turned into a link to the sewer system, checking the surrounding area to ensure that he was unobserved. Not that it might have mattered; if merely human technology could allow a drone to monitor a single human from high overhead, he didn't want to think about what alien technology could do. But there were other reasons to be careful this time, apart from the obvious. The local resistance was far too closely linked to the criminal underground – and, through them, to the collaborator government.

  It hadn't been hard to ferret out the connections at all, once he'd known to start looking; indeed, Joe and his friends hadn't really been trying to hide them. They’d claimed, when he’d asked, that the connections helped them monitor how the aliens were acting, but t
hey definitely seemed more involved with distributing drugs, operating protection rackets and making life on the streets more miserable than necessary for the helpless population of Washington. Indeed, they’d even helped the aliens to confiscate weapons, claiming that they intended to use them against the occupiers at a later date. Nicolas suspected that they really wanted to keep the population helpless. It was harder to extort money from people when they were armed and ready to fight.

  He tapped on the door as instructed and waited. An eye winked at the peephole, then the door was pulled open and he was yanked inside by a large Chinese man with a tattoo covering his eyes. Nicolas heard the sound of feminine giggling from upstairs as the guard frisked him, not unkindly, then growled a command in his ear, demanding the password.

  “Woody,” Nicolas said.

  It was a stupid password for a whorehouse, but he supposed it made a certain kind of sense. The resistance operated a dozen such buildings in their part of Washington, ranging from quick liaisons with girls for fifty bucks to more elaborate arrangements, where the price was negotiated in advance. Apparently, there was also no shortage of demand for young women to go work in the Green Zone, something the resistance had taken advantage of in the past, before part of the leadership had become criminal. Reading between the lines, Nicolas suspected that quite a few of the girls ended up dead, or dispatched to camps where the Order Police used them until they were all used up.

  The guard released him at once, then led him down a long corridor and into a large room. It was decorated in a style that suggested over a hundred years in the past, perhaps from the South during the civil war. A handful of French Postcards hung on one wall; back then, they would have been considered pornography, but now they were just laughable when compared to internet porn. He looked over at a large fancy sofa and wondered, absently, what sort of person demanded their sex on it. It didn't look strong enough to hold two people even when they were only cuddling.

  “This way,” the guard muttered, as he pushed the dresser to one side, revealing a hatch in the floor. He pulled it open and shone a torch down inside. “They’re on their way.”

  Nicolas wrinkled his nose as he smelt the sewers far below. “Is this place safe?”

  The guard snorted. “Yes, and it has facilities for washing too,” he said. “They’re going to need them.”

  Nicolas broke into a smile as Brad McIntyre’s head appeared out of the hatch, looking around carefully. McIntyre had worked with him before, during operations in Pakistan and the Middle East; he knew he could trust him and his team. The other resistance fighters swiftly followed, then ropes were lowered to allow them to lift up several heavy backpacks. Nicolas allowed his smile to widen as he saw the weapons. Apparently, the local resistance had no mortars or MANPADs left.

  “God, you stink,” he said, when he spied Rufus Dudley. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Fell in the shit,” the Force Recon Marine muttered. “But I’m all right.”

  “And to think we got rid of Shit Pond in Afghanistan,” Nicolas grinned, even though he wanted to gag at the smell. “Where are the showers?”

  The guard was holding his nose and keeping his mouth firmly closed, but he managed to point them towards the showers at the end of the corridor. Thankfully, the local resistance had also agreed to provide fresh clothes. There was some ribbing as Dudley pulled off his clothes and dived into the shower, but not as much as Nicolas had expected. The march through the sewers would have affected all of them.

  “Clothes in the next room,” he said, as Dudley scrubbed himself down vigorously. “And don’t worry, the smell will go away.”

  He listened to Dudley’s stream of obscenities with something reassembling pleasure, then watched as the backpacks of weapons were unpacked and transferred into smaller containers for transfer through Washington. By the time they were done, most of the newcomers were clean and dressed; he tossed them copies of the identification papers Karen had produced for them and watched as they went through them, piece by piece. The only thing lacking was fingerprints or genetic data.

  “Don’t get caught by the Walking Dead,” he said, as he briefed them. “You can probably bribe the Order Police, but the Walking Dead will take you into custody quicker than you can say a word. They’re the ones who will check your fingerprints and suchlike, so if they catch you ... your only choice is to fight and run. Those of you who were on the ground in Yemen may recall how many precautions we had to take. This is going to be much worse.”

  And they may have copies of our secure databases, he thought, grimly. No one had ever expected Washington to be overrun by an enemy force, so it was quite possible that the emergency procedures to destroy sensitive files – including ones identifying SF personnel – had failed, allowing the aliens to capture the documents intact. If so, they would have plenty of ways to identify possible resistance ringleaders – and catch them, if they ever ran their fingerprints or genetic codes against a central database.

  “Now,” he said, once they were ready, “time to move.”

  The local resistance had been annoyed at how little information they’d been given on the true purpose of the team Nicolas had summoned. Joe had demanded, angrily, that they consult with him before launching any operation, just to make sure that they didn't step on his toes. Or so he had claimed; Nicolas suspected that the real reason was to give him a chance to decide if he should allow the operation to go ahead, or if he should betray them to the aliens. It had been too much of a risk allowing him anywhere near General Howery ...

  Nicolas waited until they were outside the building, then led them down towards the warehouse Joe used as his nexus of operations. It was right next to a surprisingly luxurious motel, although it was clear from Nicolas’s first explorations that it was really mainly used for housing the more upmarket whores rather than Joe and his innermost cronies. Joe probably didn’t want to look too wealthy or it might arouse suspicions, either in the minds of his own people or in those of the outside resistance organisation. Or, for that matter, in collaborator minds. They might see what Joe had and decide to take it.

  “That’s the building,” he said, shortly. “Is everyone clear on the first part of the mission?”

  There were nods. They’d been briefed on the outside, after Nicolas had sent an encrypted report back to the resistance leadership. Their first priority wasn't to make contact with the infiltrators in the Green Zone, or to raid the alien positions, but to deal with the criminal gang pretending to be a resistance unit. Nicolas had been in Iraq during the Sunni Awakening and he knew – as did Oldham and his other superiors – that the terrorists had turned into criminals so vile that the Sunnis had turned around and joined the Americans. Had the aliens tolerated Joe and his gang, he wondered, because they soured the image of the resistance? It didn't seem like an alien scheme, but it was possible that one of their collaborators might have thought of it.

  “Good,” he said. He drew the baton from his belt and held it upright. “Hit hard, hit fast ... but we want as many of them alive as possible. And we don’t want attention, so only use guns if there is no other choice. Remember, most of these guys are street thugs who push around defenceless women and children. Let's show them what we can do.”

  He smiled at their expressions, then turned and led the way towards the warehouse door. It was locked, but a few seconds with a lockpick opened it, allowing him to lead the way inside. Two guards, playing cards rather than watching the door, turned to stare at him as he entered, then grabbed for their pistols. It was far too late; Nicolas knocked the first one down with a hard blow to the head, while Dudley took out the second with a hard kick to the chest. They stepped over the stunned bodies and advanced into the warehouse itself.

  Joe had been busy, Nicolas realised, as they tore through the man’s guards and workers. Some of them were probably slaves, in all but name; there was no time to stop and check before they struck. Besides, Stockholm Syndrome had been known to affect prisoners
as well as hostages. Some of them might fight for their captors rather than for the people trying to free them.

  They ran up the stairs and into a small set of offices. Joe was in the largest one, desperately fumbling with his phone while a girl cowered in the corner; Nicolas threw his baton, shattering the phone, and advanced on Joe with slow, menacing steps. The resistance leader opened his mouth, but no words came out. Nicolas growled in rage at the horror and fear in the man’s eyes, then slapped him down hard. Joe sprawled on the floor, blood leaking from his mouth.

  “I think you broke his jaw,” Brett Holmes said. The corpsman eyed the former resistance leader with some interest. “You want me to try to fix him up?”

  “Tie him to a chair first,” Nicolas said. “And then you can let me know how hard I can hit him to get some answers.”

  He turned and walked out of the office, onto the balcony that allowed the managers to survey their empire. Joe had definitely been busy; the interior of the warehouse was crammed with precious goods, including a handful of items he recognised from the Smithsonian. Right now, the remaining members of Joe’s gang were being dragged into the warehouse, secured and left to lie there until Nicolas could decide what to do with them. Normally, hostages and other innocents would be shipped somewhere where they could be cared for properly, but that wasn't an option now.

  “Hell of a mess,” Dudley said, carrying a long-haired girl past him. “They had several poor bitches in that room, just waiting for the call. I could get to dislike these guys, boss.”

  “Me too,” Nicolas said. He turned and went back into the office. Joe was looking up at him, his eyes still fearful. “Let’s talk, shall we?”

  “You’re not resistance,” Joe said, quickly. “You’re ...”

  “Can the crap,” Nicolas snapped. After everything he’d seen, he wanted to snap Joe’s head with his bare hands. “You were trusted to continue to fight, or at least make preparations for a future insurgency. Instead, you make buddies with the collaborators and criminals and turned your group into a bunch of criminals too. And you betrayed your country. Do you know what we can do to you?”