A minute before the one hour deadline, President McGee ordered the transfer of U.S security codes, handing over access of all of the U.S government, security and intelligence data to the aliens.
The minute passed. A long one that was. Everyone held their breath, a few murmurs around the room.
Sienna sat quietly in her seat, not liking the decision but not having any other ideas to offer. Nevertheless, she thought a tame surrender was a bad idea. A part of her realized that a ceasefire would get her husband and her daughters back to her. It was a risk worth taking, costs notwithstanding. Fighting against her insecurities, she hoped that the right decision was being made in the room.
General Marshall got off the phone. The alien ships had remained silent, motionless in the sky after the minute had passed. There was a somber rejoicing across the room on hearing the news. There was still the burden of guilt for condemning the rest of the world in the process. Maybe, they had it coming to them anyway. None of them had offered their help to U.S when it was being attacked.
Sienna still felt that the aliens had carefully planned the assault on U.S. Maybe, they were scared of a global scale war against them. They were possibly vulnerable to a concentrated global attack and had managed to isolate the world against US, and now the US against the world.
Chapter 13
The Librarian
Alien Mother-ship
26th January 2019
Alex saw William walk to the end of the room, take his clothes off save for an underwear, and lift a heavy slab over a pit in the corner.
The stench of human filth spread across the room with trebled intensity and Alex’s temporary adaptation gave way. He doubled upon his knees and puked all over the floor, retching out the smell, which had instantly permeated to within his guts.
William sniggered again, and waited for Alex to recover and get back on his feet. When he did, William climbed into the pit, feet first and hung on the edges before dropping down to a floor below. The landing made a soft, slushy, muddy sound. Alex climbed into the pit and immediately realized what it was meant for.
‘Darn! I am climbing into a toilet.’ Alex cursed at the smell yet again.
He too got naked save for the underwear and dropped down the pit. As soon as he did that, his suspicions were confirmed. Under his feet, was the unmistakable consistency of human crap. He felt like vomiting again and right then William held him by his arm, dragging him along.
It was a long sewer, a couple of meters in height and with flanges of a similar width that ran endlessly on either side. William dragged Alex to a run through the sewer for a hundred meters and then stopped under a service door similar to the one Alex had seen in the service corridor before. William pressed a button on the wall and the ladder dropped down. He held Alex and hoisted him up on the ladder before climbing up himself. William pressed another button on reaching the top of the ladder and the door slid up to a floor above. Alex entered the corridor followed by William. William waited a bit and listened intently. When he was satisfied that they were alone, he motioned Alex to move in. Alex found himself in another corridor, walls of which were of polished metal and had much more finesse compared to the service corridor. There was only a faint light on the top middle of the corridor and the pathway seemed neglected.
‘This sector has been abandoned following an accident three years ago. No one comes here, generally.’ William whispered from behind.
‘What do you mean generally?’
William sneered yet again
‘Well, generally means if someone’s here today and we get caught, we will both end up as meat on table.’ William finished the sentence with a guffaw, mocking Alex. Alex did not like the tone of the voice. William was relishing the fact that Alex was shit-scared and had taken it to heart that he outranked Alex, and was pulling his weight around. Alex did not mind much though. He was his only hope on the strange ship right then.
William tiptoed to a room fifty meters ahead and wedged his fingers underneath the door, pulling it up with all his might. Alex saw William for the brute he was, his biceps bulging a twenty inches around, at least. The door budged slowly, and William turned to Alex
‘Get in. I can’t hold it much longer.’
Alex hesitated a bit and then crouched under the door and across it. William grunted and pushed the door a few inches more, sliding his burly frame under the door while holding it up. Alex was sure he could not summon that strength in him and decided to help only if asked to.
William did not ask for any help.
The door opened into a room. Alex measured it by the darkness within and realized it was a large room. Williams walked to a corner and pushed at a console there. The room lit up, with a white light that pervaded the entire room. There was a large dome overhead and the far wall curved in a hemi-cylinder, colored in a similar white. The room appeared dirty, due to a general neglect, abandoned as William had told him earlier.
William was still fiddling with the console. All of a sudden, a lighted sphere appeared in the center of the room. Alex was taken aback and he recoiled back to the nearest wall. Light emanated from the sphere, and a face appeared on the sphere. The face had a pinkish hue and had slender furrows on it. It was much larger than a human face and had tentacles emerging out of its head, the face similar to that of the mythical Medusa. William stepped close to a trembling Alex and whispered in his ears
‘The face of our enemy. The Alien.’
Alex looked puzzled at William. William continued
‘Do not worry. She is not real, just an apparition. She knows all the secrets.’
William turned to the face, hanging in the middle of the room and said
‘Show me the Siege of Zadar.’
The face in the room dissolved slowly and the room darkened. Figures appeared around the room, which Alex realized after a bit to be a three-dimensional hologram of a black and white painting. He started walking around the painting and between it, seeing ladders being perched up against the wall of a fort and many soldiers lying dead in battle attire on the battleground. William too was standing within the hologram, moving his hands on a ladder, perched against the fort wall. Alex realized there was some personal connection here. This must be a battle he had fought.
‘You were in this battle?’ Alex asked William.
‘The Siege of Zadar. We were on the way to Jerusalem, for the Crusade. The Venetians led us to war against the Christian kingdom of Zadar. We were on a Crusade and we ended up killing our brethren. God has cursed me for my sins.’
‘Hey! That is not for you to decide. You were just a soldier, just as I am one and we do not decide whom to attack, do we? I have fought many a battles like that myself, not knowing why I was fighting and for what I was fighting. That is the fate of soldiers like us, William of Montferrat.’
William looked at Alex and nodded. He spread his hands apart and said
‘This here, this is not my war. What am I doing here?’ William asked louder, referring to the current Alien aggression.
‘You are here, aren’t you? And that makes this your war friend. This war is being fought at a much more basic, existential level. This war is for our survival and probably for the survival of the human race. This war is going to touch the lives of each and everyone on this planet and that includes you. You are not in it because someone ordered you to be here. It’s just because you have to be in it, just like I have to be in it.’
William listened and nodded not saying anything after that.
He walked to the console again and flipped a switch, which brought the ‘librarian’ back.
William turned around and asked Alex
‘Where do you stay?’
‘Where? Below?’
‘Yes, below, on Earth?’
‘Virginia’
William pressed a pad on the console and spoke into it
‘Show me Virginia’ he turned to Alex and asked him ‘What’s the address?’
Alex gave him the addr
ess which William repeated back at the console. The face dissolved and the room filled with the aerial view of the campus, right above Alex’s house. The entire area had been shelled and a part of Alex’s house too had borne the brunt of the attack, the eastern walls having collapsed in the bombardment.
‘Is that your house?’
Alex nodded.
‘Okay. You may have to look for new quarters to live.’
Alex did not respond. There was no shelling or bombardment anywhere at that time.
‘Is this live? I mean is this happening now?’
‘Yes this is happening now, as we speak. Yes, live as it happens.’
Alex turned to William
‘Show me Florida, University area.’
William spoke the words into the console yet again. The hologram dissolved and an immersive image of the aerial view of the Florida University appeared before them. They looked down upon the tail of an F-22 wedged in the University football stadium. Almost all the taller buildings had been halved in the attacks. Smoke and fire billowed from the debris strewn all over the College grounds.
An alien ship hung over the main University building, silently hovering over it. There were no planes or harvesters in the air and a few people were on the ground, scurrying around amongst the ruins.
Alex looked at William and then asked to see over the ‘White House’. It was more of the same; devastated visage but the guns had fallen silent. They toured some other places which were in the thick of the war and everywhere, the ships just hung silent in the air.
‘Has the war stopped?’
‘It looks like there is no war now. Something has happened down there.’
Alex had an idea
‘Can we get news here?’
William looked blankly at Alex.
‘Can we get CNN here? Ask her to show me CNN.’
William was not sure what that was but he walked to the pad and asked for CNN.
The room dissolved again and the CNN broadcast came on. An image of Washington with the ship hovering over the Capitol building came on with the anchor’s voice in the background
‘…could be anywhere between three to three and a half million. In addition, millions of others have been injured in the blistering attacks over the past three days. The government is understood to have surrendered to the aliens and there has been a cessation of hostilities since afternoon today. There is no news of the terms of surrender as of now but it has come as a definite relief to the battered lives of the people. They face a long, arduous and painful task of piecing together the shards of their battered lives, to try to locate missing near and dear ones and to get on with their lives as best as they can.
In disturbing news coming from around the world, the alien ships have started attacking all over the rest of the world now. There are reports of massive casualties coming from London, Paris, Dublin, Abu Dhabi, Moscow, New Delhi and Beijing. Were these the terms of the surrender? Is America going to be a mute spectator to the pillage and the carnage that is sure to consume the world in the coming days? Sadly, that is what seems to be the case for now. For CNN…’
William pressed the pad and the footage dissolved away, leaving a dark room behind.
***
Alex was back in the cabin, huddled under a bed. William had to leave for work. If he stayed any longer, his absence would be noticed. After they came back from the ‘library’, William took Alex to a bathroom within the slave quarters, and asked him to take a bath. Then he tonsured his head and gave him a tunic to wear, similar to what he was wearing. He then left the room, tucking Alex under a bunker-bed on the far side of the room.
It was three hours before Alex heard noises coming down the corridor outside the room. He was very tired and had managed a fitful sleep in those three hours. William led a group of about twenty others into the room. Once inside the room, he hushed everyone into silence and asked Alex to come out of hiding. There were many gasps from the crowd and after the initial shock was over, a brief round of introductions was made.
Alex was in the company of men from over nearly a thousand years in that room. There were among others, a priest from 1438, a blacksmith from 1369, a soldier from the East India Company of 1768, a Japanese farmer from 1850 and a Nazi SS General from 1942.
There was much to talk about and they chatted well into the night. They were really excited to know that Alex was from the present. All of them wanted to know about the war and about the chances that humans had against the aliens. What Alex told them spread a pall of gloom in the room. They were disappointed in their legacy, disappointed in the humans of the present.
Yet they absolutely were thrilled at seeing Alex alive. He was their descendant, born hundreds of years after them and represented all that they had struggled for in their lifetimes. Many dreamt of going back to their times though some wanted to get down to Earth and see it for what it was today. The war and the carnage saddened them because it was literally robbing them of their future, a tangible and tantalising future.
After a couple of hours of chitchat, William asked them to get to their beds and huddled together on a bed with Alex and Waffendorf, the Nazi General.
William had a plan.
The aliens kept a tab on their numbers. There was no personal identification of the prisoners. William knew it was a big risk keeping Alex in the ship for long. They had to transfer him out of the ship. The only way to do that was to get him on an Earthbound Daiit transport or harvest ship.
‘How are you going to manage that?’
‘They call a bunch of us once every three days to clean up the place where they keep all the planes and smaller ships. We can slip you into one of the ships during that.’
‘Can we do that undetected?’
‘I think we can.’
William told them his plan. Though risky, Alex thought it was definitely doable.
Chapter 14
Returning Home
Washington, U.S.A
Jan 29, 2019
It had been two days since the ceasefire had been in effect. The guns had fallen silent finally. People had slowly started coming out of their hiding places. There had been government broadcasts saying that an understanding had been reached with the aliens regarding cessation of hostilities between the aliens and the U.S. People were urged not to engage or provoke the ships in any way.
The mood in the Secret Service Hideout was somber. There were news reports of war having broken out in other parts of the world. People huddled in the room around the television, looking at pictures of terror and destruction from around the world. They sadly reminded themselves that this terror and destruction had been exported by America to the rest of the world, the people in the room being directly responsible for that decision. It was a matter of survival, ours versus theirs. Not a difficult choice that, given the circumstances. Still, the images on television filled some with remorse, Sienna one among them. Sons and daughters and husbands were still getting killed, albeit somewhere else. She was not even sure if she had managed to save her family by quietly acquiescing to this selfish decision.
She walked out of the room when she could not take it anymore.
There was a plan to let go of people who wanted to leave. People who wanted to leave the hideout would be allowed to do so.
The President and members of her Cabinet were to stay in the Secret Service hideout for a few more days. Sienna had opted to leave. Lieutenant Carter had offered to accompany her. He was an orphan and had no family to go back to. Barring a couple of old Noble-laureates, they would be the only other space guys left if they opted to stay. They had stuck together the couple of days that they had spent in the hideout. Carter was a few years younger to Sienna and was really quite a gentleman, once Sienna got over the preconceptions she had about him.
They left the base by evening, escorted by Secret Service agents in blindfolds on to the Washington Maryland Interstate with seventeen others who had also decided to leave base. They were given a GMC
Army truck, which they decided to drive on towards Washington. Sienna and Carter got down near the Reagan National Airport.
People were out on the roads, picking up on supplies to get them through difficult times ahead.
Full-scale looting and arson had not started yet. That would come soon. Washington PD had gathered whoever and whatever remained of the Police Force and had managed to get a few patrol cars on road. The Fire Department was helping people sift through the ruins of the attack, discovering their belongings and looking for survivors in shambles of buildings they once called home. There was much too grief in the air and a few huddled together in corners, sharing their woes.
The airport was non-functional, although Sienna saw some activity near the ticketing counters. They both approached the counters and saw a few uniformed staff busy cleaning up the debris that lined the entry points. That sight filled Sienna with pride, seeing the resilience in that group of workers. There was a taxi-service counter on the far end of the Departure lounge and Carter saw a man seated behind the desk.
It took Carter and Sienna three hours of agonizing wait at the gas station to get their rental, a Ford Escape, filled with gas. Sienna thanked Carter again for the help he was offering. Carter bobbed his head
‘I think we are past that point. Anyway, I have nothing better to do or no one to go back to. So I might as well help a colleague find her family.’
Sienna had told him about Alex and about her daughters.
‘Nevertheless, thanks a lot.’
Sienna tried calling Alex and her daughters. The phones were still out and Sienna failed to get in touch with any of them. They took the I-95 to Richmond. It took them a little over an hour. From there, Sienna drove towards Hampton. She knew that no one would be there. However, she could not ignore the off chance that Alex had made it back home.
They reached Hampton to scenes of wanton destruction and mayhem. They found a circuitous way around the damaged highways and reached Hampton late in the evening.
Exodus (The Domus Series Book 2) Page 10
