Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

by Warwick Gibson

  But how were they going to get out of the cavern without being noticed?

  43

  Lake Adelaide

  Southern Alps, New Zealand

  None of the machines Tomas had encountered in the citadel complex had seemed to respond to sound. As he looked up at the two 'fix-it' robots working on the hole at the end of the tunnel, that thought was uppermost in his mind. He turned to the others.

  "I can't see those two following a distraction off into the darkness, say a flare," he said softly, "and we have to make sure they don't see us. The citadels must know what humans look like by now."

  He eyed Brun speculatively for a moment, and then the two men worked out a plan. It involved a lot of upper body strength, so the women were excluded. Cathy was glad of that, and Eileen didn't comment.

  The slow, careful climb up the scaffolding took forever, but the structure didn't move under their weight and give them away. When they were right behind the machines, Tomas signalled a go. Each of the men lifted a flat rock from inside his shirt, before they attacked at the same time.

  One arm hooked around the top of the machine, while the other smashed everything that looked like a sensor or eyepiece with the rock. It was low-tech, but it was also unexpected, and that was the only advantage humanity had.

  When they had done all they could, they lifted the machines off the scaffolding and hurled them out into the darkness. Both machines hit the rocky surface of the slope and bounced once. After that they didn't move.

  The two women scrambled up the scaffolding and climbed into the tunnel. Together the team managed to tilt the scaffolding away from the cliff face, until it toppled over. It crashed down the slope below them, disintegrating as it did so.

  "Oops," whispered Tomas, "the fix-it boys had an accident!"

  "Second accident in this place today," said Eileen, with a smile. "What are the odds of that?"

  A lot of rock had been stacked inside the tunnel, and it looked like the citadel intended to make a very substantial plug at the end of the tunnel. The team scrambled over it, and pushed past the partition they'd put up on the way in.

  Once they were out of the tunnel, the appearance of the old mine workings and the spectacular nature of the forest were a balm. They were surrounded by living things, normal things. It reminded Cathy how incongruous their recent surroundings had been. Then it was a short walk through the forest to the helicopter.

  The two pilots made them welcome, and helped them stow the gear. Tomas got them started on an immediate takeoff. There had been no pursuit, but none of them would relax until the pilots had the helicopter well away from the place.

  Once they were underway it was time for a bite to eat and a well-earned break, but Tomas sat on one side by himself. He was busy making sense of what they had seen, and organising his thoughts for his report.

  The complex had been different, and human beings were curious creatures. It had appeared organised, clean, and sometimes magical, yet he had to dissuade himself from these thoughts. The creatures who built it were killers. He had learned, around the world, to never look at the surface of things. In this case, it was a fair appearance that was built over foul intentions.

  Content with his analysis, he leaned back in his seat. Going over the mission one more time, he decided he was happy with what the team had achieved. They were bringing home information, and that was always a priceless commodity.

  It was late by the time they arrived at Ohakea, and they opted for a shower and a good night's sleep. They would report to Cal at Waiouru the next morning.

  The dozen men and women who kept Ohakea operational were glad of the company. Now that cell phones were gone and short wave radio was under constant attack by the citadels, hearing the latest news had become important. Sharing information now had the feel of ancient times, when two hunter-gatherer bands met up by chance.

  Tomas told the Ohakea team about the citadels in New Zealand. One was out to sea on the Kermadec Rise, and three were on land. There was a site on the Inner Kaikoura range, and another at Lake Tarawera, while they had just come from the one at Lake Adelaide. The citadel at Lake Tarawera had been the most active, destroying much of the remaining human activity in the upper North Island.

  What was left of the big cities had been hardest hit. There were many days when the sky was crossed with the trails from high-energy arcs as they swept toward their targets. But eventually the science team ran out of steam, and had to turn in.

  Doug greeted Cathy with a hug when Tomas and his team returned to the Tangiwai caverns. Since life was now an ongoing crisis, the 'crisis room' where they were meeting was getting known more as the 'reporting in' room.

  Doug had been worried about the chances of her returning from the Lake Adelaide citadel, but his warm greeting wasn't entirely due to that. She sensed he was hiding something.

  "What is it?" she said, as she stepped back from him. Doug looked a little like a child who'd been caught out at something.

  "The Civil Defence building in Wellington took a direct hit from the Kaikoura citadel," said Cal, stepping in. "It's hard to get information from down there right now, so we don't know who survived and who didn't."

  "Jimmy Rumbal . . ." she said quietly, "and all the others".

  "We don't know," said Doug firmly. "Sorry, but we just don't know."

  She sat down in a daze. She and Jimmy had grown into the job at Civil Defence together. How many years had it been now?

  Once the room was full, Cal got the meeting started. The heads of the different departments listened to Tomas' report in silence. Some took notes. It was clear this new information was filling in gaps in their knowledge, and generating new questions.

  "We've got some news for you, too," said Cal, when the question and answer session had finished. "The citadels have been absorbing biomass."

  Tomas looked him blankly, but the more scientifically minded on his team lifted their heads to see where this was going.

  "There's a steadily growing ring around the citadels now, a dead zone where everything has been harvested. The citadel sends out machines that take everything above ground and sieve the soil as well – God knows why – and the landscape looks like tailings from a coal mine when they're done."

  "There was nothing like that at Lake Adelaide," said Eileen, and Cal shook his head.

  "You came out of the tunnel well away from the citadel," he said. "There's nothing living around the northern end of the lake now.

  "We managed to get a light aircraft in from Te Anau," he continued. "One of the few agents we've got left that far south."

  "The question is," cut in Tomas, "whether plundering our resources is their ultimate goal, or a step on the way to something else. I think it's something else."

  The room was silent for a long time. Most of those present hadn't thought that far ahead.

  "Well, you can factor something else into your equation," said Cal, getting up to stand in front of a film screen behind him. It was already unrolled.

  Without the previous level of technology, everyone was having to get used to methods that were old-fashioned to them. Cal nodded to the back of the room, and a map of the world appeared on the screen. A moment later hundreds of stylised towers were superimposed on it, giving the positions of the citadels.

  "If we send anything other than heavily disguised morse code we're asking for our transmission sites to be destroyed," he said, "but there appears to be no limit on how much we can listen in.

  "I'll spare you the details, but most of their talk – which we can't yet understand – is too regular to be anything but automated."

  Notations for times and volume were overlayed on most of the citadel glyphs. Two of them stood out as a blaze of activity notations.

  "The amount and irregularity of activity at these two sites suggests they're manned, though that may not be the correct word anymore. Maybe 'aliened' is.

  "You can see that one of these sites is in Cambodia, and the other in Peru,"
he said, "exactly opposite each other on the planet."

  Tomas caught his breath. Destroy those two sites and they would have cut the head off the alien beast. The odds had just gone from bloody impossible to highly unlikely.

  44

  Mount Weather underground complex

  Washington, USA

  "So the solution is just as likely to kill me as the problem," said President Marshall, with a wry grin. His science advisor, Cleet Anderson, had always admired his friend's ability to see a situation realistically.

  "Er, the odds are a little better than that, Mr President," said Security Chief Lawson. Once Cleet had checked out this man who'd claimed to be part of the new resistance, and asked him to change the President's mind about attacking the citadels, Cleet had quietly seen him promoted.

  "But we'll be a slow-moving convoy over roads destroyed by earthquakes, and moving through territory controlled by unprincipled warlords," said the President.

  "We can't estimate their numbers, or firepower, Mr President," said Lawson, "but hopefully they will have reduced both of those by attacking each other over the last few months. We can also be fairly sure of the element of surprise."

  The President smiled at Lawson's bluntness. Cleet had been a good judge of character.

  "And, as you know," continued Lawson, "it's getting dangerous to stay here. The citadels have obliterated some of the old telephone exchanges and ham radio outposts we've been using. Something in the citadels, even if it's an AI, is going to wonder why there are so many strikes in this area, and ask what's at the centre of them all."

  The President nodded. He knew he would have to leave Mt Weather. This was just his way of getting his team to present the pros and cons – mostly so they would be clear in their own minds about what they were up against.

  "The new alliance of states in Illinois assures us you would be most welcome, Mr President," said Cleet. "You would be a bridge between the old and the new, as it were. A legitimate continuation of the United States of America. You would take your family, of course."

  "But Harold won't be coming with us," said the President, and Lawson nodded. The President and Vice-president never travelled together, in case both were killed in the one incident.

  "Most of the military and intelligence heads are also better off here," said Cleet. "We're still getting some communications in and out, and they'll need to take control if the situation calls for us to mobilise our forces again."

  Cleet looked at the President, but said nothing. There were a few military bases holding out, spread thinly over homesteads and small towns. They mostly worked in the fields or hunted in the forests, and were dependent on the surviving communities for food. There was no navy or airforce. Whether the military would ever be mobilised again was a debatable point.

  "We will need to be a small and careful force, Mr President," said Lawson. "Anything more obvious would invite a citadel attack. The only consolation is that a concentration of gang forces would also be a target.

  The President nodded.

  "When do we move out?" he said, and Cleet was surprised again at the ability of the President to keep on top of an unfolding situation.

  Four days later a strike force carrying the President and his family was working its way through the Pennsylvania badlands.

  Row after row of ranges in the Appalachians had to be surmounted, much of it in state forests but little of it over 700m high. Once within sight of Pittsburgh, they would cut under the city, giving it a wide berth.

  They would then move north and west through a string of small towns until they reached Fort Wayne, which was controlled by the new alliance of states. Finally, they would angle down to St Louis.

  "Escort One is approaching Somerset, and is now 28km ahead of us on Route 76," reported the comms officer at the back of the armoured car. After another encrypted radio exchange, he turned toward them again.

  "Escort Two is in flank position and has entered Cumberland on Route 68. Colonel Hinkley punched through the barricades on the outskirts of the city without difficulty. Then he headed for a bridge on the north side so he could bypass the city centre. Unfortunately he started taking heavy fire, and lost two SUVs. He's taken up a defensive position in an industrial area, and sent out teams to neutralise the insurgents."

  Cleet looked across at the President. The man looked pained by the news. Even though the people in the badlands had not supported the Presidential plan, the President hoped he could win them back once their supplies began to run low, and they saw how well the small, organised communities of the new alliance were doing.

  "Tell the colonel we'll hold our position until they request assistance, or clear Cumberland," said the President. Cleet nodded his approval. The three convoys were travelling in a roughly triangular formation, some 20-30km apart. Small enough to avoid an attack from the citadels, and mobile enough to come to each other's aid in a few hours if needed.

  "Stretch the legs?" suggested Cleet, and the President nodded. They exited the armoured vehicle and looked at the forested area about them. Both were wearing bullet-proof vests, but a security detail, led by Lawson, appeared within moments.

  They were in a fairly mountainous part of the Appalachians, and the road had slipped away in many places during the world-wide earthquakes. A strange multi-purpose vehicle up ahead was bulldozing a path through the top of the range, surrounded by a military detachment that had set up firing posts and sent patrols into the trees.

  Progress was slow when they met obstacles like this, but they had managed to average sixty kilometres a day. Casualties had been light, largely because they had avoided the bigger centres of population. Cumberland was the first real problem any of the three groups had encountered.

  At Cumberland, Colonel Hinkley was surveying the open square ahead of him. It had been set up as a trap, two of the exits blocked off by cars that had been bulldozed into place. The city had been badly hit by the 'quakes, and all of the buildings showed some degree of damage. A large apartment block on the far side of the square had collapsed completely.

  The gangs ruled here now, and they would be a burden on the few survivors living in the ruins. Until they could no longer bucket petrol out of forecourts, and ran out of tinned food, and the tyres on their vehicles perished.

  But these were the type of people who never thought ahead. He remembered from his psych training how closely impulsiveness was correlated with criminal behaviour.

  A First Lieutenant beside him held up three fingers. All three firing posts overlooking the square were now operational, and ground troops had quietly infiltrated to forward positions. There had been a lot of activity on the opposite side of the square, but so far no one had engaged.

  "Let's see what they've got," said the Colonel, and the First Lieutenant rolled the armoured car forward into the centre of the square.

  A small truck roared out from between two buildings on their left, followed by two 4WD vehicles bristling with weapons. The truck was the one that had done so much damage to the army column when they first entered Cumberland. A 50mm machine gun on the back of it opened fire.

  There was steel plate bolted to the truck's sides, and return fire from Hinkley's armoured car had no effect on it. The 50mm rounds chewed away at the armoured car, and it rocked violently on its wheelbase.

  "Where the hell are the RPGs?" said Hinkley, and the First Lieutenant barked something into a handpiece from the dashboard. Both of them knew the armour on the vehicle wouldn't last for long if the 50mm rounds were concentrated in one place.

  Then a distinctive rocket trail seared from the top of a nearby building onto the back of the truck. The heavy calibre fire stopped as the crew manning the weapon died, and the machinegun and top of the cab disappeared. Automatic fire erupted from the windows of the 4WDs, and numerous figures began moving through the rubble on either side of the square in support.

  The First Lieutenant backed the armoured car out of the square, and the attackers followed it, unt
il there was a pitched battle between the gang members and this part of Hinkley's column.

  The Colonel nodded to his comms officer. His forward positions, and the firing posts overlooking the square, tore into the sides of the attacking mob. It was a methodical and wholesale slaughter. Those that tried to run were picked off by snipers working from the advanced firing posts.

  Half an hour later Hinkley was back with the rest of his column. An hour later they had cleared Cumberland.

  "Let them know we're back on track," said the Colonel, as the armoured car led the escort column out. The comms officer contacted the Presidential vehicle.

  PART THREE

  THE ALIEN CITADELS

  45

  Imazighen village,

  Atlas Mountains, North-west Africa

  Don walked slowly, supported by a walking stick. As a younger man he'd been proud of the fact he never bruised. Today, fading rings of black and yellow could be found on every part of his body. His right knee was giving him the most trouble, and that explained the walking stick.

  "Today's the big day, eh?" he said, trying to recapture the confidence and energy he'd felt before he was buried under tonnes of sandstone.

  "It sure is!" said Mosha. "And it's really good to have you back!"

  There was a hearty round of applause, which Don waved away.

  "Not me, you idiots," he said, exasperated, "the first time you'll be going inside an alien spacecraft!"

  "Oh, yeah, that too," said Mosha morosely, and the room burst into laughter.

  Mosha and Bull were present, and Jo with her comms team of Sufian and Dassin. Izem had Udad with him, now healing quickly from the bullet wound in his leg.

  Don had agreed that some of Izem's people should always be present when his team visited the buried ship. He had also offered to report back with their findings on a regular basis. He knew his team were guests, honoured guests, and he appreciated that fact.