Alien Backlash

by Maxine Millar

  Dai looked at her, thinking. “How about I do the communicating and you leave that to me to organize. Do you have a maximum amount of people in mind to bring?”

  “No. As many as possible. We need to get as many off Terra as we can.”

  Dai nodded. The three Niseyen headed for their ship. “Ideas? Thoughts?” Dai asked as soon as they were out of Sarah’s hearing.

  Kudales answered, “Something is badly wrong with Terra. And they are genuinely concerned with our problem. They have about ten billion to move off Terra. That’ll keep us all in jobs for a while.” They all laughed.

  “Are they trying to beat us to it to get here?” asked Dacklorat slowly.

  “I don’t think so,” Kudales answered. “And this planet can handle two hundred million before the infrastructure even notices. The Ridianit were building it up slowly and were at the stage where they were making a profit. I spent a few minutes talking to Helkmid, very interesting minutes. When you look at how long it would take to transport a million, we can only move a fraction off Terra.”

  Dai said slowly, “They have no spaceships while we have thousands, many of them looking for work. And this is safe work.”

  “This job is unpaid though,” pointed out Dacklorat.

  “What would you pay for a wife?” asked Dai.

  “Good point. That’s an incentive, for the crew too.”

  Dai waited to see how long he would take to get it. “Ah,” said Dacklorat eventually. “How are we going to convince a crew to stay here?” Kudales and Dai laughed.

  “We order them,” said Dai. They were all grinning as they entered the ship.

  Dai contacted the three ships and chatted with each in turn, sussing them out. He made his choice and then called them back with his decision, using Sarah’s name as authorisation. Since she was now accepted by all as the planet’s leader of the Terrestrials and was called the President, Dai’s orders were taken as being authorized.

  Over the next few months, Dai sent the maximum possible number of the biggest ships he could find to Terra. He carefully orchestrated who went and who stayed on the planet, working to his own agenda. He continued to hold regular, scheduled, meetings, via some spare communication panels he had on his ship which were now hidden and guarded by Dacklorat in his apartment. Had anyone asked, Dacklorat’s cover story was that he was fixing all these screens and adapting them for ship-to-ship communication. Sadly, he had had no need of this cover story because Miyuki, whom he wished to visit his apartment, had yet to do so. All three Niseyen had chosen adjoining apartments to limit the possibility of detection and Dacklorat’s was at the end of a corridor. They had set up surveillance equipment but no one had snooped nor tried to.

  Dai was uneasy with some of the suggestions the other ships’ Captains made during some of these sessions but they were mostly all in agreement: all unhappy, uneasy, and increasingly paranoid. Unfortunately, their paranoia as to the extent of the problem was seeming more and more reality-based. There was, as yet, no recognized leader but Dai considered if anyone should be the leader it was him. Not all the others agreed.

  He was even less pleased with some of his official orders, which came in fairly regularly after his daily reports. He complained to Kudales, “It’s irritating how often I get ordered to do something I’ve already done.”

  “I trust you haven’t told them that?”

  “Only sometimes. They must think I have zero initiative.”

  “They think that of everyone, don’t they? You seem to be performing at a level well beyond your seniority, orders, pay scale, job description, and legal parameters, even given the fact that this job gives you quite a decent level of leniency,” Kudales remarked.

  “I can’t see what else I can do. Or what I should do given this rather unique position.”

  Speaking to Sarah one evening after a long day setting up yet another village for immigrants, Kelly commented, “Heavens, you’re organized. How do you accomplish all this?”

  “With a huge amount of help from Dai. He’s seriously efficient. I ask him to organize someone to do something and he does, generally without any questions as to how to do it, and he never bitches or moans. Mahmoud, Akira and I fly around looking for locations to put the refugees, looking from a Terran perspective. All settlements near water. We try to keep several locations ahead of the need. Into each area we transplant, or generally the Zeobani do, our Terran plants, some tree seedlings with that purple fruit and other local edible plants, and that mineral-concentrating stuff that looks a bit like pink watercress. Mahmoud named it vita. It grows in any water, even tubs, so it makes for very easy transplanting. The plan is, as the refugees arrive, we’ll give them about a years’ supply of dried goop. Dai helped us transmit the pictures of all this preparation to the ships so that by the time they arrive they know what’s edible, how to look after it and cook it and, in the case of the purple trees, how to look after them until they fruit and then propagate them until they have a ready supply. So that gives them goop, vegetables, fruit, a vitamin and mineral supplement, nuts and we’re going to leave the carbohydrate source to them to choose. Presumably rice for the Bangladesh ones. We don’t have rice plants but that’s on order and we will drop some rice with them.

  “As we finish preparing each village, a group will choose or be allocated it. I didn’t ask how they do that. Then the group knows where they are going, what it looks like, what’s inside the dwellings and so on. That was Ludmilla’s idea. She said it would provide security and familiarity if they know all that. It will ease their adaptation to a new planet. And we ensure some from every group learn how to cook the goop. And we tell them the lazy way to get fish for the cost of defluking. It’s safe, too, because the Priskya know what we can and can’t eat. That’s another thing we are teaching them before they arrive — how to recognize edible fish and shellfish.”

  “Sarah, that’s brilliant! You’ve thought of everything but how did you transmit all this information to the ships.”

  “Dai did that. He’s turned his ship into a communications station and says he can get anything educational we want via the military, if they have it, and he then sends it on to the ships. It was a big group effort. Ludmilla has been a huge help. She thinks most refugees need to be primary producers because they won’t be able to cope with the Niseyen and will instantly be third-class citizens. She says the ones that will be able to cope will the ones that will want to go to the cities later. And we can do long-distance teaching with some educational stuff Dai has ordered for us. He says a few teachers can teach all the children on the planet and also the adults. That includes technology. But we will need people to supervise them and ensure they learn until we have enough teachers for proper schools when we build them. Then we can use the school buildings to be the heart of the community, teach the adults in night school, and make the halls available for community use at nights and in the weekends.”

  “A proper community.”

  “Yes. Another piece of familiarity to help them feel at home, as well as all the social benefits.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  On the Defiance, Jolene explained to Mathew, “Flavicam looks like a very good computer geek. Over the course of the trip, he has taken to pieces several of our communication devices. I gave him computers and pads, a hearing aid, a walkie-talkie and several other bits and pieces scrounged from various people. I told him what they all did. First, he wanted to get an idea of Terran technology. Some parts he said were unique but from his point of view we had invented things logically and via almost a universal system. He was a little disappointed, having hoped for some revolutionary ideas. Eventually he was able to cobble together some bits. He wants to add his creation onto the ship communicator. He thinks that with a bit of fiddling he should be able to get communication going with Earth. Is that OK?”

  “Well, we won’t know till we try it. Tell him to hook it up,” replied Mathew.

  As they neared Terra, Flavicam succeeded in receivi
ng signals but the ships had been detected before he succeeded in getting a transmission through. He continually played the recording Mathew had given him, hoping someone would be listening on the right wavelength. One night several people were, and heard:

  “This is Mathew Western, returning to Earth. I bring two spaceships equipped to take settlers and refugees to a new planet. We can take twenty thousand in each ship if they are prepared to be squashed a bit. Please choose. We will orbit until we make two-way contact. There are risks where we are going. We have food. We need seeds and basic supplies. We need some military too. There are many more ships coming from the Niseyen. They are the other Humans in space. We are going there. We need inoculations to protect the Niseyen on our ships. We also need inoculation to protect the Niseyen who live where we are going. Our doctors say each Race will be susceptible the other’s diseases.”

  An hour or so later, Mathew was fast asleep when he was woken by some inconsiderate person banging on his door. Never fast to wake up, he grumbled and dressed and headed for the bridge, muttering some words the Translator beeped at, unable to recognize them. As he entered the bridge he heard a Russian-accented voice speaking passable English.

  “Hullo, it’s Mathew Western here. Who am I speaking to?”

  “Vladimir Kashenko.”

  “Greetings from Torroxell, our new planet. It’s a Treaty planet, five Races, nice bunch, one Race is a new version of Humans. We bought some with us and also some Zeobani. Another Race. Allies.”

  “How did these Humans get there?”

  “Some of those abduction stories were true. Ancient ones. They got carted off by another Race. Where are you?”

  “I’m near Chittagong, in Bangladesh.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “There has been another series of very bad floods. I am with the Red Cross. More and more land is simply falling into the river. The available land area is shrinking.”

  “Would some of them like to go to another planet?”

  “I would think it very likely. More and more of their country is going under water. Most of the country is too low and there are too many rivers and too much rainfall swelling them.”

  “We can take about twenty-five thousand if many are small, like children, and are prepared to be overcrowded. Originally I thought we would ask the United Nations but if it all gets tangled up in bureaucracy we could be delayed for months. I think it is better just to land and take volunteers. Forget the niceties and the paperwork.”

  Mathew heard Vladimir chuckling and others in the background asking questions. He checked the view screen. He could navigate to Bangladesh by sight, clouds permitting. “How overcrowded are they there?”

  “Very! Twenty-five thousand would not be missed. I would love to come too!”

  Mathew thought hard. “Could you find out if a whole fishing village and a market gardening village would like to go en masse? There are some empty fishing villages on Torroxell and we need market gardeners as well.”

  “I could line them up now, whole towns and villages. Primary producers are what we mostly have, because the rich got out. I will ask. We’ll see if we can offer this to the most devastated. People who have nothing left. There are whole villages that have been washed away, land included. They have nothing. There isn’t anything else for them apart from a refugee camp and we have shortages of everything, including drinkable water. The weather has been so bad it has been a no-fly area but good weather is coming.”

  Following a few minutes of planning, Mathew said, “I’ll take Audacity and head for the States while you stay and organize the supplies for the Priskya while you’re loading. I’m after pilots in particular but I’ll take any military personnel and supplies I can get. And cops, can’t have too many cops. You prioitise refugees and I’ll prioritise settlers, then I’ll come back for the equipment for the Priskya. You need to load up and be gone quickly from what I can see from the state of these refugees.”

  “OK, I’m good with the Internet. I’ll start ordering what the Priskya wanted while the Defiance is loading and then take her to Torroxell. The incoming four ships can each take a mixture of refugees and settlers.”

  What Mathew didn’t say was that he was going to try to get some of his children to come with him and he wanted to get primarily military for settlers, even if he had to take mercenaries or volunteers. But he really wanted some country to pay for the equipment. The US would be nice but he wasn’t fussy.

  Jolene was beginning to feel rather left out in all this decision-making. She wondered if her husband would consider resettling on another planet…

  Steve had been thinking things through and discussing matters with Sarah even though talking was a pain with the time lag. “We will need teachers,” he said, “and Dai says a package to teach Universal is coming. How it is going to be transmitted I can’t figure but our geek knows. He also says there is enough communication and entertainment equipment on board to use for educational purposes. We’ll also need a full hospital of personnel and equipment.”

  “I thought we were going to leave the medical stuff to the Okme,” commented Mathew.

  “Mathew,” said Jolene gently, “You are proposing taking up to twenty-five thousand hungry, injured, and traumatized refugees on board. Many will be sick. Many of the women will be pregnant. Twenty-five thousand people is a city. A city needs a hospital. In this case, staffed by locals who know what the local diseases, problems, parasites, and dietary deficits are.”

  Mathew thought. A whole city on a ship. Yes, she’s right. He thought further. If one of the bad viruses comes on board, like the latest bird flu, we will have more dead than alive.

  As the ships neared Bangladesh, Vladimir contacted them again. “I have thousands prepared to go but they are coming with almost nothing but what they stand up in. There is another huge problem. We have some idea of the size of your ships thanks to NASA and there is nowhere near the camps for you to land.”

  “Our pilot says we can hover.

  “What? How?”

  “We have anti-gravity. Ensure that people wanting to come know that we cannot guarantee their safety once we reach Torroxell. A fairly powerful Alien Race is hostile to us but we have a thing called a Defense Shield on the planet which is like a deflector with offensive capability as well. It shoots back. It’s not invulnerable but it would take a pretty serious attack to dent it.”

  “Here they face disease and starvation if they stay. They are dying now. We have six days’ treated water left before they are drinking unsafe water unless they boil it, and fuel for that is in short supply. Worse, we have about four days’ food before we have to ration hard. If you can take twenty-five thousand we can last a lot longer. We have nearly two hundred thousand in several camps and more coming. And that’s just in this region.”

  Steve and Mathew looked at each other. “I had been thinking about picking up more settlers but it looks like this is urgent. What are we going to do?” asked Mathew. “We’ll need medical staff, teachers, people to process them and keep them in order.”

  When Mathew explained the problem, Vladimir said, “We already thought of that. All the medical staff and most of the Red Cross workers will come with you until you leave the planet and can replace them. Ask for volunteers where you are going to pick up supplies. There are sure to be volunteers all over the world. Some of our people are prepared to go with them to Torroxell if they can come back. Some of the local leaders are going as immigrants. This is the way we operate, Mathew. Just start, and things generally sort themselves out on the way so long as people and equipment arrive at the same time. Don’t wait for supplies, people or organization, or you’ll never get the job done. Publicize what you need and where and hope someone will get it for you. It mostly works. Each delay means more lives lost.”

  Back on board Defiance, Joline wondered how she was going to manage this one with no passport, no money, no visa, no ticket. Mathew had told her to sell her story and get to the Br
itish Consulate. From the ship, she asked for a local reporter to pick her up and look after her in return for her story and some start-up cash. A flood of offers came in. She chose an American woman, Jane Rogers, a journalist she had heard of and whose stories seemed fair and balanced.

  Jane was an investigative journalist, a freelance, but said, “I can bankroll this myself, then sell the story. I’m asking for a scoop, not an exclusive. That means you can sell your story again to someone else. It also means I can pay you now and buy your ticket home and you can share my hotel room. Have you got a current passport?”

  “Yes, but it’s in New Zealand.”

  “Under the circumstances, they should be able to get you a replacement in two to four hours.”

  “Offer accepted.” Jolene replied and Jane organized to pick her up. Jolene was dropped off in the outskirts of Delhi on the way over, which caused Delhi Air Traffic Control a few problems…

  Defiance hovered above the refugee camp and let down what looked like hundreds of bright-yellow plastic staircases. The camp personnel, helped by the refugees, moved the flexible staircases or dropped the tents they landed on until the majority of the staircases could reach the ground. Within an hour, all who wanted to go had boarded and the ship moved to another camp and then another as the weight of the refugees was calculated until the ship was near-capacity.

  There were immediate problems which Vladimir was trying to sort through. He and Kathini quickly went through the ship. Kathini was a Kikuyu from Africa. Stateless since the recent war in East Africa, she had joined the Red Cross as soon as she was old enough and traveled the world with them. There were most of the population of three camps on board, comprising staff and refugees. Two thirds of the Red Cross team and most of the medical staff of the three camps had decided to go with the refugees because Steve had assured them they could return on this same ship if they wanted to. Steve contacted Sarah again and explained, “Defiance will need to unload, reprovision and return fairly promptly as we have promised. These helpers are a treasure. Almost all of them got busy setting up the food distribution and hospitals first and as fast as they set up the hospitals, they filled up. You were right.”