Critical Dawn

by Darren Wearmouth

  The salmon started to blacken. He scraped pieces onto a plate with a spatula and took the dish to his office, placing it on his desk.

  He sat in a brown leather chair and caressed the mahogany arms, enjoying the squeaking friction against his back.

  Scanning three croatoan-installed screens on his desk while tossing chunks of salmon into his mouth, Gregor checked the productivity statistics against operational harvesters in the field. The results were at least on par with other continents, if not slightly better.

  He looked around the office, the main room in a sparse one-bedroom house on the edge of the croatoan camp. Whitewashed walls and furniture he’d looted from local derelict buildings. The aliens supplied power and water from their centralized source.

  This place was better than the trailer at the last location, but he thought it was time for an upgrade. He wanted the top job of global director, currently taken by Mr. Augustus. Gregor knew that asshole lived in luxury.

  The front door rattled against the jam three times.

  “Enter,” Gregor shouted.

  Alex, his temporary second-in-command, opened the door and entered the room, stopping short of the desk. She fidgeted with a drawstring at the bottom of her yellow waterproof jacket and wiped a thin covering of sweat off her brow.

  “Good morning, Gregor—”

  “Cut the shit. What have you come to tell me?” Gregor half-closed his eyes, looking Alex up and down. Thirty years ago, Alex could light up a room with her rich dark brown, wavy hair and glamorous features. Today, she looked old, concerned, her graying hair in a tight ponytail. “Spit it out.”

  “Harvester five. It’s down.”

  Gregor shifted in his chair. “Down? Down how?”

  “We’ve lost contact with the driver and guard. It happened during a resource switch.”

  “Do the croatoans know?”

  “They’re on the way. I contacted a mobile unit to intercept.”

  Gregor slammed his fist on the desk. “Send out our croatoan team. If it’s the little wasp, I want him dead. Even if they get a sniff of him, bomb the whole area. I don’t care. The harvesters will just have to work longer and harder.”

  He hoped he’d seen the last of the little wasp, someone who had already taken out two of his harvesters in a similar manner: land mines coupled with a direct assault. This might be the third time in five months, denting Gregor’s statistics, making him appear out of control.

  The croatoans didn’t seem bothered up to now. They claimed it was mild resistance compared to other planets.

  Their patience would only stretch so far before snapping.

  “They might not like it. They only came in from patrol an hour ago,” Alex said.

  Gregor slammed his fist on the desk again, knocking the plate off. Alex winced as it smashed on the floor. “They’re attached to this facility and will do what I say. Send them. Now.”

  “I’ll get right to it,” Alex said.

  “Where’s Layla?”

  Out of all the humans attached to the operation, Layla had a level of competence that Gregor admired. If something was happening, he wanted her there.

  “I think she’s already gone out to investigate.”

  “I can always replace you with Layla, Alex. Send you back to the farm?”

  Alex backed away from the desk, turned, and stumbled out of the door.

  Gregor doubted Alex’s abilities, but with the business with Marek, she’d taken over as Gregor’s second-in-command two days ago. Marek had been Gregor’s friend since childhood, growing up in Yerevan. They’d stolen together, fought together, and graduated into the same gang until they came to run it. Alex was just a junior member when the shit hit the fan in 2014.

  Everything was fine, Gregor thought, until Marek went missing for twenty-four hours, then turned up on the edge of camp, semi-conscious, tied to a tree. A plank was hung around his body with ‘Fifth Columnist’ painted across it in bright red letters. Two of his fingers had been snapped backwards, and he’d taken a beating. The little wasp, that fuckstain Charlie Jackson who fancied himself as some kind of vigilante hero, had interrogated and beat Gregor’s lifelong friend for information.

  Gregor slipped into a pair of jeans, pulled on a brown, woolly sweater, and fastened his steel toe-capped boots. They were always useful when delivering kicks to the farm animals or his junior staff. He clipped on a hip holster and inserted his pistol.

  The door rattled three times again.

  “What?” Gregor shouted, not even trying to hide his annoyance.

  Alex half-opened the door. “A shuttle’s coming. Just thought I’d—”

  Gregor could already hear the humming engines growing increasingly louder as a shuttle descended toward camp. The mother ship had turned up in 2025 near the end of the ice age.

  It always held a faint white presence when the sky was clear, hanging up there like a specter or a spiritual portent, but then what did Gregor have with spirits? He knew there was no God the day the Earth was taken from them by the croatoans.

  Fuck ‘em, he thought. Just play the game, survive, climb the ladder. That’s all there was left now. No point in fighting them; humanity had already lost too much.

  Gregor retrieved a plastic tortoiseshell comb from his back pocket and smoothed his thick, black hair into a side parting. Shoving Alex out of the way, he stepped outside into the bright sunshine bathing the camp.

  ***

  Six pink rings appeared over the camp. The humming took on a sharper edge as the shuttle plunged through the troposphere, its cobalt outline becoming visible against the sky’s blue-orange surroundings.

  Ever since the croatoans started harvesting the earth for their root, the orange dust floated up into the atmosphere, giving the sky a strange, permanent tan.

  Gregor stood by the landing zone at the back of the farm surrounded by trees. Solar-powered markers ran around the edge of the two-hundred-yard square strip. It had already been turned into scorched earth from repeated take-offs and landings, a regular, twice-daily occurrence for the last three months, usually for the transportation of croatoans. But never this early in the morning.

  Alex stood by his side. “What do you think they want?”

  “It’s obvious. They’re going to complain about the harvester. We’re going to need a sacrificial lamb.”

  “Do you want me to dress a human from the paddock?”

  He drummed his fingers on his chin. “No, bring me Igor.”

  “Igor?”

  “You heard me.”

  Igor, it had been reported to Gregor, thought he knew better on how the facility should be run. Additionally, Igor had been seen fraternizing with the camp’s allocation of croatoan scouts and engineers.

  They weren’t supposed to mix. Gregor suspected the worm was up to something. Igor had been one of the few to survive the ice age along with Gregor and his fellow gang members. Used to run a small protection racket in Moscow, fancied himself as some crime lord.

  Gregor had ways of dealing with competition. It was dog-eat-dog these days, after all.

  The shuttle steadied a hundred yards above. Its pink circles took on a darker glow for the final descent. The ground rumbled. Gregor pulled the woolly sweater over his nose and mouth and shielded his eyes.

  Dust and burnt grass showered him as the shuttle gracefully dropped and bounced softly to a halt.

  He was always struck with how bland these craft looked. Nothing as exciting as what he’d seen on TV but a lot more deadly. Two years ago, somebody fired on one from the ground. The response from the pulse cannon mounted on the roof was devastating.

  Although violence was rarely the croatoan way.

  That was more Gregor’s domain. As the human resource officer on the ground, he had to maintain discipline with the local team and livestock.

  A door on the side of the shuttle punched open and slid to one side with an electric groan followed by a graphite-colored ramp extending onto the ground. Through the
darkness, a human male strode out in a long, purple robe flanked by two croatoans in their gray armored suits, carrying black rifles.

  Mr. Augustus. The human-croatoan chief liaison. The only human to have visited the mother ship, and the only human to have visited and worked directly with the alien hierarchy.

  Augustus thought he was some sort of king. Strutting around dressed like a fool, treating everyone with lofty derision. He wore a creepy mask to hide his facial features. Gregor thought it was an attempt to intimidate or for Augustus to make himself appear alien.

  Gregor raised his hand and swallowed his hate. “Hello, Mr. Augustus. Nice to see you again.”

  Augustus didn’t acknowledge the welcome. He looked into the sky and then approached Gregor, stopping inches from his face. Gentle clicking came from the two croatoans behind him. Their shiny gold visors always had a way of making Gregor feel uneasy. Not that he could read their ugly faces anyway.

  “It’s been reported that another harvester has gone offline this morning,” Augustus said. “Are you aware of this?”

  “I’ve sent my force to deal with the situation,” Gregor said. “I’m expecting a report back within the hour.”

  Augustus shook his head and sucked in his breath before stepping back and taking on a calmer composure.

  When the sinkholes happened and the croatoans rose out of the earth in 2014, Gregor’s gang thrived into a position of strength during the decade-long mini ice age, taking advantage of the confusion in the dwindling population. As the aliens approached Armenia, he spied on them and noticed them dealing with another human who wore a mask: Mr. Augustus. He brokered a deal with the pompous old man. They’d provide an interface for the operational arm. Help control things from the ground.

  “This is the third in five months. We’re not having these problems in South America or Africa,” Augustus said.

  “Come back to my office. I’ll show you the results from the last two months. I think you’ll find—”

  Augustus waved his hand and sniffed. “I’m not going to your filthy den. Take me to the farm’s command center.”

  Gregor closed his eyes and counted to five. If only he’d met Augustus before the aliens arrived. He’d be using his skull as an ashtray.

  “Jump to it,” Augustus said. “We haven’t got all day.”

  “Yes, Mr. Augustus.”

  He led the way through a small group of trees into a wide expanse of open ground. Yet more orange tones blanketed the distant landscape as a sea of root crop grew from the soil. A healthy view—from an alien perspective at least.

  Gregor headed right to the croatoan quarter—an area consisting of twelve metallic warehouse-shaped buildings with lightly-tinted windows thrown up in a matter of days. Three on each side completed a large square.

  In the middle, forty hover-bikes were parked in a uniform row.

  The three buildings on the right provided barrack accommodation for the aliens. They were pressurized to allow the aliens to remove their breathing apparatus, the barracks having their own internal atmosphere. Through the window of one, three croatoans lounged in front of a large screen.

  The three warehouses on the left were workshops. Croatoan engineers constructed and repaired vehicles and equipment either brought by the shuttles or from the field after malfunction or damage.

  The three nearest were for surveying, training, and breeding.

  Gregor nicknamed the closest building the chocolate factory. Smaller aliens, that he thought looked like Oompa Loompas, used it to chart the land and test soil samples. He would assist them occasionally when selecting the next slice of land to farm as they worked their way up North America.

  The command center took up one corner. One of Gregor’s team always sat at the monitors, tracking the harvesters and areas covered.

  The two warehouses next to it were a breeding lab and rarely used training rooms. The training rooms were used to school humans from the farm to bring up others on a harvester in the belief that they were on a generation ship. It was all Gregor’s idea, and he was proud of it. “What is a human without hope?” he’d often say. The breeding lab contained pregnant livestock.

  The three buildings at the end carried out food production. One was a slaughterhouse and butchery, while the middle one carried out meat-processing.

  The final building packaged the food for consumption.

  Nearly everybody ate the product delivered in silver trays. The croatoans, human livestock, harvester crews, and of course: the bastard hierarchy in the ships who would have those on the ground send up large containers of supplies on a daily basis.

  The only people who didn’t eat the cream-colored slop were Gregor and his team. He liked to keep some sort of personal standards.

  This seemed to be the standard camp set-up wherever they went.

  He held his door open at the entrance to the chocolate factory. “This way, please, Mr. Augustus.”

  Alex came around the side of the building and whispered, “He’s waiting by the paddocks.”

  “Thanks. Come with me,” Gregor said.

  Augustus walked past a large table surrounded by the helmeted surveyors and acknowledged them with a raised hand. A couple nodded their helmets, clicking excitedly.

  The small delegation arrived at the bank of monitors. Vlad swiveled in his chair.

  After good results in Russia, Gregor was promoted to North America as the Operation switched during a seasonal change. He took key members of his former gang, or at least the most subservient. Marek, Alex, Igor, and Vlad had all joined him on the shuttle over the Atlantic.

  “Vlad, take Mr. Augustus though events as you saw them.”

  The small, greasy-haired man pushed his glasses toward his face with his index finger. “During the removal of a resource, due to reaching the age of mental deterioration, the harvester took some external damage. The onboard team couldn’t manage to switch to back-up or control the situation, so I ordered them to the rear for our guard to deal with. After this, we lost all contact. A report is due from the patrol at any moment.”

  Augustus leaned forward. “Is this the same as the other two times?”

  Vlad glanced at Gregor.

  “Look at me, not him. I’m the one asking the question,” Augustus said.

  “Very similar, apart from the resource switch, but—”

  Augustus turned to Gregor. “It seems you haven’t managed to get a grip of the local situation. Are you capable of handling it?”

  “I was going to report to you today, Mr. Augustus,” Gregor said. “We suspect one of our team with collusion. I’m going to personally deal with it.”

  “Is this true, Alex?” Augustus said.

  “Ye… Ye…” Alex said.

  “Stop stuttering, woman. Is this true?”

  Alex nodded.

  “I’m not sure I believe you. But execute him anyway. Put his body to good use.”

  “We’ve got him waiting by the paddocks. Would you like to see it?” Gregor said.

  “That’s your business. I’m going to spend the day talking to the croatoans. I want to get a good feel about local progress. You better get focused on sorting things out. If another harvester goes offline, you go offline. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, Mr. Augustus,” Gregor said as he imagined strangling him.

  “Meet me back here in three hours. We’ll talk once we know more.”

  Gregor left the building with Alex. They cut between the two warehouses and headed toward the farm. Igor waved as they approached. He stood by the eight-foot electric fence that surrounded eight separate paddocks, each forty square acres.

  Humans clustered together in the paddocks like flocks of sheep, dressed in dirty white sheets. Most under the makeshift shelters, some sitting around, eating from silver trays.

  “You wanted to see me, Gregor?” Igor said.

  Gregor approached and held his arms out. “Brother Igor, we’ve had another harvester sabotaged. Can you believe it?”<
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  “It’s the little wasp. I know it. That piece of shit,” Igor said and spat on the ground.

  “Augustus’s pissed. He came down straight away,” Alex said.

  “I saw the shuttle. What did he say?”

  “That we need to sort things out,” Gregor said. “Have you been speaking to anyone about the harvesters?”

  Igor shook his head. “They’re not part of my job. Are you suggesting I’ve been giving their intended paths away? I’m not the one who got caught with my pants down. You need to speak with Marek.”

  “Are you telling me what to do?” Gregor said. Igor stood motionless, mouth hanging open. “Do I have to ask you twice?”

  “No. You can trust me implicitly to do what’s best for the team.”

  That was Gregor’s main concern. What Igor thought was best for the team probably involved him being boss. The individual problems were mounting, but at least he had license to execute the Russian if needed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ben squinted at the sudden flash of light.

  The place smelled fresh and unfamiliar, a scent rooted in nature and in stark opposition to the sterile smell of the harvester. He breathed it in deeply, the damp atmosphere moistening his throat and lungs. The underground room accommodated the five of them plus Denver’s dog. Shadows gathered in the corners, cast there by a small, battery-powered lamp of sorts hanging from an overhead wooden beam, rough-hewn from a trunk.

  Ben remembered watching a video of humans of old cutting trees and planking the logs with simple machinery. Agricultural, Jimmy used to say, when denoting something wasn’t hi-tech.

  It seemed to Ben that this world, his home that he never had chance to know, was now a mix, but humanity weren’t the ones with the tech anymore.