Mission Zero (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  ‘They are humanoid, by the way, though very tall and thin, with quite different skeletal joints which means they move very distinctively. There’s no way they can be blended in amongst humans, they’d be spotted at once. So they are taken to the exhibits and things they want to see in soundproofed blacked out vehicles, disguised as vans and things like that, which slip them into the museums and galleries which are closed for them to visit.

  ‘And yes, that is true too,’ he said, as Mako’s eyes widened at that. It was a common claim by conspiracy theorists that if you monitored closures of museums and galleries for the cleaning of exhibits and the like, every now and again you would see something that looked like the itinerary for a two or three week holiday. This, they claimed, was evidence that aliens were secretly there on visits.

  ‘I was called on to escort such a party myself once, as a Lt. A great honour and an interesting experience.’ Alex said matter of factly. ‘But yes, all that is true. If we went out that way, there would almost certainly be one of their ships in port at the secret base. They’re enormous, fifty times the size of the biggest ships we’ve built, and may only have three of them aboard. They don’t travel like our ships, either. They use some other means of propulsion than superlight. Their ships just, to our eyes and scanners, seem to appear out of nowhere and vanish just the same way, just there one instant, gone the next. But we’re not going that way, of course. That’s a restricted area, which you will find on star charts marked off in red as ‘too dangerous for starship navigation’. We’re not going to see any alien ships where we’re going.’

  Mako goggled at him. ‘But you’re telling me it’s all true, all the stuff the nutters go on about? And our government is keeping it secret?’

  ‘Well, a purist might dispute the term ‘secret’ since it is in fact public knowledge.’ Alex said. ‘Just not public belief, which is a different thing. Lots of people do know about it, obviously. Spacers, for a start, this is common knowledge amongst spacers. It’s well known to the media too. Oh, yes,’ he assured him, ‘the media are the first people you tell if you really want to keep something secret. And no, I’ve not gone mad.

  ‘You can, if you like, when we get back to Chartsey, call any station you like. Tell them that you were told by a Fleet skipper that it’s all true, all of it, aliens going to art galleries, the whole thing. They will put you through to an editor who will tell you wearily that yes, they know all that. They even get a heads up when solarans are visiting, so they’re aware that they may get calls from the public about it.

  ‘People do see them, sometimes, or just get told about it by spacers and find the evidence for themselves. It is quite easy to find once you know what you’re looking for. But if you ask any editor why this isn’t blazing all over the news, then, they will tell you that there is an NFB19 on it. If you have to ask what an NFB19 is, they will tell you that it is the form used by authorities to slap a Not For Broadcast on a story under Defence and Security of the League laws. Any editor who tried to violate that would be off air in seconds and in prison for a very long time. But to be fair, the vast majority of them are fully aware of the very good reasons there are for that broadcast ban, and are very responsible about it, too.

  ‘You are, though, entirely at liberty to go and tell as many people as you like. Yes, honestly. This is “nine ack delta” classified and the “delta” code on this means you’re free to discuss it with anyone you like, no restriction on word of mouth disclosure. It’s a very effective method for keeping secrets that are too big to be concealed, simply by not worrying about it being common knowledge on the fringes of society.

  ‘The important thing is that the huge mass of mainstream society, even if they’ve heard about it, don’t believe it. To do that you only have to keep it low credibility, relying on the strange but useful human tendency to refuse to believe things unless they’re on the media. If it was true, people say, it would be on the news, so if it isn’t on the news, it can’t be true.

  ‘And I do feel it only fair to warn you that neither I nor the Admiralty will confirm this officially. If you, say, go back to your bosses at the LPA and you manage to convince them that this is for real, or at least that you believe it is for real, I will give them a no-comment response on it. If they approach the Admiralty, they will have a rather more competent officer than the thrice-damned Mr Hollis respond to that with a discreet snigger and the comment that some of our younger skippers are rather prone to exercising their sense of humour at civilian expense. Credibility busting, see? Which would not, obviously, do a great deal for your professional reputation or standing with your colleagues, so I would advise that you exercise some discretion in who you decide to tell and what you tell them.’

  ‘But I don’t understand,’ Mako said, feeling all at once very small and lost and alone, a very long way from home and everything that was normal and sane. ‘Why? If it’s true, why is it being kept a secret?’

  ‘For two very good reasons, either one of which would be sufficient to justify it.’ Alex said. ‘As responsible editors and journalists recognise themselves.

  ‘Firstly, there have, within our lifetime, been Marfik-panics on some of our worlds in which thousands have died, just on the rumour that the Marfikians are approaching them. Reaction to news about quarians also shows that we are not, as a people, open to the idea of friendship with non-human species. That was a ‘toe in the water’ announcement, see, disclosure on a perfectly harmless species who are so far away from us that it takes our ships more than a year to get there and back. If public response had been positive or even cautiously accepting, there would have been a great deal more disclosure on it. But the overwhelming reaction there on all our worlds was one of fear, hostility, and rejection, instant ‘we don’t want things like them on our worlds!’

  ‘With the knowledge, you see, that any announcement that highly advanced aliens are coming to our worlds would cause riots, panic, deaths and major economic impact, the determination has been made that we are not yet ready as a people for that relationship to be known. I mean, you’re a sensible and well-educated man and you’re looking pretty shaken and panicky there. And as is well understood in these situations, it only needs some kind of surge incident to kick off mass panic in a city. So we are just not ready. We will, frankly, have to be a good deal less insular and more open as a society before we’ll be in any zone of welcoming non-human visitors openly to our worlds. That’s from our side of it, and sufficient reason in itself, I think you’ll agree, to fully justify government secrecy on it.

  ‘And then there’s the other side of it, their side. They have in fact been coming through the Firewall on a regular basis for the last ten thousand years, trying to make contact with us. They are entirely peaceful. Their intentions have never been anything other than friendly, wanting to help us. But every ship they sent here, more than twenty of them we know about, failed to return, up until the one that our government met with a diplomatic reception a hundred odd years ago. One of their previous ships was the one that was captured three hundred years ago. That’s the one which is now in bits under the prison on Cestus along with the bodies of their ambassadors.’

  ‘Oh!’ Mako said, and suddenly looked appalled. ‘That’s really true? We did that to them?’ he swallowed. ‘The labs and everything?’

  ‘I wish I could tell you that it wasn’t.’ Alex said. ‘And since we are of course entirely off the record here, I will tell you something which may help you to make sense of the bitterness of the confrontation between the Fleet and the Army over that prison.

  ‘It was the Fleet, you see, which originally had that ship and its ambassadors in custody at a secret base. The Fleet was studying them and their ship, obviously, but everything I know about that is that it was being done with courtesy and some attempt to establish diplomatic relationships. But the army were impatient and they managed to persuade the Senate of the time that the danger from the Marfikians was so great that we could not afford to wast
e time, as they put it, on social niceties, so must take every advantage of the opportunity to learn about the aliens’ technology in order to protect our worlds.

  ‘The Senate of the time agreed with them. So the ship and its ambassadors, three of them, were taken out of Fleet hands and given over to the army. They built their new prison with the facility beneath it, specifically to study them. It didn’t do them any good. They were never able to figure out anything about the tech and the ambassadors just went silent and died. But yes, terrible, an awful thing in our history and something the Fleet feels very strongly about to this day.

  ‘And it is, we feel, adding insult to injury that the Senate at the time, for reasons which do them no credit, made the rule that the Fleet has to hand over all our long term prisoners to the army. That was in part a cost cutting exercise. They also recognised that in order to make the prison big enough to cover the base effectively, it had to be made on such a scale that, unless there was an unprecedented rise in serious offences in the army, they were never even likely to have it half full.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s why it’s so huge!’ Mako said, able to make sense of that at least. ‘But is that why the government is keeping that secret, then, out of embarrassment for what would come out if it got known?’

  ‘Oh, I daresay that is a factor, too. I can’t imagine that anybody would want to be the one who went public with that admission, and certainly not the army,’ Alex said. ‘But no, the reason it would still be kept secret, even if all other issues were resolved is, quite simply, because that is the condition the solarans have put on their visits, themselves.

  ‘They are not ready, you see. They are very frightened of humans, with very good reason given our history. The fact that they are making even very cautious diplomatic overtures is a credit both to their courage and to their sense that it is their duty to try to help us. But in that, you see, our giving our word and keeping it is essential. For us to go public with disclosure of their presence in our space would be a breach of promise that might well see them withdrawing again and not coming back for another couple of hundred years. So we have to honour their wishes and accept, for now, their visits must be kept, if not actually secret, then certainly diplomatically discreet.

  ‘And yes, seriously, they really do come to see museums and art exhibits. As a very highly cultured people themselves, it is something about us that fascinates them. So that is where we are at, diplomatically, in relationship building, letting them come to see our art.’

  ‘And their technology?’

  ‘No, they haven’t given us that, and won’t.’ Alex said, with some regret. ‘They say that it is a fundamental tenet of morality amongst what they call the ‘elder civilisations’ that no world may be given technology that they are not ready for, that they can’t understand or use safely. They say we are not ready yet, that we could destroy ourselves with the kind of technology they use. They did, I’ve been told, give us an anti-viral medication when we first met, but it was not any better than the ones we’ve developed for ourselves. And it is, you see, a very tentative relationship. It’s taken them ten thousand years of effort even to find us prepared to talk to them, so it may well be a lot more than a century before they feel that they are ready to be openly known to us.’

  ‘My...’ Mako breathed, as it finally sank in on him that Alex von Strada was perfectly serious. ‘But… have they told you what happened, then? Ten thousand years ago? Was it a war? With them? And are they the ones who set up the Firewall?’

  ‘No idea, to all of the above.’ Alex said frankly. ‘Though I don’t believe we were at war with them. They are the gentlest, most timid people, really are, and everything I know of them is that they are appalled by all forms of violence. But discussions as to what happened to devastate our worlds and throw them into Dark Ages are way higher than me, and the Diplomatic Corps are not inclined to chat about that sort of thing.

  ‘But spacers, you see, have always known about this kind of thing. The Firewall was identified and mapped over centuries by what we call ‘turnaround’ incidents. A ship would be going along just fine one second, and the next, its crew woke up from a very brief period of unconsciousness to find that their ship was heading back the way it had come. There have been other exo-encounters in our space, too. Or strictly speaking, I should say sightings, glimpses of their ships and very occasional incidents when crews experience that tell-tale momentary blackout. They invariably wake up unharmed, but that is rather alarming, obviously, and you just try to stop spacers talking to one another about anything like that!

  ‘You’ve seen how it is, even if you were able to control them talking to one another in port, you couldn’t prevent them talking out in space. So the authorities decided long ago not even to attempt that, just to manage sensitive information with public credibility handling. I’m sorry this obviously has come as a shock to you. I did, frankly, ask the crew to be sensitive in this kind of thing and not tell you things that would freak you out. It isn’t, after all, necessary or even relevant to your purpose here.’

  ‘Not relevant?’ Mako echoed, astounded, but then in the next moment, realised that actually the skipper was right. In his incredulity and shock, he had lost sight of the fact that he was, of course, here to observe the ship’s operation as a rehab unit, with particular attention to how they worked with the Cestus parolees. The presence of aliens visiting Chartsey, as mind-blowing as it was, did not actually affect him. ‘I think I would have preferred to decide for myself what’s relevant and what isn’t!’ He said, rather sharply.

  ‘Sorry,’ Alex said, with an apologetic little shrug. ‘It was not my secret to reveal. It’s army classified, and the fact that it is such common knowledge amongst spacers and the Fleet really infuriates them. So I am not at liberty to disclose that information, officially, to someone who is not already aware of it.

  ‘That is a technicality, I grant, since I did expect that someone would enlighten you at some point in the patrol. Once you do know, of course, the situation becomes different. You’re already in a ‘knowledge’ position and I can discuss it with you without being in breach of Senate directives. But it really doesn’t affect you, Mr Ireson. We are not, I assure you, going anywhere we are the least bit likely to have any exo-encounters, and while I appreciate that this is overwhelmingly important news to you, it’s something that’s just a fact of life as far we’re concerned, and not relevant to anything we’re doing here.’

  Mako gave him a hard, searching look. ‘You don’t think it’s relevant that the reason we can’t get into that prison is because there’s an alien base underneath it?’

  ‘Not an alien base, an army base.’ Alex amended. ‘And yes, okay, I concede that it is, obviously, a factor in the army’s rabid determination to keep everybody out. But you already knew that there’s a secret facility under there, so what difference does it make that it is a storage facility for non-human tech? That is all it is, by the way. The army was made to shut it down very shortly after diplomatic contact was established. It is now defunct, purely a storage facility, no research going on there or anything.’

  He looked sympathetically at the inspector. ‘I know, high impact,’ he said. ‘This is why spacers tend not to tell groundsiders this stuff. Quite apart from the fact that it does freak them out, there’s a feeling that it’s, as I once heard a skipper tell a group of shoreleavers who’d had some fun with that, rather unsporting. Not fair. I mean, just look at the position that it’s put you in. If you go home telling people you work with, then your professional credibility is going to take a hit. People will think you’ve turned into a conspiracy theory nutter. But keeping it to yourself has its issues too, particularly if you feel you have a duty to tell the LPA what you know now about what is really under the prison.’

  As the inspector looked stricken, the skipper gave him a reassuring look. ‘Our advice on that, the Fleet’s official policy advice to civilians who find themselves in your position, is to report it if you fee
l you have a duty to do so, but in neutral voice, as ‘this is what I was told’ rather than ‘this is what I believe’.’

  Mako considered that. ‘But then your credibility takes a hit!’ he realised. ‘If they go to the Admiralty and are told that you were winding me up, what does that do to the credibility of other things you’ve told me?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t straightforward.’ Alex conceded. ‘But we are very used to taking the credibility hit on this one, Mr Ireson, believe me, it just goes with the territory. And it isn’t something, of course, that you need to make decisions on right now. You know your employers, and once you’ve given it some thought, I’m sure, you’ll come to a decision on who you feel you want to tell, and what, and how. And if you want anyone there, like your boss, to be brought in on this officially, we can make application for that when we get back to port. That involves offering them positive vetting and security clearance so that we will be in a position to be able to have this kind of off-the-record conversation with them. You may want to consider that as an option so you know you have someone in a position of authority there who knows you haven’t gone nuts.’

  ‘But that just puts the burden on to them then,’ he realised, slowly. ‘And there’s… well, there’s no going back from this, is there? Once you know, you know.’

  Alex smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about that,’ he said. ‘Human beings are a very elastic species. We bounce back remarkably quickly into what we define as ‘normal’. This is a very well understood phenomenon, really is. Once you get home, normal life will resume. You will be able to process this, put it in a mental file marked ‘bonkers space stuff’, and it just won’t be an important thing in your life.’

  Mako looked a little comforted by that.

  ‘I suppose you do this all the time,’ he observed wryly, realising that he could hardly be the first civilian ever to be told this information.