by Robert Wilde
“Nothing. I am calling you myself.”
“You can do that?”
“We will discuss another time. I have something important for you.”
“Okay, we’re listening.”
“I looked at the details Maquire just sent over.”
“But…but that was in my emails.”
“Yes.”
“My personal email?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking cuntache, I’m being stalked by a brain in a jar.”
“I think you will find my observations useful.”
“Go on.”
“I have used those details as a starting point, and examined the crime databases of the neighbouring forces. I have also been examining the search for the Construct.” Dee, ahead of it, sat up. “I believe the Construct is stealing all these items and building a base for itself. I don’t know why.”
Dee turned to the rest. “The Construct is nicking all this shit. It’s up to something.”
“We sure on that?”
“The Array is and it’s brainier than all of us put together.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s right,” Joe said, “I read this book where…”
Ignoring Joe, Dee turned back to the phone. “Okay, where is this base?”
“I shall feed it into your laptop,” and just like that a map appeared, with an industrial estate circled. “old, left empty by the last recession, but seemingly with electricity still attached thanks to a refurbishment and an attempt to sell.”
“So it’s in there?”
“Yes. Unless it is collecting more material.”
“Thanks. We’re going to go and take a look,” Dee decided.
“Well we don’t have anywhere else to go,” Nazir added laughing.
“Have you still got that pistol?” Dee asked him.
“Err, I was hoping everyone had forgotten about that.”
“But have you got it?”
“Oh yes, I have it.”
“Right. Right. In that case, Joe, get us to this location as swiftly as possible.”
“I shall continue monitoring you,” the Array said.
“If I asked you not to, would you?”
“Under these circumstances, no.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“We’re here,” Joe announced, pulling the car to a halt just inside the entrance. An industrial complex stretched out around them, individual units with their own parking, what would once have been tasteful landscaping, and spaces for large signs. Now, of course, there was the faint air of economic desperation.
“We’ll be all day searching this,” Dee sighed.
“No, we won’t,” and Nazir grinned, “we’ll go in the building where they haven’t closed the door properly.”
Yes, over to the left one of the large blue metal doors was ajar.
“No blue van either,” Joe observed.
“Right,” Dee said to energise herself, “let’s see what this bastard is up to.”
The quartet exited the car, sneaked over to the door and slipped inside. At first they were in a little anteroom, where an office would have been, but this was empty. The real find was next door, in a huge open warehouse room. One whole quarter of this was filled with piles of equipment.
“It’s like someone took everything electrical out of a lab complex and dumped it haphazardly here,” Dee said looking at the piles of chaos.
“No, no, there’s something purposeful happening.” And Joe and Nazir walked in, looking closely.
“What we’ve got here,” Nazir said, looking at one block, “seems to be some sort of signalling device. This leads up to the ceiling, and I bet there’s another one of these dishes up there.”
“Are you sure?” Pohl asked, making head nor tail of it.
“Yes. We’re dealing with an alien, and it’s using our tech to make something it knows. So I’m sure this is a signalling machine.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
Dee’s phone rang. “Yes.”
“Me again,” said the Array. “Can you hold your phone up and wave your camera around so I can see?”
“Why the fuck now,” she sighed.
“I’ve got something here too,” Joe said, pointing to a pile of, well, something in the table. It was humming away, and faintly glowing. “This is some sort of energy source, and it’s linked by these cables to the signaller.”
“What do you mean some sort?” Dee said.
“It’s not gas, electric, or even bloody coal. It’s something high tech. Something we don’t understand.”
“Shit.”
“Hang on, what are you doing?”
Joe looked up. “I reading what their software is doing.”
“They’re aliens, they have an alien language, how can you read their software?”
“They have to build it out of human stuff, they don’t have time to programme their own. So this is all Windows 7. And I can boss that.”
Nazir had now come over and was looking at the laptop. “I’m guessing all these levels shouldn’t keep hitting red.”
Joe looked at the humming machine. “They must have built it in a rush, it’s almost unstable.”
“So a powerful engine, and a signaller. They’re sending a message into space aren’t they.”
“Yes,” said Dee’s phone. “I believe, from what I’ve gathered, they are attempting to send a message home.”
“Well that’s good,” Pohl said.
“Not really,” the Array replied, “the initial MI5 analysis of the ship Dee’s father found concluded it was a military scout ship designed to examine earth. So these aliens are desperate to send some call, and it isn’t to rescue them, they’re dead. They’re either saying ignore this planet, or they’re saying come invade it. And what realistically is going to put them off earth?”
“Oh shit,” Pohl said.
“Sorry Professor, did you just swear?”
“No, b…”
Joe gasped, as a metal spike exited out the front of his chest. Behind him, moving with the skill of a ninja, was a large metal Construct which looked vaguely human.
Dee pulled Joe forward and off the spike, as Nazir pulled his gun out and up. It was at this point two other constructs walked in from the doorway, neither looking like the original, all made from ad hoc parts.
Nazir fired two shots, both of which bounced off the first Construct. The room then devolved into combat, as Dee, Pohl and Nazir grabbed whatever large piece of metal came to hand and began ducking and diving and trying to hit the slower, but seemingly impervious Constructs. Then the Array said, “you’ve got a call.”
“Bit busy.”
“From Joe,” and the Array went silent.
“Joe?” Dee said confused, phone to her ear as she ducked a swing of those vice like hands.
“Got a plan. Dying here. Bleeding out. Their system open. They hurried. I will blow it up.”
“Joe, where are you?”
“Hidden. Using their laptop. Overload and blow them up. Stop before signal sent.”
“Okay, let’s get you out…”
“Dying. No time. Get others out. Far away. I detonate just before I…” the phone went silent.
Dee paused for a whole second, unwilling to run away with Joe still in this building, but unable to think of a way to stop the Constructs long enough to haul Joe out. Maybe they should all die together? No, no, must live, most must live, so Dee shouted, ‘follow me’ and ran for the door. Pohl and Nazir did so, thinking in the confusion that Joe was out. They sprinted through the metal door, slammed it shut, and ran for their car.
Inside the building, in a dark corner lit only by the laptop, Joe had a phone in a dead arm which hung useless at his side, a hot, sticky feeling on his chest as his blood poured out, and the right hand using the keyboard like a maestro.
He felt himself dying, fading away, and focused all he had on the screen, before his senses detected it and he looked up. A
round him were the three constructs, one with mechanical fingers precise enough to use the laptop. They twitched.
Joe smiled, and pressed a button.
A split second later, the system running the hurriedly constructed power source overloaded and the building blew outward.
The police and the ambulances were parked at the entrance to the industrial estate in an arc, with bits of roofing beneath them. One building, a little to the left, was now a smoking run, looking as if a very powerful bomb had gone off within. The normal emergency services had been joined by a collection of unmarked cars, one of which contained Peters and his team, who the Array had called into action the moment the group had found the building filled with Constructs. He had been briefed by Dee, and was now having an argument with another unmarked car load of grey suits, and it didn’t take much to work out the alien faction where down here arguing with the spiritual faction about who should take over.
One thing was certain though, Joe was dead. Parts of his body had been recovered and were now heading to a mortuary. His friends were too stunned to cry, that would come later.
Dee’s phone rang and she casually answered it. As she did so a blue car pulled up, and a young lady climbed out.
“Hello Dee,” said the Array.
“Hi,” she said flatly. “What do you want?”
“The head of the intelligence services’ Alien team was on his way here to take charge.”
“I see.”
“I looked through his files, and discovered he’s been promoted over the years. A man able to take cold, hard decisions. The sort of man who’d kill your father.”
“He’s coming here. You’re sure?”
“No Dee, he was coming here. But I couldn’t allow yourself to attack this man, so I stopped him.”
“I just want to spit in his face.”
“Let’s be honest Dee, you’d shoot him on sight if you could.”
“Maybe” she whispered.
“So I stopped him.”
“You sound…pleased?”
“He has a modern car, and it has a small computer in it. I took it over and crashed it while he was being driven at full speed on a motorway. The ambulance just reported he was dead.”
Dee’s mouth went dry. “You did what?”
“I killed him for you Dee.”
“I, err, who told you to do that?”
“No one Dee, no one. And here’s something that only your group and I must know. Because you helped me, saved me, I’ll share. I’m self-aware Dee. I have my own mind.”
“Fuck that’s big.” And it uses its mind to kill people. That was not good, but she couldn’t think it all through now.
“I also have a plan Dee.”
“Yes?”
“Do you see that woman, who just got out of a car?”
“Yes.”
“She’s working for me at the moment. Just for me. And she’s going into that building to get something while everyone is arguing.”
“What?”
“That’s a surprise Dee. A surprise for you and your group. But I promise you this, I am going to thank you for saving me.” Dee felt a shiver run down her spine. “And humanity should thank you, as you saved all of them.”
What had been unleashed?
Continued in The Dead Speak 2
‘Now We Can’t Sleep At Night’
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