“Sir,” Rawlings said, suddenly. “Look at the columns!”
Nicolas followed his gaze. The murky liquid inside the columns was slowly thinning out, turning transparent. It revealed very familiar shapes.
“Humans,” he said, in disbelief. Every column held a naked human. They looked alive, but frozen in suspended animation. “They brought humans here?”
Rawlings had another question. “Why?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Alien Base, Antarctica
Day 40
“Do you think that one of them is Elvis?”
Nicolas ignored the question, staring up at the body inside the column. The body was male, around thirty years old, with a faintly Arabic appearance. Nicolas had half-wondered if he might be a particularly infamous missing terrorist, but he didn’t recognise him at all. He was naked, yet there were no signs of injuries or any suggestion that he’d been taken by force.
“Why?” Rawlings repeated. “Why do they have humans here?”
“Slaves, perhaps,” Nicolas said, although something told him that wasn't the answer. Slavery was inherently inefficient in a technological society and the only modern-day roles for slaves were basic work or sexual services. He couldn’t see the aliens being interested in either. There were places on Earth where there were real slaves, but they tended to be poor or undeveloped, neither of which fitted the aliens. “Take a look at each of them and make sure you get a good image. We’ll compare them to the missing person records when we get home.”
He moved to the next column and peered through the glass. This one held a black teenage girl, floating in the column’s liquid. Again, there were no signs of violence or suffering. She looked surprisingly healthy in the liquid. Nicolas had been forced to learn how to breathe liquid during SEAL training and it occurred to him that the aliens might be doing the same to their captives, in which case it might be possible to free them. He placed one hand against the column and realised that it felt like glass. Breaking it should be easy, but what would that do to the girl? She might come out of it, or she might die from shock.
One of the more interesting innovations the Special Forces had adapted to their purposes was the tiny microscopic cameras; so tiny they barely could be picked out with the naked eye. The CIA had developed them for insertion in terrorist camps, which tended to have a shortage of advanced bug-detecting gear, but it hadn’t taken long for the Special Forces to think of another use for them. Every man in the assault force had a similar camera system sprayed onto his forehead, allowing the post-mission analysis teams to see everything they’d seen in the base. The original idea had been to use it as evidence to knock down charges of abuse and unpleasant behaviour brought against American soldiers, but it had plenty of other uses as well. The entire SF community still chuckled when they remembered the captured soldier whose camera had led rescue teams right to his prison, along with two of the senior leaders of Al-Queda in Iraq. They’d been so confident they wouldn’t be caught that they’d even come without a heavy escort!
The next column held a little boy, barely a year older than Nancy. Nicolas thought of all the milk cartons carrying images of missing children and shuddered. Thousands of people went missing every year in the United States, perhaps through a desire to drop out of sight or a genuine kidnap - or perhaps they dropped dead in their homes and nobody noticed. Had the aliens been kidnapping a few of them and taking them to their base? The briefings had suggested that the aliens knew more about humanity than could be explained by remote study, yet if the aliens had filled every column in the room with a human being, they had over three hundred humans on the base.
“Spread out, seal this room,” he ordered, moving to the next column. A Mexican kid looked back at him. Their faces were blurring into one. The All-American blonde teenager, the old man with little hair, a middle-aged woman who could have been someone’s wife or mother, and a Chinese man whose body faintly suggested military service…he couldn’t afford to think of them as people. They were trapped within the alien base and getting them out would be difficult. He considered the logistics quickly and shuddered again. They only had a handful of transports and moving three hundred naked people back to the station would be impossible. They’d freeze to death even without the aliens giving chase from the air. He keyed his radio thoughtfully. “Raven?”
“Raven here,” a brisk voice said. “Yes, sir?”
“Tell me you can fly one of the alien craft,” Nicolas said, knowing that it was futile. “Can you get one of them to fly?”
“I very much doubt it,” the Raven said. The Air Force Ravens were trained to fly every kind of human aircraft in the world, yet that didn’t mean that they’d be able to fly the alien craft. “They don’t have controls that we can recognise. We push the wrong button and we’re likely to start firing plasma bolts into our own people.”
“Understood,” Nicolas said, shortly. There was no point in avoiding radio now – the aliens knew they were there – but short broadcasts were the rule. He still cringed at the memory of an exercise where the enemy force had hacked into their radios and listened to his orders, then carefully deployed their own troops to counter the moves he'd kindly told them he was planning to make. “Get as much as you can, but be prepared to leave in a hurry.”
He looked up into the next column and blinked. The girl – a brown-haired girl who could have come from America or Europe – was the first to show signs of violence. Dark bruises covered her arms and chest – a very well developed chest, part of him noted – and she looked to be in constant pain. The bruises looked fresh – Nicolas had seen the results of domestic violence on active duty – yet that might mean nothing. The alien liquid seemed to keep their human captives in suspended animation and the bruises might have been inflicted years ago.
“Two hundred and seventy captives, unless they have another chamber of horrors like this one,” Rawlings said as they reached the end of the chamber. “None of them recognised by any of us; all of them stored in footage for later analysis.”
Another doorway, large enough to take an Abrams tank, yawned open in front of them. Dark steps led further down into the base. Nicolas stared into the darkness and wondered just how far down the base actually went. If the aliens had established it before the human race started seriously exploring the area – after the Second World War – they could have built an entire city and slowly moved in an entire army.
“Get one of the techs working on trying to free them,” Nicolas ordered, as the assault force reassembled at the top of the stairs. The enemy could have dug in down below and waited for them, or they could have killed all of the alien warriors defending the base. He doubted it. Someone who wiped out the guard post at Fort Hood would hardly have scratched the number of troops on the base at any one time. “Detail off a section to guard them and bring them back to the hangar deck if they’re broken out of their columns.”
“And then they all freeze to death from the cold,” Rawlings pointed out, putting Nicolas’s own early doubts into words. “Sir, we’re not going to be able to get them out of here.”
“We have to try,” Nicolas said. “If we can’t get them out of here, they’ll be killed when the bomb goes off and the base is destroyed.”
The assault force paused at the top of the dark steps, then hurled a pair of illumination grenades down the stairs, lighting up the entire area. There was no immediate response and the first group of soldiers dived down the steps, expecting heavy resistance. Bolts of green light flared up at them, splashing uselessly against the metal sheeting covering the stairs, as the soldiers took cover and unhooked their grenades. A large enemy force had been waiting for them. Nicolas watched as the grenades flew down into the enemy positions and detonated with stunning force. In the confined space, the grenades would be twice as dangerous and he heard voices screaming in pain. The sound sent a chill down his spine. He’d heard men begging for mercy or a quick death before, but those were alien voices, very far from human.
The sound was both pitiful and enraging. How dare they come to his planet and make war on his people?
He winced as the ground shook as a second set of grenades detonated, allowing the second group of soldiers to punch their way through the enemy position and finish off the remaining aliens. Nicolas followed them, escorted by Rawlings and two Delta Force commandos whom the Sergeant had ordered to look after him, and saw a bloody mass where an alien position had once been. The stench was horrific, both familiar and unfamiliar. No armchair commando could grasp the smell of battle, the mixture of fear and sweat and blood, yet this was beyond Nicolas’s experience. He saw a couple of hardened soldiers gagging and diplomatically turned away to allow them to be sick. The alien stench was tantalisingly familiar, yet far too alien.
They broke out into another level and stared into a giant empty room, so vast and dark that he couldn’t pick out the far wall. It reminded Nicolas of a gym hall with all the equipment removed and converted into a place for exercises only, yet there was the spooky sense of alienness covering the entire room. It took him a moment to realise why. All humans, regardless of their ethnic roots, shared a general similarity. He could be comfortable in an Arab or Japanese dwelling, yet in the alien base, all of the proportions were subtly wrong.
“Killing ground,” Rawlings muttered. Nicolas was inclined to agree. The aliens could have an entire force lurking ahead of them, ready to shoot them down when they attempted to cross the vast chamber. The semi-darkness meant that they could be hidden anywhere in the shadows, even if they didn’t have a portable invisibility device. “We can’t leave it unwatched.”
Nicolas nodded. The other option was to go further down the stairs, but that ran the risk of being trapped between two enemy forces in a very confined space. What had happened to the aliens waiting for them could easily happen to his force if they got careless. They’d started with two hundred men, five were dead in the opening moments of the battle, and the remainder were starting to spread out. It wasn't a good thing. The separate forces risked being defeated in detail and wiped out.
In the movies, he would have been able to grasp the true dimensions of the alien base at once. In practice, it wasn't nearly so easy. He didn’t know how the base went together, or what led to where; he merely knew about a handful of rooms and corridors. The aliens knew their territory perfectly and would have the time to deploy their own forces to wipe out the intruders. He keyed his radio, flicking briefly through the various channels, yet he was unable to build up a sense of tactical awareness. It might have been deceptive if he’d had. He'd grown used to Arab buildings from Iraq, and he’d grown up in America, but the aliens might have different ideas about how a building should go together. It would be easy to be lured into a false sense of security.
“We need to go further down,” one of the Wrecking Crewmen muttered. “The device won’t be as effective in the higher levels.”
Nicolas nodded. “Take position, and then light the room up,” he ordered. “Fire!”
Rawlings threw a pair of illumination grenades into the room and they flared into light, revealing heavy barricades at the other end and a handful of aliens lying in wait for them. He bit down a curse. The NVG goggles hadn’t picked up a trace of the alien presence against the darkness, even though they should have been easy to detect against the cold walls. The aliens either had cold blood – although they should still have been able to pick up on them – or wore something that minimised their heat signature. Nicolas’s own combat suit did exactly the same. The aliens didn’t flinch from the light, or come running forward as terrorists in Iraq had done; they merely opened fire from their position.
“Return fire,” Nicolas snapped, as the commandos dragged him back. The position wasn't a good one at all. Both sides could make each other miserable, but the only way to win a decisive victory was to walk across the vast gym hall…where the soldiers would be a very easy target. They could have thrown grenades, yet even the best thrower in the force would have problems reaching the enemy position. On the other hand…there were options. “Get one of the Javelin teams up here.”
The Javelin had originally been designed as an antitank missile, but it hadn’t taken various soldiers long to realise that it could have other uses. Nicolas himself had used it for breaking through sealed doors, walls and even taking out entire terrorist hideouts, although that had probably been because the terrorists had stockpiled their supply of ammunition far too close to the door. The resulting explosion had ended the battle rather sharply. Using a Javelin against a handful of alien personnel might have seemed a little excessive, but Nicolas doubted that anyone would complain. The aliens only needed to stall the humans long enough to get a counter-attack organised. He glanced down at his watch and swore. They’d been assaulting the base for over thirty minutes and they were no closer to securing the installation. He was starting to suspect that the base was so large that an entire army division would have trouble securing it. For all they knew, the hangar deck they’d captured wasn't the only one. Parts of the base might still be supporting the alien war effort.
“Force them to duck,” the Javelin operator said. He took up a position where the backfire wouldn’t harm any of the soldiers and waited. The soldiers opened fire, casting away fire discipline to spray the alien position with bullets, forcing the aliens to duck and cover. Their weapons gave them an advantage, Nicolas realised. They didn’t have to worry about reloading every time they shot a clip empty. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Nicolas said. He braced himself for the noise. The Javelin lunged forward, right for the heart of the enemy position, and slammed into the barricade. The resulting explosion was deafeningly loud and left the alien position shattered. “Go!”
Four commandos ran forward, weapons raised and ready to take down any remaining enemies. One of them flew backwards as a green flash struck his chest and burned through the body armour; the others avenged his death and took down the remaining aliens. The warriors didn’t surrender. Even the wounded kept fighting until they were put down. It was almost like battling fanatics again, except these fanatics were getting better organised all the time. They were making all the right moves, using smaller forces to weaken the attackers while preparing a counterattack of their own.
“My God,” Rawlings said. He’d peered through the next set of doors. “What have they been doing here?”
Nicolas followed his gaze and felt his heart sinking in his chest. The room looked like a triage centre from after a natural disaster, or a heavy round of fighting, with bodies lying on the ground waiting to be inspected by the docs. He knew the theory – patients were to be sorted into three categories; lightly injured, salvageable, certain to die – yet he also knew that he was looking upon a very alien interpretation of the concept. The bodies lying on the ground were unquestionably human. All of them were badly injured and some were near death.
He looked down at one body, wondering if the aliens had somehow teleported the missing USAF pilots out of their planes before they’d destroyed them, but the body was beyond identification. Terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan had mutilated their captured enemies, in hopes that it would break their other enemies will to resist, but this was something more extreme. The aliens had been dissecting humans with a very inhuman lack of concern for their survival, or feelings. He saw a girl with staring eyes that didn’t see him, a boy who’d lost his entire lower body and had it replaced by a giant mechanical spider, a man old enough to be his father taken apart piece by piece. The whole scene was beyond imagination.
“I think we know what happened to some of the aircraft they lost over here,” one of the soldier said, holding up a bloodstained uniform. It took Nicolas a moment to recognise it as an Argentinean uniform. They had claims to territory in Antarctica and had established several bases on the continent. Their loss rates were comparable to those of the other bases, yet they’d never imagined the truth. Who would have conceived of an alien base under the South Pole abducting
entire aircraft – apart, of course, from a science-fiction writer? Even if someone had come up with the idea, Alex had made it clear that it wouldn’t be taken seriously, not until it was too late.
His radio earpiece buzzed. “Sir, we have company,” Sergeant Tanaka said. “We have four alien craft making an approach now. I think they know something is up.”
“Take them down when they enter range,” Nicolas said. Their time had just run out. “We’ll be pulling out in ten minutes.”
He looked over at the Wrecking Crew. “Are you ready to emplace that device and get out of Dodge?”
“Yes,” their leader said flatly. Nicolas didn’t even know his name, but his face was as pale as the rest of the soldiers. The mutilated humans were shocking to them all, feeding a desire for justice – and revenge. “We’re ready.”
Chapter Forty
Alien Base, Antarctica
Day 40
“My God,” Edward breathed. “Just look at them.”
There were four alien craft hovering in the air, watching the base. They weren't making any attempt to hide, convinced – apparently – that nothing the assault force had could reach them. They weren't the little fighters, or the egg-shaped transports, but almond-shaped craft. It took him a moment to place them as being of the same class as the ship that had crash-landed over a month ago, warning humanity of the new danger. He wondered; were they troop transports, or reconnaissance craft, or what? The aliens seemed to just be waiting.
“I have a lock,” Corporal Singh said, pointing the MANPAD towards the lead alien craft. “I can definitely hit him. He’s just a sitting duck like that.”
Edward smiled. “Fire,” he ordered. “Take the bastard out.”
The missile launched from the tube, joined a second later by three other missiles from the SAM teams scattered around the base’s entrance. The alien craft looked totally surprised. One vanished – flew off so fast that the human eye couldn’t follow it – but the other three had barely started to react before the missiles struck home and sent them crashing towards the ground. They impacted hard enough to send shockwaves all the way back to McMurdo Station – assuming that the base was still intact and the aliens hadn’t attacked it as punishment for its role in the assault – and exploded violently. There was no point in attempting to pick up any of the remaining wreckage. After such explosions, the craft would have been completely atomised.
Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem Page 37
