by Clyde Key
* * *
It wasn’t hard for Ed to figure about where Richie Taylor was operating. The news reports connected alien slayings around the country with several underground operations but the ELA—Earth Liberation Army—was most prominent. That was also the organization that seemed to be involved most of the time when laser weapons were used and since Taylor would have access to more lasers than anybody else, it stood to reason that he organized or supplied that group. But how would anybody get in touch with him?
Marilee Sharp had given him the answer to that when she told Ed about the cave in New Mexico where the arms were hidden. So Major Baines gathered supplies for him—bottled drinks, army food rations, a change of clothes, a bed roll, and even a laser pistol—and had them all packed in a high level floater which he left just off base. Baines also assigned a private to carry the supervisor bracelet around the camp occasionally while Ed was gone. Of course that meant somebody else had to be assigned to distract the blue alien and Ed especially hoped that person was successful.
Authorities had closed the cave many years earlier where the weapons were kept, because it had been the scene of several serious accidents. It was also far from the beaten path and somewhat hard for anybody to reach with a regular floater so that made it isolated and thus all the more ideal for storing the weapons. Ed found the place easily enough but he wouldn’t think of going inside. In fact, he decided he probably couldn’t even make it up to the cave’s entrance. So he stopped the floater on the next rise and let it settle gently into the brush where he could watch the opening of the cave. Ed got out and pulled brush over the floater. Then he adjusted the seat back to a comfortable angle, propped the gull-wing door up about half way to let the breeze inside, and settled in to watch and wait.
Ed saw hikers while he waited for Richie Taylor. On two separate occasions, hikers passed between Ed and the cave. Neither time did they see Ed, and they either didn’t know about the cave or had been warned to stay away from it. Ed decided they probably didn’t know about it because the entrance was almost invisible through the brush.
Hours passed and dusk fell heavily over the forest. Ed was getting quite tired so he ate a good portion of the rations, closed the gullwing door to keep out bugs and snakes. (He’d heard snakes didn’t dwell at this altitude, but didn’t quite believe it.) Then he pulled the blanket over him and tried to sleep. But tired as he was, he couldn’t sleep because it was stuffy within the confines of the floater so he threw off the blanket and tossed and squirmed. It was still stuffy so he decided to take for fact the information about snakes at altitude and he propped the gullwing open again. This time he pulled the blanket over him and quickly dozed off.
The dawn came and the sunlight, fluttering through gently blowing leaves, woke Ed. Though his joints were stiff from sleeping on the floater seat, Ed was rested and quite awake. Just about when he was going to crawl out of the floater and head for the bushes, Ed spotted movement on the trail and waited for the latest pair of hikers to pass.
When he was just about certain the path was clear, Ed started to get out of the floater again. But, before he could move, a hard pointed object poked him behind his left ear. Ed tensed. The laser pistol was in his belt, hidden by his shirt tail, but he didn’t know what was pointed at his head, except that it was undoubtedly a weapon of some sort.
“Who’s there? What do you want?” asked Ed. His voice had almost left during the night in the woods, and he could barely get the words out.
I’m backing off,” came the whisper. “But I’ve still got you covered, so don’t try anything. Come out slowly, with your hands up, and don’t make any noise.”
Slowly was about the only way Ed could have gotten out of the vehicle anyway, but he couldn’t help making noise as he stumbled over the brush. Out and away from the vehicle, Ed turned to see who had the drop on him but the person had retreated behind thick foliage. Then suddenly, Richie Taylor came charging out of the bushes.
“Colonel Halloran! What’re you doing hiding out here?” Taylor rushed up and hugged Ed so hard he almost lost his breath. “I’m sorry, Colonel! It’s just been so long since I’ve been in contact with anybody!”
“It’s not Colonel Halloran any more, Richie. I’ve been arrested and demoted back to nothing. I’m a prisoner now.”
Taylor looked puzzled. “You don’t look much like a prisoner.”
“But I am. Or at least my supervisor bracelet is.” Ed went on to tell Taylor the whole story about his arrest, imprisonment, and escape. In turn, Taylor filled Ed in on his adventures with the resistance—all five groups he’d located and the other three he organized.
“So, are you out to stay? Or are you going back, Colonel?”
“I don’t know. I hate not being free, and I don’t feel like I’m helping the cause while I’m incarcerated. But if I don’t go back, it’ll probably go hard on Marilee and Baines. I guess I’m going back. I just wish we had a secure way to contact you.”
“Maybe we’ll think of something,” said Taylor. “I know how to contact you or Marilee anyway. If I come up with something, I’ll let you know. Don’t bother to come back here, though, because all the weapons are just about all gone so I won’t be back. I just came back for the last half-case of laser pistols, six of them.”
“Gone? Where did you move them?” asked Ed.
“Most of them are distributed, but I have the rest stashed in Colorado in four places. ELA groups know where they all are.”
“ELA groups? Like more than one?”
“Yes sir. I handle publicity for all the resistance I have anything to do with, so they’re all ELA. But none of them know anything about the rest, except that they exist. It’s safer that way.”
“So if we hear from a group that’s not ELA, it’ll be somebody else entirely.”
“That’s right. And I hope we do, Colonel. It wouldn’t seem quite so lonely out here.”
“Hmm. I can’t do much about other groups in my position, but maybe I can think of something else.” Ed was already thinking about encouraging Marilee to desert Eldredge’s army in favor of covert resistance, after they find some way to maintain contact.
A small group of hikers appeared on the path so Ed and Taylor retreated behind dense foliage. One member of this group suddenly yelled something about seeing a cave, so they all waited while that young man climbed up to the cave’s entrance and disappeared inside. Ed could only hope the fellow didn’t find the weapons. But the man came out a few minutes later carrying the box with the flaps opened up. “Hey, wait’ll you see what I found!”
“Are those real?” someone asked when the man had rejoined his group and displayed the contents of the box.
“Yeah. I think so.” He took one of the pistols from the box and aimed it at one of his companions, who protested. Then he pointed it toward a large gnarled tree with grotesque limbs that testified of windstorms and lightning strikes. Suddenly, the pistol discharged with a brilliant blue flash and one of the limbs fell off, leaving a smoking stump from the side of the tree. “Yaaah!” He put the pistol back in the box.
“I want one of those,” said another hiker. “I could blast stinky aliens with that, just like the ELA!”
Soon the hikers were leaving, with the last of Taylor’s laser pistols stuck into their belts.”
“I hope those people put the safeties on,” whispered Taylor.
“Me, too. Sure wouldn’t leave much of them if one went off. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
As soon as the hikers were out of sight, Ed watched as Richie Taylor disappeared back into the brush, and was gone.
42
May 5, 2113
Over a period of several days, resistance grew across the nation and not only in the South and Southwest. Each day vidscreens brought news of ambushes and guerilla raids on aliens. The reports embarrassed Macklin so much that he considered muzzling the news, but he was advised against it, so instead he pressured reporters to slant stories in favor of the
government’s efforts in integrating aliens into American society. That tactic worked fairly well for Macklin, because there was rarely a report that did not refer to the freedom fighters as criminal or radical or subversive. It was small wonder that so many reporters sided with Macklin’s government after mandatory sensitivity training was increased to a hundred hours, and media licenses were being reassigned on only administrative review.
The underground newspaper took an anti-alien and anti-government stand though, and flourished. Ed didn’t know for sure who published the paper but he thought it might have been one of his former troops who came from media ranks. Major Baines probably knew, but it was best if few others knew, so Ed wouldn’t ask the major. But no matter who wrote it or who printed the old-fashioned paper journal, a copy came to Ed’s quarters every week at irregular times.
There were not enough resistance fighters to win a war with a hundred million aliens, but there were enough fighters so that aliens feared to venture alone or in small groups. Ed Halloran had learned from the blue alien that Veezee had postponed a plan to organize humans around the world into small groups that could be managed by the aliens, and it was all because of the danger. It was not because aliens feared death for individual Veezee because the death of one or several of the aliens, interconnected as they were, was not considered death. After all, no alien thought nor any portion of the alien psyche would be lost, but Veezee recognized that large numbers of individual aliens would be necessary to control the humans. Veezee also knew that humans, except for those loyal to Macklin and Eldredge of the United States and similar puppet rulers of other nations, would have to be disarmed.
