Alien Agendas, page 21
As she’d promised.
“Elanna!” he called out. “Front and center, if you please!”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Admiral, I think you’ll remember 425812 Elanna, one of our Talisian liaisons?”
“Of course.” He sounded unsure of himself, but he gave her a respectful nod. “Hello, Elanna. . . .”
“Admiral.”
“She and I have been butting heads almost since the moment I first met her, mostly over how our allies in the remote future can best help us. She believes that we twenty-first-century humans need to make our own way . . . insofar as that is possible. Right, Elanna?”
“Absolutely, Commander. If we give you everything you ask for, if we fight this war for you, you will not develop as a civilization, and that threatens our own existence.”
“And at this point, I agree with her. I would much rather the future left us alone to grow and evolve on our own.
“But . . . the future has already intervened. Among other things, the Saurians and their human allies in the future, the Grays, gave extensive help and support to the Nazis. Not enough for them to win the war . . . but I think Elanna will agree with me when I say that their assistance may well have encouraged Hitler’s megalomania, extended the war, and killed some millions of people, most of them civilians. The V-2 bombings alone—”
“Commander. I do know my history. . . .”
“Of course you do, Admiral.”
“What’s your point?”
At least he was listening. “My point, sir, is that Elanna’s culture has been involved in our time as well, attempting to provide balance. Without them, the Grays and the Saurians would have wiped us off the map long ago, and with us the Talisian civilization. Is that a fair assessment, Elanna?”
“It is, Commander. Your use of the word balance is both succinct and accurate.”
He could sense Elanna inside his thoughts. He was pretty sure she was reading him, reading what he was about to say, and encouraging him to go on.
“Commander,” Winchester said, “it’s not just the Talisians. They’re the ones who provided the new weapons, after all. But there are people both in the Pentagon and in Lunar Operations Command who feel our soldiers should not become too reliant on this technology.”
“And that, Admiral, is bullshit. If we have it, we should use it.”
Winchester gave an expression of mock surprise. “Oh, you mean like nukes?”
“Of course not.”
Frowning, Hunter considered how best to approach this. The fact that Winchester hadn’t simply slapped him down for having this discussion at all—in front of the assembled troops, no less—was encouraging. But Hunter knew he would have to tread cautiously.
“Admiral,” he continued. “The Joint Space Strike Team is composed of men and women drawn from a number of elite US military organizations. Navy SEALs. Army Rangers and Special Forces. Special Operations Group. All of us are very good with weapons.” He grinned. “You know, they say that gun control means hitting what you aim at. That, sir, is something at which we excel.
“We’re also damned good at picking up a strange weapon in the field and putting it into operation immediately. Most of us are trained in the use of a wide variety of foreign weapons. And we’re very, very good at what we do.”
“Granted, Commander,” Winchester said. “But if you’re asking me to release those new weapons—”
“Sir. The new weapons have already been delivered.” He was aware he’d just committed the unpardonable offense—interrupting an admiral—but he continued. “Somebody up there in the future has already decided we need them . . . need them to restore balance. And they sent them back here to be used, okay? Damn it, sir, if my people are being sent in to attack the Saurians on Mars . . . if Red Strike is so damned important, then we need those weapons if we’re to even have a chance!”
Winchester stared at Hunter for a long, calculating moment. “Without proper training, son?” he said at last.
Hunter looked at Elanna. “Elanna? Do you trust me?”
Her large and expressive eyes widened, and he thought he might actually have caught her off-guard for a change. “Yes, Mark. I do.”
Hunter glanced at Minkowski. He was thinking about the NCO’s accidental discharge of an alien particle weapon into the wall of a lab back at S4.
“Do you trust me,” he continued, “when I tell you that my people know what they’re doing? That they’ll follow my orders? That they won’t . . . won’t misuse their new toys?”
She hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, Commander. I do.”
“And I trust you when you tell us that you have our best interests at heart, as well as yours.”
“Thank you, Commander.” She looked Winchester squarely in the eye. “Admiral, as formal liaison of the Talisian Confederation to your people, I authorize the release of those weapons. Effective immediately.”
Winchester looked like he was about to give them both an argument, but then he smiled. “I can’t ask for better than that. I’ll want that in writing, though, Elanna. For when my superiors haul me over the coals for violating my orders.”
“Gladly.”
Hunter gave a deep, inward sigh. Hunter remembered reading once that no less a personage than Abraham Lincoln had urged his own war department to purchase large numbers of newfangled repeating rifles during the American Civil War and been ignored. The generals, it seemed, were afraid that if the soldiers had such weapons, they would simply waste ammunition. . . .
Command myopia, he decided, was a problem for every military since the time of Sargon the Great.
“You may dismiss your troops, Commander,” Winchester told him. “Have them muster in Armory Two and issue them new weapons. I will give the necessary orders. After that . . . stand ready for embarkation. I’ll want your people deployed to the planet’s surface within the next six to eight hours.”
Hunter saluted. “Aye, aye, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me, Commander. If I have any reason to regret this, it’ll come out of your hide.”
Hunter saluted again. “Aye, aye, sir!” Turning sharply, he told Minkowski, “Dismissed!”
And Minkowski turned to face the assembly. “Comp-ny, atten-hut! Dis-missed!”
Winchester and his staff walked out of the landing bay. As Hunter’s group broke up, Groton approached him. “You were taking one hell of a chance there, Commander. I’ve known flag officers who’ve barbecued upstart commanders over a slow fire and had them for breakfast for less than what you just pulled.”
“Sir?” Hunter asked, the word dripping innocence.
“Insubordination is a serious offense. Pulling that shit with me and your entire company looking on could have landed you in Colorado Supermax.”
“The weapons are here,” Hunter said. The confrontation with Winchester had left him as exhausted as he’d been after the fight in engineering. “We should use them. If even one man gets killed because his four-shot toy laser runs out of juice . . . well, that’s just criminal. I couldn’t keep quiet about that. Sir.”
“There’s also the matter of going over my head. I told you I’d talked to the admiral . . . and that he said no.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Next time that happens I won’t bother with Supermax. I’ll just have you chucked out the nearest airlock. Understand me?”
“Perfectly. Sir.”
“Carry on.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
But Hunter knew that he would do it again if he had to.
War was bad enough without getting killed by your own top brass.
Lieutenant Commander Hank Boland held his Stingray in tight formation with three other Hawks, adrift in endless, star-strewn night. The tiny, ruby beacon of Mars hung brilliant against the starry backdrop; he could just barely resolve it by eye as a disk, with one polar cap visible against the red as a gleaming white pinpoint.
“Hey, Skipper,” Lieutenant Hobson, Delta Four, called over his headset. “How long are they going to keep us parked out here on the ass-end of nowhere?”
“Patience, Grasshopper,” Boland replied. “All things come to those who wait.”
But in truth, Boland was also feeling impatient. They’d been out here on CAP—Combat Aerospace Patrol—for hours already, and when they’d reached the end of their four-hour watch and requested permission to return to the barn, they’d been told to wait and hold. Something was brewing back there, but they hadn’t been told what.
It seemed like the guys actually out on the cutting edge were never kept in the loop.
“All things?” Duvall asked. “Like maybe a whole squadron of dinodisks?”
“Dinodisks” and “saursaucers” were the aerospace wing’s pet slang for Saurian fighters.
“Put a sock in it, Double-D,” Boland said. “We do not need to hear it.”
“Copy that, Skipper. Sock inserted, aye, aye.”
The idea of fighting time-traveling intelligent dinosaurs, Duvall thought, was about as weird as it got. Perhaps the strangest part, though, was the realization that these critters had been interfering with human development, causing wars, even changing the course of evolution for centuries . . . and maybe since the beginning of the human species. There was every reason to suppose that the Reptilians were responsible for tales of devils, demons, and night-haunt monsters throughout human history.
So far as he was concerned, it was time to exorcise those demons, so that humanity could go to hell in its own chosen way.
“Starhawk Delta, Starhawk Delta,” a voice called over the comm network, using the patrol’s current callsign. “This is CIC. We need you boys to go and earn your keep.”
“CIC, Delta, we copy,” Boland replied. “Whatcha got?”
“Scouting run. They’re setting up for a strike op now. Starhawk Delta will take point and lead them in.”
“And how did it happen that we drew that lucky straw?” Duvall grumbled. “Our watch was up an hour ago!”
CIC heard the grumble. Perhaps assuming the voice had been Boland’s, they replied, “Just lucky, Delta. Your four ships are in the best position to shape an approach vector for Mars. CIC, out.”
Leaving Duvall to wonder if the people in CIC defined lucky the same way as he did.
“’Bout time they gave these things to you,” Master Chief Vic Torres said, grinning. “Doesn’t do to have them in here collecting dust.”
Hunter hefted one of the new hand weapons, a Sunbeam Type 2 Mod 4 laser pistol, a heavier, more cumbersome weapon than the Type 1 . . . but if its performance was any better he didn’t mind that a bit. “What are the specs, Master Chief?”
“Forty megawatts, Commander. Settings for either pulse or beam, selector switch here. Improved battery in the grip . . . and you can plug in a second battery here, below the grip.”
“Okay. How many shots?”
“With the additional pack, it should give you fifteen to twenty.”
“Score!” Minkowski exclaimed at Hunter’s side. “That’s a hell of a lot better than four!”
“Yeah, at the cost of two batteries expended instead of one. We’re going to be lugging a lot of battery packs with us, looks like.”
“Can’t get something for nothing, sir,” Torres said. “Now take a look at this.”
Hunter handed the Type 2 to Minkowski and accepted the bulky rifle Torres was handing him. “Don’t point that thing at a lab wall, Mink.”
Minkowski stiffened. “Sir.”
Torres was holding a new laser rifle. “Starbeam Mark 2,” Torres told him with something approaching pride in his tone.
It was heavy . . . almost twice the weight of an M16A2 battle rifle. With a thirty-round magazine, the M16 came in at just under nine pounds; the laser rifle with its battery pack connected was sixteen.
But it would do. “It connects to our armor pliss?”
“Yup. Right here. Depending on the setting, it should hold you for a hundred shots. Thirty if it’s on its own battery.”
“That,” Minkowski observed, “should do it for us!” He examined the uprated Starbeam closely. “Damn! I wish we’d had a few of these down in engineering!”
It was about time, Hunter thought. Maybe they had a chance now.
Lieutenant Billingsly examined a Sunbeam. “So why did Elanna’s people finally come through?” he asked.
“Good question,” Hunter said. He was painfully aware he still didn’t understand Talisian policy, though he was beginning to suspect there were different, rival groups in whatever passed for Talisian government in the future. Liberals, perhaps, who favored arming their primitive ancestors against the Saurian threat, and conservatives fearful of a misstep that might wipe out their timeline, and them with it. Hunter thought the technology looked sleek and advanced . . . but probably was no more than a century or so ahead of what human arms manufacturers could produce now. He was still chewing on what Elanna had revealed—a trade network spanning time as well as space. Maybe these weapons had been acquired in the twenty-second century and brought back to the present. They would make a difference, though the weapons available in Elanna’s home epoch must make these look like bows and arrows.
“The picture I get,” Hunter said, “is of the Talisians in the position of Captain Kirk in Star Trek, bound by a policy of noninterference with primitive cultures.”
“The Prime Directive,” Billingsly said.
“Right . . . and the good guys are only able to make tiny and incremental changes where absolutely necessary for the plot of this week’s episode.”
“Fuck,” Minkowski said. “Kirk violated that damned directive every week.”
“And who decides when it’s absolutely necessary?” Billingsly asked.
“That,” Hunter said, “is something we’re going to need to explore for ourselves.” He handed the heavy laser rifle back to Torres. “Okay, Master Chief. I’ll have the team line up, and your people can issue them these babies.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And what’s next, Commander?” Minkowski asked.
“Next . . . ?” Hunter grinned, willing to abandon the struggle to understand Talisian policies, at least for now. “Next we kick some sorry Saurian ass.”
Chapter Fifteen
The JFK Assassination
John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated in 1963 by a conspiracy carried out by the CIA because Kennedy intended to shut the agency down. . . .
or . . .
JFK was assassinated by his vice president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, in a power grab and because Kennedy was about to dump Johnson as his running mate in the 1964 election. . . .
or . . .
JFK was assassinated in a conspiracy by the Russian KGB because they feared Kennedy. . . .
or . . .
JFK was assassinated in a conspiracy by the Mafia as a means of rendering his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, powerless. . . .
or . . .
JFK was assassinated by the Cubans as retaliation for the Bay of Pigs as well as various CIA assassination plots against Castro. . . .
or . . .
JFK was assassinated in a coup by the US military and the military-industrial complex because he was about to sign an executive order ending American involvement in Vietnam. . . .
or . . .
JFK was assassinated by the CIA/MJ-12 because he was about to tell the public about UFOs. . . .
And there are others. Take your pick.
Conspiracy theories,
1963 and onward
Viktor Albrecht was a prisoner inside his own body.
He could hear and see and feel everything that was going on around him, but he was powerless to speak or move by his own volition. The cold voice somehow had entered his mind and taken over. Albrecht continued to breathe, his heart continued to pump . . . but he was trapped within a fleshy shell, unable to act on his own.
Like one of the imaginary demons of the Middle Ages, der Sternenmann had possessed him utterly and completely.
The intruder, he knew, was reading his thoughts, reading his memories, drawing from them his personal experiences during the glory days of the Third Reich. Albrecht carried very specific, very sharp and crisp memories of Hitler as he’d screamed his hatred and venom and searing emotion across the spellbound masses filling the Nuremburg stadium. Memories of the thunder of hundreds of thousands of voices yelling sieg heil in unison . . .
Albrecht had struggled to comprehend. Why him? Why bring a Nazi officer forward seventy-odd years to be . . . to be used in this fashion? He’d been walked out of the upstairs room and down into the darkened and smoke-choked rathskeller below, where he’d taken his place behind a podium and begun to speak. Perhaps a hundred people sat in the room listening—long-haired, unshaven, unkempt, undisciplined . . . but blank stares swiftly dissolved into rapt attention.
Surely the Starmen could have . . . recruited one of these unkempt students for the task. . . .
As he listened to himself speaking, however, he began to understand.
“Der Sternenmänner sind unsere Freunde,” he heard himself screaming into the smoky darkness, “und zusammen mit ihnen werden wir über Deutschland, über Europa triumphieren, auf der ganzan Welt!”
He could feel his throat turning raw as he bellowed the promise of victory. He could feel the pain as his fists clenched so tightly the nails bit flesh.
And then, as he felt the cold entity drawing on his memories of Nuremburg, it struck him that the aliens were using his personal memories of der Führer for their emotional content, for their ringing, mesmerizing thunder, for their ability to reach out and grab hold of the hearts and minds of the people listening.
“Es wird kein Eurabia geben! Die muslimische Invasion hört hier auf!”
More than that . . . the Starmen were reaching out through him, using their minds to touch . . . to nudge . . . to change the listening human minds transfixed by his speech.
The aliens, Albrecht realized with an icy shock, were using him to resurrect Adolf Hitler.
