Alien Hostiles, page 34
Billingsly took his place at the head of the formation, then turned smartly and saluted Hunter. “Sir! On behalf of the Terran Expeditionary Force, it has been a privilege to serve under you!”
Hunter gravely returned the salute. “Thank you, Commander. The feeling is, I assure you, mutual. You may carry on.”
“Comp’ny, di . . . smissed!” Minkowski barked.
And the personnel began filing toward the two TR-3B transports looming behind the formation.
Duvall felt just a little lost. His commanding officer had been Andrew Macmillan, the Big-H’s CAG, and Hunter was not in his chain of command at all, but he felt like he’d just said goodbye to his father. He admired Hunter, and deeply respected him. He didn’t know much about Billingsly, though it sounded like he was competent enough. What kind of CO would he be?
He didn’t like the idea of not going back to Earth. He knew he couldn’t count on Captain Hunter returning anytime soon, and he was prepared to accept Daarish as his new duty station for the foreseeable future. It might well be years.
Like most of the members of the 1-JSST and of Hillenkoetter’s aerospace pilots, he didn’t have many attachments back home. Some friends, yes, but his parents were dead and his wife had divorced him years ago . . . something about his never being home, about loving the Navy more than he loved her, about moving all over the goddamned map every few years when he got new orders to a new duty station.
Well . . . fuck her. He wished her well, but he didn’t need her in his life. The people around him, the JSST troopers, the other pilots, especially . . . they were his family now.
He expected Daarish would be a tough duty station, but the people he served with would make all the difference.
Duvall would be flying his Stingray down to the planet, not ferrying ashore on a Treb. But as he looked around for Marv, he caught sight of two men filing up a Treb’s boarding ramp—HM1 Marlow and Chief Steiner.
Well, son of a bitch. He broke into a grin. This might turn out to be pretty good duty after all. . . .
On Hillenkoetter’s observation deck, Elanna sat on a sofa with the psychic, Julia Ashley. The young remote viewer didn’t have the same mental power and skill possessed by the Talis, of course, but Elanna recognized in her the beginnings of the psychic skills her people possessed. Telepathy and remote perception—those were powers forged within the human species over the course of ten thousand years through genetic enhancement and technical augmentation, a direct lineage of evolution from Julia to herself.
But for this era, the abilities Julia Ashley had demonstrated were truly amazing.
“But I can’t control it,” Ashley said, her voice nearly a wail. “Sometimes I’ll see what I’m looking for . . . but it’s so damned fuzzy! And often there’s nothing! Why can’t it work like yours?”
“Step by step, Julia,” Elanna told her. “You still have a long way to go.”
“Me?” Ashley asked. “Or the human race?”
“Both.” Elanna considered for a moment what to tell her. She couldn’t say too much. . . .
“Julia, there are four different types of extraterrestrials currently interacting with humans on Earth. There are aliens with no psychic skills whatsoever. Not surprising; the skill set is elusive and rare. But those aliens are either friendly to us, and are interested only in trade, or they are either hostile or indifferent, they don’t understand us, and they want nothing to do with us. Okay?”
Julia nodded, not sure where this was going.
“Among the ETs who have psychic abilities, again, there are some who are friendly and others who are hostile. The friendly ones, like those Grays who are not Malok or under the control of the Malok, are benevolent and want to help us. The hostile psychics, well, they’re different. They want to exterminate us.”
“Why?”
“Because they recognize that humans are . . . special. Not unique among all the millions of intelligent species in the Galaxy, but special. Hostiles like the Malok have considerable psychic skills and can be quite powerful . . . but they tend to be limited in range. Their powers work best within a few feet, though they can attempt to influence humans at greater distances. Humans of the twenty-first century, however, are very much weaker, but they have the potential of reaching much, much farther across both space and time. The Malok, and others who are truly extraterrestrial, know that one day Humankind will evolve psychic powers far beyond what we Talis have mastered, even beyond those of the Grays. And when that happens, there will be no stopping us.
“So as frustrating as it is, I urge you to accept the gift you have, and the depth to which you’ve been able to train it, and see it as one step along Humankind’s evolutionary path. To paraphrase one twentieth-century human, it’s a small step . . . and also a giant leap. Be proud.”
“Okay. I’ll . . . try. . . .”
Elanna touched Julia’s mind with her own.
It was . . . beautiful.
Groton stood on Hillenkoetter’s bridge, watching the expeditionary force’s departure. Twenty-four sleek Stingray fighters had already emerged from the flight deck into space and accelerated toward Daarish. The two Trebs, one carrying personnel, the other loaded with supplies, weapons, ammo, food, and equipment, were departing now.
McCone, Carlucci, and Blake were already in planetary orbit.
“Comm,” Groton said. “Make to the expeditionary force. ‘Good luck and Godspeed.’”
“Aye, sir.”
“Captain?” Haines said. “All departments report ready for flight.”
“Inman reports all green and ready to go,” the comm officer reported.
“Admiral?”
Winchester gave a nod. “Proceed.”
Groton looked at the main screen. Sol, Earth’s sun was invisible at this distance, but he knew it was there.
“Helm . . . ahead full. Take us home.”
“Ahead full, aye, aye, Captain.”
And the Hillenkoetter accelerated, the Inman a diminutive companion.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927
12 March 1945
Elanna entered the cavernous underground spaceport hidden in the mountains south of Munich, her footsteps echoing across the wet concrete floor. In one hand she carried a valise; in the other were her travel orders, signed by Himmler himself. The port hidden away in its deep, undermountain bunker was an impressive feat of engineering. Soon, though, it would be gone—destroyed or, possibly, sealed away against the Allied advance. Today might well mark the last flight out of the facility.
Ahead of her, the spaceship squatted on slender landing legs, its lowered ramp flanked left and right by a pair of SS guards. The craft, of the type known as a Vril-7, was the only one of its class. Considerably larger than the Nazi Haunebu saucers, it had been designed to make interstellar jumps—specifically to the colony at Aldebaran.
So far as its crew was concerned, that was still the plan.
“Papers!” one of the guards demanded.
He spent a long moment studying the documents she handed him, while the other leered at her. “I like your hair, Liebchen,” the second soldier said. “Unusual. So long . . .”
She ignored him as the first guard handed back her ID and travel orders. “You may go.”
“Danke.”
A pair of Grays waited for her at the top of the ramp. This was the real test, since the Grays could read her mind. Orsic carefully shielded herself, engaging the technical augmentations within her skull. Everything now depended on her implementing her plan, and these were Malok Grays. If they read her mind now, she was finished. She knew these two were here as a mental checkpoint, scanning the passengers as they came aboard.
What she gave them, holding it in her mind, was her cover—she was Maria Orsic, citizen of the Third Reich, born in Vienna in 1895, now bound for Aldebaran on a vital diplomatic mission. These two should have no reason to suspect her; she was confident that their scan would be a perfunctory one.
She felt the fleeting, cold touch of the being’s thoughts just behind her eyes, a touch there, then gone again. One waved her on, apparently satisfied.
Footsteps sounded on the ramp behind her. Turning and glancing down, she saw two more Talis approaching the top—637635 Vashnu and 299765 Tollah. She knew them both well of course.
Vashnu was a Talis agent assigned to watch an SS general named Kammler, the head of most of the highly secret Wunderwaffe projects at this time. Tollah was another member of the Vrilerinnen, the Vril Women, her thigh-length hair now bound up as inconspicuously as possible. Among the Vril Women, and within the Munich’s Vril Society circles, she was known as Traute.
She was Elanna’s lover.
Two more were already on board—a Talis named Masid and another Vrilerinnen, Franziska Oettingen. Masid was posing as a general major in the Wehrmacht, though he was in civilian clothing now. He and others had helped both Elanna and Franziska to reach the port.
Franziska was not Talis, but was native to this time. Elanna had offered her a chance to leave Germany and to leave this tragic time.
They gathered in Vashnu’s cabin. They said nothing, since the Saurians might be listening in. Elanna gave Masid a quizzical look. You have them?
He nodded, put his suitcase on the bed, and opened it.
Inside the lid, hidden in the liner, was a small flat container designed to look like a part of the suitcase if it was scanned by X-rays. Opening it, he removed four black rings. He took one, and held the others out for Vashnu, Elanna, and Tollah. Elanna slipped hers onto her right middle finger, squeezing it to readjust itself to fit her. She then closed her eyes, and let her thoughts slip out into the ship, probing.
After a moment she held up seven fingers, then two. Seven Malok . . . two of them Reptilians. Her hand moved through several gestures, a silent language. Three on the bridge, two in engineering, the two guards now on their way to their quarters on the lower deck.
The others nodded understanding. Vashnu would take the ones in engineering, Tollah the two in their quarters, leaving the bridge for Elanna and Masid. Franziska would stay here.
The plan had been carefully worked out ahead of time. First, though, they needed the ship to depart the Earth.
Ten minutes later, a tone chimed, and they felt a gentle vibration through the deck. They were airborne.
Silently, they left the cabin, splitting up to take their assigned stations.
As she and Masid entered the bridge moments later, the Saurian on the control dais rose, angry. Silent words slammed into her awareness. You do not belong here. Leave.
For answer, she raised her hand and thought of death. The ring on her finger grew warm . . . and the Saurian’s chest sparked with a loud crack. The ring, a marvel of 101st century nanotechnology, worked by reaching through the fourth dimension to deliver a powerful shock.
It was called deathtouch.
In the same instant, Masid dropped the other Saurian. Pivoting swiftly, Elanna, almost as an afterthought, dropped the Gray who was at another console. It was regrettable killing the Grays, but there was no way of knowing how deeply conditioned they were in the Saurians’ service. Like the Saurians, they were Malok.
Through the viewing field forward, she saw the deep blue of Earth’s atmosphere giving way to black and a profusion of stars. Pushing the dead Reptilian from the control chair, she took his place, letting her mind slide into the controls. There were start codes in place, of course, but they’d been unlocked.
Gently, she maneuvered the craft, getting its feel. With a thought, she changed course. So far as the Malok at Aldebaran were concerned, the Vril-7 would simply vanish between the stars.
It happened.
Vashnu and Tollah entered the bridge. “It’s done,” Vashnu said. “Let’s go home, now.”
“Yes, please,” Tollah added. “The Third Reich is . . . a nightmare made flesh. An insane nightmare.”
“They’re finished,” Masid declared. “Our contacts in 1950 told me the Germans will surrender in two more months. Hitler and Himmler both will kill themselves. But it will take a long time for the Germans to recover.”
“I very much hope Central Prime knows what it’s doing,” Elanna said. She glanced down at the dead pilot. “Otherwise we might well have just started a time war. . . .”
“I suppose only time will tell,” Vashnu said.
Elanna set the ship’s controls for the remote future, and accelerated.
The Present Day
Hunter rose as Julia Ashley entered the lounge. “Hello, Julia,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course, Commander,” she said, taking a seat. “It sounded important.”
“It is,” he said, sitting. “At least it is for me. I have a favor to ask of you.”
“What is it?”
“You have . . . a remarkable gift. You were able to see things on Daarish with amazing clarity . . . and you did it across millions of miles of space. There’s even the possibility that you were seeing across time, and that’s impressive.”
“Space and time are the same thing,” she said with a shrug. “Einstein proved that.”
“Spacetime, I know.”
Hunter reached into the left chest pocket of his camo fatigues and extracted a photograph. It was worn and the corners were dog-eared, but it showed a photo of a smiling young woman. Hunter remembered the day he’d taken that shot, on the Star of India wharf on the San Diego waterfront.
“She’s lovely.”
“Her name is Gerri Galanis,” Hunter told her. “She’s . . . well . . . she’s important to me. A very dear friend.”
Julia smiled. “Girlfriend?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
The admission embarrassed him, not because of their relationship, but because the Solar Warden hierarchy was so rigid about its personnel maintaining contacts with people not in the program. It wasn’t forbidden, exactly, but it was strongly discouraged . . . and there were some within the program who would have prohibited that sort of thing entirely. Earlier in the Solar Warden program, there’d actually been such concern about security that personnel had been forbidden from going back to Earth. That hadn’t lasted long, but Warden personnel on liberty knew they were being watched constantly by the ever-present and terrifying Men in Black. It was almost a relief when liberty was up and it was time to go back to the Moon.
“Gerri,” he said, “disappeared. The Men in Black took her.”
“Men in Black? That’s just fiction, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s very real. They’re very real. They’re . . . well, I think they’re the enforcement arm of Solar Warden. Most of them, anyway. There are a lot of strange cases that suggest several groups are taking on the role. Maybe even aliens. Some of them seem to be on the side of the Saurians. It’s possible they’ve infiltrated Solar Warden.”
“And they kidnapped your girlfriend?”
“I think so. She just . . . vanished. Someone else moved into her apartment. No forwarding address. Nothing.”
“Have you called the police?”
He smiled. “Somehow, I don’t think the police can help. Actually, I did go to the San Diego cops. Told them I was Naval Intelligence and got them to let me see their records. Nothing.”
“So you want me to RV her.”
“I’ve read that a lot of remote viewers do police work. Solve murders. Find missing persons. Stuff like that. I was hoping maybe you could zero in on Gerri if you had a picture. . . .”
Julia studied the photo for a long moment. “I’m honestly not sure,” she said at last. “I really don’t think I can do it this far from Earth.” She gave a small, uncertain smile. “Elanna told me the other day that human psychics are strong enough that someday we can span the Galaxy. Trust me, I’m not there yet.”
Hunter felt a sharp stab of disappointment. “Well, thanks for—”
“Oh, I didn’t say I couldn’t try. I just need to wait until we’re back at LOC. If I could pick up on Daarish when the Hillenkoetter was several light minutes away, I know I can reach Earth from the Moon. That’s just one and a quarter light seconds, right?”
“That’s right. But didn’t you mention that you traveled back to Los Angeles in 1942? That was . . . what? While we were in warp headed for Aldebaran, wasn’t it? ”
“That was a dream, Commander. Not remote viewing, not real, controlled remote viewing at all.” She hesitated. “That was right after we were at Oumuamua, okay? The aliens . . . I think they did something to my mind. Touching them changed me. But I don’t understand it, and I can’t control it.”
“I think, Julia,” Hunter said, “that you can do just about anything you choose to put your mind to. You have an absolutely incredible talent.”
She held out the photo. “Could I keep this? Just temporarily. I’ll give it back.”
“Certainly. Is there anything else you need?”
“If I think of anything I’ll let you know.” She hesitated. “Just so you’re aware, controlled remote viewing isn’t magic. There are limits and strict rules. I seem to have broken some of the rules after the encounter at Oumuamua, but things always seem to work best when I do things the way I was trained. Usually. So if it works, I’ll be able to give you raw data . . . drawings, a few paragraphs . . . but I can’t analyze them, I can’t explain them. That will be your job.”
“Anything you’re able to give me will be very, very much appreciated.”
Later, Julia lay in her bunk, the lights dialed down just enough that she could still see the tablet beside her if she needed to. She ran through several mental exercises in her head, opening herself to the possibility—no, the certainty—of remote viewing.
Hillenkoetter was still traveling somewhere within the sixty-seven-light-year gulf between Aldebaran and Sol, moving backward through time as she moved forward through space. The more Julia thought about it, the more she’d wondered if time travel conferred some sort of advantage on remote viewers, making the process easier . . . and perhaps more vivid. It seemed a plausible theory; she found she’d rather embrace that than consider the possibility that direct contact with alien minds had somehow changed her.
