Authors: Alexander Hammond
It was a perfect reconnaissance platform, except for the fact that the powers that be had also fitted a weapons system. The logic being, he had been told by the suited faceless civilians, that should the enemy ever develop a similar aircraft then it was vital to have offensive capability.
The chime sounded again in his earpiece, followed by a second more urgent note. Before he’d had a chance to even look at the radar screen the glass of his visor lit up with telemetry. It took him a full three seconds to accommodate the information imparted and he knew it must be incorrect.
“Computer, re-verify data and cross check.” He mentally visualised the satellite currently tracking him and immediately the computer relayed the information he’d received to the orbiting vehicle to confirm the telemetry.
“Onboard systems confirm data, satellite tracking verifies,” said the unflappable woman.
Chester barked into his microphone.
“Dreamland, this is Bullseye, we have an indicated bogie, inbound at…inbound at...it’s an error...inbound bogie at 450,000 feet at mach 4, decelerating. Definitely an error. It’s higher than me and slowing down.
His earpiece crackled into life.
“Bullseye, Dreamland, your contact confirmed. Move to intercept. Treat with extreme prejudice.”
Stunned, Chester replied. “What? Say Again?”
There was a short silence. This time the CO’s voice came on the line, urgent and insistent.
“Chester, no debate, this is a confirmed threat, bring that sucker down.”
The Colonel’s training took over. He hit the scramjets and felt himself pushed back in his seat as the aircraft leapt forwards. Keeping his left eye on the radar contact and his right eye on the aircraft status he thought, ‘Jesus, it’s still slowing down.’ Anticipating his thoughts the aircraft spoke to him. “Weapons systems online, target range 38 miles, closing velocity mach twelve.” Doing the mental maths he realised he had seconds to make a decision. “Acquire target and snapshot one through four,” he said softly.
One point three seconds later the aircraft shuddered as four missiles streaked from their rails. The moment their tailpipes ignited the target stopped abruptly. Chester blinked. The intruder had gone from mach four to a total standstill, a physical impossibility. Two seconds later it started to accelerate upwards at an unbelievable rate. Not quickly enough however. A moment later the sky lit up as the sleek metallic predators found their target.
It was a de-briefing to remember.
The moment his aircraft gently edged to a halt, it was surrounded by armed personal wearing an insignia he’d never seen before. With some alarm, he climbed down from the cockpit to face his CO who was looking faintly embarrassed.
Some six hours later a livid Colonel sat in front of the men from Washington. The Naval admiral again lit a cigarette and leaned forward, preparing to speak. Chester cut him off. “You can put that fucking thing out for a start,” he shouted. “I don’t care who the flying fuck you are. You’ve kept me prisoner here for hours, no ones told me anything and I’ve just had to shoot something down and presumably killed everyone on board on the say so of my CO with about four seconds warning. What the hell was it anyway? Jesus, the thing was above me and slowing down for Christ’s sakes! It stopped completely before I hit it. That’s just not possible.”
“Be quiet Colonel,” snapped the Admiral, “Or I’ll have you locked down for twenty four hours until you get a civil lip.” Shocked at his tone, Chester took a deep breath. The admiral sucked on his cigarette and continued, “I’m genuinely sorry you’ve been kept incommunicado. It’s taken a while to get us all here. I’m also sorry for the experience that you had today. You weren’t ready. Our intelligence was faulty. No incursions were expected in this area for a while. Your training wasn’t complete. Now tell us exactly what happened. Leave out no detail. Once that’s done we’ll give you the answers you want.”
Three gruelling hours later, the pilot sat back exhausted from the barrage of questions that he’d fielded. “That’s it,” he snapped. “I want chapter and verse.”
“We’re at war,” the admiral said quietly. “We have been for almost sixty years. When we last met we told you how things worked, why they work, why we and many others manage what’s going on. We explained the reasons: to try and keep this fragile planet peaceful and safe for its inhabitants. I explained that we control the flow of information, fund what needs to be funded, manage the world’s economies from afar and do what we can to maintain the ecosystem. There are those who seek to take this away from us.”
A civilian took up the narrative. “As I’m sure you’re aware, in 1947 there were stories of a crashed UFO in Roswell, New Mexico. The legend developed that alien bodies were recovered. It was naturally dismissed by the military as a weather balloon. Working where you do I’m sure you’re no doubt aware that there are incredible myths about the government working on projects based on technology from crashed UFOs. There are a plethora of books in the media about people who believe that they have been abducted by aliens and been experimented on. At Rendlesham Forest in England there were highly detailed reports of a UFO landing near a top security RAF base. The stories go on and on. What I have to tell you now is…they’re all true.”
He let the statement hang in the air.
Clearing his throat rather obviously, the Colonel spoke. “You’ll understand that I’m a mite sceptical.”
“You shouldn’t be now,” said the civilian. “You’ve just shot down a UFO. That’s what Project Aurora really is. An interceptor designed specifically for that purpose. They’re vulnerable when entering the atmosphere as you’ve just found out. You were due to be fully briefed on this in the next few weeks before the next incursion was predicted.”
“You mean all this alien stuff is real?” Chester’s head was spinning. “We really are retro-engineering downed UFO technology? There really are people being abducted and having experiments carried out on them? What the hell for? Have we really conducted autopsies on aliens? I mean…what’s real and what isn’t? Why are we at war? Christ guys, I need a briefing.”
The Air Force general interrupted him. “I’m sorry Chester, you got thrown in at the deep end unprepared. What’s actually happening is a little more complex than is imagined, even by the rumour specialists on the net. What we know is that these incursions have been occurring for the last sixty years. The purpose of these incursions is intelligence gathering. A prelude to invasion.” He leaned forwards to emphasise his point. “They’re very careful,” he continued, “and we rarely catch them, but we’ve had our fair share of successes.”
Chester tried to clear his head, “What’s all this abduction crap and medical experiments about then? Is that part of the intelligence gathering?”
The admiral drew heavily on his cigarette. “Not exactly Colonel. As my colleague indicated, it’s a slightly more complex situation. You see, the technology we need to defend ourselves isn’t exactly easy to come by, even by studying downed flying saucers.”
Now totally fazed, Chester ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Then where did we get it from?”
“We have a pact,” the civilian offered, “with the Greys.”
“Who the flying fuck are the Greys?”
The door to the briefing room opened suddenly. Chester spun around and what he saw rooted him to the spot. The pictures he’d seen on the internet were remarkably accurate, though the alien was taller than he’d imagined. Other than that, the black teardrop eyes and the large bald cranium were as predicted. Totally naked, the being’s skin glistened in the room’s harsh lighting. “We are Colonel,” the creature said. “Both of our races have a shared interest in this vibrant little planet of yours.”
Chester watched transfixed as it made its way around the room to an empty seat. Nobody else in the room even blinked so much as an eyelid.
The alien clasped his hands together in front of him as a human would. “You see Chester, we’re in league. Actually our races relationship is developing into…what’s the word? Oh yes…a symbiotic one. Through necessity. Both races have something that they need from each other. We’ve reached an accommodation.”
Chester finally found his tongue again. “So I haven’t just killed a bunch of your buddies?”
The alien made a noise which Chester surmised was an approximation of a laugh. “No no,” it said. “They were the bad guys. We call them the Blacks. Their agenda is simply invasion, conquest and colonisation. When they first arrived you were helpless. We’ve helped you fight back, given you technology, intelligence on incursions, that sort of thing.”
“That’s very benevolent of you,” the Colonel murmured, “Are you sending a bill?”
“You’re already paying and have been for some time,” came the reply. “The Blacks are barbarians but we’re not. We’re enlightened compared to your race and compassionate in our way. Unlike the Blacks we’re not expansionists by nature but our home planet is coming to the end of its life. We’ve been seeking a new home for a very long time and, well, yours is a pretty unique little globe, though for some reason you seem to have been hell bent on destroying it.”
The alien waved some of the admiral’s cigarette smoke away from his face. “And you seem to be intent on destroying yourselves as well,” he continued. “Your race is one of such opposites. You are capable of the most unbelievably creative thinking and yet you are individually dominated by fear and the pursuit of happiness through acquisition of material possessions. You represent such a dichotomy. This why we need to study you, you see. To enable us achieve a true compliance between our races.”
“What do you mean…compliance?”
“To enable us to…migrate here…we cannot do it with our current physicality. We are too alien to survive here for very long. The only way that we can achieve our exodus is by taking the best of us and the best of you and essentially achieving a merging of our races. A hybrid race if you like. Your
Illuminate
here faced a difficult choice sixty years ago. Conquest and extermination by the Blacks, or a pact with us to achieve a merger between our two races for mutual survival. Of course it’s a very difficult task requiring huge research. I’m afraid all those abductions and experiments are us. Casualties of war if you like. A small price to pay for survival.”
“Casualties of war?” shouted the Colonel. He felt physically sick. “And you bastards gave them a free hand? To experiment on our own people?”
“Really Colonel,” murmured the alien. “Please put this into perspective. Less than point one percent of your population has been affected in the last sixty years. There’s been remarkably few fatalities, and we do our best to keep the suffering to a minimum.”
“You’ve abducted over three million people to experiment on them? My God in heaven. What have you been doing to them?” The Colonel maintained control only with the greatest of difficulty.
The unblinking eyes bore down on him. “Unlike your race we haven’t been torturing laboratory rats so that women can paint their faces in safety Colonel. We haven’t even incarcerated anyone except for a few hours now and again. Abduction is generally a gentle process, whereby the subject is only vaguely aware of their surroundings and wakes in the morning for the most part putting the experience down to a dream. The experiments are far too complex to explain here, but essentially the main thrust of our work is genetics. We’ve spent a great deal of time studying your physiology in order to engineer human-grey hybrids. That was stage one. Stage two was introducing our own genetic material into unborn foetuses of pregnant women and studying the outcome. The few infants that survived show great promise that our objectives can eventually be achieved.”
“Dear God,” the pilot mumbled, “You’ve actually created hybrids? Don’t you realise that once these…creations…make their appearance, your little games will be over anyway. People will never understand. There will be mass panic. Whatever the threat from these so-called Blacks you’ll be seen as the invaders you are. There’s no difference between you and them except for the fact that you’re sneaking in through the back door.”
A civilian cleared his throat. “Actually Colonel, it won’t be like that at all. This has been thought through you know. As our guest here indicated, the Greys cannot live here with their current physiology. As a result the early hybrids don’t look any different from us. Mentally though they are generally superior in many ways. Increased intelligence, more developed brain functions, faster reaction times, etc, etc. By the time the final version of the hybrids is developed, the majority of the human race will already be dominated by the Grey gene and far better prepared to accept the truth once it’s revealed.”
The admiral appeared slightly embarrassed. “We’re grateful for your time Colonel,” he said, “and for your contribution to this program.”
The pilot stood up and leant over the table, “My contribution to the so called ‘program’ ends right now gentlemen. I resign.”
The Grey met his stare. “I’m afraid your contribution is inextricably linked to the program. You see, you’re one of our greatest successes. As an educated man you’ll understand our need to fully evaluate our experiment. It’s vital for us to know what has made you survive and flourish while others did not. The contribution you’ve made to the survival of our races is invaluable and will never be forgotten. A fitting epitaph surely?”
With that, a civilian opened the door to the briefing room. Moving fast, four armed soldiers entered followed by a man in a white coat nursing a syringe.
- The End -
THE MAN WHO THOUGHT HELL WAS A BREEZE
The Prince of Darkness stoked his beard thoughtfully. His subjects rarely ever had his personal attention after admission. Few merited that honour. Normally, after his well-worn greeting, new arrivals were dispatched to his team of trusted lieutenants for them to do what they did best. The new souls were almost like his children though he would have never allowed himself that almost romantic notion. He’d sowed the seeds in their life and they’d picked up the baton and run with it. He preferred to think of it as creating his own supply.
The majority of these arrivals ran through the normal tiresome gamut of pleading and sobbing before they were taken away. The very few that showed a bit of grit just lacked imagination. Their sobbing and pleading simply started a little later. Laughably, some even insisted they were there by error. He particularly enjoyed welcoming those. After an eternity though, they all seemed to merge in together. He rarely heard anything new. Until now.
What his most senior lieutenant was telling him now was indeed new and it had piqued his interest. He observed the ministrations of one of his numerous teams putting a recent arrival through an unspeakably brutal ordeal. The subject was laughing. “You know,” muttered his lieutenant darkly, “We’re just not reaching this guy.” The Devil raised an eyebrow. “It’s been a long time since I had a challenge. I may have to take a personal interest.” He recalled this soul’s arrival. It was unusual as he’d exhibited a total lack of concern. He knew it wasn’t down to mental illness as they were spared his domain. He just assumed, like others, he’d be reduced to naked traumatised fear once he’d been introduced to what this place was really all about. Evidently, despite protracted and sincerely creative efforts from his best people, this hadn’t happened. It was most odd. Curious even. Still, he mused, ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve had to dig deep.’ “I’m sure I can think of something,” he said to his lieutenant.
With a wave of his leathery hand he altered the torment and subjected the man to a barrage of agony and abuse that had his trusted aide blinking with admiration. “My Lord,” he offered gratefully, “You are truly are the Master.” His revered ruler allowed himself a smile. Admiration always went down well. It was a weakness that he allowed himself. He couldn’t allow himself many; after all it was only his will that held the place together. He stopped the scenario, eager to hear the supplication and entreaties for mercy. A hollow laugh was what he received. His lieutenant looked at his Lord with dismay. The Devil felt a prick of…what was it? Embarrassment? Newly motivated, he brought down on the man a mind-bending assault of such exorable depravity and pain even his lieutenant had to briefly look away.
The man chuckled uncontrollably. “Bring it on man, I’m lapping it up. Is that the best you can do?”
Some time later Satan flopped into his favourite chair and mopped the sweat from his brow. It wasn’t the heat causing his perspiration; it was the sheer effort that he’d put in. Unbelievably, the man actually seemed to enjoy the nameless degradations and misery he was being forced to experience.
Not one to admit defeat easily he plumbed his creativity in his search to inflect horrors beyond imagination and get the man with the program. He met with no success. He revisited the man’s time from whence he had come and studied it carefully. The man had been hell bound almost since he was born. A genuinely revolting individual. Of course the Devil wasn’t shocked, but was certainly surprised it had taken the man so long to get here. His subject had lived long enough to not only comprehensively break all of the Ten Commandments, but he’d also a good many others that the Good Lord hadn’t thought it would be necessary to remind mankind of. The Almighty always did tend to underestimate how bad his creations could actually be.
A short while later his most senior people arrived with the subject who, most infuriatingly, was sporting a broad grin. “You took your eye off the ball man,” he said, “You got old and careless. You think you’re bad? Yeah, sure you were, back then. It’s a whole new ball game now.” His lieutenants looked aghast. To their dismay the man continued. “You’ve been down here too long. You think this is bad? Have you actually been up there recently? Pain? Bring it on. I lived it all my life. I was beaten black and blue from the day I was born. A good day for me was one where I was only kicked senseless. Hell, it was the only attention I got so I started enjoying it. Gotta say, it toughened me up. Guess I’ve got you to thank for that. Isn’t all that your influence?” The Devil nodded quietly. “Well pal, you did a good job. Didn’t have nothing so I took what I wanted and didn’t let nobody stop me. In fact I liked it when they tried. Gave me the excuse to mess them up. After a while I didn’t need an excuse. Hell, I was messed up so I figured why shouldn’t they be? Got to enjoy it too. Really enjoy it. You know, the rush. Always knew I’d make it down here. I was looking forward to it. Did everything I could to make sure I made it. You did a damn fine job of screwing me up. Good work. The best. Trouble is you and this place. Big disappointment. This is a breeze. You’re not past first base after where I grew up.”
He’d heard enough. The Devil motioned his charges to take the man away. He was tired and, after all, he had eternity to break him. His lieutenants remained rooted to the spot. He looked up sharply.
The man who thought Hell was a breeze laughed. He addressed the lieutenants, “Get this sorry sucker out of my sight. I’ll sort him out later. Right now I got some changes to make.”
- The End -