The Filter Trap (27 page)

The group watching her hesitated on the edge of the landing pad, then marched off of it after a gesture from what must have been a superior. The black pad lunged forward to create a natural ramp ahead of them. The first alien stepped gingerly onto the red sand of the Mojave with two forward appendages, then flipped upright and turned around, facing away from their structure. It looked across the desert for a moment, with a massing group of hundreds arranging behind.

It turned, probably to tell the rest something, then looked out on the empty desert again. The black material grew things that sprouted from hands and feet and near the strange mouth. Similar technology appeared on all the troops behind, then they started to march off the black tarmac behind the leader.

As they set foot on Earth soil they treated it as tenderly as a NASA biologist might wisp fossilized algal cells from a Mars rock. Sample after sample was taken as black appendages morphed into all manners of scoops and spoons and funnels. In fact, it seemed the primary occupation of the aliens was exploratory.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, streamed out of the structures to explore rocks, cacti, and the occasional rattlesnake. They surrounded samples in the black growths, apparently infinitely expandable, and sent them backwards to the ship like a bucket brigade.

“They’re scientists,” Lee whispered in awe, hopeful she might not have a front row seat for the first battle of an interplanetary war after all. But she was cut off with no way to relay the good news. Somehow the structure had survived Operation Waking Desert, but these bearantulas clearly weren’t built to withstand a Fat Man. And if they somehow were, any forgiveness they held after Waking Desert would be exhausted, not that Lee would be around to care.

As part of their canvassing, the aliens eventually headed in her direction. Surely they’d recognize kindred intelligent life; after all, she’d recognized
them
as such. She’d decided they were not to be feared, but their appearance still made Lee wince. Perhaps she’d be the first person to make interstellar contact. Perhaps she’d be the first interstellar bigot. She told herself they looked more like bright walking giant starfish than It. A hard sell.

A small band of them clambered slowly up her dune on all fours, not used to the uncertain sand sinking under each step. In a few moments they realized the solution, expanding black nanites from their appendages to cast wider endings, like snowshoes for the sand.

The first, probably an expedition leader, had a spinning appendage creating sparkling apparitions in the air. There were several cautiously following him on either side. They drew closer, pointing strange appendage tools in her direction, studying her like a wildlife photographer trying to get as close to the subject as possible without scaring it away.

The leader exposed the glistening hole in the middle of its midsection. It was so close she could hear a sucking sound from it reminiscent of a rattlesnake. Lee tensed and grasped her M9. The leader stopped, straightening to stand fully upright, a motion quickly emulated by the entire team.

Her head told her that they were scientists, probably as elated to speak with another intelligent life form as she should be, but Lee’s heart didn’t believe it. She had nowhere to run, there were at least ten of them starting to surround her, and hundreds—maybe thousands—fanning out off the platform beneath the dune. They’d be on her before another F-16 could cruise by, not that a pilot could pick them off without killing her too.

Smoothly putting her M9 away, she stood up. The aliens froze as Lee walked toward them. She stopped at arms-length and reached out her open hand.

The leader, the tallest of the group, only stood as tall as her chest, but what was the proper way to measure height for animals without a proper head? They looked up at her, perhaps in fear, bending their starfish-shaped midsections and hanging their upper appendages backward.

Lee withdrew her hand and knelt, reaching open palms toward the leader, imitating the shape of the mitts and the strange joints of their appendages.

The leader extended his upper appendage towards hers, shadowing her hand with his heavy mitten.

Lee felt something, at first like a pin prick, then stabbing pain. She withdrew her hand and saw a long black line spew out of her bloodied palm. They’d injected some of that strange black stuff into her body. The nanites were
inside
her.

Lee turned to run, scrambling her hands, which felt strangely disconnected, through her pockets for the M9. Shoved down into the sand from behind, she felt the mitts holding her limbs, then the pin prick again at her neck. She turned her head to see a black shroud envelop her body. She screamed as her eyesight failed, but a coldness filled her throat and continued to her lungs before the rest of her senses failed.

“Any sign of her?” Franks asked Pith, as they both searched the giant wall of monitors relaying information from drones and Dragon Ladies over the Mojave.

“Hard to tell. Quality is a problem. We’re relegated to radio relays instead of the classified gigabit satellite signal we used to get down here. No more reading the brand of cigarette a terrorist smokes on the street in Syria.”

Franks sighed, “Can’t tell a prickly pear from a perilous pilot.”

“Cacti move like that?” Pith pointed to the black jumbles that bounced on the surface of the alien platform between video frames.

“I don’t know anything that moves like that. They’re like crazed ants, uprooting, cutting and capturing specimens to send back to their hive.”

Pith put a big paw on the Franks’ shoulder. “I’ve seen on TV what happens when ants find something curious and take it home. I’m sorry, Colonel.”

“Then I’ve lost the entire squadron. How long till he ends this?”

“The president wants to know what they’re doing down there first. A nuclear strike is still last resort.”

“Well, what resort are we at right fucking now? It ain’t Club Med down there, Pith.”

“Keep your voice down. We’ve lost a lot of good soldiers already. No matter what the president decides, it isn’t going to bring them back. You’ve got to think about the ones still here, still fighting. I only brought you in here to see for yourself and put it to bed. C’mon, we’ll be late for the briefing.”

The men left the control room and walked down the dim corridors under the mountain. With each passing guard salute they plunged deeper into secrecy. Outside the War Room Franks hesitated.

“What does he know about XinJiang?”

“Only as much as you,” Pith answered, opening the door. “Those three scientists he’s so fond of don’t know shit.”

Inside, the politicians sat with arms crossed, sore from lack of relevancy as any hope for diplomacy receded and the brass stifled any talk of patience or peace. The three scientists, increasingly more tired in every meeting, looked anxious as ever. Each time the president summoned them he had more bad news, another problem for mankind that they were ill-equipped to solve.

Allan’s insomnia had returned on the long nights conferring with Air Force Intelligence and it showed. His head hung lower to the table every time the president summoned him.

Jill, on the other hand, was excited, if not a bit apprehensive. Although all three scientists had connections to SETI, she was the only person in the room who actually held a permanent position in the organization. Unlike Allan and Kam, she was only just now starting to reap the rewards of long hours of research. The president seemed to lean on her opinions, splicing her scientific takes with the military’s penchant for aggressive defense.

Kam had perhaps the least to show for his work in these meetings. Many, including General Pith, had not-so-subtly often suggested he be disinvited from the War Room panel. If anything, Kam served here as a bolsterer of the other two scientists’ opinions, something that conflicted with his deep-rooted feelings for them. A few weeks ago he’d have wanted nothing to do with the woman that spurned his advances as a young graduate assistant on summer study at Arecibo and the man she probably
still
mistakenly pined for after so many years.

But when the fate of the world is at stake, petty personal vendettas are best kept under wraps, just like strange moments in dreams when you think God just might be trying to speak to you. Kam was quite sure nobody would understand how he felt he already knew the truth about these aliens with a planet in higher orbit, and the mysterious other ones on a planet interior to the Earth’s new place in the universe. The thought of hiding this information, amounting to treason if it were true, didn’t make him feel any better about attending another of these meetings.

The president didn’t waste any time, addressing Pith before he could sit down.

“General, my liaison with our eyes in the sky, what’s happening in the desert?”

“Sir, I’m assuming you’re talking about the Mojave, but there are two more we should be worried about.”

“I’m concerned about the colonel’s young lieutenant, the one that led my escort from Hawaii before the tsunami and lost her brothers
—
”

“
Bubbas
, sir,” Franks interjected. “She’s gone, they’re all gone.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, Colonel Franks.”

“Gone isn’t entirely accurate,” Pith added. “We’re still receiving pings from her beacon.”

Franks tried to hide the look of shock and delight on his face, switching to anger and suspicion. Why did Pith keep this from him? A power play. Franks had practically put on a lab coat and joined the scientists in his rejection of more forceful action while Lieutenant Green might still be alive out there in the desert with the aliens.

The president pursed his lips, dreading what he’d have to say next.

“Colonel, I know in the armed forces you have several different ways of saying you
leave no man behind
. However, this may be one of those cases when you must.”

Franks tried to hide his feelings, imagining steam must be bursting from his ears.

“Our last contact with 2nd Lieutenant Lee Green was at 1400 hours. Her F-22 was caught in the backdraft from the second landing and had to eject.”

“Didn’t she have an emergency radio?” Bolton asked.

“It appears Lieutenant Green ditched her flight suit after Colonel Franks warned her to take cover before Operation Waking Desert. We were able to track her pings while she escaped the alien structure, and we’ve got Dragon Ladies feeding us aerial radio reconnaissance, since our eyes in orbit are all gone.”

Photos popped up on the glass panels in front of each seat. Franks wondered again why Pith hid this information. It was apparent that by the time Pith brought him down to the monitor room to search, Lee had already been tracked and disappeared. Where she’d gone seemed obvious and terrifying. Pith’s comments about her being taken by the ants had new meaning now. Most things taken back to an ant hive were chopped up and eaten in short order.

“We made multiple passes after the lieutenant bailed. On the first pass we observed her body on the platform. Second, we saw her running up a dune to the north. A third pass showed her stationary, situated up the dune about a quarter mile, probably resting
—
”

“Or passed out,” Bolton added. “It can get 120 degrees in the shade, so I can’t imagine what it’s like in a flight suit.”

“Senator, if you’d let me finish, I was about to say we do not believe she was unconscious due to her position. It’s winter in the Mojave and perhaps sixty degrees. The lieutenant had already abandoned her flight suit and appeared to miraculously avoid any broken bones from her descent.”

“What happened in the descent?” the president asked. “I remember we lost radio contact and I was pulled away.”

“When Lieutenant Green bailed, her parachute caught on fire from the embers blasted from underneath the structure when the second set of objects descended from orbit. By our estimates she had between a 500 and 2,000 foot final drop at terminal velocity. Ordinarily this would mean death or at least paralysis if lucky, even with training. We’ve speculated that the same superconducting energy-absorbing properties of the alien material that helped
their
high velocity landings, absorbed Lee’s energy as well.”

Pith pressed the screen in front of his seat flush with the table. The holograph panes showed a surveillance image of the sand-covered, oblong, mile-wide landing site. The next photo zoomed on a lone figure on a dune looking through binoculars.

“But that is not what’s of most interest,” Pith said, moving the zoom around. “Look at that!”

Hushed awe and murmurs of terror filled the room. The image showed hundreds of little animal-like blobs, afternoon shadows on the sandy platform betraying their true shape.

“There they are,” whispered Bolton.

“I’ll be damned!” a fearful senator exclaimed. “Crayola-colored nightmares.”

Pith smirked at the politicians. “Intelligence says these pack more mass than we do, but they’re a good deal shorter. What really matters is this next bit.”

Pith flipped to a later picture and zoomed in.

“Oh God,” Jill gasped, followed by Franks.

The moment, frozen by a U-2 flying 50,000 feet overhead, showed a human body, wrapped in some tight black cladding hoisted on the haunches of a robotic multi-limbed black alien robot hurrying back to the platform.

Lee’s body faced the sky. Her eyes and mouth remained open, but she was layered in the substance the scientists speculated were nanites. Lee’s arms reached up from some final struggle, fingers outstretched before turned to black granite.

“Now you see, Mr. President, why a rescue mission may be out of the question.”

Franks viciously whispered to Pith, “I thought you said I knew everything!”

“About XinJiang. About what I needed you to know,
Colonel.
”

“Gentlemen?” the president asked rhetorically from the opposite end of the large table. “You know, the benefit of a round room is that it carries sounds all the way . . .” the president reached up and touched his left ear, “. . . around. Your pissing contest can’t spill into this room.”

“I lost three of my best pilots out there before those
things
even stepped off their ship. If we’re going to have any chance we have to let the big ones do the work, let the troops do mop-up duty. Why are we hesitating?” Franks realized he’d spoken out of turn. “If . . . if I may be honest, sir.”

Pith smiled. His plan to push Franks into a corner and exploit his anger at the aliens was working. That face, gasping for air, was hard for anyone to deny. Lee’s bubbas had gone down in ‘accidents’ when the aliens landed, but this was straight up interstellar murder and old instincts for revenge would kick in on cue for a veteran like Franks. Now he’d be Pith’s nuclear option yes-man, neutering the pacifist scientists, who had no idea what it was like to risk one’s life for their country.

The president studied Pith and Franks, aware of Pith’s manipulation, but also aware he might end up being correct regardless. But there were other things to try first. The president knew better than to blindly forge an attack against an unknown enemy. An enemy that may or may not be the same that destroyed the Moon and the satellites before moving the Earth to this new solar system was definitely not a foe to underestimate. What the president lacked in military experience he had in poker skill. He needed to save his ace for the last round and let other sacrifices, however painful, come first.

“Thank you for your honesty, Colonel. However, you know my position on the
big ones
. Nuclear is on the table, but it’s a big table and I’d like to exhaust every other opportunity before we doom what survivors there are in California, Arizona, and Nevada to nuclear fallout. We don’t want to cripple the southwest right when we may need every last citizen to stand and fight for it.

“It’s not just the American southwest, though. A nuclear strike would have to be coordinated, or our enemy could adapt after our first blow.”

The president made a twirling motion with his finger and looked at Pith, who moved through a series of photos as the president spoke.

“The objects in orbit are preparing to land or have landed in several other places already. Hudson Bay, Canada. XinJiang, China. Simpson Desert, Australia. Teeming with them, all after one thing. In Australia they’ve gone straight to Kati-Thandi Lake and started harvesting the water. We’re worried they’ll head for Adelaide on the way to the ocean. Here is how they treated the wildlife in their way.”

Photos splashed minced animals on the holograph panes. The politicians and the scientists averted their eyes from the grotesque display of carefree destruction. The soldiers practically salivated.

“Imagine that going through an American
—
or any
—
city,” the president said.

More photos came up. The aliens captured water from Kati-Thandi in massive bladders of the expanding black nanites, hanging beneath airships brought back to the landing sites.

“We’re mobilizing ground troops to protect our coastal cities in Southern California,
such as they are
,” Pith offered.

“Our goal is not to engage with the aliens in the cities, but to get any tsunami survivors to safety first,” the president assuaged the room.

“We
are
prepared to give them a fight, though, if they confront us,” Pith assured.

“Will they?” Bolton asked. “What are they doing with the water, anyway? Isn’t it easier to get it from comets closer to their own planet?”

“They may have already exhausted the supply,” Allan said. “If their lungs are anything like ours, and we don’t see breathing apparatuses on them in these photos, they’ve done a good job of exhausting
all
their native—and nearby space—resources. The Wenchang satellite is getting us more information by the minute, but what we
haven’t
found yet are water-laden moons or comets in orbit anywhere near either our planet or theirs.”