“I am the representative of the United Nations of Earth, the Parliament of Humanity,” she said. Francis might have questioned her claim to superiority, but he was more curious about how the aliens would react to the claim. If they had been intercepting human transmissions, they probably had a very weird view of the UN, or, for that matter, anything else. The old jokes about the Fox or CNN generation no longer seemed funny. “If you want to talk to the human race, you must talk to the United Nations, to Earth as a whole…”
“We will send you to pass on our message to your leaders,” the alien leader said, cutting her off. The male spoke, for the first time, and Francis listened carefully; his voice was darker, more emotional, than the females. “You will convoy our messages to your people so that they might all be saved.”
Francis blinked. It sounded almost like a religious concept. Humans had conquered in the name of religion before; he couldn’t think of a religion that hadn’t, at one time or another, tried to convert or exterminate its enemies. The Crusades, the Spanish Armada, the Arab-Israeli Wars, the ongoing global Jihad against the secular West… all of them had been fuelled, at least in part, by religion. Had the aliens come all that way just to spark off a new religious war?
“Saved?” Sophia asked. “Saved from what?”
“Themselves,” the alien said, flatly.
Philippe, like the remainder of the humans, found the entire concept rather… unbelievable, but he suppressed the suicidal urge to laugh while he listened to the alien leader and Sophia arguing backwards and forwards. It was easy enough to dismiss the alien concept, and yet… there was no denying that the aliens were powerful enough to make their presence felt. He was pretty certain that the spacefaring powers were attacking the aliens in orbit, but the mere fact that they were still alive — and prisoners — suggested that the war wasn’t going well. The United States and Russia had the capability to launch attacks on orbital targets, but compared to what the aliens had shown, it was puny. The real question was simple enough; were the aliens telling the truth about their aims?
He mulled it over as the aliens carefully separated the humans, a pair of guards pulling him through the vast hanger bay and into a smaller connection tube, trying to ignore some of the human protests. Philippe kept himself calm and docile, for the moment; the aliens would probably punish resistance, if they really were religious fanatics. He’d dealt with more than a few human fanatics, but most of them had known — or at least had believed — that France would punish any offence to his person… and, besides, he was more use to them alive. The aliens were far too powerful for the United States to hurt, let alone France… and somehow, he doubted that the French Government would seek recompense for any harm that occurred to him. It was better, by far, to act docile… and seek to profit from the situation, somehow.
The alien guards finally pulled him into a smaller room. Despite the absence of gravity, it was set out as if it was normally used in a gravity field, with none of the modifications the ISS had had to take advantage of the lack of gravity, which suggested that the aliens would spin up the ship to generate gravity, sooner or later. It didn’t help him now — and it was a good thing that he’d recovered from his bout of space-sickness after a day on the ISS — but it was interesting to note. The aliens were advanced, sure, but they weren’t magicians who could generate gravity on tap. Everything they’d shown so far could be explained, or even matched, by human technology. The aliens pushed him over to a table, pushed him down on the table surprisingly gently, and secured him down with straps. Philippe felt, despite himself, panic stirring at the back of his mind; the aliens could do anything to him…
…Suddenly, all those stories of alien abduction and medical experimentation seemed very real…
“Remain calm, please,” an alien voice said. He found himself looking up into a featureless alien face. The aliens seemed to have far fewer differences between themselves than a comparable number of humans, although maybe they thought the same of humans; the only thing he could see to distinguish this alien from the other alien females — he was sure that the breasts meant that it was a female — was a tattoo mark on her hairless forehead. Name? Rank badge? Fraternity pledge? Or merely the alien version of ‘mom?’ There was no way to know.
He caught his breath as the alien moved a set of ominous-looking medical equipment over his naked chest. It would have been easy to speak to the alien in French, to see if she understood, but if not… why give up a possible advantage? Two of the other ambassadors spoke French as well as English and Sophia, he was sure, would have some French herself. He resolved to keep speaking in English until he was with the other humans.
His voice caught in his throat as he spoke. “What are you going to do to me?”
The alien didn’t answer at first. “We must know how your race works,” she said, finally. It had the air of a brief answer intended for a child, not a serious answer, accurate and yet entirely useless. There was little point in vivisecting a live human — the odds were that they had recovered bodies from the remains of the ISS and perhaps the American space shuttle — but he doubted it was going to be pleasant. “We must know if we can live on your world safety.”
“Odd,” he observed. “You’ve started a war against us and you don’t even know if you can live on our world?”
The device lit up before the alien could answer. She moved it, carefully, over his body, paying careful attention to the implanted plate he had in his forearm, where he’d broken his wrist years ago while showing off to a girl. He couldn’t even remember her name now — she’d married someone from the army, if he recalled correctly — but at the time, impressing her had been much more important than it should have been. The alien spent an hour studying him through her sensors, the medical technology displaying a hologram in front of her of his insides, and then moved on to more invasive procedures.
“Ouch,” he said, as she started to draw a little blood from his arm. She either hadn’t heard of anaesthetic, or, more probably, she hadn’t wanted to risk an alien drug on a human. God alone knew what an alien painkiller would do to him. A normal blood sample wasn’t painful, even though most humans maintained an irrational fear of needles, but the alien either wasn’t gentle or simply didn’t have the right tools. It hurt. “Can you stop doing that, please?”
The alien female ignored him, examining the human blood through a microscope, picking it apart for information. The tests grew more invasive — she probed into each and every one of his orifices — and painful, but he tried to keep the protesting to a minimum. He would have sold his soul for another human in the room, even someone he disliked personally, but he was alone. It was another example, he suspected, of alien paranoia. They didn’t want their prisoners comparing notes.
Idiots, he thought, eyeing the alien out of the corner of his eyes. They would probably have learned more from what their prisoners said to one another. Instead, they’d separated them, just to keep them meek and helpless. Did they really think that they would break free of the alien guards and attack the crew?
“You will come with us,” the guards said finally, as the doctor — although that wasn’t a title he would have willingly given to the alien medical expert — released him from his straps. The aliens seemed to have plenty of people who understood English. The guard caught his arm as he drifted into the air and pulled him out into the corridor, through a twisting maze marked only by alien writing, which looked like a dyslexic’s attempt at joined-up writing, and propelled him into a small cabin. It was almost empty, with only a sleeping pallet, a small toilet, water tap and a constant flow of air, blown through the ceiling to keep the air in motion. The door closed with enough force to send little shockwaves through the air; it only took a moment to check it and realise that it was locked.