The square was busy with aliens. They seemed to be fascinated with the rain. Whenever it started to fall, they’d leave the barracks and stand in it, looking up, taking off their gloves and waggling their spindly olive fingers.
It was times like this that Gregor thought they were almost child-like. A quick look at the pulse cannon on a shuttle, or the meat processing warehouses would quickly push the idea from his mind.
Layla dismounted and headed toward the chocolate factory, looking uncomfortable in her soaked black trousers and jacket.
Gregor met her by the entrance.
He glanced at the riders who joined the others, marveling at the grim weather.
“They never get bored of it,” he said.
“I do. Let’s get inside,” Layla said with a scowl.
The chocolate factory was deserted apart from Gregor’s man at the monitors, lit up by their glare. Charts, pens and the croatoan’s shoebox-shaped computer devices lay around the large table. The little surveyor bastards were probably out enjoying the rain too.
“What’s that?” Layla said. She pointed to a number of objects in the corner. The odd plastic thing he saw earlier. It’d been hooked into the power source and glowed light green, highlighting an electronic system inside.
Three transparent boxes were stacked next to it.
“I saw them carrying it here. Probably came down with Augustus. His shuttle’s still here.”
“What does he want?”
He let out a grunt. “You’re the anthropologist, you tell me?”
She crouched in front of the glowing object and ran her hand along its exterior. “I’ve got no idea what this is, but I’ll find out. They brought some large crates down the other day and stored them in the barracks. Something’s going on. Seems like they’re preparing for something. The sneaky fuckers are always up to something.”
She flashed him a smile, her hazel eyes picking up the green glow from the device. She pulled her blonde hair back into a ponytail. Her face was smudged with grease and orange root. For a scientist, she didn’t have any problems with getting stuck into the physical side of things.
Gregor had warmed to Layla over the last couple of months. When he had first arrived in North America, she was introduced as part of this operation.
They picked her up in England. She was a social scientist, whatever that entailed. Gregor never really knew. Her job at the facility was to look for efficiencies in the way they ran operations—improve the human resources and the harvesting root yield. He was sure she hated him, it was her aloof style, but he felt protective of her.
She’d introduced a number of improvements on the farm that increased their food and reproduction output. In Europe, he ran the paddocks like his parents ran their pig farm. She suggested changes in human livestock management like providing shelter to limit exposure. Another key improvement was feeding livestock produce from the food processing warehouses, instead of swill. He was impressed with the pragmatic circular nature of the coldly delivered suggestion. Its effectiveness after deployment was tangible.
He wondered though, how far her coldness truly extended.
Though from one perspective, what they were doing here, treating humans like cattle was barbaric, it was the world now, and now people like Layla knew it. She had the smarts to exploit a situation, something Gregor had decided to keep a close eye on. He had no doubt she’d step on him if it furthered her agenda, whatever that might be.
“Did you figure out the details of what happened at the harvester?” Gregor said.
“They shot the guard on the platform and suffocated the driver. You need to get a grip of this. We might all go down.”
“They seem okay at the moment,” Gregor said, nodding his head toward the main square where the aliens were doing their weird rain dance nonsense. “It’s Augustus I’m concerned about. He came down straight away, asking questions.”
Layla smiled. “Let me work on him. I’ve got a few questions of my own—”
Alex burst through the metal swing door entrance. “We’ve got signals again.”
She held a croatoan tablet out, a detachable one from a hover-bike they used to track humans with. Gregor remembered the rage he felt when his bead was inserted. The advantages became clearer when he was assigned human resource manager and tracked missing stock.
“Where? How many?” Gregor said.
“We’ve got a cluster of signals, maybe three. Not far away from the harvester. They could be underground, keeps fading in and out.”
Gregor grabbed the tablet, and orientated the red dots to a map on the wall. “I’ve picked up something there before. Couldn’t find anything.”
“Fifteen minute rule?” Alex said.
Gregor nodded. The croatoans didn’t place huge value on individual wild humans. When they took him or his team out hunting for new livestock, they’d only be allowed to pursue a target for fifteen minutes.
The logic behind their rule was the aliens didn’t want to waste their time in a game of cat and mouse with one of the more slippery and resourceful humans. He thought they viewed it as the same as catching a rabbit in a garden. It was slightly annoying, but wouldn’t hurt them; they could crush it if they really wanted. Alternatively, the signal could be from a corpse, buried in a shallow grave.
“Three croatoans are scrambling, I need to take the tablet back,” Alex said.
“The crew might be with the little wasp,” Layla said.
“That’s what I’m hoping. Can you go with them?” Gregor said. “Try to convince them that this is the shit who’s been attacking the harvesters?”
Layla puffed her cheeks. “They won’t go on a wild goose chase. I don’t see what use I’ll be.”
“At what point will they start caring about the bastard who’s screwing our production statistics?” Gregor said. “I don’t want him slipping through our fingers.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Alex said.
The door flung open and a group of surveyors entered, visors covered in droplets. They surrounded the large wooden table and started working on their computers, studying charts and busily clicking to each other.
Gregor leaned toward Layla. “You’re the one they trust, and I trust. Please, go with them, we need some human intelligence on the ground.”
“Okay. I’ll get them to bring him in alive, if I can.”
“Thanks. Alive or dead, I’m easy with either option.”
They left the chocolate factory. Layla and Alex headed for the central area, where three croatoans sat on hover-bikes, watching their approach.
Gregor walked between two warehouses and scanned the paddocks. His men were distributing food. One drove a large tractor around the grassed areas, while two stood on the trailer it towed, throwing out silver trays to outstretched hands.
Some humans sat and ate at the spot they received their food, others protectively took their trays to an individual spot, cautiously looking around while scooping the contents into their mouths with their hands.
One shot from a croatoan weapon was all it took to turn them into brainless cattle during capture. Yet, after a few months in captivity, some started to display more advanced kinds of behavior, a broken attempt at language, an attempt to climb the paddock fence or an assault on a guard.
This made the meat processing selection easier. The guards would splash paint across any human showing danger signs. They would be the first in the back of the truck for the weekly meat processing run. The rest would be picked at random.