Consider; what are the motives of humans at war? Land — there is an endless supply of land in space. They’re certainly advanced enough to terraform worlds like Mars and turn them into gardens. Given enough time, they could break down an entire solar system and create a Dyson Sphere. Slaves — what could human slaves do for them that machines couldn’t do better, without the threat of a slave rebellion? Breeders — we’re unlikely to be sexually compatible with them. And really; how many humans find a Snake sexually attractive? I ask again; what do they have to gain by waging war on Earth?
I think we will have to accept, right now, that they do know better than us. And I think that we should take this priceless opportunity to learn from a race that is far more politically and socially mature than our own. The concerns of those who fear losing control, or profit, or anything else should be dismissed. We will build a brave new world, one for humans mature enough to live in the Federation as equals. And if there are those who refuse to join us, let them isolate themselves. In the end, they will lose — and they will have no one to blame, but themselves.
The man who called himself Arnie Pie stretched and stood up from the computer monitor. It had been a long day on the internet, where posting a single article on the BAN could generate thousands of responses, ranging from thoughtful rebuttals to angry semi-coherent flames that were rapidly squashed by the site’s moderators. Arnie knew better than to allow himself to be dragged into a flame war — as a listed blogger, he was expected to show a high level of decorum — but there were times when the sheer level of stupidity on the internet drove him insane. Anyone could pose as an expert on the internet and false information was rife. And then flame wars broke out because trolls made it impossible for anyone to back down.
Shaking his head, he started towards the kitchen for a can of soda. It was nearly time for him to leave the computer for the night and go to work in the 7/11. He disliked the job intensely, but it had been the only one he’d been able to get, despite his qualifications and status as an accredited BAN blogger. Personally, he blamed Congress; instead of funding prioritising getting Americans back to work, they rewarded incompetence and bailed out banks that should have been allowed to fail. And hard-working Americans paid the price for their failures, while up on the Hill, Congress debated how to hand the nation over to a force from outer space.
He would have liked to believe the silken promises offered by the Galactics and their supporters, but he didn’t dare. In the real world, no one did anything for nothing — and some took their payment in feel-good feelings. The thought that they had done something to help pleased people; the fact that giving money to a homeless druggie only helped the druggie to keep doping himself seemed to have escaped their notice. Even if the Galactics meant well, that didn’t mean that they would actually do good.
The knock on the door was loud and firm. He scowled as he changed course and marched towards the door, mentally cataloguing anything incriminating that might be in sight. His apartment had been raided once before when the Washington PD had got the wrong address; they’d damaged his computers, confiscated anything that even looked significant… and refused to pay any compensation. They hadn’t even admitted that they’d screwed up and raided the wrong apartment. And the mainstream media hadn’t cared enough to send a reporter to make the whole thing public.
He peeked through the peephole and blinked in surprise. Instead of a pair of uniformed policemen, there was a single man standing outside the door. He was black, with dark stubble on his cheeks and a short, almost military haircut. The dark coat he wore concealed almost everything else. He looked official, maybe a Fed; Arnie wondered, grimly, what he might have done this time. It was well known that the Feds kept an eye on the BAN after the network had been used to distribute official papers proving that the government had been economical with the truth.
The door clicked as it opened. “Yes?”
“I’m Federal Agent Davenant,” the black man said, holding up a card. Arnie made a show of studying it, but in truth he wasn’t sure precisely what a FBI card looked like. “I’m investigating a case at the moment; are you alone in the apartment?”
Somehow, he’d moved forward enough to block the door. “Yes,” Arnie said. “Do you have a warrant…”
He never completed the sentence. The man lunged forward and slammed the palm of his hand into Arnie’s neck. Arnie was barely aware of a crack before darkness loomed up and swallowed him whole. He was dead before his body hit the ground.
Moving with a speed that belied his bulk, Davenant swooped down on the body and dragged it into the apartment. Closing the door behind him, he carted the body over to the sofa and dumped it out of sight. The research had said that the blogger lived alone — there was no girlfriend at present — but there was no way to be entirely certain. Once the body was hidden from casual view, he went into the next room and looted a drawer of cash and a handful of small items that could be fenced easily. By the time the police found the body — it would start to smell soon enough — it would look like a robbery that had turned into a murder.
Smiling to himself, he looked around the apartment one final time and then left, closing the door behind him. No one saw him leave.
Chapter Ten
Near Mannington, Virginia
USA, Day 20
“I wonder,” Toby asked himself silently, “if I’m doing the right thing.”
It had taken several days to set up the meeting. He could have just picked up a phone or emailed, but he had to assume that the aliens were monitoring cell phone conversations — and he was already a target for their attentions. In the end, he’d had to send a friend to speak to his father and trust his father not to ask too many questions over an open line. Luckily, Colonel Sanderson was just as paranoid as his son, although for different reasons. He had arranged the meeting without comment.
He followed his father into his study, feeling old memories crawling up into his mind. The bookcase, containing his father’s collection of manuals from his military service, books he’d studied as a child. The desk, a heavy wooden object that had been passed down from the first Sanderson to buy the farm and raise a family in America; his father was the only one allowed to use it, at least until he passed the farm on to his children. The leather chair, the one he’d bent over for a thrashing after a schoolboy prank had gone horrifyingly wrong… the room’s smells assailed his nostrils, bringing back memories from the past. And the two pictures hanging on an otherwise plain wooden wall; Mary Sanderson, Toby’s mother, and Robert Sanderson, his elder brother, the one he’d looked up to as a child. They were both long dead.
There were nine people seated in the room, waiting for him. They were all ex-military, mainly from the infantry, although one of them was a Marine. The Colonel had no truck with those who argued that the Marines weren’t real soldiers, not after he’d fought alongside the Marines in the Gulf. He did have a prejudice against the politicians in uniforms who fought wars to please the media rather than concentrating on actually winning, but Toby wouldn’t have disagreed with that sentiment. Ten years in Washington had left him with few illusions about the true nature of politics. For every Senator and Congressmen genuinely devoted to the country — or even to their state — there was a dozen devoted to nothing more than their own power.