“He was the first to die in a war that threatens everyone on this planet,” the Colonel continued. “He will not be the last. But we will not forget him and we will remember him as he was in life; a brave man, a loyal husband and a good father to his children. We will not forget him.”
The group broke up slowly, the mourners heading back to the farmhouse for the wake. Coleman’s will had given specific instructions; he’d put money aside for beer and ordered the Colonel — who had been named as his executor — to invite as many of his friends and former comrades from the Marines. The Colonel knew that he couldn’t invite anyone outside the circle, but he’d silently promised himself that he’d hold a proper wake once the war was over — assuming he survived the coming struggle. If the aliens were prepared to launch a hit on a famous General, they were clearly preparing to come into the open.
“I’m sorry, Blake,” he said, quietly. It was a long tradition that American forces never left their comrades behind, dead or alive. He’d had no choice, but it still left him feeling as if he’d failed Coleman — and Toby. God alone knew what kind of shit would fall from high above — quite literally — if anyone drew the line between Blake Coleman and Toby Sanderson. They’d been careful not to leave any written notes lying around that could have attracted attention, but what if they’d made a mistake. The Colonel had no illusions. If the FBI had enough clues, they’d put the rest together in very short order. “Go with God, my friend. Perhaps you can remind Him whose side he’s supposed to be on.”
Leaving the unmarked — and empty — grave behind, the Colonel started to walk back to the farmhouse. There would be a wake. And then they would have alien butt to kick.
The first impression was blinding white light, so bright that it seemed to burn into his skull. He closed his eyes as tightly as he could, but the light poured through, sending daggers of pain plunging through his eyeballs and into his head. It moved almost like a thing alive, shivering into his mind and burning through his thoughts. Blake Coleman screamed in pain as his eyes snapped open. The light seemed to be coming from everywhere, all around his body. He couldn’t even tell if he was lying on something, or floating in the air. His body seemed to have lost all sensation. Once, long ago, he’d volunteered for a session in a sensory-deprivation tank. It had been eerie and thoroughly unpleasant, but this was worse. The light seemed almost alive, flowing into his mind. And could he hear something…?
Hell, he thought, as the noise finally registered on his troubled mind. A high-pitched whining note, so loud that he honestly couldn’t understand why he hadn’t heard it at once, was tearing through his ear drums. Slowly, so slowly, a shadow appeared against the light, inching its way towards him. Discovering that he could move his eyeballs, even if nothing else, Blake turned his eyes and saw a form silhouetted against the light. It was so bright that he couldn’t make out any features, but it was clearly not human. The movements were all wrong.
Understanding dawned. He’d been hit — he’d known at once that the shot was fatal — and he’d been taken prisoner. Somehow, they’d saved his life. Had the Colonel’s son been wrong about the aliens, or did they merely want someone to interrogate? Blake had undergone extensive Conduct after Capture courses, but he knew that everyone broke eventually. The aliens could probably reach into his mind and extract the memories directly…
A new sound appeared from high above him. Blake’s eyes whipped away from the alien form and stared upwards, squinting into the light. A long thin needle was slowly emerging from high above, reaching down towards his skull. Absolute panic overcame him and he struggled desperately against the unseen restraints, but it was no use. His body simply refused to obey his orders. Inch by inch, the needle lanced down until it was right above his forehead. Blake braced himself as best as he could, watching helplessly as the alien form peered down at him. A hand touched his forehead — it felt almost like touching a lizard — and pushed his hair away from his face. And then the needle came down.
There was a long moment of absolute pain… and then nothing, nothing at all.
Chapter Nineteen
Washington DC
USA, Day 35
“…Gives me great honour to declare that this building is now open,” Jeannette McGreevy said. Sitting in a seat at the front, which he’d been assured was a great honour, Jason somehow managed to avoid looking at his watch. McGreevy had been talking for at least half an hour, touching on all the benefits the Galactic Federation would bring to Earth and how it would improve the quality of human life all over the planet. Beside her, a handful of smaller alien devices sat and waited for inspection. One of them cleaned and purified water; another broke down waste food and turned it into chewy bars that tasted funny, but provided all of the essential nutrients for human life. “It is my fervent prayer that the Welcome Foundation will assist the entire human race in uplifting itself to the stars…”
Jason snorted, inwardly. It was his fervent prayer, right now, that McGreevy would shut up and finish, allowing him to get some work done. Even before the Welcome Foundation had been officially announced, they’d been swarmed with lobbyists and lawyers demanding everything from a private look at advanced alien technology to bans on the spread of alien technology that might put humans out of work. Congress had voted the Welcome Foundation a huge budget — they’d used it to buy up a set of buildings in Washington and convert them to their use — but Jason had a suspicion that Crenshaw, Professor Cavendish and the remainder of the Board would have to use the budget merely to hire administrators to handle all the requests. And lawyers; Jason was already thoroughly sick of lawyers. Even being the Discoverer didn’t seem to deter them from calling him at all hours and nothing, including threats of dire retaliation, seemed to deter them.
He glanced over at the aliens and smiled inwardly. It was hard to read the expressions on their faces, but he was learning — and if he was reading them correctly, they were as bored as Jason himself. The bracelets they wore to denote rank glittered brightly in the sun, but their faces were twitching, unlike the inscrutable expression that normally showed to the human race. He knew that he could have just been imagining it, yet he was sure that he was reading them correctly. Maybe they could be talked into convincing McGreevy to keep her speeches down to thirty minutes only. He wouldn’t have bet against half the crowd needing the toilet.
There was a cough from the chair behind Professor Cavendish and Jason hid a smile that threatened to turn into a yawn. The Professor had brought along a young intern from the Witnesses called Vanessa Dawlish and she was clearly just as bored as himself and the aliens. Jason suspected that the Professor was studying something other than alien science with her — biology, perhaps — but in the end it hardly mattered. The Professor was the kind of tutor he’d loathed when he had been at College, a person more interested in his politics and grading classes by ideology, rather than concentrating on actual learning. He allowed himself to wonder if he might win Vanessa away from her tutor. Imagining sleeping with her was more entertaining than listening to a thoroughly boring politician.