Jason stared down at his empty cup. Sanderson was right. Too much could go wrong, even considering the inside knowledge they had — and the alien leadership didn’t know they had. It was a secret weapon, but what good was it if it couldn’t be used? How could they hope to pull off a victory if they couldn’t get into orbit… he thought, carefully, about everything he knew about the aliens or thought he knew about them. What did they value? They probably cared about their own lives or at least the lives of their senior officers. They seemed much less concerned about their juniors and soldiers, preferring to vaporise their bodies rather than run the risk of allowing them to fall into enemy hands.
What did they value…?
He looked up, suddenly. “I know what we can use,” he said, grimly. “The one thing we have that they won’t want to throw away in a hurry. They won’t want to lose their collaborator of a President so quickly, will they?”
Sanderson nodded, slowly. “They have already been nudging at her to accept their protection,” he said. He smiled, sardonically. “For some reason, they believe that her life may be in danger — or they want to remove the rest of her independence of thought. Or maybe they think she’s worth more as an independent entity rather than a pod person.”
He considered. “If she happened to be at Andrews when the base was attacked,” he added, “what would they do?”
“Try to keep her safe,” Jason said. “And where could she be safer than their flagship?”
Sanderson smiled. “I’ll take this to some others and try to put an operation together,” he said. “I suggest that you don’t worry about this for a while. What you don’t know you can’t tell.”
Jason nodded, although part of him felt excluded. “I should come with you,” he said. “I already know too much.”
“I know,” Sanderson admitted. “And if we had someone else in your position, I’d pull you out and take you somewhere underground. But we don’t; we have to balance the risks here and the benefits we gain from having you where you are.”
“Someone who can see what the Welcome Foundation is doing,” Jason said, dryly. “Right now, I cannot think of anything we’re doing that is actually what we were promised before Tehran. We’re not even installing new fusion plants or medical centres or even food kitchens…”
“You’re doing good work,” Sanderson assured him. “The country won’t forget you afterwards, whatever happens.”
Jason snorted. “Winners write the history books, remember? The aliens will remember me as a collaborator if they win and so would most of humanity if the human race comes out of it with even limited independence…”
“The record will be set straight eventually,” Sanderson said. “Besides, you’re assured of a good mention whoever writes the history books.”
He nodded to Jason and left the room. Behind him, Jason took one last look at the mess he’d made on the floor and then turned to go to bed. He’d clean the mess up tomorrow, before the shit hit the fan — again. And then he would find what Sanderson needed to know, betray the aliens, and maybe — just maybe — escape with his own life.
Washington was burning.
Jeannette McGreevy, President of the United States of America, stood at the window in the White House and watched it burn. The Secret Service — whose agents regarded her with contempt when they thought she wasn’t looking — had warned her that there might be snipers in the area, who might just take a shot at the President. She’d been told that the windows were supposed to be bullet-proof, but why take the risk when it wasn’t necessary? And yet… if one of the snipers did end her life, perhaps it would be a good thing. All her dreams had turned to dust and ash.
She’d wanted power — but now all the power she had was enforced by the aliens. If they wanted to dispose of her and put someone else in her place, they could do it. She’d believed that she could ride the Galactic Federation’s coattails to power and a place in human history; now, all Americans would remember about her was that she had been a worse traitor than Benedict Arnold. He’d only plotted to surrender West Point to the British, a long time before anyone had even dreamed of alien life forms. Jeannette McGreevy had handed over her country to an alien power. The future would curse her name.
The portraits on the wall seemed to mock her. Every President was depicted, from the moment of America’s birth as an independent country to Patrick Hollinger’s predecessor, whose dark face seemed to scowl down upon her. George Washington, the father of his country; Abraham Lincoln, who’d unified it even as he’d purged the nation of slavery — and died for his beliefs. Even Richard Nixon, who had disgraced the office of the President, seemed to be glowering at her. Tricky Dick had wanted power too, but he’d never sold out the country. There were those who even believed that the United States would have benefited from a further Nixon term. And Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George Bush… they would have loathed her.
She swallowed two pills without glancing down at the small container in her pocket. The drugs kept her stable, for whatever it was worth now. She told herself that she should fight back, that she should find a way to turn the Presidency into a weapon, but there was nothing she could do. The aliens had explained — without quite gloating — that she was under constant surveillance. If she did anything they didn’t like, they’d warned, the heart attack that had struck down her predecessor would be nothing compared to what they would do to her.
Turning, she strode back along the plush corridors to her bedroom. The Secret Service agents kept a discreet distance. McGreevy was unmarried — there had been no room for a First Husband in her life, or the White House — and had never regretted it, until now. Having someone to hold her while she cried would have been nice. She’d wanted power. Now she was nothing more than a figurehead, a helpless watcher as Washington burned and the country fell apart. The country she had done so much to destroy.
She should have killed herself, she knew. But she didn’t have the nerve.
Lying down, she closed her eyes and felt the drugs take effect. Sleep crept up over her, just before she could start to toss and turn. Her eyes closed and she fell back into nightmares. And in the morning, she thought just before she fell asleep, she would have to do it all over again. Be their figurehead. Sell out her country. The despair rose up over her and she almost cried as she fell into the darkness. She had betrayed the entire world. And now she was their puppet, their helpless slave.
What else was she good for, now?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Washington DC
USA, Day 66
The sunlight was creeping up over Washington as Jayne finished typing on the cheap laptop she’d picked up for bargain price. It had once been a top-of-the-range machine, but now it was nothing more than obsolete, even before the aliens had arrived with the promise of newer and better computers. The computer revolution had just kept moving forwards and the primitive junk left in its wake was simply thrown out to rot. Jayne had only had to pay twenty dollars for a machine that had once cost in excess of five hundred dollars.
She’d taken the precaution of ripping out the wireless section to ensure that it couldn’t accidentally log onto the internet. The aliens had actually improved the internet by establishing newer and better servers in Washington, boosting signals to an order of magnitude above humanity’s best equipment, but she knew better than to believe that it was a gift. They’d be able to monitor the internet through the equipment, reading every email and webpage that passed through one of their servers. And they might be able to track someone down by following their cell phones or anything else they might have on their person that logged onto the internet.