Invasion

Doctor Jones shrugged. “Intellectually, she’s probably the smartest person in this base and certainly among the captives,” he said. “The various Redshirts are comparable to us, but she is very definitely the smartest…and she has practical experience that no one on Earth can match. As for trust…

“We kept a close eye on them and watched, carefully,” he continued. “As far as we can tell, her conversion seems to be genuine, hers and the other prisoners as well. It’s impossible to be sure, but I suspect that she means what she says, which doesn’t mean that either of her plans will work. It’s quite possible that we’ll run into a security check she didn’t know existed, or another trap intended to snare heretics…and that’s exactly what they’re going to regard her as being.”

“But she’s becoming human,” Paul protested. It was an interesting concept, and, if it was true, a handle on her. “Surely…”

“No, she’s adapting,” Jones said, firmly. “She isn’t human; do not forget that. Such behaviour is not unknown among humans, but it is rather unreliable. Stockholm Syndrome can kick in at the oddest places, but it is also not unknown for captives to pretend to be converted, just to get lighter treatment and a chance at escape. You know how many people are capable of fooling parole boards?”

Paul nodded. “Point taken,” he said. The thought was a galling one. Time and time again, dangerous criminals were released because they fooled parole boards into believing that they were reformed. “Still, it’s the only plan we’ve got.”

“She’s very smart, yes,” Jones said. “I’m very smart as well, but I couldn’t build a spacecraft and she couldn’t perform surgery. Just because someone is smart doesn’t mean that they’re…street-smart, or even capable. How many soldiers do you know who look like total assholes and have a string of degrees longer than mine? Her very cunning plan could be a complete disaster just because we don’t know everything we need to know about her people.”

“The President will probably agree with you,” Paul said, remembering the threat of possible impeachment. “It could be that this plan is a complete fuck-up waiting to happen. It could be that she intends to betray us…but, like it or not, it’s the only plan we’ve got and I intend to recommend to the President that we proceed at once.”

“Of course,” Jones said. “Good luck.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy.

– Anon

Riyadh, Ambassador Simon Carmichael had decided, hadn’t changed for the better under alien rule. It had been a repressive environment in so many ways, with the religious police watching for the slightest hint of un-Islamic behaviour, and the political police watching for anti-government attitudes, but it had been fairly safe, provided that you were an Arab male. Now, aliens patrolled the streets, the Burka was banned and every mosque in the city had been destroyed. The entire city was waiting nervously for the penny to drop.

The aliens had rounded up, with the help of a number of senior princes and government officials who had fallen into their hands, every member of the religious police they could find and transported them out into the desert somewhere. Rumour, never the most accurate source in the world, claimed that the aliens had simply made them dig their own graves and then shot them, but given that rumour also claimed that the United States had been destroyed and that Mecca was burning rubble…well, it wasn't very helpful. The only piece of truth that had been spread had been that Tel Aviv had been destroyed by the aliens…after Israeli nukes had fallen on several of their formations. The aliens now ruled from the Mediterranean Coastline – they’d overrun North Africa in a week – to the rapidly dissolving Pakistani border. They had not been short of ideas, this time, on how to treat the people who were suddenly under their control and a full-fledged insurgency was underway.