Mind of the Locusts (I)
From the shadows of the never-ending gulf of space, they came.
They travelled through the airless void, all together as one in their floating hive. They slept as one mind while they did so, a whole civilisation laid dormant and hibernating.
They were always of one mind. Sleeping together. Dreaming together. Thinking together.
Sharing the same memories. Seeing everything that they all saw, knowing everything they all knew.
One mind. One race. Undivided.
Invincible.
The great ship that was their home journeyed on through the endless blackness. The only light came from distant stars and nebulae shining in the cosmic panorama. Viewed from afar, it looked like a black, faceless leviathan, a beast spawned from the darkness of space itself.
The destination was always the same. Another world. The next world. Any world - so long as it had food and fuel. The voyage to the next world might take months, years, centuries, even millennia - but it would be completed. Those aboard the ship would sleep for any length of time before the next world was found.
The hiveship itself was hibernating, like all those on board. All non-essential systems had shut down, resting until the time came again. None of the power and fuel built up at the last feeding ground was to be wasted. Survival depended on that.
Only a few systems that were left functioning during the long journeys between worlds. This included the life-support which kept the whole swarm alive as they slept, the propulsion systems that kept them moving on through space and, most important of all, the navigator.
The navigator was a semi-organic mind, a living computer fused to the heart of the ship. It too was part of the great mind of all who lived aboard. It was also the only one of that mind currently awake.
The navigator had been bred to direct the ship while the others slept. It kept the hive moving on its endless journey, ensuring that there would be enough power to keep ship and swarm alive throughout the voyage. With due diligence it kept the shields up, protecting the swarm from micro-meteoroids as well as the lethal effects of radiation and cosmic rays, also using the automated defence systems to burn away the odd rogue asteroid or comet in the ship's path.
Most importantly, it would keep an eye out for new food.
The ship had sensor and scanning systems powerful beyond imagining - enough to sense a ripe new planet many light years away. The navigator kept the homeship on a path to a potential new feeding ground, ensuring the journeys between were as short as possible. Scout ships were dispatched ahead, their pilots awoken before the rest of the hive, in order to locate and probe a suitable world.
Their findings would be diligently reported; the scouts would have made a thorough scan of the planet in full, testing the thickness and suitability of the meat on the new morsel. Once the results read positive, the great ship would draw closer.
When the ship finally got close enough to the new planet in the swarm's path, a signal would be sent throughout the great mind.
Then the swarm would wake.
Billions of lights would turn on, bringing the interior to life. Billions of eyes would open, ready for life once more.
The swarm would emerge from its slumber. The single, terrible mind which all of its members formed would be filled with the readings of the new world. Of the life that filled it.
Then the hunger would come. That crushing hunger, that drove them ever on to new conquests, to new plunder.
A hunger that would never end, that would never be satisfied, that had consumed so many stars in its wake.
They had been asleep for so long. Perhaps Eons. After all that time they had awoken famished, warriors hungry and ready to do battle once more for new food.
This planet was filled with life-giving water. Surrounded by clean, refreshing air. Powered by the rich energy of a burning, shining star. Teeming with life waiting to be processed into abundant food. Heated from within by a raging core of magma and molten metal - all just waiting to be sucked out like a vampire would drain blood from its victim.
The swarm needed all of this, and it needed it now.
The natives of this world were primitive. Insignificant. Barely out of their lush cradle of a world. They would resist, of course. But they would fail. As so many others, on so many other worlds, had resisted the swarm before and failed. To resist the swarm meant only destruction.
The natives were nothing but vermin. Obstacles to food and power, which rightfully belonged to a superior race. Mere pests that infested the new fields of harvest, waiting to be exterminated.
The swarm was numberless, united and advanced beyond their feeble comprehension. So many worlds had fallen to them, so many worlds and species consumed. The native vermin would not survive.
The main systems of their mothership powered up, readying it for the latest in the long line of countless wars the swarm had waged across the stars. Within the planetoid-sized interior, ships were readied, weapons prepared, warriors marshalled.
They would descend upon this world. Cities of vermin would burn, primitive armies would be shattered. This world would be settled, harvested like so many others before it.
Then, after many years, all this world had to offer would be gone. The swarm would move on. The Earth would be left a lifeless husk - a barren, airless rock, with only the ashes and bones of its former inhabitants covering the lifeless surface.
Flashing forward in time, he strode upon this surface now. Seeing all life drained from it. Seeing the shattered ruins left in the invaders' wake. Seeing all around him the bones of his race, wiped out and consumed like so many others before them.
There was nothing here, in this lifeless hellscape of death. It was almost like the surface of the moon - the only difference was knowing this had once been a bountiful world, full of promise. Happening upon a pile of shrivelled corpses, he was drawn to a single one among them.
The corpse was emaciated, drained of all fluids and shrivelled, as if the invaders had sucked out all it could offer the same way they had done with the whole planet. Perhaps they fed on the humans themselves as well as the Earth.
Yet in spite of all, the face on the corpse was still recognisable. He screamed with horror and despair the moment he saw it.
It was the face of his lost wife.
February 21st, 2001
US Airspace, en route to Area 51
Thomas Whitmore woke up that instant, his body covered in sweat. Nearly five years now, and he still wasn't able to exorcise his recurring nightmares. He likely never would.
"God damn it..."
Whitmore ran a hand through his sticky hair, cleaning his soaked forehead as he did so. He was back in the real world now - he'd escaped the nightmare. But the escape was only temporary, and he knew it. The dreams would return the next time he slept, as they always did.
He slowly reached for a glass of water close to his bed, secured in a cup-holder but still slightly vibrating with the turbulence outside. Simultaneously, he swung his legs to his right and sat up on the side of the bed, breathing heavily.
The tormented man took a large sip of the cool water, sending it down his throat with a glug. He felt the drink cool his body as he returned to caressing his aching lobes. However much he tried, he couldn't banish the images he had seen in his sleep moments ago. Feeling those memories while awake was just as bad as living them in a dream.
Whitmore had so many painful memories from the events of '96, so many ghosts that he wished to stay away but knew would always return. Cities of slaughtered innocents that he kept telling himself he should have evacuated, always cursing himself for his indecision that fateful July 2nd. Those young pilots he'd fought alongside, who had fallen in defence of their planet. The wounded face of his daughter, her innocence forever shattered along with that of the rest of humanity.
Then the tearful face of his dying wife, Marilyn Whitmore.
Thomas was grateful that he had been reunited with her before the end - another debt to one Colonel Steven Hiller that he would never be able to repay. But she had died in his arms - and he, who people always believed to be the most powerful man in the world, had been unable to save her...the pain from seeing her face in his mind was unbearable.
There was one other face, though, that rivalled the face of his lost wife. One he saw in his dreams far more. This face did not stir sorrow or anguish in him. Only revulsion and fear, an overpowering anger combined into a burning hatred that would never die; for that face and everything it's kind had done to him, to people all over the world.
It was the face that had personally given him these damned nightmares, this mental hell he was forced to journey through for the rest of his life. The face of the alien pilot who had tried to escape Area 51, who Hiller had shot down and taken prisoner that July 3rd. The dark, soulless eyes of the monster who had telepathically raped his mind, filling it with these images that plagued Whitmore to this day...those eyes would appear at the beginning of every one of his nightmares.
The eyes would then suddenly light up - Whitmore would see them as clear as light of day - and then he would hear Dr. Okun's possessed voice echoing once more, before the images he'd received from the mind-rape came again.
"No peace...die...die..."
Whitmore guessed it was a small introduction from the author of those visions. A telepathic implant, a reminder that the aliens had not taken Earth, but they had left Whitmore, his people and the whole planet permanently scarred. Not even the President of the United States came out unscathed. They would be in his mind forever, an invasion just as brutal as their attack on the planet.
Guess they won there, Whitmore though bitterly. They lost Earth - but my brain's the consolation.
The aircraft shook with the turbulence once more, forcing Whitmore from his thoughts. He couldn't have been more grateful, and felt even better when the bedside phone rang.
Anything to distract me. Get me the hell out of my head...
He picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Good morning Mr President. We're approaching Area 51 now."
Whitmore took the news from his secret service bodyguard calmly. It was good to know they were close to landing; the former Marine pilot and commander-in-chief had developed a phobia of flying as a passenger, ever since the narrow escape from Andrews Air Force Base during the aliens' first attack. Another unwelcome scar from the invasion.
Yet the announcement did little to ease the sense of dread of what he would have to face soon after landing. An ordeal that only now, a month after ending his term of office, he had agreed to undertake.
"Thank you George. I'll be right down."
He then put the phone back in the holster, sighing and caressing his head once more. Almost everyone had begged him not to go through with this. It had been out of the question when he was still in the oval office, in those uncertain years after the aliens' defeat. The nation needed its commander-in-chief intact - it didn't help that at the time he had already been suffering the after-effects of the violent mental contact with the downed alien.
Now that he had left the White House, Whitmore was free to go through with the process that faced him at his destination. Yet still he had been urged against doing so. General William Grey - now the serving President - ever-loyal and concerned for his old friend's safety, had practically begged his predecessor to walk away from it.
"We still don't understand what happened in that lab - what in the hell it was they did to you!" Grey's face had been torn with emotion - something Whitmore would never have imagined with the iron-clad general. "You don't know what might happen!"
Thomas smiled at the thought of Grey. Tough as nails, no-nonsense, loyal to a fault - that was the General William Grey he knew and loved. During the Gulf War, Grey had been one of Whitmore's high-ranking superiors - it had been something of a leap to have him as a subordinate in the White House. But he had adapted to the change with a dedication that was nothing short of admirable. When the aliens arrived and began their attack, he had been a stable and reliable presence by the president's side. Whitmore knew that he couldn't have lasted those days without him, and could never repay him for his efforts.
Though the former head of US Space Command had been a key figure during the War of 1996, he also played an even larger role in the post-war administration and reconstruction. He'd helped to co-ordinate the rebuilding efforts not just in the United States, but throughout the world. The Grey Plan had stimulated this endeavour, ensuring America did its part in building the new world that would follow the near-extinction of the human race.
Already Grey was being praised by commentators across the world as the present generation's George Marshall or Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now he was at the helm of the nation, with Thomas knowing he couldn't have left his office in more capable hands.
Which made going against his advice all the more painful. Thomas had convinced the newly elected President Grey - firmly against the latter's better judgement - to permit his journey to Area 51, along with his participation in this latest project of the burgeoning Earth Space Defense program.
Whitmore had put all of his diplomatic effort after the war to unite every government in the world. He had fought to ensure that the ESD became a reality. For that reason he was fully committed to the continuation of their research, for there lay the keys to humanity's survival.
Now, he was about to do more than secure them another huge slice of public funding. For this project, he was ready to risk his own life.
The plane touched down with a bump. Within a few seconds of landing, Whitmore emerged from his berth, fully dressed. He gazed down at the first pair of eyes that greeted him.
"We're here daddy."
Patricia, his only child. Now eleven years old - yet Thomas could tell that the events surrounding the loss of her mother had forced her into growing up lightning fast and far beyond her years, reaching an unnatural level of maturity. Now that he was officially retired he almost felt like his little girl had become the grown-up woman in his life, the personal carer that kept him out of trouble.
Not even she had been able to talk him out of this. But he hadn't been able to talk her out of being here to support him, to stand by his side.
"Thanks munchkin."
Even as she grew, Thomas knew he would never throw that nickname away. Patricia didn't mind - but her face was still filled with heartfelt worry.
"Dad, you know you don't have to do this. It's not too late to pull out."
He looked down at her, trying to put on a brave face. His daughter had lost so much at six-years old. Now there was a chance she would lose everything she had left.
"This is something I have to do, honey. I'll be fine. Don't worry."
She stepped forward, her hand grasping his own. Though it was much smaller, her grip felt like iron. Her glazing, watery blue eyes gazed deep into his.
"Promise me that."
By the time Thomas could bring himself to respond, his voice was so strained to a whisper that he could barely hear himself.
"I promise, munchkin." He couldn't fathom any other response to give.
Area 51, Nevada, United States of America
ESD Deputy Director and Head of Research David Levinson watched the VIP jet touch down on the obscure runway of the Groom Lake Weapons Testing Facility, better known as Area 51. Major Sanchez, Mitchell's successor following the latter's promotion, stood ram-rod straight by his side, together with a honour guard of soldiers. But even his military mask couldn't hide the anxiety everyone on base felt about the upcoming experiment.
The former president's jet didn't waste time in taxiing into a parking position. Within moments, a gangway was prepared and the cabin door opened.
The Whitmores, both the former president and his eleven-year old daughter, sallied forth. The latter stuck to her father like a second shadow, keeping his hand in a firm grip as she lead the ex-POTUS down the steps. David could only imagine what she would become once she reached adulthood.
Former President Thomas Whitmore had left office just last month - yet the strain of his term in power clearly manifested itself to a point where he was starting to become physically unrecognisable.
David still remembered the sight of the cocky-looking young senator he'd brawled with after catching him with Connie one fateful afternoon, the photos of the poster-boy fighter pilot from the Gulf War, the idealistic young politician in all those speeches, debates and campaign ads. The youngest commander-in-chief since John F. Kennedy, Whitmore had certainly looked the part in the first year of his presidency.
But the horror of the invasion, along with the strain of running a devastated country and helping to rebuild a devastated world, had visibly taken a heavy toll on him.
David could see that blotches of Whitmore's finely combed, slick hair was now gaining streaks of silvery grey. His once smooth, immaculate forehead was now wrinkled with several crease lines. Salt and pepper-coloured stubble was forming across his chin. His eyes were now old and tired, sinking into their sockets and ringed with dark circles, almost permanently bloodshot. His eyes and posture still held the same confidence he always did - but he moved as if he were already two decades older.
All this, and the man was still only in his late forties. Add to that having his mind violated by a hostile alien intelligence - not for the first time, David did not envy him.
He still tried to look the part of a strong politician, decked out in his smart suit and tie. He put on the image well, as a now-veteran politician. But David knew he was looking at a man who had suffered heavily.
The Whitmores strode down the gangway stairs, crossing the tarmac to where Levinson and the soldiers waited. David adjusted his glasses in a final effort to make himself as presentable as possible. Fortunately, Whitmore was in an informal mood.
"Good to see you again David," he greeted, shaking his hand. "You seem to go from strength to strength each time we meet." Then, he let out a low chuckle before lowring his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "But there's always room to move higher."
However often David tried, he could find little, if any relation to his life before the invasion and after. Before, he'd been - in Connie's own words - 'chronically unambitious', a high-scoring MIT graduate content to live as a humble cable repairman. He'd been getting good pay from a low-profile job, and even the fact he'd almost lost a marriage over that decision hadn't bothered him. He didn't see how helpful he could be in a place higher than Compact Cable.
Then the invasion had come.
Like the whole human race, David had been brutally forced into change. At Whitmore's insistence, he had become heavily involved with the Earth Space Defense program, right from its creation. It was probably the biggest career jump in history, but he'd accepted it with no second thoughts. "Now he gets ambitious", Connie had said. But it wasn't personal ambition that drove him now - it was the desire to make the full use of his knowledge and ability to ensure the planet and humanity had a chance of survival in the future.
Humanity needed to be able to meet the second challenge from the invaders, when it inevitably came. After so many years of drifting, sitting around and chasing his tail - years he now knew he'd wasted - David was committed to making a difference.
But he still wasn't ready for the full responsibility. In spite of Whitmore's repeated urgings, he had not taken the job of full director of the ESD. He was content to influence things as best he could from where he was, and that worked well. He wasn't a leader. He couldn't trust himself to be the director of Earth's whole defence system. So, he avoided Whitmore's jab as best he could.
"Thank you Mr President. We're glad to see you too."
After the invasion's dramatic climax, David's respect for the president had steadily increased in the years that followed. Before, he hadn't understood Connie's belief in the young POTUS. As far as he had been concerned at the time, Whitmore was just another politician - a charming man who promised but never delivered, who preached but never listened.
As a humble member of Compact Cable, David had never put much faith in politicians. He'd never voted at all, never mind for Whitmore. Maybe that was one reason why he didn't want to rise to any high places - he didn't want to end up anywhere close to politics, another sore point with Connie. It also hadn't helped that David had seen Whitmore as being partly responsible for that coming divorce. During the worst of the invasion, he seemed like someone who cracked under pressure.
Then came July 4th, and David found himself being forced to change his opinion. The president had gone with his plan in the face of objections from the Secretary of Defence and long odds - a decision he still couldn't thank him enough for. The alternative had been to wait until the aliens landed and started colonising the planet for harvest - at which point the plan was to ambush the settling aliens with nuclear weapons.
Such a strategy might well have worked - but it would have left the planet poisoned and the human race dead along with the invaders. Whitmore's decision to go with a higher-risk plan had saved the planet, both from the aliens and human desperation. On top of that, he'd lead the defence himself. That proved to David that without a doubt, Whitmore was no ordinary politician. He was glad to assist the president in the post-war effort.
He respected Whitmore's latest decision just as much. But still, the danger was beyond question.
"It's still not too late to back out," he whispered conspiratorially.
"Not happening," Whitmore's reply was filled with iron certainty. "Let's get to it. It's the only way to find out exactly what they know."
This was somewhat true - most of the alien databases were still indecipherable, many having being automatically purged in the final moments of their masters' defeat. Whitmore's brain held the largest amount of accessible knowledge on the invaders known to humanity - through that telepathic link the aliens' simple, terrible purpose of stripping worlds of all life and resources had been discovered.
Now Levinson and the rest of the ESD scientific leadership wanted to know more. The proposal for what Whitmore was now about to undertake had been made a few months after the War of '96 - but had been rejected because he had still held office and the post-war government wanted to avoid any destabilisation caused by the president's health.
Since Whitmore had left office, that risk was removed. The risk to his mental state, perhaps even his life, still remained. But David knew he would not be deterred.
"Right this way."
Escorted by Major Sanchez, the two men made their way into the bowels of Area 51. Patricia followed, clasping her father's hand as they proceeded together.
No matter how many times he visited this place, Whitmore was always amazed by how much this once obscure, non-descript facility had changed following the war. Now the ESD's main centre of operations and research, the construction work and the development of the employees' town around Area 51 had proceeded like wildfire. This was Whitmore's first visit after just four months - and there were plenty of new buildings he didn't recognise.
After taking the elevator down, they strode through the same clean room he'd barged into five years ago. They didn't go the hangar this time - the alien attacker had been salvaged following Hiller and Levinson's escape from the mothership and crash-landing in the Nevada desert, but Whitmore had seen what was left of it dozens of times. It was no longer the showpiece of Area 51's collection, anyway - it had since been joined by countless other alien artefacts and debris.
There was also a darker secret - one that the ESD had been keen to restrict to rumour in the public domain. On the lower levels, in high-security vaults, there were live alien prisoners under heavy guard and surveillance. It was just one more reason for the increased military presence here. Despite hoping he'd make sure there would be no more secrets, Whitmore had ended up hiding the truth as previous governments had.
He would be kept well away from the alien prison vaults - there were too many uncertainties about how deep the telepathic link went. Even so, the aliens would be heavily monitored for possible side-effects while the president underwent the coming procedure. Gaining an observation of their behaviour was decided to be worth the risk of carrying out this experiment here.
There were still holdouts in Africa, even five years on; and while their captive comrades were inert most of the time, they displayed occasional bursts of activity. In any case, they could not be trusted. Security had been tightened ahead of Whitmore's latest visit.
The party preceded through a narrow corridor that branched away from the hangar, until they finally came to a secure door near the end of the passage. David gestured to it with an inviting hand.
"She's waiting, sir. No turning back now."
Whitmore nodded.
"I take it you'll be watching?"
"In the next room, through a two-way mirror. This is as secure as it gets - the ones we captured were interrogated here before we built the holding cells downstairs. If I see anything I don't like in there..."
"I'm seeing this through, Levinson," the president replied, his tone formal enough to make clear he would not be deterred, "whatever it takes."
The ESD deputy director nodded, before pushing his key card into the lock and opening the door. Thomas turned to look back at his daughter, who was now looking increasingly distraught.
"Stay in the next room Pat."
"Dad..."
"I'll be fine. David will be there. He'll take care of you. I trust this doctor he's hired - it'll be just like another check-up."
He clapped his daughter on the shoulder, smiling as confidently as he could. She could only offer a small smile in return - but Thomas looked into her eyes and knew her thoughts were different, same as his.
David opened the door, allowing the former POTUS to enter. The room was bare save for the two-way mirror on one wall, a table and two chairs. A typical interrogation room.
In one chair sat a primly dressed woman with dark blonde hair tied back, notebook at the ready. A medical officer was also present, tending to a brainwave monitor the president would be hooked up to during this session. All other medical monitoring and recording equipment was set up in the room on the other side of the two-way mirror. Aside from the medic, the president and the woman would be alone during this interview.
"Mr President, this is Dr. Irene Saunders, mental health expert and qualified hypnotherapist. She'll be taking your case."
Whitmore directed his gaze to the attentive psychiatrist.
"You've done this before, I take it?"
"With a number of pre-war abductees who survived '96. It was only after all that I started to take their stories seriously."
"I just hope you know what it is you're getting into."
"I read Dr. Wells' file, sir - and yours. I know what to expect."
Dr. Immanuel Wells, the original head of the Area 51 research programme and Okun's most prominent predecessor, had been present at the internment of the recovered attacker and its occupants following the Roswell crash of 1947. Like Whitmore, he had also made a telepathic link with the alien hive mind, through the sole survivor of that crash.
The link had been severed following that survivor's death - but Wells retained the memories and recorded them in detail in Area 51's files. They now served as a crucial piece of evidence.
In contrast to the violence of Whitmore's experience, the creature Dr. Wells interacted with had posed as a harmless and peaceful being, filling his head with soft and calming thoughts. A similar experience had been described by pre-invasion abductees - the aliens had not worn their fearsome bio-armour, had harmed no-one and gave every indication to their test subjects that they were a peaceful species.
Wells, however, had come to a different conclusion decades before the invasion of '96.
During the mental exchanges, he claimed to have seen a planet the aliens had previously visited - possibly, he speculated, the one where they had obtained the species which they used for their bio-mechanical suits. He had seen visions of that initially lush jungle world becoming a barren wasteland, to the point that the creatures were hollowing out the core for metals and feeding off the mosses and lichens that grew beneath the surface.
The Roswell alien claimed to be showing Wells their homeworld - that his people were refugees from a lost world and that he was a simple scientist, like his human 'friend'. But Wells surmised that the once jungle-like environment of the planet he saw would have better supported the species used as an exoskeleton, with its strong limbs and grappling tentacles, rather than the fragile masters within. The alien survivor had insisted that his people came from this planet - but Wells soon worked out that did not mean he was being shown the visitors' homeworld. His suspicions were further raised by the fact that the alien hadn't indicated how the planet was reduced to a barren state.
The visitors, he concluded, were conquerors - they'd plundered that world for all it had been worth until the environment had been ruined beyond recognition. They used the looted resources to feed themselves and grow, to manufacture new tools, ships and weapons for future conquests; the bio-mechanical suit was just one of these.
Then, they would move on to the next world. Earth.
In the decades that followed, Wells had strongly argued that the aliens were hostile. In meeting after meeting at Project Smudge, the main government program surrounding alien phenomena, he had stressed that an invasion was imminent and military preparations had to be made as soon as possible. He even advocated breaking the story to the public, if necessary. His concerns became stronger as it became apparent that most genuine UFO sightings took place over military or other vital installations. The Roswell craft was clearly part of a larger reconnaissance picket, a vanguard tasked with scouting ahead of the main force.
Wells was predictably met with opposition. Most officials who were part of Smudge dismissed his views as alarmist, and the few who agreed with him still preferred to keep the aliens' existence under wraps. Furthermore, in the decades after his telepathic experience Wells' health had suffered heavily. He had been diagnosed - as Whitmore had been - with a form of PTSD. It was easy to dismiss his ideas as the ramblings of a lunatic.
Wells' direct style in comparison to many of his peers at Smudge, along with his increasingly erratic behaviour, fiery rhetoric and radical beliefs steadily alienated him from that committee. Soon enough, they saw him as a potential threat to the secrecy of the project.
This was enough for one Albert Nimziki - then Deputy Director of the CIA - to force his resignation and disappearance in the early 70s. Wells was officially marked as deceased while confined to a mental institution, where he died some time after.
Whitmore had read the file on Dr. Wells, had heard of his own visions and trauma. He could certainly empathise easily - but it must have been even worse for that man, to know the terrible truth and not be able to speak it out loud. When he could speak it behind closed doors, no-one wished to hear or believe. The man who had seen it coming had been completely dismissed. His already low opinion of Nimziki became even lower when he read of the circumstances of the 'resignation' of Dr. Wells.
Whitmore took himself out of his inner thoughts to look the psychiatrist in the eye.
"You might not like what's in my head. It's hell every time I see it."
He winced as he remembered the roughly five-second mental download from the alien's mind. It had felt like his nerves were on fire, that his cranium would explode. But what he had seen had helped the human race know their enemy well.
Dr. Saunders nodded.
"I knew what they are as much as everyone else, sir. My husband and parents are dead because of them." She sniffed, briefly turning her gaze to the floor. "My daughter is all I have left, now."
Whitmore frowned. Almost every living human had lost someone to the invaders. He'd met so many people like this - people who reminded him that he was not alone in his losses, who reminded him not to withdraw into self-pity.
That was what gave him the resolve to continue.
"Let's get to it."
Dr. Saunders sat him down and took her position on the opposite side of the table. The ESD M.D. didn't waste time in hooking the former president up to the brainwave monitor. The session was ready to begin.
Once again, Thomas Whitmore steeled himself for what was to come.
David watched through the two-way mirror in the monitoring room as the session began. Dr. Isaacs, once Okun's faithful deputy and now Director of Research at Area 51 since his predecessor entered a deep coma, stood to his right. Isaacs had his eyes fixed on the monitors that informed the monitoring team inside this adjoining room of Whitmore's vital signs; heart-rate, blood pressure, nerves and most importantly, brainwave activity.
Not only did they hope to keep them alive, they also hoped to gain some insight into the nature of the alien hive mind - along with whatever secrets Whitmore's mind rape may have given away to humanity. It was hoped, through hypnotherapy provided by Dr. Saunders, that Whitmore would be able to recover additional memories from the mental link that was believed to still be active.
What was on a couple of other screens gave David goosebumps. These screens were linked to security cameras in the alien holding cells. The inmates were also being heavily monitored - their reactions to this interview, if any, would be clearly recorded, along with any change in their vital signs. If they were affected by this session, David and his team would know instantly.
Worse, David knew there was a chance if the imprisoned aliens would sense what was going on in here, they might try to stop it. If the readings indicated any telepathic interference on their part in this session, he'd pull the plug.
David felt Patricia shuffle nervously behind him. It clearly distressed her, seeing her father hooked up to all those chords and wires. It was taking all of her willpower to allow this to go ahead, and David admired her for it.
Hypnotherapy was always a controversial medication. The effect it could leave on the patient's medical well-being was always unpredictable, and in some cases it could leave lasting damage. David didn't pretend to understand hypnosis in full - he certainly didn't understand the procedures that Dr. Saunders was undertaking that very moment.
Nevertheless, he did know that hypnosis was instrumental in recovering lost memories - or in this case, memories that were not known in detail. Memories that had been rapidly implanted by a hostile intelligence, compressed like zipped computer files in a high-speed download.
It was hoped that hypnosis would open those files, make them viewable - that the president would be able to see all the memories the alien had shared with him in full.
It was a tried and tested procedure. Subjects of alien abductions, who had their memories wiped after their experiences, were able to recall the events of their ordeals in full while undergoing hypnosis. The Betty and Barney Hill case came to mind, as did that of Arizona logger Travis Walton, along with so many others. However, these patients went through considerable mental agony during their sessions - the nature of Whitmore's case would make it even more painful.
But David trusted Dr. Saunders to carry the procedure through safely. He could see that she was taking it slow, gradually inducing Whitmore into a relaxed, hypnotic state. He could hear her soft voice through the speakers, speaking her lines and asking questions as cautiously as she could, slowly securing her subject with what looked to be a well-practiced procedure.
Then she began the questioning.
"Part of your mind is behind a closed door. We're going to open that door - slowly, crack by crack...I want you to tell me what you see..."
Whitmore mumbled something in response - something that didn't register on the speakers.
"Now...what was the first thing you saw on July 3rd, at 3:30 pm?"
Whitmore spoke, his voice steady, eyes closed. He recounted, word for word, his entrance into the vault with the preserved alien bodies. The containment lab on the other side of the glass, obscured by sparks and smoke. Mitchell calling for Dr. Okun in vain over the intercom.
Then, with a start, he recalled Okun's body being slammed against the glass. The terror he'd felt in that split-second. The appearance of the alien, alive and conscious. It's demands for release. His attempt at negotiation, rebuffed.
Then the mental contact had begun.
"What was the first thought you had?"
Whitmore hesitated. Then he tensed up, becoming straight as a board in a millisecond.
Disgust. Hatred. Contempt. Loathing.
He felt it bombarding his mind like a sledgehammer, every toxic thought he received desiring his death. Those black eyes lit up with malevolence, filling his mind with the poison.
"Die...Die..."
He was a member of a lesser species - little more than animals. Insects, of no value whatsoever. Insignificant beyond their own pathetic comprehension.
There would be no mercy for such worthless vermin - his kind were filthy little things that needed to be exterminated. They contaminated this resourceful world like bacteria, ruining what the swarm needed.
There was no other action to take other than to wipe them all out. It was disgusting to even commune with this primitive mind.
Humanity would be burned away, city by city, like the filth they were...
Whitmore immediately cried out, recoiling from those very first thoughts he'd received from the alien pilot. Even today, they caused his mind to burn with pain with their venom. He nearly burst out of the chair, before he was restrained, steadied and slowly calmed by the medical aide.
It took some time before he was calmed enough to speak again. He moaned out the answer to Saunders' question, giving voice to the overwhelming viciousness and malevolence he'd felt from the creature that day.
He gave voice to his thoughts, becoming more delirious with each word, speaking over the doctor's attempts to calm him.
"We're nothing to them...nothing...insignificant...we're in their way...no mercy...we're nothing to them...vermin...disgusting...pests...maggots...flies on their food...germs...they want us all dead...we all need to die..."
"Why?"
"We're in their way...they want this planet, like all the others...we're next..."
"So there were ones before?"
Whitmore managed to bring himself under control. He seemed to pull himself through the malevolence that accompanied his telepathic link, like a swimmer struggling from deep water to the surface for air in a storm-racked sea. Finally, he broke through it all, and strained out two words.
"Many...worlds."
At that moment, Dr. Saunders straightened at Deputy Director Levinson's voice in her earpiece.
"We're not hearing anything we haven't heard already. Try to change tack - ask about those other planets. He's only touched on those before - let's hear more about them."
The Director sounded so calm, so matter-of-fact. Irene Saunders knew she should probably have expected that, from one of the two men who'd infiltrated the alien mothership in one of the alien fighter craft alone. Yet she could sense his deep concern, and could only imagine how the president's daughter was reacting right now.
On the other side of the glass, David was more than concerned. He was terrified, in spite of all his efforts not to show it.
The former-president's brainwave activity had spiked dramatically - almost off the charts - in that moment he'd cried out. David had immediately ordered Saunders to calm him by any means necessary. He was just glad that she didn't need to apply any sedative - there was no telling what effect drugs might have on this procedure. Clearly the telepathic link Whitmore possessed in his mind was still very potent.
This was also indicated by a much more disturbing side-effect. Surveillance footage of the captive aliens showed them stirring at the moment of Whitmore's outburst - their readings spiked almost in exact parallel. David immediately sent an order for their guards to be put on high alert. Tranquiliser gas was prepared, ready to be pumped into the cells if the captives tried anything. While he was sure they didn't cause that first outburst, David couldn't underestimate what the aliens could be capable of, with their still not-quite-known mental abilities.
He was then pulled out of his thoughts by Isaacs, whose face was tinged with concern.
"Do we still risk it, sir? We can't foresee how extreme any other reactions may be..."
"We go ahead." David's voice was final. He then addressed Saunders through the mike of his headset.
"Press on with the questions, Irene." He hoped to sound as soft, as human as possible, but this was serious business.
On the other side of the glass, Dr. Saunders gazed guiltily at her troubled charge. She felt awful, putting this man through so much pain after he'd suffered so much already. But he was willing to go every step of the way.
Irene knew she had to be willing to do the same.
"Tell me about these other worlds."
Whitmore swallowed. His voice became airy, distant.
"There were so many..."
"Tell me about some of them. Just a few." Then a new thought came to her. "Were they inhabited too?"
Whitmore's voice rose a little.
"There were battles...battles just like ours..."
"Describe them."
Whitmore continued, regaining his voice in full - as he began to unzip his implanted memories. All the time throughout the session, he kept his eyes closed.
He seemed to fly through time, with no idea of the timescale of the events he was witnessing. For all he knew, they could be decades, centuries, milennia, even millions of years apart.
Nor could he possibly give any idea of the precise locations of where these events took place. The images were too vague - a star here, a nebula there, a planet in between. He could not tell if the invaders had even begun their endless journey through space in this galaxy, the milky way. The worlds they had visited were so numerous, diverse and scattered throughout space that he struggled to tell them apart.
All he could say with certainty was that everything he witnessed had happened - every world he saw had existed. He was witnessing memories from the invaders' long and savage history, events preserved for posterity not in the pages of books or manuscripts like humans would, but in their vast communal intelligence as gestalt memories.
The memories were preserved so that the swarm could draw on their experience from previous battles, remembering their many victories and massacres. They could all remember the tactics and strategies that lead to those victories, however far back in time - thus keeping their deadly warrior skills sharp as ever.
What he saw was a depressing, terrifying indication of the invaders' power and ruthlessness. They had consumed so many worlds - and encountered other species of vermin that opposed them. The thoughts that surrounded the memories of these other races were the same as those directed at humanity. They had also been in the way of the invaders, obstructed their access to new food. In every instance, the swarm had responded with deadly force.
He first saw a lush world, covered in a blanket of dense jungle - it looked to be the same world that Dr. Wells had described in his visions. This was confirmed when he saw the same creatures the invaders used for their exoskeletons, using their long arms and tentacles to move through the trees, suspending themselves in the jungle canopy, swinging and leaping from branch to branch like monstrous primates.
These beings had no eyes, as was already known from the exoskeletons. They lived beneath a planet-wide jungle thicker than any on Earth; the lower stories beneath the canopy were in near-twilight conditions. The ground floor was in a state of total, perpetual darkness. The inhabitants of this world used a form of echolocation in place of sight, like bats on Earth. Whitmore even saw they had some bioluminiscent features, which they lit up when moving through the jungle's dark zone. The invaders, for whatever reason, did not make use of these in their exoskeletons.
The aliens of the jungle world had been primitive when the invaders arrived. They were armed with little more than wooden spears and javelins, which they could multi-wield using their tentacles as well as their arms. They dwelt in looked to be villages, towns of tree-houses, gathered in clans or tribes. By all rights, they should have been an easy conquest - as easy as the natives of the Bahamas had been for Christopher Columbus.
Nevertheless, the had put up a fight - the invaders could not use their fire beams for fear of destroying the resources this world bore. Though they had used their smaller attacker craft, they were forced to use ground forces - the latter were frequently ambushed in the dense jungle.
Whitmore saw visions of the smaller invaders taking cover as spears rained down on them from the natives in the trees, desperately fighting back with their own weapons and psychic powers, or using what looked to be drones of some sort. He saw with satisfaction that the invaders frequently suffered casualties, dying on the poisoned tips of the native spears, or crushed hand-to-hand by the stronger natives.
The natives waged a long guerrilla war, fighting relentlessly. Whitmore could empathise - they had been fighting for their survival of their people and their world, just as humanity had. But it was all for naught; in the end, the superior technology, sheer determination and ruthlessness of the invaders prevailed. Whitmore saw the native villages burning, whole groups of warriors shot down in cold blood, either by the invaders or their automated minions.
This world was apparently one of the first to be conquered. Unusually, the swarm acknowledged the fighting prowess of the natives and found a purpose for them other than annihilation. It was then that the greatest gain of this past conquest came to pass - a horrific conclusion that took place before his eyes.
As the planet was exploited, with the invaders' colonies fully established on the surface and the jungle slowly giving way to ruined wasteland, Whitmore saw hundreds, thousands of the native beings herded like cattle, coerced by robotic overseers and imprisoned in camps surrounded by crackling energy fields. They were kept in overcrowded conditions, and though the invaders provided them with food it was no more than humans would provide to livestock.
Perhaps the natives had thought they were only destined for a life of grim slavery, that their race would survive in spite of everything, even as lowly subjects of their new masters from the sky. They could never have imagined the darker purpose behind their enslavement.
The natives were gathered in groups, herded into what looked to be high-tech processing facilities. There they were slaughtered - their bodies gutted, filleted and modified for use. The invaders tried on their new bio-suits, experimenting with the exoskeleton until the design was perfected.
From that point on, the natives of the jungle-world became the invaders' livestock - cloned, bred and reared aboard their giant ships like cattle. The invaders left their world behind, another airless rock stripped bare.
David listened as Whitmore continued to slowly describe his implanted memories, his voice steady under the influence of the hypnosis.
So far, he'd confirmed what had been speculated about the aliens' exoskeletons - their chemical make-up and physiology suggested that separate species came from a humid and wet environment, the kind that you would find in a rainforest. According to cranial analysis of the exoskeletons, they had been an intelligent species in their own right - which supported Whitmore's vision, even though their stage of development had been close to prehistoric humans.
Furthermore, the very nature of the memories he was reciting was yet another confirmation that there was little, if any sense of individuality within the invaders' society. Whitmore was clearly not reciting the memories of that one alien pilot. They were shared memories of their whole race, which they experienced as one entity. They were a hive mind, that much was clear.
The intelligence level of each individual alien was a matter of speculation. It was possible that they had different castes, with some existing only as simple drones and others bred to have more complex thought patterns. According to analysis of their bodies, they did artificially bio-engineer themselves for different tasks and settings. This helped them to survive both life in space and a planetary environment once they left their low-gravity, low-oxygen home.
But David was sure that there were no true individuals within the alien swarm - another sign that they could not be reasoned with. That mothership that had come to Earth had effectively been a single massive organism, bent only on consuming any world in its path.
What truly scared David was that, according to Whitmore's memories, they all seemed to feel an overriding sense of hunger - a powerful shared emotion that drove them on. The ESD deputy director had no way of knowing whether this was an artificial emotion engineered to drive them further in battle, a natural feeling they all felt from birth and could never overcome, or whether their population had reached such a point that they were almost always short of food, especially from constantly travelling through space.
What was clear was that their entire civilisation now existed only to consume all worlds in its path - stripping them of resources and biomass, then moving on and repeating the process, so that the hive could feed itself and grow. They had clearly been doing this for a very long time, and David considered it unlikely they would ever stop.
Right now, he was hearing about those other worlds that had fallen in their path. But had any resisted successfully?
As soon as Whitmore had finished talking about the jungle planet, he made sure to remind Dr. Saunders to ask this question.
In every battle he saw, the outcome was the same.
He saw another world of red skies, scoured by great rivers which produced immense valleys, bordered by snow-capped mountains. Here the natives had reached a roughly post-medieval state, their civilisation boasting fabulous cities connected by an intricate network of paved roads and canals. Their cities were protected by towering curtain walls, imposing fortresses and even primitive gunpowder weapons.
Like the natives of the jungle world, these beings were far behind Earth in terms of development, contrary to what science fiction often depicted. Yet Whitmore could see in the magnificence of their marble cities and buildings, with their towering spires and domes, along with the beautiful ships that plied their canals, that they had been a people of much potential.
Potential that was now lost forever.
In the images of the conquest of this strange world, he saw the blue-skinned natives - roughly humanoid in form but larger, broader and stronger - firing cannons and throwing black-powder bombs down onto the invaders from their castle walls. The natives wore steel armour that made him think of soldiers in the Thirty Years War of sixteenth century Europe, and fought relentlessly to defend their world. He saw them charge the invaders on the ground head-on with oversized swords, pikes, halberds and pipe-like firearms which looked like overpowered riot guns.
These large beings had put up a fight, but it had not saved them. The invaders used what looked to be earlier versions of their huge city-destroyers to level the native cities and castles - this seemed to be the first time they had used such devastating weapons. Those fortresses that could not be reached were strafed with single-ships or stormed with ground forces.
The outcome was predictable - the planet was stripped bare and the large blue aliens were burned to extinction. Their technology had just simply been too primitive, even more outclassed than humanity's had been. For the invaders, such a battle was like spraying an ant nest.
In every instance, there had been no mercy. The invaders had no care or respect for any other lifeforms at all; Whitmore knew this for certain and saw nothing in any of their memories that said otherwise. He could not sense a shred of remorse about the slaughter of so many species, so many unique civilisations. They only saw food and resources to claim for themselves.
One memory showed him a gas giant, populated by floating life-forms of immense size, beauty and wonder. Some looked like huge living balloons, others like soaring gossamer kites, gliding dragons or sky-whales. Whitmore watched the majestic beasts as they floated and soared colourfully through the alien sky. This was the kind of life speculated about by the likes of Carl Sagan, like something from the pages of a fantasy novel. To see that it really existed - he was almost brought to tears at the sight of it all.
But none of those wonders, none of that beauty, meant anything to the invaders. They simply hunted and slaughtered the great beasts like merciless whalers, harvesting all life on that planet and leaving the great clouds barren and polluted from mass gas mining.
Most of the other alien species Whitmore saw being conquered and slaughtered had been primitive - the invaders probably would not have reached their current level of power if they hadn't devoured a lot of poorly-defended worlds.
Yet there were others who were far more advanced - races with technology decades, centuries, even milennia ahead of Earth's. As he moved further down the swarm's memories, Whitmore saw more of these.
There was one battle he recalled glimpsing during his telepathic contact in the vault. This one actually took place in space, above a world of glistening ice. He also saw several other space battles that took place with what looked to be the same species, above other worlds - which suggested these other former enemies of the swarm had colonised other planets, having achieved faster-than-light travel.
The invaders had been met by great warships in space, vessels that almost looked to be made out of solid crystal. They glistened among the stars like floating diamonds - nothing like the menacing dark hulks the invaders favoured. They seemed to be constantly shining, as if charged with some unknowable power. Whatever form of energy these vessels used, it was also lethal - as the battle memories showed.
The invaders had launched huge flotillas of their city destroyers against these magnificent, mysterious native ships, intending to drown them in superior numbers. But, Whitmore noted with satisfaction, they received more than they bargained for.
From these beautiful ships smote shining beams of deadly energy, which burned through space at long-range. Whatever powerful, unknowable weapon this was, it succeeded where humanity's most destructive devices had failed. Whitmore saw one beam burn straight through the already weakened shields of a city destroyer, boring a red-hot hole through the frontal control tower and neatly emerging out the other side.
The stricken destroyer shuddered and convulsed, fiery cracks spreading through its hull as the destructive energy burned it inside out before ballooning outwards, blasting the city-sized spacecraft apart from within in a single cataclysmic explosion. When the flash cleared, only scattered fragments of white hot hull and clouds of carbonised ashes remained.
Similar scenes were repeated throughout the attacking fleets, in all these different duels in space, as the defenders fired their brilliant beams of light across the void, holding the lines above their worlds.
But the invaders could always count on superior numbers, as well as their technology. After suffering heavy losses, in each battle enough of the destroyer craft got through to unleash waves of attackers that swarmed out of the giant ships like great clouds of hornets.
These swift little craft - so feared by Earth's pilots during the war of 1996 - literally engulfed the crystal warships like swarms of carnivorous ants devouring a herd of elephants. The outnumbered native starfighters were soon overwhelmed. The shining battleships were repeatedly strafed from all sides until their crystalline forms were left shattered in the vacuum.
Soon enough, they were pushed back to their icy homeworld. Whitmore saw the battles on the surface of that world; witnessed the desperate resistance of the furry, pale-skinned, strong, agile inhabitants. They fought the invaders in the ruined streets of their once-beautiful cities of crystal, ice and stone, fortifying their own homes and fighting building-by-building, room-by-room, an extraterrestrial re-enactment of Stalingrad performed hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of light years away.
Like that battle, the carnage and destruction had been horrific. The dogged resistance of the natives prolonged their war for survival by many years. The invaders paid a heavy price for every inch of native territory captured.
Yet for all the amazing achievements of this civilisation; all their advanced technology, ships, weapons, war machines and the courage of their warriors, it had been to no avail. Whitmore watched with utter horror and disgust as the beautiful crystal cities literally shattered and melted under the fiery-beams of the city destroyers. The defenders had been fighting in the ruins left behind, which lead to the scenes of incredible bravery he had seen.
No amount of courage, however, could stop the invaders. They made the people of this world pay for their defiance.
Whitmore saw the broken crystal cities, where any captured inhabitants were herded together in large groups, surrounded by armed invaders and their assisting drones, driven into what looked like holding camps. He felt his guts stir - he remembered those pictures he'd seen from the worst of humanity's history. He knew what was coming.
Once the natives were all together they were set upon by the invaders in their bio-suits, who gunned them down with rapid-fire energy bolts, boiled their minds with psychic power or tore them apart hand-to-hand with their tentacles and claws, showing no mercy even to crying younglings and mothers.
Yet for all their viciousness, the invaders were seldom wasteful. The bodies of those they slaughtered were gathered up and taken into what looked like processing facilities; here they were dissolved in pools of fluid, or sifted and pulped in great machines. The resulting product looked like some form of soup or gruel - the invader's food...
Whitmore almost vomited in disgust at the scenes of utter barbarism. The visions of the invaders' repeated atrocities filled him with rage and revulsion - but he knew that he needed to see this, as this was exactly what would have happened had humanity lost its own battle for survival. It was what could very well happen in the future, when they finally came back.
The invaders overran every bastion they came across with sheer numbers, murdering all in their path. Whitmore saw some refugee fleets of those crystal ships fleeing their doomed world - some of the natives had survived, if not many. Their faster-than-light technology had saved them, unlike others. However, it could not save their world. The swarm had no regard for its sanctity and melted down the immense reserves of ice to feed their water supplies. The once shining world was strip-mined, ruined like every other the invaders descended upon.
It was the same story with all the others.
He saw a desert world populated by an insectoid race, united by a hive mind just like the invaders. Swarms of them flew from underground cities, which on the surface looked like giant termite mounds or ant-hills reinforced with advanced technology. Their warriors swarmed in the air, on both their own wings and in their own fighter-craft, meeting the invaders head on.
The invaders swatted them from the sky, before burning their hives with all the thoroughness of pest control experts.
He saw a world of great oceans and sparse land, where the octopus-like natives lived in vast underwater cities deep under the ocean. The invaders adapted their city destroyers for undersea operations, burning the magnificent underwater metropolises like monstrous submarines.
He saw another world where the inhabitants had fortified their world with armoured artificial rings that surrounded the whole planet. The rings had been fortified with huge long-range orbital guns, keeping the massive ships of the invading swarm at bay.
The invaders had used their countless attackers and boarding craft to overwhelm the rings; which they then destroyed, directing the monstrous wreckage to crash into the continent-sized cities on the surface. Then they conquered and harvested the planet.
So many had stood against this hellish swarm, fought bravely and relentlessly - and they had failed. It was dumb luck in so many ways that Earth survived.
Once more, Whitmore felt the malevolence of the hive mind in his memories.
To resist us is destruction.
Every world we come to, becomes our food.
None have ever stopped us.
None shall ever stop us.
We. Are. DEATH.
He felt those thoughts in his mind now, burning like a red hot iron. He clutched his forehead, moaning and screaming with pain.
A/N: Hi guys, a bit of an editorial decision. I decided to split this fic into two parts, just to make it easier for you all to read. Since this numbers over 18,000 words, it's effectively a small novella, anyway. Fell free to review any time! :)