IAC Conference Room, London
Two days later
The room was stark, almost Spartan; recent budget cuts had seen to that. Everything was reduced to bare necessities; the only concession to luxury was a water cooler. Even the furniture was utilitarian, functional. The entire world was still struggling with austerity measures...while, Kelly fumed, incalculable riches were just waiting for them in the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt and the Near-Earth Objects. There were resources available to satisfy the demands of heavy industry for centuries to come without despoiling Earth any further, plus potential long-term employment for millions...but first, the Aliens needed to be dealt with.
Before that, the IAC had to be dealt with.
Fortunately, he had come prepared - in fact he was pretty much prepared for the next five years or so, thanks in part to Ed's advice on various points. They held no surprises for him, but the reverse certainly wasn't true, as they would shortly learn.
"I hereby call this meeting of the Finance Committee of the International Astrophysical Commission to order," General James Henderson intoned. For all his gradually declining health he was still a commanding, formidable presence, and had no plans to retire anytime soon (he, too, had received the treatments; Straker hadn't dared gainsay it). At one point he had intended to step down, but various events had convinced him he was still needed.
Yeah, events such as McAllister's latest brainstorm, he thought grimly.
"The first item on our agenda is, as always, SHADO funding. This time, Commander, you and yours have definitely gone too far."
The man he was addressing gazed back coldly, unimpressed by Henderson's glare. He'd been thoroughly briefed on the heavyset general by his predecessor before succeeding him.
He was a tall man, fairly well-built and looking quite a bit younger than his forty-nine years; he affected a beard because, he often said, "People treat me like a damn kid if I shave it off, and at my age that's just totally embarrassing. The beard stays." He was blond, though it was difficult to tell as his hair had darkened with age, becoming a little mousy (and a tad grey in places, though he was trying not to notice). His father was a redhead, and he'd inherited the odd reddish streak here and there.
He wasn't conventionally handsome, a fact he'd found both annoying and useful: it had led to him having a fairly quiet life (useful), but he'd never been that sure he wanted one (annoying). In person he was nowhere near as commanding a figure as Ed Straker had been; there was nothing all that impressive or striking about him...
...except for his eyes.
They were a cold, intense shade of cobalt blue, and harder than flint. People generally found it hard to meet his gaze for long; it had been compared to looking into the emission aperture of an industrial laser...of the sort one might use to initiate nuclear fusion.
Now those eyes were focused on a man who should have been an ally, but really wasn't. Kelly's background was more academic than military, but he was a quick learner. He agreed with Ed Straker that the survival of Mankind should not be treated as a matter of money; nor was it a political issue to either of them, and never had been. Like Ed, he'd never understood how Henderson could have lost sight of that. "General, I have been entirely prepared to justify SHADO's position -"
"You mean your position," Henderson interrupted cynically.
"- but you have as yet given me no chance to do so!" He glared around the room. "You all seem to believe the problem has resolved itself, because there haven't been all that many Alien attacks recently. Dammit, that's exactly what they want you to think!"
"Commander," the thin-faced Ian Melrose (IAC delegate for Switzerland) put in diplomatically, "it was your predecessor's theory from the beginning, was it not, that the Aliens were and are a dying race, from a dying world? Did they not themselves confirm that last, through that poor fellow Croxley? Perhaps they have in fact died out."
Oh, good, a rational thinker, Kelly silently approved. "I'll concede that's possible, but I don't think so. They showed from the start how determined they were to survive. They've struggled too long, expended too many of their resources, to simply give up now. Let me explain what we think is happening...about ten years ago, while Ed Straker was still in command, a peculiar trend emerged in their attacks: they began dwindling in number and intensity. They stopped pulling any really big operations; what few Aliens came seemed interested solely in organs and abductions, not SHADO.
"As this trend continued, Straker became more and more suspicious of it, and as the Section Chief of the Strategic & Tactical ANalysis Division," like everyone else in SHADO, he couldn't help saying it in such a way one could hear the initials, "so did I. Part of it could be attributed to Moonbase's efficiency - thanks to relentless drills, incremental technological advances and improvements in training, Gay and the Interceptor pilots got the mean launch time down to less than one hundred and ten seconds. In one particular month they seemed to be on a roll - twenty-six confirmed kills, and none of them ever got near Earth.
"But it couldn't all be down to us, so Straker and I put our heads together and started an ongoing analysis. As of last month, it was still ongoing. It shows what Ed Straker realised years ago: although this war has always been an entirely defensive one from our perspective, it has also been a war of attrition. There is no way a dying race," he nodded to Ian in respect for his earlier point, "can win such a war. Consider:
"We have an abundance of resources, wastage notwithstanding; by their own admission, they're running out of them - if they haven't already.
"We can replace losses of materiel; they can't. If they could, they'd send more than a handful of UFOs each time.
"Our technology is advancing all the time; theirs doesn't seem to have changed at all since 1982, when they developed stealth shielding. As far as we can tell, we're gradually catching up.
"Finally and perhaps most importantly in this context, we are a healthy, vital and above all fertile species; every Alien we've ever encountered was sterile, or nearly so, and in relatively poor physical health. It seems likely that the vast majority of their population suffers from chronic infertility - maybe even all of them. We have no idea if they even have any women - certainly we've never knowingly encountered any female Aliens and we have confirmation of only nine abductions of women - but if they do exist, they're surely rare.
"Most likely we haven't seen them because the Aliens don't want to risk sending them to Earth and maybe losing them. Sensible," he shrugged. "Thus if the war continues as is, with no fundamental change in operating conditions, ultimately they will lose - and to them, that means extinction." Now his voice rose stridently. "It would be utter madness to assume that they don't know that just as well as we do!"
"So what are you saying?" Natasha Svetlana, the Russian Federation delegate, inquired sharply, the words fired from her hard mouth like bullets from an AK-47. She liked to think of herself as beautiful, and perhaps she had been, before climbing up first the military and then the political ranks...the hard way, both times. Any beauty she might have possessed, though, had since been leached out of her by the demands of her ambition. She was tipped to become the next Premier of the Russian Federation, and Kelly wouldn't have bet against her.
"The reason they haven't attacked lately is, I've concluded, because they're husbanding their resources." Kelly shrugged again. "That's an obvious thing for them to do, of course...except that they can't hope to survive through austerity measures alone, given that - as Ian pointed out - they themselves confirmed that their world's dying. Our analyses suggest that they're building up their forces...preparing for a full-scale invasion within the next decade."
That was pretty much the last thing any of them except Henderson had expected - or wanted - to hear. After the shocked pause Kelly had entirely anticipated, Natasha observed, a little shakily, "As I recall, the Aliens have already tried that - and failed."
"True," Kelly admitted, "but that plan was based on their construction of a false SHADO HQ from which to broadcast conflicting or confusing orders, manned by Constructs." A few of the newer Members looked puzzled; he explained, "Before SHADO was even chartered, the Aliens managed to obtain DNA samples from people slated to become key members, namely Straker and some of the operations staff, such as Ayshea Johnson. They used them to create what we've come to call 'Constructs' - living near-replicas of human beings.
"These were manning the fake HQ; if Moonbase or other stations queried the orders, they had to appear as if they were coming from the genuine HQ - and of course they'd be seen over videophones, so just simulating the requisite voices wasn't enough."
"But - how could they know ahead of time who would be appointed to SHADO?" Natasha demanded worriedly. "The security arrangements -"
Kelly chuckled without amusement. "Oh, please. SHADO's security isn't aimed at the Aliens, there'd be no point...they already knew about SHADO before it was chartered, via agents they'd placed on Earth before the UN Security Council even became aware of the threat. That was how they knew where and when Straker and General Henderson were meeting with the UK Prime Minister to confirm the UK Government's approval." He sighed. "They already know everything they need to know about SHADO; we can only keep the latest developments secret from them, and we do. To be honest, Security's only real purpose is to conceal SHADO from our own people."
"Do these agents still -"
"No, no," Kelly interrupted the anticipated, panicked question, "they were identified and eliminated while SHADO was being set up." He managed not to chuckle at Natasha's profound sigh of relief.
Ian inquired, "But if they can create replicas, presumably as human as possible, why -"
"- do they need to steal organs?" Kelly again anticipated the question. "The Constructs are short-lived; none have ever lived, if that's the right word, for longer than three months or so to our knowledge. Essentially they're little more than three-dimensional carbon copies, not true clones, so they're no solution to the Aliens' organ replacement problems and not intended to be," he concluded dismissively. "To continue:
"The Aliens were counting on the confusion lasting just long enough for them to penetrate our defences and destroy Moonbase. After that, SHADO HQ - after which the remnants, and Earth's conventional forces, would've been easy prey. However, the STAND reached the conclusion that it wasn't a desperation push - if it had been, surely they'd have moved faster and sent everything they had. Certainly they should never have allowed Skydiver One even to report the base's existence, let alone destroy the damn thing.
"In fact, if they'd sent as few as ten or so more UFOs the STAND's post-combat analysis suggests that although it would've cost them dearly, the plan would have worked - for all Peter Carlin's superb marksmanship, SKY 1 was nearly out of missiles by the time the engagement was concluded, and SKY 2 and 4 did run out.
"Now, though, it's been thirty-four years since SHADO became operational, and we've beaten them back virtually every time. Their situation has changed, for the worse - SHADO's technology has advanced considerably, and we've expanded and improved our operations. But if they quit now, they die. I can't believe they'll just quit - they're too human for that."
It was said entirely without humour or irony, for the delegates knew he had a point. More than once the Aliens had reacted much as humans would have: the Alien retaliation against Paul Roper, for example, when they'd erroneously believed he'd deliberately fed them inaccurate information (sending Medic Dawson to murder Carol, which he had done even though dying himself after Carol shot him, was surely nothing more than pure spite and sadism); or the stranded Alien Paul Foster encountered on the lunar surface, the one who'd helped him in order to ensure their mutual survival.
Even the Alien who had attempted to defect had, they believed, exercised compassion: when he realised the pursuing UFO would probably locate him before SHADO could, he had left the old lady's cottage. Why do that if not to save her life? Had he stayed, the Aliens would simply have opened fire on the cottage, destroying it and killing them both...and they would have cared not a jot about the death of its occupant (especially since her advanced age would have made her utterly useless to them anyway).
It certainly seemed as if the defector had cared.
If their backs were to the wall...yes, it was entirely possible the Aliens would commit everything they had. That was what humans would do.
"And we must assume," Kelly told them grimly, "that they have reserve forces...and that this time, it'll be a straightforward military campaign. No subtlety, nothing fancy like that time-warping business with Turner - they don't have that luxury any more. They will throw everything they've got at us - and we must assume they have enough. If they do attack...well, at present, I don't believe we can stop them."
Unsurprisingly, the room erupted in chaos.
It took Henderson a while to bring the committee back to order. Once he had, he bellowed, "What do you mean, we can't stop them?!"
"I mean, General, that now they have reached the point of desperation! They won't hold back at all! They can't! They've nothing to lose...and, therefore, everything to gain! Risk all, to win all - or die trying!"
That, too, was consistent with human psychology, at least; and so finally the British delegate, Belinda Carstairs, asked the only pertinent question: "So, assuming you're right - and I for one am convinced that you are - what do you intend to do about this, Commander?"
He met her level gaze. As always she rather reminded him of Churchill, though there wasn't even a vague physical resemblance. It would take more than Adobe Photoshop to morph the one into the other; she more resembled Helena Bonham-Carter, and was in fact distantly related to her. No, Kelly reflected, it was her attitude, the same air of the British Bulldog. She was and always had been a staunch and valuable ally of SHADO, as Monsieur Duval had been before his death three years ago.
Like Duval, Belinda had a family - two sons, two daughters in her case...and therefore she held a keenly vested interest in SHADO's operation. Like Duval, the mere thought of any of her children being left behind by the Aliens as mutilated corpses - or worse, being taken and burdening her for the rest of her life with a terrible uncertainty as to their fate - filled her with horror.
Kelly's answer took a while.
"We'll start with the Interceptors. We're developing a new design; actually, this is an operational necessity even if they don't invade, because the L-77s have far exceeded their operational design lifespan and we can't retrofit or upgrade them any further - we've reached the point of diminishing returns. The new specs are in your dossiers," he indicated them, "but I'd like you to read just the synopsis for now."
They did, most skimming through it in anticipation of being unable to understand most of the material, - to Kelly's mild annoyance, since he'd carefully kept the use of technical language to a minimum given that few of the IAC members were conversant with technical matters...they were, after all, politicians, not specialists. There was, however, one exception, a delegate who had apparently actually read the material, albeit quickly.
"Commander," Robert Mkombe, the tall, strongly-built and much-married African delegate, spoke up in a deep, reassuring tone, "the projected velocity of these new Interceptors is SOL 4.2 - over three times as fast as the L-77s. Surely that is impossible given the current state of the art," he doubted, proving he really had taken in much of what he'd read. Then again, he had a doctorate in physics; more than once Kelly had seriously considered stealing him from the IAC for SHADO R & D.
"It would be," Kelly grinned, "if the Aliens hadn't given us a bit of help."
That got their attention, and well it might. He explained: "A few months after I became SHADO's Commander, we finally got a lucky break - a UFO was shot down over the Dead Sea by SKY 3, and owing to the water's high salinity it had a relatively soft landing. SKY 3 pulled out of the area before the Israelis could ask too many questions, and the Skydiver crew attached tow cables to it and submerged.
"Our field agents in Tel Aviv, ostensibly working for Mossad, planted débris to suggest an aircraft crash, as there were witnesses to the dogfight. The official story that made the news was that Israeli F-16s had intercepted a terrorist plane heading for Tel Aviv to bomb the US Embassy." He grinned again, sardonically. "You don't argue with Mossad - if they say the sky's green, it's green.
"The water protected the UFO from decay, and Skydiver Three towed it back to dock, where it was sealed in a vacuum chamber and later shipped to the Moon. Its crew didn't survive; by pure good luck SKY 3's shot hit a crucial spot which knocked out their onboard systems without damaging them too much, and the Aliens were killed on impact despite their suits, though the UFO itself was relatively intact." He chuckled, fondly remembering the raucous party he hadn't been able to resist throwing. "Hoo boy, did we celebrate that night!
"We've learned quite a bit from it, even though we still have no idea what half the tech in it does. We're finally ready to start applying what we've learned, which," he smiled wryly, "is where the appropriation comes in. But two things we've figured out were factors we'd wondered about ever since the very first Interceptor missile was fired at a UFO, namely: how the hell they manoeuvre the way they do at such speeds; and how UFOs have been reported as sometimes surviving even direct hits. Now, we think we know."
"Inertia control," Robert speculated.
"Got it in one," Kelly acknowledged. "We'd been working on it for years; R & D had theorised the Aliens had cracked it. It was the only way to explain the UFOs' phenomenal acceleration, so our tech guys proceeded on the assumption that it was possible. As it turned out they were in fact on the right track, as our analysis of the Alien tech confirmed - they'd have figured it out all by themselves in another ten years or so. The result of combining our theories with Alien-derived hardware was a new, improved version of the Inertia Control Device, or ICD. It's still under development," he confessed, "but it looks extremely promising."
There was only one observer present whose observational skills were keen enough to pick up on Colonel Alec Freeman's reaction to that last statement, and that was Alec himself. He was puzzled, but decided to say nothing...for now.
"We've also developed new materials based on recent graphene and nanotech research. The new Interceptors will mass less than half of the originals, yet they'll be a hell of a lot tougher - able to make tighter turns and higher accelerations even without the ICD. We've even adapted the Alien spacesuit tech to devise a new flight suit which immerses the pilot's head and body in a cushioning liquid, though they don't breathe it - it's not a total immersion system.
"That was ruled out because it's impossible to speak using such a TIS, as the larynx isn't designed to work underwater." He grimaced, having less than fond memories of trying out the prototype TIS. "It feels weird as hell, and the prototype version made people itch a bit, but it works extremely well. The L-78 prototype test flight also exceeded our best projections. We're expecting great things from the production model, the L-79, although it'll take us a few months to build them and we've already got an even newer and better design in the pipeline."
Again, a keen observer might have noticed Alec about to speak. This time, he barely caught Kelly's eye.
Kelly's slight, imperceptible shake of the head could not have been picked up on by even the keenest observer if s/he wasn't seated right next to him, but Alec saw it nonetheless. He again subsided and said nothing, though the temptation was overwhelming. What the hell's he playing at...?
"Now, about the missiles: these have pretty much stagnated since the early days. We knew from the start that UFOs are nowhere near as fragile as they look, so a massive contact warhead was needed to crack the outer shell." He looked wry. "In fact, the warheads were so damn big and powerful that a number of international treaties had to be redrafted slightly before SHADO was even allowed to build them.
"But the only known way to increase the destructive yield, and thus our chances of a confirmed kill, was to pack more fissile material into the warhead. That was perfectly doable, of course," he shrugged, "but the designers then hit a point of diminishing returns in terms of Interceptor performance and loadout. Fissile materials are heavy; even with the ICD, there's no getting around that.
"The conclusion reached by the L-77 design team and engineers was that, given the speeds and accelerations involved, each Interceptor could afford to carry one, and only one, missile. Naturally no-one was thrilled at that idea, least of all the pilots. It was far from ideal in terms of defence coverage; once an Interceptor had fired its missile, the only thing the pilot could do then was return to base. They couldn't even defend themselves if the Aliens got smart and came after them." He frowned. "Strange that they hardly ever did until relatively recently...speaking of which, I'd like a minute's silence, please, for Interceptor Pilot Martin Givens, who was killed four months ago in just such an incident."
The IAC members bowed their heads in respect. The general reaction to Givens' death was outrage; it was viewed as a cowardly act by the Aliens, given that the Interceptors had been retreating after firing their missiles and missing their target (SKY 2 avenged him, destroying the UFO over Siberia)...but looked at from a military perspective, it only made sense. A hard-to-replace, vastly expensive military asset had been destroyed...and worse, an irreplaceable man had been lost. Givens was more than merely a pilot, and a good one at that; he was skilled in training new pilots, a rare talent.
He had also recently become a father, though his wife Susan had died in childbirth owing to a previously undetected heart defect. His little boy, Philip, would now grow up an orphan.
At the end of the minute, Kelly raised his head and said softly, "Thank you. Now...with the R & D work on the ICD, the situation has changed drastically and favourably. While digging into the math, we figured out how the Alien version works: it taps into Zero-Point Energy in such a way as to wrap the craft in a sort of pocket space-time continuum, with its own physical laws.
"Isolated as it is from the normal space-time metric, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contractions don't apply; neither does the light barrier. In a sense it's the pocket that moves, not the UFO - the fact that the UFO still has mass turns out to be irrelevant because essentially it's not in this universe. It's a variation on the Alcubierre warp drive concept."
"Surely," Robert remarked curiously, "that means, in a sense, that the UFO isn't moving at all?"
Kelly inclined his head in respect for Robert's erudition and expertise - he was definitely going to look into recruiting the man for R & D. "Relative to the pocket, that's quite true. Makes your head hurt, doesn't it?" he grinned. "In theory, any velocity is possible; in practice there are technical limits, even for the Aliens - certainly the maximum UFO velocity ever recorded is SOL 8.39, and we believe they're capable of an absolute maximum, pushing their tech to its physical limits, of SOL 9, but only for very short periods. We won't be able to get near that for a while, but SOL 4.2 for the new Interceptors will certainly come as an unpleasant surprise to them."
"Does this inertia field provide protection from Interceptor missiles?" Ian wondered shrewdly.
"As a matter of fact it does, at least partly," Kelly inclined his head in respect, "which answers the question of how they sometimes survive direct hits. Better yet, it'll do the same for the Interceptors, at least to some extent, even against the Aliens' energy weapons. Once we've got the new ones flying, the job of Interceptor Pilot is gonna become a whole lot safer."
"Surely not safe," Robert observed with mild humour.
"Well, no," Kelly smiled ruefully, "but safer. Let's return to the missiles - uh, where was I? Oh, yeah - we also discovered a sort of inversion of the inertia field which can be used to concentrate an explosion into a smaller volume of space. As any explosives expert will tell you, the better the containment the bigger the bang."
The Norwegian delegate, Donna Svensdöttir, nodded at this. In her youth she'd spent a few years as a demolitions expert before her segue into the completely different field of politics, and acquired the nickname 'Demolition Donna' after the somewhat over-enthusiastic destruction of a large office block formerly owned by a company which had made her father redundant and thus caused severe hardship to her family while she was growing up. The offices had come to symbolise her family's suffering as far as she was concerned; destroying them utterly was thus the most satisfying experience of her life. Her only regret, she'd once half-joked, was that the people who'd declared her father redundant weren't in them at the time...
Kelly continued, "One practical upshot of this effect is that we can actually reduce the amount of fissile material in the missile warhead...yet still achieve the same destructive power. Or we can keep things as they are, and increase the yield without compromising loadout or performance. This effect, combined with the ICD and the lighter Interceptor spaceframe, also gives us a brand new missile option: an Interceptor can now carry multiple missiles, each of which has the destructive power, or very nearly, of the existing ones, and thus the Interceptor will be upgraded to a true space superiority fighter. So I envisage a new, deeper three-layer defence envelope for Moonbase and Earth:
"Taking them in reverse order, we first have Gamma Flight - which will be tasked with defending Moonbase directly, using the heaviest warheads, in the unlikely event any UFOs make it past Alpha and Beta. I recommend Captain Mark Bradley commands this squadron, as they will most closely resemble the original L-77 Interceptors in terms of performance and he's our most experienced L-77 pilot.
"In the middle will be Beta Flight - Interceptors carrying lighter warheads that are still as destructive as the originals; this will make them faster than Gamma. These Interceptors will split their duty between assisting Alpha in dogfights and providing additional cover for Gamma, Moonbase and SID, as well as any Lunar Modules and/or civilian craft in transit.
"And then we have the front line, Alpha Flight, consisting of three Interceptors carrying multiple missiles. These missiles will be a mixture of laser heads, standard nukes and penetration aids, to compensate for their reduced individual destructive power. But the missiles' peak velocity is projected to be SOL 9.2, even faster than the UFOs, so they'll have some utility," he shrugged, "as purely kinetic weapons. Alpha Flight's primary duty will be to protect SID, which has also recently become a preferred target, and to engage attacking UFOs directly, i.e. dogfighting.
"That's something which was utterly impossible until now - partly because of the single-missile issue, and partly because the UFOs had a nearly sixfold velocity advantage. Now that will be reduced to less than two, and the Interceptors will have multiple missiles, so their effectiveness should be increased at least fourfold. The missiles are still on the drawing board as yet, but we're pretty sure they'll work as advertised."
There was yet another subtle but pointed look from Alec, which he deliberately ignored.
"I, uh, also have a special recommendation regarding the pilots of Beta and Alpha. Gamma should be flown by our original guys, namely Mark, Lew Waterman, Steve Minto and their reliefs, because those Interceptors will more closely resemble the ones they're familiar with, as I said. Beta should have a mix of veteran and new talent, so the newbies have the steadiness of experience backing them up and there will be a healthy rivalry between them. But Alpha should be flown by our best, young pilots - and I propose that they all, primaries and reliefs, be female."
"Are you harping on about that damned 'effect' again?" Henderson scowled.
"General," Kelly growled, "the fact that you don't accept it doesn't mean it doesn't exist! We have documented evidence -"
"More like Sunday tabloid hearsay!" Henderson retorted harshly.
"Gentlemen," Natasha interjected loudly, "this is unbecoming! Perhaps, General Henderson, we should hear the Commander out." This brought murmurs and nods of agreement; Kelly smiled, but in gratitude for Natasha's interruption rather than triumph. He wasn't that petty.
"Spaseba, Natasha. The effect to which General Henderson is referring is, admittedly, controversial. It's called LIFEX - Lunar-Induced Feminine EXtra-intuition. As you know, Moonbase is staffed with a mixed crew, but with a heavily skewed gender ratio - 4:1 of women to men. There's a variety of reasons for that, which we don't have time to go into," and which we, uh, don't even know anyway, he thought ruefully, "but believe me, it is the only ratio which works. Anyway: over the years we noticed an increasing number of what the girls call 'Moonbase hunches'." He paused on seeing Natasha's offended expression; he'd clearly lost a point or two with his terminology.
He knew exactly what the problem was, and sighed. He really was tired of this issue.
"Yeah, I know, it's not politically correct to call them 'girls' when we're talking about mature, professional women. Two points: first, it's the term they use and prefer, and who are you to argue with that? They arethe ones on the front lines, taking all the risks for us - how they refer to themselves is up to them! Second...we are fighting for our fuckin' SURVIVAL here! We have way more important issues to address!"
"A fair point, Commander," Robert agreed diplomatically, ignoring Natasha's glare. "Please continue."
"Thanks. As I was saying, the girls started reporting their hunches - things they couldn't have known about, sometimes things that hadn't even happened yet. By far the best example happened about six years ago, when a Lunar Module carrying Commander Straker back to Earth was shot down by a UFO and crashed in the Kalahari. That in itself wasn't significant.
"What was, however, was that fully two days before, Gay Bradley changed her furlough destination to Namibia - but in the post-mission debriefing, she admitted that she couldn't explain exactly why she did that. She hired a jeep, ostensibly joining an expedition studying meerkats." He chuckled fondly. "She reckons they're cute, and who can blame her?
"Anyway, when the LM came down, she was less than three miles from the crash site. She was able to reach it before the local authorities, and planted evidence to make it look like a routine aircraft crash; her husband Mark, who was with her, provided civilian clothing to disguise Commander Straker. SHADO operatives got him out of there and back to base ASAP, as well as removing the LM's wreckage and attending to any civilians who saw it. You might say it was all just coincidence, and you might be right...except that this sort of thing has occurred sixteen times."
Several jaws dropped on hearing that.
"In every case, female Moonbase personnel were involved; in every case, events of which they had no knowledge were occurring. On a few occasions these hunches bordered on prescience or even precognition. Coincidence, you say? My slightly deformed left foot it's coincidence! How was it that Mark had a spare set of clothes with him? Answer: Gay had packed them into the jeep the night before - and again, without consciously knowing why! You can't tell me that was coincidence!"
"But if this is a real effect, why is it happening, Commander?" Ian asked, his thin but somehow charming face alight with fascinated curiosity.
Kelly chuckled. "What is it with you and the intelligent questions? Not that I'm complaining! Well, we don't really know why," he admitted a little sheepishly, "but we think it's got something to do with living and working long-term on the Moon; somehow it increases and enhances women's intuition. So I think we should take advantage of it; fighter pilots should be intuitive. Also, women tend to make better combat pilots; they can take higher G-forces without blacking out, and they have better reflexes." Now he grinned. "Besides, the male pilots have been campaigning for it for years, mainly on morale-related grounds."
He went on to suggest further long-term improvements he had in mind, such as:
Expansion of the Skydiver fleet, from five (Skydiver Five was commissioned and deployed in 1996, after years of furious political infighting against EU members who were also members of the Security Council) to seven;
Expansion of Moonbase below and on the Moon's surface;
A second Moonbase on the far side, to increase sensor coverage;
New, more heavily-armoured Mobiles - numerous ground battles had shown Mobile armour to be inadequate against UFO laser or plasma weaponry (they still weren't sure which it was; for some reason, they hadn't been able to fire the captured UFO's weapons yet). The last proposal (the cheapest, Kelly noted cynically) was agreed upon immediately, though that didn't necessarily mean they'd be built immediately; the others were hotly debated for a while.
The one thing he didn't dare tell them was that even if he got the entire appropriation - impossible, he knew, though he'd never counted on that anyway - even with the planned expansion of SHADO's operations it still couldn't fight off a full-scale invasion.
There was, however, one proposal he wanted to put forward which could very well solve the entire problem - but it still wasn't feasible as yet, as they hadn't the resources or technology with which to implement it. The plan went by the imposing codename of 'Thor's Hammer' - or at least it would if it ever got off the ground...
SHADO HQ, Commander's Office
Six hours later
The moment the doors closed and the privacy locks engaged, Alec wasted no time in preamble. He'd never minced words with Straker, and saw no need to do so with his successor, long-time friend or not. "You lied to them! Almost everything you said in there was an out-and-out lie!"
"Alec -"
"You told them the ICD was 'still under development', when it's coming off the production lines right now! 'A few months' to build the L-79s, when we've already built one and we're partway through the second! And what about the new missiles - they're 'on the drawing board'? We tested one last week!"
"I know," Kelly agreed, with an edge to his voice Alec couldn't miss, and didn't, "it was necessary for two reasons."
"Which are?"
"First, I didn't want the IAC to know how far we've got just by juggling current budgets, or they'll expect us to do that all the time, and we can't afford the risk. The world can't afford it. We need the extra money for further R & D, as well as new personnel."
"That reminds me," Alec frowned, "where did the money we've used come from?"
"From the last appropriation; I've streamlined various procedures, found shortcuts, R & D developed new, cheaper materials...I just didn't report any of it to the IAC. You know how these things work, Alec: don't tell 'em anything they don't need to know. But we still need more, not to make do with less. Besides," he shrugged, "we won't get the whole appropriation anyway; the UN can't afford it."
He saw Alec was about to ask the obvious question ("If you knew that beforehand, why ask for so much?"), and forestalled him by continuing, "But we will get what we need, which is why I deliberately asked for too much. Most of the money earmarked for pure research will actually be channelled into production, since we've already done most of the research. It was a necessary piece of misdirection."
"Nice," Alec approved, "that's about the neatest political manoeuvre I've ever heard of. Straker would be proud."
"Thanks, Alec," Kelly smiled, while thinking to himself: Yeah, he was. "Have a drink?"
"Don't mind if I do," Alec grinned, and crossed to the bar. He was in the process of pouring a stiff Scotch when a thought struck him. "Wait a minute - you said you had two reasons. What's the other?"
Kelly's expression was one of grim solemnity as he answered: "The Aliens."
"Huh?"
"We don't want them to know how far we've gotten, either. If they found out, they'd attack before we're ready for them. As it is, I released just enough information to worry them but not panic them. They know now they must attack, or they'll likely never get through our defences ever again once the new tech's up and running. They'll figure out where we're going with the research, of course, but if we time it carefully enough they'll think we'll be too far away from finishing it and building the new Interceptors by the time they strike. I've lulled them into a false sense of security."
"Sounds good," Alec mused. Something about that was bothering him, though. Kelly had a way of slipping in little comments that went unnoticed at first, but were highly significant - it was one of his more maddening traits. Suddenly Alec caught it: "What do you mean, 'they know now'? They can't know. There weren't any Alien agents at the IAC meeting, and they've none in R & D. You scanned 'em yourself."
"Yes, I did."
"So -?"
"I lied to them, Alec. There was a spy."
"WHAT?!" Alec gasped in disbelief.
"Alec - when you've got a spy, but he doesn't know that you know he's a spy, what is the last thing you should do?"
It was a question straight out of the SHADO Espionage Manual. The SEM ran to nearly two thousand A4 pages, drawing on the wisdom of the entire global intelligence community accumulated over nearly a century, and covered every conceivable espionage method...including some which were unknown outside of SHADO.
Alec knew every single word of it. Even shocked as he was, his answer was almost by reflex: "Expose him."
"Exactly; if I'd said anything, they'd simply kill or abandon him, target someone else and we'd be back to square one - plus they'd know that their latest subversion techniques aren't proof against our scanners. Now, we can use him against them."
"Yes, I can see that," Alec conceded, calming now he could see the grim logic of Kelly's actions, "but...no, you're right. So what are you going to do - feed him false information?"
"No," Kelly said slowly. "I thought about it, as that's what we normally would do, but in his position he could check it, and he'd realise he'd been found out. No," he decided. "He'll be given accurate information, fairly timely, but watered down - remember, we want to worry them, not panic them."
"Well, okay. So who is it?" It was an obvious question, and he'd expected Kelly to reply immediately.
But he didn't.
Understandably, Alec's ire rose at this. "Dammit, Kelly, if we have a spy he is by definition a security risk, and as your head of security I need to know who he is! It's my job!"
"I know," was Kelly's soft reply, "but I want you to leave him alone. There are one or two unanswered questions."
"Such as?"
"For a start - why'd they place a spy in the IAC? They have no jurisdiction over SHADO's chain of command, only its funding. They don't direct R & D; effectively, I do - Phyllis Anderson answers directly to me. So why not place him closer to home?"
"That's a good point," Alec admitted. "But you can bet they'll have a damn good reason. They always do."
"True. Also...there was something strange about the brainwave alterations. They were...subtle. They don't seem strong enough for the process to have altered his personality or subverted his will," Kelly explained, with a puzzled frown. "In fact they were barely even there - any conventional doctor or analyst would've dismissed the changes as normal fluctuations. It's only due to our equipment's exquisite sensitivity that they showed up at all." He paused thoughtfully. "It's almost as if..."
He trailed off. It was several seconds before Alec grew uneasy and prodded: "As if what?"
"...as if the alterations had another purpose - not subversion, but...well, I don't know. But I'm almost sure that his mind's still his own."
"But he is a spy?" Alec persisted.
"Maybe not in the usual sense," Kelly speculated. "I'll have to go over the readings with Jackson."
"Good luck with that," Alec quipped; he knew Kelly was no fonder of Jackson than Straker had been. "And you still haven't told me who it is."
"Holtzmann," Kelly told him after a moment. "Klaus Holtzmann."
"Representing the German contingent?" Kelly nodded. "Well, what do you expect me to do - nothing? I can't."
"Watch him," Kelly decided, "but that's all. Don't do anything which might call attention to him. Don't do anything else without my direct order, unless he does something out of the ordinary - in which case, I'll take it from there."
"Just watch him?"
"Yes. I can't risk anything else. That's a direct order."
"Okay, okay," Alec surrendered reluctantly. He checked his watch. "Hey, the Moonbase transport should be landing in an hour. Do you want to debrief them?"
"No, Alec," Kelly smiled, "I'll leave that to you - I have a few fine details to sort out here," he indicated his paperwork resignedly, reflecting that even in 2014 the "paperless office" concept seemed further away than ever. There were rather more than a 'few' reports in his In tray..."Take care of it, will you?"
"Sure." Alec rose and walked to the doors.
"Alec," Kelly said as he reached them and they slid open, "I mean it. Don't take any action against Holtzmann. We don't want him to know we're onto him..."
Alec hesitated, but nodded briefly and walked out. The doors closed.
Kelly waited until they locked and the privacy baffles came online, before finishing quietly:
"...especially as he's not the real spy."