Alien Alliance (35 page)

Helkmid says he and his staff brainstormed
all this soon after the attack began and again after they realised
so many Terrans had escaped and were prepared to fight back. He is
frightened that an attack may begin on the Priskya, although he
doesn’t know what they can use without damaging the planet. Unless
they have a disease he doesn’t know about. His solutions are
complicated but there are just too few options and too many Races.
After all, diseases are his thing. To know how to defeat something,
you must understand it. Helkmid says he’s been working on this
Keulfyd virus for decades. He was just experimenting to see what he
could do. He said he didn’t really intend to ever use it but he had
fun playing with it. There are no Keulfyd among his workers so it
was safe. He said doctors, nurses and other medical workers make
the best murderers anyway. They also have the highest suicide rate
for the same reason. Knowledge. He and Dr. Black have been talking
a lot. So has Ludmilla but Dr. Ousey says it gives him the creeps
and he doesn’t want to know.

*

Mathew had been consistently telling
everyone to look laterally for weapons of any kind. The main Terran
weapon was a group effort.

Several of the children had been playing in
the corridors. Ali found a pipe on the wall beside a Cleaner. He
started fiddling with it and discovered it fired a ball with
compressed gas. Of course, it wasn’t long before the other children
joined in and finally one of the children, Ali himself, was
injured. The children trooped off and found Kelly who treated the
injured eye and then demanded to know how this had happened. The
children took her to the building and showed her the pipe. Kelly
took the pipe to Mathew. On the way she saw Az and showed him the
pipe.

“These are for clearing out the Cleaner
pipes. When the Cleaners work, bits of fur, hair, nails, claws etc
clog up the pipes. You shove this pipe into the drain. If it
doesn’t clear you fire the balls. The fired balls will be
underneath the floor. Magnets catch them.”

Con was there also and said, “Heck these are
bloody good drain rods. Man could I use these.” Fascinated, he
experimented. Off they all trooped to Mathew and demonstrated.
Mathew was very interested. He took the pipe to Helkmid who said it
would be no problem to add a poison to the balls; a lethal one. The
children were not told this.

Within a day, the children had scattered
throughout the apartment blocks and hotels and collected many pipes
and thousands of the balls once Az showed them where and how to
find them. By that evening, Ali had organised firing ranges and
practice had begun. Kelly and Stella had organised competitions. Az
and Kaz were amazed at the accuracy of all the Terrans in using the
redesigned drain rods.

Li explained, “Last century, a game was
invented called Paint Ball. It was a weapon that fired a blob of
paint. Teams played. It was huge fun. Depending on where someone
was hit, they were classified as dead or injured and had to either
‘play dead’ or continue fighting with an accurate reduced capacity.
A decent blob on the leg meant they had to crawl. All head shots
were a ‘Kill.’ Players had to wear protective clothing and got
bruises due to the force of the guns. There were prizes for which
Team won.

It wasn’t long before the military and
police saw the potential and used them for training. The guns got
better and better and finally one was designed for children that
fired water-based paint that washed out and guns that didn’t
bruise. Well not much anyway. It became a real craze in the schools
and now is an Olympic sport;

“What is Olynip?”

“Olympic Games. That’s sport games our whole
world plays together; one country against another.” When Az still
looked puzzled Li explained what countries were. “Oh and the
Olympics are games our whole world play.”

“Your whole world plays games with
weapons?”

“Yes, several of them. Why? Doesn’t
yours?”

“No!”

*

Despite the need for weapons, in his spare
time Helkmid continued his own research. He couldn’t miss this
opportunity. The Niseyen were in deep trouble and getting close to
extinction. Like other Okme, Helkmid was frustrated that he had not
been able to find out how this had happened but he was certain it
was Biological Warfare and just as certain of the delivery system.
But what was the method? How were the genes being damaged? No Okme
had yet found out. What had Dijina discovered? He so regretted her
disappearance and his research request to her that had probably
caused her death. It had shocked him. How far up did the rot go?
But her loss had taught him a valuable lesson in security. He
pulled his mind back to the task at hand.

Had it taken generations to weaken the
Niseyen genes and the damage was still occurring or was the
residual damage still worsening? Helkmid wondered if it was the
former, was that was why nothing was detectable; if the actual
method had stopped. Or could they just not detect it?

But this aside, he had an ideal situation
here. He had two Niseyen who had presumably been damaged and a lot
who hadn’t. Pity the damaged ones were both male though. Helkmid
asked to see Az and Kaz and questioned them alone.

“Are you two Independently Fertile?” he
asked Kaz who was the less reserved of the two.

“We wish!”

“What’s wrong?”

“A low count and inactive. We’re both the
same.” Kaz looked at Az who was looking very embarrassed.

Helkmid thought. That put them in the second
category of the about 26% of males who could reproduce with help.
Only about 11% of males were independently fertile and 4% or less
of females. So their genes determining sperm quantity and sperm
activity were damaged, or missing bits, or switched off. There was
no way these two could father children without a medical
laboratory. There was no way the Machines could help either as all
these specific Niseyen genes were damaged, some more than others.
There were no undamaged genes for the Machines to work with. No
perfect master copy. Until now.

“I’m working on something that may help with
that. Would you care to help with my research?”

“It won’t further damage us?” asked Az.

“No definitely not! I would not ask you to
harm yourselves! If it works as I expect, you will be Independently
Fertile.”

“Yes we’ll help,” offered Kaz, ever
trusting.

“Could you come back this time tomorrow?
You’ll need to stay a few hours.”

The next day Az and Kaz turned up as
requested to see Dan leaving. Helkmid was preparing two of his
Healing Machines. After stripping off all clothing, they got into
one each and lost consciousness as it closed. The Machines inserted
the probes, needles, monitors and tubes and in less than four
minutes were ready to start. Into the side chamber of each machine,
Helkmid poured a small quantity of Dan’s sperm. Dan had assured him
he was fertile and on examination Helkmid found the sperm were
mobile, well tailed and so numerous!

The Machine examined the genetic code of
Dan’s sperm and overlaid it over the sperm it had drawn from Az and
Kaz. It looked for the expected defects and found them. Where it
found them, it determined where the faults lay. It found a total of
eight faulty genes; identical faults in both of them. Two genes
were there but switched off. Five were missing essential pieces and
one gene was mostly missing. The Healing Machines then used the
blueprint provided by Dan to instruct the gonads in what was
missing and thereby providing the blueprint to rebuild it.
Treatment took 46 minutes, and the Machines opened.

Dazed, Az and Kaz slowly got up, both
ruefully examining various needle marks and with one sore groin
apiece making dressing a delicate and painful process.

“What has been done? Surely you can tell us
now?”

“Yes Kaz. I didn’t want to delay in case the
power failed yet again. The batteries aren’t full. I have used
Terran sperm to provide the blueprint to repair yours. If it works
and I believe it will, it will make you both Independently Fertile.
I will need to retest in about three weeks. You should both be well
repaired by then.

Az and Kaz looked at each other and then at
Helkmid. If this worked and if they got back to a Niseyen world,
they would be assured of being Chosen. If and if.

The next day Mathew called another general
meeting. He had been busy. His spies had been even busier. They
took their new jobs very seriously. Mathew opened with, “I have
called you here tonight because we need to firm up the schedule and
The Plan.

Of the 132 cities, according to my spies (he
smiled), 18 have so far been completed and emptied of all
bodies.

Of the 15 towns, seven fishing villages and
2 of the 3 inland villages, all have fallen and been emptied.

Due to the lack of an internal road
structure, there are no individual homesteads on this planet as
there is no transport system except flying and apparently Ridianit
are social, not solitary.

Five cities are showing resistance,
including ours. We urgently need to figure out how to contact and
unite those cities with us. This process is underway.

Az and Kaz tell me that the Keulfyd Plan is
simple. First, they will have knocked out the satellite network
both communication and power so the planet could not call for help.
Then they launched possibly thousands of hunter/killer satellites,
which also monitor and block all communication. This stops incoming
or outgoing spaceships calling for help and shoots down all air and
space traffic. They then try to gas all the cities, in as few days
as possible, to limit resistance, limit all calls for help between
the cities and thereby all attempts to unite the cities to fight.
Apparently Terra, with its scattered small towns, isolated villages
and single dwellings, is an exception to modern civilization. Most
live in cities, as here. Some of these are supercities with
billions living there. The main reasons are that the power, and all
the modern facilities, including climate control, are in the cities
only. Without power, they can’t live. Heck they can’t even clean
themselves! Look how miserable Kaz and Az are every time the power
goes off again.

The slaves empty all the cities of bodies,
usually 3-5 cities a day. They start with the capital city as they
did here. The capital is in the Northern Hemisphere and is empty.
Any cities that put up a fight or have survivors are passed over
and they continue with the others. That stops their momentum
slowing. It also gave us precious time. Because we have not fought
back, they will not consider us a threat. I don’t know whether they
will try to wipe us out first or whether they will go for the
resisting cities first. Kaz and Az couldn’t help me there. But what
they did find out is another really practical consideration. The
Southern Hemisphere was emptied first because it is summer here.
The bodies would decay sooner resulting in a disease risk and
slowing the job down. This also has helped to give us precious
time. They are now concentrating on the Northern Hemisphere and
ignoring us. There, the power is off, the climate control is off
and the cities are very cold thus slowing the decay process of the
bodies. This aids speed and reduces the likelihood of disease. It
also makes the mess less smelly and easier to clean up. Kaz and Az
also say the attacking force is usually a lot bigger than this one
but because this planet’s development is recent, it has a very
small population. They expected a walkover.

The reason for ignoring resistance at first
is also so that when they start to fight, they have all their
troops free and not otherwise committed. None guarding slaves. None
helping with the dumping of bodies. Kaz and Az are expecting that
the slaves will be dumped at around day 25-30 or whenever the
cities are emptied. I understand all the Southern cities have been
emptied. But the Cats tell us there is one village left to empty,
on this continent, within range of here. It is probably our best
hope. To deliver these pathogens, we need aircraft. We don’t have
any we can use. Az and Kaz tell us they have all been disabled.
They checked some. The equivalent of the throttle control is gone
on all the ones they checked. We also need to capture two of the
planes the Keulfyd use because we need the spraying device. Kaz
tells me they are still attached on all the ones he’s seen. We have
only boats and ships. Only one ship has the range to get to the
Northern Hemisphere in time. We will send that one tomorrow. Their
task is to capture at least two aircraft and do it in such a way it
looks like an accident. The Keulfyd are moving across the Northern
Continent in a predictable pattern according to my spies. We will
try to intercept them here,” he pointed to his map. “Tasha found
some maps in a classroom and took them to the Priskya. They
identified this as their planet.” Mathew looked up but saw he had
their full attention. He carried on, gratified.

“At the same time, we will send one group
here,” he pointed to the inland village, “in hopes of getting
aircraft here too. We will send Kaz with one team and Az with
another, giving us two chances, with our two pilots. Volunteers
please.”

Li stood up. “I’ll go with Az.”

After a startled moment, “No you won’t young
lady!” from Kelly.

Mathew smiled as Stella, Donny, Mahmoud,
Steve and many others stood up. To the furious and frightened Kelly
he said,

“Kelly they aren’t safe anywhere. The
Keulfyd could come tomorrow with conventional weapons and wipe us
all out. We all must fight. No exceptions. If we are to survive, we
need to give everything.”

Kelly looked trapped. “Then I’m going with
Stella,” she said.

“Agreed,” said Mathew. “You’ll probably be
needed more there. And Sarah you sit down too. I need you more
here.”