Dark Skies

CORONET

Episode 1: Key
(Part two)


The smack was so loud and so hard that for an instant Rebecca thought it was she who had been hit across the face.

She turned her head and looked out from her screwed-shut eyes and realised the Helena woman was gone. How? What happened?

‘I suggest we all do exactly what I say. Would be unfortunate if this little grey bugger lost the contents of his oversized cranium all over the factory floor.’

Who was speaking? Rebecca twisted, strained her head round and saw.

The man in the flying jacket - they called him ‘Lionel’ - had grasped one of the grey malformed chimeras. He held a large black automatic pistol in his left hand and was pushing the barrel hard against its distended head. The creature’s arms were flailing.

‘Now that’s much more like the thing. Doctor, start untying them – the woman first.’

‘Have you lost your mind?’ the doctor squeaked.

‘Do it. I’m not a patient man!’

Breath rasping, Helena grasped the side of Rebecca’s stretcher-bed and raised herself from the floor. A skein of blood swung from her nose and split upper lip as she shook her head. Abruptly she started making the disgusting throaty grating noises she had before. Then she turned to Lionel and said.

‘Coronet! I might have known you were bloody Coronet! Well, you’re a fool. The Hive cannot be threatened the way you threaten mere humans. Go on shoot me. Shoot me!’ She began making her unsteady way round the bed towards him. ‘You think small, individuals matter? Oh no, not with – ‘

Suddenly Lionel jerked the gun away from the thing he was holding and fired the gun. And again. And again and again… There was a chiming tinkle as shell casings struck the floor.

‘Stop!’ Helena screamed, `Stop stop. No no no! Not the legate! No no! Oh, Christ almighty – what have you done? You stupid stupid man!’

Twisting her head about once again Rebecca saw that two of the four other little grey monstrosities were lying thrashing on the brick floor, a clear brownish ichor spilling from holes in their torsos. Then she caught a strong whiff of what seemed to be old rotted fish and her stomach heaved.

‘Get me out of here!’ she screamed.

The doctor was shaking as he helped her off the gurney. His lower lip trembled and his eyes were brimming. Gasping, she pushed him away and staggered over to the American.

‘Wheel him out of here,’ shouted Lionel. ‘Go left and up the stairs and through the doors. There’s a Morris Traveller in the centre of the loading bay. It’s unlocked. Get him in the back and pull one of the yard gates open. Now, you dizzy bitch! Now!’

‘Okay, okay!’ She heaved the wheelchair forward and round left into a filthy unkempt brick corridor lit by a series of naked bulbs most of which were extinct. It seemed to go on and on forever and the flooring was littered with puddles, masonry debris and damp discarded packaging. No stairs in sight, she thought. Bloody typical.

From behind she heard more shouting. Oh, please God, no more shooting, she thought. Those things? What were they? What could they possibly be? They weren’t human but they seemed alive and intelligent and…

Don’t think about it!

Sometimes she had to spin about and drag the ’chair over the mess. Within minutes her arms began aching and her breathing grew ragged. Just how far was it out of here?

The American was groaning and gasping.

‘Knight in distress saved by lady in shining armour,’ he grunted. ‘That’s a new twist.’

‘Whatever you say,’ she grunted.

And there they were, steps, eight of them flanked by a handrail on each side, leading up to a small landing and an open door.  She knew she would have to reverse the chair to haul it up. She pulled it towards her and backed onto the first step.

‘Oh no.’

‘Problem?’ he asked.

‘The chair,’ she said. ‘It’s too wide for the steps. The bloody handrails are too close together!’

‘Unstrap me, lady and let’s see how mobile I am.’

She turned the ’chair, then tugged and thrust the straps through the buckles, loosening the arms first, permitting him the freedom to work on untying his legs while she tackled the ones about his torso. More distant shouting…

Albano stood and keeled forward onto the steps, the wheelchair twisting backwards and onto its side.

‘You’re gonna have to help me, I guess,’ he splutterd.

‘Just call me Florence,’ she said, grasping his arm and hauling it round her shoulder. She straightened and he yelped. As she went to lower him he cried out, ‘No! No, keep going, lady just ignore me. Keep going.’

‘Rather difficult in the circumstances. Come on, Christopher Robin, let’s climb the bloody stairs!’

Moving unsteadily through the doorway into the dimly lit rain swept loading bay they saw the car sitting about fifteen feet from the tall yard doors.

Another shot came from behind.

‘Not again,’ she hissed.

Together they shuffled down a loading ramp and into the light rain, Albano pushing along with his one good leg and stepping slackly with the other.  As they reached the Morris, Rebecca pulled open a back door and helped him crawl inside. Then she heard footsteps, running – no, not running exactly…

She turned to see Lionel sway through the door.  ‘Go,’ he yelled. ‘Get the damned gate!’

As she ran she heard the car door open and close. She dragged the wooden gate aside and the engine hacked to life behind her. Turning she saw the car lurch forward and jerk to a halt a couple of feet away. The front passenger door was pushed open.

Bang!

Something punched the gate a few inches from Rebecca’s shoulder spitting splinters into her face. She shrieked and leaped into the car. Someone was screaming curses behind them. Helena!

The little Morris swung out, juddered as it mounted the pavement on its way into the roadway, splashed through the swirling gutters and accelerated off into the night.
 
 

‘Stupid stupid, so bloody stupid!’ snarled Lionel.

‘What?’ Rebecca asked.

They were travelling through poorly lit back streets between high brick walled buildings, all in darkness. The squeaking windshield wipers slapped the raindrops lazily aside.

Lionel shuddered and grimaced hauling the wheel round, taking the little car up another alleyway. Rebecca looked at him. Something about him was not quite right.

‘’What’s wrong? Is there something up with you?’ she asked sharply. ‘Are you sick?’

Lionel shook his head and inhaled unsteadily. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I tried to get one of the legate out, to take it with us to Northumberland Avenue. It slipped my grasp and Helena and the doctor caught me and got the gun. I got away but she put a bullet in my back.’

‘Oh my God. You’re shot.’

‘Genius for stating the obvious,’ grumbled Albano. ‘You should’ve shot the whole damn bunch of them when you had the chance.’

‘I was almost out of bullets and the bug-men don’t kill easily. A couple of rounds apiece to finish them off.’ He came out of the lane badly, screeching to avoid a solitary tramcar and swerved into another side street.

‘Pull over and let her drive before you kill us all.’

‘But I can’t drive!’ she exclaimed.

‘Then give her a number to call.’

‘Not yet,’ said Lionel. ‘We’re still too close. A few minutes and maybe then, we’ll see. Anyway this part of London isn’t exactly crammed with phone boxes.’

`Where are we?’ she asked.

‘Isle of Dogs, Miss Black,’ said Lionel.

‘And can somebody tell me, please, what in God’s name is going on?’

‘And who the hell are you?’ grunted Albano from behind. ‘Are you really with Coronet? Cause if you are you sure put on one hell of an act.’

‘And it would still be going on if they hadn’t brought down a legate. Soon as they stepped into the bloody room they knew something didn’t smell right. Otherwise I’d still be a true and trusted helper of the Hive, passing information back to Northumberland Avenue.’

‘So you’d have just have stood by and let them kill me, then, I suppose?’

‘Who asked Majestic to stick its nose in here?’ Lionel growled. ‘This is our manor, Yank, and you’re definitely not invited! You lot really do think America’s all there is, don’t you? The rest of the world is just your back bloody yard for you to tramp around in as you damned well please.’ He breathed in sharply.

Albano sighed. ‘We had to know what was going on here. You people never co-operate. You never answer our requests for information – ‘

‘Hah!’ Lionel barked. The car wavered slightly. ‘ I seem to recall two gentlemen, Frisch and Peirels, who worked on the British nuclear project at the start of the War and who went to the United States because they were crucial to the Manhattan Project. Remember? Britain and America were going to share everything? But, hey, when the War was over, oh that changed completely. Didn’t it? Our scientists were sent packing and you held on to all their work – including what they’d brought over from Britain. Suddenly it all became Top Secret from us. You lot decided Britain really didn’t need its own bomb now that America had it, so why share anything? Yes, Coronet ignored your orders to hand over our reams of information on the Hive, Lieutenant Albano. America has shown us just how far it can be trusted!’ He coughed and shuddered.

The animosity was too much on top of everything else. Rebecca decided to change the subject. ‘Surely we should call an ambulance and the police … ’

‘The cops?’ Albano chuckled. ‘We don’t involve the civil authorities, though. Do we, Lionel?’

‘What is going on? You’re all crazy, psychotic.’

Lionel coughed again and winced and the car wavered some more.

‘What do you think is going on, Miss Black?’ he said.

‘I… I don’t know, some kind of mass insanity. I … ‘

‘And what about the creatures back there?’ said Albano. ‘What about them? Hallucinations?’

‘What were they?’

Lionel replied. ‘They were part of a Hive legate, Miss Black, beings from another planet, another star – '

‘That’s nonsense!’ she blurted.

‘You’re the scientist, right?’ he asked drawing in a long ragged breath. She nodded and he continued. ‘Suppose ten thousand years ago you tried to explain to cavemen about television and aircraft, electricity, cars, railways. That’s just what they’d say – nonsense! And they’d be right because to them it would be nonsense, but its not nonsense to us, is it? No. And travel to the stars won’t be nonsense to our descendants in ten thousand years time either. Our people, Coronet, reckon that intelligence travelling out there amongst the stars is fairly recent. Only been around for about a hundred million years or so. You hear that? One hundred million years! It means they have technology that’s like bloody magic to us.’

She shook her head. ‘But it just doesn’t make sense,’ she said. ‘If they’re as advanced as all that and they want to conquer the Earth, they could just wipe us out like bugs.’

From behind Albano laughed softly and said, ‘But, lady, it’s not the Earth they’re after.’

‘No,’ agreed Lionel. ‘It’s not the Earth. It’s us.’
 
 

‘Us?’ she frowned. ‘You mean the human race? For what? Slaves? That’s ridiculous!  Space beings with the resources to cross light-years the way we cross the Atlantic certainly wouldn’t need slaves!’

‘No, not slaves,’ said Lionel. ‘Not in the way you mean anyway.’

He was glancing in the mirrors a lot, swerving to avoid other vehicles and driving too fast. Rebecca could see the tiny sweat pears glitter on his face and forehead when headlights flashed across them.

‘We call it the Hive, Miss Black,’ said Albano from behind. ‘They’re a collective mind. We’ll it’s more complex than that: we guess that on the lager scale they’re a collective of collective minds. The individuals are like single cells in a greater body. Right now they want to absorb more cells. Make us part of their assemblage.’

‘But … why? What do we have to offer? Look! A phone box! Over there!’ She pointed to a street corner up ahead.

‘Cant’ do that,’ grunted Lionel. ‘Look behind.’

She turned and peered through the rear windows. ‘But the road’s clear. There’s nobody following us.’

‘The sky, lady,’ said Albano.

Rolling down the window, the rain spattering over her face, she looked back and up catching a brief glimpse of diffuse light spinning above the factory and warehouse rooftops just as Lionel swerved into another alleyway.

‘Damned legate’s after us!’ sighed Lionel. ‘And I’m not going to be able to keep this up for much longer.’ He shook his head.

‘We have to get you to a hospital right away,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to risk stopping at a phone box. What can they do? I mean they’re really quite – small. Do they shoot us with a ray-gun or something?’

Albano spoke. ‘They can kill the electrics in the car and take us. They’ll drain your will, paralyse your muscles. There’s not a lot you can do if they decide to take you. In fact I don’t think there’s really a lot we can do right now. It’s just a matter of time.’ He sighed.

‘Bugger that! Not if I can help it.’ Lionel barked wrestling with the wheel, jerking the car sideways onto a major road almost devoid of traffic. The silhouettes of chimneys and cranes were etching a skyline into the pale greys and yellows of the morning sky ahead. He jammed his foot down on the accelerator pedal.

‘Watch out!’ screamed Rebecca as they slid across into the path of an oncoming lorry – then back again. The driver parped his horn and flashed headlights furiously as he rolled past.

‘Any sign of it, Albano?’ asked Lionel. His breathing was short and rapid, as if he had been running.

The American peered out, behind. ‘Nothing there. Not yet. But it’s just a matter of time, believe me! If you’re trying to find a public place and scare them off it won’t work – ’

‘Stick a cork in it, Yank!’

‘Do you live near here?’ Rebecca asked.

‘No. Anyway my family think I’m dead…’

‘What? They think you’re dead? Why?’

He shook his head again, angry with himself for revealing an element of his private, personal past. ‘Never mind. Keep a lookout. Will you?’

‘My God,’ said Albano. ‘Lionel. Jesus, I know who you are.’

‘Bully for you. Keep a lookout,’ mumbled Lionel.

‘Your Crabb, aren’t you? Lionel Crabb, the Secret Service diver?’

 ‘All right! All right! Commander Lionel Crabb, at your service, Yank. Now keep looking out!’

The name was vaguely familiar to Rebecca, it had to do with spies and the Royal Navy. Then she remembered.

‘But you vanished last year! You were a naval frogman or something but didn’t you disappear when there was a Russian ship on a visit here with some Soviet delegation. Wasn’t Khruschev in it? I thought I read that they’d captured you and you were being held in some Soviet prison camp?’

‘Except that was all cover, wasn’t it?’ said Albano. ‘Coronet recruited you and put you under deep cover to penetrate the bloody Hive. God, you’ve been lucky. How did you avoid the Greys so long? A few minutes in their presence and they’d have made you, man!’

‘Damn! They’ve found us!’ Crabb began throwing the car wildly about the road. More horns complained as the few vehicles around braked and swerved desperately on the rain-slicked tarmac.

Suddenly the interior of the Morris was flooded with a glowing intensity and Rebecca saw a bright luminous shape moving just above and in front of them, moving at the exact same speed as they were. There was a splutter and the car’s dashboard lights died and with them the rhythmic squeak of the windshield wipers. Everything seemed stuffed full of white silence.

‘Shit,’ cursed Albano from behind. ‘Got us.’

‘Uh,’ mumbled Crabb. ‘Maybe… not…’

They were drifting, Rebecca felt, soaring or sailing. Like being underwater, she thought, immersed in something. She looked round at Crabb. The Englishman was slumped forward over the wheel, unconscious, immobile – just like her arms. Oh, she was so dizzy so ….

For a second there was the sensation of falling. Then they were clear of it, whatever it was, and they were in… a tunnel! And the car was coasting forward down the slope at an angle.

Rebecca yelped as it banged into the wall and began scraping along.

‘The hand-brake!’ Albano said. ‘The lever between the seats. Pull it up!’

The car stopped.

‘Mr Crabb!’ She leaned over and grabbed his jacket to shake him. The leather was wet and sticky. She jerked her hand back – it was bloody. ‘Oh, dear God! He’s bleeding to death!’ she gasped.

She grabbed the door handle and pushed.

‘Where the hell’re you going?’ rasped Albano.

‘I’ll have to get an ambulance. The man is dying.’

‘Phone Coronet. They’ll get here quicker!’ He started coughing and spluttering.

She ran straight on through the tunnel which seemed to go on and on forever. After a few minutes which seemed like decades, the tunnel began to slope upwards and the running became all the more difficult. God, she thought, I am so unfit! Should have used the staff swimming pool at the University. Kept promising myself I would but never did. Now this. I’ll never get an ambulance here. Crabb’ll have bled to death twice over before I get out of this damn place.

She had to keep well into the side. Cars roared past belting their horns and flashing lights. A Jaguar swept past within inches. Had he actually been trying to hit her? Some drivers slowed and shouted abuse. She could do without this, really.

Then one stopped just ahead, a large mud streaked white van with J.Harvey – Builders’ Suppliers stencilled in green and black on the side. The driver rolled down the window and called to her as she approached.

‘You all right, darlin’?’

‘My friends are injured back at that car,’ she panted. ‘Must call for help.’

‘Get in, love. I know where there’s a phone box!’

For a second she hesitated. What if he was Hive, either a fully controlled human or one of their lapdogs like that doctor?

In that brief flash she realised more intensely than she ever would just how deeply and permanently her life had changed. Before she might have worried that a strange man offering her a lift might be a sex-fiend, but not now. Then the hard determination took over; it had seen her through her father’s death and through a gruelling seven years at Glasgow University. It would see her through this night too.

She pulled open the van’s passenger door and climbed inside.

The driver, a small rat-faced man with a squeaky voice, talked non-stop. Rummaging through her handbag, Rebecca shut out his words. There was only one phone number she had that was any kind of possibility for contacting Coronet – the one on her letter from the Air Ministry. Whatever it was, it was not RAF. That much she was certain.

The phone box was less than a hundred yards from the exit and the big lumbering van bee-lined for it, crossing into the right hand lane of the road to the disapproval of a couple of other road users. More flashing lights and horns.

She clambered out shouting her thanks and ran round the front of the vehicle straight to the phone booth, heaving back the door. Then she turned, pointed back down the way they had come and shouted to the driver, ‘What tunnel is that?’

‘Rotherhithe, darlin’. Check the phone’s workin`. Young’uns is a bunch a vandals round ‘ere!’

She picked up the phone and held it to her ear. There was a purring tone. She turned and gave him a thumbs-up. She had a penny ready, pushed it into the slot and placed her interview letter on top of the black box unit. Carefully she rang the number. The dial seemed to take forever swinging back to its original position after each digit.

There was no time for a ring at the far end, just a voice answering immediately, ‘Dr Black, is that you?’

She recognised it, the dry distinctive voice of the man who had interviewed her this afternoon!

She pushed button A and heard the coin rattle down through the innards of the box. ‘Get an ambulance to the Rotherhithe Tunnel right now. Your man Crabb is in a crashed Morris Traveller. He’s been shot and he may be dead for all I known. There’s another man inside called Albano, an American with, er, Majestic I think? I’m in a phone box just beyond the tunnel’s end.’

Without another word the other end hung up.
 
 

Externally the glass-fronted building was an attempt at a Modernist office block, a failed attempt. It was one of those buildings which becomes instantly dated in its attempt to be ‘contemporary’ or ‘modern’. Rebecca guessed that the interior would be standardised, predictable and as profitable as the builders could make it. Absently she felt disappointed in London architecture; it had little of the Victorian grandeur and Gothic splendour she associated with the great buildings in her home city.

My God, I can deliberate on architecture, she thought, amazed. It’s almost as if I’m outside myself watching all this madness happen around me, watching myself phone Mum from the hotel this morning. Oh yes, everything’s fine, big developments – it was all a misunderstanding – yes, looks like I may have a job with the Air Ministry after all…

Cool headed lying; the kind of thing she deeply hated and she just went right ahead and did it without blinking. Mum was probably the closest human being to her on the entire planet and she hadn’t just lied to her – she had lied royally ... but Mum had to be protected. She mustn’t know about any of this, about Coronet or Commander Crabb, and certainly not the Hive!

Once through the revolving doors it was quite different. The foyer was cramped with a small cash-grill counter. This was set at the top of a chest high wall of claret painted wooden boards with a stretch of frosted glass frames rising above to the ceiling. A thick wire mesh visible on the other side. There was a smell of fresh paint.

In the wall to their right was a heavy looking metal-faced door, again painted claret and flanked by two soldiers with clipboards and holstered sidearms. She inhaled sharply. It was the first time she had ever seen an armed man …

Don’t be stupid! she thought. What about last night?

Abruptly the detachment left her and she trembled for just a moment.

‘Are you up to this, Dr Black?’ His voice was as light and papery as before but the hand he placed on her forearm was firm, steady. ‘Perhaps you’d rather wait until this afternoon, or we could put it off until Monday?’

‘No, I’ll be all right. Just a wee shiver. This has all been, well, quite something.’

‘Oh, it’s quite something all right. You’re not wrong there.’ He cut an impressive figure in his long woollen coat and felt hat. It seemed to be almost a uniform. The two silent men who accompanied them were dressed similarly but on him it actually looked good. Removing a pair of rimless tinted spectacles, he folded them and slid them into a soft pouch that he placed in an inside pocket. Withdrawing his hand he lifted out a plastic laminated card and pushed it under the counter grill. Behind it a figure moved and muttered something.

Picking up the card as it was returned, he replied, ‘I’m bringing in a recruit, Charlie. You’ll find a new DDITS7 under her name in your ‘Pending’ – Black. Rebecca. Doctor.’

The voice inside muttered again.

‘That’s right, Charlie, An ’S-seven.’

There was a low whistle from the other side of the grill.

He turned and motioned her forward. She stepped up to the barred window and looked inside at a round soft face looking right back. The face, “Charlie”, glanced at something in his hand and then placed it in a plastic wallet that he slid under the grill.

He turned and muttered something which might have been ‘Welcome aboard,’ or ‘You wont get bored.’

‘Thank you,’ she said uncertainly.

‘This is the drill,’ the man in the overcoat said. ‘Show both of these guards your Staff Card every time you come here. Don’t flash it at them. Let them take their time to check that the picture really is a picture of you and that the name on it tallies with one on their list. If you try to rush them it will simply take longer to get inside.’ While he spoke the two armed servicemen examined his plastic sheathed identification

Glancing at her own, the first shock was the picture of herself staring back. Where did this come from? Then she realised it was one of the set she’d had taken for her British passport and submitted with her application last year.

‘Let these good men do the inspecting, Dr Black. You’ll have plenty of time to scrutinise it later, I’m sure.’

‘Will I be working here?’

‘Here and in the Air Ministry’s Northumberland Avenue offices, the old Hotel Metropole. Room 801 on the ninth floor. You’ll probably spend a quite lot of your time there, I imagine. The way things are shaping up.’

Their identities accepted one of the two guards nodded to the other who stood to one side and opened a panel recessed into the wall behind him. Inside was a vertical row of brass-faced studs.

‘Sir?’ the soldier asked.

‘Clinic please, sergeant.’

The sergeant pressed his thumb against the top stud. A bell rang somewhere distantly and the metal door rolled to the right, straight into the wall, revealing a small carpeted lift with mirrored walls.

Their two coated companions took a seat on a long cushioned bench by the revolving door. One pulled a Daily Mail from his pocket and began unfolding it as the lift closed. They began to rise.

‘Don’t put your Staff Card away for a moment, Dr Black,’ the man said, smiling. ‘We’re not in yet.’

Rebecca sighed and took it out of her handbag again.

‘What exactly is an “S-seven?”’

‘Ah, I might have guessed you’d pick up on that. It stands for “Section seven”, the top level of security for the Deputy Directorate of Intelligence. There are ten of us, well, eleven now. And don’t panic when we get there.’

The lift stopped and opened and she inhaled sharply. Another two soldiers faced them only this time their sidearms were drawn and the automatic pistols were pointing at her and her companion.

‘Jesus!’

‘Keep calm, my dear.’

She felt that same hand on her arm, this time lifting it up beside his own, displaying the Staff Cards for the guards to inspect. They nodded and immediately lowered the firearms, thumbed their safeties back on and holstered them.

For all the world it looked like a hospital wing, everything white and tinged with a whiff of carbolic, doctors and nurses with echoing steps, long nightingale wards with a dozen or so beds in each. They seemed about half full.

‘Who …’ she began, not really knowing how to ask the question.

‘Mainly they are aviation accident victims. There was a crash a few days ago in Kent. Military transport coming in from Cyprus went down. No loss of life, God be thanked, but lots of bad injuries and the plane is nothing but scrap.’

‘Really I didn’t hear about this?’

He shrugged. ‘We try to keep most incident off the public record,’ he said. ‘Anyway we were prepared. Since May the Hive has been interfering with the communications and electrics of aircraft in the South of England. In June they targeted our military planes. I imagine they were just letting us know they could tell the difference. The Hive seems to be polishing its technique generally in this area of late.’

Stopping at a varnished pine door he knocked sharply and turned the handle. He motioned her inside.

It was an airy north facing room in pale peppermint. Its large windows, though open a few inches, had their rattan blinds pulled right down and tied off.

Albano and Crabb occupied the two hospital beds.

‘Gentlemen, good afternoon to you,’

‘Afternoon, sir,’ grunted Crabb, trying to sit up and almost knocking his IV drip stand sideways.

‘Just lie back, Buster,’ said the older man. ‘No formalities. You look somewhat improved over yesterday morning. Gave us quite a turn, you did. However, the main thing is you survived.’

‘Wanted to bring back one of those bloody bug-men, sir! Had him right in my hands, but there was a whole legate there, machine and all.’

‘Frankly, Commander, I’m much happier that you made certain this young lady escaped.’

‘Rather pleased about that myself, sir.’

‘And you, Lieutenant Albano, I’m told will be fit and well in a few days.’

‘Oh pip pip, anyone for tea?’ said the American. ‘Does Frank Bach know I’m here?’

‘Majestic has been officially informed of your situation. Your government also received an official complaint from the Foreign Office in respect of Majestic’s activities over here.’

‘So you’re going to kick me back to Washington?’

‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. You see this is one of the very few occasions that I’ve had more than just a short sharp exchange of views with Captain Bach. He claims he would like you involved in some formal liaison between our two organisations. We’ll see.’

‘What’s she doing here?’ asked the American, nodding at Rebecca. ‘She’s a civilian. She shouldn’t be listening to this.’

‘Not any longer. Dr Black has decided to join Coronet. She’s a specialist in astrodynamics. No doubt that will come in handy.’

The American looked at him coldly. ‘No doubt it will,’ he said. ‘But that’s not why you want her. Is it?’

There was silence for a few moments.

‘What are you talking about?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Astrodynamics?’ Albano said and gave her a chilling grin. ‘Look, lady, Dr Black – they could care less about astrodynamics.’ He glanced at the older man. ‘If you don’t tell her, I will.’

‘Oh God,’ groaned Crabb, lying back on his pillow, eyes closed and clearly still in pain. ‘Yanks! They’ve the biggest buildings, the biggest potatoes and the biggest bloody mouths!’

‘You’re Grey-bait, lady!’
 
 

A jaunty summer sun beat down incongruously on the wet black and smoking expanse that had been the warehouse. The charred stench she held at bay by pressing a handkerchief soaked in Tweed perfume to her mouth and nose. There were still a couple of fire tenders and a police car in attendance, officers carefully picking amongst the rubble and ruined walls.

She stumbled over some broken bricks and he caught her. The firm hand, she thought, always there.

He spoke. The same soft light voice, the words like crisp tissue paper. ‘Their intention is to turn humanity into a collective mind. We know that much. They have no interest in anything else so far as we can tell. They do not seem to have any desire for conquest in the traditional sense. It would appear that the rest of the Earth is safe - we humans are their solitary interest.’

‘But if they’re not trying to kill us, can we be sure they’re hostile?’

‘We know that they’re quite ruthless. They regard individual people as being totally dispensable. Their only interest is in creating a mass human Hive.’

‘But… I mean, do we know why?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course there are theories. Generally it’s assumed that they want us as a collective mind in order to further some agenda they have. Some people theorise they want to contain an aggregate human consciousness as part of their own Hive in order to enhance it somehow, perhaps creating part of a greater Hive.’

She had come to terms with it, with the unthinkable. It went against everything she knew, everything she been taught, everything she felt was fundamentally right.  It was a madness but real and here and she was now a part of it.

‘Do we know how they found us?’

‘Well, most scientists who’ve looked at the problem believe they travel amongst the stars looking for interesting civilisations to harvest.’ He sighed. ‘We know so little about them, really. And we are almost completely helpless. You see they have a technological lead over us, which is staggering. We cannot compete in that area. The best we can do just now is to frustrate their attempts to incorporate humanity into a collective intelligence.’

She considered it in silence as they turned and began walking back to the car.

‘And,’ she said. ‘I have to ask this. What did the American mean by “Grey-bait”?’

‘Hmm.’ He continued walking without speaking for a while and then said. ‘We were alerted that they were still looking for you almost four years ago.’

‘Still? What do you mean still?’

He ignored her and continued, ‘Fortunately they find our social structure quite confusing and couldn’t locate you. We think this is one of the main reasons they’re so keen to Hive us up, if you follow me. Right now we baffle them.’

‘We do? What’s so baffling about humans, then?’

‘The thinking is that most technologically advanced societies out there don’t come about the way we did: you know - packs of smart primates evolving into tribes of intelligent humans and then us, Homo sapiens, finally forming intricate powerful societies.’

‘Well, what other way could there be?’ she asked, frowning.

‘None of the non-human societies on this planet, and there are tens of thousands of them, is based on intelligence. Ants, bees, termites and so forth.’

‘Ah!’ she said. ‘I see. You think space-creatures start off like that, like termites, in a highly ordered society and only then do they grow smart – As opposed to us. So we did it the wrong way round?’

‘Exactly. Ours is the only example we know of a society forming the wrong way round, as you put it. Forming the right way round – complex society before any sign of complex intelligence - is commonplace among many different species all over the Earth, so it’s probably the same out there amongst the stars.’

‘Right. I see that,’ Rebecca said and then added, ‘Can we get back to the “Grey-bait” now or are you just going to continue avoiding it?” Up ahead there was another car parked in front of their black Rover, a black Bentley.

Black cars! Something tickled her memory and slipped away – again.

‘Those unearthly creatures you saw, the NTIs – Non-Terrestrial Intelligences, are more commonly referred to as “bug-men” by Coronet staffers. The Americans call them “Greys”. Particularly colourless, no?’

‘So “Grey-bait”… Oh, I see. Hmmm... and what's the difference between an EBE and an NTI?'

He favoured her with a wry lop-sided smile. 'One is American. The other is English.'

'And they're after me. Why? Do you know?’

The two gleaming black cars, wheels half on the kerb …

‘Yes and no, Dr Black. You are one of nine people, individuals, that the Hive believes it must either control or destroy if it is to gain mastery over the Human race. That is all we know. We’ve identified three so far. You were the first.’

‘But how…?’

They were approaching the cars now. He walked past the Rover to the Bentley and leaned forward, hand on the door handle.

It burst through her mind lie the torrent from a collapsing dam. The black cars, the men in dark coats and felt hats…

‘You were there!’ she gasped. ‘My dad’s funeral. You…’

‘Indeed he was, my good woman,’ came a strong voice from within the Bentley. ‘As was I. Please, do step in and we can have a blather.’

As he helped her through the door, the man in the coat said, ‘Dr Rebecca Black may I present, Coronet – First Lord of the Admiralty, Earl Louis Mountbatten of Burma.’
 

END

Historical notes