“Even lower life-forms have their uses.”

  Chapter Thirty: Interrogation

  Day 23. Saturday

  I woke up all at once. No drifting in and out, no sleepy huddling under the warm blankets. We had a captive alien invader to interrogate. The thought drove all the sleep fog out of my head, and my heart started hammering with two parts excitement and one part fear.

  I sat up, looked around for my clothes, then leaped out of bed. I took just long enough putting my clothes on to make sure my pants weren’t on backward, then headed for the barn, typing furiously on my phone.

  Already on our way, came back from Nat within seconds.

  Well, good, I thought. No sense burning daylight. “Sheldon, any progress on those files?”

  His answer came over my cling-on as a staircase lowered for me:

  “Yes, and I think you’re going to find it interesting. Not good interesting, either.”

  “Outstanding,” I muttered. A roar and skidding-on-gravel sound from outside told me that Patrick and Nat had arrived. “Gang’s all here,” I said. “Give us a few minutes to set up, then I guess we’ll be good to go.”

  Nat and Patrick had done the drive-through on the way, so I was pleasantly surprised to receive a McMuffin meal with a large coffee. Nat almost threw the bag at me as she hurried to her favorite spot. Fortunately, she was a little more careful with the coffee.

  “What do we have, Sheldon?” she said as she slid into her chair.

  “A PowerPoint presentation.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The thumb drive that Jack stole contained a PowerPoint presentation. It appears it was intended to be presented at whatever status meeting Karen was planning to attend. It is in fact a status report of sorts.”

  “PowerPoint,” Patrick said with exaggerated weariness. “Invading alien lizard people use PowerPoint. Microsoft’s marketing team is really, really good.”

  Nat waved to the display wall at the end of the room. “Can you put it up?”

  “Coming up. I have clarified the text and labels, to the extent that I am able.”

  A window popped up in the display wall, showing a surprisingly mundane PowerPoint title page. No images, just three lines of text:

  Earth Conversion Project

  Schedule, Timeline, Milestones

  Prepared by Karen Ingram

  “I expected it to be in an alien script,” Nat said. “This is English. And Calibri font, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Funny thing,” Sheldon replied. “Turns out Unicode doesn’t contain the Lorannic alphabet. Who knew? In any case, I imagine the Loranna work in English exclusively, not only from necessity, but also out of simple prudence.”

  After a few seconds, the page changed to a Gantt chart. It contained at least a dozen different development paths, with the word continued at the bottom.

  “I’ve created a larger graphic combining all the chart segments,” Sheldon said. The window expanded to take up the entire screen, with a massive amount of detail.

  “Look at all those separate paths,” I said. The chart had the look of a major software project for a bank or government department. I could spot at least six critical paths, linking at major milestones.

  “Yeah, but this is the part that’s really important,” Nat said, pointing to the end. All the various paths merged at the right side of the chart to a single milestone, labeled “Takeover Complete.” Nat’s finger traced upward to the timeline displayed along the top of the graph.

  “Shit,” Patrick said. “That’s less than five years away!”

  I stood and moved closer to the chart, peering at some of the details. “Unfortunately, a lot of these task labels are meaningless or even nonsensical. Sheldon?”

  “It appears that the text uses acronyms or jargon that would be unfamiliar to an outsider,” Sheldon said. “I suspect some terms are nothing more than Lorannic labels, spelled out phonetically. Even I can’t make sense of most of the individual items. Although the milestones tend to be more straightforward.”

  “Uh, yeah, takeover is pretty clear,” I said. “Some of these other items are at least ominous. What’s interesting is when the pandemic subproject was projected to start.”

  “Off by less than three months,” Nat said. “Oh, that can’t be coincidence.”

  “So this means … ” Patrick gestured helplessly at the graphic.

  “A complete breakdown of human society sometime in the next five years. Everything and I mean everything is set to peak at the same time. This,” I pointed, “looks like a major environmental catastrophe, although it’s hard to tell exactly what.”

  “Jaysus.” Patrick closed his eyes briefly. “Any other slides, Sheldon?”

  “A few. I think you’ll find them interesting.”

  “As opposed to … ” Patrick waved a hand at the Gantt chart.

  “Even so,” Sheldon replied.

  Several slides popped up in rapid succession, with images of well-known politicians, media figures, and wealthy individuals. Under each picture was some text. Sheldon flashed the images too quickly for anyone to read more than a word or two. By the time the slide show stopped, I’d given up counting them.

  Nat had to take a moment to compose herself. “And those were … ”

  “Collaborationists,” Sheldon replied. “More than two hundred powerful or influential humans who have thrown themselves in with the Loranna. Knowingly. The text below the images is a summary of their efforts in the service of the plan.”

  “Any actual Loranna in disguise?” I asked.

  “I would think that’d be poor strategy,” Nat interjected. “Too much risk. Disguises can break down; people can notice inconsistencies in behavior, inconsistencies with constructed history, and so on.”

  “Natalie is correct,” Sheldon said. “Although the presentation doesn’t give details, there are numerous references to Lorannic ‘handlers’ and ‘influencers,’ all no doubt operating behind the scenes. There may in fact still be some embedded Loranna other than those here in Dunnville, but there is no mention of them in the presentation.”

  Patrick made a face. “Damn. Too bad. I was thinking of unmasking someone famous as a Lorann in public, maybe even live on TV—sabotaging their disguise or something.”

  “I’m not sure it would be all that effective, anyway,” I replied. “Deepfakes have gotten so good now, you can’t depend on video evidence. And if the Loranna are as embedded in everything as this indicates, then I’ll bet real money they’d have a campaign up and running to discredit us in no time.”

  Nat sighed. “The Loranna seem to have everything sewn up tight.”

  “It is possible that this is not their first hootenanny,” Sheldon said.

  Nat snorted. “Rodeo.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “I agree,” I said. “This is too smooth, too well orchestrated. Minimal effort, minimal investment, using the resources of the host planet whenever possible. This is a practiced, optimized script. Like they’ve done this before.”

  “We are so fucked.” Patrick leaned back and sighed. “Let’s review, shall we? We can’t call the Gen for help. We can’t go to the Gen for help. We can’t unmask any Loranna, and even if we could, it would be buried under a mountain of competing disinformation. We could release this PowerPoint presentation, but it would probably have zero effect. We can’t go to the media and expect any results, and if we try to go to the government, we’re as likely as not to get intercepted by a collaborationist or disguised Loranna. Have I got it all covered?”

  Nat nodded. “Nicely summed up. Let’s go talk to my ex-boss. Maybe we can get some ideas.”

  We stared at Karen. Karen stared back. For almost a minute, no one spoke. I wish I could say we were trying to unnerve her or some such psychological trick, but really, we were just all completely at a loss. And Karen was obviously not going to give us anything.

  Patrick threw out the first question. “Why are you here?”

  “You kidnapped me.”

  “No, I mean—” Patrick paused to regroup. “Why is your species secretly on Earth?”

  “We’re a research group, doing a study of Terran civilization.”

  I interjected, “And for some reason, you’ve called it the Earth Conversion Project?”

  Karen’s face went from relaxed to stony. I think. I had to remind myself that reading the facial expressions of an alien probably came with huge error bars, but her face definitely had changed. Which meant I’d scored a hit of some kind.

  “I’m not familiar with that phrase.”

  I held up her thumb drive. “It was on your PowerPoint presentation for the seminar. Want to try again?”

  Now there was a definite reaction—a momentary expression of rage. Again, I think. But bared teeth and narrowed eyes wasn’t just arbitrary signaling, like an ear-waggle or something. There would be good strategic biological reasons for showing your weapons in a threat display and protecting your eyeballs. Oh, and it turned out Loranna had fangs. Worth noting.

  “You’re making a very large mistake,” she said. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

  Nat stepped forward. “To be honest, Karen, after the secret aliens thing, and the Earth Conversion thing, I’m betting anything else you might want to throw at us would be anticlimactic.”

  Karen showed her teeth again and said something guttural. In my cling-on, Sheldon said, “That was Lorannic. She was discussing your ancestry and promising her personal attention to your comfort at some future point.”

  I chuckled. “Comfort. I’m sure.”

  Karen cocked her head. “You understand Lorannic? Interesting. If you’re Gen, you’re the shortest Gen I’ve ever seen.”

  She looked up and spoke to the air, which I found interesting. “Ship, please open my stateroom door.”

  “Authorization not recognized,” Sheldon replied in a flat tone. At the same moment, he said over the cling-on, “She doesn’t need to know I’m sentient.”

  Now Karen focused on Nat. “You know you’re out of a job, right? And times are tough, especially in this rinky-dink town. Gonna be tough paying for your father’s medical.” She paused and smiled. “Of course, you’ll be dead, so maybe it won’t matter so much.”

  “Your threats are empty until you get out of here,” Nat replied. I could see anger on her face, though. The comment about her father had scored a hit.

  “Even if I don’t,” Karen said, “you’ve seen the Gantt chart. You have five years. At the most.” Her expression shifted into what was presumably supposed to be a smile, but on a Lorannic face it looked more like hunger. “Listen, that can change. This is nothing personal. We’re businesspeople. If you release me, I guarantee you not only a raise and better job title, but also a place in the protected zones once our plans enter the final phases.” She glanced at Patrick and me. “And your friends as well. Family, too.”

  “And we should believe you?”

  “We always keep our word, Natalie. Can I call you Nat? You Earthlings have this ridiculous idea that agreements made under duress should have no validity, but we have a more practical attitude. If you don’t keep your word in this kind of situation, you have no negotiating power in any future confrontations.”

  “And you have the authority to make offers like this?”

  I glanced at Nat, frowning. Was she actually considering the offer?

  Karen laughed. “Kae-Ah and I—that’s Arley Montrose to you—are the founders and lead architects of this project. If we can’t make commitments, no one can.”

  Nat looked at me and made a sideways motion with her head. She said to Karen, “We’ll need to talk about this,” then marched off toward the central elevator. Patrick and I hurried to catch up.

  Not a word was spoken until we were seated in the conference room. Nat looked up into the air. “Sheldon, is that statement about Loranna keeping their word true?”

  “Yes, but only in the same way as deals with the devil or wishes to genies in your literature. You’d want to make sure the terms were very, very clearly defined.”

  Patrick gaped at Nat, horrified. “You’re not seriously considering taking—”

  “Jesus, Patrick,” Nat said, cutting him off. “I’m trying to figure out how much we can trust what she says. For instance, that thing about being one of two lead architects … ”

  “Yeah, I was wondering about that myself,” I replied. “Sounds kind of small-time. I’d assumed that the entire Lorannic race was behind this. Sheldon, any thoughts?”

  “It does seem like a very small footprint for the operation, if you assume even a single Lorannic tribe is involved. You’d think—”

  “Tribe?” I interjected.

  “Like your nations, but not as geographically well-defined. Tribes are made up of clans, which you could think of as large families. They are loyal to the tribe, but pursue their own interests.”

  “Weird.”

  “Not all intelligent species use the same social structures, Jack.”

  Nat frowned. “How small can clans be?”

  “Possibly as few as a couple dozen Loranna. Below that, they would be unable to defend themselves and would likely be raided and absorbed. However … ”

  “Yes?” I prompted.

  “However,” Sheldon continued, “we discussed earlier that the whole operation seemed very efficient and practiced. This is inconsistent with a small, marginalized, and possibly desperate clan.”

  Nat’s frown deepened. “We need to get into the Harris computer systems. We need answers.”

  Chapter Thirty-One: Reaction

  Day 24. Sunday

  I was awakened by Sheldon’s voice over the cling-on. “Alert! Activity in the Harris office.”

  I sat up. “What?”

  “Was I not speaking English? Perhaps I spoke too swiftly for you. Let me try again. Accccccttttivvvvvittttty innnnnnnn ttttthhhhhhhe—”

  “All right, Sheldon. Jesus. What’s happening? Specifically?”

  “It would appear that the Loranna have missed our captive. They are upset enough that some of them have spoken Lorannic out loud in the office.”

  “Okay. I’ll come up to the conference room. Have you alerted the others?”

  “Gee, that never occurred to me. What a great idea. I’ll get right on that.”

  “Umph,” I replied, glaring blearily around the room. If the world needed saving before I had coffee, the world was going to be in deep trouble. Finally focusing on my slippers, I shoved my feet into them and staggered off to the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, I was on board the Halo and watching the activity on the wall monitor. Two video windows were open—the bigger window showed a view of part of the office from the bug that Nat had planted, and a smaller window displayed a close-up view of Karen’s monitor from the bug under her keyboard. Three people, including Karen’s assistant, Marc, were searching the offices, presumably for any clue to Karen’s whereabouts. One of them had a phone on speaker and was occasionally exchanging commentary with the person at the other end.

  They had gone through Karen’s office twice, but hadn’t touched her computer. I found myself gritting my teeth with frustration. Was checking her computer that complicated an idea?

  “If they could log in to her account, maybe,” Nat said to my muttered complaint. “But if they log in using their own credentials, it’s hard to see how they could learn anything.”

  I made a growling sound in reply, but she was right. I tried to relax and let events unfold at their own—nope, that Zen stuff didn’t work for me.

  However, my complaints to on high seemed to have an effect, and a positive one for once. Someone finally sat down at Karen’s computer, logged in, and proceeded to do some searches. Because of the position of the keyboard bug, we could only see the monitor, not the person using the workstation.

  “We have his log-in credentials,” Sheldon said with satisfaction. “It’s Karen’s assistant, Marc Abramson, judging from the username. Fun fact, his password is EarthSuxGr8ly.”

  Nat laughed. “Maybe the Loranna are more like us than we think.”

  “Don’t make the mistake of trying to relate to them, Natalie. The Loranna have a massive case of racial entitlement. Humans are little more than talking animals to them. As are the Gen, the Ka’alag, the Nir-k-hi, and all the other Covenant races. However, the Loranna are outmatched militarily, so they maintain a veneer of politeness.”

  “Wonderful,” I muttered. “Kzinti.”

  While this discussion had been going on, Marc had finished, or possibly just given up. He smacked the monitor, then logged himself off and pushed the keyboard away. He yelled something to his fellow searchers and stomped off.

  “We should wait until Marc leaves before attempting to log on remotely,” Sheldon said. “If he logs on locally while we’re remoting in, security systems will generate an alert.”

  “Are you sure?” Patrick asked.

  I answered before Sheldon could. “Even for human sysops, that’s an obvious thing to watch for. It’ll be automated and they’ll get an alert.”

  The device that Nat had planted could pick up sound over most of the third floor, but the video field of view was limited by its location. Most of the information coming over the bug consisted of off-screen bumps, walking sounds, and occasional English and Lorannic commentary. It was a measure of the stress level that the Loranna were breaking character like that.

  Then there was a yell, followed by stampeding sounds. “What just happened?” Patrick said.

  “They are excited by something,” Sheldon replied. “Ah. Security-camera feeds. Someone went back through the video files and found a scene where Karen was being kidnapped by Karen and Marc. Marc keeps yelling, ‘That isn’t me! I wasn’t there!’ I believe the jig is out.”

  “Up,” Nat corrected.

  “Regardless of the jig’s ultimate vector, they are now on full alert. We might want to consider logging in now and getting what we can.”

  “Let’s do it,” Nat said, and grabbed her laptop. Reaching into a pocket, she pulled out a small, round object—her new security fob. Some rapid typing, a pause to transfer a number from the fob’s display, and the logo of the Harris Institute was up on her laptop screen.