We've Seen the Enemy Read online

  Some of the machines were definitely human in origin while others were alien and unrecognizable. A few had a mixture of both, combined together for a purpose Jack couldn’t see. Other aliens were now coming in, bringing more machinery that appeared much newer then the stuff they already had. Some of it looked so familiar that Jack new she had seen it before, and knew they must have taken it from one of their ships at some point.

  In the far end they could see some new activity, with large bay doors opening and an influx of ants grabbing equipment as they got ready to leave through them. Jack grabbed Scratch’s arm hard as she realized what they were getting ready to do.

  “They’ll probably be salvaging stuff from our ship that just crashed,” Scratch whispered to Jack, mirroring her thoughts.

  But the humans! Jack looked at Scratch and wondered how it was possible that humans were helping these aliens, and after a moment, Scratch shrugged his shoulders. Although she hadn’t said a word he understood her confusion. This was the second time he read her emotions, but she didn’t say anything.

  They turned once again to the view in front of them. There was something familiar about the whole setup but Jack couldn’t put her finger on it. She concentrated on each individual machine, then the whole image, and a thought slowly started taking shape in her subconscious. That thought flitted in and out, losing and regaining ground until she suddenly gasped, staring wide-eyed at Scratch. Scratch sat there grinning at her, and then she finally understood what he meant when he said that what he found out meant life or death…

  CHAPTER 10

  A Trap is Sprung

  Ruth and Timothy worked their way down to the generator room. Timothy was now able to walk much better after having been treated at the base medical center by the Duty-Bot that had injected them with the transponder. He still needed crutches, and he was still in pain, but the Duty-Bot made it clear that the cast would come off in one week as opposed to three and that the pain would subside soon.

  As they dropped down in the elevator, Timothy asked HAL how fast the elevator was traveling. He had found out earlier that HAL could be accessed from anywhere in the base and had been listening in on their conversation since the moment they got there, but had stayed quiet until they reached the control room.

  “At its maximum speed, this elevator travels 25 meters per second.”

  Timothy waited as the elevator accelerated for a bit and then slowed to a stop, but he had only counted twelve seconds, which put it at about 200 meters or so between the upper floor and the generator room floor. The doors opened to reveal another long corridor with a number of doors on either side. As in the earlier corridors, this one also lit up only as they walked along it, and once again when they reached the end, the lights came on to reveal a robotic guard identical to the one outside the control room standing sentinel over the entry labeled “Generator Room”.

  Ruth and Timothy were still uncomfortable around the guard, partly due to its immense size. Most of the robots they saw appeared somewhat human in form, but these guards were different. Although they did walk on two legs, the similarity ended there. The upper part of their ‘body’ was relatively round, with sensors top and bottom, and they had a set of arms at all 4 poles. In place of a head, it had a munitions delivery system which included some sort of rapid fire projectiles and grenades. Timothy was impressed and figured that very little could stop this machine.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of. Just ask it to step aside,” said HAL.

  “Please let me through,” Timothy said, and the robot dutifully stepped aside to allow them access to the door. Once Timothy put his hand on the pad, the door opened immediately and silently. Timothy and Ruth were constantly amazed that machinery this old could function so well, and they commented on it.

  “Timothy, I’ve had hundreds of years to maintain this facility, and if I were human, I’d be bored. Still, I would calculate that what you will soon see will impress you more,” HAL said.

  “So why is the main floor in such poor shape compared to the rest of the base?”

  “The situation became chaotic as base leaders slowly lost control of the situation. To prevent any further damage to the base and to protect them from the poisons left behind that had concentrated on the lower levels, I kept them from accessing these levels. Once the few survivors hunted everything in the vicinity to extinction they left,” HAL answered.

  Timothy had nothing to say to that as they both stood looking through the now open doorway into a central room. It had various doors around the perimeter and a desk with monitors in the center. At first Timothy and Ruth were confused, but HAL quickly said: “Go around the desk to the other end of the room and enter the door on the right, labeled Generator Room.”

  They obeyed, and as they reached the door they felt a slight but steady vibration.

  “What is this room for HAL?” Ruth asked, looking at the desk and monitors.

  “It is the nexus for this floor.”

  “And from here we can access…?” Timothy added.

  “Other than the Generator Room where you’re headed, you can access all the equipment that keeps this base operating.”

  “Wow. Shouldn’t this room be better protected?” asked Ruth.

  “I assure you, it would take an attack of monumental proportions to make it into and past this room.”

  Ruth looked around and wasn’t too impressed by what she saw but she kept quiet. As they approached the door, the vibration increased until they felt a slight tremor coming from the floor near the door. At first glance the door seemed the same as the others, solid and metallic, but once they got near it they noticed that the door fit differently. It was also the only door inside this room that had a palm scanner. Their thoughts were confirmed when Timothy once again laid his hand on it. The door suddenly moved inward a few centimeters and then slowly swung open. A puff of air sucked past them into the opening, and a rush of sound flooded their ears, as if there was a waterfall somewhere in this new room.

  Timothy and Ruth walked through, and once they rounded the corner they stood dumbfounded at the massive wall of concrete and machinery that confronted them. Large stainless steel pipes jutted out from the concrete wall, dropping down to a lower floor that housed three cylindrical objects – two spinning and one dismantled and the innards suspended on a crane as a robot worked on it. It was obvious that water was running at high pressure through the two spinning turbines. They appreciated the incredible feat of engineering that they were witnessing and they stood quietly contemplating it. Finally, Ruth asked HAL: “What exactly is this powering? It seems that there’s a lot of equipment here producing a lot of energy.”

  Timothy hadn’t thought of that, but once he looked around he realized she was right.

  HAL answered, “You are correct, Ruth. The generators are in fact running at only 5% capacity and the turbines are at near idle. This base defends this quadrant of the earth, as do the other functioning bases. This generator powers the main laser and other defensive equipment and armaments, and the waterfall powers the turbines that spin the generators. Sitting behind the concrete wall is a six hectare natural lake, and that lake is also used to cool down the laser amplifier. The turbines also supply power to the rest of the base that you haven’t seen.”

  “Oh,” was all Ruth could muster. After a moment she added, “What other part have we not seen? The elevator was clearly marked and we’ve been to every floor.”

  “To every floor on that elevator, but not on the base itself. This base extends over two miles deep and uses geothermal energy as a backup power source in case the river is diverted or runs dry. I will be taking you now to another part of the base, the one I’ve been meaning to show you.”

  Timothy and Ruth had presumed HAL wanted to show them the waterfall, but it was now obvious HAL had something else in ‘mind’. They kept on walking as HAL directed, past the concrete wall, through a large steel door that opened up to a tunnel bored out of the solid rock. Ruth
counted two hundred and fifty steps before coming to another steel door that opened into a room full of lockers. Timothy noticed four large washbasins, a door marked ‘Men’ and ‘Women’, another door marked ‘Supplies’, and so on. Once through the door at the opposite side, a large and brightly lit room, much more pleasant then the functional but utilitarian room they just exited welcomed them. The air inside seemed fresh and much less damp then the previous room too.

  “Please excuse the walk through the tunnel. It was a shortcut not usually used by the original inhabitants of the base,” HAL said.

  Timothy and Ruth looked around to see a glass enclosed area full of electronic equipment, although very few of them seemed to be working.

  “This area is one of our electronic libraries which contain, among other things, a catalogue of events that have happened since the aliens attacked earth. This base also contains an artifact library on another floor, separate from this one. To the right you will see a guarded portal. Walk up to it and it will open.”

  There was so much here that they were desperate to look at, but they walked on as HAL directed. The portal stood out at the opposite side of the room because of the large Guard-Bot standing next to it.

  Once they reached it the solid steel doors opened and they entered into a small room. The doors closed and a few moments later opposite doors in the room opened onto a landing and boarding ramp for a suspended tram. It was only then that Timothy and Ruth realized that they had gone up a number of floors in an elevator.

  They could hear the gurgling of water and it was obvious that the tram was suspended over a river, although they couldn’t see it. On one end stood the machinery that worked the tram and behind that was a solid stone wall. It seemed to Timothy that the river somehow went under the machinery into the wall but he couldn’t see that far without walking there and peering down. The tram and tunnel curved slightly upward and ran off into the darkness, with the river running under it. The river appeared to be the same one that fed the turbines and generators, although there must have been another river adding to this one. It ran cold and deep, but there was obviously not enough there to supply the water needed for the large stainless steel pipes they had seen earlier.

  “This river and tramway is another part of this base’s defense. We use both passive and active defense mechanisms that make and have made this base impervious to attack.”

  Timothy and Ruth were surprised that HAL was now sharing more information, but they didn’t comment on it. They got on and the doors closed silently behind them. The tram started up silently, and what little noise the mechanical drive system did was swallowed by the sound of the river below. They watched as the river passed by underneath them faster and faster. The tram tunnel was lighted as the rest of the base was, in sections and only as they passed by. They had no idea how long it was, but it seemed to go on for a long time. Timothy noticed that sections of the tunnel seemed to have caved in at different times, but that these sections had been repaired to allow the tram easy passage. The tram was moving at a very fast speed as it traveled the distance through the tunnel but it soon started to slow back down again. Timothy was hungry and he knew Ruth must be too as they both hadn’t eaten in over a day, but he didn’t say anything.

  “HAL, are you here?” Ruth asked, interrupting the silence.

  “Of course Ruth.”

  Ruth felt relieved at hearing the voice. She was getting spooked being all cramped up in this small, driverless tram. She had never been in anything like it before and Timothy hadn’t either, and they were not used to the confined moving space. It was as if HAL noticed the edge in her voice, and then commented, “We’re almost there. We’ll be disembarking in just a few moments.”

  The tram left the river system and came to a set of large steel doors that opened just before the tram reached them and closed after they entered. It soon came to a stop, but the exterior lights only came on when the tram actually stopped moving. HAL purposely turned on all the lights at the same time for effect.

  Timothy and Ruth gasped at what they saw. Here was another huge cavern and it extended hundreds of meters from the tram. Timothy could now see why the hill he had seen a few days earlier from the outside seemed odd. This cavern was artificial, with massive steel walls and girders shoring up a solid granite ceiling.

  Inside the cavern were hundreds of pieces of military equipment that Timothy could only guess at. There were large rolling vehicles with steel treads, defensive robots like the ones they had seen earlier, long slender machines with wings on them, and unusual vehicles with bars and antennas on top. Some of the machinery looked antiquated but in perfect shape, while others looked like nothing from Earth, sleek, black and mysterious.

  On one side of the wall were more displays, most of them inactive but one of them with the ancient writing scrolling down the screen and the other with an active video log, showing a bird’s eye view of a quickly moving forest. Timothy tried reading the words on the first screen but it was just out of range. That language was so archaic and the grammar difficult to understand, but he now appreciated the long hours of studying he was forced to do as a child at the hands of the Tribe’s teachers as they considered the Holy Book.

  At the very opposite end of the cavern was a long ramp that stretched upward for a few hundred meters to a massive set of steel doors.

  “HAL, are we near the surface?” Ruth asked.

  “Yes. At this point we’re approximately 80 meters below, depending on where you’re standing. The chamber roof is approximately 40 meters thick at the thinnest part.”

  “Why did you bring us here?” she continued.

  HAL paused for a few moments to calculate an appropriate answer and then said: “Both of you need proper instruction and knowledge to be able to proceed on the path you have chosen. This room has the equipment necessary to achieve that objective.”

  “I haven’t decided on a path yet,” Timothy replied, but Ruth gave him a solid glare that quieted him down.

  “Judging from Ruth’s glare, it appears that you have,” HAL replied, astonishing them with his remark. It was obvious to Timothy that not only did HAL have eyes, but that this machine was surprisingly intelligent and able to quickly identify facial expressions. Ruth hadn’t missed the point either, but she was miffed at HAL’s remark and decided not to comment. Instead she asked, “Do we have the time for this instruction?” she asked. “We have to go back to our village…”

  “Not to mention that we’re getting hungry!” Timothy added.

  “Your instruction will only take three days, including rest periods in between. In the meantime, I have had duty-bots capture and prepare some food for you to eat. You will find the food, teaching equipment and living areas to your right. If you agree to start, follow the light.”

  At that, the lights in the main cavern dimmed to a glow, but one room was brightly lit about a hundred meters away.

  As Timothy and Ruth walked toward it they had to walk around several pieces of machinery, including a row of sleek looking objects of differing sizes, black on the top side but almost white underneath, smoothly contoured and obviously built for flight and speed, even to the untrained eyes of Timothy and Ruth. They stopped to admire the objects and Timothy ran his fingers along the skin of the aircraft. It felt cool and rubbery, and Timothy couldn’t feel a joint or separation anywhere he had touched. Aside from some rather large openings on top, Timothy couldn’t see any way that an operator could look out from inside. It almost seemed as if the ship itself wasn’t quite big enough to hold a person. He wanted to linger and take a closer look, but HAL asked him to stop and reminded them that time was short.

  “The oils from your fingers will seep into the skin of the craft, affecting its performance in a number of ways.” HAL didn’t explain further, and Timothy felt that he wouldn’t understand even if HAL did explain.

  Once they came close enough to the room, Ruth, who had walked ahead, saw a row of cots and comfortable looking chairs wit
h equipment attached to them, including a sort of metallic crown with lots of wires near where a person’s head would be. Ruth looked at the wires with dread, but she continued walking until she reached a set of glass doors that opened for her and Timothy, who had by now caught up. They stood quietly looking at all the equipment, but were startled by a duty-bot that had come in just behind them, carrying a tray of food. The smell of food caught Timothy’s senses immediately, and he nearly yanked the tray of food off the duty-bot’s arms.

  “What took you so long to bring food in?” Ruth asked HAL.

  “Almost all of the food in this base was processed outside of the base and brought in. The emergency rations warehouse has been empty for a long time, so I had to improvise. Unfortunately, some of my files have been corrupted and are incomplete and I have lost valuable information, data pertaining to some events that occurred after the attack and to information that I needed to prepare food for consumption. It was only after you caught, dressed and prepared an animal that I was able to see how it was done.”

  They heard a noise outside the room and turned to see the bay doors slowly opening off in the distance. At first they couldn’t discern what was happening because of the outside glare, but once the doors closed they saw one of those blacks ships hovering a few feet off the ground. They were stunned as they watched this incredible object float soundlessly and come in for a perfect landing.

  A robot then came up to it and hooked up an umbilical cord. No one came out of the craft.

  “Did we build that?” Timothy asked, not sure of what to think. It looked… right, somehow, but Timothy couldn’t say why he thought that way. “I mean, did we humans build that?”

  “Yes,” HAL said.

  “I would love to know how that thing works,” Timothy said out loud, but more to himself than anyone else.

  “That’s why you’re here, in part. The machines in this room are instruction units, they imbed information into your mind that you will hopefully use to better yourself and help your fellow humans. You will need this knowledge for your future tasks. After you finish eating, please sit on the chair so that the Medi-Bot can make the necessary preparations.”