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  Bill held on to Tom tightly. ‘So you just let me believe Tom was about to be eaten, and then followed me?’

  Aytch used a towel to start cleaning himself. ‘Well, I covered myself in this red goo first and got into character. But yes—that’s about it.’

  ‘Can I speak to Mary?’

  Aytch looked doubtful. ‘Let’s talk about Mary later. It’s been fifty years, a few more hours won’t hurt.’ He turned to the screens. ‘First, I need to avert disaster on Earth. Jack must be kept out of government hands.’

  It was immediately obvious that the Hardings had all dumped their personal technology, but the mini-bots in Mike’s car were still broadcasting. For a few minutes Aytch accessed mini-bot command screens and telecoms providers’ systems. Eventually he managed to find Louise’s new pay-as-you-go phone and put a call through.

  They know so much now, I might as well play it straight.

  Jack walked into the motel bedroom with a couple of full plastic bags. ‘I managed to get these tracksuits and t-shirts from the service station.’

  Mike nodded. ‘Good work. Now, everyone needs to shower thoroughly and put on new clothes. We have to assume there are more drones like the one we found in the lab. Hopefully, we can get rid of some of them.’

  Ten minutes later, the whole team was fully showered and clothed. Jeff stood up. ‘Let’s go.’

  Louise was sitting on the bed still writing away. ‘Okay, just a minute.’

  Jeff dragged her off the bed, gently in due consideration of her thigh wound, but firmly. ‘There were industrial bins out the back; I suggest we put our old clothes in those.’

  The four of them walked back to the hotel lobby. Jack went ahead to have a look at the car park. It was dark and drizzly, but quiet. Too quiet? He peered into the shadows around the car park edge. It still seemed quiet. He signalled the all-clear to Mike.

  Mike got the car and, moments later, they were back on the road, having also dumped their old belongings.

  ‘Where to now, Mike?’ Jeff asked.

  Louise looked up sharply. ‘Don’t say anything. I know we’ve taken precautions, but we have to expect the worst.’

  Jack murmured approval.

  Mike drove on. ‘I know where I’m going.’

  The new phone rang. Louise answered, eyes wide, and listened for a few moments. In the car, the others tried to decode the conversation from just her few spoken words.

  ‘Gadium?’

  ‘Emergence?’

  ‘Triple Alpha?’

  Louise then listened to a longer piece. She turned to Jack. ‘He wants to talk to you.’ She passed the phone to Jack, but as Jack reached for it she snatched it back. ‘How is Willis?’

  Louise’s face went rigid as she heard the answer, then she turned her attention to the team. ‘He’s says Willis is dead, and Bob. But he claims it wasn’t him. It was a traitor on his ship.’

  Louise passed the phone to Jack. As he reached out for it she snatched it back again. ‘How can you prove you’re not the guy who blew up Mike’s garage?’ Louise listened for a few moments. ‘Yeah, trust and apologies don’t go a whole long way with me at the moment.’ Louise shook her head and passed the phone to Jack.

  Jack waited for a moment to see if it would be snatched back again, but Louise had finished. He put the phone to his ear, listened for a moment and then politely declined. ‘I hear what you’re saying, and I do believe you are an alien. But I’m not going to put myself in your power until I get firm evidence you’re genuinely going to keep me safe.’

  The phone was passed back to Louise. She spoke into it. ‘We need some thinking time. Call back in twenty minutes. And, yes, we know you’ll be listening to every word we say in the meantime.’ Louise turned to the others. ‘Split up or stay together?’

  Mike, Jeff and Jack confirmed they wanted to stay together.

  Jack added. ‘He said it was critical I didn’t fall into government hands, because Earth was not ready for people like me.’

  Louise nodded. ‘Similar to me. He said I couldn’t publish. But we’ve not hurt anyone, and he’s killed.’

  ‘Not him, his traitorous crew mate.’

  ‘So he says.’

  Mike continued to drive, taking seemingly arbitrary left and right turns. ‘The killings would be a reason to do what he says, irrespective of his motivations.’

  Louise reached down to her thigh and winced. Jeff put a comforting arm around her. They drove on in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

  Jack broke the silence. ‘If he just wants me, maybe I should go. It would keep you guys safe.’

  Louise smiled appreciatively. ‘But, at Mike’s, we were definitely targeted too. We have no reason to believe this will be any different. He may just lure us to another spot to take us out.’

  Mike chuckled to himself. ‘When two giants fight over a mouse, one of them walks away victoriously with a dead mouse.’

  They drove on.

  Chapter 61

  Aytch knew he couldn’t risk a Despot situation on Earth. They may come round to his way of thinking but, in the meantime, he would need to take steps to silence them. He turned to Bill. ‘My number one plan was to rehouse Jack on Earth securely and in great luxury, under constant Gadium protection. But if he won’t come into my custody I’m going to have to consider plan two.’

  ‘Plan two?’

  ‘Kill Jack and then take you back down to Earth and rehouse you in great luxury. There is a chance that, as a reintroduced Triple Alpha, you will suppress other Beta to Alpha transition; stop any further Emergence.’

  ‘Are you sure that Earth’s not ready for an Emergence?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘And you can’t just capture Jack, like the way you caught me.’

  ‘Just me, working alone, from thousands of miles away. No. Unfortunately, Bullage and his team need to be silenced.’

  Bill and Tom looked at each other and started whispering.

  Aytch turned back to the control panel and started initiating a whole series of activities. He sent an encrypted kill order to Justio’s Special Forces team, sending them into the vicinity of Potters Bar. The order confirmed Louise and her team were terrorists with biological weapons. The Special Forces team were put on high readiness—pending voice confirmation of the actual kill order. Kill Jack Bullage and the others; then tidy up the loose ends.

  Bill looked up. ‘But Justio was trying to kill Jack, and Justio is your enemy, so…’

  ‘I have to kill Jack; but for a different reason from Justio’s, I want to avert disaster on Earth; I take my role of stewardship seriously.’

  Bill grimaced.

  Aytch checked the mini-bot command screens. He overrode Justio’s self-destruct orders and sent new orders to most of the mini-bots. Those stationed at the team’s houses all destructed, as did the ones at the university—the reachable ones.

  Bill stood up. ‘Aytch, don’t do this. Let’s try another way. Surely we can stop the newspaper easily enough.’

  ‘We could stop that. But then there’s all the social media…‌Twitter. We can’t close it all down without causing what would look like an attack. We need to stop it at source.’

  ‘But do they really know their lives are at stake?’

  ‘They’ve made their choice.’

  Turning his attention to the video feeds, Aytch studied the camera footage from the Z00A Platoon. Major Sebastien had sent two soldiers to the university. The feeds showed them making their way through the corridors. There were also pictures of Major Sebastien in the command truck closing in on the street where the Hardings and the others had dumped their mobile phones.

  And I have the reconnaissance drone closing in, with one remaining antimatter missile.

  Inside the Z00A military truck, Major Sebastien double-checked the phone triangulation calculations. This is the spot. But the street appeared to be dark and empty.

  He sent a c
ouple of soldiers out to look for the Hardings. It soon became clear that the Hardings had dumped their electronics. He had nothing.

  Major Sebastien turned his attention to the video feeds from the helmets of the two soldiers he’d sent to the university. He watched them talk to the receptionist and then deploy down the corridors in full battle mode. After a little while they reached the locked door of the Pryson Room.

  A few moments later, the soldiers entered the room, bringing a host of military hardware.

  Major Sebastien watched the soldiers drop into combat mode as explosions rang across the laboratory. There was a tense pause, and then the reports from the university came back. The soldiers were fine; the explosions had been small.

  It was frustrating, but not yet a disaster.

  His primary objective was to secure any evidence of alien existence, or replication of the Project Hedgehog activities. The explosion could well have been alien forces cleaning up their own trail. For him, failure would be a public circus involving accredited alien activity without the army pulling the strings.

  He stopped for a moment to consider his options; they were drying up, he was running out of manpower. The four soldiers at Mike Littlejohn’s garage would secure any evidence there; but standing orders were that they could not respond to any voice- or text-based instructions. He needed to capture Louise Harding.

  Major Sebastian reached a decision. He put a call through to MOD headquarters and, passing through all the layers of authentication, ordered a police response to a potential terrorist attack in North London—Mike Littlejohn’s car was detailed as the suspect vehicle and its approximate location given.

  Aytch watched Major Sebastien put the initial calls through to the MOD. He rerouted the call via a Gadium holding circuit, but allowed the call to pass through. As long as he doesn’t mention aliens or psychic powers.

  It suited Aytch to get some police cars on the streets, they would help send the Hardings to ground, and he could vector in the Special Forces—assuming the Hardings didn’t come to their senses.

  He turned to footage from the laboratory, and smiled in satisfaction at the successful self-destruction of the mini-bots.

  Looking around the crew room, he noticed Justio’s communications tablet lying, forgotten, on the floor. He turned to Bill and Tom. ‘Close your eyes, please.’ They complied. A moment later he’d cracked the security code and was browsing Justio’s activities. Almost all of the information was highly encrypted with a personal one-time code; it would take time to break, if at all. This should be a gold mine on GF activity.

  Aytch considered putting another call into Louise Harding, but stopped himself. I’ll wait for an improvement in my negotiating position.

  Chapter 62

  In the back seat of the car, Louise continued to write up her story. Her leg was aching, but felt no worse. The wound wasn’t seeping blood, but she did feel tired. Looking up, she was sure she could hear sirens faintly.

  ‘Can anyone else hear that?’

  Jack pointed into the distance in front of them. There were a lot of blue flashing lights coming from the north. ‘Mike, get off the main road!’

  Mike didn’t slow; he sped up slightly.

  Louise shouted. ‘Come on, Mike.’

  ‘Not yet, there’s no escape on the left, and they’re all dead ends to the west. And if I try to turn across the traffic I’ll just draw attention to us.’

  He continued forward, holding steady at 40mph. The police cars closed in, head on, with full sirens and flashing lights. Mike held steady. Louise held her breath. Jeff ducked.

  Mike kept looking forward. ‘There are five of them; they’ll be on us in a few seconds.’

  The police cars filed past without slowing. In their wake there was a gap in the traffic, and Mike took the opportunity to make a right turn. Louise watched the police cars disappearing into the distance. She sighed in relief, but it did not last long. Just before they were lost from view, a slight aberration triggered her instincts. Oh, god, the one at the back is slowing.

  Louise hit her pad on the back of Mike’s seat. ‘Step on it, Mike. I think the last car is turning around and coming back.’

  Jack shouted. ‘Follow signs to Cuffley.’

  Mike did as he was told and veered right at the next junction.

  Louise looked back. ‘I think I can see some flashing lights in the distance, but it’s hard to tell. Keep going.’

  They powered onwards and, on the next long straight, Louise confirmed there was a police car behind them. ‘It’s probably a mile away. But it’s going faster than us.’

  ‘I’m not a good fast driver.’ He sped up.

  Jack shouted. ‘Turn right at the next junction.’ Mike did. The car tyres screeched. There was a railway crossing in the distance. The barrier was raised. They were approaching it fast.

  Jack scanned the crossing. ‘When I say the word Samson everyone, including you Mike, needs to shut their eyes for a count of three seconds. I’ll keep the wheel steady. Do you all understand?’

  Louise squirmed in pain as she turned to look behind. ‘It’s getting real close.’

  Mike checked his rear view mirror. ‘A hundred metres, closing.’ He accelerated, and the car started to judder violently.

  Leaning across, Jack reached for the steering wheel. ‘SAMSON!’

  Everyone except Jack closed their eyes.

  This was his moment, he felt calm.

  He took hold of the steering wheel.

  Jack focused on the signal box next to the railway crossing. Green to Red. Green to Red. Green to Red. He felt his perspective change subtly and…

  Siren!

  But not a police car siren. It was the barrier crossing warning. The barrier started to lower. Jack steered the car through and sat back in his seat. Within a few seconds the barrier was fully down.

  ‘You can open your eyes.’

  Louise blew out a stream of air. ‘Let’s get off the road.’

  ‘There’s a school about a mile up this side street on the left.’

  Mike drove the car more sedately through the backstreets into the school car park. He drove into the far corner by a small generator building. ‘It may hide our heat signature from any infrared air search.’

  Mike turned off the engine. ‘Louise, you’ve got an hour at the most. And they may find us during that time anyway.’

  Aytch sent a few more dummy messages to the North London police dispatch centre. Don’t worry, Mike; I’ll keep the police away from you.

  Then he sent messages to the Special Forces team. They were 20 minutes away.

  The reconnaissance drone was about 30 minutes away.

  Aytch turned back to Bill and Tom. ‘This has to be done. If you don’t want to watch it, then you should leave the room. The regulations are absolutely clear; I have to prevent a Despot situation. I cannot allow Jack to go into government custody.’

  Bill stood up. ‘But they haven’t explicitly said they won’t comply. Let me speak to them.’

  Aytch shook his head and opened screens up to prepare the retrieval craft ‘You need to be ready to go in about 20 minutes. I’ll make sure your lives are very well supplied.’

  ‘You haven’t given Jack a real chance. He simply doesn’t trust you. He may agree to the logic if you can get him to trust you.’

  ‘I don’t have time. Louise is fully set on a wide communication piece that will make future Emergence interventions impossible…‌governments creating their own Triple Alphas, leaving the majority stuck in the Beta state. I have to stop the information getting out.’

  Aytch looked at the status of Major Sebastien. He was on the move again. The police had radioed through a potential sighting of the terrorists near to Northaw. Aytch was not concerned, as they had nothing of consequence; James Chambers had a zip drive with the data on it—but it could easily be fake; anyway the moment they put it into a machine he would erase it.

 
If the Special Forces dealt with the Harding team he may possibly use the antimatter missile to clean up Major Sebastien; Aytch wasn’t decided yet.

  Bill spoke again. ‘One more time?’

  Aytch put a call into Jack. He was straightforward. ‘The police are closing in on you. Louise will never get a chance to publish, because the UK government won’t allow it. They will take you, Jack.’

  Jack’s voice came back. ‘Sorry, but we cannot trust your word. You’re stalling to take a better shot at us.’

  Aytch cleared the call and shrugged. He hadn’t quite done his best to avoid bloodshed, but he’d given them plenty of chances. He looked at his Special Forces team, now deployed around the school car park. This would be cleaner—a training mission gone wrong.

  Chapter 63

  In the quiet, darkened school yard the Special Forces’ team leader watched the car through the night scope of his automatic rifle. His team were under no illusion, this was a car full of terrorists with biological weapons. Three of his team had automatic rifles and the others had incendiary grenades, phosphorous burning—inextinguishable.

  Once orders were confirmed, they would put 100 rounds into the car and burn it to a crisp.

  He whispered into his headset to the other team members. ‘When I give the order to start, we go and we don’t stop until our gun barrels are melting.’

  The team leader’s helmet signalled an incoming call. ‘This is the Prime Minister. Identity code Alpha Zulu India Sixer Bravo. Status please?’

  The team leader scanned the car park. ‘One car, four inhabitants. Please confirm kill order.’

  ‘Stand by.’

  There was a growing noise in the distance, a clatter of helicopter blades as a police helicopter flew over. The team leader looked up briefly; the helicopter had not appeared to see them.