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CHAPTER FOUR
Jarvis.
The war was over.
The mountain air had never tasted as sweet, and I filled my lungs to the brim. McCloud was behind me, and he ran forward with his body bent under the turbulence of the helicopter rotor blades. Next came Rogers. He jumped out of the chopper and stumbled forward in a limping run to join us.
We were back!
We were a little war-weary but in decent shape, except for Rogers, who had taken one in the leg when rescuing McCloud from a burning, armoured car.
“Looks like we have a welcoming committee, Captain, “said McCloud. He still used my war rank, and I had got into the habit of calling the other two by their surnames only. It kept things more orderly.
There was a crowd of people on the other side of the field and a few droids, and as the helicopter took off, they parted ranks to allow a Tribus to glide to the front. Her presence was a great honour and was rarely seen.
“Welcome home to all of you.”
The Tribus was still a distance away, but we heard every syllable.
“At the double, men! “I ordered. It would not do to keep her waiting. We halted before her and waited for her to speak first.
“I see you have injured yourself, Mr. Rogers. Please attend the clinic as soon as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
There were a few more words of conventional welcome, and at the end, she said,
“Mr. Jarvis, every facility here is at your disposal. Please make yourselves as comfortable as possible.”
We did not need her to tell us twice, and the next week passed in a blur of sleeping, eating, and long walks in the mountains. Rogers got his leg fixed and was soon back to normal.
We had survived.
The war had been a bloody business. We fought hard, but we were no match for the machines and had taken heavy casualties. There was no official surrender. The army had disbanded, and the men either went home or formed small guerrilla units. We knew from the start that we were hopelessly outgunned, but we could not just stand back and let them take over. We had lost, and the machines were now in control, but with the help of The Tribus, we intended to overthrow their regime and drive the invaders out.
But it was not going to be easy.
The Tribus would never condone war, however great the provocation. Non-violent tactics were the only thing they would consider. In any normal conflict, they would refuse to even take sides, but here, they recognised a fundamental difference between us and the machines. We believed that The Tribus would consider it their duty to ensure that human consciousness endured on Earth.
“Daydreaming, Captain?”
It was Rogers.
“Yeah, I suppose so. How are you feeling, Rogers?”
“Fit and ready, Captain.”
“Good. Same here, and I know that goes for McCloud as well.
“We are ready to make our move.”
This day had been a long time coming, but it had finally arrived.
Lieutenant Doctor Komarov, a.k.a. the impostor, Rogers, was smart but not as smart as he thought. We were on to him right from the beginning. Not only him but the plan to invade our planet. It was Verne who had first detected the machines when he noticed an anomaly during our allotted time on the upgraded VLT telescope of the Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
We were the ‘two bright scientists,’ who, unknown to Komarov, had discovered the existence of the invasion force. His intelligence was incomplete, and we knew that his story of Verne selling our story was a fabrication because Verne was still covertly involved in the operation. The letter I had shown Rogers in the pub, and the information that Verne had retired to Scotland was all fake.
The discovery of the would-be invaders was fortuitous. We were allocated a few hours a year viewing time, based not only on the international reputation of our department but also on the size of the donation made by our sponsors towards the cost of the upgrade. The anomaly Verne spotted was the artificial release of radioactive energy on a moon of the planet Jupiter in our solar system. Further investigations confirmed the presence of a huge robotic army.
A prior secret treaty between the major powers in anticipation of the eventual discovery of alien intelligence agreed on the initial suppression of all news of such an event. The respective governments wanted time to prepare the world population to receive this knowledge without panic, but strangely enough, that moment never seemed to come until the day the invasion began.
We intercepted communications between the machines, and our top analysts found the computer codes remarkably easy to break. Unlike language, the designers constructed the codes on known mathematical constants. We discovered their invasion plans but were uncertain how to respond; then, like a gift from the gods, we found the sphere in the North Sea.
Contrary to what we had led the impostor to believe, the stories of the sphere found in the North Sea, my abduction from the laboratory, and meeting The Tribus at their base camp in the Andes were all true.
It was all a massive double bluff on our part, and we allowed the enemy agent to think that he had outsmarted us. There was no way we could avoid the war, but we believed that the Tribus would help us. But they would not sanction a war and refused to come to our assistance. There was nothing we could do to change their minds, and I left the base with the intention of creating an army of resistance against the machines.
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