“Welcome,” Doctor Jones said, once the guards had checked Paul’s ID and fingerprints. The CIA, he’d been told, had once used the place for defectors from the USSR and, later, terrorist groups, a perfectly secure compound where they could be interrogated and debriefed in private before being given their reward. No one would think twice if a helicopter landed in the complex, or a truck pulled up to it, which kept everything secret. “You’ll be pleased to hear that we’re ready for you.”
Paul followed him down a flight of stairs into an underground complex that wasn't on any of the publicly-available plans. “We didn’t bring the craft itself here, I’m afraid, but we were able to move it to another complex, where NASA’s best engineers have been working on it,” the Doctor continued. “We did bring the alien captives here, although alas, without Captain Kirk to court the pretty alien babes, we didn’t learn much at first.”
Paul almost gave in to the temptation to grab the doctor and shake him, hard. “Doctor, people are dying out there,” he snapped, as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “It’s not fucking funny!”
“No, of course not,” Jones agreed. He paused for a moment in the corridors. “What would you like to see first? The craft – or at least the images of it – or the prisoners?”
“The craft,” Paul said, forgetting his anger. The craft might be able to help them actually win the war. “What have the engineers found out about it so far?”
Jones led him into a small briefing room, turned out the lights and activated a PowerPoint presentation. “The craft appears – I’m no engineer and we couldn’t spare one to brief you, although they did write the notes – to be a fairly basic SSTO design,” he began. “We actually worked on trying to build one, but we never got the concept quite right and…well, NASA wasn't too keen on it for some reason. The alien craft looks crude” – he clicked through a series of images of the conical shuttle craft – “but it is, in fact, very sophisticated. One of the engineers even called it sheer genius.”
The image changed again, this time to show the dissembled pieces of the craft. “The craft was designed on a principle that seems to allow them to take the entire thing to pieces very easily,” Jones added. “The field engineers who reached the crash-site were able to figure out how to take it apart, after which the separate pieces, all seven hundred of them, were transported to a secure complex somewhere else. A lot of the electronics were fried by the EMP – that’s probably why the craft got so far off course anyway – but the mechanical aspects were easy to understand. Hell, sir, we could duplicate it, given a few months.”
“Better get working on it,” Paul said. He’d have to recommend that to the President, if the President survived the threat of impeachment. Apparently, these days,
“The fuel mix is a little unusual and the electronics will have to be replaced carefully, but if we can meet those issues, we could even fly the craft we have now,” Jones said. “Building our own shouldn’t take that long; according to the engineers, it’s one hell of a lot
“The President will be pleased to hear that,” Paul said, relieved. It was something, perhaps, that they could use in the future. The aliens might be advanced, but they weren't all-powerful. “And the aliens themselves?”
Jones turned the lights back on and started to fiddle with a computer, playing with it until it showed an image of the aliens, each one in a separate cell. “We think that they’re reasonably unhurt, although it’s hard to tell for certain,” he said. “We’ve kept them separate, but six of them don’t seem to speak English and don’t even seem interested in anything else. They don’t respond to our questions, not even in their own language.”
“So they could be faking it,” Paul said. “They might understand English and are just pretended not to speak it.”
“They might,” Jones agreed. “Some of my…fellow researchers have advocated a more rigorous program of questioning, but if they genuinely can’t speak English, there’s little point in trying to hurt them. We could try to get them to speak in their own language, but they could be saying
Paul studied the aliens for a long moment. “What are they doing?”
Jones followed his gaze. “We think the males are at prayer,” he said. “The females…they talk to us, or they read the books that we give them, but little else.”
“I see,” Paul said. He peered towards the male aliens. “And that’s the male Redskins?”
Jones winced. “I wish that you wouldn’t use that word,” he said, tightly. “It has too many…issues with Americans. Call them Redshirts, if you must insult them.”
