Chapter 13

A.D. 2020-2021

"It's taking too damned long!" Oskar Caprio fumed. Three years he had been the head of Earth government, and while the orbital pickets were getting better at intercepting the alien attackers, the aliens were still in the system, and still, occasionally, getting through the sphere of satellites and orbital fighters designed to protect against them. The social and infrastructure programs were gradually yielding results, as witness the increased availability of near earth combat vessels and pilots for them, but defending Earth, as the alien tormentors delighted in proving over and over again, was not enough. The aliens needed to be driven completely out of the system, not just held at bay around Earth.

Caprio's popularity numbers, in the nineties after the destruction of one of the alien 'mother ships', had steadily declined since the formation of the United Earth Government. There was resentment among the nations of Earth at having to answer to a central government, and even more at being held accountable for their actions, but hard times call for harsh measures, and Caprio was determined to use the remainder of his five year term to see those nations working together at last.

"Who was that guy the Americans thought was helping them with the terrorists a few years back?" He asked his secretary. "Prometheus, Promo..."

"Prototype Ten, sir," Gretchen said quietly. "Actually, there was a man and a woman and they called themselves 'Prototype Nine' and 'Prototype Ten.' It was rumored that they were the products of a secret U.S. experiment that got out of hand."

"Yes, yes! Prototype Ten! Whatever happened to them?" Caprio asked impatiently. "I could use the help of a pair like that about now!"

"No one seems to know what happened to them, and that program is one of the ones the U.S. exempted from disclosure when they joined the UE," Gretchen said, checking her personal data terminal. "They just dropped out of sight one day and no one has seen or heard from them since."

"Do you suppose the U.S. Government finally caught them?"

"Doubtful, sir," The secretary replied, still consulting her PDT. "If they were capable of even a fraction of the things they were reported to have done, it would be virtually impossible for anyone to have caught them. If they did, it would have to have been such a large operation that some hint of it would have leaked, and there has been nothing. It is more likely that, since they were clearly the result of someone's experimentation, they were biologically unstable. If that was the case, they may have just crawled off into a corner somewhere and died."

"I knew it was too much to hope for," Caprio sighed. "Anyway, what are the figures this week?"

"Seven attacks that made it through the orbital pickets," Gretchen used her stylus to bring up another report on the PDT. "That's down from twenty three for the same period last year. As usual, all attacks were against military targets. Two were wounded and one is missing. No fatalities."

She knew what was coming next but hoped that this time the President would forget. He didn't. "And the missing person?"

"Captain Yvette Colbert, Sir," Gretchen replied. "One of the picket pilots."

"Was her ship destroyed?"

"No sir."

"Damaged?"

"No sir."

"Anyone see what happened?"

"Just like the others, sir. One moment she was there, the next, gone. Her ship was not engaged in any action with the enemy," Gretchen added.

"God damn them!" Caprio cursed. "How many does that make, altogether?"

"Seven hundred eighty three since the attacks began, sir."

"What kind of sick, perverted game are these aliens playing with us?" The President asked, for perhaps the thousandth time. "Are they performing experiments on these people? Eating them? Breeding them like cattle? What?"

"There is evidence to suggest that each person is chosen for a particular reason, sir," Gretchen said quietly. "If you combine these disappearances with a number of disappearances that occurred in the months before the alien ships appeared, you find that they might have kidnapped a rather broad set of skills and capabilities. Perhaps they are trying to understand our society, or reproduce it in some way."

"What do you mean about disappearances before the alien ships?"

"Well, sir," she cleared her throat nervously, "it's just a theory of mine, but it occurred to me that if I were an alien commander about to attack a new planet, I might want to know something about the beings on that planet, so I went back a couple of years, and found about two hundred isolated reports of mysterious disappearances from around the world. I won't pretend to understand the alien psyche, sir, but there does seem to be a pattern of sorts there."

"Have you told anyone else about this?" Caprio asked.

"Oh, no sir. I have no other evidence to support my theory, sir."

"That's just as well, then," The President replied. "How are we doing on the new fighters?"

"Well, sir," Gretchen once again consulted her PDT, "as you know, we've only gradually been able to piece together bits of the alien technology from fragments of destroyed craft and missiles, but our scientists finally think they understand how the drives work and have built a prototype. They should be able to test within a couple of days. The factories are holding up production of spacecraft that don't have engines installed for the moment because they're hoping to put the new drive in all future craft, and it will mean even more delays if they have to take out the rocket drives first. It's a gamble, but the consensus is that it's worth taking."

"Are the new drives that much better?"

"Yes sir," Gretchen continued to scroll through the report on her hand held terminal. "It seems they operate off gravity, and as a result don't need a rocket boost to orbit. They can take off and land on Earth, the Moon, or a space station, and are much more energy efficient. In addition, they should give our fighters about the same performance as the aliens, which should level the playing field a little."

"And they'll be armed with the beam weapons?"

"No matter what the drive, the beam weapons have already replaced every projectile weapon in the fleet," The Secretary replied, working rapidly on the PDT as she walked with the President. "That has greatly reduced damage from 'friendly' fire and ensures that what we fire at the enemy won't come back to strike one of our craft in a few months as its orbit brings it back into Earth space."