MORE VISITORS - LATER ON
THE CRAFT VEERED BADLY as it passed through this new type of radar beam.
The effect on the craft guidance system, that might possibly have been expected, had never been witnessed previously nor was any such thing anticipated by the occupants.
The pilot attempted to make adjustments to the flight path settings but these could not be put into effect rapidly enough.
Had this sort of interference, from a radar system still in research and development and whose particular combination of factors been suspected, then it might have been possible to include some sort of automatic correction instructions in the flight computer.
It was not expected that the humans might have this sort of technology nor pointed their antenna in this particular direction crossing the selected flight path.
It was too late to try to make any manual adjustments that might have made a difference, considering the speed the craft was travelling at, although a hasty attempt was started.
The craft unexpectedly went into a rapid descent manoeuvre as though under some sort of remote control but the on-board systems showed only a malfunction in its powers of reasoning that could not be overcome.
It would appear that the specific frequency and modulation of a speculative radar system under test, had managed to interfere with the computer’s internal thought processes.
The pilot tried everything he knew but nothing was working, they were going to crash as the craft curved further downwards towards the ground.
The impact came quickly.
The space displacement drive system, as advanced as it might be was nonetheless incapable of coping with a massive immovable solid mass, such as the rocky desert floor.
Even the occupants were not totally immune. The system may protect them in flight from any inertia effects but when coming to an immediate full stop because of an impact, it could not.
The craft partially buried itself into the rocky, sandy floor of the desert with a loud explosion resulting from the drive's energy source coming off its mountings. A large section of the hull was ripped open.
The pilot and two of the passengers were thrown out through the ragged open hole and died almost instantly. One other passenger barely survived but lay mortally injured in the heat of the afternoon sun.
The co-pilot, who was facing almost backwards to the flight path was still in his seat, protected by it and badly injured, but not fatally so. He was in a clear state of shock, perhaps an arm broken, possibly a few ribs bruised. He just sat there gasping for air.
He was capable of living in the atmosphere that was now rushing through the gaping hole, replacing what had previously been inside the craft, but in his injured state, he did not know for how long he could stay alive. He sat there not moving, drifting in and out of consciousness.
A craft following some distance behind had seen the difficulties being experienced and took an evading change of direction in sufficient time not to be affected by whatever it was that had caused the problem.
They registered the impact but had to keep flying on; it was unlikely that any one could survive that sort of crash.
The authorities were soon notified by the few local people that had heard the impact. One had even seen the flash of the explosion over the horizon but decided this was something he should tell the authorities about and not investigate directly.
The Sheriff arrived at the scene of the crash, as did a military force, a very short while later.
A few radio calls to base and the military had their ordered instructions arriving by mobile telex. The officer and the senior sergeant read them twice to ensure they had read and understood them correctly to be able to brief the hurriedly assembled team of ordinary ranks.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> TRANSMISSION START
>
>
>> ABOVE TOP SECRET <<
>
> RECOVER EVERYTHING WITH
> THE UTMOST OF SECRECY
> TO INCLUDE ALL LARGE
> COMPONENTS
> TRAILER HAS BEEN PROCURED
> ON ROUTE NOW
> EVERY SCRAP OF SCATTERED
> MATERIAL TO BE FOUND
> AND BOXED
>
>> COMPLETE AREA CLEAN <<
>
> IF THERE ARE BODIES
> BOX UP QUICKLY
>
> TRANSPORT ALL OUT OF
> THE AREA TO AIR FORCE
> BASE CODE ALPHA YANKEE
>
> FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS AT
> THAT LOC
>
> THE SITE TO BE CLASSED AS
>
>> MILITARY SECURE ZONE <<
>
> WITH ABOVE SECRET SECURITY
> LEVEL
>
> ARMED GUARDS TO BE POSTED
> AND EMPLOY DEADLY FORCE AS
> REQUIRED
>
> NOTE THE FOLLOWING
>
> DEATH PENALTY FOR ANY
> SERVICEMAN REFUSING DIRECT
> ORDER BY SUMMARY EXECUTION
> AT SITE
> AS EXEC STD ORD 35-7001
>
> ALSO FOR SERVICEMAN
> DISCUSSING OR REFERRING TO
> WHAT THEY HAVE SEEN OR
> HANDLED WITH OTHER PERSON
> AS EXEC STD ORD 35-7001/A
>
> CIVILIANS PENETRATING
> SECURITY ZONE TO BE
> CONSIDERED AS AWARE OF YOUR
> ACTIONS AND SUBJECT TO
> SUMMARY EXECUTION AT SITE
> AS EXEC STD ORD 35-7001/A/C
>
> ALL BODIES AND PIECES OF
> ANY DENOMINATION TO BE BOXED
> AND BROUGHT BACK WITH
> RECOVERY TEAM
>
> FULL REPORT UPON RETURN
> ONLY
>
> NO SITE NOTES - NO PHOTOS
>
>> ABOVE TOP SECRET <<
>
> TRANSMISSION ENDS <
>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This had the desired effect putting an edge to the orders.
The soldiers listened quietly the silence being broken by the bark of the senior sergeant to, “Now get some f***** work done.”
The team picking up the pieces became frightened at the sight of the bodies they had to collect; they were not human, most were in various states of being ripped apart with limbs missing and moreover they smelt bad.
They were servicemen and a quick order from a senior rank had them rapidly getting on with what they were ordered to do. As they attempted to pick up one of the whole bodies, it moved and responded to the touch.
“Hey Sarge, this one’s still kicking, what do we do with him, put him in a box like the others?”
“F****** hell, nothing’s f******* simple in this man’s army is it?” the senior rank swore rhetorically.
“Wait one and I’ll get you a f****** answer.”
A quick radio message confirmed the instructions. Place it into a box, but put some holes in the lid so it can breathe, don’t be rough with it, just be firm if it wants to argue.
This survivor was bundled into his own box with little more ceremony than the broken bodies or ripped pieces of flesh. The high pitched sounds, emanating from what was taken to be his mouth, as he was manhandled roughly were ignored by the servicemen who just got on with their instructions. He was loaded into a sealed box with a few small holes in the lid and thrown onto the rear of a separate truck.
“Hey Sarge.”
“Now what, can’t you just get on with your orders in silence.”
“Well it’s bothered me, Sarge. How come we had the right size boxes in the wagon to put these midgets into? Who worked that one out?”
The sergeant’s tone changed, he had been separately briefed along with the one officer there. The officer, overhearing the question, glanced in the direction of the sergeant who now needed no further hint or instruction to sort this out.
“You ask one more question and you will find yourself fitting into one of those f***** boxes, and that is a f******* promise. Do you get my drift?”
He was not kidding; any hint of humour was clearly missing. He was deadly serious and the querulous soldier knew immediately that this was most seriously meant. There were no more questions. The job in hand proceeded quietly.
Looking inside the craft one of the men called over to the officer in an almost state of panic. The officer came running to look inside for himself. The co-pilot was on his feet, tottering a little, but walking to a different opening in the craft wall that no one had seen or heard appear.
The officer was not at all perturbed, like the ranking serviceman, but offered his hand to the small person to help him walk over the edge of the half buried craft and to a waiting Jeep. Some of the servicemen stood and gaped at the casual polite manner in which this officer behaved; it was as though he were helping an injured friend.
He helped him into the back of the Jeep and placed a soft blanket round his shoulders, as small as they were.
Those of the men looking on in amazement and their own sense of shock were swiftly reminded again of their duties by the sergeant.
By the late afternoon and much hard work with shovels, the damaged craft had been dug free. Along with this and the separately collected pieces, it was part hauled and part manhandled onto the back of a low loader where it was covered in a series of concealing tarpaulins.
The boxes containing the bodies and pieces were all sealed before being placed onto the back of the trucks. The whole area for several hundred yards around had been carefully combed with a military precision to ensure every single piece of wreckage had been collected.
The shovels were then put to another use as every man, except the officer and sergeant, filled in the hole and smoothed out the desert floor as level as possible.
The officer directed his Jeep's driver, with its passenger and a few heavy guards, to stay with the convoy. It moved off the desert floor to find the nearest tarmac roads and was then driven, at the best speed of the heaviest and slowest vehicle, towards the nearest air force base. The sergeant stayed with the truck containing the injured small person in his holed box.
A quick check inside revealed the sad truth; the little man was motionless as far as could be seen, not breathing, his big black almond shaped eyes staring directly ahead without a flicker and it had to be assumed that he had died. There was no movement or any other signs of life. A call through to base resulted in a new order being given to the officer and sergeant.
Take the freshly deceased body to the mortician from the local township and obtain, if possibly, an early post mortem result. The mortician, officer and sergeant were to meet at a rendezvous location given by the higher ups.
The officer put his guest under the auspices of the sergeant who was to drive the jeep back to the unit’s base location. The now empty truck was sent on its way, with the others of the convoy. The officer stayed with the mortician in his hearse where the dead body had been placed.
They travelled back to the mortician’s offices by which time he had been made fully aware of his perilous position should he mention anything of what was taking place or might take place shortly.
The dead body was transferred into the cold room where it was examined rapidly on the slab and many notes made.
An elite group of officers, in civilian clothes and unmarked private cars, arrived in town within the next hour. They came to the mortician's premises, where the brief examination of the body had been completed and it had been placed in a child's coffin. It was then transferred into a van, one of the unmarked vehicles that the plain clothes officers had arrived with. All notes, handwritten or typed by the mortician and his assistant, were confiscated and they were warned one more time. The consequences of revealing anything of this strange day or night would be terminal.
Within the next two days further appearances of military officers in civilian clothes made sure that all of the townsfolk heard the same message individually; to speak of anything seen here or even guessed at and for the remainder of their natural lives, would mean their early disappearance from life on a permanent basis. They understood and were frightened into silence.
Unknown to the public, to all military personnel and even to the government right up to the very highest level, these new strange, small people involved in the crash were, however, well known to a very select military grouping. They were in constant communication with this most secret internal organisation outside of the normal corridors of power or communication channels.
The small people knew that these people were not a legitimate government body but they were not troubled by this; they could achieve what they wanted regardless.
The one survivor had been secreted away, with all the bodies and hardware, via several different military locations to make any trail run cold, into a most secure and secret underground building complex. This had been originally intended as a bombproof bunker for the impending world war, if it happened, but had suddenly become a makeshift laboratory, hospital, storage and interrogation centre.
A cover story was released by the military press service but only the one that had been dreamed up by a misinformation section.
The small people somehow had become aware that one of theirs from the crash had survived and was being held somewhere by this country’s clandestine organisation. They did not know where and had come to bargain for his release.
This didn’t happen but what did develop was a significant amount of two-way communication, well hidden from all and kept most secret from the ‘normal’ official powers.
The co-pilot survived for a considerable length of time although the medical people did not know how; he didn’t drink or eat, he got rid of no waste material, he just sat where he was directed, in his airtight room and waited for something that never came.
He died suddenly one morning, falling sideways off his chair onto the floor. His body was put into a freezer as a complete example to study later after all the post-mortems on the other bodies and pieces had been exhausted.
Claims for their comrade by the visiting small people ceased; how did they know that he was no longer alive?
These few victims of the crash were not the only new visitors to this planet. Within the next twenty years more started to appear in their own craft at locations pre-announced to those in the inner secret circle.
How they transmitted and received messages in plain language but unable of detection elsewhere no one could determine, but when they were, arrangements were made and meetings held.
An exchange of information including much technical and engineering expertise took place, but only in one direction.
These further visitors, similar small people, wanted information only and in return, provided an amount of their advanced knowledge which the scientists of the inner circle could only just understand.
Eventually many new technical advances would appear in the world, from apparent invention and research, but actually from some of the understood and back engineered alien material, carefully released.
The small people requested and were generally given, approval (the inner circle were told in no uncertain terms that approval was only a nicety now) to start a program of cross breeding with the human population as a very long-term experiment.
They were explorers who were never returning home and wished to ensure the survival of their species through DNA mixing. It also seemed that the small people had another agenda but they would not disclose anything. The differences between species, the small people and the humans had been found to be so great that cross breeding by ‘natural means’ had never really been very successful. They knew this because they had tried and failed.
They told the inner circle openly what they were doing and that they had better get used to the idea. This inner circle may be in charge, and might continue to be so, but only with a changed population on this planet in the future, one that suited the small people's needs.
One accidental crash and a few more that occurred subsequently did not mean that the humans had the ability to resist.
Then it got confusing.
More small people suddenly appeared, having provided the correct coded message to the inner circle as though belonging to the first lot. They were different, however and took the inner circle representatives by surprise. They looked different, were more openly hostile although they didn’t speak, and were led by people who, to all intents and purposes, had a remarkably human appearance.
These tall ‘humans’ did the speaking, and there were those who swore that the little people heard commands from them when no one else could.
They wanted other things, not information, but living things, including people, but without offering any explanation as to why. The inner circle simply offered to help in return for support for their own aims, an expansion of their influence and power worldwide.
This was promised although the influence and power change were put onto a long term plan. The small people received what they wanted without resorting to any level of violence on the basis of a few greedy words.
The small people went on a spree of collection that had not been envisaged, people started to disappear from all over the world. It took some time to slow this down but it did not stop by any means. What may have made its way to the popular media was suppressed rapidly and most forcefully by those of the inner circle.
These small people and their ‘human like’ leaders cared not for people, animals or anything in this planet's living world. A lot of what was taken simply disappeared permanently, never to be seen again. They did depend on the inner circle to keep their presence and practices secret with subterfuge, false stories and even some assassinations; so further deals were done.
The numbers of those abducted reduced and of those that were eventually returned (after a great deal of bargaining by the inner circle); they were generally made incapable of remembering anything of their experiences.
Tracking devices were developed by the small people, to be implanted in many sections of the world’s population but without explanation; the inner circle became aware of this practice but had no power of persuasion to stop it.
Their flying craft were required to operate generally at speeds that provided an invisibility cloak because of the space displacement techniques. This had been negotiated with the first arrivals but much time and effort was needed to cover the tracks of all those who regularly seemed to not care. They regularly flew in open sight of whoever was stood on the ground at the time.
The worlds population became confused; who was correct, the science fiction authors, the governments with their highly visible special projects, or the witnesses to strange events who were regularly ridiculed by officialdom.
Books, films and other media flourished with many fictional and strange stories appearing that seemed to have a direction of thought or theme forced upon it.
The inner circle even set up highly visible enquiries into the ‘phenomenon’ but, of course, produced inconclusive reports.
If more confusion was caused then this was to the good. Misinformation on a large scale was a great benefit to hide the reality, especially if it was espoused by ‘cranks’ and ‘nuts’.
The original small people did not argue with these new arrivals but they didn’t agree with them either.
It seemed they were all helping themselves, with little resistance from the various ‘official’ world governments, to whatever they wanted. Only their own agenda seemed to be the controlling factor in what they would or would not do.
The inner circle was becoming a mere distraction and they were left to believe that they had some influence in what was happening, wherein in reality they did not. The agendas of the two races of small people were proceeding nicely.
Suddenly a plethora of different aliens started to appear although all it appeared, were under the controlling umbrella mostly, of those ‘human’ looking types that accompanied the small people.
Some of these new ones actually appeared from within underground complexes of which no one on the surface had the slightest inkling; they had been there for generations undetected.
The inner circle were at their wits end as to what was really going on, especially when they were told that particular aliens, very ‘human’ in appearance, would now be assisting them in the wholesale cover up of what was really going on.
They would operate as a clandestine secret service, attached to various world governments to suppress any hint of real information being spread.
The inner circle had no choice. They had become power mad and wanted their influence to rule the world. They were receiving significant amounts of incredible technical information and had been almost successful in reverse engineering the propulsion system of the crafts recovered from the crashes.
Test bed flights of anti-gravity, space displacement drives had been trialled on military aircraft and partially successful. It was now hoped to be only a matter of time before it became sufficient, in meeting their aims so they thought, of standing on a par with the aliens.
They were dreaming and drunk with power but they didn’t know it.
For now, the space exploration program, which their scientists had developed, would have to continue with the old chemical means of propulsion; everything should appear as conventional as possible.
Within the inner circle, yet a further clandestine grouping was created. Those involved maintained a close personal contact with each other but without any record or written material connecting them in any way.
They had picked up on certain unconnected facts from the human-alien interactions, which had made them examine the world’s history again. They believed they had a truth that no one else had and it must not be communicated to any of the aliens or especially the people of this world.
They saw themselves, somehow, as potential saviours and ultimate rulers of mankind. Whatever it took, through ‘visible and conventional’ means, they would direct their hidden programme by gently pushing the ‘authorised’ ones, in the appropriate direction.
The aliens had not seemed generally interested in these people, just another collection of status seeking, power mad individuals, within a whole plethora of the same.
The inner circle considered that because of their efforts, mankind might just be able to remain pretty much as it was, without the interference and bleak future that was slowly becoming evident, but, of course at much aggrandisement of their themselves.
This story has not been rated yet. Login to review this story.