B00BKLL1XI EBOK

  shadow nation

  Shadow Nation

  © Greg Fish, 2010 - 2013

  All rights reserved.

  [ 001 ]

  future shock

  [ prologue _ 000 ]

  On a clear Martian morning, he opened his eyes and gazed at the red dunes around him. Almost immediately he noticed that something was off but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Everything looked just like it always had when he hiked across the desert to check on some of the experiments being done by the machines placed miles away from the base. And as he surveyed his barren, alien surroundings, it hit him.

  He actually felt the wind in his hair and a gentle bite from the rusty sand blowing across the desert. He wasn’t wearing a spacesuit but somehow, he could still breathe. Normally, a human standing on the surface of Mars without the proper protection from the harsh elements suffocates and explodes in just under fifteen seconds. The only remnant of the body would be a puff of dust to be scattered by the Martian winds. And yet, he felt just fine.

  Of course, the only reason why he was able to breathe in a mostly frozen, alien desert was because he was already dead.

  As he stood up, he saw a bizarre, eldritch structure on the distant horizon. It looked like a nefarious infestation, rising into the sky as a collection of scaly tentacles chaotically woven together, and its entrance looked like a giant, wide-open mouth. As curiosity won over instinctive trepidation, he stepped inside and cautiously made his way into a huge atrium. It was made of black marble, but not like any black marble he knew. It wasn’t cut like normal marble. It didn’t sound like marble. It didn’t feel like the marble he knew either. It simply looked like it. So there he was, in a massive, dark structure of black alien stone, in the dark, and without the slightest idea of what to do next.

  He did the only thing he could. He called out. And they came.

  The domed ceiling lit up with constellations no human has ever seen before and holographic images of alien solar systems appeared all around him, illuminating the cavernous chamber. Directly across from where he stood, two immense, red, glowing eyes came into focus. Another pair lit up on his left. On his right, yet another pair of eyes flashed into existence. Very large and very menacing things were examining him. The air was charged with a heavy static of unease.

  The human looked around, locking eyes with the disembodied stares directed at him. Now certain this must be a dream and whatever was behind those glowing, red pupils couldn’t harm him, he didn’t worry. The disembodied guardians of the alien planetarium said nothing as they tilted their invisible heads to thoroughly examine the astronaut.

  A holographic image of an ancient world appeared in front of the human, exploding out of nowhere into a floating, three dimensional model. The planet was dark green, pockmarked by craters and bisected by an equatorial ocean which glowed with an odd, haunting aura. Instinctively, he reached out to touch it. His fingers froze a few inches away as he glanced inquisitively at the aliens around him.

  “Read,” commanded an eerie, low pitched voice, clearly struggling to imitate a human voice box.

  He touched the holographic planet. The hologram pulsed and displayed an alien creature shaped like a tube with twelve spiny legs, with a large, green compound eye wrapped around the middle of its torso. Before his eyes, the creature’s evolution rewound to its very beginnings as a colony of jellyfish-like organisms. From this starting point, the holographic projection shot forwards until it showed the aliens as a space faring civilization that created a vast city of towering, jagged spires of rock in an exaggerated microcosm. He saw their fluid, dark craft, their religious monuments, and finally, a war that ended their reign over the dark green world.

  But there was more. The hologram showcased their wild buildings, temples, statues, and even the aliens’ outposts on other worlds. Whatever these creatures were, once upon a time they controlled an impressive swath of the Milky Way and left behind a lot of relics. These relics were interwoven with the events the disembodied guardians of the planetarium were showing him, presented throughout the holographic timeline and annotated with a multitude of pictorial hieroglyphics that were surprisingly easy to understand.

  In the microcosm, the great war was over, the tube-shaped aliens disappeared, and their city had fallen into disrepair. A gloomy mist descended on what was left of their capital. The human’s first history lesson was over. He withdrew his hands from the holographic planet which froze on the last thing it projected.

  “This isn’t your world,” he said to the floating eyes around him. The statement was made with authority. The human knew. He passed their test.

  “No,” they replied with satisfaction, their growling voices in perfect unison.

  “Where am I?”

  “You are in the netherworld.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Because you are dead.”

  The human chuckled, shaking his head. Just your imagination, he thought. Just your imagination.

  “Well,” he cracked his knuckles, “as long as I’m dead, do you want to show me anything else?”

  “Yes,” replied the voices. “Much, much more.”

  The aliens offered him a peek at the detailed mechanics of the universe’s birth, told him of sapient species which were long extinct, and showed him the many places where the knowledge of these ancient beings could still be found amid primeval ruins, how to get there, and how to find their lost works. To their pleasant surprise, the human was willing to learn and tried to keep up with the torrent of information. Better yet, the more they told him, the more fascinated he became. In short, he was perfect for what they had in mind.

  The creatures made a decision that would seal their fate, jumping to complex conclusions of their own as they studied the man in front of them. The Cube, they decided, has lead us to the right place. As it was written, so shall it be again, but this time, on their terms.

  As the human was about to reach out to another holographic planet that caught his eye, the planetarium and the aliens suddenly vanished, leaving a pitch black void under his feet.

  His fall was surprisingly short. With a splash, he landed in a dark cave on all fours. As he looked at his reflection in the shallow water, he saw another alien creature glaring at him. It looked like the stylized, symbolic sketch of a human face come to life. The face was identifiably human in origin, but all the complex, individual features were gone. It was like a jet black mask, with a pair of huge, red, glowing eyes and jagged red marks on each cheek that stretched from the temples to just under the cheek bones. These jagged marks looked like war paint on the face of an ancient soldier ready to engage the enemy.

  Its hair was crystalloid and spiky. Its big eyes were formed by a complex, circular pattern of glowing, red patches that came together to look like a pupil on a translucent, black eyeball. Its nose was small and it had a very thin, seemingly lipless mouth. This odd face looked almost boyish. The flexible gel from which it was shaped into a determined, firm expression.

  The warped reflection looked back at the confused human with a sinister smirk and flexed its brow. Its eyes and the jagged marks on its face ignited with a bright, broiling, red glow.

  As the human tried to stand up and step back, he noticed that the dark water around him began to move. Suddenly, huge hands armed with huge, shearing claws that bent and flexed like fingers, enveloped him. The last thing he saw was one of these hands wrapping itself around his face, leaving him in total darkness.

  He was being pulled into a gelatinous mass under his knees, crushed by the weight of whatever was on top of him. As he felt his body go limp, the first hint of panic began to set in. It didn’t last long. After a few seconds, he blacked out...

  Martian winds lashed across the deser
t, sending clouds of fine dust towards an impressive structure that stood in front of a cliff, flanked by two giant boulders. The structure was a series of domes standing on huge, rounded struts and connected by cylindrical walkways. Strong winds went under and around these domes, never harming them. The biggest dome, which was the size of a small mansion, was designed to comfortably house the ten astronauts who came here from Earth.

  Inside this dome was an eerie silence. Some rooms were in total disarray, others were spotless. Half-written and half-read documents were displayed on computer screens. In the mess hall, plates that still had steaming food on them sat on tables. On the bridge, aside from a quiet ping indicating an incoming transmission from Earth, there was absolutely no sound or motion.

  It was as if the entire crew suddenly got up in the middle of what they were doing and left the station. But the airlock was only opened once that day and out of ten spacesuits, only one was missing. On the bridge, a computer kept displaying that mission control was calling, but there was no one to answer...

  [ chapter _ 001 ]

  In low Earth orbit, a satellite drifted over the white swirling clouds of the planet below. As it connected to the computer in charge of issuing course corrections for its morning update, its proximity alert went off. Something was going to make a very close pass and do it very quickly. The satellite’s sensors sprang to life just as two small, neon green pods covered in blue fractal design screamed by at 10,000 miles per hour, following the curvature of the Earth. Searching its database, the machine didn’t find a match to the shape it saw. After analyzing their trajectory, it became very clear that the pods didn’t come from Earth. They didn’t even use an identifiable propulsion system.

  A computer in the control center of a military base lit up and technicians surveying space that morning jumped into action. An unknown object from outer space just flew by one of their primary communication satellites. Defensive arrays immediately locked on to the alien pods and sent updates to the technicians’ computers.

  “Pods coming in for atmospheric entry at 1-0, 23 degrees...”

  “Pods slowing down to 1 k...”

  “Atmospheric entry... confirmed. They’re heading for touchdown.”

  “Looks like their target is the industrial sector but it’s too early to say where they’ll impact...”

  “EM scan shows pods are hollow with occupants inside!”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, second scan confirms we have little green men...”

  Commanders rushed to scramble an encounter team to the predicted landing site as the pods shot through the sky, electromagnetic shields around their hulls glowing blue to dissipate the heat generated by air compression during atmospheric entry. While a squad of heavily armed specialists from SWAT and whatever other rapid response teams they could rouse at such a short notice were being dispatched to the scene, the pods started spiraling around a landing site in lazy curves, burning off excess speed and preparing for touchdown. The alien craft landed to the sound of heavy weaponry powering up and turrets locking in on their faintly glowing engines.

  The aliens sat in their pods for just a few minutes as they shut down. Then, one of the pods softly slid open. The soldiers and police gently tapped the triggers, making sure the safety was off. Laser and projectile turrets mounted on several warehouses to be used in an air attack now set their sights on the open pod which stayed silent, blowing out wisps of white smoke. Suddenly, a blurry figure of a ten foot tall creature jumped out and landed in front of its craft. It looked a praying mantis that survived a nuclear war, with four bug eyes, three antennae, and massive, shearing blades on its skinny arms and legs. The four legs with huge claws that could clearly deliver a lot of damage flexed as the alien adjusted to Earth’s gravity.

  It was armed with a powerful, claw-like blade that came out of a cybernetic implant on its arm and its body had a dark green tint with splotches of aquamarine fractal designs. The creature aimed its blade at the military personnel and the armed rovers surrounding it. With a high pitched screech, it jumped at one of the soldiers and was instantly thrown back by a round from one of the anti-aircraft guns. As the smoke cleared, there was a collective double take. The alien stood up unscathed, protected by an electromagnetic shield that lit up as a blue, transparent bubble.

  The insectoid cocked its head and deployed something that looked like an arm-mounted gun the barrel of which glowed with a brighter and brighter blue as a high pitched whine came from its power core. Before the alien had a chance to shoot, the officers of the encounter team gave the order to fire at will. Hit by tens of thousands of rounds in a split second, the giant bug’s shields failed and its body was torn to shreds. As the other pod began to stir, the warehouse mounted guns let loose with a barrage of large caliber rounds, shattering it into thousands of pieces. After making sure both of the aliens were dead and the shards of their craft posed no threat, the encounter team sent an all clear signal to their commanders.

  The date was May 13, 3507. The local time was 08:47. Earth made first contact with a space faring alien species and the results left much to be desired.

  An hour later, an emergency meeting of the Council was called. Aliens made contact and they didn’t exactly come in peace. What happens next and were there more pods to follow? Civilians didn’t know anything yet. The craft streaking across the sky were assumed to be meteors. The planet’s rulers, who knew differently, were panicking, and so they gathered in a large conference room with a panoramic view of a massive hyper-city to discuss the situation.

  They weren’t a clandestine cabal of self-appointed overlords, but rather a council of elected officials established in the late 2600s to oversee global commerce, space exploration, healthcare, and social programs while enforcing international laws. Over time, nations began integrating into one under the banner of global trade and cooperation. Of course this was not an easy task and for hundreds of years afterwards, separatists and nationalists started small wars in hopes of tearing this new one world government apart. Across the globe, separatist groups still carried out bombings while shouting their opposition to the new order on pirate radio stations and the internet.

  A new one world government wasn’t the only change made in 1,500 years. In the 2200s, life extending treatments allowed many of those who lived in wealthy nations, or simply had plenty of money, to live to the ripe old age of 312. It almost goes without saying that there was a rather big conflict about it and by the 2700s, the vast majority of the world’s population had died out thanks to war, starvation, and disease. One might think that a near total annihilation of the world’s less fortunate was a downright barbaric example of the vast disparity between the world’s haves and the have-nots, but that wasn’t quite so. After inflation kicked in, the world was back right where it started. The lowest earners of wealthy countries became the new poor and the world’s wealthiest people weren’t quite so wealthy anymore. Thanks to the laws of mathematics, the world returned to where it started before the mass attrition began.

  By the early 3100s, the world’s population (just over one billion at that point in time) gathered in vast, sprawling hyper-cities. With populations in excess of 100 million, the hyper-cities became major economic hubs which allowed global commerce to thrive under the watchful eye of the International Council, tasked with preventing and stopping major conflicts that could disrupt trade. That included terrorist bombings, business quarrels, trade and currency wars, and apparently, alien invasions.

  Councilor Howard Grey, a distinguished gentleman with salt and pepper hair and the look of a natural father figure, rushed into the lobby of the skyscraper occupied by the Council and its staff. Like all leaders of his day, he was born into a family of wealthy and powerful politicians groomed for leadership roles and destined to occupy a public office. Having spent nearly two centuries in the world of politics and built vast networks of informants, it was very difficult to catch him out of some crucial loop and hence, he often becam
e the de facto boss of the Council during a crisis.

  Having received the first reports, Grey hurried to the meeting. On his arrival, he was bombarded with concerned military officials who were waiting to speak to the Council. He told them to stay put, keep watching for more alien pods and to make themselves available on a moment’s notice when the Council had a question. Having given the officers something to do, Grey now tended to his own business as he stepped in an elevator and ascended to the top floor of the skyscraper where the Council held its meetings.

  He ran the reports in his mind, trying to see if he could walk into the chamber with some sort of insight. Alas he didn’t know anything that the other Councilors weren’t made aware of and this lack of information was a bit irritating to him. He was used to coming up with solutions to major problems thanks to tips from his network of experts and informants. Today, they were of no use.

  The elevator stopped and Grey proceeded to the conference room where his fellow councilors were waiting. The Council numbered nine officials in charge of everything humans needed to maintain a stable society. They presided over every face of human existence on planet Earth, each Councilor responsible for a specific field such as energy or defense. A third of the members were up for reelection every two years and as a member of the Council for almost half a century, Grey has seen many of his so-called colleagues come and go with the people’s changing attitudes.

  His fellow Councilors were three very formal men and five stern women responsible for countless cartoons depicting the Council as a bunch of uptight, decrepit bureaucrats, and many of them were going to be replaced during upcoming elections for a far less conservative group even though they weren’t actually all that conservative or liberal in their ideology. They just liked to keep the status quo so they could avoid doing actual work since after all, work was the dirtiest word in politics. Because the elections were only a year away, two of them were in the middle of their lame duck phase, knowing in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t keep their jobs.