Stranger Things

Invasion

'I saw a shop keeper putting up a steel barrier on his window this morning.'

'You see that's precisely the reaction we are trying to avoid, Pierce. That idiot in the State Department over in the US of A who leaked this needs to be put up against a wall and shot.'

I'm sure you don't mean that, Harry.'

Lieutenant General Harry Fields put his pen aside from the pile of memos he'd been briskly working through and fixed his prickly expression on Pierce. 'Actually I do. To have the public know this now is dangerous in the extreme in my view. No one should have been told until we were ready to tell them.'

'But we have time to get ready, two years is enough surely to prepare for an Invasion?'

'You see there's the problem. Ever since the British press has got hold of it it's been an Invasion Force this and Invasion Fleet that. How do they know that based on a just a few grainy pictures? How is it not a Welcoming Fleet, a visit form a Diplomatic Corp from a distant planet or perhaps a wondering group of inter-galactic dog groomers? No, to the press it's an Invasion Force and as a result everybody panics. There is general unrest worldwide, the price of gold has shot up, people are hording food, and in here in Blighty people are cancelling their milk deliveries and the price of steel's gone ballistic as all our corner shop owners bolt metal barricades to their doors.'

Pierce shrugged his shoulders in tacit agreement. 'How did the Americans get the pictures?'

'I'll tell you only because I know some other buffoon somewhere has leaked that as well and it will be in today's rags. The Yanks aren't keen on it coming out you see, cos it'll cause problems with the Rusky's.' The General packed his paperwork into a slim attaché case as he spoke. 'Back in the seventies the Americans developed a new type advanced spy satellite, one in a long line used to spy on the Russians. But this one was something super special, advanced optics, early digital technology, you know- the whole kit caboodle.'

Pierce nodded as he listened, picking nervously at the edge of the buff manila file that lay on his lap.

'Well up it went and just as they were getting it into the correct obit a valve sticks open and the thing is pushed off its path and out into space. Imagine, it's loaded all that technology and an old mechanical valve breaks. ' The General snorted. 'Cock up of monumental proportions, eh?' His bushy eyebrows drew together and momentarily touched each other. 'Well off it went, bumbling its way in the general direction of Mars, sending intelligible messages back to Earth as it went. You see naturally everything that was sent back was encrypted as it was a Military bit of kit.'

'And?' Pierce leaned forward expectantly.

'Well forty years on a young whippersnapper at the Pentagon wonders what all the signal activity is coming in from an old satellite chuntering around in deep space somewhere. He gets hold of some retired buffer from the original program for the decryption codes and low and behold there are the pictures of a fleet of alien ships heading toward Earth. At present speed they should,' Harry pulled up his sleeve and glanced at his Brietling, 'be here in precisely five hundred and twenty three days assuming they don't have to pull over for any toilet breaks.'

'Hmmmm,' Pierce intoned.

'I take it from your sparkling discourse you've something on your mind Pierce. Well let's have it, I'm a busy man.' The General rose from his desk and slapped the table with a pair of heavy winter gloves.