Silverlords Part One

A Short Story

Silverlords

A Story in Two Parts by Charles Hackney

Part One

Caspar North celebrated his nineteenth birthday alone. This was not a matter of loneliness or social rejection; in fact, there was a party planned for that evening with friends and family. But Caspar was a young man who appreciated solitude and quiet. His family had come to understand that, when Caspar would tell them “I need some Introvert Time,” it was not a sign that anything was wrong, just an indication that he wanted a break from people.

On this particular day, Caspar was happy that his friends were coming over, but he wanted some Introvert Time beforehand. So the morning of his birthday found him halfway up a mountain, on one of the many hiking trails on the outskirts of Denver. It was a perfect day for it, too: sunny but cool, clear skies, and the scent of pine trees in the air.

He stopped to adjust the laces of one of his boots, enjoying the sounds of birds in the trees and the rustling of leaves. Suddenly the birds fell silent, and a faint roaring sound began to intrude upon Caspar’s ears. He grimaced, muttering “Stupid airplanes have to go and wreck the mood.”

As the noise grew louder, though, it sounded less and less like a jet engine. Caspar trekked higher up the trail until he found an outcropping that afforded a view of the sky over the city.

An object was falling. It was too high up for him to tell what it was, but it clearly had no wings. He watched as the thing continued its drop, a feeling of dread slowly building within him. The object appeared to be falling toward Denver. Caspar fumbled for his phone, and called his father as he kept his eyes locked on the plummeting object.

“Hey, Cas.” His father’s voice was gruff but warm. “What’s up?”

“Dad, there’s something in the air over the city.” Caspar heard his voice tighten as the fear gripped his throat.

“Is that what’s making that noise? Can you see what it is from where you are?”

“I can see it, but I don’t know what it is. It’s not a plane or a helicopter, and it looks like it’s falling. I don’t know, maybe it’s a satellite that got knocked out of orbit or something. The point is, you need to get Mom and Nora and get out of there. It doesn’t look safe.”

“Your mother and your sister went to do some last-minute shopping. I think Nora forgot to get you a birthday present.”

“You have to get them out of there. I don’t…” Caspar’s voice trailed off as he watched the thing in the sky. Impossibly, it seemed somehow to be slowing down, the fall from the heavens now looking more like a controlled descent. And it was now close enough that Caspar could detect certain features of the object. “Dad, you’re not going to believe this. Whatever that thing is, it’s got arms and legs.”

“What?”

“Swear to God, Dad. Arms and legs.” The fear was now reaching toward panic, Caspar’s breathing now rapid and shallow. His father did not seem to realize the seriousness of the situation.

“Cas, you didn’t sneak some of my bourbon out there, did you?”

“No! Dad, I…”

“Is it drugs? Did you get drugs from that lowlife who lives down the street?”

“Dad, listen to me! I’m not drunk, I’m not high, and I’m not seeing things!”

“So what, the Jack and the Beanstalk giant fell off his cloud?”

“No, it looks more like it’s made of metal.”

“Ah. Giant robot then, like those Japanese cartoons.”

“This is serious, Dad! What do you think is making that noise?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, but I doubt we’re under attack by the Robotech people.”

The roaring of the gigantic thing was now so loud that Caspar had to shout to make himself heard. “Stop it! You need to get out! You need to get Mom! You need… oh dear God in heaven. Its arms are guns!” The object was now near enough to the ground that Caspar could see that, where the thing’s hands should be, there were two long cylinders. It was also close enough that he could begin to get a sense of the sheer size of the monstrous object. Easily as tall as a ten-story building, the thing that Caspar’s father had called a giant robot had slowed its descent even further, and Caspar could see clearly the massive torso, the thickly armored legs, and the blank faceless head.

And then the arms started firing.

Pressure waves from the blasts hit Caspar like a series of fists, and he fell backwards as the metal arms spat out thick beams of energy, producing explosions on a scale that the young man had never seen in person. Only footage seen in school of wartime bombardments came close to what Caspar was witnessing now. Buildings were levelled, towers crumbled, and still the metal giant continued its descent. Rising back to his feet, Caspar could see fires start to spread in the city, like flickering pinpricks at first, then gaining in size.

With an earthshaking rumble, it finally touched ground. Ponderously slow in its movements, the machine swept the beams back and forth, razing entire sections of Denver in a matter of seconds. It then began to walk, each footstep sounding like unstoppable doom in Caspar’s ears. As it travelled toward the downtown core, it began to release some kind of smoke or steam, the gas hugging the ground as it spread out from the monster.

Caspar remembered the phone in his hand, and brought it up. “Dad? Dad, are you all right?”

There was no response.

Oh God, he thought. What does all of this mean?

***

Caspar North squared off against his opponent. Someday I really should learn to keep my big mouth shut.

Caspar’s opponent was a blueberry. A collaborator. Worse, the man—if such a term could be said to fit one of the spineless bootlickers of the alien overlords—was a minister of the Progressive Universal Church of Enlightenment. Wearing a pendant in the spiral design favored by the Grays, the reverend—again, the appropriateness of the word was questionable—was standing on a platform in a downtown public square, flanked by supporters and officers of the Portland police. And he was sermonizing loudly on the virtues of the otherworldly invaders who had been ruling Earth for the past decade.

“We are uplifted!” he had shouted. Collaborators employed depilatory treatments, and drank colloidal silver until it dyed their skins, in an attempt to look more like the hairless gray beings whose mechanical giants stood as sentries over every major human city on the planet. It did not work; the result was a distinct blue rather than silver, which prompted the unflattering nickname. “Through the guidance of the Silverlords, life on Earth is better now than it has been for many years!”

Caspar had been standing in the crowd that was gathered in the square, and he could not help but growl, “And whose fault is it that the world was in shambles in the first place?” He kept his voice low; no point in starting trouble with the Gray’s pet cops guarding the Gray’s pet preacher. I should have just kept on walking, he thought to himself.

“Visitors from above, they came to us when we were divided and fighting amongst ourselves, wallowing in ignorant darkness. They showed us the way!”

Caspar’s teeth were grinding.

“They bless us with their technology, guiding us to a higher stage of evolution!”

I should leave. If I’m smart I’ll just go.

“Amazing, isn’t it? That some dim backwards souls remain ungrateful! So full of hatred for anyone who isn’t exactly like them. Bitterly holding on to outdated dogmas of the past.” The blue-stained preacher slopped buckets of contempt onto his pronunciation of the word ‘past.’ “Unwilling to learn from the wisdom in the words that once were spoken: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to the alien among you, for some thereby have entertained angels unawares.’”

“Angels?” Crap. I said that with the loud voice. Nothing for it now. “You fail at biblical interpretation!”

A smug sneer crossed the collaborator’s face. “Well what have we here?” the hairless man laughed. Caspar felt rough hands seizing him. One hand grabbed at Caspar’s beard, pulling it aside to reveal the clerical collar around Caspar’s throat.

The collaborator nearly squealed. “A nazirite! Oh fun! One of the hairy dog-priests has come to lecture me about how ignorant superstition and savage hatred is better than peaceful wisdom!” He chortled, playing to the crowd as he postured for them to see. “Come on then, nazirite. Tell me all about how good your bigotry is, and how evil it is to bring us medical science and advanced technology.”

Caspar was pushed forward, and now stood below the preacher at the front of the crowd. I should just shut up. A little humiliation, and they’ll let me go my way. Caspar’s anger got the better of him, though. “You brag about their technology,” he snarled. “But technological advancement does not mean moral superiority.”

“Oh please!” The skinny blue man waved his hands about in a dramatic fashion. “Don’t tell me you actually believe that morality was handed down from heaven to some Bronze Age goat herders to give them the will of God. Those of us who actually paid attention in school know that morality is a system developed for the purpose of ensuring social stability and cohesion, and the Silverlords have maintained their civilization for over ten thousand years.”

“A civilization that lies and murders is nothing to admire. And your ‘morally-superior’ masters are systematically stripping our forests to ship tankers full of wood alcohol back to their homeworld.”

“For which they pay us!”

“In their currency!”

“Well of course. The global economy was in total disarray, so a common currency was necessary.’

“Your ‘enlightened saviors’ are a bunch of rapacious little booze hounds whose only interest in Earth is how rich they can get by draining us of our resources.”

The collaborator was beginning to lose his attitude of jolly condescension as the crowd began to grumble, and the noises sounded a bit too much like they might be starting to agree with the man with the shaggy hair and long beard. “They are going to raise us to the stars, and you quibble over a few barrels of alcohol. You would rather stay here, mucking around in the mud with your stupid backwards doctrines and prejudices. The Silverlords don’t have prejudices. The Silverlords don’t act like women are of lesser worth than men.”

“True. Because they see us all as equally worthless.”

“The Silverlords don’t separate us by race.”

“Yeah, all skin colors are welcome as long as they’re blue.”

Now there were chuckles in the crowd, and a few outright laughs. His thin lips tight with fury, the minister pointed to his face. “This is silver! It is not blue!”

“Oh it’s blue, berry.”

“Silver! I drink silver and so it is silver!”

“Whatever you say, Papa Smurf.”

Now the laughter was blatant, and the minister was quivering with rage. “You are the past! We are the future! And your children already belong to us! We make sure that real truth and science are taught in the schools!”

“All wrapped in a tortilla of Gray propaganda.”

“See! See! See, everybody! ‘Gray!’ See how he uses that hateful slur in reference to the Silverlords! See! Look at you, so ugly in your hatred! You sick sad… hairball!” Tears—likely of the crocodile variety—were now evident on the minister’s face. “I know all about you people! You want to hold us back! You want us hating and killing!”

Caspar pointed toward the distant Archon, the metal behemoth towering over the local buildings. “Don’t talk to me about killing! Talk to them! If even one of the Grays gets killed, they use one of those giant machines to gas an entire city!”

The minister spread his arms. “Simple solution to that: Don’t murder! Is that too hard for your bigoted little brain? I think we’ve had about enough from you.”

“What, you can’t handle…”

“Enough” he shouted. “Enough! Enough! How long do we all have to suffer because of people like you?” The minister was now weeping. “All we want is to live in peace and harmony, and you come along spewing your hatred and advocating murder. Get out! You’re not welcome here! We’ve had enough! Enough! Enough!” The yelling became a chant, which was taken up by the blue-tinged supporters standing beside the speaker, and then by his supporters in the crowd.

Caspar began to shout a response, but a thrown bottle impacted the back of his head, and he staggered. Fists began raining down on him as the chant of “Enough! Enough!” continued. Those who had been laughing at the collaborator were now fleeing as the police stood by and watched the beating, maintaining their posts near the minister.

Caspar was on his knees, attempting to cover his head, when a amplified voice was heard over the crowd: “Make way! Move aside!” The crowd began to break up and move back as a shining car approached, the driver attempting to pass through the space on his way to his passenger’s destination. The blue minister and his supporters began cheering and waving when they saw the passenger. In the back seat was a diminutive figure, gray skin covering a rounded triangular head, large black eyes impossible to read.

A hand grasped Caspar’s shoulder, and a voice whispered “Come on, while they’re distracted.” Caspar rose and followed the man away from the crowd and down an alley.

A couple of blocks away, the two ducked into a bar and made their way to a booth in the back. Caspar was out of breath, unable to speak. The newcomer was middle-aged, short-cut blond hair going gray at the temples, with wrinkles around the icy blue eyes. As Caspar calmed himself, the stranger went for drinks, and set a glass in front of him. “Judging by the hair and the getup, I assumed you’d want water.”

“Thanks.”

“You don’t mind if I enjoy a beer?”

“No problem. I appreciate the assist in getting out of there. I’ve seen situations like that get nasty.”

The stranger smiled as he took a drink. “Then why’d you open your mouth?”

Caspar shrugged. “Stupidity, probably. Stubbornness.” The combination of the man’s help in getting free of the violent mob and his easy manner made Caspar sense that this was someone he could trust. “To tell the truth, probably the biggest reason I took the nazirite vows was that it was the most Christian way I could think of to give a giant middle finger to the Grays.”

“I get that. The little buggers are hairless, and their human lapdogs go hairless, so you join a Catholic order that refuses to shave or cut their hair.”

“Anglican, actually, but yes.” Caspar lifted his glass. “And they’re using us to supply them with alcohol, so it feels right that the vows include a requirement that I abstain. Same reason I wear the collar even when I don’t always have to. Grays suppress religion, with the exception of the PUCEs,” Caspar pronounced it with a hard C, “and their wishy-washy garbage about how true religion is all about being nice and inoffensive and subservient to the overlords. So I make sure to wear my clerical collar in public, like I’m daring them to do something about it.”

“You trying to be a martyr?”

“More like a pissed-off Old Testament prophet. They can kill me, but they can’t make me shut up.”

The stranger’s grin widened. “Not bad.” He reached across the table to shake Caspar’s hand. “The name’s Bernard Lorne.”

“Caspar North.”

“I know. Reverend Caspar Theodore North. Born in Boulder, witness to the destruction of Denver, family killed in the attack.” Lorne leaned forward, dropping his voice lower. “And one of the few members of the United Earth Defense Force to successfully pilot a J-1 Hammerhead. I’ve been looking for you.”

Caspar pulled back, the first twinges of suspicion entering his estimation of his new acquaintance. “That was a long time ago, and the J-1 never really worked. Nothing humanity ever came up with even came close to matching the Archons.”

“I know. I was there. I am in fact Colonel Lorne, with the UEDF North American Division. We hit those metal giants with everything in Earth’s combined arsenal, and they shrugged it off. The Archons took out our aircraft and our navies without breathing hard, and by the time we were desperate enough for nukes it was too late.” The Colonel glanced around the room before continuing. “The owner of this bar is a friendly, but there’s no point in tempting fate. Come with me and I’ll tell you more about why I’m here. But first, let me ask you this: would you rather be a pissed-off Old Testament prophet, or one of the Mighty Men of David?” Lorne reached into a pocket and pulled out a small cloth object. Caspar had just enough time to recognize it as a yarmulke, before Lorne returned it to its place of concealment. “You’re not the only one who remembers the scriptures.”

The remainder of the conversation was held in conspiratorial whispers. “When I get together with my fellow nazirites,” said Caspar, “we’re not of one mind about what our basic stance should be toward the occupation. Many of us think that God allowed this invasion as his way of chastising us. It’s happened before: Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Soviet Union. They say the best response is to call the people to repentance, pray for the peace of the city, patiently endure persecution, and wait for the day when the Lord frees us.”

Lorne grimaced. “Well I suppose that’s one way to go. But there’s also the Judges, King David, and Judah the Maccabee. Warriors who took action and struck a blow for God’s people. You remember the story of Shamgar?”

“Book of Judges, Chapter Three. A stickfighter who killed six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad.”

Lorne nodded. “Come with me. Come with me and I will introduce you to someone, and he will give you one hell of an oxgoad.”

***

Lorne and Caspar travelled from Portland to New Orleans, where they boarded a sail-powered wooden boat. Only when the vessel was out of sight of the mainland was Lorne willing to speak freely. “I don’t blame you for abandoning the fight,” he said. “After the Battle of Los Angeles I almost quit, myself.”

Caspar nodded. “I just couldn’t take the futility of it all. Too many lives wasted with nothing to show for it.”

“They broke us at LA. Since then, the UEDF hasn’t been able to mount an open attack. We’ve been scrambling to figure out anything that could be a path to victory, while staying under the Grays’ radar.”

“Do the Grays actually use radar?”

“We don’t know. If we could get our hands on their technology we might be able to engineer our way through this, but all attempts at that have failed also. So then we turned to biological options.”

Caspar felt a chill run down his spine. “Germ warfare?”

Colonel Lorne shook his head. “We haven’t had any more success at obtaining biological material than technological. If we could get a sample of their DNA—assuming they have DNA—we might have a chance at engineering a plague for them. But nothing so far.”

“Just as well. Better to endure and pray than to unleash a bioweapon on the world.”

Lorne did not respond to that, focusing his attention on adjusting one of the sails.

“So now can I ask who you’re taking me to see?”

The Colonel completed his adjustments, then turned and looked down on Caspar, who was seated in the bow of the small craft. He hesitated before saying “Nathaniel Smith.”

Caspar blinked. “Who?”

Lorne stared out toward the horizon as the boat pitched unsteadily. “Another priest, of sorts. I guess I’m not surprised you haven’t heard of him; I imagine you move in different circles.”

“You don’t sound like a fan,” said Caspar.

“To win a war, sometimes you have to do things that stain your conscience,” Lorne replied without looking at Caspar, “and sometimes you have to deal with people who make your skin crawl. You’re about to do both, but I wouldn’t ask it of you if it weren’t genuinely necessary. We can’t defeat the Archons, and the Grays are stripping the planet. I’d call our project a Hail Mary play, but I think you’d find it a deeply inappropriate use of the term. Better, perhaps, to say that we’re standing at a crossroads at midnight, desperate enough to make a deal.”

Now Lorne sat down across from Caspar, looking him directly in the face with his piercing blue eyes. “You said a minute ago that bioweapons are a step too far for your conscience. You are going to have to ask yourself how far you are willing to go to save the world, how dirty you are willing to get.”

Caspar realized that he had stopped breathing, and drew in a shuddering breath. “Who is this Nathaniel Smith? What is this new strategy you’re working on?”

Lorne’s face was stony. “That’s just it. Everything new has failed. What we are about to do is old.” He closed his eyes. “Very old.”

***

Matul Island was a tiny speck on the map in the middle of the Caribbean, between the Yucatan peninsula and the Cayman Islands. Colonel Lorne steered a course around to the southern side of the island, into a secluded cove. There, a cluster of trees concealed the landing point from prying eyes, and Caspar and Lorne disembarked.

The two made their way through steaming jungle, down a narrow trail overhung with vines and dripping leaves. I hate humidity, Caspar thought. I’ve always hated humidity. Comes from growing up in Colorado, I guess. As they continued, Caspar became aware of a strange odor on the breeze. It was something sour and clinging, with a moldy, sickening undertone of rancid sweetness. The smell intensified the farther along the path they went, and soon Lorne noticed Caspar’s discomfort.

“You get used to it,” he said. “And it helps keep trespassers away.”

“Away from what?”

“From this.” Lorne pointed as they turned a corner, and there before them was a massive structure, squat and wide, hidden from aerial view by a dense camouflage netting. The facility was built into the hillside beyond a small valley, and guards dressed in camouflage fatigues stood watch beside the entrance. “All the answers are in here.”

The guards saluted as the two approached, and Lorne returned the gesture. He then entered a series of numbers on a keypad built into the wall beside the single door, and there was a low deep sound of machinery in operation from within. The door slid open to reveal an elevator car. Caspar followed Lorne.

As the car descended, Lorne began speaking. “This is a military research facility, left over from the Cold War. The Russians used to do work here on projects that were best kept far from any overly-curious officials back in the motherland, but close enough to Cuba to have easy access to their allies’ resources.”

“I doubt that’s the case now. Since the Grays took Cuba for a cargo launch facility, there aren’t even any humans left on that island.”

Lorne smiled. “That’s part of why we are here. Once Colossus is up and running, we’re going to hit Cuba without having to worry about reprisals against local civilians.”

“Colossus?”

“You’ll see.”

The elevator stopped, and the door opened onto a well-lit lobby. More soldiers stood guard, saluting as Lorne passed between them with Caspar in tow. Beyond the door on the far side of the lobby was a conference room, and waiting there was a man whom Caspar could only describe as vile. The man’s sallow skin was pockmarked with the remains of old blemishes, and his greasy hair hung in patches. His smile was a twisted, arrogant leer, revealing rotten teeth as he said “Ah! Colonel! You’ve brought me a pilot at last. The Watchers provide.”

Caspar spoke up. “The who?”

Smith’s diseased smile widened. “The Antediluvian Watchers. Masters of the Outer Darkness. I speak with the spirits of old, nazirite. And they tell me many things. They gave me the dreams that led me to the Book of Vyônes. They gave me the knowledge to translate the Enochian spells therein. Nothing would have been possible without their guidance.”

Caspar shifted his weight, feeing as if a serpent had crawled up his spine. “Why me?”

Lorne cleared his throat. “The J-1’s neurocognitive interface system is the closest thing to what we are working with here.”

“What is the Colossus?” he asked Lorne. The Colonel looked down and did not reply.

“I’ll show you,” replied Smith. “Come this way.” Smith turned and opened a door behind him, and Caspar’s nostrils were filled with a wave of that same rancid stink that seemed to permeate the entire valley.

God go with me. What am I getting myself into?

The door opened to an enormous subterranean hangar, sufficient to hold many aircraft. Soldiers and technicians bustled about the place, though with less of the noise and conversation than one would expect. It was as if nobody present wanted to be there, and were trying to carry out their duties quickly enough to go away as soon as possible.

In the center of the hangar was a nightmare.

Flesh, in the ghoulish shade of decay, was piled higher than Caspar could reach, and longer than three city buses. Caspar turned away, gagging. And then a different, colder sort of nausea grew within him as he turned back and recognized the shape into which the foul meat had been formed. It was the figure of an immense man, a hundred feet tall. Caspar’s eyes traced the lines of the thing, and saw the face, a lipless mockery of humanity, monstrous eyes staring sightlessly toward the ceiling.

“My Colossus,” whispered Smith.

Caspar staggered back and ran to the conference room they had just left, Lorne and Smith following him. “What… What is that… that thing?” he gasped.

“It is my Colossus,” Smith repeated. He began to gesticulate and snarl, his back hunched as he paced back and forth. “By the knowledge of centuries past, I bestow upon mankind a weapon, to drive the invaders from our soil. As the Watchers in Darkness showed me, joining flesh to flesh and bone to bone, the bodies of five hundred victims. Yes!” Smith threw a hand behind him, pointing back toward the open door. “What you saw there you thought was foul. And so it is! Foul and cruel. Five hundred of our brothers and sisters, our parents and children, killed by the Grays for disobeying, or not working hard enough, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time!”

Smith now pointed at Caspar, a drop of saliva escaping his mouth as he shouted and raved. “But now their deaths have a purpose! Now they are become the wrathful hand of vengeance! Tell me, do you really think humanity can go on like this, crushed beneath the heels of the Grays and their towering metal Archons?”

Caspar swallowed. “I don’t… I… No, this isn’t right. This is sick.” He reached up and touched his collar. “I’m a man of God.”

“Oh!” Now Smith’s voice was taunting. “The man of God wants more of us to die so his conscience won’t bother him. What good is it,” he hissed, “to keep your soul but lose the whole world?”

Lorne put a firm hand on Smith’s shoulder. “That’s enough. Caspar, listen to me. I said earlier that we’re going to have to get dirty to win this war. I don’t like this any more than you do. We’re desecrating the remains of the dead, under orders from a slimy little weasel who says he talks to evil spirits. But we’re desperate here. The human race is sliding toward oblivion, and this is the only lifeline we’ve been tossed.”

“There has to be another way.”

“I’ve spent the past ten years looking for another way. Believe me when I tell you that this is our last option. If we fail, there is nothing left for humanity but slavery and death.”

Caspar wiped sweat from his face. He thought about Denver. He remembered his family. He remembered what the Archon did to them, and his revulsion was slowly overtaken by hatred.

“What do you need me to do?”

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