Missionaries

Missionaries

by Roger Ley

 

Roger Ley has self-published eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories.
He was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. Later, he worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His early articles appeared in publications including The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, The Oldie, and Best of British. His short stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).

Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk

More TTTV Stories by Roger ley: https://talltaletv.com/tag/roger-ley/

His Amazon author page is at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Roger-Ley/author/B01KOVZFHM

You have to hand it to the Tinmen; the way they introduced themselves to practically everybody on the planet all at the same time was pretty stylish. I mean, an alien species arrives in the solar system in a fleet of huge spaceships, makes its way to the third planet, and then sends each of the inhabitants a friendly personal email:

‘Hello David Bailey, I hope you will not mind if I introduce myself…’ Sure, it looked like spam and a lot of people hit delete without reading it, but plenty didn’t, and it was easy to resurrect it from the Trash folder when word got around. The Tinmen sent clips and pictures of themselves and messages of reassurance that their intentions were honourable, but I never trusted them; I knew it was all squit.

What were their real intentions, though? Me and the other vets talked about it in our booth at Halligan’s. We were all pretty hard-nosed and kind of cynical. Ed thought they might be missionaries for some crazy religion. Mike thought they might want to harvest us for food or medical use. They’re both ex-grunts and don’t know any better. Me, I thought they were going to take over the planet and steal our resources. My turn to buy a round.

Within a week their ships began landing — well, hovering really — they were great big pyramids, as big as a town? A city? They were different sizes, but they were all big. They dropped personnel ready to get to work, stores, even flat-pack buildings in some places. When the first of them stepped onto the ground, no one was surprised that they were robots. They’d given us enough warning. They were of average height, varied in colour, and some of them had patterns on them. My guess was that they wanted to look as little like an army of occupation as possible. They were humanoid in as much as they had two arms, two legs, and a head. They walked upright, but they were definitely robots. And they were nice, polite and helpful to everyone. It wouldn’t have surprised me if a couple of them had come knocking on my door with toothy smiles and wearing dark suits.

‘Good morning, friend, have you heard the good word? Have you invited the great god Zog into your life?’ or some such crap.

But that wasn’t their mission. Their mission was to do good work, but it wasn’t based on a religion. We were supposed to believe it was pure altruism. I still didn’t buy it though. Call me ungrateful, but I just knew they had an ulterior motive. Nobody can be all nice. Everybody has a hidden agenda. I learned that in the Corps.

They televised their leader speaking to Congress. It said they were representatives of the Galactic Commonwealth of Planets, the GCP. It said it’s an alliance of hundreds of species, and that we had reached a level of technology that allowed us to start the process of joining up to be members if we so wished. Bunch of godless commies, if you ask me.

The months rolled by, and everywhere you looked, they were doing their good work. The Tinmen gave us advice about big infrastructure projects. They had machines that could melt tunnels through mountains. They helped solve world food problems by gene splicing our main crops: rice, wheat, soybeans, potatoes. World health was their next target with new drugs and treatments. They gave us designs for carbon dioxide extractors to cure global warming. I saw them every day on my TV until I was so sick of the sight of them that I stove in the screen with my boot.

It only took a couple of years before we couldn’t do without them. They were so entangled in almost everything, almost everywhere. And people were happy about it. Everyone had free healthcare, a job, an electric car, and I mean in all countries. Armies were being dismantled; nuclear weapons had been banned. But I still didn’t trust them, not me. I didn’t want any of their fancy gene-spliced food, better drugs, or lab grown steak, so I moved to my cabin in the mountains of the Driftless Area and lived off-grid with a wind up radio to keep me in touch with the outside world. I shot my own meat, grew some vegetables, and kept my head down, like I was trained to do at the Marine Corps Sniper School. Well, not the vegetable growing exactly, but we were taught how to live off the land where we could. I was designated MOS 0317 when I was in the Corps. I did my six years and then left the service around the time the war in the Middle East cooled off.

At my cabin, I kept a vintage Harley; it was a petrol job, probably illegal now, but those State Troopers would have to catch me first if they wanted to take it off of me. I rode it into town once a month to pick up my pension, buy groceries, books, and suchlike. So there I was, minding my own business, living halfway up a mountain in Wisconsin when who should come a-knocking but one of the Tinmen. Well, it didn’t exactly come knocking; if it had, I’d have probably blown its head clean off. I expect that happened a time or two, and they learned to approach people like me carefully.

This one interrupted the radio show I was listening to. It was kinda funny having it talk to me out of my own radio.

‘Hello, Mr Bailey,’ it said, ‘I am a member of the recruiting branch of the GCP Active Unit Corps. I wonder if I could have a word with you? I will not take up much of your valuable time. I have no weapons and promise to leave immediately if you ask me to. Just say “Yes” and I will come up the path to the front of your, er, cottage.’

How it would hear me through the radio I don’t know, but I sat and thought about it for a few minutes, then loaded my break-action over-and-under, went out onto the porch, and sat down with it laid across my lap.

‘Okay, Tinman,’ I called. ‘Come out with your hands up.’ I was joking, but it took me literally. It stepped out of the bushes and came up the path, hands in the air.

 

And that’s how come I’m sitting in this here big shiny spaceship ready to cast off for the galactic core, or some such. The Tinmen didn’t really say. They just told us that we’d be going down a wormhole and that when we popped out the other side, we’d be so far away that our sun wouldn’t be visible. Shucks, but it’s good to be back in the service, even if it ain’t the US Marine Corps. We get to wear these fancy fatigues with all kinds of doohickies built in, and we’ve been trained to use some pretty fancy weapons. Our company are all snipers. Not all from the US of A, but all good people: boys, girls, black, white, brown. The things we have in common are dedication to each other, dedication to the nations of the Earth, and dedication to the money that’s being banked while we’re away.

These Tinmen are such goody-goodies. Like I said, I knew they had an ulterior motive, that they’d want something in return for all their helpfulness, and I was right. Only thing is that I never could have guessed that what they wanted was me, and people like me. See, the GCP had a little problem. Their problem was that they only let advanced species join up, and by “advanced” they meant non-violent. Now, in general, I am a great believer in nonviolence, but I also believe in what President Roosevelt said: “Talk soft and carry a big stick”. Diplomacy works much better if it’s backed by military strength. Unfortunately, the GCP didn’t have a military wing, and even more unfortunately, the Lizards did. In fact, as far as the Tinmen and their friends knew, that’s all the Lizards have. War seems to be their way of dealing with life.

The other civilisations in the GCP and their bots are too moral to wage war, but the Lizards, the new kids on the block, had popped out of a wormhole from another galaxy and were currently nibbling at the fringes of the GCP. So, as they explained at our first briefing, somebody has to go out there and show the Lizards that they’re just not welcome, and if we do it hard enough, the hope is that they’ll up sticks and go bother someone else. Well, that’s the theory, or so the Tinman instructor told us in the political awareness class. Me, I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’m sure looking forward to giving it a try.

The ship starts to shake as the engines fire up. I look at the black and yellow Pit Bull shoulder patch on the soldier in the next seat. She smiles, touches the patch, then points at me. Her front teeth are filed to points, and she has some interesting facial tattoos. I smile back.

Oh yes, we are savages, strapped in, psyched out, and smiling.

Bring it on, you slithering varmints. We are the galaxy’s attack dogs, we are legion, and we are coming to bite your scaly green asses.