Live or Die Trilogy Read online

  Live or Die

  A trilogy by

  J.A. Hawkings

  Ebook protected by Digital Rights Management

  © 2015 All rights reserved by author

  First English Edition June 2015

  Table of Contents

  Live or Die

  Live or Die

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Part IV

  Part V

  Parte VI

  Live or Die

  The Reawakening

  Live or Die

  First Part

  Second Part

  Heartfelt Thanks

  Live or Die

  Trilogy

  Betelgeuse or Alpha Orionis (Vol. I)

  A Novel by

  J.A. Hawkings

  Ebook protected by Digital Rights Management

  © 2015 All rights reserved by author

  First English Edition April 2015

  This novel is a work of fantasy. Names, characters, places, organizations and events are the result of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely random.

  This work is protected by Copyright laws. Any unauthorized duplication, even in part, is prohibited.

  Part I

  The Hole

  or

  Notes from Underground

  June 3

  They dropped me into the hole.

  It could be an adventure of a few days, an arduous mission of several months, or even my grave for all I know. I don't much care. This is why I was chosen, selected from among thousands of individuals. I'm as cold as ice, cynical and indifferent to the aversions of life, they say.

  And yet I have begun to write a diary.

  June 4

  The hole is a bunker of seven meters by five, located one kilometer deep in the bowels of the earth. On one side, there is a wall that resembles something from a space capsule: it's coated with an insulating material and has drawers, equipment, a monitor and various buttons and knobs. In one corner, there's a bed with a mattress made by a sadist, in the other, a bathroom that seems to have been taken from an airplane. The two main parts of the bunker are divided by a thin partition and a door that provides access to the food supply and life support systems. If you were to release even a single bolt, you'd be fucked. If you were to point a gun to my head, I'd remain as calm as a Buddhist monk in meditation, but don't talk to me about adjusting those diabolical gadgets.

  Fortunately, the lighting is comfortable, the temperature is perfect and the air is pure. There is always the hum of the fans to keep me company.

  This shitty place is what I should be saving the world from, or better yet, I should destroy it.

  June 7

  Mike contacted me today.

  From the United States.

  He and I have the same job.

  “Have you already tripped the alarm?” he asked.

  “Are you talking about all those red lights that light up, the deafening noise and the vibrating bed?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Then I tripped it.”

  He smiled, we exchanged a couple of jokes and then he signed off. None of the six of us that are found in similar holes scattered around the earth are very talkative.

  At the end of the day, the touch screen embedded thirty two inches into the wall came on.

  Mission Command.

  “How's it going?”

  “I had a party,” I answered tersely, but General Verdecchi's face in the foreground remained as immobile as that of a statue.

  They should've sent him down here.

  “And over there, General? How's it going?”

  “We still don't understand what the hell they want!”

  June 9

  Namiko is really sweet.

  She looks like a porcelain doll.

  She's the one who contacted me, from the Japanese hole, first with a written message, then showing herself via HD cam. The other five and I are in a network, like a social network composed of some twenty users: we six, the various Mission Commands and a handful of individuals who believe they're the masters of the world. We have no access to the outside, physically or virtually. We are cut off, sealed in a metal shell that none of the selected occupants knows how to locate. They brought me here drugged and blindfolded. They injected me in Rome. Therefore, I don't know how many hours have passed. For all I know, I might be under the Vatican, in the far-off North Cape, or in an abyss in the ocean. Security reasons. The only certainty is that I answer to the Italian Mission Command. Unless Italy is destroyed. This reciprocity applies for the other member nations: USA, Japan, Germany, Russia and the Federal Government of Australia.

  Who knows what those fucking aliens have in mind.

  June 10

  I can't sleep, or rather, I was doing just fine until the damned alarm began to sound. My heart is still beating fast. Do they think they're going to save the world by giving me a heart attack in the middle of the night?

  Night?

  Who knows.

  If I believe the clock in the hole, it should be around 3.00 a.m.

  But in which time zone? Don't know. I'll ask.

  They did a good job with the installation of the sirens. It's impossible not to hear them. They'd even rattle the eardrums of a deaf man. And the lights seem to penetrate your eyelids. An infernal bright red that heralds the end of the world. You have an hour to stop the countdown.

  You first have to mash a big switch to send the process to a temporary stand-by. Then, the procedure requires that you enter an alphanumeric code of thirty-two characters, which they made me recite ten thousand times before throwing me into the hole. Finally, you go to the scanning screen and show your retina or place your palm on it, whichever you choose. If for some reason you're unable to do this, you can repeat a sequence of five previously memorized words. If, when the alarm sounds, you don't carry out the procedure and Mission Command doesn't act in your place, you can say goodbye to Earth.

  So what kind of diary am I writing?

  The hole's manual is always available in digital format.

  In the last several hours, the belief that I will end my days in here has been born in me. And that these pages will be among the few items not reduced to ashes.

  June 12

  It seems like only yesterday that they arrived.

  Instead, it's already been six months.

  I heard about it on television, like everyone else.

  In the first few hours, the governments tried to contain the news, but people knew there was something wrong in the celestial realm, something that shouldn't be there. If you looked up, you could see a bright spot shining, even in the daytime sky.

  Another civilization had come from who knows where, without any warning. Possibly some government entity knew about it in advance, but, working at AISI (Agency for Internal Security and Information), I should've heard a rumor.

  The next day, a photograph of the alien spaceship, taken from the International Space Station, went around the world. I laughed. Until then, scientists, science fiction filmmakers and psychologists had always wondered how people would react if faced with such an event. Well, the only panic that day was the fastest stock market crash on record. Wall Street had to close for a week.

  How people handled it after that isn't clear. I had no time to follow world events. The agency told me that they had a job for me, and that training would start immediately.

  “You aren't married and have no children,” General Verdecchi said with a hint of satisfaction. “And you shot a lousy terrorist between the eyes without leaving a trace. You have two big beautiful balls, my boy.”

  At forty ye
ars old, I didn't feel like a boy any more, but that shriveled old goat must've seen me that way.

  “You're our man.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “To burn the little green men's asses.”

  June 17

  For a half hour, I've been curled up on the bed, staring into space, waiting for something to happen.

  So here I am again, writing this bullshit.

  Nothing more than a legacy for posterity. If I ever get out of this tomb, I'll throw this diary into the flames and, with it, all of its impressive crap, in the hope of avoiding being teased for ever and ever. I can already imagine my colleagues: they'll make me use the ladies bathroom.

  A diary is for sissies.

  However, no big news from Mission Command.

  Up till now, it's been days of nothing.

  Could the thing with the aliens be an excuse to do experiments on extreme isolation? Or maybe it's punishment for some bullshit in the past?

  No, unfortunately, there really are little green men on that thing in the sky.

  Green men... but who's even seen them?

  No one.

  At least not since they threw me into the hole.

  For all I know, they could be beautiful, like angels, pus-filled monsters or ethereal beings.

  During the initial contact, they were hidden behind a digitized anthropomorphic figure and used a precise duplication of a famous American speaker's voice.

  With all these tricks, I think they're probably not too attractive.

  It may be that people at Command know what they are. I could ask them about the extraterrestrials' looks.

  Stupid move! I already know that they wouldn't tell me. But shouldn't we moles (as I like to call myself and the others in holes) be the first to know everything?

  “No!” Verdecchi would say. “Security first. You have a mission and you must finish it without external influences. Like automatons.”

  “But then, couldn't you have put a fucking robot down here?”

  “You disappoint me, Bastiani. Do you think we want to entrust the fate of the world to four tin heads?”

  Bastiani.

  He's the only one who pronounces the “B” so violently.

  Sometimes, he even calls me by name.

  Sirio.

  Stressing the “S”, like a snake.

  Ugh, I'm tired as hell of writing.

  I'm going to do some push-ups, before checking that the life support still functions properly.

  Then I'll watch one of the movies in the database.

  While waiting for the world to blow up.

  June 18

  There are no smells inside here.

  I think that this is one of the most sterile sites in the world.

  Everything is filtered and sanitized.

  Continuously.

  Peculiar and demeaning.

  I think the water in the shower comes partly from my own urine. We never throw anything away, down below. Everything is filtered and demolecularized.

  Demolecularized?

  I think I invented that.

  Or not.

  I could ask the computer.

  So that whoever wants to can take notice of my blunders down here.

  My handwriting teacher always said: “You write like a dog!”

  Adorable.

  Old grouch.

  She said that I'd never accomplish anything in life.

  In fact, it was she who took those bullets in Iraq, infiltrated terrorist cells, and, finally, held the fate of the planet in her hands.

  However, she was right about the dog analogy, in a way. It's not about being able to write, but about anger.

  One day, I woke up and saw my best friend die.

  I became a rabid dog.

  It was an Al-Qaeda attack.

  Not enough dead comrades in “Operation Ancient Babylon.”

  Cursed Nassirya.

  Because of that, when given the opportunity, I went from being regular Army to military intelligence.

  To become a shadow.

  Invisible.

  Fighting the enemy with his own tactics.

  One of the terrorists.

  That appear suddenly.

  Effective and damned.

  June 20

  I've always been an orphaned outcast.

  I don't remember my parents' faces.

  Maybe one day, here underground, I won't remember any faces, apart from that of Verdecchi and the moles.

  Look where I ended up at age forty.

  The database is a great resource.

  Terabytes of information are always available.

  Movies, videos, photos, articles, books, manuals and videogames.

  The only odd thing is that they were all updated on June 3.

  After that, for me, the world ended.

  Update from Command.

  The rapport between us and the alien species is progressing wonderfully.

  They are not hostile.

  The first landing is expected to be on June twenty-seventh, at 12:00 am, in New York. An alien ship will land in the space in front of the United Nations headquarters.

  Who knows what they'll look like or if they can breathe our air?

  June 21

  I've deluded myself that a lone wolf, like me, has no need for contact.

  Well, I'm wrong.

  I have a soul too.

  Being able to contact the moles is a huge relief. Perhaps what gives me the most peace of mind is not so much the ability to have a relaxing chat, or to compare views on sensitive issues, but the knowledge that at those times when loneliness seizes me, I'll always find someone ready to listen on the other side. Up till now, I haven't abused the privilege and haven't let anyone know what I know.

  We were selected with great care.

  I don't think that being verbose was a useful requisite for the mission.

  Tonight, according to the clock in the hole, we had what the Russian decided to call a “lounge.” All six of us chatted passionately. It was the first time that the screen had to be split into so many boxes.

  The Russian, Igor, seems like a serious type, but every so often, without warning, he comes up with these really funny, but never inappropriate, jokes. With a few shots of vodka, I'll bet he'd be the funniest guy in the world. The others all seem to be the right type for the job, but with a heavy past.

  At one point the conversation became serious.

  It was inevitable that we would discuss the landing. Unfortunately, I found that the others didn't know much more than I did about what Italian Command had just told me.

  It's obvious that these institutions are coordinating communications.

  I wonder if there is a single director for all the Commands, and how much power Verdecchi really has.

  Not even Namiko was aware of the landing.

  In the end, it was just the two of us talking.

  In private mode.

  From aliens, we went to discussing human relationships, to the husbands and wives that we never had, to success stories and the loneliness, including sexual, to which we're constrained.

  “You're very nice” was the last thing that I told her.

  She replied with something in Japanese.

  Mischievous.

  What do I know about the Japanese language?

  Maybe it was just a simple greeting.

  However, before turning the cam to off, she gave me a smile that seemed a bit like a wink.

  Pretty, that Japanese woman.

  June 25

  I find myself inside here, like a rat in a cage, with the objective of exterminating an alien civilization about which I know nothing.

  Exterminate…

  It makes me laugh.

  A bitter smile.

  If an ill-fated event were to occur, like a nuclear disaster, the only certainty we would have would be that we had condemned the Earth to death, and probably all life with it.

  But them?

  The al
iens?

  Perhaps they'd report some damage, maybe even a lot. However, unlike us, they could just restart their ship's engines and go off to greet other worlds.

  The project aims to stop that too. But I don't believe that the little green men are quite so stupid. They braved light years of travel to be destroyed by a backward civilization like ours? Targeting a missile at them would be like an Apache Indian thinking he could destroy a tank with a bow and arrow.

  Why would they have come here with hostile intentions?

  We humans are always ready to judge others by our own yardstick. Who knows how different the space visitors' way of thinking might be. Maybe the concept of war is unknown to them.

  I remember the first time that they addressed us very well, after which occurrence, they remained in orbit for ten days without attempting to send or receive any type of message.

  Disturbing.

  The world was left hanging.

  People spent their time looking upward, hoping not to be surprised by a death ray, or under the illusion that some heavenly angel had descended to deliver us from ignorance.

  Their first message.

  Of peace.

  They justified the long wait by saying that they wanted to avoid an unpleasant misunderstanding, due to a lack of knowledge about our language. Moreover, another concern was that they wanted to deliver their communication only to the proper authorities. This made us ponder their knowledge of social hierarchies and their doubts regarding the unpredictability of the human psyche.

  The words had been accurately calculated, but were not for everyone, at least initially.