05

Machinations

While the core group of humans attempting to preserve humanity were continuing their discussion, another meeting took place elsewhere. This one was far more covert than the meeting among the erstwhile leadership that was now in charge of the colony of survivors manning the lunar complex.

This meeting was between less than a dozen of the survivors, all huddled in a closed door meeting in one of the population sleeping zones that had been designated during the time they were all transported. Everything that had happened to the survivors so far in the lunar complex was a sore point among these people, and those of like-mind.

The nature of the meeting meant that no names were discussed. One of the attendees, a man who designated himself with the letter A, forcefully interjected himself among the group when it was clear to him, that these were dissatisfied with what was happening in the complex. It was an opportunity he took with enthusiasm, and a certain disdain for the perceived lack of intelligence among these survivors.

He was different from the others, for while he had the skinny, emaciated appearance of the survivors around him, he was naturally built that way. For him, his appearance was less malnutrition, and more metabolism. It also meant his development was far more advanced than those he now shared a room with. The reason was simple. He, like a very small number of other survivors wrest from the Earth, had a comfortable existence in sealed-off shelters that had never been exposed to the surface in more than fifty years since the first warnings of nuclear attack had sounded. He had never suffered the depredations of surface life as the others in the room had suffered, and he never would have. If anyone was really paying attention to him, his appearance, while seemingly as hardened as the others surrounding him, was the result of more than fifty years of climate-controlled living, rather than a scant twenty-thirty years of hard survival on the surface. If anyone was paying attention, they would have noticed the lack of conditions such as rickets, deficiencies in everything other than exposure to Vitamin D from the sun, and they would have noticed that his teeth were far too clean, even if they were not as perfectly aligned as American orthodontistry would have demanded pre-war.

But no-one had noticed. The survivors did not pay much attention to the differences at the time because they lacked the focus and the curiosity that was needed, and because he offered them something they badly wanted.

Someone to blame for all of their problems.

As for the returning members of the mission that had obviously been sent out over fifty years before, Agent A did not know why they had not noticed, or maybe they had, and they kept it to themselves. Either way, he intended to capitalize on their lack of attention.

His intellect would be comparable to any one of those pompous assholes that had lived a life of luxury aboard their spacecraft. He had the political instincts of a finely honed, if inexperienced, political figure from the United States of America back in the twenty-first century, and the guile of a covert operative. Both of these were taught to him by his father, the only member of his family to have survived long enough to get to their custom-built shelter, and the man who taught him how to blend in with the topside survivors if their shelter environment had ever been compromised.

But the shelter was practically impenetrable from anything short of a direct missile strike, which had never happened. Such fortunate happenstance was because his location had been kept off the records, not even allowed to be revealed to the intelligence community his father had been a part of, such was the innate paranoia of the man.

Most likely, this was what had made him a superlative covert operative when there was such a thing as the Central Intelligence Agency. It was also what made him start planning to build their fallout shelter, almost two years in advance of the attacks. He knew which way things were going even before the foundations had been laid for the ship that had last departed the Sol system. A did not know the exact details, only that five ships had successfully departed the system, and only one had come back so far.

Had he been left undisturbed in his bespoke shelter, he would have had enough provisions to last his remaining life, which would have gone on for another fifty or sixty years with his carefully-controlled exercise and dietary regimen, without ever having to venture on to the surface. He had been alone for a few years, since his father had passed on, and he preferred it that way.

But then the returning humans changed all of that.

One minute, he was sat comfortably in his shelter, enjoying a little time to himself, watching via the few remaining satellites in Earth orbit what was going on on the surface, the next, he found himself in another concrete shelter, with none of the creature comforts he had grown accustomed to, suddenly surrounded by masses of bodies, all afraid out of their minds.

His response was much like the others at first. The surprise and shock at the sudden change of location caused him to have the first bout of panic he had ever been aware of. He quickly mastered it, though, and began assessing his environment. It didn't take long to fit in with the others, and start to absorb whispered conversations among those around him. This allowed him to get up to speed on what the hell was going on.

Now, he had plans. He was going to build himself a miniature plutocracy, with himself as the central figure, and a circle of lackeys he could call upon to be the public face of his machinations.

He was going to take control, and overthrow these space humans, and then he was going to expel the aliens from their system.

"No names in this meeting," A told the others. "Call me A. No, that's not an initial for my real name." He then pointed to each of them in turn. "B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J and K." He then looked at each of them again. "Remember these initials well, people, because we will not be using anything else to identify ourselves from this point forward. If you cannot abide by these conditions, get out of this room now, and I'll find someone to replace you."

He waited, somewhat impatiently. While he knew that some of these people needed time to process what he was saying to them due to diminished mental capacity thanks to a lifetime of malnutrition and a complete absence of a formal education, he didn't like it nonetheless. Of course, he would be a poor covert agent in the old world if he gave away his impatience.

Eventually, everyone seemed to understand, and they all slowly nodded. It was just as well that these people were all from the non-coastal areas of the United States. People from Washington D.C had already been wiped out more or less utterly, when the second wave of nuclear attacks took place. Most of the West Coast were unlikely to be receptive to his ideas, and might actively attempt to interfere with his plans, and so he had made sure to avoid their presence here, today. Those in attendance today represented some of the strongest physically that he could dredge up from the dregs in the shelter, while also being some of the least intelligent. As frustrating as it was to have to deal with people you had to hand hold through everything, it meant they were less likely to question or countermand his orders.

"Good," he told them. "As of this moment, we are the resistance."