Hostile Intent Read online

another planet.” she chortled. “Okay then smarty pants, how do you explain this, it’s not a satellite TV channel and nobody makes microwave video sender units so it’s obviously being transmitted from space. Oh, and you’re a language expert, you know everything there is to know about all the different languages. Did you recognise the text headings on the top of the screen?” replied Harry getting steamed up. She remained silent. “There you are then, I must be right! They’re planning an invasion! Why do you think Earth was shown on that transmission?” “Oh my God Harry, you can’t be serious! I hope this isn’t true.” mumbled Julie. “So do I.” said Harry worriedly.

  The Ministry of Defence

  He talked Julie into driving him to the railway station that afternoon. He got a taxi from the other end and arrived at the M.O.D building after a ten minute ride. “They’ll probably have a good laugh and tell me to get lost when I show them the DVD.” he mumbled to himself as he walked through the doors. He went to a desk where a frumpy looking secretary sat manicuring her nails. She gave him a bit of a funny look when he explained what he was there for and picked up a telephone and spoke very quietly into it. He was shown into an office and sat waiting for what seemed like ages. Eventually, a distinguished looking army officer walked in smothered in medals, carrying a brief case.

  “Good morning, uh Harry isn’t it? I’m General Walker, but you can call me Jim.” he said as he shook his hand and smiled. Harry handed him the DVD a bit sheepishly and he walked over to the corner of the room and inserted it into the player. The recording played through showing an alien, who seemed to be describing a planned attack on Earth to his viewers and getting quite excited about it. He stopped the recording and sat looking at Harry with his hands clasped and a serious expression on his face. There was a moment of silence and Jim said “Where did you get this recording Harry?”

  Harry told him he was an electronics enthusiast, and explained how he’d constructed a microwave receiver and added, with a quiet embarrassed laugh, that he was using an army surplus satellite dish to pick up the signals. “Follow me, I’d like to show you something.” said Jim as he opened a door politely allowing Harry to go through first. They walked endlessly through dingy corridors until they reached a door with a plastic sign fixed to it reading ‘TOP SECRET, AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY’

  Jim used a swipe-card on the door and they entered a huge complex bristling with computers. Harry gazed goggle-eyed at all the high-tech equipment stacked everywhere his eyes could see. There were row upon row of computers, and enormous video screens fixed to the walls. Various staff sat at computer terminals, looking engrossed in their work. Harry looked up and noticed with great surprise that one of the huge screens was displaying the identical images that he had recorded.

  “Yes, we’ve known about this for some time now. One of our technical team picked the signal up about three months ago and since then we’ve been on high alert.” said Jim when he noticed Harry staring at the screen. “The transmission hasn’t altered since then. When it does, we’ve got trouble, big trouble.” he said, soberly. They both walked back to the office and sat down looking grimly at each other. “Harry, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to swear secrecy. More than that, you’ll have to sign a form in regard to the Top Secret Act. We can’t have this story leaking out, it would cause public mayhem!” said Jim very seriously. “Does anybody else know about this?” he asked. Harry thought about it and said “Yes, I’m afraid so, my wife and a next door neighbour.” Jim said, with a frown “We’ll have to think of some yarn to tell them. I don’t want to appear rude Harry but women love gossip and we can’t risk the story spreading.” They decided that a foreign program transmission reflected back from the Moon might be just plausible enough. That’s the story he would tell when he returned home, and hoped they would both swallow it. He signed a Top Secret declaration and said goodbye to Jim. “We’ll be in touch if we need you Harry. Oh, and here’s my telephone number if you need to contact me urgently.” said Jim, handing over a card. Harry put the card in his pocket and left the building mentally exhausted.

  Story Time

  He arrived home by taxi, just as it was starting to get dark and told his story to Julie, who lucky for him, believed every word of it. He told Julie that he felt pretty stupid and wished he’d never bothered to go up there. They had dinner and joked about the alien invasion and how absurd it was. Harry felt quite relieved that she could forget about it so easily.

  He saw Ricky the next day and spun him the same yarn. At first, Ricky wasn’t quite so convinced with his story but considered it a possibility, and they both left it at that. Harry went down to his garage workshop and stood just staring at the receiver for several minutes before he realised he was doing it. The alien broadcast kept playing over and over in his mind. Harry thought “Damned Green Men, showing off their weaponry, gloating and pointing at Earth like it was some kiddie’s toy to be crushed.”

  The receiver was powered up and Harry spun the tuning dial until he found a sci-fi channel. “Usual stuff.” he muttered “Another world getting a pounding by Federation war ships.” He stood transfixed for a moment or two. “Yes, that’s the answer.” he thought, with sudden realisation. “Make them think we’ve got something even better up our sleeves.” He made a fifteen minute recording of the film and then started studying the circuit diagrams for his receiver. After twenty minutes he had scribbled a design for a transmitter module that could be incorporated in his box of tricks.

  He found all the components he required in his ‘spares’ box and started soldering them on a circuit board. After about an hour the new module was housed in the receiver and a TX-RX switch fitted on the front panel. Now he needed to know if it was working. He tuned the receiver to a quiet part of the waveband and rotated the switch to TX. A loud thump was heard on the garage roof and he went outside to find out what it was. A pigeon had dropped out of the sky, probably killed by the beamed microwave signal. “The poor bugger must have been roasted.” he thought sadly, and rushed back in the garage to turn the switch back to RX.

  A Plan is Hatched

  Harry pulled the card out of his pocket that he’d been given earlier and punched in the number on his mobile phone. He spoke with Jim for quite a while, explaining his idea. “It’s worth a try Harry, we’ve got nothing to lose.” said Jim, without much conviction. “Okay, I’ll set things up and give it a shot.” said Harry, feeling quite excited.

  “We’ll be monitoring the broadcast in the meantime. Good luck Harry.” Then Jim hung up leaving Harry with quite a responsibility on his shoulders. Harry then tuned the receiver to the alien broadcast and made a note of the frequency. He pressed the play button on the DVD recorder and rotated the switch to TX, to broadcast the recording to their planet.

  He watched as the film clip was playing. It was very realistic. It depicted scores of Federation warships attacking a planet, with the defending ships being totally wiped out. After just a few minutes the planet glowed a smouldering dull red as it was continually bombarded, destroying all life. “That’ll give them something to worry about.” he thought. “When they see that they’ll think twice about invading Earth, even though it was just a film.” Luckily there were no commercial breaks, which might have given the game away, and the special effects were very nicely done. Harry beamed the broadcast regularly for another six hours.

  Broadcast Terminated

  It was late afternoon when Harry stopped the beamed microwave transmission. Luckily Julie was seeing some friends that evening and was too busy getting ready to worry about what he was up to. She would probably leave the house without even saying goodbye. That suited him fine as he didn’t want any interruptions.

  He turned the receiver back on and spun the tuning dial to the frequency of the alien broadcast. The broadcast was nowhere to be found; just a blank screen, even after checking and double checking the figures he had written down earlier. “This looks promising.” he thought. His mobile phone startled him as
it chirped and he saw that it was Jim calling from the M.O.D offices.

  He said “Hello Jim, anything new?” Jim replied with excitement “It looks like our ruse worked Harry. The alien transmission stopped twenty minutes ago! We’re all ecstatic down here!” They both laughed at the idea of the aliens being scared to death by one of their sci-fi films. Jim said jokingly “If you ever need any army surplus electronics give me a call.” “I might take you up on that. Cheers Jim.”

  Harry went back indoors with a huge smile on his face. Julie was just putting her coat on. “Is everything alright Harry, you look quite happy?” she mewed sarcastically. Harry replied, grinning “Yes everything is fine. In fact it couldn’t be better sweetheart.”

  The End

 

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