“Sir!” said the adjutant as he hurriedly brought in his laptop and placed it on General Gant’s desk, “The New York Mayor is giving her press conference.”

  The recently elected New York city mayor, Karyn Fredayle had been complaining to the General and everyone that would listen, following the latest FOP hunting trip on Martha’s Vineyard. She threatened she would act to ensure such devastation would never happen again, ‘Not on my watch!’ she had declared.

  General Gant and his adjutant watched the livestream with a slowly growing disappointment and frustration.

  “My fellow citizens!” said the Mayor, raising her hands for silence, “We are horrified to learn of the latest atrocity caused during the recent visit of aliens. In our own backyard! At Martha’s Vineyard!”

  The crowd grumbled and yelled appropriate cries of outrage and then stopped when the Mayor restarted her speech.

  “The delightful and picturesque West Tilbury Farmers’ Market was destroyed. Obliterated by gun fire. Not just turning the main pavilion into rubble, but also the homes of several rare Black Throated Gray Warblers were destroyed in multiple titanic explosions! These rare birds are no more and others can no longer return to their homes.”

  The sympathetic crowd sighed as the Mayor wiped away a small tear which had formed near her eyes and continued, “And the local farmers and hobbyists no longer have a place they can share their country produce with neighbours and visitors. American small businesses destroyed!”

  The crowd waited for the Mayor to say something important.

  A reporter yelled a question, “What about the market cleaners and maintenance people that were killed? And the local bird watchers that died in the first of the explosions?”

  The Mayor ignored the question and continued.

  “We all know who has caused this problem! We know New York will have to step up and be the adults in the room.”

  The crowd cheered as they were praised.

  “Why has no-one tried to talk with the aliens?” the Mayor asked, looking directly at the cameras in emphasis.

  “We have!” yelled General Gant at the screen, “They won’t answer!”

  “No one!” repeated the Mayor.

  “All we do is shoot them whenever and wherever they appear!”

  The crowd roared in agreement. There had never been a hunt in a major metropolitan area. Many knew of hunts from various online sources and occasional official broadcasts, but the majority of city dwelling people had no personal experience of hunts. Disbelief with official stories was high.

  “An alien appears,” said Mayor Karyn moving her hand from high and down onto the podium, “And within a short time humans with guns shoot at them. No wonder they aren’t talking to us!”

  The reporter resisted the Mayor’s security team and tried again, “Two of the ARRG troopers died and five were seriously wounded! What about them?”

  The Mayor’s security grabbed the reporter and dragged him away, struggling under their tight grasp and hands over his mouth.

  “Who is responsible?” the Mayor repeated.

  General Gant stopped his angry retort when he realised where she was going. He turned to his adjutant, “Rhett, is she going to say WE are causing the deaths and destruction?”

  Before Rhett could reply, Mayor Karyn answered.

  “Yes! We are at fault! We are causing the death and destruction of these so-called hunts!”

  General Gant slapped his hand on his forehead and groaned.

  “To be precise, ARRG is at fault! Those men with guns rush to any visiting aliens and shoot them. No communication!”

  “No communication!” repeated the crowd.

  Someone in the crowd yelled, “We don’t need no stinking badges!”

  “From today,” announced the Mayor, “All Rapid Response forces are banned from New York City. The so called ARRG HQ will move out of New York. I invite any aliens to visit New York and received a proper friendly New York welcome!”

  The crowd yelled and cheered.

  “Hello. We mean you no harm!” Mayor Karyn yelled.

  General Gant’s intercom buzzed. He pressed the answer button, “Yes?”

  “Sir, we have just received a call. The New York ARRG team is to pull out of New York. The Mayor’s department just called, very insistent.”

  Sighing, the General replied, “I just heard Mayor Karyn. Tell them to consolidate with the Boston ARRG team.”

  “Yes, Sir,” said the voice on the intercom before cutting the connection.

  “I hope this idiocy isn’t catching,” said the General.

  ****

  The New York ARRG team captain placed his hand on Eric’s shoulder, “It’s OK, Eric. You can stay here even if we are no longer based in the city.”

  Eric sat in his laboratory, surrounded by a collection of electronic and plastic components and partly assembled bits of equipment. His fellow researchers had left for the day and Captain Paige had dropped in prior to his departure with the New York ARRG HQ to Boston.

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  Eric looked up at Captain Paige and said, “How can Mayor Karyn not understand?”

  “It’s easy to deny reality if you aren’t impacted by it,” said Captain Paige, as he moved a nearby stool and sat next to Eric, “Many city folk have never been to the country. Calling to ban cows makes sense if you don’t understand where milk comes from and how it ends up in the supermarket.”

  “But I saw what has been happening!” said Eric, “We tried to communicate in so many ways. Johnny Cartwright even rigged up the FOP communicator to a broadcaster and sent messages such as ‘Greetings. We mean you no harm’, but nothing. Not even an acknowledgement from them.”

  “I have been talking with some of our experts, and also had a chat with Padre Pacioli, attached to the Aussie ARRG team,” said Captain Paige, “They have a working theory that as Earth is considered ‘Non Compatible’ as they call us, we can’t be communicated with. We’re not people so won’t be communicated with. If that legal and psychological wall is ever broken, it would have repercussions.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Eric, confused.

  “People here sometimes behave the same way. If it’s legal, then it’s OK,” explained Captain Paige. Eric was young and hadn’t seen much of the outside world. Studies, college, research at Cartwright Industries and more, he had been concentrating on other things.

  Captain Paige looked directly at Eric, eye to eye, “Now son,” he said, “Don’t worry. Although we are officially now based in Boston, many of us live in New York. They have their gear stowed safely at their homes and will be ready. Besides, hunts have never happened in large metropolises like New York. It has always been in remote or smaller areas.”

  “But Martha’s Vineyard has twenty thousand people,” said Eric.

  “And up to two hundred thousand in peak tourist season, I know,” said Captain Paige, “But the hunt there was in a relatively remote part of the island. We think whoever is directing the hunt locations is being clever about it.”

  “So it’s not really a problem?” said Eric.

  “I’m sure that the Mayor is performing for her audience,” nodded Captain Paige, “It’s easy to ban things that won’t happen in your area. Like banning nuclear power plants inside a fully built up area. Or saying your food is ‘toxic free’ implying others may not be.”

  Captain Paige stood up and patted Eric on the shoulder. Looking around at the equipment he asked, “Have you made your communicator blocker yet?”

  Eric brightened and said, “Almost, Captain! Let me show you.”

  He pushed aside a collection of clutter and brought out a small red box with a couple of buttons on it.

  He showed it and explained, “The red button blocks the communicator signals. The green button turns the device on and off.”

  “What’s the range?” Captain Paige asked, accepting the device from Eric and turning it over in his hands.

  “Only one hundred yards or so at the moment. To increase the range I need more power, but more power means more interference which stops the blocking transmission,” Eric frowned and waved his arms indicating the room of equipment and parts, “But I’m working on it!”

  “Excellent,” said Captain Paige, handing the device back to Eric, “I’ll catch up later. Now don’t worry. It’s all just politics. There won’t be any hunts in New York.”

  Eric nodded and waved as Captain Paige left. He had seen the FOPs in action and while most hunts were as the Captain had said, in remote areas, the hunt in Nantucket Island was different. They had security guards. And then the one on Martha’s Vineyard was very close.

  Shaking his head, he went back to work. How could he increase the signal?

  ****

  Sergeant Todd welcomed Captain Paige to the Boston ARRG headquarters. The New York ARRG team was a larger group than Boston, so everyone had to cram into the existing facilities until some more facilities could be sourced or built.

  “I thought there were more of you?” asked the Sergeant, looking at the troopers moving into the recreation hall.

  Captain Paige smiled, “Ah, yes. There are. We have instituted some ‘Work from home’ rules, following another of the Mayor’s initiatives. She said more people should work from home, so I have assigned two squads on and two squads off in rotation. Our job is providing protection, so technically, they can do that ‘working from home’.”

  Sergeant Todd laughed, with Corporal Miller smiling behind them.

  Once he had quieted, the Sergeant said, “I gather you didn’t inform the Mayor of the new policy in line with her rules?”

  “No need to, “ answered the Captain solemnly, “This is an internal matter. We have moved the New York ARRG HQ outside of New York. All according to the rules.”

  Sergeant Todd and Corporal Miller nodded. They understood how to get things done within a bureaucracy.

  “Besides,” added the Captain, “It’s all political anyway. Hunts never happen in a big city.”

  ****

  Monsignor Jones looked up at the large screen showing the map of the world with coloured dots representing the hunts. He was based at his Chaplain Headquarters in the Vatican and was in contact with the chaplains accompanying ARRG teams across the planet. As they were not from any particular nation, information was shared from the majority of countries.

  Green dots meant a hunt with no human contact. Yellow meant contact but no human deaths and Red meant contact with human deaths. It was a bit like a traffic light system.

  His assistant Phillips had added some more colours for context. A White dot and a number represented aliens killed and a black dot meant total hunter party killed. There were a lot of black dots around the United States with a scattering around the rest of the planet. Every time there was a white or black dot, an accompanying blue dot appeared. That was when the Hunter security team arrived to retrieve hunter survivors or bodies.

  “Monsignor?” said Phillips, looking closely at his monitor, “Did you read the daily Scorecard from last night?”

  Phillips had designed an automated system to send a nightly ‘Scorecard’ of all the statistics with a data table and graphs. This was distributed to all ARRG teams that had provided information and was the only report compiling statistics from every country. The report was very useful for researchers trying to determine patterns in the alien hunts.

  “I did,” replied the Monsignor, “What should I have noticed, Phillips?”

  Phillips gestured to his screen and the Monsignor stepped over to watch over Phillips’ shoulder at the monitor. Phillips pointed at a graph, “This is a graph of hunts over time. You can see we have had a couple of gaps, followed by a spike and then back to a steady level. It’s almost as if they had a budget of how many hunts a day they want to run.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the Monsignor, “We discussed this before. Father Pacioli’s guests have told us the hunts are organised by Hunting Tours Incorporated. They sound like a typical trans national corporation on Earth. Lots of budgets and procedures. We pretty much agree on that.”

  “Ahh,” said Phillips, changing one of the report filters, “Now look at this.”

  The report changed and just showed two dots for each hunt, red and green.

  “What are these dots for?” asked the Monsignor.

  “Green is a hunt, Red is a hunter casualty,” said Phillips, “I thought I would show the report as if I was a company director.”

  Monsignor smiled. That was an excellent point. Try to think like the other side. A bit of Sun Tzu’s Art of War ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles’ type of thing.

  “The Red dots are increasing,” said the Monsignor.

  “Exactly,” said Phillips cheerfully, “They were pretty random until we instituted the Global Warning System, here, and red dots increase dramatically,” Phillips pointed at a vertical line on the graph. Then he pointed to the next vertical line, “And here is when the satellites were finally removed and the GWS was less effective in remote areas, the ones where hunts were more likely.”

  “The Red dots dropped, but now they are increasing again,” said the Monsignor, realising what he was seeing.

  “And I don’t think they like the Red dots. Probably bad for business. I reckon the rising red dots is why they arranged for The Brick to clean up the satellites,” said Phillips.

  “Something is coming,” said the Monsignor, standing up.

  “Phillips, send an urgent copy of this newest presentation. Add it to your daily scorecard,” instructed Monsignor Jones, “We may not be able to do much to stop it, but it will encourage the ARRG teams to not be complacent.”