Retread Shop 1: First Contact

by T. Jackson King

  A pause.

  “I did,” said the synthetic voice of the only self-aware computer in the Compact. “At seven seconds. It didn’t work. The Humans must have disconnected it from the drive. I used a starboard antimatter beam projector to destroy the intruder. A moment.”

  Feeling impatient, angry and frustrated, T’Klose waved back the approach of his staff with one wing-tip. The Humans had attacked. And Hekar itself had been the target. Just as he prophesied. There would be no turning back now.

  Hekar’s voice came back on-line. “Spectral analysis shows the leased cargo ship carried a cobalt jacket around its fusion device. Tritium enrichment noted. Estimated yield of the thermonuclear bomb that was attached to the ship’s drive is 73 megatons. The cobalt jacket would have caused massive transuranic contamination.”

  T’Klose’s left hand pressed the ship’s Emergency alarm. All up and down Hekar’s l60 kilometer-length, auto-systems would be responding, sealing off sections, shutting down dangerous reactions, conveying Conflict Scenario instructions to certain sapients.

  The Humans must pay!

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  President Heather McDonnell sat in her seat at the table in the buried National Command Authority room under the East Wing of the White House. She looked out at the people gathered before her. Sitting at the table were National Security Adviser Edward Luttwak, National Science Adviser Amy Sung, Secretary of Defense Harold Smith, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Lucius Kelsey Whitehead, Vice President Alexander Kinsey and CIA Chief Loretta King. The NSC staff were outside, digging up any data they could find on the disaster. Like two years before, several participants were following the CNN SystemNet broadcast by way of ear buds and their Sanyo wrist TVs. The date was August 29, 2052, and she had a deep sense of foreboding.

  “Ed, any word on what the Compact people at Hekar are going to do in response to this attempted thermonuke attack?” she asked, ignoring the silent wallscreen that showed the usual crowd of talking heads and a few scientists.

  Ed had white streaks in his beard, when formerly it had been all black. Coping with global economic melt-downs, jihadist attacks on American DOS plants and failing to catch that bastard Hartman would do that to a man. Or a woman, she thought.

  The man grimaced. “Madame President, no word yet from Hekar, from Sargon or from the Liaison Jack Harrigan. And nothing on the SystemNet beyond what you see on the wall.”

  “They failed in the attempt,” Heather said, repeating what they all knew. “But the Compact will backtrack the cargo vessel, get imagery of the people aboard it, scan the Internet and our databases for image recognition yields, and quickly learn the identity of the people who tried to blow up their starship. My bet is Hartman is involved.”

  “Stupid idiots,” Kinsey said from his seat to her left. “Don’t they realize this attack will cause the aliens to come after their buddies?”

  “I think that’s what they hope to happen. They’d love the chance to ignite a global war.” Heather looked to Loretta. “Gal, where the fuck is William Jennings Hartman? If we could capture him and put him on trial, that might put us right with the aliens.”

  Loretta King also had white streaks in her formerly charcoal black hair. While her curls were still as luxurious as the hair of the Vice President, the woman’s face had more lines in it than the Mississippi had tributaries. Her gray eyes met Heather’s.

  “Madame President, I don’t know. The bastard built up a pile of money from his worldwide vidcasts, before the aliens melted down his Tower of God’s Word. That has allowed him to still operate despite going totally covert.” The woman who daily juggled jihadist attacks, fundamentalist Christian demos, and kept track of several hundred spies from China, Russia and India, looked down at her LinkPad. She tapped it briefly. “We’ve found a cell of Penitents in Memphis. We’ve been watching them in the hopes one of them would give us a link to Hartman. And we blocked a chemical bomb attack on Fort Lauderdale by the Libyan Protectorate jihadists. The Coast Guard sniffed the chems and sank the ship 20 miles out from the coast.” Loretta looked up. “We are working with our sister agencies in the UK, the EU, Japan, China and Brazil to find Hartman. He’s somewhere on the planet. We know that, thanks to—”

  “Look!” yelled Harold as he pointed at the wallscreen. “It’s Hartman!”

  Heather looked at the wallscreen at the far end of the room. The CNN SystemNet logo was still showing in the upper corner, but an inset image showed the rugged face of Hartman, sitting in a white-walled room and facing them. Someone tapped on the sound.

  “We are bringing you this vidcast from Pastor William Jennings Hartman of the Church of the Revealed Word of Christ that showed up minutes ago on YouTube,” said the woman announcer, whom Heather recognized as Lesley Ann Jacobs. “We cannot verify the authenticity of the vidcast but since it relates to the attack on Hekar starship, we are sharing it with viewers.”

  The image of Hartman grew to fill most of the vidcast screen. The man’s deep bass voice echoed through the room.

  “May Christ the Redeemer be Praised!” Hartman said loudly, his brown eyes looking out at them. “Today our Penitent members attacked the devil-ship of the alien demons who defy the literal Word of God in the Bible! Do not believe the lies of the world media, we believe thousands of demons were killed as our craft rammed into the devil-ship!” Hartman looked aside, then tapped a LinkPad in front of him. “Here are the faces of the five men who gave their lives so that Christ might redeem all humanity from the lies of evolution and secular humanism! Believe in the literal word of the Bible! Reject the false religions of Islam, the Jews, the Hindus and the stupid Christian evangelicals! Today the Word of God struck the face of Satan with a shining staff of light! Today is the first day in our effort to reclaim Earth as the home of humans like you and me! Join us! Join our crusade against the demons from space! Whoever dies attacking these demons will be reborn in Paradise!”

  Hartman’s image shrank and Jacobs took center place. “That is the totality of the recent YouTube vidcast by the rebel theologian William Jennings Hartman, who is wanted for murder, treason and larceny by American authorities, and by other national police.” The woman looked aside, then back. “We hope to make contact with our Senior International Correspondent Jack Harrigan, once we reach him on the asteroid starship Hekar. When we do, we will bring you and the entire system the latest word on Compact alien reaction to this deadly attack. Several defense authorities have told us the cargo spaceship contained a thermonuclear bomb that detonated 200 kilometers short of contact with Hekar, despite Hartman’s claim otherwise. Joining me in analyzing this dramatic news is former National Security Agency analyst Lorilane Smith, who is unrelated to the Secretary of Defense. Lorilane—”

  The sound cut off. Heather looked to her CIA chief. “Loretta, get in touch with FBI’s Metzger. And Interpol. Find out who those five men are, and if any are Americans.”

  “Will do,” Loretta said, tapping her LinkPad. “Do we grab the Memphis Penitent cell?”

  “Yes,” Heather said. “We can at least protect the people of Memphis from an alien attack. And maybe one of the Penitents will have news of Hartman’s whereabouts. Uh, use the FBI to grab them, not your agents. I prefer to avoid accusations of the CIA putting Americans into cells.”

  Admiral Lucius Kelsey Whitehead cursed profanely. “That attack tears it. The Compact will attack any Penitent cell they can find anywhere in the world. And they will go all out to find Pastor Hartman. Madame, in view of the Memphis cell news, do we go to DEFCON 3 status?”

  Heather didn’t answer immediately. The Compact globeship attack against Hartman’s headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, in retaliation for the attempted assassination of Sargon by Henri Duvalier, had happened when they had no means of detecting Compact spaceships. That had now changed, thanks to the infrared targeting satellites that were in low Earth orbit. While the alien ships were still nearly invisible to milspec radar, the geeks at DARPA had come up with the
infrared targeting sats. Which in truth were just a jump up from the infrared nuke monitoring sats of 2010. The Air Force Space Command at Peterson had successfully tracked every visiting Compact spaceship for the last fifteen months, from low orbit down to the surface.

  “Lucius, what is the intercept ability of the 21st Space Wing?”

  “The Aurora spaceplanes are fitted with infrared heat-seekers plus fire-and-forget missiles,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “They can launch from McChord AFB in Washington state, from Peterson in Colorado and from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Plus we have the hydrogen-fluorine laser bases and anti-ABM interceptor rockets at Minot, El Paso, Edwards and Wright-Patterson. Plus there’s the Air National Guard F-35 interceptors at plenty of other locations.”

  Heather was pleased her directive to expand the launch sites for the Aurora spaceplanes had been implemented so quickly. “Lucius, hold off on DEFCON 3 for now.” She looked to the black face of her Veep. “Alexander, you’ve been to Goddard, to the Tycho base and out to Ceres. You’ve met this Sargon and other alien types. What do you recommend? Do we defend our national airspace, or do we accept an alien strike within it that goes against Penitent cells?”

  The man frowned. “I recommend we accept any alien strike within CONUS airspace, so long as we receive assurances from Sargon that collateral injury to non-Penitents will be avoided.” Ed cursed under his breath. The man had always been more pro-military than the serving vets. “Congress will denounce you for it. The Gompers will yell for impeachment. We have enough votes in the Senate to block any such move.”

  Heather looked to her chief of geeks. “Amy, do you think our spaceplanes have a chance against a Compact fighter craft? Or our lasers? With targeting aid from the sats?”

  The woman looked down at her LinkPad, then up, her expression tense. “They have a chance to damage one or two Compact fighters. But they may face more than space-to-air fighters. Our spooks in the Human Compound report the Compact aliens have large combat spaceships similar to our naval cruisers and battleships. Madame, the best weapon humanity has to defend our planetary airspace are the ten laser and nuke torp battlestations. They are outfitted with top-level targeting sensors, autofire ability and thermonukes. If they can take out a small comet, they should be able to take out a fighter craft. Maybe even one of the larger combat ships.”

  “Which will require the cooperation of the UN Space Authority people,” Heather said. But should they fight? That was still the question. Attacking an alien had proved to be a losing proposition. Between the protective hoverbots that guarded every alien visiting on Earth, and the hundreds of alien space-to-air fighter craft that their histories said they possessed, the Compact aliens had not suffered further attacks. Until now. She looked to her Secretary of Defense. “Harold, what if we propose a mutual defense alliance with the Compact people? Offer to send our jets and spaceplanes against any target they attack? That way, it will be like a space version of NATO.”

  The former Boeing exec’s somber look brightened. “I like that. It avoids the impeachment issue and falls within your authority as President to make alliances against terrorists. The Senate will have to approve the treaty, whenever you get around to sending it to them.”

  Heather smiled briefly. Harold had always been someone who could follow her thinking. And her scheming. She looked to her National Science Advisor. “Amy, I’m putting this mutual defense treaty in your hands, cause you’re the one who knows space stuff better than the rest of us. Work with State on the language. But get me a draft treaty in six hours. I want to sign it and broadcast it to this Sargon before the Compact strikes any Earth target.”

  “Will do, Madame President.”

  Heather McDonnell picked up her LinkPad, stuffed her iPhone 14 in a jacket pocket and headed out of the room, aiming for a public appearance at her granddaughter’s soccer game. The 24/7 worldwide media would see her, would make guesses about the meaning of her attendance, and meanwhile, the nation would not worry about aliens attacking the United States of America.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!”

  Jack jerked awake next to Colleen. He sat up, waving the lights on and blearily looked at the digital clock on the opposite wall. Two a.m., August 29, 2052. What a time for a fire alarm!

  Then he remembered.

  He was inside an alien starship in a giant cavern that had been fashioned into a modest simulacrum of Earth. Not a real habitat, but there were some Italianate, Ming Dynasty and Greek Revival buildings sitting below the one kilometer high roof of the Human Compound. And the aliens didn’t have fire drills. They had a self-aware computer to take care of such things.

  “Jack! What is it?” asked Colleen as she turned over on her left side to look at him. Ignoring her delectably nude body, he looked out the apartment window at the park below. People were running about.

  “I don’t know Colleen. Some kind of alarm. But I didn’t realize this apartment had one. Maybe it’s left over from the last Compact use of the cavern.” He thought for a moment, rationality striving to come to the surface of a sleep-fogged mind. “Let’s ask Hekar itself. That’s what these damn comdisks are for anyway.”

  “HEKAR! What’s the alarm about?” he yelled at the comdisk sitting on a stone nightstand next to their waterbed. Nickel-iron rock, he bemusedly thought, had many uses. Particularly when you had millions of tons of it around. Pulling on his jeans, he stared at the golden disk. No answer. There had never been a time that Hekar hadn’t instantly responded to any inquiry from any sapient, human or alien. What was happening?

  “Please pardon the delay, sapient Jack,” came the smoothly urbane voice of the alien computer. “I was momentarily preoccupied with emergency duties that occupied all my facilities for a few seconds.” Preoccupied? Sargon had said it was impossible to overload the Core computer. “Now, what was your inquiry, Jack?”

  “What’s happening? Why the alarm?” he asked, pulling on a yellow and green shirt. Colleen’s fashion taste had begun to infect him

  “There was an attack on Hekar, Liaison Jack. Conflict Command T’Klick T’Klose activated the shipwide alert alarm.”

  What! “Who attacked us?” he asked as Colleen hurriedly pulled on her jumpsuit.

  Hekar’s cultured voice came from the tiny comdisk. “We think a group of Libyan Protectorate jihadists, Church of the Revealed Word of Christ Penitents and NeoMarxist European terrorists just tried to ram us in a hijacked Compact cargo ship.”

  “Well, don’t stop there! What happened? Anybody hurt? Any news from Earth?” he angrily asked. Colleen now stood beside him dressed in her MacLaren Clan jumpsuit, green eyes wide with shock. Together, they stood hand-in-hand before an alien oracle. Only this time the gods really did control lightning.

  And thunder.

  And life and death.

  “No one was killed or injured and the starship is intact,” Hekar responded. “Apparently this was a repeat of the Orly hijack attempt that failed six months earlier. Only this time it worked. And the terrorists somehow knew the daily protocol for cargo vessels,” Hekar explained. “They got within 700 kilometers before a Strelka craft gave them an emotion-check flyby. When the Strelka flashed the alarm and challenge, the cargo ship put on a burst of speed that let them dodge the initial laser fire from Brilliant-Green-Sky. And from the ship’s laser pods. I ended their attack run a few milliseconds later with an antimatter beam from a starboard projector. However,” the neutral, factual voice of the computer paused in imitation of organic speech processes, “the rear section of the ship detonated in a thermonuclear fireball. Spectroscopic scanning of the fireball showed the ship to be a multi-megaton ‘dirty’ hydrogen bomb consisting of a thin jacket of cobalt around the fusion bomb casing.” Colleen turned and buried her head in his shoulder, crying. “It appears your Human terrorists intended to ram Hekar, induce a destructive compression wave with the fusion explosion, and contaminate large parts of the ship with radioactive co
balt.”

  Holy Shit! “I’m glad you and the Strelka stopped those bastards!”

  “Liaison Jack, why would a group of humans be so irrational that they would use their own deaths to hurt and sicken 32,000 other beings?” asked the now very alien voice of the starship.

  Jack turned to look down at Colleen’s weepy eyes, holding her, feeling helpless. She looked back at him, as stunned as he. As confused. Why indeed?

  Over the last two years the pace of planetary chaos had quickened. South Sudanese animists had bombed the main mosque in Khartoum. The Sri Lanka Socialist government had been overthrown by the Tamil Revolutionary Front. The New Palestinian Movement had launched suicide bomb attacks against “Zionist” targets in Milwaukee, Fort Lauderdale and Denver. Other crazies had also added to the mayhem. A twenty-man terror team of NeoMarxists had attacked a Strelka research station in Brazil, and there had been the hijack attempt on an indentured French Compact ship at Paris’ Orly Airport. The Strelka had turned the NeoMarxists into shreds of flesh, but only the presence of an empathic Strelka visiting the French Trade delegation had blocked the hijack attempt by Libyan Protectorate jihadists. As it was, the French assaulted the ship, killed or captured all thirty terrorists, and found the six man crew dead. In a CNN blog he’d written at the time, Jack had lauded the French decision to shoot the surviving terrorists. They had realized, he’d written, that terrorist jail prisoners only gave other groups an excuse to hit more targets in an effort to get them released. The upshot of the hijack attempt had been a retaliatory strike against the Tripoli base of the jihadists by the French and the Israelis which Libya’s Egyptian occupiers hadn’t opposed. It had been relatively quiet over the last six months. But the computer was waiting.

  “Hekar, I think the answer is mostly the Church of the Revealed Word of Christ. They’ve been pushing this ‘Armageddon is coming’ idea ever since the Compact arrived,” he said while walking over with Colleen to turn on the LinkPad and its screen. Nothing showed on it. Then he remembered he had to tell the device’s wifi to link to the surface radio pod that brought in CNN SystemNet and other vidcasts. He tapped the control. “Hekar, some humans have always looked forward to self-immolation, to martyrdom for a God that is pictured as being an overlarge male human. I know it’s not logical, but some of our people fear reality, the new reality of a universe shorn of superstitions, of the assumption that they have the final Word of God, or that someone else will always take care of them.” He saw that there was an email from Tommy at the International Desk. Probably wanting Colleen to put on her vid-cast unit and go do live vid-interviews of Compact aliens. He clipped the comdisk to his shirt pocket and sat down beside Colleen. “Our religions—at their best—encourage humans to ‘do unto others as we would have them do unto us’.” Colleen suddenly got up and began stuffing clothes in her travel bag, a determined look on her trembling lips. “This attack is religion at its worst. It is religion trying to make its own prediction of ‘The Millennium,’ of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, come true.” Colleen’s flurry of clothes packing made him wonder—what did she know that he didn’t?