by Patty Jansen
The world was damaged, peace was fragile, they needed cooperating voices to present a somewhat united front to gamra. Rightly or wrongly, they didn’t want any members who refused to stick to the rules and refused to make a commitment to better the lives of their own poorest citizens.
Celia Braddock had been a player—albeit a minor one—on the international stage since securing a spot in the legislative assembly of Atlantia. She was a career politician.
I found it hard to understand her motivation for her involvement in international politics, which would be seen as a thankless job amongst her domestic peers. Ambition? Being seen as a serious player internationally? Behind closed doors, most people at Nations of Earth made jokes about this part of the world.
I’d wondered—and tried to research—the relationship between the four nations and the Pretoria Cartel, but the Cartel widely invested in off-Earth relationships, and the American countries were just… not interested in those. They just wanted the nasty “aliens” to go away.
The music had stopped and all the patriotic singing voices had fallen quiet. Celia Braddock took her place behind the lectern and faced the audience.
“I have a short and very important announcement to make,” she began. “I won’t be long, because, as you will understand after this press conference, I have better things to do than spend a lot of time talking. I will make a detailed announcement about all our findings later.”
She was speaking quite a heavy local dialect. Several members of my team scrambled for their translators to make sense of it.
She put both her hands flat on the dais.
“At 9:41pm the night before last, we experienced two unprovoked, coordinated attacks on our capital. The airport and train stations were the main focus. The attacks came from the air and lasted only minutes. A second attack followed forty-three minutes later. Major infrastructure was destroyed. At present, the victim tally stands at two thousand and forty-five, mainly from the airport. The Atlantian Police and Rescue Service has mounted a significant rescue and recovery operation, which is still underway. If you live in any of the affected areas, you will have been contacted by local authorities, and if you have any problems, please make sure you contact them for help.”
Someone in the audience yelled a question. I thought it was about terrorists.
She glared across the heads of the audience and ignored the question.
“I have to stress that this action was entirely unprovoked. Thankfully, the death toll will be somewhat depressed because the attacks came at night, and many people were at home. Things could have been worse, especially at the stations.”
The same journalist repeated his question. He said, “This mode of operation is not typical for America Free State terrorist operatives. Who is responsible?”
Governor Braddock turned to him and pointed at him. “I’m getting to that in a moment.” She sounded very much like a school teacher.
“As some of you have rightly concluded, this type of action is atypical for any of the entities that have recently perpetrated violence against us, or against me directly. The attempt to kill me last year came from terrorist operatives in America Free State and could be traced down to known enemy operators. This is different. Because there were two attacks following each other, our military were on high alert after the first incident. They scanned the skies. They picked up anything that shouldn’t be there, and they managed to take out one of the attack vehicles, a drone carrying explosives, without triggering an explosion and destruction of the rocket. We know who they are now. We have their number. They will not be able to get away with this a third time.”
People in the audience started yelling again. I picked up the questions I also wanted to ask: what about simultaneous attacks in other places?
She waved the audience into silence and continued, “I am aware that other cities have suffered similar provocations. Air attacks have been reported in America Free State, Mexico and Canada. Compared with what has happened in New York, those actions were fairly minor. More about this later. We’re dealing with an enemy we haven’t had to deal with before, an enemy of humanity that has, so far, left us in relative peace.”
My heart jumped.
Damn, I had a feeling this was going to be about Aghyrians or the Pretoria Cartel.
She stepped back, allowing two uniformed men to come to the front. They were carrying a platform between them with on it, a cloth-covered object that looked disturbingly like a dead body, both in size and shape. They set this down on a couple of stone blocks that I’d assumed to be part of the landscaping, but appeared to have been placed there for the occasion. One of them whipped off the cloth cover. The platform held a curved fragment of metal about the length of a person, torn and blackened on one side.
The inside of the curved surface displayed a selection of electronic boards with singe marks. Coloured wires with little connectors hung loose or had been ripped from the rest of the device.
It could be part of a rocket or something like that.
Celia Braddock was still speaking. “I’ve spoken to General Bainbridge, Intelligence Chief Officer Dos Santos, and Science Bureau Chief Yau before making this public. All three of them agreed with each other over the origins of this device. It does not come from this earth. This is alien technology.”
She let that sink in for effect.
I found the theatrics quite off-putting. Instead of turning this into a show, she might just tell the audience in plain language exactly where they thought this rocket came from. Last time I looked, the universe, even just our local galaxy, was a very big place, occupied by many different entities.
“This alien technology was used in the attacks that killed many people two nights ago. Why, we don’t know. They have made no claims, but we can make some guesses. The aliens don’t like us and never have. In my communications with Nations of Earth’s President Dekker, I’ve expressed strong reservations about accommodating their wishes. Only the Atlantian military captured one of these drones, while the drones also attacked other countries. Isn’t that strange that with all the might of their technology, countries like Mexico couldn’t bring down a second drone? Is that because those attacks had the function to make it look like we weren’t the only ones affected? Is that because Mexico and Canada accepted minor attacks for the sake of appearing to be on our side? In Los Angeles, the drones attacked a university building, an office tower, and the headquarters of a security firm, all of which were unoccupied because it was night. They lost four lives. In contrast, the drones attacked our airport and inflicted major damage and loss of life. Let’s make no mistake, this was an attack on us specifically, to bring us into line or teach us a lesson.”
What? Was she suggesting that gamra had sent these drones because they didn’t like the fact that the small percentage of the North American population that had voted in the referendum had mostly voted against joining gamra? Really?
The broadcast’s focus had returned to the governor, but the members of my team, including Sheydu, Isharu and Reida, had already captured the footage of the drone and had enlarged and enhanced it. Looking over Reida’s shoulder, I judged the image quality to be quite poor. I hoped it would be good enough for them to derive at least some data. Isharu was running a simulation that inserted the fragment in a possibility of different vehicles based on its shape. Rockets, bombs, drone craft. None of the models that Isharu was flicking through looked familiar. There was also some activity going on in the group of Asto military, who had ensconced themselves in the other corner of the room, and had spread out their equipment over the dining table.
I presumed the two groups would join their efforts later.
Celia Braddock continued, “Make no mistake. This was a direct assault on the sovereignty of Atlantia. The aliens have always come here with one aim, and that is to destroy our planet’s independence. They don’t like us, they are afraid of us, and they think that the
only way to deal with us is to beat us down and they can only do that by infiltrating our society. I have written to various world leaders to let them know that this is unacceptable. I am also about to consult with General Bainbridge about further action we will undertake, because there will be further action. I want there to be no doubt about that. While I will not be taking questions today—some of you have already asked your questions—I will be back here tomorrow and will return every day until this is solved and all your questions answered.”
She nodded and turned around, flanked by the two security officers. The music blasted out of the loudspeakers and people started singing again.
The news service flicked back to a news presenter, and Clay turned off the screen.
Nicha met my eyes across the heads of those of my team who were seated on the floor.
While the others were still working on the translation, Nicha would have been able to follow the speech without devices.
He said, “What the fuck was that about? Did she just accuse gamra of military action against her country?”
His comment encapsulated my feelings perfectly.
Chapter Nineteen
When the sound from the broadcast stopped, it became very quiet in the room.
Everyone who had come in to watch was looking at me, as if I had the answers.
Well, I knew what we should do, I thought, I hoped. But whether it would provide any answers remained to be seen.
Children had a perfect sensor for when something important was up. We had put them all to bed, but the older ones were all standing at the door. Nalya, Larrana and Vanessa’s son and some other kids. Of course, the Pengali were also there. Jaki, because he looked after all these kids, and Ynggi and the kids themselves, watching with wide eyes.
No one moved to send them back to their room.
In Coldi society, kids were absolutely expected to be part of important decision-making processes.
I got up from the table.
“I presume that all of you have understood that in her speech, the governor of Atlantia accuses gamra of having taken military action against her country. I don’t know if she realises how ridiculous this accusation is. For one, gamra does not command any military forces. She has no idea what she’s talking about, other than that the fragment of the rocket they have brought down looks unfamiliar to them, and therefore, it is her misguided conclusion that it originated from gamra. I think you can all agree that our highest priority needs to be to establish the identity of this piece of equipment, where it came from and who made it, and communicate that clearly to all concerned. Can anyone report on what you’ve found out so far?”
I expected Sheydu or Isharu to get up, but it was Reida who gave the report.
He showed us the images they had captured and comparisons with similar devices, rockets or small-scale explosive delivery drones used by various militaries.
The seven Asto military officers in the corner watched and occasionally nodded.
Reida’s main conclusion was that the design of the device was unfamiliar, but many of the components were not. He had circled a few items on the projection to prove his point. A control device matched a similar device that was produced on Asto and commonly used in aircraft. Another type of chip was commonly used in solar gliders at Indrahui. Part of the housing resembled metalwork done in Damarq. He also pointed out that the device contained many parts that the database didn’t recognise at all, but also that this might be the result of poor image quality.
“In conclusion, the people who put this device together had access to markets for electronics at gamra, but may not have been from any of those entities, judging by the way they cobbled together the different components based purely on their function. Both Coldi and Damarcian designers would find the aesthetic arrangement of this device fundamentally displeasing. Neither of those groups would have designed a device like this. According to our modelling, the explosives delivery vehicles were small and are likely to have used simple hydrogen rockets. While powerful, they also require large storage tanks for fuel if operated over a distance. We haven’t seen evidence of this, because these rockets would have shown up on multiple systems where we could track them. Besides, the only entity that still uses engines propelled by hydrogen is Miran, and this device looks nothing like anything built by Miran. This is a flimsy thing. No one in their right mind would design a rocket for atmosphere entry where the electronics are attached to the outer shell of the vehicle, but that looks precisely like what they have done here. Our conclusion is that these rockets came from a local source and never left the atmosphere.”
Oh crap.
This was starting to look like some trick by the Pretoria Cartel. Yet I had looked for, but not found, evidence of any level of interaction between them and the North American countries.
Reida made a hand gesture to the military people in the corner.
One of them got up, a woman, carrying a reader.
She put the device face up in the middle of the floor where Reida had been sitting. Another black-clad, heavily armed man pulled shut the blinds to the largest window.
“We received this material just now during the governor’s talk, and I apologise for not speaking of it earlier, but once you’ve seen it, you will appreciate why we made that choice.”
Reida nodded at the officer. She touched a corner of the reader’s screen. The familiar Exchange logo sprang up in the air. It was replaced with the image of the solar system and that damned approaching ship that we knew was coming, was still a way off, and I’d honestly pushed to the back of my mind because—damn it—Dekker refused to talk to me.
He continued, “I’m going to change the subject. Bear with me, because it will make sense when you’ve heard everything I want to say. Months ago, both the Exchange and the Asto military detected a single object coming towards this world. They were following it, expecting to engage with it at some point if it contained live technology and was not a piece of space junk. There were a lot of speculations about the origins of the object, but then again we know there are isolated communities in space, and they sometimes choose not to show themselves.”
He looked sideways at Thayu. The Asto army, led by her father, very much chose to not show themselves most of the time.
“Anyway, during the night before yesterday, this single object emitted a burst of energy that jumped through space and split into multiple strands. You can see here how it has happened.”
He showed us a moving image of the scan. It was blurry, but you could see the object we had been following for months, and that Amarru had been wanting to speak to Dekker about, that the Asto armed forces had classified as being of interest, had tried to communicate with, but ultimately, that all parties had ended up ignoring. Because it was only one small object and all signs were that it was a piece of dead space junk.
Mereeni said, “We’ve been trying to communicate with that thing for some time, but it wasn’t answering.”
In this, “we” was the Athens Exchange, and I knew that they had first spotted this object more than a year ago.
“That’s because it looked like it was a piece of junk,” Reida said. “But consider this. I’m going to overlay this rough scan with a map of this planet with the same scale and projection type and time schedule, and you may see the issue that worries us.”
The projection of the filaments jumped over the top of a 3D projection of Earth, rotating slowly. I hadn’t realised that the image of the filaments was also in 3D. The moving projection covered a few milliseconds, Reida said, and he slowed the image sequence down so we could see the flash of light bursting out of the unknown object and splitting and splitting into smaller and smaller filaments until they reached the Earth’s atmosphere. There, they stopped as suddenly as they had appeared.
“What does that mean?” Telaris said. He had been on guard duty for most of the time that my team had prepared for the speech
and had, presumably, discussed these issues.
“We’re not entirely sure,” Reida said. “But consider the coincidences. This strong filament thread hit the atmosphere near New York.” He pointed.
He also pointed out other filaments that went to other cities, including Mexico City and Los Angeles, and other parts of the world. Cities in Europe, Asia had also been affected.
“Is this as bad as it looks? Very clearly, the attacks were not limited to this continent, even if Governor Braddock acts like they were. Were other cities in the world attacked?”
Veyada said, “From what we’ve been able to gauge, yes, but we can’t confirm that with certainty. It’s probably a function of the fact that we’re in a part of the world that doesn’t communicate well with other entities.”
Well, that was an understatement.
“Is anyone going to destroy this ship?” Like the Asto military.
“This is the difficult part. Because for gamra law, this world became a member when they signed the intent to join. Any entity of gamra can only send military intervention to any other entity when the receiving entity requests it, and the gamra assembly approves it.”
“Has Asha ever been stopped by this kind of bureaucracy?”
“You’d be surprised. Yes, the Asto military sticks very rigidly to this rule. The only reason Asha could intervene in the earlier situation with Romi Tanaqan was because this world was not a member.”
