The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  He seemed to do nothing, yet the recon drone’s wings started beating with a quiet buzz. The rate increased and the drone took off zipping around the high-ceilinged warehouse. After a few circuits, a red light could be seen flashing rapidly from at least four of the holes on its body.

  “It’s building up a LIDAR scan of the room and sending the picture back to my headset. Of course, I have visuals as well, but the computer-enhanced LIDAR imaging is a good substitute in low light and allows an accurate 3D model with dimensions and distances rather than just pictures. We also have the IR mode with active illumination available, of course; sound, too, so we can eavesdrop, but until we learn to speak alien I don’t think that particular application will be of much use,” said Buick, bringing the Hummingbird to rest on his outstretched hand. “It can go for twenty-four hours or so on one charge and reaches a top speed of 40kph,” he continued.

  The Hummingbird’s wings had stopped, but as the men were still eyeing it on Buick’s hand, it started rising up again, this time with no wing movement at all.

  McIver did a double take. “What the..?!?” he exclaimed as a smiling Hadley came close alongside the Space Force general and spoke quietly in his ear but loud enough so his colleagues could hear. “Look very carefully, General. See that?” asked Hadley, pointing to the side of the little levitating drone. McIver could see a very faint shimmering. It reminded him of heat haze but with a more static and familiar shape. A human shape.

  “Ha! Invisible battlesuit?” he guessed correctly.

  A brief moment later, the apparition flickered between transparency and opaqueness before stabilizing as a visible figure. A soldier, clad head-to-toe in a body-hugging armoured battlesuit, had appeared, the tall, athletically built man holding the Hummingbird.

  “Matt, out of your debrief I see. Come here to cause a bit of havoc?” joked Buick to Sergeant Hart, the demolition specialist on the Gaia patrol. Hart was a thirty-something, six foot plenty, martial arts expert with a dark padlock beard and slightly receding hairline. He shared the dry sense of humour that seemed to be present in both Hadley’s and Buick’s personalities. He was a laid-back guy; calm under fire with an excellent grasp of the tactical situation. Hart would be the man who carried the nuke and most of the demo charges.

  “Yes sir. Thought I’d come and join you, show off the suit to our guests,” he replied, briefly saluting the officers in his midst. The formalities were often a lot more relaxed in the SSS than regular army units and nobody familiar with the Special Forces unit would mistake informality for lack of respect. There was still rank, but when operational they’d just use first name, surnames or nicknames and saluting was against protocol as with most units in the field. There was nothing to be gained in pointing out the officers to a sniper; although it was unlikely the aliens would have any idea as to the significance of it.

  “Not just invisible to your eyes but across pretty much the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The suit doesn’t do much about air-pressure disturbances or noise … same thing really,” he continued.

  “How do you keep backpacks and other kit hidden?” asked McIver.

  “Either inside the pockets if it’s something small or under the cloak, which is in the zipped pocket at the back. Just got to make sure you secure it tightly to the pack. The HK750 assault rifle has its own invisibility coating. Not much good having a floating assault rifle when the rest of you is hidden!” said a beaming Hart.

  “Got some other neat tricks too,” he continued, “see these?” He pointed, unfastening a short zipper on each wrist and another on each of his lower legs. “Thrusters, gentlemen,” he said, revealing the matt-black, pyramidal air vents. “Can jump onto the roof of a five story building with these little beasties.”

  “Can you actually maintain flight with them?” asked one of McIver’s officers.

  “You can, but they won’t last that long and the noise is fairly noticeable when maintaining thrust. The noise suppression system seems to only be designed for short bursts on the current version. But who knows in future? They’re always upgrading stuff,” replied Hart to the question.

  “How good’s the body armour, Sergeant?” asked McIver.

  “Top spec, sir. Well, let me refine that statement: top spec against projectiles, shrapnel, explosion and laser fire. If these aliens are sporting particle beams or such like then my understanding is that there’s not a lot that can stop them…” said Hart.

  “Our scientists tell us a sufficiently powerful charged field could deflect them, but that’s not something we have for our ships yet, let alone soldiers,” said McIver, with a hint of disappointment that the WGA research machine couldn’t yet provide them with such protection.

  “Well, I think that pretty much covers the kit, gentlemen. There is other gear, but we’ll leave it in view of time. Shall we make our way upstairs and we’ll run you through the mission plan for Operation Rapid Denial? Thanks, Sergeant. You can get back to you duties now,” said Hadley, leading the way back through the security door and to the second floor of the red brick admin block. They entered a briefing room complete with large viewscreen, which took up most of the space on the front wall.

  Captain Buick stood at the front on the right hand side of the viewscreen. The five officers: Generals Hadley and McIver and the three more junior Space Force men, sat in the front row in anticipation of the run-through Buick was about to give.

  A 3D rendering of planet Gaia suspended in space appeared on the viewscreen. The green, brown, and blue mass was partially shrouded by the white of weather. So much like Earth, but with unfamiliar continents; shapes alien to human eyes, so used to the outlines of their own planet’s lands. Virtually imperceptible movements could be seen. The weather and the terminator between day and night shifted slowly as they would on the real planet Gaia. This was no mere aesthetically-pleasing, static image. It was a realistic 3D model comprising every detail the two probes – Santa Maria and Pinta – had managed to gather. All integrated into a model that had been used to plan Operation Rapid Denial.

  “Planet Gaia,” announced Buick, with a degree of fanfare. “Our target, believed to be an alien military and research facility, sitting here, five degrees north of the equator within the dense forest.”

  The screen zoomed into Gaia and marked the place with red dot on a green part of the land mass close to the equator. “This was the last known position of the Santa Maria probe and we believe, from the way we lost comms with her, that she was taken either underground or into a building massive enough to stop her radio transmissions.”

  The viewscreen changed to show a slowly rotating 3D rendering of a modified Viper drone. About the size of a small car, these flattened-wedge shaped craft were designed primarily for space superiority and security of the Citadel space station and other WGA assets. “And this is one of the modified Viper drones that we’ll be hitching a ride in. So what’s modified about them? First, you’ll notice that the internal missile bay has been replaced with a manpod for two soldiers or battledroids sitting side-by-side.”

  The viewscreen showed two recumbent seats installed in the lower, internal part of the drone. The graphic illustrated how the seats were hinged at their aft-end, allowing the forward end to move down, allowing access via the underside of the Viper. “This is how we get in and out of the Viper. Just step into the seat, buckle up and push a button.” The graphic showed two figures getting in and the recumbent seats being drawn back up into the belly of the drone.

  “The other mod is that bulge you can see on the top of the drone. That’s all you can see of the cloaking field generator that’s been put inside the three modified vehicles,” explained Buick.

  “Cloaking has been successful against Alien sensors so far. The only times they’ve detected our probes have been when the field generators have been down,” added McIver.

  “Yes, that’s our understanding too, General,” said Buick with a business-like nod.

  Buick went on to detail how the
three modified Vipers would carry his patrol of four men, plus two humanoid battledroids, to the Avendano system. A hoop-like FTL-gate had already been rigged up in the Assembly Module of the Citadel space station. The three Vipers, carrying their cargo of Special Forces soldiers and battledroids, would transit to Avendano through the gate, straight from the Citadel. It would be a one-way trip for the Viper drones themselves. They would eventually burn up in Gaia’s atmosphere.

  “They'll still be armed with their cannons, affording us some degree of protection. But we’ve got no protection against particle beams and little against plasma weapons. Therefore, we must stay hidden at all times, or at least until Santa Maria is destroyed.”

  The viewscreen changed to a photorealistic animation of the three Vipers approaching the atmosphere of Gaia after the FTL transit. Vipers were designed for space operations only, not planetary entry. The animation showed the Vipers skimming into the Gaian atmosphere at a shallow entry angle, the first wisps of frictional drag appearing on the physically-accurate computer model.

  “This is the clever part,” said Buick, looking pleased with himself. “The manpod doesn't just hinge open. Once the drone AI reaches the drop point they’ll be ejected downwards from the Viper. What you’ll see in a second is the heat shield burst open on the underside of the manpods.”

  A thick, umbrella-shaped blanket grew rapidly from the underside of each manpod, which were now entering the Gaian atmosphere. It enveloped the entire space below the twin-coffin-shaped black boxes that the soldiers would be contained in, overlapping all four sides of its belly and looking like a metallic, upturned jellyfish. The orange flare of atmospheric friction could be seen to grow from the underbelly of the heat shield.

  “While this is going on, what you can't see is the Vipers burning up just the way we want them to,” he continued.

  “Good deal, Captain,” said McIver. “The aliens have already gotten their hands on enough of our tech, we don’t want them getting hold of Vipers too!”

  “Quite,” remarked Hadley in agreement.

  “Once we reach 60 km altitude, we’ll detach from our manpods and execute the UHALO jump into the forest 10 km from the alien base. This is all in the dead of the Gaian night, of course. Their day being 36 hours long with 18 hours of day and 18 hours of night, we’ll have plenty of time to get setup and recon our route to the base on the first night,” said Buick.

  “So what are conditions like there on the ground do we think?” enquired McIver.

  “Coming on to that now, sir. The average temperature on Gaia is higher than on Earth, estimated at 20 degrees compared to 16 degrees on Earth. So we’re expecting a slightly hotter version of the tropics with high humidity and up to 35 degrees top temperature outside of the forest canopy. However, as you can see from the close-up satellite pictures, almost everywhere you see dark green is canopy. In the forest, it should be more like 25 to 30 degrees. Gravity is more of an issue and we’ll need to conserve our strength with gravity on Gaia 12m/s2 compared to the Earth’s 9.8 m/s2. We’ll get the battledroids to lug a lot of our gear for us. They’re equipped with invisibility too and will most probably be on point during base ingress and egress.

  “We also know it’ll be pretty dark under the canopy. The top canopy seems to be made up of sheet-like leaves, which mutually support one-another like a sea of green. From close-up orbital pics they look a little like banana tree leaves, but virtually continuous, no gaps, very little light penetrating below,” explained Buick.

  “Do we know anything about other flora and fauna?” asked McIver.

  “Unfortunately not in the forest. We’ve picked up some signs of life other than the aliens themselves, but we don’t have eyes below that canopy so can’t say. Anyway, with the kit we’re going in with I doubt it’s anything we can’t take care of,” said Buick confidently.

  With the situation map now displayed on the viewscreen, Buick explained, “We’ll launch our Hummingbird recon drones along the route shown and observe the base. We’re looking for security, patrols, sensors and ingress points. We have a radar and heat map from Pinta so have some idea of its layout, but the details are still unknown. So we’ll have to improvise and find a way in based on what the Hummingbirds show. We’d prefer to operate them at night to maintain stealth, hiding them and putting them on standby in the day. While they’re making their way there we’ll check the battledroids and the rest of our gear is in good nick. After the Hummingbirds have reconnoitred the route and way in, we’ll hike over and get in using invisibility. We’ll have already located Santa Maria via the Hummingbirds with any luck, so we’ll make our way to her, plant demo charges on a delayed timer and exfiltrate from the base. We’ll get back to the exfiltration point and set up the FTL-gate, leaving a demo charge on the gate and the battledroids. Jump through the gate back to as close to Citadel as the FTL tech decides it can manage. And jobs a good'un!”

  “As you said, the FTL tech doesn’t transit things to precise locations, there’s some error. I presume you won’t be banking on jumping straight into the Citadel?” said McIver, looking at Buick for an answer.

  Buick explained, “Our battlesuits can maintain pressure in the vacuum of space and have more than enough air supply until we get picked up by the shuttle and taken back to the Citadel.”

  “Amazing piece of kit those battlesuits. We need to kit out all our soldiers in them things!” exclaimed McIver.

  “That’s one way to break the WGA budget,” quipped General Hadley.

  “I have one issue with this plan,” said McIver, face turning serious, focusing on Captain Buick. “This is currently being discussed at the highest levels. The issue is this: what about research materials that the aliens may have already gathered on the FTL tech? Should we go after that as well as the probe itself?” Holding up his palm to ward off interjection, he continued, “Now I know there’s just no way of knowing how or where they store information or even if it’s in a form we can read. Do they centralise it somewhere nearby the probe? Is it on a distributed network? But we should have some sort of contingency worked up to maximise our chances of hampering their efforts to crack FTL tech.”

  “There is a contingency, sir, but I understand our political masters have not authorised use of the nuke. Are you saying we may be using the nuke by default, as part of the base plan?” asked Buick.

  “Let me step in here,” said General Hadley. “Forgive me, General McIver, if I am answering this for you”—McIver motioned him to go on—“but I understand the dilemma still being discussed at the highest levels is as follows. On the one hand we should nuke the entire alien facility to maximise the chance of setting back their reverse engineering efforts, and on the other hand there are two problems with this. One: we have no idea if they’ve scanned and documented every detail of the FTL drive and already stored that information on a network, which could be anywhere on Gaia or beyond. And, more saliently in the long-term, point two: once we use a nuclear device the gloves have really come off. If it fails to deprive them of FTL, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The fear is that it could actually persuade them to launch a war of annihilation on us and they’d have some justification.”

  “Well, as you know, I sit on the WESTFOR Joint Chiefs of Staff and I can tell you that I doubt any sanction of nukes will be part of the base plan—at least not in time for mission-go in three days’ time. It’s not just the joint chiefs involved, it’s a decision elevated to the heads of all thirty-five WGA states. As you can imagine, that is not a fast process. Unless we’re all surprised and they tell us otherwise, your orders are to only use the nuke if there is no other means to destroy the probe. This is a direct action mission; if we wanted to nuke the aliens I’m sure we could find a better delivery method. The only reason we’re doing this is because they have our unarmed probe Santa Maria and fired on the unarmed Pinta. It’s proportionate and vital in preventing a vastly superior alien force from coming here. We still hold out hope for a constructive dialog and all
that may bring in terms of trade, cultural exchange and so on.”

  “But we’ve not started off on great terms, have we? And the prevailing view, I understand, is that with Gaia being so Earth-like, the aliens will be our natural competition for land and resources,” surmised Hadley.

  “I can’t argue with that, but we need to stick to the task at hand and leave that for tomorrow,” advised McIver, Hadley satisfied that they were on the same page.

  They spent the next hour going through the finer details of Operation Rapid Denial, stopping only briefly to enjoy the tea and biscuits delivered by a young soldier.

  “Mission date set for three days’ time on October 14th,” concluded Buick.

  McIver stood up and thanked Captain Buick and Major-General Hadley. “Well, I’m happy with what I’ve seen. You’re the best guys for the job, but as they say: failure is not an option and never could that old saying be truer than with this mission. Faster-than-light tech must be snatched from alien hands so that we can work on diplomatic relations with them and establish a constructive dialog on our terms not theirs. We don’t want them coming here until we’ve established good relations, and at the moment this is the best way to do that.”