The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  In the fifth and six months of the deployment, eight gravimetric spikes, which matched up with FTL transits out of and back into the Gaia system, were detected. When an FTL drive transits from one location to another it gives away its presence by a momentary increase in gravity at both its origin and destination. Sensitive equipment can sense these gravity spikes and work out where they came from. These detections indicate that the nuking of the alien base did not stop their FTL-development programme. Officials now fear that the hostile alien race has the means to reach across the stars to attack Earth. The Far Light report details that the aliens have more advanced weaponry than we do, in the form of plasma guns and particle beams, and that they have also been amassing an enormous space armada. In the space of just six months, they have built an additional sixty-five destroyers, each the length of a football field and bristling with weapons. Their space-based shipyards have churned out hundreds of fighter craft, and most menacing of all is the gargantuan carrier that many of these fighters will be based on. Probes, which are still in orbit around Gaia, took photos of the kilometre-long spaceship showing a stream of fighters leaving one of its launch bays. The reason for the armada is not yet clear, but it is feared that it is bound for Earth. The scientific and military community is divided as to whether the aliens will be able to build FTL gates or drives large enough and powerful enough to allow such massive ships to reach Earth. Some say it is decades away, others say less and that we should quickly prepare a robust response.

  Anxious World Leaders Disagree Over Response

  From a source inside the WGA-Plus-Two summit held here last week, it is understood by The London Guardian that world powers have failed to reach a consensus on how to deal with the Alien threat. The US President, Stephen Powell, seems to be taking the threat more seriously than other leaders and has proposed a three-step plan committing billions in additional funding. The WGA, bank-rolled by a US cash injection, will accelerate plans and build the WGASS Atlantic in the Alliance Citadel orbital assembly module. The newly-created Corvette-class spacecraft will be by far the most powerful ship humanity has ever built and will be fast-tracked to completion in just a year’s time. There was also Powell’s ill-defined proposal to combine the space command structures of the WGA, Russia and China to face an alien assault. However, many feel this will come to nothing as Russia and China, as wells as the Alliance itself, lack the mutual trust to make it happen. The final point of the US three-point plan is to launch a series of pre-emptive strikes on the alien armada and shipyards before they can invade our Solar System. This newspaper understands that these will involve Special Forces troops and battledroids from at least a dozen countries. However, there has been no commitment from the Russians, Chinese or any other non-WGA country so far.

  An expert close to the planned raids says that simply sending nuclear weapons via an FTL gate to destroy the alien fleet would not work. At the moment, the FTL technology is too inaccurate and the alien ships and facilities are thought to be too well defended. Covert infiltration is felt to be the only feasible way to smuggle in the nuclear weapons needed to destroy such large ships and facilities. The British response, and those of our western allies, has been muted, with budgetary constraints cited as the main reason. With the government’s austerity programme continuing it is seen as unlikely that anything more than a token response will come in the near-term from the UK. Michael Carlton has proposed further intelligence-gathering before committing to further measures.

  President Powell is set to make an address to the nation at 7pm US eastern time. PM Carlton is now planning to make a statement at a special sitting of Parliament tomorrow morning in response to this exposé. The Labour Party are set to call for a judge-led national enquiry into the affair, a move the Prime Minister is expected to reject.

  Whether dark times are about to befall us or if the threat has, like so many before it, been exaggerated, only history will tell.

  “Well, bugger me!” muttered Hart to himself, having forgotten all about the hot water for his coffee, which had stopped boiling ten minutes before.

  “What’s that, love?” asked a bleary-eyed Zara, emerging from the hallway door, dressed in her pyjamas.

  Eyes still on the report, Hart blew out a deep breath and shook his head, thinking about just how to start. He’d never shared operational information with his wife and didn't want to start now. There were reasons why missions were supposed to stay classified; the information firewall between work and personal life was something all Special Forces soldiers had to take seriously.

  “Kids still asleep?” he asked, buying more time to think through how to approach this conversation. Zara hugged him from behind and looked over his shoulder at the article.

  She didn't say another word and took over the tablet as Hart got up to make his coffee.

  “Want a cup?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she replied, distracted, engrossed in the story and suddenly more awake even before she had her morning caffeine fix.

  Hart delivered the coffee to the breakfast bar and waited silently as she finished reading. He stood as she sat, admiring her long, blonde hair and kind eyes. Her beauty still remained in his opinion. Even though they weren’t getting any younger they were still attracted to each other. Finding time to be together was a major challenge that Hart hoped to put right this time off. If the news story was anything to go by, he might soon get roped into another mission; especially as one of the few people on the planet who had actual experience of the aliens on the ground. Jesus Christ, after losing his friends Fuzzy and Crier, now this! Still, he felt fortunate that The London Guardian had continued to respect their anonymity. It served no purpose for news outlets to do otherwise, and they themselves wanted to be seen as supporting the military as patriots. Little of the special report was new to Hart since his close friend, Motor, had shared the Far Light story—namely the six-month part he’d missed after he jumped back to Earth orbit through the portable FTL gate.

  Still, when you put it all together, as the news story had done, it didn’t read well. He was pretty certain that, unless the aliens could be stopped in their own system, there was nothing in Earth’s arsenal that could stand in their way. The question of what motivated the aliens was something no one, so far, could answer. Perhaps they were simply a warlike race. Earth had, through the ages, had its fair share of those. What if they were like a technologically advanced version of the Nazis? Hart knew from the history books he'd read that once a criminal, psychopathic regime got their hands of the instruments of state power they were pretty difficult to displace without outside intervention. He just knew that Zara would freak out at what she was reading. If the worst did happen, he would make sure his family were protected one way or another.

  “Did you know about this?” asked Zara, suspicion in her voice, assuming he did.

  “Some of it, yeah.”

  “Should we be worried?” she asked.

  He let out a big sigh then cast his eyes down into his coffee, swirling it around as if looking for answers in the cup.

  “Well? You looked stressed so it must be bad. Right? Talk to me, Matt.”

  “Okay, it could be bad. But there’s so much we don’t know still, so I don’t want you to panic. However, we do need to take some precautions, just in case. It’ll probably come to nothing though, I hope.”

  “You hope? Is it true what they say: that the aliens are hostile?”

  “I think we can safely say they’re hostile.”

  “I know you don't like sharing details with me, but…”

  “It’s orders, Zara, and, besides, it’s for your own good...”

  “But this is different. This threatens us here at home, our kids. It’s not a bunch of tin pot terrorists in some hellhole country the other side of the world. The alien fleet sounds scary. You’ve been there, I know that. What happens if they come here, Matt? How worried should we be?”

  Their youngest son emerged, interrupting them. “Hi Qu
in, good morning, little buddy,” Hart said to his youngest boy, sun streaming in illuminating his innocent face and blond hair, making the six-year old squint. “Is your big-boy brother still asleep?”

  “I’m a big boy too, Daddy,” protested Quin, running over to hug his dad.

  It was as if the sight of seeing his boy changed his mind. The little man’s vulnerability and the love he felt for his son seemed to amplify the alien threat.

  “We need to talk later, Zara,” he said, as his wife turned to face him and put her arms around his neck. Nose-to-nose, he kissed her lightly, “Whatever happens I won't let anything happen to you guys.”

  ***

  With the fine weather, by time the kids had eaten their breakfast and gotten ready, they were keen to play outside in the garden. Hart had spent the previous afternoon assembling a trampoline for the boys and they couldn't wait to give it another go.

  He settled on the couch and switched on the TV, navigating to one of the twenty-four hour news channels. The toilet flushed and he heard the sound of Zara washing her hands in the downstairs bathroom. She sauntered back in, wearing her relaxed Sunday slacks and small, red merino sweater, and sat down next to her husband. For once, she was as interested in the news as he was.

  “...and today has already seen the first significant protests in Australia, New Zealand and now Japan over the London Guardian article that has taken the world by storm since its release. Those stunning revelations have had the web seething with criticism for governments around the free world. Alliance governments, from Britain and America to every other country in the Alliance, have come under fire over secrecy, poor decision-making and perceived inaction on the alien threat,” said the grey-haired, fortysomething correspondent-on-the-scene outside of the WGA office in downtown Tokyo. The caption in the corner told viewers this was a live broadcast. He put his finger in one ear, trying to hear the question through his earpiece from the GNN centre in Atlanta. A few dozen chanting protesters had gathered just behind the reporter holding banners and placards, doing their best to get into camera shot. Most of the placards and banners were in Japanese, unintelligible to Hart and Zara as they watched. The only English one they could see said, ‘Alien Threat is Real!!!’ and had an archetype, mythical ‘grey’ alien sketched underneath the words.

  “John, what is it that the protesters actually want?” asked Dana Alessi, the news anchor from her comfortable, softly lit studio half a world away.

  “Well, I spoke to some of them earlier this evening and most of them are furious at the way the contact with the aliens has been handled, and accuse their government, WESTFOR and the WGA of a cover up. The other thing they’re saying is that their incompetence – that of WGA Space and WESTFOR – has stirred up a hornets’ nest that threatens us all.”

  “It’s still quite limited numbers though, there in Japan, and similar to what we’ve seen so far in other WGA and free countries after the story broke this morning. Is this thing expected to grow and persist or is it just a flash in the pan?”

  “Dana, looking at the discussions online and talking to the people here behind me, this thing is not going to go away any time soon and is likely to grow as the days and weeks go by. These people want concrete action from their government and protection if the alien invasion – which many of them believe is a real possibility – comes to pass. We’ve already seen some hoarding of essential items such as food, medicine and bottled water. No sign of a state of emergency anywhere in Japan yet, but if more people start taking things into their own hands and lose faith in the government’s ability to control the threat and keep order then it could get ugly. Dana...”

  “John, thank you for updating us. John Francis there on the Alien Threat demonstrations in Tokyo, Japan,” said Dana, concluding the on-the-scene report.

  The camera switched to show a dull-looking, middle-aged man with glasses in a navy-blue suit and grey tie sitting beside Dana at the news desk. She turned to face him slightly and smiled as the man nodded his head in acknowledgment. Dr Alan King had only recently got back on his feet again after he had been left reeling with the discovery that his seven-year relationship with the woman he’d loved was all a lie. Jenna Perez, his beautiful live-in partner, to whom he'd hoped to propose, had initially been reported killed in a tragic accident, which left him devastated. Shortly after her death, the FBI then revealed she'd actually been a Russian deep-cover agent named Dasha Morozova. That had shaken his most fundamental beliefs about human nature and taken him out of work for months. Nevertheless, he was still a trusted member of the WGA organisation in Seattle, which was a hive of activity analysing terabyte upon terabyte of data from the probes. He’d been the only senior staffer they’d been happy to supply for TV interview. He felt heartened by the faith his bosses had placed in him once more allowing him to be their public face, at least on this occasion.

  “And now we’re joined by Dr Alan King of the WGA Space organization. Dr King is a key member of the science team that sent the two space probes to Avendano in September last year,” Dana said, King nodding again, with only a half-smile on his lips.

  The TV screen went to split view and another face appeared on the videolink inset.

  “And on videolink from Washington is defence analyst and former Navy Seal, Eugene Yang. Welcome, Mr Yang.”

  “Thanks for having me,” said the well-groomed, sharp-looking Asian-American man.

  “So if I can start with you, Dr King. We’ve read in this London Guardian story about the lost probe. There was the Special Forces missions, how the aliens are hostile, how we nuked them to stop them reverse-engineering the probe and finally their invasion fleet.” Her tone rose as she mentioned the nuclear attack and invasion fleet.” How much of this did you know about and can verify for us today?”

  “First, let me say I’ve worked purely on the civilian probe missions and don't have any more knowledge that you do about the military operations. The probes were sent; we found the alien civilization and tried to communicate with them as best we could. Every single encounter, planned or unplanned, resulted in hostile action on our unarmed probes by the aliens. They simply opened fire every time they saw us. The one thing that’s been consistent through this saga is the aliens’ unrelenting hostility.”

  “Do we actually have a way to communicate with them? Did we try?” asked Dana.

  “If you’re asking whether they speak English and we speak Alien the answer is ‘no’. However, we did transmit, and send physically to them, pictorial representations with English translations. We know they have eyes and a visual system and indeed use a script of their own; we saw evidence of this. So, yes, we tried alright. But every time we tried to communicate they opened fire. I have to admit, we don't know why and we understand little about their culture or history. Getting them to talk is, for us in WGA Space, our number one priority. We’d hoped for a peaceful coexistence, trade, technology swaps, but, for whatever reason, the aliens are just not interested.”

  “So, before we turn to our other guest—thanks for waiting, Mr Yang…” continued Dana.

  “No problem,” replied Yang, smiling.

  “...what are your theories as to why the aliens don't want to communicate and how are we going to get them to talk? Dr King?”

  “Sure. Although we’ve not managed to directly communicate with them, we have gathered a lot of data from our probes. We also have some very smart people studying what we know: astrobiologists looking at evolutionary reasons and historians looking at parallels from Earth’s past, which may shed some light on the aliens and their affairs. The first thing our people stress is that we shouldn’t for a minute assume they are necessarily one homogeneous tribe. They most probably have factions and divisions. They’re not thought to have a hive mind or anything such as this, so being individual aliens with individual minds they are likely prone to differences of opinion, perhaps political or sub-species groupings and so on.

  “The clearest evidence is that they have an on-go
ing war on the moon called Exelon around the gas giant Demeter. We’ve also seen evidence of historical fighting on Gaia itself. So there are at least two factions and perhaps others now or in the past that we haven’t yet confirmed. What if the dominant faction is just particularly warlike and malignant? We’ve had plenty of similar militaristic, aggressive regimes here on Earth. If they’ve historically got what they wanted from war rather than negotiation why stop? The other part of this is that, culturally, we may have made a massive faux pas with our probe missions in some way. As I said, we don't understand their culture and because of that it was always going to be a risk just going there,” concluded King.

  “Now turning to Eugene Yang, defence analyst. Mr Yang, you've read the article and seen some of the photos that went with it—those amazing, yet frightening images of alien warships and fighters. What do you make of it?” asked Dana, an open-ended question designed to allow her guest freedom to say what was on his mind.