Struggle for a Small Blue Planet

by Warwick Gibson

  "Goddamit!" he swore. "There is so much we don't know!"

  "I think I can help with the language on the schematics," said Izem. "I haven't spoken to the Rohifs family since the earthquakes, but maybe Cal can get a message through. They mentioned they were making progress deciphering the written language, when I said we weren't making much headway here."

  Don remembered the early German explorer Izem had talked about, Friedrich Rohifs. The High Council of the village had been trading bits of the ship with Rohifs' descendants for over a hundred years.

  "How exactly do we get in touch with Cal from here?" he said. "I thought the citadels destroyed anything that produced strong electromagnetic signals."

  "Oh, they do," said Izem. "But we keep moving across the emf spectrum and we keep changing the signals. Jo has been showing me some electronic camouflage she's come up with recently, and I think we should try it."

  He looked at Don.

  "Sounds like it's time you and I made a little excursion to the Fezzou radio station."

  "Fezzou - the place we came through on the way here?" said Don, and Izem nodded.

  Jo cut into the conversation. "I'd like to start interviewing I Wadu as soon as I can, if that's all right with both of you," she said.

  "I'd like to come back once or twice a day, but not overdo it. Do you think we should put out food and water for the little fella?"

  They all looked at her for a moment, and there were a few smiles. She had made the creature sound like a pet to be looked after.

  "You can ask I Wadu what it wants," said Izem, "but I think you'll find it catches its own food. There has to be other ways in and out of the ship, at least I've never seen it using the tunnel, day or night."

  "He, or she, could slip through the bars in the doorway easily enough," interjected Sufian.

  "Maybe," said Izem, "but I think we've just solved a puzzle that no one in the village has been able to solve. There have been reports of a djinn down this end of the valley – a spirit that haunts the crops – for at least a decade. Those who glimpse it talk about a covering like a black cloak, and something that flows through the air as if it were water. I think they've been talking about I Wadu here."

  The control panel kept translating away, beeping and chirping, and Jo wondered what the strange creature made of their words. She figured that was just as important as what they made of the creature. But her immediate objective was clear: to get a rapport going with I Wadu, and then ask the creature the many, many questions they all had.

  50

  Presidential convoy

  Pennsylvania badlands, USA

  The troops from the Presidential convoy established a perimeter, and then a safe passage into the old Donegal telephone exchange. It was a windowless box at the back of what was now the postal services and stationers building.

  Cleet noticed Lawson handing out sniper rifles. The soldiers entrusted with these weapons spread out and found boltholes, inside and outside the building. They would take a shot from one place, and then move invisibly to another. They were only at risk if their positions were spotted.

  Two teams were prepping under the overhang of the loading bay at the back of the exchange building.

  "Goddamn house to house," muttered one of the sergeants. "I thought I left that behind in Iraq."

  "Well then, Johnson," said the major in command of the team, "we'd better put you out at point. No one's going to shoot at such a distinguished veteran."

  There was a ripple of laughter. Johnson joined in.

  "I'll take point until we hit the first house," said the major, emphasising that they were all treated the same under his command. "Then we rotate as per code. Everybody ready?"

  There were a number of affirmative grunts. The two teams split left and right, using what cover they could find until they were hard against the houses on the opposite side of the street from the postal services building.

  Several rifle barrels appeared in windows as they crossed, and the snipers got most of the men holding them. One member of Bravo team stumbled as a bullet passed through his leg, but he made it to cover. He got a bandage and a shot of painkiller, and rejoined his team.

  The atmosphere inside the telephone exchange tightened noticeably as the President walked in. "At ease, gentlemen!" he said loudly, and motioned the commanding officer over.

  "Your report, Colonel Pears," he said briskly. In his time as a leader, he had learned that people were most likely to do their best when they thought the officers knew what they were doing.

  "Seven down and three critically wounded, Mr President," came the reply. "Four vehicles have been disabled, and that's my greatest concern. We can't afford to lose any more."

  The President understood. Overloaded and on treacherous roads, the convoy would be vulnerable. They needed to salvage anything they could of Escort one's vehicles.

  "Let's hope we can get some of them back, colonel," he said, his gaze sweeping the room and assessing the state of the soldiers.

  Despite the setbacks, they were eager to fight. Proportionally, more women than men had volunteered for the mission to move the President from Mt Weather to a more secure location, but women were still less than twenty percent of Escort one.

  The President had noticed how slow the military had been to implement the 2016 authorisation to integrate female combat soldiers in all military and special ops roles. Most of the female troops here had been volunteers from the intelligence groups at Mt Weather, and he had accepted their request with pride.

  "We'll have control of the rooftops in a few more minutes," he said, "and our attackers should fall back at that point. We will move out immediately they do. I need you and your soldiers to be prepared for evac."

  The colonel nodded, and the President dismissed him.

  On the other side of the street, the mission to clear the attackers was proceeding smoothly.

  "Frag and clear!" yelled the major as shotgun blasts pumped out of an open door on the third story of the house. Automatic weapon fire followed the explosion, and the two men in the room were left where they had fallen. The last two rooms were empty, and then Alpha team burst out onto the rooftops.

  For a few tense seconds they exchanged fire with a position at the front of the roof, overlooking the street, and then they split to take the sides. One half of Alpha team looked across at Bravo team, and the other half cleared out two major emplacements on the roof next door, but a story lower. A minute after that they gave the all clear.

  Lawson and Pears surveyed the damage to the Escort one vehicles. Those with dynamite damage they wrote off, though they might be good for parts. One of the other vehicles started at first try, and another three looked like they could be repaired.

  "How long to get them running?" said Lawson, and Pears got his mechanics straight onto it. Both men knew how little time they had. The insurgents had retreated for a block or two, but they would be back soon. As if to underline that thought, the cough and growl of a bulldozer started up in the distance.

  "Let the snipers take care of it," said Lawson, as the mechanics looked up. "We're relying on you four to save our backsides. Patch the engines together, somehow, and we can do a proper fix later."

  The mechanics nodded, and went back to work.

  Two of the moribund vehicles were running by the time the bulldozer came roaring down the street between the postal services building and the rooftops now commanded by Alpha and Bravo teams. Reasoning that the bulldozer might try to take out more of their vehicles, Lawson had anything that could move under its own power shifted to the back of the building.

  The bulldozer did, in the end, take out one vehicle the mechanics had abandoned as unrepairable, before it veered sideways and crashed into the brick wall of a bank. The two men in the cab, those hunkered down behind the giant blade, and several hitching a ride on the back, were all dead.

  "My compliments," said the President, as Lawson passed him a handset and he could address Alpha and Bravo tea
ms, "that was some fine shooting at a distance. I would like to thank you all personally."

  The two majors saluted, out of habit, and one managed a simple "acknowledged" at the Presidential words of praise.

  Scouts set out to find a route that would be safer than the one they'd come in on. Once the two teams from the rooftops were safely back at the telephone exchange, the two convoys moved out as one. Despite a smattering of rifle fire, they managed to exit the small town safely, and get back onto Route 76.

  Lawson looked at the map. There was one more range of hills to work their way up and over, and then the terrain improved considerably. A day later they were making their way around the larger centre of New Stanton, and heading for a meet up with escort group two. Colonel Hinkley's convoy was already cutting through Farmington and Chalkhill along back roads, and was on time to make the rendezvous.

  By that evening all three convoys were at Twilight, a farming location south of Speers on the Monongahela River. There had been a brief gun battle with a local group that thought it owned the bridge, and could trade goods for passage.

  Once in Twilight it had been easy enough to find an abandoned farming complex and then a little-damaged barn. It was late afternoon, and the folding table and chairs set up for a meeting looked incongruous in the large open space.

  "What is your status, Colonel?" said the President.

  "Lost one vehicle and all the people in it to some sort of improvised mine," said Colonel Hinkley. "One of the trucks broke a part we don't have a spare for, so that has been left behind. Hostiles have cost us three more dead and a number of wounded. The wounded are recovering satisfactorily."

  The President nodded. The original three convoys would barely make two now, but the last hurdle was just ahead.

  "Pittsburgh," he said. "What are our plans for that?"

  "As you know, Mr President," said Colonel Spears, "we picked up Route 70 after New Stanton, and we intend to follow it until we've passed south of Pittsburgh. That means we'll soon be at our closest point to the city, which will make it the most dangerous part of our journey.

  "An ex-military force holds the north of Pittsburgh, and a coalition of gangs controls the south. Unfortunately the gangs have extended their control into the countryside, presumably looking to benefit from wild cattle and abandoned orchards when the tinned food runs out. Their presence could make problems for us."

  "Drones tell us the road ahead has been cleared, and some repairs made," said Hinkley, taking over smoothly from his colleague.

  "That could be good news for us, or it could be a trap. The gangs are probably clearing the road so they can control the road."

  "Alternatives?" said the President.

  "Nothing practical," said Lawson. "Side roads suffered more from the 'quakes, and a deviation would add a lot of extra kilometres. If we stick to Route 70, though, we'll have to cut north to avoid the urban areas around Washington, in Washington county, and that will bring us closer to Pittsburgh than I would like."

  It wasn't ideal, but it was the best route they had.

  51

  Imazighen village

  Atlas Mountains, North-west Africa

  "I Wadu has only been able to tell us so much," said Jo, sitting at a table in the IT room, "but we're working our way through the ship's files, and piecing things together between the two."

  There were a lot of people crammed into the room at the back of the barn. Don and the rest of his team, including Graham, Jo's IT staff, Izem and his most trusted people, and the rest of the High Council. Standing beside the High Council members were two interpreters.

  It had been an invigorating week for Jo. The strange alien creature inside the buried ship had seemed to appreciate her company, and she was beginning to understand why.

  She had so much new information to share. Most of it she wouldn't have believed a few short weeks ago. Standing inside an alien spacecraft tended to change your perspective on things.

  "I Wadu was orphaned," she continued, "as we would look at things, and the ship has taught him most of what he knows.

  "He is a 'he' by the way. All of his species are, and there is a very close symbiotic relationship between the three types we saw in the zoological readouts. I think we should start with the biology of these creatures, and it's a very strange biology indeed!

  "Their planet revolves around a sun much bigger than ours, but about the same distance from it. That explains why the default setting for lighting inside the spaceship is much brighter than we are used to.

  "My astronomy's not really up to this, but it appears the large sun pulled at least one of its gas giants closer than is normal in most solar systems, or it managed to capture a rogue gas giant, I'm not sure which.

  "I Wadu's planet and the gas giant travel around his sun at slightly differing speeds, and the effect of the bigger planet's gravity is enough to set up an elliptical orbit for their planet. The temperature oscillates between extremely hot and extremely cold every twelve of their years. I don't know what that is in our years.

  "These extremes make the planet an evolutionary crucible. Many of the plants and animals have formed symbiotic relationships with other species to help them survive, and they can't live without their partner species now.

  "I Wadu's people have formed such a relationship with the larger creatures we saw in the files. His type are at their best in the hot part of the cycle, hence the umbrella shape and black skin to dump heat as soon as they're out of the sun. They have always used caves as home bases, much as our ancestors did.

  "The larger creatures are a type of soldier, and they protected the caves during the blood-drenched cold years."

  "Aeskri," said Izem. "In our language - soldier."

  "Then we'll use that name," said Jo, and continued on.

  "The Aeskri would fight for food and territory during the cold part of the planet's cycle. The larger shape conserved body heat, but they also needed to be large and aggressive to survive. The planet's colder times were a killing field, not unlike the dinosaur years on Earth.

  "In more recent times they have shaped their world to their needs, as we have shaped ours. However the dependency between the two types remained a normal feature of their society, at least until recently. Both types of creature are always male, because that helped survival in those early, extremely harsh, environments.

  "Both types are also most comfortable underground – their natural shelter against early predators – and we can see that with the citadels. A little bit above ground, and a lot below.

  There were always some females in the early days of cave shelters, and these are the third type we saw in the files. They give birth to the males of both species, and a few females like themselves. If the females die out in one place, some type of extreme hormonal adjustment takes place in the I Wadu type, and turns some of them into females.

  "Since females are so rare, and they are essential to the survival of the tribe, both of the other two types revere them. This explains the attitude of the ship, and I Wadu, towards myself. There is apparently a 'head female' in each clan, and the ship seems to have chosen me over, say, Dassin for instance."

  "Tell them why," said Sufian, and Jo looked annoyed. Then a little colour crept into her cheeks.

  "In the interest of science, and being fully informed," added Sufian. Jo suspected he was secretly enjoying this. He was being poker faced, so she couldn't tell, but he was also a male.

  "The ship does take ongoing readings of female DNA and health levels," she said, "and in quite complex ways. The ship believes I have the highest levels of hormonal activity and am most likely to breed in the near future."

  There was a burst of laughter from the Europeans, and polite smiles from the Imazighen men. Dassin looked defiant in defence of her boss. Sufian remained poker faced.

  "Well, if that is the case your situation as head female has been very useful to us," said Don carefully, "and we're extremely thankful for what you have learned.

&
nbsp; "If you could continue, Jo?"

  "The control panels in the ship are continuing to translate," said Jo, "especially if I put questions directly to I Wadu, but my team is getting nowhere with a translation guide. Izem, you have some news on that?"

  The Imazighen leader made a swirling gesture with his hand. The people of the village understood it, but the Europeans didn't.

  "A request has been sent," he said, "and a reply should be back by now. Mr Don and I will be visiting Fezzou soon, so let us remain hopeful."

  Jo had no idea what the abandoned village of Fezzou had to do with it, but she moved on to the next topic.

  "We've been lucky," she said, looking round the room and making eye contact. "The spacecraft buried here was one of several early exploration ships. The colonisation wave Earth is experiencing now came much later.

  "Some of the references in the ship's files, at least when I ask I Wadu to help me with them, show Imazighen society still at the hunter-gatherer stage, certainly before the Islamic renaissance and its contribution to the High Medieval period in Europe.

  "1000 to 1250 AD," she added, seeing confused looks around the room.

  "So the ship arrived here sometime before 1000 AD," she finished. "Which makes what I am about to tell you even more extraordinary.

  "This was a manned ship, as all the exploration ships were. They carried small numbers of I Wadu's people, who are the more scientifically minded, and more mentally stable over long periods of time in space. The exploration voyages were a one-way trip, and the crews knew that. But here's where it gets really interesting.

  "Even at the time the ship was launched, there were divisions showing up in their society. The larger and more aggressive Aeskri wanted to conquer new worlds, spread through the galaxy, that sort of thing. I Wadu's people could see the necessity of war, at times, but they thought more could be gained by trade, and exposure to new scientific ideas.