Vaz 4: Invaders

by Laurence E. Dahners

  “Understanding their technology is what I meant.” Tiona went on to explain how a daughter-ship had broken away from the main alien mothership and appeared to be headed toward Earth. “The military is worried that they might attack us.”

  Vaz looked startled, “Why would they do that?”

  “Um…” Tiona paused since she had no idea why aliens would want to travel to another star and attack the beings there. “Because they need something we have here?”

  “What could we possibly have that they wouldn’t be able to get more easily in their own solar system? Transporting anything from one star to another is so difficult and resource intensive that the transportation costs alone would make anything you moved far more precious than gold.”

  Realizing she had no idea why aliens might attack, she said, “Do you have any thoughts on why they might have come here then?”

  “Knowledge is the only thing that has high enough value and low enough transportation cost to make it worthwhile.” He frowned, “Is there any reason to think that we know things they don’t?”

  “Well,” Tiona said, “I would have said that they must be more advanced than we are since they have a star drive and we don’t… But I guess they’re actually only more advanced than everyone else in the human race if we except you.”

  Vaz tilted his head curiously, “Why do you say that?”

  “Because,” she said patiently, “apparently you know how to get from one star to another just like they do.” She waited a beat. When Vaz said nothing, she mentally snorted at herself and continued, “They’re accelerating their daughter-ship with a plasma drive, so I guess in some senses we’re more advanced than they are because we have thrusters.”

  Vaz looked interested now. Tiona had the impression that the fact that humans were more advanced in one area had made him think about the possibility that the aliens might be more advanced in another. When he said, “What else do we know about them?” Tiona thought this confirmed her supposition.

  Tiona considered. “The daughter-ship masses about 400 metric tons. They’re communicating by radio. The signals look digital.”

  He appeared to be uninterested in the mass of the daughter-ship, but when she mentioned their communications Vaz looked excited. “Have we decoded their transmissions?!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you get me copies of their signals? It’d be really fun to decode them!”

  “How can you decode them when we don’t even know the language you’re decoding into?”

  Her father appeared to be startled by the possibility. He tilted his head curiously, then said, “I guess I don’t know until I try. But, if some of the information being sent represents machine instructions rather than the conversations of biological beings, I think I’ll be able to understand the machine logic.”

  Trust my father to think he’d understand the machines better than the people! Tiona thought. “I’ll ask, but they’re trying to keep everything pretty hush-hush so they might not let us have them.”

  Tiona wandered out to her car in a daze. She and her father had talked some more about the aliens, but she’d had a hard time getting him to talk about their technology. He was much more excited about how interesting it would be to try to puzzle out their communications.

  She settled into her car, then wondered where she should go. I should stop in and talk to Mom, she decided, opening the door again. Her AI said, “You have a call from General James Cooper.”

  “Put him through… General Cooper?”

  “Hi, I’m answering your call, but I have a lot of pressing issues. Is it urgent?”

  Tiona blinked, “I suspect I’m calling you about those selfsame pressing issues. Are you helping deal with the aliens?”

  “Yeesss,” Cooper replied, dragging the word a little bit. Suspiciously, “How did you hear about them?”

  “A General Stoddard is out at GSI commandeering saucers to go look at them. He’s a little… abrasive. Even though I believe we should help him, he’s getting less help than he could because he’s…” Tiona tried to think of a nice way to say it but then decided not to candy coat it, “such a jerk. I’m hoping you or someone on your staff can help us get a better liaison.”

  “Ah… yes. I know what you mean about the general. He’s very capable but… lacking in social lubrication.” There was a little pause, then Cooper said, “I’ll see what I can do about that issue. For now, talk to me about any problems. Will you be able to provide saucers for reconnaissance?”

  “Though Stoddard didn’t ask for it, I’ve called all of our saucers back on the remote chance that we need to fight. Unfortunately, even the first one won’t get back for four days. Since I talked to him, I realized we still have the original saucer that went out to the asteroid. It’s small, but could go out and have a look-see right away.”

  “Oh! That’d be great. It’ll carry, what, seven people?”

  “Five.”

  “We’d need someone who’s familiar with the equipment. Could you or Nolan go?”

  Startled by the suggestion of Nolan, there was a hiccup in Tiona’s thoughts. Maybe it’d be good for him? “Sure,” she said slowly, “one or the other of us could go.”

  “Stoddard will probably want to go, but more importantly we’ve got to send a Major Vincent. Vincent’s the real hotshot on space warfare. If anyone can assess the alien’s technology it’d be him. I guess we should also send a couple of guys who are really comfortable in spacesuits in case we need to land somebody on the alien ship.”

  Tiona said, “I think you should send a diplomat too. If you only prepare for war, that’s all you’ll be able to do.”

  Cooper snorted, “That’s what the president said too. I pointed out that we won’t be able to communicate and she dropped the request.”

  “If there is some way to communicate, being out there with no one but triggermen could be a problem.”

  Cooper said nothing for a few seconds, then said, “There’s no point in me talking to the President Miles about that one. She’ll agree with you. I’ll ask her to assign us a diplomat. Any other issues I can help you with?”

  “My dad would like a datastream of the radio transmissions we’ve picked up between the alien ships.”

  “They’re digital! Not in any machine language we use!”

  “I know. My dad thinks it would be fun to try to decode them.”

  “We’ve got the NSA working on… Never mind,” the general said, sounding resigned, “I’m not going to make you point out the fact that your dad’s way better than the NSA. I’ll get him a feed.”

  They talked a few minutes longer about the reconnaissance mission then Cooper hung up. Tiona sat thinking in her car for a few more minutes, then got out and went into the garage. At her command the saucer tilted up so she could climb onto the back deck…

  ***

  Once General Cooper had disconnected his call to Tiona, he turned to one of his aides. Lt. Mullins was the one he thought of as his Technical Aide because Mullins was so savvy with electronics and other science. “How’s the NSA coming with the Signals Intelligence on the aliens?”

  Mullins slowly shook his head. “No context to use for decoding. There’s no way to figure coding schemes out when you don’t even have any idea what they might be saying.”

  “I was afraid of that. I need you to get a feed of the raw data and forward it to Dr. Vaz Gettnor.”

  The lieutenant frowned, “Who sir?”

  “Vaz Gettnor. My AI will give you a connection to his daughter Tiona Gettnor. She’s the one that flew the saucer out to pick up the astronauts.”

  Mullins glanced up, probably seeing the ping with the connection data on his HUD. “Do I send the alien transmissions to her, or her father?” Mullins looked a little uncomfortable, “And what are they going to do with the data?”

  “He won’t answer your calls. So, contact her to figure out how to get the data through to him. He’s going to see if he can understand it.
”

  Mullins looked taken aback. “He thinks he can decode stuff that’s stumping the NSA?”

  Cooper gave Mullins a little grin, “What’s the worst that could happen. Maybe that he won’t figure it out either?”

  Mullins gave the general a dubious look, but said, “I’ll get right on it sir.”

  ***

  Pasadena, California — The Near Earth Object Program at JPL today confirmed some rumors that have been on the amateur astronomy network. Apparently the object first seen in May after it rounded the sun has in fact split into two fragments. The smaller of those two fragments is going to pass quite close to Earth which will provide an excellent opportunity for closer observation…

  Reven was at a skate park “generating buzz.” Tiona had told her that making a successful commercial product out of her sky-board would require that potential users had some time to get hyped up about it and encouraged her to fly it in public as much as possible.

  Reven almost felt guilty about telling her parents that she was going out to advertise the sky-board when, in her mind, she was actually going out to ride for the fun of it. However, having zoomed around this particular skate park enough to have attracted a big crowd, she’d finally landed and started letting some of the kids take short rides themselves.

  Some of them panicked when they got on because the board didn’t provide them the side-to-side resistance that wheeled boards did. Tilting the board hard enough to keep it from sliding out sideways took some getting used to. Some kids couldn’t stay on it for more than a few seconds and essentially wasted their turn. Others seem to get the knack of it fairly quickly, taking substantial rides around the park.

  Fortunately, when they wanted to stretch their turn longer than they should, she could just tell her AI to ground the board. To their dismay it would slow and gently settle to the concrete. One of the kids had evidently thought she wouldn’t ground him if he stayed far away from her—presumably thinking that she wouldn’t want to walk over to get the board. However, once she’d grounded him he’d called out to her asking if she wanted him to ride it back over to her. To his frustration, when he stepped off the board, it rose to an HAAT of six inches and flew back to her under AI control, neatly dodging the intervening spectators on the way.

  ***

  As the small saucer settled into place at the coordinates Tiona’d been given in Washington, she wondered once again whether she should’ve sent Nolan on this trip. She kept thinking that it would have been the good thing. It could have gotten him engaged in doing something again. Something to get him out of his dissipated new lifestyle. Tiona tried not to think about how she might be hoping that such a mission might get Nolan out of Carolyn’s orbit and into hers.

  But, when it had come down to it, she’d realized that she couldn’t send him into danger that she wasn’t going into as well. If the purpose of this mission was to evaluate the aliens as a possible threat, sending her boyfriend out to evaluate it while she stayed at home felt… wrong. Perhaps she could have, if she’d been sending him on other missions. All space flights were inherently dangerous, after all, but sending him on the new undertaking that had as its only purpose the evaluation of the danger posed by the aliens felt morally inexcusable.

  She wished she could take him with her, but there’d been tremendous wrangling over who got the five slots on the saucer. General Stoddard hadn’t even wanted Tiona to go. Essentially, he wanted to go himself, taking four mission specialists to help him fight the aliens if it became necessary. Tiona had the distinct impression that Stoddard would have phrased it “when it became necessary.” The president had told the State Department to send a diplomat. At first they hadn’t been able to find anyone who was both fit enough and willing to go. Then, when they’d finally found an undersecretary, he wasn’t thrilled and refused to go if he couldn’t have at least three underlings to assist him. NASA had insisted on sending a team to evaluate the scientific capabilities of the aliens.

  What they had for a team at present included General Stoddard and one of his men, a Lt. Nunez specially trained in space work who had his own military spacesuit. NASA had one man, a Dr. James Kline trained in astrophysics. The State Department’s Undersecretary, having been told he couldn’t take his minions was sending one of those minions rather than going himself.

  Tiona opened the airlock doors at the back of the saucer and stepped outside. “Mr. Shapiro?” she said to the nervous looking young man standing there.

  He nodded nervously and picked up a couple of large suitcases.

  “You can’t bring those!” Tiona said, appalled. She calmed herself, “Sorry, we don’t have much room. You can bring one small overnight case, but that’s it.”

  “But… what if the negotiations continue for an extended period? Besides the second case has document printers for any agreements we come to.”

  “We’ll be lucky if we can communicate at all! There’s no way we’re going to be signing printed agreements.”

  It took another 15 minutes for Shapiro to go back in and repack into one small case. They headed back to GSI to pick up the rest of their team. On the short trip to North Carolina, Tiona got to know “Kurt” as Shapiro preferred to be called. He seemed to be a nice fellow with a good handle on Earth politics, but was completely clueless about spaceflight. Once the introductions were completed, he looked around and said with some concern, “Where’s the room we’re going to meet with the aliens in?”

  Tiona stared at him for a moment, wondering if he’d been listening when she’d said they’d be lucky to communicate at all. Finally, she said, “This is it. That’s why you guys can’t send a whole team—we only have seats for five people.”

  He stared, “I know you folks have some huge saucers; why aren’t you sending one of them?!”

  Beginning to regret having demanded that they send along a diplomat, Tiona tried to explain the issues with getting a big saucer back in time, but met a disbelieving stare. Thinking that the guy might turn out to be worse than useless, she nonetheless set out to explain some of the physics of the situation to him.

  He waved that away, “Sciencey stuff has never been my strong suit. You handle that stuff and I’ll do the talking.”

  By the time they landed at GSI to pick up Stoddard, Tiona was dreading the trip. Sure enough, during the trip to LA to pick up Klein, Stoddard and Shapiro managed to thoroughly rub each other the wrong way. Tiona spent the time teaching them how to get into their spacesuits. Then, while Stoddard rolled his eyes, she had to try to convince Shapiro that he couldn’t wear his designer suit over the space one.

  Dr. Klein proved to be pleasant, excited to meet the aliens, and holding very reasonable expectations about the trip and how limited their ability to communicate might be. He seemed most excited about inspecting the alien starship in hopes of understanding how they’d traveled the immense distances between the stars. However, when Tiona forwarded her dad’s deep gravitational wormhole hypothesis, Kline merely lifted an eyebrow and shook his head to discount it. Tiona felt pretty certain that he didn’t know who either she or her father was, but decided it would be petty to bring it up.

  When they stopped at a small military space habitat in LEO to pick up Lt. Nunez, Tiona was pleasantly surprised to find that the Lt. was not a man, but a small, no-nonsense woman who Tiona immediately liked. The Lt. went by her initials, “J. J.” and, after seeing the general’s reaction, Tiona had the feeling that Stoddard hadn’t known Nunez was a woman either.

  Stoddard wanted to travel at 2G acceleration and no one resisted the suggestion so Tiona had the AI plot them a trajectory and start them out. 2G’s wasn’t intolerable, but it did inhibit people from doing much.

  Tiona insisted on decelerating briefly to 1G for meals and bathroom breaks.

  Even traveling at two gravities, it was nearly 17 hours before they’d accelerated up for the trip and then decelerated back down to zero and started accelerating toward the Earth again. The daughter-ship was coming
toward them at 47 km/s so they had to start accelerating back toward Earth in order to match the daughter-ship’s velocity and vector and reach a zero-zero intercept.

  ***

  Aboard the lander, the second officer turned to the ships brand new captain and said, “An object is on a near intercept course for us.”

  Balan turned irritably to look at the screen herself, “Is it going to hit us or not?”

  Timidly, Second Officer said, “I don’t think so, but it’s decelerating. If it changes its rate of deceleration, it might.”

  Despite her attempt to damp the reaction, Balan’s wings lifted slightly in alarm. “Decelerating?” she asked, turning to the radar screens.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Balan saw the object displayed on the meteoroid detection system. The system displayed objects in higher frequency colors according to the degree of threat they posed. With a frisson of fear, Balan saw that this one was far into the ultraviolet. Even meteoroids that were calculated to hit them were usually only blue, but most of them were tiny. “How big is it?”

  “Its diameter is 21 fargs (8 meters).”

  Balan blinked, That’s huge! “Its velocity?”

  Second Officer looked over at his screen before answering “8340 kilofargs per milliday (one renda milliday = 1.5 Earth minutes).”

  “You didn’t know?!”

  “It’s decelerating,” Second Officer reminded her patiently.

  Embarrassed that’d she’d forgotten, Balan merely asked, “How fast?”

  Sounding awed, Second Officer said, “5.4 Gravities (2 Earth Gs)!”

  Astonished by the acceleration’s magnitude and wondering how it could possibly be achieved, Balan said, “Wait! Does it have a plasma exhaust?” Realizing that a plasma drive could never produce that much thrust, she said, “Or nuclear?” Then, thinking that the natives of this system couldn’t be advanced enough to have nuclear rockets said, “Or chemical?” Then she wondered how a chemical rockets could have sufficient specific impulse to travel interplanetary distances at such high accelerations.