Vaz 4: Invaders

by Laurence E. Dahners

  With an inability to communicate, some say that the only evidence of the aliens’ intentions comes from their attacks on the two saucers we have sent to meet them. They urge that we prepare to meet them on a war footing. Others, pointing out that it’s almost impossible to imagine why the aliens would’ve traveled here from another star system to wage war against us, urge that we meet them with open arms. After all, a race which can travel between the stars must have tremendous technological advantages which would be almost impossible for us to overcome in any attempts to make war on them.

  Tiona introduced Generals Cooper and Stoddard as well as Major Vincent to some of the people there at GSI including her brother, a couple of the technical guys, and Pete Costa from Costa and Sons. They were having a meeting to talk about possible weapons that might be used against the aliens. She began by saying, “I thought it might be helpful if we knew what kind of weapons you military guys are mounting on saucers. No need to duplicate effort and all that.”

  Even before she’d finished General Stoddard began shaking his head negatively. “The weapons systems are all classified. We can’t tell you anything about them. Essentially we’re only here to give you advice on any systems you think you might be able to build.”

  Cooper had gotten a sour look on his face. He turned to Stoddard and said, “Marlon, we need to work with these people. They have access to a lot of brainpower. We can’t afford not to tap into that.”

  Stoddard’s face closed up, “Classified, Jim. You can’t even order me to give these people classified information.”

  Tiona lifted her hands in a pacifying gesture, “We don’t really need to know any details. Were just wondering what broad categories of weapons you guys are working on? Kinetic weapons, beam weapons, explosive weapons,” she shrugged, “some other category of weapon we haven’t even thought about?”

  Stoddard gave her a look that fell a little short of a glare, “There’s no reason why you need to know what we’re deploying for you to build whatever you want to build.”

  Tiona stared at him for a moment, then said, “Let’s just suppose that we’re thinking about building some kind of beam weapon, and let’s further suppose that you guys are already mounting some kind of amazing laser blaster that’s ten times stronger than what we’re building.” Stoddard started to interrupt, but Tiona held up her hand to get him to wait. “Now let’s suppose that it does come down to the space warfare and we head out there and take a shot at them… But,” she waved that halting hand back and forth in negation, “it turns out that they’ve got some amazing deflection shield that blocks all beam weapons. You guys take your shot too. Neither of us even puts a scratch on them! Now,” she leaned forward and fixed him with an intent gaze, “it becomes evident that we need a kinetic weapon, but it’s too goddamn late because neither of us built one!”

  Looking like he might explode, Stoddard started to stand up out of his chair, but Cooper had a firm grip on his shoulder. Cooper said, “Settle down Marlon. She’s got a good point and you damned well know it.” Cooper turned to Tiona and said, “Without divulging any classified information I am quite comfortable telling you that yes, we’re in fact mounting beam weapons on a couple of our LEO saucers. They’ve been converted to function in deep space by adding on your dad’s electromagnetic radiation shielding systems.”

  Tiona said, “Thank you. That happens to fit fairly well with our plans since our skills are mostly suited for building kinetic weapons. Our plans are to…” She went on to describe some of the thruster based projectiles that their team had been working up since the initial discussion that she and Nolan had. Cooper and Vincent had a few good suggestions.

  If Stoddard had any suggestions, he kept them to himself.

  They brainstormed a little about “out there” kinds of weapons such as a fusor and capacitor device linked up to a graphene net which might shock the alien ship into a nonfunctional state. However they soon realized it would be subject to the same problems as the kinetic weapons. The aliens’ beam weapon would probably fire on it as it approached. Considering that it would be filled with sophisticated electronics, it would probably be much more susceptible to damage by the beam weapon than a simple impactor made of a big chunk of steel.

  They also discussed nuclear weapons. Even though the blast effect from a nuclear weapon wouldn’t be very significant unless they managed to place the weapon really close to the aliens, an enhanced radiation weapon like a neutron bomb should kill all the aliens on board even if it didn’t damage the ship itself. An advantage would be that they could study the technology on the ship afterwards. GSI, of course, couldn’t produce such a weapon, but they might build a delivery system for it.

  As the meeting broke up Tiona thought General Stoddard looked very thoughtful. She felt a little uncomfortable about her suspicion that he was mostly interested in the possibility of delivering an enhanced radiation weapon. The whole idea left Tiona feeling a little unclean.

  Though, she didn’t know why—dead was dead, wasn’t it? Not really, she thought, dying from radiation is supposed to be a really ugly way to go.

  On the other hand, those bastards took an unprovoked shot at me.

  When Tiona got back to her office, she found General Cooper standing there, apparently waiting for her. “Yes General, what can I do for you?”

  He said, “Can we talk in your office? This isn’t for general consumption.”

  She nodded and opened the door, waving him in and indicating a chair. “What is it?”

  He chewed his lip for a moment, looking uncertain, then said, “The president had a strategy meeting, trying to decide what to do…” he trailed off.

  Having taken her seat while wondering what it was that Cooper was finding so difficult to say, Tiona said, “And?”

  “And, one of the biggest questions was what to do when the daughter-ship gets to Earth. Assuming we still don’t have any way to communicate, do we shoot at it? Do we let them land?”

  Tiona drew back, a look of horror on her face, “Let them land?! What if they release their virus?”

  Cooper blew out an exasperated breath, “That’s what I said. However, the president has some very bright science people advising her. They point out that, first of all, the aliens can’t possibly design a virus to wipe us out until they’ve gathered specimens of our DNA. Thus, they can’t have such a virus ready at hand prior to landing. These smart folks feel certain that it would take months to years to create such a virus. Second,” Cooper raised his hands, palm up suggesting helplessness, “without some kind of substantiation, they just don’t believe your dad translated anything.”

  Tiona closed her eyes, feeling her shoulders slumping in despair. Opening them, she said, “I’d like to tell you that I’ll head right over and get him to explain it…” She sighed, “But I’d probably do better talking to the wall here.”

  “Can you maybe get him to translate some random segment of their transmissions? Something that would serve as a Rosetta Stone for the rest of it?”

  She gave him a weary smile, “Send me something you’d like to have him translate. I’ll ask. I don’t think it’ll work, mind you, he pretty much ignores me if I talk about anything to do with the aliens, but I’ll ask.”

  The two of them set, staring at one another for a moment. Then Tiona said, “What if we grab that daughter-ship with one of the big saucers and just keep it from landing? Keep it out in orbit?”

  Cooper frowned, “You mean by just holding it up?”

  Tiona nodded, “I suppose they’d start shooting at any saucer that got close enough to do it, but maybe we could armor it?”

  “I’ll talk to the president. But I can hear some of her advisers now, telling her that doing that would be tantamount to an attack and that an attack would get everything off on the wrong foot.”

  “Would they let a diplomat from another country, someone who’d shot a couple of our policemen on his way to Washington, walk into the White House with a big box th
at might have an atomic bomb in it?”

  Cooper snorted, “Some of ‘em would.” He shook his head with dismay and drawled, “The dumb sons-a-bitches…”

  ***

  Tiona stopped in to visit her mother. Lisanne looked up and smiled, “Not that I’d ever object to a visit from my daughter, but should you be spending all this time visiting your parents when the fate of the world rests on your shoulders?”

  With a little laugh, Tiona said, “I’ve got my people working on the fate of the world. Besides, that fate really is supposed to rest on the military guys with me just providing them assistance.” She shrugged, “And, I’m afraid that probably the most important thing I can do is to get Dad to tell us how to translate the aliens’ transmissions.” She tilted her head inquisitively, “Have you had any luck?”

  Lisanne sighed and shook her head. “Every so often I have an idea for a way to ask him about it that he might not find threatening, but they never work. He just clams up and then I don’t get to talk to him for a couple of hours.”

  Tiona grinned at her, “Must be unbearable having that chatterbox quieted.”

  It was Lisanne’s turn to smile at the thought of the taciturn Vaz being called a chatterbox, “Admittedly, he doesn’t talk a lot, but I cherish what communication we do have.”

  Tiona descended the stairs into her dad’s basement lab. She decided to stop trying to beat around the bush and hit her dad with the issues full frontal. “Hey Dad. Came to talk to you about the aliens.”

  Vaz had turned toward her with one of his shy smiles, lifting his eyes almost to hers. Now they dropped and he swung back around to lift his eyes back up to the big screens on the wall.

  Although he always acted like he couldn’t hear her when he was behaving this way, Tiona decided to challenge that idea by talking to him as if he was paying attention. “I thought you should know that the alien daughter-ship is supposed to be arriving here at Earth in the next few days. They haven’t decelerated yet, so it might be that they’re going to go right on by, or they might be planning to use those big rocket nozzles to slow themselves at the last minute.” She paused to see if he would react.

  After a few moments, he said a single word, “Aerocapture.”

  Tiona blinked as her mind stumbled over this, to her foreign, word. She’d heard of aerobraking, but she didn’t know very much about it. She opened her mouth to ask her dad what aerocapture was, but then shut it. In normal human conversation you’d ask the person who used an unknown word what it meant in order to keep the dialogue going. But talking to her dad was not a normal exchange. Instead, she sat down and queried her AI about aerocapture.

  It turned out that “aerobraking” referred to the practice of dipping into the atmosphere repeatedly so that the resultant drag would convert an elliptical orbit into one that was more circular by reducing the apoapsis (high point of the orbit). In an aerocapture maneuver, you did it in one pass, plunging much deeper into the atmosphere to generate far more resistance and produce the orbit you wanted right away instead of skipping quickly back out and then making another pass. She supposed you could completely slow down and land rather than skipping back out, but the aliens were traveling at an extremely high speed for that. The heat generated would be enormous! Tiona closed her eyes, wondering whether she dared tried to get him to say more about this. She decided to go ahead, after all, it would only amount to explaining some cool physics, something her dad like to do. She posed it as a statement, “Their velocity will be too high, I don’t think they can perform an aerocapture without overheating.”

  Vaz didn’t react and for a while Tiona thought he wasn’t going to respond at all. Then he said, “Advanced materials technology.”

  Wow, Tiona thought, three whole words. She desperately wanted to ask follow-up questions. What kind of materials? Ceramics? Carbon allotropes? Exotic metals? She decided not to push her luck. After giving it extensive thought, she ventured, “The president’s decided to let them land...” She paused to give him time to react, but he didn’t, so she continued, “Even though I told her that they might release a virus to kill everyone…” Vaz still didn’t say anything, so she said, “President Miles’ scientific advisers say that even if the aliens want to kill us with a virus, it would take a long time to create one.” Tiona stopped talking and sat back. She decided she’d give him a long time to mull that in the hopes that he might react. Meantime, she instructed her AI to be sure to record anything he said in case she missed it, then to teach her about the current state of materials technology on Earth as it related to the heat one would expect from a single pass aerocapture event starting at the aliens’ current velocity.

  She’d just begun to realize how far ahead of us the aliens had to be in their materials technology if they could actually do an aerocapture, when her dad broke into her thought process. He said, “They’re sure it’s safe?”

  She’d been thinking so hard about materials technology that it took her a moment to realize what he was asking. Finally, she responded, “The people advising the president think it’ll take months to years to develop such a virus. They think that, before the aliens could release a virus, we’d have plenty of time to try to negotiate, then to fight if that doesn’t work.”

  Vaz didn’t say anything. He’d never looked toward her, so he didn’t even have to turn away, he just continued staring at his screens, occasionally murmuring commands to his AI or hitting some of the keystroke combinations he liked to use. To her horror, Tiona realized she had no idea whether he might actually trust the president’s advisers, or, whether he thought they were idiots like she did. She very much wanted to ask him, but she’d just gotten more out of him than she had in weeks and she hadn’t asked him a single question, only made statements that he’d subsequently commented on. She didn’t want to ask a question now, even though she couldn’t think of a way to accurately determine what he thought of the president’s advisers without forming an actual query. Finally she said, “I think her advisers might be wrong.”

  Vaz didn’t comment on this missive. She sat and waited for about fifteen minutes in the hopes that he would, but he gave no evidence even knew she was there. Finally she said, “General Cooper asked me if we could get a translation of this file.” She had her AI send Cooper’s file to her dad’s AI. “If you could send me a translation, that would be really helpful.” She got up and left with a heavy heart.

  Which was nothing new for any of recent encounters with her dad.

  After Tiona left, Vaz sat thinking about what she’d said. He found it hard to believe that the president would let the aliens land. After all, even on our first Moon mission there was a lot of concern that the astronauts might bring back some kind of pathogens. Letting aliens land who say they’re planning to create pathogens to kill humans seemed kind of crazy to him. But, he reminded himself, I’m not a biology expert. The president must have real virologists advising her. They should know whether the aliens could do what they think they can.

  He thought about it for a couple of hours, then decided that he shouldn’t do anything to prevent the alien’s landing after all. The president had to have excellent advisers who knew more about biologic threats than he did. Certainly, they would know better than Vaz whether it was reasonable to try to talk to the aliens. Vaz hadn’t seen anything in the aliens’ transmissions to suggest that they were interested in talking at all, but he’d only read a small portion of their transmissions. Even though he’d seen several which matter of factly discussed the eradication of intelligent life from the solar system, maybe those were just contingent upon a failure of negotiations and Vaz had missed the ones about diplomacy. Surely, he thought, the NSA is translating and reading all of the aliens’ transmissions, then sending the important ones on to the president.

  I’m good at science, he told himself, not this other stuff.

  He’d forgotten the file that Tiona had asked him to translate.

  ***

  President Miles looked aro
und the big table at the “alien team” she’d assembled. The people looking back at her ranged from representatives of the aerospace industry and NASA, some military and NSA people, the Secretary of State and a gaggle of his advisers, a science fiction author someone had picked because he’d written several books about alien encounters and Tiona Gettnor to represent GSI. “So what’s new?” Miles asked.

  One of the people from the NASA section said, “They haven’t decelerated. They’ve only made minor adjustments to their trajectory using their plasma thrusters.”

  “So, are they going to miss us and fly on by? Crash into us and blow the planet apart? Slow down and land?”

  “Oh, they wouldn’t be able to blow the planet apart!”

  “Not even if they have some kind of super weapon we’ve never heard of?”

  The NASA guy pressed his lips into a thin line, but then shook his head doggedly. “They can’t possibly release enough energy from something that size to destroy the planet.”

  “Could do a lot of damage though, I’ll bet, huh?”

  The NASA guy gave a minuscule nod, “But that would make no sense. What good would that do them?”

  President Miles stared at him for a moment, then said dryly, “Maybe they like living on burnt out husks.”

  The guy ignored this, “Our best guess,” he ventured, “is that they intend to decelerate at the last moment, perhaps using some aerobraking to put themselves into an orbit.”

  General Cooper slightly lifted a hand.

  The president saw it, “Yes Coop?”

  “I have it on good authority that they’re going to perform an aerocapture.”

  The NASA representative’s eyes widened and he slowly shook his head, “That’s impossible! Their velocity is far too high for them to burn it all off in a single maneuver. They’ve got to decelerate even to make aerobraking feasible.”