Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  It didn’t help that Lunar City was now a self-governing enclave, the centre of the Lunar independence movement. Russian and Chinese miners visited, completely against their countries’ regulations, and came back with ideas of independence. Dangerous ideas, to their governments…

  The elevator slowed, its doors opening out onto the high-ceilinged Main Concourse. Unlike the functional grey designs of most lunar colonies, this one was decorated, between the mall-like store entrances, with colourful designs that made her eyes widen slightly. Lunar City was not a place to bring young children.

  “Samra!” came a voice from behind her. “Welcome to the Lunar Capital!”

  Samra turned to see a short, wild-haired man in a brightly-coloured suit; personality launched from every aspect of him, from the mauve suit to the wild white beard and slicked-back green hair. Karl Bova was the son of Sam Bova, the entrepreneur who had founded Luna City; he would have been attractive if he hadn’t put so much work into looking unusual. Some people questioned his sanity, but nobody questioned his competence or determination. Lunar City had expanded tenfold into a real Lunar capital since he’d taken over from his father.

  “The camera algorithms picked you up as you came in,” he explained. “I thought I’d welcome you personally.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She had technically bent the rules by ensuring that Bova’s attention was drawn to the discovery, but there had been little choice; she desperately wanted to go meet the aliens. If that involved spending time playing politics, it was a price she was willing to pay.

  Bova took her arm and escorted her onto the Concourse, which was packed with thousands of people in all kinds of dress. Most were enjoying themselves; rich miners and wealthy visitors sampling real pork, cow and chicken from the farms Bova had established. There were poorer visitors too, some of them trying to reverse that status by playing at the garishly-coloured digital slot machines in alcoves between the storefronts. Vendors with trays of drugs, alcohol and food passed by, hawking their wares.

  “The entire place is buzzing with excitement!” Bova proclaimed as they headed down the concourse. Samra felt people staring at her; she kept her face blank, hoping Bova’s presence would deter attention. It was surprising no press had come onto her, but maybe Bova had something to do with that.

  “Aliens! In our lifetime!” Bova went on. “What else could you have brought that would have caused such excitement?”

  “I don’t know,” said Samra. “What is going to happen now?”

  Bova led them right, onto a smaller and less-crowded corridor. They passed a bank of ATMs, neon lighting advertising exchange in seven currencies. Next to them were a line of digital slot machines.

  “You’re going to give a press conference,” Bova said. “As one of the Lunar-born, you’re going to be telling everyone how the moon enabled you to see the aliens before anyone else. Before the UN decides to drop a few thousand soldiers here and take away our national independence.”

  National independence? Samra blinked. She tried to be apolitical, but nobody in as politically-sensitive a job as hers could afford to be completely clueless when it came to politics. The IAU would be furious over her decision, even if their own regulations had justified it. It would have been easier if the moon were independent or unified, and not a patchwork of independent states, semi-independent states, corporate states and directly-ruled-from-Earth colonies. Governments had their position on Lunar independence; people like Karl Bova differed. Everyone had been waiting for years for the other shoe to drop.

  “We have our sources on Earth,” said Bova, “and we know that the United Nations Special Security Council held an emergency session yesterday.” Guards nodded at them, mostly at Bova, as they cleared a restricted area of the city. Bova signed their paychecks; they knew who the boss was. “That’s the council that only allows world leaders to sit at the table, and we have some reason to believe they came to decisions about cooperation when the aliens get closer.”

  The tone of his voice made it clear that he expected that, as the semi-official representative of the Lunar colonies, he wanted to attend as well.

  “By the way,” he paused, “have you heard anything from them?”

  Samra shook her head. “Nothing,” she said curtly. “I find it impossible to believe they don’t have radio, but there’s been no attempt to signal us. Some of my people think that’s ominous.”

  “And why?” Bova asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I honestly don’t know,” Samra admitted. “The IAU banned all attempts to communicate with the aliens, several hours after word got out. But in that time there were several hundred signals sent, almost certainly confusing them. They may be waiting to talk once we have a confirmed embassy out there.”

  They came to the door of a room, guards outside of it nodding respect to Bova as they showed. They didn’t, yet, lower their assault carbines.

  “And so you’re determined to have that meeting with the aliens,” Bova said. “You give this conference, Samra, and you’ll have a lot of people convinced that you should be included on the flight to meet them.”

  The guards stepped aside as Bova reached to open the door “The conference is in an hour,” he said. “We’ve had reporters flooding in. Knock them dead!”

  Samra smiled wanly as she stepped through the door; it was a small refresher room, a green room with sofas, what passed for a wash-stand in the minimal Lunar gravity, and closets. A little of Karl Bova could go a long way, but she’d made her choice. The Caliphate had already started proclaiming her an Islamic Heroine, and while that might call her neutrality into question, it wouldn’t be easy to avoid a brief visit to Arabia to meet the Caliph himself.

  She stepped into the shower-like fresher booth and ran a hand through her hair as the digital screen began suggesting cosmetic options, all of which she ignored. Her hair was short, as long hair was discouraged for safety reasons on space habitats. It contrasted with her dark skin as she undressed from the transit skinsuit and replaced it with a plain grey business suit. It would never have passed muster on Earth – the close-able jacket-cuffs and pant-bottoms were designed to provide protection against an atmospheric leak, and instead of heels she wore elegant black boots – but it was as close as she could come on the moon to formalwear.

  She looked herself over in the mirror, applying a dash of powder to her face. She was barely into her forties but looked thirty; despite two doctorates, growing up under low gravity tended to have that effect, making you look younger. “The things we do for funding…”

  * * *

  The things we do for money, thought reporter Spencer O’Dowd, although he himself considered Lunar City the most interesting place on the Moon. It was, after all, where the stories were, he thought as he headed down a slot-machine-lined corridor toward the Concourse.

  He was a short, slightly hyperactive man in his forties with a receding black hairline; he’d been compared to Karl Bova and he didn’t mind that, since he himself considered the agitator one of the most interesting people on the Moon. He’d been kicked off Earth, meaning out of New York City, after a dispute with his editor – the intent had almost certainly been to get him out of her hair. Maybe she’d hoped he’d defect to a Lunar syndicate or something. Instead, she’d dropped the scoop of a lifetime into his lap!

  “You really, really think I’m not going to use it?” O’Dowd muttered as he shouldered aside a two-bit stringer and placed himself firmly, edging aside that shaven-headed CNN bitch, in his preferred vantage point. “Fuck you. Fuck you.”

  He adjusted the optical sensor on his shoulder and aimed it toward the stage; Lunar City had tight laws on what could be recorded there. What happened on Lunar City stayed on Lunar City, as the advertisements proclaimed. The press conference itself would be recorded – that was a given – but no more, outside the camera angles, would be. You never knew what could come up incidentally, and what shouldn’t.

  Karl Bova, the hyperactive madman, appe
ared at the podium and began to talk. O’Dowd tuned most of it out; it was the same old stuff, although playing this time to what might be a new audience. Every election cycle, politicians would announce their determination to extract more Helium-3 from the Moon; every new set of administrations would discover the risk in pressing that powderkeg too hard.

  “And now,” Bova finished, “Director Samra Hussein.” There was a round of applause from the Lunar-born reporters and polite clapping from everyone else in the crowded room.

  O’Dowd studied Hussein with interest. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much in her public file, other than how she’d been born in the Subhnallah Colony, which had been established half a century ago by the Caliphate. Academic records in her public profile showed a BS in physics from a respected Caliphate university, an MS in astrophysics from Oxford and doctorates in astrophysics from MIT and astrobiology from Stanford. She looked younger than the forty her records had indicated she was, but she would have looked even younger if she’d grown her hair longer; the IAU wouldn’t have trusted her to run the Observatory if she hadn’t been competent.

  He listened carefully as she outlined what had been learned so far, in the two days since the alien fleet had been discovered. Most of it was scanty and imprecise, which didn’t surprise O’Dowd; he could tell from their expressions that some of the other reporters felt differently. They were used to a single world you could cross within hours, but space was different; space was bigger. It took weeks to go from Earth to Mars, longer to the asteroid belt. There was a reason the Bridge Ships were so huge – and according to Director Hussein now, the alien ships were even more massive.

  A reporter from one of the British colonies called out a question: “Do the aliens even know we’re here?”

  “I believe they must,” Hussein replied. “We have been broadcasting signals into space for more than two hundred years, meaning anyone within that many light-years of Earth will know that we’re here. It’s inconceivable that they could have star travel without radio receptors, although they haven’t yet responded to us.”

  “Do we know what they want?” O’Dowd’s shaven-headed competitor from CNN asked. “Are they an invasion force?”

  Hussein’s smile flickered; clearly, she thought the question was stupid.

  “It would be logistically difficult to prosecute a war across interstellar distance. You might remember how much trouble we had colonizing the moon and Mars, and cosmically speaking both worlds are right next to Earth. So far there’s no evidence the aliens have super-technology like faster-than-light drives; what we can see puts them as more advanced than we are but not much more advanced. With a few years of work, we could get to where we think they are…”

  The questions continued, and Hussein’s answers impressed O’Dowd. She was answering them with enough detail to convince everyone that she knew what she was talking about, which would make her popular on Earth. Most talking heads spoke in bullshit riddles to cover their ignorance; Director Hussein had the confidence to admit her own ignorance, which in O’Dowd’s view would resonate to a bullshit-weary public. She was willing to admit that humanity didn’t know most of what needed to be known. That, the seasoned reporter thought, would look good. It made her credible.

  Presently the conference ended. O’Dowd waited for most of the press to leave, while Hussein talked with Bova. He felt his respect grow; the woman was all too human. She was real. The viewing public would love her.

  As he approached, Hussein turned from Bova. Her eyes were tired but intelligent.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” O’Dowd said. “But I’d like to talk further with you about the aliens and the welcoming fleet you suggested. Do you have plans for dinner this evening?”

  Her eyes flickered over him. It wasn’t an ‘oh, that’s nice’ examination or a ‘not fucking likely’ one, but a more dispassionate one. They weren’t going to bed anytime soon, but that wasn’t his interest anyway. If she could be convinced to help him, or to let him help her…

  “I do not have plans this evening,” said Hussein, after just long enough that he could see she’d considered the matter. “I would be delighted to accept your invitation.”

  Bova was typing on his phone. “You two go eat at the Mad Duck,” he said. “I just told them to expect you. Private room?”

  “Thank you,” said O’Dowd. He owed the Lunar City madman a favour, which was probably what the man had been banking on. Bova was crazy but not stupid, and making nice to the press was as an important an aspect of the man’s quest for Lunar independence as the… armed aspects O’Dowd was quietly sure were happening but hadn’t yet been able to find evidence of.

  Hussein said nothing as they shouldered their way back toward the Concourse, crowds increasing as they walked. Some people, more astute than others, had seen the press conference and noticed Director Hussein; most were focused on their own pleasures. Lunar City was like that.

  The line for entry to the Mad Duck was several dozen people, many of them playing on their phones while they waited. O’Dowd went to the head of it, where a sharply-dressed bouncer with an eyepiece recognized them immediately. Facial recognition algorithms through the eyepiece, most likely.

  “Mr. O’Dowd, Director Hussein,” the bouncer said. “Come right in, please.”

  A few people glared at them for jumping the line; O’Dowd shrugged it off and Hussein didn’t appear to notice. A hostess in a cocktail dress and improbably high heels took them through the crowded restaurant to a comfortable private room; Bova had organized the real VIP treatment for them. One-way mirrors gave a view of the bustling restaurant, which was one of Lunar City’s most exclusive. O’Dowd noticed mining magnates on the floor, a well-known porn star, a couple of successful professional gamblers.

  “So what do you want?” Hussein asked when they were seated. O’Dowd had ordered his usual drink, a double Glenlivet; Hussein had ordered a cocktail that looked alcoholic but didn’t contain a drop. She was a scientist but also at her level, by necessity, to some extent a politician; of course, thought O’Dowd, she’d have tricks like that. His respect for the Director went up another notch.

  He had to smile. The woman was good-looking enough that men would be asking her out all the time, even though his own motives in that regard were as pure as newly-fallen snow. His interest lay in a different direction. And he sensed from how she’d presented herself at the press conference that only honesty would work.

  “I want a place on the welcoming fleet,” he said, leaning over the dark wood table at her. “In return, I can make you a star…”

  Chapter Five: The Defence of the World

  Washington, DC

  “She’s quite a clever little self-publicist, isn’t she?” remarked General William Denny, Commander of the United States Continental Command.

  President Cardona gave his old friend a droll look. “She’s also someone who spotted this threat with enough time that we can respond,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter right now; our task is making sure we get equal or superior access to whatever the aliens are offering – if they’re offering anything. And that we defend ourselves, if they’re a threat. As a nation, and hopefully as part of a global alliance.”

  He stood up and began to pace, back and forth behind his chair in the secure briefing room. It was similar to the one in Geneva, guarded electromagnetically against every known form of surveillance. The walls were bare, for easy sweeping, except for a large American flag hanging behind him.

  “We’ll determine later exactly how the welcome fleet will be comprised,” he said. “Our priority right now is to make sure we have something to bargain with, if it comes down to a war. Politically we have a balance to walk: between being seen as aggressors, versus having too much faith in their goodwill. We must prepare.”

  Everyone had known that humanity would eventually encounter aliens – but not many people had expected it to happen in their lifetimes, particularly a race as mundane as these seemed to be. Where w
ere the exponentially superior technology, the faster-than-light drives, the psionic abilities? The people, now, who claimed to have made contact with aliens were being laughed at – the kindest responses had been that their aliens had obviously been very different to the ones now heading for Earth.

  And there was no doubt of that. Which worried the President, who had sat in on a number of planning sessions. The human Message Bearer project had been aimed at establishing a base in the asteroids of Tau Ceti before heading inward to the habitable-seeming world the telescopes had detected. It would have been supremely ironic if the aliens had been coming from there, but it looked instead like they were coming from a very different part of the sky. Simple prudence would have indicated establishing a base somewhere outer in the system, but the aliens hadn’t stopped; they were still coming in toward Earth. Which implied… what?

  He steepled his fingers as he sat down. “Admiral?”

  Admiral Nelson Oshiro was a sturdy Japanese-American, commander of the United States Space Force in which he’d spent his entire career. The USSF might have based many of its traditions on the wet-navy it had originated from, but it had a few quirks of its own; one of them being a reluctance to spend much time on formalities. The traditionalists in the older service branches might have decried that as laxity, but the sinking of the USS William Jefferson Clinton during the Taiwan War, and the USSF’s subsequent saving of a disastrous situation, had proven them beyond all doubt to be the premier service.

  But right now there was worry on the Space Force commander’s face.

  “My office has been working on various scenarios for decades,” he said in a grim voice. He, like many others, had cursed his country’s failure to develop space before the other Great Powers got there. The US could have had a commanding head start; they’d let it drop. “Although we only have limited information on the aliens’ actual capabilities, there’s nothing to indicate we’re facing an impossible foe.”