Outside Context Problem: Book 01 - Outside Context Problem

by Christopher Nuttall

  “We…ah, SETI studied the problem extensively over the last few years and all of the experts agreed that it would take aliens years to learn even one of our languages,” she continued. “We expected that we would be reduced to the level of building up a shared language piece by piece, learning the alien terms for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or ‘true’ and ‘false,’ yet the aliens were able to compose a message and speak to us perfectly. It defies belief.”

  “A great deal about this whole situation defies belief,” the President pointed out. “Who would have believed, in the final years of the twentieth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless realm of space?”

  It was a misquote, but Karen understood. “Yes, Mr President,” she said. “They’ve been watching us for a very long time.”

  “Perhaps,” the President agreed. There was…something in his expression, as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t – or wouldn’t. “Do you feel that the aliens are trustworthy?”

  “No,” Karen said, flatly. “I think they have an agenda of their own.”

  “True,” the President said. There was an odd note in his voice. “I feel the same way too. Hard times are coming.”

  The President’s aide popped in to say that time had run out before Karen could answer and ushered her out to where her parents were waiting, leaving her with one thought. The President knew more than he’d said aloud. It had been, she decided, an oddly unsatisfying meeting. She thought, briefly, about sharing her thoughts with Daisy, before deciding to keep them to herself.

  Daisy didn’t need to know.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Colorado Springs, USA

  Day 28

  “I think you need to see this,” Robin said, into the phone. There was a pause as she listened to the voice on the other end. “Yes, of course I’ll wait.”

  She put the phone down and smiled to herself. Now that other radar technicians were involved with tracking the alien craft, she could follow up her own lines of inquiry rather than watching over their shoulder. She had been looking at the alien flight paths, convinced that there was a pattern there if she looked hard enough, and she’d finally stumbled over the key. In hindsight, it was brutally obvious, but she simply hadn’t been thinking along the right lines. It was an error she intended to correct.

  General Sandra Dyson strode into Robin’s compartment as if she owned the place, which in a sense she did. Cheyenne Mountain was coming back online rapidly now that the alien mothership had been detected and the world knew that alien contact was just a handful of days away. Robin had little interest in the political situation, but even she understood that the world was already changing and that the aliens might present a new and dangerous challenge. She had no intention of allowing the aliens and their undeniable superior technology to defeat her.

  “General,” she said, managing to remember to salute this time. She rather approved of Sandra Dyson, who happened to be tolerant of nerds and geeks in the USAF. There were some, mainly pilots and ground crew, who had no tolerance for the technicians who made it all work, but the truth was that the USAF couldn’t have fielded a modern fighting force without them. The technology was no longer as simple as it had been back when the USAF had confronted a foe on equal terms. Now, a multi-million dollar gadget could determine the fate of a fighter jet that cost billions of dollars to produce, or prevent cheap and nasty enemy missiles from landing on their target. “I was looking at the aliens we were tracking and I found something interesting.”

  The irritating thing about tracking the aliens, at first, was that they only appeared as transient radar contacts, if that. It made it hard to tell if she was looking at a genuine radar contact, a flock of birds or a glitch in the machine. One of her former colleagues had drawn a series of cartoons in which the target had been identified as a piece of fluff inside the radar system, but it was no laughing matter. Launching a missile or deploying interceptors on the strength of a transient contact could have resulted in disaster.

  Now, however, they could track the alien craft to a high degree of certainty and she’d noticed a pattern. “The aliens have been maintaining a series of high altitude overflights – not just over here, but over most of the rest of the world – but they haven’t been landing anywhere in America, as far as we can tell,” she said. “I noticed, however, that many of their tracks seemed to lead due south, right towards Antarctica. I called the NRO and got them to re-task a stealth satellite to fly over the continent and look for anything unusual. The alien tracks seemed to terminate at a single location.”

  She saw Sandra's smile, but she didn’t understand it. It hadn’t occurred to her to question it; yet no mere Second Lieutenant could have talked the NRO into altering one of their satellites before, even if the fate of the world rested on the decision. The President had ordered the NRO to comply without hesitation to any request for intelligence coming from NORAD and they’d re-tasked the satellite without demur.

  “I couldn’t make head or tail of what they’d sent, so I asked them to have their analysts take a good look at it,” she continued. “They found…this.”

  She put the image up on the screen. There was a tiny fraction of the icy continent that was warmer than it had any right to be. If that wasn't enough of a giveaway, there was a single image of an alien craft on the ground, floating into shadow. She knew they’d been lucky – normally, she suspected that the aliens kept their base well out of sight when a regular satellite was directly overhead – yet the implications were disturbing even to her. The aliens had established a base in one of the most inaccessible areas on the planet.

  “You’re certain of this?” Sandra asked. The General leaned forward, as if she could pick out more detail just by staring at the image. Robin knew that she wouldn’t learn anything else; the NRO hadn’t been able to tell them anything about the size of the alien base. If it hadn’t been for the location, Robin would have wondered if an alien craft hadn’t crashed there as well. “That is definitely an alien base?”

  Robin grinned. The General believed her! “I compared the location to the files,” she said. “It’s actually in the midst of an area notorious for bad weather and…ah, what the researchers called electromagnetic interference. Any aircraft that flies into the area risks losing their navigation systems and other electronic devices. The researchers used to speculate that there was a large deposit of magnetic material in the area, but no one sent in a team to explore. The whole area is listed as an Area of Inaccessibility and off-limits to everyone. It’s actually quite some distance from McMurdo Station – the closest human outpost – which might be why no one has followed it up.”

  “Antarctica is known for bad flying conditions,” Sandra mused. The problem, Robin knew, was that so many tales grew in the telling. The aliens might have deliberately done something to conceal their base from prying eyes, or the interference might be natural and the aliens had merely taken advantage of it to keep human interlopers away. “Why would they establish a base there, of all places?”

  Robin had been giving the matter some thought. “It’s not an easy place to reach,” she said, slowly. “There are no large military forces stationed in Antarctica, even with the disputes between the various nations that have claims to parts of the continent. I doubt that there are even a hundred soldiers in all on the continent. The aliens wouldn’t have wanted a base we could reach easily.”

  “I’ve been reading up on UFO contacts,” Sandra said, slowly. “The aliens were supposed to have established a network of bases on Earth, perhaps even on the Moon.”

  She shook her head. “Do you have any details about how many craft are based there, or the exact size of the base?”

  “No, General,” Robin said. “I asked one of the analysts to keep working on it, but he said that the base is very well concealed and if we’d looked an hour or so later, we’d have seen nothing. We only got lucky because we were tracking an alien craft on its way to the base.”

  “
An entire alien base, just waiting to be stripped of its technology,” Sandra said. Robin had to agree. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, one that could not be allowed to just slip away. “Don’t speak to anyone about this – in fact, give me the details of the NRO analysts you spoke to and I’ll have them warned as well. They’ll have been thoroughly vetted if they work there, but there’s no point in taking chances.”

  She smiled wanly. “And the other alien contacts?”

  “Just high-altitude recon missions, as far as I can tell,” Robin admitted, reluctantly. “I’ve been using them as tests for the new tracking system. I could have fed the data to a THAAD launch site and attempted to engage the alien craft.”

  “Try to hold your fire,” Sandra said, dryly. “In five days, the aliens will present themselves at the UN. We don’t want the war to start until after that, do we?”

  Robin decided she was joking and shook her head. “No, General,” she agreed. She didn’t want there to be a war at all. She wanted the chance to examine the alien technology herself. She was sure that humans could find more uses for the alien tech than the aliens themselves had found. “What do you want me to do now?”

  “Continue tracking the alien ships and inform me at once if anything changes,” Sandra ordered, flatly. “I need to speak to the President and then to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We need to start making preparations to take that base off their hands.”

  ***

  “Further protests are expected in seven other cities later in the week,” the FOX announcer said, “despite the breakdown of one protest into a mob of violent thugs. The New York Police Department announced that they’d arrested over four hundred people, most of who would be released without charge, although the City of New York intends to bring charges against various rioters. Mayor Hundred announced two hours ago that anyone who committed an act of violence in the course of the riot would be charged and brought to justice. Various legal watchdogs, including the ACLU, have charged the NYPD with excessive violence and mass arrests, sweeping up the innocent as well as the guilty, and have promised to bring suit against the City Government. In a speech in New York, Mayor Hundred had this to say…”

  Captain Philip Carlson looked away from the television as a young man looked into the room. “The General will see you now,” he said. He looked far too young to serve at the heart of America’s defences. “If you’ll follow me…?”

  Philip left Mayor Hundred prattling on about how law and order would be maintained in New York and followed the young man though a series of slightly musty corridors, finally entering an office overlooking the Situation Room. NORAD might have been officially decommissioned and put on standby, at least until the alien mothership had been detected, but it had had the best technology available at the time and it had even been updated over the years. One massive display showed the entire might of America's military power, a second showed a live feed from an orbital telescope, revealing the alien mothership. He felt something inside his heart break as he studied the massive ship. The people who had built it had nothing to fear from humanity.

  “Captain,” General Sandra Dyson said, as Philip snapped to attention. “Please take a seat. I’ll be with you in a second.”

  Philip nodded. It didn’t take a genius to know that the meeting was about the aliens and their mothership, not after NASA had been unceremoniously ordered to halt the countdown and hold Atlantis on the surface. The shuttle, one of the two remaining shuttles in American service, had been scheduled to make a supply run to the ISS and launch a pair of commercial satellites into space, but instead it had been pulled from the launch schedule on short notice. The astronauts had been furious about that decision. The competition to fly shuttle missions was intense and the scheduled pilots had been disappointed. Few of them believed that NASA would ever get its act in gear and start building new spacecraft.

  The alien mothership mocked NASA, as Congress hadn’t hesitated to point out. Senator Sam Hamlin, a space-booster since he’d been a kid, had savaged NASA in front of a special committee, calling for the entire senior staff to be ruthlessly sacked, if not transferred to Leavenworth and left there to rot. He hadn’t minced his words and had castigated NASA for everything, up to and including high treason. Congress seemed to agree. In the interests of showing that they were Doing Something, they had already authorised vast new space programs and projects, most of which wouldn’t produce usable hardware for at least a decade. NASA spent most of its funding on bureaucracy, public relations and, legal affairs and popular programs. There was little left for actually launching men into space.

  “We should have met the aliens in orbit around Jupiter or Pluto,” Hamlin had pronounced, speaking in front of Congress. “We might have earned a little more respect!”

  “Captain,” Sandra said, closing the file on her computer. “I’m sorry about the delay, but we’ve just had a small upset here.”

  “No harm done, General,” Philip said, forbearing to mention that if a General wanted a meeting with a mere Captain delayed, she’d get what she wanted. “I’m not expected back at the Cape for another week.”

  Sandra’s lips twitched. “You’re going to be going up in Atlantis,” she said, flatly. He had the impression that it had already been arranged and forced down NASA’s collective throat. “You and another military crew will be taking weapons to the ISS and mounting them on the station. Atlantis herself will be armed and serve as a space fighter if necessary.”

  Philip stared at her. It was true that he was one of NASA’s military-cleared astronauts – and therefore flew many of the classified military operations, mainly launching satellites for the NSA – but he hadn’t expected to be given command of an armed shuttle. There were international treaties against permanently placing weapons in space! NASA was a mostly-civilian agency and they’d have a fit when they realised that they’d suddenly become an arm of the USAF. The idea of arming the shuttles would be horrific to them.

  “Yes, General,” he said. It was a new challenge – and a chance to fly in space. How could he refuse? “I should point out that the shuttle is not a space fighter in any sense of the word.”

  “I understand,” Sandra said, seriously. “We are almost certainly sending you to your death if it comes down to a fight. We’ll try and get the other shuttle prepared in time, but I doubt that we’ll have her ready to fly by the time the mothership enters orbit. The alien craft seem to fly like…well, craft out of a science-fiction movie. We gave serious thought to just evacuating the ISS and abandoning the station, but some analysts figured that arming the station might give it a chance.”

  “Not much of one,” Philip said. He hadn’t served a term on the station – another position with more volunteers than there were places – but he’d seen it on shuttle flights and knew how fragile it was. A single missile would rip it apart. “Do we have any weapons that can be deployed against an alien threat?”

  “Some,” Sandra said. She looked him in the eye. “I won’t lie to you. The odds of surviving this mission are very low. If you want to decline it, let me know now and it won’t be held against you later and I’ll find another pilot.”

  Philip grinned. He’d flown JSF fighters for the Navy before transferring to NASA, always looking for another challenge. NASA had talked about using the shuttle to make bombing raids over Moscow, but the Cold War had ended and such missions had never materialised. There had been proposals to deploy a Project Thor system from the shuttle to help win the war on terror, but Special Forces and USAF aircraft had started to win that war before NASA had even finished the paper studies. There would never be another opportunity like this again…and, of course, if he declined it, he would never have another chance. He’d be lucky to fly again.

  “I accept,” he said, simply. “What do you want me to do?”

  ***

  General Sandra Dyson had grown up as a tomboy, the youngest child of a southern man who’d had five sons before she’d been born. His wife had
died giving birth to Sandra and she’d grown up with six men, without any feminine influence. Her father had been a soldier, four of her five brothers had gone into the Army…and Sandra herself had joined the USAF. It had been a long climb up to the highest levels, yet it was something she was proud of. Her father had been a patriot and he’d taught his kids that while America wasn't perfect, and it did have flaws, it was still far better than most of the rest of the world. Sandra had deployed to countries where freedom of speech, religion and almost anything else was a joke. She had no doubts about her own loyalties.

  She wished that she could have flown the shuttle instead. She’d flown into danger before, but then that had been against a known danger, one that could be countered. The USAF was the finest air force in the world and had known it, known that it would never face a superior foe – until now. The aliens, if they chose to invade, would enjoy massive superiority. She was sure that she had sent Captain Philip Carlson to his death, yet she had argued for the mission, in hopes of giving the aliens something else to worry about. Their actions suggested to her that they weren’t capable of simply overwhelming the human race, but they still had superior technology. If it came down to a war, the death toll would be massive. The war might well be lost.

  It was easy to stare down at the big screens and accept that they were just numbers; that the men and women who served in America’s armed forces were just figures that could be dismissed at will, but she knew better. They were living breathing humans, with hopes and dreams and fears of their own, each one with a family and friends who loved them. It had never been easy to send men and women into harm’s way, expecting – knowing – that some of them would get hurt or killed, but they’d volunteered. She’d volunteered to serve, yet she had to remain in the rear. A General had no place leading the charge.

  She composed herself and returned to her computer. She couldn’t afford such worries, not now. There was a war to plan.