“We initially communicated with the aliens by the use of pictographs specifically designed by scientists to allow communication with alien species. We know the aliens received and were able to at least partially decode the pictographs because they parroted them back to us and then sent us similar pictographs that we interpreted to mean that they had agreed to a meeting we proposed to them.”
The president paused again and his expression became grim. “Our people pulled their ship, SC Phoenix, alongside the alien vessel, though they still kept a significant distance. The aliens sent a shuttlecraft over to Phoenix. The aliens, who have six limbs and are not at all like us, demonstrated their understanding of the pictographic communication by successfully following our directions for opening the airlock door on the outside of Phoenix. They entered the airlock, still in their own spacesuits. The airlock was pressurized in the standard fashion and, without removing their spacesuits, they opened the inner airlock door into Phoenix.”
Del Rio paused and looked hard into the camera. “It is with great regret that I inform you that their first act, as soon as the inner airlock door had opened, was to toss a small bomb, something like a large grenade, into Phoenix. This landed in the hallway and went off, instantly killing everyone in the diplomatic party that awaited them.”
Somberly, the president said, “Our hearts go out to the families of U.N. Diplomat Rene Lasalle and his team. I ask for a moment of silence.”
Kaem thought, Del Rio won’t hide the fact that the rest of the team was from the U.S. Space Force, but he isn’t going to volunteer it yet.
The President let the silence stretch a little longer, then continued, “Of course, everyone must realize that there has to be tremendous potential for miscommunication when dealing with aliens. We still hope that perhaps we inadvertently offended them and that this was all a horrible misunderstanding. Unfortunately, their next actions were to come aboard SC Phoenix and drag away the bodies of some of the members of the diplomatic party. Finding this abhorrent, the crew of Phoenix attacked them, killing six of the aliens before the remainder of the visiting party escaped back to their own ship in the shuttle.”
After taking a sip of water, Del Rio continued, “As many amateur and professional astronomers have reported, a brilliant flash was detected in the area of that meeting. Regrettably, I must inform you that flash came from an atomic weapon the aliens had attached to the hull of Phoenix before their shuttle departed. Though SC Phoenix itself, made of Stade, was not destroyed by the detonation, we must assume that all remaining personnel aboard the ship were killed by the violent impact of that explosion.”
Del Rio leaned closer to the camera, a serious look on his face, “Allow me to summarize. Aliens have arrived in our solar system. We have managed to communicate with them in a rudimentary fashion. Despite our attempts at peaceful overtures, the aliens attacked our diplomatic party, killing everyone in it. Then they destroyed the ship our people arrived in.
“They are on their way to Earth.
“We will continue trying to communicate with them in hopes that this has all been some kind of horrible misunderstanding.”
Del Rio’s eyes flashed. “But we’re also preparing for a war that now seems almost inevitable.
“Remember that, despite the fact they are advanced enough to travel from one star to another, we do have some significant advantages. First, though their ships are large, there are only three of them. We have the resources of an entire planet behind us. Second, mobility has always been important in warfare and their acceleration rates are much lower than ours. Finally, they do not seem to have the ability to create Stade, and, as we have learned in recent years, Stade is a miracle material.”
“Please rest assured…” Del Rio paused to give weight to his next words, “that though the aliens aren’t responding, the governments of this world are continuing to work together to try to improve communication with them in hopes of achieving a peaceful resolution.
“We are also mobilizing every possible resource with the intent of preventing them from reaching even the vicinity of Earth.
“I will update you as events dictate, but because deep space travel takes a long time, not much will be happening for a while yet. Please be patient.
“Good night and may God bless us all,” Del Rio intoned, then signed off without further ado.
Caught flat-footed by his abrupt closure, it took the news services a minute or two to mobilize some talking heads to discuss and spin the information they’d received.
Kaem decided that while Del Rio hadn’t told the entire story, he’d covered the important points. After that, he listened with half an ear while refocusing on what Staze could contribute to the war effort.
He didn’t look up until one of the talking heads said something about bioweapons. After staring a moment, he hissed, “Aww, shit!”
***
The next morning SC Maui pulled into a parallel trajectory with the three alien ships.
The problem was that, at 5,000 kilometers, the ships, big as they were, were still too small to see with the naked eye. All they could see without a telescope was the bright exhausts of their rockets.
They’d unlimbered Maui’s small telescope and could easily see the alien ships with it, but it could only point at one ship at a time and the detail wasn’t great.
“Are we going to have to move closer?” Lee asked. She felt angry she hadn’t considered this problem and done the math on it. “If we were a thousand kilometers away and they fired a weapon at us, how long would it take to hit us?”
Ray said, “I’m pretty sure our fastest attack missiles max out at 5,000 kilometers per hour, so about twelve minutes.” He looked worried, “They might have something faster though because ours aren’t designed to attack from 5,000 km. The old ICBMs that flew halfway around the world could get up to 25,000 kph but they were huge. You couldn’t carry very many of them, even in ships as big as the aliens’.”
“What if they fission power their missiles?” Lee asked.
Ray shrugged, “Fission plants are massive, so acceleration would be limited. Unless they have a tech solution we haven’t thought of.”
“We can watch them with radar,” Massey said. “Radar provides ranging data, so it’d also tell us whether they start our way. Or shoot something at us.”
“But then they’d know we’re watching them, right?”
“Come on. We’ve pulled alongside, though admittedly at a great distance. We can see their exhaust. Surely, they can see ours. They’ve got to assume we’re out here keeping an eye on them, don’t they?”
“Okay,” Lee said. “Let’s watch them with radar. I don’t want to get any closer to them than this.”
Ray had Maui retract the Stade doors over the radar dishes and deploy them. When he first started it up, the returns off the aliens were weak. After spending a few minutes with it, he said, “Their ships aren’t very reflective. I suspect their hulls are carbon fiber or some other non-metal that’s somewhat transparent to our signal. I got some improvement by pinging them in the five-megahertz band and boosting the radar’s output to high levels.” He shrugged, “I thought about turning it back down in case they considered it impolite to hit them with a high-powered radio beam, but decided I didn’t give a damn whether they thought it was rude or not.”
Ray gave everybody a briefing on how to interpret the radar’s output. He wanted them to understand both the image displayed and the ranging numbers. He set the system to automatically notify them should anything move their way from the alien flotilla. Despite this automatic monitor, Massey set a rotating watch to make sure a human would be watching at all times.
Ray leaned closer to Lee. “I’ve set the ‘staze-ship’ command so it closes the Stade covers over the radar dishes, but we need to check to be sure the compartments for the radar are set up to staze their interiors. If the aliens attack, we don’t want to survive by stazing ourselves, then find the radar’s trashed. That’d be the wors
t possible time to have to do without it.”
Lee nodded and told her phone to set up a reminder.
Once everyone had been briefed and people started to move on to other tasks or their bunks, Ray turned to Lee and Massey. “Can we sit and talk a moment? The more I think about it, the more I’m bothered by that alien encounter.”
“We’re all bothered Ray,” Massey said pulling herself into a seat at the table even though the 0.015g-force—needed to station keep with the aliens—was so low the table was mainly a way to position herself. “It was horrific.”
“Well, yeah. I’m bothered by what they did. But what I’m talking about now is why they did it? What did they accomplish?”
“What do you mean?” Lee asked, frowning. “They attacked us and killed eight of our people.”
“Sure. But why? Why set up a meeting, then drop a grenade without even trying to talk? Yes, they killed a few people, but surely, they must’ve known there’d be more than those eight on board Phoenix? And a lot more on the planet they’re heading for.”
“Maybe,” Massey said slowly, “they were so horrified by our appearance they threw the grenade in reaction? I certainly find them repulsive.”
“Ruth,” her first officer said gently, “they didn’t take time to look at our people. As soon as that airlock door was open wide enough for the grenade, they tossed it in and slammed the door back shut. They didn’t come to talk. Not even to look at us. They came, grenade in hand, to kill some of our people. I just can’t get over why they’d go to all that trouble to kill eight of us when they had to know they were killing an insignificant number… What did it gain them? Surely they didn’t just do it to piss off the human race.”
Lee’s stomach was sinking. “They took our peoples’ bodies!” she said in a horrorstruck tone. “Right? They left their own behind but they took our peoples’ bodies with them in their shuttle! They didn’t come to talk, or to see, or even to kill, they came to get samples.”
Massey blinked. “Samples? Why would they need samples?”
Ray said, “Oh, shit! You’re right. They were only on Phoenix to get specimens of our biology! They’ll use the bodies from Phoenix to design toxins or bioweapons. Um… most likely bioweapons, since those self-replicate.” He leaned forward. “We can’t let them get to Earth. By the time they get there, they might have packages of tailored viruses ready to drop. Ones that’ll be able to wipe out the human race but leave the rest of the planet in pristine condition… All ready for them to move in.”
“We can’t even let them have time to design a virus,” Lee hissed in dismay. “Once they’ve designed and replicated it, they could fire a giant shotgun full of viral delivery canisters at Earth. Once that’s done, even if our military people do wipe out the aliens’ ships, if a couple of the canisters reach our planet the human race could still die…”
After everyone had stared at each other in silence for a moment, Lee said, “I’ll send a message to Earth. See what they think of Ray’s hypothesis and whether they want us to do something.”
“But there’s nothing we can do to stop them!” Massey said.
“Yes, there is,” Lee said with resolve. She got up and went to the comms shack without explaining further.
***
Kaem’s phone spoke in his ear. “You have a call from President Del Rio.”
Getting so many calls from the president was giving Kaem a feeling for the kind of stress a president was under. He said, “I’ll take it… Hello, Mr. President. How can I help?”
Del Rio got right to it, his habit when situations didn’t require flowery language. “Is Mr. X on the line with you?”
Kaem said, “Of course, sir.”
Del Rio had once insisted that he must talk to the “great man” directly.
Kaem had told him that X refused and then implied that if the government tried to find X, the man would go completely incommunicado, no longer providing any help at all. Del Rio had accepted the ultimatum but always insisted that X “be on the line” on the pretext that he didn’t want his words filtered through a third party on their way to X.
Kaem felt a little guilty about deceiving even the president into believing that he and X were two different people but remained committed to keeping his secret.
Del Rio said, “I assume you and X have seen April Lee’s last message proposing that the aliens’ entire purpose for the meeting was the retrieval of human tissue so they could create bioweapons?”
“Yes, sir,” Kaem said. “Something similar has been suggested by Dr. Rita Hepburn, a science commentator who’s brought the idea up on several of the news services.”
“What does X think?”
Kaem hesitated a moment to suggest he was listening to what X told him, then said, “It’s the only likely explanation for the aliens’ actions that we can think of. They didn’t make any meaningful attempt at communication, simply arranged a meeting at which they would be able to attack our people and carry away bodies. The only possible use of those bodies would be as a source of DNA from which to design viral bioweapons.”
“Look kid,” Del Rio said tiredly, “is that what X thinks? ’Cause I don’t care much what you think.”
“Um, yes, sir,” Kaem said, suppressing a smile. At least his disrespect confirms I’ve talked him and the NSA out of trying to figure out who X is.
“Okay,” Del Rio, sighed. “Then we need a strategy for dealing with the aliens. Is there any chance Staze is going to be able to finish either of the warships you’ve been working on in time to keep them away from Earth?”
Kaem’s hesitation this time was due to surprise at the president’s question. He’d told the man several times that even the lightweight policing craft already under construction was months away from completion. Del Rio’s grasping at straws, Kaem realized. Gently, he said, “We’re still months out on the first of those. Besides, the biological experts we’ve consulted all agree that we need to stop the aliens now. It’s conceivable they could design a bioweapon in just a few days. Though it’s more likely to take weeks, we have to be concerned that if they develop a self-replicating bioweapon and we blow them up after that point, the destruction of their ship could spread a bioweapon widely enough that deadly viral particles or spores could land on Earth years after we vanquished the aliens. We have to stop them now.”
“You just said you can’t build the ships we need to be able to do it!”
“Even if we’d finished those two ships, they couldn’t get out there before the aliens completed a bioweapon.”
“You’re saying there’s nothing we can do?” Del Rio asked angrily.
“There is. And, I think, reading between the lines, that Ms. Lee said she would do it unless we told her not to.”
“What?! How?!”
“I don’t know how she plans to do it, but I can think of several ways.”
“How?!”
“The how’s not that important. She and her crew are the ones who have to decide to do it and which method they want to take. As the leader of our country, you only need to decide whether you want to tell her not to attack them. To take a chance on trying to talk to the aliens even though the danger may become irreversible if you do.”
“You want me to tell her to kill them all?”
“No… I’m confident she’s planning to do so unless you tell her not to. That’s what you have to decide. Even though it’ll be highly dangerous for someone I consider one of my very best friends, both I and Mr. X think you should let April Lee and the Maui attack the aliens now if she can. If we give the aliens time to create a bioweapon, the dangers of it getting loose don’t bear contemplation.”
“I’m going to have to think about this,” Del Rio said, then disconnected.
And you’re going to decide not to say anything. Then, if attacking the aliens turns out to be a really bad idea, you can disclaim it. Blame it on a rogue April Lee, Kaem thought. Which is exactly why that brave woman gave you this out.
&nb
sp; Kaem dabbed at a moist eye and turned to look out the window. I hope to hell she makes it through to the other side.
***
When SC Maui’s radar lit up the haliq ships and the screeching, highly-irritating, five-megahertz radio signal first struck his antennae, Diddiq had no idea what was happening. He shouted, “Arrgh! What in the primal haliq is that?!” It was at one of the most annoying frequencies and loud. When he looked around, he saw everyone else’s antennae had laid back the way his were.
Turning to the comms section of the bridge, he said, “Lieutenant Falaq. Where in the primal planet is that coming from? Has some electronic device lost its shielding?”
She turned reluctantly to him, “It’s coming from the alien ship, sir.”
Diddiq’s antennae twitched in alarm. “The one we blew up with the atomic weapon?!”
“Oh!” she said, surprised. “No, sir. The one that just started paralleling us at 5,000 kilometers.”
Wincing, Diddiq asked, “Is there a way to block that noise?”
Falaq looked apprehensive. “Metal would block it, for instance, if we turned the ship so the engines were pointing its direction. But then we wouldn’t be able to continue decelerating. We could roll the ship so the bridge isn’t on the side next to the transmissions. The cubbies of the hibernating haliq would absorb some of the power of the signal.”
“Roll the ship,” Diddiq ordered curtly, feeling like he couldn’t take it much longer. Falaq looked at Captain Rabaq who gave the actual order.
One of the other comms officers turned his eyes to the captain. “Sir, we’re getting complaints from all over the ship.” He didn’t say what they were complaining about—that was obvious. “Medical says the noise is going to disturb the hibernators. Our people will arrive irritable and exhausted.”
I’m already irritable! Diddiq thought. He turned his eyes to Captain Rabaq. “Do you have any ideas?” He looked around the bridge, “Can anyone think how the solians could know that particular frequency and signal would be so irritating?”
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