StS6 Deep Space - Hidden Terror

by Laurence Dahners

  “Maybe this isn’t their home system,” the physicist said. “They may have been expanding from elsewhere in the galaxy and just reached this system. If they only have a few ships here, the likelihood of hearing a jump would be much lower.”

  That thought gave Diddiq a cramp. Still trying to defend his thesis, he said, “They’re completely unaware of bioweapons or they wouldn’t have let us collect specimens of their biology.”

  “Didn’t we trick them into letting us get specimens by offering to negotiate?”

  “Yes, but they’d have to be fools to fall for it if they understood bioweapons.” When she just stared at him without comment, he said, “Besides, what’re the chances they have enough control of their own biology to have differentiated specialty versions of themselves. Math computers, DNA/biology computers, piloting specialists, science specialists like yourself.” Diddiq humbly didn’t mention leadership specialists like himself. Instead, he continued, “How likely is it that they can compete with us and the wide variety of extraordinary abilities we can bring to bear on a problem?”

  She shrugged her antennae, “I don’t know. Maybe they have other abilities that compensate.” She frowned, “So far they seem to be kicking all six of our legs out from under us.”

  There was a flash from the screen displaying the solian ship. She turned to it and, staring, said, “Primal planet!”

  ***

  Lee came back from the hold, guiding a cylindrical Stade about the size of a large cup of coffee. Though Maui remained in weightless conditions, judging from the effort Lee had to make to change its direction as she turned the corner, the Stade was much more massive than it looked.

  “What’ve you got there? A chunk of lead?” Carol asked.

  “You don’t wanna know,” Lee answered. “I do need some help though. Can you come with?”

  They were soon in Maui’s workshop, Carol helped Lee set up the stazer and choose a stazing bag that fit over the Stade with plenty of room to spare. Bumping the Stade confirmed Carol’s impression that it was surprisingly massive for its size. Really dense but not lead. Gold? she wondered.

  Lee contacted Captain Massey on her suit radio and asked her to check the ship’s stazing system. Once Massey’d said she’d do it, Lee turned to Carol, indicating the Stade in its bag. “This is a more powerful bomb on a timer. We’re going to put this out on the dish under the alien wreckage to see if we can clear that stuff off. Please make the trip to the dish and go out through the airlock to make sure everything’s clear. Once I staze this thing I won’t be able to stop the timer so I want to be sure there isn’t anything that’ll keep me from getting it out onto the dish expeditiously. Worse comes to worst and I might have to put it in the lock and ask you to reach in and take it out, putting it under the wreckage in about the same place we put the Semtex.”

  Carol did so, wondering the entire time what kind of bomb Lee had built. It was too small to be more Semtex. Once she’d gone out the door and was in the dish, she checked in with Lee over the radio. Lee asked her to wait outside the airlock door, watching the ready lights to make sure no one tried to use it.

  Meanwhile, Massey was having the crew check-in and making sure they were all on their way to their acceleration seats.

  About ten minutes later, Lee opened the inner airlock door and pushed the heavy Stade into the lock, handling it by a loop she’d Stade-welded to it. The Stade was substantially bigger. Wondering why, Carol thought, She must have blown some air into the bag and stazed it again to make it bigger.

  Lee climbed in the lock, emergency depressurized it, and was soon opening the outer door. Clipping on safety lines, they started pulling themselves out onto the dish. Lee went back over to the same location that they’d positioned the Semtex explosive earlier. They put the Stade beneath the biggest clump of wreckage, firmly wedging it between the alien remains and Maui’s dish. Then, while Carol held it there, Lee used some wire through the loop on the Stade to tie it to the wreckage so it was stable.

  She’s astonishingly good with a spacesuit’s mechanical hands, Carol thought. Then she realized, Building things in orbit and on the moon, she must’ve had thousands of hours of practice.

  Lee tugged on the lumpy Stade a couple of times, then said, “Let’s get back inside.”

  Back inside the ship, Lee double-checked that Carol had fully secured the airlock door, then they climbed out of their suits with big sighs of relief.

  As they headed back toward the bridge, Carol asked, “Can you tell me what kind of bomb that was?”

  “Sure,” Lee said. “You know Ceres has a small nuclear reactor it uses for power?”

  Carol nodded.

  “Maui was bringing out one-kilogram fuel pellets for it. We just destazed five kilos of plutonium 239 and immediately restazed them for thirty minutes. Then I stazed a thirty-one-minute Stade around that. When the fuel pellets come out of stasis inside a neutron reflector like the thirty-one-minute Stade that’ll be surrounding them, they’ll go critical and detonate inside the Stade. When the Stade disappears, that explosion’s gonna be unleashed.”

  “You nuked us? Yourself?!” Carol asked disbelievingly.

  “No,” Lee said, grinning at Carol, “We nuked that pile of crap that’s keeping us from going after the third alien ship.”

  “Oh…” Carol said, suddenly seeing the purpose of what Lee’d done. She felt short of breath. “Why didn’t you tell me what we were doing?!”

  “Come on, Carol,” Lee said, smiling and easing her into her chair and helping her strap in. “I didn’t tell you because I know you well enough to know you’d react just the way you’re doing now. I need you functional.”

  “How… how are you not panicking?” Carol asked plaintively. “We built a freaking nuke!”

  Lee gave her another grin, “I am panicking, deep inside. I’m just doing my best to keep it from showing.” She leaned closer and said, “You wanna know a secret? If you pretend you’re not panicking, it doesn’t feel as bad. Try it. Give me a big smile.”

  Carol blinked a couple of times, then took a big breath and forced a smile.

  “There you go!” Lee said cheerfully, a huge smile on her own face. “Now lean back, close your eyes, tuck in your arms and keep on smiling.”

  Carol did so, surprised to realize she did feel more relaxed.

  Lee spoke cheerfully to Captain Massey. “How’s our alignment?”

  Massey said, “Pretty good. We should swing past our best alignment just about the time the nuke goes off. I have my doubts as to whether it’ll work though.”

  As if she were truly curious, Lee asked, “Doubts about whether the nuke’ll go off, whether it’ll free us from the wreck, or about whether we’ll get blown the right direction?”

  Massey snorted, “The science says the nuke’s gonna work so I trust that. It’s hard to believe an A-bomb won’t get rid of the wreck. Whether it’ll blow us the direction we want to go or not? I’m not so sanguine on that one… But it doesn’t matter much. If we wind up a long way from where we hope to be, it’ll just take a little longer is all.” She cleared her throat and said, “All hands, all hands. We’re about to Staze. Strap in and assume the position.”

  About thirty seconds later, Massey said, “Okay, we’re just out of stasis. Ray, where are we?”

  A moment passed while Ray looked at instruments. “Believe it or not,” Ray chuckled, “we’re pretty close to where we hoped to be, Ma’am. I’ll lay in a course for the aliens’ third ship.”

  Carol thought about it. The off-center explosion against the dish would’ve tended to send us whirling off, but if our stern was facing the direction we wanted to go, the explosion would’ve sent us that way, guided by the way our bow slid out of its impalement in the stern of the alien ship. Something like a spear coming out of a spear gun. That would’ve limited the whirling.

  Lee undid her harness and pulled herself out of her chair. “Carol, John, Rick, let’s go. We need some cannons, and they aren�
�t going to build and deploy themselves.”

  ***

  Diddiq stared as the brilliant flash faded from the screen. Now it showed the stern fragment of Kranex tumbling. Diddiq could no longer see the solian ship skewered into the tangled material of Kranex’s rearmost segment.

  The engineer turned eyes and antennae toward Diddiq. She quietly said, “Looks like the solians do have nuclear weapons.”

  Ignoring her, Diddiq checked with the bridge to make sure the nuclear explosion they’d witnessed hadn’t been from a haliq weapon. Then he asked if they’d found the solian ship.

  “Yes,” one of the junior officers answered, antennae trembling. “I’ve just put it up on your screen.”

  Diddiq looked at the big screen near him and saw the solian ship, a few fragments of Kranex still clinging to its dish. The body of the solian ship appeared to be off-center on the disk of the dish, which made Diddiq imagine for a moment that it wasn’t aimed at him. Then he remembered that Busux was still decelerating so the solians would have to aim for where Busux would be, not where it was. “Where’s it going?” he asked resignedly.

  “They’re coming for us,” the young officer said.

  Diddiq turned to a nuclear physicist. “Is armoring the bombs going to work?”

  “Probably, at least sometimes,” she said, her eyes on the screen. “But even if they get through, our bombs will only blow the solians back so they have to come a little further to hit us.” Her eyes turned to focus on Diddiq. “Unless, by some miracle of the first haliq, they run out of fuel, they’ll just keep coming.”

  “What can we do?” he asked plaintively.

  She shrugged her antennae. “I don’t know of anything. You’re the one designed for strategy and innovation. For all of us on Busux, I hope you figure it out…” She studied him a moment, “But I don’t have a lot of hope.”

  Epilogue

  “Zaii, wait up,” Shelle called from behind her.

  Zaii turned and smiled as her friend jogged a few steps to catch up to her.

  “Guess what?” Shelle said.

  “They’re going to let us watch the president’s broadcast live during class?”

  “They are?!” Shelle said, a surprised look on her face.

  Zaii rolled her eyes, “Of course not. It’s just that you were smiling when you asked, so I thought of something I thought’d be good news and proposed it.”

  “Really? That’s what you’re hoping for?”

  Zaii gave Shelle a wide-eyed look, “Aliens have arrived in our solar system and attacked us! You don’t want to know what’s going on?!”

  “Well, yeah, but,” Shelle shrugged, “there’s nothing I can do about that.” She gave a sly grin, “I’m more interested in the fact that Eric Lasker tried to grab me on my way into the building this morning.”

  “Ah,” Zaii said, immediately understanding how—after Lasker’d bullied and sexually assaulted her earlier in the year—such an episode would tend to reign supreme in Shelle’s mind. She gave Shell a concerned look. “Were you able to deal with him?”

  Shelle laughed. “You should’ve seen the look on his face when I bellowed at him with my command voice. I honestly thought he shit his pants, but a moment later he grabbed for my wrist anyway. By then I’d pulled out my pepper spray, so I let him have it.” She frowned, “In my excitement, I guess I overdid it ’cause he had some trouble breathing. I had to call 911 for him.”

  “Your restraining order’s still in effect, right?”

  “Yeah. The police said I should be fine, given both the restraining order and the fact that I had a video record of him coming after me.” Shelle tapped a pin on her blouse, “I took your advice and sprang for a cheap version of your video camera.”

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” Zaii said, leaning in and giving Shelle a little hug. They started their way down the hall to the class they shared. “Did you sign up for that self-defense course?”

  “Already been to my first class,” Shelle said with a smile. “Did you get accepted at UVA?”

  Zaii nodded distractedly, “Uh-huh. But I might take a gap year… or something. I don’t know what yet.”

  “You got into UVA as a junior and now you’re gonna blow ’em off? Are you insane?!”

  Zaii rolled her eyes, “If you’ve completed the requirements for graduation, I don’t think you’re a junior anymore, are you? Besides…” she shrugged, “this whole alien invasion thing has me thinking. Maybe there’re more important things to do than going to college to party?”

  Shelle widened her eyes, “You’d be a lot more useful in a war against the bug-eyed monsters if you had a college degree, you know?”

  They were taking their seats. With a distant look in her eyes, Zaii said, “What if the war’s over before I finish college?”

  “I’d say you lucked out.”

  “Not if we lose,” Zaii said grimly.

  Ms. Robinson called the class to order, then said, “Before you start begging, we are going to pause class for the President’s press conference about the aliens. I know half of you’d just be trying to listen to it on your earbuds anyway. Besides, I want to hear what he says too. But!” She swept the room with her gaze, “That means I need to try to teach you something in the few minutes we have before the conference starts, okay? So, listen up.”

  Robinson launched into her spiel, trying to cram all of the day’s lesson in half the time…

  ~~~

  Robinson lost everyone’s attention when President Del Rio’s image popped up on the screen over a subtitle that said, “Live Presidential Press Conference.”

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Del Rio began immediately, “this morning I am able, for the most part, to confirm my broadcast of five weeks ago. At that time, I told you that we’d successfully disabled all three of the large alien ships that’d invaded our solar system. I was also able to tell you that, due to the destruction of their propulsion systems, none of the ships could arrive at Earth, nor even pass nearby. Though, at that time, it seemed that we’d ameliorated and possibly eliminated the grave danger the aliens had posed, I promised to get back to you with details and confirmations as soon as we were more certain of the aliens’ status.

  “Providing such details is the purpose of the conference today.

  “A more detailed written report will be made available to news outlets when I’m done, but in summary three large and one small alien ships initially appeared at the edge of our solar system through some kind of wormhole or spatial jump system. They proceeded inward, stopping at Saturn where they plunged through the outer atmosphere of that planet, scooping up gas we believe they use as fuel for their nuclear rockets.

  “Staze Incorporated placed SC Phoenix, their newest and by far fastest spacecraft, at the disposal of the United Nations. Staffed by a diplomatic team led by Rene Lasalle of France and a small team from the U.S. Space Force, Phoenix met the aliens shortly after they left Saturn. Using messages in the form of pictographs, sent to and received from the aliens, we believed we had successfully arranged a peaceful meeting with the aliens. That meeting was to be held on board Phoenix.

  “When SC Phoenix took up a position alongside the alien ships, the ETs sent a small shuttlecraft over to Phoenix. A team of six-limbed aliens, as seen in this image,”—a picture of an alien popped up in the corner of the screen as the president said the words— “exited the shuttlecraft in spacesuits and entered Phoenix’s airlock. To our horror, as soon as they opened the inner airlock door, the aliens threw a powerful grenade into Phoenix and reclosed the airlock door. As I previously reported, that grenade killed Mr. Lasalle and seven members of our Space Force. The aliens then immediately entered Phoenix, gathering the bodies of some of the victims and taking them back to their shuttle. In reaction to this travesty, a second team from our Space Force then attacked the aliens still aboard Phoenix, killing some and driving others off the ship. The alien shuttlecraft then departed. Unfortunately, it left a nuclear weapon attached to P
hoenix’s hull. I’m sorry to report that, as expected, though it didn’t hurt Phoenix’s hull, the impact of the explosion killed all the people remaining on board.

  “When I last reported to you, we were at a loss to explain or understand the logic of this sudden and unprovoked attack. It was only when we began to consider it from a hostile viewpoint that we realized the only way the aliens would consider their mission a success was if their objective had been to obtain specimens of our biology for the purpose of developing biological weapons. We have subsequently determined that their biology is DNA-based, like our own. This means they might readily translate any existing biowarfare capability into methods they could use to attack Earth and humanity.

  “Even worse, if we waited long enough that they successfully developed such a capability, then, even if we destroyed their ships before they got here, spores, viruses, or some other bio-bombs might arrive and be dispersed on Earth.

  “In other words, even if we destroyed their ships, if the debris from those ships contained bioweapons that subsequently rained onto our planet, they might sterilize Earth anyway.

  “However, because of a number of treaties dealing with the weaponization of space, Earth had no space-capable warships with which we could attack these aliens.”

  Del Rio stared hard into the camera. “This is a situation which must, be, remedied.” Del Rio thumped the podium with each of those last three words.

  “In any case, at the time of the alien attack on SC Phoenix, the closest spacecraft of any kind we had was SC Maui, a cargo and passenger ship; its only weapons were a single nine-millimeter handgun, some pepper spray, and some Tasers. We’d asked them to divert from their intended destination at Ceres and instead go to the region of the meeting between the aliens and Phoenix. There we’d hoped they could provide us with observation of the encounter.