Strange Invasion

Christopher Nuttall

Prologue

Where are they?
-Enrico Fermi

Is an alien attack possible?  Of course it is.  Statistically speaking, almost anything is possible.
-Travis Taylor

What makes Earth the invasion centre of the galaxy?  What do we have that makes us important enough to invade by a race that can cross light years?  Why would they bother?
-Christopher Nuttall

From half a light year distant, there was nothing to distinguish the sun from any other star, save only the torrent of radio noise emitting from one of the planets orbiting the star.  The Worldship – a massive converted asteroid - fell on its endless course towards the Sun, its computers and the handful of active crewmembers recording and analysing the signals beaming out from Earth, using them to build up a picture of life on Earth.  As they grew closer, they became more and more aware of humanity – and of the nature of the solar system.

They had timed their course perfectly; the main braking manoeuvre was conducted as they sped towards the sun, but on the other side of the planet to Earth.  As they slipped into an elliptical orbit, no different from any other comet or asteroid, they launched probes, using them to catalogue the resources of the Solar System…and to watch for any contact from Earth.  The minds onboard the Worldship knew that they could be discovered at any moment – and knew that the exact timing of their discovery would determine humanity’s place within the universe.

No questing sensors reached out to them.  No spacecraft were launched towards them.  There was almost no sign of activity in the Solar System at all.

As the Worldship settled into orbit near a cluster of asteroids, utterly indistinguishable from any of the natural asteroids orbiting nearby, the minds mulled over the mystery.  They wondered if the entire Solar System was a trap – for they were certain that humanity knew how to make spacecraft – but they found no signs that humans knew that they existed.  They dug into the asteroids, waking the remaining members of their crew, and started their construction project.  Day by day, more and more equipment was brought online…and their position became ever more secure.

There was no sign that they had been detected.

Chapter One: Echoes on the Oceans of Eternity

The White House
Washington DC, USA

“I’m not a technical expert,” the President said, examining the long and detailed report from the study group.  It had gone into so much detail that it had swamped General Eustace Lewis – and he had had a hand in writing and preparing it.  The attempts to avoid the conclusion that everyone had known from the start was impossible to avoid would be fascinating under other circumstances.  “What exactly does this mean?”

General Lewis leaned forward, as much to convey the gravity of the situation as anything.  “There are…signs of life in the asteroid belt,” he said, almost reluctantly.  He’d had a fortnight to adjust to the news; the President was hearing it formally for the first time.  “There is good reason to suppose that an unknown power has taken up positions within the belt.”

The President stared at him.  “An unknown power?”

“An unknown power,” General Lewis confirmed, knowing that the President wouldn’t want to believe him.  “We have little choice, but to consider that the signs are being caused by an non-human force.”

“Aliens,” the President said slowly.  General Lewis almost sympathised; the mocking that would fall upon the President’s head if it were proven to be a hoax would destroy a promising political career.  His concerns were greater; the aliens, if that was what they really were, presented a possible threat to the Earth.  “Exactly what have you found?”

“We were running experiments with some of the newer satellites for tracking radio communications among terrorist groups, particularly since the damned Russians allowed the terrorists to gain control of some of their advanced communications systems,” General Lewis said.  He kept his more private thoughts on what the Russians had been doing to himself.  “An analyst spotted transmissions that were being picked up on very capable equipment, at levels that are beyond most equipment…and traced them to the asteroids.”

He paused.  “I don’t think I need to tell you just how much power it would take to have a single station broadcasting in the asteroids,” he continued.

The President nodded impatiently.  “I see,” he said, his voice non-committal.  “What happened then?”

“The satellites were part of NSA’s orbital fleet,” General Lewis said.  “They traced the signals, got very confused, and forwarded it to the Space Defence Command – my command.  Further investigation, after the first disbelief had been defeated, revealed that there were at least three dozen transmitters within the asteroid belt, all transmitting signals that we have been unable to decipher or study.”

The President, to his credit, took the news calmly.  “There’s no hope that the transmitters are in fact human spacecraft, from NASA, or the Russians, or…?”

General Lewis shook his head.  “I’m afraid not, Mr President,” he said.  His face darkened with the thought of alien life forms in mankind’s solar system.  “There are just too many of them.  Hell, some of them are not actual radio transmitters, but they’re just emitting energy that we can pick up on Earth.  We couldn’t have missed a space program on that scale, sir; they’re not Russians.”

The President stood up and turned, facing out of the big window and staring out across the White House lawn.  It was a beautiful morning, with the sun peeking over the blue sky; the handful of tourists were staring at the White House though their cameras and taking photographs.  It all seemed so safe and tranquil.

“Answer me a question,” the President said, without turning.  “Are we the only ones who know anything about this?”

General Lewis hesitated.  “I believe that we are alone for the moment,” he said.  “We have literally no information on when the aliens arrived, however; they might only just have become visible.  The Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese have been orbiting more and more satellites in the last few years; they might well have some hints themselves of the alien presence.”

He frowned.  “We have people looking back through the archives, and they might be able to give us a date and time, but…there’s no way to be sure,” he said.  “The rest of the world might find out tomorrow, Mr President, or they might never find out until alien weapons start impacting on the Earth.”

The President turned to face him.  “Do you believe that they are hostile?”

“I don’t know,” General Lewis admitted.  “They must know we’re here; if we can pick up their signals, they can pick up ours – they might even have traced us back to Earth from our signals.  And yet…they haven’t come to say hello, or anything else; they appear to have ignored us.”

The president took his seat and stared down at his hands for a long moment.  “I ran on a platform of open government,” he said, his tone bitter.  “General, I want this information to remain classified for the moment.  It will get out, sooner or later, but we need to get as much groundwork as we can in place first.”

“Yes, Mr President,” General Lewis said, privately relieved.  One of the more hair-raising scenarios that the United States Space Defence Command had drawn up had been global civilian panic, perhaps even open warfare among the major powers.  “We still have to respond in some way.”

“We have to show that we are in command of the situation,” the President mused, shaking his head.  His short brown hair waved as he moved his head.  “How exactly do you propose that we respond to this?”

General Lewis smiled.  “My department has been considering the question,” he said.  “Our main handicap is our lack of knowledge; we know very little about them – and finding out information has got to be our main priority.  I propose a two-stage effort, followed up by a third program.”

The President quirked an eyebrow.  “Carry on,” he said, after a moment.  “How do we find out more information?”

“Firstly, I would like to commandeer all of our orbital research systems and space-based telescopes,” General Lewis said.  “Some of them have been picking up working resolutions of formations on Mars; they should be able to give us some idea of what’s not broadcasting in the asteroid belt.  That would be difficult to accomplish quietly, but it can be done; the USSDC has contingency plans to press them into service for defence-related issues.

“Second, we would have to send probes out to investigate directly,” he said.  “There was a great deal of discussion about that in the working group; some feared that it would be taken as an aggressive act, others think that we have to move quickly to discover what’s out there and what – if any –threat it poses to us.  That’s going to require a major national commitment; I have teams exploring that angle now.”

The President scowled down at his hands.  “Money is no object, unless it comes to spending it,” he said, only half in jest.  “What do we do if there is something out there?”

“We have to shore up our own defences and get a team out there,” General Lewis said.  His voice darkened.  “Mr President, we have got to have first-hand information on what’s out there, and the only way to do that is to place a small research group out there in the belt.  At the same time, this could be the beginnings of an alien invasion – and, with all due respect to my own people, we are buck naked when it comes to facing one.”

“An invasion,” the President said.  He seemed astonished by the suggestion.  “We don’t know that they’re hostile.”

“I had chapter and verse on this from one of my people,” General Lewis said.  He unfolded a sheet of paper and placed it on the President’s desk.  “The aliens are currently based in the asteroid belt, which gives them command of some of the most vital resources in the Solar System – resources that NASA was planning flights to investigate in the next few decades.  Even if they’re not hostile, that gives them a very commanding position – and…well, you know how the Monroe Doctrine used to be enforced by the Royal Navy?”

The President nodded.  “The Royal Navy wasn’t exactly hostile to us during that period,” General Lewis continued.  “At the same time, its mere presence suggested options to the British – such as how they could use it to make other powers cooperate with them, much as we used our command of the Middle East and the Pacific to keep Japan and some other states in line.  We had the Navy; they had no way of contesting our command of the seas and that part of the world.”

He sighed.  “I do not know if they are hostile,” he said.  “I just know that if they want to be hostile, they have excellent options for being hostile, from asteroid bombardments to God-only-knows technical weapons.”

The President scowled.  “I see,” he said.  “How much can we do, quickly, to build a viable defence?”

“We can launch more Brilliant Pebbles into space, along with some additional orbital weapons,” General Lewis said.  “We can also mass-produce THAAD missiles; we know that the Russians have been cheating on the deployment treaties…and, quite frankly, we would be quite within our rights to build more defences.  With more states producing ballistic missiles, we have dozens of reasons to deploy more ABM weapons.”

He scowled.  “We need more, Mr President,” he admitted.  “We need to really reach into space, from expanding our space-launch capability to building more weapons in orbit, perhaps even bases on the moon.”

“Bases on the moon?”  The President repeated.  His tone became incredulous.  “Why?”

“What happens if interstellar law says that whoever sets up a base on a planet has first rights to the planet?”  General Lewis asked.  “They could land on the moon, claim the rights to it…and we would be helpless to resist them.  We have options, from chemical-fuelled SSTOs to the nuclear spacecraft designs, but all of them have considerable build-times ahead of them; five years, at the earliest, for a working nuclear space drive.”

“The environmentalists would go nuts,” the President said.  General Lewis felt his eyes flash fire; the environmentalists had stood in the path of the space program that could have saved their world for far too long.  “How much will all of these programs cost?”

“Billions,” General Lewis said.  The President looked astonished.  “We’re in a race against time, Mr President; we don’t know anything about what they want, or why they’re here, but if they take it into their heads to be hostile…”

“You don’t have to spell it out for me,” the President said.  He scowled.  “I would have to ask Congress for such a vast budget, and getting them to approve it would be a political nightmare.”  He reached into his desk and brought out a sheaf of White House paper.  “That’s my problem, however; you, General Lewis, have other concerns.”

He wrote, quickly and neatly, on the paper.  “This is a classified executive order,” he said, as he wrote.  “It allows you to take command – gently, if possible – of the space research systems that you need to continue hunting for information on our unknown visitors.  It also authorises you to begin planning for everything you think that we will need, from defences to probes out to the asteroids, and gives you powers to requisition whatever you need from the USAF, NASA or the NSA – or, for that matter, anyone you think can be helpful.”

He scowled and examined General Lewis’s report again.  “This is going to take some heavy moving to get Congress to sign off on any of the monies you’ll require,” he said, again.  General Lewis sighed inwardly.  “I’ll get working with my Cabinet, perhaps even bringing some outsiders into it, just to put together the funding package that you will need.  It will be tricky.”

He smiled grimly.  “Which leads neatly to another point,” he said.  His voice seemed to grow darker with foreboding as he spoke.  “Do we tell the foreign governments about this?”

General Lewis considered the point for a long moment.  “I don’t think that we should discuss this with anyone until we have a hope of a solution,” he said, after a moment’s thought.  “If we tell everyone – now – we’ll get wrapped up in confusion.  People everywhere will be trying to talk to the aliens, others will be demanding that we put a massive defence system in space yesterday…”

The President held up a hand.  “I understand,” he said.

“There are also military problems,” General Lewis continued.  “Do we work with NATO?  The UN?  What about the countries that don’t have any space capabilities at all?  Who will be making the tactical decisions about when to use force, assuming that it will be necessary; who speaks for Earth if we end up talking to the aliens?”

“The UN would want that job,” the President said.  He shook his head.  “Over my dead body.”

General Lewis nodded.  “Yes, Mr President,” he said.  His opinion of the United Nations wasn’t high; the UN was dominated by interests that were permanently opposed to America.  “Still, that’s a political issue.”

The President snorted.  “How true,” he said, dryly.  “I’ll discuss that with my cabinet, perhaps try to work out a framework for cooperation with the important countries – until then, we’ll keep it to ourselves, unless someone else puts two and three together and gets five.”

“It could happen at any time,” General Lewis warned.  He pushed as much concern into his voice as he could.  “The signals are not aimed at us, Mr President, and while you require sensitive sensors to find them, they can be found by any determined searcher.”

The President nodded slowly.  “I want you to concentrate on this,” he said.  “Assemble a group to examine the problems caused by the aliens, the political problems, the military problems…and what we need to do to counter them.  Report to me personally in a week; by then, we should have some idea of what we need to do.”

General Lewis stood up.  “Yes, Mr President,” he said, heading towards the door.  “I won’t let you down.”

Chapter Two: Mission to the Unknown

United States Space Defence Command
Near Washington, USA

The United States Space Defence Command had been founded to end the endless territorial struggles between the different American military services that had been attempting to claim exclusive control of American space-based resources – and hence a larger share of the budget pie.  In theory, General Eustace Lewis commanded the entire space force of the United States; in practice, he commanded only a small percentage of the total force.

He smiled as he walked down the corridor and entered the briefing room.  Armed with the President’s letter of authority, and his own determination to ensure that America had the best space-based defence force possible, he had been able to secure control of much of the remaining space asserts.  The NSA had been reluctant to surrender all of their asserts to the USSDC, but everything relevant to the mission had been re-tasked for the USSDC.  For the first time, the USSDC would live up to its name…but he was grimly aware of just how weak the entire planet was in the face of an alien threat.

“You may be seated,” he said, as the small group rose to meet him.  It had taken nearly four days to assemble everything and that had been quite long enough.  “We don’t have all day.”

He took his seat and gazed around the room.  It was a nicely-anonymous conference room, one of thousands in Washington alone; comfortable chairs, a central table, a display screen and a coffee pot that was forever on the boil.  He could have found his way around the room in his sleep; they were that standard.

“You all know the situation,” he said, glancing around the table.  “Further attempts by space-based telescopes have revealed clear evidence of industrial activity in the asteroid belt, all beyond Mars’s orbit.  We can no longer dismiss it as a hoax, or worse; we have to come to grips with the fact that there is an alien presence in the solar system.”

He paused.  “The President has tasked me – us – with taking the lead on the reaction to the alien contact,” he continued.  “The time pressure is immense; we will be forming recommendations that will be forwarded to the President himself, and they will be used to form the first response to the new…threat.  Yes, Mr Garland?”

Alan Garland, one of NSA’s representatives to the USSDC, had lifted his hand.  “The threat, General?”  He asked, his voice a curious mixture of concern and bitterness; like all NSA staffers, he cultivated an anonymous appearance.  He was, very much, the man in the street who a person would pass without a second glance.  “Do we have any evidence that they are intending to be hostile towards us?”

General Lewis smiled grimly.  “None as yet,” he said.  “Do I deduce that the NSA has not yet managed to translate any of the signals that we have picked up?”

Garland’s scowl managed to grow darker.  “No,” he admitted.  “We have recorded what seems to be several days worth of transmissions, several hours of which appear to be scrambled without any real hope of recovering them.  We're starting to sort out the function on some of the remaining signals, to the point that we think the high bandwidth stuff is some kind of two-way television - digital, probably very compressed.  Whatever it is, its nothing like anything we’ve ever seen outside a few experiments.”

His scowl lightened slightly.  “We have people trying to adapt hardware to bring the signal down into normal television ranges and other people trying to reverse-engineer their compression algorithms,” he continued.  “The problem is that its basically a hard-effort process; without any clue how they do what they do – the programs and so forth – we have little option, but to keep crunching away at it until we hit success.”

He sighed.  “That doesn’t even include the problem of translating whatever they use for a language,” he concluded.  “We know Arabic, German, all human languages, but alien languages?  We don’t even know Klingon.”

There were some chuckles.  “Keep working on it,” General Lewis said.  “Have there been any signs that anyone else has noticed the signals?”

“I have been unable to gain any proof that they have,” Garland said.  “The NSA is watching for any signs that another nation might have seen them, or SETI, but so far we’ve found nothing.  I’m a little surprised that SETI hasn’t picked them up, at the moment, although as they’re not on the hydrogen band they might just have been missed for perfectly innocent reasons.”

“I must confess that I am uncomfortable with any prospect that a non-Governmental organisation might detect the signals,” Colonel O’Neil said.  The gruff former USAF officer, an expert in advanced warfare concepts, had been consulting for the Pentagon when the crisis had appeared – and General Lewis had kidnapped him for the response program.  “Is there nothing that we can do to prevent them from detecting the signals?”

Garland shrugged.  “SETI has access to systems across the world,” he said.  “We could close the facilities in America, although not for very long, but we couldn’t interfere with the facilities outside the US without the permission of the host governments – and we would have to level with them to get them to cooperate.  It would be waving a red flag in front of all of the conspiracy theorists.”

“We’ll just have to hope,” General Lewis said, reluctantly.  Admitting defeat wasn’t something that came easily to him.  “What do we do about the aliens?”

“There are limits to what we can achieve though Earth and Leo-based systems,” Suzie McClelland said.  General Lewis smiled; he had been hoping that Suzie would take the lead.  A former NASA scientist, Suzie had gotten into enough trouble with the upper echelons of the organisation to be offered early retirement – and the USSDC had snapped her up like a shot.  She was a genius; NASA’s loss had been America’s gain.  “We need a closer eye on the location.”

“I was hoping that you would have worked out some of the details,” General Lewis said.  He’d discussed the possibility with the President, but there had been limits to what he’d known to be possible; he might well have promised the President more than he could deliver.  “How do you suggest that we proceed?”

Suzie’s face, shrouded in blonde curls, grinned.  In many ways, the situation, nightmarish through it was for General Lewis, was a dream come true for her.  “We have to proceed as fast as possible, at least in the early stages,” she said.  “Fortunately, launching a probe into space won’t be that difficult; there are two NSA satellites that can be quickly altered before they get launched into space, so they get converted into makeshift space probes.  The NSA will scream, but…”

General Lewis looked down at Garland, who shrugged.  “The budget can hold the loss of one of the satellites,” he said.  “Losing two…is it really necessary?”

“Yes,” General Lewis said flatly.  “Suzie?”

“If I recall correctly, the satellites were intended to be launched from the space shuttle in a couple of weeks,” Suzie said.  Garland nodded grimly at her.  “Instead, they’ll have to be adapted to be launched from a Delta or an Atlas – with additional boosters to provide Delta-V.  The original concept was worked out by my old mentor; he was quite a famous writer in his day.”

General Lewis scowled at her.  She laughed and continued.  “Launching two probes towards the asteroids will give us some additional information,” she continued.  “At the same time, it will give us the ability to launch weapons towards them if we have to, although I would advise against arming the probes themselves.  We’d stage them both out of Vandenberg AFB; they would be launched as quickly as possible.”

General Lewis nodded grimly.  “How quickly?”

Suzie lifted one elegant eyebrow.  “Time to launch or time to arrival?”  General Lewis shrugged.  “We might – if we cut corners and generally trample roughshod over everything else – get the first probe ready in a month or so,” she continued.  “It would be a roughly five-month transit time, although we expect that we would be able to start receiving telemetry much sooner than that.  In fact, I would like to launch the probes on slightly different trajectories; one to fly directly there, the other to take a longer route, but to have more opportunity to see just how far the aliens have spread out into the belt.”

General Lewis smiled.  “Calvin,” he said, to Colonel Calvin Jackson, “I want you to coordinate the probe launching program.  Work with Suzie and the space experts; get the probes ready for launch as quickly as possible.”

Jackson, a massive black man who had once played professional soccer, nodded.  “Consider it done, sir,” he said.  “I’ll have everything prepared as quickly as possible.”

“That leads us neatly to the second problem,” General Lewis said.  He looked down at Suzie, knowing that she would relish the challenge.  “Suzie, how do we get our space-launch capabilities expanded?”

“With difficulty,” Suzie said.  She scowled, mentally cursing NASA.  “We have three space shuttles, one of which could be launched fairly soon – it was intended to include those NSA satellites – and another might just be ready in another month.  We also have a handful of boosters, such as the Atlas, that can be used to lift satellites into orbit.  Past that…fuck all.”

Her mouth twisted.  “If we had a few years, we could throw money at the SSTO producers; some of their craft have actually made it to LEO.  We’ll have to wipe out any number of regulations and we’ll have to make all manner of promises that NASA won’t interfere with them again.  That said, they concentrated on smaller craft; we really need something larger and it’s hard to see how we can do that.  There are a handful of speculative designs, from heavy transport spaceplanes to the really far-out concepts like Orion – again, we would have to throw money at them and we might well end up merely proving that the concept was useless.”

She scowled again.  “Orion seems so simple, on the surface, but few of the problems were solved before it was cancelled,” she said.  “Oh, the simulations said that it should work – and if the President was willing to ignore a whole series of stupid rules we might even be able to build one quickly – but…it might well be an expensive disaster.”

“The nuclear bomb-powered spacecraft,” General Lewis said, who’d read about it in a science-fiction book.  “What about other heavy-lift projects?”

“Speculative, at best,” Suzie admitted.  “All of them got to the pretty pictures stage before NASA cancelled them or the funding ran out or some other excuse was used against them.  These days, we would have real problems building Saturn V rockets – and we used to know how to build them perfectly.  The Russians, incidentally, have their own heavy-lifters, but until the political angle is solved…”

She shrugged.  “We can use the inflatable space station concept to expand the ISS rapidly, provided that we ignored the regulations,” she concluded.  “Frankly…we need much more research and less rules and regulations – and no fucking shutting down the entire program if someone gets a boo-boo.”

Her voice had become vitriolic.  “I understand,” General Lewis said.  He understood her points too clearly; the United States was suddenly in the position of a canoe-paddling native, meeting a western galleon for the first time.  “That is something that I will recommended to the President.”

“We can actually mass-produce a lot of space weapons very quickly,” Colonel Jackson injected.  “The problem is that of getting them to orbit – which, as Suzie pointed out, is a very strong bottleneck.”

“That’s a problem that we will have to deal with,” General Lewis repeated.  He didn’t want the meeting to degenerate into an anti-NASA raving contest.  “Our final problem, then; we have to get a team out to the asteroids and investigate the aliens directly.”

Suzie scowled.  Her voice was still bitter.  “What sort of time limit would you expect us to handle?”

General Lewis sighed.  “Go nuts,” he said.  “How soon could we have a team out there?”

Suzie smiled.  “Do you want them back, alive?”  She asked dryly.  “It would make life a lot easier if you didn’t want them back.”

General Lewis bit down hard on the angry response that came to mind.  “How do you plan to do it safely?”

“There are two possibilities for a launch within the year,” Suzie said.  “The first option is fairly simple; we will confiscate the new habitat module that was supposed to be for the ISS and is currently waiting in Florida for a shuttle launch and place it into space, mating it up with a shuttle’s external tank and some boosters, perhaps even with a MEV if we can get one produced in time.  The ship leaves orbit and heads out to the belt along a fairly simple course, carrying enough supplies to last for a few months.  We would also attach a space-capable nuclear power source, using that to provide power for the craft.  It will be tricky, and the voyage could be dangerous, but it could be done.

“The second option, in some ways, is better,” she continued.  General Lewis blinked at the assertion.  “We take a space shuttle and modify it, removing part of the cargo bay and replacing it with a habitat module, allowing it to serve as a spacecraft.  With some modifications, we could even attach some additional capability to the craft; we might even be able to have a second shuttle supply the first in orbit, given time.  The shuttle, refuelled, then blasts out of orbit and heads for the belt.”

She looked up at them.  “In both cases, supplies will be the major problem,” she said.  “If we had time, we could assemble – within five years – a proper interplanetary spacecraft in orbit, perhaps even using a NERVA system, or an Ion system.  Either one would be much more efficient for space travel, but they require much more lead time than anything off the shelf.”

“Logistics,” General Lewis said.  He made it a swearword.  “Can we solve that problem?”

“With some commitment, yes,” Suzie said.  “We can launch supply pallets into orbit, and then launch them out to rendezvous with the spacecraft.  We would have to work hard on expanding our booster fleet, just for that alone, but…hell, we might well be able to put some of those Russian nukes to use in a modified Orion concept; there’s no reason that we have to launch the system from the ground.  We could just launch it from space.”

She paused.  “General, whatever happens, I would like to volunteer for the mission,” she said.

“We’ll see,” General Lewis said, without any commitment.  “You should know that I cannot promise anything at the moment.”

There was a long pause.  The members of the group had, for an all-too-short period, been captivated by visions of humans riding across the solar system.  The return to reality was hard for all of them, but they knew their duties; they had to concentrate on the here and now.

“We can begin preparations for both programs at once,” General Lewis said, after the pause had finally faded away.  “Suzie, please will you take the lead on this; feel free to dismiss any NASA objectors, or at least to push them out of the way.  We’re going to have to raid NASA’s funding for the program, which will irritate them, but…the President authorised us to do just that.”

“The program will be monstrously expensive,” Gavin Hastings commented.  The USSDC’s funding coordinator scowled.  “Keeping the secret might be a wee bit tricky.”

“We’re going to be playing every fiscal trick in the book, according to the President,” General Lewis said.  We’re going to be using every legal fiscal trick we can to retarget money, along with a few tricks that may not fly if anyone takes us to court on them.  That'll work for a week or maybe even a month, but eventually we'll have to go to Congress.”

“And they'll ask why we're assuming that whoever is out there is hostile,” Garland said.  His voice became bemused.  “That's something we don't have a good answer for just yet.”

“They’re out there,” Suzie said, her voice dark.  “They must know that we are here; if they can send out radio transmissions of their own, they must be able to hear ours.  They haven’t come to see who we are; they’ve moved into our solar system and set up a base without so much as a nod in our direction.  It doesn’t mean that they are hostile, of course, but…I don’t think it’s a good sign.”

“No,” General Lewis agreed.  “The President has said that we are to prepare for the worst-case scenario.  That’s…that this is the opening shot of an alien invasion…and we have to prepare for it as best as we can.  If we can make a peaceful contact, well and good – if not, we want to be able to deter attack, as best as we can.”

“Which does raise another point,” Garland said.  “Why don’t we just attempt to hail them?”

General Lewis had to smile.  He hadn’t thought of that possibility.  “It’s a thought,” he conceded.  “I’ll mention it to the President, but I would prefer to wait until we had some defences in place.  They might not know that we know about them – yet – and the longer it stays that way…”

“They’ll know when we launch the probes,” Suzie said.  She smiled grimly, remembering happier times when she had tracked Russian launches for NASA.  “Unless they’re blind, they’ll see the probes coming; they would be very hard to miss.”

“I’ll bring that concern to the President,” General Lewis said, and stood up.  “You know what you have to do, ladies and gentlemen; let’s get on with it.”

Chapter Three: Towards the Final Frontier

NASA Administration Centre
Florida, USA

The recently-built centre of the administration of NASA, at least the week-to-year administration, had been designed by a man who had been dreaming of space for years.  It looked nothing more than a gigantic space station, of a design that could have been built, according to popular rumour, for the amount of money that had been spent on the administration centre.  The astronauts hated it; they saw it as a building that had soaked up funds that could have been spent on more spacecraft, even more shuttles.  It was not a place that Captain Dale Hanson liked visiting; he had always believed that the senior staff actually discouraged the pilots from visiting the centre.

He passed through the security gates at the entrance – NASA was a target for the terrorists, who had stepped up their activities in recent years – and stepped into the main corridor.  It was a metal and glass monstrosity; elaborate paintings of NASA’s heroes, from Neil Armstrong to John Glenn, were scattered around, looking remarkably out of place.  He had been ordered to wear his uniform for the meeting, including the medal he had won from the Iraq War, but he knew that he was terribly out of place.  

He smiled at a pretty secretary as he passed her up the stairs and smiled at her reactions, half-admiring, half-subdued…almost nervous.  The corporate culture of NASA was very anti-military, very peaceful; the mere presence of a genuine military hero was anthemia to many of the administrators.  The other pilots, many of whom came from military backgrounds themselves, had accepted him; that, as far as Hanson was concerned, was all that mattered.

He paused in the rest room, just long enough to check his appearance in the mirror and quickly brush his brown hair into a more formal hairstyle, and then he took the elevator to the top floor.  The elevator itself looked like a spacecraft; it was a glass ball, seemingly floating in midair.  The effect claimed to be realistic, to the point of scaring some visitors to the building…but Hanson knew that it was nonsense.  In a true zero-gee environment, he would have just floated up to the top floor quicker than waiting for transport.

The exterior office of the current NASA director, a political appointee of the last administration, was decorated in a style that would have shocked members of the Congress Oversight Committee.  No expense had been spared on the office, from the comfortable sofas that were worth over five thousand dollars apiece, to the computer systems that dotted the walls and the plasma displays that showed scenes from the ISS’s cameras, staring out into space.  The secretary, too, was worth thousands of dollars; Margaret Kimmel could have had her pick of acting jobs in Hollywood.

He had his first surprise when he walked into the office; two men, their demeanour practically shouting ‘bodyguard,’ were staring by the door to the interior office.  Margaret herself was sitting in her chair, her redheaded good looks almost invisible under her pinched expression; Hanson wondered, rudely, if one of the bodyguards had stuck a poker up her behind.  She had always seemed so friendly to everyone.

“Captain Hanson, reporting as ordered,” Hanson said to her, feeling a prickle between his shoulder blades as the two bodyguards looked him over.  He steeled himself in preparation for a long wait; the director liked to keep his visitors waiting for as long as possible, just to remind them of who was in charge.  “Should I just take a seat?”

Margaret’s expression, if possible, grew even more pinched.  “That won’t be necessary,” she said, stiffly.  “You may go right in.”

Hanson concealed his surprise and stepped into the office…and received his second surprise.  Jacob Rutherford, the Director of NASA, was nowhere to be seen; his seat was occupied by a tall black man, wearing a General’s uniform.  Hanson recognised him at once, from his prior service; General Eustace Lewis, his former commanding officer in Iraq.

“General,” he said, coming to attention and saluting.  Lewis returned the salute.  “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Crawler,” General Lewis said, affectionately.  His voice betrayed no disgust or amusement.  “I understand that you have been making a name for yourself here.”

“I try,” Hanson said.  he paused, wondering if he dared ask…and then decided that General Lewis wouldn’t have him shot for curiosity.,  “General, where is Director Rutherford?”

General Lewis’s voice took on a grim note.  “Director Rutherford had…problems carrying out a direct executive order from the President,” he said.  His face twisted into a look of pure stone.  “Director Rutherford has been relieved of his post and removed to Washington under emergency powers.”

Hanson stared at him.  “Is that legal?”

“Only in cases of a national emergency,” General Lewis said.  He looked up, noticing that Hanson was still standing.  “Take a seat, Dale; we have a lot to discuss.”

Hanson sat on one of the chairs facing Rutherford’s desk – or perhaps it was General Lewis’s desk now.  The chair was sinfully comfortable; the atmosphere in the room was anything, but.  General Lewis seemed to be staring out of the window, and then he looked back at Hanson; his dark eyes seemed to be glowing slightly in the room.

“You still have your USAF commission,” General Lewis said, without further preamble.  “It will need to be reactivated, although I hope that you will accept the task willingly – there are security regulations that cannot be dodged for very long.”  He passed over a sheet of paper.  “Read and sign.”

Hanson skimmed the sheet of paper.  It reminded him of the security regulations, reminded him of the penalty for breaking them…and ordered him to sign the paper if he wanted to learn more.  It didn’t, interestingly, contain any provisions for him deciding that he didn’t want to be involved with the project past learning what it was all about – it did go into great detail about what happened to people who talked without permission.

He looked up at General Lewis, who had returned to looking out of the window, and then quickly signed.  He felt a moment’s pang of pure regret, and then he shook his head; he trusted General Lewis, who at least wasn’t a political general.  He pushed the sheet of paper over to the General, who read it, verified the signature, counter-signed it, and then placed it neatly in his briefcase.

“Thank you,” General Lewis said.  “Dale – do you believe in aliens?”

It was a question all shuttle pilots were asked, although normally by UFO researchers and children; Hanson had never formulated an answer, although NASA had an official party line on the question.  “I do not disbelieve,” he said, carefully.  “Why that question?  Why now?”

“A very good question,” General Lewis said.  He opened his briefcase and passed over a small folder, marked PROJECT WELLS.  “Read this…carefully.  There will be a quiz later.”

Hanson blinked at him, opened the folder and started to read, skimming the summery and then re-reading it to ensure that it had actually said what he thought it had said.  “Sir,” he said, “is this a joke?”

General Lewis suddenly looked very tired.  “I wish it was,” he said.  “No, it’s serious – and all too real.”

Hanson read through the remainder of the folder, noting just how thin it actually was, then re-read it to make certain that he had read all of the important points, before sitting up and facing the General.  “I think I see,” he said.  “What do you want from me?”

“So far, the information in this document has remained within the classified community,” General Lewis said.  His face seemed to darken.  “That won’t last, of course; the circumstances of their discovery suggest, very strongly, that we will soon have other human powers investigating the aliens.  The President has ordered me to coordinate our response to the new…threat, possible threat, alien contact…”

His voice trailed off, and then grew stronger.  “I have teams, all over America, looking into different possibilities for the future,” he continued.  “One…item that we need to address, however, is sending a small team out to the asteroids, one that can actually investigate the aliens directly.”  He passed over a second folder.  “Read that.”

Hanson read it.  “You plan to send a space shuttle out to the asteroids?”

“That’s the general idea,” General Lewis said.  “I need your honest opinion.”

“It seems like a recipe for disaster,” Hanson said.  It was a honest answer - and yet…there were problems that he felt could be solved.  “Why not just send out thousands of probes?”

“Different opinions for different people,” General Lewis said.  “There will be time delays on the probes, even with the best radio systems we still can’t get around them; the probes will have no time to react to anything unexpected.  Other people think that meeting them in space will get us more respect from them; still others want to launch a diplomatic mission out there.  Humans think and adapt; probes cannot.”

Hanson looked down at the folder again.  “There will be thousands of problems, mainly regulations,” he said.  “What’s going to happen to NASA?”

“The President has signed an executive order covering the problem,” General Lewis said.  His voice was grim, determined; Hanson knew what he was about to say before he said it.  “As of now, building a response to the new threat…and, I might add, to other human powers attempting to turn it to their advantage, is America’s number one priority.  NASA’s resources have been conscripted towards this purpose; some programs will be shut down completely, others will be placed on extended hold until we have a clear path forward.”

He leaned forward.  “In addition, we intend to start a crash program covering defences and so on,” he continued.  “Teams based around the military space program will be launching two probes into space; other teams will be working on defences.  By the time this goes public, we hope to have a major program underway.”

“Clever,” Hanson said, speaking to fill the silence.  “What do you want me to do?”

General Lewis tapped the folder.  “That,” he said.  “Your mission – and I’m afraid you no longer have a choice about accepting it – is to put together the mission specifications for a flight to the asteroids.  You may use whatever resources NASA has on hand – and money, for once, is no object.  Work out what you need, work out how to build it…and I’ll get you the money.”

Hanson smiled, studying the folder again.  “There are a lot of details and problems that need to be solved,” he said.  “We can handle the food supplies, we can handle cabin fever – hell, we have guys who were competing for the mission to Mars that was intended for the next few years.  You do realise that this will tie up a lot of NASA’s resources – and whatever shuttle we use will not be coming back?”

“I think I worked that out,” General Lewis said.

“Which leads to a second problem,” Hanson said.  He leaned forwards.  “General, we have no major spacecraft at all.  If we send one shuttle out on this…mission, we are very likely to be unable to recover the crew – hell, supplying them would be a major pain in the arse.  This is a suicide mission, with just enough hope for rescue to make it a really bad suicide mission.”

General Lewis scowled.  “I understand your concerns,” he said.  “However…”

Hanson glared at him.  “However…?”

“There are other issues here,” General Lewis said.  “We would be committed to launching dozens of resupply flights, perhaps even sending out more crewmembers – and we have teams drawing up plans for nuclear-powered spacecraft.  Recovering the crew would be possible, Dale; we will have the craft built and launched.”

Hanson saw, suddenly, the sheer cunning of the plan.  A crew, abandoned in the asteroids, would have to be rescued; the space development plan would have to be carried out in its entirety.  There would be dozens of volunteers for the flight crew; they would have more people willing to fly the mission than they would need.

“I see,” he said, slowly.  He looked up; iron determination filtering into his voice.  “This mission will be for volunteers only.”

“Assuming it gets launched,” General Lewis said.  “We’re concerned with providing options here; we need the ship, but at the same time…we have to prepare for anything.”

Hanson scowled.  “If this mission flies, I command it,” he said.  “I can’t ask people to take risks I won’t take myself.”

General Lewis nodded.  “That would be acceptable,” he said, after a moment.  “How many crewmembers do you think a shuttle could carry that far?”

“Five, perhaps six, at most,” Lewis said.  He thought for a moment.  “The more people, the more strain on the ship’s systems; they would have to get along with one another very well.”

“That would be something to worry about later,” General Lewis said.  “More to the point, it’s something that you will have to worry about – I have to coordinate dozens of teams.”

Hanson gave him a sharp look.  “Thanks a bunch, sir,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” General Lewis said.  He smiled brightly.  “You have executive power in NASA, for the moment; you have USAF skills that will be useful for organising everything.  The President will appoint someone to replace Rutherford later, but for the moment – you have been appointed as a temporary stand-in.”

Hanson hesitated.  The temptation to just accept the post was overwhelming, but there would be problems, political problems; they were problems he didn’t want to have to face at any time.  “Sir, with all due respect, I’m not exactly in the chain of command…”

“No, which is one reason why you have been appointed,” General Lewis agreed.  “I will be blunt, which you know I am; the President is very determined to have this project off the ground as soon as possible.  NASA needs a good kick in the pants – and you have been appointed the butt-kicker.  Your priority is to have NASA prepared for supporting the new space development program – and to have the mission planned and prepared; when the President gives the order, I want the shuttle launched as soon as possible.”

“I understand,” Hanson said.  He thought quickly.  “We have three shuttles; one that was being prepared for launch, one that could be prepared fairly quickly…and one that was intended to enter maintenance.  I can light a fire under that program, once we have the modifications worked out; that shuttle can be adapted to be the interplanetary ship.  The other two can be prepared for supporting your program.”

His voice became more animated as he spoke on.  “I can have dozens of useless projects cancelled,” he continued, allowing his delight to spill into his voice.  “The designs for the Mars Mission can be cancelled – it wasn’t as if years of research actually led to anything useful.  The FTL program can be scrapped; that never got near success.  I can have more boosters built with the money…”

He paused.  “What about arming the ship?”

“The President will have to make the final call on that,” General Lewis said.  “For the moment, I would advise against assuming that the ship will be armed.”

“Perhaps a good thing, perhaps not,” Hanson said.  He smiled.  “I could…”

General Lewis held up a hand.  “That’s enough for the moment,” he said.  “I want a report from you in a week; the President himself will read it.  For the moment, start work; I have a nasty suspicion that we have very little time indeed.”

Chapter Four: The Secret Is Out

The White House
Washington DC, USA

“The secret is out,” the President said, as General Lewis took his seat and the Situation Room was sealed.  “The world knows about it.”

General Lewis felt the shock flaring through his nerves.  It had been nearly a month since the first hint of contact; he had known that the day would come, but he hadn’t expected to hear about it in such a manner.  He took a long breath and slowly let it out, calming himself by sheer force of will.

The President’s eyes were grim, worried.  “Travis, perhaps you would care to outline what happened?”

Travis Roscoe, the National Science Advisor, spoke from his corner of the table.  “A satellite from Japan, built for commercial purposes, but with some military applications, started to detect the signals coming from the belt.  The Japanese looked back at the signals, realised where they were coming from…and the secret leaked out to the Japanese branch of SETI.  We expect a formal announcement shortly; it won’t be long before the rest of the world knows about it.”

“The genie is out of the bottle,” the President said.  He seemed perfectly calm.  “The news will be in the hands of every government in the world by sun down; the Internet is buzzing with rumours, false claims, and outright lies.  Enough serious people are looking at it, however, to have any attempt to cover it all up blown away.  The world will be hearing about it tomorrow on the morning news.”

There was a long pause.  “We have contingency plans for the news being released,” General Lewis said.  “The downside is that they will know that they’ve been seen, assuming that they are monitoring our communications; there’s no way that we could gag CNN and Fox, let along the transmitters that operate outside our jurisdiction.  They might well react to us seeing them – and that will change the situation yet again.”

The National Security Advisor scowled.  “This does present a serious problem to us,” he said.  “How might they react?”

“They’re aliens, so it’s hard to fit them to a human profile and make it sound convincing,” General Lewis said wryly.  “There are all sorts of possible options, from attempting to make open contact to launching an asteroid in our direction and watching the fireworks from a safe distance.”

“Fuck,” the National Security Advisor breathed.  “Can we stop them?”

“Not as yet,” General Lewis said.  “We would need months of effort before we had even a flimsy defence in place.”

“That does give us at least one option,” the President said.  “I have been discussing the matter with a number of trusted Congressmen and Senators, people from both parties and people with considerable influence.  The program, as devised by General Lewis and his teams, will go ahead; it may mean some economic problems, but frankly – I don’t see any other choice.  Congress will pass an emergency spending bill within the week; the USSDC will have all of the money it could possibly need.”

He stood up, glancing from face to face around the table.  “I intend to ask for an official state of emergency,” he continued.  “That gives us some additional options, from abandoning a whole series of rules to ignoring concerns such as health and safety.  General Lewis, your task will be to actually turn that into something that we can actually use for a defence against the aliens, should they prove to be hostile.”

General Lewis nodded.  “We can start some of the plans at once,” he said.  “The main problem, however, remains the bottleneck; can we build enough launchers to actually get stuff into orbit?  One of the shuttles is being stripped down for its mission to the asteroids – do we intend to launch that mission?”

The President frowned.  “I don’t know, yet,” he said.  He sat down, steepling his fingers in front of his face.  “It’s a contingency plan, one that we are going to need, but…it’s going to be politically difficult to launch what in effect is a suicide mission.”

General Lewis shrugged.  “We have a whole host of volunteers from NASA’s flight crews,” he said.  “We’re looking now at who has the skills that we need to actually be useful out there.  They know the risks, Mr President – and they still want to go.”

The President nodded slowly.  “Brave men,” he said.  “However, I want every effort made to ensure that they are recovered if we can do so.”

The Secretary of State, Hubert Rollins, coughed for attention.  “Mr President, we have received some questions from other governments,” he said.  “It won’t be long before something happens that will make those questions a lot more insistent.  At the moment, they don’t quite believe in the possible alien contact – but, as they work to confirm it, they will start to believe.  At that point…”

He cleared his throat.  “What sort of international effort are we looking at here?”

The President looked up at General Lewis, who scowled.  “All of our contingency plans were rather based on American resources only,” he said.  “The Russians have a small force of Soyuz launchers that were intended to resupply the ISS; the Europeans have a few launchers of their own that were intended for satellite launching missions.  The Indians and the Japanese have vast programs that – like us – have only a few vehicles…and I dare say that I don’t have to tell you that no one knows for sure about China.”

He tapped the table insistently.  “If they work with us, they could certainly expand the defences in orbit to some degree, but not enough to actually make a difference,” he continued.  “Quite frankly, we need – desperately – to work on expanding the launchers we do have; ours, the Russians, everyone’s launchers.  Whatever contribution they make, however, will come with a political price-tag.”

The President scowled.  “It won’t be long before the UN tries to stick its oar into the situation,” he said.  General Lewis thought dire thoughts about the current Secretary-General of the UN; a man who had seemed pro-American…until he actually got into the office.  “How much should we cooperate with them?”

“I would advise little cooperation,” Rollins said.  His voice seemed to be growing clearer; General Lewis wondered if he had had a cold recently.  “The UN, as a whole, can’t contribute much to our defences – and we certainly don’t want them attempting to talk to the aliens on behalf of a world that seems to hate us half the time.”

The President chuckled.  “It will be difficult to maintain exclusivity,” he said.  “I give it a day before people start beaming messages towards the alien positions in the asteroids.”

“Something else we have to worry about,” General Lewis said.  His team had considered that possibility.  “Can we prevent people from doing that?”

“I don’t think so,” Rollins said.  He frowned.  “Back to the UN; we should work with the space-capable nations and the handful of others to prepare a defence – and an approach to the aliens.  The UN can simply be ignored, past the Security Council; we’ll need their support to avoid a UN debate on the matter.”

“That might be difficult to avoid,” the President said.  He shook his head.  “It doesn’t matter if they try to pass resolutions; we have had enough of toothless resolutions.  The Security Council can work out a joint approach, if we can come to some agreement on such an approach…if not, we’ll act on our own.”

“Yes, Mr President,” General Lewis said.  “If we did have access to the non-American launchers, we could put more firepower into orbit, as well as some additional parts for the space station and the lunar plans.  The downside is that we would have to work out some form of shared command and control; we cannot expect them to launch our weapons into space and then place them in a position where the decision to fight or not rests with us alone, not them.”

Rollins coughed again.  “That would mean drawing up agreements on when we should open fire,” he said.  “What constitutes a clear threat to us all?”

The president shrugged.  “That’s a matter for the diplomats,” he said.  “General Lewis, what about the probe launch plans?”

General Lewis picked up the remote for the projector and displayed an image of the rocket and its payload on the main screen.  “This is Probe One,” he said, citing the unimaginative name for the modified spy satellite.  “After nearly a month of effort, it is nearly ready to launch – the launch was planned for next week.  Probe Two is going to be aimed along a slightly different trajectory; that launch was intended to be carried out in a fortnight.

“Both probes will be carrying some of the most advanced sensors we have into space,” he continued, repeating himself for the benefit of the newcomers to the table.  “Unfortunately, it will be difficult to have them remain undetected by the aliens; we expect that they will see the launch and then track them along their ballistic courses.  One of the team came up with a message for transmission to the aliens, inviting them to open contact with us; the probe will transmit the message when it is investigated by the aliens, assuming that they try to investigate the probe.  The course is designed to avoid flying too close to alien concentrations, of which we have identified now more than five dozen, but as we can only really see emitting sources…”

“I understand,” the President said.  General Lewis scowled; the aliens were really too far out for effective imagery of their positions.  The growing interest in their positions allowed them to locate more centres of alien activity, but it was frustrating – they knew so little about their unknown visitors.  “Which leads to the final question – I have to make a broadcast to the nation; do we tell them about the probes?”

“I would advise against it,” General Lewis said, after a moment’s thought.  “There will be considerable demand for the information, when we recover it; it would be broadcast on open channels and the aliens would know what we know about them.  It would also give us bargaining power with the other nations – they’ll want access to the information and we can use that for leverage.”

The President nodded.  “I have a speech to write,” he said.  “General, I want you to continue making the preparations; once we have the money in hand, you can start spending it.”

General Lewis nodded.  “Yes, Mr President,” he said.

The President stood up.  “Good luck to us all,” he said.  “We’ll meet again tomorrow.”

***
“My fellow Americans,” the President said.  The television screen focused in on his face; Robert Zeke, Special Representative, could see the fixed smile on his face.  “There has been a recent discovery by radio astronomers within our solar system; they have discovered nexuses of non-human activity within the asteroid belt.”

The camera seemed to jump slightly; Zeke had to smile.  His role as the President’s Special Representative – and oldest friend – had given him enough understanding of reporters to know that whoever was holding the camera had jumped.  Heads would be rolling later in CNN’s headquarters; the most important broadcast of the century had been damaged.

“After considerable attempts to discover a natural cause for these nexuses, we have been forced to assume the presence of a non-human race within the solar system,” the President continued.  “The solar system has been touched by aliens – and they have come to stay.  So far, despite the rumours already floating around the Internet, they have made no attempt at contact – we know next to nothing about them.

“With the agreement of Congress, I have declared a state of emergency,” the President concluded.  “We intend to build, as quickly as possible, a space force that can allow us to interact with the aliens on an equal level – and one that will allow us to claim some of the resources of our own solar system.  This will also be beneficial for the economy, as this will pump more money into the development of space.

“I must stress that there have been no signs that our visitors are hostile,” the President concluded.  “I hope that this contact will lead to a new age for planet Earth – and a new age for humanity.”

He stepped off the podium and out of the small side door.  Moments later, he walked into the room where Zeke was waiting, watching one of the talking heads ranting and raving about the dangers of provoking the aliens.  Zeke stood up and shook hands with the President; the President waved him to a seat and took his own.  

“It’s good to see you again,” the President said, only half-seriously.  “How did the discussions with the other Ambassadors go?”

Zeke smiled grimly.  “They were more than a little stunned,” he said.  “The Russians were very interested in cooperation, along with the British; the French and the Chinese were less committal to anything that we might propose.  It’s only been a day since they started to hear rumours, however; they might well come around after the usual posturing.  The Japanese and the Indians said nothing about their own programs; I think their governments haven’t yet started to believe.”

“Odd, given that the Japanese were the first to hear about this, apart from us,” the President said.  “Was there any other useful bits of information?”

“They all seemed to agree that some form of joint control would be…necessary for cooperation,” Zeke said.  “Incidentally, a radio lab in Japan has sent the first transmission out towards the asteroids; they’re claiming the record for the first transmission to an alien power.”

The President shrugged.  “So far, there has been little panic,” he said.  Zeke laughed; the movies had gotten that one wrong, in any case.  No one had expected aliens who had just set up base in the asteroids without paying any attention at all to humanity.  “That might well change – and not that far off, either.  Robert, what about the other countries?”

“Some questions from some of the smaller nations,” Zeke said.  “There’ll be more in a while; the nations I talked to were willing to have talks among the space-capable nations, but the nations without space capabilities of any sort are more than likely to go to the United Nations.”

“In hopes of gaining some influence,” the President said.  “We should try to keep this within the space-capable nations, if we can; it’s going to get far more confusing.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Zeke said.  He leaned forwards.  “There are going to be questions over command and control, sir; they’re not going to give us a blank check.”

“I know,” the President said.  “It won’t be long before we launch the first probe towards the asteroids – will they want some control over that mission?”

Zeke hesitated, taking a moment to think carefully.  “I would advise against telling them until the probe was launched,” he said.  “They might object to the launch of the probe, either for real concerns or political concerns.  Either way, it would provoke a political firestorm we’re not ready to handle.”

The President nodded.  “I just spent an hour signing financial requests,” he said.  “I’ve just disposed of half of the government funding for this year alone – and its only going to get worse.  Sooner or later, someone is going to put two and two together and work out that dozens of pork barrels have been terminated.  Once that happened…”

“We might be able to get financial contributions from other countries,” Zeke said, absently.  “That will come with strings attached, however; they’ll want some influence over our preparations if that happened.”

The President smiled grimly.  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.  “For the moment, we have dozens of preparations to make.  Once we have some real firepower in orbit, I’ll feel a lot happier about the world.”

Zeke blinked at him.  “You don’t know they’re hostile,” he said.  His voice became a question.  “Or do you?”

The President shook his head.  “I know nothing,” he said.  He scowled a fierce scowl.  “That, of course, is the real problem.”

The President’s pager buzzed.  They both knew that it meant more bad news.

Chapter Five: First (Radio) Contact

United States Space Defence Command
Near Washington, USA

“There have been developments,” General Lewis said.  The faces looking back at him looked as tired as he felt.  “Some of you already know this, but I will summarise the outlines for those of you who don’t – we have received a message from the aliens.  From the timing, we suspect that it was sent back nearly an hour after the first human attempt to hail them would have been received in the asteroid belt.  The message…has the effect of complicating matters for us quite considerably.”

He sighed.  “Alan?”

“The signal was transmitted on the hydrogen band,” Garland said.  “That means, among other things, that it will have been detected by SETI and the countless radio telescopes focused on some of the publicly known nexuses of alien transmissions.  We expect that the exact text of the message will be broadcast across the Internet within the day; the message itself was surprisingly easy to read…and it was in English.”

Astonishment raged around the table.  “It’s not that surprising,” Garland said.  “There have been countless ‘English as a second language’ programs broadcast on satellite television and a single probe near Earth could have picked them up and forwarded them to the alien positions.  Regardless of that, the signals were unencrypted; they will have been read across the world.  The signal repeated itself fifty times, each time allowing us to gain a complete copy of the signal, and then it terminated.”

He paused.  “The signal was traced back to one of the asteroid clusters that have been transmitting radio signals and other energies to other asteroids,” he continued.  “I have forwarded a request that we watch that cluster with all of our sensors and telescopes, but so far there have been no new discoveries.  It might well take some time; there have been no breakthroughs with the main alien signals.”

He took control of the display and showed the message.  “We can go into details later,” he said.  “The main thing is that they have invited us to send a small team of people, including one diplomatic representative, to visit them at that cluster.  They have promised that human life support is available for our team, and if necessary they have promised a return trip.  There’s enough information attached to the signal to confirm that they’re telling the truth about their ability to provide the conditions.”

“If we get out of this, we are going to have to spend some time working on restricting just what we broadcast into space,” General Lewis muttered.  He cleared his throat loudly enough to gain their attention.  “The President is keeping the final call to himself, as is his right while we sort out the details, but I have been ordered to assume that the mission to the asteroids will go ahead as soon as possible.  American primacy, if not an outright monopoly on information, depends on it – Suzie, could anyone else mount a mission within the year?”

Suzie shrugged prettily.  “It could be done,” she said.  “It would be risky – far riskier than the space shuttle idea, but they could do it.  They have several ISS modules that the Russians were planning to launch; they could put them into orbit as a makeshift spacecraft, and then launch for the asteroids.  Hell, if they were really desperate, they could even convert the ISS into a makeshift spacecraft.”

General Lewis laughed.  “I hope it won’t come to that,” he said.  “So…why would they have asked us to come to them?”

“There are several possibilities,” Jane Robertson said.  Her background was in anthropology; she had been denied tenure at several universities for the crime of making value judgements.  General Lewis had read her book and liked it enough to invite her to join the group.  “It could be intended as an intelligence test, or a test of our capabilities; they cannot be blind to any threat that we might present to them.  It could also be intended to allow us to gain some respect; if we can reach them, we are worthy of congress with them.”

“Congress,” Suzie repeated.  “It could also be intended to get them some humans – and the craft they flew in.”

“And you want to go on this mission,” General Lewis said.  He shook his head.  “Crew selection is going to be a pain in the butt.  Bill?”

Bill Edwards smiled grimly from his position.  “My team has been looking at the question for quite some time,” he said.  “Oddly enough, there have been other studies of the question conducted, but none of them actually agree with one another.  Worse, in many ways – this crew will be conducting operations some distance from Earth, even through there will be radio contact…and one of them has to be a diplomat.”

“That does make sense if they want to open talks with us,” Jane injected.  “Asking for a diplomat is not a hostile move.”

Edwards shrugged.  “The mission is to establish a level or degree of contact and initiate communications with another civilization,” he said.  “Neither side of this event – or encounter - is of the same race.  One assumes that they know a great deal about us, just by reading our transmissions; we know bugger all about them.

“The human side of the mission has to successfully create a cross-disciplinary analysis response to the other civilization's representatives - the alien side.  That analysis has a presumptive goal of determining what the alien's individual and group/aggregate brain processes and perceptions are, relative to alien sensory inputs.  

“Those alien thought processes and perceptions are based on an alien culture - a complex adaptive system - and alien contexts - bordered or somewhat-constrained systems.  Those thought processes and perceptions, relative to culture and context, represent at best a cross section of that race's values, concepts, ideas, strategies, methods of planning, implementation, communications, and experiences.”

General Lewis stared at him.  “What exactly does all of that technobabble mean?”

Edwards laughed.  “It’s a way of expressing the problem,” he said.  “To determine what that cross section is based on, or to make studies based on the alien nature, the human contact team has to evaluate the alien culture, literature, contemporary issues, past issues and history, conflicts and crime, technologies and sciences and associated trends and histories of technological and scientific development, form or forms of government, theological foundations, and capabilities.”

“Assuming that they are willing to let us see all of that,” Jane said.  “There are…areas within recent human history that are glossed over or ignored by modern-day schooling.  Do we tell them about the holocaust?  9/11?  The slave trade?  Will they show us bits of their own history?  Why should they?”

Suzie snorted.  “To be open and honest with us?”

Jane shrugged.  “Why should they be?”

Edwards smiled grimly.  “Here comes more babble,” he said.  “To initiate the evaluation, the human team must have multidisciplinary skills and capabilities that encompass, to a greater or lesser degree, linguistics - audible, visual, olfactory – music, archaeology, physics and astrophysics, mathematics, engineering, chemistry, metallurgy, anthropology - presuming the aliens are semi-human/anthropoid in appearance, otherwise reptilian or as the situation warrants - biology and biochemistry, theology, communications, and warfare/threat analysis.”

He grinned at their faces.  “And, to add to the mix, the trip to meet the aliens requires crew training and specialization skills that can allow the mission to continue and succeed even if one or more crewmembers are lost or otherwise incapacitated.  So while the mission command and first officer can include skill sets in engineering and/or physics and/or warfare, the other crewmembers must have baseline-to-advanced training and skills for operating, maintaining, and repairing the spacecraft.

“So, you have a mission size of six, from what Suzie said, consisting of pilot and mission commander, the assistant pilot and mission second in command and 4 other crewmembers.  It would seem the average mission crewmember would be a Nobel-level astrophysicist, biochemist, Special Forces, baker, tree surgeon man or woman.  How much lead-time for crew training and preparation do we have?”

General Lewis glared at him.  “Are you taking the piss?”

Edwards shook his head.  “I’m not trying to be funny or snide, but several web searches along the lines of cultural analysis requirements indicated to me that the comments I made above are a high-level view of what the team should be capable of.  The other studies, which anticipated meeting aliens on Earth rather than deep space, intended to have hundreds of scientists, the top names in their field or within the classified community, on call for the main contact team.

“In fact, we might be better off picking six redshirts and hoping for the best,” he concluded.

“Not bloody likely,” General Lewis snapped.  “Can we narrow it down?”

Suzie nodded.  “I believe, from my days at NASA, that some of the pilots had air force training and even some backgrounds in space warfare,” she said.  “We won’t need an expert in ground warfare, for the simple reason that the contact won’t be taking place on the ground – we need some experts in relevant fields.”

She tapped the vast list that Edwards had prepared for them.  “The Captain of the mission will be a former USAF officer,” she said.  “That’s one military expert; we can get a second from one of the black space mission programs.  If I go along – and I do have some training for space travel – that’s a general expert in space propulsion systems as well.

“That leaves several other problems,” she continued.  “We will need an anthropologist and a social scientist – ideally, we will need someone with a foot in both camps.”  She looked up at Jane.  “Jane…”

Jane stared at her.  “No,” she said flatly.  “I have little interest in the flight, even though…”

“At least go in for the training,” General Lewis said, who’d worked out what Suzie was trying to say.  “You will have tried, if nothing else.”

“We’ll need a doctor and a language expert as well, and an engineer,” Suzie said.  “We’ll have to start looking for them in NASA’s ranks – and then outside.  We’ll also need a mission psychologist – someone who can tell us how the crew is standing up to the long trip.”

“The crewmen will love that,” General Lewis said.  “The President will appoint a diplomat – someone who can afford to spend the months of preparation for the flight in the centre at Houston.  I’ll have to take the recommendations to him directly.”  He frowned.  “Any other comments?”

“There is a final point,” Edwards said, after a moment.  “Do we hold a space for someone from another country?”

“I don’t see that we could,” General Lewis said.  “If we give the role to any other country, even just one of the other space-capable nations, we would be pissing off every other nation on the planet.  An all-American crew might be better from a political standpoint.”

He shrugged.  “That’s a question for the President to answer,” he concluded.  “My recommendation, however, is that we merely maintain our control over the mission – which means no non-Americans on the flight.”

***
“This is the final stage of the launch preparations,” Suzie said, after a week had passed.  The massive plasma screen was active, displaying the Atlas rocket on the launch pad, equipped with the additional boosters that had been strapped onto the hull to provide additional delta-V.  The launch had been delayed twice, just to ensure good weather; the sun beat down on the rocket.  Vandenberg AFB had never looked so good to General Lewis; he had once commanded the base.

“They’re just checking all of the systems now, and then they will launch the rocket,” she continued, watching the telemetry from the rocket and the surrounding systems, monitoring the launch preparations with considerable interest.  Her face tightened.  “The protesters don’t help either.”

“No,” General Lewis agreed.  Somehow, against all of their efforts, news of the launch had slipped out – people seemed to believe that the Atlas was launching a manned ship towards the aliens.  The crowds of protesters, some wanting the launch to be delayed or cancelled, others wanting a ticket, were parked near the base; a harassed force of National Guardsmen and Army soldiers were attempting to keep the peace.  “What do they think they’re doing?”

Edwards shrugged from his seat at the table.  “Jane?”

Jane scowled at him.  She hadn’t been keen on the flight; her training for the shuttle mission – along with several dozen other hopefuls – would be starting soon.  “They think that the aliens shouldn’t be disturbed,” she said, her voice cold and hard.  “They don’t trust the government, or the military; they expect that the aliens would be treated the way that the Native Americans were treated.”

Her gaze fell on the map that the NSA was building up of alien positions within the solar system.  “I expect that it will be the other way around,” she said.  “We’re going to be junior partners in our own solar system.”

General Lewis scowled.  The President had been as good as his word and billions of dollars had been funnelled towards the crash defence effort.  Even so, there were far too many bottlenecks; NASA had started building more boosters, just to speed up the process before they managed to get new launching systems into orbit.  The Russians and Chinese weren’t helping, either; they had their own people building orbital weapons as fast as they could.  Cooperation with America seemed to be a dead letter.

“Give us time,” he said.  “Give us time and we will change the world.”

“They’ve started the countdown now,” Suzie said, before Jane could say anything in reply.  A big screen counted down to the launch moment…and then the rocket’s engines fired.  There was a long moment, with only smoke billowing from under the rocket…and then it started to rise up into the air.  It rose slowly, picking up speed as it moved, rising higher and higher into the air.

“The telemetry looks fine,” Suzie said, into the awed silence.  “That probe is on its way.”

Edwards smiled grimly.  “Could you do anything about it if the telemetry wasn’t fine?”

“No,” Suzie said, her voice droll.  “It’s good to know that everything is working.”

“Put a sock in it,” General Lewis said, as the rocket started to separate, launching the probe towards the stars.  “How long do we have to wait until it gets there?”

“Five months,” Suzie said.  “They might come to investigate, of course, but even if they don’t, we should be pulling up useful information in several weeks anyway.”

General Lewis stood as the rocket vanished into the sky.  “They’ll have seen it coming,” he said.  “Damn it – I wish we knew more about them.”

“We will,” Jane said.  She shook her head.  “It’s the chance of a lifetime…”

“I know,” General Lewis said.  “I would prefer to have had it happen in someone else’s lifetime.”

He laughed.  “Now, all we have to do is decide the answer to a different question,” he said.  “Do we launch the shuttle, when its ready, before we start getting information from the probe…or do we wait ten months before we have our team on station?”

Suzie shrugged.  “I would be inclined to wait myself,” she said.  “After all, it’s all that we can do at the moment, isn’t it?”

Chapter Six: Making Preparations

Shuttle Assembly Area
Florida, USA

“You have no idea how much confusion there was in the first week,” Captain Dale Hanson said, as he stepped out onto the overlooking balcony, looking down at the hanger-sized room.  “It was almost like fighting a war again.”

He grinned mischievously at General Lewis.  “But we won, and you can see the results below us,” he continued.  “Give us a couple more months and…well, we can rock the world.”

General Lewis stepped forward, peering down into the hanger.  A space shuttle – Atlantis – had been placed neatly on the ground…and it was half-dissembled.  The wings had been carefully removed from the craft, sealed up neatly into the hull; half of the inspection panels were open, with people swarming all over the craft.  The entire room throbbed with activity.

Hanson followed the General’s eyes to the open cargo bay.  It had been removed, almost completely; a habitation module had been installed, along with supply boxes that would – hopefully – feed six astronauts for their five-month flight.  The construction crews were working quickly, but very carefully; the entire scene looked like a bureaucrat’s nightmare.

“We managed to obtain some guarantees from suppliers,” Hanson continued, as the General turned back to face him.  “They were reluctant to work under such conditions – the chances of a serious accident and legal fees are quite high – but we managed to convince them to accept the new regulations…or rather the lack of regulations.  The shuttle will be flying with some of the latest technology, from crew preservation to sensors.  No weapons, but…”

“You couldn’t fight them all anyway,” General Lewis said.  “What’s the time to launch?”

Hanson lifted an eyebrow.  “Are we going to launch without the intelligence from the probes?”

“It’s starting to look that way,” General Lewis said.  “The President has built a powerful political coalition, but its starting to fray at the edges – so far, support for the new space program remains strong, but its going to fade if there isn’t a strong success soon.  Many pork barrels have been cancelled; that’s not a bad thing, but…there are far too many congresscritters who have strong interests that are at stake.”

He sighed.  “There’s also the political dangers; there is a lot of pressure to have non-Americans on the flight, which would remove someone important from the flight roster.  Russia and China are actually drawing up plans for their own mission to the asteroids – they seem to believe that whoever manages it first will have the inside track on dealing with the aliens.”

Hanson laughed.  “I thought we had the same idea,” he said.

General Lewis shared the laugh.  “We do,” he said.  He allowed Hanson to lead him back into the secure office.  “What’s the planned launch date?”

“Atlantis will be ready for launch within two months,” Hanson said.  His voice darkened.  “We’ve made a lot of modifications to the original idea, sir; we won’t need another shuttle meeting up with it in space.  At the same time, we have a few other problems to handle; the crew roster has proven difficult to fill.”

“I know,” General Lewis said.  “We would have preferred to have sent a massive ship the size of the Starship Enterprise.”

“Me too,” Hanson said.  “We have six people; myself, Suzie McClelland, Jane Robertson, Thomas Auckland and Dave Howery are the main crew.  Thomas and myself will be the main military representatives on the flight; Suzie should prove helpful at evaluating their own equipment, should we see any.  Jane can actually double as a Doctor and a shrink, but we will have Dave along in any case.  He’s a stroke of luck; he used to work for NASA and has a period onboard the ISS to his credit.

“The President has assigned his old friend, Robert Zeke, to the crew as the diplomat,” he continued, considering the problem.  “He’s young enough to bear up under the strains of the space travel, but I’m still a little worried about him and Jane.  They’re going to have real problems learning everything they need to learn in time; we have them working now under the tightest schedule possible.”

He snorted.  “It does help the emergency procedures boil down to kissing your arse goodbye that far out,” he said.  “Unless the aliens get involved, there is no way that we can rescue them if something should happen to go wrong out there.”

“Not, I think, something to make clear to anyone,” General Lewis said, warningly.  “How’s NASA holding up under your reign of terror?”

“Fairly well,” Hanson said, unwilling to admit just how proud he was of NASA.  “A lot of people got the boot; they’re the ones currently whining to the press about how their funding was suddenly cut off and their doubtless promising experiments scrapped.  Space experiments that were not strictly useful for our current situation have been scrapped; we have actually been working towards building up the ISS and the space defences.”

He checked his PDA.  “Endeavour flew last week, as I’m sure you noticed, carrying some inflatable systems for the ISS,” he said.  “We’re going to have to do some more work on the politics of the ISS, but in the longer term we can simply launch our own into space, using the new inflatable system.  We’re also buying many more boosters – and, in a year, we should have the first commercial SSTO craft ready to fly.”

“I read your statement on the subject,” General Lewis said.  “You’re suddenly very popular with the space community.”

“I have my moments,” Hanson said wryly.  “With all the money being sloshed around at every halfway-promising idea, we should have some success very quickly.  The Japanese have been developing their own systems; when we hit upon a working design, we intend to have it mass-produced and pressed into service.  At the moment, we have boosters being mass-produced, but many of the production lines were cut back.”

He smiled.  “One of the ideas we did have was approaching the Russians and offering to buy their old nuclear missile launchers,” he concluded.  “That would at least allow us to place more weapons in orbit.”

“They’re trying to put their own weapons in orbit,” General Lewis said.  “The President was trying to hammer out some form of joint command and control, but…there’s too much political problems with any such system.  You might not be allowed to use the missiles.”

“We can at least ask,” Hanson said.  He turned to nod towards the plans for the modified shuttle.  “There are dozens of ideas that are being tossed forward for the next five years – the problem is building what we have into a working system within the year.  In five years, we’ll have a lot more in the way of options to use.”

General Lewis nodded.  “Five years is too long,” he said.  “We have to move as quickly as possible, Captain; I have a feeling that the universe is about to come knocking at the door.”

***
A week after his arrival at the secret astronaut training base at Edwards AFB, Robert Zeke was on the verge of giving up; only determination and the desire to serve his country pushed him forward.  After a long medical check, the training had begun, forcing him to learn everything he could about the shuttle, even working in the shuttle mock-up that had been suspended underwater, preparing him as best as he could for zero-gee.

The base itself, he had been surprised to discover, had been created for training cold warriors who would have fought the cold war in space.  Humanity had developed all manner of weapons for the long-awaited America-Soviet Union duel, from chemical lasers to anti-satellite weapons.  In the event of war, a secret astronaut corps would have gone into battle…except the war had never come and the astronauts had been disbanded.  NASA had taken over the base, but it had hardly been used, until now.

He’d met and liked the other five people who would be travelling on the voyage, although he had registered some…resentment from some of the astronauts who would otherwise have been able to compete for the coveted sixth post on the flight.  They’d spent several days on their own, working in one of the shuttle mock-ups; he’d been surprised and slightly dismayed by how little there actually was to do once the shuttle had been launched into space.  He’d been careful to order thousands of electronic resources, including Baen Free Library books, but he knew that cabin fever would be very likely to actually send them all crazy.

“We’ll be chasing each other around the cabin with knives,” he had predicted, in one of their meetings.  The shuttle was surprisingly large, but they would have very little privacy; they would quickly learn if the others had any disgusting night habits.  “We’ll end up a ship full of corpses.”

Dave Howery, who had been introduced as a researcher, and whom he knew to be a shrink, had disagreed.  “I think that we’ll get used to it,” he said.  “We will have powerful communication links with Earth; we could spend hours talking to people on Earth…”

“Part of the reason for going on this mission is to get away from people,” Suzie had injected.  He’d found that he liked the space expert; she had a refreshingly blunt view of the world.  “We’ll be out there for years; you do know that, don’t you?”

“Don’t remind me,” Zeke had commented in return.  “I shall return, Ambassador to the Stars, or I will die in our flying coffin.”

He smiled grimly as he replayed the countless conversations they had shared, arguing out point after point until they knew one another as well as they could.  They had been forced to concentrate on each other to a degree he found almost terrifying; they would have to trust and respect one another completely.  It didn’t help that if they ran into trouble, they would be almost certain to die out there – between Earth and the asteroid belt.

The President had kept him updated on the general situation – and the growing chaos in the world.  In some parts of the world, it was pretty much business as usual; North Korea was practicing nuclear brinkmanship again, Vietnam was threatening China for minor Chinese intrusions across the border, the European Union was having problems with the Russians and…

In other parts of the world, the fact that aliens really existed had brought an uneasy peace; Russia and China were working together to prepare their own defences – the Russians had launched more satellites into space than they had launched before within a similar time period.  The ESA was still arguing, but he suspected that they would end up allying themselves to NASA and the American defence force; the USSDC would be more than willing to share some information and technology with them in exchange for cooperation.  

His pager buzzed and he glanced down at it.  The message was simple and blunt; REPORT TO THE COMMANDER’S OFFICE AT ONCE.  He grinned as he made his excuses to the other team members and left the briefing room; a lecture on possible alien lifeforms was less than useful anyway.  The Base Commander hadn’t been quite certain how to treat him, but they had finally come to some agreement – he was being treated as one of the normal astronauts-in-training.  He had in fact been informed that there would be dozens more astronauts within the year, but for the moment only a handful were in training, not counting their own team.

The Commander had a fairly nice office, with a decent view of the air base; he had actually been inside several times before.  This time, several guards in black suits insisted on searching him…and he realised with a shock just who had come to see him.  The sight of the President, sitting behind Commander Stillwell’s office, was a real surprise; the President had too many problems in Washington DC to come visiting him.

“Mr President,” he exclaimed, in astonishment.  “You’ve come to see the base?”

“Well, I actually came to see you,” the President said, very gravely.  “Robert – how are you handling the training?”

Zeke slipped into a chair and faced the President.  “I think that it’s going very well,” he said.  “I’ll never be a proper astronaut, unfortunately, but I can handle the stress of the mission.”

“That’s good,” the President said.  “You know why I selected you, of course?”

Zeke blinked.  “I assume that it was because I was convenient,” he said, after a moment’s thought.  “Was there another reason?”

The President snorted.  “Yes, there was,” he said.  His voice was very serious.  “Have you seen some of the intelligence from the probes?”

Zeke frowned.  “I was under the impression that it would be at least four months before the probe reached the asteroids,” he said.  “Have you been keeping secrets from me?”

“No,” the President said.  He paused.  “Well, nothing concerning the probes anyway.  The probes have sensors that they have deployed, now that they are on their way towards the belt; we have some additional information and…I’m afraid that its not good.”

He passed across a small folder.  “This will be discussed with your team-mates later today,” he said.  “There have been signs that the alien activity is increasing exponentially, from hints of powerful nuclear drives to the suggestion that a nuclear bomb has been used in the asteroids.”

“Fuck,” Zeke breathed, ignoring the President’s reproving look.  “What are they doing that requires nuclear warheads?”

“Cracking open an asteroid, according to the survey teams,” the President said.  “It’s starting to look worrying, not least because it could be easy for one of them to send an asteroid towards Earth.”

“Instant extermination,” Zeke said.  “Do you think that that is likely?”

“I have no idea,” the President said ruefully.  He leaned forward.  “Robert, they requested a diplomat – they might be interested in talking to us in that case.  You will have some communications with Earth; you may have to refer some decisions back to us – back to me.”

He paused.  “Can you handle that?”

“I don’t think that I have a choice,” Zeke asked.  He understood the President’s point; his ability and freedom to act wasn’t what was at stake here.  “I won’t let you down.”

***
In the brilliant sunlight, the space shuttle Atlantis glittered, it’s modified form seemingly pure and perfect.  From his position on the beginning of the crew walkway, Captain Hanson could see the shuttle, shining under the light.  Its wings had been stripped from its hull; whatever else happened, Atlantis would never be able to land again.  If something went wrong in Earth orbit, NASA would have to have them dock at the ISS; if something went wrong past there, NASA – might – be able to recover their bodies, years later.

“I think that we’re ready,” he said, as the team finished their final meal.  Steak and eggs, following the old tradition; NASA had kept that tradition since the first flights into orbit.  He looked from face to face; Zeke looked surprisingly relaxed, Jane looked nervous.  He’d seen worse; one person who had won a competition to travel on the shuttle had had to beg off at the last moment.  “Shall we move?”

“We need a proper soundtrack,” Zeke commented, as they started to walk towards the gantry surrounding the space shuttle.  Reporters, some invited by NASA, others who had forced their way into the spaceport, were flashing their cameras at the team, recording their flight for posterity.  “Something to follow our long walk to the top.”

Hanson grinned.  None of them were wearing spacesuits; if something went wrong during the launch, it would be inevitably fatal.  He’d handed the task of NASA’s administration to a new man, selected by the President; he would be able to focus on the flight to the asteroids alone.  He kept his face calm, waving cheerfully to some of the reporters, as they reached the crew lift.  There was a final security check…and then they were riding up in the lift to the shuttle’s hatch.

“Here we are,” Dave Howery commented.  He had been in space before, but he was unable to keep a tremor from his voice.  “Goodbye, world.”

Inside, Atlantis had been heavily renovated; they were able to board the shuttle and take their places without too many problems.  He took a moment to check all of their positions, knowing that NASA would be picking up on their life support from the sensors they all wore on their chests; everyone had taken their seats without any problems at all.

“It’s time,” he said, taking the pilot’s seat.  The first stage of the flight had been automated, as far as NASA could automate the process; computers reacted much faster than humans could react.  Even so, he stood ready to try to take control if he had to; computers had little imagination.  “Anyone want to get off?”

Jane laughed.  “Stop the bus, I need a wee-wee,” she said.  The team laughed.  “Can we get on with it?”

“Mission control, this is Atlantis,” Hanson said, without bothering to reply to Jane.  “Everything is green-to-go, I repeat; everything is green-to-go.”

“Understood, Atlantis,” the controller said.  “Your flight path has been programmed; launched in ten minutes, I repeat, launch in ten minutes.”

The minutes ticked by like hours; Hanson was suddenly aware of his breathing, it sounded very loud in his ears.  His chest began to hurt from the sudden bout of nervousness; he wanted, desperately, to abort the flight.  He carefully refused to give into the sudden fear; he knew that it would fade once the rocket engines ignited and the space shuttle rose to the skies.  His mind raced, from place to place; had the scientists gotten their calculations wrong?  Had the engineers made a tiny, but fatal mistake in the rebuilding?  Had…the aliens set a trap for them?

The controller was still speaking.  “Launch in ten seconds,” he said.  “Nine, eight, seven,” – Hanson felt his heart begin to relax, they were committed to the flight now – “three, two, one…launch!”

The rocket engines fired…and slowly, but surely, the shuttle began to rise into the air.

Chapter Seven: Gathering Intelligence

The White House
Washington DC, USA

“There have been some new discoveries made over the past three months,” Alan Garland said, briefing the Cabinet.  From his seat, General Lewis listened grimly to the briefing; he knew much of it already, but the NSA and the NRO, which had the first line of responsibility for analysing signals from the two probes, had been working hard on collecting the information into one briefing package.  “Some developments are alarming, others are surprising.”

General Lewis saw the President nod thoughtfully.  In the three months since the Atlantis had been launched into interplanetary space, the world had taken a breath…and was still waiting.  Thousands of messages, some from governments, some from private citizens eager to appoint themselves humanity’s ambassador to the stars, had been broadcast out towards the asteroids – but there had been no reply.  The aliens had transmitted their message and nothing else; they were just…waiting.

The world didn’t have that option.  The Europeans and Indians, at least, were cooperating on a space defence system, but there were so few actual ways of getting to orbit.  Given a few more months, they would have newer systems, including perhaps even one of the nuclear-powered engines that had been designed in record time, but he didn’t know if they had months.  The Russians and Chinese, in the meantime, were developing their own defences – and they were refusing to have any formal discussions on coordinating the defences.

He scowled as he remembered the row over the ISS.  The Americans had wanted to arm it; the Russians had wanted to arm it…but neither of them had been able to decide on who should command the new battle station.  After a long argument, they had armed the station, but the crewing was shared between the two powers…and no one knew what would happen if one power wanted to fight and the other wanted to avoid a fight.  Soon, there would be inflatable military space stations, but that too would take time – too much time.

“As you know, Mr President,” Garland continued, “the two probes were launched on slightly different trajectories, one to fly directly to the source of the signal, the second to fly along a more elliptical course and get as wide a picture as possible of the activity in the belt.  We were picking up information almost from first deployment, but recently the probes have reached close enough to actually start picking up information that the ground-based systems couldn’t see.”

He took control of the display and showed the image of the asteroids.  “This is a long-distance picture, taken from a camera that can read a newspaper from orbit,” he said, leaving out the technical details.  “Subsequent analysis suggests that one of the sources of energy is in fact a fusion drive, powering a spacecraft.  We actually got a shot of the craft itself” – he changed the image – “but as you can see we weren’t able to get much in the way of useful intelligence from the image.”

General Lewis scowled.  There was little that could be said for the image; a bright flare for the ship’s drive and a shadowy shape just in front of the drive.  The NSA and the NRO could do wonders with images taken from spy satellites, but he didn’t think that they would find anything useful from the image.  There was just too little resolution.

“The drive itself, however, is indicative of their capabilities,” Garland continued.  “From spectroscopic analysis, they seem to be burning hydrogen – using it to power a fusion drive reaction that forces the ship forward.  That makes sense, from what NASA says; they could quite easily be mining the asteroids for materials for their ships.  It also adds some reassurance; they might be advanced, but they’re not as advanced as…say, the aliens from Independence Day.  We have images of several ships like that one moving around the asteroids; none of them seem to be moving at fantastic velocities.”

He changed the picture again.  “This is what we’re designating the contact point,” he said, as several asteroids appeared in the display.  “It is not only the source of the transmission that was broadcast to us months ago, but one of the heaviest sites of activity; we believe that they’re expanding out from this point in the asteroids.  It might well be the place that they arrived at, after entering this system; unfortunately, we have no time period at all.”

He shrugged.  “We have countless teams looking at records from telescopes, trying to see if they sent a mothership from outside the solar system,” he concluded.  “So far, we’ve had no luck at all in tracing their arrival; we don’t know if they have a mothership, a lot of smaller ships, or what.”

The President cleared his throat.  “Based on what you’ve seen, just how advanced are they?”

Garland hesitated.  “I have been consulting with Suzie McClelland,” he said.  Suzie was onboard the Atlantis, months from Earth; the miracle of telecommunications kept them in touch.  “She believes, so far, that they have shown us nothing that we cannot understand, even though we cannot duplicate it at the moment.  NASA’s classified nuclear research program believes that we can duplicate their drive within a few months; it’s hardly warp drive or something more complex.”

He tapped his control; several more drive flares appeared on the display.  “This is more worrying,” he said, as the image cleared up slightly.  “These asteroids – no one ever bothered giving them a name – were near Mars…and now they’re heading right towards the planet, powered by these fusion drives.  We believe, from concepts that NASA developed and then did nothing with, that the drives are mining water ice from the asteroids and using it to power the drive; spectroscopic analysis suggests that the drives are much less…clean burning than their spacecraft.”

The National Security Advisor blinked.  “Clean burning?”

“They seem to have purified the water that they used for the drives we detected attached to spacecraft,” Garland said.  “The drives the asteroids are being forced forward by have many more impurities within the drive flame.”

General Lewis scowled.  “That’s not the worst of it,” he said.  “If they are pushing water asteroids towards Mars, they could also push them at Earth.”

The President shook his head.  “Why?”  He asked.  “Why launch asteroids at Mars at all?”

“Terraforming,” Travis Roscoe, the National Science Advisor, said.  “The environmentalists will have a fit.”

He laughed briefly.  The plans to launch nuclear-powered spacecraft had already met with some opposition from environmentalist groups, although the state of emergency and the growing economic involvement in the space program had helped to mute it down.  In the long run, they would probably manage to slow down the program slightly, but in time humanity would be up in space.  If nothing else, the aliens had shown them that it was possible to live in space.

“The idea is fairly simple,” Roscoe continued.  “NASA had plans drawn up for it; they would introduce more water into the atmosphere, along with biological packages that would start to grow and reproduce, adding more oxygen into the air.  Given time, people could breath on the surface on Mars; the world would become warmer because of the asteroid impacts.  We expect that they will have set up a solar mirror soon, just to warm the atmosphere further; Mars could be terraformed in as short a period as ten years.”

The President sighed.  “I see,” he said.  He looked up at Garland.  “What else have you found out?”

“There are hints that they’re using lasers and other systems within the belt,” Garland said, displaying a tactical chart of the solar system.  General Lewis found that amusing, in a droll way; it wasn’t as if Earth had the ability to affect anything outside Earth orbit.  In a few months, perhaps it would be different, but for the moment…

He shuddered.  Earth was at the mercy of unknown aliens.

“This is what we know about their deployments,” Garland said, as the display altered to show the icon – a single stereotypical grey alien head – that the NSA had suggested for the alien locations.  Shock ran around the table; the aliens had dozens of locations within the asteroids.  “These locations are the ones that have been picked up by the probes, or have been transmitting signals – we located more of those thanks to the probes.  The NSA wishes me to inform you that they may not be able to detect locations that aren’t transmitting to the other locations.

“There seem to be at least three dozen separate alien locations within the belt,” he said.  “There are five locations that have really heavy activity – including contact point – and several that seem to be growing rapidly into similarly-sized nexuses of activity.  We don’t know exactly what the aliens are doing out there; they seem to be mining the asteroids, but…we think that colonisation is their main objective.  Based on human estimates, there could be as many as a million aliens in the belt – although that, I must warn you, is an estimate only.

“We have been throwing computing resources at the problem of the recorded alien transmissions, right from the start,” he said.  He changed the display again.  “Unfortunately, we have had absolutely no luck at all – we know nothing about what they’re sending to one another.  The information seems to be compressed beyond anything we can do and probably encrypted as well.  We’re still working on it, along with every other half-decent amateur in America and the world, but I do not believe that we will have a quick success.”

The President frowned.  “You cannot give us a timetable?”

“No,” Garland admitted.  “We have been devoting almost all of the NSA’s computing equipment to the task of decrypting the signals, from the older crays to the new quantum computers – and nothing.  It could be tomorrow, with the brute force attack, or it could be years from today.  I can’t even begin to promise a timetable.”

He sighed.  “That, I fear, represents almost all of my knowledge,” he concluded.  “We’ll keep you informed, Mr President.”

“I should hope so,” the President said.  His voice was very tired.  “Hubert?”

General Lewis nodded as the Secretary of State, Hubert Rollins, spoke from his corner of the room.  “I have been consulting with the other departments of the government,” he said.  “I have also been working with Russia and the Europeans on a joint defence program – the main sticking point is that we don’t know what constitutes a hostile attack.  If they blow Atlantis out of space, are we at war?”

“I would have said so,” General Lewis injected.  “Killing the ambassador is as close to a declaration of war as you can get.”

“True,” the President agreed.

Rollins frowned.  “The problem is that not every nation on Earth accepts that position,” he said.  “The killing of an American Ambassador, particularly since a lot of nations feel that we froze them out of the entire process…”

“Damned if we did, damned if we didn’t,” General Lewis said.  “We did.”

“Exactly,” Rollins agreed.  He scowled.  “They lose nothing by using the fact we froze them out for their own public posturing, but at the same time its something that they can use for leverage against us.  If we knew who and what we were talking to, we might be able to come to come compromise with them – but, for the moment, Robert is not an accredited ambassador of anything, but America alone.”

The President steepled his fingers.  “And if we ask them to…accredit him, they’ll want some impact on the negotiations,” he said.  “Hell, we don’t even know what sort of negotiations Robert will be asked to undertake.”

Rollins nodded.  “They want some input, definitely,” he said.  “What we could do is cut a deal with the powers we need – Russia, China and the Europeans; they all get some input into the negotiations, in exchange for cooperating on mutual defence.”

“It would be a lot easier if we knew what the aliens wanted,” the President said.  He studied the display for a long moment.  “Have them offered the input in exchange for their cooperation – them alone.  If they want to bring in their client nations of the week, tell them to go to hell.”

General Lewis nodded.  “We can run the defences through NORAD,” he said.  He would have been a lot happier if the President had been at NORAD as well, along with many of the remaining government and military officers.  “I imagine that we can make some preparations through the other nations for sharing command authority – provided that there will be no delay built into the system.”

The President nodded.  “I dare say that we can get them to agree to that,” he said.  “I think that an alien attack will be obviously an alien attack, rather than anything more…ambiguous.”

Rollins smiled grimly.  “Of course, we could be invited to take part in the Galactic Federation,” he said.  “In that case, we would be in real trouble.”

The President tapped the table and he fell silent.  “There are only a few matters left,” he said.  He turned to face General Lewis, who had been waiting for this moment.  “General, what is the status of the current defence program?”

General Lewis coughed.  “We have been ignoring safety rules and some common sense,” he admitted.  “We have been working the shuttles – the two remaining shuttles – hard; we’ve been lifting more and more weapons into orbit, along with the other projects.  We intend to deploy the shuttles as gunships if we have time – the former USAF shuttle pilots are convinced that it can be done – but that will require some luck.  We have been arming the ISS, as per our earlier discussion, but…it could become very political.

“We have also burnt up many of the remaining Atlas and Delta boosters to place more equipment in orbit,” he continued.  “Production of the boosters has been increased and we hope to have dozens more launchers by the end of the year.  Production of orbital weapons has also increased, but the main bottleneck remains the actual deployment of the weapons in space.  If we actually do manage to work with the Russians, they might be willing to lift some of the weapons for us; if not, we might end up with some of them stuck on the ground if it really comes down to a fight.”

He sighed.  “I don’t like the thought of them using asteroids the way they do, even though Mars is uninhabited,” he continued.  “If they launch an asteroid at us, we would be almost defenceless; we have been working to assemble nuclear warheads that might be able to shatter an asteroid before it reaches Earth, but that would result in a lot of radioactive particles falling into the atmosphere.  The scientists are still arguing about it, but it’s a very real concern – and not one that we can do much about.”

He adjusted the display.  “In the longer term – around one to two years – we hope to have a small fleet of SSTO craft,” he concluded.  “At the same time, we should have the first nuclear drives ready to move, along with the expanded heavy booster fleet.  That’s the danger point – if we can get past there, we might well be able to place the first base on the moon within two years, and then continue outwards.  At the same time…they might want to make sure that we don’t come out to threaten them; they might decide to take action against us.”

The President sucked in his breath.  “Is it wise to form a defence?”

“We need a defence,” General Lewis said.  He tried to place as much warning in his voice as possible.  “We’re naked at the moment, and – worse – they’re starting to take all of the real estate in the solar system.  We might end up confined to Earth…and that would be very bad indeed for our future as an independent planet.”

The President shook his head slowly from side to side.  “An independent planet,” he mused.  “I understand politics; I thought that I wanted this job.  I must have been out of my mind.”

Chapter Eight: The Long Hard Road

Space Shuttle Atlantis
In Transit

It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.  It was somewhere in between.  It was heaven.  It was hell…

Captain Dale Hanson smiled to himself and deleted the last sentence on the web-Blog that he had been concentrating on filling in for the public; interest in NASA and space flight was at an all-time high and the spin doctors were interested in using the publicity as best as possible for improving NASA’s funding in the years to come.  The space shuttle flight was on a scale that made Apollo look small; Hanson and his crew would be remembered longer than Columbus if they played their cards right.

He unstrapped himself and pulled himself over to the portal; the space shuttle didn’t even have a tiny gravity field.  The stars seemed unmoving; they burned away in the night without the twinkle that they displayed from Earth.  There was no air in space to provide the twinkle; they were seeing pure starlight.  Outside, the ship seemed utterly unmoving, all alone in the night.

It didn’t matter that he knew perfectly well that the ship wasn’t floating in space; the main engines had placed the shuttle on a perfect trajectory for the asteroids.  Months later, they were still on course and they were still alive; privately, he had half-expected that one of them would have committed suicide by now.  Dave Howery had been dismissive of the thought, when he’d mentioned it; there was enough to keep the crew active, if not exactly busy.  Among other things, they had access to the information from the probes, which were far closer to the alien positions; they knew what they were travelling towards…and they knew that they knew nothing like enough information to make the right decisions.

The images had been clear and precise as the first probe zipped closer to the alien positions; they had seen the alien spacecraft, genuine spacecraft, as opposed to the makeshift canoe that formed their craft.  He knew, deep inside his heart, that there was no way that Atlantis could avoid contact with the alien craft; the shuttle had been programmed to enter a solar orbit near the contact point.  He could only hope that that was where they had been invited to visit; the aliens had said nothing since their first message.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”  Suzie said.  The spacecraft engineer had been the busiest of them all; she’d been working hard to discern the finest details from the images sent from the probe.  Hanson pulled himself around as she entered, seeing how her hair was spreading out in the zero-gee conditions, and smiled at her; she gave him a tired look back.  “That’s a pure hydrogen-fusion combination out there.”

Hanson blinked, before realising that she meant the image of the alien craft on the main screen.  There was very little that they actually had to do, apart from monitoring the nuclear power plant; the shuttle practically ran itself.  He’d kept them all working hard on performing checks on the shuttle anyway, just in case, and then enforcing a strict exercise routine for all of them.  They knew nothing about the conditions they would face when they met the aliens; he intended them to be prepared for every possibility.

“So you said,” Hanson said, unable to hold down a spurt of envy when he looked at the alien craft.  He couldn’t see them being that advanced over humanity, not with craft like that, but they knew what they were doing…and humanity – poor foolish humanity – had turned its collective back on the universe.  “What are they doing at the moment?”

Suzie shrugged.  “We lost contact with the probes on Mars,” she said.  Hanson nodded; the first of the alien ice asteroids had been intended to splash down on Mars in the last few hours.  “Houston is still working on trying to regain contact, but it looks very much as if they’ve lost the probes; the shocks on Mars would have been awesome.”

“It wasn’t unexpected,” Hanson reminded her.  “Anything new on the aliens?”

“The second probe found a few more alien settlements,” Suzie said.  Her voice became grimmer.  “I’m starting to wonder if they’re not Von Neumann probes, at least in some ways; my old mentor wrote an entire series of books about them – we even have copies in the electronic library onboard.  They’re expanding far quicker than anything we could do; I’m starting to feel a little intimidated.”

“Me too,” Hanson said.  He suppressed the feeling without giving in to it.  “You know how alone we are…and yet so compressed?”

Suzie shrugged.  Atlantis was a large craft, and yet it had so little living space; the six of them had only their tiny cubby-holes for privacy.  They gave each other some space, allowing each of them to get on with their own projects…and yet, they were living practically in one another’s pockets.  The sexual relations were something that would confuse thousands of future schoolchildren.

Hanson felt his lips quirk.  Howery had threatened to write a book on the subject.

“All that space out there sure does make one horny,” Suzie leered.  She pulled herself away from him, accidentally on-purpose banging her head into the ceiling.  “Not tonight, dear; I’ve got a headache.”

Hanson laughed.  “Cheat,” he said.  “How’s the other project getting on?”

“You mean Robert’s little project?”  She asked.  “He’s still working hard on his studies of history – I think he’s rather enjoying the break.  We can’t get many details of what’s happening on Earth broadcast out here, for security reasons; he had very little to do.”

Hanson frowned and checked one of the computer monitors; space near the shuttle was constantly monitored.  He half-expected that the aliens would attempt to rendezvous with the shuttle, rather than let them dock at their contact point; they might attempt that at any point, just in case the shuttle was carrying some form of super-bomb instead of an ambassador.

He scowled.  The aliens understood English; that much had been proven by the transmission they’d sent, weeks ago.  They could have hailed the shuttle at any point; they hadn’t hailed the shuttle…or done anything to the shuttle at all.  They would almost certainly be tracking the shuttle – he would have done that in their place – but they hadn’t attempted to make contact.  He found that…rather ominous.

On a different note, it meant that Robert – or Ambassador Zeke, as he was now being called – wouldn’t be able to take part in any preparations on Earth, not even at one remove.

“Well, I guess we all need a hobby,” he said, pulling himself over to check a second monitor, one attached to a telescope that was pointed constantly at Earth.  “What about your ship designs?”

“They’re good,” Suzie said.  “If we had some antigravity system, we might even be able to hoist a lot more into orbit – without it…well, what I’ve been doing is trying to make the spacecraft as simple as possible, almost so that someone could build it in their backyard.”

Hanson laughed.  “They could build an entire rocket in their backyard?”

“That’s the hard part,” Suzie admitted.  “In orbit, you don’t need much to get around…although I do have hopes that one of the SSTO designs will be simple or dumb enough to be built in a backyard, or at least a small lab.  The more I look at the aliens, the more I worry for the future.”

***
Days stretched into weeks and weeks stretched into months.  For Robert Zeke, the journey was hardly monotonous at all; he had thousands of electronic books to read and countless articles to read that he had never quite had the time to read, before boarding the flight.  He spent time reading and some time writing, including the beginnings of a book on the alien contact that he hoped to publish after the flight.  More time was spent studying the constantly revised instructions from Earth as the President finally convinced the other space-capable nations to work together to provide a defence against the aliens – should they turn out to be hostile after all.

He had been surprised – and delighted – to discover that it was possible to play chess onboard the shuttle, playing with the other crewmembers, including Dave Howery.  The psychologist – or head-shrinker to everyone else – was a surprisingly good player; he and Jane made an almost unbeatable team when they played together.  Zeke had never liked Team Chess, but with two strong opponents it almost worked perfectly.

“I can learn a lot about someone from playing chess,” Howery said, one day as they played in the lounge.  The chessboard was a computer display; they had to use a small touchpad to enter their moves into the computer, which displayed them on the screen.  “You, sir, have a scheming mind.”

“Not half so much as you have,” Zeke said, examining the position.  If he moved a pawn forward, it would threaten Howery’s attempt to build up a defensive position protecting his king.  “You’re trying to distract me again, just like that argument about ‘it.’”

Howery laughed.  The argument about whither or not ‘it’ was a real word, and therefore legal for playing scrabble, had taken several hours for them to decide – reluctantly – that it was.  They hadn’t played scrabble since then; Zeke didn’t miss it.  He preferred games that depended less upon luck.

“You saw right though my cunning plan,” Howery said, his face stretching into an odd grin.  “It was Sherlock Holmes who claimed that you could tell a lot about a person – and that playing Chess was one sign of a scheming mind.  You, sir, like to react bluntly to problems.”

He tapped the position of Zeke’s queen to illustrate the point.  “Like that position there, for example,” he said.

“I was hoping that you’d forgotten about that,” Zeke said, rather ruefully.  He had planned to use his queen to rip open Howery’s position.  “How exactly does that tell you about me?”

Howery made his countermove and smirked as Zeke scowled.  “You like the simplest way to respond to problems,” he said.  “Like taking a hammer to hammer down a nail.”

Zeke lifted an eyebrow, comically exaggerating the expression.  “Are you saying that I’m simple-minded?”

“No,” Howery said, quickly.  He tapped his next move into the computer and waited for Zeke to respond.  “Just like you like simple solutions to problems.”

Zeke frowned.  “I’m not sure that I would agree,” he said, rather slowly.  “Diplomacy is the art of getting people to agree – and doing it in a way that makes people willing to keep the agreement, rather than shattering it the first moment they have to break the agreement.  If you defeat someone in war, you still have to let them keep enough face – or keep them downtrodden long enough to see that they are either beaten, or benefiting from their defeat.”

“Iraq being a case in point,” Howery agreed.  He scowled at Zeke’s move.  “We had to build a new government and nation as well.”

“Exactly,” Zeke said.  He pointed towards the computer-generated chessboard.  “In this game, I can wipe the floor with you and call it a victory.”  He ignored Howery’s snort.  “In real life, I can’t be that blunt unless I’m willing to crush the life out of each and every one of your pieces.”

He made his final move.  “Checkmate,” he said.

“Fuck,” Howery said, his voice astonished.  “I never saw that one coming.”

“Oh yes, and keeping everyone guessing is also a part of diplomacy,” Zeke said.  In a moment of childishness, he stuck his tongue out.  “Of course, in real war – the pawns and your surviving knight would launch an insurgency, urged on by the bishops.”

Howery shrugged.  “So, what do you think we’ll find out there?”

Zeke smiled as the computer reset the game board.  It was a common theme of their discussions on the ship; their theories ranged from rogue computers to aliens who were almost exactly like humans.  One of the more exotic theories was that they were aliens literally native to the asteroid belt, with all manner of strange theories being drawn up to account for their existence.

“I don’t think that they’re that different from us,” he said, after a moment.  “They were able to speak to us in our own language…and that would hardly be easy for us humans, let alone very different creatures.  That in itself is interesting; I wonder how the religious people are handling the crisis.  I notice that none of us have strong religious beliefs.”

“That was generally considered to be a good thing,” Howery said, after a moment.  “Dale is a practicing Catholic, of course, and Jane and Thomas are Protestants.  Suzie and myself are atheists; you are the only one without a declared religion.  Still, all of us are pretty lapsed.”

Zeke smiled.  “I would have thought that poking around in people’s heads would have made you more religious, not less,” he said.  “Doesn’t it help?”

Howery shook his head.  “You learn so much about the darkness within the human soul,” he said.  “I know that people like Dale or Thomas hate me for daring to suggest that there is something wrong with them, preventing them from flying, but they’re all really normal compared to a serial killer, who will do whatever he wants to in the name of his own desires.  Religious people – religious killers – are worse; they think that they can do anything in the name of god.”

Zeke unstrapped himself from his seat, shaking his head at Howery’s offer of another game.  “I wonder, what sort of religion do the aliens have?”  He asked.  “Will they be accepting of our beliefs?”

Howery shrugged.  “How should we know?”  He asked.  “We might as well expect the unexpected.”

***
The one duty on the ship that actually had to be done – at least in Hanson’s view – was watch duty; the former cockpit of Atlantis had been designed to serve as the monitoring station for the entire ship.  He had ordered that everyone spend a shift on the cockpit for the entire mission, just to ensure that there was someone on duty if something changed radically.  As they grew closer to the asteroids, he had become more serious about the duty; he insisted on standing one of the watches himself, for example, trying to lead from the front.

A console chimed.

Hanson, sitting at one of the main piloting stations, quickly tapped a command into the computer, shifting the console’s feed to his station.  Something was pinging them with radar energy, monitoring their course; there was an alien craft out there, pacing them.  He swore as the shuttle’s radar, brought up quickly, located the alien craft; it was pacing them at quite some distance.  It had intercepted them without ever having been detected.

“Hellfire,” he breathed, hitting the alarm key.  Jane and Howery would be wrapped up in one another’s arms; Suzie would be on duty in the lounge, with Zeke.  Moments later, both of them came into the cabin, followed quickly by Thomas Auckland.  “We have a situation, people!”

Auckland took the co-pilot’s station; a futile gesture since the shuttle could hardly manoeuvre or avoid the fate that awaited it, should the aliens be intent on hostility.  Suzie took one of the detection consoles, examining the alien craft through the telescope; Zeke took the other console.

“They’re moving in on us,” Suzie said, after a moment.  “I think they’re using gas jets; they must have moved up using them, avoiding detection.”

Hanson glanced through the records from the probes and cursed; the second probe had recorded one of the alien craft leaving, but no one had made the connection between the ship and the shuttle’s flight path.  Given time and nerve, the alien crew could have caught up with the shuttle, and matched course and speed, without tripping a single alarm.

“Transmit a full record back to Earth, using the encrypted lasers,” he ordered, knowing that Zeke would have handled it already.  “Tell them…that we’re about to make first contact with the alien craft.”

Suzie’s voice was admirably calm.  “They’re closing in on us,” she said.  “There’s no hint of any communications, just…silence.”

Hanson felt something clench inside his chest.  “Ensure that Earth gets a full record,” he warned, as the remaining crewmembers entered the cockpit.  “We’re about to make history – or perhaps be history.  God help us all.”

Chapter Nine: First Contact

Space Shuttle Atlantis
In Transit

Captain Dale Hanson felt his hands inching forward for the control panels; he held them back by sheer force of will.  Atlantis had some manoeuvring propellant left, but that had been intended for matching orbits with contact point, not for evading an alien spacecraft.  There was nothing he could do to avoid making contact; only the constant stream of information being lasered back towards Earth kept him calm.  Whatever happened, Earth would know what had happened.

The alien craft drifted closer and closer.  Up close, in the telescope, it started to reveal shape and form; a single long needle several times the size of an aircraft carrier.  It was studded with sensors and long…systems, poking out of its hull and angling towards the human craft.  Lights flickered over its hull, revealing more components of the ship as it matched course and speed…and drifted closer.  It was the descendent of something not unlike the shuttle, but he was certain that it had never been intended to land on a planet.

“Something’s happening,” Suzie said.  She nodded towards the telescope screen; a shape had appeared on the side of the alien craft…then it leapt out, towards the human shuttle.  It could hardly be seen in the darkness of space, but they all felt the dull thump as it landed neatly on the side of the shuttle.  “What was that?”

“I think it was an alien,” Hanson said.  He noticed that Thomas was looking worried.  “Thomas, you ok?”

“Just a little nervous,” Auckland said.  “Do you suppose that it wants in?”

“I think that we have no choice, but to assume that,” Hanson said.  He reached out and tapped the beginning of the air lock sequence into the computer; the airlock’s exterior hull door would be opening now, inviting the alien into the shuttle.  He scowled as three more aliens made the jump to his shuttle; he was almost convinced that he had seen a ball, spinning in space.  “Dave, do you want to check the airlock?”

“Yes, sir,” Howery said, as…something entered the airlock.  His hands danced over the system and the exterior door closed; the interior door hissed open…and they came face to face with an alien.

“Fuck me,” Suzie breathed.  Her voice was a strange mixture of horror and awe.  “Look at it.”

Hanson stared.  The alien was nothing more than an octopus-like creature, a horrific combination of metal and living flesh.  He realised suddenly, as he examined the creature more carefully, that it had no space suit…and needed none.  The alien had four large eyes, mounted on top of a spherical ball of flesh in the centre of its body; it carried itself on its long gangly arms.  It floated perfectly in zero-gee; its eyes studied the humans as they stared at it.

Hanson pulled himself free of his straps and floated in front of the alien.  “Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” the alien said.  He could see now that it had three mouths; the centre mouth was talking to him, the other two seemed to remain permanently closed.  Absently, he tried to imagine an evolutionary path for the alien and failed utterly; the alien was just too alien.  “You have come to talk with us.”

“Yes,” Hanson said, wondering exactly what was going on.  A second alien passed through the airlock…and he realised with a shock that the aliens had somehow overridden the airlock control system.  Others were floating on the hull, examining every detail of the shuttle.  “We come on behalf of all mankind.”

“You will put on your spacesuits,” the alien said.  “You will come to our ship.”

Hanson stared at it.  “You cannot expect us to just…come into your ship,” he protested, anger overriding common sense.  “We don’t even know if we can live there!”

“Quarters suitable for your race have been prepared,” the alien said.  “You will come back to our ship.”

“Do as he says,” Zeke said.  The Ambassador looked more than a little concerned, but he was holding up well; his face wasn’t pale at all.  “I think there’s no choice.”

Hanson scowled.  They’d practiced putting on their spacesuits quickly, in the same confined space, but he found the aliens’ presence distracting as they watched with unblinking eyes.  As they pulled on their suits, he was grimly aware of more aliens entering the space shuttle and searching the craft; they were clearly trying to make certain that all of the humans were coming to their craft.

“We’re ready,” he said, as Jane finished preparing her suit and they checked each other’s suits quickly.  “Lead on.”

The alien stepped into the airlock and jammed the hatch.  Hanson had a moment to sense absolute disaster coming…and then the air rushed out of the shuttle, yanking them towards the hatch.  He caught onto the side, holding them all inside until the pressure had balanced; the alien seemed utterly unconcerned that the shuttle was now tumbling gently through space.  The alien spacecraft had managed to follow them; he saw now that the aliens seemed to be just as dependent upon physical laws as humanity.  There was no magical FTL drive; their craft were advanced, but understandable.

An alien caught him and tossed him into space, throwing him towards their ship.  He felt an instant of panic, just before a second alien, hanging on the hull of the alien craft, reached out with its long tentacles, pulling him into the ship.  The others were coming; he could hear some of their panic over the radio wavelengths; he hoped that the shuttle was forwarding their transmissions to Earth.  He looked back at Atlantis and saw the shuttle go dark; the aliens were clearly working on the computers.

“There’s nothing in there for them,” Auckland commented, over the radio.  Hanson said nothing as the first alien leapt across from the shuttle to the alien ship, beckoning them to follow him into a hatch and into the massive alien ship.  He followed, reluctantly; the alien ship seemed almost functional, without even a trace of personality.  “Sir?”

“Follow them,” Hanson ordered.  “I don’t think that we have a choice.”

Inside the alien ship, there were only a few lights; he sensed more than felt the impact of light radiation at levels the human eye wasn’t quite capable of seeing.  There was no gravity; he realised suddenly that the aliens would have real trouble in a gravity field.  He didn’t understand how they had evolved; like that, would they have actually lived on land at all?  Had they evolved from the sea directly into space?

The alien escorted them into a large room, which was brightly lit; there were more aliens in the room, staring at the humans with undisguised interest.  He wasn’t sure how he knew the octopus-like aliens were interested, but he was sure of it; they seemed far too keen to proceed with…what?  He could only hope that they weren’t lunch.  He felt a wave of pressure as the aliens pumped air into the room…and then the lead alien reached out a tentacle and sliced open his suit.

“No,” he said, as the suit was ripped open.  The alien seemed to be perfectly at home in the null-gravity region; it tore the suit off him completely, and then pushed him towards one of the groups of aliens.  They caught him and placed him neatly on a table; he realised suddenly that they intended to study their human captives.  “What are you doing?”

“We have come to learn of you, as you have of us,” the alien said.  Its voice was atonal, but Hanson was sure that he detected a hint of genuine concern in the voice.  “We must learn about you so that we know how to treat you…and then we can talk.”

The next hour or thereabouts – they had all lost track of time – was not one that Hanson would care to remember.  The aliens weren’t sadists – he would say that much for them – but they were through; they examined his body completely, from top to bottom, taking samples of everything that his body could produce and dissecting it.  They paid considerable attention to his head, examining his brain though a series of instruments that looked like nothing on Earth, and then examined his penis.  He heard one of the girls scream and knew why; the aliens were curious about everything.

He didn’t think that he had any secrets left.

An alien bent over him.  “What is the purpose of this implant?”

He took a moment to remember what the alien was talking about.  The USAF had placed some implants in the bodies of some of its pilots, just to attempt to study how their bodies reacted under pressure.  He had actually had three of them, one from NASA; he’d almost forgotten about them in the pressures of preparing the flight to the asteroids.

“It’s meant to monitor my body’s reactions to certain conditions,” he said, wondering at the absurdity of answering questions based on the alien’s appearance.  He was certain that the alien doctors, if not all of the aliens, were cyborgs; he thought for a long moment on the Borg and other cyborg science-fiction races.  Half of their tentacles seemed to be mechanical implants; they lived and worked in space without spacesuits.

He took a breath, testing the air; it smelt only of humans.  Did the aliens themselves need air, or had they modified themselves to live and work in space without spacesuits.  He knew that some people at NASA would have sold their souls for such a capability; DARPA had actually been working on such a program when the alien crisis had erupted.

The aliens bounced several more questions off him, mainly involving medical treatment, and then they let him float off the table.  There was a distant, but very clear, feeling of gravity; he realised suddenly that the ship was moving away from the space shuttle.  He almost cried, but saw the shocked expression on Jane’s face and concentrated on not appearing weak in front of her; she didn’t need any of them going to pieces in front of her.

“Sir?”  Auckland asked.  He was looking to Hanson for orders as the humans drifted towards the wall under the strange pressure from the ship’s drive.  “What do we do?”

Hanson scowled at Zeke, who seemed unresponsive.  “We cooperate for the moment,” he said.  He looked at one of the aliens.  “Who are you?  What do you want?  Where are we going?”

Surprisingly, the alien answered.  “You are being transported to the centre of activity for us in this solar system,” the alien said, after a long moment.  Hanson wondered just how good the alien command of English actually was.  “Once you are there, you will be the representatives of your race before us.”

Hanson stared at it.  “You’re taking us to your leader?”

The alien didn’t answer the question.  “This craft is mainly vacuum,” another alien said.  He recognised it – or thought he recognised it – as one of the aliens that had brought them onboard the craft.  The Doctor aliens started to head out of the door, though what he realised was an airlock.  “You are to remain in this room; you have the facilities that you require and food from your ship.  Once we have reached our base, we will discuss matters with you.”

The aliens swept out of the room.  Hanson scowled after them, feeling the strange pressure from the ship’s drive building, then thought fast; if the alien was telling the truth – and he had no reason to doubt its word – then they were trapped very neatly.  If they tried to leave the room, they would be killed by the vacuum…and if they stayed in the room, the aliens would know exactly where to find them.

“Look at the suits,” he ordered, as the pressure started to rise slightly.  Auckland picked up his suit, drifting perfectly in zero-gee…and then thrust it aside.  The suit was ruined beyond repair.  Hanson studied his own and came to the same conclusion.  “What about the others?”

“Mine’s fucked,” Suzie said.  A bubble of blood had formed on her forehead; she’d banged it against something while the aliens had been examining her.  “We might be able to get out of the door, but we would…die.”

Hanson thought about all the horrible things that happened to people who tried to breath vacuum and nodded grimly.  “I know,” he said, feeling the power of the alien drive accelerating them again.  “Do you think that that can tolerate high gravities?”

Jane shrugged.  Her eyes were very dim.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I think we should have sent for a vet instead of a human doctor, although I would have loved to have gotten some of their equipment.  That scanner that had does imaging far better than anything else we have…and as for this cyborg arms they have…well, I know people who would have loved them back on Earth.”

“Walls have ears,” Zeke commented.  His voice was very calm; it was the kind of calmness that snaps suddenly at the worst possible moment.  “What do you think they’ll do with the shuttle?”

Hanson winced.  For all of the complaining he had done about the shuttle, he had loved the old ship – she had been his home for months.  “I imagine that they will examine the craft,” he said, knowing that the aliens would find nothing of military interest in the craft’s databases.  “I wonder – what will they tell Earth?”

Zeke’s voice brightened slightly.  “It is their safest course of action,” he said.  “They know very little about us…we could have been a gunship, or something worse; we could have been carrying thousands of nuclear warheads or…”

His voice trailed off.  Hanson watched him with growing concern.  “Nukes are…smaller on a cosmic scale,” he said.  “What we think of as the epitome of destructiveness means very little on the scale that the aliens seem to operate on.  Still, taking us prisoner seems a little extreme…”

“Not necessarily,” Zeke said.  His voice was starting to regain some of its old vigour.  “It’s the safest thing they can do, Dale; they can keep us under their control while they talk to us and then talk to Earth through us.”

“I think that you’re deluding yourself,” Hanson said, not without sympathy.  NASA – for reasons of its own – had trumpeted the ‘aliens are going to be friendly’ argument for years, but Hanson had never believed in it.  “I wonder…this might be the first shot in the first interstellar war.”

Auckland had been examining the supplies the aliens had brought in from the shuttle.  “They stripped her down pretty well,” he commented.  His voice was bitter.  “No weapons, of course; no computers or tools or anything else.  There’s a lot of food here – I wonder if they know we drink water.”

“There’s a tap there,” Suzie said.  “I wonder if we are meant to sleep on the examination beds.  It’s a good thing that there’s a breeze, or we would be in real trouble.”

“We are already in real trouble,” Jane said.  She was floating in the middle of the room, seemingly angelic in her positioning; her body seemed utterly vulnerable.  Her eyes were pale and haunted.  “We’re the prisoners of giant octopuses, Dale; what could be worse than this?”

“We could be prisoners of the Jihadis,” Hanson commented.  He tried to inject a note of humour into the situation.  “At least these creatures are unlikely to be interested in my body.”

“It shows that they have some common sense,” Suzie said, and leered cheerfully at him.  She had slept with him, dozens on times, and broken up with him dozens of times.  If they ever got back to Earth, he expected that the six of them would remain together as a family; they had bonded with each other.  “I can’t imagine anyone interested in your body.”

“You know what I mean,” Hanson snapped.  “I think that…”

“It should confuse the others,” Zeke commented, tapping his ears.  Hanson remembered the certainty of the presence of surveillance devices and fell silent.  “I think, for the moment, that all we can do is wait…and see.”

Chapter Ten: Reactions and More Reaction

The White House
Washington DC, USA

“That’s all you know?”  The President demanded.  “An alien craft made rendezvous with the shuttle…and then it fell silent?”

General Lewis rubbed his eyes.  He hadn’t had any sleep since hearing that there was an alien craft that had just appeared out of nowhere near the shuttle – and the final transmissions from Atlantis had been chilling.  The American defences – and the skeleton united Earth defence force – were on full alert, but he suspected that there wouldn’t be any challenge to them for a while.

“That’s pretty much all we know,” he admitted.  The final transmissions replayed themselves in his head; he slipped the secure datachip into the President’s computer and allowed it to begin running the clip.  “This is the beginning of the final transmission; the alien craft pings Atlantis with a radar pulse, presumably to alert the crew and to ensure that the course projection is accurate…”

The President watched the reminder of the clip without comment.  “The face of the enemy,” he said, as the aliens started to swarm all over and through Atlantis.  The shuttle had had monitoring sensors on every nook and cranny; the aliens had swarmed everywhere, searching for more humans.  The constant telemetry had warned of the sudden loss of air pressure, the humans being removed from Atlantis…and the sudden loss of transmissions.  “Why do they look that way?”

“We have biology experts trying to understand that now,” General Lewis said.  The final image of Atlantis’s cockpit, with an alien examining the system with the greatest of interest, hung on the display in front of them.  “We also have science-fiction writers; they might be more useful in the longer run.  Short of actually having an alien body to examine, we believe that they are actually designed to operate in space, either as augmented beings or biological robots.  We believe that it is in fact the former; there would be little point in constructing biological robots for space activity.”

The President frowned.  “Why?”

“Mechanical constructions could certainly do the same job, only better,” General Lewis said.  “The aliens showed considerable skill at moving within zero-gee, although the crew had equal capabilities from their long flight; I believe that fighting them in zero-gee would have been futile.  In any case, the crew didn’t attempt to resist them; they went willingly onboard the alien craft.”

The President placed his head in his hands.  “And then what happened?”

“The telemetry from Atlantis suggests – although we cannot be sure of anything – that the aliens tried to hack the main computers and succeeded,” General Lewis said.  He scowled; he had expected that the computers would have been secure.  “Most of the telemetry dropped off at that point; the final transmissions reported that the aliens were shutting down much of the remaining systems onboard Atlantis.  The remaining telemetry, involving systems not physically connected to the main computer, vanished ten minutes later; we don’t know why, but we expect that the aliens destroyed or disabled the systems.”

The President thought rapidly.  “And the entire world will know,” he said.  Atlantis’s flight had been followed by the entire world.  “I wonder if that could be converted into political advantage.”

General Lewis had other concerns.  “The aliens now have one of our shuttles and the crew,” he said.  “That is not good; the shuttle was unarmed, but they will be able to make some guesses about what weapons we have just by examining the shuttle.  We also…we might have to assume that the aliens are hostile.”

The President sized on the keyword.  “Might?”

General Lewis sighed.  The job of the military was to plan and prepare for the worst-case scenario; politicians had a tendency to hope for the best…and forget planning for the worst on the theory that it would never happen if they hoped for the best.  They knew almost nothing about the aliens, even though some of his people suspected that they would be helpless in a major gravity field; they knew almost nothing about their technology…and their capabilities.

If they really did have problems, he knew, they would try to overcome them…

“Might,” he concurred, reluctantly.  “One of my people suspected that they kidnapped the team to ensure that they were held in an environment that they possessed total control over – and not allow us to move a possibly armed spacecraft so close to their main centre of activity.  They might, right now, be talking with Ambassador Zeke; alternatively, they might be dissecting the team.”

The President scowled.  “Which one do you think is most likely?”

“I don’t see that there would be any point in asking for an Ambassador unless they had some real reason to want an Ambassador,” General Lewis said.  His voice darkened slightly.  “They might well have some of the team being studied now, just as we would look at an alien if we had one, or they might be doing something completely different.”

He sighed again.  He’d been doing a lot of sighing recently.  “They haven’t allowed the team to contact us,” he concluded.  “I don’t know for sure, of course – we know very little for sure – but that strikes me as a bad sign.”

The President’s intercom buzzed.  He tapped it absently.  “Yes, Loretta?”

“Mr President, we just had a call from CNN,” Loretta, the President’s general assistant, said.  Her voice was surprisingly warm; the President had hired her for her competence, not for her body.  That, General Lewis had thought occasionally, made her unique in Washington.  “They know about the missing space shuttle, the Atlantis, and they’re asking for a comment.”

The President looked up at General Lewis.  “Thoughts?”

“They’re going to run with it whatever we say,” General Lewis said.  In the past months, he’d learnt more about the Press – and its occasional defiance of common sense or morality – than he had ever wanted to know.  “Even if we gagged them, the foreign media will run with it.”

“Al Jazeera certainly will,” the President said.  “They didn’t want to believe in the aliens – until they found out that they were real after all, despite the claims of the Saudis.”

General Lewis smirked.  The Saudi media had been forbidden to report on the aliens, for whatever reason made sense to the people who were trying to run the country – and keep it in the sixth century.  Al Jazeera, which had credibility in Saudi Arabia that the rulers bitterly resented, had not been slow to report on the aliens.  General Lewis, who had been a young pilot during the Gulf War, found that more than a little amusing.

“I think that we will have to announce it to the world,” General Lewis said.  “They will know that we know that they have the Atlantis; we’ll have to try to keep people calm or God only knows what will happen.”

***
The secure conference room in the White House looked surprisingly normal; only the massive bank of billion-dollar equipment, mixed with a taste and elegance that had been chosen by the First Lady personally, distinguished it from any number of secure conference rooms across the nation.  General Lewis enjoyed sitting in the room; the secure lines back to the USSDC headquarters allowed him to hold a videoconference with his people in Washington and NORAD.

“We actually managed to have some success deciphering their communications,” Alan Garland said.  The NSA man’s face was pale; he had liked Suzie and Jane…and both of them were now prisoners of the aliens…or dead.  “Now that we have some idea of what they look like, we were able to use it to…”

“Spare me the technobabble,” General Lewis said.  “Summarise.”

Garland scowled.  “We have managed to recover ten minutes of video,” he said.  “The video was actually designed in a more efficient format than anything we have; they used a quantum computer or something similar to actually create the images.  The video shows aliens doing something in the asteroids, we suspect that they’re mining asteroids and constructing something from the rubble.”

“I see,” General Lewis said.  He ran his hands through his hair; it wouldn’t be long before the President stood before the nation and explained what had happened to the Atlantis.  “What about the soundtrack?”

“We have samples of the alien language now, at least some of it,” Garland said, after a moment.  “We’re having problems separating spoken words from radio telemetry, General; they seem to be using the same channels for both and we can’t get a proper handle on it at the moment.  There’s some really powerful streams of information being passed among the aliens, sir; I think we should be working on other probes.”

“Not an option at the moment,” General Lewis said.  “What about the other probes?”

“They were fine at the last update,” Garland said.  “We’re still receiving useful information from them.”

“Good, I think,” General Lewis said.  He scowled; it was time.  “Keep working on it.”

He closed the connection and activated the big plasma screen; CNN was running endless speculation on the subject of the missing Atlantis.  One of the talking heads – they all seemed to look the same to him – was going on and on about how the aliens were misunderstood, much to the amusement of the show’s presenter, who was picking holes in his argument with ease.  General Lewis was just starting to enjoy the argument when the broadcast was interrupted; they were being taken directly to the White House.

“My fellow Americans,” the President said.  “It is with heavy heart that I must confirm to you that the Atlantis – the space shuttle dispatched to the asteroids – was boarded by the aliens.  We believe, however, that the crew remains alive; we do not know that they are dead, or in serious trouble.  The aliens have not committed any hostile act; they have only acted to bring the Atlantis under their control.”

He paused.  “Regardless of such beliefs, we must prepare for the worst,” the President continued.  “With the agreement of Congress and the Senate, I am placing the United States on full alert; the state of emergency has been extended to cover the defence requirements of the United States.  I urge all citizens to remain calm; there is as yet no unambiguous sign that that aliens are hostile.”

General Lewis took a seat and waited.  The President didn’t answer questions; he slipped out the side door and back into the main White House, ignoring the reporters who were firing astonished questions at him.  Five minutes later, the door opened and he rose to his feet as the President entered the room, his face pale and wan.

“I would have preferred to face a man-eating tiger,” the President said, his face too tired to hide his feelings.  “The tiger, at least would only want to kill me once.”

“Yes, Mr President,” General Lewis said.  “There has been some progress with decrypting the alien transmissions.”

He outlined what Garland had told him.  “Good,” the President said, when he had finished.  “Ambassador Petrovich will be here any moment now – fashionably late, as always – and we will have to have some high-level discussions with him.”

General Lewis rose.  “Don’t go,” the President said, his voice very serious.  “Your input might be vital.”

There was a knock at the door.  “Mr President, Ambassador Petrovich,” the Secret Service man said.  “Shall I show him in?”

“Please,” the President said.  “Show him in at once.”

Ambassador Petrovich stepped into the office.  He was a smaller man than anyone had expected, but he made up for it in his girth; he was very fat, fat enough to keep warm in a Siberian winter.  The new Russian President had reintroduced the penalty of sending dissidents, opponents and people who got in his way to Siberia; Ambassador Petrovich was probably bulking up for that day.

“Mr President,” Ambassador Petrovich said, extending a hand.  The President shook it firmly.  “My condolences on the loss of your ship.”

He nodded once to General Lewis before taking the seat the President waved him towards.  General Lewis nodded in return; it had always galled him – and he wasn’t sure why – that Ambassador Petrovich spoke perfect English, without even a trace of an accent.  The Russian seemed shamelessly corpulent; he would have shamed any drill sergeant in the American Army.

“Thank you,” the President said.  “If you will permit it, we will proceed at once to business.”

Ambassador Petrovich smiled.  There was something about the smile that was vaguely disturbing.  “I would be honoured,” he said.  “Sitting and drinking tea would be quite nice, I feel, but…”

“The aliens boarded the shuttle and made off with the crew,” the President said, shortly.  “We forwarded the information to your President – and I assume that he has issued you your marching orders.”

General Lewis smiled at the Ambassador’s reaction; Ambassador Petrovich hadn’t liked being reminded that his life hung by a thread.  Stalin himself couldn’t have done a better job of making a man fear for his life.

“That is correct,” Ambassador Petrovich said, as evenly as ever.  “The Russian Federation does not regard the…kidnapping of your crew as a good sign.”

The President nodded briefly to General Lewis.  “Nor do we,” General Lewis said.  “What exactly does Russia plan to do about it?”

“We do not feel that the defence of Earth should be conducted by only one nation,” Ambassador Petrovich said.  If he was annoyed at Lewis being there, he showed no sign of it.  “We have been discussing matters with China, but the collective power of all three of our nations might be needed to make our continued existence possible.”

General Lewis, who knew that it would be years before Earth was ready, said nothing.  “That is a refreshing attitude,” the President said.  “What exactly do you suggest?”

Ambassador Petrovich’s face was a study.  He had been issued his orders – and he clearly didn’t like them.  “The Russian Federation is prepared to propose an alliance with you, a three-way defence alliance,” he said.  “We will ally our space-based defence forces with your space-based defence forces – and we believe that the Chinese will join you as well.  If you have the Japanese, the Indians and the Europeans as well, then we will have a group that can defend Earth.”

“And speak for Earth,” the President commented.  Ambassador Petrovich nodded.  “General?”

“There are certain issues here,” General Lewis said, recognising a cue when he heard one.  “Who holds tactical command?  Who will determine when we’re under attack, or not?”

Ambassador Petrovich scowled openly, his face twisting before returning to its more standard blank expression.  “We would be willing to accept an American commander, on the condition that we have unified rules of engagement,” he said, after a long moment.  “Would that be acceptable to you?”

The president looked at him.  “That would be acceptable,” he said.  “If you would care to send staff over to Washington, we can start the discussions now – or, more correctly, bring them into the open.”

“But without admitting that that’s what we’re doing,” Ambassador Petrovich said.  “Russia insists on that too.”

“Understood,” the President said.  “General?”

“We can set up a united defence fairly easily,” General Lewis said.  “I think that…”

His pager buzzed.  “Excuse me?”

The President nodded.  General Lewis stepped away from the two men and listened to the message.  He felt his blood run cold.

“Ah, Mr President,” he said, wondering how he was going to break the news.  “There have been developments.”

“I’m starting to hate that phase,” the President said.  Ambassador Petrovich smiled bitterly.  “What’s happened this time?”

General Lewis sighed.  “Two things,” he said.  “First, both of our probes have stopped transmitting…and second…two of their craft have cut loose from their positions and are heading towards Earth at quite a clip.  They’ll be here within two weeks, perhaps sooner.

“Mr President, what the hell do we do now?”

Chapter Eleven: Face To Face

The Alien Mothership
Asteroid Belt

The team floated into a single massive cavern…and stopped dead, or tried to; the lack of gravity kept them floating forward into the massive room.  Ahead of them, there were thousands of plants, some seeming almost Earth-like, some from evolutionary pathways that seemed very different to anything any other human had ever seen.  A massive series of blue fronds contrasted with red leaves and strange insects; the entire garden was growing in every direction at once.

“I suppose it makes sense,” Jane said, her voice a little shaky.  Hanson couldn’t disagree as the aliens gently pushed them through a…path?  A tunnel?  The plants had grown in each and every direction, fighting for supremacy in ways that no plants could even begin to attempt in a gravity field.  Trees – at least he thought they were trees – hung down from above; they were washed by streams of water that floated through the air, glittering in the light that shone from high above.  “Plants just don’t grow normally in zero-gravity.”

“You’re telling me,” Hanson said.  The aliens seemed to move through the forest with ease; it was surprisingly cold, despite the tropical appearance.  Droplets of water splashed against their skins; Hanson shivered from the cold.  The aliens had given them their clothing from the space shuttle, but they hadn’t prepared for anything like the strange eerie garden; who had even thought that such a place was possible?

“They must have hollowed out the asteroid,” Suzie said.  She looked at one of the aliens.  “What is this place?”

“This is the Worldship,” the alien said.  Hanson realised with a shock that the alien meant that it was a real spacecraft; just how large was it?  Had the aliens converted an asteroid into an interstellar spacecraft?  “It brought us to this star system.”

Hanson frowned as they passed further into the jungle…and reached a strange construction in what felt like the centre of the craft.  A spray of mist fell across them, glittering like raindrops, as they drifted through the windmill-like building; the aliens were silent, not even chattering to themselves in their strange fashion.  It suddenly occurred to him that they were being shown a religious building and he stared at it, before understanding what the strange flickers of light around the windmill actually were.

“That’s our star system,” Zeke commented.  His voice was very quiet as the holograms flickered around them; alien hands pinned them neatly in place, drifting in the strange air currents around the windmill.  He looked up at one of the aliens.  “What have you been doing here?”

The alien indicated the holographic image; it changed and expanded, revealing a strange symbol on the sun, an image of a crab’s claw.  The alien tapped its harness, indicating a second symbol, and then tapped the display again; the hologram rose up, showing the local region of space around the sun.

“My God,” Auckland breathed.  There were dozens – hundreds, thousands – of starts in the display; Hanson tried to read the star patterns and failed utterly.  Many of the stars held the same symbol; did the aliens control them all?  He spun around to the alien and met its unblinking eyes; suddenly he hated them, hated them for disturbing Earth, hated them…despite the opportunity they had given to him personally.

“What is that?”  Zeke asked.  His voice had a new note, one of danger and concern, flowing through it.  “You can talk; what is it?”

“That is the local region of space,” a new voice said.  A new alien had appeared, growing out of the foliage and drifting towards them.  “We have visited many of those stars and we control many of them.  Others are controlled by other…clans; we have been long outside any single world.”

Hanson pulled himself around to study the newcomer.  It seemed to be larger than the other aliens, with a larger body and longer tentacles.  Its eyes were focused on the separate humans; there was something undeniably creepy about its appearance…and then he saw that it too was a cyborg, a fusion of flesh and machine.

“This is the time of destiny,” it said.  It drifted closer; he felt a vague frisson of threat spilling down his spine.  “This is the time for your world to wake up to the larger universe outside and begin to find its place within the massive community of intelligent lifeforms outside Earth.”

Zeke drifted forward.  “I am Ambassador Zeke, accredited to all of the nations of Earth,” he said.  Hanson knew that that was only partly true; only the space-capable nations had been able to take part in the discussions.  “I understand that you wanted to discuss the future.”

The alien seemed unimpressed.  “You will be convoying our message back to Earth,” it said flatly.  It seemed to glide forwards.  “You may call me Speaker, if you like; there is so much to talk about…and so little time.”

Zeke tried to seem confident.  “We would be quite happy to talk to you as long as you like,” he said.  “I do, however, have messages from the world leaders…”

“They are irrelevant,” Speaker said.  The irony wasn’t lost on any of them.  “There are many things that your race doesn’t know about the universe – and it is my job to ensure that you learn what you need to know about your place on the” – there was a moment’s pause as the alien searched for the right word – “pecking order.”

Hanson shivered.  “There are three types of race in the universe,” Speaker continued.  “There are those who have transcended, becoming far above us mere mortals; they are at the top.  Fortunately, they have little interest in us; they spend most of their time contemplating the whichness of the why.”

“You must have been very busy studying the television channels from Earth,” Hanson said, after a moment.  “What else did you learn about us?”

“This event, first contact with another intelligent lifeform, is something new and remarkable for you,” Speaker said.  “For us, it is something that happens on a fairly regular basis; in the thousands of years since we left our original homeworld, we have spread right across the spiral arm.  There are dozens of intelligent races out there, in many different shapes and forms; first contact is nothing special to us.

“The second form of life is the space-faring life; beings who have successfully masters crossing space,” Speaker continued.  “They have, in human terms, the ability to defend themselves; I apologise for my bluntness, but this is too important for you to be permitted any misunderstandings.  Finally, there are the races that have no ability to reach space; they are at the bottom of the ladder…and they have no rights, according to galactic law.  According to that law, we have claimed your solar system – and you.”

“It’s taken,” Hanson said, automatically.

“We have taken it,” Speaker agreed.  “Your race does not even have a united government; the one source of authority for your race.  We have the largest concentration of power in the solar system and you are required to submit yourself to our authority.”

Zeke’s mouth was hanging open.  “You summoned us all the way out here to tell us that you want our surrender?”

Speaker’s eyes seemed to refocus on Zeke.  “We intended to test you, to see if you could present a possible threat to us,” he said.  “The conclusion is that you do not possess sufficient command of space to be treated as equals – your history is full of similar examples.”

Hanson mentally cursed Zeke’s history files.  “What do you want from us?”

Speaker seemed almost relieved to hear the question.  “We want very little from you,” he said.  “We want possession of the high orbitals over your world.  We want some limited trading with you; we will trade some technology for materials on your world.  We will be hiring a small number of humans to work for us; we have little interest in slaves, but useful experts would be welcome.  As long as you remain on your world, we will not exercise our control over your world…

“And yes, we want your surrender.”

Zeke stared at him.  “I am not empowered to negotiate a surrender,” he said.  “I would have to consult with the Oversight Committee on Earth and ask for orders.”

“We will be proceeding shortly to Earth with some of our warships,” Speaker said, dispassionately.  “Alas, we often find that a primitive race is often unwilling to accept clear evidence of superiority without a demonstration of power.  You will broadcast to your race from our ship, where you will tell them about our demands.  They will have a week to decide on their course of action before we arrive at your world.”

Hanson gasped.  “A week?”

“Our craft are considerably faster than your craft,” Speaker said.  “You will be offered the choice between accepting our supremacy – or paying the price for not accepting our supremacy.”

Zeke pulled himself together.  “And if we refuse your demands?”

Speaker focused on him.  “Then your race will suffer,” he said, mildly.  A colonial officer from the worst of the colonial period could hardly have done it better.  “We are here to stay and your race will adjust to the new realities of the galaxy.  You have been isolated for a long time, but not for any longer.”

“Your culture will adapt to service ours,” Auckland muttered.

“Exactly,” Speaker said.

***
The aliens didn’t waste time; as soon as Speaker had finished lecturing them, they led them back out of the strange garden and though a series of corridors, only a handful of them pressurised with oxygen.  The aliens seemed to have no problems moving from one atmosphere to the other; they’d provided breath-masks for the humans among them.  He tried to study the alien ship, trying to learn about it…all to stop himself from panicking.  He hadn’t expected anything like this!

They stepped through a door and into space; a very old panic gripped him before he realised that he was gliding through a long glass corridor, leading towards a ship hanging from the asteroid-ship.  He could see the alien ship now; from a distance, it would look like just another asteroid, but up close he could see sensors studding the hull, watching the universe.  The others followed him in silence; they knew that the aliens wouldn’t be interested in killing them in such a protracted manner.

The interior of the alien ship was bland and featureless; they were escorted quickly to a small room, one large enough to hold all six of them.  It contained some of the supplies from Atlantis; it also carried a series of small books, written in English, although with some odd spellings.  Hanson skimmed them quickly; they detailed some elements of the alien society…and how they worked.  The aliens had obviously decided that they needed to know some information about them; the style was written in a manner that reminded him of humans, writing in a second language.

“My God,” Zeke said, breaking his silence.  “What the hell do we do now?”

“I have no idea,” Hanson said, trying to avoid the gibbering panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.  “I don’t know…what the hell was the point of inviting us out here for such a fucking demand?”

“They wanted a look at us,” Jane said.  Her voice was very bitter; her body was hunched in the room.  Hanson felt a flicker of gravity as the ship started to move away from the asteroid ship; it built up in a manner that he wished that NASA ships could match.  If they could have been capable of matching such speeds, they would have been able to quality as a ‘space-faring’ race; compared to the aliens, the flight to the moon took on its proper perspective.

Jane stared at the air, watching one of the booklets drifting towards the wall under the influence of the gravity field.  “They must have come to this system unseen and un-remarked, years ago, perhaps homing in on our radio transmissions,” she said.  “They would have lurked in the asteroids, setting up their bases, all the while wondering if we would see them…and when we didn’t see them, they knew that they were safe for a while…”

Suzie was skimming through one of the booklets.  “They’re an empire,” she said bluntly.  “An odd empire, one based in space rather than the surface of any planet, but an empire nonetheless – and we’re their latest conquest.”

“I don’t understand,” Zeke said.  “Why come to take Earth?  That ship of theirs can’t hold many aliens, not if that’s the only ship they have…and could they survive in high gravity anyway?”

“If we’re going to get to Earth within the week, then yes, unless they have some magical inertial dampening system anyway,” Hanson commented.

“They don’t,” Suzie said.  Her voice was very certain.  “Nothing we’ve seen came out of super-science – they’re about fifty to a hundred years ahead of us at most, perhaps much less than that.  Making it back to Earth in a week is possible, although we are going to have a very hard trip under those gravities.”

“I was going to be Ambassador to the Stars,” Zeke said.  “They’ll want me to broadcast to Earth, telling them…what?  Telling them to surrender.  They won’t go down without a fight.”

Hanson met his eyes.  “They’ll fight,” he said.  “Do you think that they can destroy the aliens in the belt?”

Suzie shook her head.  The gravity pressure got higher.

He sighed and turned his attention to the booklet.  The aliens, assuming they were telling the truth, claimed to have evolved from a form of asteroid-settlements, rather like humans had dreamed of, before the aliens arrived.  They had once been humanoid – they claimed that humanoid life forms were common in space – and their current forms were the result of endless genetic engineering and cyborg implants; they had redesigned themselves to live permanently in space.

“The people who hate the thought of designer genes will really hate them,” he commented, reading the short information on the alien biology.  “They’re the very epitome of what they hate.”

Zeke laughed bitterly.  Hanson smiled and returned to the short outline of the alien history; they had expanded across space, setting up colonies in asteroids in dozens of star systems and had, surprisingly, ended up with an empire.  They had worked with races that could have fought them off, trading their knowledge for living space, and had ended up the power behind the galactic community.  Their longevity and their ability to literally assimilate members of other races had allowed them to expand further, sending out thousands more colony ships like the one that had reached Earth’s system.  They seemed to have no FTL drive; the documents didn’t even hint at the possibility.  All travel between the stars happened at STL speeds.

“Whatever happens, this information has to reach Earth,” he said, reading the documents again.  Earth’s fate was quite clear; at best, humanity would be confined to Earth, with only a selected handful ever able to travel from Earth to the Moon, or Mars.  The worlds within the Solar System would become the colonies of the interstellar empire.  

He had to admire the concept; the aliens age and power gave them the ability to hold the community together.  Earth had to be warned; there was literally no other choice, none at all.  “Robert, you have to make the broadcast.”

Zeke gave him a despairing look.  “We’ll help you,” Jane said, placing her hand on his arm.  “You can tell Earth everything in the course of the message – and at least then they will be warned.”

Chapter Twelve: Defiance

The White House
Washington DC, USA

“There are now seven alien craft heading towards the Earth,” General Lewis said, speaking to a silent room.  It was the oddest briefing he had ever attended; not only Americans, but a handful of Russians, Chinese and Europeans were also attending the meeting.  The alliance between the space-faring powers for the defence of Earth was starting to work properly – General Lewis could only hope that it was in time.  “It adds a certain edge to the message from Ambassador Zeke.”

The President scowled.  There had been no hiding or covering up the message; it had been broadcast right across the world by the aliens.  Some parts of the world were in chaos; some factions demanding that humanity resist, others pressing for surrender.  Ambassador Zeke had been able to give Earth a great deal of information – General Lewis saw Hanson’s hand in that – but it was just enough to show just how bad the situation actually was.

“The craft are moving quite fast,” he continued.  “According to NASA, the lead craft will be able to match speeds and enter orbit within four days; the remainder will be here within six days.  They’re using fusion drives, we believe; unless they run out of propellant, they should be able to enter orbit without problems.  At that point, our problems begin.”

He leaned forward.  “The Joint Strategy Council” – a mixed group that had actually proven more useful than he had expected – “believes that Ambassador Zeke is correct and the aliens intend to take possession of the high orbitals over Earth.  Their first step would be to attempt to knock us out of orbit – by destroying the satellites and the ISS, perhaps even destroying facilities on the ground.  Knowing what they intend to do is one thing – actually stopping them is another.”

There was a long pause.  “Do you really think that they will destroy all of the satellites?”  Rollins asked, his voice very concerned.  “Most of the satellites are unarmed!”

“They won’t know the difference, unless they have some unrealistic scanning device,” General Lewis said.  “Even if they did, many of our satellites have applications for watching them in the belt – they would be foolish indeed to allow them to remain in service.  They have warned us, Mr President; we have to decide what to do about it.”

The President spoke from the head of the table.  Technically, he was chairing the meeting; practically, no one was quite sure what was going on.  The sense of imminent doom was concentrating a lot of minds; all of those who might have argued about protocol had been silenced or ordered to refocus their minds.

“A masterful summery,” he said.  “What does the Joint Strategy Council believe the aliens want?”

“The Solar System,” General Lewis said.  “They came up with a lot of details that basically boil down to Earth being almost useless to them, from a tactical and strategic standpoint.  There’s nothing on Earth, with the possible exception of some humans with skills they need, that they actually need – or want enough to try to fight the equivalent of a land war in Asia.”

The Chinese representative laughed.  “We are almost certainly far more numerous than them,” he said.  “Perhaps we should lure them into a war on the surface.”

“I don’t believe – and nor does the Joint Strategy Council – that the aliens will be so foolish,” General Lewis said.  “We are inclined to accept their statement to Ambassador Zeke; they’re only interested in the asteroids and perhaps a few of the smaller planets.  Mars, it seems, is to be a colony world for the races in their empire that don’t want to remain in null-gravity; the aliens themselves seem to have adapted themselves to living completely in space.”

He sighed.  “All of that leads neatly to the second point,” he continued.  “They’re not going to be dragged into a land war on the surface – they’re only interested in Hong Kong, rather than the vast interior.  Even if they were interested, they would have formidable advantages…and I imagine that they would have no problem recruiting proxy armies for use against resisting human nations.

“We believe, at the moment, that we should take what they told Ambassador Zeke at face value,” he concluded.  He felt a welling of grim despair spreading through him and forced it down with an effort.  “Their purpose is to force us out of space and take command of the high orbitals around Earth – and by doing that, they will make it very difficult for us to launch any form of counterattack.”

He scowled.  “That does several things to us,” he continued.  “It seriously damages our economy – as well as suddenly shattering some of our most priceless military advantages over rogue nations.  It makes it impossible for us to get into orbit, and probably makes it impossible to fire our ballistic missiles at surface targets.”

“Not something to mention to the peaceniks,” Rollins commented dryly.  “They would be overjoyed.”

General Lewis nodded.  “The choice is simple,” he said.  “We can resist – using the handful of weapons we have available – or we can surrender.  If we surrender, we will probably have to evacuate the ISS and let them destroy it – or capture it.  If we surrender, we will have lost most of our chances for actually fighting back.”

“Russia will not surrender to any aggressor,” Ambassador Petrovich said.  The Russian ambassador looked very determined; General Lewis wondered what orders he had received to place him in such a belligerent mood.  Perhaps the sudden economic benefits of the new space race had appealed to the Russian President; Russia stood to do very well in the next few years.  “We have the weapons; we should use them.”

“China feels the same way,” the Chinese Ambassador said.  His face seemed to darken ever so slightly.  “We do not surrender to this exercise in interstellar imperialism.”

General Lewis smiled behind his inscrutable expression; the irony was that the aliens were acting in very much the same way as the west – including America – had treated those too weak to resist…including making it very difficult for them to resist in the future.  He knew that the aliens would have little interest in Earth itself; humanity would probably end up isolated on Earth for the rest of time.

The President tapped the table.  “General, if we do fight, can we win?”

“The Joint Strategy Council was divided on the question,” General Lewis admitted.  ‘Divided’ was a gross understatement; they had almost come to blows over it.  “We know from what they told Ambassador Zeke – always assuming that they were telling the truth – that they respect planets that can fight back…”

“How very…western of them,” the Chinese Ambassador commented.

General Lewis ignored the interruption.  “They don’t seem to be that much more advanced over us,” he said.  “We cannot duplicate their drives, not yet, but they’re very clear targets for our weapons.  At the same time, we suspect that they have lasers and other weapons of their own; we might be able to hold Earth orbit, or we might just be…a turkey shoot for them.”

He took a breath.  “It was the recommendation of the Joint Strategy Council that we engage the enemy as soon as they try to enter Earth orbit,” he said.  “We imagine that they will attempt to target the space station and the armed satellites first; we can use the boosters to place more missiles into orbit in the few days we have left.  At the same time, we have been preparing ballistic missiles for deployment and detonation in low earth orbit; we might have to launch a coordinated attack against the craft using them and the THAAD missiles.”

He unchanged a worried glance with the President.  “We might well destroy some of their craft,” he concluded.  “To add to our firepower, I would like to use both of the shuttle gunships; they would provide some mobile firepower in orbit.  If we had had time, we could have done so much more to arm the shuttles, but for the moment…”

The President sighed grimly.  Ambassador Petrovich coughed.  “What about the Orion craft?”

General Lewis grinned inwardly.  The Russians had fallen in love with the concept; they didn’t care so much about the pollution and they had plenty of experts in the massive battleship-like construction that was required for the effort.  At the same time, the very real flaws in the concept had never been solved – not yet.  Computer simulations could only go so far.

“They won’t be ready in time,” General Lewis said.  “The four that the USAF was building still have months to go, let alone the problem of mass-producing all of the bombs.  The Russian ones have similar problems; they won’t be ready in time.  There are some specialist weapons that we have developed, following what we’ve found out from the probes, but they won’t be ready in time either.”

“So you said,” the President said.  He looked around the table.  “Do we try to fight or surrender?”

“There are some other considerations,” Rollins said.  “If we beat them off from Earth, we might end up having to deal with them; do we recognise their claim to the asteroids they’ve settled, or what?”

General Lewis shrugged.  “Recognising someone’s claim generally implies that you have the strength to force them off the asteroids,” he said dryly.  “We don’t, full stop – and we are not going to be able to have that strength for a very long time.  We’re going to have to live with them.”

The President nodded.  “What, then, do we settle for?”

“The Moon,” Rollins said.  “We have plans to set up bases there now – we tell them that we want the moon, and we’ll handle the other planets and asteroids on a case-by-case basis.”

General Lewis nodded.  “Quite frankly, I don’t feel that we could get much more from them,” he said.  “Are we going to try to talk to them first?”

The President nodded.  “We should attempt to talk to them at the same time,” he said.  His voice tightened slightly.  “We’ll sort out a message and try to open communications with them again.  Perhaps they’re bluffing and they’ll be reasonable.”

General Lewis hesitated.  He had a strong feeling that the aliens weren’t bluffing at all.  “There’s one final matter,” he said.  “Mr President, I strongly feel that you should be in NORAD when the alien craft approach.”

“Yes, that would be a good idea,” Rollins echoed.  “Mr President…”

The President nodded.  “We’ll have to get some precautions going for the world,” he said.  “FERA can handle that; General, please ensure that they have all the support and warnings they need.”

Cape Canaveral Space Centre
Florida, USA

Captain Matt Daniels had never seen the NASA base look so grim; the entire complex was secured by armed soldiers, following a terrorist attempt to penetrate the base’s security.  The thousands of tourists had faded away as the news from the asteroids filtered through to the public mind; the news that seven alien ships were on their way to Earth had shocked the world.

He put down the telephone and sighed; his girlfriend had been worried about him.  Her family were packing their bags and trying to get out of the city before the alien craft arrived; they’d offered to take him along.  He hadn’t been tempted; he knew his duty…and there weren’t many men in the astronaut corps that could do what he could do.  He and his crew had been practicing on simulators for what now threatened – a genuine war in space.  They knew their duty…and most of them knew that their mission was likely to be futile.

He stepped into the briefing room and gratefully accepted a cigar from one of the other pilots; NASA had banned smoking in a misplaced display of political correctness, but the new influx of USAF pilots had simply ignored the orders.  There were more important things to worry about, such as the alien craft, riding their fusion flames towards Earth.  He envied them; they could make it across the solar system within weeks, but it had taken months for humanity to get a ship out to the asteroids.

And now it seemed that humanity and the aliens would be going to war.  He puffed on his cigar and remembered the President’s message to the world, the declaration that humanity would stand up for itself in a universe that had suddenly proven itself to be very hostile.  He had been proud of the President at that moment, even though he had voted for the other guy, but he knew that the rhetoric might well prove futile; humanity was very weak when it came to space warfare.

“Get your head out of your ass, boy,” Colonel Ward bellowed.  Daniels pulled himself to attention, seeing Colonel Ward glaring at him, a pointer in one hand and a massive cigar in the other.  “Pay attention because this is fucking important, all right!”

Some people were becoming more stressed as a result of the knowledge of alien contact – and possible alien war.  Colonel Ward had been a mean son of a bitch for his entire life, from flying a fighter jet into battle above Iran to commanding the only space-capable squadron in the entire world.  Permanently on the verge of being dismissed for constant insubordination and bullying, he survived through undoubted competence and the respect of his subordinates, who respected him more than they feared him.

Ward took a puff of his cigar and glared indiscriminately around the room.  Daniels felt a flicker of sympathy; Ward had been much happier leading his force into battle, but now he would only be watching from the ground as the squadron went into combat – without him.  For someone who had always led from the front – obtaining a whole series of impressive war wounds in the process – it had to be galling.

Daniels glanced at the flight roster on the wall, noting that he was being ordered to launch later in the day, something that wasn’t exactly unexpected.  The pilots had debated the options endlessly amongst themselves; launching when the aliens arrived, they had agreed, seemed a recipe for a quick defeat.  At the same time, of course, remaining in orbit would sap the pilots…

“We finally have our orders,” he said, looking from face to face.  Some commanders accepted some slovenly behaviour; Ward would never have dreamed of tolerating it for one moment.  “We will be taking part in the defence of Earth.  You have never fought against such odds before – and, if God is kind, you never will again.”

His voice hadn’t softened by one iota.  “You have been practicing on the two space shuttles,” he continued.  “The weapons were loaded onboard at the same time as something happened to Atlantis; the regular crewmen have been removed from the craft, to be replaced by you.  I don’t need to tell you the risks that we face in space – that you face in space – but I know that each and every one of you will do your best.”

He tapped the screen behind him.  “This is the general plan,” he said.  “You will launch into orbit today and tomorrow, one shuttle per day.”  His face twisted into a scowl at the thought of such a delay in preparing for war.  “Once in orbit, you will be refuelled from the space station and take up your positions…and wait.  For political reasons” – his face became even darker – “we have to allow the aliens to fire the first shot.”

Daniels winced.  The aliens would have the first shot at them free; if they had missiles, they would at least be caught in the act, but if they had phasers or something similar the shuttles would die before knowing what had hit them.  Ward looked as if he had bitten into a lemon and the pilots shared his opinion; Daniels shared his opinion.

“Once the aliens have fired, you have clearance to fire back, using the weapons mounted on the shuttle,” Ward concluded.  “I expect that each and every one of you will perform your duty to the end of the fighting.”

He paused.  “Dismissed!”

Chapter Thirteen: War In Heaven

Near-Earth Space/Earth Orbit
Near Earth

The trip in the alien craft had been uncomfortable, finally dispelling the belief that the aliens couldn’t handle high gravities.  The craft had raced from the asteroids towards Earth, following the other craft…and followed itself by five objects, racing toward the Earth.  The aliens had been surprisingly talkative, from time to time; the junior aliens, in particular, were more than willing to talk to the humans.  Speaker, however, refused to discuss the other objects – something that hadn’t stopped Hanson from drawing several conclusions of his own.

The alien ship’s bridge – he hadn’t even been told the name of the craft, or even if it had a name – wasn’t anything like a human ship.  He had expected a cross between a space shuttle and a submarine; the four aliens responsible for commanding the ship had no consoles, but plugged themselves directly into the computers, controlling the ship with their minds.  The aliens had managed to perfect interacting with their computers – and it made taking the ship over impossible, or even more impossible than it had been already.  He had wondered if they could manage, somehow, to kill the aliens, but the problem of controlling the ship was insolvable.

In the centre of the bridge, a holographic image of the Earth rotated in front of Speaker, who was hunched down in what Hanson suspected to be an alien chair.  It reassembled a small dish; he was surprised by the sheer fury of the thought about lighting a fire under the chair and cooking Speaker like the octopus he reassembled.  The alien didn’t seem surprised at how perfectly Hanson had floated through the air to join him; by now, the humans were just as capable as the aliens at moving within a zero gravity environment.

“Your people have broadcast defiance,” Speaker said, without preamble.  Hanson had never been able to decide if the aliens were naturally blunt or if Speaker didn’t consider him worthy of whatever passed for alien politeness.  “We believe that they intend to try to destroy our craft as they enter orbit.”

Hanson wasn’t surprised.  “You could try to talk to us,” he said, trying to convince Speaker.  “We could work with you towards building a better future for us both.”  He scrambled to find arguments that might convince the alien.  “We could learn a great deal from you…”

“You lack the ability to recognise your position within the universe,” Speaker said.  He pointed with one long metal tentacle towards the holographic projection of Earth; two space shuttles and the International Space Station circled around the planet, armed and dangerous.  They confronted two of the seven alien craft; they were preparing to approach Earth orbit, matching course and speed as he watched.  It wouldn’t be long, hours at most, before they reached firing distance.  “That is not a reasonable response to our overwhelming power.”

Hanson had to smile.  “I don’t think you know my people very well,” he said.  “We won’t give up without a fight and we’ll keep looking for ways to hurt you forever.”

“That is my point,” Speaker said, very patiently.  Hanson still couldn’t hear any tone from the alien’s flat voice, but he would have been astonished if the alien wasn’t gloating inside; he seemed to be enjoying himself.  “Your race will have no ability to hurt us on your world – and some of your people will add to our collective abilities.”

Hanson had a sudden bitter vision of dozens of humans, living among the aliens and forever forbidden to go home, and winced.  He wiped his eyes, hoping that Speaker hadn’t noticed – and wondered if the alien would understand, even if he had noticed.  Whatever happened on Earth’s surface would never impact upon the aliens themselves; humanity could destroy itself and they wouldn’t care.

“This is a regrettable display of force,” Speaker said, breaking into Hanson’s thoughts.  “Why did your race not develop space while you had the chance?”

“It’s a long story,” Hanson said.  It might have cost humanity its independent existence, perhaps even its collective life.  “There’s no time to understand it now.”

“Understanding is not required,” Speaker said.  On the display, the two alien craft inched towards one of the space shuttles.  “We only require your submission and obedience.”

***
Captain Matt Daniels cursed his luck as the latest information from the dozens of spy satellites flickered onto the tactical screen; his shuttle, Endeavour, was on the wrong side of the planet for engaging the alien craft.  Discovery, the other space shuttle, would have the first shot at them – or, rather, the aliens would have the first shot at them.  The pilots had pressed for altering the rules of engagement, but the President had been very firm on the subject; humanity would not fire the first shot at the aliens.

The space shuttles weren’t, despite the best efforts of Colonel Ward and the USAF’s black budget, designed for offensive operations; they carried a small number of missiles and a nuclear-powered laser cannon each, a laser that was supposed to be able to cut through hull material.  The modifications had affected the shuttles and made them harder to handle though the atmosphere; he knew better than to think that Endeavour would ever be able to return to Earth.  The additional armour that NASA had quickly attached to the shuttle was a good thought, but it wouldn’t last long under any attack at all.

“Discovery has visual,” the controller on the International Space Station murmured.  A handful of NSA satellites, using undetectable lasers for communications, were working to transmit information between the defensive units; Daniels knew that that was a fancy term for three manned units and dozens of armed orbiting weapons.  “Look at those bastards…”

Daniels looked.  The alien craft were slowing now, using gas jets to slip towards Earth; telescopes had revealed enough about them to know that both of them were the size of aircraft carriers.  One of them seemed about to enter orbit on one side of the planet; the second seemed to be intent on sliding around the other side of the world.  One of them would challenge Discovery; the other would be coming up Endeavour’s rear.  No one knew what weapons they carried; no one knew if the aliens were bluffing or not.

“Radar pulse,” Captain Anderson, on Discovery, snapped.  Daniels glanced sharply down at the display; the aliens had just pulsed a massive burst of radar energy towards Earth, a wave of energy that had already revealed humanity’s orbiting defences in great detail, a wave that had passed over Endeavour before Daniels could even blink.  “They’re targeting us.”

“Hold your cool,” the space station commander said.  Daniels glanced down at the images from the satellites orbiting Earth and shuddered; the crew of the space shuttle were watching with him, and preparing the shuttles missiles.  Absently, he boosted the shuttle forward with the manoeuvring thrusters; they would start catching up with Discovery, perhaps they would be able to support Endeavour’s sister ship.  “Stand by…”

The image of the alien craft seemed to explode.  Dozens of small lights rippled free of its form and flashed down towards Earth.  Alarms rang in the shuttle’s cockpit; the aliens had opened fire!  Daniels cursed again; they were not in a good position to open fire…and the aliens were firing more radar pulses after their missiles, tracking the effects of their strikes.

“They’re rail guns,” someone snapped.  Daniels didn’t have time to identify the voice.  “They’re firing on the satellites with rail guns.”

“Bastards,” Commander Harden snapped.  “They’ll be blasting them all into the atmosphere!”

“This is Discovery,” Captain Anderson said, his voice grim and professional.  Satellites were dropping out of contact all over the sky, but he remained calm; some of the orbiting weapons were manoeuvring to support the shuttle.  “We’re moving to intercept the alien now, we repeat…”

His voice broke off.  Daniels watched as Discovery started to launch missiles, the satellite network updating itself as satellites dropped out or were destroyed by the aliens.  The rate of destruction was falling as the orbiting weapons manoeuvred to attack; chemical lasers and iron slugs were being launched towards the alien ships.  Daniels spared a thought for the other alien craft; it was moving around the planet, picking satellites off as it moved.  Little flashes glittered around it; it was moving without a care in the world.

The display flickered and changed.  “This is Cold Front,” a Russian-accented voice snapped.  “We are engaging with missiles now.”

A thought occurred to Daniels as the shuttle moved forwards faster and faster.  “Configure the laser for point defence,” he ordered, hoping that the laser would suffice to knock out alien missiles and rail gun pellets.  “I want to use it to…”

“This is NORAD, the Russians have launched, I repeat, the Russians have launched,” yet another voice said.  “We are preparing to engage with ground-based weapons…”

“Look at that,” Commander Dalton said.  Daniels shook his head in awe; ICBMs were rising from Russia, heading directly towards the alien craft.  Some of them winked out as the aliens fired on them with lasers, others just kept rising…and rising…and then they started to detonate.  The screen shaded automatically as nuclear warheads started to detonate near the alien craft, creating a maelstrom of energy that lashed out towards the alien craft…and swept it away.  Daniels cheered as one of humanity’s tormentors vanished in a blast of fire.

“This is Neighbourhood Watch,” a southern-accented voice snapped.  “Y’all watch out up there!  Four of the other alien craft had just kicked in their drives; they’re coming this way!”

“Captain, Discovery,” Commander Dalton said quietly.  Daniels sucked in his breath as the screen turned to follow the other space shuttle, which was closing in on the alien craft, firing its missiles as it came in a cosmic game of chicken.  The aliens were firing with lasers – the telemetry from Discovery showed the shuttle’s hull boiling under the lasers, but the shuttle was closing in.

“This is Anderson,” Discovery’s Captain said.  “We’re about to engage with nuclear-tipped…”

There was a wave of static and the contact was lost.  Daniels stared at the display, willing the shuttle to blast through the sudden cloud of static, but he knew that the Discovery had been destroyed.  He closed his eyes in silent prayer as the alien craft slowly came around the planet, preparing to engage the ISS.  Endeavour was pushing its envelope, but it was still too far away to intervene.

“This is NORAD, the bastard is too close to the ISS to fire,” a protesting voice snapped.  “We can’t engage…”

“Get your head out of your fucking ass,” Colonel Ward snapped, reprimanding an officer who was almost certainly several grades about him.  Daniels smiled at the whole sequence of events.  “That station is dead anyway!”

“He’s right,” a Japanese voice said.  Daniels recognised it as Colonel Sato; the Japanese officer had been given command of the newly-armed ISS.  “NORAD, you must engage the enemy craft!”

“This is NORAD, THAADS being deployed now, I repeat, THAAD missiles are engaging the enemy,” NORAD said.  Daniels willed the shuttle to move faster; the alien craft was closing in on the station.  The station returned fire, launching missiles from the stockpile that had been moved up to the station over the months since humanity had come to terms with the alien contact, but in the end…the ISS was a stationary target.  A single alien missile punched through the station and ripped it, end to end, sending the wreckage falling down towards the planet.

“THAADS are about to engage,” NORAD said.  “They will engage the target in two minutes; Endeavour will engage the target in five minutes…”

Daniels scowled, holding the shuttle steady; if luck was with them, the THAAD missiles would destroy the alien craft.  Luck wasn’t with them; the aliens, suddenly aware of the power of ground-based missiles, started to sweep the THAADS out of the sky with lasers.  The other alien craft were closing in on Earth; it wouldn’t be long before they were in firing range themselves.

“Hit,” NORAD snapped suddenly, as a THAAD missile detonated near the alien craft, sending a wave of shrapnel towards the craft.  The THAAD missiles didn’t carry nuclear warheads; Daniels silently cursed that oversight – a nuke would have destroyed the alien craft with ease.  “We hurt the bastard!”

“It’s still moving,” Daniels said, feeling the urge to hum some appropriately suicidal tune as Endeavour drifted closer to the alien craft.  He could see the craft, leaking air, but still functional; it was spinning with an ease he could only admire, turning to face the shuttle without attempting to run for it.  He smiled grimly; whatever speeds the aliens could attain, they simply didn’t have time to build the speed up after the fighting…and shedding all of the speed that they had lost.

“Stand by all weapons,” he said, knowing that everything had to be timed perfectly.  An alien laser beam lashed out at Endeavour; sensors on the hull screamed warnings at him as the hull began to bubble.  Laser links to the other surviving satellites kept the shuttle on course; the alien weapons might have disrupted the shuttle’s own sensors, but it wouldn’t be crippled.  If they fired too early, the aliens would have plenty of time for counter-battery fire; if they fired too late, the aliens might fire something nastier at them than a laser beam…

“Fire,” he snapped.  The shuttle jerked as four missiles launched from the missile bus, poking out of the cargo hull.  The alien laser beam cut off suddenly; the shuttle’s sensors slowly started to recover…and he saw the aliens take down one…two…three of his missiles, before the fourth punched its way into the alien ship and detonated.  A wave of disruption washed out at him as the alien ship exploded…and then Endeavour was through the debris and heading on around the Earth.

“Good shooting, Endeavour,” NORAD said.  “Ah, we make two alien craft manoeuvring to face you.”

Daniels scowled.  The alien craft were braking hard, to the degree that their drives would probably trigger off all kinds of reactions in the atmosphere…and blind anyone stupid enough to be looking at them through a telescope.  They were shedding speed and slipping neatly into Earth orbit, and Endeavour was no longer in a state for a fight.  He checked the hull sensors and swore; the shuttle was no longer in a state for a landing, even assuming that the aliens would let them land.

“This is Point East,” a new voice said.  Daniels felt a wave of hope; he’d forgotten about the Chinese.  “We are engaging the alien craft…”

He watched as the Chinese launched two dozen missiles upwards towards the alien craft.  The missiles, he was amused to note, were bigger and heavier than the Chinese had claimed throughout the years, but it hardly mattered; at the moment, he was grateful.  The aliens fired on the missiles as they rose up from the surface…and were caught by surprise as more missiles launched from the South China Sea; a Chinese boomer…or a Russian or American boat.  He couldn’t remember if the British or French had committed themselves to the fight; the shuttle was starting to get very hot.

“Some of the life support is damaged,” Commander Dalton said.  “Sam can try to fix it…”

“It hardly matters,” Daniels said, wiping sweat from his forehead.  “We are not going to last long enough for it to matter.”

The missiles were still rising, but some of them were winking out, more and more every minute.  The aliens were concentrating on completing the destruction of the satellite network; one by one, the satellites, helplessly drifting along in their predicable orbits, fell from the skies.  One missile detonated under the alien craft, scorching them, but the others were all destroyed before they could detonate.

“Adjust orbit,” NORAD snapped, and rattled off a list of coordinates.  Daniels didn’t argue, he triggered the thrusters and sent the shuttle on a new course, one that would only brush the alien craft’s weapons range.  He tried to adjust further, worrying about the consequences of exposing the engines to alien laser fire…and then he laughed.  It didn’t matter anyway.

“They’re turning to catch us,” Commander Dalton said, after a few minutes had passed.  “I think we made them mad.”

“Use the laser if they launch missiles at us,” Daniels ordered, noticing that their course was taking them back over the Pacific…and the Pacific coastline of America.  The fourth alien craft was manoeuvring to catch them, high over America; there was no longer any time for an escape.  “We’re going right down that bastards throat!”

The pursuing alien craft were picking up speed; their drives were blasting strange energies over the Earth as they closed in on the shuttle.  Daniels ignored them; they no longer mattered – the only thing that mattered was taking down the alien craft hanging so insultingly over America.  He checked the display and frowned; the aliens seemed certain of their victory…

“Fire as soon as we enter middle range,” he ordered quietly.  “Fire and…Jesus Christ!”

The display altered as seven SSBNs launched their missiles into space, targeting the alien craft chasing Endeavour…while ground-based launchers fired on the craft hanging high over America.  For a moment, even the aliens seemed stunned; they’d been lured right into a trap.  Daniels launched aloud and pointed Endeavour directly at their target…and felt the shuttle jerk as the missiles were launched.  The aliens simply had too many targets to handle…

“Captain,” Dalton said quietly.

Daniels looked at the display and saw one of the alien craft launch a series of missiles towards the shuttle…and knew that the shuttle was doomed.  Even as their target exploded under the impact of a missile – he mentally claimed it for the shuttle, even though there was no way to be sure – the missiles lanced towards Endeavour and smashed into the rear of the shuttle.  Moments later, the remains of the shuttle started the long fall towards Earth…leaving the remaining alien craft in possession of the high orbitals.  The defenders had done their best…but it hadn’t been good enough.

The aliens controlled the space high over Earth…

Chapter Fourteen: Disaster

Cheyenne Mountain
Colorado, USA

Everything had been quiet for nine hours since the shooting had begun.

General Lewis stared at the display in the centre of the room, permanently showing the two alien craft, hanging high over Earth.  High-powered telescopes, some part of the space defence network, others quickly added from the private sector, studied the alien craft; they had managed to escape serious damage.  The United States had attacked them with THAAD missiles, and ground-based lasers, but the aliens had managed to retreat.  They now floated high over the oceans, waiting.

Waiting for what?

The network of sensors in orbit had been destroyed; the aliens had swept everything out of orbit, from satellites to pieces of space junk.  Much of the wreckage was in descending orbits; people were reporting massive showers of meteors falling all over the globe as the remains fell out of orbit and into the atmosphere.  Some chunks of debris had been large enough to make it down to the ground; Africa and China had been hit particularly badly.

He scowled.  The aliens hadn’t responded to their attempts to contact them with radio; their only reaction had been to fire back at a pair of American-produced 747 aircraft carrying chemical lasers.  The American aircraft had been blown out of the sky; if they had hurt the alien craft, there was no sign of it.  They remained in orbit, watching and waiting.

The telescopes on the ground were still working and he knew that a third alien craft, to all human inspection the same as the two orbiting Earth, was lurking near the moon.  It had been the one that had attempted to convince Earth to surrender; it now waited, silently, watching humanity from its position.  There were other alien craft on the way, the telescopes could make them out from the asteroids, but they wouldn’t arrive at Earth for a week yet.  The aliens seemed to be waiting.

Waiting for what?

“General,” the President said, as he stepped into General Lewis’s office.  Two Secret Service men, useless inside Cheyenne Mountain, took up positions outside the door.  “Has there been any change?”

The President looked dreadfully tired; the United States was on the verge of anarchy.  The battle had been followed by everyone with a telescope – the hospitals were starting to see cases where the patient had been blinded by staring too closely at a nuclear strike – and everyone knew that it had been a draw, at best.  The shower of space junk hadn’t helped; it had been sheer luck that the ISS had broken up in orbit, rather than just falling – it would have hit the ground for sure.  All civilian aircraft were grounded; panic was starting to echo around the country.

“None,” he said.  “They wait and watch us; we watch them and wait to see what happens next.  Have we heard anything from the Russians and Chinese?”

The President seemed to sigh.  It was one of the times when a world leader, such as the President, dealt directly with the other world leaders, rather than through ambassadors and special representatives.  He had the chance to brief General Lewis, something that only happened rarely; normally it would be the other way around.  The President was supposed to sit in the centre of the web of politics, not contributing to it.

“The Russians are hopping mad over the loss of their satellites,” the President said.  “They’re still willing to allow us to fire the THAAD missiles from their territory and the same goes for the Chinese.  The Europeans and the Africans, however, are less willing to become involved in the war; there is a lot of very real fear out there.”

“I know,” General Lewis said.  He yawned suddenly.  “They just don’t want to annoy the aliens.”

“They’re scared,” the President said.  “You should go to bed.”

“Warfare happens so slowly on this scale,” General Lewis agreed.  He scowled.  “If all they wanted to do was lock us out of space, they’ve succeeded.  Worse, in fact; we’re afraid to use aircraft at all in places where their craft can reach down and fire on them…”

Alarms sounded within the mountain.  “Shit,” he snapped.  “That’s the emergency alert.”

The president pulled himself to his feet.  “What’s happening?”  He asked, his voice very calm, almost atonal.  General Lewis realised suddenly that the President had passed the limits of his endurance.  “General?”

“That’s the network of telescopes, radars and other sensors on the ground,” General Lewis said.  The magnitude of the disaster hadn’t quite become real to him.  “There are asteroids heading towards Earth, medium-sized asteroids…and they’re going to hit the planet…”

He looked down on the screen and saw disaster unfold.  The network of telescopes and sensors were staring far out into space, trying to locate any signs of alien activity…and they saw the asteroids, smaller than he had feared, but moving at immense speed.  They’d known that the aliens had the capability; they’d seen the aliens bombarding Mars…why hadn’t they believed that the aliens would use their weapons on Earth?

Because we would have just surrendered, idiot, he thought coldly, and saw the ruin of Earth approaching.

The President’s voice snapped him out of his muddle.  “Where are they going to hit?”

General Lewis stared down at the screen.  NASA had designed the software for predicting impact sites – without devising any way to terminate the threat – and it was working overtime.  They could see the asteroids clearly now, they could calculate their course and speed…and slowly the targets came up on the display.

“One’s going to come down in the Pacific,” he said, knowing that the slightest error could put their calculations way off.  The asteroids might hit thousands of kilometres from their predicted impact sites.  “Another is going to impact in the Indian Ocean, one more is going to impact in the South Atlantic, one seems to be aimed at Russia…and one looks as if it will come down in the Mediterranean.”

“They like oceans, don’t they?”  The President said, his voice a struggle to remain calm.  “General, issue the warnings; we need to get people away from the seafronts.”  He hesitated.  “Can’t we shoot them down?”

General Lewis shook his head.  “They’re too large to deflect, not with the time we have left, and breaking them up would be difficult without resorting to nuclear missiles.  We’ll try to hit them, try to shatter them, but I don’t think that we can actually succeed.”

“Issue the warnings,” the President repeated, his voice showing that he knew all too well that it would be futile.  “We have to try to keep people alive.  General, how long until the first missile impacts?”

“Around five hours,” General Lewis said.  “In ten hours, they all will have impacted.”

***
Hours passed in nightmarish succession.  The first asteroid came down and struck the Indian Ocean, sending waves of water blasting out across the ocean.  American bases in Saudi Arabia and Iraq reported on the effects of the strike as the tidal waves marched northwards, sweeping across the Arabian Peninsula and drowning Mecca, Medina, Basra, Tehran…they battered at the shores of Indian and Pakistan, washing the work of human hands away.

As shockwaves echoed around the globe, the second asteroid came down, washing away Taiwan, China’s coastline, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia, damaging and destroying the lives of thousands of people.  The waves marched westwards to America, finally slamming into the Pacific coastline; they watched cameras in San Francisco as the waves swelled up and raced across the city, destroying as they marched onwards.

Two more asteroids impacted in quick succession, hitting the coastlines of South America, Africa and Europe, while the Mediterranean Sea rose up and drowned the southern European counties and North Africa.  Britain and the north survived, for a while; Britain was hit by some lessening waves from the strike in the Atlantic Ocean.  The impact in Russia struck the ground; shockwaves raced out with the impact of a thousand nuclear bombs, smashing human constructions for thousands of kilometres.

The Earth rang like a bell.

General Lewis, aided by the President’s declaration of martial law, strove to prevent chaos…but he was already too late.  Chaos was spreading across America, and it seemed hopeless as millions of people were trying to flee the coastlines.  Even the east coast, which had almost completely avoided damage, was boiling with thousands of people, trying to escape other strikes.

“The ecological effects of the asteroid strikes will be devastating in the next few months,” the National Science Advisor said.  “In some places, without proper government or supervision, the death rate will almost be total; we have only fragmentary communication from forces in Iraq and we have lost contact completely with forces in Central Asia.”

“We have also lost contact with Russia,” Ambassador Petrovich said.  The Russian’s face was pasty right; the maths about what would happen were very clear about Russia’s likely fate.  “Can you aid us?”

“I don’t know if we can even help ourselves,” Rollins admitted.  The Secretary of the Interior had been in a bunker near San Francisco; nothing had been seen or heard of him, or indeed anyone from the bunker.  “We have radio contact with military units on the west coast; they report considerable devastation and deaths…and thousands of people fleeing the coast.”

“I don’t blame them,” the President said.  He looked very old.  “Can we help them?”

“I don’t know,” the National Science Advisor admitted.  “There is so much additional water vapour in the air that it is almost certain to have a major effect on the farming process, perhaps even knocking the ecology completely out of line.  The refugees are not going to help matters, sir; they’ll start fighting with people who do have food and the people who do have food won’t want to give it up.  There’ll be dust from the Russian strike drifting around the planet; anything could happen, anything at all.”

He sighed.  “Bottom line, we’re looking at thousands of millions of deaths, world-wide,” he concluded.  “The population of the Middle East will have been seriously reduced already and the collapse of society will only make it worse.  It’s going to start raining soon, Mr President, and that will last for quite some time.  We have to act now.”

The President stared at the table.  “People will start fleeing north from Mexico,” he said.  His voice was almost dead.  “People will start fleeing from Russia, from China, from North Africa…”  He laughed bitterly.  “So much for the terrorists from the Middle East.”

“Israel is gone,” General Lewis said flatly.  “The waves in the Mediterranean will have swept them right out of existence.  We might be one of the remaining kernels of human life after a few years of suffering; Canada might end up the superpower of the next few hundred years.”

The President straightened up.  “General, coordinate with FEMA and Atlantic Command,” he said.  “I want to save as many American citizens as possible.  You have complete authority to do what you have to do, starting with calling up all of the remaining reserves and military people; we are going to need all of them just to keep order.”

He took a breath, but the pager buzzed before he could continue.  “Mr President, we have a tight-beam laser signal from orbit,” Captain Denton said.  His voice was very grim.  “It’s the aliens.”

“I see,” the President said.  He stood up.  “General, you might as well listen to this, and then we can start trying to salvage something from the disaster.”

General Lewis followed the President out of the door into the communications centre.  He was worried about the President’s mental state; the man had just…presided over America’s greatest disaster, ever.  The Civil War had killed hundreds of thousands over four long hard years; the alien attack would have killed upwards of a billion humans by now…and billions more in the next few years.

“Out,” the President said shortly to the communications technician, who took one look at the President’s face and obeyed at once.  The President studied the console and tapped the buttons, opening the communications channel.  “This is the President,” he said.  “Robert, is that you?”

Robert Zeke’s voice was broken; General Lewis could hear the heartbreak in his voice…and he realised that Zeke would have seen everything from high orbit.  He wondered what it had looked like from so high, perhaps even a form of artwork – if one ignored the thousands of millions of deaths.

“Yes, Mr President,” Zeke said.  A wave of static washed over his voice; the communications were already being disrupted by the effects of the asteroid strikes.  Nuclear war would have been worse…and he wondered, absently, if the aliens had started to add to the chaos by jamming human communications.  It hardly seemed necessary.

The president leaned forward.  “My God, Robert, what happened?”

There was a long pause.  “My…hosts wish me to inform you that such punishment is the natural reward for attempting to resist humanity’s proper place in the universe,” Zeke said.  The bitterness in his voice was growing.  “Mr President, I saw it all; there’ll be nothing left of Russia, or Afghanistan…”

“They’ll survive, if anyone will,” General Lewis said, remembering battles with the godforsaken Taliban.  “Human cockroaches, them.”

The President ignored him.  His voice was defeated.  “What do they want?”

Zeke’s voice seemed to falter for a long chilling moment.  “They are demanding your immediate and unconditional surrender,” he said.  He paused again.  “They are warning you that if humanity doesn’t surrender, they will bring more asteroids and keep dropping them until humanity surrenders or is exterminated.  They have the entire asteroid belt to use as their weapons; they are demanding that humanity surrender and provide a united government to talk to them.”

The President laughed hysterically.  “The United Nations will have been drowned in New York,” he said.  “I can’t speak for the rest of the world, don’t they know that?”

“They will be expecting you to do that,” Zeke said.  “Mr President, I don’t think that there is any other choice.”

The President looked up at General Lewis, who reluctantly nodded.  “We will do our best,” he said.  “What are their terms?”

Zeke’s voice sounded a confused mix of bitterness and relief.  “They want humanity to remain on Earth,” he said.  “They want us to set up a spaceport somewhere; they are prepared to trade some items with us in exchange for services.  They are not interested in reparations, perhaps because we have nothing that they want, but they do insist on their supremacy being recognised.”

“It will be,” the President said.  His voice lightened slightly.  “When will you be returning to Earth?”

There was another pause.  “They told me that they will be dropping us back to America within the week,” Zeke said.  “I’ll see you soon.”

General Lewis muttered a suggestion in the President’s ear.  “Ask them a question,” the President said.  “Would it be possible for us to use new satellites to help with the clean-up, or can we have access to some of their observation satellites?”

General Lewis smiled.  He hadn’t thought of the second option.  There was life in the President yet.  “They say no to the former,” Zeke said, after a moment.  “They said that they might allow us some access later to their own satellites, but they’re not sure at all.”

He coughed.  “They want your surrender,” he said, again.  “Mr President?”

“I surrender, on behalf of America,” the President said.  His voice was tired, defeated, filled with self-loathing.  “We will do as they want.”

The connection broke.  The President slumped in his chair.  “You had no choice,” General Lewis said.  He cursed himself, he cursed his mistake, and he cursed the aliens.  So few of humanity had truly dreamed that they were staring down the barrel of racial extinction.  “Mr President…?”

“You know what needs to be done,” the President said.  “Go; see to it, do what you can for the country.”  His voice darkened.  “Save as many as you can, General; they don’t deserve to suffer for my mistakes.”

General Lewis saluted and left the room.

Behind him, a single shot rang out.

Epilogue

The alien re-entry craft was no different from any human spacecraft; they launched it into the atmosphere with little ceremony, aimed directly at the new centre of American government.  Hanson felt very weak as the gravity rose; the aliens hadn’t bothered to make them exercise and the gravity had been non-existent without the drive being active.  As the craft plummeted into the atmosphere, he felt the temperature rise – this must have been how the first astronauts felt during their return to Earth.

The craft jerked as the parachutes deployed; their fall slowed as they came nearer to the ground.  Jane was praying with silent intensity as the craft finally came to the ground, and crashed with enough force to jar them all.  The gravity field returned to normal; he staggered as he tried to unstrap himself and stand up.  He could hear voices outside the craft as he pulled himself to his feet, opening the hatch and looking out…onto a sky that was dark and cloudy.

“Captain Hanson?”  A voice asked.  Several Special Forces troopers had deployed around the crash site; he could see crowds gathering outside the perimeter.  For a long moment, he wondered if they had somehow crashed in Sudan or somewhere else poor – the crowds looked hungry and angry…angry at them.

“That’s me,” Hanson said, as Zeke pulled himself out of the craft.  Hanson had his first chance to take a proper look at it; the craft was a blunt cone, nothing else – and hardly reusable.  The aliens hadn’t intended to introduce humanity to anything that could be used to hurt them.  “What’s happened here?”

“This is one of the refugee camps,” the officer commanding said.  His voice was very grim.  “People fled to here and…we have to try to feed them all.”

On cue, thunder crashed through the sky.  “It’s going to start raining again,” the officer said, as a helicopter came to rest nearby.  “Are you up for a short journey?”

“I think so,” Hanson said, wishing that he had a walking stick.  Earth seemed so…restrictive when he had spent nearly seven months in space.  “Where are we going?”

“NORAD,” the officer said.  A large armoured troop carrier rumbled up to them; the soldiers helped them all to climb into the vehicle.  “The higher-ups want to talk to you.”

The journey was nightmarish; Hanson saw enough of the camp to scar his soul.  The camp looked like something from the Third World, not America; the handful of soldiers hardly seemed enough to maintain control, or even to help people to help themselves.  The soldiers spread out, escorting them – or guarding them; he wondered what had really happened down on Earth.

The rains started to fall, pouring down in torrents that he had never seen before in his life, splashing down and running over the convoy.  “The rains are everywhere,” the officer said, very grimly.  “The border between Mexico and Texas is a warzone; thousands of people are fleeing north and others are trying to head south…and all hell has broken loose.  We might not even survive as a country when the shortages really start to bite.”

They passed the rest of the trip in silence.

Cheyenne Mountain was almost as it had been the last time he had visited, what felt like thousands of years ago, but there were thousands of trailers and emergency housing units scattered around the nearby Colorado Springs; the small town had suddenly found itself the centre of the United States.  The rain kept pouring down; he was somehow unsurprised to see dozens of collection units and greenhouses, trying to grow food away from the rain.

“They say that there’s famine in Europe,” the officer said.  He still hadn’t bothered to introduce himself.  They passed though the security and into the tunnel, walking down the long corridor that seemed – somehow – darker and more oppressive than it had seemed, years ago.  “The North African and Arab ragheads are all dead; the remaining soldiers in Iraq will be coming home soon.”

The scale of the disaster was beyond Hanson’s ability to grasp.  Speaker’s parting words – “this is what happens to those who don’t know their place” – echoed in his ears; the aliens had come, they’d seen…and they’d conquered.  They could have exterminated humanity if they had wanted to…and both sides knew it.  Even with what Speaker had termed a limited strike, the death toll would be in the billions – humans crushed, drowned, or dying of starvation after the impact’s secondary effects echoed around the world.

Zeke spoke for the first time in days.  “Do we have any contact with the rest of the world?”

“The Brits are supposed to be holding out,” the officer said.  “They have problems of their own – and they have starvation problems.  The Russkies seem to be all dead – we haven’t heard anything from them for weeks.”

Hanson said nothing.  The officer led them into the main control room…and then into a waiting room.  “Captain Hanson, you are to see the General,” the officer said, and pointed towards a door.  “The rest of you are to wait here.”

Hanson nodded and tapped once on the door, before stepped through into the office and coming face to face with General Lewis.  The General wore, surprisingly enough, a basically civilian outfit, with his rank stripes sewn onto the shoulder.  His face looked dreadfully tired; Hanson felt his heart go out to him.

“General,” he said.  It had been so long.  “I have a lot to tell you.”

“I imagined that you would,” General Lewis said.  For the next hour, Hanson told him everything that had happened from First Contact to watching the bombardment of Earth.  “I still can’t see what we would have done differently…”

Hanson nodded.  That was the curse; they could have changed nothing, even after knowing what might happen – and had happened.

“There’s much to be done down here,” General Lewis said.  “I’m Vice President now – the new President is in the other command post, working to coordinate the relief effort.”  He waved a hand at the map of America; red streaks covered much of the coastline and even some interior locations.  “The country is breaking down, Dale; we have far too many fires to put out and only a few firemen.”

Hanson winced.  “There’s going to be real trouble when the food supplies start to run out,” General Lewis continued.  “We’ve even had reports of cannibals – cannibals, for god’s sake – active across the United States…and the Mexican invasion doesn’t help either.  Much of the Navy was damaged by the tidal waves; we lost several carriers and dozens of smaller ships in the bombardment.”

He shook his head.  “We’re in serious trouble, Dale,” he concluded.  “It’s going to be years before we can recover, but then…”

He looked up.  “Then we will have to take action against them,” he said.  His eyes glittered with a new fire.  “Then we will have to teach them that human lives don’t come cheap.  That will be your job, as the person with the most experience of them; you will coordinate the attempt to develop a newer, better, defence.”

Hanson stood up to leave.  In the future, perhaps humanity would have a chance, but for the moment all of mankind’s resources had to be focused on bare survival.  Only one piece of knowledge had come to the fore of human thought – and it was a bitter pill to swallow indeed.

The Earth – and humanity – belonged to the aliens.

The End…