The AI then zoomed into one of them near the north-eastern horizon, the green glow of Demeter above the curvature of Exelon. Flashes of blue-white light could be seen in the sky above what was presumed to be an alien facility or city. These lasted several seconds before flashes emanating from the ground joined the distant, faint fireworks display. Pinta zoomed in slightly further, now at the limits of her optics. In the next two minutes of the light show, several orangey flares rose up, lasting five or ten seconds before dimming down to a vague, orange glow. A yellow box popped up around the still on-going blue-white flashes, ‘Probable Weapons Discharge… Type: Particle Beam’. Another yellow box appeared around the surface lights where the orange glow was now almost imperceptible, ‘Possible combustion’. Over the next few minutes the flashes above the ground died down to nothing and eventually, a few minutes later, the ground weapons followed suit. Pinta’s view went back to the last known position of Santa Maria, but there was nothing of the probe to see anymore.
No one spoke for what seemed like a very long time.
Trantham sat there thinking about the implications of what looked like a raid on a surface settlement or base on Exelon. Particle beam weapons? He’d need to research what they were exactly. What he did know was that he’d never heard of them being used by any of Earth’s militaries. The only place he had seen them was in sci-fi movies. But the one thing he was sure of was that if Pinta had assessed them as particle beam weapons then there must, at least theoretically, be a concept that had been thought of by humans at some point. The limited number of space-weapons platforms on and around Earth used either lasers, mass-drivers, cannons or missiles. Missiles and cannons were only considered useful for slow-moving or proximate targets. The velocities in space were orders of magnitude higher than targets in terrestrial conflicts. If fast enough or far enough away bullets and missiles could simply be avoided. Also, interception systems had come a long way. The Alliance Citadel had projectile interception lasers, mainly used to vaporize orbital debris, but also to guard against enemy action.
The kinetic energy weapon on-board the Citadel was for ground or naval targets and had been useful in obliterating terrorist training camps a number of times. Its projectiles were too fast for any Earth-based enemies to intercept. It could accelerate solid projectiles towards the target faster than an incoming meteorite and with a mass that interception systems could not handle. The fleet of fifty fighter drones, codenamed Vipers, housed on the Citadel were artificially intelligent and more highly manoeuvrable than a piloted fighter could ever be. They could be piloted remotely from Earth or space in joystick mode, but this was reserved for prospective missions requiring real time human decision making rather than inhumanly fast reactions. They were designed to get in close to the enemy and destroy the target with an electronically-fired cannon shooting depleted uranium rounds. Although they were not fitted with cloaking fields, they were stealthy to a degree and hard to detect on conventional radar. Their armour and laser-diffusing coating made them able to resist a limited level of enemy fire. An internal weapons bay was large enough to take up to three missiles or one nuclear device with a one-megaton yield. Space superiority was the Vipers’ primary mission.
Robert Hartmann, probe construction lead, spoke first. “And there we were thinking Avendano was a nice, peaceful neighbourhood...”
“Yes, that’s what we all wanted to believe. Assuming there is one dominant species in the system, like we are here, then they would have had to subdue at least some competing species, as we have. That may have been recently or a long time ago,” explained Professor Hawkins. “And we know what that means…”
“Explain,” asked Trantham.
“It means that some level of violence at some point during the dominant species’ ascendancy was to be expected. The only real question that remained – at least until we saw what looked like warfare – was whether or not the Aliens had reached some kind of peace consensus within their ranks. We’ve not managed it here on Earth, so we can’t really claim the moral high ground if we were ever to consider trying to claim it,” said Hawkins, arguing his case persuasively, although slightly too philosophically for Trantham.
“I can't disagree with you, Prof Hawkins, but I think we need to concentrate on more practical matters. It six o’clock now and I think we’d better widen the discussion here,” said Trantham.
“Who are you thinking of, Will?” asked Townsley.
“The military, Sarah. I’m going to give General McIver a call right now. He needs to brief the WESTFOR joint chiefs at the Pentagon and possibly the president and other heads of state,” he announced.
Although the Western Global Alliance military – WESTFOR – had a, primarily Space Force presence at its headquarters in Seattle, the Pentagon had become not only the US centre of military power, but the entire alliance’s with another centre in Brussels. General McIver was the top military officer commanding the Space Force and he sat on the WESTFOR Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Space Force was the alliance’s fourth arm of the military, with the Marines being considered part of the Navy.
The Avendano adventure now needed to be at the centre of the military’s metaphorical radar screen after this morning's revelations from Pinta. First, Santa Maria and her FTL-drive falling into alien hands and now evidence of warfare with weapons beyond human technology. This could be a dangerous situation and Trantham knew it.
The recording from Pinta was paused while Trantham removed his VR headset to call General McIver who was just settling into his morning coffee in his office at the Pentagon three time zones away. The time was 9am eastern.
“Good morning, this is McIver…”
Trantham explained what they’d seen. An emergency session of the Space Force Command Council, chaired by McIver, would be called. Pinta was to continue her mission under civilian control for the time being, but Trantham knew there was a distinct possibility of it becoming a military mission instead of one of exploration.
***
September 21, 2061 WESTFOR Space Force Command Council Session, The Pentagon
Sarah Townsley from WGA Mission Control presented a summary of all they’d seen remotely from headquarters in Seattle. She explained how they feared that the probe, Santa Maria, had been spirited away by the aliens for suspected reverse-engineering; evidence of warfare on the gas giant Demeter's moon, Exelon; probable deployment of particle beam weapons; at least one orbital military shipyard with two destroyers under construction and other sightings of suspected warships. The scale of the aliens’ space presence and probable military superiority boded ill for humanity if they turned out to be hostile and managed to exploit the FTL drive they’d captured. No form of first contact package had yet been transmitted from either probe and the downing of Santa Maria by a suspected computer virus put there by the Russians was an unfortunate way to announce humanity’s presence in Avendano. There was no way to know yet how the aliens had interpreted it.
“Thank you, Ms Townsley,” said McIver, turning from the viewscreen at the end of the conference room to his six uniformed Space Force colleagues and several more junior officers sitting behind—their aides. “Please stay with us in case we have any technical questions.”
“Okay, will do, General,” said Townsley, her image remaining on the viewscreen.
“Now gentlemen, we have some decisions to make. But first I’d like to hear your assessment of the situation. I think it’s safe to say that we have no clearly hostile intent from the aliens towards us since all they’ve seen of us was Santa Maria entering their planet’s ocean and fishing her out. So it’s hard to say one way or the other how they view us. So let’s assume for a second they do turn out hostile and do manage to replicate FTL drive. How much of a threat does this present militarily?” asked McIver, searching from face to face until the clean cut, thirty-eight-year-old, Colonel Smith took a breath and began, brushing his side-parted red hair off his forehead slightly.
“Sir, the information we’ve b
een given about their warship capability is very scant, but if the ships that Ms Townsley detailed are armed then they’d probably wipe the floor with us. But, let me ask Ms Townsley a question about the FTL drive…”
“Go ahead, Colonel,” said Townsley.
“On the workings of the FTL, if the aliens used the drive from Santa Maria and installed it for use on one of those huge destroyers, three-hundred metres long, would it be able to jump to Earth? Or does the size of the FTL drive need to fit the ship?” asked Colonel Smith, looking quizzically at the viewscreen and Townsley.
“That’s a key question, Colonel, and you’d be right in thinking that the size of the drive must fit the ship. The FTL drive emits a focussed stream of gravitons to a point at which it creates a sphere. This sphere will appear as totally black—you may have seen the star field or background black out momentarily on the TV pictures of the probe transits. Anyway, the power of the FTL drive essentially determines the size of this sphere and this is the tunnel through which a transiting object must pass. They tried passing larger objects through smaller spheres during lab testing and can you guess what happened?” asked Townsley.
“Wouldn’t go through?” guessed Colonel Smith.
“Half right, Colonel. Objects would go through but only after they’d been ripped to pieces on their way into the sphere. Similar things have happened on oil rigs and construction sites to poor workers unfortunate enough to be pulled through a small hole while attached to a man-riding cable,” explained Townsley, a little too graphically for Colonel Smith’s taste.
“Okay, thanks for the explanation,” he said.
“But couldn't they just construct a big FTL drive, generate a transit sphere big enough for the largest ship then sail their whole navy through it?” asked the intelligent looking Major-General Guardini, his rapid speech showing the barest hints of an Italian accent. Guardini originated in the Italian air force but was now one of WESTFOR’s rising senior officers, valued for his experience and sharpness of thought.
“That is possible, yes sir. But, of course, it’d be a one-way trip unless the drive was attached to one of the ships,” said Townsley.
“But,” Guardini countered, “we use exactly that method with our probes and our Gemstone messengers don’t we, Ms Townsley?”
“You’re right, we do,” she conceded.
“So conclusion: they only need to make one drive per fleet and could simply scale up the Santa Maria FTL drive. Correct?”
“Yes, no reason to prevent scale up as I understand it, Major-General,” she replied.
“So what I’ve heard is that we’d be no match if what look like warships come to Earth. But we can’t say for sure as we have no idea of the potency and number of weapons or even a comprehensive survey of number of ships and other weapons platforms. We also have no idea about our ability to defend against their weapons or their ability to deal with ours. From their general space capability we believe that, given time, the aliens look like they have the technical capability to reverse engineer the FTL drive,” summarised McIver. There were nods and no dissenting voices around the table. “I feel we’re going around in circles here and trying to solve an equation with too many missing variables. The real key thing we need to find out next is the aliens’ inclination towards us: hostile, friendly or somewhere in between.”
“Only one way to do that, sir,” said Colonel Smith, “Transmit the first contact package ASAP.”
“My thoughts precisely, Colonel,” agreed McIver.
Murmurs of agreement and nods went around the table. A red-faced, older man – General Kline – with the appearance of the famous Gulf War One General, ‘Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, asked, sitting forward in his seat and looking at each officer around the table in turn. “So what about trying to recover Santa Maria? Has anyone thought about that? I mean, if this is all that’s stopping them getting here then it stands to reason that we should be making every effort to recover our lost property.”
“Do you mean a direct action mission, General Kline?” asked McIver to his most old-school, hawkish colleague.
“Hell yes, sir. That’s exactly what I mean. If all them delicate electronics and systems can jump using the FTL then surely soldiers can too. Am I correct, Ms Townsley?”
“Testing has been done on animals in the lab and they showed no ill-effects, General. But it’s not cleared as safe for manned missions as yet,” said Townsley.
“Well, that’s civilian missions Ms Townsley. Space Force has different rules and we base it on the balance of needs as well as safety. I’d say it’s an imperative, sir,” proposed General Kline to McIver.
“Okay, General Kline, I hear what you’re saying but we need to try the first contact before making covert incursions that could be interpreted as hostile. We’ve got to at least try to go in with good intentions and try to open a dialog.”
“I understand, sir. What I am proposing is to get resources together to have that as one of our options; in fact our primary initial plan,” he replied.
“I second that, General,” said Major-General Guardini, looking at his boss, General McIver.
The instruction to Sarah Townsley for the on-going civilian mission was that they should recall Pinta to initiate the first contact package at the time they deemed most appropriate. The timing was a matter for the Mission Control team to decide in Seattle. The Space Force Command Council spent the next hours hammering out the scenarios they would start planning for—FTL covert recovery, alien recon detection and denial, large-scale Earth defence and the nuclear option. The nuclear option was a controversial last choice option but they needed to consider it just in case.
General Fred McIver closed the session and walked to his office, closing the door. He sat back and thought through how he truly hoped that the aliens turned out to be peaceful. His livelihood and purpose was the military and keeping his family and other civilians safe, but for the first time he felt that the Alliance, even with Russian and Chinese help, would be hopelessly out of its depth should the worst happen. So he sat back, closed his eyes and thought of his two little grandchildren, wishing for a peaceful encounter fifteen light years away.
***
McIver briefed the WESTFOR joint chiefs at the Pentagon later that day and the respective secretaries of defence briefed their national leaders. The plan was endorsed; the plan was set.
Chapter Thirteen
September 24, 2061 Western Global Alliance Mission Control, Seattle
Spending so much time hooked up to the recorded virtual world of the Pinta probe made Mission Control Director William Trantham feel like he’d visited the Avendano system in person. He’d chatted to his colleagues about this in the office café that morning and they’d had much the same experience. Townsley had confessed she’d had dreams of floating through the distant star system. They’d all spent long hours viewing the Emerald then Topaz findings. Trantham felt shaken to the core at the perilous situation they’d uncovered. It had been escalated up the chain of the civilian and military commands. The president, as well as leaders of the other WGA nations, were all aware and supported the way forward. The public and the other world powers were not informed—not fully anyway. Rightly or wrongly, it was felt that it would be better to avoid panic and speculation before the full picture had become clear. Footage sent by Pinta with the Topaz Gemstone had been cleared for release, but only a sanitised version showing nothing of the suspected space battle on Exelon or the Santa Maria find. She was simply reported as still missing.
After the plan endorsement, they could now instruct Pinta to transmit the first contact package. Except it’s no longer a first contact package, thought Trantham for the umpteenth time as he considered the downed Santa Maria probe. A set of radio messages on the 21cm wavelength would be broadcast from Pinta within the Avendano system. The 21cm wavelength was a special wavelength that would be instantly recognisable by any technologically advanced civilization because it is the frequency emitted by hydrogen mo
lecules when excited. And there was no doubting that the nameless aliens of Avendano were technologically advanced, arguably more so than humanity; although their apparent ignorance of FTL technology seemed to be at least one exception. Perhaps there were other techs humans had but they didn’t. Accompanying the first contact messages would be a capsule with a radio beacon built in that would be released along with the broadcast. Hopefully, the aliens would be able to use the pictographic information in the capsule to decipher simple English as well as the radio broadcasts.
Pinta had been recalled uneventfully and given the instruction to return to Gaia orbit in stealth mode, assess the situation, gather more data and try to sight Santa Maria again. Then, all going well, she was to disengage her cloaking field, start transmitting the first contact broadcasts then release the language capsule towards the nearest alien space station at low speed. In Trantham's opinion, it was risky. Their second and last remaining probe could be lost. But he knew that to show good faith it was vital that the Pinta probe stayed visible and non-threatening once the broadcasts began. She was due to send back a Gemstone messenger probe, Onyx, after the first contact package had been sent and there had been some time for a possible response. With any luck, the Aliens would respond, even if it was in an indecipherable way.
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