Chapter 11
Surprise! Surprise!
There had been a mad scramble in the decision making circles of all the three human missions, as suddenly the timetables got upset and the intentions of the aliens became hazier. Up until now it could not be said with certainty that the aliens had noticed us or our approaching ships, although any advanced being like them should have the technology to see the ships.
Humans could definitely see the alien ship. Even if the aliens were blind, they could surely sense the multitude of radio waves and lasers that was being flashed on them, as human scanners were continuously lighting them up.
Now it was confirmed beyond doubt that the aliens had noticed the human ships and were heading towards them. Yet the aliens had made no attempt at communication at all. What did it say about them? Either they are incredibly incompetent at communicating, which seemed unlikely for such an advanced species, or their intentions cannot be that good.
If they consider humans beneath their efforts to communicate, it cannot be a good sign for us. If their intentions are unconditionally hostile, then they have no incentive in trying to communicate, unless trickery is part of their ammunition.
The Sentinel planners had to make a call on their disposition as they passed the alien craft. They were still loathe to opening an unprovoked attack. How effective the attack would be against such a large ship was another issue altogether. In the end it was decided that they will still have weeks after the alien ship passes Sedna – 1 to decide the course of action. They will wait and see how the alien ship behaves towards Sedna – 1.
There was however a deep unanswered question, which no one dared to ask right now. What if the alien ship did nothing and just passed Sedna – 1? Would Sentinel still let the alien ship pass itself and have a clear shot towards earth?
It had been decided that the trajectory of the Sedna – 1 would be kept such that it would pass about 2 Km beside the approaching alien craft. This would give the alien craft ample indication that it was not designed to crash into it, and hopefully it would not be construed as a threat.
However there was no guarantee it would not be considered so. There was no better solution unfortunately if Sedna – 1 was to perform its primary task of getting a closer look at the craft.
The Shaitans however had different plans however, and the human debates on how close they should get became moot. Six hour before the estimated time of passing by the alien craft, Sedna – 1 which was now close enough to pick up reasonably detailed image of the craft from its telescopes noticed a very small explosion on one of the sides of the alien craft.
It was a very minor spark of an explosion, almost like the blowing up of explosive bolts used in old human space crafts to detach a stage of the rocket from another. Soon after the explosion, a secondary thrust exhaust was noticed from the side of the alien craft.
All this had already happened over three hours ago because Sedna – 1 was so far away that it took the signals traveling and the speed of light 3 hours to reach Earth. Now they were simply mute spectators because whatever command they sent to Sedna – 1 would take over three hours to reach it, by which time it would already have passed the alien craft.
The data stream of Sedna – 1 was being streamed live to Houston as well. Except for a small skeleton staff on Sentinel’s watch, everyone was glued to the stream from Sedna – 1.
Jason shouted to the trenches. “People, I want opinion on what just happened.” Someone from the trenches shouted. “Very quick unscientific opinion would be a missile, we are working on analyzing the profile of the burn and trying to estimate its trajectory. The secondary thrust is coming from something which is too small to see. That shouldn’t be a surprise if it a missile. It would be too small to see at this distance.”
Saloni also shouted from the trenches. “I just spoke to Stephan and he agrees they are also thinking on the same lines.”
Jason was puzzled. He knew each and every person who worked in the control room in every shift. “Who the hell is Stephan?” he asked Saloni. Jason was a bit piqued when a lot of Saloni’s colleagues who were standing up looked at her and gave a knowing and naughty smile.
Then one of them spoke up. “That smug handsome German dude who is the third shift controller at Darmstadt.” He said with a wide grin towards Saloni.
“Hey don’t be such an ungrateful jerk Boris. He helped you more than most out here. He helped you get that algorithm that helped you eliminate the jerky motion on servo control of Sentinel!” Saloni retorted back to her colleague.
“And I am grateful to him for his help and to your good offices for convincing him to help.” Boris replied with a bow and an even wider grin. Some of the others were laughing now, and Jason could see Saloni blush.
There was some office dynamics at play here which he was not aware of. He would get to the bottom of it later, right now he knew who Stephan was. He had finally learnt the name of the person he had spoken to from Darmstadt, as they had been caught napping when the aliens unexpectedly shut their engines.
“Ok people, let’s cut the chatter and work on getting some hard data. We need to know what is happening to Sedna – 1. It is very important for the fate of Sentinel.” That got them focused suddenly and they dropped their jokes and banters, and dove back into their analysis and calculations.
Jason walked over to the desk of Clarisse who was closer to his age. He felt most comfortable talking to her about office gossip. He wasn’t that old at 45, but felt old around these kids barely out of college in their late 20s and early 30s, who were manning the trenches. Young they may be, but they were at their sharpest at this age, and that is what was required most in a control room. “What is this business about Saloni? Why were the guys teasing her?”
Clarisse looked up at Jason with disbelieving eyes, then rolled them over before saying. “Really Jason? You don’t know? Jason you are very good at your work. You really are, but when it comes to knowing what’s going around you with people, you have a long way to go. Saloni and Stephan talk to each other for almost the entire 8 hours of their shift.
The ladies room gossip is that they talk to each other even at home for long, and I mean very long. The amazing thing is that they haven’t yet met each other in person yet! Modern day romance I guess. Old timers like you and me wouldn’t understand it. I believe it all started when Saloni took that little speech of yours to heart.
She took it on herself to apologize to Stephan for an insult he had not even witnessed. It must have made quite an impression on him, and he on her, for next you know they were talking to each other all the time the last few months. You must feel proud Mr. Cupid for having kindled a modern romance.”
“Wow” was all Jason could say. So that solves the mystery of how he went from a Euro to Stephan, and why their coordination with Darmstadt was going so smoothly these days. He was glad his little speech had the effect he desired, albeit with unintended but happy consequences.
Jason went back to his seat and was feeling smug himself for he had never played cupid ever before. He hadn’t had too much to do with romance in his life. His own marriage had been a very straight forward affair, and he had never gotten involved with any woman before that. Neither had he taken any interest in anyone else’s romantic affair before, so this feeling was new.
“The thrusters of the secondary object detached from the alien craft is puny compared to their main thrusters. It is also an ion plasma thruster, but too small for a missile even by human standards. It is consistent with the profile of an attitude thruster that a large ship like this would have.
I know this sounds weird, but it seems like one of their attitude thrusters detached from the port side of the ship in an accident and has started firing on its own like a zombie. Darmstadt agrees, they are getting the same results.” Someone from the trenches shouted after 15 minutes.
That was another change. They no longer waited for the shift coordinator, or the operations head to speak to Darmstadt.
Most of them now seem to have an equation with their opposite number there and they spoke directly. Human dynamics works in strange ways.
The secret to the smooth coordination between two large multi-billion dollar organizations lay in a single budding romance! He would have to keep that in mind. It may help in his conspiracy.
As the operations head, he had already informed all the stakeholders of the new development in a single message, and asked them to watch feed from Houston. He expected a few of them present in the city to join in the Control Hall soon. He had also copy-pasted the same message separately to his co-conspirators.
Not just Houston, but also Darmstadt were passive observers now to whatever drama that may unfold for Sedna – 1, so they were all a bit relaxed. After another quarter of an hour, it was Saloni’s turn as the trajectory specialist to get up and shout.
“I can confirm with a more than 90% statistical confidence that the detached object designated Z1 is now 2 Km apart from the alien ship and has stabilized its path at that distance using its thrusters. It is now heading straight for a head on collision with Sedna – 1! Spoken to Darmstadt and they agree, they have come to the same conclusion.”
Damn Jason thought. Doesn’t any of his staff tell him anything before speaking to some Euro in Darmstadt? He bit his lips for calling names, the very speech which had caused this new found coziness, was where he had admonished them for calling names. Practice what you preach Jason. He was curious what the designation of Z1 for the detached object signified. So he asked.
“Someone called it a Zombie and we thought that as the first Zombie spawned by the aliens, it should be designated Z1.” Boris replied with a smirk. Jason could bet that being the joker of the group, it must be Boris himself who had named and designated it Z1. He let it go.
He shifted his mind to the ominous implication of what Saloni had said. Even if Z1 was not a missile, at the speed the two crafts were approaching each other, even an object weighing a Kg or more would punch a hole or smash through the craft either disabling it or destroying it outright. The intentions of the aliens seem to be clear. They want to destroy Sedna – 1!
One thing was clear. If the aliens could so accurately place an object to collide exactly with Sedna – 1, then they couldn’t have mistaken the trajectory of Sedna – 1 as heading towards their ship and threatening them. So the aliens knew that Sedna – 1 was no collision threat to them, and yet they want to destroy it.
Could the aliens fear that Sedna – 1 would launch a missile any time and hence wanted to destroy it? If that was the case, then they should have launched a missile of their own accelerating and meeting the Sedna – 1 far out from the alien ship to destroy Sedna – 1 as soon as possible and as far as possible from the alien ship.
Z1 was drifting alongside the alien ship travelling towards Sedna – 1 at almost the same speed as the alien ship. It was no missile. It looked more like a Kinetic kill weapon designed to smash into Sedna – 1. Jason could be fairly certain that the aliens did not act on some sense of threat from Sedna – 1. They wanted to attack Sedna – 1 unprovoked! Their intentions were getting clearer by the minute.
Z1 itself was a mystery. Why would such advanced aliens have such poor weaponry? By comparison, we primitive humans can design missiles and kinetic kill weapons with far better thrust and acceleration.
Why would the aliens use ion thrusters in their weapon, when a simple solid fuel rocket thruster developed by humans over a hundred years ago could give orders of magnitude better thrust? Solid fuel rockets were so cheap and easy to make into weapons, that even small gangs and terrorists on earth used them in their RPG weapons.
There wasn’t much that Jason or the other mission planners could do as the hours passed, but watch and speculate. It was not as if they could ask Sedna – 1 to change its course. The command wouldn’t have reached it in time.
When the collision of Z1 and Sedna – 1 happened, it was too fast for the eye to see. One moment the alien ship and Z1 respectively seemed far and remote, and the next moment the display feed from Sedna – 1 was gone.
The aliens had remarkable targeting technology, it was far more accurate than humans could achieve yet. The problem in this case for the aliens was that they had been too accurate. They had hit Z1 head on, exactly at the dead center of the front profile of Sedna – 1. This happened to be the only hardened area on the entire surface of Sedna – 1.
It had been designed to be able to take any accidental hits from space rocks on its long journey to the Kuiper belt and through the asteroid belt. Such collisions were extremely unlikely, but when you have a multi-billion dollar probe and decades of effort at stake, you don’t take chances. The hardened shield was however designed to take glancing blows from rocks a few Kg at most in mass. That was the most likely of a very unlikely scenario, so no one needed to engineer the shield beyond that.
The shield was not designed to take a much heavier object coming head on and at a fairly significant speed in the opposite direction. The shield crumpled along the supporting spine of the space craft, as it was designed, but far more violently causing complete damage to the front part of the craft and irretrievable damage to the internal equipment from the snapping spine of the craft, when it could not bend anymore without breaking.
However to an observer wheezing past Sedna – 1 at a distance of 2 Km at high speed, it would look like Sedna – 1 was intact, and at worst had taken some minor damage on its front profile. Sedna – 1 was tumbling wildly from the impact, but that could be easily corrected by a functional spacecraft.
This is the conclusion the AI software on the alien scout ship came to. It deemed its current tactic of ramming the ship with a single attitude thruster head on as a failure. It concluded that the enemy ships were far tougher than the scans on their composition suggested. Thus for the attack on the next passing ship it would have to use more aggressive force.
Chapter 12
Aggressive Tackle
A pall of gloom and dread had set over the control hall of Houston for the next few days. It was Sedna – 1 that had been destroyed, but with the new found bonhomie with the team at Darmstadt, it felt like it was their own ship that had been killed. Everyone in mission control felt for their ships like their own child.
They were filled with dread for what was coming next for the Sentinel. With the intentions of the aliens getting clearer with each approaching day, they were filled with dread for what was coming for earth next. They were getting increasingly convinced that they would not be able to halt the Shaitan ship.
Jason had hardly been in the control hall in the last few days. He had been cooped up in meetings down the hall most of the time. Most of the full time mission planners had flown down to Houston. Only some of the senior most government officials would join on and off via remote conference. Today’s meeting however has someone joining remotely who was the senior most of them all – the president.
“Let me summarize what I have understood, and please interrupt and correct me if I have understood something wrong. Oleg I give you that responsibility. You are good at it anyway, the only person who would not hesitate in interrupting and correcting the president.” The president said with a fond smile looking towards Oleg sitting a few seats away from him.
“We know that the aliens attacked Sedna – 1 unprovoked, and we can conclusively rule out any threat perception on their side. They used an unconventional but effective weapon to do so. If they used the same weapon again on the Sentinel, we have no way to stop it and hence Sentinel will meet the same fate as Sedna – 1.” The president paused to see if anyone had any counter view. Finding none he continued.
“Destroying one human craft unprovoked does not conclusively prove their hostile intention, but it does no good to their peaceful credentials either. As I understand, the overwhelmingly large majority in this group assembled here believes that the alien ship is a potential threat to earth and hence to the United States. I wish I could have such unanimity of view i
n the Senate and the Congress.” The president smiled and many in the group laughed out.
“Fortunately for us, this is an executive decision and does not involve the Congress or the Senate. I am sure some bozo in DC will differ, call it a declaration of war and want congressional approval. But you ladies and gentlemen, leave that worry to me. It is my burden to carry. As it happens I agree with your assessment about their intentions.
I think the time to look for peaceful first contact is over. I am hereby authorizing this group to try and stop the alien ship from approaching any further towards earth with any means available to you.
My staff will be in constant touch with this group to monitor the progress as well as render any assistance my office may be able to provide. Now if there are no questions, then I would not like to keep you from your jobs Ladies and Gentlemen.” There were no questions.
The link to the White house was cut, but most people in the conference room in the control center kept sitting. There was a tense and nervous silence in the room. The president has asked them to stop the alien craft, but no one was confident it could be done by the puny Sentinel when compared to the Goliath size of the alien craft.
They started discussing various strategies weighing the merits and demerits of each. Now that the president had made them weapons free, this was essentially a military planning session. This was however a unique military planning session where most of the offensive ideas came from the engineers and the scientists rather from the military men present.
The military did have their tactical experience added to each strategy, which helped in rationalizing the pros and cons of the strategy. They only discussed offensive strategies. There was no need to discuss defense. This was going to be a suicide mission for Sentinel. The only defense discussed for Sentinel was to ensure that it would live long enough to deliver its offence.
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