by John Ringo
“Holy shit,” he muttered under his breath. At minus sixty minutes from Mars the spacecraft was about 50,000 km from the planet and so the image resolution was about 60 m per image pixel. And at 60 m per pixel all Roger could say was… “Holy shit!”
“Roger, am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Dr. Guerrero asked, pointing at a section of long straight lines interlaced in a gridlike pattern. Years at the NRO had trained him to notice artificial features in space reconnaissance imagery and Ronny recognized what he was seeing. But he couldn’t believe it.
“Roads perhaps? Or maybe high-rise buildings? But, these things are a couple hundred meters wide! I don’t understand what I’m seeing yet. The scale is just too… large,” Roger replied.
The next image in the sequence had begun downloading and thus far the mission was going as according to plan. The currently downloading image was acquired at 13,000 km from Mars with a resolution of about 20 m per image pixel. Roger had the raw data displayed as it was downloaded. The first few rows of the image filled in across the screen as the mission timeline ticked by. With no post-processing it was hard to determine what they were seeing, but it appeared to be a cityscape or industrial center, but very, very large.
“How could objects this big be manufactured from Martian soil so quickly and across the entire planet?” Alan asked over Roger’s shoulder.
“Dunno?” Roger said, stumped. “Magic.”
“Any sufficiently advanced technology…” Alan replied.
“Yeah,” Roger muttered. “That kind of magic.”
“Maybe we’ll understand it better when the image is finished and we can clean it up some.” Ronny scratched his head and took a sip from the Styrofoam coffee cup in front of him. “But, it looks like a civilization. A big civilization. That just… sprang up.”
“How much longer do we have to wait to get the rest of this 20 meter resolution?” Alan asked.
“Well, it’s been downloading about fifteen minutes or so. It’ll take about another thirty. I’m gonna grab a Coke, I’ll be right back.”
Roger stretched and stood from his chair. He pulled the headset off and rolled his head left then right. Tense didn’t begin to cover it — his neck felt like a steel wire.
“Mission Command, Watchdog reset on HGA requested. I’ve got an extreme load on the high-gain dish gimbals.” The C DH console rider shouted over the mike, loud enough for Roger to hear it all the way across the control room.
“Mission Command, we’ve got an Attitude Determination and Control Systems Alert. The star trackers are giving rapid angular acceleration of the spacecraft.” Another console report came in. “Momentum wheels are spinning erratic and the ACS thrusters have fired.”
Then multiple alerts at once were being reported. Roger sat back down and donned his headgear.
“Roger that, Watchdog reset. I’m showing no contact with Percival. I repeat… no contact with Percival. Has anybody got anything on their monitors?”
“Low bandwidth telemetry shows that multiple Watchdog software and hard resets were triggered. No further telemetry from the LGA is being received,” the C DH console operator said.
Roger waited patiently for reports from all consoles, but he was not at all happy with what he was hearing.
“Nothing from the low-gain antennas?”
“Negative, Roger.”
The final assessment was that contact with the probe had been lost.
“Okay, let’s start up the reconnect protocols and follow the procedures.”
Tom Powell sat back in his chair and made a Jetsons space car noise, blowing air through his pursed lips as he looked at something on his monitor. He muted his mike and turned toward Roger, Alan, and Ronny.
“You know, when I came up with the idea for that ‘Nuke Mars Now’ bumpersticker when all those probes started disappearing, I meant it then, and I reiterate the sentiment now. Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action: NUKE MARS NOW! I knew everybody should have listened to me!”
“Why?” Alan asked.
“Well, I’ve already compiled the alert signals — there weren’t that many of them — and the last one was of massive spacecraft bus structural integrity loss. The first alerts were from the exterior boxes, then they moved structurally inward to that final alert. All this took place in about a second or so. It looks to me like the spacecraft was dismantled from the outside inward. Fast. Something took it apart at a relative velocity of about 15 km/s to the planet. I mean, something flew up to it, matched velocity with it, then ripped it apart.”
“Tom, don’t jump to conclusions,” Alan said with a shrug. “Even if it flew apart, couldn’t they — whoever ‘they’ are — have just shot it down — not that that’s any better mind you — or couldn’t the spacecraft just’ve failed. I mean it could have just hit a micrometeorite or something.”
Roger looked at the big mission clock on the overhead screen. The mission time display told him that the telemetry commands sent back to the Mars probe should be getting there in about eight more minutes. Be patient, he thought to himself.
“Sure,” Tom argued. “But I don’t think that’s what happened. The data doesn’t support it. Nuke Mars Now!”
“Tom,” Roger said quietly.
“Yeah?” the rocket scientist replied angrily.
“It’s on the table. Now shut up.”
The eight minutes passed, then another ten, then another thirty and no response came back from Percival. More command signals were sent out — still no response.
After hours of searching for signals from the probe, the team finally decided that the spacecraft was lost. Most certainly the folks at the DSN would continue listening for the spacecraft for days, but as it stood at the moment, reestablishing contact seemed unlikely.
Roger and Dr. Guerrero had continued to check systems, talk to team members and just plain wait. The two of them had been holed up in the HOSC support room for more than twenty-two hours and it was time one of them said what they both had been afraid to. Roger rubbed his eyes, then yawned. He turned to the DDNRO who was adding another packet of sweetener to his coffee cup.
“Well, Ronny, it looks like somebody didn’t want us getting any closer to Mars.”
Chapter 8
“Mr. President, Joint Chiefs, advisors.” Ronny Guerrero began the debriefing of the top advisors and leaders of the United States of America. The briefing was held in the secure room just down the hall from the Oval Office and was at the highest security protocols. Ronny had completed the mission that he had been asked to do and had done it well. The mission was as successful as it could have been. Success, however, was a bit moot at this point. Ronny had to tell the President of the United States what they had discovered and that the discovery might mean the end of the human civilization. The Mars mission was an easier task.
“Although we lost all contact with the Mars ISR probe, we can report that the mission was a success to some degree. We were able to piece together the timeline of events and the details of the mission and data collected are shown in the classified final report you have in front of you.” Ronny held up a copy of the Neighborhood Watch final report.
“Analysis of the alert messages in the telemetry data from the probe suggests that at 1 minute and 4 seconds after reaching its closest approach altitude of about 54 kilometers at a Mars-relative velocity of about 15 kilometers per second the spacecraft was completely destroyed. All systems were functioning properly and no unusual loads were being created by any of the spacecraft systems. Then within a period of less than a second the spacecraft was lost. This at first appears to suggest that the spacecraft was, for want of a better term, ‘shot down,’ that is, destroyed in an act of immediate and catastrophic destruction. The spacecraft was well above the atmosphere and a micrometeor impact would not have been as catastrophic. An analysis of the sequence of alerts suggests that the spacecraft was pulled apart from the outer periphery equipment inward to the spacecraft str
ucture. In other words, something dismantled it in about a second.” Ronny flipped through the report in front of him to the data section.
“If you’ll turn to the data section, you’ll find there is more startling information. We were able to capture a complete image with 60 meters per pixel resolution and a partial image of 20 meters per pixel resolution before contact was lost with the spacecraft. The imagery was obtained by the spacecraft and downloaded just before its destruction and it shows the change in the surface of Mars.”
Ronny flicked his laser pointer at the reconnaissance image on the screen.
“There are vast grids and infrastructure like textures and structures on scales of tens and hundreds of kilometers. There are several single structures many times larger than the Great Pyramids of Giza. Impact craters as large as cities have been excavated and built upon and their specular content has dramatically increased, suggesting refined materials.
“The general reflectance of the region in the imagery shows that the region is much more specular than Mars should be. The large specular regions suggest shiny, most likely metallic, structures, consisting of synthetic, smoothed minerals or concrete, or glass-covered structures.
“Also, a fractal analysis of the imagery has been conducted and the fractal dimension of these images is that of an artificial landscape.
“In summary, it’s very little doubt that the changes in Mars are due to intelligent design. There are, in fact, now canals, as well as roads and buildings, on Mars.
“Alarmingly, the structures are much larger than human standards and even in Martian gravity must require advanced knowledge of manufacturing principles. Also, these structures must have been constructed in a period of no more than about two years as no changes in Mars were detectable before then. This suggests rapid construction on a planet-wide scale, which is far beyond human capabilities.
“Finally, the Neighborhood Watch team has discussed at great length the data and implications of this occurrence. We have gathered a team of scientists, engineers, mathematicians, exobiologists, cosmologists, and others, and after much debate, it’s our opinion that our new ‘neighbors’ can only be considered as hostile; they first destroyed all of our probes that were already there; second, moved in on a massive scale without contacting us although they knew we were somewhere in the neighborhood due to our probes; and third, they destroyed our ISR probe while they must have been able to realize from its trajectory that it would fly by Mars causing it no harm.
“This conclusion is alarming. The rapid occurrence and large scale of the phenomenon suggest that the implementation was automated and likely mechanized. It’s our best guess that self-replicating automatons would be most suited for this task. This suggests either robots or insectlike culture and capabilities. The most likely candidate description that comes to light is that of Von Neumann probes as described by the Hungarian mathematician John Von Neumann in the previous century.”
“What are Von Neumann probes?” the NSA interrupted.
Ronny paused and caught his breath for a second.
“Well Madam Security Advisor, the mathematician John Von Neumann described that the best approach to interstellar travel would be to send self-replicating robots to the new star system. One or a few robots would land at the new star system and use in-situ resources to replicate until they reached a critical number. This critical number being that which is required to either construct a civilization infrastructure for the real inhabitants that would arrive much later when the new star system has been equipped and ready for occupation or to create more bots to move on. The implications of that are… disturbing.” Ronny paused again.
“Disturbing,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs muttered. “Nice use of understatement, Dr. Guererro. Can I send a couple of nukes now?”
“All in favor say ‘aye,’ ” the NSA responded. “Aye.”
Ronny nodded, acknowledging the comments.
“The worst part, General, is that such automatons would be driven by one of those two goals — replication for further interstellar movement or preparing the new system for colonization. In either case, then we can only assume that Mars is not where they will stop. The Von Neumann probes would use every in-situ resource within a solar system for either goal. The point here being, whether they intend to colonize or simply are ‘passing through,’ there is no indication that they will not do the same thing to Earth that they have done to Mars. Whether their intentions are hostile or simply… uncaring, the damage to the Earth will not be survivable by the human race.
“We suggest tasking the Hubble Space Telescope to look at the spectra and albedos of the outer planets and possibly Kuiper Belt Objects to determine if Mars is the only planet within the Sol system being transformed.
“We also suggest that we begin to prepare for an invasion that could occur at any time. We have no way of knowing or understanding the alien devices’ motivation or timeline. What is the critical mass required before they move to the next target planet? Perhaps the Hubble experiment will give us some insight. Or perhaps they will move from Mars to the Moon first, if we’re lucky. Who knows? We’re not certain of any of these things, but we’re certain that these are aliens. We’re also pretty certain of the Von Neumann probe theory although it could be some sort of biological equivalent. And finally, several of our team members concur with the Chairman: Nuke Mars Now. However, given the scale of the change and the fact that our probe was intercepted well outside of any reasonable engagement range it’s unlikely that we can, in fact, get a nuke onto the ground. Or that any number of nuclear devices would, in fact, help.”
“In other words,” the President said, sighing. “We’re too late.”
* * *
“Sorry I’m late,” Roger said, sitting down at the table in Hooters with a sigh. “Ronny called. He wants us to start using the Hubble to look for more traces in the system.”
“We’re systems engineers,” Alan said, frowning. “Why us?”
“Not we three in particular,” Roger corrected, looking over at Tom with a raised eyebrow. “He wants the group that’s doing it reporting to us. Then I report to Ronny and he sends it on. And we just got Asymmetric Soldier dumped on us, too.”
Project Asymmetric Soldier, from the perspective of the team, might be the critical linchpin of the defense of the world.
Project Asymmetric Soldier was put into play because it was decided that any invasion from space by the phenomenon would be extremely one-sided in the invaders’ favor. Asymmetric Soldier was based on the concept of “asymmetric warfare.” The general idea was to try to fight battles using your strengths against an enemy’s weakness. The concept was much touted by groups that had fought the United States over the years. The known problem with asymmetric warfare was that it rarely worked. The project was already notorious for being referred to by its acronym — AS, pronounced like the name for a male donkey — and various variations.
Asymmetric Soldier was a research, development, and engineering as well as strategic and tactical investigation into how to prepare for the invasion, begin preparations, and search for fast turn-around technologies that could be used against an invasion on a planet-wide scale. While it was probably the only hope of survival of the human race, no one involved, especially given the CASTFOREM data, gave it more than the chance of a snowflake in hell. However, every bit of data they could gather would refine and improve AS’s chance of working.
“Why are you giving me the fish-eye?” Tom asked, frowning. He picked up a wing and tried to get the bone to fall out with a twist, ending up with mashed chicken mess. “I will succeed in this endeavor. As GOD IS MY WITNESS, I WILL FIGURE OUT THE CHICKEN TRICK! If I can figure out the chicken trick, maybe I can figure out… the rest…” he ended with a sigh.
“We’re going to need planetary guys, astrophysicists…You’re from CalTech, you know all those types,” Roger ended with a shrug. He picked up a wing, expertly stripped out the chicken and double-dipped.
&n
bsp; “I seriously need a beer,” Alan said, sighing and reaching for the pitcher. “I thought we could chill for a while. And now we need asshole physicists—”
“My job,” Traci said, slapping his hand away and picking up the pitcher. “And quit bad-mouthin’ my future career. Besides, why do you need an astrophysicist? You guys are systems engineers. What the hell do you know about stars and planets? Nothing, that’s what. You had to get me to convince you the albedo of Mars was changing! Hah. Rocket scientists couldn’t even tell that Mars was changing color until a Hooters girl pointed it out!”
“Funny. But Roger here is really more of a telescope designer than a rocket scientist, although he plays one on TV,” Alan said, giving her a forced smile as he picked up the refilled pitcher.
“Hmm.” Roger grunted; he was made a little bit nervous by the fact that Traci knew so much about what they had been doing. Security matters were still important. Roger started pondering a debriefing scheme or cover to lead Traci away from the Neighborhood Watch line of thinking.
“Why’s everybody so glum? You’re at Hooters!” Traci said, bouncing up and down so she jiggled pleasantly. “And check out my hot and spicies if you need a boost! What happen, somebody cut your funding again?”
“No, funding’s not a problem,” Roger said, looking at her thoughtfully, then over at Tom who was also looking… thoughtful. There was, of course, an alternative to creating a story…
“Traci, honey,” Tom said, seriously, stroking his beard and not even bothering to look at his nominal boss, “how far along are you on your masters… ?”
* * *
“Hweet, Gries!” Captain Sparling half whistled, waggling a finger at the major.
Shane hit the close key on the window showing a new and improved tac-net concept, logged off the secure computer systems, then slid his chair across the corridor to the captain’s cubicle. In the last six months he’d tried to keep in shape by running. But his schedule was such that he knew he was getting swivel-chair spread and a beer gut. He had to get out of this racket, somehow.