Vaz 4: Invaders

by Laurence E. Dahners

  Fourth Officer only nodded.

  “Recalibrate your instruments!” Levon turned, “Second officer, recheck his calibrations and his calculations!”

  Second Officer nodded and headed toward Fourth Officer’s station. This action was carried out readily enough, but Levon did not miss the doubtful glance Second Officer cast in her direction. She wondered whether the crew was becoming mutinous. The hormonal changes that allowed a named prime officer like Levon to dominate her crew should make mutiny nearly impossible. The second officer Levon had killed had probably been able to propose relieving Levon only by focusing on following the directive from the Prenaust. Keeping in mind a directive from the supreme leader of all rendas could have allowed the second officer to begin some hormonal changes of her own.

  Levon rose and headed for her cabin. Even if this alien ship was approaching, Levon would have days before it arrived. During that time, if Levon focused on her need to be dominant and her role as the named prime officer, she could induce even more hormonal changes in herself.

  By the time the aliens arrived she could be indomitable.

  Only a little more than two and a half decidays (6.25 hrs.) had passed when Levon got another call, this time from Second Officer. Levon’s head and shoulders ached from the hormonal changes she’d been able to induce and she really didn’t want to talk to anyone. “What now?!” she barked.

  Second Officer didn’t sound intimidated. He said, “In another centiday (fifteen minutes) the alien ship will be at rest relative to us at a distance of about 26,300 kilofargs (10,000 km). It’s approached us on an oddly and irregularly curving path that I suspect is intended to make it a difficult target for our meteorite deflection system. Likely they’re wary after you had Balan shoot one of the aliens’ other vessels…” Second Officer paused, evidently waiting for Levon to respond. When she didn’t, second Officer continued, “We need to know what you intend to do in regards to this vessel.”

  Levon felt her pulse thrumming with the hormones. Glancing in the mirror she saw her increased musculature—made more evident by induced fat atrophy— the muscles were standing out in bands. I should have done this long ago! She jerked open the door to her cabin and started for the bridge.

  Rob glanced over at Dan Vincent and saw the major was as focused on the screens as he had been. During the approach they’d only been able to bring the smaller telescope located on the bottom of the saucer to bear on the alien ship. Now that they were nearing their 10,000 kilometer closest approach, they had the huge scope from the top of the saucer focused on it as well. The computers were combining the optical images from three telescopes over an extended period to give them a much better picture. “This one’s not designed to land on a planet,” he said

  Dan shook his head, “Nope, that’s a space vehicle.”

  It was obvious just from all the external plumbing. The irregular surface of the aliens’ ship would be disastrous if it entered an atmosphere at any speed. In fact, the whole thing looked like it’d been assembled from large numbers of modules packed in next to one another to form a long slender cylinder. There were no massive rocket nozzles on this structure, though Rob thought he saw a big assembly at one end that might represent a large plasma thruster. The other end looked like something weird was going on, but Rob couldn’t really tell what. “Do you know what’s going on, down on the right end of their ship?”

  Dan shook his head, “Let’s zoom in on it.”

  The saucer’s AI zoomed in, correcting pretty well for the fact that they were moving past the alien ship while constantly changing accelerations. Even though the AI knew the acceleration was going to change before it did, there were still some tiny bobbles in the alignment. Rob couldn’t figure out what he was looking at until a star suddenly appeared just in front of the ship. “Damn! That’s a huge freaking mirror on the front, isn’t it?”

  Dan nodded, “Yeah. I think it’s cone-shaped like a rice paddy hat.” He said nothing for a moment, then with a sound denoting the satisfaction of understanding, “Ah… Remember, they passed really close to the sun. They must point that mirror at the sun and hide in its shadow.”

  “Geez! That’s right! I’ll bet if there’re any flaws in that mirror it’s a freaking disaster!” He looked down at the scale bar on the screen and compared it to the alien vessel. “That thing’s huge!”

  Dan gave him a look, “Only a few times bigger than this monster saucer you fly around in.” He looked back at the screen, “I wish we could make a circle around it to see it from all sides.”

  Rob had just said, “Yeah,” when a loud bang sounded off to the right.

  The AI spoke calmly, “The number five fusor is no longer providing power.”

  Rob winced, “Shit! AI, boost our acceleration to vary from 1.5 to 2.5 gravities and begin irregular turns perpendicular to line of sight to the alien vessel.” He turned to Dan, “I’m assuming they’ve got to be shooting at us now.” Rob turned to the crew behind them, “Spread out and see if you can find any holes. Don’t let the gravity changes catch you by surprise! AI, give us a tone with a rising pitch before the gravity starts going up and a dropping tone before it starts going down. Have you detected any damage to the ship?”

  The gravity had been smoothly increasing to above normal. Now a rising pitch accompanied it, but stopped rising and started to drop just before the weight they were feeling began to decrease. The AI said, “The number two water tank is undergoing decompression. It and the number five fusor are both in areas where atmospheric pressure is not maintained. Inspection will require that someone suit up.”

  Realizing the biggest danger to the crew would be decompression, Rob said, “All hands, all hands, keep your helmets with you at all times.” He turned to Dan, “Any suggestions?”

  When Levon arrived on the bridge, the eyes of her crew jerked around to stare at her. That’s right, cower, you sniveling idiots, she thought to herself. It felt great to be so dominant. “Show me this alien ship,” she snarled.

  No one said anything, but an image popped up on the big screen. It showed a disc-shaped object. Levon narrowed her eyes, by the scale circle on the screen the alien ship would be about 200 fargs in diameter. Big, and a lot bigger than the twenty-one fargs Balan had claimed for his first visitor, but still quite a bit smaller than the Flying Light. Far too big to deflect with the meteorite deflection system, so Levon wondered what to do. Then she remembered that Balan’s twenty-one farg visitor had fled after being fired on by the lander’s smaller deflection system. “Fire the deflection system at them.”

  Second Officer said, “They’re constantly changing their velocity. They’ll be hard to hit.”

  Levon drew her head back at this. It was hard to conceive that a light speed weapon couldn’t hit an object every time. Then she remembered the thing was 26,000 kilofargs away. Even at light speed it would take the beam a third of a microday to hit and, if they couldn’t predict its velocity… She keyed a quick calculation into the computer, then turned to her bridge crew, “Yeah, at this distance we’ll miss our aim point by a few fargs, but that thing’s big enough that we should hit it somewhere with some of our shots. Start firing.”

  Second Officer slowly shook his head, “The meteorite system isn’t going to deflect something that size.”

  Levon grimaced at the idiocy of her crew, “Of course not. It’s a ship crewed by a bunch of primitives. Getting holes punched in their ship will scare hell out of them. Then they’ll leave.”

  Second Officer frowned, “Are you sure they’re primitive? The way they accelerate…”

  Levon stepped close to him and bared her teeth, “They don’t even have space elevators! Of course they’re primitive.”

  Second officer stepped back and dropped his muzzle to protect his neck. A thrum and smack sound signaled the firing of the deflection system. Levon and Second Officer both turned slowly to watch the alien vessel on the big screen. Nothing happened after the first two firings, but shortly after th
e third firing the alien vessel swerved, accelerated, and began turning. “Keep firing,” Levon said in a satisfied tone.

  ***

  Vaz reviewed the program one more time then gave his AI the command to run it.

  Wendell cursed. “Is someone in here screwing with the number two and number five dishes?!”

  Wendell was in charge of monitoring the signals from the aliens’ ships. Originally, it had been fairly simple because the mothership and the daughter-ship were aligned almost coaxially with Earth. Whatever signals the mothership had sent to the daughter-ship also blew past the daughter and came to Earth, so they were easy to pick up. The daughter-ship had an antenna of some type that leaked signal back toward Earth. Though that signal was much weaker they’d picked up a decent waveform most of the time. However, as the mothership and the daughter-ship trajectories diverged, their original coaxial alignment with Earth shifted off to the side so that it became harder and harder to get a signal. At present they were only getting a detectable signal from the mothership, probably because it was much stronger and still aimed at least somewhat towards Earth, but it was weak.

  As if it wasn’t bad enough that they were barely picking up a signal, now both of Wendell’s antennas, the one aimed at the mothership and the one aimed at the daughter-ship were transmitting! He glanced at what they’d been receiving and realized they hadn’t actually been getting anything for the past few minutes, either because the aliens weren’t transmitting or because the signal had completely faded out, but if the aliens did transmit something they might be able to pick up, they wouldn’t be able to get it when their own system was generating a bunch of radiative energy from the antenna!

  Wendell looked around the room and saw a few people gazing at him curiously, but no one was raising their hand to volunteer that they were the ones who’d loaded a transmission. He looked back at his monitors. The transmissions had ceased. He let out a long-suffering sigh and sagged back in his chair.

  About three minutes later Wendell was getting a strong clear signal from both the mothership and the daughter-ship. In fact, a better signal than he’d ever gotten from the daughter-ship in the past.

  He scratched his head. It was as if the aliens had turned an antenna from each ship to beam directly at his dishes. Maybe they were about to start sending actual messages to Earth? He studied the signals, Looks like the same old crap. After glancing around the room one more time to make sure no one was pulling his chain, he settled back down to try to make heads or tails of the signals. Apparently the boys at the NSA weren’t having any luck so he didn’t really think he had a chance.

  But it was better than doing the crossword puzzle.

  Vaz turned back to his screens and called up the alien data streams. With a mild sense of satisfaction, he saw that the signal NASA was sending him had markedly improved—suggesting that he’d succeeded in turning on two of their spare antennas and pointing them at Earth. In addition, the alien ships were transmitting copies of the various programs that controlled ship functions like he’d ordered.

  He leaned back in his chair, wondering why the aliens had such poor security on their computer systems. Well, he thought, I don’t really understand why humans do most things the way they do. It shouldn’t be any surprise that I don’t understand why the aliens don’t think they need to protect their computer systems. After a moment, he thought, I wish I could talk to Tiona about this. But then I’d have to tell her what I’m doing.

  No matter how badly he wanted help understanding the aliens, he didn’t want anyone to know he was thinking about attacking them. There wouldn’t be a lab for him in prison.

  His mind cycled back to the thought that a lot of other people had to be translating the aliens’ messages and must know what they were planning to do to Earth. Maybe those people would attack the aliens and save him the trouble.

  But if they didn’t he needed to be ready.

  Vaz wondered if he should feel badly about what he thought he could do to the aliens.

  He decided, They shouldn’t have shot at my daughter…

  ***

  Nolan looked over at Tiona. She was staring at her HUD with tears running down her cheeks. Gently touching her arm he said, “What’s the matter?”

  Hoarsely, she said, “Reven just sent me the video of her delivering the thrust chair to the boy that inspired my dad to build it.” She slowly shook her head in awe, “The look of joy on his face…”

  Nolan said, “Can I see it?”

  Tiona nodded and a moment later the vid showed up on his HUD. Watching it, he got a frog in his throat too. After swallowing a couple of times he said quietly, “They look pretty poor.”

  Tiona said, “Yeah. Everything’s clean and neat, but worn out.” She studied her HUD some more, evidently going back through the video. Then she mused, “I’ll bet something bad’s happened. The father died, the mother lost her job, something bad…” After a moment she got a look of resolve, “I’ll check into it.” She started mumbling to her AI.

  Nolan thought back to Tiona’s days helping the homeless at the shelter in Chapel Hill. If anyone can recognize somebody who’s been crushed somehow, it’d be Tiona.

  Nolan waited until she seemed to have finished talking to the AI about the boy’s mother, then said, “So I’ve been thinking…”

  Tiona, her mood restored, grinned at him, “What with?”

  He smirked back at her, “I’ve got several devastating comebacks, but I’ll refrain from deploying them in the interest of ordinary human decency.”

  Tiona laughed, “Oh! That was a low blow!” She rolled her eyes, then said, “Let’s hear these profound thoughts.”

  “It’s about a weapon we could use against the aliens if…” he paused as if unsure how to continue.

  The corner of Tiona’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, yeah, we’re on the same page about the fact they probably need to be attacked. Don’t go all namby-pamby on me.”

  “Well, remember we were talking about how their beam weapon could shoot up small projectiles and that they could probably detect big projectiles from far enough away to maneuver their ship out of its path?”

  Tiona nodded.

  “I’ve been considering a couple of strategies.” He held up a finger, “Number one. Remember their beam weapon didn’t do so well once it hit a fluid-filled object. It had to boil the water which absorbed a lot of energy.”

  Tiona nodded again, distantly grateful that he didn’t say “Kurt Shapiro’s head” instead of “fluid-filled object.”

  “Suppose we fly something like a fifty-five gallon drum full of steel balls at them. We pour water into the barrel and around and over the balls and let cool to nearly freezing. Now their beam has to first heat and then vaporize that water before it can start damaging any of the balls.” He shrugged, “Besides, a big barrel full of steel balls is probably too heavy for them to deflect with their beam weapon.” He paused, glancing at her to be sure she was following.

  She jerked a nod at him.

  “Now, remember we’re steering our barrel-o-balls with the thruster system that aligned and accelerated it in the first place. If they try to maneuver their ship to avoid getting hit, those thrusters just put it back on target.”

  Tiona looked thoughtful, but didn’t make a comment.

  He continued. “The barrel could even have a bursting charge to spread the steel balls right before they hit, like a shotgun blast.”

  Tiona said, “I think you’re right. But a big chunk of solid steel would probably hit harder and still be too much for them to deflect with a beam weapon.” She tilted her head, “It could also have water in front and an explosive charge.”

  “Probably true. I’m thinking we should make up several weapon systems. We don’t want to find out that the one we spent all our time on doesn’t work when we don’t have enough time to build another one.”

  “Good point. Shall we go over and brainstorm with the Costa brothers?”

  Nolan nodded. Tio
na had her AI contact Pete Costa.

  ***

  Washington DC — The US State Department has confirmed that the second saucer which was sent to evaluate the aliens’ vessels has been fired upon as well. This mission approached no closer than 10,000 kilometers in an effort to be sure that they didn’t accidentally trigger any automated meteorite protection systems that the aliens might be using. Despite maintaining this distance, this larger saucer was fired upon while paralleling the alien mothership. Though specifics have not been released, we have learned that the weapon fired by the mothership was substantially larger than the one fired by the daughter-ship in the first incident. Apparently this incident also involved a beam weapon that punctured a hole through the saucer, this time from side to side rather than top to bottom since the saucer was traveling parallel to the alien ship rather than decelerating to meet it. No one was injured by the weapon, despite its holing the saucer, taking out the power runs to a fusor and perforating the corner of a water tank. Apparently this was because, even though the weapon punched a larger hole, the saucer itself—at seventy-five meters in diameter—was much larger than the eight meter saucer which was damaged in the first incident.

  Around the world storms of controversy continue to erupt over how to deal with the aliens. Though multiple political entities have apparently sent their own radio messages to the alien ships, it would appear that no return messages have been received. Any radio transmissions emanating from the alien ships appear either to be simple radar emissions or to represent the leakage of incomprehensible transmissions sent from one alien vessel to the other. Though it’s thought that tens of thousands of people, ranging from hobbyists to cyber-security specialists to governmental codebreakers have been working to understand the alien transmissions, if anyone has been successful in translating them they have not made it known to the rest of the world.