Vaz 4: Invaders

by Laurence E. Dahners

  A moment later Levon heard the thrum as the meteorite system fired. “Miss,” Sixth Officer said.

  Levon turned, thunder in her eyes, “How did you miss?!”

  “They decelerated,” Sixth Officer said. “They’re constantly accelerating or decelerating. Sometimes they move transversely to their path. The computer can’t predict…”

  Levon cut Sixth off with an irritated wave. She’d forgotten these claims her officers had been making that the aliens wasted reaction mass so prodigiously to change their velocities. On the one hand, she didn’t believe it, on the other hand it didn’t matter. “Just keep firing, even you’ll have to hit them eventually.” She turned and left the bridge

  ***

  The alien team heard Stoddard’s voice say, “No plume or other evidence that our beam penetrated. Firing again. Full power now.”

  After a pause, Stoddard’s voice came back, “Still no evidence of damage. Firing at a different tank now. Planning to keep firing each time the beam recharges until the alien ship is destroyed.”

  The president said, “Don’t you see any evidence that you damaged your target?”

  When Stoddard’s reply finally came back, he sounded a little unsettled, “There’s a mark where we targeted. It looks… black.”

  People around the table looked at one another.

  Minutes passed. Finally the president said, “General Stoddard? Any progress?”

  This time when the reply came Stoddard sounded frustrated, “No ma’am. The beam’s hitting, because it keeps leaving spots where we aimed it. But as best we can tell, it’s not doing any damage. The spots do look… Aw dammit!”

  When Stoddard didn’t elaborate, the president said, “What’s happened?”

  Before Stoddard could have gotten the president’s query, he said,” After a pause he continued, “It looks like it might be yawing, but our imaging from here isn’t very good. We’ll send one of the camera discs over to look at it.” There was a brief wait, then he came back on, “We’re also sending another camera over to get a close-up look at the marks it made on the alien ship. I’m hoping if it moves slowly enough, their automatic defense system, assuming that’s what their beam weapon is part of, won’t recognize it as a threat.”

  A long period of silence had ensued with everyone in the room getting fidgety. Tiona contacted Nolan, “It looks like plan A isn’t working. We may be moving to Plan B. Can you get me an estimate on how much longer it’ll be before the impactors’ll be ready?”

  Nolan said, “I think it’ll be a week or so, but I’ll get back to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tiona had been about to say more, but then Stoddard’s voice came back on. “It looks like the weapon-saucer got hit by the aliens’ beam weapon. It’s got one of the four centimeter holes that the mothership’s beam weapon makes. From its location, and the fact that the saucer seems to have completely shut down, we think it hit the fusor.

  Tiona thought to herself that it was unlikely the beam destroyed the fusor since the water jacket around the actual fusion unit would have been difficult for the beam to penetrate. However, it could easily have hit the power runs coming out of the fusor with the same result.

  Stoddard was continuing, “The camera disc approaching the alien vessel has gotten pretty close by now. We continue to see black spots in the locations we’d targeted. They look like perforations, but there aren’t any plumes of escaping gas or liquid. We’re sending images now.”

  The big screen in the room lit up. An image cleared on it showing a black spot on a white background. Tiona thought the white had to be a part of the alien ship. It looked like it’d been painted white like many of the objects humans had out in space. The black spot had an odd look to it that she couldn’t put her finger on. While she frowned at it a white spark drifted across it. She frowned, wondering what the spark could be, then she had it. “That’s a star!” she exclaimed.

  A few doubtful murmurs signaled the fact that some people had heard her, but had no idea what she was talking about.

  For a second, Tiona had thought she was seeing a star through a hole that went right through the alien ship, but a second later she realized she was looking at a mirrored surface. She waved for attention and said, “The laser burned off a layer of paint and exposed a mirrored surface underneath.”

  Muttered exclamations of doubt came from around the table. One of the NASA guy said, “First of all, why would you have a mirrored surface underneath, it adds cost but no benefit. And, second, if you did have a mirrored surface, why would you paint over it?”

  Tiona waved toward the screen, “Keep your eyes on the image, eventually another star’s going to drift across to it to prove my point. As to why, I don’t know, but remember this thing flies really close to the sun and uses a huge mirror to reflect away the heat. I suspect it’s mirrored in case something happens to its orientation and part of it gets exposed…” She paused for a second, wondering why they would’ve painted over it, then she had that too. “They painted over it because working on something that looks like a bundle of fun house mirrors would be a pain in the ass.”

  The NASA guy stared at her for a moment, then gave a sharp nod of agreement. “Lasers aren’t gonna work,” he said decisively.

  People around the table were looking at one another with horror in their eyes.

  Tiona turned to General Cooper and found his eyes already on her. “Plan B,” he mouthed.

  The president said, “Well, if that’s not going to work, I’m hoping we have some kind of a backup plan?”

  General Cooper got the president’s attention and said, “GSI’s been working on strategies for hitting them with kinetic impactors.”

  The president blinked, “Is that some kind of fancy military euphemism for shooting a cannon at them?”

  Cooper snorted, “Essentially yes, though we’re planning to use thrusters to accelerate our cannonballs rather than lighting off a big barrel filled with gunpowder.” He went on to describe some of the possible strategies they’d discussed. “Essentially, we think we can send some big chunks of steel at them. Something that massive’ll be too big to deflect with their beam weapon. If the aliens try to move their ship with their plasma thrusters, we’ll simply use the attached disc to correct the course of our,” he quirked the corner of his mouth, “cannonballs.”

  Nolan reported back to Tiona then, so she could tell the group that the first of the impactors should be ready early next week.

  The president adjourned the meeting until the next week. “I think you can all use some rest time with your families, but please hold yourselves immediately available in case something else happens.” As everyone started to get up, she said, “And, just in case the impactors don’t work either, everyone try to think of some other strategy we can use.”

  ***

  Tiona glanced behind her as she sat at the big table in the president’s conference room. For the first time, she, like many of the other people at the table, had an adviser sitting behind her. She grinned at Nolan. He looked a little bit wide-eyed over the whole thing.

  She and Nolan had been working together almost constantly, putting the finishing touches on the various projectiles GSI’d been building. The projectiles themselves weren’t all that complex, simply being big chunks of steel or, in some cases, a barrel of large steel bearings with water around them. However, a lot of work had gone into command-and-control. They had lights on the back of them that General Stoddard’s saucer could use to track them in order to aim the control lasers without giving away Stoddard’s position.

  It’d further increased Tiona’s respect for the crusty general that he’d insisted on being out there in the line of fire during the deployment of GSI’s projectiles, just like he’d been for his pet beam weapons. She felt a little ashamed that she wasn’t out there herself, however, Nolan had insisted that if one of them went, it had to be him. When, shortly after Nolan had put his foot down, Stoddard had said that he was going an
d that they weren’t, Tiona had guiltily acquiesced without complaint.

  Stoddard’s voice said, “Permission to proceed Madam President?”

  The president glanced around the room for a last-minute objection, then said, “Proceed.”

  Tiona saw people’s eyes go to the big screen even though most of them had to realize that nothing would be happening for a while. Dr. Pasha, the virologist from the CDC was sitting next to Tiona. She leaned over to whisper, “There’s some kind of time delay again?”

  Tiona nodded, “They’re over six light minutes from Earth, so it’ll be that long before General Stoddard actually gets the order. Then, he has the projectiles holding about 2,000 kilometers from the alien mothership. Once he gets the order, the disc attached to the first one will begin accelerating it at 0.7G. That’ll go on for another twelve minutes to get the projectile up to five kilometers per second.” She got a little bit of a distant look, “So, a total of about eighteen minutes until impact, then another six minutes for the imaging to get back to us here. Make it a total of twenty-four minutes.” She winked at Pasha, “You could go out for coffee and be back in plenty of time.” In fact, Tiona could see several people getting up and moving to the back of the room where refreshments were set up.

  Pasha frowned, “Why such a low acceleration? I know your saucers can pull several Gs.”

  Tiona shrugged, “Yeah, but this is only a one meter disc which runs best at about 1700 pounds of thrust. Since that hunk of steel it’s pushing masses a metric ton, 0.7 Gs is what it can do. Besides, that’s plenty.”

  Looking curious, Pasha asked, “How does that speed compared to a cannon or rifle?”

  “Cannons and rifles fire at about three quarters of a kilometer per second, so five kps is a lot more. Kinetic energy goes up as the square of the velocity, so velocity makes a huge difference. Our projectile will have the kinetic energy of about three tons of TNT.” Tiona shrugged, “It’s hard to imagine that their amazing materials technology could bounce something like that. Of course, if it just blows a little hole in their ship on the way through, it won’t deliver all that energy. We may have to adjust our strategy depending on what happens.”

  “Thanks,” Pasha said with a little grin. “I think I’ll go for that coffee.”

  Tiona grinned back, “Since they’re my company’s projectiles, I’d probably better stay here and look like I’m quivering in anticipation.”

  As Pasha got up and went toward the back of the room, Tiona realized that she felt surprisingly relaxed. A little bad that they were about to wipe out the alien ship, but it was hard to feel remorse for the aliens after what they’d been doing. She thought she should be worried that something would go wrong in the attack on the aliens, after all something had certainly gone wrong with the beam weapon attack, but it just seemed like all the laws of physics were on the humans’ side this time. No mirrored coating was going to stop a metric ton of steel traveling at 11,000 miles per hour.

  Nolan leaned close to her and said, “Want me to get you a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure. And one of those little coffee cakes too please.”

  After six minutes for the president’s message to get to Stoddard and six more for his to return, a message came back. In it Stoddard announced that they’d sent the projectile on its way. Multiple screens lit up, one showing the projectile departing and multiple others showing the alien ship from the different perspectives of Stoddard’s little fleet of camera discs.

  Tiona sipped her coffee and nibbled her cake while thinking, This is about as exciting as watching golf or soccer on TV. Nothing happening. Worse, there’s not even an announcer trying to make it seem interesting.

  A counter popped up in the corners of the screens and started rolling down the last sixty seconds until impact. The room fell quiet as all eyes were drawn to the screen.

  Someone in the room started counting down the last ten seconds and Tiona finally started to feel some tension. When he got to zero, the screen flickered. Tiona’s initial thought was that the impact had generated some kind of interference.

  But then Stoddard’s raspy voice came over. “Son of a bitch!” he said.

  The alien ship looked completely unchanged…

  ***

  Tiona and Nolan were in the saucer, heading back to Raleigh to ask her dad what he thought had happened.

  Viewing the attack on the mothership from all different angles showed the impactor appearing to travel right through the space where the alien ship was located. Every image had the same slight flicker in it. Looking at the video frame by frame it seemed that the flicker was because the alien ship actually disappeared for one to two frames. On some of the obliquely oriented video, a frame showed the impactor traveling beyond the mothership. Those frames were too blurred to tell for sure, but the impactor didn’t look damaged.

  After a lot of fruitless discussion and speculation, the president had asked General Stoddard to send another impactor. This time they’d sent Nolan’s barrel-of-balls, detonating a bursting charge right before it hit.

  Once again, there was a flicker in the image, but no evidence of any damage to the mothership.

  Consternation had reigned in the meeting room. Some were of the opinion that we’d just gotten lucky in dealing with the daughter-ship and that technology capable of avoiding the impactors was only to be expected from star-striding aliens. Others were certain that the impactors had simply missed due to some glitch in Stoddard’s equipment.

  There’d been a proposal to send some Special Forces guys out there to land on the mothership and plant explosives. The guy that had suggested it didn’t have any ideas for how they were going to get there without getting shot by the beam weapon.

  Hearing the suggestion though, Stoddard had suggested loading a bunch of discs the size of the camera discs with high explosives and flying them very slowly into place. Since the aliens hadn’t shot at the camera discs as they slowly approached, he thought maybe explosives could be taken in that way.

  The president authorized the explosive disc mission, even though none of the camera discs had actually gotten within a kilometer of the alien ship as of yet. Someone proposed sending in a camera disc to determine whether it was possible to actually get all the way in and touch the alien ship, but that was voted down on the principle that if the aliens only let a small disc slip in slowly once, it sure would be nice if that one had explosives on board.

  Finally, Stoddard had proposed that in case nothing else worked, the president needed to release an enhanced radiation weapon to Stoddard’s team. The general proposed to send the bomb in behind a large container of water to absorb shots from the beam weapon until it got close enough to release its lethal sleet of neutrons.

  While everyone was coming to grips with the dismaying results of the projectile runs and their growing concern that perhaps nothing was going to work, Cooper had come over to Tiona and quietly suggested that she check in with her dad. “Maybe he’ll understand what actually happened?”

  Tiona had shrugged. Realizing that she wasn’t accomplishing anything at the White House, she took her leave.

  Tiona did check in with her mother to see how Vaz had been doing. It was a relief to learn that Lisanne thought he’d been acting normally.

  Normal for Vaz.

  Now she and Nolan opened the door at the bottom of the stairs into the basement lab and looked around. Vaz was seated at one of his electronics benches with something that looked kind of like a large soccer ball sitting in front of him.

  Tiona walked over, saying, “What’s that?”

  “A pentagonal dodecahedron,” Vaz said without looking up.

  Tiona gave a little laugh, “I can see its shape. But surely you’re not just creating geometric shapes down here, are you?”

  “Um, no. It has a thruster disc in each surface so,” the disc suddenly rose into the air, “it’s completely maneuverable on all axes.” Vaz picked up a paper plane resting on the table next to him and the dodec
ahedron rose with it. Tiona realized that it was staying about a foot above the paper plane. Vaz pulled the plane back, the dodecahedron going with his hand, then he threw the plane. The plane promptly did a couple of loop-the-loops, twisted off to the side, stalled, and crashed. The dodecahedron precisely followed the plane in these maneuvers, staying a vertical twelve inches above it. After it crashed, the dodecahedron came to rest just above it where it lay on the floor.

  “That’s… um… cool,” Tiona said. “What’s it for?”

  Of course Vaz didn’t look at her. He sat, his eyes still focused on the dodecahedron. After a moment he said, “I don’t know. I just thought it would be cool to build.”

  Feeling bad that she’d put him on the spot for something that would’ve embarrassed her, Tiona said, “Well, if it isn’t good for anything else, it’d be an incredibly cool toy.” Now she worried she might have embarrassed him even more by implying that he’d been building a toy. Though, from her knowledge of him, she’d be surprised if something like that embarrassed him.

  Vaz didn’t say anything, continuing to keep his eyes on the dodecahedron.

  After a moment, Tiona said, “We’re hoping to get your help.”

  Vaz still didn’t say anything, but Tiona thought maybe he tensed up a little bit.

  “You’ve already been a huge help by providing that translation program. We were able to destroy the alien’s daughter-ship where it had landed on a Pacific island by bringing down an asteroid on it. We’re pretty sure that the heat of the impact sterilized any of the bio-weapons they might have created there.” She paused, wondering if Vaz would ask a question or make a comment, but he didn’t. She continued, “The president used your translation program to try to talk to the aliens, but they just ignored her. Now we’ve decided we have to destroy the mothership before it returns to their own solar system. By being able to read what they’ve said, we can tell they think our solar system would be a good place to move their excess people. We want to keep the mothership from going back and getting reinforcements.”