The Resolute

by G. Weldon Tucker

  So, the Cyborgs were in the billions, the cities controlled and occupied, and very few people remained. But there was a resistance, and there was a plan.

  The population of Earth had shrunk by an estimated ninety percent, according to the moon based message. No word was given about the three sister ships. The news would be useless and untimely, anyway.

  There had been no further contact for over a one hundred and twenty years. And once they made that turn around the black hole it was still a bit of a guess as to the exact alignment of the bearing.

  They might have found the tunnel, but even if they were a mere hundred thousand miles off, one one thousandth of a degree, even up or down, there was no way home…

  -----

  Optics had made a major breakthrough, using special enhancements and magnetic imaging crossovers, it was huge improvement. With a different kind of lens, forward and aft, they could see almost fifty light years, though still not clearly. But they could see the four star system they had aimed for, and minor corrections put them on a direct line to the center of those stars.

  The Hubble Telescope had found them before they were a target, clear back in the twenty first century. The probes that had been sent out verified their makeup, and the planetary systems around them, but not the details they needed. But that was nearly five hundred years back. Technology was surely better, but no way to get the message to Resolute.

  The stars orbited one another in a near tangle, but the scientists were excited by the improved lens and its ability to discern tiny movements in the twirling pairs that verified the presence of planets. If only one was habitable, it would be worth all this work.

  But so many, in the search for the ideal orbits, had been a bust. Too big, too hot, too cold, no atmosphere, and so on. But that had been a study, then, of less than five hundred planets, out of billions of stars.

  Angela sighed. Just because they were on a desperate mission for the survival of the human race, there was no guarantee that there would be a survivable planet waiting for them.

  Earth existed because of a series of near coincidental happenstance. It was located in what the astronomers called the Goldilocks region, not too cold, not too hot, so it could hold water. It had an internal engine, huge magnetic field from a spinning inner liquid metal core, and it was big enough to hold onto its atmosphere, despite the sun’s determination to strip it as it had done to Mars.

  On top of that, Jupiter hung way, way out there, with a super massive magnetic field and it pulled many harmful objects out of trajectories that might have destroyed Earth, altogether. Earth took its beating in the early stages of the formation of the universe, but as it settled out, Jupiter was able to stand guard. Mostly.

  All of that created a less than a billionth of a chance that a habitable planet might exist within five thousand light years, less than five percent of the way across it. And they’d planned to go maybe two hundred and fifty light years, if that. That was changeable on the fly, as long as they watched resources, carefully.

  The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy some 100,000–120,000 light-years in diameter which contains approximately one hundred to four hundred billion stars. It may contain at least as many planets as well. The Solar System for Earth is located within the disk, about twenty-seven thousand light years away from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of a spiral-shaped concentration of gas and dust called the Orion–Cygnus Arm.

  The stars in the inner circular orbit of ten thousand light years create a massive bulge and several bars radiate from the bulge. The very center is marked by an intense radio source named Sagittarius which is almost certainly a super-massive black hole.

  One thing Resolute had to do, and do well, was stay well out from the center. Also, it had to miss any wayward black holes in the process. Then search the planetary structure of every star for something survivable, some place to transplant mankind. So, though they had the renewable process down for resources, man was mot meant to live his life, generation after generation, in a tin can racing to nowhere.

  It was Resolute’s mission to find one inhabitable planet, wherever if might be. And her sister ships had the same mission. But none of them were coming back. These were merely seed pods, hoping to spread humanity into the galaxy, long before heading into the universe. All of them were launched down dark tunnels that seemed to have no obstacles for the first one hundred and fifty light years. So far, so good for Resolute. The black hole had been better than two hundred and twenty-two. Out of detectable range.

  However, now, they were in uncharted territory, and the onboard astronomers were building those charts as fast as they could. It always paid to know where you were going, especially when you were going very, very fast.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Captain on the bridge!” called one of the Lieutenant Commanders.

  “As you were! What the hell is that?” growled Angela, stepping through the swishing wide door into the bridge. “Commander, report!” An awful growling sound seemed to fill the entire bridge.

  “Captain, it is a deep signal, very much bass, an oddly changing frequency. If I were a sci-fi fan, I’d say this deep of voice represents a very, very big alien. We cannot yet decipher it, but it seems a communication, ma’am!” Commander Rogers replied.

  “How long have you been receiving it, Commander?” If I was left out of the loop, heads will roll, she promised herself.

  “It just started about a minute ago. We sent the summons immediately to your quarters, but you had already left, ma’am!”

  The odd noise suddenly stopped. Nothing happened.

  While everyone held their breath, Angela asked, “Any vessels, anything odd around us?” They could reach almost thirty thousand miles, now, all directions, much better than the previously restricting twenty. They were trying for a clear fifty thousand, but so far, no luck.

  “No ma’am. We have recorded it…” and Rogers was cut off as the sound came again.

  Angela listened. It might be said it was a calm, repetitive voice. Not much inflection. Not much annunciation, either. “Could it be a computer?”

  “I don’t think so, Captain. Look at the sound analog on your screen. The entire message can be scrolled across your view. But see the second one now lining in under the first? Same communication, but the rhythm, the timing is slightly off, just a hair. A computer would not, probably could not, do that!”

  He was right. Computers did what you told them ad nauseam. This was a message being transmitted at a relatively standard frequency, not far from their radar. But whatever or whoever, it was saying it over and over… four sections repeated. The timing varied every time.

  Dead silence for two minutes.

  Here it came again, but at a slight elevated frequency. Then, it dawned on her. They had used their radar, which sent out a signal a long, long way, and accepted returns via a bounce. If there was anything to bounce off of out there. The aliens trying to communicate knew they used that frequency, and perhaps was trying up or down to find them. Her heart was beating too fast. Contact. Real contact!

  “Captain, please watch your monitor. It is exactly the same as the previous group of messages, so it has to be something they recorded. Whatever recorded it sort of reads it, four times. Now they are playing the recording… uhh, Sir.”

  It was so hard to remember protocol at an exciting, almost overwhelming moment like this.

  Radar, give me a single sweep, our plane and up, hard band.”

  “Yes, Captain.” She did, keying in the instructions, which took about two seconds, and immediately, the voice or signal stopped. It came back in on the original radar band. “Someone is reading our radar and treating it like radio. Very clever… ma’am.”

  “Any return?” The hard band radar was good, now to almost one hundred thousand miles, used sparingly, as it could fry the intestines of the people on board if they misguided it. Hell, they could fry their new friends in three sweeps if they got too close.

  “No,
ma’am. Rocks and ice, only.”

  The signal repeated for two lengths, then stopped. Nothing for a few seconds, then, a single note. Then, shortly, two notes. Then three.

  Already, the bridge was cheering. The aliens were attempting contact via their own kind of light bar.

  “Unreel the light wire. Let’s try answering them, same sequence, Commander!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He passed on the order and ten minutes later, in the middle of the repetitive sequence of notes, they flashed a three light signal.

  Immediately, they got back three distinct notes. They sent five, and got five back.

  “They can see our light source, which we lose in less than fifty miles. How the hell can they see it and stay hidden? Any ideas?”

  “Far better stealth than ours, Captain. I bet you they are very close by!” Commander Rogers said, nervously.

  People around him suddenly looked a bit green. Aliens too close to home.

  “Commander, let’s see if they are just monkeys, or if they can think. Lower intensity by two thirds, and start a sequence of binary prime numbers. If they are too far away, they will lose the light!”

  Light diminishes strength in an exponential fashion. Twice the distance loses four times the strength. The reverse holds true by diminishing the light source.

  “Yes, ma’am.” In a moment, they began blinking for a sequence of prime numbers. This took only half the lights to function, but prime numbers are those that cannot be divided evenly, with no remainder, by anything but themselves or the number one.

  1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, went out over thirty seconds, and suddenly, there was nearly a roar over the radar frequency!

  Radar scrambled to find the volume and got it turned way down!

  “Stop sending!” Angela commanded. The less oppressive roar continued for sixty seconds.

  “The computer has it, Captain. Look at your screen!”

  Every prime number after 23, all the way to 1001 was laid out with a tenth of a second to space them. All input was in dots and dashes, neatly laid out, but at a furious rate. The computer did the count quickly and accurately, converting them to decimal. Not monkeys, then. No way.

  “Holy shit,” said the suddenly very anxious Captain Washington. “Holy shit!”

  CHAPTER 15

  “We are receiving a video signal, Captain!” cried the stunned Commander Rogers. “But we cannot sync it… yet, ma’am!”

  It came in on their internal video frequency, so the aliens had the ability to sense Resolute’s infrastructure and systems. But perhaps, they did not understand video technology. What showed up was a racing vertical pattern, like a vertical TV signal out of sync, if anyone could remember that far back, a billion bytes of information at astronomical speed.

  Resolute’s system was equivalent to a twenty third century Cray, in triplicate for redundancy, and was damned fast. But it was trying hard to retrieve the data, and translate.

  This made the information it displayed on Angela’s battle screen a very fuzzy picture, with pieces missing, of some kind of office… bridge? Battle station?

  She could not make out a single sentient entity, it was all machines. Were they interfacing with computers of some kind?

  The front vid still showed the fantastic array of lines at an unbelievable speed. Nothing there made sense.

  “Okay, swap my battle screen with the front vid, Commander!”

  Rogers hurried to comply. Slowly, ever so slowly, a picture began to emerge for all to see. More pieces filling in, less grainy. It was still a bridge, apparently, but still empty of life.

  “What is the range of the transmission, Commander. Video is limited, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. This might be very, very close to us, especially at this speed. Anything this fast and distant would be irretrievable. Radar? Anything out there? One ping, please.”

  However, on the requested ping, the video went blank, altogether.

  “What the hell? Maybe we… hurt them, somehow!” Angela cried out.

  Radar reported, “Nothing around us at all, Captain, unless they have terrific stealth.”

  “HOLY SHIT!!” cried Commander Rogers, who went stark white in shock.

  On the forward vid, which showed that area ahead of them for perhaps several thousand miles, much less than the optics system, a ghostly shape began to appear. It seemed to be the top or back of a very, very large… something, and immediately, the system was spouting data, “One hundred four miles long, twenty-two miles wide, no data for depth, object is losing stealth, range one hundred miles below the keel, even. Speed relative to Resolute is zero.”

  “Jesus,” Angela managed, adding, after a moment, “Maybe the ping broke their stealth! They were right under us the whole time!”

  All the vid could see was the forward edge in the distance, a long rounded point, and hugely wide wings, of which only a small part was on the vid. Everything else trailed behind them by nearly a hundred miles. It was an unbelievable monster in size. Maybe a monster in intent, too.

  “Captain, sensors tell us it is… ummm, organic in nature. Magnometry indicates seventeen percent make up of metals inside of it, but it has… umm, thick skin over… something, ma’am!” Radar reported. She looked like she might pass out at any second. She had an iron grip on the edge of her work station desk.

  “Calm down, Radar. If it wanted us killed, we would already be dust.” Though, to tell the truth, the Captain’s heartbeat still hammered in her ears.

  In space, vessels can be any size, depending on materials and labor force. Organic, provided with the necessary gases or liquids, could grow to any size. A mixture of organic and metals bespoke of a highly advanced, well accomplished civilization. Angela was stunned into silence.

  A shape appeared on the forward vid, the system reporting the scanned feedback. “It looks like a damned… pterodactyl! One in glide position. Long wings, long nose, long damned tail… Unbelievable,” Commander Rogers said aloud, all protocol driven out of his head.

  “What is powering it, Commander? Get a grip! Scan it for propulsion!”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, Sir!”

  Angela knew that creatures could not fly in space. Without atmosphere to provide lift, they were merely projectiles that went a particular direction until they hit something. There had to be thrusters, or some alien technology that would direct it.

  They were traveling over forty thousand miles per second, according to Angela’s restored battle screen. The isotope engines were full bore, the mains on full, thrusters helping, but it would be almost another year before they got close to the speed of light. And the thing below them stayed rock steady, one hundred miles ‘down.’ Relative.

  -----

  “Well, people, I can say this, we do NOT want to piss it off!” Angela offered.

  “Amen to that, ma’am.” Rogers was helplessly in full agreement.

  The ship was already at battle stations, if there were such a thing on board the Resolute. The EMT stations were manned, the engineers ready to dash to any damaged area, but in fact, all battle actions were performed from the bridge, or, nine levels down, the alternate bridge, just in case. And the alternate bridge personnel were every bit as stunned. Everyone on either bridge was in full battle mode, every minute. But no one was eager to test their visitor.

  “It is fading,” Radar called. The scan was getting sketchy. On the forward view, now in real time, the thing just seemed to fade right out. Visible to invisible.

  “Got their stealth fixed, I guess,” Angela offered. But the image that was seemingly burned into her eyes still remained. The alien, whether an entity or a vessel… was simply frigging huge!.

  “COLLISION WARNING!” called the system, twice as loud as normal, and every eye assigned to a scanner, radar or optics focused tightly. There, nearly four hundred thousand miles out, another asteroid, traveling away from them, but much, much slower, was transiting Resolute’s path. At her present speed, she would clip the back en
d of the big thing, which Spook quickly determined to be almost fifty miles wide and close to seventy miles tall. There was only twenty seconds to impact at their overtaking speed. No one had a clue to its depth, but there was no time for that.

  The system threw on shields, then started the evasive maneuvers, unable to wait for slow humans, and there, right in the viewer, apparently from out of that invisible snout, a huge, bright green flash shot out in front of the Resolute, and just like that, the asteroid was gone! Shades of the last one!

  Angela was simply stunned. But she managed, “Oh… my… God! How on earth do you defend against that?”

  There were no answers forthcoming.

  CHAPTER 16

  Though they could no longer see it or sense it, all of them believed the thing was still right below them, even if a hundred miles distant. In space, everything is relative, and with billions upon billions of miles to play with, a hundred miles was right next door.

  “Oh my God!” Radar called. “Look at the vid!”

  Rogers blanched, for looking back at him was his own image! “What the hell?”

  Under that image, a flurry of data crossed left to right, so quick no one could begin to make sense of it. But above it, a duplicate image of Commander Rogers was talking, gesturing, in fact, doing what he always did, talking with his hands. But, perhaps running a few seconds behind. It might be nothing more than a clever feedback loop, which creates a delay.

  “Easy, people. They are sending us a vision that might be acceptable to us. Who knows what they actually look like. If there is a they!”

  “Yes, Captain. I get it, now, ma’am,” Rogers gamely defended his momentary lapse.

  Activity started in a space that was screen wide, but only about six inches high at the bottom, a mere seven percent of the vidscreen height, 80 inches, words began to form. Incomplete words, almost like a teenager texting. This was happening in the secondary screen, upper right of the main vidscreen.