“The Alpha certainly come close to fitting that imposing description,” Gallono commented, “however, unless something’s changed in the last four thousand years, I think you’ll find the Novi body lacks a certain… intimidation factor,” he added to ease the President’s state of mind
“What do you mean?”
“They’re short,” Hastelloy clarified.
“And bald with relatively weak muscular structure,” Tonwen added.
“But what they lack in stature and strength they more than make up for in technology,” Gallono concluded.
“I can’t wait,” the President said with an insecure timbre still present in his voice. A soft chirp from Hastelloy’s pocket prompted him to retrieve a blue communication disk the size of a silver dollar.
“You may not have to for much longer,” Hastelloy commented as he brought to life a cone of blue light that housed a miniature image of Valnor’s head. “Report.”
“The main craft is still holding stationary orbit on the far side of the moon. I picked up a smaller landing craft inbound to your position a few minutes ago. They should be arriving in just a few minutes.”
“Still no communication?”
“None, they’re still holding radio silence despite your message conveying the time and place of the meeting,” Valnor reported.
The President read the lines of concern on Hastelloy’s brow and asked, “I take it that’s not normal procedure. Should I be worried?”
“Probably not,” Hastelloy answered with a surprising level of assurance. “There is no procedure for this situation, but it makes sense that they wouldn’t send a reply. Signals leave Earth every day by the millions, allowing us to mask our communication. In contrast, there are absolutely no signals directed toward Earth from outer space. It would be detected and the point of origin easily located by any amateur astronomer worth his salt.”
“Their lack of a reply probably saved us from an enormous cleaning bill over at the SETI program. I can just picture those boys piddling themselves with excitement at receiving a message from beyond, especially one so close,” the President’s scientific advisor commented.
The President allowed a flat smile dripping with gallows humor to cross his lips as he shook his head. “If you’d have asked me two weeks ago whether or not those hippies volunteering their days and nights listening for radio static through a set of headphones were crazy, I’d have answered certifiable. Now they strike me as visionaries to be admired on some level.”
“It still begs the question of what those people intended to do if they ever did hear something,” the science advisor pondered. “There is no preparing for first contact. We can’t all of a sudden trot out advanced weaponry to defend ourselves if a hostile race pays us a visit. Any civilization advanced enough to cross the distance between stars could crush us as easily as we might an ant colony. Oh, we might scurry around and bite a tiny bit, but the final outcome would be unavoidable. If you ask me, first contact will either lead to us being friends or us being conquered.”
“Or we’ll be wiped out of existence,” the President added, following it with a heavy sigh that could have blown down one of the nearby oak trees. “To think I campaigned for three years to get this job. All that money raised and spent, all those miles traveled, hands shaken, and babies kissed. It felt so important at the time.”
“Now a few weeks into my term I realize everything I’ve done in my entire life, everything every single human being has done throughout our recorded history,” the President amended, “will have absolutely no effect on the outcome of this meeting. Whether humanity survives beyond this day or not depends on the noble or evil nature of the Novi. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Humbling realization isn’t it?” Hastelloy commented as the wind picked up around them. A dark speck appeared in the sky directly overhead and brought with it the sound of rolling thunder even though there was not a cloud in the sky. The object approached at a phenomenal rate of speed and did not slow down until the last possible moment to reach a steady hover ten feet above the putting green.
The rate of deceleration displayed would have crushed any living thing inside the craft were it not for the independent gravity field the ship maintained around its hull. A heartbeat after the craft’s appearance a sudden down rush of air pressed every onlooker to the ground as if an invisible entity were forcing them to kneel before the new arrival.
Tonwen knew the downward pressure was just the atmosphere above backfilling a hole made by the speedy craft, but the effect was quite intimidating. He could only imagine what the humans were feeling as they picked themselves up off the ground.
Before them hovered a black cube measuring twenty feet to a side with two-foot diameter ion engines protruding from the center of each. Four landing struts grew out of the bottom panel, which the craft used to touchdown without a sound.
The outlines of a rectangle appeared in the middle of the side facing the onlookers and extended five feet up from the cube’s base. The dark body of the rectangle slid down and out to provide an exit ramp for a doorway lit from behind by a soft white light.
Time seemed to stand still as they waited for something to appear in the doorway. The humans waited for their first glimpse of a living alien body. Tonwen and the rest of his stranded crew waited to see their people again for the first time in ages. Then, without the preamble of whimsical music or an ominous chord that surely would have accompanied this moment in the movies, it happened.
The outline of a three-foot tall being with a large head accounting for half its height stepped in front of the lighting to cast a long shadow down the exit ramp. It moved forward with a confident strut that seemed at odds with its diminutive stature. Six more aliens followed the first down the ramp as Captain Hastelloy led the group of five onlookers to the craft.
All of the Novi wore dark gray uniforms, except for the leader who donned a black uniform with the rank insignia of admiral pinned on the being’s chest.
“Where is Captain Hastelloy?” a feminine voice asked in a short yet beautifully flowing sentence using the Novi language that made even the Latin based romance languages of Earth seem choppy. It almost sounded as if the Novi was serenading them with a song as they drew near.
Hastelloy snapped to attention, issued a salute and responded in the same tongue. His dialect was rough as sandpaper by comparison however; it had been so long for all of them since they had heard the true sound of their native language. “I’m Captain Hastelloy. This is my first officer, Commander Gallono, and chief science officer, Lieutenant Tonwen.”
The tiny Novi’s head snapped back with surprise and alarm. The admiral narrowed her eyes and evaluated Hastelloy from head to toe with undeniable disgust at what she saw. “You’ve…altered form?”
“A distasteful action necessary to exist among these humans for so long,” Hastelloy explained, but the Novi was uninterested in explanations as her attention shifted to the pair standing behind Hastelloy and his crewmembers.
“Two human leaders I presume?” the admiral asked gesturing to the American President and Science Advisor. “This was not sanctioned to serve as a first contact event.”
“Another necessity of our circumstance to make this meeting possible,” Hastelloy began explaining, but the Novi was having none of it.
She turned away from the humans as if they did not even exist to ask of Captain Hastelloy, “Where is the Nexus device, and is it still active? At this point those are the only relevant details I require.”
“The Nexus is still fully functional and located on the other side of the planet near the equator on the planet’s center of landmass,” Hastelloy answered.
The admiral looked back at one of her men who tapped a few buttons on a handheld device he carried. A quiet nod let her know that Hastelloy’s statement had been verified. In response, she drew a wave blaster from her hip holster and shot one of her crewmen through the head, killing the being instantly. She followed that up
by shooting two more.
The lifeless bodies collapsed to the ground without a hint of reaction from the admiral or her remaining crewmen. As she turned her head back to face Hastelloy, she found the three Novi in human forms with their eyes nearly popping out of their sockets from shock.
“It’s the quickest way to reach the location. They will come out of the Nexus and secure the location while the three of you come back to the ship with us for your debriefing,” the admiral explained as if her actions were an everyday occurrence.
Tonwen could not speak for his captain or Gallono, but he had no intentions of doing anything this woman said. Her acerbic attitude, the cruelty of her actions, and the complete disregard she showed for the local species rubbed him the wrong way in every possible manner.
“At the moment, it is not possible for all of us to leave. Lieutenant Tonwen will join you for now,” Hastelloy offered as a compromise. “The commander and I must remain on this planet to maintain relations with the human leadership to ensure minimal cultural contamination.”
“Cultural contamination will be minimized by you and your crew getting off this planet immediately. You three are with me,” came her dismissive response that invited no further discussion. She turned on her heels and walked up the ramp expecting that to be the end of it, but the captain chose defiance instead.
“The Lieutenant and no one else,” Hastelloy declared causing the admiral to stop and look back at him with eyes trying to decide if pressing the matter was worth her effort. Apparently, it was not.
“For now. Just make sure these humans stay far away from our affairs while we clean up your mess. Lieutenant, you’re with me.”
Tonwen did not want to go, but seeing how both the admiral and Captain Hastelloy outranked him, he had little choice in the matter. On his way up the ramp, he overheard the American President talking to Hastelloy. “What the hell was all that? She just murdered three of her men and took one of yours captive. You’re okay with that?”
“Her men will regenerate in the Nexus chamber, and Tonwen will tell them about our time spent on this planet. To answer your last question; no, I’m not okay with any of this,” Tonwen heard Hastelloy say before the craft’s door closed behind him.
Chapter 14: Risk Assessment
“Lieutenant Tonwen, pollution levels present in the atmosphere of the planet below indicate that these humans are nearing the end of the Atomic Age. Would your ground observations agree with that assessment?” one of the three review panel members asked. The admiral apparently had more important matters commanding her attention and was content to leave the debriefing of Tonwen aboard her ship to these overly inquisitive subordinates.
“Yes, they still rely almost exclusively on fossil fuels as their source of energy,” Tonwen answered with a tired voice exhibiting the strain of the intense questioning and the toll it had taken on him. For the past three hours, he had sat in the center of a windowless, white room in a chair that forced him to sit uncomfortably upright at attention. In contrast, his three questioners enjoyed cushioned chairs that seemed to caress their bodies like a mother rocking a child to sleep in her arms. They could sit and ask questions of Tonwen all day long and they seemed quite content to do just that.
He somehow summoned the willpower to expand upon his previous answer. “The use of atomic energy began roughly seventy years ago, but they quickly realized the inherent risk associated with the process. About forty years ago, the humans began actively experimenting with renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal forces. These technologies are still in their infancy at this time.”
“The probe carrying your message that we intercepted employed a fusion reactor as its power source. That seems at odds with your prior statement,” a second panel member declared.
“We controlled the development and production of that reactor. It was the only one of its kind and the designs were destroyed after project completion.”
“Are you sure about that?” the individual pressed. “It has been my experience that in the digital age information is rarely destroyed, especially the technical specifications of an invaluable asset such as a fusion reactor.”
“I destroyed all hard and digital copies of the designs myself,” Tonwen insisted.
“What of the scientists and machinists you no doubt employed to help design, construct, and pay for the fusion reactor? Did you purge their homes of data devices? Did you purge any human who worked directly on the project to ensure no advanced technology was transferred to these primitives?”
The loaded question snapped Tonwen’s mind back to attention. “We confiscated their computers and portable storage devices of course. As for your question regarding the humans who labored on the project, by using the word ‘purge’ are you asking if we executed them all on their last day?”
“Yes,” the third panel member confirmed. “That would be the only way to ensure they could not recreate what they saw.”
“These are sentient beings with enriched family lives, not lab animals,” Tonwen objected. “Of course we did not terminate their existence.”
“Hmm, then that is an area of risk we will need to address,” one of them said with the other two nodding their heads in agreement.
“What is there to address? Even if they construct a functional fusion reactor, it is the next step in their Neo Scale progression into the Fusion Age. They may get there slightly faster than normal, but it would not represent a reckless leap over the top of several developmental stages,” Tonwen insisted.
“Moving on, what are the military capabilities of these humans?”
“Their conventional weapons include vessels bound to the waters of their oceans, land confined armored vehicles, fixed wing aircraft, and rudimentary spy satellites in orbit directed at other nations rather than the cosmos. The Novi landing ship I observed earlier could fly circles a thousand times around one of their weapons of war before they even knew what to think. There is absolutely no military threat level to the Novi posed by this planet,” Tonwen concluded.
“Not yet, but we once thought that of the Alpha as well. What about non-conventional weapons?”
“A few of their countries have atomic weapons with an explosive yield that would not even dent the armor of this ship, let alone pierce its shielding. What is more, only a couple of those nations have the technology to launch those weapons into space. Once again, there is no threat to the Novi. None whatsoever.”
“Once again, these humans will grow beyond their harmless state, just like the Alpha after their Neo Scale contamination event. History has shown us that it is only a matter of time, and that time is quickly running out. As you pointed observed earlier, Lieutenant, these humans are about to enter the Fusion Age.”
“Indeed,” another panel member added.
Tonwen knew a witch hunt when he saw one. This debriefing was not about gathering facts. These three were on a data-gathering mission to support a specific conclusion they had already reached. He decided to buy himself some time to sort out the agenda that was already in play here. “Gentlemen, we have been at this for quite some time now and I have grown tired and quite hungry. May we adjourn for a while so that I can get something to eat and give my mind a chance to rest?”
“I think we could all benefit from a break, and it will give us time to discuss and compare notes about what we’ve heard so far. The guards will escort you to the galley; we’ll reconvene in one cycle.”
“My first sampling of Novi cuisine in several thousand years; I wonder if my tastes have changed much over the millennia,” Tonwen said on the way to his feet and followed a set of guards out of the room.
The hundred-yard walk to the ship’s cafeteria was uneventful except for all of the pointing and whispering as he squeezed by others in the petite hallway. While the six-foot high ceiling offered even the tallest Novi at least two feet of headroom, the low overhead forced Tonwen to hunch over as he walked. Ducking through the cafeteria door threshold was even m
ore of a challenge, which drew the attention of every Novi in the room away from their food.
Tonwen looked around the large room for a place to sit down, but found none. He did see plenty of open floor space for additional seating, but there seemed to be only enough tables and chairs to accommodate those who were already seated.
“Let’s start you off with the chef’s choice for the day and see if that agrees with that alien stomach of yours,” one of the guards offered and moved off in the direction of the distribution line.
“Where do I sit?” Tonwen asked his remaining escort, still failing to find an empty chair.
“Anywhere you’d like.”
Tonwen met the stares of half a dozen diners and silently pleaded with them to invite him to sit down, but every single one averted their eyes in fear.
“How about that empty space over near the corner?” the guard suggested.
“That would work just fine if there were a table and chair in that location,” Tonwen protested.
“Watch and learn newbie,” the guard teased as he led Tonwen by the hand as if he were an insecure toddler.
Tonwen imagined it had to look quite comical for the rest of the room watching a relatively tiny, three-foot tall being leading a six-foot giant by the hand. Rather than take offense or make a scene, he opted to go along with the joke and show there was nothing to fear from him. “I’ll have you know that my life force is quite ancient young man.”
“Perhaps, but you’ve missed a whole lot while stranded on that backwards planet for all those years,” the guard replied. He tapped the floor three times with his foot, causing the floor in front of him to shimmer like a liquid substance for a moment. The fluid plastic compound rose up from the floor to form a flat table surface with three chairs around it. “Have a seat…newbie.”
Origins: A Greater Good Page 8