There had been no final council or last discussions; the Great Powers had simply shut the old organization down and settled for creating something new, to allow them to work out their conflicts between one another. Back then, there’d been much less to fight over – the working relationship had blossomed and survive the development of space assets and the rise of dangerously separationist views on the moon and in the asteroids.
The replacement UN had its detractors, of course; smaller nations who considered it a tool of the Great Powers to divide the world between them. They had some cause to think that; most of the smaller nations that had existed at the turn of the millennium no longer did. Their names, flags and sometimes even their populations had fallen to history as the Wrecker War had ground on. But the new UN had survived, more or less intact.
Switzerland – the only mainland European nation east of Russia to maintain independence of the European Union’s government in Brussels – had volunteered to serve as the new organization’s host. There’d been proposals to locate it on the moon, but those had been laughed out of their hearing rooms. Switzerland’s historic neutrality, and present well-guarded independence, had made Geneva a safer bet even before the situation on the moon had gotten troublesome politically.
“Welcome back, Mr. President,” said the tall Swiss Guardsman at the door to the conference room. Despite the bright colours of his fourteenth-century uniform, the Guardsman carried what Cardona could tell was a first-rate modern energy weapon – and the President would have been surprised if that old-style uniform didn’t have body armour woven into or hidden beneath its colours.
Only top-level world leaders and their guests had access to this room; the seven Great Powers liked to work out their differences without scrutiny, to prevent national pride and domestic politics from becoming obstacles. Protocol meant less here; the leaders didn’t have to like one another, but they always respected one another. That was a given, at this level.
The room was large, with faintly buzzing anti-surveillance devices in two of its corners. There were desks, larger ones for the world leaders each flanked by sitting room for advisers, around a seven-sided table.
The Swiss Guardsman firmly closed the door behind Cardona, closing what the President had been told had been built as a Faraday cage. Surveillance from outside could simply, point-blank, not penetrate the room; the buzzing bug stompers inside were to take care of anything hidden that had missed the careful sweeps. You could never be too sure.
By longstanding agreement, the chairpersonship rotated annually around the room. This year it was Great Britain’s turn; Prime Minister Tim Keck held the position. He was a tall, balding man in a grey suit and Cardona was glad he held the gavel right now. The US and the British Commonwealth were firm allies; his chairmanship might give America a slight ally. The Russians and the Chinese, too, were firm allies, although they did occasionally work against each other. The Europeans and the Japanese worked with each other sometimes and at other times with the Americans, while the Pan-Arabic Caliphate had little in the way of allies.
President Cardona sometimes wondered if that nation was Allah’s joke on his believers. If it had been established even ten years earlier, before the southward expansions of Europe and Russia and China’s push west, it might have had a real chance at power. As it stood, they were the weakest of the Great Powers. Which didn’t mean they were objectively weak, not with their own orbital installations and weapons systems in space. All seven Powers had ringed the planet with weapons, carefully watching for trouble from the others.
A hundred years ago, at the turn of the millennium, America had been the most powerful. Now nobody was quite sure which country was, but all agreed that all-out warfare would be apocalyptically disastrous. Hence the need for chambers like this.
Prime Minister Keck banged his gavel on the table as Cardona sat down. He was the last to, and he noticed that the other leaders’ aides were absent as well. Just the seven world leaders sat around the table, although a bureaucratic-looking grey-haired man in a grey suit stood near Keck’s side.
“The room is now sealed,” Keck declared unnecessarily. A green light above the main door indicated that thousands of volts of electricity were flowing through the electric mesh in the walls on every side, and the door itself. “I call this meeting to order.”
“The issue at hand is the discovery of the alien fleet heading toward our world,” Keck continued.
None of the other men and women around the table showed any surprise. They’d had a day to get used to the news after the Selene Observatory’s public announcement. Nobody had argued with the need for an emergency meeting.
“I have asked Rick Davenport, of the International Astronomical Union, to brief us on the discovery.”
“Careless,” President Siegfried Gerwulf of the European Union commented. “The news should have been kept under wraps until we’d made a decision.”
The grey-suited man by Prime Minister Keck spoke up. He was a senior administrator of the International Astronomical Union, which had become one of the more distrusted and disliked organizations in the system. It was also arguably a necessary one; President Cardona strongly suspected humanity would have already fought its first interplanetary war without it.
“The decision to release the information came from Observatory Director Hussein herself,” Davenport said with a tight face. His organization was risk-averse, and given the choice would almost certainly have sat on the information until after the Great Powers had formalized an agreement. “It would be possible to discipline her, should it be required…”
* * *
“It will not be required,” said Caliph Baha Ihsan. Despite his title he was an elected leader, although not all in his land could vote. He eyed the bureaucrat with disdain. “Any reasonable interpretation of the regulations as given would support her actions.”
Keck banged his gavel lightly. “It’s not important right now,” he said carefully. “Mr. Davenport, would you summarize for us what has happened since yesterday’s initial announcement of the fleet?”
Davenport was already holding a remote. A computer-generated image of a starscape appeared in high resolution on one wall; a handful of the stars had been circled in red to identify the alien ships. More than a handful of them. Humanity might have been in the middle of private attempts to build the first starship, but the aliens had already built far more than near-future humanity could hope to.
“There’s actually very little we presently know, beyond their existence,” said Davenport. “The observatory’s initial report, of course, led to just about every other research program being dropped in favour of focusing every sensor, telescope and radio receiver on the aliens. But the sheer distance to them makes it impossible for us to know some details. The inherent limitations of passive sensors are a problem, too. We don’t…”
“Caveats noted,” Keck said with a hint of irritation. “Mr. Davenport, would you tell us what you do know?”
The IAU administrator looked unhappy.
“Sir, we have around a hundred alien starships coming into the solar system,” he said. “Roughly twenty-seven hours ago they began a fusion burn, angling their course Earthwards. Gentlemen, madam, there is no question of that; the aliens are coming toward Earth.
“It should also be noted that the alien craft are large. The largest one we’ve been able to get data on is over a hundred kilometres long.”
Cardona nodded slowly, listening. The privately-run Message Bearer project involved converting an asteroid into a starship; its intent was eventually to settle a new human civilization outside of Sol. But that asteroid was about fifty kilometres long, dwarfed by this alien ship.
“We can tell very little else about the aliens,” Davenport continued. “Their fusion tech shows some signs of being more advanced than ours, and the technical capabilities of sending a fleet of craft this size this far, are obviously impressive.
“So far there have been no signals de
tected from them, or any detectable response to the signals that various factions and individuals have been sending toward them. We have no idea as to what they might want or what their intentions are.”
“We cannot run the risk of assuming the aliens are friendly,” Chinese President Liu Juanfeng said, glaring around the room. He voiced the question that had been forming in Cardona’s mind: “How many aliens could they fit onto each ship?”
“We – cannot presently tell,” Davenport said uncomfortably. “Assuming the aliens have the same requirements as humans, maybe a hundred thousand per ship? Possibly many more. If they’re prepared to accept much higher population densities than we are, or have hibernation systems, there could be many, many more.”
“It could be an invasion force,” Russian President Aleksandra Zakharovka said. She was a grey-haired woman with tired eyes; Cardona had heard that hard-liners in her country had been pressing for stronger action with regard to the lunar tensions. She’d had enough to worry about before the aliens. “They have to be aware of our existence, so why haven’t they attempted communication?”
She leaned forwards, her thin frame projecting determination and concern. “We have no choice but to prepare on the assumption that we are facing hostility, perhaps an invasion. If they are friendly, well and good. If they are not…”
“There is the danger,” Cardona pointed out, “of our accidentally sparking a war on our own ground before they even arrive. And if we reinforce the moon we may trigger a rebellion.”
“Too bad,” snapped President Liu. China had responded to its lunar-separatist problems a lot more roughly than the US had its own. “We should have cleaned those separatists out before they started to unite to the level of real danger!”
“Water under the bridge,” said the Caliph. “A military solution is right; we could destroy everything we want to preserve.”
Cardona said nothing. The urgent need for Helium-3 ensured that the Great Powers would push to maintain their control over the lunar mines, to say nothing of the scoops orbiting Saturn and Jupiter. Humanity had been dependent for too long upon oil to repeat that mistake intentionally… but it was a dangerous line to walk. Without a steady supply of Helium-3 fuelling them, Earth’s economies would grind to a halt. But if a moon rebellion were triggered, the resulting devastation would destroy the mines and the world economy anyway.
“It’s possible,” Prime Minister Keck mused, “that the Lunar Independence Front will accept this requirement given the circumstances. The settlers often take a more pragmatic view of things than some of our own citizens. The threat may be more apparent to them.”
“The only way the Front would accept more forces on the moon would be if those forces were put under their own command,” said Cardona ruefully.
The American colonies, like the British and Caliphate ones, had their own semi-democratic assemblies, and at least something of a voice in their own affairs. The European, Russian and Chinese colonies were governed by appointed strongmen from the homeworld. Some of the larger corporations also had colonies, which had been the source of some of the nastier revolts.
“That’s unthinkable,” Zakharova snapped.
“We’re getting off-topic,” Keck said. “Unless they change course, in six months this alien fleet will reach Earth orbit. We have to be ready by then.”
“My organization has come up with a proposal,” said Davenport. “We have plenty of our own craft capable of reaching the alien fleet. We can send a ship, or several, to intercept the aliens and meet them short of Earth. In the event the aliens are hostile, there would be some warning. Time to prepare for war around Earth orbit.”
“Director Hussein’s proposal,” said Cardona.
There were a couple of chuckles. Selene Observatory’s director had in fact made the proposal, shortly after her announcement of the fleet.
A hundred starships, he thought. Each more massive than humanity’s largest, and clearly far more advanced. It would change the balance of power in the solar system; it was almost certain that each of the other Great Powers would try to make a private agreement with the aliens. Certainly the State Department had indicated an upcoming proposal to him along those lines.
“A joint mission, then?” he said.
“An armed mission,” said President Liu. “If we begin now, we could line up a meaningful defence force before they arrive. We can easily equip those ships not currently armed, and of course we’ve done our own research into space warfare possibilities…”
Cardona smiled, thinly.
“And if they opened fire, we’d have a look at what their weapons are capable of,” he said.
Officially, the Great Powers limited their weapons research. Unofficially, all seven were working furiously to develop new weapons and tactics for their use. Space warfare theory was a confusing field of study, but all projections said that the practice of it would likely be long hours of boredom interspersed with moments of terrifying danger.
“Damn it,” said Keck, “what the hell do they want?”
The discussion went back and forth without much structure; Keck held his gavel but didn’t use it. The real agreement had already been made, in principle; it was the details that were now to be worked out, and reactions to some of the possibilities. Cardona was surprised by some of those; that the aliens might want to establish their own colony on Mars or perhaps Venus, or perhaps on one or more of the outer planets’ uncolonized moons.
A brief argument over who’d have overall command when the aliens arrived was, by mutual agreement, tabled for later. Cardona knew that Congress and the Senate would never allow American spacemen to serve under Chinese or Russian command, and he suspected those countries’ legislatures would have the same problems accepting US command over their space assets.
After an hour of carefully vague discussion – nobody wanted to reveal their own strengths, or how much they knew about the others’ – President Cardona concluded, “We can certainly establish much larger defence networks.” Specifics could be worked out by ministries and staffers; if the IAU supervised, it might be possible to place far more weapons in Earth orbit without giving one Power temptation to strike first against the others.
“We may want to evacuate the orbital stations when the aliens get closer,” Cardona said.
“That would be a serious problem,” said President Gerwulf, shaking his bald head firmly. “We need the products manufactured in orbit.”
“Then move some of your platforms out toward the asteroid belt,” said Keck. “If the aliens are hostile, those platforms are all but defenceless. A single missile would destroy your investments.”
The discussion shifted, becoming more heated with indirect jabs at each other about other projects going on in the asteroid belt. Cardona kept his mouth shut, although it was no surprise to hear that the Chinese knew a little about the secret American program. America knew a thing or two about the secret Chinese one, after all.
He’d sometimes thought it would be a lot easier if everyone just agreed to broadcast every message in the clear – but some pretence at secrecy did have to be maintained. Some of the manufacturing platforms could be sent away from Earth on slow, minimally disruptive orbits, just in case. Others would stay above Earth until the very last moment, supporting the defence program.
“There’s a final issue,” said Keck as people prepared to adjourn. “If the aliens do prove hostile, we will have to expand our stockpiles of Helium-3. Can we all agree to fund expansion of the lunar mines?”
“If we pay for it, they may well expand the mines themselves,” said Cardona.
The bottleneck for everyone had always been the cost of shipping more people out of Earth’s gravity well. It was no surprise that children born outside of it were less interesting in supporting Earth; few of them had ever been there, or were likely to go.
“Given the other demands on our resources,” Cardona went on, “it might be tricky to force them to expand their supplies.”
Keck murmured for a moment.
“True,” he said. The British Prime Minister glanced down at a list of rough minutes; aides would transfer the tentative agreements and limited plans into usable details to be worked out at that level.
The tricky part would be to ensure no other power succeeded in making a separate deal with the aliens – or, for that matter, the Rockrats. For all anyone knew right now, the aliens might turn out to be Rockrats themselves. Or communists, or fascists, or… there was no way of knowing.
“Six months until the world changes again,” the Prime Minister mused. “Are we going to be ready?”
“We’ll make ourselves ready,” said Cardona. “Think of this as a great opportunity.”
“Think of this as a great threat,” President Liu said. “We know nothing at all about these aliens. I cannot help but wonder: just how much do they know about us?”
Chapter Four: Preparing the Ground
Lunar City, Lunar Surface
Crowds surged around Samra Hussein as she headed for an elevator on the arrivals deck of Lunar City. It was a massive underground complex, most of it, built by entrepreneur Sam Bova as a safe haven where miners and their families could relax between shifts. Its detractors had called it a waste of resources; Bova had taken fire from sceptical investors. They’d been proven spectacularly wrong – and made a ton of money – when the place had become the most popular location on the Moon, a freeport that accepted anyone from anywhere.
She reached a bank of elevators. They all went down, and as she arrived one opened. She jostled her way in, crowded between a miner in off-shift coveralls and a young woman in barely anything. Luna City claimed to be the least religious place on the moon, and Samra believed it; there were three major casinos, dozens of bars, any number of whorehouses… and only one place of faith.
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