Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (34 page)

“Dr. Gettnor.”

The NASA guy said, “Come on! This is the kook who claims he can decode the aliens’ transmissions but won’t tell us what they say?”

Cooper’s face closed up, “Yes, and he’s
not
a kook. I’m telling you this now so when they
do
perform an aerocapture you might start listening.”

The team went on to discuss the various preparations being made for the arrival of the aliens. The military had worked on a distribution of aircraft carriers and quick reaction teams around the world, not based on trouble centers, but on coverage of
any
possible location where the aliens might choose to land. The State Department had, with the help of some smart people in the deaf community, come up with various symbolic ways to address the aliens that they didn’t believe required a mutually comprehensible language. NSA was working with the State Department to try to develop a system for quickly understanding the aliens’ language once they could begin pointing to objects and naming them. NASA was all atwitter over means to try to quickly comprehend the alien technology. They were providing star maps to the State Department that could be used to determine where the aliens had come from. GSI was providing camouflaged thruster-based drones with cameras that could be used for unobtrusive observation of the aliens once they’d landed. They were also working with the military on discs that could deliver weapons up to and including nuclear devices that might be used should the aliens prove to be unremittingly inimical.

Tiona thought about telling the group that the aliens were from Epsilon Eridani, but decided that it was a waste of her time and that of the group. First of all, they wouldn’t believe her claim since it was based on what her father said, and second, she didn’t think that the aliens’ origin had much bearing on the main problem at hand.

The entire group was entirely too lackadaisical, in her opinion, based on their assumption that the aliens were going to orbit for a while before they actually landed.

***

Pasadena, California — JPL has been providing a constant feed of the aliens’ approach to Earth. To the complete astonishment of the scientists observing this singular event, the aliens have thus far not used retrorockets to slow their approach. The consensus of opinion at this point is that the aliens must only be planning a fly-by since the accelerations required to place their craft in orbit would be extremely high. The types of rocket motors capable of producing high accelerations are typically not capable of producing the large changes in velocity that would be required. Achieving that kind of velocity change typically requires the use of ion or plasma motors which generate small accelerations over very long timelines. If the aliens have a high acceleration technology like the thrusters produced by GSI, there has been no evidence of this as yet.

***

As almost everyone on Earth is already aware, the aliens have entered our atmosphere at an extremely high velocity and have been slowing their craft by means of atmospheric drag. Scientists are at a loss to explain how their vessel can tolerate the extreme heating generated by plowing through the air at such high speeds. People on the ground claim to be able to feel the heat generated by the passage of the alien craft overhead. Eyewitnesses have likened it to having a second sun rapidly move across the sky. Tremendous sonic booms are shaking houses over wide swathes of the planet.

***

The aliens appear to have landed! They came down somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and it is currently believed that they either landed in the ocean or on one of the atolls of Kiribati, an island republic. Why they would land so far from any populated centers is a subject of intense speculation. Some have proposed that they want to land where there are no humans, perhaps in an effort to avoid showing favoritism to one particular group. However, the most likely landing site appears to be Tabuaeran, an oval island also known as Fanning Atoll. Tabuaeran is very close to the equator and has a declining population thought to be in the low hundreds. It’s unknown whether the aliens could have detected the presence of humans on the island prior to landing there.

***

Satellite photos of Tabuaeran have detected the presence of the alien daughter-ship at a location called Weston Point. It appears to have landed in a typical tail down position for a rocket. A large area nearby seems to be covered with material as if a parachute was an important part of their final descent. Due to its gossamer appearance the speculation is that the parachute must be made out of something like graphene or some other extremely strong but very light material…

***

New York — Aliens Fire on Overflight! A flight chartered out of Hawaii to overfly the island of Tabuaeran and view the aliens has been fired upon by their beam weapon! Apparently one of the engines of the Boeing 737 was destroyed by the weapon but the flight managed to land on the relatively nearby Christmas Island. The United States military has now expressly forbidden any civilian flights in the region of Tabuaeran and is actively interdicting that airspace. There is speculation that a military overflight has also been fired upon, some saying it was shot down and others saying that it only suffered minor wing damage. Since military aircraft often fly in pairs there have been rumors that one member of the pair was shot down and it’s the other one that suffered the minor damage.

It’s also been reported that a number of individuals and small groups have set out for Tabuaeran in boats, but it’s not known whether any of them reached the island. Some have definitely been turned back by the United States military which, with the cooperation of the Republic of Kiribati has established a forward operating base on Christmas Island. At a distance of 300 kilometers, Christmas Island is well below the horizon from Tabuaeran and thus not endangered by the aliens’ beam weapon.

It would certainly appear that the aliens are
not
friendly.

Vaz was eating his lunch when Lisanne said, “Did you see that the aliens landed on some tiny island in the Pacific?”

Vaz nodded.

“They’ve shot down a couple of planes.”

Vaz nodded again.

“I don’t think the president has any idea what the aliens are planning since they haven’t been able to translate any of the aliens’ radio transmissions.”

Vaz frowned, thinking once again that the NSA must’ve translated the transmissions like he had. Probably the president had access to the translations, just not the rest of the population. Besides, the last time Tiona had been by she’d asked him to translate a file for her. They must just be checking to see whether their translations agreed with his. He got a startled feeling,
I never translated that file!
He paused with his fork part way to his mouth and instructed his AI to translate the file and send it to Tiona.

Taking his bite, he wondered what that particular file was about.

He decided he should look at it later to see what it was that the NSA was interested in confirming.

***

Tiona was in a briefing of the president’s alien team. The news seemed pretty grim. The aliens’ beam weapon, even if it might have been designed to ward off meteorites, had proven to be perfectly adequate for punching holes in aircraft. As a light speed weapon, at these short distances they didn’t have any trouble hitting what they were shooting at.

The Boeing 737 which had made a tourist overflight had had a hole blown right through one engine. Fortunately for the people on board, the aliens had not fired again once the plane had dipped a wing and turned away.

The military overflight of two F-35s had not been so lucky. The wingman described the lead plane as losing control and quickly spiraling into the sea. The flight leader had not made any transmissions nor tried to eject. His wingman thought the pilot had probably been hit by the first shot from the beam. The wingman followed his leader down in support, but was unable to visualize any damage to the airframe. Admittedly, a two centimeter hole would’ve been difficult to see. At that point the second F-35 sustained a perforation of its wing root, thought to be a near miss from a shot at the body of the plane. The wingman didn’t sustain any further damage while fleeing the scene.

The alien had not fired on any satellites so they were able to maintain some observational resources, but it seemed evident that the beam weapon
could
take down satellites if the aliens decided that they presented a threat.

“Do we have any ‘eyes on’?” the president asked.

The briefer shook his head, “No ma’am. We tried to fly in thrust disc drones carrying observational gear, but the aliens shot them down as well. This was despite the fact that the discs flew in just over the wave tops, apparently the aliens are quite adept at picking them out of the clutter.”

The president said, “Actually, I was referring to the locals who live there on Tabuaeran. I think there’s a couple of hundred people still living there? Have we been able to reach any of them by sat phone or something?”

“No ma’am.” The men glanced over at his superior and got a nod, “Unfortunately, ma’am, we have some satellite images showing at least some of the locals being rounded up by the aliens. Would you like to see the imagery?”

“Not really,” the president said grimly, “but I guess we should.”

At a gesture the big screen at the back of the room popped open a large image looking down on the area immediately surrounding the alien daughter-ship. With the top down view it was a little difficult to really understand what was going on, especially as the video wasn’t of the best quality. Tiona wouldn’t have really understood what was going on if the man hadn’t used a pointer to identify a team of the aliens moving from house to house and rounding up the Gilbertese, as the locals were called. Since the aliens returned to the ship dragging some people limply behind them, it appeared that any of the locals that resisted were killed. There were gasps of horror, but when the president asked if anyone thought the people could be rescued the consensus was that they might be bringing out disease vectors.

Tiona thought,
Now they’re seriously considering the bioweapon?!

Like a bolt out of the blue, Tiona’s AI said to her, “Your father has sent a translation of the file General Cooper asked you to give him.”

Tiona jerked around to look at Cooper, but the president had just turned to the general. “Well Coop, I hate to say it, but it looks like you were right. These guys are just plain hostile.” The president turned to the NSA representative and said, “I don’t suppose you guys have recently made some headway on translating the aliens? No chance we can try to talk to them, or at least analyze what they’ve been saying to each other before we move to a war footing?”

The man shook his head.

Tiona cleared her throat and raised her hand a tiny bit to gain the president’s attention. Miles turned to her and lifted an eyebrow. Tiona said, “Two things. We’ve just had a breakthrough on translation issue. My father just forwarded me a translation of a file General Cooper provided. Something we’re hoping might serve as a kind of Rosetta Stone to let us translate other things. With your permission, I’ll send it on to General Cooper and the NSA so that they can see if it might serve in that manner. My second item has to do with the fact that the discs GSI provided are waterproof. Their AIs should be capable of flying them
beneath
the waves until they reach the island at which point they may be able to pop up and get us imaging. Perhaps if, once they leave the water, they moved slowly like a turtle or other animal might move, the aliens might not attack them.”

The NSA guy was shaking his head in preparation to rejecting the translation notion but President Miles had fixed him with a fierce gaze. She said, “Dr. Gettnor may be odd, but he’s definitely a
genius
. He
may
not
actually be able to translate the aliens’ transmissions, but you
will
give him the benefit of the doubt and check to see whether his translation of that file can be used to make sense out of subsequent transmissions.”

The man gave a little nod and Tiona had her AI send him both Cooper’s original file and her father’s translation of it. She sent the translation file to Cooper. By then the president was already questioning the folks who’d mounted the cameras on the discs about whether the cameras were waterproof or could be covered with something to protect them from immersion. The answer appeared to be that the cameras should tolerate immersion without any further treatment. Even before the end of the meeting some discs had been sent on their way with instructions to submerge to a couple of feet of depth before they crossed the visual horizon to the alien ship.

“Next,” the president said, “it looks to me like we’re going to need to take these bastards out. How are we going to do that when they can shoot down anything we send? Submarine?”

The military guys were shaking their heads. One of them volunteered, “The alien ship is parked too far from the shore for a torpedo. All the other munitions the submarines might deliver, cruise missiles or other missiles, travel far enough through the air that the beam weapon would probably be able to take them out.” He shook his head, “We could wish for one of the old battleships because the huge shells those big guns fired flew over the horizon and would’ve been too massive to be deflected by a beam weapon, but all of those old ships have been decommissioned.”