Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (36 page)

President Miles frustratedly slammed her fist down on the table. “Dammit! We should
never
have let them land! Is the NSA translating the rest of their transmissions?”

“Yes ma’am. Unfortunately, it’s very slow going because of the limited amount of material in the file translated by Dr. Gettnor.” Parque glanced at Tiona, “The NSA would find it
extremely
helpful if they could get Dr. Gettnor’s actual translation program, or barring that, they would like to get his translations of some additional files to give them a larger word dictionary.”

Tiona sighed, “I’ll ask, but it’s impossible to know how he’ll respond.”

Miles glanced off into the distance as she thought. “Send me the translations you’ve got so I can read them myself, but I don’t think it matters what any further translations might teach us. From the way they’ve behaved and what you’ve told me of their translations I think we need to be getting ready to fight.” She turned to the Secretary of State, “What did the Russians say about their atomic torpedo?”

The man grimaced, “There’s no doubt they’re planning to make political hay out of the fact that we’re having to ask them. However, they do say they’ll come through. Unfortunately, it’ll take as much as a couple of weeks to get an asset in place that can fire one.”

The president turned to Tiona, “And your asteroid?”

“We got lucky there. It’s actually pretty close. We’ve got a seventy-five meter saucer pulling two Gs to get out to its present location. Once there, they’ll have to deflect it on to a new trajectory. If they run their thrusters at near emergency levels they’ll be able to deliver it on target five days from now.”

Looking a little dubious, the president said, “And they’ll be able to hit the island?”

Tiona shrugged, “Admittedly it’s an extremely complex problem in orbital dynamics, but that’s something AIs are
really
good at. We’ll have the saucer stay with it until the last possible moment in order to be as sure as we can that it’ll hit where we want it to. Also, in case you change your mind and need them to deflect it so it doesn’t hit.” Tiona frowned, “But the closer it gets, the lower the possibility that we’d be able to deflect it meaningfully.”

The president glanced around the table, “Anybody know what’s going to happen to the uranium or whatever’s in the aliens’ reactor when we drop an asteroid on it?”

There were a lot of shaking heads. One of the NASA guys volunteered, “We can hope that a direct impact drives it deep into the crater. I’d guess that a miss will probably splash it around.” He shrugged, “But I don’t think
anybody
really knows.”

It sounded like the president was speaking to herself when she said, “Hard to imagine how it could spread it around worse than blowing up a nuclear reactor
with
an atomic bomb.” She turned her eyes on General Cooper, “We need to be working on a way to get the rest of the locals off that island, not just before we blow up the island, but before the aliens grab any more of them.”

“Yes ma’am,” was all Cooper said.

The president looked around the table, “Final question.
Can
we rescue the people they’ve already captured?”

People glanced uncomfortably at one another all around the table, obviously troubled by the horrific ethical dilemma. However, no one spoke.

The president said, “Anybody?”

Looking reluctant, Cooper said, “If they’re designing a bio weapon and we break in and rescue someone who’s infected with it, bringing it home…” he trailed off.

“Yeah, yeah,” the president said, “I get it.” She sighed, “I don’t like it, but I get it. The good of the many…” After a pause, she said, “Let’s don’t let them catch anyone else though.”

As everyone was getting up to leave, the president said, “Oh, and let’s get some advisers from the CDC and the military bio-weapons programs on this team.”

***

Tiona descended the stairs into her dad’s lab, wondering if the entire world could depend on something as mundane as her personal interactions with her father. Just thinking about it roiled her stomach. She tried to reassure herself that the translation he’d already done was enough to convict the aliens on their intentions, but she couldn’t stop worrying about the aliens’ technical advantage. What if translations of the aliens’ encyclopedia could neutralize those advantages, but she simply couldn’t even talk to her father, much less convince him to give up the program? What if NSA never made much more progress on translations despite having a partial translation dictionary?

When she entered the basement her dad turned toward her and his eyes rose high enough that she knew he could tell who it was. “Hi Dad,” she said quietly.

He nodded, though he didn’t say anything. She thought, in his own strange way, he looked apprehensive.

For a moment she was once again tempted to say something inane like, “How’s it going?” But such verbal fillers had always been wasted on her father. After a minute she said, “I’ve just come from a meeting with the president and the team of her people who’re helping decide what to do about the aliens.”

Vaz didn’t say anything, but Tiona thought he might’ve given her one of his little micro nods.

“They really appreciated getting your translation of that file. No one else’s been able to translate anything by the aliens so that was the first evidence they’d gotten of the aliens’ intention to wipe out the human race.” She sat down on a rolling stool and scooted over next to him. She put her arms around his muscular shoulders. It felt like hugging a bag of stones. Resting her head against his deltoid, she said, “I really appreciated it too. Thanks.” Though she wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do, she sat and held him a little longer. He was uncomfortable with hugs, but
she
needed one. After a moment, he clumsily patted her on the knee. Tiona let go, then said, “Now that the president understands what the aliens are like, she’s getting the country mobilized to fight them. Unless they manage to release their virus before we can destroy them and their ship, your translation just might save everyone on Earth…”

Vaz still didn’t say anything, but Tiona had a feeling that he’d been listening. She took a breath, wondering whether it was a good idea, but then finally ventured, “It could help a lot if the NSA could get your translation program. They’d like to search through the transmissions to understand the alien’s technology better. They’re hoping to find some weaknesses.”

Tiona set beside her father for another ten minutes, hoping for reaction but not getting one. Finally she said goodbye and departed with a heavy heart.
I failed again, and so many people’s lives could hang in the balance.

Her car was lifting off the lawn at the farm when her AI said, “You have a message from your father. It has an extremely large file attached.”

Tiona’s eyes flashed up to her HUD where the file delivery icon was flashing. The file was only labeled, “XLTR.” Praying that that meant “translator” she said, “Show me the message.”

This message had
four
words. “They have many weaknesses.”

***

Tiona walked into the president’s daily alien briefing thinking how unlikely she would have considered it five years ago that she might be flying to Washington DC and back on a daily commute. To meet the president, no less.

Parque cleared his throat and said, “Let me bring you up to date. A team of Navy SEALs removed the last of the Gilbertese from Tabuaeran last night.” He glanced around the table, then said, “We should be proud of the planning and coordination as well as the execution of this mission. Satellite reconnaissance people as well as those monitoring the now hundreds of cameras that have been flown to Tabuaeran on discs were able to identify the islanders’ locations by observing for movement over the last forty-eight hours. The SEALs were delivered close to shore by submarine, moved in quickly to offer to remove the islanders, taking with them a video message from the president of Kiribati. To be honest, after seeing what had happened to the other people on the island, the Gilbertese didn’t need to be convinced by their president. They already wanted to leave. The SEALs swam the natives out to the submarine using snorkel gear. We don’t believe the aliens took any notice.”

After awaiting a moment to see if there were any questions, Parque continued. “Our friends from Russia are working to deliver one of their atomic torpedoes to the mid-Pacific. They apparently already have an asset capable of firing it in the Pacific and expected to be on site in eight days. However, GSI will be able to deliver a forty meter diameter metallic asteroid in three more days. Assuming we proceed with it, its mass of 220,000 metric tons will strike at a velocity of ten kilometers per second, releasing about three megatons of energy. If it’s on target, the heat should sterilize the area and the only radiation would come from the fissionable materials in the aliens’ reactor.”

Someone asked, “What about tsunamis? Those Pacific atolls are really low. If this asteroid generates a tsunami it could completely swamp neighboring islands.”

Parque looked down at his notes, “The nearest populated island is Kiritimati, or Christmas Island. We’ll warn them of course, but it’s 300 kilometers from Tabuaeran so it should take about an hour and a half for the tsunami to reach them. By that point the wave should only be about two feet high. Fortunately, GSI considered this aspect and they’re delivering the asteroid just before low tide. A two foot rise shouldn’t be a big threat unless they miss their target and the asteroid hits closer to Kiritimati.”

Parque waited a couple of moments to see if there were any other questions. When there weren’t, he continued, “The final item is perhaps the most consequential. Dr. Gettnor provided his translation program to the NSA through Ms. Gettnor,” he gave Tiona a nod, “and the NSA is finding it… highly unusual. Unfortunately, some of his programming methods are completely unknown to the NSA so they haven’t been able to completely understand how his program functions. However, it does translate files consistently. If fed garbage files, it doesn’t just produce garbage, but says the file is untranslatable. The NSA has managed to extract the dictionary out of Dr. Gettnor’s program and used it to perform their own translations, though this produces translations that are difficult to understand because of bizarre grammatical construction and syntax. They’re uncomfortable with the fact that they cannot confirm that the word to word equivalences posited in Dr. Gettnor’s dictionary are correct. However, they have found many examples where those words are associated with images in what appears to be an encyclopedia, and at least in the case of nouns, these images seem to confirm the correspondence of the words.”

Parque looked around the room. Though people were looking at one another in some surprise, or perhaps consternation, no one offered an objection. He continued, “The program has translated a massive amount of material. Analysts are reviewing it as quickly as they can, but some of the high points include the fact that the translations confirm Dr. Gettnor’s contention that the aliens have severely overpopulated their home system and are hoping to move as much as half of their people from that system to ours. They
do
expect to exterminate us in that process.” He glanced around, “There’s a bit of good news-bad news in some recent transmissions. The daughter-ship is, as we thought, on Tabuaeran trying to design a bio-weapon to wipe us out. The good news is that, apparently due to some differences in our cellular biology, they’re finding it more difficult than expected. They were expecting to finish designing the weapon, release it, and then lift off to join the mothership. Instead, the daughter-ship has been ordered to remain here and finish the job of…” Parque broke off as if uncertain how to say it, but then apparently decided not to soft-pedal it, “the job of eradicating us. Note that those difficulties provide us some breathing room in which to destroy
them
. The bad news is that they find our solar system quite hospitable. The mothership plans to transition back to their home star when its orbit brings it back in proximity to the sun. We can expect the aliens to start moving here in frankly unbelievable numbers not too long after the mothership leaves our system.”

Exclamations and curses exploded around the table. A few people sounded frankly hysterical. President Miles stood, leaned over the table on braced arms and barked, “Keep it together!” Abashed, the room fell silent and all eyes turned to her. She said, “So, we have a brief grace period in which to destroy the daughter-ship. We
also
have to mobilize to destroy the mothership, preferably well before it nears the sun. If our first try doesn’t succeed, we’ve got to have time for a second third or fourth attempt before they can return to their home system.”

“If the mothership doesn’t return, won’t they just send through another ship to check on it?”

Miles said grimly, “Then we’ll just need to destroy that one too. And, we’ll need to figure out some way to
permanently
block their wormhole.”

No one disagreed, so the president set about assigning tasks toward their immediate goals of destroying the daughter-ship
and
the mothership. She glanced around the table, “And remember, we
will
mobilize any resources necessary, so do
not
fail to ask for any help you think might make a difference!”