The Black Ships (16 page)

Sixty
Meter Observatory

Mauna
Kea, Hawaii

July 15
^th
, 2026

J
an sat at the conference table in the atrium and stared up at the
large screen, showing the latest imagery captured from Mars. The aliens had
been busy, setting up a large complex on the surface and aggressively
exploiting the planet’s resources. Mine shafts had been driven into several
locations on Olympus Mons and processing facilities had sprung up at each.
Ground transport had also been developed, with roads and an elevated maglev
rail connecting the mining sites with the production facilities on the plain
below.

She reached out and grabbed her cup,
enjoying the warmth that leached into her hands as she cradled the hot coffee.
Army logistics had provided a stock of tea for their British staff but it was
horrid. The coffee was far better and so –
when in Rome
… The momentary
comfort relaxed her mind, shifting her train of thought. She realized that,
though much growth was in evidence, something about the image seemed backwards.
“Colonel McCutcheon, could you give us a before-and-after of the main site?”

McCutcheon nodded over to a corporal who
split the display screen, bringing up an older file image. The difference
between the two was impressive. Recent building activity had enlarged the enemy
complex by four hundred percent.

“That stack of capsules has been
shrinking,” she said out loud.

“Fuel cells?” ventured Pete.

“I don’t know,” Jan mused quietly. “The size
- they look just right for holding an alien.”

“Stasis pods?” McCutcheon offered.

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jan was still
looking up at the two images.
But not just stasis. “
If they carried them
all this way on board, why waste the resources needed to ship them down to the
planet when they could revive them and ship down the individuals?” She looked
around the table. “Why waste energy carrying the pods to the surface?”

“Well it’s obvious that they did just
that,” Dr. Tudor pointed out.

“Did they really?” Jan thought for a
moment. “The sudden burst in activity follows the sudden reduction in capsules,
so I think it’s reasonable to consider the possibility that the capsules held a
workforce.”
What exactly am I trying to say?
she looked down at her mug.
I need another coffee but the pot is empty. Why does it always seem like I’m
the only one who makes a new pot.

Suddenly, she smiled.

She got up and walked over to the
percolator leaving the rest to argue.  It was one of the big cylindrical
forty cup machines that every army headquarters unit was sure to have and
reloading it would give her mind a few moments to think. She pulled out the
filter unit – almost the size of a spare tire – and dumped it. She dropped it
back in the top and put a new filter paper on the bottom.
Making a pot means
I get the first cup, the freshest possible coffee.

She dumped a full bag of coffee into the
filter unit, leaning over to sniff the rich earthy scent. She put the lid on
top and flicked the switch to start the heater. “You only make coffee when you
need it,” she said loudly as she turned and leaned against the table. Some of
her colleagues looked a little shame-faced at that but most had caught her
tone; she was making a point and not about coffee.

“Unless you’re Mike,” she added, to General
laughter. Mike’s tolerance for stale coffee was something of a legend on the
mountain. “The rest of us only make a pot when we need it and I think that’s
what our alien neighbors are up to with these pods.”

“Dr. Colbert, I believe you’ve already made
that point,” said Tudor. “They’re defrosting colonists, yes?”

“You’re still thinking like Mike,” she
responded with a grin. “They aren’t popping them in the microwave; they’re
making
them. It explains why they started to ship them all down months in advance
of when they were activated. They didn’t carry them from their home world, they
manufactured the pods on site and cloned laborers. Because they don’t have room
on board the ship, they sent them down to the surface while the pods finished the
cloning process; possibly implanting knowledge so the product would come out
‘ready to use’.”

“Or ready to fight,” Young offered.
"Might be why they haven't come here yet. Take a foothold on Mars, set up
a logistics base and clone the invasion force onsite." He nodded to
himself. "The shorter your logistics supply train, the better. If they
don't have to rely on their home world for re-supply and reinforcements,
they're more efficient - at least if their enemy can't reach their logistics
base."

“Then they've got a surprise coming."
McCutcheon muttered darkly. "Regardless of their reasons, those pods would
be well worth trying to grab when we hit the ground.” He turned to the corporal
who was serving as projectionist. “Dan, how many time frames do we have for
this site?”

Dan opened up a file folder. “Looks like
ten or eleven.”

“Put them up in sequence starting from the
earliest,” the colonel suggested.

As they watched, the original showed no
capsules but, as each subsequent image came up, they could see a steadily-growing
number. The latest image showed that they had been almost entirely depleted.
McCutcheon was pleased. “It’s not proof, but it certainly matches your theory
Dr. Colbert. If they’d brought all those capsules with them from their
homeworld, they probably would have revived them on the ship. Waste of space to
ship them down in capsules.” He scribbled some notes on the pad in front of
him. “It definitely seems to indicate the use of on-demand manufacturing at the
very least.”

“One bit of good news,” he continued.
“Their aggressive patrolling seems to have reached its zenith.” He nodded at
Dan who brought up a new graphic showing a larger area with a red hash-marked
area surrounding the production site. “The patrols have stopped expanding their
coverage. Dr. Wilsen believes that their vehicles are having trouble with the
soil and blowing dust.

“Our survivors, if they did in fact
survive, are in a cave ten kilometers outside of the current patrol zone.” He
pointed to the blue symbol to the left of the alien site. “There’s a habitat
inside the cave and enough food and water to keep them alive for almost three
years.”

“When do we get there?” Mike asked.

“Just under three years.” McCutcheon looked
grim. “I wouldn’t want to spend three years cooped up in a cave, but they have
electronic files of every book ever written and tons of other media. As long as
they don’t get cabin fever and start killing each other, they should be more or
less sane when we pick them up.” He stood. “Let’s call it a day; write up your
findings and send them to the collator by sixteen hundred. Thanks, everyone.”

As the team began to drift away, the
colonel came over to Jan and began fixing a cup of coffee. “Nice work today,
Doctor” he remarked casually, pouring three packets of sugar into the fresh
brew.

“Thanks, it came to me when I was thinking
about making coffee.”

He took a sip, nodding his approval at the
strength of the beverage. “However it came to you, it came to
you
, not
to any of the rest of us.” He looked at her keenly. “I notice that you haven’t
put your name in for the response fleet. We could use you.”

Jan shrugged. “I wasn’t really sure whether
I would be able to earn my keep if I went along.”

“That’s the thing about working in
intelligence,” he replied, gazing absently at the percolator. “You never know
what kind of contribution you might make until it happens. You could spend
years sifting through garbage but that one flash of insight could save
thousands of lives on both sides of a conflict.” He turned to face her directly.
“You had an impressive flash of insight today and it may well be of great
technical importance for us. Whether or not it turns out to be the case, you
have the kind of analytical mind and fertile imagination that we need to have
on this team. Once we capture that site,” he said, pointing up at the image on
the screen, “I’m going to want you down there, going through he place with a
fine tooth comb.”

Jan was surprised.
I know I’m a good
professor and a solid scientist but it will be a much faster pace with the
fleet.
“Colonel, if I miss something I could get a lot of good people
killed.”

He shrugged. “If you don’t come with us,
you make it a certainty that you
will
miss something, everything in
fact.” He drained his coffee, rinsed out the mug and shoved it into a large
pocket on his tunic. “Consider this: I would welcome any member of this current
team but you are the only one that I’ve approached about going. We need you.”
With that, he turned and headed for his office.

He’s right,
Jan
thought, shocked.
I might miss something and get someone killed, but staying
behind guarantees that I’ll miss everything that I might otherwise have caught.
She had been holding back because of Liam. She had been unable to shake the
feeling that she would be going simply to stay near him. Now, Colonel
McCutcheon had made her realize that she had every right to go; in fact, he had
presented it as her responsibility.

She crossed the atrium, sitting down at one
of the dedicated application terminals and began to type.

Graubünden, Switzerland

November 17
^th
, 2026

M
ärti Bohren sat in his cold bachelor apartment watching the news.
Angry chanting wafted up from the street outside as protestors marched by.
Unrest was growing around the world. Many countries were becoming openly
belligerent about the debt loads that had been assessed to them in support of
fleet construction. France, once known for its social programs, had been forced
to institute severe cutbacks and citizens there were taking to the streets for
more than just peaceful protest.

People who had counted on free health care
and retirement benefits suddenly found themselves forced to pay huge fees, not
to mention supporting their retired relatives who had lost most, if not all, of
their government pensions. The riots had been growing in number and violence
and it had reached a point where it was beginning to bring the nation’s economy
to a standstill.

In a briefing that morning, Märti and his
brother officers had been told they would be placed on 48 hours notice for a
UN-led intervention. The last thing the world needed right now, or so they had
been told, was for countries to stop paying their allotted share for the
defense of Earth and France was only one of many countries teetering on the
brink. Märti and his men, all natives of Graubünden, were chosen for their
ability to speak not only English, but the three languages of Switzerland which
included  a dialect of French.

He shivered, unsure of whether it was
because of the new restrictions on household heating, or the growing dread of
the imminent deployment to France. He had no doubts that he would soon find
himself patrolling the streets of Paris where, after two months of training in
Hawaii, he would continue to feel the cold.

The worst of it was that his sympathies
were with the protestors. He knew that Switzerland’s own universal health care
system was on the rocks. Only by pulling strings did he manage to get approval
for his mother’s eye surgery. In another few months, he knew that many Swiss families
would be forced to choose between treatment or food.

How could he suppress angry French
protestors when he would rather join them?

His phone began to vibrate in his pocket.
He had put it on mute during the briefing and hadn’t bothered to reset it. He
pulled it out reluctantly, looking down to see the name of his colonel, Petrus
Fohn. The fan-out must have started. “Sir,” he answered simply. The colonel
appreciated brevity.

“Major Bohren, we deploy to Paris in two
days; have your companies ready for loading at Dübendorf on the twentieth at
eleven hundred hours.” There was a slight pause as always, giving time for
orders to be written down. “Is that fully understood, Major?”

“Understood, sir. Both of my companies to
report to Dübendorf for transport on the twentieth of this month. Loading to
commence at eleven hundred hours, full roll call will be completed by zero nine
hundred hours in front of 3
^rd
Air Transport Wing headquarters.” He
stopped for a heartbeat, considering. “Sir, how far are we taking this action?”

The colonel’s tone was tired, resigned.
“We’ll do what we must to keep them from collapsing,” he answered. His tone was
the only indication of his disapproval, the closest he’d ever come to speaking
against orders.

Märti hung up and pulled up the number for
one of his company commanders. Until a month ago, he had been a captain in
charge of a single company, but an accident had killed a senior officer and the
resulting shuffle had seen several promotions, leaving him in charge of a
newly-formed, shrunken battalion of two companies. Though his parents were
pleased, Märti would have gladly forgone the promotion if he could have avoided
suppressing hungry protestors. He almost looked forward to training aboard the
Hermann
once she became operational.