Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (32 page)

Second Officer said, “They’re constantly changing their velocity. They’ll be hard to hit.”

Levon drew her head back at this. It was hard to conceive that a light speed weapon couldn’t hit an object every time. Then she remembered the thing was 26,000 kilofargs away. Even at light speed it would take the beam a third of a microday to hit and, if they couldn’t predict its velocity… She keyed a quick calculation into the computer, then turned to her bridge crew, “Yeah, at this distance we’ll miss our aim point by a few fargs, but that thing’s big enough that we should hit it somewhere with some of our shots. Start firing.”

Second Officer slowly shook his head, “The meteorite system isn’t going to
deflect
something that size.”

Levon grimaced at the idiocy of her crew, “Of course not. It’s a ship crewed by a bunch of primitives. Getting holes punched in their ship will scare hell out of them. Then they’ll leave.”

Second Officer frowned, “Are you sure they’re primitive? The way they accelerate…”

Levon stepped close to him and bared her teeth, “They don’t even have space elevators!
Of course
they’re primitive.”

Second officer stepped back and dropped his muzzle to protect his neck. A thrum and smack sound signaled the firing of the deflection system. Levon and Second Officer both turned slowly to watch the alien vessel on the big screen. Nothing happened after the first two firings, but shortly after the third firing the alien vessel swerved, accelerated, and began turning. “Keep firing,” Levon said in a satisfied tone.

***

Vaz reviewed the program one more time then gave his AI the command to run it.

Wendell cursed. “Is someone in here screwing with the number two and number five dishes?!”

Wendell was in charge of monitoring the signals from the aliens’ ships. Originally, it had been fairly simple because the mothership and the daughter-ship were aligned almost coaxially with Earth. Whatever signals the mothership had sent to the daughter-ship also blew past the daughter and came to Earth, so they were easy to pick up. The daughter-ship had an antenna of some type that leaked signal back toward Earth. Though that signal was much weaker they’d picked up a decent waveform most of the time. However, as the mothership and the daughter-ship trajectories diverged, their original coaxial alignment with Earth shifted off to the side so that it became harder and harder to get a signal. At present they were only getting a detectable signal from the mothership, probably because it was much stronger and still aimed at least somewhat towards Earth, but it was weak.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that they were barely picking up a signal, now both of Wendell’s antennas, the one aimed at the mothership
and
the one aimed at the daughter-ship were transmitting! He glanced at what they’d been receiving and realized they hadn’t actually been getting anything for the past few minutes, either because the aliens weren’t transmitting or because the signal had completely faded out, but if the aliens
did
transmit something they might be able to pick up, they wouldn’t be able to get it when their own system was generating a bunch of radiative energy from the antenna!

Wendell looked around the room and saw a few people gazing at him curiously, but no one was raising their hand to volunteer that they were the ones who’d loaded a transmission. He looked back at his monitors. The transmissions had ceased. He let out a long-suffering sigh and sagged back in his chair.

About three minutes later Wendell was getting a strong clear signal from both the mothership and the daughter-ship. In fact, a better signal than he’d ever gotten from the daughter-ship in the past.

He scratched his head. It was as if the aliens had turned an antenna from each ship to beam directly at his dishes. Maybe they were about to start sending actual messages to Earth? He studied the signals,
Looks like the same old crap.
After glancing around the room one more time to make sure no one was pulling his chain, he settled back down to try to make heads or tails of the signals. Apparently the boys at the NSA weren’t having any luck so he didn’t really think he had a chance.

But it was better than doing the crossword puzzle.

Vaz turned back to his screens and called up the alien data streams. With a mild sense of satisfaction, he saw that the signal NASA was sending him had markedly improved—suggesting that he’d succeeded in turning on two of their spare antennas and pointing them at Earth. In addition, the alien ships were transmitting copies of the various programs that controlled ship functions like he’d ordered.

He leaned back in his chair, wondering why the aliens had such poor security on their computer systems.
Well,
he thought,
I don’t really understand why humans do most things the way they do. It shouldn’t be any surprise that I don’t understand why the aliens don’t think they need to protect their computer systems.
After a moment, he thought,
I wish I could talk to Tiona about this. But then I’d have to tell her what I’m doing.

No matter how badly he wanted help understanding the aliens, he didn’t want anyone to know he was thinking about attacking them. There wouldn’t be a lab for him in prison.

His mind cycled back to the thought that a lot of other people had to be translating the aliens’ messages and must know what they were planning to do to Earth. Maybe those people would attack the aliens and save him the trouble.

But if they didn’t he needed to be ready.

Vaz wondered if he should feel badly about what he thought he could do to the aliens.

He decided,
They shouldn’t have shot at my daughter…

***

Nolan looked over at Tiona. She was staring at her HUD with tears running down her cheeks. Gently touching her arm he said, “What’s the matter?”

Hoarsely, she said, “Reven just sent me the video of her delivering the thrust chair to the boy that inspired my dad to build it.” She slowly shook her head in awe, “The look of joy on his face…”

Nolan said, “Can I see it?”

Tiona nodded and a moment later the vid showed up on his HUD. Watching it, he got a frog in his throat too. After swallowing a couple of times he said quietly, “They look pretty poor.”

Tiona said, “Yeah. Everything’s clean and neat, but worn out.” She studied her HUD some more, evidently going back through the video. Then she mused, “I’ll bet something bad’s happened. The father died, the mother lost her job,
something
bad…” After a moment she got a look of resolve, “I’ll check into it.” She started mumbling to her AI.

Nolan thought back to Tiona’s days helping the homeless at the shelter in Chapel Hill.
If anyone can recognize somebody who’s been crushed somehow, it’d be Tiona.

Nolan waited until she seemed to have finished talking to the AI about the boy’s mother, then said, “So I’ve been thinking…”

Tiona, her mood restored, grinned at him, “What with?”

He smirked back at her, “I’ve got several devastating comebacks, but I’ll refrain from deploying them in the interest of ordinary human decency.”

Tiona laughed, “Oh!
That
was a low blow!” She rolled her eyes, then said, “Let’s hear these profound thoughts.”

“It’s about a weapon we could use against the aliens if…” he paused as if unsure how to continue.

The corner of Tiona’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, yeah, we’re on the same page about the fact they probably need to be attacked. Don’t go all namby-pamby on me.”

“Well, remember we were talking about how their beam weapon could shoot up small projectiles and that they could probably detect big projectiles from far enough away to maneuver their ship out of its path?”

Tiona nodded.

“I’ve been considering a couple of strategies.” He held up a finger, “Number one. Remember their beam weapon didn’t do so well once it hit a fluid-filled object. It had to boil the water which absorbed a lot of energy.”

Tiona nodded again, distantly grateful that he didn’t say “Kurt Shapiro’s head” instead of “fluid-filled object.”

“Suppose we fly something like a fifty-five gallon drum full of steel balls at them. We pour water into the barrel and around and over the balls and let cool to nearly freezing. Now their beam has to first heat and then vaporize that water before it can start damaging any of the balls.” He shrugged, “Besides, a big barrel full of steel balls is probably too heavy for them to deflect with their beam weapon.” He paused, glancing at her to be sure she was following.

She jerked a nod at him.

“Now, remember we’re steering our barrel-o-balls with the thruster system that aligned and accelerated it in the first place. If they try to maneuver their ship to avoid getting hit, those thrusters just put it back on target.”

Tiona looked thoughtful, but didn’t make a comment.

He continued. “The barrel could even have a bursting charge to spread the steel balls right before they hit, like a shotgun blast.”

Tiona said, “I think you’re right. But a big chunk of solid steel would probably hit harder and still be too much for them to deflect with a beam weapon.” She tilted her head, “It could also have water in front and an explosive charge.”

“Probably true. I’m thinking we should make up several weapon systems. We don’t want to find out that the one we spent all our time on doesn’t work when we don’t have enough time to build another one.”

“Good point. Shall we go over and brainstorm with the Costa brothers?”

Nolan nodded. Tiona had her AI contact Pete Costa.

***

Washington DC — The US State Department has confirmed that the second saucer which was sent to evaluate the aliens’ vessels has been fired upon as well. This mission approached no closer than 10,000 kilometers in an effort to be sure that they didn’t accidentally trigger any automated meteorite protection systems that the aliens might be using. Despite maintaining this distance, this larger saucer was fired upon while paralleling the alien mothership. Though specifics have not been released, we have learned that the weapon fired by the mothership was substantially larger than the one fired by the daughter-ship in the first incident. Apparently this incident also involved a beam weapon that punctured a hole through the saucer, this time from side to side rather than top to bottom since the saucer was traveling parallel to the alien ship rather than decelerating to meet it. No one was injured by the weapon, despite its holing the saucer, taking out the power runs to a fusor and perforating the corner of a water tank. Apparently this was because, even though the weapon punched a larger hole, the saucer itself—at seventy-five meters in diameter—was
much
larger than the eight meter saucer which was damaged in the first incident.

Around the world storms of controversy continue to erupt over how to deal with the aliens. Though multiple political entities have apparently sent their own radio messages to the alien ships, it would appear that no return messages have been received. Any radio transmissions emanating from the alien ships appear either to be simple radar emissions or to represent the leakage of incomprehensible transmissions sent from one alien vessel to the other. Though it’s thought that tens of thousands of people, ranging from hobbyists to cyber-security specialists to governmental codebreakers have been working to understand the alien transmissions, if anyone has been successful in translating them they have not made it known to the rest of the world.

With an inability to communicate, some say that the only evidence of the aliens’ intentions comes from their attacks on the two saucers we have sent to meet them. They urge that we prepare to meet them on a war footing. Others, pointing out that it’s almost impossible to imagine why the aliens would’ve traveled here from another star system to wage war against us, urge that we meet them with open arms. After all, a race which can travel between the stars must have tremendous technological advantages which would be almost impossible for us to overcome in any attempts to make war on them.

Tiona introduced Generals Cooper and Stoddard as well as Major Vincent to some of the people there at GSI including her brother, a couple of the technical guys, and Pete Costa from Costa and Sons. They were having a meeting to talk about possible weapons that might be used against the aliens. She began by saying, “I thought it might be helpful if we knew what kind of weapons you military guys are mounting on saucers. No need to duplicate effort and all that.”

Even before she’d finished General Stoddard began shaking his head negatively. “The weapons systems are all classified. We can’t tell you
anything
about them. Essentially we’re only here to give you advice on any systems you think you might be able to build.”

Cooper had gotten a sour look on his face. He turned to Stoddard and said, “Marlon, we need to work
with
these people. They have access to a lot of brainpower. We can’t afford not to tap into that.”

Stoddard’s face closed up, “Classified, Jim. You can’t even
order
me to give these people classified information.”

Tiona lifted her hands in a pacifying gesture, “We don’t really need to know any details. Were just wondering what broad categories of weapons you guys are working on? Kinetic weapons, beam weapons, explosive weapons,” she shrugged, “some other category of weapon we haven’t even thought about?”

Stoddard gave her a look that fell a little short of a glare, “There’s no reason why you need to know what
we’re
deploying for you to build whatever you want to build.”

Tiona stared at him for a moment, then said, “Let’s just suppose that we’re thinking about building some kind of beam weapon, and let’s further suppose that you guys are already mounting some kind of amazing laser blaster that’s ten times stronger than what we’re building.” Stoddard started to interrupt, but Tiona held up her hand to get him to wait. “Now let’s suppose that it does come down to the space warfare and we head out there and take a shot at them… But,” she waved that halting hand back and forth in negation, “it turns out that they’ve got some amazing deflection shield that blocks
all
beam weapons. You guys take your shot too. Neither of us even puts a
scratch
on them! Now,” she leaned forward and fixed him with an intent gaze, “it becomes evident that we need a
kinetic
weapon, but it’s too
goddamn
late because
neither
of us built one!”

Looking like he might explode, Stoddard started to stand up out of his chair, but Cooper had a firm grip on his shoulder. Cooper said, “Settle down Marlon. She’s got a good point and you damned well know it.” Cooper turned to Tiona and said, “Without divulging any classified information I am quite comfortable telling you that yes, we’re in fact mounting beam weapons on a couple of our LEO saucers. They’ve been converted to function in deep space by adding on your dad’s electromagnetic radiation shielding systems.”

Tiona said, “Thank you.
That
happens to fit fairly well with our plans since our skills are mostly suited for building kinetic weapons. Our plans are to…” She went on to describe some of the thruster based projectiles that their team had been working up since the initial discussion that she and Nolan had. Cooper and Vincent had a few good suggestions.

If Stoddard had any suggestions, he kept them to himself.

They brainstormed a little about “out there” kinds of weapons such as a fusor and capacitor device linked up to a graphene net which might shock the alien ship into a nonfunctional state. However they soon realized it would be subject to the same problems as the kinetic weapons. The aliens’ beam weapon would probably fire on it as it approached. Considering that it would be filled with sophisticated electronics, it would probably be much more susceptible to damage by the beam weapon than a simple impactor made of a big chunk of steel.

They also discussed nuclear weapons. Even though the blast effect from a nuclear weapon wouldn’t be very significant unless they managed to place the weapon really close to the aliens, an enhanced radiation weapon like a neutron bomb should kill all the aliens on board even if it
didn’t
damage the ship itself. An advantage would be that they could study the technology on the ship afterwards. GSI, of course, couldn’t produce such a weapon, but they might build a delivery system for it.

As the meeting broke up Tiona thought General Stoddard looked very thoughtful. She felt a little uncomfortable about her suspicion that he was mostly interested in the possibility of delivering an enhanced radiation weapon. The whole idea left Tiona feeling a little unclean.

Though, she didn’t know why—dead was dead, wasn’t it?
Not really,
she thought
, dying from radiation is supposed to be a really ugly way to go.

On the other hand, those bastards took an unprovoked shot at me.

When Tiona got back to her office, she found General Cooper standing there, apparently waiting for her. “Yes General, what can I do for you?”

He said, “Can we talk in your office? This isn’t for general consumption.”