Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (41 page)

Tiona decided she’d have to come back and review this conversation later. She wanted to understand it but it was a little too mind-boggling to take in at the moment. For now, the important thing was that the aliens were briefly hiding in their wormhole while the projectiles went by. Hesitantly, she asked, “Is there a way to keep them from going into the wormhole? So we can… hit them with a projectile.”

“Um…” Vaz’s body language suddenly became stiffer than usual.

Tiona, worrying that he was going to withdraw again, squatted down so she could get some idea where his eyes were going. They were darting over towards Nolan’s feet.

Speaking very quietly, Vaz said, “I don’t think we should…”

We should what?!
Tiona wondered.
Destroy the alien ship? Use some dangerous method to keep them from going into the wormhole?
Then she realized his eyes were still darting over toward Nolan.
Talk about it in front of Nolan!
she suddenly realized. “Um, just a minute.” She stood and stepped over to whisper to Nolan, “I think he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of you. Can you go upstairs for a minute?”

Nolan nodded and headed for the stairs.

Tiona pulled over a chair and sat down next to her dad. He didn’t look nearly as much on edge as he had. “Can you tell me about it now that Nolan’s gone?”

Vaz nodded, “It’s like Korea.”

“Like Korea?” Tiona asked, having no idea what he was talking about.

“Yeah. You know, how I shouldn’t tell anyone that I killed a bunch of people… even if they deserved it… or if I overthrew a government.”

Holy crap,
Tiona thought, her conversations with her dad about keeping his role in overthrowing the government of North Korea a secret washing back over her
. He doesn’t want anybody knowing what he’s doing to the aliens either.
“Okay. If you’ll tell me how to do it, I can tell the government. If they do it, nobody’s going to be upset about it.”

Vaz fidgeted, the fingers of his right hand sliding over his left forearm as if he was looking for hair to pull out. “Um, but I already did it.”

Tiona blinked, “Did what?”

“Reprogrammed their astrogation so the perihelion of their orbit will be much closer to the sun.”

Tiona frowned as she tried to understand, “So close they’ll be destroyed?”

Vaz nodded, “Do you think I should undo it?”

Dismayed by the possibility that he might do that, she said, “No! No, it’ll be a good backup in case the government doesn’t manage to destroy them before they get back to the sun. Um, how’d you do that?”

“Their computers and their programming are relatively simple. Since they don’t have AIs that monitor system activity, if I change things they don’t notice.”

“Oh.” Tiona thought for a moment, relief washing over her at the thought that the aliens wouldn’t be able to go back home even if every attack humans tried failed. Then she worried about the possibility that her dad’s programming might fail to take them out as well. If they survived his programming changes it would truly be too late to try plan D, or E, or whatever they’d be up to by then. She said, “The military’s going to try to sneak in some discs loaded with high explosive. They hope to place them right up against the hull of the alien ship by moving them so slowly that they aren’t recognized as meteorites.” She paused for a moment, wondering if her dad would make a comment on that strategy but he didn’t. She shrugged, “After we’ve been attacking them, I think it’s pretty unlikely that they’re going to let a bunch of discs, even if they’re small, sneak in and place themselves right up against the surface of their ship.”

Vaz didn’t comment.

Tiona said, “If that doesn’t work they’re planning to use a neutron bomb. Even though the aliens were planning to kill us, having them die of radiation toxicity seems… I don’t know… cruel and unusual.”

Vaz gave one of his tiny shrugs, “A neutron bomb probably won’t kill them anyway.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure they can get the bomb close enough the aliens can’t avoid the radiation. They can send it in behind a barrier of water that’ll absorb the energy from the aliens’ beam weapon.”

Vaz didn’t say anything for a moment, then he said, “I’m not tremendously knowledgeable about biology, but the aliens live in a lot of really high radiation environments. I was surprised about that so I looked for information on it in their encyclopedia. Unless I misunderstood, their DNA error correction processes are several orders of magnitude better than ours. A neutron bomb would probably make them sick, but I’m pretty sure they’d recover.”

Holy shit!
Tiona thought. She cast about for other solutions, “Could you reprogram their system so they couldn’t escape into their wormhole?”

“So the government could hit them with impactors?”

“Uh-huh, then it’ll be the government that killed them, rather than you.”

He frowned, “But then I
would’ve
done the programming and they’d
know
it. Or, are you wanting me to teach someone in the government how to work with their software?”

“Um, no,” Tiona said, thinking about how freaked out the NSA already was about his programming skills, “I’d rather you didn’t try to do that.” She paused, thinking.

She hadn’t come up with anything before Vaz said, “You know they don’t
need
a program to keep the aliens from entering the wormhole. The aliens almost certainly can’t open the wormhole more than a few times per hour. It takes too much energy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, they have a device that acts like an enormous capacitor…” He got an animated look on his face and said, “Its specs are pretty amazing. I’d really like to see it…” He ran down with a kind of dreamy look on his face.

Tiona waited a moment for her dad to explain what the capacitor had to do with attacking the aliens, but it appeared that he’d lost that train of thought. Finally, she said, “You were telling me about why the aliens can’t open the wormhole more than a few times an hour?”

“Oh, yeah. That capacitor is pretty amazing but there’s a limit to how much energy it can hold. They keep it charged all the time so they can jump if a big meteorite surprises them, but if two or three meteorites were to come one after another, they wouldn’t be able to recharge the capacitor sufficiently to jump again.”

Prickles formed in Tiona’s scalp and, as disbelieving relief exploded over her, she felt a little lightheaded. “So…
all
we have to do is send a chain of impactors at them one after another, separated by a few seconds each?”

He nodded.

***

Levon looked up when the capacitors thrummed a discharge, sending the
Flying Light
into the wormhole. It caused some discomfort, lifting into the wormhole, but, thank the Prenaust, nothing like the agony of going all the way through.
They must have thrown another one of their impactors at us,
she thought.
When will they learn that their kinetic weapons can’t touch us?

She turned back to her screens, but then the capacitors thrummed again. A sensation of icy lightning shot through her wings. She looked over at the screen displaying the charge remaining in the capacitors. Three percent!

Levon looked back at her officers, seeing panic in their eyes.

Distantly she remembered Fourth Officer asking, “What if they send multiple impactors?”

Levon had brushed him off, telling him that the primitives in the system couldn’t possibly do that. Now she desperately wondered what she could do about it.

Her world exploded…

The White House, Washington, DC – This evening from the Oval Office, President Miles spoke to the nation and the world, addressing the rampant speculation about the aliens’ recent visit to our world.

She states that it recently became possible to translate the aliens’ transmissions, a major stumbling block when they first arrived. The president says that these transmissions reveal a race of aliens which has little control over its reproductive cycles and has massively overpopulated several solar systems. When overcrowding becomes severe, their strategy has been to move many tens of billions of their people to another system. The vessel which visited us came through a wormhole from Epsilon Eridani, which is not their primary system, but a secondary system that they have now also overpopulated.

Their mission here was an exploratory one, preparatory to beginning to move billions of their people into our system. Although humans are apparently the first intelligent race they have encountered, this did not dissuade them from that plan. President Miles says they intended to exterminate the human race by release of a bio-weapon from the ship that landed on the Pacific island of Tabuaeran.

With regret, President Miles reported that, shortly after they landed, the aliens captured a number of the people living on Tabuaeran and apparently used them as guinea pigs for the design of said bio-weapon. President Miles expressed her gratitude to the president of the Republic of Kiribati for his cooperation in allowing the United States unfettered access to the islands of the Republic while the US military was evaluating and eventually dealing with the intruders on Tabuaeran. She also expressed her thanks to GSI. The company was instrumental in delivering an asteroid which impacted on Tabuaeran, destroying the aliens’ ship and generating sufficient heat to eradicate any viral bio-weapons which might have been present within it. Although the accompanying video of the asteroid impact looks like the detonation of an atomic weapon, President Miles assures us that it was not. She says however that there was some radiation present in the mushroom cloud. This radiation came from a nuclear reactor on the aliens’ ship.

Although the alien ship on Tabuaeran was destroyed weeks ago, the president says she waited until now to inform the world of these events because she wanted to be sure that we were able to deal with the mothership before she did so. The president then showed high-speed video of the aliens’ mothership being demolished by the impact of high speed projectiles, something she says did not happen until late yesterday.

Of note, there are rumors that destroying the mothership was much more difficult than President Miles lets on, requiring multiple attempts. However, even the people generating those rumors apparently do believe that the problem has now been solved.

In short, President Miles says that the aliens did intend to eradicate the human race. For now the threat’s been resolved. However, she says that in order to prevent further incursions we’ll need to forever remain diligent in guarding the wormhole near the sun. The president does not seem to be concerned that the aliens will be able to bypass or overwhelm the guard force she plans to establish.

As you might expect, the great majority of people were greatly relieved by this news. Of course, there are those who still claim that the aliens arrived peacefully, that they have been horribly misunderstood, and that their eradication will bring down the wrath of galactic civilization. Others claim there were no aliens at all, merely a conspiracy to make us
believe
aliens had arrived.

Demands are plentiful including those who insist that they must have access to any translation program in order to confirm President Miles’ claims. The president says she is reluctant to make the translation algorithm available until all of the transmissions have been evaluated to make sure that any technology revealed within them will not be tremendously disruptive or easily weaponizable. Of course, many are appalled by this limitation on the free dissemination of scientific knowledge. Others are insisting on the right to study any alien artifacts retrieved from the debris of the mothership. Several countries have given notice of their intent to submit claims regarding their rights to this information with the United Nations or the World Court.

This president’s spokesperson states that all due consideration is being given to providing this information to the world, but only after it is been fully evaluated to be certain that it does not present a danger…

Walking into the first day of school, Victor’s eyes were pulled to a girl a little way in front of him. She had dark hair and walked a little like Reven, but she had on a pair of the new shorts that were all the rage. The shorts showed off legs which were muscularly graceful.

Victor took his eyes off the new girl to look around for Reven. As his eyes skipped further down the walkway he saw Eddie Scott step out. Victor and Eddie had been friends many years ago, but less so the past couple of years. Even less so over the last few months when Eddie’d broken Reven’s heart by ignoring her after he’d taken up with Kate. Victor thought Kate was beautiful on the outside, but ugly inside.

Victor realized that Eddie was angling toward the new girl. He supposed that Eddie and Kate must have broken up, probably because Kate dumped him for somebody new. Victor felt bad for Reven that after losing Kate, Eddie was moving on to some new girl. Victor knew just how much Reven would like to get together with her old friend.

The new girl stopped and she and Eddie started talking. As Victor walked by he looked over curiously to see the girl’s face.

Reven!

Victor stumbled and stopped, staring at Reven. Her hair was different. Though Victor wasn’t really sure what had changed, he thought it looked good. Rather than the heavy work shirts she’d always worn in the past, she had on a lightweight blouse that had a string belt at her waist. Her
slender
waist!

Was Reven always this pretty and I just didn’t notice? Or is it the new clothes? Or is it because she’s getting older?
He blinked and started wondering what Eddie and Reven were talking about.

Reven said, “Sorry to hear about Kate. You aren’t the first guy she’s dumped though. I think she… just likes having new boyfriends.” Reven’s eyes fell on Victor and he would have sworn they twinkled.

“I think we have history together first period,” Eddie said. “You want to head over together?”

A feeling of dismay welling up, Victor started to turn away. But then he heard Reven say, “I would, but Victor and I already talked about sitting together in history. Besides,” she winked at Victor who thought he was probably gaping like a beached fish, “Victor and I need to talk about his sky-board. GSI’s going to make him one pretty soon.”

Reven stepped over to Victor and said, “Hey there. I’ve been missing you.” She grabbed Victor’s elbow and turned him toward the school.

Victor turned to stare at her, “We have history together?”

“Sure,” Reven winked at him and grinned hugely, “don’t you
remember
talking about it.”

“Um, no,” he said, searching his memory in confusion.

She leaned a little closer, “So, does that mean you don’t want to sit next to me?”

“Oh! No, I, I, mean yes. I mean I
do
want to sit next to you. I just don’t remember…”

“Yeah,” Reven wrinkled her nose at him, “I might’ve made a little bit of that up. You know, on account of Eddie not being a very good friend to me in the past, while
you’ve
been awesome. Over the summer I decided I wanted to get to know
you
better.”

***

Karen looked over at Ronnie as he deftly spun his float chair up and in the door of their pickup. It was an old beater of a truck that she’d traded their wheelchair van for. Sliding half sideways and half backwards, he brought his chair down on the passenger seat. Grabbing the truck’s shoulder harness, he slipped it across and buckled himself into place like he’d been doing it all his life. She still felt astonished that, since it didn’t have wheels, the float chair fit into the seat of the truck and he could buckle himself in without any adaptations. Ronnie could actually ride in almost any car now, though it helped that the truck was big and didn’t require tight maneuvering like some of the smaller cars they’d tried out.

The pickup was a godsend for this move too. Packing all their crap into the van would have been possible, but the open space in the back of the truck held a lot more boxes and meant fewer trips. The float chair let Ronnie help a lot more too. The knees of the chair would fold out straight when he lowered it so the seat was on the floor. This let him lower himself down beside a box; pick it up and put it in his lap; then lift back up into the air and zip out to the truck. Once out at the truck, he could bring the chair up to the level of the bed and push the box off. She still did a lot of the rearranging of the boxes in the truck in order to best conserve space, but he was
way
more helpful than he would’ve been in his old wheelchair.

The most amazing though was the fact that he’d saved her hiring some men to move the heavy stuff. She simply tied rope around big objects and he hooked the rope over the arms of his wheelchair. The damned thing could lift a surprising amount, so he could sail through the air with objects weighing a couple hundred pounds suspended beneath the chair. He’d lift them up over the pickup where she’d line them up over the bed and he’d slowly lower them into place. The biggest problems had been when he and the object he was moving wouldn’t fit one above the other through the door. Like with the couch. But he’d been able to maneuver up to the door inside the house while she guided one end of the couch through the doorway. Then he’d zipped out the back door and around to the end of the couch that was already outside, looping the rope to lift and tug the couch outward while Karen lifted the back end the rest of the way through the door.

Karen figured one or possibly two more trips and they’d have all their worldly possessions moved into their crappy little apartment. She’d gotten a job, but it didn’t pay well enough to keep up the mortgage on their old house. The apartment was so small they could barely fit their meager possessions into it, but the low rent should leave them some money to do a few other things.

And, if John managed to find a job so he could pay his alimony and
any
of her other job applications came through maybe they could move into a better place.

They pulled up in front of their old house and Karen backed into the driveway. To her surprise she saw someone standing on the porch. She could tell Ronnie was looking that way as well. Since so few people came to visit, she once again worried that it was a salesperson or a proselytizer. She couldn’t help but think about the day Reven Davis had delivered Ronnie’s float chair, but had to be realistic that a visitor was likely
bad
news.
I hope the real estate people didn’t forget and send somebody by to look at the house today.
She’d told them that it was going to look a disaster because of the move and said she needed a couple days to clean it up before anyone should come by for a viewing.

The truck hadn’t even completely stopped when Ronnie popped his shoulder harness, banged open the door, and flew his float chair out. He shot over the hedge and up onto the porch, leaving Karen with cuss words dying on her lips.
What the hell’s gotten him so excited?
She glanced at the woman on the porch, wondering if it could be Reven Davis come back. Ronnie was excitedly talking to the woman while floating high enough to be speaking eye to eye like he did almost everyone nowadays. The woman didn’t have shiny black hair like Reven though, more of a dark wheat color.

With a feeling of trepidation, Karen slowly got out her side of the pickup and walked around. Climbing up onto the porch, she said, “Hello?” to the pretty young woman.

“Hi Ms. Williams, I’m Tiona Gettnor…” the woman began.

Ronnie interrupted excitedly, “Mom, she’s Dr. Gettnor’s daughter and the Chief Technical Officer of GSI!”

Karen could tell that her son was doing his best to make sure she didn’t stick her foot in her mouth by not recognizing Ms. Gettnor. She wanted to think that she wasn’t as obtuse as Ronnie thought, but self-awareness made her admit to herself that she hadn’t recognized Gettnor by her appearance even though the young woman was all over the news. “Um, hello Ms. Gettnor. We’d
very much
like to thank you for Ronnie’s float chair.” Her voice broke a little, “It’s… it’s
so
improved his life… We’re
really
grateful.”

Gettnor gave Karen a brilliant smile that warmed her soul. “I’d say that we’re really glad we could help, except it was really just my dad’s idea.” She glanced over at Ronnie, “And Ronnie was the inspiration, having been the one my dad saw struggling with a wheelchair and a curb cut.” Her eyes turned back to Karen, “I’m actually here wondering if you could help us?”

The bottom dropped out of Karen stomach.
I knew it was too good to be true! They want to be
paid
for that chair!
Then her logical side caught up, telling her that no company would send their CTO out to collect money. Glad that her voice didn’t sound shaky, she said, “Sure, what can I do?”