Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance Page 17

  Normally, starting with just a single pair of this species would risk failure if they were unable to survive in their harsh environment. This would not be a problem, however, because the governor was going to extrude a portion of itself into each of these specimens. There was nothing better than on-the-spot monitoring to insure their safety. Also, remaining close by for an extended number of years to protect this pair would ensure the spreading of their genes into several successive generations.

  Chapter 61 – Intercept Failure

  “Sir, they’re splitting up and accelerating in three different directions,” Commander Santos reported. “They are already up to almost eighty thousand kilometers per hour, and each has a heading to pass through our screen in less than twenty minutes.”

  “Plot the contact points, Commander,” Brooks replied. “I need to know if we will have any of our ships close enough to intercept.”

  Thirty seconds later, Santos reported, “They have chosen their breach points very carefully sir. We cannot get any ship close to them.”

  “Get me Naval Headquarters.”

  Fifteen seconds later, Brooks was connected to Andrea Miller, Secretary of the Space Navy.

  “What do you have for me, Admiral?”

  “Ma’am, the visitors will breach our perimeter in less than twenty minutes and will be heading directly toward Earth with unknown intentions. They have accelerated to a speed far beyond our capability to pursue or even for a missile to strike. The only thing that could catch them would be a laser weapon.”

  “Thank you, Fleet Admiral. Have you seen any evidence of hostile intent?”

  “No, ma’am. They were ignoring us completely until we interposed our ships between them and Earth, and then they changed their approach by accelerating around us.”

  “I’ll get back to you if we have any further orders, Admiral.”

  Secretary Miller cut the connection.

  Chapter 62 – The Esss Map Earth

  The three scouts blew through the perimeter and passed over the planet at three times the height of the local atmosphere. Their courses intersected briefly after this first pass so the scout leader could consolidate their reconnaissance and send it back to the base ship. Then each scout executed a tight turn for the next pass. This was not as efficient as simply orbiting the planet, but the mapping could still be completed with only twelve passes, with the data from each pass sent back to base before starting the next.

  Chapter 63 – The Newsies

  Richard Collins woke up to loud banging on the door of his Canal street apartment. He stumbled out of bed and put on his frayed old bathrobe as he headed from the bedroom to the apartment door.

  “Just a minute,” he yelled as he flipped on the lights. He took a quick look around the living room and then shrugged his shoulders. “Whoever you are, you’ll have to put up with a messy apartment,” he muttered to himself.

  At the front door, Richard activated the camera feed from the apartment hallway and saw three men in suits standing outside his door. Pushing the intercom button, he said gruffly “Who the hell do you think you are, knocking on my door at two o’clock in the morning?”

  “Open the door, Mr. Collins. I’m special agent Mark Singleton from the FBI and we have a warrant to search your apartment and your office.”

  “Just a minute,” replied Richard as he disengaged several locking mechanisms on his door and pulled it open to admit the FBI agents. “What the hell do you guys want? Don’t you realize it’s too early to be pulling this kind of crap?”

  “Don’t worry about what time it is,” said the agent. “Here is your copy of the warrant. We are looking for any documents associated with your publication of classified information regarding the alien visitors. If you tell us your source and turn over all of the materials you have, we can be on our way.”

  “Excuse me, please, while I contact my lawyer. You can search all you want, either here or at the office, but I will never reveal my sources.”

  With that, Richard picked up his personal comm device and dialed his lawyer’s number. He knew that the FBI would try to question him further, and he was not talking without proper representation.

  When Richard and the FBI agents reached the offices of the New York Rag, his lawyer was waiting for them, and that ended the questioning very quickly. The offices had been relocated to the top floor of a small commercial building on the lower east side of Manhattan not far from his Canal Street residence. Since Richard still did not know the identity of “The Insider”, he couldn’t reveal the name of the source to the FBI anyway. That, however, wouldn’t stop them from asking in the future, because the aliens were now buzzing around the Earth for some unknown reason.

  When the agents left, Richard decided to get right to work. With the Rag’s circulation figures now exceeding 100,000 copies a day, he was forced to spend almost all of his time overseeing his news staff of four actual reporters and he always felt like he was behind and just couldn’t seem to catch up.

  In the meantime, he had recently contacted three additional bloggers with inside tracks to the North American Union who could provide background information on what was happening inside the government to prepare for the aliens’ arrival. He had been able to offer the bloggers what some might consider exorbitant fees for their stories. These bloggers continued with their regular blogs but found the time to pass sensitive information to Richard for publication in the Rag, each under their own nom de plume. Now he had to worry about these sources being bothered by the FBI.

  Richard was hoping that tonight’s edition would have something substantive to report. He hadn’t heard from “The Insider” today, so he was scrambling for filler stories just in case. Reporting the news was definitely much harder than the rumor reporting of the past. Perhaps a story about the FBI harassing the paper was in order.

  Chapter 64 – The Council of Eight

  “They’ve been flying over Earth like bees flying around their nest,” Secretary Miller reported to the Council of Eight. “By analyzing their flight paths, we have surmised they are making detailed maps of Earth’s surface. They have not flown over any place twice and will probably complete their mapping runs with only two more passes. What they do next is a matter of pure speculation.”

  Council president Sir William Travers held up his had to quell the immediate outpouring of conversation stimulated by this report. “Let’s have some order please.”

  Travers waited for the buzzing to stop before he spoke. “Let me summarize what we know so far. First, we have an unknown alien presence in the system with a large vessel in orbit around Jupiter. Second, we have three smaller alien craft that were dispatched from the large vessel and sent in system for unknown purposes. Third, we sent a convoy toward Jupiter that encountered these three smaller ships while on their outbound flight. All attempts at communication from the convoy failed. Fourth, the three vessels altered course as they approached Earth so that they could over fly the moon. Again, all attempts at communication failed. Fifth, the Navy attempted to interpose itself between the alien vessels and Earth, to no avail. Finally, the three alien vessels are now on what appears to be a mapping mission around Earth. Did I leave anything out?”

  Councilman Jacques St. Just raised his hand and was recognized by the president. “We must note that there has been no direct evidence of aggression by the aliens to date. Personally, I would not recommend any course that would antagonize them. We need to take a wait and see approach.”

  “I did not ask for recommendations at this point,” Travers said. “Let’s hold that until we wrap up the summary of what we know so far. I will add a seventh point to the list, noting no aggression to date. Now, does anyone have more to add?”

  Miller raised her hand, even though she was not a council member. Travers nodded for her to speak.

  “We must note that, as a race, the aliens have interstellar capabilities and that their technology is quite advanced beyond what we can currently produce. We could add
quite a bit of detailed information about the three alien craft, but I think the only relevant point is that they have already demonstrated the ability to out-accelerate our best ships and to maintain velocities well above our current maximums, which are limited by our fuel capacity. Whatever other technology they have will probably be at least as far beyond our current capabilities as their vessels.”

  “Thank you, Secretary Miller,” Travers said. “I think that summarizes our worst fears. What we do know makes us feel like we are simple natives encountering the first thrust of an oncoming advanced civilization.”

  He gestured toward the door. “Okay, Secretary Miller, you are excused from the meeting. We will call you back in if we have further questions. At this point, I want to go around the table and get input and recommendations from each of the council members on what we should do next.”

  As Miller closed the door behind her, she heard the buzz of multiple conversations around the council table. She only hoped they would come up with something constructive that the Space Navy could do in the face of these daunting aliens.

  Chapter 65 – The Esss Begin Sampling

  Upon completion of the mapping, the scout leader pinpointed six landing areas around smaller landlocked bodies of water for scout two to take water and air samples and six landing zones near the major oceans around the planet for scout three to release the current monitoring buoys and take additional water, sea bottom, and air samples. The entire operation should take no more than two complete rotations of the planet, so the leader directed the other two scouts to land in each area under full exposure from the central star so that any local threats could be detected early and either avoided or dealt with as necessary.

  Once the assignments were given, the leader focused its attention on the many communication satellites circling the planet. It appeared the satellites that were in stationary orbits above the planet were the most active with communication traffic. Therefore, it selected the satellite closest to its current position and swooped in to capture it. It was a simple maneuver to get into the same orbital path as the satellite, to open the cargo hatch while flying just below it, and then to rise up and envelope the metallic object inside the cargo bay. The leader had to be careful not to damage this piece of equipment or the master chronicler would be unhappy, so it did not engage any magnetic grappling fields but simply caught the satellite in a net that it had strung in the hold for that purpose.

  As it was completing the loading of the satellite into the hold, the leader received a warning of an approaching craft. The scout craft’s monitoring system indicated that the inbound ship was coming down from a higher orbit but could not reach an intercept point in time. Therefore, the leader completed the capture, reentered the acceleration tank, and began accelerating into a much higher orbit away from any possible encounter. That is when alarms started lighting up inside the scout ship. The approaching local craft was firing very weak laser bursts and making direct hits on his ship. At this distance, the laser was not strong enough to do any damage other than causing automated shutdown of the optical sensors on one side of the ship. This was quite interesting. The leader was sure the locals could have used a more powerful setting on the laser but had chosen to send this as a warning. It would not be a good idea to get within close range of one of these local ships and take a chance on sustaining significant damage. There was no way to outrun a laser beam.

  Protocol required immediate reporting of all encounters, so the leader organized recordings of the encounter with the satellite and the subsequent laser warning and beamed them back to the base.

  That left the leader free to monitor the other two scouts’ progress and to run reconnaissance for them in case of additional local interference. Overall, the mission was going according to the plan laid out by the master chronicler, and that was always a good thing. However, the locals did pose a possible threat with their laser weapons, and the other scouts needed to be notified.

  Chapter 66 – USpN Raptor Tries to Engage

  Fleet Admiral Brooks was furious. Their spherical defensive perimeter had been so ineffective that they might as well not have been in orbit. And then the high-speed maneuvers over the planet left him feeling helpless. Pursuit was impossible at those speeds, and trying to intercept one of the alien craft was like trying to catch a gazelle in the open African plains with bare hands while running on unshod feet.

  At least on the open plains, you could attempt to hide in the tall grass and hope for a chance encounter. Out in space, there was nowhere to hide. Every move the Navy made was obvious immediately.

  That’s when the call came in from Naval Orbital Operations. One of the three alien craft was in the process of capturing one of the many geosynchronous communication satellites. Because the spherical defensive perimeter had spaced naval vessels evenly around the planet, one destroyer, the USpN Raptor, was close enough to engage.

  Brooks ordered Captain Askew aboard the Raptor to break formation and make top speed toward the satellite. “Record everything you can on the way in,” Brooks said. “You will probably be too late, but if you get close enough, paint their hull with your lowest level laser setting to let them know we’re not happy. I want it to be like a shot across the bow, not an act of war.”

  “Yes sir,” Askew replied. “We have already altered course and are making top speed. I’ll keep you informed.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Captain Askew was hailing Invincible. “I’m sorry, sir, but the alien bugged out after picking up the satellite. We were able to paint their hull, but it seemed to have little impact. The ship accelerated away from us and now appears to be heading into a much higher orbit. Do you have further orders?”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Brooks replied. “Return to your perimeter duty while I report your actions and get further instructions. Brooks out.”

  Chapter 67 – Fishing Interrupted

  Jimmy had been fishing since sunrise without too much success. His boat was anchored off the south side of Inner Island just east of the much bigger Wright Island in Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior. His family had come camping on Wright Island every summer for many years, and what Jimmy enjoyed most was getting away from his younger siblings on his morning fishing trips. Every once in a while, he even brought home enough fish to feed the entire family!

  The sound started as a background rumble, not dissimilar to distant thunder. Jimmy scanned the horizon looking for any ominous black clouds that might be approaching, but the sky was clear blue in every direction with high cirrus clouds dancing around the horizon to the south. So where was the thunder coming from?

  That’s when Jimmy spotted it. Coming in low over the lake was some type of large aircraft of a kind he had never seen before. The craft’s exterior was a grayish-green color, not unlike brackish swamp water he had seen on many of his hikes in the park. The shape was like a large cylinder floating on its side about fifty feet above the lake as it approached Wright Island. Many small jets streamed out from under the cylinder and roiled up the water directly beneath it. That’s where the thunderous noise was coming from.

  Just as the craft reached the edge of the island, its nose pivoted upward, and the tail spread out like flower petals opening to the sun. Then it settled down right in the middle of Dog Harbor. As soon as it came to rest, the noise subsided, and Jimmy decided he better not stay in the open like a deer caught in headlights. He reeled in his line, raised his anchor, and began rowing for the small opening between Inner Island and Wright Island.

  When he was just out of sight, he pulled the boat up onto a pebbly beach on Wright Island and worked his way around the island perimeter until he could just see the legs of the craft through the trees.

  “Man, that thing is huge!” he exclaimed.

  Standing on its six legs, it was as high as a forty-story office building. The top had to be at least 150 feet in diameter. With the legs spread out, the craft almost filled the entire harbor.

  As Jimmy stood there be
hind a tree watching, he heard a winching noise coming from under the main body of the craft between its legs. As he watched, the craft lowered a small object into the water on what appeared to be a cable much too thin to carry the object’s obvious weight. When the object touched the water, the cable detached and retracted. Then the small object propelled itself between two of the legs, headed out of the harbor, into the lake. Maybe it wasn’t so small, Jimmy thought. Compared to the main ship, it was tiny, but it had to be twice the size of his rowboat.

  The watercraft only went about half a mile out into the lake before it stopped for about a minute, and then turned around and headed back. Once inside the legs of the aircraft, the cable extended back down to water level, attached itself to the craft, and then retracted once again, carrying the small boat all the way back up into the ship’s underbelly.