2.9.
The days since the unexpected return of Project Seeker had been busy, exhausting, and exciting for Major Mary Phillips. She had barely slept, drinking coffee by the pot in order to stay alert as she processed the information as it came in from the secured data stream. While it was regretful that the initial broadcast of the Seeker had gone out to everyone involved in the Seeker ’s mission, and a number of news organizations had been alerted to the recordings, the majority of the ship’s revelations about the place of humanity in the greater universe remained top secret.
And would continue to do so for a few days longer, at which point the Yonohoans would arrive with their diplomatic delegation. After that, disclosure was inevitable.
Mary did not envy the decision makers who would be responsible for negotiating with the aliens and attempting to establish advantages for the peoples of earth and specifically their individual governments and corporations. Her duty was to provide those people with reliable and accurate information, which meant cutting through the bullshit and getting to the golden core of the truth.
Which, unfortunately, meant that she was forced to perform what was basically skype calls that had a two hour delay between asking a question and receiving an answer.
“To answer your question about what sort of weapons the Yonohoans possess; the answer is all of them. We have the imprints of every weapon which was used throughout the liberation war and almost every weapon that has been developed during the time of peace which has followed,” Etalia explained. “Almost any weapon that has been manufactured within the last one hundred thousand years is available to the Yonohoan military.”
“To answer the question of which weapons we are willing to share with your militaries, the answer becomes more complicated. Once we have given you a weapon we become responsible for how it is used. We must spend some time familiarizing ourselves with the mindsets of your rulers, and the history of your military organizations and their past actions and doctrine, before coming to any conclusions,” the representative of the Yonohoan self-defense fleet explained. “I will not make promises for my people at this time, except to say that we meet honor with honor and trust with trust. If you openly share your history with us and do not hide the blemishes, we will see that as an effort to learn from past mistakes and prefer that stance to attempting to deceive us with sweet words on top of festering wounds.”
Her Yonohoan counterpart continued speaking for some time while Mary formulated her response question. The politicians weren’t going to like some of the answers that they were getting from the two aliens who remained aboard the Seeker . She liked the aliens, what she had seen of them so far. They were open and honest and while they waxed on sounding formal and serious, they had a playful side which often showed through. And they got straight to the point.
The recording ended when the alien reached the final question that had been transmitted two hours ago, and Mary began reading the list of new questions for the representative. “While I understand your concern about arming us with dangerous weapons, I must also ask which technologies might be given to us for use in peace time but which have the potential to be transformed into weapons. One of the many struggles which planet Earth currently faces is the energy crisis. We are largely reliant on fossil fuels in order to provide our people with the standard of living which they have come to expect. Are there any technologies which the Yonohoans might be willing to share to help ameliorate this crisis?”
She framed and asked a few more questions, such as whether Yonohoans had any technology which would help restore planet Earth’s fragile ecosystems which continued to take a battering, then turned her attention to the recording from the representative of the Yonohoan senate, Tilandrous, aide to Senator Osantos.
“The simplest answer as to what the Yonohoans expect to gain from reaching out our hand in friendship is that we hope to gain a new friend,” Tilandrous stated. “Much of the might of the Yonohoan people comes not from the might of our individual forces but the promises of retribution from our mutual defense pacts. While these pacts also require a significant amount of maintenance, they remain a stabilizing force throughout the universe at large. We wish to include Earth in that umbrella without tainting your autonomy or affecting your development in ways which you might find distasteful. I understand that this will be a delicate and intricate balancing act, and I look forward to reaching and developing compromises with your leadership.
“One of the more pressing matters is the question of the laws regarding the earthling concept of ‘copyright.’ You should understand, to the Yonohoans, the most significant export of earth is not its material wealth, but its culture. We must figure out how to disseminate your works of entertainment, music, philosophy and history in a way which …”
The Yonohoan politician droned on for longer than the military representative, as was often the case, but in the end Mary had marked down a few significant takeaways. The fact that the Yonohoans didn’t give a crap about oil, gold, or other valuables was noteworthy. They would treasure gifts with history and meaning. A handcrafted lanyard from a gas station was probably worth more to them than an entire bar of gold bullion, provided that it came with the proper story of how it changed hands to come into their possession.
Or at least that was her understanding of what Tilandrous was attempting to communicate.
Mary had the mental image of a museum in the stars filled with hubcaps and detritus from a junkyard, with plaques describing the models and histories of the discarded objects and describing their usage.
One man’s trash, as they say.
When she had concluded reviewing the Senator’s response to her last set of questions, she began asking the next series of questions which she had either been assigned to ask, or which she had personally thought of in the hours since she’d last sent a communique to the senate representative.
A ping from her phone interrupted her, but she finished her current line of questioning before checking it. A second ping, and she stopped what she was doing immediately and reached for the device. The second alert was marked as high-priority, and she quickly scanned the information within.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
There was none, just an urgent command to report to the conference room for an emergency meeting.
She quickly sent off her incomplete questions to Tilandrous with an apology that her next response may be delayed due to factors on the planet requiring her attention, then she left to find out what this was all about.
She frowned as she joined the others to a briefing that was already underway.
“The object remains unidentified. We don’t know how long it has been there, but the asteroid monitoring satellites picked up its thermal signature approximately three hours ago. When we turned an optical telescope onto the area to see what it was, this is the image we received,” the general was reporting.
The projected image showed a spacecraft that oozed with malevolence. It looked like a personal fighter craft to Mary’s trained eye, designed for traveling within an atmosphere.
“If this craft was sent by the Yonohoans, that means that they are violating their own stated ideals and intentions regarding our autonomy,” one of the officers in the room said. “The presence of an uninvited armed craft within our solar system is an affront to our sovereignty.
“It may not be the Yonohoans,” someone pointed out. “According to the returnees, many factions are searching for Earth. This might be a new player or polity.”
“What do the representatives from the alien government have to say about the matter? Do they know yet?” another officer inquired.
Eyes turned to Mary, who shook her head. “If they know they haven’t said anything. It is possible that this is an armed escort meant to protect their diplomats covertly. It is also possible that it is from the force which intercepted the Keeper of Dreams and caused the data breech that Captain Anders reported. I will include questions for the representatives of the Yonohoan government during my next communique if that is the recommendation of the council.”
The room nodded, and the matter was discussed at length.
~~~~~~
Eodar was napping when the alert from the ship’s computer brought him back to wakefulness. A directional burst of unencrypted radio and microwave radiation had just hit his location. Part of it appeared to be active scanning methods using radar and other methods, but the majority was the unencrypted method of communicating sound that the Earthlings used to speak to each other over vast distances.
He turned off the music that he had been listening too from one of the ‘radio stations’ from the surface and pulled up the message which had been sent to him.
“ Unknown spacecraft, identify yourself and your intentions. I repeat, to the unknown spacecraft receiving this message, the Earth Space force demands that you identify yourself and your intensions .”
Eodar tsked. He’d been spotted. While the Earthlings were primitive, he’d underestimated them. He wondered what had given him away to their monitoring network, but then again his ship wasn’t built for stealth.
A modern foe would have spotted it before it arrived in system. That it had taken them days to even know he was there indicated their lack of technological advancement.
He didn’t bother responding. Instead, he decided it was time to move to the next stage of his plan.
Infiltration.
He grabbed the controls of the ship manually and skimmed along space, bringing himself into orbit around the third planet from the sun. He prepared for atmospheric entry.
There was a chance, he knew, that he was about to die. Insertion was the most dangerous part of infiltration, and even if they were savages, he knew better than to underestimate them.
The shuttle that he had stolen rocked as it fell to earth like a shooting star.
Hypersonic jets were scrambled all across the planet as the unidentified ship made its approach. They had already been in the air in a holding pattern, launched moments after it was first detected. One squad was in position to intercept the spacecraft as it came in on approach, and the five-aircraft team intercepted the alien ship in the stratosphere.
Demands were made to reply with intentions, to reduce speed, to alter its course. The ship responded with silence at first.
The aircraft of the earth’s military was given orders to issue a warning shot. With a Brrrt, the ships began firing at the sleek black spacecraft in a short, controlled burst designed intentionally to miss.
The response from the ship was a burst of energy which passed within inches of the squadron leader and exploded just beyond the fighter jet. The heat of the energy passing so nearby chipped the paint and warped the hull of the aircraft.
Rather than back off, the squad went weapons free, launching air-to-air missiles and firing their guns with lethal intentions this time. The spacecraft, while designed for in-atmosphere maneuvering, was struck multiple times by the planet’s defenders.
Heavily damaged, the ship crash landed in the forests of the state of Washington. It burst into flames moments after its crash landing, the explosion expansive and prolonged. Helicopters and local law enforcement scrambled to reach the location and secure the landing site, most of the men and women involved having no idea what they were involved with but following the orders that came down from on high.
Nobody noticed the small humanoid figure that had ejected hundreds of miles away from the craft, disguised as one of many pieces of falling debris. At first it appeared to be no more than another piece of the black spacecraft breaking off, and then stealth technology which was beyond the scope of the technologies of Earth engaged, causing it to vanish midair.