Alien hostiles, p.9
Alien Hostiles, page 9
Hunter hadn’t had more than passing interactions with the man thus far, but he’d taken away the distinct impression that Norton hated the military and everything about it. At least, Hunter noted, the man was wearing a holstered Sunbeam Type 1, which seemed strange for someone of presumed pacifistic sentiments. Sunbeam laser pistols might be the Buck Rogers equivalents of popguns, but if things went sour, it would be good if everyone out there was armed, both civilians and military personnel.
Minutes later, they stepped into the dark and eerie cold of the alien airlock. The powerful heaters inside their Mk. VII Space Activity Suits kept them warm enough . . . but Hunter still imagined he could feel the chill of the poisonous atmosphere around them hammering at the SAS’s hard shell.
The interior hatch was deeply set into a rock wall thirty yards from the spacecraft. The rock looked jagged, black, and broken, like the ‘a‘ā basalts he’d seen once in Hawaii, and the walls were more reminiscent of the interior of a cavern than the flight deck of a starship. The deck, however, had been smooth polished, black but highly reflective, and hidden light sources cast bizarre shapes around them.
“Spread out, people,” Hunter ordered his team. “Perimeter defense.” The five JSST troopers formed a circle, each facing away from the door, while Hunter stood with the scientists. He was concerned about what might be behind that massive-looking door.
“I don’t see any controls here, Doctor,” one of the scientists said. Her name, Hunter recalled, was Janet Tyler, and she was a xenotechnologist in Norton’s department.
The other scientist, Roger Kellerman, ran his gloved hands over the door. “Pressure doesn’t open it. Should we put in a sample probe?”
“Do it,” Norton ordered.
“Dr. Norton—” Hunter said.
“Quiet.”
Hunter was becoming more than fed up with the man’s rigid hostility . . . and he strongly disliked the idea of burning through an airtight hatch inside the alien vessel’s airlock.
“Sir, I really believe this is ill-advised.”
“I’m in charge here, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.” There was nothing else he could say. Damned civilians . . .
“It’s perfectly safe, Commander,” Norton added. “We burn a ten-millimeter hole through the hatch material and insert a probe. It will give us a look at the other side and confirm that the pressure and atmosphere is the same as in here. We then seal it with a Kevlar patch. With the outer door shut, it’s not like we’re compromising their internal atmosphere, is it? Please . . . step back a little and let Dr. Kellerman work.”
Kellerman was using a heavily modified RAND/Starbeam connected to his PLSS backpack as a cutting torch, the beam dialed down to a needle of dazzling blue-white light. “Stand ready, people,” Hunter ordered. He’d drawn his own Type 1 pistol, and was holding a fresh battery pack in his left hand.
Minutes passed as the torch cut into the alien surface. Hunter was just about to call the shuttle for an update on communications when the modified laser quite literally exploded in Kellerman’s grip, shattering into hundreds of whirling fragments of metal and plastic. A hard, silver needle had emerged from the hole and smashed through Kellerman’s weapon and arm, stabbing into his PLSS and the dark rock-walled cavern. Kellerman sagged . . . and as he moved, the rigidly unmoving metallic thread carved its way through his space armor like butter. His pressurized air tanks in his PLSS exploded; the scientist hit the deck in three pieces, more or less neatly bisected through his chest and with his right arm severed at the elbow.
The man hadn’t even had a chance to scream.
“What the hell?” Norton cried, and he stretched out his hand as if to touch that silver thread.
“Don’t touch it!” Hunter yelled, knocking Norton’s arm aside. “No one touch it!” He was aware of a high-pitched shriek now of escaping pressure, audible through his sealed helmet as well as his external microphones.
“What is it?” Tyler asked. Her eyes were huge behind her visor, her voice trembling.
“High-pressure water,” Hunter replied. Droplets were freezing on the door around the jet as he spoke. “Very high-pressure water!”
As a Navy SEAL, Hunter had learned the physics of deep diving, and of the dangers of the high-pressure environment of the abyssal ocean. He had no idea what kind of pressure they were dealing with here, but he had an absolute respect for the pressures generated in the deep sea. For a moment more, the needle hung suspended in front of them, emerging from the drill hole and vaporizing in a seething, roiling cloud of ice crystals somewhere in the smog behind them. Thank God it hadn’t hit the TR-3W, he thought. . . .
As suddenly as the jet had appeared, it vanished, cut off from the other side. Hunter assumed there was some sort of automatic sealant as a safety precaution in case of leaks, but how it would work under such pressures he had no idea. A prickle of fear twitched at the back of his neck. The technology here was way ahead of what was possible for humans.
“It . . . it shouldn’t have done that . . .” Norton said. He sounded like he was in shock.
“I suggest, Doctor, that we get back to the shuttle and think about how we can get out of this thing.”
“But the physics . . .”
“Worry about the physics later, damn it! Now move!”
They were halfway across the vast, open expanse of black deck when the thing appeared.
Hunter had no better name for it other than . . . thing. At first, he thought he was watching insects . . . ants or extremely small spiders. They seemed to emerge directly from the rock walls, rippling across the deck in a dark, flowing, seemingly liquid mass. Almost immediately, they began running together, connecting with one another with blinding speed, bulking up into a black, hulking, potato-shaped mass the size of a bus, growing larger until it loomed over the small humans.
Hunter could see no eyes or sense organs, but he knew it was aware of them as it glided forward. Lumps like translucent blisters pulsated on random spots across the body, and its foot-long hairs bristled. It gaped its toothless mouth, only to be blended together again; the worst was its horrible plasticity—a hairy, lumpy amoeba made of thick, black mud forty feet long. The mouth opened again, and this time a spark snapped and popped deep within that gaping maw. A weapon? A means of communication? Hunter had no idea.
“Everyone fall back to the ship,” Hunter ordered. Until they had a means to talk with that thing, it would be best to keep clear . . . especially since it might well be defending its ship against drill-happy human interlopers.
“I’m reading a strong EM field,” Tyler said, holding a meter out in front of her like a protective amulet. “The reading’s off the scale!”
“It’s going to fry us!” Norton cried, and he took aim with his hand laser.
“Belay that!” Hunter bellowed, reaching for the man’s arm, but he was too late. Norton pressed the trigger button and the Type 1 laser flashed in the smoggy air. A fist-sized crater appeared on the thing’s snout, leaking gray smoke. The alien swung toward Norton and picked up speed. . . .
Hunter smashed his arm across Norton’s, knocking the laser from his gloved hand. Sweeping his arm back into Norton’s chest, he scooped the man up and carried him at a slogging run toward the TR-3W.
A second moving mountain appeared off to the right. Hunter thought it might be trying to cut them off from the shuttle.
He dropped Norton. “Run! Run!” Hunter yelled. “Herrera! Minkowski! Weapons free! Cover the withdrawal!”
Herrera raised his Starbeam rifle to his shoulder and triggered a bolt at the second alien. Minkowski leveled his shotgun to the deck and fired at the first; its deep-throated boom echoed through the cavern.
Lightning flared from both creatures, brilliant arcs sparking to the deck. Minkowksi’s weapon had been loaded with a heavy, sabot-wrapped steel slug, and the bullet tore through the alien’s body with a grisly spatter of sand-sized debris. The alien slowed, then turned aside; the way was clear now, and the eight humans jogged up the ramp and into the shuttle. They weighed less under eight-tenths of a gravity, but that actually made them clumsier in a dead run . . . and the heavy suits made it worse.
Tyler fell, sprawling onto the deck.
Hunter turned back and grabbed her arm. “Come on!” he shouted. “Let’s not stay around and chat!”
He hauled her along as they followed the others up the ramp. Grabiak was accompanied by a squad, laying down an intense covering fire. “Get your ass on board!” the Marine yelled, before adding a scathingly polite “Sir!”
They squeezed into the airlock. “Pilot!” Hunter called. “Button up!”
“Affirmative.” The ramp was grinding shut behind them. They huddled together in the close quarters of the shuttle’s airlock as the noxious local atmosphere was pushed out.
“Take your seats, everyone,” Hunter ordered. “Move!”
He didn’t go into the shuttle’s cargo bay, but swung to the right and climbed the narrow steps of a ship’s ladder. He emerged inside the TR-3W cockpit, where the pilots and engineer were strapped into their seats.
The TR-3W didn’t have a traditional aircraft cockpit, but instead mounted large monitors ahead and to either side. On the screens, Hunter could see at least a dozen massive things converging on the shuttle.
“I suggest, Captain,” Hunter said quietly, “that you get us up off the deck.”
“Yeah. Yeah, on it.” He pulled back on a pair of control handles, and the ship detached from the deck. It hung suspended in midair just a few feet clear of the shiny black surface. “Now what, sir?”
“Take us to the big hatch. Dead slow.”
The rock walls pivoted toward the right as the shuttle rotated. The place where they’d entered Oumuamua was a solid wall now of black metal.
“Are we armed?” Hunter asked.
“AIM-120 AMRAAMs. I don’t think they’ll punch a hole through that . . . or in here; we would end up having a really bad day, if so.”
Setting off air-to-air warheads, each packed with fifty pounds of high explosives inside a tightly confined space, didn’t seem like a very good idea to Hunter either.
“Hey!” the co-pilot called from the right-hand seat. “They’re . . . they’re dissolving!”
It was true. The things outside looked as though they were melting, their massive bodies breaking into sand grain–sized components which seemed to merge back into the rock.
“The outer hatch is opening, sir!” the pilot yelled, gripping his controls. “Hang on! We’re still under pressure!”
Air thundered out through the rapidly widening bay hatch, propelling the shuttle like a leaf caught in a windstorm. For a wild moment, the pilot struggled to bring the ship under control . . . and then they were in the clear.
The entryway closed behind them.
“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry . . .” the pilot said.
“Looks like the alien took some external damage,” the co-pilot said. Hunter could see fresh craters in the rock next to the entryway hatch, and a cloud of dust and small rock fragments hanging above the surface. Someone had been knocking at the door—hard.
“Ah,” the shuttle’s pilot said, nodding. “That’s why. We had help . . .”
A pair of F/S-49 Stingrays drifted up to the shuttle, positioning themselves to either side. “Shuttle, this is SFA-05, the Starhawks,” a voice said over the TR-3W’s radio. “Lieutenant Commander Boland. Are you guys okay?”
“We are now, Oh-five,” the pilot replied. “Thanks for the assist.”
“No problem. Let’s get you back to the Big-H.”
“Lead the way, Oh-five.”
And the JSST shuttle turned and accelerated back toward the distant Hillenkoetter.
Chapter Six
“The alternative is to imagine that Oumuamua was on a reconnaissance mission. The reason I contemplate the reconnaissance possibility is that the assumption that Oumuamua followed a random orbit requires the production of ~1015 such objects per star in our galaxy. This abundance is up to a hundred million times more than expected from the solar system, based on a calculation that we did back in 2009. A surprisingly high overabundance, unless Oumuamua is a targeted probe on a reconnaissance mission and not a member of a random population of objects.”
Professor Avi Loeb, Harvard University, 2018
Have you seen what your superiors wanted you to see?
Kemperer looked down at the Reptilian beside him and wondered if it was making fun of him. The sense of it finding him vastly amusing still lingered, so much so that Kemperer was now convinced he’d been picking up on its emotions directly.
He’d heard of that sort of thing happening with the Eidechse. They could pick up human thoughts and emotions—at least the superficial ones—but some humans could in turn read them as well.
But what specifically, he wondered, had the alien found so amusing? He had a feeling it had to do with what he’d said about the Ahnenerbe’s crusade to uncover the origins of the Aryan race . . . but Kemperer could not see what could be so funny about that. “You have a very great deal to learn,” the thing had told him. About what? Human origins? Aryan supremacy? The Ahnenerbe’s scientific quest for truth?
The thing was waiting for his answer. “I’ve seen enough. I’ve seen enough to know that you could destroy this city if you wished to.”
Indeed we could. But we will not. The being turned, looking through the large window down at the dark cityscape below. Explosions continued to flash and blossom outside, though there still was no sound and no sensation of shock. But I can tell you that our people are already working with yours to create a weapon, one that you will design, that could incinerate this city in a single, literal flash. Think of how proud you will be to have designed this weapon largely on your own, to have produced it in your own factories, to have delivered it with your own aircraft, rather than to have had us simply give it to you.
“There will be time for pride once the war is won,” Kemperer replied. “Besides, our aircraft cannot possibly reach Los Angeles.”
Ah, but they will. With the aircraft we will show you how to build, they will. . . .
That was worth some thought, certainly. The word within the Ahnenerbe’s inner circle was that Germany’s best scientists had been unable to crack the secrets of the flying disks recovered during the 1930s. But already some significant progress had been made with Eidechse help.
Where did the aliens draw the line, he wondered, between openly helping the Nazi Reich and covertly showing them how to build Wunderwaffen? Between helping them, and teaching them? Between winning the war for Germany, and showing Germany how to win on its own?
A single weapon that could incinerate a city like Los Angeles. Was such a thing possible?
The alien ship, Kemperer noticed, was moving, had been moving for some time now, drifting very slowly through the flame-shot sky toward the south. With the city blacked out, the ground below was as black as the sea, but he could actually make out the coastline by the flashes and twinkles of the enemy’s guns.
The searchlights followed them south.
The Present Day
“What the hell was going on in there!” Groton demanded. “I’ve seen the video. None of it makes sense!”
Hunter sat at the briefing room table and held his peace. Blaming Norton for this snafu op couldn’t help matters and would probably make them worse. Rather than pointing fingers and assigning blame, they needed to come up with a coherent methodology for conducting shore-party and VBSS operations.
Especially when civilians were involved.
Hunter and Norton had been summoned to an after-mission debrief. Also present in the room were a half dozen science specialists and a handful of others, including Lieutenant Commander Abrams, the shuttle’s pilot, and Lieutenant Commander Boland, the CO of the Starhawks, one of Hillenkoetter’s fighter squadrons. Philip Wheaton, Hillenkoetter’s N-2, or senior intelligence officer, sat next to Hunter. Behind Groton’s back, on the bulkhead, a large monitor showed the drifting, enigmatic cigar shape of Oumuamua against a backdrop of stars, its rugged horizon brightly lit by the brilliant gleam of Sol in the distance. The image was being transmitted from an unmanned drone; Hillenkoetter had backed away by nearly ten thousand miles, just in case the Oumuamuans decided to attack.
“We have a preliminary analysis of the creatures themselves,” Dr. McClure said. “The shore party brought back some hitchhikers.”
She activated a remote, and the monitor went black, then came up once again, this time with a close-up view of what looked to Hunter like a spider . . . no . . . like a tick, a body like a corn kernel colored a deep black and red, but with ten skinny legs rather than eight.
Hunter hated ticks. Growing up near Boulder, Colorado, he’d come down once with a nasty case of tick fever—bad enough to land him in the hospital. Just the sight of the crawly little horrors could still make him queasy.
"We found a few of these on your SAS armor, Commander,” McClure went on. "There must have been . . . I don’t know. Hundreds of trillions of them out there. They link up together to form colony animals, those big, lumpy things you encountered.”
“Wait a minute,” Groton said. “Doctor, you’re saying these got on the Hillenkoetter?”
“They appear to be inert now, Captain,” she replied. “Possibly they draw on power generated within their native environment.”
“Are they . . . insects?” Abrams said, examining the hugely magnified creature closely. “Spiders?”
He appeared to be thinking along the same lines as Groton. Those things had been on board his ship . . .
“Actually, they appear to be machines, of a sort,” McClure told them. “They’re organized along distinctly biological lines, but we’re calling them ‘biots,’ biological robots. They appear to be truly xenoalithic—a completely alien type of life.”
