Alpha strike, p.13
Alpha Strike, page 13
Not to make that sound insignificant. The devil was in the details.
Nevertheless, she’d rigged up an initial version to use the translation algorithms she’d developed from running the original files through her process. She’d readily admitted it would be inaccurate, but it still beat making rude hand gestures and hoping things turned out okay.
It took a couple of minutes before the transparent cover shielding the alien slid aside, and Alan held his breath, waiting to see what happened next. Then those strange hands reached out, grasped the pod, and the alien pulled himself out, standing naked before them when he stepped onto the deck. The alien recoiled as soon as he saw the humans and started waving his hands in what looked like distress.
Frankly, Alan could sympathize. The sight of the alien—particularly with his vertical jaw working—made Alan a bit queasy. Still, he couldn’t show fear or disgust. This was science.
“We mean you no harm,” Alan said into a specialized comm unit designed to interface with Lisa’s program. It immediately said something back in what sounded like the alien language.
Based on the creature’s response, he doubted the translation was accurate. The being jumped a foot in the air and scampered behind the pod. Then it spoke rapidly.
The comm unit seemed to digest that for a few seconds and then spat out its guess at what the alien had said. “Run warning cat don’t fractal my digit.”
“Lisa, I’m not quite getting what he meant,” he said. “Do you think you can do anything to clear that up?”
The translator dutifully spat that out in the alien language. They’d need a way to turn the translator off in the future for moments like this.
“This is literally the first chance I’ve had to run this program during a live translation,” the hacker said. “This is an incremental process, Professor Snark, so don’t expect miracles. Let me see about slowing down what he said and running it through again.”
A few seconds later, the comm unit spoke in the mechanical voice again. “Retreat or I endear you with my cat.”
Marginally better. At least the phrase had something of a theme. If the translation was even close to the mark, of course.
“Maybe he’s telling us to stay back, or he’ll attack,” Christine ventured. “It would be in character for someone confronted by aliens, particularly when he’s naked. Are you sure you didn’t find any clothes he could wear? We’ll have to blur part of this out for the historical record.”
Alan chuckled. “I suppose that’s as likely as anything else and better than we should expect.”
He took one step forward and bowed just a bit. “We’re not going to hurt you. You’re in no danger here.”
The being considered what the comm said to him and apparently found it somewhat reassuring because he stepped hesitantly out from behind the pod. He didn’t advance very far, but he seemed at least willing to listen.
“Jesse, I don’t suppose you have any clothing suitable for him, do you? If so, we wouldn’t want a nudity taboo to get in the way of making him more comfortable.”
“We recovered some clothes from the dead on the ship, but there was no way to get him dressed until he came out on his own power,” she said as she reached into a box at the back of the room and pulled out a folded pile of clothes.
When she set them on the floor between the alien and the Marines, the alien advanced slowly and warily, snatched the clothes off the floor, and quickly put them on. They didn’t seem to fit all that well, but Alan supposed it beat being naked.
Taking something of a risk himself, Alan advanced far enough to put the comm on the floor and then stepped back. The device would be able to hear him speaking from across the room because it had been designed to do so. Perhaps the alien would feel more comfortable if it had the device in hand.
The alien picked up the unit and tapped the screen with one finger. Apparently, it had a suspicion about how this sort of thing worked. It then spoke a single word into the comm.
The translation program spat out another attempt at defining what it had said. “Identify?”
Well, that was a complicated question. It could be answered both literally and figuratively. Which way would be best?
“Alan Prescott,” he said, pointing at his chest. “Who are you?”
The being seemed to consider his response before it spoke again. “Regex.”
That could be a personal name, a race name, or something unrelated to the actual question. Opening a dialogue would be a long and complicated process.
“I think we should step out and leave him to get used to his environment in the quarters,” Jesse said. “We’ll leave the comm unit with him so we can have someone attempting to communicate over a longer period to refine the translation program, but it’ll be less stressful if we’re not hovering.”
He nodded. “Jack, if you could open the hatch to the quarters we’ve prepared, he’ll explore it on his own once we’ve left.”
“Will do, after you leave the compartment.”
Alan joined the others in backing to the hatch and making their way out of the compartment. The Marines extracted themselves in good order as soon as they were gone and closed the hatch behind them. It wasn’t something the alien could open from the other side, so they were safe now.
It shamed him that he felt more than a bit relieved.
Christine had withdrawn all four of her drones and started putting them away in the case she’d grabbed on the way out. He was somewhat shocked she hadn’t tried to leave one in the compartment with the alien.
“Well, that was somewhat anticlimactic, but I suppose boring is better than exciting,” he ventured.
“I’ll definitely take boring when it comes to first contact,” Jesse said. “In all the entertainment videos, things go horribly wrong. I’d hate to start a war because of a misunderstanding.”
There was a moment of silence, and then everyone laughed. It wasn’t funny, but it kind of was.
“I’ll still be recording everything coming over the video feeds,” Christine said. “Once we have a better idea of what he’s saying, we can try to have another face-to-face conversation. He seems willing to talk, so we’ll get more samples of his voice to translate. You might want to put a monitor in there to display images of various things and run the words past him to see if the translator works correctly. You know, trees, grass, sky, stars, that kind of thing.”
“That presupposes their plant life is anything like ours, which isn’t a given,” he cautioned. “We have several computers in the quarters, and I’d be happy to let Lisa and the other professionals work on that. Do you really think we’ll be able to communicate with him?”
Christine shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I think you might get more if you wake some of the others and put them together. If they’re anything like humans, he feels alone and exposed. Besides, hearing them talk amongst themselves will give us a better opportunity to monitor their language.”
“We can open the hatch between the quarters and the revivification chamber and let him be there while we wake the others one at a time,” Jesse said. “I’ll need to collect more clothing and maybe bring all the shoes we have because there’s no telling what fits. Assuming Jack has no objection to that—and we have no medical emergencies while waking everyone else up—we could have them all awake in a few hours.”
Personally, Alan wasn’t certain how this would work out, but they had to try. Once they’d woken all the aliens, the attempts at communication could really begin. He had so many questions he wanted to ask, and it was frustrating that they couldn’t start the dialogue immediately.
Still, he understood the limitations of their technology. Lisa was doing the best she could, and he wasn’t going to blame her because things were rough. That they could even guess at what the alien was saying was a tremendous achievement. This project was a long-term one, and patience was key.
He truly hoped everything worked out, but these were early days. These creatures had built the machines that had tried to conquer humanity twice. He might have interesting questions to ask them, but he knew that Jack had pointed ones, and he wouldn’t be put off very long.
They were going back to New Copenhagen in a week, and Alan hoped they could get some answers before they left. If not, they’d just have to figure things out the hard way.
16
Mac knew how to work under a deadline, so he focused on getting the important things done first. Now that the commodore had decided to go back to New Copenhagen in a week, he needed his Marines ready for what was to come. That wasn’t much time, but he’d do what he could.
The Marine portion of the mission would involve getting down to the surface and liberating the nuclear warheads that went on the missiles Hunter carried. That kind of raid would draw negative attention in addition to what fighting the Locusts usually entailed.
Getting the ship into orbit around New Copenhagen was the commodore’s problem. He hoped there weren’t many Locust motherships or drones in the vicinity when the Marines launched, though. Pinnaces were tough, but they weren’t that tough.
If they could clear the orbit around the planet of hostile enemy units, they’d launch every pinnace they could and head straight down to the depot where the warheads were stored, liberate them, load them aboard cargo shuttles, and fly them back up to orbit.
The facility they were raiding had to be huge. A complete weapons load for Hunter was two hundred thousand missiles, not counting those in storage. If you added those, the number went up dramatically as Hunter could store a million missiles to reload between battles.
The station was designed to hold a complete loadout for all twelve battleships and its own defense. Just counting the mobile units, that was fourteen million four hundred thousand missiles for their initial combat loadout. The depot was where the battleships were meant to rearm when needed, so they had significantly more missiles waiting if a ship shot everything it had.
He hadn’t asked Joby Hutton how many missiles he’d found, but he suspected there were more than enough to reload every single battleship multiple times. If there wasn’t a minimum of a hundred million missiles aboard the depot, he’d eat the damned thing.
That meant the facility on New Copenhagen had at least a hundred million low yield nuclear warheads. To say it was impossible to move with anything short of a massive convoy of vessels dedicated to the task would be an understatement.
Their goal at this time was to get enough warheads to arm the missiles they needed to defend New Copenhagen. If they could do that, they could protect whatever depot held the nukes and keep using them. If they couldn’t—or if the Locusts destroyed the depot—they were utterly screwed.
He was still thinking about that as the Marines from Hunter made their way to the depot to draw arms and armor and begin drilling with them. Thankfully, they had enough operational pinnaces—barely—to get everyone down to the surface and set up surface-to-air defenses, though he’d have to find pilots.
“Have you got a second, Major? I need you to look at something.”
Mac turned and found Joby Hutton standing behind him with a puzzled expression.
“I’ve got a little time. What’s up?”
“I’ve found a section of the warehouses that I can’t get into. It’s armored, and the hatch doesn’t respond to my overrides. I’m hoping you can pop the seal for me.”
His interest piqued, Mac followed the logistics officer to one of the lifts and deep into the bowels of the warehousing system. This place was far too enormous to explore without a host of people working in concert. Apparently, that was what Hutton was doing.
After a few more minutes, they came to a set of security doors almost as impressive as those protecting the Marine armory. No. Scratch that. They were more impressive.
With a shrug, Mac entered the codes he had and was rejected. “I’ve got nothing. What do you think is in there?”
“No clue,” Hutton confessed. “We passed a couple of empty guard points, so this section was just as protected as where the nukes were stored. That’s got to mean it’s important, and the fact it’s still locked implies there’s something in there.”
“I bet Connor knows a person or two who might be able to bypass the security.”
Hutton snorted. “True, but do we really want him to know what’s in there? That seems like that’s just asking for trouble, if you know what I mean.”
Mac leaned against the hatch. “So let me see if I understand this. Your options are to keep this area secret but never figure out what’s inside, or ask a smuggler to provide someone capable of breaking the security on this thing and revealing its contents to the criminal elements while learning what’s in there for yourself? That is a rough set of choices.”
The logistics officer sighed dramatically. “You do have a way of putting things into stark relief, don’t you? I think it’s ironic that whatever it is has been here the entire time, and nobody’s bothered to try to get into it because they didn’t know it existed. There could be anything in there.”
“I suppose your other option is to have us bring in all kinds of explosives and blow the living crap out of it. That might mess up whatever’s inside, though. Do you even have any idea how much space this area takes up?”
Hutton shook his head. “I suppose that’s a good place to start, and I’m curious about the life support connections to the interior, too. Maybe there’s a way to get something through the air ducts to take a look. Even if we can’t access the interior, knowing what’s inside would be worthwhile. It would suck to spend time and effort breaking into an area that’s already been emptied out. And I think I know who might be able to help us figure this out if there are air ducts.”
The two of them went in search of an entrance to the maintenance areas below the deck, and Mac wasn’t surprised to see the storage area blocked under the deck. It looked like the air went through a tiny duct in the bulkhead. It was far too small for anyone to get through, but it was a way in. There was no ingress for water, which meant the compartment wasn’t intended to have people inside for very long.
When they climbed back up, Hutton called Hunter and explained the situation to the researchers that had discovered the mothership with the functional hyperdrive. Mac immediately understood why they’d have something that would work. They’d explored these wrecks remotely—at least in part—and had mechanical henchmen that crawled through them to see what was there before risking their own lives.
While they waited for the researchers to arrive, he and Hutton mapped out the edges of the compartment and discovered that it was enormous and occupied three decks. Whatever it was, it was substantial.
Doctor Alice Wilson only brought one of her research assistants, but they had several cases that held their scurrying minions. She looked at the large hatch with a jaundiced eye as her assistant opened the cases and set up the exploratory devices inside.
“I hope you have a better way to get into that area than straight through the hatch because my little devices need more space.”
Hutton made a come hither gesture. “If you’ll come over here, Doc, we’ve got access under the deck to where the air goes in. It’s about as big as my hand, but that should be enough space, don’t you think?”
“Let’s take a look and see.”
After Mac helped the older woman down through the opening in the deck, she examined the duct for a few seconds before nodding. “It will depend on any obstacles inside, but I think this will work. Our remotes can cut through some obstacles if I send the one with a laser in first.”
She ordered her assistant to hand her goggles and a cutting torch, which she then used to open up the conduit. She took one of the smaller remotes that looked like a spider and put it inside, being careful to avoid the hot edges.
The little thing turned on its lights and scurried out of sight while the research assistant handed Wilson a tablet with an image of what the thing was seeing.
Mac knelt and watched over her shoulder. Sadly, it ran into a series of bars across the duct at about the same location as the bulkhead.
“As I suspected,” Wilson said with a nod. “If you’re going to protect an area against intrusion, you’ll want to make sure it’s very well protected. Whoever built this security system was careful. That likely means cutting through these bars will set off alarms somewhere. Do we even know where that is?”
Mac shook his head and looked over at Hutton, who mirrored the gesture. “Not really. It’s either going to be to an area that the locals control or one that isn’t being monitored. It might not have even been powered until we turned everything in this area on.”
“I say we go ahead and do it,” Hutton said. “If it sets off an alarm, somebody will come looking for whatever it is or give us a call. If we call them in advance, they’ll know something is up. You could always have your people start looking for a security area, Colonel.”
“We’ve already started, but we haven’t found the security center yet. It’s probably somewhere above us, so I’ll send my people up that way in vacuum suits. It’s not going to be powered, but it would still be good to know where it is.”
“So we’re going through?” Wilson asked.
When the two men nodded, she instructed her assistant to hand her a remote that looked more like a snake with a laser emitter at the front. Mac found that even more disturbing than the spider. Why did they have to be spiders and snakes?
Once the new remote was in the air duct, they watched via the tablet as it got up to the blockage and then responded to her highlighting the areas she wanted to be burned away by firing a laser at it until it melted through the bars where they met the bulkhead. Whatever the material was, it was resistant but did give way. The entire process took approximately ten minutes.
