“Mr. President, there has been a nuclear detonation in orbit.”
“What?” Clay McConnell asked. “Did our satellites not catch the launch?” he asked the National Security Advisor.
Clay was sitting in the war room inside his bunker, and the man who had just told him this devastating news was in a bunker in Nevada and had been since the first DEFCON 2 alert had gone out a week ago. He would remain there with the Vice President until this insanity passed.
“No, Mr. President. It appears that the explosion came from a satellite already in orbit. Our best guess is that one of the Russian satellites with a nuclear reactor harbored a small nuclear device inside as well.”
Of course, the Russians had broken the Outer Space Treaty. They broke every other treaty they signed. “Is nothing sacred to them?”
The National Security Advisor shifted uncomfortably.
“Bruce, please don’t tell me we broke that treaty as well?” Clay asked the man.
“We have two satellites with such devices in orbit, Mr. President. They were launched in the late 80’s.”
“Why wasn’t I informed of this?” Clay demanded.
“The program was mothballed shortly after those two satellites went up, and the people responsible for passing the information on either passed away due to old age or vanished under mysterious circumstances. Considering the Russians built a similar satellite, we suspect one of those developers was either paid off by the Russians or abducted by them to kickstart their own program. The Overwatch program was only brought to my attention by an archivist a few hours ago as we were looking into possible causes for the satellite disruptions General Roberts mentioned.”
Clay pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Did they at least destroy the alien ship?”
He wasn’t sure what answer he wanted to hear; both outcomes could be good or bad.
“Negative, Mr. President. In fact, it looks like the alien vessel destroyed the satellite with some sort of energy weapon before it could get close.”
“What? How did that trigger the weapon? Did they use some sort of directed energy weapon?” If that was the case, then maybe the aliens weren’t as advanced as he feared. Oh, who was he kidding? They had to be far more advanced; they crossed the gulf of space for Pete’s sake.
“No, Mr. President. Our best guess is that the Russian satellite had a proximity or damage trigger that initiated the detonation. As for the alien weapon, it seems to be some sort of coherent energy or bolt. Our analysts are going over the data, but preliminary guesses are that it’s plasma. Video of the attack is already circulating online. I’m also getting reports of people blinded by the weapon’s detonation while watching the alien ship through telescopes.”
“And the aliens? What are they doing now?” There was no way the detonation of a nuclear weapon heading toward them could be taken as anything other than an attack.
“Um…nothing,” the National Security Advisor replied. “After the explosion, the ship moved to block the ISS from the debris field produced by the blast. It seems to be protected by an energy shield, since the debris is hitting something before striking the craft. Conventional weapons will likely be useless, and we’re not sure if our directed energy weapons will be effective against whatever is protecting the vessel. For now, it’s just orbiting about a hundred meters in front of the ISS.”
That was less than ideal, but they weren’t attacking. “Okay, so not overtly hostile, just defensive. I can wor—” he started to reply when the image on the monitor fuzzed, and then froze. “Bruce, you still there?”
There was no response from the frozen signal. Clay was about to call the techs in to take a look at it when he heard someone tapping on glass. He looked around the room in confusion, but there was nothing made of glass, then he realized it was coming from the TV, which made no sense. TVs are all plastic nowadays.
“Is this thing on?” a young man’s voice asked, then the image on the screen flickered out and was replaced with a new one.
“Nice, it worked,” the young man on the TV replied enthusiastically.
“Who are you?” Clay asked, “And how did you hijack this secure connection?”
“Oh, I’m sorry about that, Mr. President. My name is Jacob. I tried calling, but no one was taking my message seriously, so I had to take more drastic measures.”
“You do realize that what you are doing is illegal. You could be arrested.”
Jacob nodded in understanding, but Clay could see the amusement on the young man’s face.
Let’s see how amusing you find it when the CIA or NSA gets hold of you.
Those agencies wouldn’t arrest the young man, but they would put someone of his talent to work.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“And what message was so important that you had to break through highly encrypted communications to pass on?” He could at least humor the lad.
“Oh, just that I’m in control of the alien ship. I’m also here to collect someone who,” there was a slight pause, and the man’s face quickly morphed into disgust, “seems to have crashed in Brooklyn. Sorry about the loss of life.”
Clay was still stuck on the first part, but when the young man expressed regret for all the deaths caused by the crashed alien ship, his mind kicked back into motion. “Y-You’re on the alien ship?”
“No, I’m in control of it,” Jacob corrected. “This would be a lot easier if I could just come down and speak in person. Your people are making it very difficult to keep this connection active.”
As Jacob said that, the screen glitched for a bit before the young man’s face returned.
“Certainly,” Clay said before he could talk himself out of it. “We have a secure facility in the desert where you can land.”
“Area 51?” the man chuckled. “I mean, it fits, I guess. Can you guarantee no more nuclear weapons will be sent my way? My ship has its own defenses, but I would prefer not to have to shoot them down, only for them to explode over some hapless town.”
“I can guarantee that America won’t use any nuclear weapons against you, but I can’t speak for the other superpowers.”
Jacob stopped and rubbed his chin in thought for a bit before coming to some conclusion. “That’s fine. I’ll speak with them as well.”
Clay didn’t know what the man meant by that, but he also knew that getting access to the ship could be a game-changer, so he chose to agree as quickly as possible. “I’ll see you in Nevada.”
***
“Well, that went better than expected,” Jacob said after he lost connection.
He could force a connection again, but it was annoying to keep active.
After he saw the damage that Franky had caused, he was shocked and required nearly a full second in his virtual space, with time accelerated, to come to terms with what Franky had done. He also needed to verify something in the logs, because he wasn’t sure if the US had shot Franky down or if the idiot had crashed on his own. He suspected he knew the answer.
When Jacob needed the location of Earth, he had spent days scouring Melody’s logs, only to realize the AI had wiped them. He wondered how Melody expected to complete its primary mission without knowing how to return to Earth, but that issue was moot with the AI dead. He did eventually locate a set of coordinates, but they were on the science drone that had brought the others. He was aware that Melody had transitioned the vessels near the surface to allow for quick extraction, without being detected by Earth’s radar systems. And sure enough, there was a third log entry showing that someone had grabbed those coordinates.
“That idiot!” Jacob spat.
“I assume we are talking about Franky?” Katherine asked. “What did he do this time?”
“Who else?” Jacob sighed. “When he stole the coordinates for Earth, he used them as is.”
“So?”
“So,” Jacob continued. “They came from the science drone, which appeared very close to the surface. He wasn’t shot down like I first assumed. That idiot crashed.”
“I’m not sure why you’re surprised. Has he shown any critical thinking that I’m not aware of?”
Jacob couldn’t argue that point. While Franky was definitely a schemer, he seemed to be more of an opportunist.
“Enough about Franky,” Jacob grumbled. “I’ll deal with that buffoon after we secure him. For now, I need to go meet with the President.”
“You realize they are going to try and take the ship,” Katherine replied. “They will probably lock you up and experiment on you as well.”
“Yup,” Jacob admitted. “Which is why I brought so many extra drones. Did you want me to drop you off first?”
Jacob wasn’t naïve. He knew the world powers would do whatever they could to get their hands on the ship or destroy it. The nuke hidden in the satellite was proof of that, but it wasn’t the only one. The ship was alerting him to dozens of ground-based targeting systems aimed at them. It was one of the main reasons why he didn’t want to come back to Earth without a solid plan and something with a bit more punch than this pleasure yacht. Franky’s rash actions changed all that and forced his hand.
If the ship was captured, it wasn’t the end of the world. Jacob’s mind was tucked safely back on Melody, while Katherine’s was at the station. That was another reason why he had removed her storage from the ship. The only reason he had allowed their storage onboard before was that he thought he was going to die and the station was going to be destroyed, leaving the ship as their only lifeline.
Katherine shook her head. “So they can just lock it up as well? Pass. Get them to understand they can’t just walk all over us, and then I’ll visit my home.”
“Fair enough,” he replied. Then he adjusted the ship, and they fell out of orbit.
The ship, seeming to fall from the sky without any outward thruster, probably looked unreal to the crew of the ISS, who had been ogling it this entire time, but gravity manipulation allowed you to do all sorts of weird stuff. Technically, he didn’t need to orbit the planet; he could just sit stationary. That would cause a lot of the junk or satellites in Earth’s orbit to crash into the ship, however, so he refrained from doing that.
Jacob held their descent to terminal velocity to avoid atmospheric heating. The ship was capable of much faster gravitational acceleration than the transport had been, but he was in no hurry, and he wasn’t sure how well the vessel would handle the thermal shock of entering an atmosphere. It wasn’t like Chalto had included a user manual.
“Russia?” Katherine asked as she looked at the screen showing their current trajectory.
“I figured I would drop a drone off there first, since they seem to be the most belligerent country. That nasty little satellite was one of theirs. Next, I’ll drop one off in China.”
“And how exactly do you plan on communicating with them?”
“I’m sure they speak English well enough,” Jacob replied with a huff, “but I don’t need to rely solely on that. I pulled a Slavic and Mandarin translator program into the ship’s storage as soon as we got in range of the cell network.”
Katherine sighed. “Please tell me the program you’re relying on doesn’t have an owl for a mascot?”
Jacob wisely kept his mouth shut.
Katherine sighed again, then wandered out of the bridge, muttering to herself about piss poor planning.
Jacob ignored her hurtful words. He would have gone for a book or other method, but it was frightfully easy to connect to the Earth’s cell network and pull the app off the app store, even from the ship. Besides, it worked. He was already the top rank for both languages on the app, and he had only had it for a few minutes, removing the crown from someone named Susan G, who spent far too much time on the app. He could officially call himself the first human multi-species polyglot.
“Eat your heart out, teacher’s name I can't recall from grade school Spanish class. You said I had no capacity for languages, but who’s laughing now? All I needed was vast quantities of digital storage and the processing power of an AI!” he crowed.