Last Contact, page 2
“Twenty minutes ago, we received confirmation that this thing is real,” she said. “Fifteen minutes ago, we put locating you and getting you here ASAP at the top of our list of needs. Ten minutes ago, we found out you were already at the gate. Do you want to explain?”
Max went through the folder. The images they’d captured were all blurry; much worse than anything he’d seen from the Ellis Space Station, and also worse than the photo from Sorbonne. He really wanted to tell them they could get better shots with a quick call to Martin Burgess at the Pentagon, but that would probably burn Marty, and he needed Marty to not be burned.
“These are terrible,” Max said. “What did you use?”
“That’s classified,” the general said.
“Spy plane, huh?” Max said. “All the cameras are on the underside. Did you have it fly upside-down?”
“Max, don’t dick around,” the president said.
“I mean, re-task a satellite or something.”
“Max…!”
“About thirty-six hours ago, Sunset Station suffered a total power failure,” Max said. “We nearly lost the entire team, to what looked to us like some kind of EMP attack.”
“Are they…?” Terry asked. “I mean, is anyone…”
“They’re fine, they’re fine. Well. They’ll live. Injuries range from minor to serious, but nobody’s dead and they got the station back up. I’m not here to talk about that, not exactly, but the timeline should give you an idea of how long that ship has been up there. Thinking is, the ‘attack’ was the alien ship pulling into the nearest parking space.”
This was not, strictly speaking, accurate; nobody on the Monterrey science team had arrived at anything like that conclusion. But they would. And if they didn’t, that was the story Ellis Aero would be telling anyway, so it wasn’t like it mattered.
“Thirty-six hours?” Hight repeated. “I think we would’ve seen it before then.”
“It wasn’t visible until about five hours ago, general,” Max said, “so no, you wouldn’t have. Someone on my team saw something wrong with the stars in that region of space and fired a laser in that direction. For whatever reason, this triggered the alien ship to turn its lights on, and here we are.”
There was a lovely pregnant pause after that, as the three occupants of the room took in this news. Someone on the other end of the open conference line Max didn’t know he was also addressing, said, “I’m sorry, did you just say you fired a laser at it?”
“Is that you, Larry?” Max asked. Larry Bosco was the head of NASA.
“Hi, Max,” Larry said.
Max looked at Terry. “Anyone else I’m talking to I don’t about?” he asked.
“Secretary of State Hancock,” she said. “And whoever else is in the room at NASA. Don’t change the subject.”
“Larry, it was a sighting laser,” Max said. “To measure distance. It’s harmless.”
General Hight shifted uncomfortably. “You fired something that could be construed as a weapon at a possibly hostile alien force,” he said. “After which, the possibly hostile alien force powered up their spaceship. Harmless is not the word I would be using.”
“I don’t think Sunset Station should have done it either,” Max said. Considering he had been begging them to investigate that specific region of space, this was definitely not true. “But they didn’t know if there was anything there at all, and this was the best way to make that determination without further endangering anyone aboard. My team was curious, and they used the tools they had. I’m not going to apologize for it.” Max turned back to Terry. “Your question was, how did I get here so fast. After that happened, they told my ground team about it, the ground team told me, and I headed straight here.”
“You could have called,” the president said.
“I had my staff call ahead to expect me,” Max said. “Check your logs.”
“You could have said why you were on your way.”
“Yeah, this really felt like an in-person kind of thing, Mr. President.”
“Max, is that all they did up there?” Larry asked.
“So far, yes,” Max said.
“They haven’t tried to contact the ship?”
“They rotated the station to face the alien ship, but they haven’t redeployed the radar arrays to listen for anything yet, so it could be talking to us and we don’t know it. Have you guys picked up anything down there?”
“We’re still positioning satellites to do a full sweep,” Larry said. “We should know more when it’s overhead. But that isn’t what I asked, Max.”
“To my knowledge, nobody on Sunset Station has transmitted anything,” Max said.
This was not true, but when it came out later that the ESS had, in fact, attempted to communicate (before being told to stop doing that by the Monterrey team) Max planned to feign ignorance.
“So no,” Max continued. “We’re not listening, and we’re not talking. But we plan to do both, just as soon as our ground team works out the most intelligent way to go about doing that. It is in our neighborhood; we may has well knock on the door and introduce ourselves.”
There was a commotion on the conference line, as several people spoke up at once in protest.
“Guys,” Max said. “Guys!”
“Quiet down,” President Malden said. They did.
“I don’t think you understand why I’m here,” Max said. “It’s not so we can commiserate, and it’s not to deliver an update I could have done with a phone call. I came, in person, to let you know that my team intends to make first contact. I’m hoping for the full support of the US government, and NASA, and anyone else you guys want to throw our way. But like I said, this ship parked itself right next to my space station. To me, that means they want to talk to Ellis Aerospace, specifically. We fully intend to proceed with that in mind.”
This led to another gloriously pregnant pause.
“Mr. President, we cannot allow that to happen,” the general said.
“Arresting me won’t change anything,” Max said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. And I believe in order to stop my team on the ground from providing station support, you’re going to have to invade Mexico. General Hight, unless I’m forgetting someone, we have the only team off-planet right now. Ask NASA how long it’ll take them to get someone into orbit safely. Larry?”
“Six to ten months,” Larry said, “if we skip the ‘safely’ part. He’s right.”
“See?”
“That doesn’t mean I agree with you,” Larry added. “Yes, for now, any efforts to engage the alien craft would have to be orchestrated through the team on the ESS. But we are a long way from doing anything so aggressive as, as you said, knocking on the door. There are plenty of more passive, safer approaches. I know you like to dive headfirst into things, Max, but that’s just not the right approach here.”
“Mr. President,” Terry Brewster said, “you should be the first to speak to them.”
“If the aliens wanted to speak to him, they’d have landed on his lawn instead of mine, Terry,” Max said.
“You arrogant…” Terry began.
“No, Terry,” the president said. “He’s right.” He looked at Max. “A joint operation. Through your team.”
“I’ll need the European Space Agency on board too,” Max said.
“I… don’t see any reason to share,” the president said. “Does anyone? Larry?”
“They can read our press updates,” Larry said. “We may need to backchannel with them to leverage expertise, but no; I don’t see a need for a direct hand in it.”
“That’s because you haven’t heard what I’m asking for in exchange,” Max said. “If you want a joint operation, my one condition is that nobody sends up another team to engage separately with the alien ship. To my understanding, NASA and the ESA are the only organizations capable of doing anything in under a year. If you want our cooperation, you need to stay out of my piece of the sky.”
“Unacceptable,” General Hight said.
“Non-negotiable,” Max said.
“Max, there are no property rights in space,” Larry said. “As much as you keep trying to prove otherwise.”
This was in reference to a much older argument, one in which lawyers for Ellis Aero asserted that by putting the space platform in a non-geo-locked position—rather than in orbit directly above a specific nation—Ellis owned the space around the platform. The only problem with the legal theory was that there wasn’t a court they could bring it to; they’d have to get every country in the world (or, at minimum, every country that passed directly underneath the platform) to agree, and nobody had that kind of time. It was easier to just declare it to be so, which was what Max had been doing.
“That’s the deal, Lar,” Max said, standing. “Take it or leave it.”
He looked around the room. The general, and Chief of Staff Brewster, looked like they wanted to take turns punching him in the face. President Malden looked more pensive. He stood.
“When can we start?” he asked Max.
“Have NASA and ESA sign a non-compete, and we can start right away,” Max said. “I’m sure my guys in Monterrey are looking forward to working with them.”
Andrew Malden extended his hand.
“Mr. President…!” General Hight blustered.
“Shut up, Augie. He has us over a barrel and you know it.” the president said. “Max, you have a deal.”
Max shook his hand.
“Just don’t fuck us,” Malden added.
“Don’t fuck me, and I won’t fuck you back, Andy,” Max said.
“Good enough,” the president said.
Of course, they would be fucking Max, the very first chance they had. Larry Bosco was probably already shopping for the right dildo. But that was fine; Max was expecting it. He was even counting on it.
Kris
There was only so much room on the bridge of the Ellis Space Station—enough for three people to exist in relative comfort, with four being a little tight, five uncomfortable and six almost out of the question. At the moment, they were at uncomfortable five, and only because the sixth (Sandee) was still strapped down in the common room, out cold from the meds Paul gave her, as a kindness, to ease the pain.
The reason they were all crammed onto the bridge was that it was the only place to get a look at the alien spaceship with whom they were now sharing an orbital plane. This would be either by way of viewscreen, or by looking out the window directly. There were no other windows in the hab, and while the external cameras gave them a 360 degree view of the space around them, those cameras only sent a feed to the screens on the bridge. If they wanted to see anything outside, from a viewscreen in another part of the hab, they had to first figure out how to send images to those screens (which were meant for personal communications with the ground,) and to do that they needed a computer expert. They had one of those, but it was Sandee, who was, again, unconscious.
Staring at the ship didn’t do anyone much good, because it wasn’t actually doing anything. They stared anyway. It was like they had to get it out of their system first—much in the same way they had to get used to looking down on the planet Earth before being able to do their jobs effectively. If all they did was gaze in wonder at the wondrous thing, they’d never get any work done.
“They are definitely a weapon,” Josip said. This was in reference to the “tusks” jutting out from the front of the alien ship’s “head” that happened to be pointed at the surface of the planet below. “No question.”
“Yes, question,” Davina said. “They could be antennas.”
“Because you see an insectoid shape, whereas I see a rhino.”
“I see a sperm, if we’re going for comparative shapes,” Dav said. “Just, one with antennas.”
“I think, ‘what do you think of when you see this,’ is probably a waste of time,” Paul said. “But yeah: sperm, or tadpole.”
“The point being, it is a weapon,” Jo said.
“We don’t know that,” Alan said. Alan was in the main seat at the nose of the bridge. He had Monterrey on hold (or they had the ESS on hold) while everyone decided what to do next. Self-evidently, nobody quite knew the answer yet: they’d been waiting for five hours.
Before the five hours of waiting, they did something that was evidently a mistake. In the moments after first discovering an alien vessel in their local space, Kris had Dav rotate the ESS, turn half of the communications dishes in its direction, and scan every frequency for a signal. Then—getting nothing that sounded even marginally alien-ish—she and Dav adjusted for interference from the planet below and tried again.
What they got was a whole lot of stuff, none of which happened to be emanating from the ship. (On certain frequencies, space could be very noisy, and it wasn’t always possible to filter out all of it.)
But hey, maybe the reason nothing was coming out of the ship was because whoever was inside was waiting for them to speak first. So, Kris and Davina tried sending instead of listening.
What they sent was, “Hello, and welcome to Earth.”
It was about then that Alan, who had been busy processing the unlikely circumstances of the moment, remembered he was supposed to be in charge.
“Don’t do anything else,” he ordered, “until we talk to Monterrey.”
They did talk to Monterrey, and now it was five hours later, and they were still waiting for permission to do something other than stare. In that time, the alien ship had neglected to respond to the very nice greeting, or to do anything else whatsoever. It was just sitting there.
“They’re waiting for us to say something,” Kris said.
“Who, Monterrey?” Alan asked.
“Not Monterrey,” Kris said, nodding out the window. “Them.”
“We already said something,” he said, his tone strongly implying that the fact the aliens hadn’t replied was definitely a bad sign. Non-trivially, Monterrey had a we are trying not to lose our shit over the radio, but we cannot believe you welcomed them to Earth without consulting with us first collective tone of voice, when notified of the ESS’s second course of action.
The first course of action was firing a yardstick laser at the hull. Monterrey wasn’t happy about that either, but it was hard to figure out why; before they did it, nobody knew the ship was even there.
“You want us to fire the laser again?” Dav asked.
“Maybe we should,” Kris said. “It’s the only thing that got a response.”
“How can I help?” Susie asked.
“Not now, Susie,” Alan said.
“Of course!”
“Yes, it was a response,” Alan said. “But we don’t know if it was a good response or not.”
“If they saw themselves as attacked…” Josip added.
“…then manifesting on our starboard with guns pointed at the planet was a show of force,” Kris said. “I get it. I just don’t think it’s what happened. What I think happened was, they pulled up to the planet, got hit with a concentrated beam of light—not a natural phenomenon—concluded that there was an intelligent species nearby, and now they’re waving to us and hoping we wave back. We just haven’t figured out the best way yet. It’s also possible they’re looking at the bucket and wondering if it’s a weapon, the same way we’re looking at their antennas.”
“It’s possible,” Alan said. “But Monterrey has an entire planet of experts to tap; let’s hear what they have to say before we do something we can’t take back.”
“Dav, is there any signal coming off the ship yet?” Kris asked.
“All our devices are pointed at the Earth,” Davina said. This was because Alan had the dishes redirected back at the planet shortly after remembering he was in charge, as if by doing this he could pretend it had never happened.
“We don’t want to redirect a dish until we’re given the okay,” he said.
“Jesus Christ, I’m not suggesting we fly over there and bang on the door,” Kris said. (Not that they could see any door.) “Guys, we’re not disobeying orders if we haven’t been given any orders. Let’s find out what we can before our hands are completely tied. Dav, just turn the main dish and do a wide spectrum search. If they’re talking, we should be listening.”
Davina, rather than doing that, looked to Alan, who shook his head.
Oh, Kris thought.
“Kris,” Paul said, in his patronizing doctor/patient voice, “I haven’t cleared you.”
“Yeah, I know. And Alan is in command until then, but look: he doesn’t even want to be in charge. Just clear me and let’s fucking do something, please.”
This was met by an uncomfortable silence. Kris searched the room for a sign that anyone was on her side, and didn’t see one. Not even Davina, which was a shock.
“About how long am I going to be sidelined?” Kris asked Paul.
“I need to take some scans,” he said. “Have someone downstairs review the results. Then we should be good.”
“Scans of my head?”
“We have the equipment for it.”
“Unassembled,” Josip said.
“Of course,” Kris said. “How far down the list of priorities is having my head examined?”
“After retrieving the space platform,” he said. “Before fixing the spare drone. Soon.”
“Until further notice, then,” Kris said.
“Kris…” Paul began.
“I’m fine, goddammit.”
“You probably are,” Paul said. “But aural hallucinations aren’t anything to screw around with. Medical overrides all other considerations, and you know that as well as any of us. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
“Okay, okay,” Kris said, kicking away from the floor and floating to the back of the bridge. “Alan, I’m not going to make this a big deal, but I’m telling you now, you’re making a mistake. You need to establish some autonomy with the ground before this gets insane, or in a month we won’t be able to scratch our asses without an okay.”
“We’ll clear this up with medical soon,” Alan said, tacitly ignoring her advice. “I promise.”
