Invasion

Chapter One

The President of the United States, Colonel Paul James was surprised to note, looked younger than he had expected, although more impressive in person than on the television. Paul had grown up in a time when politicians were carefully photographed to make them look either intelligent or idiotic — depending on the political values of the given media source — and he had thought that he was used to it, but the President looked oddly impressive. He was fairly handsome, in an unfinished kind of way… but at the moment, he looked shocked. It was hard for anyone, particularly Paul, to blame him. He’d known for years that he might be faced with this moment, but the President had probably never considered it, outside his wildest nightmares.

“Explain it to me again,” the President said, finally, briefly sparing a glance for the three other Cabinet members in the room. “We have a what coming our way?”

Paul took a breath. It didn’t get any easier. “There’s an alien starship approaching Earth,” he said. He’d spent years, literally, trying to think of ways to get that basic message across to the political lords and masters of the United States, but somehow it had never seemed easy. He had been prepared for disbelief, or doubt… and he didn’t know how the President would react. “Perhaps I should start at the beginning.”

The President glanced once at the calendar mounted on his desk. “It does not appear to be April 1^st,” he said, with a hint of the same smile that had captivated a certain class of voters. “I assume that no one would bring a joke about such matters into the Oval Office, so… by all means, begin at the beginning.”

“A day ago, the International Space Station was doing a routine sky-search with one of the telescopes orbiting near the installation,” Paul began. “The search was actually part of the asteroid defence program, which was set up to hunt for possibly dangerous NEO asteroids — that is, asteroids near enough to Earth to pose a danger…”

“I’m familiar with the program,” the President said. He’d even voted funding for the program. “The telescope sweep found an alien starship?”

“It found the drive flare from the starship as it lit off its drives,” Paul said, carefully. This wasn’t going to be easy. “The sheer brightness of the display rapidly convinced the observers that it was far from natural and they informed NASA, along with the other involved nations, of the contact. The information was forwarded rapidly to Operation Nightwatch — my command — and we started to do a preliminary data check and analysis. The conclusion, Mr President, was inescapable. There is an alien starship approaching Earth.”

The President said nothing for a long moment. “Aliens,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I assume that we have a contingency plan for this?”

Paul smiled, despite himself. “Sir, Operation Nightwatch has contingency plans for everything we could imagine involving aliens…”

“If you tell me that a UFO actually did crash at Roswell, I’m going to be astonished,” the President said. “I think I’d like a fuller briefing on your activities.”

“Of course,” Paul said, welcoming the distraction. “There was no UFO crash at Roswell, Mr President. Operation Nightwatch was founded during the Carter years as a top secret response to the prospect of alien contact, which some members of the administration thought was just around the corner…”

“Bunch of loonies,” Tom Spencer said. The Secretary of State snorted. “How many billions of dollars did they waste on this particular boondoggle?”

The President laughed. “At the moment, Tom, it’s starting to sound as if they were precognitive,” he said dryly. “Carry on, Colonel.”

Paul nodded. “It was actually one of several programs launched into the question,” he continued, “but the only one to survive the Reagan years. Reagan didn’t believe in aliens outside the movie screens, but Operation Nightwatch was actually involved in other intelligence issues as well, such as examining captured pieces of Soviet — and later Chinese — hardware. The idea was that the techs would gain experience working on technology that wasn’t American in origin or derived from American technology, while keeping an operational pool of experienced personnel. We proved, back before my time, that the Japanese strike fighter design was partly a copy of one of our designs that never made the final cut. We also were involved with analysis of captured Iraqi hardware after the war and the research into their attempts at fooling our systems.”

He paused for comments, receiving none, before plunging on. “But the primary objective was to plan for a possible alien contact,” he said. “The overall cost was barely more than a billion dollars, for which we came up with contingency plans for every possible alien encounter — or at least every possible encounter that we could imagine. When we actually did discover alien life, Operation Nightwatch was activated as a matter of urgency and I was detailed to brief you personally.”

“I see,” the President said. He looked down at his desk for a long moment. “What do we have so far?”

Paul activated the small secure laptop he’d brought with him and displayed an image on the wall. “This is the best image we have so far from the ISS,” he said. There wasn’t much to see, but a pinpoint of brilliant light against the darkness. “Most of the data is speculative, so far, but it seems likely that the alien craft is huge, at least a hundred kilometres long. NASA has a team of researchers analysing what we’ve picked up so far and they believe that, judging by the drive emissions and its observed performance, that it will enter Earth’s orbit within a month.”

“They’re certain of that?” The President asked. “It’s definitely coming here?”

Paul frowned. There was a detail the President would definitely not want to hear. “Orbital mechanics are well understood, even though the space program would be unable to duplicate the alien ship,” he explained. “The craft is currently on a trajectory that would allow it to enter orbit within a month — safely. It’s… very unlikely that they do not intend to visit Earth, unless they’re interested in the Moon, which is a possibility. If they had been heading to Mars, or the asteroids, we might not have picked it up at all.”

“Aliens, in my term,” the President said. He was eager, Paul saw, for re-election already. “I take it that they haven’t attempted to signal us?”

“Not as far as we are aware,” Paul said. “Operation Nightwatch maintains a handful of contacts in the various SETI programs and other public alien research programs and they have picked up nothing, so far. However…”

Spencer broke in suddenly. “Who else knows about this?”

“Us, the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans and the Japanese, I presume,” Paul said. “They were — are — all represented on the International Space Station at present and their people won’t have hesitated to inform their superiors on the ground. It won’t be long before someone leaks… and it’s quite possible that the starship will be detected from the ground before long, in any case. I doubt that secrecy will last more than a week.”

He paused. “And there is bad news,” he added. “Their choice of… orbital insertion manoeuvres is… worrying.”

“Explain,” the President ordered. “In English, please.”

“Entering orbit isn’t easy,” Paul explained. “They have to match speed with Earth and slip into orbit. It would actually be easier simply to ram the planet, but if they intend to arrive intact, they have to make radical course changes to enter orbit. If NASA’s research is to be believed, the aliens have held back from making those changes until the last possible moment.”

He held up a hand before he could be interrupted. “It’s impossible to be sure, without knowing more about the alien craft and their technology and physiology, but it looks very much as if they intended to prevent us from noticing them for as long as possible,” he said. “Unless they have some way of compensating for the effects of the manoeuvres, they have got to be very uncomfortable… and they could have avoided it by starting their burn much earlier. One possible reason for such an action, the most likely one in my opinion, is to limit the amount of warning time we will have of their arrival.”

“And, based on incomplete data, you believe that they are hostile,” Spencer sneered. “Are there no other explanations?”

“None that fit the data,” Paul said, refusing to allow himself any anger. “They could be attempting to limit the time spent under boost, but there seems to be little reason to do that, not least because all of the effects will have been compressed into a few days. They’re putting themselves through agonies just to limit the time spent under boost and there’s no reason to do that, not when they could have started much earlier and had a far gentler ride in to Earth orbit.”

The President tapped the table. “Unless this really is some kind of hoax, I think we have to proceed on the assumption that the aliens might be hostile,” he said. “That leaves us with something of a problem.”

Spencer shrugged. “Why would the aliens come all this way to start a war?” He asked. “I’ve read hundreds of alien invasion novels and most of them were unsatisfactory in that regard. Why would they come after little old Earth when they have the entire solar system to play around in?”

“There are dozens of possibilities,” Paul admitted. “They could be anything from refugees themselves to merely stamping on a competitor before we could become a threat. Radio waves spread out in space, but anyone within twenty light years of us would know that we were here and might consider us possible competition.”

“But none of this suggests that the aliens are hostile,” Spencer insisted. “They could be friendly and if they are, greeting them with a hail of fire is probably… not a good idea.”

“We will, of course, hope for a happy encounter in space,” the President said. His manner became recognisably political. “We do, however, have a responsibility to ensure that all necessary precautions are taken to ensure the safety of America and, indeed, the world.”

And ensure that you have your chance at re-election, Paul thought, quietly.

The President peered around the table. “That leads to the simple question,” he said. “Do we mobilise our forces?”

“I believe that we have no choice,” Deborah Ivey said. Her strong contralto echoed in the room. “If the aliens are hostile, we have to prepare to meet them, but there is a second possibility. Someone else, maybe Iran or North Korea, may seek to take advantage of the alien arrival.”

Paul found himself giving Deborah a look of honest respect. She was, by almost any measure, the most powerful woman in Washington, and perhaps the world. A close friend and confident of the President, Deborah Ivey had climbed from being one of the world’s leading businesswomen to the post of National Security Advisor, leaving a trail of battered lives and bruised egos. Knowing, as she did, where far too many bodies were buried, she was regarded with a mixture of fear and awe by Washington insiders. There was even talk of her running as Vice President or even making her own run at the Presidency in the future.

“Perhaps,” the President agreed. “Could we handle it if they did so?”

General Hastings coughed. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was a bluff honest man, with a long and decent war record. “The forces currently stationed in South Korea have the capability to break a North Korean attack, assuming that it doesn’t include nuclear weapons,” he said. Paul nodded grimly. Even now, no one was sure just how many nuclear weapons North Korea had, or even if they would work when deployed. It was one of the reasons why the BMD missile screen had been extended — quietly — to cover large parts of the world. “Iran may pose a more dangerous problem, but the Iraqis and our own forces, stationed in Iraq, should be able to handle it. If we mobilised, however, we would have more reserves ready within the United States to handle any alien threat.”

Spencer scowled at him. “There is no reason to believe that an alien threat exists,” he said. “If we called up the reserves and federalised the National Guard, would we not look threatening to the aliens?”

“A threat exists when capabilities exist to make that threat a reality,” General Hastings said, coolly. There was little love lost between him and the Secretary of State. “The aliens may not be hostile, but we have to treat them, for the purposes of planning, as though they are… and they have the capability to do us serious harm. If they content themselves with knocking out all of our satellites, for example, we would be crippled almost instantly.”

“But you have no proof that they intend to do that,” Spencer snapped. “Mr President, we should be taking advantage of this magnificent opportunity by making contact, now, with the aliens, before the Russians or the French can get involved. They’re probably beaming signals at the aliens right now, offering peace and friendship, trying to get ahead of us!”

“Another reason to prepare for a possible war,” General Hastings said, dispassionately. “What happens if the aliens get involved in our human quarrels?”

“Why would they care?” Spencer asked. “Perhaps we should seek to hide the fact that we are a violent race…?”

“We can’t,” Paul said. “They will have been intercepting our signals for years. They may have problems with understanding our language, but it is much easier to understand images… and most of our entertainment is grossly violent. They may not even understand the difference between Rambo III and the daily news. They’ll know that we have a capability for extreme violence and they’ll certainly have a good idea of our technological capabilities, if only by using their own development as a yardstick.”

General Hastings smiled. “They’re also going to be intercepting Star Trek and Babylon 5,” he said. “That’s bound to confuse them about our capabilities.”

The President laughed. “We can’t keep this to ourselves,” he said, nodding towards the single phone that sat on his desk. He could call any world leader, any time, and be fairly sure of an answer. “I’ll have to discuss it with our allies and the other major powers, particularly those involved with the ISS, before we can decide on a joint response. If nothing else, we don’t want the aliens playing divide and conquer.”

He looked over at General Hastings. “General, I want you to start mobilising our forces as quietly as possible,” he continued. “For the moment, we’ll call it a drill and I’ll brief the Press and the Speaker of the House to that effect; later, once the news breaks, we can explain that it’s a simple precautionary measure. Colonel James…?”

Paul nodded. “Yes, Mr President?”

“I want you and your people to coordinate the response and to expand our defences as much as possible in the time we have,” the President said. “Again, keep it covert until the news breaks, but I want a plan for defending the country — and indeed the world — if it does come down to a fight.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Paul said. It wasn’t going to be easy. The most optimistic alien wargame he’d played had suggested that humanity was in for a hard time. “I won’t let you down.”

“We need to get some of our people onto the International Space Station,” Deborah said, bluntly. “Logically, the aliens will make First Contact on the station itself; they can’t just enter Earth orbit and ignore it. If we lifted a team of representatives onto the station, we would be in a good position to dominate talks with the aliens, without putting too many international noses out of joint.”

“The UN will demand that it takes the lead in talking to the aliens,” Spencer said. “How do we respond to that?”

“If the UN could agree on anything more significant than what to have for dinner, I might suggest leaving it in their hands,” General Hastings said. “As it is, they should come to some agreement a few years after we all die of old age.”

The President winced. Paul could almost follow his thoughts. He was a committed internationalist, but at the same time, half of his voter base would desert him if he considered handing the entire contact team over to the United Nations… and the Senate would scream for his impeachment. Republicans and Democrats alike would scream for his head and they’d probably get it. Even if he survived that, his chances of being re-elected would plummet like a stone; he certainly wouldn’t be nominated for the coming election.

“That’s something to discuss with the other great powers,” the President said, finally. “If the Security Council is in agreement about the issue, the remainder of the UN won’t have a say in it.” He stood up. “General, Colonel, I’ll want to see you two in a few days to discuss defence preparations. Tom, I want you to start looking for a suitable candidate to be our ambassador to the stars.”

He paused. “We will do everything in our power to avoid a war,” he concluded, “but if we have to fight, we will do everything we can to make a good account of ourselves. We have a mandate to defend America and that, my friends, is what we are going to do… or die trying.”