Nu Trilogy 1: The Esss Advance (20 page)

Upon completion of the mapping, the scout leader pinpointed six landing areas around smaller landlocked bodies of water for scout two to take water and air samples and six landing zones near the major oceans around the planet for scout three to release the current monitoring buoys and take additional water, sea bottom, and air samples. The entire operation should take no more than two complete rotations of the planet, so the leader directed the other two scouts to land in each area under full exposure from the central star so that any local threats could be detected early and either avoided or dealt with as necessary.

Once the assignments were given, the leader focused its attention on the many communication satellites circling the planet. It appeared the satellites that were in stationary orbits above the planet were the most active with communication traffic. Therefore, it selected the satellite closest to its current position and swooped in to capture it. It was a simple maneuver to get into the same orbital path as the satellite, to open the cargo hatch while flying just below it, and then to rise up and envelope the metallic object inside the cargo bay. The leader had to be careful not to damage this piece of equipment or the master chronicler would be unhappy, so it did not engage any magnetic grappling fields but simply caught the satellite in a net that it had strung in the hold for that purpose.

As it was completing the loading of the satellite into the hold, the leader received a warning of an approaching craft. The scout craft’s monitoring system indicated that the inbound ship was coming down from a higher orbit but could not reach an intercept point in time. Therefore, the leader completed the capture, reentered the acceleration tank, and began accelerating into a much higher orbit away from any possible encounter. That is when alarms started lighting up inside the scout ship. The approaching local craft was firing very weak laser bursts and making direct hits on his ship. At this distance, the laser was not strong enough to do any damage other than causing automated shutdown of the optical sensors on one side of the ship. This was quite interesting. The leader was sure the locals could have used a more powerful setting on the laser but had chosen to send this as a warning. It would not be a good idea to get within close range of one of these local ships and take a chance on sustaining significant damage. There was no way to outrun a laser beam.

Protocol required immediate reporting of all encounters, so the leader organized recordings of the encounter with the satellite and the subsequent laser warning and beamed them back to the base.

That left the leader free to monitor the other two scouts’ progress and to run reconnaissance for them in case of additional local interference. Overall, the mission was going according to the plan laid out by the master chronicler, and that was always a good thing. However, the locals did pose a possible threat with their laser weapons, and the other scouts needed to be notified.

Fleet Admiral Brooks was furious. Their spherical defensive perimeter had been so ineffective that they might as well not have been in orbit. And then the high-speed maneuvers over the planet left him feeling helpless. Pursuit was impossible at those speeds, and trying to intercept one of the alien craft was like trying to catch a gazelle in the open African plains with bare hands while running on unshod feet.

At least on the open plains, you could attempt to hide in the tall grass and hope for a chance encounter. Out in space, there was nowhere to hide. Every move the Navy made was obvious immediately.

That’s when the call came in from Naval Orbital Operations. One of the three alien craft was in the process of capturing one of the many geosynchronous communication satellites. Because the spherical defensive perimeter had spaced naval vessels evenly around the planet, one destroyer, the
USpN Raptor,
was close enough to engage.

Brooks ordered Captain Askew aboard the
Raptor
to break formation and make top speed toward the satellite. “Record everything you can on the way in,” Brooks said. “You will probably be too late, but if you get close enough, paint their hull with your lowest level laser setting to let them know we’re not happy. I want it to be like a shot across the bow, not an act of war.”

“Yes sir,” Askew replied. “We have already altered course and are making top speed. I’ll keep you informed.”

Fifteen minutes later, Captain Askew was hailing
Invincible
. “I’m sorry, sir, but the alien bugged out after picking up the satellite. We were able to paint their hull, but it seemed to have little impact. The ship accelerated away from us and now appears to be heading into a much higher orbit. Do you have further orders?”

“Thank you, Captain,” Brooks replied. “Return to your perimeter duty while I report your actions and get further instructions. Brooks out.”

Jimmy had been fishing since sunrise without too much success. His boat was anchored off the south side of Inner Island just east of the much bigger Wright Island in Isle Royale National Park on Lake Superior. His family had come camping on Wright Island every summer for many years, and what Jimmy enjoyed most was getting away from his younger siblings on his morning fishing trips. Every once in a while, he even brought home enough fish to feed the entire family!

The sound started as a background rumble, not dissimilar to distant thunder. Jimmy scanned the horizon looking for any ominous black clouds that might be approaching, but the sky was clear blue in every direction with high cirrus clouds dancing around the horizon to the south. So where was the thunder coming from?

That’s when Jimmy spotted it. Coming in low over the lake was some type of large aircraft of a kind he had never seen before. The craft’s exterior was a grayish-green color, not unlike brackish swamp water he had seen on many of his hikes in the park. The shape was like a large cylinder floating on its side about fifty feet above the lake as it approached Wright Island. Many small jets streamed out from under the cylinder and roiled up the water directly beneath it. That’s where the thunderous noise was coming from.

Just as the craft reached the edge of the island, its nose pivoted upward, and the tail spread out like flower petals opening to the sun. Then it settled down right in the middle of Dog Harbor. As soon as it came to rest, the noise subsided, and Jimmy decided he better not stay in the open like a deer caught in headlights. He reeled in his line, raised his anchor, and began rowing for the small opening between Inner Island and Wright Island.

When he was just out of sight, he pulled the boat up onto a pebbly beach on Wright Island and worked his way around the island perimeter until he could just see the legs of the craft through the trees.

“Man, that thing is
huge
!” he exclaimed.

Standing on its six legs, it was as high as a forty-story office building. The top had to be at least 150 feet in diameter. With the legs spread out, the craft almost filled the entire harbor.

As Jimmy stood there behind a tree watching, he heard a winching noise coming from under the main body of the craft between its legs. As he watched, the craft lowered a small object into the water on what appeared to be a cable much too thin to carry the object’s obvious weight. When the object touched the water, the cable detached and retracted. Then the small object propelled itself between two of the legs, headed out of the harbor, into the lake. Maybe it wasn’t so small, Jimmy thought. Compared to the main ship, it was tiny, but it had to be twice the size of his rowboat.

The watercraft only went about half a mile out into the lake before it stopped for about a minute, and then turned around and headed back. Once inside the legs of the aircraft, the cable extended back down to water level, attached itself to the craft, and then retracted once again, carrying the small boat all the way back up into the ship’s underbelly.

With almost no warning, three fighter jets overflew the strange ship. Because the jets were flying faster than the speed of sound, the wash of noise came only after they had passed. Close to the ground where Jimmy was, the noise was almost deafening. But that was nothing compared to the noise when the greenish behemoth awoke with a roar and lifted vertically out of the bay. Water and steam sprayed in every direction as the six legs cleared the water, spewing some kind of propellant from their tips. The craft accelerated into the heavens before the jet fighters could execute a turn and make a second pass.

It was a good thing Jimmy had been standing behind a large tree. It saved his life as hot gases mixed with mud, water, and steam passed on either side of him, igniting the tree’s upper branches. As soon as the stream of hot gases subsided, Jimmy ran back past his boat and jumped directly into Malone Bay, keeping his whole body under the water until he was at least fifty yards out. The cold water felt good on the burns he had suffered on the left side of his face and his left shoulder. He had not pulled back quite fast enough to escape all injury, but at least he would not burn to death from the fires started all around Dog Harbor.

Scout three was responsible for all ocean water sampling. Orders were specific to take core samples from the underwater shelf on islands near major ocean currents and dump miniature buoys for tracking speed and current flow. Based upon the initial survey where water temperature gradients were measured, the scout had chosen to sample near a small island group off the peninsula at the southeast corner of the major continent in the northern hemisphere.

As the ship settled just west of the northern tip of the island, it noted the presence of the local indigenous population in dwellings on the island and on watercraft just off of the island. They should not be any problem, but it watched them carefully as it lowered its drilling platform down to the water. The platform was preprogramed to take three core samples from the shelf at ever-increasing depths and then return to the ship.

As soon as the platform reported a successful start of the first core, the scout lowered the water sampling craft down to the water’s surface and released it to find a suitable place away from the landing area to get undisturbed water samples at multiple depths. It would also release the buoys into the ocean current.

Once all of the samples were taken and returned to the ship, the scout programmed the next stop into the navigation system and then lowered itself back into the acceleration tank in preparation for the next jump.

Alison Weech had dozed off into a comfortable afternoon siesta in her condo at the Bimini Bay Resort. Normally, she would have been out on the water with her boyfriend Greg, but he had left early that morning to go on an all-day fishing charter, and she had spent the entire morning on the beach.

Her eyes popped open when the rattling of the sliding glass door leading out to the balcony warned her Earthquake-trained equilibrium that something was definitely amiss. Having grown up in Santa Clara, California, she was all too familiar with the jolting of small quakes, so she knew instinctively that this was something different.

She leaped off the bed and pushed back the curtains covering the door that looked out over the bay. What she saw made no sense whatsoever. A hundred meters off the beach stood what looked like a giant version of the six-legged water towers that dotted the countryside in many of the states in the North American Union. But there was definitely something alien about this structure.

First of all, the color was wrong. Most water towers she had seen in her travels were painted white with the name of the city or town painted boldly across the tank at the top. This tower was mostly a swamp green color with mottled brown areas over the main body and legs.

Second, the tower was not an inanimate object. There was some kind of movement between the legs.

This was just too good not to record, so she pulled out her personal com, stepped out on the balcony, and started recording the event. Hers would not be the only recording, but at least she would have something to show Greg to back up her story.

It was hard for Fleet Admiral Brooks to keep up with all of the activities of the three alien ships. On his desktop screen were reports of six landings on Earth over the past twenty-four hours. The reports noted the location of the landings, but there was little detail about what the aliens were doing when they landed.

On the North American continent, there were landings in Lake Superior and Great Bear Lake in Canada as well as off the coast of Oregon and the coast of Florida. On the South American continent, there was a landing on Lake Titicaca, Peru and in the flood plains of the Amazon River as it flowed out into the southern Atlantic Ocean.

In addition to the landings, there were low and slow over flights up and down the eastern and western shores of both continents.

If this wasn’t a survey of the western hemisphere, then Brooks had to be losing his marbles.

“Sir, we have a news report from the landing in Lake Superior,” his aide, Lieutenant Manzelli said over the overhead speakers. “We have film from a direct flyover and a close eyewitness account. Open the new file called ‘Contact1’ in the New Contact Directory.”

Brooks scanned through the new file and watched the video from the flyover. It was definitely one of those alien ships standing upright in the bay of a small island in Lake Superior. What the hell was it doing down there? He focused on the eyewitness report and went over it slowly, trying not to miss any detail. He concluded it had to be a water-sampling survey.

“Mr. Manzelli, I need more details on all of the landings by freshwater lakes. That would be Great Bear Lake in Canada and Lake Titicaca in Peru. I want to know if we have any other witnesses to what happened after the ships landed in or by the lakes.”

“Right away sir,” Manzelli replied. “We have teams already on the way to the three locations. The only reason we have the report from Lake Superior so quickly is because of the Air National Guard flyby of the alien craft. The boy’s boat was spotted from the video, and somebody connected the dots with a helicopter rescue that took the boy to the closest hospital. A news reporter interviewed the boy, and we picked up on the story.”

“Get that boy flown to the nearest military hospital. I want him thoroughly debriefed before he forgets anything,” Brooks said. “Even the smallest detail could be critical at this point. Also, schedule an appointment with Secretary Miller at her earliest convenience. I don’t think she is going to like my preliminary analysis of what these aliens are up to, but she needs to hear it ASAP.”