The Incident at Kruger 60, Part 1 Page 9

We had a lot to think about. The control panel twinkled in the cabin. We were traveling at warp, which made us feel a little less obvious. We hadn't said a word to each other since we left the planet. I don’t think either of us knew exactly what to say.

  Finally she broke the silence.

  “So Alex, what are we going to do now?”

  “Good question. I'm open to input and suggestions.”

  “I was hoping you would have a good answer... You are supposed to be experienced at this kind of thing.”

  “I have no experience in dealing with alien cultures, sorry about that.”

  We looked at each other, in the darkened cabin.

  “Neither do I. What are we going to do?”

  “First get away from here. We need to get a hold of Jochim, and send him all our data from... From whatever happened.” I paused a moment. “Then, then I'm not really sure. Maybe we could stick around, but my inclination would be to head to the other side of the open zone. As far from here as possible. I got a feeling this will spin out of control pretty quickly, and I'm not sure we should be anywhere near here if it does.

  “Yea, I can see your point.” She paused a moment. “How much do you know about the closed zone... Or anything beyond it?”

  “A bit. I have some star charts, locations of outposts, etc. Some planet descriptions. Stuff like that. I would guess if all hell breaks loose we can run for a while. Couple of years at least. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but...”

  “Are you scared Alex?”

  I looked at her. “Yea, I'm scared. You would have to be insane not to be.” I turned away. “And the thing is that we really don’t even know what happened or what we are dealing with. That’s the problem. There are no reference points.”

  “How does a ship just disappear like that? One minute it was there, and the next second, it just vanished. There wasn’t even any explosion or anything. Nothing, just...”

  “Just gone.” I finished her sentence. “I don’t know. I don’t even really have a theory. I guess they vaporized them, or put them in a different dimension somewhere. Those are the only ideas I got right now.”

  “Yea. I had the same thoughts. I can't think of any other possible explanations. I’m not really scientific, but there would have to be some kind of explosion or something, even if its dust and debris. There wasn’t any thing. The matter couldn’t have just been destroyed by anything except... What?”

  “Dunno. Some kind of anti-matter maybe? But how would you get it from the launching spaceship to the target? You’d need a mass basically identical to the one you were going to destroy. Their ships were smaller than our frigate. Half the size. It's just not physically possible.”

  “What about opening up a dimension to something, or something like that?”

  “Maybe. How you do it would be beyond me. Again you would need a huge energy source. They couldn’t have anything like that on ships that size. Simply impossible, given our level of understanding. I have no idea, Laura. None at all. I know this. This is going to be a major problem for humanity. Regardless of what is going on here, the commission is going to feel threatened. They are going to call out everything they have.”

  We were both silent. Then we looked at each other.

  “This is the nightmare contact scenario, isn’t it?” She said.

  “Not yet. But yea, it could very well be. We don’t know whats really going on, and we are about to have to risk everything on the decisions we make, and none of the options looks very optimistic. Bad situation. Yes it is.”

  “Yea, it looks about as bad as it could at this point.”

  “Nope.”

  “How so?”

  “Cause we aren’t dead, and we are headed away from the place as fast as we can go. At least we have some kind of chance.”

  “Maybe... Who knows. Maybe they are following us. Have you thought of that?”

  I looked at her.

  “Yes, I considered that. They could follow us, if they wanted, I suppose. Except the warp trails were clear on passive scanning and they warped out of here at about 100 times what we could, so they should be a hundred times further away from us. That, frankly, I find a bit curious.”

  “OK... Again... How so?”

  “Well. Think about it. They obviously have some pretty intense power sources, and technology that is far ahead of ours. And they out numbered us 3 to 2, if they saw us, 3 to 1 if not. They destroy the big ship, or make it disappear, and then blast out of there like there is no tomorrow. That’s weird, don’t you think? Obviously they have the ability to stop anything in front of them. So why did they run the other way? Doesn’t that strike you as very odd?”

  She was silent, but it was obvious she had just realized what I was getting at.

  “Why would creatures that powerful run? There has to be a good reason? Why would we scare them so bad they ran like that.” She looked at me. “That’s more than half the mystery. If we knew why they did that, we would be a lot closer to knowing what their intentions are, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Laura, I agree. I don’t think it would completely solve the mystery, but it would tell us a lot about what they are all about.”

  “OK. They have to be scared of something. Why else would they run?”

  “Yea, it seems logical, but remember it could be something totally different.”

  “It could, but it fits Occam razor. The simplest explanation is the best. They ran, because they have something to fear. What is it they have to fear, with technology like that?”

  “Good question. Very good question. I have no idea. But for now I'll work off that premise. They ran because they have something to fear. What could we represent as a threat to them? We are obviously hundreds, maybe thousands of years behind them technologically. So they cannot fear our technology.”

  “Could be be infectious to them in some way? Do we carry something that could cause a plague?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. There are other things to fear besides us in space, don’t you think?”

  “Yea. Yea I'm sure there are. So maybe they are scared of something more than us? Why would they destroy one of our ships then?”

  “Good question. Maybe they don’t want someone else to know we are here.”

  “Could be. Why would that be though? Very odd. Maybe they don’t want anyone to be able to report that they were here. Maybe someone is a threat to them, and not a threat to us?”

  “That sounds like a long shot, Alex.” She paused. “But who knows. We don’t know anything about them, except that they have technology that is hundreds of years a head of us. So what are we going to do next.?”

  “We report to Jochim. We need to put together a package of all our on ship data, everything since we left port, and everything you and I saw. Then we send it off and wait for instructions. I don’t think Jochim will be sending us back out there. not at least with out half a dozen star cruisers and a load of anti matter weapons.”

  “Alex”

  “Yes Laura?”

  “I don’t think I want either of us going back out there. We cant fight that... Can we?”“I don’t know Laura. I really don’t know.”

  The next few days passed in relative silence. We made several abrupt course changes, at random intervals, in random directions, and then headed at full speed back to Kroatzys Station. For an eight day long journey, we mostly kept our thoughts to ourselves. We had sent off the files and our observations not long after we did the third course change, just to be safe. It didn’t take long, a few hours, before we had a reply. It was short and to the point.

  “Return here. Fleet on alert. All hell is breaking loose. Good luck.”

  “That looks ominous.” Said Laura.

  “Yea, it does.”

  Our journey continued uneventfully, for the next couple of days. Laura was working on the material she got from the linguist on the Volga. So far she had now breakthroughs. But it kept her busy, and that was something. I went over the tapes again, of both co
ntact events. I ran numerous filters on them, looking for any additional info the scanners had picked up, but there was nothing that appeared to be new. The rest of the journey back was uneventful. And felt like the quiet before a big storm. In the end it was.

  We finally reached the planet and station, and reentered normal space. We made contact with the Kroatzys Station space port, and were instructed to immediately proceed to landing on the surface at the main station. We followed the nav plan that space control uploaded to our nav system, and 30 minutes later we were back on the ground, where Jochim was waiting to meet us. The situation was clearly very tense. The station was already at full alert. Patrol vessels were everywhere in the area, armed and ready to shoot anything out of the sky that didn't respond to communications protocols. Full alert meant the big interstellar nukes were armed and ready to launch. Given the developments, there wasn't going to be any attempt to to make any contact with any incoming ships from any unknown intelligence. They were simply going to be blown out of the sky. Unless the aliens had some kind of technology that would disable a nuke, and the way these bombs are designed, once you shoot them off, they are going to explode once they reach their detonation point. The fusing process is chemical, not electronic, so unless you have some way to alter a chemical reaction at a distance you cannot stop them once you launch them. They have never been used in combat, only in tests. Clearly, the situation was serious. Very serious.

  Jochim received us in his office. Clearly he had aged from the stress over the last few days. And he clearly hadn't slept much.

  His assistant showed us to the office and we entered.

  “Alex, glad to see you. Though not under these circumstances. How are you doing?”

  “As well as can be expected. So you got our transmissions. I can see that accelerated developments here a bit...”

  Jochim gave a little sarcastic laugh. “Yea you could say that. Really all over the known region of space. Everyone everywhere is at full alert level. Yesterday they blew up an unknown ship entering the Tau Ceti quadrant. It was probably a smuggler, but at this point we will never really know. There were no transmissions, and they took them out with a nuke. The ship realized what was happening when they picked up the radar signature on their monitors, but it was too late, those rockets travel much faster than anything humans fly in. I'm expecting more such reports. At this point the closed zones are just that, closed, and there isn't going to be any easy movement between there and the open regions. Everyone is being stopped and searched. This is going to bring trade to a virtual halt, and cause massive economic problems throughout the open zone. Basically things couldn't be much worse right now. Or maybe they could.”

  We were all silent a moment. Then he continued

  “Frankly I'm not even sure the nukes offer us any real defense. If these aliens can vaporize a star ship without any signs of energy usage, or anything, I would assume they can do the same to a nuke. That means that we have no practical defense from these beings.” He paused and then continued. “They are feverishly working on a type of neutron weapon, that releases everything in focused ray of emitted neutrons, that should destroy or kill any carbon or silicon based life form that could exist, regardless of any physical shielding. That and dirty bombs that can poison a region of space for 10,000 years so that no one can use it. That's not much of a real defense against what ever this is out there.” He collapsed back into his chair. “So that's where we stand, basically.” He took a drink of tea. “I may have a mission for you two, but I'm still waiting for details about some things I cannot discuss yet. I want you to prepare your ship for a long voyage. I'm going to equip you with two more nukes in addition to what you've got, and if they get the designs for this neutron weapon done soon enough, I'm going to put one of those things on your ship, if it can be fitted. So what have you got to report?” He looked at us, not really expecting anything new.

  “Nothing really besides the data I already sent you. Really you know as much as we do, as what we saw out there, as I sent both the scanner data, and cabin data. Actually this is pretty much what I expected. A lot of fear, full prep for an all out war, and no idea what to do next. Bad situation, eh?”

  “Yea, bad one. I can tell you this. Brush up on everything you know about the closed zone, especially in the region of Tau Ceti and Trajians 7, and be prepared to move at anytime. Stay aboard your ship, I want you to be able to pull out of here as fast as humanly possible. Once you are loaded up with supplies, it would be best if you disengaged from the station and waited far enough out that you can warp out of here at a seconds notice. I would program someplace in the area of Tau Ceti into your nav computer, but somewhere well outside the usual landing zone.” He handed me a piece of paper off of his desk, which was cluttered with paperwork and reports. “This is a safe reentry point about a two light days outside Tau Ceti. I have some other data for other such points, will up load to your computer. My recommendation would be to be ready, at a seconds notice to warp out of here, go somewhere deep in dead space, exit the warp field, give yourself some impulse distance and then reengage to make the rest of the journey. Maybe even two or three possible jumps. And program the computer not to follow a straight line. Don't make it easy for them to track you. Whoever they are. No one uses the point I gave you today, it was cleared decades ago when we got to space, and then as technology improved, abandoned. It's probably your best bet of getting in the area unnoticed. You can run some scans and see what's happening there. If Tau Ceti is off line, or gone, well, head into the closed zone and from there you will have to make your own decisions. Laura, have you made any discoveries with the transmissions?

  “No nothing significant. It looks like they are encoded somehow, distribution algorithms can't spot any clear linguistic patterns, but they are not random transmissions. Clearly something intelligent produced them. Sorry I don’t have anything better to offer you.”

  “No worries. I really didn’t expect much. If those transmissions are encoded, it will probably be impossible to crack them. And if we do get anything out of them it's going to take months, probably years to figure out what they are saying. Its pretty unrealistic to think that without some kind of Rosetta Stone to clue us in on how they use language. Without that we have little chance of decrypting anything.”

  I jumped in. “Jochim, I had an observation about this. They left in a real hurry, that means they are scared of something. That’s some kind of clue, even though we don’t yet know what to make of it. Something scares them. It can't be our technology, they are hundreds or maybe thousands or tens of thousands of years ahead of us. So maybe if we can identify what that is it might give us some useful info on how to deal with them.”

  “Good thinking. Yea, I see your point. I was thinking along similar lines myself. It's odd they would vaporize a ship and then pull out so suddenly. If they did vaporize it. Maybe they are running from something, and that is what is scaring them.”

  “Yea, that thought had crossed my mind. But what are they running from?”

  Laura piped in. “Maybe they are some kind of pirate too, and someone is trying to hunt them down, and they are trying to destroy all evidence of where and what they have done.”

  We were all silent a moment. Then Jochim spoke. “It's certainly possible, but there are probably a 1000 other possibilities too. And the question arises, do these aliens, still have such problems given 100s or 1000s or 10s of thousands of years more of societal development?” he sighed. “Sure it could be so. Human nature hasn’t changed that much since roman times. We still have the same issues today that they had as far as dealing with bad guys, and we still have bad people amongst us. It's a valid idea Laura, but until we get some more info, significant information that can shed some light on this I don’t know that we can focus on that as anything more than one of many many possibilities. I have a study group of four scientists working on likely scenarios of what may have actually happened out there right now. That will probably be one of their
possibilities. The question is, even if its true, then how does that affect things. No idea at this point.” He pushed the chair back from his desk and got up. “I'm sorry to throw you all out of here, but I have a hundred other things I need to deal with. Go get your ship ready to fly, and get yourselves on board. I would prefer you are ready for immediate take off in case anything happens, so don’t hang around the station. If you want a decent meal, have one of the restaurants send one up to the docking station. OK?”

  “Sure thing Jochim. We will be ready to pull out with less than a minutes' notice. At all times. I assume we aren’t going to be here very long anyway from what you are telling me.”

  “No I don’t think you will. Like I said I got a mission for you, but I can't fill you in on all of it yet. Just stand by and be ready.” He went to the door, and gave us both a pat on the back as we left.

  “Well Alex, what now?”

  “Easy Laura, we go load up the ship with supplies and get ready to pull out like greased lightning if we need to.”

  “That's what I thought you would say. I'm going to order us a couple of meals to take with us. Assuming they can deliver them before we go on the run.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. Get some sweets. It might be a while before we get any again.”

  She cracked a little smile. “Will do Alex, will do.”

  We went back the ship. The station was humming with activity, and people were stressed out. Some of the supplies Jochim had ordered were already there waiting for loading, more food and water. The delivery of UUP hadn't happened yet, but I figured it would be along shortly. First I went on board and loaded the data into the nav computer so that we could blast out of there as fast as possible if something happened. Then we used one of the trollies I kept on the ship to load the food and water, another six month supply. At that point there was nothing more to do but wait.

  Laura went back to working on the tapes. I sat there and considered the situation. Basically there was nothing anyone could do, if these aliens wanted to destroy us, that was clear. But the weird thing was this running away thing that they did after the Volga disappeared. I didn't want to say was destroyed, as at this point it was proven one way or another what happened to the Volga. Something didn't fit here with that action.

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. We watched some news, and while it was public knowledge that something was up, as the entire open sector was on full alert, the full extent of the news hadn't been released to the general public. Rumors abounded. What was known was that the spaceship Volga had vanished suddenly without a trace from a small planet orbiting Kruger 60. According to the reports, it was part of an exploration party looking doing general science research on that planet. According to the reports the disappearance was monitored by a research vessel in orbit. The disappearance was considered unnatural, and as a precaution, the quadrant around Kroatzys Station had been placed on high alert. The pundits were of course speculating on possibilities. Everything from some kind of gravity wave moving through the galaxy to aliens to some kind of fracture in time.

  We got our delivery of UUP and undocked from the station, and pulled off a few thousand kilometers from the station. Laura had gotten us two weeks of meals from the nice restaurant we had eaten at here on our first visit. We had one of the for dinner, steak and veggies with a nice salad. And tiramisu for dessert, double servings. The irony, here the world as we know it is on the edge of who knows what and we are eating double helpings of dessert. After dinner we got a high priority message from Jochim. They had some new information on the transmissions.

  “Hi Alex, how's it going there?”

  “Quiet really, how about you?”

  “Not quiet. We got some info back on those transmissions. It looks like they have might have come up with a way to decrypt the transmissions. I'm going to send you the new data, and a report explaining what they did. We aren’t sure if its really unencrypted or not, but now the linguistic frequency analysis programs are coming back with patterns that look, basically, like the same kind of data applied to human communication. They are in the range anyway. So we may have a clear transmission for you all to work with. We only have, at this point about ten minutes of data, which is hardly enough to do a thorough analysis on, but who knows. Maybe at some point you will get more data and this can be of some use to you. The algorithm used to code the transmissions is based on fluctuations of gravity in the area of the broadcasts. It's pretty simple to reverse engineer once you figure it out. I'll upload all the data to you and you all can take it from there. Laura, I have some other data that the Volga sent back before its disappearance, from the linguists on board. I'm going to send you that as well.

  “Cool, looking forward to getting it.”

  “OK you all just hang out there and be ready to move. I have some other info coming in shortly, and at that point I think I got something for you all to go look into. In the meantime try and get some rest.”

  “OK. Talk soon.”

  “Roger that, out.”

  We both climbed into the bunks early and went to bed. We left the alarm on full volume, if there was a warning alert from the station regarding any seriously dangerous developments. The ship would automatically warp out of the area if the alarm was activated. Strange thing I noted, that we could very well go to bed in one part of the galaxy and wake up a few million kilometers away before we even knew what was happening.

  On the Run