THE HIVE
by sharok rillk
Chapter Four : Research
- Earth : ThreatNet HQ -
In the past few weeks, the
compound had grown to an impressive
size. Chief Commander Thomson's responsibilities had gone from being
the top local bigwig to merely the first in line at the General's
security meetings. Somehow, he was rather happy that he was not the one
in charge of the mess that ThreatNet HQ had become.
Nowadays, there were no less than
two thousand soldiers
creating a very impressive military security ring around a complexe
housing no fewer than three hundred scientists and operators (plus two
hundred civilians brought along because of family ties), not to mention
a few thousand square feet containing top secret scientific equipment.
Several high-ranking officers had been brought on board at the
General's request, and staff meetings were now an impressive array of
shoulderboards. Catering to the security of three and a half thousand
people was not a small matter. Especially when the security forces were
just as dedicated to prevent anyone from leaving as they were to
prevent anyone from entering.
When the General had made his
first speech to the civvies and
scientists assembled, there had been a strong current of resentment,
and anger was not far underneath. But the double line of fully armed
soldiers along each wall ensured that the people listened. That and the
General's strong charisma. He hadn't bothered with much diplomatic
nicities, nor had he neede to. When he came up on the hastily-erected
stage, the first thing he did was present himself. His name brought a
certain mollification among the assembly, as they realized that they
were being detained under the orders of one of the most famous
military men in recent history. The next thing he did was state, in no
uncertain terms, what was at stake.
"Okay, ladies and gents, so now
you know who brought you here.
What you still don't know is why. Well I'm going to answer that
straight away. You've been brought here because this defense program
has hit the motherload of all gold mines. We have found proof of alien
presence in our own Solar System. Yep, you heard me right ; the little
green men are hiding around Jupiter, except that we don't have the
slightest idea what they look like or what they want. It's your
husbands and wives that have made this discovery possible, and your
government doesn't want any word of this leaking out to the public.
That is why I have been granted special executive permission to corral
you all here and detain you. That's how it is, people, and I don't like
any more than you do. But I like the alternative even less, and do you
know what that is ? People talking. And when people talk about
something as big as this, people invariably get it wrong. Then rumors
will start flying higher than ducks during migrating season, and then
what'll we get ?"
The General was pacing the stage
now, his energy and commitment far too great
to let him stand still.
"We'll get panick, that's what
we'll get. Panick and looting
and shooting on a national scale. Thousands dead by trampling, more
thousands dead by gunshot, and millions running around like headless
chickens, because nobody will know where to go, where is safe. The fact
of it is, ladies and gents, I'm keeping you here against your will
because that is the only thing that stands between sanity and madness.
And if I have to keep you all locked up for a year, by God I will."
The General stopped his pacing,
and faced the assembly. As he
took stock of the emotions, he felt that his rather brutal assessment
of the situation had been just the kind of thing needed to make the
most unbelievable thing be accepted : that an alien civilization was
present in Earth's immediate neighborhood. The people present had just
been
dealt an uppercut to the chin, and they forgot anger and outrage as
they tried to deal with the situation. Except that there wasn't really
any rational way to deal with an alien presence. To be able to
rationalize, one had to have experience in the matter at hand, and
nobody had any experience of any kind with aliens. The General knew
that he had crossed the first stage, in the coming days there would be
resentment again, and maybe somone would do something foolish. He had
to make sure that nobody would try.
"Very well, now listen up. This
camp has a perimeter, which is
guarded by soldiers and tanks. I want to be very clear on one point,
anything that has barbed wire fences around it is not to be approached.
The soldiers guarding fenced-in buildings have orders to shoot first,
and not ask questions. Is that clear ?" Some people took the news
calmly, but many faces started showing fear. "One last thing, obvious,
but I suppose I have to say it anyway. You are not allowed to leave
this compound, for whatever reason, by Presidential order. I wish to
impress on each one of you that anyone in the zone around the perimeter
will be shot. Make no mistake : my men have every necessary means of
detection to find and terminate any individual coming or leaving, and
they have orders to do just that. I will do what I can to make your
stay as pleasant as possible, but I warn you, as much as it pains me to
keep good American citizens locked up against their will, it would pain
me even more to be responsible for nationwide panick and mayhem.
Therefor, there will be no exceptions to the rule, and the rule is you
stay here or you die. There, now that the unpleasantries have been
clearly stated, are there any questions ?"
Chief Thomson remembered the
moments that ensued as a textbook
example of how a collective conscience tries to recover from a killing
blow. There were a few moments of utter silence, followed by an
eruption of wails, shouts and angry words. It is a tribute to
McWinter's patriotic reputation that nobody even tried to lay a hand on
him. That McWinter managed to placate the crowd in a mere twenty
minutes, without calling on the armed men at his command to beat
the people to their senses, is a rare example of charisma at work. Amid
the shouts and cries, the General talked, promised, cajoled, and when
the crowd had calmed down enough, he convinced and persuaded them to
the point that he finally was able to joke with them at how the
newspapers
would have the President's head on a plate when all this became public.
Thomson
had winced at the terms used, but in the end the General was just
making sure that the people were on his side - for the moment at least.
After the meeting, the people had
gone to their
air-conditioned bungalows, had discovered cable TV with a thousand
channels and all the reruns you could possibly hope for, plus a nice
living room and two or three rooms, following the size of the family to
house. All these bungalows had been erected the week before their
arrival, by many hundreds of workers. It was amazing what could be done
in such a short time, when money was not an obstacle, thought Thomson.
They had a library, a video club, a children's square and even an
Olympic swimming pool (granted, set above ground in a metallic
structure, but covered and air-conditioned). And nobody had to pay for
anything, including the food. The washing was also taken care of, and
dishwashers were in every bungalow.
Thus, although physically
constrained, the people were living
in a golden cage, and it only took a few days for the anger to melt
away. Nobody tried to get himself killed, and the soldiers were a
constant reminder that it was no good to try to break free. The
soldier's barracks
and mess halls were apart from the civvies, although they benefited
from the same cable channels on their off-duty time, so there was
little
interaction between the two groups. This had been intended by the
General, as he did not want any chance of influence to break down the
soldier's attitude. He had promised shoot to kill, and he was sure that
if things stayed as they were, such orders would not be difficult to
follow. But he knew full well that time and human interaction between
prisoners and their guardians tended to muddy the waters, and the
General did not make the mistake of blinding himself to the truth : he
was running a scientific prison camp.
So Chief Commander Thomson found
that he was quite happy with
the sole responsibility of making the scientific part work. He did
everything he could to make sure that his men and women took their duty
seriously, while at the same time making sure that any complaint or bad
attitude was correctly and quickly dealt with. Chief Thomson knew that
resentment and frustration could not be allowed to build up, whatever
the cost. He found that responsibility tiring enough. Especially with
Doctor Richards. She was his key scientist, the only one who knew the
theory behind the software, and one of the few who could code the
theory correctly. But she still had a bitch of a character, and dealing
with her had become only marginally easier.
Nevertheless, when his phone rang
just before noon that day,
and he picked it up to hear her voice call him to the server room, he
kept his retort about lunch to himself, and went off to see whatever it
was she wanted to show him, again.
Turns out she did have something to show him after all.
- Ganymede : Alien Fleet in Orbit -
The fleet assembled over Ganymede had not moved from its
orbit for over six weeks now. The cargo vessels had kept regular
rotations to the surface camp, which had grown to an impressive size
with numerous large and smaller turrets dotting the structures. New
activity
was taking place though, and cargo vessels were now ferrying elements
from the surface to orbit. These elements were weapons platforms, being
placed in arrays
for first-contact high-orbit defense. Soon, the entire moon would be
sheathed in an energy net, the points of which were ready to spout
vast
energies at a moment's
notice.
The fleet and the base were bathing in the light of Jupiter,
with another pair of cargo ships dropping silently to the moon's
surface, when a disturbance manifested itself a few hundred kilometers
from the fleet. The disturbance took the form of a flickering, slow at
first, but in seconds it grew to encompass a volume of hundreds of
thousands of cubic kilometers. In a few seconds, through the
application of
physical laws unknown to Mankind, an entirely new armada appeared in
the
flickering volume, and space reverted to its normal form.
The new armada was deployed
around a massive starship at its center. It was nearly
two miles from bow to stern, five times the length of the biggest
vessels
of the first fleet. Shaped like
a massive wedge, its tip was a hundred feet wide, and around fourty
feet tall. Its tail was diamond-shaped, when viewed from
behind, and was almost four thousand feet from tip to tip. Two smaller,
but no less impressive replicas of the mother ship were in close
formation, no more than a mile away, as if afraid to venture too far
into
the dangerous, radiation-filled environment.
All around these three floating
cities were more smaller vessels. Many more vessels. Thousands of
them. Ranging from a measly seven hundred feet or so in length, to
titans in their own right, several thousand feet long.
And almost all of these thousands
of ships sported some number of the same turrets, in various sizes,
than the vessels of the first fleet. Thousands of ships, tens of
thousands of turrets, adding up to unimaginable firepower. This
overwhelming armada turned itself to face the puny fleet stationed over
the moon, and moved to join it.
Reinforcements had arrived.
- Earth : ThreatNet HQ -
Chief Thomson was trying hard to
keep up with an uncharacteristically buoyant Doctor Richards, who was
excitedly showing him data from screen and various printouts
simultaneously. She was babbling on about how, thanks to the vast
additional processing power now available to her programs, she had
managed to
increase the resolution of the GravNet detection array by refining the
analysis algorythm - effectively turning the whole array into the
equivalent of a planet-wide optical mirror for a telescope. Except that
it was not visible light that was being measured, but gravitons and
their modulation in frequency.
Totally out of his depth, Chief
Thomson nonetheless understood one thing while looking at the latest
printout the Doctor had put in his hands : there were almost four dozen
separate lines of data. And these lines were apparently supposed to be
a very important evolution in the project.
"So, uh, this tells me that there
are four dozen . . what ?" Thomson asked.
"Twenty-two distinct modulation
bases." repeated Richards, "Which means that there are fourty-two alien
ships over Ganymede !"
"And what's this ?" asked
Thomson, pointing to several dips in some of the lines.
"Those are instances where the
modulation is flooded by the the regional graviton signals."
Thomson gave her his best
blank/confused stare.
"It means that, at that point,
the ship has docked with the moon, and it becomes impossible to
distinguish its gravitational signature." answered Richards impatiently.
"You mean that they're landing on
Ganymede ?"
"No, the data says they're
landing on Ganymede."
"But what for ?"
"How should I know ?" Susan shot
back. What difference did it make anyway ? At more than six hundred
million kilometers, it wasn't like anyone could do anything about it.
"They're aliens, remember ? They might like to walk barefoot on ice,
or roll
over the ground." Susan was disgusted with him again. Such a childish
mind, it was a wonder he managed to finish High School. How he had
gotten a degree was anyone's guess, she thought, turning back to her
screens.
Which suddenly flickered, all at
once.
"Whoah !" Doctor Richards said,
despite herself.
Chief Thomson looked up from the
incomprehensible chart, and caught the look on the Doctor's face.
"What is it ? What's happening ?"
He looked at the screens, and,
instead of organized (though obscure) data flowing in regular patterns,
he saw jumbles of figures cascading down every screen, too fast to be
properly seen. Then the printers kicked in, spewing forth page after
page of log data as if a core dump had taken place. The only things
that were not moving in the room were two humans, struck dumb by so
much activity all at once.
Dotor Richards pulled herself out
of it and jumped over to the printer. She took the current stack from
the log output and placed it on the table tray next to the printer,
where she frantically tried sorting the pages by reverse order. After
bunching up the first five pages, she started pooring over the data to
get an idea of what was going on. At that moment, the phone range.
Thomson picked it up immediately.
"Thomson." he barked.
"Morse here, Sir. GravNet's gone
nuts again. I've got a reading of . ."
the Lieutenant paused as he controlled the screen again, "more than a
hundred billion tons now."
"Right, we've got a situation
here. I'll get back to you when I know more." Thomson hung up without
waiting for an answer. He walked over to the Doctor's side.
"What is all this ?" he asked.
The screens were still spewing data at an appalling rate, followed
closely by the printers.
Doctor Richards looked up from
the pages and turned to him, her face whiter than usual. "The data
streams have been demultiplied. The system's trying to count them."
"You mean there's more aliens now
? How many ?"
Richards looked at the bottom of
a page. "One thousand two hundred fourty-nine, and counting." she
said, almost not believing it herself.
"Holy shit." Thomson said,
and turned to the nearest phone. He punched the quickdial button and,
as soon as
the Lieutenant had picked it up he said : "Get the General over here on
the double !" and slammed the phone back down. Having done that, he
turned back to the Doctor's side, to try and make sense of the figures
on the pages.
Doctor Richards felt like her
mind was going to blow a fuse. She was collating the data as fast as
she could, and the figures were abominable. The processors were
struggling to integrate all the streams without duplicating the already
voluminous data, and the results being printed pointed to a massive
increase in the number of vessels and the overall mass of the alien
presence over Ganymede. If she was right, the system had so far tallied
almost one thousand five hundred vessels, for an incredible five hundred billion tons of additional
mass.
There was only one way anyone could explain such a massive
infusion. Susan Richards felt her knees go weak. She sat down and
buried her head in her hands. "Oh my God." she started whispering.
"They're coming."
McWinter strode in only a scant few minutes after the Chief's
hurried call, followed by his orderly scurrying behind him. Somehow, he
had already been on his way when Lieutenant Morse had managed to alert
him of the problem. It did not take the pair long to complete the trip,
and when they got to the monitoring station the Lieutenant had quickly
led them to the server room.
As they entered, they saw a rare spectacle : Doctor Richards
and Chief Thomas both sitting on the floor, a sea of paper scattered
around them. They both looked up, and Chief Thomson jumped to his feet
as fast as he could.
"So ? What's up ?" asked the General curtly.
"Sir, we have more incoming . ." Thomson started, but Richards
cut him off.
"General, I managed to do what you wanted. GravNet can now
count the enemy ships." Susan's pride at her accomplishment allowed her
to keep a steady voice. "Before the crisis, I was monitoring fourty-two
alien vessels. I was just showing the results to the Chief here when
the system went into overdrive."
"So they were fourty-two. Then what happened ?"
"Well, GravNet has now completed the preliminary analysis of
the new situation. If my code is correct, we are looking at a new total
of three thousand vessels, for more than a trillion metric tons of
mass." Doctor Richards stated the figures almost tonelessly.
Despite himself, the Lieutenant gave a short whistle of awe.
Remembering where he was, he shut his mouth and turned bright red with
embarrassment.
But the General only smiled, although a bit tightly. "Indeed.
Three thousand ships, a trillion tons. Those are heavy numbers, Doctor.
Are you sure of them ?"
"I will be when the code has finalized the confirmation
procedure." Susan looked at the stats on a screen, then at her watch.
"That should be in about another
fourty minutes."
McWinter looked at all the paper on the floor. "Very well
Doctor. You have one hour to get the data confirmed and the necessary
documentation together. After that, you're coming with me." He turned
to leave, his orderly preceding him outside the room.
"Where are we going ?" asked Richards, still sitting on the
floor, a dozen printouts in her hands.
McWinter stopped next to the door. "To see the President,
obviously." he said, and left, trailing his orderly behind.
Back in his office, once he had finished briefing Senator
Brennard, McWinter asked everyone to leave. When he was alone, he
turned to the safe that he had had installed in the back of the room.
He typed in the code, and the safe door clicked and opened. He reached
inside, and withdrew two things that he put on the table.
The first thing was a small box with a switch on top, and a
small LCD screen. The other was his mobile phone. He first turned his
attention to the box, and flipped the switch. The LCD screen lit up,
and displayed the various starting messages to confirm that its
integrity was valid, and that it was starting to emit its scrambling
noise. What was neat with the box is that it emitted frequencies that
human ears cannot hear, but that play havoc with any sound-based
recording device, rendering it useless while the box is functioning.
Of course, that meant that no mobile phone could function in
its immediate vicinity - except ones which had been specially tuned to
separate the noise from the sound of a voice, like the General's phone.
It had been calibrated to filter the noise from the specific box that
was now flooding the room. The General keyed the phone on with a
special code (no mistake allowed, the phone would blow up if the wrong
key was entered), and waited for the identification procedure to
complete. When the red light at the top of the phone shut off, the
General keyed another number, and waited for his connection.
When the connection was established, the General put the phone
to his ear and presented himself. On the other end, the proper
codewords were spoken. Satisfied, the General spoke about the
situation, giving the figures Doctor Richards had submitted to him. The
conversation lasted about thirty-five seconds, after which time the
General cut the communication, keyed the phone to standby and turned
off the screamer box. He put all the hardware back into the safe, and
locked the door again.
A few seconds later, a knock at his door made him look up from
his desk. Upon his affirmative, the door opened and his orderly came
in. He confirmed to McWinter that the rapid transport would be landing
in the compound in about twenty minutes. Which left scarcely half an
hour for the Doctor to get ready. McWinter motioned for the others to
come back in. The orderly then confirmed that his meeting with the
President and the Chief Defense Advisor was okayed in four hours.
McWinter nodded his consent, and resumed his office work. There was
still much to do, and time was always short.
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