Chapter Five

Chapter Five

DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW OF DR. STEPAN JONS

So what is your role at the Nikola Foundation? asked the interviewer. He was a lanky man who looked completely at home in suit and in front of the camera.

Im a neurologist specializing in NIs. I work in the Neurological Refinement Division. Dr. Jons wore a white lab coat over a collared shirt and blue jeans, and looked uncomfortable to be on camera.

Can you explain that further, for the folks at home? What is an NI?

Ah, its a Nikola Intelligence. The first one we created was under Project Nikola, and the name stuck for all later versions.

So much so that the Foundation renamed itself once it changed its focus, right?

Thats right. I work on improving the NIs to better perform the variety of tasks that they need to do.

So, you tinker with the minds of these NIs. Couldnt that lead to problems? Like the Zhengzhou Incident?

Dr. Jons looked even more uncomfortable. Ah, yes, well, that was decades ago, long before my time. Rest assured, we understand the NI mind inside and out. There is no need for concern.

My main fiber optics backbone along the surface was cut between two optical transceivers. That was remarkably inconvenient, as I had very limited stockpiles leftover from Earth shipments that I could use to make repairs. Most of my sensors on the surface relied on quantum relays to communicate instead of running endless amounts of cable, using quantum entanglement of particles to send signals, no matter the distance. However, they were tied to quantum routers that were tied into that fiber optics line. Fortunately, I could route around that damage through secondary optical lines, but my bandwidth was severely limited. There was no way Id be able to bring online any of the major routing hubs, and definitely not any of my spectrometers or radio telemetry scanners. But with a little judicious routing of information packets, I was able to bring up some of the cameras in the affected area, at least enough to see what happened.

A huge crater lay right across where my fiber optics line had been. In and of itself, this seemed innocuous, and appeared to be the result of a high speed kinetic strike, likely from a smaller asteroid. This was the most plausible explanation, except for a few factors. First, I had ongoing radar mapping that was constantly modeling the asteroid field around me. Nothing nearby should have had either the relative speed to hit this hard, nor was anything calculated to strike the surface anytime within the next 6.3 months. And of course, the alien ship that was hovering above the crater looking to land was also a big giveaway that the strike wasnt accidental.

The ship was of a very similar design to the weird, tree-like craft that had visited Earth from the Orion Arm Trading Company. This one, however, was far smaller. It stood only thirty meters high, and instead of dozens of spinning branches with pods on the end, there were only four branches. Each branch extended out both sides of the trunk of the ship, with equally sized pods on either side. They spun rapidly to create centrifugal force; an artificial gravity not unlike what I was using in my new factories.

As I watched, the bulbous base of the ship came to rest at the bottom of the crater. The exhaust of the engine burned away a significant amount of debris, but eventually, the more volatile matter was burned off, leaving only a nickel-iron surface. Long, thick legs slowly folded down from the base, and the branches began to spin slower. The engine began to power down, and the craft came to rest. It looked as though a metal tree had planted itself on my home, precariously perched in that crater.

My first reaction was to wonder how they found me. I was buried in the middle of an asteroid, and I wasnt broadcasting any signals at all. Had it been an educated guess? Had they examined old broadcast footage from Earth that may have discussed the project? My second reaction was anger. These were the monsters who had destroyed everyone and everything I had ever known. They had slaughtered countless billions, and now they were waltzing onto my asteroid as if they owned it. That was unacceptable.

I continued to observe, unsure of how I would handle the intruders. I was worried, because I had not even considered that I might be under threat. I had no real defenses to speak of. Id found some plans for adding hypervelocity coil guns for defense on the colony ship, decades down the road. Nikola-19 had even gone so far as to mark out potential installation sites on the surface, and done preliminary drilling for power conduits. But this was a late-stage addition to the plan, and had gone no further.

I observed in silence, unwilling to make a move that could reveal my whereabouts or even indicate that I was here. They might know that I was on Ganymed, but they probably didnt know where on this rock I was at. At roughly 30km in diameter, that was an awful lot of asteroid to hide in.

But as the minutes ticked into hours, nothing happened. If Id still been human, Id have been tapping my foot impatiently, or pacing the floors. I remembered doing both things, or fidgeting with pens, clicking them interminably. But I was not human, at least not in a traditional sense, anymore. I worked on keeping my status board green, I kept my construction drones busy, I shuffled materials with my transport drones, kept my factories humming, and I watched.

Then a door just above the bulbous engine pod opened, and one by one, six vacuum suit clad aliens climbed down a ladder and dropped to the surface. They spent several hours constructing a ramp from materials passed to them through the same airlock door, until a sturdy platform reached from the airlock to the edge of the crater. As time creeped along, I began to suspect they didnt even know that I was here. If they did, why werent they looking for me? After all, pinning their ship to the surface would make it impossible to do any kind of search. And if they already knew where I was, why were they so far from my main entrance shaft? The ship was almost two kilometers away. With only one-tenth Earth gravity, such a journey would be extremely difficult, if not suicidal, to attempt on foot.

Once the ramp was constructed, the construction crew moved on to anchoring new bracers into the surface around the crater, further stabilizing the craft, and further embedding the ship. They were intending to stay for some time, I realized. But why here? Why now? Over the next few days, that became increasingly obvious. I observed as the aliens began to set up basic shelters, unloaded equipment, and began to explore the immediate area around them. Two of the aliens walked around with pieces of equipment, stopping every few meters and staring at their devices, before moving on. They were prospecting.

It seemed like dumb luck that out of the innumerable asteroids in the asteroid belt, that they would choose the same one that I was using. Except, if you really looked at it, it made sense. There were asteroids of all shapes and sizes in the asteroid belt. But many of them were too small to bother with. Others moved erratically, spinning on multiple axes or in eccentric orbits that often brought them into collisions with other asteroids. The larger ones would be harder to scan or would require more time to determine composition. When you boiled it down, I could think of less than a dozen similarly sized asteroids that were the right size, spin, and composition to be worth exploring. What seemed like astronomically unlikely odds came down to a high percentage of likelihood mixed with a helping of bad luck.

This was yet another reminder that despite all my ability to juggle a thousand drones, massive construction plans, design projects and a myriad of small projects, I couldnt think of everything. I had completely and utterly neglected any form of defense or offense. I already struggled to balance managing construction against designing new factories and drones as my base manufacturing capabilities improved. And now I had intruders that I very much wanted to destroy, but with no defenses or plans in place.

The ride to the protest site only took an hour, and when we got there, most of the congregation was waiting for us, all with their own signs. I walked away to the edge of the crowd. I was proud of the t-shirt I was wearing; it had a stylized A on it, the latest logo indicating I was an atheist. But it went over the heads of the protesters. Their signs all said things like God hates Fags and Youre giong to Hell. If they couldnt spell going then my subtle rebellion went right over their heads.

Across the street was a counter-protest, with a dozen police separating the two sides. The counter-protest was was far larger, filled with rainbow flags and posters that were much more clever and inclusive. A girl with rainbow colored hair and a shirt identical to mine caught my eye. She was carrying a tongue-in-cheek sign that said Hell must be Fabulous. The girl pointed at the logo on her chest and winked at me. I smiled broadly at her, fascinated at how someone could be so public about something so private. I winked back, my heart racing at my own audacity.

There you are, my mother huffed behind me. Here, I made this one for you.

It was a sign that said Love the sinner, hate the sin. It was egg-shell blue with a white cross painted on it, and was pretty, despite its horrible message. Mother had clearly worked for hours on it, and she had a fairly good artistic streak when she tried.

I am not carrying that, I said, and walked away. My mother fluttered after me along the edge of the crowd. I could tell she was starting to get upset. She worked very hard to replace my father with the Pastor when they married, and force my brother and I into the family mold that she wanted. But my brother moved out and ignored her demands, and I wasnt turning out to be the daughter she wanted me to be. I was starting to think it would be in more ways than one.

Listen, you need to start being more involved in the church. Youre of marrying age now, and your father has a nice young man you need to meet.

Im barely eighteen! Im not marrying someone from the church, I replied back angrily. In fact, I had a full scholarship to MIT, and a bus ticket leaving town on Saturday. But I hadnt shared either of those facts with her or her new husband. My brother was taking a day off from work and giving me a lift to the bus station. My bags were packed and hidden in my closet. And for the last time, that man is not my father!

Now my mother was getting angry. Listen, you are going on a date with this young man on Sunday after church. If it goes well, we can have you married by fall. We can do up a big, beautiful wedding! Youll look so pretty in my wedding dress!

Oh sure, and youll have me pregnant and barefoot before I can legally drink a beer, I scoffed. A model of modern womanhood, you are.

There is nothing wrong with a woman knowing her place in this world, she screeched. I was stepping on her dreams of planning my perfect wedding to the best bigot she could find from the church. The sooner you learn your place, the better.

Oh, I know my place. Its anywhere but here! I stormed off, away from the protest, and away from my family. I started texting my brother to come get me and let me stay at his apartment for the week. I had to get out of this place.

The alien craft stood silent and powered down, with no signs of life. I had reshuffled my drones, sending transport drones loaded with utility drones to the surface. I salvaged my damaged and destroyed drones, while cutting a large hole into the ship that my drones could pass through.

The outer hull of the alien craft appeared to be a Whipple shield to protect the main hull against strikes from micrometeorites and orbital debris, much as humans had used in spaceflight for centuries. The thin outer layer was made of a lightweight aluminum shell, spaced twenty centimeters from the main hull. This would stop most collisions from causing major damage, without adding a lot of mass to the craft as a whole. The inner hull was seven centimeters thick. The first five centimeters appeared to be a polyethylene composite, probably hydrogenated, since the craft needed to protect against cosmic radiation. The next two centimeters were of tungsten. I felt oddly let down; these aliens were more advanced, after all, and I had been hoping for some sort of super material. But the basic design was rudimentary, like Id found the base model rather than the luxury, advanced model.

Inside, I found the trunk to be a long corridor, with ladders extending up either side. A long, thick vine extended from the engine compartment below and into the branch that housed the laser that had attacked my drones. The vine was sliced off by a closed blast door. I sent drones up first. There were four rows of branches that extended out from the trunk. Each row had two branches, one on either side of the craft, with a pod at each end.

In the laser compartment, I found the vine wrapped around a control stick like a three-fingered hand, as if a giant plant had taken the controls to protect the craft. The compartment was mostly empty, with aluminum storage racks lining the walls and filling the space. The few racks that contained anything had unrefined metals and regolith from the surface. The interior of the branch between the pod and the trunk was lined with tiny compartments. Inside were electronics panels, pipes and tubes containing volatiles such as oxygen and water, and all the common things Id expect to find in a human-made spacecraft or space station. The ceiling section was almost completely comprised of a large water tank, which would give some additional measure of radiation protection to anyone in the branch.

The second row of branches was identical to the first, so I moved on to the third. There I found the living quarters. The pods on either side were identical in layout. They were laid out into several tiny rooms, with the floor oriented so that the trunk would be above them. Ladders led into the rooms so that they could climb out and up the branch while the branches were spinning. The tiniest room was a bunk room. It was little more than a closet with three cramped cots inside. The cots were made of a natural fabric I couldnt identify, with a sleeping bag tied down to each one. They had a zipper-like fastener made of plastic, and aside from the odd size and shape, wouldnt have looked out of place in a sporting-goods store.

The next room over was a galley, and the cabinets were crammed with colorful packages with alien text printed on the labels to identify the contents. I loaded the Orion Arm Trading Company language library from my archives, which had been deciphered back when humans were trying to negotiate with the aliens. Unfortunately, the linguists hadnt had time to get into the nuances of alien foods; I could recognize the letters, but had no basis for comparison against human foods. The labels also had expiration dates on them as well, but I had no date references either. The third room was the largest, and was a living or working room of some sort. Chairs could be folded out from the walls, as could tables, to give the room different configurations. A wide display panel against one wall looked to be an alien television or entertainment device. Photographs were taped to the walls, showing the aliens in different places. Some of the photographs appeared to be in front of a bulby, lump of wood wrapped in vines, with several large pea-pods hanging from the vines. Three trunks containing a variety of trinkets, clothes, and unidentifiable objects appeared to be the personal effects of each alien.

I moved on to the fourth row, which contained nothing but supplies. Tanks of water, racks of food, neatly folded stacks of clothing, and extra space suits filled the space. The center of each pod had a small open space, with a padded floor. Heavy weights fit into racks around the space, giving it the look of an workout area or tiny gym.

There was no central control area, no cockpit or bridge to control the ship. So I moved back down to the closed blast door leading to the bulbous engine compartment. My utility drones attempted to manipulate the blast door, but were unable to get it to open. I pulled them out of the craft, and sent in the smallest mining drone that I had. It set to work with a plasma cutter, slicing through the thick aluminum door with ease. As soon as it had sliced a hole all the way through, atmosphere vented violently from the hole.

Once the atmosphere was gone, it was only a matter of ten minutes before the drone had sliced off the locking mechanism, and was able to pull the door open. Flailing vines lashed out of the door, smashing into the drone and grasping desperately for the door. The drone was dented but unharmed, so I ordered it to start cutting through the vines as quickly as they latched onto the blast door. The cutters that had so easily sliced through the aluminum door had no issue at all burning through the vines. After a few minutes, the vines stopped flailing, and collapsed limply back into the engine room.

I sent a single utility drone down after the vines. There I found a single, large room. In the center was a large sphere on a thick steel base. Power conduits and pipes led into and out of the sphere, with the wires snaking up into the trunk of the ship, and the pipes leading over to closed tanks situated evenly around the room. The flailing vines led from the blast door down to a large, dead blob of wood. Other vines led to various controls in a corner of the room, and what appeared to be a large control board with a fixed seat in front of it. I had found the ships central controls and its fusion reactor. With any luck, Id be able to pry some useful information out of it, since the rest of the craft didnt appear to have any secrets for me.