Near Sralanya
April 19, 2063
The world outside the windows was breathtaking.
Valmiki Goswami remained as captivated by the lush green-blue orb as the first time he had lain eyes upon it, mere moments after emerging from hibernation. Despite obvious differences in the shapes and sizes of the land masses, the planet was remarkably like Earth. Below the blanket of clouds that only partially obscured its oceans and continents, Sralanya teemed with life. It was still too far away to see such details, but Goswami imagined dark clusters dotting the landscape, indicating immense cities visible even from orbit as described in the mission briefings. Billions of beings, going about their lives in much the same manner as the people he and his companions had left behind. What were their thoughts, their goals, their dreams? Had anyone paused to admire the simple beauty of a flower, or an animal running in the wild, or a sunset?
Did anyone suspect they were supposed to die today?
“Val? You all right?”
Glancing over his shoulder, Goswami saw Meredith Harper standing a few steps away, drying her still-wet red hair with a towel. The tiny, coffin-sized shower was one of the few extravagances afforded to them in the ship’s cramped berthing area, and she had taken advantage of it following her own emergence from cryogenic suspension. Now she wore a standard gray one-piece jumpsuit, the front of which was unzipped far enough to reveal a blue T-shirt underneath. Over the jumpsuit’s left breast pocket was a white label with her last name in red block letters, and an American flag adorned her left shoulder, as opposed to that of India on Goswami’s own suit.
He forced a smile. “Sorry. I guess my mind wandered.”
“Yeah.” Harper stared at her towel. “Mine too. You’d think after napping for twenty years, I’d be more alert.”
The hibernation process responsible for sustaining Peacemaker 1’s three-person crew since the spacecraft’s departure from Earth nearly twenty years earlier had performed in accordance with all specifications as well as the hopes and dreams of the engineers who had designed and constructed the system. Goswami understood how it worked, thanks to the time he had spent studying it as part of his training, and so possessed a working knowledge of its operation. While he could make some rudimentary repairs on his own or with the aid of instructions from the ship’s computer, that was as far as his understanding took him. All he knew now was that it had worked, and he and his fellow astronauts were alive.
Despite the rigorous preparation for this mission, Goswami was still coming to terms with the notion that he along with Harper and the crew’s third member, Park Ji-hu, had aged mere weeks thanks to the hibernation process, while nearly twenty years had passed on Earth. By the time they returned to their home planet, many of the people they knew would be aged or even dead. Children born just prior to Peacemaker’s departure were now young adults, perhaps attending college or serving in the military or simply lying around the house, annoying their parents while glued to some gadget or other distraction. What events of note had occurred during those years? How had technology and society advanced during that time? Was war still a constant specter, or had the nations of the world figured out a way to live in harmony? Perhaps the alien invasion Goswami’s superiors had feared finally came to pass, making his mission here irrelevant.
Wow. Some pretty thick irony there.
“I guess you’ve seen it,” said another voice as Goswami and Harper were joined by Park. His close-cropped black hair also still damp from his shower, he wore a jumpsuit like those of his companions, but with the flag from South Korea on his left shoulder. “It’s absolutely gorgeous. I’ve already had the cameras angled for some great pictures.”
Goswami nodded. “Almost like home.”
“So,” said Harper, exchanging looks with her friends. “Are we really going to go through with this?”
“Well, we did come all this way.” Goswami intended the reply to carry a bit of levity, but it came out flat and even a bit sardonic, and he felt guilty about even attempting to make a joke at all. This was serious business, after all. The fate of an entire world—perhaps two—was at stake.
Five years of training and preparation, overseeing and participating in every step of mission planning down to the smallest detail, had brought the Peacemaker’s crew to this moment. The plan had been under way long before Goswami’s selection as commander of the mission, originated from deep within the bowels of the intricate web of secrets that was Majestic 12. Neither Goswami nor his fellow astronauts had even met anyone from the clandestine organization that had come up with this notion. For security reasons, intermediaries saw to it that the Peacemaker crew had all the information they were required to have at the appropriate times during their training, without there ever being a need to meet with those overseeing the entire affair. Even their meeting with the president of the United States, less than a week prior to the ship’s departure, had avoided discussing mission specifics, which Goswami found comical given the chief executive’s authorization for the launch to go ahead as planned.
It was as though no one wanted to talk about attacking a planet and perhaps wiping out an entire civilization.
Valmiki Goswami did not set out to command such a mission, and it was not among the goals he had in mind upon applying to the astronaut candidacy program in 2035 while serving as a lieutenant and an aviator in the United States Navy. Despite his Indian heritage, he enjoyed joint Indian-American citizenship, born in California while his parents lived there under a guest worker visa program. A military career seemed like the fastest way to attain his dream of flying, and eventually applying to NASA, where he hoped one day to participate in a mission to the Moon or one of the system’s other planets. Joining a top secret, all-but-invisible shadow government organization tasked with searching for signs of extraterrestrial activity on Earth and creating defenses against possible alien invasion was not in his original plans. Still, there was no denying the draw of such a fantastic challenge, especially when presented with incontrovertible proof that such threats were real.
Like Goswami, Meredith Harper and Park Jin-hu were both military veterans who had made the transition to NASA’s astronaut corps. All three were selected for the Peacemaker mission after meeting a lengthy list of criteria, including technical knowledge, experience, and accomplishments in a number of skill areas. Each also possessed an unwavering commitment to the security of their country and their planet. The mission they were being asked to carry out was one that required a particular mindset and fortitude. Could they, at the moment of truth, visit mass destruction upon an enemy in defense of their own civilization? A battery of psychological tests and interviews indicated they could indeed rise to this commitment.
But that was not going to happen today.
Making their way to the Peacemaker’s cramped cockpit, Goswami maneuvered himself into one of the two forward-facing seats positioned before the slanted canopy. There was just enough room for the three astronauts in and around the equipment and other components stuffed into the tiny compartment. One of the consoles separating the two forward seats, a piece of retrofitted hardware with a computer setup the crew could use to access the vessel’s own systems, was so large that Goswami and Harper had to climb over it to reach the cockpit chairs. Behind them, a third position had been installed for Park, whose station oversaw all of the ship’s power and life-support systems along with other processes like communications and emergency procedures.
From where Goswami now sat, he could look down the length of the massive cylinder fitted to Peacemaker’s forward docking collar. Twice the diameter of the massive center fuel tanks that had powered Space Shuttles to Earth orbit during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the weapons platform was essentially the largest six-round gun ever created. Half a dozen Titan V missiles and their support systems were crammed into the massive tube, which possessed no propulsion capabilities of its own. All control over the platform was routed to the Peacemaker cockpit and one of the computer terminals separating Goswami and Harper.
Sralanya was visible in all its splendid grandeur, and he had to take another moment to admire the planet as it hung alone in space. The very idea of harming this jewel, let alone allowing such devastation to be inflicted by his own hand, filled him with rage and disappointment. The anger was fueled by the knowledge that he was here at the behest of cowards who lacked the conviction to do their own dirty work, but instead sent others to carry out directives born of fear and ignorance. His dissatisfaction, however, was reserved for himself.
“I can’t believe I ever went along with such a stupid idea. What the hell was I thinking?”
In the beginning, it was an abstract notion, a scenario developed and tested and theorized to every imaginable limit. Goswami likened it to the military officers who once sat at the bottom of missile silos, prepared to launch intercontinental nuclear weapons against distant targets at a moment’s notice. For all the testing and make-believe, there were no stakes, and neither were there consequences. In Majestic’s case, it was all just another simulation in an endless series of games designed to create strategies for countering an alien invasion. A preemptive strike was justified if one’s entire world was on the line, right?
Only after the simulations turned to actual mission planning, and he watched the Peacemaker spacecraft being assembled in orbit and fitted with the nuclear weapons platform the ship would push to an alien planet, did the horrific reality of the task he had volunteered to perform begin to grip him. That Goswami had allowed himself to be a willing part of such a malicious venture, and that he once believed it to be a righteous cause in the name of protecting his home planet, only furthered his anger and self-loathing.
“I’m initiating the course correction,” he said, tearing his eyes from the beautiful planet beyond the Peacemaker’s cockpit. “Stand by for platform separation.”
Uncounted hours of training in a mock-up of the ship guided his hands over the controls, which were a hybrid of Eizand and human technology. It was a simple matter to fire maneuvering thrusters in order to induce a pivot that turned the ship so that it was no longer facing the planet. Satisfied with the vessel’s new attitude, Goswami reached for the row of switches and status indicators dedicated to the weapons package. Habit made his fingers drift over the controls that would begin the process of arming the platform’s six missiles, but he pushed past those to the next set of six switches and began flipping them in sequence. A light illuminated behind each control. He was just activating the last one when an alarm began buzzing in the cockpit.
“What the hell is that?” asked Park.
Goswami tapped the console. “It’s a master alarm for the platform arming controls.” He frowned. “Something’s not right here.” As he stared at the rows of switches, each of the toggles he had just activated flipped themselves back to their previous positions, and their associated indicators went dark. Next to them, the controls for the arming package flipped in unison, accompanied by all six lights activating.
“It’s the computer,” said Harper, her face all but buried in the console and pair of keyboards and monitors that comprised her own workstation. “It’s initiated some kind of override protocol.” Scowling, she muttered a string of colorful profanity. “I’ve never seen these routines before. This procedure wasn’t here during any of our simulations or prelaunch checks.”
Park said, “Are you kidding me? They installed new procedures and didn’t tell us? Why would they do that?”
“It’s a failsafe,” said Goswami as realization struck. “Son of a bitch. Majestic probably stuck it in there, in case we got cold feet. Maybe it was a fallback if we were incapacitated or killed during the trip out here.” He tapped the console, attempting to reset the arming switches and reactivate the separation controls. Nothing registered. It was as though that portion of the control panel had gone dead. “How long until the arming process completes?”
Harper checked her readouts. “About five minutes. Same as if we’d gone through the process by the book.” She snorted. “Guess you can’t rush greatness or insanity.”
“Can you disable the procedure or find a way around it?”
The crew’s designated computer and software expert, Meredith Harper had learned her trade first as a network systems officer and later a cyberspace operations officer. There was, in Goswami’s experience, nothing she could not do if given a keyboard and sufficient time.
“Are you asking me if I can hack Majestic’s super-secret doomsday program?” she asked. “Yeah, I think so. It helps that I know one of the people who wrote some of the mainline software.” When neither Goswami nor Park asked the obvious question, she added, “I look at her in the mirror every morning.”
Goswami had activated a countdown timer on his console, which now read less than four and a half minutes. “Whatever you’re going to do, faster would be better.”
“Hey,” said Park. “Something else is up. We’re transmitting.”
“To whom?” asked Goswami. Was it possible Peacemaker’s computer was sending information back to Earth? How long would such a signal take to even reach home from this distance? Decades, he guessed.
“It’s aimed at the planet, on a wide broadcast across multiple frequencies.” He toggled a pair of switches. “Listen.” In response to his actions, the cockpit’s recessed speakers came to life, and Goswami heard his own voice.
“—and security of all our people, we are forced to answer these unprovoked actions against our planet. We cannot tolerate interlopers or invaders from other worlds, including yours.”
Goswami felt a knot of dread forming in his gut.
“Oh my god. That’s . . . that’s got to be something they recorded during one of our training runs, right?” As part of their repeated simulation training exercises, each of the Peacemaker astronauts had performed their assigned tasks down to the smallest detail. For Goswami, that meant reciting a set of prepared remarks that were similar to whatever message he would end up sending to the people of Sralanya just prior to launching the weapons package. Given what he had planned to do upon Peacemaker’s arrival here, he had hoped to have something profound to say. It would never measure up to those immortal words uttered by Neil Armstrong from the surface of the Moon or Shaun Christopher upon reaching Saturn, but he had hoped they would serve a noble purpose, rather than the agenda of those who sent him here.
Instead, the people of Sralanya were hearing the preface to their destruction.
“I think I’ve got it,” said Harper, blowing out her breath. “It’s not pretty, and I’ll have to do some serious cleaning up in this code when this is all over, but I think I can get us around this.”
“Three minutes,” said Park, pointing to the timer on Goswami’s console.
Feeling his stomach tightening, Goswami asked, “What now?”
Her fingers moving almost too fast to follow, Harper typed extended strings of indecipherable commands to her terminal. Line after line of rapid-fire text filled her screen. From what Goswami could tell, she was rewriting entire sections of whatever subroutine had been embedded into the ship’s computer, or simply substituting the offending code with entirely new pieces of her own creation. He did not care about the details, so long as it worked.
Harper stabbed at the Enter key with one finger and all of the script on her screen vanished, replaced by a technical schematic of the weapons package. On the console between them, Goswami saw all of the indicators on the platform’s arming panel go dark.
“That’s it?” asked Park.
“I think so. Try the separation sequence again.”
With tentative fingers, Goswami reached for the control panel. “Here we go.”
He flipped each of the switches for the platform separation sequence, watching with increasing relief as the indicators above each toggle lit up as before. “That’s it.”
“Push the button,” snapped Park. “Before the damned thing changes its mind.”
“Yeah.” Goswami reached for the switch marked Commit and flipped it.
The effect was immediate, with the entire cockpit jerking as explosive bolts fired around the collar linking Peacemaker to the weapons platform. Through the cockpit canopy, the crew watched as the massive cylinder disconnected from the rest of the ship and began falling away. Within seconds the entire construct was visible, the act of its separation pushing it into a slow tumble as it drifted in the void.
“It won’t get caught by the planet’s gravity,” said Harper. “Will it?”
Goswami shook his head. “We’re still far enough away that it shouldn’t.” Manipulating the controls for the thrusters one again, he guided the ship back to its original heading, centering Sralanya once more in the cockpit windows.
“Hit the radio,” he said, taken once again by the sight of the planet. “Let’s try to fix this somehow.”
Behind him, Park replied, “Go ahead, Val.”
Clearing his throat, Goswami said, “People of Sralanya, I bring you greetings from the planet Earth. The craft we have used to travel to your world is actually one you sent to us some time ago. We have returned it to you, in what we hope is a gesture of peace. I regret the earlier message that implied a threat to your planet. Rest assured, that is not the case. We intend no harm toward you and welcome the opportunity to establish peaceful contact.”
“Not bad for off the cuff,” said Harper.
A string of low-pitched beeps from her console made her shift in her seat, and she pointed at another row of indicators. “Uh-oh. Look at this. Lidar’s showing a couple of pings.” She looked to her companions. “It’s a pair of ships, heading right for us.”
“You’re sure?” asked Park.
Harper nodded. “Oh, yeah. No doubt about it.”
The three astronauts said nothing, waiting in nervous silence to see what happened next. Within moments the ships moved into view, approaching from opposing angles and converging on the Peacemaker. According to the light detection and ranging, or lidar, system, the new arrivals were less than fifty kilometers away, but even from that distance they looked enormous. Their curved, wedge-like shapes gave them an ominous, predatory appearance Goswami found unsettling.
“I don’t know about this,” said Park.
As the Peacemaker carried no armaments, it had no means of defending itself should Eizand ships decide to attack, not that Goswami had any desire to start a fight. Their situation was precarious enough without adding to the trouble.
We’re the aliens here. Remember?
Now it was they who were trespassing. In light of that, and particularly the events of the past few moments, he knew that the best option was cooperation, honesty, and respect. The safety of Earth itself might well be hanging in the balance, based on what he did right here and now.
No pressure, right?