Fian shook his head. ‘My parents will get a huge shock when they find out the family failure is a Captain in the Military. It was bad enough when I told them I was going history instead of science, but this …’
I laughed. ‘I think they’ll be even more grazzed about the aliens.’
9
The Ark team leader sat down, and Colonel Torrek nodded at me. I stood up and gave my carefully prepared speech to a meeting room packed with Military officers and civilian experts.
‘The History team have found no indication that anything like the sphere has visited Earth in the last nine hundred years. Researching written records is complicated by translation problems, since Language was only formally ratified as a common tongue as late as 2280 in some areas of Earth. We’re now working well before that, when there were thousands of languages in use, each evolving over time. Not only does no one speak any but a handful of these any longer, but we don’t even have computer translation for the uncommon ones.’
I paused. ‘Since translations will take far too much time, we’ve opted to pay special attention to historical images, art in all forms, even cave paintings. We’re collecting as many potentially relevant images as possible, and the Threat team are helping us analyse the results looking for hot spots on locations and dates.’
I sat down again, and pulled a face at Fian who was sitting next to me. He grinned back at me, and mouthed a couple of words that looked like ‘well done’. There was some incomprehensible scientific report next, so I let my mind wander for a few minutes, before discovering the report had somehow turned into a verbal fight between a civilian adviser from the Physics team and the ever-relaxed Threat team leader, Commander Leveque. The unfortunate Military officer in notional overall command of the Science teams made a last attempt to keep his civilian adviser in check, before giving up and listening with a look of despair on his face.
‘Perhaps I should remind you, Professor Devon,’ said Leveque, ‘that Colonel Torrek makes the tactical decisions, not you.’
I exchanged startled glances with Fian. So this was the Gaius Devon who’d come up with the new portal theories.
‘But a pre-emptive strike against the sphere is the only sane course of action,’ said Devon. ‘It’s sitting up there in Earth orbit to test our defence capability. You have to blow it up now to prove we aren’t an easy target.’
‘Premise One of the Alien Contact programme states an unprovoked attack should be avoided,’ said Leveque.
‘Premise One was written centuries ago by people who didn’t have a genuine alien threat on their doorstep,’ said Devon.
Leveque’s smile widened. ‘Which meant they were in a position to think calmly and logically rather than rush into precipitate action that could later prove regrettable in the extreme.’
There was no doubt who was winning this argument. Devon’s face was turning an ever-deeper shade of puce, while Leveque’s smile kept growing more maddening, and his sentences more ornate.
‘You have to attack now!’ Devon turned to Colonel Torrek. ‘You can’t keep listening to that coward.’
I gave a shocked look at Leveque to see how he felt about being called a coward in front of every senior officer in the base. He seemed to be struggling not to laugh.
‘I have every confidence in the personal courage of Commander Leveque,’ said Colonel Torrek. ‘You might note he wears the Thetis medal. He would have qualified for the Artemis, if he hadn’t been incredibly lucky and escaped totally uninjured.’
‘With respect, sir, that was good planning not luck,’ said Leveque.
‘Chaos take your Military medals,’ said Devon. ‘My evaluations show we’ve a good chance of destroying the sphere, so do it.’
‘And what happens if we try and fail?’ asked Colonel Torrek. ‘Even if we succeed, we’ll have committed an act of war. The cross-sector Military was founded to prevent any repetition of the wars fought between humans before Exodus century, not to deliberately start wars with aliens, and I’m advised the sphere may not represent the current technological level of the alien race.’
‘Oh we’re back to that again,’ said Devon. ‘It’s ridiculous to think the sphere could have got here by any means other than a drop portal. That’s how we always get to new star systems, isn’t it?’
‘If it used a drop portal,’ said Leveque, ‘it must have been one of dimensions above the maximum possible size according to Jorgen Eklund.’
Fian leaned forward in his chair as he heard his great-grandfather’s name.