Alien Empire Read online

  ALIEN EMPIRE

  ANTHONY GILLIS

  ALIEN EMPIRE

  By Anthony Gillis

  Revised First Edition

  Published by Sol Invictus Publishing, Inc.

  Cover design and interior artwork by Anthony Gillis

  Copyright © 2014 by Anthony Gillis

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN 9781476472683

  Graphic of planet in center of cover Copyright © 2012 Spiral Graphics Inc. Sample obtained under Spiral Graphics Free User License 2.

  Publication History:

  First Edition, April 2012

  Revised First Edition, October 2012

  Republished by Sol Invictus Publishing Inc, December 2014

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For more works by the author, visit:

  AnthonyGillis.com

  -AG-

  This work is dedicated to all the great science fiction authors who inspired it, from H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Poul Anderson, to Larry Niven and Orson Scott Card.

  I thank you all.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks are due to my editor, Alex M. Jones, and to my friend Adam Dressel, who was in no small part the inspiration for a certain prominent character in this work, to my readers for their support and feedback, and to all the scientists, engineers, programmers and entrepreneurs who have made the modern era of ebook publishing possible.

  ALIEN EMPIRE

  Table of Contents

  Front

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  About the Author

  Other Books by the Author

  1

  When they came, the world changed forever.

  Karden was there. All the long years of his life beforehand seemed to condense to insignificance before the magnitude of what happened in that short time. What happened to the world, what happened to him.

  People had of course been telling tales of UFOs for decades. Sites on the net were devoted to conspiracy theories of alien observers, varyingly monstrously evil, supernaturally benevolent, or merely cold and inscrutable. Those who believed in such things assumed it was all being kept secret by the government, the aliens themselves, or perhaps both. Then there were the apocryphal stories of abductions, which always managed to happen in some isolated field or patch of wilderness far from reliable observers, let alone video equipment.

  That was not how the aliens made themselves known.

  On the cool spring day when it all began, Karden was making a rare visit to the east building faculty lounge. Someone had brought in a big snack assortment tray, and he was attempting a surreptitious raid to loot some of it without getting pulled into unwanted conversations. Chairman of the History Department, and considering retirement, he was getting old, slowing down, a bit thin in the limbs and thick in the middle. He’d have to rely on guile rather than speed.

  His plans failed.

  “Professor Karden! Come look at this!” It was Professor Snel, a mathematician notable for her brilliant work, thick goggle-like eyeglasses, disheveled clothes, and usually, quiet shy manner.

  She was watching television, along with a dozen other academics.

  That by itself by itself might have been enough to get Karden’s attention, but that Snel had yelled something ensured it. He turned around, snacks carefully in hand, to see what they were all looking at.

  Karden almost dropped his plate.

  There on the screen, on repeating cycle, was a news report. Astronomers had observed, near the outer edges of the solar system, powerful bursts of light and some very strange subatomic particles. Twelve simultaneous bursts, in a grid pattern. That was not what was most notable, however, for out of those bursts emerged a group of objects, objects flying in formation at astonishing speed.

  That they were detectable at all at that distance implied they were… large.

  “What ARE those?” someone gulped.

  “Too small to tell,” said someone else.

  “No, not at all! We may not be able to get better visual resolution at that distance, but astronomers are already getting enough information to find out plenty about them!” said Snel.

  As the growing crowd watched, a hastily-assembled group of panelists debated the nature of the objects. Some pundit or other wondered whether they were an unknown natural phenomenon.

  “Natural?” scoffed Karden, “And when, exactly, did natural objects fly in perfect formation?”

  The journalists finally patched in an astrophysicist to join the discussion. He pointed out that the objects were flying directly toward the world, their trajectory precisely coordinated with its orbit around the sun.

  “Uh oh,” said Snel, her voice returning to its usual near-whisper.

  Another pundit onscreen theorized they were giant projectiles, missiles aimed by unknown but inconceivably powerful enemies to destroy the planet itself.

  “Or, as a simpler explanation, they could be ships,” said Karden.

  “Very large ships,” whispered Snel.

  The lounge was getting full. Someone in the back quipped, “Ships? Naturally, Karden, as the expert in first contacts between cultures, you’d be hoping to finally see one first hand.”

  Karden replied in an acrid tone, “As you know, my work is more… terrestrial. However, the actual history of such first contacts has never encouraged me to want to be on the receiving end of one. In any case, none of us will have a choice.”

  Snel looked over at him. “At that speed, they’ll be here in five days.”

  ///

  Karden returned to his large but woefully cluttered office, cleared a stack of teetering papers to make room, and with help from a couple of graduate students, rigged up a spare monitor set to the news feeds. Over the next few days, with varying company, he followed developments and public reaction.

  There were those who expected the end of the world and those who expected its salvation, and a few perhaps who expected both. Some panicked and fled the cities with their families and vehicles loaded with supplies. Others dug bunkers and stocked them with weapons, awaiting the worst. Crazies gathered in the desert or on rooftops to dance to the arrival of the aliens, wish them welcome, or ask them for boons. Most simply went to work as always, hoping things would turn out all right.

>   The nations of the world mobilized their armed forces, reserves were called up, and aircraft flew regular patrols on high alert. None knew if such preparations would help, or would even be necessary, but none wanted to find out what would happen if they didn’t make them.

  As the objects grew closer, astronomers were able to get a better look at them.

  “Those are definitely ships,” mumbled Snel, who’d made herself at home in a chair nearly surrounded by stacked books.

  “And what ships!” added Karden.

  Each was larger than the greatest oceangoing vessel by far, the length of an urban center. One could imagine crews with the populations of small towns manning them. And they were beautiful. They had, to be sure, an alien aesthetic at work, but they were magnificent matches of form to function. Whoever built them had been building such things a long time. No experimental prototype, no new feat of untried engineering, could have looked like that! They made the world’s handful of little orbital spacecraft look like the works of some amateur tinker.

  All twelve of them followed a standard design - roughly cylindrical, cut off about three-quarters of the way around their circumference to make a flat top, with tapered bows and bright glowing engines at the stern. They had clean lines and gracefully arcing curves, with minor variations here and there, just as one encountered with individual surface warships over the lifetime of a class

  But these ships were decorated with colors and touches of metallic gold. The designs were placed so as to highlight an eye-catching portion of a ship, or in elegant geometric patterns elsewhere. It was just enough to enhance the beauty of the ships without overwhelming it. Though all the decoration followed a common aesthetic, no two were done exactly alike.

  To Karden’s eye, they resembled painted and gilt sailing ships of centuries past, like the hulls of fast low-slung galleys, only far, far larger. Once pictures got out of what the ships looked like, the mood of the public turned notably more positive. Talk filled the airwaves and the net. The media pundits continued their analysis, such as it was.

  “Finally, and notably, there are no visible objects on the surfaces of these ships that our experts think might resemble a weapon,” said one of Karden’s least favorite, a pompous old windbag of an anchorman named Rorder.

  “Surely,” the latter continued, in his pontifical way, “such beautiful ships couldn’t house the slavering monsters or cruel invaders of popular imagination! Here I think we see diplomats and teachers from the stars, artistic beings that have advanced beyond our petty greed and ruthless warmongering. The only enemy we will see upon their arrival is us, or rather, our own fear.”

  Karden peered around the pile of books to talk to Snel.

  “The sailing ships of any number of conquering empires were themselves beautiful things.”

  She gazed nervously through her ponderous glasses. “What do you mean?”

  “I can call to mind more than a few encounters between overawed natives, and more advanced and powerful visitors, visitors who came by ship from far away.”

  Her expression became even more nervous.

  “And this time,” he added, “we’re the natives. All of us.”

  2

  As the alien ships approached, the governments of the world hastily convened conferences. Some sort of plan had to be formulated, but what? As people ever did, the politicians had many theories and much trouble agreeing on a specific course of action. What they COULD agree on was forming committees to recommend such courses. Lists were drawn up of specialists, experts, world famous authorities in any fields that could conceivably be relevant, and urgent requests went out asking them to attend.

  Physicists, astronomers, engineers, anthropologists and linguists, military commanders, diplomats, business leaders, and even speculative futurists, were asked to contribute their ideas on what might be learned, and what to do with it. Some official, or more likely one of their staff, even saw fit to invite a historian, just in case.

  Karden was considered by some to be the world’s foremost scholar of cultural first contacts and the changes that followed. Or at least, his books sold well, he thought ruefully, and perhaps that was enough for the politicians. While the company was likely to be moderately interesting to tedious, at least the food and accommodations on these kinds of junkets tended to be top notch. So, how could he decline?

  Veteran of many conferences, he travelled light. Packing a set of his increasingly archaic dress clothes, a computer bag, a few hours flying to the capital, and he was there.

  On the other side of security, a harried-looking staffer was waiting, recognized him by sight, and guided him out to a waiting car. It was a posh thing too, with a large comfortable back cabin, a driver, and best of all, a built-in bar! Good to know, he thought to himself, the government felt this situation merited lavish and gratuitous use of taxpayer money.

  A long, traffic-snarled drive and a tall drink later, Karden arrived at the hotel that had been commandeered for the conference. Thankfully, the staffer had not bothered him with conversation other than a basic briefing. He noticed the place was one of the absolute best and most expensive in the capital. In a cynical way it made sense. When the spigots were on, why stop with cars?

  Reporters stood outside the entrance, like scavengers hoping for a meal. They had probably been denied access inside. As the staffer scurried from the car and around to open the door for him, Karden could see them tense, preparing for the tasty scrap that awaited them.

  As he stepped out, their expressions changed to confusion and then disinterest. After all, even a famous historian isn’t that famous, and certainly not by sight. However, one of them must have seen one of his books or videos, as he stepped forward with what Karden assumed would be useless questions.

  “Professor Karden, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The historian, yes?”

  “Not THE historian, merely one, but yes.”

  Thus far, his assumptions were not disappointed.

  “What do you think the aliens will do, what will they say?”

  “I’ll answer your second question first, since it is likely to happen first, even if it is out of my field. They’ll say things in their own language, which we won’t understand, and then we’ll try to translate them. I presume it will be difficult since we’ll have only short samples, and no frame of reference. For that you’ll need linguists, not me…”

  “But professor, you know what I mean.”

  “…unless of course, they’ve already learned one of OUR languages, and send us a message using it. In which case, they’ve already been studying us, and may have some very interesting though not necessarily comfortable things to say.”

  “Please, professor!”

  “Very well, I expect they’ll want something.”

  “Want something? Could you clarify, professor?”

  “There are many possibilities. Not our clearly inferior technology, to be sure. Perhaps they want our resources or our labor. If we’re lucky, they might even want to trade for them voluntarily. Or perhaps they’ll simply want our obedience. Then again they might not want us at all, just our nice beautiful planet. In that case, they aren’t likely to SAY anything to us, and they’ll go straight to doing.”

  “But don’t you think, such an advanced species, a powerful alien race, might be more enlightened, might have come to help us and teach us?”

  “Why would more advanced technology necessarily make them more enlightened? Why would they cross whatever immense distances they’ve come, and at what is no doubt immense cost, just to waste their time giving us things?”

  “But really professor, some of the other authorities have been much more optimistic!”

  “I’m sure they have. If you like, I can tell your viewers about several important historical events where more advanced, more powerful people crossed the seas and found people who were less so. They had many motives, but wanting to give gratuitous help and free gifts to the natives was never
among them. I can describe them in detail…”

  “Oh I’m sorry professor, I’d love to, but our broadcast time will be limited.”

  Another car was pulling up.

  “Ah well, you may like the next person’s opinions better. I will however answer your first question. What they DO will flow directly from what they SAY, and how we answer. Assuming we have a chance to answer. Interpret that how you like.”

  “Ah, thank you professor!”

  The reporter was already turning, with his crew, to the next, and hopefully sweeter, tidbit.

  ///

  Inside, the place was grand, and packed. Politicians, generals, scientists, and assorted other VIPs were clustered in conversations throughout the lobby, hallways, and main meeting room. Aides and staff scurried about fetching documents, drinks, and promising-looking food. How fortunate then that he was, for the day at least, one of the VIPs!

  Karden was wending his way through the crowd at random, trying to balance grabbing delicacies without being pulled into the conversations, when he noticed something else promising. There, towards an exhibit area where some fool had decided to post large glass-framed still photos of the alien ships, was Tayyis, the linguist.

  He’d had the good fortune to talk with her at many a conference or project over what was now close to thirty years. She was a most interesting conversationalist, spoke some implausible number of languages, and was a breath of fresh air among the self-important figures packing the place. He’d always thought her an attractive woman, with her luminously contemplative and intelligent eyes, but he was a difficult and incorrigible bachelor, while until her late husband’s sad passing, she’d been happily married.

  Karden abandoned his subtle plot to make off with a couple of the little snack wedges being held unfortunately close to a pair of the biggest windbags in the room, and walked straight over to Tayyis.

  3

  Tayyis was listening to two very different young men carry on a technical conversation, and was enjoying it immensely. Though she’d published several books, the foundation of her career was freelance translation and linguistic work. She hadn’t managed it by being shy or misanthropic. The conversation itself was so thick with jargon that she may as well have been trying to learn a new language, and that made it interesting.