Jul 15, 2015

Siege of Earth

This is a short story I've written. Hope you like it! 
Siege of Earth

The company of Genoware Corporation­­a biotech firm­­was looking for a research breakthrough for past several months. The CEO of the company had been given an ultimatum to show some progress by its investors. Now their only hope was a project launched last year, in 2121. The project was to search space for signs of extraterrestrial life with their satellite, called Explorer, and its probe Darwin . If successful, then Darwin would obtain a DNA sample and send it back to Earth for studying. So far, not a single sign of life was found.
Genoware Corporation HQ:
It was one a.m. The chief scientist in the biotechnology department, Dr. Casis was going through an old file named CONT1980, trying to decode it in his office. It was a response received many years ago, but nobody could decode it so far. Many had thought it was only a space disturbance. But he was refusing to believe that.
“Dr. Casis, could you look at this?”, requested Dr.Smith, Dr.Casis’s assistant pointing to the probe dashboard. Darwin had detected something cruising through the solar system at high speeds. They had a closer look at the images sent by Darwin. The object was as long as the Empire State Building. It was made of some type of silver metal. It was cylindrical in shape with some transparent squares along the side. It was heading directly towards the Earth. “It should reach our atmosphere within seven days,” said the assistant. He was excited, but Dr. Casis got worried. What it is and more importantly, who was travelling in it?
70 million miles from Earth:
“Sir, we have detected a planet with intelligent life forms on it,” said a Votoros(grasshopper like alien) soldier rushing into the command center. “How intelligent?” asked General Tronos of the Unifists. “Primitive,” replied the soldier. “Invade the planet,” commanded Tronos. “Should we call in for reinforcements or activate the wormhole generator?” questioned the soldier. “Neither,” replied the general, “Alliance ships can detect when something enters an artificial wormhole and they are already patrolling this area as we speak. Reinforcements will draw too much attention to this sector. We will slowly but surely reach the planet in time. Once the Alliance ships leave the sector, divert all energy to the engines. The Unifists must unite the galaxy.”
Dr. Casis’s office:
Dr. Casis tried to contact the spaceship. But there was no response for several hours. They kept trying but got more worried since the spaceship kept approaching faster than expected. They had to act fast. In a desperate attempt, he decided to use CONT1980 to send the signal from Explorer and Darwin in a hopeful attempt to see if this would get a response. He was not confident that he would be able to understand the response again this time. He was just hoping for another miracle. He informed the U.S. president and other scientists about the development.
100 million miles from Earth:
Astrosapien General Tenuros was looking at the holographic map of the system he was in. No Unifists in the sector. He was about to tell the pilot of the ship to leave the system but Hypersapien Admiral Tonos came in. Tenuros was an Astrosapien who were the first advanced civilization to evolve in the galaxy. Tonos was a Hypersapien who were usually strong and smart in war. Tenuros was tall, blue skin, elongated back head, and with green eyes with no pupils. He and Tonos had the same eye color and both had no pupils, but Tonos was tall, had skin that looked like silver metal and glinted in the bright light, and muscular. “Sir, our spies indicate that General Tronos is attacking a planet with semi­intelligent life forms on it. The inhabitants are defenseless. Also, we received a message from the planet. The planet is called Earth. It is plea for help from an Earthling,” informed Tonos. “We must help them” said the commander. “Call in for reinforcements. Fire up the wormhole generator.” commanded Tenuros.
Dr. Casis’s office:
“Doctor, you must look at this at once!” cried Dr. Smith. They didn’t believe it. He got the exactly same response as was found in the old file. He started to put it through his decoding software which wasn't successful for so many years. But he was working more intensely this time as if he was hoping for a different outcome this time. And it appeared on the screen ­­ “Hello Earthling!” He and the assistant almost jumped out of their chairs. They continued to read the decoded message. In few hours and after few more exchanges, they realized that it was a response from another spaceship which would be able to help them in this crisis. And that they are about to intercept the fast approaching enemy spaceship. He immediately communicated with the president and requested for more time before taking any action on their own.

"But how did you decrypt the message?" Dr.Smith asked curiously. "I had tried earlier all the modern ways of decoding the messages. But we probably never tried some of the ancient ways to decipher the messages." replied the doctor. And he continued "Sometimes we forget to look at simple solutions for a complex problem. The approaching spaceship reminded me about the Skytale, the method used by the Greek Spartan generals during their war. That did the trick. It is possible that the aliens we communicated somehow got the knowledge from their earlier contacts with the Earth. They have much advanced version of it now and they also use it to contact their allies during wartime." "But how could we trust those aliens to help us?" assistant was now skeptical. "Should we not prepare ourselves to defend us?" "We don't have a choice now, do we?" countered Dr. Casis.
Somewhere near Mars:
General Tronos’s ship entered the atmosphere. “Should we get into battle stations?” asked a soldier. “Yes and do it quickly. We must be swift in our attack,” ordered Tronos. The ship’s pilot came running toward Tronos quickly. The pilot showed something on the holographic map. Tronos’s face turned from eagerness to being infuriated.Tronos barked an order: “Alliance forces have entered our area through a wormhole. And they are closing in on us rapidly. Contact a Unifist base for reinforcements. NOW!” On the ship heading straight for Tronos’s ship, General Tenuros came out of the control room. “Battle stations!” he ordered. Admiral Tonos screamed, “Disable their transmissions!” As Astrosapien and Hypersapien soldiers did as were they told, thespaceshipshookviolentlyandtilted.“Theenemyhasengagedus!” someone yelled as an emergency siren blared loudly. Tonos instantly told a squadron of pilot fighters to disembark from the motherships immediately. As pod fighters from the Alliance fought against the Tronos’s army of pod fighters viciously, the motherships battled against each other relentlessly.
Dr. Casis's lab:
A team of scientists watched the battle between the spaceships via the images sent by Darwin. A few hours later, the battling spaceships retreated into deep space. The images captured were quite valuable to Dr. Casis to sponsor his research for next several years. More importantly, a new chapter of friendship saga between Earthlings and Hypersapiens and Astrosapiens had begun.Maybe Earth would face more encounters again, but for now with new alliance Earth would be more prepared for it for sure. 

0 comments:

Post a Comment