Chapter 16 Epilogue Part 1

Earth, White House briefing room

“So, it’s just gone then?” Stephen Graham President of the United States of America asked. “How does a 5-mile-long alien just disappear? Did all the Admirals and everyone else just forget about it? Hope it wouldn’t show up in the middle of the last battle?”

Assembled in the briefing room were members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of the CIA, NSA, State Department, National Science advisor and the Presidents Chief of Staff. Every single one of them could only look at the President with and hope someone else would be made the object of the Presidents ire.

“Weren’t we at least tracking it before the battle?”

Admiral Nicholas Feng the Joint Chief of staff representing the USA space forces took this as his cue to speak. “Yes Mr. President we were tracking it from Earth and Mars based telescopes, and it was on approach to Europa. However, just after the destruction of the ring and power plants over Jupiter it turned around and accelerated towards Saturn. It entered a blind spot behind Saturn and we suspect it is hiding on one of Saturn’s 107 moons.”

After a few moments the president leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Alright then, what is our plan to find and destroy it? We do have a plan to find and destroy it right?”

“Mr. President, we have drawn up plans for a search and destroy mission to Saturn.” Admiral Feng continued. “As we have not seen it leave the vicinity of Saturn, we believe that it is still hiding on or behind one of Saturn’s moons. Given the difficulty in logistics with sending a force large enough to effectively scout that much area and fight a Kraken when it is found I recommend that we not send any manned missions at this time.”

Admiral Feng who had served in the military for almost 40 years found himself more than a little worried as the President fixed him with an icy glare “I see, and what do you propose Admiral? Leave an enemy in our backyard?”

“Our plan at this point is to send several dozen unmanned probes to Saturn Mr. President. Both stealth and non stealth, they should allow us to find the Kraken with no risk to any crew. This will also have the advantage of us not having to worry about the logistical issues with sending a manned force out that far. Once the Kraken has been found we will be able to send several hundred missiles at it from halfway across the system. It’s cheap, effective and there is no danger to human lives.”

“Why an unmanned mission Admiral? I don’t think the American people will be reassured by a bunch of unmanned probes poking around Saturn.” President Graham said.

“If we were to send a manned force looking for the Kraken I would want the task force sent to have overwhelming superiority of numbers and a clear chain of command. Because of that the force should only be made up of ourselves and possibly E.U. ships if they were willing to play ball.

The Force itself would have to be at least 1 Super Carrier task force reinforced with several other Carrier groups with their attending ships, add in a few extra Cruisers for good measure to ensure screening for the fleet tenders that would have to go with them. Given how poorly our frigates faired in battle I would strip most of the frigates from the task force and leave them here. All told it would probably be 50 ships mostly cruisers and carriers sent out to Saturn for an unknown amount of time.

As there are currently no facilities near Jupiter or Saturn with which to refuel or resupply the fleet, they would not have the ability to look for the Kraken for any significant length of time even with fleet tenders. If we were to send such a large task force and not find anything, well it would be a significant waste of resources that would be better served being closer to Earth or Mars.

At this the President frowned. “How long would it take to find the Kraken?”

“I am afraid at this moment Sir we have no idea. While the Leviathans were easy to see, they had never tried to hide themselves. It may be extremely simple to find; but more likely with the amount of surface area on all of the moons and asteroids it could take months to find or even longer.”

While the president looked extremely unhappy still a concrete plan of action did at least seem to mollify him somewhat. “I don’t like the idea of leaving something like that out there, but I can see how your plan would simplify things considerably. Send out the probes for now but draw up the plans to send out a task force, if one of the other powers sends ships out there I don’t want them going alone.” Turning to his Secretary of State he asked. “How are the talks proceeding Elizabeth?”

“Very slowly Mr. President. The Chinese Ambassador is dragging his heals on just about every issue we raise. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were completely uninterested in any kind of mutual defence pact.”

“Any idea why that could be?” The president of the United States asked.

“I have a few back channels into the Chinese Government and from what I hear they are currently cleaning house. 4 Admirals 3 Generals and a large number of officers have been removed, as well as several senior government officials. All of them hardline anti American from the looks of it. I think they must have been getting pushback from their own people regarding any potential treaties and alliances with us and are cleaning house before they seriously begin negotiations.”

“Were they really worried about a coup? Everything I’ve ever seen of their government looked fairly stable.”

At this Elizabeth Berkley the head of the State Department nodded her head to Jack Rodriguez the head of the CIA indicating he should take over.

“While the Chinese have always done an excellent job of appearing unified from the outside, the CIA and NSA have caught wind of a number of different factions inside the Chinese Government, nothing destabilizing but less unified than they appeared. This was likely the catalyst for a shift in their politics and forced a purge of their more extreme officials. Right now it was the ultra right-wing nationalists, and other people with connections to some of their larger corporations that have been removed from offices. These were the people that were always pushing for war with us. Now that this new threat has emerged it seems that the moderates and centrists are cleaning house.”

“Is there any chance this could escalate into a full-blown civil war?”

“It seems unlikely Mr. President. Most of the most hardline members of their Admiralty and Generals have already been relieved of command, forcibly retired or isolated. The remaining Admirals and Generals are from what we can tell far more moderate in their views and appear to be loyal to the Government. I can’t rule it out completely of course but if something significant was going to happen it likely would have happened already.”

“What does this mean for the upcoming summit Elizabeth?”

“We are expecting the Chinese to be far more moderate than in the past and more open to a compromise. They will still be seeking a resolution to the issues in the asteroid belt and I think we will need to come to an agreement on mutually administering the areas where the conflict was flaring up the most. But given the new political climate we’re in I am expecting we can come to some sort of an agreement on this if we are willing to compromise as well. The one issue that is likely to be a big problem is the question of corporate security forces.” she said.

Elizabeth Berkley was referring to the issues that had almost precipitated the Chinese American war in the first place. Disagreements on what county or company owned the mining rights to certain parts of the Asteroid belt had led to Chinese and American companies starting their own small wars against each other.

With each side fielding increasingly deadly ships armed with weapons that were just a step down from military grade. Thousands had died with billions of dollars worth of equipment destroyed.

Eventually the fighting got so bad that the American government had been pressured by their own corporations to intervene in order to protect American interests in the area. The sending of Admiral Jacobs fleet to try and stop what the American Government labeled pirate activity had of course caused the Chinese to send their own fleet. And it was only the appearance of Aliens at the edges of human territory that had stopped the war from breaking out.

“I want us to begin immediately cracking down on corporate security forces. Send out a press release that any ship with a rail gun is to be impounded immediately upon entering American controlled space. Begin creating checkpoints for all craft and send out inspection teams to corporate controlled shipyards. Any corporations that push back too hard on this are to be investigated.”

“Investigated for what Mr. President?”

“I am certain we can find something Elizabeth. The corporations have had too much say in our government lately and I mean to change that. Anyone who doesn’t fall in line will be made an example of.”

“This is going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of companies, not to mention more than a few Congressmen and Senators. Half the ships in these areas have rail guns these days, and ever company has some armed ships. If the Chinese don’t follow suit and begin impounding their own ships, we would be handing them a huge advantage.” Jack Rodriguez said.

“This will help us get the EU on our side however, the conflict in the asteroid belt has always been a point of contention between our governments. They’ve always seen both sides as allowing corporate interests to run wild. If they see us taking a stand on this and the Chinese allowing their corporations free reign it could go a long way with the EU.” Elizabeth Berkley said.

“Just impound the ships and crews and track down any shipyard that is modifying civilian ships to use railguns for now. If the Chinese refuse to follow suit, then we can always drop the charges later and release the ships back to the corporations that own them. For now, I want people to see us making a good faith effort on these issues.”

“Mr. President you can’t seriously expect the Chinese to act on these issues now. We have been having problems in the belt for years. If we disarm the corporate security forces, we could lose the whole of the conflicted zone to their corporations.” Said General Anthony Phillips. “That will be billions in raw resources and equipment in that area.”

“This area has been in conflict for decades, a few months won’t change that. Admiral Feng, how would you describe the battles against the Leviathans?” President Graham asked Admiral Nicholas Feng the commander of American Space forces.

“In short Mr. President? The battles were a disaster. Even with far superior numbers and intelligence on the enemy’s movements we lost far more ships than we thought that we would in our most pessimistic projections.”

“What were the main causes of our poor performance Admiral?”

“I would like to state for the record that it was not a problem of the crews themselves or the senior leadership of the fleet. Every member of the fleet acted superbly and did their duty. The biggest problems our forces faced was our ships simply being too small and lacking armor that could withstand the enemy’s weapons. Co-ordinated fire from a Guppy class enemy could destroy one of our Frigates in under three minutes when we first encountered them, by the final battle they had learned our ships weaknesses and they could disable most of a frigates weapons in just under 1 minute 30 seconds before moving onto another ship. Our cruisers fared better but they could still be destroyed in just over 5 minutes and disabled in just over 3 minutes. Adding the fact that we cannot dodge their weapons and they have a longer effective range; we were at a severe disadvantage in every fight. Many of these disadvantages were compounded by individual fleet commanders acting under their own orders from their governments. “

“Can you elaborate on that Admiral?” President Graham asked.

“Without a true Chain of Command for the task force each fleet was acting far too independently of each other, choosing their own targets when they should have been coordinating fire more effectively for instance. This caused far more loss of life than was necessary, especially for the Chinese at the beginning of the conflict. I would say it was so bad that if more Leviathans were to appear tomorrow, I would strongly advise against sending any forces to meet them unless an actual chain of command were established for the task force. I am certain every government has come to this conclusion as well Mr. President.”

“I agree, the real question is going to be determining in the future how the command structure of any future expeditions would be sent out.” General Philips said.

“Not exactly General, most of the Leviathan wreckage is still in orbit of Europa, and given the wreckages size, it’s likely to stay there. The scope of the facilities that will be needed to study the wreckage, as well as the logistical challenges in building anything that far out, I believe that we will need at least 2 of the other major powers working with us, if we’re going to be doing that, then we need to determine the chain of command now.”

“What kind of logistical problems will we be facing?” President Graham asked.

“To be frank Mr. President, it is going to be a nightmare. No one has much in the way of infrastructure out there so everything will need to be constructed at Earth or Mars and then towed millions of miles to Europa.

The station itself would likely have to be the size of Ares station to be at least partially self sufficient and given the distances in shipping perishables I would recommend we try to make it as self sufficient as possible. The task force has found an asteroid near Europa that may be possible to convert into a station, but even that will require massive amounts of materials to make habitable.

With new ship building program Congress has just authorized which includes the new Super Dreadnoughts our production facilities will already be stretched thin Mr. President. We are going to need Millions of tonnes of materials and equipment and we simply don’t have the capacity to expand the fleet and build the materials for a station of that size. Not to mention getting it out to Jupiter and building it there.”

“Why can’t we bring the wreckage back here?” General Phillips asked.

“Some of the wreckage we would be able to, but the largest pieces are literally 2 and a half kilometers long and weigh as much as a dreadnought, its simply not possible to move those and they are the most intact pieces. Even if we could move them, we still need to study Europa itself. Admiral Robinsons most recent report indicates something is moving under the ice of Europa, and even that structure has started moving again.”

“Are we sure that wasn’t just the organisms that were already there? The Europa project had been studying them for almost a decade.”

“None of our warships have the equipment for detailed scans, but the first reports indicate that whatever is down there is much larger than anything the Europa Project had seen in the past. It seems that something survived the Behemoths crash and it’s down there now which is worrying itself. The ice of Europa is almost 15 kilometers thick.”

“What’s that in miles?” Asked the President.

“9 miles Sir.”

“How does anything survive an impact like that? Let alone make it through the ice in one piece?”

At this Kevin Price the National Science advisor finally broke his silence “The original Behemoth that set part of itself on Europa was building something on ice, we believe that it was also burrowing down under the ice, either looking for water, a more hospitable climate, or simply expanding. In any case the 2nd Behemoth landed directly on top of it. If it had burrowed far enough down, the ice could have been weakened enough to allow it to crash through. There were also a few other things I wanted to go over with you and the Joint Chiefs Mr. President.”

At a gesture from the President he began speaking. “When looking into their FTL, or more specifically the gate we saw some things that I think need to be brought to all of your attention.” Tapping his tablet he projected a still image onto a large screen set into the wall of the briefing room. “This is the gate itself, now we learned a considerable amount about their construction and some of their technology just from watching them build this, but what I really wanted to draw your attention to was this.” As he finished speaking he zoomed into a specific area of the gate when it had been activated showing stars in the distant background.

“This was captured by the Cherry Barb when it was closest to the gate. When we were going over this looking for more clues as to what it is made of we noticed these.” As the image zoomed in further the Admirals and Generals started to talk to each other. “As you can see on the other side the gate were more Leviathans.”

On the screen were hundreds of small creatures hanging in the void of space.

“These are Guppies right?” General Anthony Philips asked.

“No Sir. While it is difficult to judge their size with nothing to measure them against, given their shape we believe these are all Kraken.” At this announcement the room erupted into whispers.

As the everyone spoke to each other down Admiral Feng asked the question on all of their minds. “How many?”

“It is difficult to say for certain, but we counted at least 300 Kraken and several thousand Guppies.” At this the whispers turned into shouting only to be silenced when the President began to bang his hand on the table.

“You’ve got more?” He asked.

“We are also seeing variations on their design, sharper angles, more obvious weapons, possibly thicker armor. We think that the force we faced recently, may have been more of a construction crew than warships. We believe these are the ships they send to a new systems and build the gate so the rest of their forces can come through.”

If Doctor Price had expected more of an uproar he was left disappointed as the faces that looked at him were too shocked to speak.

“It gets worse Sir.”

“How?!” One Vice Admiral that the President couldn’t name asked.

In answer Dr. Price zoomed in on another section of the picture, zoomed in again and then several more times. “This was taken by the Cherry Barb as well, fortunately their sensor operator was able to deploy their main telescope and capture these images.” As the picture focused the people could make out what appeared to be a planet. “We believe this planet is similar to Mars in size, just to give some context. We were able to estimate based on these here, which are Kraken in orbit.” As he pointed out the Aliens in orbit not a person spoke. On the screen in front of them was a planet covered in what looked like flesh. Reaching up from the planet were long tendrils of muscle and bones that were tall enough to reach into space. On the end of each tendril of which there were dozens, were Kraken in various stages of being grown.

“We believe Sir, that they operate like a cross between cancer and an animal. Or maybe a tumor that moves and spreads itself? In any case this is likely what they were attempting to do to Europa Sir. The entire surface of the planet appears to be covered in it, whatever it is. From there they likely mine planets of resources, reproduce and spread. The fleet has already reported that the growth on Europa has already started growing again. Likely it is trying to do, well this.”

At this pronouncement the room quieted down and all eyes turned to the President. His face grim, his eyes locked on the screen he said. “Elizabeth, send this to the other powers. I want a quarantine of Europa, and I don’t want a single piece of Leviathan getting within 100 million miles of Earth. All samples will be kept at Jupiter, nothing and I mean nothing will come into the inner system. If anyone tries they are to be charged with something, I don’t care what and executed. We’ll get congress to pass a new law if we have to. Get the other powers on board with this, I don’t care what it takes.”

“Yes Mr. President.”

With this new information the President turned to the head of the CIA. “Jack, I assume every nation on earth has instituted a new ship building program?”

“That is correct Mr. President. The E.U. announced a massive ship building program across it’s members states, China, and Russia have not announced anything but our assets have noted the shipyards we have access to are now at full production, we can safely assume their other shipyards are similarly busy. Japan, and The African League have also announced their intention to increase production on war materials. The South American Confederacy have not announced anything yet, but with all of the infighting there I’m not surprised.”

“So, with all of this shipbuilding going on, does anyone have enough left-over industrial capacity to actually make the materials for a station that size, transport it out there and provision it?”

“The full-sized station? No sir, but China or the EU could make a smaller station for some limited tests, or even modify some ships into research vessels.”

The President sat back in his chair deep in thought. It was times like this he even wondered why he had ever wanted to be President; the next hundred years of human history would be decided right here and now. “When we go into these talks it will be to attempt to build a consensus towards a joint effort for a space station near Jupiter. I do not want the next time these things, or something like these things come here for the battle to be this close.

I also want us to prioritize control of the research station and team, even if that means giving up some control of future engagements, or impacting our ship building now.”

“Mr. President are you sure that’s wise?”

“If we control the station we control the resupply point for all future pushes into the outer system including whatever fleets will be operating in that area, and I don’t think I have to tell you how important this research will be in the next 20 or 30 years and I do not want China having control over it.”

“Do you think we will see them again Mr. President?” A junior aid asked.

“They know where we are, they have absolutely no reason not to come again, but when they do we’ll be ready for them. Doctor Price, any idea when we could expect to see them again?”

“It’s impossible to say Mr. President. The gate appears to be instantaneous, but whatever they used to get here in the first place could take years, or longer. I’m afraid we don’t know enough about their FTL to make a reasonable guess.”

“Your people will have whatever you need to figure it out. Now more than ever Humanity can’t afford to have all her eggs in one basket. We’ll need to spread out and find more resources if we want to have any hope of a future for us.”

With the Presidents decisions the meeting began to wrap up. With several days until the summit the President sat in his office looking up at the night sky. Despite not being able to see the stars he could still imagine them there. When he was a boy he had always loved space. He loved looking at it with awe and wonder. Now he looked towards the night sky with a sense of dread and wondered what other horrors could exist there.