April 9, 2009 - Port-aux-Fran?ais - Kerguelen Islands - French Southern and Antarctic Lands - Southern Indian Ocean
Electronic Warfare Technician 3rd Class Jonas was checking his data for the third time since it first appeared on his monitor. The orbital satellite that his team was responsible for monitoring had, for years, been returning images of a spot in deep space that looked distorted. The satellite took four pictures per hour and frankly, he thought, the pictures had changed very little the initial readings had come in all those years ago.
The last hour’s series of images, however, had shown something significantly different. The first image in the series showed an unusual spot on the peripheral of the sphere that was easy to miss. The second image showed more unusual spots, and by the third image the entire circumference of the sphere was a different color. The fourth image was the most disturbing and contained what had actually caught Jonas’ attention.
Surrounding the sphere were hundreds of new objects in space. The moment he saw the fourth image and rechecked that it wasn’t an anomaly, he called for his supervisor to come over. He had just finished his third check when the supervisor, a civilian doctor named Dr. Guirade, approached his station.
“What did you find?” He asked the seaman.
“This series has significant anomalies in the image. The computer says it isn’t an error and I tripled checked the data. Sir, I think this is what we’ve been hoping against happening.”
Dr. Guirade was quiet a moment while he studied the images. “I think you’re right.” He quickly walked over to a panel that contained a single button under a glass cover. He lifted the cover and took a deep breath to steady himself. “May God help us all.” He pressed the button.
April 9, 2009 - The Facility - K?ro?lu Mountain Range - Bolu Province, Turkey
MacKenna was sitting in her office sipping coffee while reading the daily brief when all hell broke loose. The lights dimmed and red rotating hazard lights kicked on while a tonal siren began oscillating over the base intercom. A few seconds later a voice spoke along side the siren “This is not a drill. Alarm Red. This is not a drill.”
Dropping her coffee to the floor she sprinted out of her office and down the hall to the control room. “Status.” She barked as she entered the room.
“Ma’am, Port-aux-Fran?ais triggered the alarm, we’re receiving the images from the satellite any moment now.” The main screen in the middle of the far wall switched from a map of earth to the most recent image from the monitoring station. Audible gasps could be heard from all over the room.
MacKenna recovered from her initial shock and started shouting orders. “Somebody get NORAD on the phone and see if there has been any change in the Saturn situation. Get somebody from the Council on the phone and apprise them of the situation. And turn that damn siren off.” She stared at the image on the main screen with fear in her eyes.
An Airman with a phone in his hand called over to MacKenna. “General, I have NORAD on the line. It appears the Saturn situation has become fluid.
“Give me that phone,” she said as she jogged over to it.
“General MacKenna, this is Colonel Daron. It appears the object at Saturn has started to move to Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. It’s difficult to tell, but we think it’s descending to the surface.”
“Task a satellite to watch Titan as much as possible. What’s the orbital period on that moon?”
“Around thirteen days Ma’am. We can keep an eye on it for about five of those.”
“Keep us apprised of the situation. If the thing lands and we can get an image of it from Hubble do so. Task another satellite to watch the region of space surrounding Saturn and if one is available task one to watch the path of Neptune.” She glanced at some real time celestial data. “Keep an eye on Jupiter as well.”
“Yes Ma’am.” The line went dead.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.
April 9, 2009 - The Wormhole - 1992QB1 - Sol System, Milky Way
As the satellite back in a Molniya orbit continued to take pictures at it’s new assigned rate of one image every ten minutes, a clearer picture of what was happening started to take shape.
In the span of six hours alien spacecraft continued to pour through the wormhole and gather in a large cluster. Various different ship configurations began to attach to one another as more and more spacecraft funneled into the solar system. Eventually the flood of ships slowed and the interconnecting of ships stopped. In the wake of the flood of craft, a giant space station had been left that was now slowly orbiting the wormhole.
Meanwhile the satellites tasked with watching Titan discovered that the craft had indeed landed on the moon, but details of what was happening were still a mystery as the resolution from the satellites wasn’t significant enough to see. Everyone watching back home on Earth sat with bated breath, waiting to see what horrors were coming.
April 11, 2009 - The Wormhole - 1992QB1 - Sol System, Milky Way
Large spacecraft roughly twice as large as a container ship began exiting the wormhole. Some started to taxi toward the space station, while others turned toward the outer Kuiper belt or toward the Jovian planets. Dozens of the vessels had docked with the newly-assembled station by the time the flow of ships slowed down to a trickle. The watching satellite ran calculations as the last of the ships began a trajectory, and it determined that if they maintained their current speed, the outward-bound ships would intercept Saturn in roughly a month.
April 11, 2009 - North American Aerospace Defense Command - Cheyenne Mountain Complex - Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
“Sir, we’re tracking several hundred ships breaking away from both the space station and the wormhole, and heading toward Saturn.”
Colonel Daron watched as the radar was updated in real time. “They must be huge if radar is picking them up. Didn’t the ship that crashed in the nineties elude tracking via radar?”
“I believe so sir, but you’d have to ask somebody higher up the chain. I don’t think anybody here was serving in the nineties.”
“Forward the information to General MacKenna. Her team is significantly more qualified to parse the information and what it could mean.”
“Yes Sir, uploading the data now. Sir?”
“Yes Airman?”
“Sir, this is only a speculation, but I think those might be supply ships and I think that thing on Titan is the beginning of a base of operations.”
Daron looked at the airman with a raised eyebrow. “What makes you say that, son?”
The airmen looked a little embarrassed, “Well sir, I play a lot of strategy games when I’m off duty. If I had a space station to act as a refueling point between two long distances, I’d want to establish a proper base before I launched an attack on something. If I can’t always count on reinforcements from point A, point B needs to be only to replenish the fleet.”
Daron looked thoughtful for a minute while giving a critical eye to the airman. “Include your analysis, we set up our own forward operating bases when we go to war, I don’t see why an alien civilization would do things any differently.”
“Yes, Sir.”
May 20, 2009 - Titan - Saturn - Sol System, Milky Way
The sprawling complex on the surface of the moon spluttered to life as the structure powered up. Small craft lifted off from the surface and flew toward the planet, skimming through the atmosphere before returning to the moon to land in berths that appeared to be made specifically for that craft to land in. Other small craft lifted off and and headed for the Kuiper belt or turned inward toward the asteroid belt.
As the larger craft began to arrive and land on the moon, the complex started to take a more defined shape. The satellite humming away taking pictures showed a pair of clear docking areas for large or small craft and a building that was generating a huge amount of electromagnetic radiation that must have been the power plant. A small swarm of ships were working on constructing something above the base with a purpose as yet unknown.