Nebula (38 page)

The large ship had a small module of some sort attached to it, and the
Chanreek transport went there and docked. The hatch opened again, and their next instructions were given through the Chanreek radio.

“You will now go into the isolation chamber. We cannot permit you to have direct contact with us or to enter any of the areas that have been kept free of your plague. You must understand that we need to be very careful in dealing with you. The robots that attended you and Commander Radeek Nol Zvi will be sent to our decontamination facility where they will be sterilized with high doses of radiation. Unfortunately we cannot do the same with you or Radeek or you would be killed. The alternative is to conduct our discussions with you in isolation. You see that there is a large window at one end of the chamber. We are on the other side. Once you are seated, we can begin. We will be able to see each other, and we can speak through a simple device similar to one of your speaker phones. Please turn the radio off now. We will not need to use it while you are in the isolation chamber.”

Harry and Brad sat down in the two chairs in front of the window. The chairs were larger than the ones that the Chanreeks would use and were obviously built specially for them. When they were seated, the window became transparent, and they could see a group of Chanreeks seated in front of them. One of them began to speak, and they assumed that this was the senior Chanreek in the group. It appeared to be female and quite old. To its left was another elderly female and to the right was a male that looked younger, but it was hard to tell a Chanreek’s age other than by what would be the usual features in a human.

“I am Akaree Daru Novata,” the female said. “I am the senior member of the
Chanreek governing council and will act as our lead negotiator. You may refer to me as Prime Minister Akaree.” Brad and Harry realized that surnames apparently came first in this culture, similar to others on Earth. Radeek had never explained that. In fact, they never knew that he had names other than Radeek until they arrived at the fleet.

“This is Naroo Krili Boa, another member of our council,” she said as she pointed to the female on her left. “You may
refer to her as Minister Naroo.

“And this is Kragin Dom Krili, the commander of our military forces,” and she pointed to her right. “You will
refer to him as General Kragin.

“You will now introduce yourselves and tell us of your positions in your own government.” It was a very direct and blunt order for Brad or Harry to speak.

Brad replied in the same, abrupt manner as Prime Minister Akaree had. “I am Colonel Bradford Lincoln, commander of our force on Mars and one of the senior commanders in the military forces that defend our planet. I have been sent to represent the human government on Earth and to discuss how to end this conflict. You will refer to me as Colonel Lincoln.”

Then he pointed to Harry. “And this is Doctor Harry Ambrose, one of our scientists and a member of the force that defended Mars from your invasion. You will refer to him as Doctor Ambrose. But I believe that you already know this, since Commander Radeek Nol Zvi must have informed you of our identities and positions in our military organization.”

Akaree Daru Novata nodded, apparently a common form of body language, and continued. “We do know of your organization and its senior leadership, and we are also aware of many other things. We have determined that we are much stronger than you and that your early successes were due to our failure to detect that you had penetrated our communication network. That was a mistake that we will not make again. We have taken very large losses due to our failure, and we have lost most of our population due to your cowardly biological attack, but we will not be fooled again. We also have determined that the warships that you sent against us must be the strongest that you have. We have much stronger ships still in reserve, and we can easily overpower you with only one or two more attacks, ones that you will not be able to know about until they happen. So, tell us what your proposal is and why we should deal with you at all. Why should we deal with the murderers of so many of our civilian population?”

Brad’s response was direct and to the point.
“If you want a world to live on, you will listen to our proposal and think very carefully before rejecting it. I guarantee that if you attempt to take our planet by force, you will find that you cannot live here. We have prepared biological weapons that are buried deeply, all over the entire planet. We can render the planet uninhabitable for your race for at least one million of our years.”

For a moment, there was silence and then Akaree Daru Novata replied, “We doubt that your buried weapons can withstand the intense thermonuclear bombardment that we can send if we are not able to defeat you with our heavy plasma and microwave weapons. We will sterilize your planet and then spend enough time in near light speed travel, so when we return, the world will be safe for us.”

Brad shook his head and replied, “Do you think that we are fools? Haven’t you learned that we can think as well as you can? We have many layers of robotic weapons. Some would activate immediately after an invasion or many years after a thermonuclear attack, when the radiation levels have decreased enough for you to return. Others are programmed to wait for subsequent bombardments or when your machines are detected as they arrive on Earth. Then there are other layers, many others. You could bombard Earth time and time again, but there would still be weapons remaining, waiting for the events that cause them to activate. They are tended by robots that have unbounded lifetimes, and the pathogens that they will release are far worse than the ones that we sent in our first biological attack. Even one of these canisters can release enough pathogen to contaminate the entire planet within one or two months. If you win the war, you will lose the chance to live here forever. That’s why you should listen to what we have to offer.”

Brad then explained what Earth was willing to offer and showed maps of the areas that had been set aside for the
Chanreeks’ temporary home while Mars was being prepared for them. They listened silently while he spoke and for several seconds after he finished. From the expressions on their faces, and from their body language, Brad and Harry could tell that their earlier arrogance and assuredness had changed to concern.

Finally Akaree Daru Novata spoke, “We will take your proposal under consideration. You will be taken back to your ship until we are ready to resume our discussions.” Then they left and the screen went blank.

“So, that was interesting,” Brad said as he got up from his chair. What do …”

Harry interrupted, “En Español, Brad.” Both of them were fluent in Spanish, and Brad realized that Harry switched language so the
Chanreek translators wouldn’t be able to follow their conversation.

“OK,” he replied in Spanish. “What do you have?”

“I was able to make contact with Robby. He’s still operating, and our software is still functioning, so he’s recording everything that interests us as it comes across the robot network. That’s their main network for planning and for recording meetings, so it’s better than when we just read their message traffic. We’re tapped into the mother lode of information. I can see in their planning and analysis records that they aren’t as confident as they made out to be. They’re pretty sure that they can overpower us and that the warships that we already sent at them are most of what we have, but they’re not one hundred percent confident, more like about eighty percent. Some of their military leaders think that we may be keeping the big planetary defenses hidden, so that we can surprise them again.”

“So we still have some leverage?”

“It looks that way. But they do have a plan for a massive thermonuclear attack. They had robots outfit some of the contaminated transports with a large number of weapons, and they’ll use robots as crews. That part of what they said is true. They also figured that we might use biological weapons to contaminate Earth, so they do have a plan for multiple bombardments, spaced at about ten thousand years. They’re preparing four bombardments, all of them done by robots that would return to the solar system in three waves after the first bombardment. If they resort to this attack, they would return to settle on Earth about one hundred thousand years from now. This isn’t a problem for them since almost no time would elapse on their ships.”

“I thought that they no longer had enough survivors to be able to leave on an extended trek.”

“That’s only if they were searching for a new home world. When they do that, they have to loiter for quite a few years while they search an area. They can’t do that anymore since they have very limited long term life support. Their agriculture and environmental sustainment capabilities are almost zero. They also have very few scout ships to do the exploration. But if they’re just trying to kill time by traveling fast, none of this matters.”

“OK, I see. So what can you tell about their response to our proposal.”

“From what I’ve seen, I think that they’ll realize that our offer is probably their best chance of surviving. Wait. I’m getting new information. They’re discussing this now, and the meeting is being recorded in real time. I’m like a fly on the wall, listening in through Robby’s monitoring of the robot network. This is one big piece of luck.”

Harry was silent for about a minute, leaving Brad to wait for the next bit of news.

“They’re leaning toward accepting our proposal, but they’re suspicious of our intentions. They worry that we will invite them to land on Earth, and when we have all of them here, we’ll release the pathogens. They don’t trust us, for obvious reasons. I think that we’d feel the same way. So we need to give them some assurance that we’re being honest about having them as guests while we terraform Mars.”

Brad thought about this for a few seconds and replied, “Why don’t we suggest that they use their robots and their thermonuclear weapons as guarantees that we’ll play fair? They have the power to destroy Earth whenever they want to, so if they send their robots off at near light speed and have them return from time to time to check things out, that should give them some assurance that we’d want their people living here in peace whenever the robots returned.”

“They had the same idea,” Harry answered. “They think that all they’d need is about one hundred years before they could be sure of the situation here. But they’re not going to tell us about that plan. They’re afraid that if we knew, we might be able to build planetary defenses that could stop the robot attack. But the good news is that they seem to be willing to continue the negotiations, not just reject our proposal out of hand, which was their original intention.”

*

Back at Nebula Prime, Seduro, Billingsley, and the other senior members of the staff spent most of the time in the large conference room, waiting for word from Brad and Harry. Radio transmissions from the
Chanreek fleet would take about a day to reach them, so the tension built as the hours passed.

Finally, three days after Brad and Harry had left on their mission, a message arrived and was displayed on the large screen on the wall of the conference room. It reported that negotiations were concluded after a day of very tense discussions. The Earth’s proposal was finally accepted, on condition that a
Chanreek inspection team could visit each of the territories that had been set aside and then meet with the Earth’s leadership to iron out final details. Brad and Harry were already on their way back and would arrive a few hours after the message. The Chanreek inspection team would be ready to come to Earth about a day later and would wait beyond the orbit of the moon for further instructions from Nebula on the procedure for traveling to Earth.

“So what leadership will they meet with, and where?” Billingsley asked.

“They’ll meet with us, at Ops,” was Seduro’s reply. “We can’t take the chance that a meeting with the heads of state could unravel everything. And we don’t want to show them the true state of Earth’s technology outside of Nebula’s. We’ll send a transport to their ship and take their team to Ops. When they see the warships in the hangar area, it should continue to give the impression that we have forces that they wouldn’t want to contend with. As far as they’re concerned, we’re the leadership on Earth, and I have to say that this isn’t too far from the truth. The governments will do whatever we tell them to do. So we’re the boss, at least until things settle out. Then we can decide later on our relationship with the governments for the longer term.”

Billingsley nodded, “OK, meeting over,” he said. “Let’s everyone get back to work. We need to prepare for our visitors. Alert the personnel at the bases in the
Chanreek resettlement area that they can expect a Chanreek inspection team in a few days. They need to get everyone who shouldn’t be there out as soon as possible. Only trained Nebula personnel are to have any contact with the Chanreeks. Everyone knows the plan, so let’s get to it.”

At that, the meeting ended, and everyone left to prepare for the arrival.

*

Nebula sent a large transport ship to meet the Chanreek ship when it stopped just beyond the orbit of the moon, and the delegates were transferred to the Nebula ship for the short flight to Earth. They arrived at Ops and were greeted by Seduro, Billingsley, Haverford, Brad, and Harry, the latter two mainly since they had already met and would provide continuity in the discussions. The Chanreek delegation consisted of five Chanreeks, led by General Kragin and Minister Naroo. The other three were introduced as scientists who would collect data in each region and advise the two leaders on the ability of their people to live for an extended time in those places. Both the humans and Chanreeks had translation devices.