First Contact

Chapter 1

"We have a situation."

That wasn't what Jeremiah was hoping to hear when he answered a call in the middle of the night. But he didn't know what he was hoping for... Why else would they call him at this hour. "Keep it short if you value your job," he greeted as he got up from the bed, careful not to disturb his wife sleeping soundly beside him.

"Sir, the scanners have picked up an object on a collision course with Earth."

Sleep disappeared from his eyes at the news. "How far?"

"Just outside of the solar system."

"You woke me for that!" Jeremiah was fuming. People these days have no manners. Asteroid on a collision course? Big deal! But why couldn't they just leave it till the morning. "Prepare your resignation."

He was about to cut the call when the speaker screeched. "Sir, wait! This is urgent!"

"What?"

"ETA is in less than twenty-four hours."

"That's impossible!" He tried to lower his voice as he heard his wife stirring awake behind him. "A timeline like that would need relativistic speeds."

There was silence on the other end of the call for a moment. "Yes, sir. And... it appears to be decelerating."

Jeremiah didn't need to know more. This was more than enough information for the gravity of the situation to sink in. He turned around to face his wife who had concern etched on her face. "Send the chopper," he said as he ended the call, but he could already hear the faint hum of the machine in the distance.

He locked eyes with his wife. "Go," she said. "We'll be alright."

Ten minutes later, Jeremiah stepped out onto the helipad at Johnson Space Center, and the loud hiss of the rotors behind him started to die down. He looked to the several people assembled there and saw that most of the top officials were present— at three in the morning. Not surprising, given the seriousness of the situation. "Report," he ordered no one in particular as he entered the building.

"A few hours ago, our systems detected an anomaly in the deep space scans from our probes orbiting Saturn—" began the Chief Scientist.

"What sort of anomaly?"

"-um, space-time distortions, sir," said a high-pitched voice from behind him. "The system flagged it as a sensor issue and we almost ignored it, but I cross-referenced the data of all the probes and created a 3D model." Jeremiah turned back to look at speaker. The girl was barely into her twenties. "Dr. Lydia Martin, sir," she said extending her hand to Jeremiah. He ignored it.

Jeremiah looked at his Chief Scientist, "Dr. Mitchell, please continue."

"Dr. Martin is one of our lead scientists and as she said, once we visualized the data, we knew it wasn't some sensor issue caused by a solar flare or anything like that. We initially thought it was a black hole that created the distortion but there was no singularity."

Dr. Mitchell paused, unsure whether or not continue and Jeremiah knew it was fear of spouting speculation. "Go on," he urged.

"We traced back the readings from before the distortion was detected and the only inference we have is that the space-time distortions is from the deceleration of the object, whatever it is—"

"It's an alien ship, sir!" blurted out the young scientist. They came to a stop and Jeremiah looked from the Chief Scientist to the young scientist, to everyone else who were gathered and back to Dr. Martin. "What? I'm just saying what everyone else is thinking, including you. Sir."