We're Back! - Folician Chronicles 9

Chapter 15 - Can we colonize a different world

~~~ US Military's reaction

When the dragon hit the edges of the atmosphere it was blatantly obvious. The various space radars and other sensors quickly acquired the signal and alerted the system. Since nuclear weapons had been banned and dismantled years ago the tech wasn't worried about a first strike. Part of the reason they'd been eliminated was due to the shield of lasers, EMP weapons, and hypervelocity missiles, and EM countermeasures made them almost useless. Now they were used to track space objects and debris. They'd finally gotten around to starting to clean up space around the Earth, but it was a huge job. Most of the old and dead satellites and large pieces had been dealt with. It was the small pieces and parts which they were still working on.

When he realized how fast the object was moving he hit the alert button. The computers were already tracking the item and had a general location where it was going to impact. The speed at which it was traveling was terrifying. They had nothing which could go from space to ground in maybe fifteen minutes. What made it more impressive was the object was circling half the globe in such a short time. He was trying to get a visual on the object but moving almost too fast. It didn't match anything in the database and the vector was all wrong. There weren't any stations, satellites, or even larger debris in the location the trajectory indicated it came from.

His supervisor came over and almost swore when he saw what was on the monitor, "What the hell is that?" At this rate it would hit before they could do anything. Their systems weren't designed for anything going this fast. Even the hypervelocity missiles didn't come near to the speed, "Have you been able to get any sort of visual on whatever this is? If it's another alien species I'm going to scream. Folician's are one thing but the Dragon was almost too much."

"No sir, it's moving faster than imaging systems can follow. I've programmed in some advance timing on imaging systems but the few which have been able to catch anything have shown flames but that's it." There was only going to be about five minutes before impact. It almost didn't matter if the object was relatively small due to the speed the impact was going to be catastrophic, "Its trajectory is showing it impacting in a swampy area which isn't very populated. The impact is likely to throw up a great deal of debris and start fires."

"Better than a populated area. The damage is going to be extensive... What the hell? It's slowing down? Get the imagers focused and tracking the object." He picked the phone up and started making calls.

By the time he was done the tech was staring at what the imagers were showing, "Um, sir, we might have a problem." What the hell was a dragon doing flying circles around some remote group of trailers? It didn't make any sense. On a small screen he did a search of the internet media for 'dragon flight' and several others. He finally found one which appeared to be streaming from the location and called it up with the audio enabled.

The officer turned to look at the monitor and jerked a bit. This might get ugly since he had a feeling it was hungry, and they really didn't need video of a dragon making a snack out of someone. The meetings with the Folicians was going much better than the last time and this might put a crimp in it. He glanced at the other monitor as the sound was being turned up. At this point all they could do was to watch in horror during the entire thing. The final bit was what she'd said at the very end.

"Download it and forward it to me. If what she said is true I can understand. At least she didn't make a meal out of anyone." Both made a face about that.

When the flight footage reached the upper command, they weren't happy. At first it looked like it was a potential attack, but nobody had anything which could travel this fast. It didn't come from the direction of the Folician ship and based on what they'd seen. They couldn't see the Folician's doing something like this. If they were going to take over the easily could have. When the image video finished they had to stare. What the hell was the dragon doing?