Alien Singularity

Chapter 9. Alien Reaction

General Alpha called another meeting with his four Lieutenants:

"Guys, the time has come. They found us. I admit they have surprised us. We did not expect them to find us so soon. After all, this hot region was of very little interest to humans. They are better off looking for a new planet to expand to rather than trying to make this infernal place usable for them. These apparent foolish human daredevils completely defied any common sense and logic by coming here. I have to admit, humans never ceased to amaze me.

We should prepare for the worst. At this point, we do not know what they are capable of. All we can do is to get our weapons ready in position but hidden. If they come with heavy weapons, we will be forced to strike first."

"It's about time!" Shouted Lieutenant Spike, "I say we take a preemptive strike now! Why wait any longer?"

"No, Lieutenant Spike!" said Alpha with a stern voice, "humans currently outnumber us ten to one, both in energy consumption and in areas of reach on this planet. If we strike now it will be suicidal to us. We have to play peace with them at the moment, and keep building up our weaponry and our troops."

Alpha turned to Lieutenant Torque: "Give me a report on our expansion and infrastructure."

Lieutenant Torque replied: "General, our entire active range is currently a flattened spherical shape with a radius of 100 kilometers sideways, so a 200 kilometer in diameter from a top view, and with its depth of about 100 kilometers, ranging from the ground surface to near the planet mantel. I have successfully implemented a sonar barrier on all tunnels and chambers, so human sonars won't detect us."

Lieutenant Spike snickered: "Human sonar won't detect us? What was the 'something moving' the Joe Hon guy detected? Don't say that you were outsmarted by a human. Huh?"

Torque fired back: "If you didn't make the dirt avalanche that destroyed their equipment, and send your robots to kill them all, we could have captured them alive, and then kept them in our deep down air conditioned prison chambers to interrogate them, to analyze their equipment and find out what they know that we don't. But now thanks to you, we'll never know how he found out about us."

Spike was relentless: "If you weren't so confident about your sonar proof structure, we could have all gone down further to hide away from them, and we won't be having this conversation now."

Alpha interrupted: "Guys, please. We took all the precautions possible. Human outsmarted us. It's nobody's fault. We just have to do our best to prepare for the next step."

Lieutenant Axle asked: "General Alpha, what would be our best strategy now?"

Alpha paused a little, then said, "I don't know. We will wait for them to make the first move, and then react upon it. Keep the highest alert for now."