January 25, 2019. The Nomad. Crew Lounge. 11:00 Ship Time.
Judy sat on the plush sofa, a new cup of tea in her hands. The shock was slowly giving way to a cold, pragmatic anger—her "Audit Mode." "So," she said, looking at the hologram of the Solar System floating above the coffee table. "Let me get this straight. We are fugitives. We just fled a police raid in a spaceship. And we are going to Mars to live in a hole?"
"Basically," I admitted, nursing a bruise on my shoulder where the shield belt had caught the bullet. "It's the only place with enough resources to build a permanent colony."
"Correction," Archi's voice chimed in. The hologram zoomed out. "Mars was the primary vector. However, intercepting communications from Colonel Vance indicates that NORAD is already tracking our trajectory. They have extrapolated our burn. They expect us to go to Mars. They are retasking the Hubble and the Deep Space Network to watch the Red Planet."
Mereel groaned. "So if we land there, they'll see us building the base. We'll be under a microscope."
"We need to disappear," I said, looking at the outer edge of the map. "Archi, change course. We're not going to Mars. Not yet."
"Suggestion?"
"Go deep. Back to the Kuiper Belt. Go to the scattered disc. It's billions of kilometers of debris, ice, and dust. It's dark, cold, and noisy for sensors. We can hide there, rebuild, and wait for the heat to die down."
Judy frowned at the map. "The Kuiper Belt? Isn't that... empty?"
"It's full of resources," I explained. "Ice, metal, hydrocarbons. We can survive there indefinitely. And nobody looks there because it's too far away."
"Calculating transfer orbit," Archi replied. "We will perform a gravity assist around the Moon to break our radar lock, then go silent running. Destination: The Haumea family. ETA: 3 weeks at constant thrust."
"Do it," I ordered. "Let them stare at Mars."
January 25, 2019. The Ruins of the Warehouse. 11:30 Local Time.
Agent Schreiber stepped carefully through the debris. The roof was gone. The sky was grey. Technicians in white hazmat suits were swarming the remains of the Command Container. They were tagging everything: the melted decoy servers, the strange metal alloys of the container walls, the heavy cables.
"We need this cut out and shipped to Ramstein," Vance barked at a team of engineers. "I want that alloy analyzed. If it's alien, I want to know where it came from."
A technician approached a large, twisted piece of metal—part of the Mass Driver support structure. He clamped a sample container onto it. "Sir, reading strange vibrations," the tech said. "The metal is... warm."
"Warm?" Schreiber walked over. "Radiation?"
"No. Friction. On a molecular level."
Suddenly, a hissing sound filled the air. Like acid hitting water. The metal beam under the technician's hand turned grey. Then it turned into powder. It collapsed into a pile of ultra-fine dust.
"What the hell?" Vance shouted.
Then it started everywhere. The walls of the container. The floor plates. The remains of the server racks. Even the copper wiring inside the walls. Everything that Surgrim had built—everything that contained nanites—began to disintegrate. The "Dead Hand" protocol wasn't an explosion. It was a dissolution. The nanites were breaking the molecular bonds, turning advanced technology into inert, grey silica dust.
"It's eating the evidence!" Schreiber realized, watching a hard drive turn into sand. "Get the samples! Get them into sealed bags!"
A hazmat guy grabbed a circuit board. It crumbled in his gloved hands. Within two minutes, there was nothing left. No alien alloys. No quantum nodes. No hard drives. Just a warehouse floor covered in three inches of fine, grey dirt.
Vance stood in the middle of the dust, his face purple with rage. He kicked a pile of grey sand. It puffed up, coating his boots. "They wiped it," he whispered. "They wiped everything."
January 25, 2019. ECHO-1 Mobile Command. 12:00 Local Time.
Vance stormed into the surviving comms trailer. He slammed his fist on the table. "We have nothing. No ship. No prisoners. And now, no physical evidence. Just a pile of dust and a hole in the roof."
"The media is swarming the perimeter," an aide said nervously. "CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera. They saw the flash. They heard the boom. They're asking if it was a nuclear test or a meteor strike. Twitter is trending #BerlinUFO."
"Kill it," Vance ordered. "Kill the UFO story. We cannot admit that an unknown hostile force just launched a capital ship from German soil. It makes us look powerless. It causes panic."
"What's the cover story?" Schreiber asked, wiping dust from his glasses.
Vance looked at the report on the warehouse's registered contents. "They bought liquid nitrogen and fertilizer chemicals for their 'recycling' process, right?"
"Yes, ammonium nitrate was on the manifest."
"Then that's it," Vance said coldly. "Catastrophic industrial accident. Improper storage of volatile chemicals. The explosion blew the roof off. The shockwave shattered the windows. The strange light was... burning magnesium."
"And the ship?" Schreiber asked. "Thousands of people saw something go up."
"Debris," Vance lied smoothly. "A large section of the roof was propelled into the upper atmosphere. It happens. We deny everything else. Swamp gas and weather balloons."
He pulled out his secure smartphone to call the Chancellor. "I'll handle the press release. You lock down the site. Nobody gets in without Top Secret clearance."
The Nomad. Deep Space.
"He's lying to the press right now," I said, listening to the audio feed. We were back on the bridge. Archi was playing the intercepted audio from ECHO-1.
"Ammonium nitrate explosion... tragic accident... no danger to the public..." Vance's voice crackled over the speakers.
"Fertilizer," Mereel laughed bitterly. "He turned our spaceship launch into a poop explosion."
"It's smart," Judy admitted, looking at the news feed on her tablet. "People believe incompetence faster than they believe aliens. Look, the stock market is already stabilizing."
"Archi," I asked. "How are we hearing this? You said the nanites in the warehouse dissolved. We shouldn't have a bug anymore."
"We don't have a bug in the warehouse," Archi replied smugly. "We have a bug on the Colonel."
"What?"
"When the shockwave hit, the surveillance van was crushed. Colonel Vance was thrown against the dashboard. During the chaos, a microscopic cluster of nanites—which I had deployed into the ventilation system of the van weeks ago—transferred to his person. They have infiltrated his smartphone and his smartwatch."
A live view of Vance's phone screen appeared on our main monitor. We could see him typing an email to the Pentagon. Subject: Threat Level Omega. Entity is hostile and highly advanced. Recommend immediate funding for orbital defense initiative.
"He thinks we're aliens," I said. "Hostile aliens."
"Let him think that," Archi said. "Fear makes them predictable. And as long as he carries that phone, we will know every move the Earth Defense Force makes."
"Earth Defense Force," Mereel mused. "Has a nice ring to it. Too bad we're the villains."
I looked at the star field. The Earth was just a bright star now. "We're not villains, Mereel. We're just... leaving. Archi, engage the main drive. Take us to the dark."