Captain Mbiti contemplated the vial of poison he kept by his console. An hour ago, an enemy attack on his carrier had crippled her right away. Earth Carrier Washington was ambushed while on a solo mission to a new solar system. A fleet of more than forty ships, each twice the size of the Washington, appeared out of nowhere, actually popping into view from behind the system's two largest planets. Their advanced technology was instantly apparent in both their speed and firepower.
An attempt to hail them went unanswered. They never even opened a channel to hear Mbiti's appeal. They only seemed interested in his unconditional surrender, and, to persuade him, they did not just fire a particle cannon across his bow, they took a precision shot at his ship-wide communications plexus, preventing him from sending a signal back to Earth, hobbling communication with his crew, and especially cutting off contact with the pilots who had been scouting the system away from the ship at the time of the attack.
Mbiti and his men fought as long as they could, using the emergency generators on each deck and a dual magnetic/pneumatic tube system by which Mbiti was able to send hastily written orders to each deck, telling combat stations to fire at will and directing sig-ops to begin destroying all codes and passwords. He also warned all decks that he had initiated the self-destruct protocol. This had meant that the ship was set to explode in fifty-five minutes and that—should the self-destruct procedure be interrupted or terminated—every crewman should commit suicide rather than be captured.
Mbiti did not know who these aliens were or what their intentions might be, but he had to assume the worst. If they were planning to invade Earth, they would need to penetrate the Solar System Defense Network, meaning they would need to bypass four concentric interplanetary force fields. Even though their technology generally appeared to be more advanced, these aliens were going to find the SSDN a formidable obstacle. They could not attack directly without heavy losses. Blasting through one layer of defense would mean facing stiffer resistance at the next one. A fully alarmed solar system, throwing everything it had at the invaders, would wear down even an armada of hundreds of enemy ships.
No, Earth's defense strategists knew that the SSDN could only be penetrated by a Trojan horse such as an enemy ship disguised as a friendly one. For this reason, even the Washington, if it were to return home, would have to give a different numeric code to each defense sphere and, at last, the verbal password. Even an apparently friendly ship would be destroyed if it could not provide the correct codes and password. Additionally, the SSDN had prevented communication signals from escaping the solar system for more than 250 years, so even if these aliens had been collecting signal intelligence since the twentieth century—plotting and biding their time until they had the technology to launch an invasion—their information would by now be out of date.
Under no circumstances could the aliens be allowed to take the Washington or anyone aboard her, Mbiti thought, especially not the captain or anyone else who knew all of the codes. He rose from his chair and went to look out his porthole at the enemy fleet. Since electronics were down, cameras were not working, and physical windows like this were the only way to see out. He wrinkled his brow when he saw his fighter craft, like so many little red-glowing gnats, still pestering the great white lead ship of the enemy fleet. He saw one after the other blink out as each was hit by an alien particle weapon. Not only were their otherwise heroic actions futile, but the fighter craft that were not destroyed might actually endanger Earth precisely because they each had the codes for the three outer spheres programmed into their transponders. Each of them could make a serviceable Trojan horse, at least part of the way through the SSDN barriers.
Some of the pilots, including his personal friend, Lt. Piri Reyes, kept in their heads both the numeric code needed to enter the final, Martian sphere and the verbal pass code that would allow safe passage after that point. Mbiti hated the thought of his friend falling into enemy hands, but he hated more the thought of his captors drawing from Reyes the keys to penetrating Earth's defenses. Mbiti and Reyes had been trained not only to withstand physical torture but, also, to fight mind-probes, which had become very effective on Earth; he could only imagine how much more effective these aliens might be at reaching into someone's mind and extracting the most sensitive secrets.
He turned away from the battle scene and reclined on his couch. He examined the vial once more and then drank. It was done. Now it would take about three minutes for his central nervous system to shut down. More than likely, the Washington would be gone before that. He checked the clock. Two minutes and twelve seconds left to self-destruct.
Lt. Piri Reyes saw yet another comrade's fighter craft blink out of existence as a particle cannon blasted it into its constituent atoms. His wrap-around screens, connected to six external cameras, allowed a complete view of space around him. Reyes had seen one comrade after another die. Now another to his aft burst and disappeared.
His fighter squadron's peppering of the upper deck of the enemy vessel with their mini-cannons had proven futile. What Reyes had to do was hit the big plasma cannon on the underside of the ship. The cannon that was spewing a white-hot beam toward those of his remaining wing members who were trying to escape and warn Earth.
He looked at his own mother ship and despaired at her plight. She was dark and only sporadically firing back. Many crewmen had probably already taken their suicide pills. His friend, Captain Mbiti, had no doubt taken his own life with that vial of clear liquid he kept in his quarters. Several dozen enemy fighter craft were speeding toward her now, as if they did not care that the Washington might blow at any moment, probably before they could reach her. Or perhaps the enemy was so much more advanced that they had some way of disarming the self-destruct program.
It was Reyes' time to go, too, but he would do as much damage as he could on his way out. He dodged small particle cannon fire as he made an arc over the top deck of the enemy ship and rode down her starboard side and then swung, upside-down in relation to the alien ship—though this made no practical difference in space—and headed straight toward the rounded gun turret.
He thought about the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II who desperately crashed into American ships in the futile hope of preventing their country's inevitable defeat. He knew that even if he destroyed this one gun, the aliens would, at most, be forced to take a day to install a new one. But desperation was all he had left.
Suddenly, he felt a force throw him, from his perspective, upward and forward against his restraints. Then he was forced down but still forward. His craft was being yanked backward in a reverse arc. His cameras told him that he was being sucked into a circular aperture well aft of the gun turret he had been trying to crash into.
At first, Reyes only knew that his craft was inside a space dominated by bright light. He had lost all power, could not see anything on his monitor screens and could not self-destruct. His sensors could no longer tell him much about his environment except that there was only slightly less oxygen and a slightly higher temperature outside his craft as compared to its interior. The light shone bright through the small porthole that was now his only window to the outside. He raised an arm to shield his eyes, but soon discovered that each of his arms hurt so much that he could raise neither of them far enough. He ached all over and was sure he had whiplash in his neck and shoulders. He knew he would be unable to resist capture now. There was no use in fighting his physical fate. He waited.
It was child's play for them to open the hatch. As he lay helpless in his flight chair, they stood around his craft, which seemed to be in some kind of great cargo bay that was bathed in so much light he could not determine the limits its walls let alone tell whether there was any such thing as a corner where a wall met another wall, or a floor or ceiling.
The appearance of the aliens was a shock. The impression they gave was of man-size praying mantises but with uncanny, almost human faces and long, no doubt very efficient fingers. And they each had two pairs of arms. Four opposable thumbs. Their legs bent back and they seemed to bob slightly as if, at any moment they might jump like kangaroos. What surprised him most was that he was not frightened by their appearance. Something about them made him want to laugh. It was not that they were absurd to him. On the contrary, they were actually elegant in design. He found himself even admiring that. What made him laugh was the recognition that evolution had not gone so differently on their planet as it had on his. For one thing, the air in the room suggested that they thrived on a similar mix of gases on their world. It seemed a bit thin, but it still contained oxygen and he was getting just enough of it. And, yes, there was the difference that on his own planet an intelligent species of primate had come to dominate, while on theirs insects had developed intelligence, but he noted that this meant that both planets had insects. Perhaps their planet had apes, too. If so, the novelty of his appearance to them would wear off soon enough.
They must have drawn the same conclusion, for they only stared at him for a split second before going into action. Reyes felt a twinge of panic when two of them produced blades—one for each set of their arms for a total of four blades—but they only used these to cut him out of his harness. They were rough, but he believed they were not intentionally sadistic as they pulled him out and placed him on a kind of floating gurney, which they then guided out of the bay and down a corridor. One of the aliens touched him with a cold object, and he felt a rush through his skin, and then descended into unconsciousness.