The State of Emergency

C1:Discovery

28 September 2016 0644 hours (-2 21:22:37) (GMT) / Manchester Conference Center, Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom

Harry was shitting himself

He had sat down next to Jen, the both of them looked down at the scripts provided to them by the government officials as well as a few question answers. The lenses of many news stations row upon row of journalists sitting, pens and recorders all ready to record what he was about to say. He was at the edge of the table, looking completely out of place, in his work clothing while being on the same table as smartly dressed Government officials, including but not limited to Mother Fucking Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and its respective territories, Naomi Gordon, that and his boss, the head of Manchester Uni's School of Physics and Astronomy, Geoff Renolds. Dick.

The Prime Minister cleared her throat. "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are here to announce what is possibly the single most important and earth shattering shock to mankind in history. Last night, Dr. Harold Smith, as well as his two colleagues, a Dr. Jennifer Hammond and Micheal Cannon discovered a radiation anomaly in Lunar orbit. This 'blip' as the doctor has called it planning a high atmosphere insertion. If current estimates are to be followed, it will land in three days in the Irish Sea. Do not be alarmed, our models are showing a landing that is a slow and steady decent. The royal Navy has been deployed from HMNB Devonport and Clyde to meet whatever this is and to face it with extream caution." She took a sip of water. "Currently, all UK forces are being deployed and to the best of my knowledge all NATO and EU members are cooperating. So there is nothing to be worried about. Now my I pass on to Harold Smith, Doctor at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics and team lead of the MERLIN."

Harry carefully pulled himself up. "Morning everyone." He sighed. "Yesterday evening, myself and my associate, Micheal Cannon, made contact."

27 September 2016 2343 hours (-3 3:23:45 till landing)(GMT) / Jodrell Bank Observatory, Lower Withington, England, United Kingdom

"Come on you useless piece of shit," Micheal grunted, banging the side of the computer, "work already!"

"Don't break the bloody thing, Mike, it's worth more to this institution than some language undergrad. You're only here because it was the only janitorial that had anything cool going on with it. Speaking of which, have you even done your job?" Harry offered, tossing a chocolate covered peanut in the air and into his mouth.

"Number one, I didn't drop out, I was subtly kicked out by the Uni, turns out they can't take a joke, even by an A-grade student. And secondly my job is nearly done and I have till six in the morning to finish it." He said pointing his finger at the young physics doctor. "And for the record you want me here, or this job would be too boring otherwise. Sitting around, pointing the big ass dish towards the heavens waiting for a blip from a star or ET." He said

"Funny, should I add that to your list of qualities, next to complete dickhead, narcissistic arsehole, and Smart-Ass." He said, pinging a crumb from a bourbon cream off his white rolled up shirt. "Whats up with the machine anyway?"

"It suddenly started acting up, it picked up a large burst of radiation around the moon for about five seconds before dropping. Should I run a systems diagnostic?"

"Do you know how?" The Doctor asked, raising an eyebrow, but in return got a death stare. "File, system preferences, then press system diagnostic." He turned back to his computer. "While you do that, I'll look if there are any discrepancies. The guys at the other MERLIN sites are looking at the same spot anyway." He picked up the phone and typed in the number for the Pickmere RTC. The drones rang until it was finally picked up. "Yo Dave, I was wondering whether you could check up what the dish is picking up at eleven twenty-three this evening."

"Sure, one sec... You talking about the big blip around lunar orbit?"He asked, harry looked up at Mike who mouthed No issues.

"Yeah, that one... Any ideas?"

"Glitch?"

"Mi..." He nearly slipped "diagnostic says all is green, no problem, cheers for the help Dave."

"Ciao." The line cut.

"Sooo. No glitch?" Mike smiled.

Harry's eyes were filled with curiosity. "Isn't this exciting?" He began plugging in another number. "Time for a clearer look." Two drones and a Click.

"Surry Satellite Technology Limited, Jennifer Hammond speaking."

"Jen, it's Harry. We hit something big, real big."

"How big?"

"Big, Big."

"And definitely not a glitch."

"We checked, diagnostic and all." You could almost see the glee radiating off the doctor.

"DMC-3 is currently over the Atlantic, you can borrow her for a while, may I ask what for?" He could hear her type on the other end of the phone.

"We got a radiation blip, five seconds, give or take, in lunar orbit." He said, sticking the phone on speaker.

"Cool, I am just turning the satellite now." She said as Harry opened up a window on his computer, and typed in his ID and password. Mike had picked up his cup of tea and walked around to look at the feed. "You have control."

"Thank you, Jen." Harry began to zoom into the area of interest, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Mike pointed at the screen, noting a slight purple fleck on the screen.

"Long expose that." He said taking a sip from his tea as the layers of pictures built and built, the picture becoming more and clearer. "What the fuck is that?" He leaned int, as much as that would have Harry annoyed any other day, this event was taking up much of his attention.

"Holy shit..." Jen said, getting a slow feed through her own computer. "Is that what I think it is?"

"It can be," Harry said. "Mike, keep an eye on that. I need to do something real quick." He pushed his wheelie chair across to another computer and began to mutter to himself as he typed away. "Frequency... 1420.405751786 MHz... Prime Number Bursts... There."

"Mike, aren't you supposed to be working?" Jen said off hand.

"Shut up Jen. Like hell would I miss this."

Harry threw his arms up. "And it is sending. He said pushing himself back over to Mike. "Now we wait."

"I'll stick the kettle on," Mike said crossing the room and began to prep to cups of tea.

Harry waved him off and sat down at the slowly rendering image of the unidentified foreign object. Whatever it was, it was HUGE. It was quite easily about five kilometers long, or a quarter the Length of Manhattan and was producing a large amount of heat in patchy locations like it had been destroyed and exposed by something natural. It had an odd, bulbous shape to it, like some sort of whale. But its size wasn't what was worrying.

He was removed from his thoughts immediately as a cup was placed down next to him. "Milk, two sugar."

"Thanks... Jen you still there."

"Yes."

"Note how quickly that thing is heading towards Earth." He asked rhetorically. "I that thing is going to hit the atmosphere in three days."

Mike just stood there, not quite sure what to think, after all, something that big at that speed could kill a load of people. Took a sip of his tea. Frowning slightly into the cup. A little too much sugar. He walked over to the receiver console and bent over to meet the screen. "one hundred and one, one hundred and three, one hundred and seven, one hundred and nine, one hundred and thirteen.. Holy crap."

28 September 2016 0600 hours (-2 21:53:34)(GMT) / BBC Television Center, London, England, United Kingdom

"This is the BBC Breakfast Show on Friday the twenty-eighth of September two thousand and sixteen. I am your host Alexander Henderson."

"And I am Holly Peterson."

"Today we are doing things slightly different as a surprise press conference was launched yesterday by the UK Space Agency, the Univerity of Manchester and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. Live from Manchester, we have Patrick McAlister." The screen changed to show a middle-aged man with black hair standing outside the Manchester Conference Centre. "Whats rumors have been going around the news staff and has any information been released."

"Good morning Patrick, good morning Lousie and good morning our viewers. There has been a lot of speculation but no data has been released, but the fact that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Defence, the director of the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the Director of the Government Office of Science have all suspended what they have had planned for the entire week, as well as the heads of SST and the UKSA being both here today, we believe we have some very interesting details here tonight."

"Do you have any other information in regards to what's going on."

"Yes we do, the UK may be the first country to launch a surprise press conference, but all G20 countries and a few others such as Chile have followed suit, but all are waiting for the UK to speak out first. Whatever is happening, it is Huge."

28 September 2016 0646 hours (-2 21:29:32)(GMT) / Manchester Conference Center, Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom

"...made Contact." He said the room went still. "And I strongly believe it is intelligent and it recognises that we are too. I asked for the use of the UK-DMC-3, or United Kingdoms Disaster Monitoring Constellation Three, as it was, at the time, over the Atlantic and unofficially gained control to check up on this blip due to diagnostics coming up green as well as the other MERLIN sites showing the same result. This is what the satellite captured." The coat of arms with the logos of the Government, Manchester Uni, and SST was replaced with the purple-blue shape of the craft. "This, ladies and gentlemen, is intelligent life who have mastered space travel beyond our sense of comprehension." He flipped to the next slide. "How sure am I that it is intelligent life, I sent out a signal of that frequency," the number was plastered at the top of the slide with prime numbers underneath, "and they are prime numbers. What's special about them? They are special because sending them prime numbers, one of the few mathematical constants that don't occur as often in nature as say the golden ratio or the Fibonacci sequence, makes a perfect sign of intelligent life. As for the frequency, it is called the hydrogen line, it is the EM radiation released by an electron in a hydrogen atom dropping an electron level, which is said to be the most likely used by non-terrestrials in a search for intelligence life, us, and vice-versa."

A member from CNN raised his finger. "And how do we know they are intelligent and it's not just bouncing back?"

"You see, we sent them the first twenty-five, and we received the next twenty-five back. To double check I sent another group of primes, this time, the next twenty, I got back next twenty after that back. This was done by them, I imagine, so we would no mistake them as echoes."

"How do you know you are telling the truth about this?" Asked and NBC journalist.

"I have the Prime Minister sharing a panel with me. That and your government confirmed it for us, pointing their orbit based camera satellites towards the predicted spot, they are all currently following the object as we speak, that and THEMIS recorded the disturbances and we have this amazing picture provided by NASA from the Low Reconnaissance Orbiter." He flicked the slide and showed the true scale of the ship, the large pockets of superheated metal glowing orange in patchy damaged shapes in its superstructure. "We thought you'd like that one. And since it is NASA, a public entity, these are all available on the internet for free. Have fun. As for what we can do? We can only wait, for now, I doubt a nuke is going to make anything better. So I would just suggest keeping calm and let us deal with it, after all, it will be landing in our waters.

"Meaning, your country will get all the benefits from it." Asked an ABC reporter.

The prime minister took this question. "No, we won't, under International Maritime Law and the Outerspace Treaty, this ship kind-of-sort-of comes under its own laws right now, well at least until it reaches British airspace and waters where is then subject to British laws and customs. And our government, for the time being, wishes not to rush this delicate situation, and if anyone or any nation tries to do anything rash against these foreigners, discussions will be had about the repercussions of those actions. And if, and it is a big if, we get access to say advanced technology, out nation will happily meet at the table with other nations, not just limited to out allies, to discuss what need to be done."

"So why does your country get control over it?" Asked a member from CCTV.

"The aforementioned discoverees are all British, work for British institutions, with British Citizenship, they found the object while in Britain with British-made and maintained equipment, this man made contact with them in Britain, they took the first pictures with a British built and owned satellite, they are landing in British waters, through British airspace, and will be met by British naval vessels with British personnel. Does that answer your question?" The defence minister offered. "And we don't control the situation, the situation is owned by the foreigners, they are the ones who hold the majority of the cards, we are just damage control for the world, and we will spearhead every and all things relating to this craft, it is clearly our jurisdiction until the government of this country says otherwise it will remain as so." He affirmed.

"Isn't this a job for the UN, not the UK?"

The Prime minister took this question. "Possibly, but definitely not now, anyone who tries to pass international law against us will just get vetoed. Simple as that, well at least until our government and the cabinet all agree. We will not leave the nations out the loop, we like our position in the world political and economic stage and we are not willing to risk it with some stupid and avoidable incident."

Sighing to himself. Isn't this one already?