Solar Warden by Jakob Waechter (best authors to read TXT) 📕

Their craft was now slowing down and finally hovering over the landing zone. The shuttle turned to the opening hangar doors and slowly floated inward. They had to wait a bit till the doors were closed and the area was pressurized to leave the plane. There were more of these TR-3CS spaceplanes in the hangar. All with their back to a wall.

“They have no free docking port so we have to wait,” Taylor informed after they touched down. Then Owens also joined. They went to the airlock.

“Here you can see the status of the outside atmosphere. A green light will show you it is normal like on Earth. But you can verify the air components on this display. We have a lot of sensors outside to get detailed information. Sure the most important is the oxygen and enough pressure is available. But if it is not Earth like we have to count on our suit systems to be safe. This will be lectured again in the upcoming training,” Ryan told. The green light turned on. Ryan checked the detailed information then opened the airlock and they went out. He led the team straight for the next airlock into the Moon base.

“We are now heading for the briefing room where we meet up with General Wells the leader of the Solar Warden project. He will give a short introduction for the new ones and a mission update,” Ryan informed.

They went to an elevator and then to a room where in the middle was a table with 20 seats around it. The team seated down while Ryan went for the General’s office. Then he came back with the General. Everyone stood up and saluted. After the military procedure all seated down.

“Good morning SW-5. I will make it short since you might be tired from the journey. Solar Warden is a project started decades ago. Since we always had encounters with alien vessels visiting our planet, some abductions and other incidents, we had the need to prevent that. From the technology we could recover we have our anti-gravity propelled space ships. The first ones were not able to travel to the stars at least with humans. But we could cover our solar system and prevent most alien vessels, which in most of the case were just probes, entering the near Earth space. On one of our last shot down on Earth, we recovered the technology to enter something we call hyperspace and travel to other stars. Still we had no clue where those vessels come from. So our first visit of a nearby star system is a just nearby one. But Lieutenant Archers discoveries gave us probably the coordinates to the origin of the vessel with the faster then light drive. I have also to mention that similar vessels also visited us further decades ago with lesser technology. From our research and analysis of the bodies,” the general informed and activated a presentation screen where triangular spacecrafts were shown. Then he continued. “We guess that the prior version had a journey of centuries behind it or must be brought with a mothership to our system. But as you can see here this bodies have changed. We call this the evolution of the Grays. But they are hybrids, clones probably genetically designed and created with some strange device connected to their brain. We are guessing that might be a connection to their operators. Which means that they are more like machines sent to do more sophisticated analysis. We also found no weapons which also concludes the scouting objective. However, we have also to consider that their intense may not be friendly. As we could connect them to a lot of abduction cases. For that you will travel with the Icarus a Daedalus class spaceship to the star system. Which is also not too far away with probably a planet in the habitable zone. Your mission will be to first recon the system and find any trace of them. If you get attacked, you sure have to defend yourself. But also get as much information you can. Don't risk too much to obtain information. You must also be able to bring it back. There is no possibility of communication to Earth,” the General finished his introduction.

“Sir. Does this mean we land on a planet?” Samuel asked.

“Depends on what you find there. First you will send probes, then you will land if possible. Even if you only take probes of an uninhabited planet. But that's the decision of Captain Fisher which is in command of the Icarus. Keep in mind you are part of seven SW teams. Most of them are highly trained members of special forces coming from air force, navy, marines and army. You are the team with the most science experience. Which means you do most of the investigations. Also I mention here the altered ranking since we are a mix of different organizations. We start with a Lieutenant that is the same as a Captain of the air force. That's a bit bureaucratic dispute we have here. I don't want to go into details. In the end it would not matter much,” the general replied.

“Do we have any useful weapons since they could know most of our stuff we use to protect the solar system?” Owens asked.

“The Icarus has some newer railguns and microwave cannons. But also x-ray lasers and our improved drones and spaceplane fighters,” the General replied.

“Sir. For whom on Earth do we speak if we encounter aliens since we all, I guess, are from the US here,” Samuel asked.

“Oh, sorry I forgotten the further introduction. Since we captured the Moon base our support has been grown. The Solar Warden project is secretly funded by many Nations. It's still so secret that details only the participants in space and very few on Earth know, but we have countries from Europe and Asia supporting us with personal and resources. Further technology discoveries will, if useful, be brought to the market and also funding us. Well, you didn't notice for example Taylor is from Britain,” the general replied.

“Sir. What about the alien vegetation we might encounter do we have any handling there?” Samuel asked.

“Sure, your new suits you will train here with are developed for this. Also we have procedures and staff capable of analyzing and handling that situations. One of the specialists here is Lieutenant Dr. Watkins. So I guess you want to sleep now then your training will start. After that there will be more preparation briefings. Are there any important questions?” the General finished. He looked around, there were none. “Good, dismissed.

Three weeks later the training was done. Some more meetings happened and the Icarus was back from its exploration mission. Samuel and his team and some of the other SW teams were here on a window, showing the landing pad, to witness the approach of the ship.

The stars were good visible. However, it took quite some time to spot the ship coming out of the darkness. First it was the missing of more and more stars until finally it came into the range of the landing lights. The lights were on the side of the big area directed into the sky. The starship was huge. Even that Samuel knew the specs it was still impressive. A spaceship bigger then modern naval carriers with a length of over 350 meter and a beam of about 200 meter. The main part had a beam of about 90 meter. But there were left and right two wing like attachments where the hangars for the spaceplanes were integrated. The ship touched smoothly down like it would weight nothing. Then the hangar doors opened and a gangway expanded from the base to the ship to make a connection for resupply and personal transfer. The starship now in its size was bigger than the tiny Moon base installation. Contrary the Moon base itself was a lot bigger then what could be spotted on the surface. But compared to the ship it could not match the height nor the size of the length.

While Samuel and the others would be transferred to the ship in the next hours the leaders of each SW team had a final briefing with the general and the captain of the ship. So Samuel and most of the others went to their locker to put the suits on. While Ryan went for the briefing room.

The General was greeting all and congratulating the Captain for his successful mission. There were also the seven leaders of the SW teams here. Two of them were from the Icarus, the others from the Moon base. That meant SW teams of the ship were now replaced by the five new. The team leader by the look could come from different cultures. Ryan did not know all of them, yet, except from short discussions. But that didn’t matter. They had a long journey to grow together.

“Before I begin with the next mission briefing a short recap of your mission would be good Captain Fisher,” the General suggested.

“Sure, our first journey verified the reliability of our ship, the navigation system and the hyperdrive. We could reach the selected star as planned and scanned it. There was no planet in the circumstellar habitable zone. But a barren stone planet where we took some samples while we tested some hyperdrive short jumps. This maneuvers worked as expected and the landing team had also no problems with the suits in a not breathable atmosphere. We stayed in the system for three days to gather data and then started the journey home.” Captain Fisher was done with his report.

“Good. Now our objective has changed a bit. With the discoveries made by Dr. Samuel Archer's algorithm. He is now a member of SW-5, Major Ryan's team. We have a probable origin of our hyperdrive technology. So your next mission will be to investigate this. As we cannot assume the aliens will be friendly. I suggest a cautious approach. The main objective is to gain intel but to avoid any threat of returning the intel to us. This does not mean you cannot scout the planet. But keep the Icarus safe and support the operation team as much as you can. There is no need to hurry. Therefore, you try and train on a nearby star system your approach proceedings and scanning methods. As we have no long-range communication you are on your own for this. So you have to make all the decisions for the proceedings by your own. As the travel to your destination would take about a month. We expect you at your destination in two months. So use your detour well. You have two weeks there for testing and planning.” General Wells was finished with the mission description. On the screen behind him was a star map showing the route and marking Earth including the other two stars with their cryptic name number.

“Sir, as most of our teams consist of special forces not having expertise in first contact situations like this. In which cases, we should proceed a landing operation?” Commander Knight