The Scalian Legacy

As Rivas walked Jack to their destination, Jack pondered his situation. He thought he should feel overwhelmed and terrified at the thought of having to covertly board a hostile alien ship in order to save humanity. The thought of it made Jack laugh; how absurd it sounded! However, instead of feeling overwhelmed, Jack felt fairly calm, and almost looked forward to being able to do something to help the cause. Maybe the situation was so surreal at this point emotions were difficult to clearly identify. Regardless, he felt no hesitancy following this tall, rough-skinned human into whatever insane adventure was about to unfold.

Rivas interrupted Jack’s introspection. “I would like to apologize for my behavior when we first met. I was quite wrong to accuse you as I did.” He said it without much emotion or intonation. Jack saw it was likely not something easy for him to admit.

“It’s quite all right,” Jack started. “I can understand how difficult it must have been to think that I was genuine. Heck, I had a hard time accepting that I was in the future—well, the future from my perspective.”

“Thank you,” Rivas said gently.

Jack sensed relief from the unemotional giant.

They soon arrived at a fairly large open area. The facility had what looked like spare electronic parts all over the place. There were wires, boards with what looked like millions of tiny transistors or the like on them, containers and monitors of varying sizes, as well as other equipment that Jack could not classify. Three other giant humans were dressed in white, working at a few open desks with a couple of holographic displays above each of them. They took notice of Jack immediately. Two of them were noticeably surprised as their eyes widened and mouth opened just slightly for a moment as they saw Jack. They then caught themselves and returned to work, but the last one didn’t seem as surprised. He just looked blankly at Jack before returning to his duties. That last one was oddly familiar, but Jack couldn’t place him. It wasn’t as if Jack had met a great deal of these giant humans over the past day.

Rivas asked Jack to take a seat. He then motioned to the giant that had looked at Jack oddly. The giant put down his tools and walked over. He was slightly taller, thinner and darker than Rivas, but with that same rough, uneven skin. “I would like to introduce you to my senior technician, Henry Jameson. He’s completely up to speed with the mission and has prepared a lot of what I will be showing you.”

“Hello, Mr. Felder,” Henry said and took a seat. “I hear that you spent quite a few hours with my grandfather yesterday.”

He was Horace’s grandson. Of course. The familiarity Jack had sensed was not from having seen Henry before, but the manner in which Henry resembled Horace. “Yes, and this morning. We played chess. He mentioned that he was here with his grandson and his family. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Rivas then described the mission parameters to Jack. First, he explained that they would try to get Jack through the Scalian Sphere inside a Pendoran protopher fighter. The fighter was more advanced than any other smaller war vessel, and the Scalians were dying to get their hands on one. Since the Pendorans regularly patrolled around the sphere, a fighter failing near the sphere should not be too out of place. In order to make the fighter’s failure realistic, a Pendoran had been tasked to evacuate the ship after flying it near the Scalian Sphere and demand, per the truce, that the Scalians blow up the ship, or let it be destroyed. If the Scalians followed these instructions, then the mission would end before it started… and Jack would be dead. However, with project Redemption so close to execution, the Scalians would probably be bold and take advantage of this fortunate event.

That’s optimistic of them, Jack thought to himself.

After that lovely bit of news was behind them, Rivas went on to explain that Jack would be placed in a special suit to avoid life sign detection. The suit, however, would work only if Jack remained completely still. Any movement would cause the Scalians to detect him as a living thing—and if he was detected, he would be killed immediately.

Oh this just gets better by the moment! Jack thought.

In addition, it would get hot in the suit, because the suit prevented heat from escaping. Lastly, his air supply would be limited to thirty minutes. Beyond that, he would lose consciousness.

“Oh come on. Seriously? Do I also need to play a game of Russian roulette while standing on one leg?”

Henry chuckled out loud and then caught himself. There was little reaction from the weary Rivas. Jack now realized why the admiral wasn’t abundantly confident about the chances of this plan. The plan was a Hail Mary pass with no time left on the clock.

“Is there no other way?” Jack asked. “Seems like a lot can go wrong.”

“We’ve gone over this for hours.”

Jack saw that same exhaustion in Rivas he had earlier detected in the admiral, but there was even more to it now. He seemed quite shaken, and only a semblance of that confident giant that shook his hand just yesterday. The energy level was not the same. “We don’t see any other way, and if it wasn’t for you, our chances would be even worse, because we know none of our species would succeed and a robotic solution could not adjust to the uncertainty of the destination without guidance, which we would not be able to provide. Also, we only get one shot at this. There’s no way the Scalian’s will believe a second Pendoran ship failed. You are our best hope,” Rivas concluded as his voice lowered. He almost seemed like a beaten man, and he certainly was not inspiring a great deal of confidence in Jack.

Jack realized he would need to be the upbeat one here. “I got it. Go on.”

Rivas showed Jack the few items he would have at his disposal and how to use them. First, once inside a Scalian ship or fort, he would need a battery pack to allow him to temporarily power up the Pendoran ship in order to raise the ship’s protective shield and fire one photon blast. This maneuver should cause quite a bit of damage in the area around the ship while not hurting him inside and allow him to get out of the ship to look for a computer terminal. Rivas went on to explain that the Pendoran ship would already be programmed to do this, so all Jack had to do was place the battery pack in the designated chamber and then, after the blast, take the suit off and look for a terminal.

Next, Rivas showed Jack what looked like a small gun, but it was fairly light, with green lights on the side. Rivas called it an FPE—or focused particle energy—gun. It had a range of energy emission settings that could be used to stun a Scalian or cut through the hull of the Scalian ship. Of course, the higher the setting, the quicker the energy drained.

Jack then chimed in, “So, it’s like a laser gun?”

“Not really.” Henry explained. “A laser would cut through objects. This is focused energy to incapacitate your targets, albeit it does burn pretty badly.”

Rivas then went on to show Jack a couple of small, metallic half spheres with a see-through opening on top and a red button under the see-through opening. He explained that these were small explosives, each with a brief timer that could be set anywhere between one and thirty seconds. These explosives couldn’t cause too much damage, but they could certainly provide a distraction, or even knock out a few Scalians. Lastly, Rivas showed Jack three small devices. They were white, rectangular, just over an inch long, about half an inch wide as well as thick and with a cable sticking out of them that seemed to be moving on its own.

“What the heck are those?” Jack asked, nervous to even touch the things.

“These are what you need to break into the Scalian computer system,” Rivas replied. “One simulates an eye scan, another simulates a palm scan and the last one simulates input into the system, so all that you need to do is to connect them at the right locations.”

“What are those things at the ends?” Jack said.

“Those are nanobots.” Henry jumped in. “I have pre-programmed them and others to perform specific functions just like Anterian described. Here, I can show you on these Scalian terminals.” Henry motioned across the way to a few tables with a variety of monitors, holographic displays and even some fairly ordinary-looking wall units. They walked over, and Henry showed Jack approximately where to place the nanobots depending on the type of terminal. There wasn’t much to it since the nanobots would probe each wire automatically to determine where to connect.

“Seems simple enough, but how does it work? How do you have a valid scan? And Scalians don’t use passwords?” Jack was amazed that it could be this simple.

“It’s not quite that simple.” Rivas explained that nearly two years ago, just prior to the truce, a human battlecruiser defeated one of the primary Scalian battlecruisers. Humans captured a high-ranking admiral during the fight. Shrapnel had pierced the admiral’s throat in such a way that he lost all vocal ability and was unlikely to be able to regain it. While he was unconscious, his eyes and palms were scanned, with the results saved in the same format as a Scalian scanner. Per known Scalian protocol, someone with such a disability, especially a high-ranking official, would still be allowed to access Scalian systems with their two primary biometric scanners. Commander Rivas and his personnel were able to test this on their disconnected Scalian systems, but they weren’t certain it would still work until they tested it on the freighter they commandeered a few hours ago—and it did.

Jack was thoroughly impressed with the technology. “Who needs the actual eyes or palms, when you already have their digital signatures? So, what are these nanobots programmed to direct the system to do?”

Rivas looked at Henry so that he could reply on his handiwork. “They are programmed to lower the shield for section D47 of the Scalian Sphere, which is where the fleet will be ready to invade from, and then lock in the command so that it will take a few minutes for them to override.”

“Got it.” Jack was now feeling a little more confident. But the entire mission was predicated on him reaching one of these terminals, and many pitfalls lay in between.

“The Scalians have always been overconfident about their technology. They feel like it was provided to them by their god, so it should dominate everyone. It’s probably their biggest weakness,” Henry added.

“How do you guys know so much about Scalians, anyway?” Jack said.

Henry’s expression changed noticeably, and he looked quickly at Rivas. “We have been fighting them for a long time, so we’ve been able to piece things together here and there. Now, we need to show you the schematics of the ships and space forts that you might be brought to.” Rivas quickly changed the topic to get Jack focused back on the mission.

“You captured this admiral, so you must have captured many Scalians before. Did you learn anything from them? Where do you keep them?” Jack’s curiosity persisted. He wanted to get a full picture of what was known about these aliens.

Rivas seemed uncomfortable as he took a quick glance at Henry. “Scalians don’t tend to cooperate with you or even allow themselves to be taken prisoner. They would rather—and mostly did—die prior to any capture. In fact, as soon as they are captured, it’s a death sentence for them. Even if we release them back to their superiors, they are killed for allowing themselves to be captured. We got lucky that the admiral never knew he was captured.”

“So, what do you do with the ones that know they’ve been captured?” Jack asked.

“Sadly, we’ve taken to allowing them to kill themselves, since that’s what they wanted anyway. Regardless, they’ve been useless in terms of information-gathering.”

“So, what about this ship that you just commandeered?” Jack asked.

Rivas took a deep breath and shook his head. He didn’t have to say it. They were all dead. Jack thought of how difficult it must have been to defeat such a crazed enemy.

They walked over to another table that had ship schematics laid out on it. Henry began to explain where Jack might be taken on each of the three space forts and two remaining Scalian battlecruisers. As they reviewed the schematics, a disturbing thought came to Jack. “Wait, after I’m done, how am I supposed to get out of there?”

Rivas hesitated. “We will give you a tracking device that you can activate once you are done, but the Scalians will be able to detect it as well, and we will likely not have a way to get to you, so…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence. This was very likely a one-way trip. There would be no return.

Jack’s heart sunk. While he was more than willing to risk it all, he wanted some hope of getting out alive, but that now seemed rather unlikely. Still, what choice did he have? If he did not go along with this crazy plan, everyone on Earth was doomed and there would be nothing to go back to anyway. So, Jack just shook his head to let Rivas know that he understood.

Rivas then stood and let Jack know that he would need to go back to the situation room with the admiral and the others as they finalized the attack plan. Rivas departed, and Jack practiced with Henry on several terminals. Jack then reviewed the schematics of the space forts and battlecruisers, asking Henry about all the symbols and mechanisms displayed.

While deep into their review, Henry stopped and looked at Jack. “Others have probably already told you, but thank you. You’re giving us a chance.”

“I’m sure most of you would also do it, if you could go undetected.” Jack shrugged off the compliment as he didn’t feel particularly worthy given that he had not exactly volunteered to sacrifice himself and would just as soon not be the one doing this, nor did he feel he had much of a choice in the matter anyway. They went back to work.