Alien
Copyright© 2025 by Harry Carton
Chapter 9
April 8, Monday Selvin and Alister 5 reporting/recording.
The world leaders stared at the empty space where the alien Commander had stood moments before, the holographic display still pulsing with Beethoven’s Sixth and the alien response patterns. Admiral Harkness moved to the window, his eyes scanning the moonlit peaks around Lake Louise as if expecting to see Nightwing’s ascent. “They’ll make contact within the hour,” he murmured, more to himself than to the room. “Godspeed.”
Out of the general chaos, one conversation cut through. A uniformed officer from the US Army was handing his cell phone to President Ho of the US. “This is Ho,” she said, “who is speaking?” She put her phone on the speaker setting. On getting a sharp glance from the US Army General who gave her the phone, she said “This is no time for secrets, Mike.”
“This is Admiral Hopkins in the SitRoom. We are getting a series of Morse Code-like transmissions coming from undersea sources. They are transmitting on the same frequency and seem to be coordinating transmissions. Some are weaker and some are stronger. They are repeating over and over.”
“Can you make any sense out of the Morse Code, Admiral Hopkins?” Ho asked.
“One of my oceanographic guys says it almost is the breakdown of sea water composition. At least it starts that way. That’s H2O three times, Chlorine, Sodium, Nitrogen eight times, Phosphorus three times, Magnesium, Calcium, and Carbon six times.”
“So it’s just sea water, Admiral?” Ho repeated back to him.
“No, Ma’am. If you take the nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium out, then it would be almost exactly sea water, if you put in more H2O. As it is, it is the sludge we dump out of the Mississippi into the Gulf -- including the pollution. It’s the chemical description of the Dead Zone in the Gulf. Not enough oxygen to keep anything alive.”
“And where are we picking up this code?” Ho asked.
“All of our ships that can receive microwave transmissions. All over the Caribbean, Ma’am.”
“Anything else? Is this a world wide phenomenon?”
“Nothing like this cluster. We’re getting spotty reports from elsewhere,” Hopkins said.
She handed the device back to the Army General. “We’re NOT going to send a message to the alien ship on those frequencies. Just listen and report.”
Harkness said, “We’ve gotten an outgoing message from the alien ship. But the sea water composition was exact. The message from the alien was on a broad range of frequencies. I’m repeating the message you just got to the Nightwing -- Commander C’Droit’s ship.”
Back aboard Nightwing, Craynet gripped her seat as the ship sliced through the atmosphere, the stars sharpening outside the viewport. Below, the dark expanse of the Indian Ocean shimmered under moonlight, vast and unknowable. “Selvin,” she called out, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands, “put Elliot on comms. We need every nuance of that message decoded before we meet them.”
Elliot’s voice soon crackled through, layered over the symphony still playing softly in the background. “Suzi, it’s not just pollution—it’s a distress call. The pattern repeats in cycles of seven, like a heartbeat fading. They’re trapped in that dead zone, suffocating.” His words hung heavy, the urgency cutting through the hum of the ship’s engines.
“No, Elliot. The Dead Zone has been growing since the late 20th Century. The sea creatures that are sending that distress call have moved out of the DZ by now,” Suzi corrected. “But it’s spreading, I’m sure.”
The incoming inter-galactic ship had been dodging the myriad of near-space satellites for several minutes. Nightwing watched the black missile dodging, accelerating, and decelerating in fits and starts. Finally, the ship knifed into the Indian Ocean at a speed that would have left the humans watching a water touchdown with astronauts gasping in disbelief. The resulting geyser was impressive to the humans on board.
Nightwing made a more graceful touchdown, following the alien bullet into the ocean. The water seemed to welcome Nightwing, creating a hollow in the sea as Selvin made the repulsers do their job.
As the water closed over the canopy, Suzi watched the alien ship settle onto the ocean floor through the external sensors. It resembled a colossal, obsidian sea urchin, spines retracting as it nestled into the silt. Bioluminescent patterns pulsed along its surface in time with the distant, distorted strains of Beethoven’s Sixth echoing through Nightwing’s comms.
“Nightwing cannot go to the bottom of the ocean following it; the external pressure on the hull would be too great. We are limited to watching from here,” Selvin explained.
“They’re adapting,” Craynet whispered, her reflection wide-eyed in the viewport. “Elliot, the message – any change?”
“The message it’s been sending has stopped,” Elliot answered. “They’re apparently listening to all the incoming transmissions from all over, coming in to level eight of the original message.”
Craynet leaned forward, her breath fogging the viewport as the obsidian ship below pulsed with soft blue light. “Selvin, can we enhance the sensor feed? Focus on those bioluminescent patterns—they might be responding to the symphony.”
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