01:14 (Estimated Universal Time)
Saturday, October 23, 4021 (ship date)
Command bridge of the H.S.S. MARCO POLO
Henry Ferguson was now firmly strapped in his command chair as the Solar System was now clearly visible on the holographic screens. The Sun appeared as a small yellow marble-sized light as the fleet was approaching Pluto’s orbit.
‘’Pilot, position report, please!’’
‘’Our speed is now down to 0.57 lux{2}, Commodore. Approximate distance to the Sun: forty Astronomical Units{3}. We will cross Pluto’s orbit in six minutes and should enter into Earth orbit in about five hours.’’
‘’Very well’’ Replied Ferguson before switching his intercom to fleet-wide call. ‘’Commodore Ferguson to all ships: go to full alert! Keep total electronic silence from now on.’’
Three tense hours then followed: Ferguson had no way to know if the Morgs had already attacked or not the Solar System and could take no chances with his precious cargo of refugees. The speed of the fleet was now down to 0.07 lux, or seven percent of light speed, allowing observations to be now made with minimal distortions.
‘’Commodore, this is the navigator.’’
‘’Go ahead, Commander Rollings.’’
‘’Commodore, our navigation computer still has a lot of problems calculating our exact position. I am thus navigating on visual at this time. The star in front of us is however definitely Sol but the other stars in the sky, while recognizable by their spectral signature, are not at the place they should be.’’
Ferguson was left perplex by that. An idea then came to his mind.
‘’Commander Rollings, could the Morg weapon have affected our databanks?’’
‘’That is a possibility, Commodore. I will keep that in mind.’’
‘’Thank you! Ferguson to all sensors operators! Do you have any anomalies to report as part of your observations of the Solar System?’’
After a short moment, a voice came in on his intercom.
‘’Commodore, this is Lieutenant Slovic, at bridge sensors. Something definitely feels wrong in our observations. First, the electromagnetic frequencies are empty. Nobody is emitting in the system, at least not in omnidirectional. That could however be explained by a state of red alert across the system. There is more.’’
‘’Continue, Lieutenant: you are interesting me.’’
‘’Well, we just crossed Jupiter’s orbit seven minutes ago. Our advance base on Europa should have been visible, but we were unable to detect it. It still could have been camouflaged in anticipation of a Morg attack. Finally, our optical telescopes are not detecting any artificial lights on the surface of the Earth, as if a planet-wide blackout had been ordered. That is all for the moment, Commodore.’’
‘’That is already more than enough for me, Lieutenant. Good job and keep your eyes opened! Attention all hands! Go to combat stations! We are going to Red Alert! Lieutenant Tousla, arrange a fleet-wide teleconference via laser links: I don’t want to alert anyone of our presence by using radio waves.’’
‘’Understood, Commodore!’’
Within a minute, Ferguson’s videophone screen subdivided itself into a mosaic of 32 separate images, each showing the face of a ship captain, with a caption listing the name of the ship under each picture. Ferguson looked somberly back at his ship commanders.
‘’Ladies and gentlemen, the sensors of the MARCO POLO have detected a number of anomalies that are making me think that the Solar System is about to be attacked by the Morgs. I am thus declaring a Red Alert, and this until further notice.’’
‘’My sensors also picked up many anomalies, Commodore.’’ Said Ray Shelby, of the battleship KONGO. ‘’However, as painful as this is to say, there is another possible explanation for all this: that the Morgs have already visited the Solar System.’’
Ferguson’s shoulders sagged at those words as he felt immense dread envelop him: Shelby could very well be right. Ole Messente, of the frigate ORAN, then spoke in turn.
‘’I am afraid that Captain Shelby may be right, Commodore. If the Solar System was really preparing for a Morg attack, we would already have had half of the local defense fleet on our backs, demanding that we identify ourselves. Unfortunately, the Morg antimatter weapons don’t leave any residual radiations, so we can’t say if Earth has been bombarded or not. Only a close range reconnaissance run would be able to confirm the state of the Earth.’’
‘’Suggestions, ladies and gentlemen?’’ Said Ferguson, a bitter taste in his mouth. The first to speak next was Nina Perez, the commander of the interceptor division.
‘’Commodore, the fleet should adopt a waiting position near the main asteroid belt of the system while my interceptors make reconnaissance flights from up close. We are the fastest ships in the fleet and that would also keep the MARCO POLO and the support group away from any possible Morg ambush.’’
‘’An excellent idea, Captain Perez. Divide your interceptors between Mars, Earth, Venus, Mercury and the main bodies of the Main Asteroid Belt. Check also the hidden face of the Sun, in case a Morg fleet would be hiding behind it. Relay the data from your interceptors to the MARCO POLO. If you are attacked, withdraw immediately. Good luck, Captain!’’
‘’Thank you, Commodore!’’
‘’To the frigates MACAO, ORAN and MADRID, you will respectively do in-depth reconnaissance runs of the Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus systems. The frigates NEW YORK and SANTIAGO will check out the Trojans Asteroid Group, while the SIDNEY will adopt a blocking position halfway between Mars and the main asteroid belt. Our battleships will stay in battle formation around the MARCO POLO and the ships of the support group. Execution!’’
Ferguson next spoke to his second in command.
‘’Captain Montoya, shake up our interceptor crews presently slacking off inside our hangars and have them form a defensive globe around the fleet.’’
‘’I will crack my whip forthwith, Commodore.’’
Once those orders were passed, Ferguson sat back in his chair, his heart beating fast and wondering if he had forgotten something important. He finally decided that he could do nothing more right now than wait and hope for the best.
05:48 (Estimated Universal Time)
Interceptor AC3027, on fast approach to Earth
‘’AC3051, this is AC3027! Cover me from a low Earth orbit while I enter the atmosphere for my reconnaissance run.’’
‘’We have your back, AC3027. Good luck on your run.’’
Robert Busson did not reply to that, instead making his interceptor decelerate brutally before diving at a steep angle inside Earth’s atmosphere. The bubble of molecular force propelling his craft also protected it from the friction with the rarified air of the troposphere, which would have normally heated the hull past its fusion point. Busson pointed the nose of his interceptor towards the East Coast of North America, his first objective. Diving at a blistering rate of four kilometers per second, the interceptor went down to an altitude of 3,000 meters before Busson raised its nose to the horizontal and slowed down to just under the speed of sound. The voice of Sylvia Morgan, who was operating the forward sensors, then resonated inside his helmet.
‘’Turn full North once you cross the coast. We will then overfly New York in less than two minutes. A turn to the Northeast after that will then lead us to Boston in five minutes.’’
The voice of the young technician seemed steady enough to Busson then, to his relief. Sylvia had been put into forced rest after the disastrous battle for Alpha Centauri, suffering from a severe nervous shock after witnessing the death in battle of her husband. Thankfully, she now seemed to have mostly recovered her composure.
Crossing the coast at low altitude and subsonic speed, Robert then turned north, following roughly the contour of the coast.
‘’Sylvia, make sure that you relay your sensors readings to the MARCO POLO via the AC3051.’’
‘’Already done, Robert.’’
‘’Hey!’’ Exclaimed Jorge Canseco, their gunner. ‘’Where is the coastal road and the New York-Atlantic City monorail?’’
‘’Now that you are mentioning it,’’ added Dyy Jonan, their flight engineer, ‘’I haven’t seen a single habitation or artificial structure up to now.’’
That started an alarm bell inside Robert’s head.
‘’That doesn’t make sense! Even if the Morgs had already destroyed everything, we would still see some debris and craters, at the least. However, I can’t see nothing and the vegetation cover is intact. It is as if the whole infrastructure in this region had never existed.’’
‘’Well, we should know more soon: we are now approaching New York.’’ Replied Sylvia. Eight pairs of eyes then concentrated on the forward horizon.
‘’Are you sure?’’ Asked Robert after a few seconds.
‘’Yes! Here, we can see the mouth of the Hudson River and the island of Manhattan.’’
Jorge Canseco swore loudly as he examined the virgin forests they were overflying.
‘’Nothing! Absolutely nothing! No buildings, no roads, no bridges and not a single trace of bombardment. What the hell is going on, for God’s sake?’’
‘’I am now heading towards Boston. We will see once there.’’ Replied Robert, who didn’t know what to think anymore. The crew of the interceptor kept quiet during the short flight to Boston, faced with an impossible reality. Their remaining hopes evaporated when Boston proved as immaterial as New York. A fantastic hypothesis then started growing in Robert’s mind. He suddenly veered straight east and accelerated to Mach ten while taking some altitude.
‘’Sylvia, give me a heading for Paris.’’
‘’For Paris? But, that’s not our next planned target.’’
‘’Don’t care! I was born in Paris. Let’s say that I want to visit it again.’’
‘’As you wish. Adopt heading 086.’’
‘’Thank you! If what I think is confirmed, Paris should give us an indication of what happened on Earth.’’
The interceptor crossed the French coast twenty minutes later, with Robert decelerating at once to low subsonic speed and going down to an altitude of a thousand meters. Sylvia suddenly shouted excitedly less than a minute later.
‘’I SEE HOUSES AT TWO O’CLOCK!’’
‘’I see them!’’ Replied Robert, veering to the right while slowing down further. His maneuver brought the interceptor to the vertical of a small group of tiny, apparently flimsy buildings. A dozen or so humans, apparently panicking at the sight of the interceptor immobilized over their heads, ran at once inside the buildings, which were made of wood and straw.
‘’All this looks so primitive.’’ Said Dyy Jonan as she eyed the houses.
‘’Like I expected.’’ Replied Robert, feeling immense discouragement fill him. ‘’I am going to continue towards Paris. We should learn more there.’’
The interceptor crossed the Seine River a few minutes later and started following it upstream towards Paris, the city appearing soon afterwards. Dyy frowned at the sight of the small agglomeration concentrated on a small islet in the middle of the river, with two primitive wooden bridges linking it to the shores of the Seine.
‘’That’s the famous Paris?’’
Robert gave her a resigned look, now knowing what they were facing.
‘’The correct expression right now would be ‘that was Paris’, Dyy.’’
He continued on a tired tone as the other crewmembers looked at him with wide eyes.
‘’We didn’t find New York and Boston because they have not been built yet. If I recall correctly my history of Paris, which my father made me learn by heart when I was a kid, the absence of Notre-Dame Cathedral and the fact that the city walls are limited to the Île de la Cité tells me that we are back in the past, at least as far back as the High Middle Ages and maybe as far back as the period of the Roman Empire. That damn Morg weapon that struck us in the Alpha Centauri System kicked us back to the distant past.’’
His companions stared at him with horror for a moment, then looked down at Paris to examine it more. Still under the shock of what Robert had said, Jorge pointed a small flotilla of wooden boats beached on the Left Shore downstream from the town.
‘’Look at those boats: they use both sails and oars. Do you recognize their type, Robert?’’
The pilot took a few seconds to detail the boats in question, using the magnification of his belly camera to have a better look at them. He then swore loudly.
‘’Scandinavian dreki{4}! We are back in the Ninth Century of the Christian Era!’’