[Liz]

Clara nudged me awake. She grumbled, "That's your viewer ringing."

Still half asleep, I rolled over, pulling the covers with me. "Wha'?"

She yanked them back. "You're the governor. Nobody calls me in the middle of the night."

"Oh, right."

In my line of work, middle of the night calls almost always meant that someone else's problem would become my problem. Still laying down, I fumbled for my viewer and answered it. "Jack, what is happening?"

His deadpan response made me sit straight up. "They're here."

I felt the adrenaline surge through my body, prickling my gut. I responded as calmly as I could. "I will see you in a few minutes."

Clara raised her eyebrows. "What is it?"

"Something I have feared for a long time."

*****

"What do we have, Jack?" I looked over his shoulder as he sat before translucent display panels in the space operations center, located near the ground base of the space elevator. Usually sedate, the center was now a beehive of anxious activity.

Jack motioned to the operator who sat beside him, a young man wearing blue coveralls with messy hair, who also looked like he just got out of bed. The operator pointed at the solar system map on the panel before him.  "Two interstellar ships, Governor. A small one in front and a much larger one behind. They are still decelerating for insertion. If I were to guess, they will probably swing around Tau Ceti to match our relative orbital velocity."

I asked, "How long?"

"Fifteen to twenty hours, ma'am, depending on how hard they burn."

"Any visuals?"

The young man shook his head. "Not yet, ma'am. Still too far away. Our satellites are tracking them." A stream of data on an adjacent panel caught his eye. "This is strange..."

Jack rolled his chair closer. "What is it?"

"The larger ship is accelerating as if it is trying to catch up with the smaller ship ahead of it." The operator turned to face Jack. "To avoid overshooting, they will have to push some serious g's to slow back down. That would be a huge waste of thrust."

I turned toward my Security Chief. "Jack, initiate First Contact Protocol. Send regular data bursts to Earth, but if they get anywhere near the communication beam, shut it down and the relay stations too. Until we know the aliens' intentions, we don't want to point them to Earth."

I caught the attention of my aide, who yawned as she walked in. "The Council will need to know of this. Go wakeup Brinne."

I didn't want to have a debate with Brinne in front of all the others, so we met in a nearby conference room. Now, more than ever, we needed to show a united front. Over the years we came to a mutual respect of each other, but oh, the heated discussions we still sometimes had. I think, though, that she enjoyed them as much as I. But not today.

She came from an ultra-libertarian group called the Free Alliance, who settled in the southern colony they named Freehold. Over time, their more radical stances have moderated. She tossed her long silver hair behind her back. "We should have made more preparations to defend ourselves! You blocked every attempt."

"Brinne, we've already discussed this. It's not like one of those old space movies. By all indications, their technology is far beyond ours. Even if we had developed new weapon systems, it may only draw us into a war we could not possibly win. They could easily wipe us out by reintroducing the blight, bathing the planet with gamma rays, or who knows what." I shook my head. "We don't even know if they are friendly or hostile yet."

In our first formal negotiations shortly after the Ark Hope arrived. She pulled a gun on me. However, I had arranged to drop a rock from orbit, making a crater not far from our location just to show her I had the high ground. We came to an understanding then. But I sometimes thought she joined the Council and then became its Chairwoman just to be a thorn in my side.

Brinne narrowed her eyes. "You may come to regret..."

Jack interrupted her rant, thankfully, as he stuck his head in the room. "Governor, Councilor, you will want to see this."

Brinne, Jack, and I gathered closely around an operator. The operator slung her head around, apparently nervous to have us peering over her shoulder. Jack nodded to her. "Show them the image of the starship." He turned to Brinne and me. "One of our satellites caught this as it emerged from the other side of Tau Ceti."

The woman fumbled with the keyboard to bring up a grainy object illuminated from one side by the sun.

I studied the image. "It looks like a small asteroid with engines strapped to it."

Jack explained. "That is actually a good description. One strategy for shipbuilding is to hollow out an appropriately sized asteroid, maybe after it is mined out, and then attach thrusters."

Brinne asked, "How big is it?"

"Roughly half the volume of the Ark Hope."

"So it may hold about two-thousand aliens?"

Jack shrugged. "Not enough information to speculate. The Ark was a colony ship while this alien ship likely is an exploration vessel with landing craft. We also don't know anything about the aliens or how much room they require onboard."

A voice came out from the other side of the control room. I could not make out who made it since the room was relatively dark, illuminated mostly by the display screens. "Sir, something is happening. Go to display eight."

The operator switched one of her data displays to a live feed. Small streaks of light came from the alien starship and raced forward. "It looks like they are firing missiles, sir."

I'm sure my eyes went full open. "At us?"

The operator brought up a screen with streaming telemetry data. She studied it for a moment. "No, ma'am." She turned around to face me, then Jack. "They appear to be firing at the smaller vessel ahead of them. Why would they do that?"

Jack shook his head. "This is unexpected."

Unexpected indeed. I voiced the thought that made me shudder. "Perhaps they bring their own internal conflicts to our world."

The voice from the far side of the room came again. "They are firing again, sir. Different targets this time. Hold for telemetry." A tense silence filled the room while the satellite tracking data came in. "Sir, they are targeting our satellites."

One by one, visual display feeds turned to grey static and data streams abruptly ended. Silence overtook the room again and all eyes turned toward me.

Brinne shot me an icy stare. Her words were just as cold. "What do you think now, Governor?"

I took a deep breath. "Brinne, call an emergency Council meeting." I turned to Jack. "Initiate the Hostile Intent Protocol."