Amalfi Echo by John Zanetti Read Free Book Online

six metres long measured along the
floor, not counting appendages. Being segmented had its uses and
they could twist in interesting directions.
    Beyond the
battleship, an endless array of ships of various sizes, most
incredibly huge, others merely huge, spread out towards the
stars.
    “This is the
actual view, outside the ship, we can see from here, right?” Tessa
said for the tenth time. For some reason the unchanging panoply of
ships, rolling along indifferently, was much more impressive than
the many detailed holograms they had been watching back at the
Moon.
    More than
impressive. For the first time, Marion felt real fear, coiling in
her stomach. It had been brought home to her, with a stunning brute
force, how insignificant they were before this display of
unstoppable might.
    Tessa too, had
lost her bounce. “We’re toast,” she said. She hadn’t tackled Digby
about the spacesuit idea and now there was no way she was even
interested. The dark side of the Moon now seemed like home and she
began to wonder if it was wise hanging around the fleet so
long.
    She was
relieved when Digby said, “Time to go.”
    -oOo-
    It was also
time to say goodbye to the dark side of the Moon. Marion and Tessa
were now committed to warning the world of the impending
catastrophe. They had thought that they would do this from the Moon
but Digby suggested putting the ship into orbit around Earth. He
explained, “The ship’s resources aren’t unlimited and it’ll be a
stretch if we have to carry out too many tasks in relation to Earth
from here. An alien ship in orbit will wake them up a bit and it’ll
give you a certain cachet.”
    It went without
saying that it fell to Marion to do the broadcast. Digby had
promised a feed directly into every dish and antenna on the planet.
Marion and Tessa created a conference room, because it was more
business-like, and sat down at the conference table to work out
what Marion was going to say.
    “People of
Earth,” Marion declaimed, looking at an imaginary camera, and then
stopped because Tessa was rolling her eyes and looking embarrassed.
“What?” Marion said.
    “Have you ever
done this before?” Tessa said.
    “What?
Broadcast to the world from an alien spaceship? Oh yeah, I do this
all the time.”
    Eventually they
settled on a script which they were both more or less satisfied
with and which included video footage of the bugs. To help Marion
get into the role they created a studio complete with cameras and
Marion sat at a curved desk like a newsreader. They recorded the
broadcast. Now all they had to do was wait for the ship to get
noticed which didn’t take long as Digby had put the ship into orbit
over the night side of Earth. When they had the world’s full
attention, Digby broadcast the statement.
    They sat back
to wait for the reaction.
    The people of
Earth reeled under a triple whammy. Not only was there now, most
definitely, an eight-kilometre wide alien spaceship in orbit but
also a message that they were about to be annihilated had flooded
every device on the planet and if that wasn’t enough, the person
announcing the end of the world was Marion Bakken, a fugitive
wanted by the FBI for the kidnapping of Tessa O’Brien.
    Confusion
reigned. Governments around the world said nothing of substance and
issued calls for calm although the reality of the sphere ship was
hard to deny given it could be seen on any amateur telescope.
    The phone
images of the shuttle and the interviews with the passengers were
exhumed and intensively rehashed by the media. The answer to the
question, ‘are we alone in the universe?’ did not prove to be a
game changer. Many people already believed that there probably was
other life out there somewhere so it was simply a question of
‘when’ not ‘if.’
    A feeling
became widespread throughout the globe that they were dealing with
humans, not aliens, as aliens were very much not in evidence. There
were not huge ships hovering menacingly over the