This is the shortened version. You can read the full version here.
It is twenty-four years since Contact and I’m drinking coffee while sitting behind my desk in New Scotland Yard. I cleared some space by moving a paper mountain to one side and set my cup down.
“Boss”, declared Detective Sergeant Kieran Mulrooney, as he strode towards me with a memorandum in his fist. “Read this…”
“Let me see.” It was from Intelligence. They were monitoring some scholars in Camden. Hard-wired bugs you understand. We don’t use radio, not since Scrixn’s warning, anyway.
The missive was crisp and brutal: “There is plausible evidence Professor Dexter of the Peace Costs Nothing group is considering using a comms-laser to communicate a peace message to the Drar’ch. Termination is required.”
“Saddle up, Kee,” I said rising to my feet. I reached into my desk, drew out my Glock and checked the clip. “We’ve got work to do.”
We took-off from the roof, navigating a darkened London to the Professor’s home near Camden Market, four miles away, making it in six minutes, and landing without a sound on his veranda. Glancing up, I could detect light emerging from a misplaced blackout curtain, so I signalled Kieron to position himself in front of the window and he levitated up, a faint glow coming from his A-Grav-Plate as he did so. Meanwhile, I entered via the balcony doors.
The door to the room was ajar, and I could hear sounds coming from above. Creeping out, I activated my AGP so I could scale the stairs and not provoke any creaks. The Glock was ready in my hand.
“Is there sufficient power?” asked a voice. I recognised it as the Professor.
“Yesh,” someone responded. It shocked me. I recognised Scrixn, the alien who alerted us to the Drar’ch, a race of automatons, whose sole purpose was to discover intelligent biological life and eradicate it. “You may proscheed.”
I snapped the door wide and dropped the alien. He flew backward as slugs hit him in his forehead and the Professor whirled around clutching a gadget that appeared to be a spring-loaded clamp, its jaws wide – two wires trailing from the handle.
“Officer,” he said with an air of cool nonchalance. He raised his hands as I pointed my pistol at him.
“Drop the device,” I commanded him.
He smirked and let go of the clamp; the jaws closed and sparked. A table-top laser hummed, and the drapes parted. I shot him in the face and as he sank to the floor, emptied my clip into the laser’s case. The hum continued to grow, so I lunged for the clamp and levered its jaws apart as the laser fired a two-second ray through the open window. I was too late.
I rushed to the window to watch it, but saw instead the figure of Kieran Mulrooney, dangling lifelessly, a small hole bored into his front armour. Dragging him close, I rotated him. There was no hole in the rear.
The Earth had survived.
