Chapter No.22. Conflict.

The trip down to Earth was uneventful at first. We landed five kilometers away from the biosphere habitat city. Even at that distance it dominated a dismal looking landscape of ugly scrub on cracked and depleted soil.

The weather was not too bad. It was partly cloudy with a slight chill in the air. We wore the bio suits without helmets. It was a decided pleasure to breath real air for a change.

We had a lot of work to do. While I began digging the graves, the women got the body bags out of the shuttle and carried them to the gravesite. Bridget helped me do the digging, but it still required an hour of backbreaking work. The next step was to drag the body bags into the graves, but before we did that, Janet pointed at something in the distance.

"What the hell is that?"

"I peered at the direction she was pointing and saw an object traversing the ground, trailing dust plumes. I obtained binoculars from my accessory belt bag and adjusted the digital image enhancement at 10X. "Looks like a land rover."

As it moved closer It wasn't slowing. "I don't like this."

That made my heart rate increase and the women to gather behind me.

The wheeled rover came to a sudden stop at fifty meters, and two men wearing dark uniforms got out. When I saw that they were holding weapons, I turned to the women. "Get down in the graves!"

They hesitated at first, staring at me as if I had lost my mind, but when a bullet smacked into the ground near them, they didn't waste time jumping into the newly dug graves.

After getting prone on the ground, I powered up my laser rifle and used the scope to zero in on the guy shooting the weapon. He fired at me again, but the bullet missed my head by a few centimeters before it smacked into the ground. I shot a laser blast that hit him square in the chest, dropping him.

The other guy started shooting, but his aim was off.

Mine wasn't.

I stood up. "Okay, the coast is clear."

The women slowly began to climb out of the graves.

"Hurry up, we have to get these bodies buried and get the hell out of here before they send more of those gun happy nuts."

We didn't waste time completing that task. Once we covered them over with dirt, we made a B-line to the shuttle. After boarding, I fired up the engines and ascended while turning away from the city. I had to adjust the shuttles' course several times to get it line up with a rendezvous course to the ship. The last thing I wanted to do was get too close to the domed city.

Once I had the shuttle back in the hanger, we immediately went down to the crew wheel deck and headed to the command station,

"COMA, power up the object intercept laser."

"What are you going to do?" Janet asked, her face twisted with concern.

"Noting, but I want to be ready just in case they try to do something."

"Why did they shoot at us?" Natale asked. "We were far enough away from their city."

"I don't know, but I hate the fact I had to kill two people. It's not what I wanted to be doing when I came back to Earth."

"There's something coming up from that city!" Janet said, her voice strained by excitement.

I looked at the main screen. "Holy hell! That's a missile. COMA, track the missile and prepare to fire the laser at it at full power."

"The optimal range will be at a hundred kilometers," COMA said.

We watched the missile ascend on an intercept course. When it came into the range of the laser weapon, COMA fired a steady beam at it. At first it didn't do anything, but after a minute-long blast, the missile detonated in a brilliant explosion.

I turned to Sharon. "Begin communication pings on all frequencies." I turned back to my screen. "COMA, power up the laser again at full power."

"Commencing full power arming," COMA replied.

"Why are they trying to destroy us?" Natale asked.

"I don't know, but if they launch another missile, we're moving away from here."

"I think I've got a link," Sharon said. "I'll try to get video."

After a few tense minutes, a female face appeared on the main screen.

"If you fire another missile at us, I will rake the top of your domed city with our laser weapon," I said, trying to avoid tinges of anger in my voice.

"Who are you?" the older women with very short blond hair asked.

"We are the survivors of the first mission to Proxima Centauri-b in 2043. Part of our crew is from the second mission launched three years later."

Her brow wrinkled and an older male's face appeared. He had a stubble beard and black hair.

"That's impossible," he said. "This is the year 2250."

"Yes, we realize that. Because of an engineering screw up, our vessel entered hyperspace where time stops relative to those not in it. We were in hibernation for twenty years and ended up over three hundred million light years away from Earth. We've made several hyperspace-jumps to get back here, thus putting us in the future."

The man and women exchanged glances.

"We apologize for the missile," the woman said. "We have been attacked by extraterrestrials. We mistook you for them."

We exchanged glances before I turned back to reply. "Do you know where they came from and what their capabilities are?"

"We have no idea where they came from. They just showed up five years ago and abducted several people who were outside the city. They look like cartoon characters."

"Do you know the status of Moon Base and Mars Colony?"

"We have been unable to contact them since the aliens showed up."

"Okay, we'll check them out." I sighed. "I'm sorry about the two guys you sent out to accost us. We came down to bury some of our deceased crew members and they just started shooting at us."

"We understand. Everyone's on edge these days."

"Are you the only human colony on Earth?" I asked.

"We believe so. This region of Canada still has some plant growth. Most of the Earth is deforested."

"Have you considered trying to reverse climate change?"

She gave me a subtle grin. "Most of the attempts have been expected failures. We have no way to restore the forests."

"As it turns out, we have tons of tree seeds. I don't know if they could be planted or if they would survive, but that's one of the ways to restore Earth's forests and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

She smiled. "Oh my, that would be amazing. What other methods could be done?"

"We could move a sizable asteroid into an orbit that would gradually move Earth's orbit further away from the Sun. It would be a tricky maneuver, but it's theoretically feasible."

There was a pause before she reacted to my idea. "You look so young. How do you remain youthful?"

"We believe that traveling in hyperspace stops aging, but we're not sure about that."

What she said next surprised me.