It was a dark and stormy night on Lake Superior and the Fritz was in Canadian waters. The G-Fritz was a large multi-purpose freighter designed as a great-lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway, ocean going vessel. It had an operating crew of thirty.
During a winter storm, coast guard ports received an emergency distress call from the G-Fritz:
“May-day, may-day. This is the captain of the G-Fritz. We’ve been boarded by some kind of machinery and are under attack. We don’t know how long we can hold out. We need immediate assistance.”
Towards the rear of the ship a large cubically shaped object had crash-landed on the deck. The cube was sunken part-way into the deck of the ship. A doorway opened and out of this cube shape unloaded about a half-dozen androids. The androids looked like power-fork-lift suits. They had legs and arms and bodies. They were several times the size of a human being.
A couple of minutes after the androids landed, a crewmember radioed the captain that some kind of fork-lift machinery was on the loose. When asked to provide more details the crewmember responded that the fork-lift seemed to have a mind of it’s own. The captain under the impression it was just a fork-lift, ordered the crewmember to shut it down. Moments later screams could be heard as the crew-member was torn to pieces.
Using a shot-gun and several small fire-arms, and axes, the crew managed to disable one of the androids, but the crew losses were heavy.
Canadian air-force did recon on the situation. They reported back that there were several small fires on the vessel, and a large cube at the rear of the vessel. There appeared to be some sort of mobile artillery on the vessel.
The next thing that happened was that the air-force was ordered to blast anything moving to smitherines and to sink the G-Fritz. A squardron of fighter-bombers was dispatched to do the dirty work.
Several weeks later, a navy salvage operation was complete.
Aftermath - Back at the lab:
The technical genius elaborated on the situation.
"It was an attempt by an alien race to invade."
“This is all technology that we have today. We could build one of these things ourselves. The only problem is the software, the software is ferociously complex. Hardware wise, the brains are just a network of about sixty to eighty eight-bit processors. The processors are only about as complex as a 6502.”
“The actual android bodies aren’t any more complex than a fork-lift. They’re made from high-strength steel, and powered with hydraulics.”
Basically we got invaded by stuff that we could manufacture today if we wanted to, 1970’s technology. We don’t have anything to learn from these things, except perhaps from the software. All the invasion materials are technically useless to us.
Strategy Analysis:
The invasion was a “long-shot”, low success rate type of invasion. It was done under cloud cover and in the winter. Basically a sneak attack type of invasion. If the androids had been able to take out the ships radio, it could have been a week or more before they were detected. Who knows what they may have been able to do, if given more time. They picked a large vessel in an isolated area, a vessel which had a wide variety of resources onboard.