by Bob Blink
"General Easystone, I have a General Pike on the line."
"I don't know a General Pike," Easystone replied, rapidly sorting through his memory to see if the name could be unearthed.
"He's Australian, sir," his aide explained. "He's calling from Downunder. He's part of their Special Operations Command."
"Oh, I see," General Easystone replied, but he really didn't. "Put him on please."
"Hello?" a rugged sounding voice asked. "General Easystone?"
"General Pike. I don't believe we have met. What can I do for you?"
"I believe I might be able to do something for you. Before we venture too far into a discussion, is there an address where I can email you a couple of photographs?"
"Of course," the General replied, wondering what this could be about. He read off his unsecure email address, and a moment later an icon appeared on the screen of his unclassified computer indicating he had a message. Once he opened the first photograph, he was instantly more interested in what the Australian might have to say.
"Where did you get this?" he asked.
"You see what it is?" General Pike asked.
"If this isn't a phony, it appears to be an alien base. One I have not seen before."
"That's what I thought as well. After watching your briefing the other day when you brought the rest of us into the fold so to speak, about the previously classified mission on the moon, when this popped up, I decided I would go directly to you."
"I'm glad you did, but I ask again, where did you get this?"
"From an Aborigine," Pike replied.
"An Aborigine?"
"That's right. An honest to god, Australian Aborigine. Fellow named Jarli Burarrwanga. An odd old fellow, probably in his sixties, who spends a lot of his time in some of the nastiest desert areas you could imagine. I take it he has been searching for a lost cousin the last few years. No luck apparently, but he came across this."
"He took these photos?" General Easystone asked. Somehow the picture of an old fashioned native Australian aborigine that came to mind didn't mesh with the idea of his having a camera on hand as he wandered the great Australian Outback.
"Hey, these guys are pretty modern in some ways these days. He apparently carries an old iPhone with him wherever he goes. No service most of the time, but some of the other features come in handy such as the camera and GPS. We should be glad he was prepared."
"Just where was this?" Easystone asked as he scanned the picture. He'd have to get it to the right people and see how the vehicles he spotted compared to the ones on the moon. "The site looks pretty small," he observed, an obvious difference, and maybe because someone faking it didn't have the resources to simulate something like what they'd found in Fermi Crater.
"In the Western Australia desert, about four hundred miles west of Alice Springs. I put the latitude and longitude in the email. When I questioned this guy he claimed that the barrier around it was a bit less than a mile across."
His mind screamed fake, but his gut was telling him a different story.
"I assume you just got this?"
"Less than an hour ago. I questioned the old guy, but much of what he said was a bit batty to be honest. He kept going on about giant bats. They killed his brother when he tried to walk through the barrier around the area. There were the two of them out there looking for his cousin, and apparently this guy was able to hide while his relative was being chased and killed. As important as this might be, I thought you should have it, and see what your experts think. Something tells me it isn't fake. I was thinking a run out there might be in order, but recalled your saying how you didn't want to alert these aliens that we might be on to them, so I decided to get guidance even before I elevated this locally."
"You haven't told anyone about this? Not even the police seeing as a murder has basically been reported?"
"Not yet. As I said, this might be something far more critical than a simple murder."
"Smart decision. I'd like you to sit on this. Where are you located?"
"I'm in Perth. It took the guy a few days to get here, so this is somewhat dated news."
"I'm going to call a CIA guy who is stationed at Alice Springs. We have a pretty significant posting there, and from what I recall you have a small force of your Special Forces assigned there as well. The CIA guy will be calling you, but I'm going to try and put in motion a small group of trained observers from the team at Alice Springs to go out there and have a look. If this goes as I hope, you'll be getting formal direction to keep this classified while they have a look."
"What's this bloke's name?"
"Clyde Dawson. He's a senior analyst for our top secret monitoring effort, but he used to be a damn good field operative. A bit of bad luck took him out of that business, but he's someone who will know how to go about this."
"Alright. I'll be standing by at this number."
"Thank you. You may have just broken the deadlock that has kept us stymied for so long."
General Easystone hung up and quickly jotted down the list of names of people he was going to need to contact. First was the Secretary of Defense. This kind of potential breakthrough he needed to hear about first hand. He could inform the President and Vice president, and whoever else he wanted in the loop. Easystone would also need his go ahead with his planned call to the CIA. Next would be Howard Rotondo, the CIA Director. He'd be the one who could give Clyde orders to drop everything else and get moving on this. Clyde would know the players on that end and be able to give them names of their Australian counterparts who would need to be contacted to get support from their special forces. Finally, he wanted to call both Wally Peterson at NSA and Bud Hollister and get a careful look at the photos.
"Bats?" Clyde Dawson said doubtfully when General Easystone and CIA Director Rotondo got him on a secure line. Clearly he had doubts about this whole thing.
"This Burarrwanga fellow claimed that the site was populated by what looked to be extremely large black and red colored bats, roughly two-thirds the size of a person. They could fly, but also carried some kind of weapon which they used to burn this old guy's partner to ash. The presence of a weapon supports the idea they may be our aliens."
"It sounds like he's been drinking some home made stuff," Dawson said.
"NSA experts have had a preliminary look at the photos that he provided," Director Rotondo explained. "They claim the vehicles are identical based on the details they can see. It sounds too precise to be a fake. We need to check this one out."
"Okay," Dawson said. "What do you want me to do?"
"Alice Springs is the closest military contingent to the location we have been given. We don't want an over-flight, as that might alert these guys to our having discovered them. That means a careful ground approach. We were hoping that you and a group of the Australian Special Forces there would be able to take this on immediately."
"These guys would be all for that," Dawson replied. "And Colonel Hope, their commander, would see it as something to relieve a bit of the boredom around here. They have some very nice vehicles that would do the trick as well. They carry nine with full gear plus the driver, and have a range of five hundred miles on a tank of gas. But, you'll have to grease the skids with the brass."
"The Secretary of Defense is working that end as we speak," General Easystone explained. "You need to get the people there moving on this so when the official word comes down, you'll ready to roll."
Chapter 21
Washington, DC
"General," NASA's Bud Hollister said when he picked up the line. "I guess you've heard already."
"Er, yes. But how did you learn so quickly?"
Hollister was silent a moment, and then he said, "Are we talking about the same thing?"
"The possible alien base in Australia? I think so?"
"We've found a base?" Hollister asked. "NSA finally was able to spot something in their processed data."
"Wait! Let's back up," General Easystone said, realizing they weren't really talking abou
t the same thing. "What were you referring to?"
"The asteroid," Hollister replied.
"Asteroid?" Now I'm the one confused. What asteroid."
"Oops, I guess not. Big Bastard. Just spotted last night coming our way. Just a minute. I see Dr. Allen. He should be in on this."
"Good morning, General," Dr. Allen said when he came on the line. "Well, maybe not so good, actually. Your call is well timed. We were about to call you anyway."
"Tell me about this asteroid. Who spotted it and what kind of threat are we talking about?"
"An amateur Canadian astronomer noticed it last night, ran his own orbit calculations, and immediately got in touch with one of my colleagues who made us aware of his discovery. We have just verified their findings, and are trying to firm up the orbit predictions. This guy is big. Remember that one that smacked into the Yucatan peninsula about sixty-five million years ago? They estimate that one was about ten miles across. This guy is about forty, perhaps a bit bigger. It's oblong, dark, and we are still trying to finalize the data on it. Plus, it's only three days out."
"And it's coming close? How come we didn't know about this earlier?"
"One in three chance of a direct hit on the Earth. If it misses, there is a fifty-fifty chance of it striking the moon. As big as it is there might be consequences from that as well. We've never seen anything like this close up. The rock itself is pretty dark, and wouldn't have been a problem, at least not anytime soon, if our orbit hadn't been altered. Now, because of everything else, and the non reflective material it is made of, it sort of snuck up on us. Think about it. There's more than fifty times the mass of the old Yucatan rock in this thing, and moving a bit faster due to the orbit.
There are almost certainly others like this one out there, but everyone has been so busy with other observational tasks, the asteroid tracking problem had dropped in a crack. That's an effort that uses up a lot of time, and calculations. It's also a moving target these days, as the Earth's orbit is no longer static, and that in and of itself makes some of the observations difficult. The shift just the other day in the direction of the acceleration we are experiencing once again is a perfect example of what I'm saying. Without that, this one would have missed us."
"Our alien buddies are trying to finish us off in short order?"
"No, I don't think so. My guess is this is a surprise to them also. This could be dramatic, and damage the planet for centuries. It seems inconsistent with what we believe they are trying to do. And causing it to hit would be complicated as well. I guess with their technology it would be remotely possible for them to have examined all the orbits of the rocks coming into our area and decided, if we move the planet just so, this one will impact it. But that would be a lot of work, and if that were their goal, it would have been a lot simpler to simply drive the moon into the Earth and be done with it."
"And this thing is really that big? What is the prognosis if it hits?"
"This is an extinction level event we are looking at," Bud Hollister explained. "It is the exact thing we have worried about for years, and now that event is days away. The aliens, and whatever they are up to, suddenly isn't our real worry."
"But it could miss, right?"
"Odds say so, barely, but I wouldn't bet on it. If not a direct hit, a serious side blow is almost a certainty."
"Where will it impact?"
"North and South America will be facing the approach full on at the time it is due to arrive."
"What are our options?"
"Break out the special wine, and have at it before it is too late. There isn't anything we can do to turn this brute. Even if we launched a bunch of nukes at it, we wouldn't accomplish much. If it hits, mankind is probably done."
"And we don't think the aliens are behind this?" General Easystone asked.
"It doesn't make sense for them to do it," Dr. Allen said.
"Then they must be aware of it, and just maybe they will do something about it for us. Well, for the planet. Clearly they have no interest in saving us."
"They appear to have the technology," Hollister agreed. "But they better do something soon. Their efforts have been slow acceleration, and as close as this bastard is, they don't have time to do that much following that technique. Turning it will take time. And, from what we found on the moon, they might need some kind of facility on the thing so even they might not have time."
"Can they increase our acceleration, and move us out of the way?" Dr. Allen asked.
"Questions, but no answers," General Easystone said. "But if they can, I'm guessing they will take action. We should alert all of our monitoring facilities to see what they do. We might learn something about them, like where they are hiding. We have a pretty good idea they are here on the Earth in addition to the moon."
"Excuse me" Dr. Allen said. "I seem to have missed something along the way."
"That's what the General was calling about," Hollister said. "What did they find?"
"We are still investigating, but an aborigine tribesman searching for a missing relative in one of the vast empty deserts in northwest Australia found what appears to be a much smaller version of what we located on the moon. I've sent pictures he took along with the location to Dr. Allen's email. But it looks legit to me. We are sending a team of special forces soldiers to have a look, but that will take a couple of days, and I want a high altitude flyover, but from what we saw on the moon, visual examination from above seldom shows much."
"What about this thing that was spotted. How big is it?" Dr. Allen asked.
The General told him.
"Damn it!" the professor cursed. "We were assuming something of the same magnitude. We've been looking for a site of the order of twenty-miles across. It made the processing easier. But something a mere mile across would, or at least could, very easily be lost in the processing. That's roughly 400 times the resolution. We'll have to start over."
"Start at the coordinates I forwarded," General Easystone directed. "That's where this thing was supposedly found. I have a ground team going for an eyes-on look. It's a bit easier to do that here than it was on the moon, and we should know something in a day or so."
"With something as small as this place appears to be, we might not get any signal at all," Dr. Allen warned. "You said there wasn't much equipment there. The fields they are generating could be proportionally less, and with the Earth's fields so much larger than the moon's we might not be able to extract anything useful."
"On the other hand, they are moving a much larger mass with far less area involved. That might increase the strength of the fields," Dr. Allen said.
"So, we really don't know what to expect, beyond we need to look. So long as the acceleration that revealed this whole thing remains present, there is a chance we might find them."
"We'll get right on it," Dr. Allen promised.
"What about the asteroid?" Hollister asked. "You'll have to tell the Vice President, but an announcement will create another panic."
"I doubt it can remain secret. You said people in Canada already know, and it's not the kind of thing that other astronomers will continue to miss. Sooner or later the thing had got to be noticed."
"What are you going to do?" Peterson asked.
"I'm going to assume it will miss, or that our unwanted guests will take some action against it. Nothing to lose with that approach. If I'm wrong, and it smacks into us, from what you said earlier, I'll be right at ground zero. No more worries. I'd appreciate if you gentlemen could adapt the same approach and get people hopping on that new analysis. Let me know the minute you discover anything. I have a lot to tell the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President."
Chapter 22
Alice Springs, Australia
Orders had come through directing a team to be assembled and set off for the site far out in the Outback that the old Aborigine had claimed was an alien base. This was one of the roughest, and driest places on the face of the Earth, and an area not to be taken lightly. The Bu
shmen might wander it with confidence, but anyone else should travel with others if they intended to return, carrying significant resources, and a means of calling for assistance in the event things went poorly. The Australian military was more than up to the task, but even so, they made sure their vehicles were inspected and stocked against mishap. Even the creatures out there were to be treated with respect. Australia had some of the most deadly poisonous critters in the world.
The sun had not yet crept over the horizon when they set off, twenty-men in two of the rugged, Australian built Bushmaster Protected Mobility Vehicles. The BPMVs were armoured, four-wheel-drive, all-purpose vehicles that could each hold nine men with full gear in addition to the driver. They were equipped with a fifty-caliber Browning M2HB-QCB machine gun and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition, a variety of useful explosives, spare gasoline to extend the five hundred mile radius of the filled tanks, in addition to a variety of communications devices, including a precision-controlled satellite dish for secure communications back to the base.
The team was formally led by Colonel Hope, the senior Australian officer of the Special Operation Command in Alice Springs, but CIA officer Clyde Dawson was an unofficial leader of the mission as well based on the entire effort being a direct request of the US Secretary of Defense to his Australian counterpart. Cooperation between the US and Australian forces was excellent, but this was Australia, and therefore this technically an Australian mission. Directly reporting to the Colonel was Major Davis, and to him Sgt. Larson, who would be in operational command of the sixteen well equipped and superbly trained soldiers making the journey. All were armed with H&K416 assault rifles in the standard 5.56 NATO round, the same round favored by the US military, but a superior weapon in many ways to the familiar M16 and its variants. Even so, Clyde Dawson carried the M4 chambered for the same round, a weapon he was intimately familiar with from his former military and operational spook days and which he'd also had on hand. They weren't planning an engagement, and hoped to make their survey unnoticed, but if the native Australian who had reported this was correct, the aliens here had taken the lives of at least two persons, and they meant to be prepared against whatever encounter that might develop.