The Euclidian: Alien Hitman

by Jay Cannon

  As Adar departed the bridge, headed for his quarters to prep for the pursuit, his thoughts roiled with the sick feeling in his stomach. Damn it! Here we go again. Another boring assignment on a backward planet. At least this isn’t just an outpost. I can’t believe I let those Cheoili get the jump on me.

  He swung at the air as if punching at some invisible enemy. I had planned on another interlude with those twins tonight. Instead I have to chase down some murderous new species I never heard of. Who knows how many people they’ve already killed on that planet? If they expose our mission, there will be hell to pay.

  Making another fist, he punched at the wall to activate the inter-level transporter so he could descend to the section with the crew’s quarters.

  ***

  As the Andrea emerged from dimensional space just behind the moon, it partially obscured the stars being viewed from powerful telescopes stationed at one of Earth’s observatories.

  “Dr. Egorin, I need you to look at some data just in from our lunar telescopes,” said Leslie Golden, one of the science fellows monitoring the output from the lunar telescope array at NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office.

  “The instruments show that the stars around the background of the moon disappeared from view for a moment. What’s more disturbing is we seem to be getting flashes from the dark side of the moon, but above its surface. The effect might be caused by one large object or several small ones hovering in space above the moon. We believe this to be the case because we are able to observe the anomaly from both sides of the moon, though I don’t understand how something could have gotten there without being noticed.”

  “It’s too bad we can’t send a probe to see what’s going on up there. I don’t understand why we can’t have a satellite permanently orbiting the moon,” said Dr. Melanie Egorin, disturbed by the amount of bureaucracy she had to wade through to get anything done.

  The lab where the two scientists worked had several screens that provided different views of the sky captured by their telescopes. The screens provided the only light in the otherwise dark room. Scientists in white coats darted back and forth across the linoleum floor, gathering data and making reports. All of them hoped to make an important discovery that would catapult them to the forefront of their fields, making years of staring at the sky worthwhile.

  “The lack of an international agreement is the biggest roadblock to placing a satellite in orbit around the moon,” Golden said, trying to sound well-informed. “I can contact one of our partners if you want to see what they know,” she offered, eager to show her value as a new team member.

  “Which contacts do you have?” Egorin asked, surprised that someone still in college would already have significant contacts.

  “I know of two offhand. Amy Hall manages the NEOSSat telescope and Sarah Levin manages the Spitzer telescope, although I don’t know if either will be able to position their telescopes to help us. What should I say to them?”

  “Tell them we are recording flashes on the surface of the moon where they should not exist. We should contact the Defense Department as well,” Egorin replied.

  “Do you think it might be an alien ship?” Golden asked eagerly, while bouncing up and down on her toes. She could already see herself standing next to Dr. Egorin and accepting an award for outstanding achievement as a rookie scientist.

  “I don’t want to speculate at this point. Let’s just stick to what we know. It’s an anomaly that blocks light and does not seem to be affected by asteroid strikes.”

  ***

  “Welcome back. I’m Joe Scarborough along with my cohost Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. We have been speaking with Dr. Egorin at NASA, who has confirmed that there is some sort of object on the dark side of the moon. No word on what it might be, but people are speculating that it might be an alien object of some sort. What can you tell us, Dr. Egorin?”

  “Please, just call me Melanie. We don’t know much more than you just mentioned. We certainly have not received any communications from the moon. We are receiving higher than normal energy readings though.”

  “Do you think some aliens saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and planted a giant monolith there as a joke?” quipped Scarborough.

  “No, not at all. But if they did, I don’t think we would like what they did next. I spoke with Admiral Orth from NORAD, and she mentioned that the Chinese sent a probe up to the moon last night.”

  “I didn’t know the Chinese scientists had been actively engaged in a moon mission.”

  “No one did,” said Egorin. “They just sprang it on us. I guess with everyone focused on what’s up there, they figured no one would complain about their plans.” What I can’t tell the public is that the Chinese observed an object that appeared to be a vehicle leaving the moon and heading to Earth, she thought.

  ***

  “Dr. Egorin, do you think the Chinese are telling us all they know?” asked Golden, worried that politics would interfere with information-sharing between the scientific communities of both countries.

  “Yes, because they are just as fearful as we are about what could be going on up there and what came to Earth,” Egorin replied emphatically. “Plus, they want our help, which is evident in how they engaged us. The Chinese gave us more info about the object that came toward Earth than they presented to the press. According to their telemetry, it appears to be some sort of manned craft. NORAD picked it up as well and tracked it into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia.”

  “Couldn’t it have been an asteroid or some other space rock?” Golden asked, searching for a more palatable alternative.

  “No, not at all. According to NORAD, the object changed direction and then decelerated before entering the water.”

  Dr. Egorin reviewed her notes. “Leslie, could you ask Kerry to come in,” she asked.

  Golden’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Carrie’s on vacation this week. She’s in Charleston at a blues festival.”

  “No, Kerry with a ‘K’. And ask him to bring in his binders. I want to document all the images of the lunar anomaly for future reference.” The section chief turned away and began pouring over the images on a screen in front of her.

  ***

  “This is Megyn Kelly in my new role at NBC News. I have breaking news this hour on the lunar mystery. The Chinese have reported that their rocket just released a satellite over the moon, and it is now in a stable orbit. After the completion of three orbits it found no unexpected objects or debris anywhere on either side of the moon. Their satellite detected high levels of energy and radiation on the far side, which is out of the ordinary for that area of the moon–or anywhere on the moon for that matter. I hate to disappoint the conspiracy theorists listening, but the lunar landing vehicles are there as expected.” Kelly laughed before taking a pause.

  “Okay, let’s get back to reality here,” said Kelly, scrawling on the papers in front of her, then looking directly into the camera. “We have Amy Hall from the NEOSSat observatory, Sarah Levin from the Spitzer observatory and Melanie Egorin from NASA– excuse me, that’s Dr. Egorin of NASA– who have all been involved in watching the skies over Earth. Thank you for joining the show.”

  “Happy to be here,” the three scientists chorused.

  “Dr. Egorin, I believe your team first spotted the anomaly.”

  “Please call me Melanie. Yes, my science fellow, Leslie Golden, alerted me to the finding during a review of the previous night’s logs. It showed that something had momentarily blocked out the stars from one of our telescopes that monitor the moon. Judging from our calculations, it had to be a pretty large object.”

  “We saw something similar,” Hall chimed in. “We have telescopes at a slightly different elevation, and we detected a large object moving into position on the far side of the moon where it remained for several days.”

  “I can concur on the sighting, as well,” interjected Levin. “We also monitored the Chinese satellite as they placed it into orbit. However, we ne
ver saw any object traveling from the moon towards Earth.”

  “If you consider that the event occurred during daylight hours in North America,” Hall said, “we had no ability to see anything from our land-based telescopes. Our space-based telescopes are designed to observe narrow areas of space. We had them pointed at both edges of the moon at the time they spotted the object, well out of the area of visibility to see what type of object came towards Earth. However, according to the trajectory given to us by the Chinese scientists, the alleged object started its journey from the southern tip of the moon.”

  “I don’t want to discount your findings, Amy, but we are beyond allegations at this point. A craft of some sort did travel to Earth from the moon, and it had to be of alien origin,” Levin insisted, eyeing Hall as she gave a little nervous laugh.

  “So you’re saying there are some aliens possibly walking around on our planet right now?” Kelly asked, arching her eyebrows.

  “We don’t have any evidence that there are aliens on the ground,” said Egorin. “But Admiral Orth, our contact at NORAD, informed us that she tracked a vehicle entering our atmosphere that later submerged below the waters off the coast of Canada.”

  “It could have just been a rock falling from space, right?” Kelly posited, throwing her hands up in disbelief.

  “No, not really,” replied Egorin, annoyance pinching her features. I do this for a living and this ‘journalist’ thinks she knows more than me because she reads Wikipedia, she scoffed inwardly.

  “Number one, an object, which we believe to be around the size of a greyhound bus, would have created a huge tidal wave upon entering the water, but it barely made a splash. Number two, after entering the water, the UFO, if I may call it that, changed course, dodging a whale and dived out of SONAR range. Number three, working with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) using one of their HROV vehicles, we tracked the UFO to a location off the coast of Puerto Rico at a depth of about 5,000 meters before the tracker was destroyed.”

  “The UFO destroyed the HROV? It didn’t crash into something or just run out of fuel?” Kelly asked.

  “Not according to their logs,” replied Egorin, leaning into the camera.

  “Sort of odd that their acronym is WHOI, not pronounced hooey, I’m sure. Well, you heard it here first on the Kelly File. Aliens visiting Earth. At least the part covered with water. After this commercial break, we will be back to get an update on the Big Foot sighting out of Saskatchewan.”

  Chapter 3

  Adar Goes to Earth

  Adar stood motionless against a wall in a Chicago alley, hiding in the shadows. He pushed his head against the wall behind him, attempting to force calm into his mind. Interplanetary jumps always left his brain jittery, with sparks flying like a live electrical cable scraping along a metal wall. His chaotic thoughts flashed back to the transporter room, where a medical officer fussed over him during last minute preparations before his deployment.

  “Adar, try to keep still. I did what I could for your face and head,” said Doctor Valera, giving him a final scan. “I can’t do much about your eyes.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” snapped Adar. “It’s the rest of you that have the problem.” He had no eyelids or eyelashes above the centimeter-wide optical slits that wrapped around his skull from the bridge of his pointed nose to just in front of his ears on both sides of his face. Tear ducts kept his eyes clear. Millions of tiny optical receptors gave him a thin, but wide field of view with an astonishing degree of both near- and farsighted vision. Adar also could see quite clearly in very low-light.

  “Maybe so, but your unique eyes will be noticeable to the people on the planet you are visiting unless you do something about them,” said Valera, frustrated by Adar’s cavalier arrogance.

  The doctor, a small, wizened female of indeterminate years, worked in the indoctrination department of the Andrea. She helped to ensure the health of new crewmembers who reported to the ship and prepared them for new environments when leaving the ship.

  “I’ll figure it out,” replied Adar, eager to start the mission. “Just place me in an alley near the location where the escapees landed, and make sure it’s dark out.”

  “I can take care of that,” said Krystyy, an operations officer waiting at the controls of the transporter to handle Adar’s descent to the Earth’s surface. “Now is a good time to go, if it’s okay with you, Valera.”

  “Just give me a minute. Here are some gloves to cover your hands,” said Valera. “Keep your collar up to hide the strong contours of your neck. I dyed your hair black and fashioned it like their faux-hawk style to cover your pointed head. The gene therapy I used to fade your facial and neck stripes should last you for a good while. Your skin now has a beige tone, which should allow you to move about unremarked among any of the racial groups on their planet. I could have done your entire body, but you would be more likely to suffer from negative side effects.”

  Adar gave her a sideways look as he put on the gloves and snarled at her. “Just back away, and let me get on with it.”

  “You can’t go down there and expose the fact that you’re from another planet. The captain doesn’t want the population to know they’re being monitored by aliens. You’re just supposed to kill or retrieve the escapees and get back without being discovered.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Valera,” said Adar, climbing onto the transporter platform. “If anyone discovers me, I’ll just kill them.”

  “You can’t just kill everyone,” Valera snapped.

  “Oooh, but I can, kill a lot,” said Adar, twisting his head to meet Valera’s eyes and bare his sharp teeth. “Doctor, just back away so Krystyy can send me there. I don’t need you to floss my teeth for me. The food there is a snack for later. Krystyy, let’s do this.”

  Valera stepped away from Adar and signaled Krystyy to proceed. The operations officer called up coordinates for an alley in the West Loop area of downtown Chicago, near the location where the Cheoili disappeared, and engaged the tech that dematerialized Adar and enabled him to travel to Earth in mere seconds.

  “That guy is so creepy,” said Krystyy, frowning in distaste. “You see the way he snarled at you when you tried to help him?”

  “Yeah, but if I needed help in a fight, he is definitely the one person I would want by my side,” the doctor replied, before leaving the transporter room and heading back to sickbay.

  ***

  On the darkened streets of Chicago, around the corner from where Adar materialized, two members of a local gang approached a teenager, intent on relieving the youth of his valuables.

  “Hey, kid, where you going?” asked one of the men.

  The scrawny teen walked along with his head down, sticking close to the buildings and away from the street lights that cast shadows across the litter-strewn sidewalk. A model student who focused on his books and avoided socializing with the miscreants who infested his neighborhood, Malcolm Stewart headed home a half-hour earlier from his job washing dishes at the hamburger joint near his school. Malcolm knew that hanging around dishonest people likely would lead to being involved in dishonest acts, and he wanted none of it.

  “I’m on my way home,” Malcolm told the husky gangbanger as he hurried along, not bothering to look back. “My mother’s waiting for me.”

  “You got anything for me?” asked the man, quickening his pace to catch Malcolm.

  “I don’t do drugs,” the teen retorted, walking even faster without actually running.

  “I know you don’t have drugs. I want your money.” The guy snorted, then made a grab for Malcolm. The youngster dodged the outstretched hand and broke into a sprint. Seeing his path ahead blocked by another gang member, Malcolm darted to the left down an alley in hopes of finding a door left open or some other hiding place. But after a few paces, he tripped on a discarded bottle and fell on his face. When he heard footsteps approach his sprawled body, fear crawled up the boy’s spine.

  I hate my li
fe. I do all the right things, and bad things still happen to me. I hope they don’t hurt me this time, he groaned inwardly.

  Honoring his mother’s guidance, Malcolm always played by the rules. He went to church every Sunday and treated strangers with respect. Still, he found himself the target of bullies at school and on the street. He believed, perhaps naively, that good behavior would be rewarded.

  ***

  Adar inhaled deeply through his nostrils to let the implanted filters do their job. He could smell the garbage in the alley and the stench of urine and animal excrement. As his eyes adjusted to his new surroundings, he could see small creatures, which his training enabled him to identify as rats, scurrying along the far wall. Bugs flittered in a florescent light over a doorway across the alley. Muggy heat that day exacerbated odors in the alley, a nauseating cocktail of reeking runoff from a nearby dumpster and oily drippings from cars that traversed the alley.

  Adar double-checked his appearance, ensuring that the long, black, microfiber coat he wore covered the handle of his spear and his rifle grip sufficiently. His black and grey patterned, long-sleeved shirt fit tightly across a muscular abdomen. Loose-fitting, black microfiber pants covered his lower limbs and the tops of his black boots. A black, metallic belt at his waist, held his spear and photon rifle in place and provided an anchor for his personal shield, which would keep him safe from weapons fire. He kept his universal connection device, or UCD, in his right pants pocket. It provided him with several capabilities, including the ability to contact his colleague, Wylyy, aboard the attack ship.

  Adar removed his gloves and placed his hands on the wall behind him so he could feel the texture of the bricks used to cover the façade of the building’s back wall. Crude building materials, he thought. He scraped at the bricks with his dense fingernails and examined the red dust collected there. I can’t imagine these buildings last very long. The odd distraction helped relieve Adar of his brain jitters, and he noticed the mugging in progress a few meters away.