by Ian Douglas
“Mark?”
“Mm?”
“Do you have anybody waiting for you, back home?”
“I’m not supposed to. But . . . yeah. There’s someone.”
“I hope you can get back together with her.” She sounded . . . disappointed.
Her question, however, raised a new worry for Hunter, something even more immediate than . . . that.
Nearby, against bright stars, a dark gray rock floated in the Void. It had showed up shortly after Hillenkoetter arrived at Zeta 1, a lone sentinel twenty miles across, keeping watch.
A Xaxki Guardian.
“I’ll be happier,” Hunter said, “after we shake that thing. I wouldn’t want them to be nervous about us.”
As if in reply, an overhead speaker announced, “All hands, all hands, prepare for immediate departure.”
And, moments later, the Hillenkoetter and her escort cruiser folded local space-time around themselves and departed for Earth.
Epilogue
Gerri’s apartment was occupied by someone else, an older man who grumbled at Hunter’s intrusion. She’d left no forwarding address, and no one seemed to know where she’d gone. Hunter even flashed his Navy ID at a desk sergeant with the San Diego Police Department, told him he was with Navy Intelligence, and asked for police help in tracking her down.
All of the SDPD’s computer resources, all of the California State Police records, everything came up empty. There was not even a record of her vehicle registration or driver’s license.
What the hell?
It was as if she’d disappeared right off the face of the Earth . . . and Hunter began to wonder if that was exactly what had happened to Gerri Galanis. Someone had been following him ever since a TR-3B had silently and gently delivered him to the Groom Lake airbase. Had They—the invisible but ever-present and sinister They—done something to her?
If they had, there was going to be an accounting.
“I think, sir,” Hunter had told Rear Admiral Kelsey, “that the MIBs have abducted my girlfriend. I mean, we got back to Earth just two days after we left, thanks to a bit of time traveling, right? And she’s gone without a trace. I want to know what happened.”
He knew as he said it how paranoid he sounded. But, damn it, there was no other reasonable explanation! A person doesn’t just vanish in two days, right down to her driver’s license and her credit history.
To his surprise, Kelsey actually took him seriously . . . but then the older SEAL had to explain things to him. “You did sign papers promising not to seek . . . entanglements with people outside of Solar Warden,” Kelsey said.
“First off, we were already ‘entangled.’ Regardless, that has nothing to do with it. Go ahead and court martial me, sir . . . but in the meantime a young woman has been abducted or scared into hiding and I want her found! Who did it?”
“I don’t know, son,” Kelsey said. “And I do wish I could help you. But you must realize by now that there’s a kind of low-level war going on.”
“Between the Nordics and the Saurians. Yes, sir, I know all about that!”
“Not just them. Some of the wilder conspiracy theorists are right. Saurian influence has penetrated quite deeply into the halls of government. And not just in DC either. London. Moscow. Beijing . . .”
“You’re saying dinosaurs are running the planet now?” The idea, crazy as it sounded, somehow almost made sense.
“Not entirely—the Saurians can only pull their strings with human help. But there are agencies within the government, especially among the intelligence agencies, that have been deeply compromised. And, as always, it never seems like the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.”
Like the Xaxki, Hunter thought. No one knows what the hell is going on.
“If it’s any consolation, Mark, I doubt very much that this young lady—Gerri is her name?—that Gerri was killed.”
“She’d better not have been. Damn it, she doesn’t know anything!”
“Most abductees are kept alive, cared for, used for genetic research.”
“That doesn’t relieve me, sir. I’ve seen a few of them, Admiral. Those bastards had 315 humans crammed into bottles breathing green goop. Some of them had been kept alive inside those things for years, awake and aware! Fifty-nine of them had breakdowns of one sort or another after we rescued them. Eighteen are so deeply comatose we may never get them back. What they went through out at Zeta Retic—that’s not living, sir. It’s more like hell!”
He considered, too, that even those rescued civilians were now at Darkside on the Moon, their legal status the subject of considerable debate. Would they ever be allowed back into the general population?
“Like I said, I wish I could help you,” Kelsey said. He frowned for a moment. “There is one thing you might do . . .”
“Name it, sir.”
“This won’t help Gerri directly, but it will put you in a better position to track her down. We’re now taking part in a planetwide secret operation called Divine Guidance.”
“Okay . . .”
“Divine Guidance is a Navy, Marine, and Talis project helping to defuse tensions between nations all around the world, and to reduce the risk of a nuclear calamity. The Talis, remember, are terrified that we’re going to annihilate ourselves, which would kind of wreck the time line for them, y’know? Come with me on the next op. You’ll get a higher security classification out of it, and you’ll meet some people who are in the fight against the shadow government. The Saurians.”
“Okay,” Hunter said, not hesitating. “I’m in.”
Four days later, Hunter filed off a bus inside a hangar at S4, along with seven Grays, two Talis, Kelsey, and a couple of other humans.
He didn’t get to see the spacecraft from the outside, as he was hustled up a ramp in the ship’s belly. He’d assumed it would be a TR-3R, but the control deck, he saw, was larger, empty of furnishings, and circular. Shortly after boarding, the ship drifted out of the hangar, then accelerated into the crisp, blue desert skies of Southern Nevada.
And moments later, the ship descended out of the clouds over a dark and viciously rugged landscape—sheer mountains and twisting valleys. Hunter stood by one of the flat, oval ports, watching the unforgiving terrain drift by.
It looked . . . familiar. Hauntingly so.
And then he saw why.
Hunkered down on a barren, boulder-strewn slope, was a handful of men, heavily armed, sheltering beneath ghillie suit camouflage, monitoring various high-tech gadgets, including the bulk of an AN/PED-1. The ship was close to them—less than a hundred feet. Even so, they would have been invisible if not for the fact that the saucer’s technology was letting him see past the camo ghillie suits, and let him see what was down there.
And with a jolting shock of recognition, Hunter realized exactly what he was seeing.
One of the people down there was staring back up at Hunter with his mouth hanging comically open, binoculars pressed to his eyes. Grinning to himself—literally—Hunter raised a hand, a silent greeting and acknowledgment.
And then the ship had passed, leaving eight heavily camouflaged Navy SEALs behind.
He’d not been aware that they’d slipped back in time while crossing the distance between Nevada and North Korea.
In position, a Gray thought to the others.
“Very well,” Kelsey said. “Engage the device.”
Hunter couldn’t see what was going on, but he heard a deep thrum coming up from somewhere belowdecks. Ahead, Mantapsan loomed above a secret North Korean weapons testing base. Unimaginable energies beamed from the saucer to Earth to a cavern deep beneath the earth where North Korean weapons of titanic destructive power had been tested, gouging out a vast submountain chamber.
Manipulated from the saucer, the cavern collapsed, bringing down much of the mountain with it.
As awed as he was by just seeing himself, he was also livid.
“What the fuck did you send us in there for?” Hunter demanded
of Kelsey. “There was no need for our mission! You knew this ship would show up to take care of it!”
“Actually, there was a need,” Kelsey said quietly. “We needed you and your team to go in and watch us destroy the mountain, then exfiltrate and tell us that we’d been successful. Our Gray allies knew the operation would be a success because you and your team told us it was. That’s the only way they would agree to it.”
“With respect, sir, that makes no sense at all!”
Kelsey shrugged. “It worked. Not long after this, North Korea did a complete about-face and offered to give up its nukes. Turns out they saw this ship, a few of them, and they were terrified. An exceptional outcome, and a necessary one.”
“How many of them were killed, sir? How many of those slave laborers were killed inside that mountain?”
“That was regrettable, of course. It was also necessary in order to shut down Kim’s nuclear playground. There was no other way.” Kelsey hesitated, then looked Hunter in the eyes. “Carrying out military operations across time can be . . . challenging. But it offers advantages you simply can’t win any other way.”
Hunter wondered if Kelsey might not be giving him an unspoken hint, just a shred of hope, that he would be able to find Gerri after all. With time travel anything was possible.
Including, he thought, rescuing her from Saurian-influenced agents of the US government.
“Hillenkoetter is refitting on the Moon,” Kelsey told him. “The review board gave its okay for the Big-H time-traveling to Aldebaran to meet up with those three cruisers out there. You still want to come along?”
“I didn’t know I had a choice, sir. But . . . yes, I would.”
“Outstanding.”
One of the Grays gave a command, and the saucer accelerated into space and time. Hunter would return to his command, the battle-tested 1-JSST. Next stop . . . another star. Aldebaran.
But when he returned he would find Gerri.
Somehow, somewhen, he would find Gerri.
About the Author
IAN DOUGLAS is one of the many pseudonyms for writer William H. Keith, New York Times bestselling author of the popular military science fiction series The Inheritance Trilogy, The Heritage Trilogy, The Legacy Trilogy, The Star Corpsman series, The Andromedan Dark series, and The Star Carrier series. A former Navy Hospital Corpsman, he lives in Pennsylvania.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Ian Douglas
Star Carrier
Earth Strike
Center of Gravity
Singularity
Deep Space
Dark Matter
Deep Time
Dark Mind
Bright Light
Andromedan Dark
Altered Starscape
Darkness Falling
Star Corpsman
Bloodstar
Abyss Deep
The Galactic Marines Saga
The Heritage Trilogy
Semper Mars
Luna Marine
Europa Strike
The Legacy Trilogy
Star Corps
Battlespace
Star Marines
The Inheritance Trilogy
Star Strike
Galactic Corps
Semper Human
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
alien secrets. Copyright © 2020 by William H. Keith Jr. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
Digital Edition JULY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-282539-1
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-282538-4
Cover design by Amy Halperin
Cover illustration by Gregory Bridges
Harper Voyager and the Harper Voyager logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
HarperCollins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers in the United States of America and other countries.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com