Deep Star

by Jerry Ahern

  As three sedans rounded the block, Croenberg flipped his cigarette into the street and said, “I’ll see you upstairs, but you won’t see me,” and turned to go inside.

  The three non-descript sedans parked next to the curb and Sarah Mann stepped from the rear passenger compartment of the second, along with two of Wolfgang’s security detail; all three vehicles left immediately. The security personnel were in business casual clothes and Sarah was dressed in blue jeans and a pullover with a matching baseball cap and large sun shades. She did not look like the First Lady of New Germany, not at all.

  When she saw Paul coming to her, she smiled. Wrapping her in a bear hug, Paul squeezed harder than he meant to, and Sarah let out a ‘huff’ of breath. Stepping back he said, “I’m sorry Sarah, I didn’t mean to squeeze so hard. It’s just that seeing you here right now...” He stifled what almost was a whimper.

  “Where else would I be, Paul?” She said. “Take me to our darlings, please.” Her two-man security detail and six of the Secret Service agents drifted around them as they headed inside. “Security is tight, I see.”

  Paul nodded. “Precautionary. The bastards who took the kids were captured. Most of this is to ensure your privacy, Sarah. It’s not like the old days when we could come and go as we chose. I’m glad this is a ‘secret’ visit. The fewer people who know you’re here the better.”

  “I know,” she said. “Sometimes, I find I actually miss those days... or parts of them anyway.” A short ride up the elevator and a short walk down the hall, Sarah stuck her head into a large double room and said, “Well, look who’s here.”

  Calls of “Grandma!” erupted as Paul closed the door behind her. Moments later, Annie came walking up the corridor with cups of coffee. “Your Mom’s inside,” Paul said. “She just got here.”

  Annie frowned. “Is she okay? She’s been on my mind for the last two hours.”

  Paul shrugged. “Seems to be... your intuition kicking in again?”

  Annie shrugged back. “I don’t know, maybe it’s just the stress of the kids and what we’ve all been through.” Paul opened the door for her and followed her inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sarah was with Emma; the news of John Rourke’s disappearance had stunned her.

  Michael and Natalia sat in the living room of the Presidential mansion; their children asleep upstairs. Michael was reading the reports from the Office of Emergency Management; the hantavirus outbreak was reaching critical mass.

  Natalia stretched as she stood up from the couch and stepped around the coffee table on which Michael had spread out the half dozen reports. She said, “Michael, I told you I knew the Soviet Union began a bioweapons program in the 1920s but that during and after the Second World War, Stalin continued to work on his biological weapons.”

  Michael looked up. “Yes, you told me that.”

  She nodded. “I know there were several biological research facilities throughout the Soviet Union. Over the years, these were known to have weaponized and stockpiled several bio-agents and pursued basic research on many more. Could they have involvement in this new epidemic?”

  “It sure looks that way,” he said. “What gets me is the genetic manipulations; did the Russians do research on that?”

  She shrugged. “Not much before the Night of the War, but since... I just don’t know. What about that extermination plan John was working on before the trip to Mount Rushmore?”

  “It begins tomorrow,” Michael said, sitting back deeper into the couch cushions; fatigue evident on his face. “National Guard and the Office of Emergency Management are coordinating on the procedures. They seem pretty confident that can wipe out the VBBs. Dr. Kirby is stumped on how they were genetically engineered, but they don’t exist it nature. Part Lord Howe Island stick insect, part Rocky Mountain Locust, part scorpion, and they can fly.”

  “How do we fight them?” She asked.

  “Kirby says we’re lucky, the original three different species have one thing in common: all three prefer to nest underground in burrows. This new beastie does also. Kirby says that on an individual scale, we can step on them like a cockroach; provided you’re wearing heavy shoes or boots.”

  “But how do we deal with so many?” she asked, her lips turned down in a frown and her brow furrowed with thought.

  “With a population density like we’re looking at... we have to burn them out,” Michael said. “That’s what Dad was working on with Lancer. They were modifying regular energy weapons, changing them into flamethrowers. We have enough now to launch the attack on the bugs and Randall Walls thinks he knows where to find them. I just hope he’s right.”

  Fifty National Guardsmen were gathered at the Lancer test range. Six long tables were set up with what looked like eight regular energy weapons laid out on each table, about twenty feet behind each of the firing stations. A hundred yards down range sat a series of targets.

  Jim Downey, the primary instructor, picked up one of the black rifles from a table and walked to the firing line. “Good morning, this will be your first class on this weapon. We at Lancer are proud to be a part of this operation.” He turned downrange, flipped the activation switch to on and made some small adjustments.

  Shouldering the weapon and taking aim, he squeezed the trigger. A stream of green fire erupted in an arch from the muzzle; it traveled down range to impact on a stack of wooden pallets. Intense red/orange flames shot skyward. He placed the weapon on safe before turning to the first group of trainees.

  “This started its life as a standard energy rifle,” Downey said. “But it wasn’t suited to this mission.” He pointed to a small device in front of the receiver. “I made this component to correct the problem, it’s a frequency modulator. A standard energy weapon sends an individual bolt of high energy downrange; it is modulated plasma, modulated and set at very high range. That setting is necessary for accuracy, almost at a pinpoint level.”

  “We had to go back and reverse-engineer the ‘problem’ the original designers had to overcome. In the beginning, they struggled with how to increase the ‘flow’ of energy to a ‘usable projectile’ of energy. That was what was so time consuming in the original design; how it functioned. Understand?”

  No one seemed to.

  “Look,” Downey said. “They started with a flow and improved it to a pulse; the opposite of what we need. With this modulator, I reduced those individual bolts, or pulses, of high energy back to a stream of lower energy plasma; lower energy but higher temperature. That means instead of single bolts of high energy, the weapon is capable of generating a continuous stream of energy of high temperature plasma. You don’t have the long range accuracy or the impact devastation, but you have blistering heat, approaching 2,000 degrees that can be sprayed like a stream of water.”

  “That’ll melt the barrel, won’t it?” one of the National Guard sergeants asked.

  “Watch again,” Downey said as he aimed and pulled the trigger; the jet of plasma energy leaped from the barrel again. “The flame doesn’t start until the stream has already left the barrel by two, two and a half feet. Neither you or the weapon will be exposed to the high temperature.”

  “So, there’s no danger to the operator,” the sergeant said.

  “Not from the weapon, this is a proven design with proven technology. All we really did...” He thought about a proper analogy. “We didn’t change ammo, just how it functions.”

  “How about the capacity, how long will one weapon function if it starts out fully charged?” another Guardsman asked.

  “On continuous stream, probably fifteen minutes. Use short, controlled streams, double... even triple that,” Downy said. “It uses the same energy pack currently in use to power the energy rifle. All of you are familiar with the base weapon already. To reload, it just takes a few seconds and you’re back at full charge, ready to start over again.”

  Downy continued, “Once we solved the flow problem, we didn’t have to fabricate or recreate a weapon th
at none of you are familiar with or have any experience with. This design eliminated the bulky, heavy fuel backpack, plus the nozzle and igniter contraption from the old style flamethrower.”

  “This module only increases the normal weight of the weapon by about three-quarters of an ounce. And we’ve eliminated the time involved in training people to safely operate this weapon platform. If you can spray a water hose, you can operate this weapon.”

  Someone from the back of the crowd asked, “What happens if it becomes necessary to switch back to the regular energy rifle? Or, are we going to have to carry both weapons?”

  Downey shook his head. “Not at all, all we have to do is remove the modulator and the weapon returns to its normal functioning. That can be done in the field by the operator, without any special tools and only about ten minutes of training. Now, who wants to try it first?”

  Thirty minutes later, all of the Guardsmen had fired and qualified on the weapon. The next class of Guardsmen arrived as the first class boarded buses to return to base.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  It took Randall Walls hours to lay out the search pattern; in addition to Oahu, there were seven other main islands. Hawaii, Maui, Kahoolawe, Lanai, Molokai, Kauai and Niihau and over a 150 separate islands in the Hawaiian chain. The total came to almost 6,500 square miles, not including uninhabited islets, rocks, coral reefs, and atolls.

  On Oahu alone, he had activated almost thirty local agencies in response to such an outbreak; the Capital City Fire and Police Departments, County Sheriff’s Offices and School Districts, County Health Departments, Air Quality, and Emergency Management to mention a few. Add to that mix the Red Cross, pharmacies, medical examiners, hospitals, and the rest; it added up pretty quickly.

  Days earlier, General Sullivan, the Chief of Staff, had asked General Rodney Thorne if he thought he could fly the captured UFO. Thorne had said he could, but one of the super brains is going to “have to tell me how to turn the damn thing on and take off. Frankly, I don’t have a clue.”

  That evening, after much thought, Thorne still didn’t have a clue but he did have a hunch. He drove back to the hanger, flashed his ID to the guard and saw Dr. Dalton, the Senior Flight Surgeon, bent over a table studying files. Thorne climbed the steps that led to the UFO’s hatch, sat down in the pilot’s seat, thinking, Okay, let’s see if this works.

  Swiveling the seat around, he sat there looking at the blank control panel. “Feels right,” he said aloud. “Feels right.” When he reached out with his left hand and laid it on the surface of the panel, nothing happened. He moved his right hand and laid it on the surface; still nothing. He pulled them back and sat there for a moment, thinking. Then he had laid both hands at the same time on the panel and thought, On.

  Right in front of him a holographic image sprang into view, he had jerked back in surprise. The image vanished. “Whoa, I didn’t expect that,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants’ leg. He did it again and the image returned; this time he left his hands in place. He thought, Systems, and data began to stream across the hologram. That’s good, it is in English. The order of the data was different from what he was used to but it was all there. Taking a deep breath, he thought, Remain on standby.

  He went to the hatch and hollered for Dalton, “Doc, have you got a camera?”

  “In my office.”

  Thorne ordered, “Get it and come in here, hurry. Make sure the camera has good batteries and a new memory card.” Less than ten minutes later Dalton returned with the camera, slightly out of breath. Thorne sat back down and said, “Get the camera ready and watch this.” Placing his hands again on the panel he thought, Resume. The holographic image sprang into being.

  “Holy crap,” Dalton exclaimed. “How did you do that?”

  “See if it registers on the camera,” was all Thorne said.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  “Then start taking pictures, damn it. Don’t use the flash.” For the next thirty minutes, Thorne ran through the program, Dalton snapped pictures until Thorne thought he had seen it all. Finally Thorne thought, Off. The image faded and he swiveled the pilot seat around. Sweat glistened across his forehead as he said, “Whew, did it work?”

  Dalton reviewed the images and nodded. “How did you figure it out?”

  Thorne wiped his face and smiled. “I kept thinking about what you said the other day, ‘It was as if the pilot had to wear’ the craft to fly it. I couldn’t shake the idea but I couldn’t see each craft being designed for individual pilots. It had to be simpler than that. Flying is flying... we were over thinking the way to do it; I just simplified the thinking process.”

  The next day, Thorne and Dalton briefed the Chief of Staff, General Sullivan, on their progress. Sullivan said, “I have to get back to headquarters. I will expect a full briefing from you tomorrow.’”

  The next day, after Dalton had left the briefing, Sullivan told Thorne, “We don’t have anything in our arsenal that has its flight or weapons capabilities. One ship may not be enough to stop an invasion, but it could be a hell of a surprise for the invaders. It could buy us a little time.”

  Since that day, Thorne had spent hours in the cockpit of the “flying egg.” Using the visual display, he was able to locate the cloaking system and the weapons system. He was now comfortable that he could fly it. Sullivan insisted, “In everyone’s view, we have to keep any flights secret.”

  “Though difficult to detect cloaked, it was detected. Through more luck than skill, Randall Walls and Paul Rubenstein did it. They realized the ‘patterns’ were flight paths of unknown and cloaked air craft. That discovery led to the Battle at the Forest where Rubenstein almost died.”

  The first flight had gone reasonably well; the hardest part for Thorne had been learning to keep both hands in position on the control panel. He was used to a stick in one hand, thrust control in the other and controlling directional maneuvering with his feet. Thorne had to sit relatively still and control the flight with his thoughts. It had taken time “getting used” to the change.

  Once, he had unconsciously moved his hands and lost control of the craft. That sent him spiraling downward almost 3,000 thousand feet before he regained control. After the flight, he had told the General, “It would almost be easier to have someone who’s never flown to learn this craft. I have to unlearn just about everything I have been doing all these years.”

  “Yes,” the General had agreed. “But once you get the ‘hang’ of this thing, your combat experience will be invaluable. A computer geek used to playing combat games would have an easier time in the beginning but they wouldn’t know what to do when the shit hits the fan.”

  Thorne and Dr. Dalton had come up with what they hoped would be a fix. They would superglue Velcro straps onto the control panel for Thorne’s hands. They felt those straps would provide a physical reminder for Thorne to “keep your hands were they’re supposed to be.”

  Today, they would find out if it would work; it was time for the second cloaked flight of the alien craft.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The list of equipment John Rourke had asked Paul to retrieve from the Retreat before the Mount Rushmore operation had been lengthy. Except for a few... a very few private collectors—technological equipment from the mid twentieth century did not exist. Even at Mid-Wake, the obsolete equipment had long ago been discarded in favor of changing technology. There simply had been no room in the confines of Mid-Wake for non-essentials.

  When Paul and his “crew”—John Michael, Timothy and John Paul—returned from the Retreat, they brought back old style computers; some that operated on the old floppy discs, others that processed punch cards, old operating systems that covered a wide variety of out of date systems and even old wire recorders. After all, the unknown data and artifacts from the Hall of Records potentially were stored on technology that simply no longer existed.

  Rourke’s fear was they might be able to retrieve it but, depending on how it was stored, might not be ab
le to decipher the data.

  Paul had given the “haul” to Jose Zima and his computer nerds. They were to get the equipment functional and start the recovery of data. Zima and his crew had worked for days cleaning and refurbishing the mechanical components.

  “Luckily,” Zima had told Paul after he examined the equipment, “From what I can see, the storage conditions at John’s Retreat seem to have been ideal. I don’t see anything that causes me concern. We’ll have a few components I’m sure that we may have to fabricate, but mostly just a good cleaning and this stuff should work as well as it ever did. It is amazing that in today’s world we have to rely on technology over a half millennium old to find out information.”

  The Hall of Records data was examined; some of the information had been lost. The old style paper that had been used for printed materials had suffered badly. The porcelain plates, floppy discs and electronically recorded data were in the best shape; particularly those dictated onto the wire recorder system.

  Zima told the President’s representative for Cultural Conservation, Dr. Adam Levine, “Wire recorders date back to the late 1890s. They were used for dictation and telephone recording and were made for many decades. The brief heyday of wire recording was from 1946 to 1954, particularly by the government. There were some home entertainment applications, but that did not last very long. While phonograph records could accommodate only a few minutes of audio on each side of a vinyl disc, the steel wire could be repeatedly re-recorded and allowed much longer recordings to be made.”

  “The wire was also a much more compact storage medium than magnetic tape. They were used in aircraft cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders in the early 1940s. The steel wire was compact, robust and more heat-resistant than plastic-based magnetic tape, and wire recorders were used to record data in satellites and other unmanned spacecraft, from the 1950s to the 1970s. The heavy-duty recorders used large spools and could record hours of conference or meeting minutes. This is where the majority of ‘relevant’ material in our search was found.”