Extinction Code

by James D. Prescott

  Chapter 67

  The humming sound had nearly reached its peak when Jack ran back to the pod room’s entrance. In a corner was Anna, trying to reattach one of her broken arms. Scattered around were the bodies of Sentinel agents, their glasses still lit with a blinding display. But they weren’t the only ones hurt. Mia emerged, shaking and covered in blood. A few paces away, Jack saw a large figure that looked a lot like Sven slumped over. He rushed over and pulled him back. Sven gazed up at him, his eyes filled with tears. Jack’s own eyes fell to the floor where he saw Tom, dead from two bullet wounds to the chest.

  The humming ended and that was when the rumbling began.

  “Pick him up,” Jack told Sven, nudging the big man’s shoulder when he didn’t respond. They needed to hurry for pod thirty-seven and hope that it was still working.

  Anna and the others were already heading in that direction. When they got there, Jack ordered Anna to open the pod door.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Dave.”

  Biting back the rising panic, Jack paused as the reference sank in. “Yes, good one, Anna, save it for later, would you?”

  “My apologies, Dr. Greer,” Anna said as she used her one good arm to activate the console and enter the command.

  Mia and Sven exchanged looks of fear and confusion.

  “She was quoting Hal 9000,” Jack explained as the glass door slid open.

  They piled inside as Anna plugged in the final commands. The shaking was getting worse. In the distance, water sloshed onto their level, racing toward the pod room. Anna tried to roll forward, but the pod entrance was a foot off the ground. She wasn’t going to make it in. But worse, the rover they’d attached her to was too large to fit inside. With water now gushing around their feet, Sven set Tom’s body down and grasped Anna by the shoulders and twisted her torso off the rover’s base. When she was inside, the glass door slid shut. Then a violent burst of g-forces followed as the pod shot up the tube. Soon they were out of the ship, bubbles roiling past their eyes. But it was only when they burst forth from the ocean and spotted the sun shining down on them that they truly felt safe. For Jack, he had never been happier to fly in all his life.

  Chapter 68

  USS Grapple

  Gulf of Mexico

  Jack and Mia stood on the deck of the salvage ship, USS Grapple. Military blankets were draped over their shoulders, steaming mugs in their hands. He sipped at his coffee, peering over to see what she was drinking.

  “Green tea,” she said, tilting the mug just enough for him to catch a glimpse of the light brown liquid.

  He smiled and went back to the blaze of beautiful colors cast off by the setting sun.

  Shortly after the pod had landed, a group of military men in hazmat suits had descended on them. Predictably, a battery of medical tests had followed. What lay ahead were the endless debriefings as the Navy sought to understand not only the full extent of what they had discovered on the ship, but also how things had gone so horribly wrong.

  Mia didn’t pretend to have answers to all of those questions. Besides, there were several she was still grappling with herself. Unsettling as some of their discoveries had been, it was clear that much of what we understood of human origins on this planet would need to be rewritten. And yet far from bringing the world closer together, Sentinel’s campaign of disinformation had only driven it further apart.

  But Sentinel hadn’t only sown dissent. They had taken the life of Tom, a man she hadn’t known for long. But what she knew of him, she had liked a great deal. At one time a member of Sentinel, Tom had had the strength to challenge his faith in that corrupt organization and lay down his life for a noble cause he believed in. She knew Jack had felt a similar respect for Commander Hart.

  A hatch opened and out came Rajesh, Anna nestled in the crook of his arm. If someone didn’t know any better, they might mistake him for a ventriloquist.

  “We owe you one,” Jack told her.

  Anna’s face brightened as she reached out with her new arm. “We are even, Dr. Greer.”

  “Even? How so?”

  Her expression grew serious. “It was largely through our interactions that I began mapping alternate neural pathways, discovering areas of myself I did not know existed.”

  “For better or for worse, I think we all left a bit of ourselves down there,” Mia said, distinctly aware of the weight she would carry for what she had done to Brooks, even if it had been in self-defense.

  “It’s called growing up,” Jack told Anna, lifting his mug to her in a silent cheers.

  Rajesh nodded his thanks as well. “The Navy has offered to help get Anna back on her feet, so to speak. No strings attached.”

  “What does that mean?” Mia wondered.

  He bobbed his head and grinned. “I’m not sure, but I suppose the two of us will soon find out.”

  They turned and headed back inside, leaving Jack and Mia alone once again.

  “There’s an old adage that for every answer you receive three more questions arise,” Jack said, feeling the sun’s warmth wash over him.

  Mia laughed. “Story of my life. You starting to have regrets?”

  He thought about it. “Right now, only one, although others are bound to follow.”

  “Really? And what’s that?” She peered at him through narrowed eyes.

  Jack leaned in slightly, tilting his head. And for a brief moment, Mia wondered if he was about to kiss her.

  Instead, he said, “I wanna know why. Why an advanced race would bother with all of this. The ship, wiping out an entire biosphere eons ago, only to repopulate the earth. I’ve been racking my brain and can’t come up with a single explanation that makes any sense. And for some reason I just know the answer was somewhere on that ship.” His gaze fell. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  Mia’s eyes sparkled as a grin formed on her soft lips. “Maybe the answer hasn’t been lost.” She held her battered USB key before him. “Maybe the answer is right here.”

  Chapter 69

  The Pentagon

  Washington, D.C.

  The Emergency Conference Room inside the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center was unusually spacious. Rectangular and with thirty-foot ceilings, it seemed almost wasteful that the only furniture present was a long oak table—a remnant from the Truman era—along with a dozen or so leather chairs. The lighting here was dim, some of it pooling in the corners, the rest strung low over the men in uniform waiting patiently to begin the briefing. Hung on the walls were enormous display screens packed with maps of the United States and the world.

  Secretary of Defense Ford Myers, only just recently back from his time in the Gulf of Mexico, sat at the head of the table, drumming the fingers of one hand, sipping an espresso with the other. When he was finished, Myers deposited the mug, dabbed the edges of his mouth and stared out at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “I’m ready.”

  General James F. Dunham cleared his throat and began. “At zero eight hundred hours today, NASA satellites detected a small gamma ray burst emanating from the planet’s surface.”

  “Yes, I’m aware,” Secretary Myers replied, pushing his mug off to the side, making sure the spoon stayed squarely on the saucer. “The USO was lost shortly after that. Fell into a chasm, I believe.”

  Always the consummate professional, General Dunham squared his shoulders and carried on. “The burst I’m referring to came after that and was a localized event.”

  Myers wasn’t annoyed anymore, he was confused. “Are you saying we’ve got another USO on our hands?”

  “I’m afraid so, Mr. Secretary,” Dunham replied. “This time we determined the blast wave’s area of effect was less than fifty miles. We believe it’s in the beginning stages.”

  “Where’s it located?”

  “Greenland,” General Dunham said. “So far satellite imagery hasn’t revealed an object. Our best guess is that it’s buried somewhere under the ice sheet.”

  The Secretary swore and rubbed th
e palms of his hands up and down his forehead. “Do we have any more information on the individuals who gained access to the USO by impersonating Naval Intelligence officers?”

  A crack appeared in Dunham’s steely composure. The other generals looked on, expressionless, although their deep embarrassment was on full display for anyone who knew how to spot such feelings on hardened men.

  “We’re working on that,” Dunham said, clearly anticipating the response that was to come.

  “Not good enough, General. A group of terrorists—because that’s what they were, terrorists—managed to enter a restricted, top-secret area and steal invaluable technology right from under our noses. You’re not going to tell me they didn’t have help on the inside. We need to know how they did it and we need to know now.”

  Dunham clicked his teeth with annoyance. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, you have my word. But there’s something else you need to know, Mr. Secretary. Something more important than the infiltration.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Myers said, his tone spelling out his suspicions clearly enough. If the generals thought they could distract him from their incompetence, they had another thing coming.

  General Dunham produced a black and white photograph and passed it down along the chain of generals on his side of the table. When it arrived before Secretary Myers, he plucked the glasses from his inside jacket pocket, slid them on and peered down at the image. “What the hell am I looking at?”

  “Voyager One, sir. Launched in 1977. It left our solar system sometime in 2012. She is now travelling through interstellar space and expected to reach the nearest star system sometime in the next forty thousand years. She does periodically peer back at earth, however, and send us a snapshot or two. The scientists’ idea of keeping us humble, I suppose. The image you’re looking at was taken twenty-four hours ago.”

  Secretary Myers stared long and hard. Slowly, his eyes began to make sense of the smudges of light set against the dark interstellar background. And as that happened, his gaze was drawn to one particular part of the image. A blemish, larger than the others, closer. Then all at once, the realization struck him with sudden and overwhelming force, the shock so powerful it was enough to make the blood drain from his face. Even the caffeine-fueled anger once pumping through his veins dissipated like a fine mist.

  Without needing to be told, Myers now understood the reason for the general’s deep concern. The object in the photograph was silver, shaped like a giant diamond, and headed straight for earth.

  Real life versus fiction

  While Extinction Code is a work of fiction, several of the elements that went into building the story were drawn directly from newspaper headlines and magazine articles as well as from medical and academic journals. Here are just a few.

  Drilling the impact crater:

  In 2016, an international team of scientists descended on the Chicxulub impact crater in the Yucatán Peninsula. This was the location where sixty-five million years ago a meteor struck the planet and ended life not only for the dinosaurs, but for seventy-five percent of the species on earth. Their goal was to drill down into one of the ‘peak rings’ to learn more about what happened in the days and years following the meteor strike. To my knowledge, no expedition has ever set out in search of the meteorite itself.

  Galactic Cosmic Rays:

  Cosmic rays are bursts of high-energy particles originating from outside of our solar system. Although the source is still somewhat unclear, many scientists believe they are created by supernovae. Since they contain radiation, direct exposure to cosmic rays can alter segments of our DNA and lead to health issues. Astronauts working in space often reported seeing flashes of light whenever their eyes were closed. The cause was eventually attributed to cosmic ray particles striking their optic nerves. Such rays also pose a challenge for the prospect of long-distance manned spaceflight. In the future, spacecraft hoping to travel the vast distances between stars will require some form of shielding against various forms of radiation.

  Sentinel:

  For a variety of reasons, there are several groups and prominent individuals who believe that contact with an intelligent alien species might lead to humanity’s demise. Among them is theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who suggested recently that “meeting an advanced civilization could be like Native Americans encountering Columbus. That didn’t turn out so well.” In my research, I also came across an organization called Lifeboat which seeks ways to mitigate the impact of future extinction-level events. In regards to first contact, they say, “We are against any efforts to purposely provide our technological level and location to potentially hostile aliens.”

  Silencing chromosomes:

  As with the fictional Salzburg, scientists using gene therapy have recently learned to ‘muzzle’ the extra chromosome (twenty-one) which causes Down syndrome using a gene called XIST. In women, XIST is used to silence one of the two X chromosomes they carry, a built-in function which made repurposing the gene that much easier.

  Office for Outer Space Affairs:

  Yes, it sounds made up, but it really exists and is actually part of the UN (not the US). The full name is the UNOOSA (United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs). The department’s staff is larger than one person (sorry, Eugene) and also deals with more than the prospect of first contact. See the UN’s website for any additional information.

  MAOA gene:

  The ‘warrior gene’ is real and exists largely as it was described in the book. However, more research is needed in the area of human aggression to fully understand the interplay between genetic and environmental influences.

  Magma pockets beneath impact craters:

  Large enough asteroid impacts on earth, like the one in Sudbury, Canada, have been known to create pockets of magma beneath the earth’s surface, forming what is known as an igneous intrusion.

  Prosimians:

  It should come as no surprise that several debates are currently raging within the field of primate origins. Identifying animals from the fossil record that look and behave like modern primates is easy. The challenge for most scientists is that the links between distant primate ancestors becomes more and more tenuous, especially since there was an explosion of mammalian species in the years following the extinction of the dinosaurs.

  So if anyone claims they can draw a precise line from proto-primates through to Homo sapiens, you should be very skeptical. As additional species are uncovered, however, that picture will become clearer.

  The number 37:

  In a peer-reviewed work entitled “The ‘Wow! Signal’ of the Terrestrial Genetic Code,” scientists Vladimir I. Shcherbak and Maxim A. Makukov have suggested there are mysterious patterns of mathematical symmetry within the human genome. They’ve identified at least nine occasions in which the number thirty-seven occurs. They believe this lends weight to the idea that humans were bio-engineered by an intelligent species.

  Similarly, other scientists such as Paul Davies have argued for a concept called ‘Biological SETI,’ the idea being that if humans were engineered by an advanced alien species, signs of such a manipulation would likely reside in our DNA.

  Thank you for reading Extinction Code

  Book 1 in the Ancient Origins Series!

  I really hope you enjoyed it!

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  Book 2 in the Ancient Origins Series

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