by S. A. Beck
When General Corbin suggested he come down and visit him at his current posting in Virginia, General Meade ground his teeth. Another long flight that the bureaucrats in Washington would want justified. Well, hang them. It was important, and Corbin obviously didn’t want to talk over the phone any more than he did.
Two days later, General Meade was passing through the gates of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Barracks stood in long rows off to one side, and a large warehouse on the other side lay open as mechanics worked on several tanks. The road led through the base, past columns of jogging soldiers and a row of artillery being towed away by Hummers, probably to the gunnery range that General Meade knew was attached to the base.
Meade parked his government rental car in front of the administration building and checked in at the front desk. The sergeant on duty gave him a sloppy salute that Meade decided to ignore. The sergeant was Air Force, Meade was Army. The different branches of service had deep-seated rivalries, something Meade thought was stupid and dangerous.
Conflict between different agencies in both the civilian government and the armed forces had led to numerous security lapses over the years, including 9/11, and some fumbled battles in overseas wars, not to mention countless millions of wasted dollars. General Corbin had been the man to teach him that all branches of service needed to work together for the good of the country.
Back when Meade was a rising young officer stationed at White Sands, he got a lot of ribbing for being one of the few Army officers on an Air Force base, but none of that ribbing ever came from Corbin. He had always welcomed soldiers from other branches of the military, saying they all needed to work together.
That welcoming attitude did not extend to members of the civilian government. Like many high-ranking officers, Meade included, Corbin didn’t trust the spooks from the CIA or the rednecks from ATF. People shouldn’t have military powers unless they had military training.
After going through security, General Meade was led to General Corbin’s office and was ushered inside.
Corbin was much as he remembered him—a rugged, aging Vietnam veteran who had earned a Purple Heart and a Silver Star in the line of duty. He stood rigidly erect and gave Meade a firm handshake.
“Good to see you again, Hector,” Corbin said, using Meade’s first name with a familiarity typical of him. “Glad you could make it. Please sit down. How can I help you?”
Meade paused. How to start? He remembered Corbin was a direct person, so he might as well be direct.
“As I mentioned on the phone, I saw your work in getting some old documents scanned and uploaded onto the Armed Forces Top Secret Server. I’m sure you’re aware of my interest in this subject.”
General Corbin smiled. “‘Martian Meade,’ I think that’s what they used to call you, isn’t it?”
General Meade grimaced. He hadn’t heard that nickname in years. Perhaps people still called him that behind his back and he didn’t know. It was not something a private would say to a general’s face, after all.
Corbin seemed to read his thoughts. “I’m sure people say the same sort of things when I’m not around too, but they’re idiots. You know as well as I do that the alien threat is real.”
General Meade leaned forward. Suddenly they were getting to the heart of the matter. “I’ve read everything I can in the secret reports. The sightings are getting more frequent, and closer. Do you think they’re preparing for an invasion?”
Corbin nodded. “It certainly seems so. I don’t think they’re ready to strike just yet, but they are definitely ramping up their activity. We need to be prepared.”
The Air Force general paused, as if waiting for Meade to speak.
You want me to say it first, don’t you? Meade thought. It looks like I’m the one who has to take the risk of exposing myself. Remind me never to play poker with you.
Meade took a deep breath and said, “We need a breed of super soldiers, people with superior genetics. It’s the only way to fight back.”
Corbin looked at him with interest but continued to keep silent.
Meade steeled himself and went on. “There is such a group of people. Some scientists think they are descended from the people of Atlantis.” General Corbin shifted in his seat, and Meade hurried to add, “But I’m not sure of that. They certainly are genetically superior, though. That’s not in doubt.”
General Meade felt a deep sense of embarrassment. Hearing his old nickname—“Martian Meade”—had brought back some bad memories. He hated being laughed at. On the surface, some of his beliefs sounded ridiculous, as though he was some wild-eyed civilian spending too much time on the Internet rather than behaving as a high-ranking general. The fact that the alien threat was real and hardly anyone believed it made the laughter doubly hurtful. And there he was talking about the lost continent of Atlantis.
General Corbin fiddled with a pen on his desk and said in a low voice, “The Air Force has been studying the Atlantean theory.”
Meade perked up. That was what he had suspected all along.
“You have a research project?” he asked.
General Corbin nodded. “We’ve had one for a few years now. I can’t give you very many details, just like you can’t give me many details about the project you’re involved in. You know how different branches of service are always keeping secrets from one another. It’s like if you gave my three kids four slices of pizza. Who gets the extra one? Everyone is always fighting over funding instead of fighting our enemies. It’s a national disgrace.”
“I’m willing to cooperate as much as I can as long as I don’t have to release any classified information you aren’t privy to,” Meade stated.
General Corbin shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask you to. Let’s go through what I can tell you. First off, you’re right about the alien reconnaissance. The Air Force is better placed to study that than the Army, and we’ve gathered some disturbing data. The UFOs are beginning to focus on the nation’s main sources of energy—not just nuclear plants like they did when we first started building them back in the fifties but also hydroelectric dams, coal plants, even wind and solar farms. From what we can gather from our allies, it’s happening in other countries too.”
“Our energy grid? That would be a strategic target to hit if they were planning an invasion, but perhaps they want it for other purposes.”
General Corbin nodded. “That’s what the researchers here at the Air Force are thinking. Maybe they want to take the energy from our planet for some reason. Now about the Atlanteans. From rumors I hear, you’ve been studying the Atlantis gene. That’s why I put up that Roswell report, because I wanted to see if you would spot the significance. You didn’t disappoint me. It seems your project is fairly advanced. Our project has been more modest but has been going on for some years. We’ve been studying the DNA of Atlantean servicemen and servicewomen.”
General Meade’s brow furrowed. “Is that so? We’ve been looking through the American population and found that Atlanteans almost never join the armed forces. They tend to lie low. Enlisting would make them stand out.”
“Ah, but you forget the draft. We’ve been gathering DNA samples from patients in Veterans Administration hospitals. We assembled a list of all mixed-race draftees from World War Two, the Korean War, and Vietnam and got DNA samples from them, telling them it was part of whatever treatment they had come into the hospital for. Many turned out to simply be mixed race, but we’ve assembled a database of more than six hundred Atlanteans.”
General Meade’s eyes went wide. “Six hundred? That’s remarkable! Our team had no idea they were that common.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say common. Six hundred out of a sample size of more than a million, but it’s a skewed sample. First off, it doesn’t include women since women have never been eligible for the draft. Plus the sample only covers draftees from three wars who have come into the VA hospital. The actual number of Atlanteans in America must be in the thousands, maybe even the tens of t
housands.”
General Meade sat back in awe. That changed everything. He could assemble more than a strike team, he could assemble a real army.
“How could so many have gone undetected? My God, sir, why haven’t they taken over?” General Meade thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Our sampling has been wrong! We’ve been looking for mixed-race individuals who show remarkable physical ability. What if not all Atlanteans have these traits?”
General Corbin nodded. “Now you’re on the right track. You almost have it. In fact, all Atlanteans do have supernatural physical powers, but they don’t always manifest themselves. In fact, they rarely do. Most Atlanteans go their whole lives without realizing they’re special.”
General Meade rubbed his jaw. “I wonder if there’s a way to bring out those abilities.”
“There is.”
“How?”
General Corbin sighed. “I’m afraid that’s classified.”
“How are we going to work together if we can’t freely communicate?”
General Corbin frowned. “I’m not sure. The bureaucrats in Washington don’t want us to cooperate. They’ve always needed the military, but they fear us too. So they play these games with funding. It’s the old ‘divide and conquer’ tactic.”
“This is no time for petty civilian politics!” General Meade thundered. “We need to act.”
General Corbin’s eyes narrowed. “We took an oath to defend this nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I intend to keep that oath.”
“So do I,” General Meade replied, and then paused. There had been something in Corbin’s tone, a hardness, a determination, that told him he wasn’t going to let anyone stop him. And had he placed a slight emphasis on the word “domestic”?
General Meade cocked his head and studied his senior officer. Just what was the man getting at? He thought he knew, but he didn’t dare put it into words.
He felt it, though. The civilian government had been holding the military back for far too long. It was their lack of will that had made them lose Vietnam and Lebanon and Somalia. Those fights had been winnable. A military leader would have won them. But time and again, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington had tripped up the military.
As humiliating as those defeats had been, they were nothing compared to what would happen if America lost its war with the aliens. The country, all of humanity, would lose everything. Humans might even become extinct.
What was that line an officer fighting in Vietnam had said?
“We had to destroy this village in order to save it.”
General Meade saw clearly then. Begging for funding and sneaking around behind the government’s back wouldn’t get him the resources he needed, not in the time frame they were looking at. He had to go further, and General Corbin was hinting he was willing to go further too.
Both of them wanted to save America, and if that meant destroying its democratic institutions for a time, then so be it. Better to have a living military dictatorship than a dead country.
General Meade extended a hand across Corbin’s desk.
“Sir, I think we’re of the same mind. Let’s start talking frankly. We have a war to win.”
Chapter 10
JUNE 27, 2016, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
11:00 AM
Jaxon couldn’t believe her luck. She had told her foster parents that she wanted to take the bus to meet some of her friends in downtown Hollywood, and they had actually let her go. Stephen and Isadore seemed eager for her to make friends at her new school and didn’t ask too many questions. That was fine by Jaxon. She didn’t want to answer questions about which friends she was going to meet or what they were going to do. That would have been hard to answer.
Hard to answer because Jaxon had no friends, and she wasn’t going to be meeting anyone.
She really was going to downtown Hollywood, though. Long ago, Jaxon had learned that telling too many lies soon got confusing, and it was best, if she were going to garnish the truth a little, to leave in enough truth that she could keep track of her own story.
Jaxon tried not to think how pathetic it was to lie about having friends. She was used to not having any, and while it was lonely, she didn’t want to talk about it. Isadore, with that fake enthusiasm she always showed when she was trying to act like a supportive mother, would only encourage her to try harder.
If her foster parents wanted her to have friends, they should have sent her to a different school. The kids at hers were as fake as their nose jobs. Maybe she was naive, but she had never seen a teenager with plastic surgery before, and at her new school, it was hard to find one who hadn’t had some, even among the boys.
Jaxon sat on the bus as it rolled through the city, gazing out at the long stretches of residential neighborhoods and strip malls and gas stations, all looking alike. She shook her head. The city was as fake as the kids at her school. All glitz and glamour with no heart, like that neighbor of hers with the big, rich house, the man who liked to beat up prostitutes. Briefly, Jaxon felt worried that he would notice she lived on the same block. He might be looking for payback.
After a moment, Jaxon stopped worrying. The guy was a loser, and if she could beat him up once, she could beat him up a second time. It wasn’t as though he was going to call the police. What would he tell them?
They were passing an office building with a thin strip of grass between the sidewalk and parking lot, a pathetic attempt at making it look as though the place had a front yard. Jaxon spotted a man in overalls who had a big metal container attached to a sprayer that was shooting out a fine mist of green paint onto the grass.
Curious, Jaxon turned in her seat to watch as they passed. She heard a laugh behind her.
A young black man sitting nearby said, “You must be new to LA, sister.”
“Um, yeah. What was he doing?”
“Painting the grass green. It’s gone all brown. Because of the drought, watering lawns has been banned.”
Jaxon shook her head and laughed. “So they’re painting the grass?”
“Welcome to LA, sister! It’s like we’re all in the movies.”
Jaxon sat back in her seat and smiled. Yeah, the whole city was fake. Maybe it was the place for her, because didn’t she put up a false front too? She had been doing it all her life, at least since she found out about her powers. She had to when she knew she didn’t belong. That guy had called her “sister,” seeing her black skin and nothing else. Oh, maybe he noticed she was part white and Asian too, but he chose to see her as black.
Jaxon didn’t see herself as black. She didn’t see herself as any race, not even mixed race. It was weird, but for some reason, she never thought of herself as mixed, although one look in the mirror told her she was. It was obvious, and yet it didn’t feel right. She could fake it and call that guy “brother,” but she didn’t feel any more a part of his race than she did of anyone else’s.
Which made her doubly annoyed when people at school made racist comments. Not only was it lame to make those jokes, but also it was twice as lame to think they applied to her.
The bus was driving along Hollywood Boulevard. The Chinese Theatre appeared off to their left, the famous cinema palace with its amazing dragon facade that looked as if it had been brought over from medieval China. Jaxon decided to get off there.
“Going to see the sights?” the guy behind her asked.
“Meeting someone,” she said with a smile. The guy looked disappointed. He had his phone in his hand. Then he put it back in his pocket. Jaxon guessed he had been about to ask for her number. Well, lying about having friends turned out to be useful on more than just her foster parents. She favored him with a goodbye smile and got off the bus.
The chance encounter on the bus put her in a good mood as she strolled down Hollywood Boulevard. Not many guys tried to pick her up, because she wasn’t exactly pretty, and some people had problems with her being mixed race. Otto always said he liked her blend of feature
s.
Otto. What was he doing? Working on some chain gang? Exercising in the prison yard? She hoped he was okay. She’d heard all sorts of horror stories about prison. A gentle heart like Otto didn’t deserve to behind bars with a bunch of carjackers and killers.
Jaxon sighed. There didn’t seem to be anything she could do. She was tempted to write him but was afraid her foster parents would object. No one had told her what prison he’d been assigned to, so she didn’t even know where to write anyway.
She set her shoulders and tried to put those dark thoughts out of her mind. It was a bright, sunny day, not too hot, and she had managed to grab a few hours of freedom for herself. Good times were rare in her life, and she shouldn’t waste them. Today she was going to enjoy herself.
She loitered around the front of the Chinese Theatre, looking at all the handprints placed in the concrete by movie stars. It was an old Hollywood tradition for stars and directors to get a wet slab of concrete and put their handprints and footprints in it. Some were made all the way back in the 1920s. A lot of the older names she didn’t recognize, although she’d heard of Clark Gable and of course Marilyn Monroe. She was surprised to see Jack Nicholson’s prints dated to 1974. How old was that guy? She also saw prints of Arnold Schwarzenegger—who’d written above his handprints, “I’ll be back”—Johnny Depp, Michael Jackson, and Sandra Bullock.
Next she saw the Walk of Stars and then the Wax Museum. She found that a bit creepy. Not the Chamber of Horrors, which was lame, but just the idea of a wax museum. All of those wax dummies were made to look like famous people. She took a couple of selfies and then found herself deleting them. They were too weird. Fake people. Didn’t she have enough of those in her life?
She sent one photo to her foster parents so they would know she hadn’t lied about where she was going.
Jaxon liked the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Odditorium better. The Darth Vader made of scrap metal was cool, and the woman who could pop her eyes out of her head made Jaxon feel much more normal. The guy with the twenty-eight-foot fingernails made Jaxon feel the woman with the pop-out eyes was normal too.