The Black Knight

by Dean Crawford

  However, she had not selected any objects and in an instant her eyes settled on a single transmission spike. It took her mind only a moment to assimilate three salient points of information from the track.

  It did not belong to the United States as it bore no transponder code.

  It did not belong to any other nation as it bore no identification code.

  It was in space, as its velocity was being recorded as close to seventeen thousand miles per hour, placing it in low Earth orbit.

  Duvall lowered her boots from the edge of her desk and leaned forward as she peered at the contact. It was tracking an unusual near-polar orbit, rather than the equatorial orbits favored by most satellites and space vehicles.

  The sound of Fuller’s voice broke through her thoughts. ‘The machine’s bust again, decaf’ only and…’

  ‘We’ve got an infiltration signal.’

  Fuller chuckled, more than used to the pranks played by bored operators on their colleagues. ‘Yeah sure, maybe E.T’s got some coffee we can borrow?’

  Duvall did not reply to him as she scanned the data stream on her screen.

  ‘Orbit is seventy nine degrees off the equator, apogee is one thousand seven hundred and twenty eight kilometres, perigee two hundred eighteen kilometres. Orbital period is one hundred and four minutes and thirty seconds.’

  Fuller glanced at the main screen, saw the track, and dumped the coffee as he slammed down into his seat and slipped a pair of headphones over his ears.

  ‘We’ve got a primary return,’ he said as he saw the same track on his own screens. ‘Records confirm it’s not one of ours and it’s not a catalogued piece of debris.’

  ‘I’ve got data,’ Duvall replied, ‘object is approximately twenty four meters in length, approximately six metres in width. Data calculations estimate a mass of fifteen tons.’

  Fuller glanced up at the screen. ‘Damn that’s big, real big.’

  Duvall nodded as she held her own earphones to her head, squinting as she sought to determine what she was listening to.

  ‘I’ve got audio,’ she whispered, almost so quietly that Fuller didn’t hear.

  ‘You’ve got what?’

  Duvall nodded to herself more confidently as she listened.

  ‘I’ve got audio,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve got a signal. It’s coming from the track.’

  Fuller stared at her for a long moment and then looked up at the screens.

  ‘What the hell is it?’ he uttered.

  Duvall reached out for her phone as she set her monitors to record every detail of the track. Without a transponder, identification and with signals being emitted or perhaps even received by the object, she wasn’t about to put her career on the line by taking a chance that it was just an iron-rich meteorite captured by Earth’s gravitational field that just happened to be deflecting satellite signals across the atmosphere.

  She picked up the receiver and dialed a single number. The line connected immediately and she spoke clearly, trying to keep the nervous edge out of her voice.

  ‘Primary Orbital Contact, signals confirmed, initiate Orion Shield. Repeat, initiate Orion Shield.’

  Beside her, she heard Fuller curse beneath his breath.

  Orion Sheild was the code name for the United States’ missile defense system administered by the Missile Defense Agency. The major component was Ground-Based Midcourse Defense consisting of ground-based interceptor missiles and radar in the United States in Alaska, designed to intercept incoming warheads in space. Duvall knew that some GBI missiles were located at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and could be supported by mid-course SM-3 interceptors fired from Navy ships, the Missile Defense Agency having some thirty operational GBIs. Those weapons would be augmented by the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Systems located on US Navy warships and designed to pick out incoming ballistic missiles in flight at high altitude, thus preserving the safety of the continental United States.

  ‘Roger, Orion Sheild initiated, stand by.’

  Duvall set the phone line to stand by as she heard boots running down the corridor leading to the Command Center and a low, mournful wailing siren as the entire base was alerted to the possibility that the United States was about to come under a nuclear attack.

  Duvall prepared for the conversations that would follow: the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the line, conference calling as the President was awoken and informed of the crisis. She knew that they would be talking to her long before her boss was on site, and that as a communications specialist she was the most qualified person in the under-staffed base to conduct the assessment of the threat.

  Then, just as she felt herself ready to conduct the assessment and as dozens of staff flooded into the Command Center, everything changed.

  ‘It’s not a missile,’ Fuller said.

  ‘How do you know?!’ Duvall demanded, tension in her voice.

  Fuller looked across at her. ‘Because it just changed direction.’

  Duvall looked up in shock at the main screen and saw the object’s orbital track change by a few degrees.

  ‘What the hell…?’

  Fuller picked up his phone. ‘We’re not under attack,’ he said to her, ‘and I don’t know what the hell that thing is.’

  Duvall switched her headphones from internal to broadcast and then filtered the feed through to the Command Center’s speakers. Above the rush of conversation a sudden sound of regularly paced beeps and growls echoed across the room and the conversation shuddered to a halt as every person in the building listened intently.

  Duvall, along with everybody else in the Command Center, had been trained to recognize the countless signals emitted by both Earth-based installations and those from distant supernovae, neutron stars, black holes and quasars that blazed their high-energy emissions across billions of light years of intergalactic space.

  What they were hearing now was none of those things.

  The signal echoed around them like the chanting of monks drifting in haunting melody through the halls of some ancient abbey, both tuneful and yet without structure but for the rhythmic beacon accompanying it. Like a song from the depths of prehistory, something about it sounded familiar to Duvall, and she could see from the expressions of those around her that the rest of the team felt the same.

  ‘It’s like music,’ Fuller finally managed to say, his jaw hanging open in shock.

  Duvall recovered her senses and turned to the deck officer.

  ‘Get a linguistics team down here as fast as you can, and open a channel to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We may have initiated first contact!’

  As the team scattered to perform their duties, Duvalls’ own words echoed in her ears. First contact, the first verifiable signal from an alien species sent from an alien craft in orbit around the planet. She didn’t have long to dwell on the gravity of the subject as Fuller spoke from beside her.

  ‘Its orbital velocity is decaying,’ he said, his features stricken and his skin pale as he stared at her. ‘Whatever it is, it’s coming down.’

  ***

  III

  Logan Circle,

  Washington DC

  The sound of incessant banging reverberated through the apartment and jerked Ethan Warner out of his slumber, dreams of helicopter blades and blazing guns vanishing as he opened his eyes and saw the feint light of pre-dawn glowing lethargically through the blinds of his bedroom window.

  Ethan sat upright, unsure of whether he had actually heard something, and moments later he leaped out of his bed as he heard the front door of his apartment suddenly open despite the three sets of locks securing it in place. One hand reached for the Beretta M9 pistol he kept under his pillow and he whirled as two figures appeared to fill the bedroom doorway in the dull morning light.

  ‘Ethan Warner? Defense Intelligence Agency.’

  The brief, clipped tones imparted the information necessary for Ethan not to open fire on the armed intruders even as behind them another figure appeared in the doorway
and hit the lights. Ethan squinted as he stood naked in front of the intruders, shielding his eyes with one hand as he stared at a tall woman with long auburn hair who smirked as she looked him up and down appraisingly.

  ‘You didn’t have to get your weapon out for me, Warner.’

  Ethan turned away from former FBI Agent Hannah Ford and tossed his pistol onto the bed.

  ‘False alarm,’ he replied. ‘I thought something exciting was about to happen. Don’t you know how to knock?’

  ‘We’ve been knocking for five minutes,’ Ford replied as her two armed escorts moved to guard the apartment’s door as Ethan dressed. ‘You sleep soundly, which is something I wouldn’t have expected.’

  ‘I’ve learned not to give a damn any more,’ Ethan retaliated. ‘Where’s the fire?’

  Hannah leaned on the doorframe and watched as Ethan pulled on a pair of jeans.

  ‘Doug Jarvis has called us in. I don’t know why, but they’re in one hell of a hurry so let’s get moving.’

  Ethan scowled as he glanced at a digital clock beside his bed. 5.26am.

  ‘Jesus, can’t they have a crisis at a normal time for a change?’

  Hannah didn’t reply as Ethan padded into the bathroom and stood in front of a sink, yanking the faucet to let warm water fill it. A mirror reflected his wide jaw, gray eyes and scruffy light brown hair as he splashed the water across his face and tried to shake off the lethargy slowing his movements.

  In recent years Ethan and his partner Nicola Lopez had been fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough depending on how he looked at it, to have been contracted by the Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate cases the rest of the intelligence community had rejected as unworkable. The connection to a high level agency like the DIA had come from a former colleague of Ethan’s named Douglas Jarvis. The old man had once been captain of a United States Marines Rifle Platoon and Ethan’s senior officer during his time with the Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their friendship, cemented during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later, when Ethan had resigned his commission and been embedded with Jarvis’s men as a journalist, had continued into their unusual and discreet accord with the DIA where Jarvis continued to serve his country.

  Throughout this time he had performed his duties for the DIA alongside Nicola Lopez, as a part of their shared business Lopez & Warner Inc. The memory of Lopez slowed his movements further still and he stared in silence at his reflection in the mirror as he thought of her.

  ‘How’re you holding up?’

  Hannah Ford’s voice reached him from the distance. Ford had been an FBI Agent assigned to track both himself and Lopez in an attempt to arrest them for crimes they had not committed. It had taken a recent national incident for the FBI to realize the deception and cancel the operation, after which Hannah Ford had transferred to the DIA and joined the team. Her voice pulled him back into the present, and he sighed and dried his face.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  Nicola Lopez had been seriously wounded several months before during a gunfight with terrorists determined to assassinate either the President of the United States or the President of the People’s Republic of China, during a major ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. Both he and Lopez had been instrumental in preventing that tragedy, but success had come at a great price, with Lopez still on a life-support machine in a DC hospital. Ethan had moved from Chicago to be closer to both Lopez and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

  ‘I checked in on her the other day,’ Hannah said. ‘She’s still stable, still fighting.’

  Ethan did not reply. It wasn’t often that he had heard anybody refer to Lopez as stable – being a fighter ran strong in her Latino blood. They had shared several investigations for the DIA over the years, often facing death and coming out the other side by the skin of their teeth, each always covering the others’ back. His world felt empty now without her constant bitching to color it.

  Ethan pulled on his shirt, which helped to cover some of the scars his frame had garnered over the years, and then he pushed past Hannah and fitted his shoulder holster, slipping the Beretta into it before pulling on a leather jacket.

  ‘Let’s go see what the fuss is about,’ he said, not wanting to discuss Lopez any further.

  Outside the apartment two smart SUVs were pulled into the sidewalk, the sun rising in slivers of molten metal between gray clouds as Ethan climbed aboard one of the vehicles. Hannah Ford followed him and moments later the two SUVs were cruising south toward the Capitol, the driver eager to beat the early morning rush into the city center.

  ‘Where’s Vaughn?’ Ethan asked.

  Michael Vaughn was Hannah Ford’s former partner at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, both of them having resigned their roles there to become agents within the Defense Intelligence Agency after the attempted attacks on the life of the President. A stocky, thick-necked and capable agent, Vaughn had followed Hannah willingly into the DIA.

  ‘He’s already at Bolling,’ Hannah replied. ‘Jarvis sent me to get you.’

  ‘Why didn’t he just use the damned phone?’

  ‘Because you keep turning it off, Einstein,’ Hannah pointed out. ‘You haven’t been on top form lately, Warner, so I guess he thinks you need me to pick you up and return you to your former joyful self.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have delegated that task.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have accepted it but I’m all heart, y’know?’

  Ethan glanced out of the windows as he watched the city awakening around them, lights glowing in houses and twinkling across the Potomac. The SUV was closing in on Joint Bolling-Anacostia Airbase, located on the eastern shore of the river close to where it merged with the Georgetown Channel. The base was the location of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Headquarters and clad in secrecy.

  ‘You got any idea at all what this is about?’ Ethan asked, more to change the subject than anything else.

  ‘Like I said, Jarvis didn’t reveal much but I do know that this isn’t just a DIA gig. Vaughn told me they’ve got a team of boffins from NASA assembling at the DIA Headquarters Building, and all of them are in a state of excitement about something.’

  ‘Hellerman there?’

  Hellerman was Jarvis’s assistant, a scientist and verifiable genius who liaised with the agency on technical matters. A firm admirer of Lopez, he too had suffered since she had been shot months before.

  The SUV pulled into the base, security checks delaying their passage as the vehicle and its occupants were thoroughly searched before they were allowed into the DIA’s complex. The SUV pulled up close to the south entrance and allowed Ethan and Hannah to disembark. The dawn sky above was brightening quickly as two armed escorts approached them and hustled them inside.

  The DIA’s south wing entrance, in front of which was a fountain before broad lawns, made up only a tiny part of the agency’s sprawling complex. Huge, silvery buildings with mirrored black windows contained some of the most sensitive intelligence gathering equipment in the world, including vast 24/7 Watch Centers manned by specialists monitoring events across the entire globe.

  In all Ethan and Nicola had conducted eight investigations for the Defense Intelligence Agency since Ethan had been plucked from Cook County Jail by Jarvis and given a new life working for one of the most clandestine units ever created by the intelligence community.

  Hannah took the lead as they moved through the intense security measures, including full-body X-Rays and pat down searches. They finally passed through the last of the checks in time for Jarvis to meet them in the main foyer of the building, the polished tile floor emblazoned with a large DIA emblem in the manner of all the senior intelligence agencies. For a change, Jarvis’s characteristic easy smile and casual demeanor was absent, replaced by genuine concern and urgency.

  ‘Ethan, how are you doing?’

  Ethan shook the old man’s hand. ‘I’m fine. What’s the story?’

  ‘Come with me,’ Jarvis replied. ‘I’ll show you.’

>   Ethan followed them, aware of the large number of civilian staff walking through the building. Uniquely to a highly secretive intelligence agency, two thirds of the DIA’s seventeen thousand employees were civilian, which allowed selected freelance operatives like Warner and Lopez to act in concert with official employees like Jarvis. Represented in some one hundred forty countries and with its own Clandestine Service, to which Warner and Lopez were now attached, the agency’s only weakness was a lack of influence in law enforcement, forcing them in past cases to work alongside, or against, local police and federal law agencies around the country.

  Jarvis led them to an elevator shaft, which in turn carried them deep into the building’s subterranean sections far from the prying eyes of even the most sophisticated surveillance cameras and electromagnetic scanners.

  ‘A NASA Watch Station at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, detected an unknown signal this morning coming from Earth orbit,’ Jarvis announced as they travelled down in the elevator. ‘It’s got the Joint Chiefs of Staff running about like headless chickens, and for now the President is out of the loop until we can provide a decent explanation for what the signal is and what is means.’

  Hannah Ford frowned. ‘What kind of signal?’

  ‘You’ll need to hear that to believe it,’ Jarvis replied.

  ‘I never like it when you say things like that,’ Ethan said, recalling previous expeditions he and Lopez had conducted at the DIA’s behest. ‘It usually means something dangerous is gonna happen.’

  The elevator doors opened and Jarvis led them out into a Watch Station used by the new department that Jarvis was heading up. Formerly employing only Ethan and Nicola Lopez, the events of recent investigations had brought the department to the attention of the current administration, with the result that staffing had increased. Ethan saw at least a dozen specialists working at computer stations before the large screens that dominated the walls, all showing news feeds from around the world.