Project Diamond (Jacob Lansing Series Book 1)

by J. W. Bouchard

  None of us had any, or if we did none of us had the sack to ask.

  “Good. Follow me.”

  I stole a quick glance back as Hayes led us out of the room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Lisa, but I didn’t see her.

  Hayes took us down a twisting maze of corridors, through a skywalk that gave us an unobstructed view of the acres of black tarmac and the mammoth shuttles with their noses pointed toward the sky. Was one of those ships the one we would be taking into space? I doubted it. They were enormous, but didn’t appear capable of housing a crew of over a hundred, let alone all the equipment and supplies needed for the trip.

  Hayes showed us into a cramped locker room where he had us stuff our belongings into lockers and pick out blue jumpsuits. The jumpsuits weren’t attractive by any means, but the material was comfortable and easy to move around in. There was a white patch sewn onto the left breast with the symbol of an eagle with its talons clutching a yellow star stitched into it. We switched out our shoes for black military-style boots. They were heavier than the running shoes I normally wore. “This isn’t a fashion show,” Hayes said. “Let’s get this thing moving.”

  After we changed, Hayes took us down another hallway and into a training room. He sat down behind a desk at the front of the room, plasma monitors mounted across the wall behind him. We took seats in plastic chairs.

  Once everyone was seated, Hayes said, “All right, this isn’t Kindergarten, and there won’t be any tests. The real test will come later, when you’re forty light years from home and the only person you have to rely on is the guy standing next to you.”

  Feeling a little sheepish, I raised my hand, my curiosity getting the better of me. Hayes stared at me for a minute before saying, “What did I just get done saying, Lansing?”

  I drew a blank. Was this a trick question? My mind tried to rewind and playback everything Hayes had told us since we left the auditorium, but didn’t come up with any answers.

  “This isn’t grade school. We don’t raise our hand. Speak freely. Unless I’m talking. If I’m talking, you listen. Is that understood?”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  “And don’t call me sir. I’m not big on titles. We all have them, no getting around that, but this isn’t a military operation. If that’s what you’re looking for, you can all eat tile and start giving me pushups posthaste. Captain, Captain Hayes, or Hayes are all acceptable forms of address.”

  “Oh Captain, my Captain.”

  This from the guy sitting behind me. He had a crewcut, but it didn’t hide the fact that his hair was as red as money used to be green. He was pale-skinned, freckled, and baby-faced. Wide shoulders, six-four. Smiling a goofy smile. Nobody understood the reference, so nobody laughed.

  “Come on? Nobody? Dead Poets Society? Robin Williams?”

  Silence. I almost felt bad for the guy. The worst part was that he kept talking, trying to explain to us that Dead Poets Society was a movie from back in the twentieth century, prehistoric almost. He didn’t know when to shut up. He should have let the joke fall flat and left it at that.

  “Harper?”

  “Yes s…Captain?”

  “Shut your pie hole. Now…Lansing, you had a question?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was just wondering how we’re going to get there. Forty light years is…a long time, and even if we’re traveling at the speed of light…”

  “That’s above my pay grade, Lansing. Best not to ponder it. Leave that stuff to the brains.”

  I regretted asking. The only thing that saved me from embarrassment was the fact that Harper had done such a spectacular job of humiliating himself less than two minutes ago.

  Hayes had us go around the room and introduce ourselves. He had me go first.

  I felt sheepish talking about myself, but managed to give them my name, age, and a little bit of pertinent history. I mentioned I’d done two years at Hancock as Burnell’s assistant. That raised a few eyebrows. At least one person nodded as though they remembered me from there.

  Next up was Jeffrey Jin. He was Chinese, grew up in Taipei. Jin squashed the old stereotype that all Asians were short. He was an inch or two taller than me. He’d done a stint in the Chinese military, before joining a private security firm that specialized in protecting high-level diplomats.

  Lawrence Perkins looked to be the oldest of us. Hair the color of dull iron, a fair amount of snow sprinkled in his sideburns. Wrinkles around his eyes from squinting into the sun for too many years. He was former U.S. military, an ex-Army Ranger. Tours in the Middle East, Korea, and the Congo. He didn’t ramble on, but from what little he said, he made the rest of us look like infants fresh out of the womb. This guy had been places. If I had to take a guess, I would have pegged him at early fifties, but despite the age difference, he looked like he was chiseled out of stone. His skin was like tight leather stretched over muscle that had seen a lot of use.

  Seth Harper went next. He made a point of mentioning he liked to watch classic movies. Apparently, he didn’t consider a movie to be a classic unless it was in excess of a hundred years old. The guy had done four years in the Marines, but hadn’t seen any action. After that, he had spent time studying entomology at Michigan State. Hayes had said this wasn’t grade school, but if it had been, my money was on Harper being the class clown. Only he wasn’t very good at it.

  Yuri Durov had clung to his Russian accent even though he had been living stateside for several years. He had been a combat instructor in the St Petersburg Space Academy before transferring to a school in Miami. Dark hair, blue eyes, and a built like a Belgian Blue. He came off as a no nonsense kind of guy until he made a comment about the humidity in Florida. I didn’t catch all of it, but something about sweating buckets in Florida and shitting icicles in Siberia.

  Abel Flynn was born and bred in Dallas and had the Texan drawl to prove it. He looked like a shitkickin’, tobacco chewin’ bull rider. I pictured him in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. He was twenty-four and had already completed his tour with the marines. He was a pretty boy. Polite. I bet he was a hit with the ladies.

  And, finally, there was Gloria Mayweather.

  It wasn’t lost on the rest of us that she was the only female of the group. Long blonde hair, green eyes, 5’7”, and toned. She could have been a model, but there was something inherently masculine in her features. It didn’t make her any less attractive. She was from some town in Indiana I’d never heard of. My age. She had gotten a Bachelor’s in Sociology, then decided to attend a space academy in Chicago to become a pilot, but had shifted her interests after proving especially adept in the academy’s combat training.

  I thought she had her work cut out for her, being the only girl in the group and all, but she wasn’t the type you felt sorry for. There was a certain self-assurance about her. You always wonder when you come across a female in what is often considered a man’s occupation. Sometimes they could be overly aggressive, if not downright mean, in an effort to compensate for gender discrimination. Listening to her talk, calm and composed, I didn’t think she suffered from that particular ailment. I told myself if anyone gave her a hard time that I’d be there to back her up, fooling myself into believing it was because I didn’t like bullies and not because she could have been a pretty picture in a swimsuit calendar.

  “Now that we’re all acquainted, let’s get down to brass tacks seeing as how we’re suffering from a shortage of time. Launch is in one week.”

  A week seemed like an insufficient amount of time to learn everything we would need to learn. Mission details, ship schematics, environmental considerations, security protocols. Then I thought about it. What if it took forty years to reach our destination? Or longer even? Given that, we would have more than enough time. I thought about asking Hayes how we were going to get all the information we needed stuffed into such a short amount of time, but I had learned my lesson when it came to a
sking questions.

  Fortunately, Harper was a glutton for punishment. “How are we supposed to cover everything in a week?” he asked.

  “You’ll need these,” Hayes said, and started passing out devices that looked like a marriage between sunglasses and headsets.

  I examined the device, turning it over in my hands. The glasses were thick, small plastic boxes mounted to the side of each lens. The rest of it was like old school headphones, fitting over the top of the head with two padded wafers to cover the ears.

  “What are they?” Harper asked. The question was on all of our minds, but Harper had the stones (or bad sense maybe) to ask.

  “The best educator technology can produce,” Hayes said. “There’s a manual in your sleeping quarters. Read it. Everything you need to know is already loaded onto the device.”

  “It’s like The Matrix,” Harper said, looking around, hopeful that someone would understand the reference this time. “No? Keanu Reeves? Where have you guys been?”

  Hayes said, “It’s useless for anything physical. You can’t go to sleep learning kung fu and wake up a master. It doesn’t work like that. But it works for academic knowledge. It functions in the background, accessing your memory banks while you’re in an unconscious state. Retention rate is around ninety-five percent, which is probably more than you’d remember if you were sitting in a classroom.”

  “Will we be tested?” Flynn asked in a Texan drawl that was so soothing it could almost lull you to sleep.

  “What did I tell you?”

  “No tests.”

  Gloria raised her hand, seemed to remember how this wasn’t grade school, and quickly brought it back down before she said, “Captain Hayes, you said it can be life or death out there. Shouldn’t there be tests? At least to make sure we know what we’re doing.”

  “That’s what practice is for. We’ve got a week, but I promise you that we’ll run through exercises again and again until you can’t stomach it anymore. By the time we leave, your brains won’t even have to think about it. It will be instinct.” Hayes scanned the room. “Anything else?”

  I had questions. Loads of them. But I kept my mouth shut. And so did everybody else this time, including Harper.

  “Good. We’ll break for lunch. I’ll see you back here at thirteen hundred hours.”

  “Where’s the cafeteria?” Jeffrey Jin asked.

  Hayes said, “You figure it out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The cafeteria ended up being in a different building. We would have used up twenty minutes of our hour if it hadn’t been for Perkins. He’d had the good sense to study the navigation kiosk in the main entrance of the WSSC before heading to the auditorium. He led us straight to the cafeteria without missing a beat.

  I wasn’t that hungry, but I wasn’t sure when our next meal would be. I settled for a turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat and a cup of coffee. I sat down at a long glass table along with the rest of my team. I had spotted Lisa when I was standing in line, considered sitting with her, but thought better of it. I wasn’t there to make friends, but it might not have gone over well to sit apart from my group on the first day. Strategically, it wouldn’t be in my favor to cast myself in the role of outsider. Hayes had said we would have to rely on one another and I had taken that to heart. Besides, I ended up sitting across from Gloria Mayweather. She was great eye candy.

  It wasn’t a surprise that Harper was the first to talk. I don’t think he could stand the silence. For some reason he felt the need to fill it with his voice. I hadn’t known him for more than an hour or two, but that was long enough to find out that he liked to compare every situation to some old movie he had watched. “I can’t believe you guys haven’t seen The Matrix. I wonder if we can stream movies on the ship. If we can, I’m going to open you up to a whole new world.”

  We let him ramble. For not being hungry, I scarfed down my sandwich quickly, sipping on my coffee as I scanned the room. Harper didn’t seem to care if anyone paid attention to what he was saying. He seemed content to flap his trap with or without an audience.

  Gloria kept glancing at me. I caught her doing it a couple of times. Finally, I said, “Do I have something on my face?”

  She gazed at her tray of food, pushing around a small pile of green beans, an embarrassed smile on her face. “No. It isn’t that. I was just thinking about the question you asked back in the training room. About the trip. How long it would take to get there. That’s been bothering me, too.”

  “I guess it’s supposed to be a big mystery,” I said. “Or at least nobody’s telling.”

  “Nobody will,” Perkins said. He had finished eating, his tray wiped clean. He had a gravelly voice. He had a long history of active duty and I wondered if his voice had gotten that way from barking orders in the heat of battle. Or maybe he just smoked a lot of cigarettes. “I doubt if Hayes even understands, or cares for that matter. His job is to keep us focused. We don’t need to understand the big picture.”

  “Don’t tell me you ain’t the least bit curious,” Flynn said.

  “Hell yeah, I’m curious. But I’m not gonna let it consume me. If Hayes doesn’t want us to know, then that’s the way it is.”

  “You’re used to living in the dark,” Jeffery said. “You’re ex-military. Need to know basis and all that. I never understood the point of such secrecy.”

  “Funny to hear that comin’ from you,” Perkins said.

  “How so?”

  “China right?”

  Jin nodded. “Taipei, yes.”

  “Your country’s got a history of keeping people in the dark.”

  “I didn’t say it doesn’t happen. Just that I don’t see the need for it.”

  Flynn said, “I’ll bet our man Perkins here is stubborn as an ox. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “Careful, son” Perkins said. “Bet I could teach you a few tricks you don’t know.”

  Perkins wore a half-smile. He wasn’t making threats. Just a man stating facts. Flynn seemed to take it in stride, smiling a pretty boy smile when he said, “No offense meant, Old Timer. I don’t doubt you could.”

  Listening to them talk, I couldn’t help but feel out of my depth. I was surrounded by guys that had more experience than I had, that had seen a helluva lot more action than I had. The fact that I had spent a couple of years training newbies in combat techniques I hadn’t even tested on a field of battle seemed laughable. Take Perkins, for instance. He was old enough to be my father, and despite having technique under my belt, I didn’t doubt for a second that he could squash me like a bug with one hand tied behind his back.

  Gloria was still using her fork to push green beans around her tray. “I didn’t mean to start some kind of dick measuring contest.”

  The comment caught us off guard. None of us had expected such a crude remark to come from such a pretty mouth. The table broke out in laughter. I laughed until I was in tears. Some of the tension dissipated. It felt good. Although it was a little early to judge, I could see myself getting along with these people.

  “Here’s what I think,” Harper said.

  “This should be good.”

  “Just hear me out. Let’s spitball for a minute. What if the ship has a black hole engine in it? You guys think of that? It’s like in this movie Event Horizon. The ship can create its own wormhole in the fabric of spacetime. It’s a cool idea. This guy explains it by folding a piece of paper and sticking a pencil through it.”

  “How does that work out?” Jin asked.

  “Pretty much everybody dies.”

  “That’s great. Real mood lifter.”

  Harper continued undeterred. “That would explain everything. How can we make a forty light year trip in less than forty years? A wormhole. Technically, we could reach our destination in virtually no time at all.”

  Gloria said, “Wouldn’t
it take an enormous amount of energy to create a wormhole?”

  “It would. But, theoretically, it’s possible.”

  “Vat are you basing thees on?” Yuri asked. “Movie science?”

  “A lot of the stuff in movies is based on real science. Actually, science fiction has been pretty good at predicting future technology.”

  “You just said it’s an impossible amount of energy,” Jin said. “That makes this entire conversation pointless.”

  Harper wasn’t going to give up without a fight. He hesitated for a moment, but then his eyes widened as an idea blossomed in his head. “Maybe it’s beyond our present technology. Maybe we can’t make one. But what if one already exists? Did you think of that? If a wormhole occurred naturally, that’s how we could traverse that kind of distance instantaneously. They would have had to send a probe through it first to know what was on the other side.”

  “A naturally-occurring wormhole would be inherently unstable,” Gloria said. “It could close up at a moment’s notice. Especially if they sent a probe through it. You would have to have a way to prevent it from closing. Some kind of exotic matter.”

  “Are you just making this up as you go?” I asked. “Because it kind of sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”