Project Diamond (Jacob Lansing Series Book 1)

by J. W. Bouchard

  “Literally,” I said.

  “Yes, quite literally.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, this planet isn’t exactly hospitable to life.”

  “Which might only mean that they left this to us as a gift. Perhaps a good faith gesture or possibly a peace offering of sorts.”

  “Maybe it was all by accident,” Lisa said. “They could have built it for themselves a million years ago and then after a while they didn’t need it anymore.”

  “I doubt that,” Thomas said.

  Lisa turned to me. “Have I mentioned that Thomas thinks he has all the answers?”

  “No, but I think I’ve figured that out on my own.”

  Ahead of us, the others came to a halt. I switched back to the general com channel.

  “This looks like as good a place as any,” Bertrand said. “We’ll start here.”

  They unpacked their gear. Some of the equipment I recognized, but much of it was foreign to me. Yuri moved over to a rocky outcrop and sat down on a flattened chunk of rock. I saw Davidson remove several items from his pack, a dictionary among them.

  “What’s that for?” Yuri asked. “My English is perfect.”

  “It’s not for you,” Davidson said. “Chances that an alien life form would speak English is on the magnitude of one in a trillion. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to go old school. From alien eyes, the English language might seem like a code. As unintelligible as the Rosetta Stone if you don’t know how to decipher it. A dictionary is like a cheat sheet. A ready-made cipher.” Davidson proceeded to unpack the rest of his instruments.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt like a fifth wheel standing around doing nothing.

  “Need any help?” I asked as Lisa began sifting through rocks.

  “Not really,” Lisa said. “I’m collecting rock samples that we can analyze later.”

  Liz Packard was struggling to put together what I assumed was some type of advanced weather balloon. The aluminum foil-like material was blowing in the wind, making it difficult for her to make all the connections. After several minutes, she did manage to get everything in place. She held it up at an angle until the material self-inflated into a large white orb. The wind caught it and carried it upward. There was a red blinking light at the bottom.

  She pulled a tablet out of her backpack, swiped it on with a gloved hand, and I saw data fill the screen. Her gaze shifted between the tablet and the weather balloon as it rose higher and higher into the sky.

  I didn’t want to get in the way, but my curiosity got the better of me. I could see Yuri sitting on his rock, shaking his head back and forth, probably thinking to himself that this was going to be another case of an American talking too much.

  I leaned in to see what was on the screen of Packard’s tablet. “What’s it do?” I asked.

  “The balloon has onboard instruments that can read atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed, stuff like that.”

  “Won’t it just float away?”

  “That’s what it was designed to do. If push comes to shove though, it has tiny rotors that allow us to control it manually. It also has built in GPS, so we can track it. It also contains several pinhole-size cameras that can help map the planet. It isn’t as exact as the probes, but it helps corroborate the data they’ve already collected.”

  “Nifty.”

  She swiped at the tablet’s screen and the data disappeared, replaced by an aerial view from one of the balloon’s cameras. She zoomed in, and the screen showed a shot of us huddled together at the base of the ridge.

  “That’s cool,” I said.

  “I could watch it for hours.”

  I glanced up at the sky. The balloon had risen high enough that all I could see was the red beacon blinking on and off in the semi-darkness. The wind looked like it was carrying it in the direction I had deemed as north. It wouldn’t be long before it floated above and beyond the jagged ridge.

  Everyone was busy doing something other than Yuri, Peter Davidson, and I.

  “Must be tough,” I said to Davidson.

  “What’s that?”

  “Trying to find signs of alien life. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “It is a little like that, but I’m positive it exists. Not just at the microscopic level either. If a high-level intelligence exists, I would bet that they’ve visited this planet. It’s too resource rich to ignore.”

  “If that’s the case, wouldn’t they have taken all the diamond the planet had to offer already?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” He was bent over with a shovel, scooping dirt out of the Earth.

  “Think you’ll find anything?”

  “I don’t know,” he grunted as he continued to shovel. “If we do find any artifacts, my guess is that they would be made of metal. Probably some form of iron. Or stone possibly. In these temperatures, anything made of wood would spontaneously combust. Soft metals might even melt. They might be safe on this side of the planet, but on the other side they’d be toast.”

  I decided to test a theory.

  “I’m skeptical myself. I think if there was life smarter than us around, we’d see signs of it somewhere.”

  “If they were of sufficient intelligence, we most likely wouldn’t know it unless they wanted us to.”

  “Possibly. But what are the chances? Really? The human race has its flaws, but we must be doing something right if we’ve figured out a way to travel forty light years in the span of three years.”

  Davidson stopped shoveling briefly. He craned his head around so that he was looking at me and said, “Maybe we don’t deserve all the credit.” He commenced digging again.

  I glanced up and saw that Thomas had stopped what he was doing and was standing there staring at me. I shrugged. He had heard the conversation over the com and he knew damn well what I was playing at. But I hadn’t betrayed his trust. It was obvious that Davidson knew about the Alcubierre drive, too, which meant at least three people were aware of how we’d gotten there. That’s not counting Lisa and I, who had heard the story secondhand from Thomas.

  Bertrand said, “Wait a minute.” The tone of his voice came off as sufficiently alarmed for us to gather around him. Even Yuri left his makeshift seat to see what was up.

  Bertrand was holding something in his hands. It was long, perhaps three feet in length.

  “What is it?”

  “A weapon?”

  “I think it’s a sword,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Bertrand said as he examined the new find. “Look at this.”

  A series of serrated barbs ran along the underside of the object.

  “Doesn’t look like any sword I’ve seen,” Yuri said.

  “And how many swords have you seen?” Thomas asked in his usual matter-of-fact manner.

  Davidson said, “It isn’t either. See how it’s hollowed out? It’s almost as if it’s meant to fit over something.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Bertrand said, “Be careful with it. It’s sharp.”

  I held it in my hands, raising it in front of me. It was lighter than I expected it to be. I tapped on the outside of it. It felt as if it was made of a tough plastic.

  The business end looked razor sharp. I was about to run my thumb across one of the barbs, but Yuri shouted, “Don’t! You’ll slice open your suit.”

  Everyone took a turn holding it except for Lisa. When her turn came, she shook her head and said, “No thanks.”

  “Is it plastic?”

  “I don’t think so,” Davidson said. “But I’m not an expert. See how it’s almost transparent? It’s almost like armor.”

  Davidson raised the object over his head and swung it down. It clove a rock in two.

  “Whoa.”

  “It just cut that rock in two like it wa
s nothing. If you look at the edge of the serrated blade, it doesn’t exactly look like metal.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Right here,” Bertrand said. “I didn’t even have to dig for it. It was partially covered with rocks.”

  “How old do you think it is?”

  “I can’t tell. Not without testing it back in the lab, but it doesn’t look that old. There isn’t any sign of decay.”

  “We’ll need to take it back with us,” Bertrand said. “For analysis.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “Four and a half hours,” Thomas said.

  “Make that three and a half,” I said, checking the HUD timer. “Yuri and I arrived an hour ahead of you.”

  Bertrand nodded. “Okay. Let’s keep going and see if we find anything else.”

  I looked at Davidson and said, “Looks like you got your proof. In record time even.”

  “Looks like it,” Davidson said, but he didn’t seem as excited about this new discovery as I was.

  CHAPTER 12

  We didn't find anything else of interest. Despite that, the initial excitement hadn’t worn off. When we were down to forty-five minutes we packed up the gear and headed back for the carrier ship. Yuri, Davidson, and I took turns carrying the artifact since it was too awkward for one person to handle for the entire two kilometer walk.

  In the short few hours we had been working at the ridge, a lot had happened at the operations zone. The open pit had increased in size and depth and there was equipment working at the bottom of it. Most of the roughnecks had gone underground to reinforce the tunnels the equipment had dug.

  Harper was standing watch near the mining shack. When we reached him, he said, “Take a look at this,” and handed me a chunk of rock large enough to fill my hand. Only it wasn’t a rock. “Ever seen one that big?” It was a diamond. It wasn’t shiny like you saw them in the store, but looked more like a piece of dirty quartz. “They’ve already brought up tons of this stuff.”

  “You can’t keep it you know,” I said, handing the hunk of diamond back to him.

  “Yeah, I know that, but it’s pretty cool isn’t it? Guy brought back a couple of these with him, he’d be set for life. What’s that?” He pointed at the object Davidson was carrying.

  “We found it by the ridge,” I said.

  “Holy shit. What is it?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “You know what it looks like, it looks like the l –”

  I cut him off. “Gotta go. We need to get this thing back to the lab.”

  Once we were buckled into our seats on the carrier ship, I asked Bertrand if I could join them in the lab once we were back on the Astraeus. He seemed hesitant at first, but eventually said, “If Captain Hayes will sign off on it, I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Hayes won’t go for it,” Yuri said as we were docking with the Astraeus.

  “We’ll see.”

  I was letting my curiosity get the better of me and I knew it, but wasn’t that the reason I had joined the mission to begin with? I didn’t think Hayes could fault me for that.

  When we were back on the Astraeus, we left Lisa and the others in the lab while Yuri and I proceeded to the security corridor. Yuri was still of the mindset that there was no way that Hayes was going to let me sit out a shift in order to watch a bunch of science geeks run tests on an alien artifact.

  I couldn’t find Hayes. We had shed our suits back in the docking bay, but my handheld radio was clipped to my duty belt. “Lansing to Captain Hayes, copy,” I said into the radio.

  “Captain, what is your current location?”

  “Command Center.”

  Yuri and I made our way to the cockpit and knocked on the door. Debby Huang opened it, letting us in. Hayes was standing in a huddle with Sturgeon, Harms, Jensen, and Sammy Wong. They were all whispering, a frantic air to the conversation.

  Hayes glanced up at us as we entered the room.

  “What is it, Lansing?”

  His face was pinched, his tone sharp. For whatever reason, he didn’t seem to be in a good mood.

  “Captain, I’d like permission to be stationed in the lab for a shift. We found a –”

  “Denied.”

  “But Captain, I…”

  “Can it, Lansing,” Hayes said. Hayes had never been a teddy bear, but this was as severe as I had ever seen him. “Report to your quarters. I want you in the conference room at sixteen hundred hours. That goes for you, too, Durov.”

  Both Yuri and I stood there without moving.

  “Now.”

  “What was that all about?” I asked Yuri once we were outside the command center.

  “Something big.”

  “Guess we better get to our quarters.”

  “I think I will stop by Finnigan’s first.”

  “Hayes ordered us to quarters.”

  “I think that was only to get rid of us,” Yuri said. “It is fourteen hundred hours now. Two hours until he wants us in the conference room. That makes plenty of time for a fast drink and then a nap.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m going to catch a couple of hours sleep before next shift.”

  I entered my room, stripped off my duty belt and plopped down on my bed. I was disappointed. And a little pissed. I had been there for a discovery of a lifetime, but now I couldn’t be there for the good part. Lisa, Thomas, and the others would be in the lab now, probably using radio carbon dating or something to gauge how old the artifact was. On top of that, Hayes had been an asshole about the whole thing.

  I didn’t bother trying to sleep. It was useless. I was too excited and too pissed.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened and Harper rushed in.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Yeah, the conference room. I know.”

  “No, not that. I mean, yeah, you’re right, Hayes wants us there at sixteen hundred, but something’s going on. Something big. He pulled us all off our security details.”

  I sat up.

  “You heard anything?”

  “Nada,” I said. “Hayes was being a dick.”

  “Maybe it has something to do with that giant insect leg you guys found.”

  “Insect leg?”

  “What it looked like to me. It’s called ecdysis. When an insect grows, it has to shed its exoskeleton and grow a new one.”

  “You’re saying that thing is from a bug?”

  Harper shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s just what it looked like to me. I’ll tell you one thing though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It would have to be one hell of a big bug.”

  We reported to the conference room at sixteen hundred hours. Hayes, Sturgeon, Thomas, Bertrand, and Davidson were waiting there when we arrived.

  “Guess it’s a full house,” Flynn said and took one of the remaining seats. Gloria and Jin took the last ones. Harper, Perkins, Yuri and I had to stand.

  After the room had gone silent, Hayes nodded to Bertrand. Bertrand was holding the same tablet Packard had used to monitor the weather balloon she had released back on 55 Cancri e. He placed the tablet at the edge of the table, scooted out of the way, and swiped some buttons on the screen. An aerial view of the planet was projected onto the opposite wall. If I squinted hard enough I could make out what appeared to be the top of the ridge near where Packard had launched the balloon.

  “This was recorded at approximately thirteen hundred hours,” Hayes said. To Bertrand, he said, “Can you speed up the recording?”

  Bertrand punched the tablet’s screen and the video on the wall sped up. We were passing over the ridge and beyond it, moving miles and miles in seconds until…

  “That’s it. Freeze it there.”

  The video froze.

  “What are we
looking at?”

  “Zoom in and enhance.”

  There was a time stamp at the bottom corner of the video that read February 8, 2177; 13:37.

  The image on the wall was magnified.

  “Shit.”

  Flynn whistled through his teeth.

  “Is there a secondary mining operation we don’t know about?” Jin asked.

  “Negative.”

  A giant crater filled the screen. Equipment was parked along the crater’s rim. Vaguely familiar, but not quite. It resembled some of the equipment we were using, but there were big differences.

  “That isn’t ours,” Harper said.

  “Can we enhance?”

  Bertrand shook his head. “That’s the best we can do.”

  Perkins leaned forward, squinting at the image on the wall. “Somebody beat us to the punch?”

  “Appears to be the case,” Hayes said.

  “Another Earth expedition?”

  “Negative,” Hayes said. “Whatever this is, it isn’t of Earth origin.”

  “Holy shit,” Harper said. “You’re talking about aliens.”

  “Bring up a live feed.”

  The video on the screen moved again, this time the view was in real-time as the weather balloon hovered over the alien mining operation.

  Sturgeon said, “It’s grainy. A probe has been dispatched, so we’ll have better image quality in a few hours.”

  “Maybe it’s abandoned.”

  “Signs of life?” Perkins asked.

  “The weather balloon isn’t equipped with thermal sensors. We won’t be able to verify until the probe gets down there.”

  Perkins said, “Have mining operations been halted?”

  I was only partially aware of the conversation taking place around me. My eyes were glued to the video on the wall. An alien operation going on right under our noses.