by D F Capps
Andrews glanced out the bullet-proof window behind his desk.
“The aerial spraying?”
Hollis checked his notes. “I’m gradually increasing the coverage. The new nanoparticles of aluminum and barium are staying airborne for eight to ten weeks. The weapon won’t work without the metallic ions to conduct the electromagnetic energy through the upper atmosphere.”
Andrews nodded, a guilty look on his face. “I hate dousing people with these metals. It’s ruining their health, contaminating our food, and our water supply.”
Hollis took a deep breath. “I know, but not using the weapon isn’t an option. Our new friend told us this was going to be a long and painful process. The situation is already bad and getting worse by the day. I don’t see that we actually have any choice.”
Andrews closed his eyes momentarily and shook his head. “We don’t. Is your security still tight?”
Hollis glanced around the room. “Yes, sir, fully compartmentalized and need to know.”
The information was ears only. Andrews didn’t have any printed or electronic copies of anything on the project, and he made sure there would be no recordings of any of the meetings that took place.
“Still fully isolated from the military industrial complex?”
“Yes, sir, totally isolated. No cross connections. Our most vulnerable point is the recruitment of top-qualified pilots, but the military system seems to be handling that reasonably well. When asked, we just hint that the pilots are being moved into Special Forces units for classified missions. That appears to be an acceptable reason for losing their best people.”
Andrews looked particularly worried.
“What about the rate of alien abductions?”
Hollis stared at the presidential seal in the carpet. “Still increasing,” he said. “Worldwide, more than fifty people a day are being abducted by the Zeta Greys. Many show up after a day or two, but some are never seen again. Animal mutilations by the aliens are up, too. More people are noticing. It won’t be long before the outcry becomes a public issue. Our official position of denial isn’t going to last indefinitely. At some point the people are going to figure out what’s happening and that their government has been lying to them all along.”
Andrews grimaced. “The timing of this was always a critical issue. Your people have to come up with the necessary strategy and tactics soon, or this whole thing will start to unravel. I’m just afraid that if we fail at this, humanity will be unable to recover. We will lose not only our freedom, but our capacity for self-determination. All of us would be reduced to slaves, at best, and eventually, to little more than farm animals waiting to be harvested for someone else’s gain.”
Hollis nodded and reflected Andrews’s concern for the future. “Believe me, sir—I understand exactly what is at stake. I’ll call you as soon as we make the necessary breakthrough on strategy and tactics.”
Chapter 5
Diane Zadanski collected her baggage in the Albuquerque Airport and looked around. This was as far as her orders had taken her. A tall, husky man with close-cut blond hair, cowboy boots, faded blue jeans, a muted blue plaid shirt, leather jacket, and Stetson hat approached her.
“Lieutenant?” he asked softly.
Diane glanced around and wondered if this was who was meeting her. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, so it felt strange to her.
“Zadanski,” she replied. “And you are?”
He checked to see that no one was close to them. He showed her his military ID. “Jed Collier, ma’am. I have a car waiting,”
She followed him out the glass sliding doors into the cold, dry night air. He opened the trunk of the plain dark blue Chevy sedan and hoisted her luggage into the compartment. Closing the trunk, he opened the back passenger door, motioned for her to get inside, closed the door, walked around to the other side, and got in. He nodded to the driver, who pulled out into the light traffic. She looked him over as the car left the airport.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He didn’t look at her, but just stared straight ahead. “To never–never land.”
This whole thing was starting to feel strange. “You’re joking, right?”
He turned to face her directly. “Not really. If you’re ever asked, you’ve never heard of such a place, and you never talk about what you’re doing there, or where it’s located.”
Her level of suspicion was rising. “Your military ID was Army,” she said. “Why aren’t you in uniform?”
He nodded. “Valid question. I used to be a colonel in Army Intelligence.”
She frowned. “But you’re not now?” She felt alarmed about where this conversation was going.
“Still a colonel, only not in the Army anymore. Just like you’re still a lieutenant, but not in the Navy.”
He watched her closely to see how she was taking the news.
“What? What do you mean I’m not in the Navy?” She contemplated ordering the car to stop so she could get out.
“You’ve been promoted into a higher branch of the service. I’ll let Admiral Hollis explain it to you when we arrive.”
Admiral Hollis? she wondered. She’d never heard his name before, but that wasn’t too unusual. There were a lot of admirals in the Navy. The thought that the admiral might not be in the Navy any more crossed her mind, as well.
She felt a little panicked about the sudden change in her life. I’ve got to have faith that this is the best thing that I can experience, she thought. She tried to relax. It wasn’t working all that well. “So what do you do now?” she asked.
“I’m head of security at Peregrine Base.”
Peregrine Base? she wondered. One more thing she hadn’t heard of before. This was getting stranger by the minute. “So you’ve read my service file?”
He nodded and glanced down. “Honestly, I know more about you than your mother ever dreamed of knowing. I’m sorry about her passing.”
Diane closed her eyes and breathed out slowly. Her mind raced to adjust to her new conditions. The fact that he wasn’t in uniform was troubling, but he genuinely seemed to be military.
“So do I address you as colonel, or sir?”
He smiled for the first time since they met. “Collier is fine. You’ll find military rank isn’t much of a deal in the new unit. Most everyone is comfortable using last names, if that works for you.”
The mood was definitely lighter now. “It does, Collier,” she replied.
He relaxed, too. “I thought it might, Zadanski.”
They both chuckled. They filled the long drive into the dark wilderness of southwestern New Mexico with polite conversation.
* * *
“We’re here,” Collier said as the car came to a stop.
A jolt of panic swept through Diane. They were out in the middle of nowhere: no lights, no buildings, no gate, nothing. For the last half-hour, the car had bumped down what could only marginally be called a gravel road. What had she been sent into?
Collier came around, opened the car door, and illuminated the ground with a flashlight.
“Watch your step; the ground is uneven,” he said.
He led her along a narrow path, through scrub brush and sage, in the frozen stillness of the night. A massive outcrop of stone rose above them, barely visible in the dull reflection of his flashlight on the snow. Two men dressed in padded camo fatigues with night vision gear stepped out of a cave. Diane glanced at the M-16 rifles they carried as she passed between the guards, still unsure what was going to happen. Cameras mounted to the ceiling of the cave whirred as she followed Collier deeper into what was clearly an abandoned mine of some sort. She began to feel less uncertain as she entered into the lighted section around a corner in the cave.
Collier led her through a round opening where a twelve-foot diameter blast door, two-feet thick, stood open. The room was generally cubical, fifteen feet on a side, thirty feet deep with rock walls, a security desk, and another blast door off to the left. That door w
as closed. An older officer stood, waiting for her.
His uniform was a solid dark gray color with a unit patch on the right shoulder. The emblem had a black background with a red border, a yellow nine-pointed star in the lower half of the patch, and USSC in white letters across the top. The collar of the man’s shirt was open, no tie, but with four chrome stars on the lapel. He walked forward and held out his hand. She shook hands, glancing at the name tag above his right shirt pocket: Hollis.
“Welcome to Peregrine Base, home of the United States Space Command,” he said. “You can keep your personal items. Your new uniform is in your quarters, so you won’t need any of your Navy issued clothing.”
Space Command? she thought. She didn’t know there was such a thing. That’s when Collier’s words came back to her: “Never–never land. If you are asked, you’ve never heard of such a place.” She slowly began to relax.
“This is your new home. Your luggage will be in your quarters. Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure,” she said. She handed her orders and ID card to the soldier at the desk who processed her paperwork and gave her a new ID card. Two men opened the second blast door.
They trekked through a smooth concrete-lined hall for another two hundred yards, rode an elevator down three hundred feet, and entered the residential section of the underground base. They threaded their way through a moving mass of construction workers carrying supplies and tools in the underground halls.
“Still under construction,” Hollis explained. “I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with the noise for some time yet. Cafeteria is in here.” He turned to the right, walked over to the coffee machine, and poured two cups.
“You’ll meet the rest of the squadron tomorrow,” Hollis said. “Before you turn in, I’d like you to try something out for me. Do you feel up to that?”
She glanced around at the unfinished dining hall. The construction noise was probably going on twenty-four hours a day.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A flight simulator. You can think of it as a type of video game—on steroids.”
She finished her coffee. “Okay, let’s go.”
Hollis led her down a flight of stairs and into a small room off a long hall, and flipped on the lights. In the center of the room was a pilot’s seat with a complex console wrapped around the cockpit, not too different from her Super Hornet’s. The cockpit was supported by a number of hydraulic cylinders, which gave the simulator a six-axis range of motion. Three screens were mounted in front of the pilot’s seat, simulating forward, right, and left fields of vision. Mounted behind the pilot seat were two displays and another seat.
“It’s a two-seater plane?” she asked.
He shook his head and blinked slowly. “Two-seater craft. It’s much more than a plane.”
She frowned slightly. “Okay, but won’t I need a RIO?”
He nodded, looked at her, and grinned. “For tonight, I’ll be your radar intercept officer. Go ahead and strap in.”
She climbed into the pilot seat and strapped the five-point harness around her. Hollis stepped into the second seat and strapped in. He powered up the simulator and the screens in front of her lit up. They depicted a mountainous terrain with blue skies above.
“You’re going to encounter a saucer shaped craft sitting on the ground in the middle of your screen. The controls are very similar to your Super Hornet, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble adapting. Weapon selection and firing is on the control stick. Your job is to shoot down the scout saucer. We’re going to take a few minutes for you to get accustomed to the simulator. Just fly through the air and get used to the controls, okay?”
Her hand trembled slightly and the coffee wasn’t helping the nervousness in her stomach, but, she said, “Okay.”
“Here we go,” Hollis said.
The scenery on the screens started moving. It was a good simulation of flying her Super Hornet at fifteen hundred miles an hour. She banked left then right. The whole simulator tipped and swung in response, just as her fighter jet aircraft moved.
“Okay, you see that valley coming up on your two?”
She checked the screen on the right side. “Yep.” The familiarity of flight settled her down into the present moment.
“Fly into that valley and move closer to the ground. That’s where you’ll find the scout saucer. As soon as you acquire the target, shoot it down.”
She banked into the valley and dived for the ground. As soon as she spotted the glowing silver saucer she froze. It bolted up from the ground and shot a beam of light at her. The screens went dark and the simulator came to rest.
Diane was shaking in her seat, breathing hard, and unable to speak.
“Zadanski?” Hollis said softly.
He waited patiently for her to respond. She finally released her harness and turned to face him.
“It’s the same damn saucer!” she shouted. “It took my brother!”
Hollis’s expression fell. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”
“These saucers are real. I saw one.” She was furious.
He nodded. “All too real, I’m afraid. When did this happen?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, her hands still trembling.
“Nine years ago,” she said. Her voice was shaking as much as she was. “My brother had left his sweater out near our pond. It was dusk, but there was still some light in the sky, so he went out to get it. That’s when the saucer appeared. I remember him looking back at me just as he was swept up in a bright white light. The saucer flew right over me as it left. It was totally silent—no engine sounds at all. I never saw him again. To this day I don’t know if he is dead or alive.”
Hollis sighed and looked down, shaking his head. “If he wasn’t returned within three days, I’m afraid he’s dead.”
Diane’s trembling increased. She began sobbing. He reached forward and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry.”
She felt short of breath and instinctively put her hand on her chest. “Why do you think he’s dead?” she asked.
The expression on his face was both grim and sad. For a few moments he wouldn’t make eye contact with her, but then he did.
“Each year approximately ten thousand people are abducted by UFOs and never seen again. Those are just the ones we know about. My guess is that the actual number may be three to four times that high.”
This is incredible, she thought. “And nobody notices?”
“Sure, people notice, but without an actual sighting, as in your case, the victims are thought to have left on their own, got lost, had an accident, or some other rational explanation. For most people, UFO abduction isn’t even on the list of possibilities.”
She shook her head. So her brother wasn’t the only one, she thought. The same thing has happened to a lot of people. It’s still happening, she realized.
“So what’s being done about it?” She turned to face him more and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“You and this new squadron are an integral part of the solution,” Hollis said. “I understand, if you don’t feel up to continuing tonight.”
She turned to look at the screens and the controls in the simulator. Then she swung back to face him.
“We can take them down?”
He shrugged. “We believe we can. The technology is almost there. We need pilots like you to come up with the tactics and skills to make it happen.” He looked back at her, hope in his eyes.
She turned forward in her seat. A new determination filled her mind. “So what happened on the first run? The screens went black.”
“Hypothetically, you died,” Hollis said. “So far everybody dies, every time. Your first problem is slow speed. You ready to try it faster?”
She glanced back at him. “Yes,” she said firmly. She strapped back in.
“Okay, here we go,” Hollis said again.
The three screens came back on with an apparent speed of fifteen hundred miles p
er hour.
“Thruster control is just like your Super Hornet. Push the speed to the edge of where you’re comfortable. Same valley, same scout saucer, same action, just faster this time.”
She pushed the thruster lever forward. The images on the screen streamed past her at a frightening speed.
“There’s your valley.”
She banked and dived, spotted the scout saucer, and swung to the side, realigning her aim. The scout saucer shot up quickly. She banked again to the left and pulled back on the control stick, trying to lock her weapon on the scout saucer. The beam of light hit her again and the screens went dark.
“That was better. You ready to try it faster?” His voice was calm, reassuring.
She looked back at him. “How fast will this go?”
“Your last run was at ten percent thrust,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Ten percent!” That was a shock. In her Super Hornet, ten percent wasn’t even takeoff speed. She’d still be on the flight deck.
“It takes time to adapt to the higher speeds. Our fastest pilot has worked his way up to fifty percent thrust. We think at seventy percent, we can start successfully engaging the scout saucers.”
She shook her head. “We think?” Didn’t he know?
Hollis shrugged. “We’ll find out when we get there.”
Unbelievable, she thought. “So, faster?”
He nodded. “Faster.”
The simulator powered back up. The screens came to life. She pushed the thruster to twenty percent. The images were screaming past her. She located the valley, banked and dived after the scout saucer. It lifted off. She banked and swerved, trying to avoid the beam of light. Just as she was about to line her sights up on the scout saucer she crashed into the side of a mountain. Her spirits fell with the darkened screens and the return of the simulator to its resting position.