by WADE, T I
AMERICA ONE
NextGen
Book 5
By
T I WADE
AMERICA ONE – NextGen
Copyright © 2013 by T I Wade.
All Rights Reserved.
Published in the United States of America.
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Library of Congress Catalogue-in-Publication Data
Wade, America One / T I Wade.
Library of Congress Data.
Thanks to:
Editor – David VanDyke, Woodbridge, Virginia
Proofreader – Kayla West, Weatherby, Missouri
Cover design – Jack Hillman, Hillman Design Group, Sedona, Arizona
eBook edition layout by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz
Dedication:
AMERICA ONE – NextGen is dedicated to all you special youngsters who are studying or will study the astronautical sciences such as astronautical engineering and get us humans into space permanently one day. To all you future scientists and engineers, NextGen is for you.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Now What Do We Do?
Chapter 2
Aggression from Washington
Chapter 3
First Flight
Chapter 4
The Atlantic
Chapter 5
The Sahara
Chapter 6
Israel
Chapter 7
The Pig’s Snout
Chapter 8
Okay, So You Want War?
Chapter 9
Good Riddance
Chapter 10
The Cavern
Chapter 11
The Third Level
Chapter 12
The Last of the Matts
Chapter 13
Gold!
Chapter 14
Good Day Australia
Chapter 15
Goodbye Earth
Chapter 16
Slight Change in Plans
Chapter 17
Return to Mars
Chapter 18
Home Again
Chapter 19
The First Visit
Chapter 20
The Battle
Chapter 21
What Now?
Chapter 22
Cryogenics on DX2017
Chapter 23
DX2017
Chapter 24
Closure
Chapter 1
Now What Do We Do?
“Gee, Dad, why do I have to carry this heavy brick around in my stomach?” Saturn Jones asked once she had been wheeled into the medical area for a thorough checkup.
“That’s what your mother and I grew up with,” replied Jonesy, smiling.
“A brick in your stomach?” she asked, not understanding fully.
“No, what you are feeling is the gravity of Earth, nearly twice as strong as what we are used to on America One. Wait until Ryan has you running around the airfield we just landed on with that heavy brick,” her father added. His “brick” was mostly gone, his muscles already filling out to fight the gravitational pull, and he knew that it wouldn’t be long before he had to run again.
“Ignore your father, dear,” added her mother Maggie. “It is perfect gravity, something everything living on Earth has to deal with. Within a week, and giving your body time to accept the extra pull, you just wait until we return to space and weightlessness again. Just going weightless after Earth’s strong gravity is a pure pleasure.”
“Does my father feel this gravity in his metal legs?” asked Mars Noble to Jonesy as his own father, VIN, walked into the medical area unattended.
“No, my boy,” said VIN, interrupting Jonesy and his answer. He never knew what would come out of the mouth of his best friend, Colonel Jones, United States Air Force, so he decided to answer the question before Jonesy told his son more about space sharks, or sea sharks, or gravity sharks coming to get him. “My legs don’t feel the difference, but the top half of my body just wants to sink down and lay on the floor. As soon as you are checked over, son, I’ll get you to the pool. It is so much bigger and better than the tub in America One. Mars, Saturn, just to warn you, it smells of chemicals, so just be prepared for sharp aromas that could hurt your nose.”
“You swim in polluted water here on Earth?” asked Saturn Jones, about to get something rammed down her throat to check her tonsils.
“Something like that,” added Maggie, smiling at the word pollution. “Even the sea and the oceans are full of salt and pollution.”
“And fish,” added Jonesy. “I think our fishing chariot, the Gulfstream, will be ready and here tomorrow. Fish, here we come!” shouted Jones, scaring the younger members and some of the nurses with his noisy outburst.
“I don’t think so,” added Ryan, smiling and entering the room while wheeling in his wife Kathy. Medics pushed his two daughters, Lunar and Pluto Katherine, behind them in wheelchairs as well.
All newcomers went through the same checks. Ryan, Jonesy, Maggie and VIN had arrived earlier for a week on a previous flight down from space and didn’t need wheelchairs. They were already strong enough to walk the distance from hangar to medical center, and to the pool.
“I think, full Colonel Jones, now that we have arrived back on Earth and I assume you still part of the military, that we need a little more time debriefing before you head off on your vacation. I’m sure in a week or so we will all be glad to see your departure to bluer pastures. I might even come with you, or wait. At worst I could fly in formation beside the Jones family.”
“Sounds good to me, Ryan. Since you blew up your bank manager’s building, and now we have all our accounts back open, and thank you for the two percent interest rate for the last ten years, I can afford to fill my tanks,” Colonel Jones replied.
“We might need air or space fighter protection on our unarmed civilian aircraft flights,” suggested VIN. “You never know what our trusty American government might want to do to us once we are airborne and over their territory.”
“Never thought of that,” replied Jonesy, looking serious. “I mean, I know what it is like to be dishonorably discharged from the military, and that we were nearly blown out of the sky several takeoffs ago, but being an enemy of our own country for doing absolutely nothing! Maybe it is time to get out of the States for a while?”
“I’m thinking the same,” added Ryan, watching the medics attend to Kathy and his daughters.
Dr. Nancy, Captain Pete, Igor, Boris, Vitaliy and Max Burgos and families were still up in space. The men were flying the other craft around in various formations to show strength, and to protect the crew on the ground.
“Flight crew, my old office, ten minutes,” said Ryan, walking out. It was time to get things done. Now, what do we do? he thought to himself, beginning to understand the enormity of keeping all his crew safe.
“We have Bob Mathews and his crew arriving tomorrow,” began Ryan with his pilots in attendance half an hour later. There was Jonesy, Maggie, Allen, Jamie Saunders and VIN in attendance. Ryan was already enjoying the fresh coffee.
The stuff produced by Mr. Rose was good, but nothing was as good as the
real beans. “We need to fill the Dead Chicken with its first load and get her out of here to the Sahara. She will need to refuel in Germany and then head south. The engineers have promised me that the storage hangar and basic living requirements in the Sahara at our new base will be ready within five days, so we are going to move really fast. Hence we’ll be putting off your vacation, Mr. Jones, until we have at least two flights into Africa and back.”
“What about refueling in Germany?” Jonesy asked.
“We have the friendly German Air Force offering us all the fuel and services we need,” Ryan replied. “I only want U.S. assistance this side of the Atlantic. Because there are no more space communications, satellites or GPS systems up in space apart for our own ships, I assume that anybody interested in our movements can follow us up to a certain distance, but not as accurately as they used to a couple of decades ago. I’m sure Bob Mathews will fill us in when he arrives tomorrow.”
“I bet the governments around the world are struggling with surveillance outside their borders,” added Maggie.
“The NSA and CIA must be twiddling their thumbs doing nothing,” said VIN, smiling. “Maybe the world has gone back to James Bond and the old-fashioned spies.”
“Could be,” responded Ryan. “I think once we fly out into the Atlantic and over the horizon at low altitude, we might just disappear from all viewing screens.”
“So how do the countries shoot down ships and aircraft, if they don’t have any space surveillance?” Allen Saunders asked, bringing up a good point.
“Well,” Ryan replied, thinking for a few seconds. “Good point, General, but I think firstly, the Iron Dome systems can lock onto incoming missiles through the altitude of the missile. Other than missiles, I would assume search and destroy aircraft on constant patrol could be the next alternative.”
“It is difficult for any jet engine to fly long distance at low altitude,” added Jonesy. “Low altitude kills distance. I reckon that this whole new world order works their defenses on high altitude aircraft reconnaissance.”
“Maybe those little space drones have surveillance systems?” suggested Maggie.
“A good chance,” said Allen.
“Maybe all the countries have atmospheric drones,” interrupted VIN. “You know, like the ones I used to work with when I was a Marine in Iraq in a past lifetime. We worked with the MQ-1 Predator then, and I’m sure they have more modern unmanned aircraft with hours of extra fuel range, and much better cameras.”
“It sounds logical,” added Ryan. “Our friend in Canada told me that only the smaller aircraft can fly continental in safety. I would assume long-range small drones with large fuel tanks could be a way of finding aircraft over the vast oceans.”
“Well, they had a solar-powered aircraft a decade ago before we left,” said Jonesy.
“Yes, I saw one once crossing the USA,” included Allen Saunders. “It landed at Nellis. Nearly the wingspan of an old 747.”
“I’m sure wherever we go we will have dozens of hidden eyes watching us, and once we get to the open Sahara, they will just position their eyes within camera distance,” said VIN, Head of Security.
“Could we see these drones on radar?” Ryan asked his former Air Force personnel.
“Small jets and propeller driven aircraft show heat trails from their exhausts,” said Allen Saunders, former general in the USAF, and former base commander at Nellis Air Force Base. He knew his stuff, although now a decade old. “The Israelis had some of the best equipment to defend themselves; they did build the world’s Iron Dome systems. If these drones are bigger than a shoebox, we should be able to pick them up on radar, maybe up to 50 to 60 miles. Even so, we have nothing to shoot them down. The lasers from space struggle with any target smaller than a four-wheeled vehicle, even at the lowest altitudes. I think a visit to Israel with tons of cash would get us their latest surveillance and infrared systems.”
“Great idea,” replied Ryan. “I think a visit to that country on our first trip to North Africa would be fruitful. The problem I cannot find an answer to is, how can we all travel in different directions without somebody trying to kidnap us and then hold us hostage? I’m sure the government wants everything we have, especially our Matt shields, if they knew they existed, and would stop us from ever leaving again. Especially if they knew my whole flight crew was down here with me.”
“As your Head of Security, I advise that you must make sure none of these nurses or doctors are allowed to leave, or to see what goes into the Dead Chicken. Every new item on this base must be checked for bugs daily,” said VIN. “I know this room was swept by Sergeant Meyers before we entered, and it is clean, but any of those medical staff could be a mole trying to find out our next moves. Any conversation between us will be listened to by everything they have. I think that a kidnapping or capture of any of us here in this room, or even our families, could force us to comply with their demands. Remember the NSA listening in to its own citizens before we left, to their emails and telephone conversations in 2013, 2014? Now think what they have learned in a decade, and how they could have improved their equipment.”
“I got it!” said Jamie Saunders, usually the quiet one in meetings. “We all speak Matt!”
“Well done, Jamie!” laughed Maggie. “We are all fluent in Matt, every single one of us. Even my dearest husband can get by in Matt, even though he doesn’t like speaking it.”
“Only because it is hard to give altitude readings, log flight information, and bearings. Their language doesn’t have the sophistication of our flight chatter, apart from up, down and Hasta la Vista Baby,” replied Jonesy, straightforward for a change. The other pilots nodded, and nobody said anything for a few minutes.
“Well, I hereby give the order that all Earth languages are now banned between us, apart when flight commands or directions are needed to be conveyed in English. Then, with modern surveillance and aircraft tracking systems from the Israelis, and us speaking a 10,000 year old language, we should keep one step ahead of the pack,” conveyed Ryan with all attending nodding their heads. “We will only take off from this airfield when one of the two lasers aboard our ships is currently over the Pacific and about to fly overhead. I will always have the Pitts in the third shuttle. Mrs. Pitt can fly while Mr. Pitt can shoot. He is as deadly accurate as Mr. Noble here. Captain Pete can fly America One from the laser’s computer station while aiming the large laser, until VIN heads back up in two weeks’ time. Boris and Igor can fly one of the unmanned mining craft, and doing two days on and one day off in rotation will show strength up there. Max Burgos can fly Astermine Two, and only the two Matt craft are useless at this moment until Commander Joot, or you Jonesy, returns to give the others a break. So vacations are still out of the question until we are gone from the good old U.S. of A.”
“So we speak Matt when we leave here?” VIN asked. Ryan headed for the door, opened it and spoke to the guard outside. A few minutes later Lieutenant Walls entered.
“Lieutenant, we are going to speak a foreign language from now on, so don’t look at us as if we have lost it or something. You have the one man in solitary confinement in his apartment?” The lieutenant nodded. He hadn’t been told anything about this prisoner, or what he thought the shorty was. “That man is a walking, living fossil 10,000 years old, from Earth, and speaks a different language.”
Walls looked at his boss as if he had totally lost it. “An alien, an extraterrestrial 10,000 years old. Impossible!” was all Walls could say.
“You might think so, but he’s far more intelligent than any of us,” Ryan replied, watching the poor man come to grips with what he was being told. “Think, man! How did we get through the attacks on us in space? How do you think we have better weapons than the U.S. government?”
“Because you designed them, sir,” Walls replied.
“To an extent, but without this alien’s knowledge, we would all be particles floating around in space right now, apart from you of course, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Walls swallowed hard, still trying to grasp that this Nevada base now had more aliens than the other Nevada base just up the road, and these aliens were actually alive.
Nobody outside the newcomers had seen Commander Joot without a full spacesuit since he had arrived. The commander was in one of the bungalows with half a dozen security guards around its perimeter 24 hours a day. Only the America One crew went in to chat and to bring him food. Ryan had explained to Commander Joot, who had completely understood, that it was imperative that his existence needed to be kept secret from all others. Either that, or face the current world governments’ kidnapping, interrogating and eventually dissecting.
“Only you, Lieutenant, will be privy to this information. This man will be out of here on the first flight. I trust you to keep this info to yourself, or I will have no choice but to take you and your family with us. Understand?”
The man nodded, swallowing again, but stood resolutely. To the lieutenant, Ryan Richmond was always full of surprises.
Then Walls heard Ryan speak to his crew in a language he had never heard, if it even was a language, right in front of him, and they responded as fluently as if they were speaking English. Lieutenant Walls couldn’t believe his eyes, or his ears. Even Jonesy, a man he respected more than anybody, clicked away in weird noises as if he was actually having a conversation. Then Ryan returned to English.
“Lieutenant Walls, Mr. Noble, I want at least half of our security to go through every piece of equipment on the base daily, with every bug scanner we have. I want every cell phone, computer to the internet, and communications device found and destroyed. I don’t care how small it is, whether it walks, flies, or just hangs around. It could be a real bug for all I care. I don’t give a crap what you use, but I don’t want to see any bugs on base. This is the Nevada desert, for heaven’s sake. We don’t have bugs here, only rattlers and scorpions, and even those might have “Made in China” bugs on their heads, or up their butts, knowing the NSA and CIA. We will be out of here ASAP, and then your job is over, Lieutenant. You will be better off for life, and I doubt we will be back.”