When all were seated at the table, Shaw asked Pritchard to distribute the photographs. By this point, everyone in the room had already seen them, so the photos were accepted without a great deal of scrutiny. Jennings didn’t even look at his copy. He lifted it up and asked, “Are we sure it’s authentic? Amato’s not playing tricks on us?”
Pritchard presumed the president’s query was related to a persistent concern expressed in previous briefings about the possibility of Amato detecting their surveillance of his fleet’s activities. It was a concern Pritchard shared given the ugly end of his meeting with Amato at DFW. Even if Amato hadn’t been wise to Space Command’s surveillance before the meeting, he must have concluded it would happen afterward.
But if Amato had discovered his fleet was being watched, he appeared not to care. He’d made no effort to alter the encryption of his data transmissions, nor had he taken evasive actions since reactivating the CUBE transponders on the fleet’s way to Mars. It was a strange oversight in Pritchard’s opinion.
Warner exchanged glances with Pritchard and said, “You first, Dennis.”
“All right,” Pritchard said. He turned to face the president. “As I said when we emailed the photos earlier this morning, there are multiple reasons to believe it’s a hoax. First and foremost, there is zero possibility Cetus Prime could have landed on Callisto and remained intact. Then there is the other structure. We have no idea what it is, but, suffice it to say, it’s not natural. And it’s preposterous to believe Amato found both on his first scan of the moon’s surface, actually selecting four craters to scan out of the millions on Callisto and getting a hit on the first one.”
Pritchard paused to catch his breath. “But, despite all that, we could not find any indication that the photos were staged or manipulated.”
“We concur, Mr. President,” Warner said. “The photos were transmitted from Amato’s command CUBE to his tracking satellite and from there to Mayaguana. We intercepted both hops of the downlinks, and there’s no evidence in our earlier uplink intercepts to suggest Amato created the photos in Mayaguana and transmitted them to the CUBE through his satellite.”
“Dennis, in your email you said you would check NASA’s archive to see if the crater’s been photographed before. Did you find anything?” Shaw asked.
“We do have photos of the crater in Voyager-2’s archive, but unfortunately the resolution in all of them is too low to see any details inside the crater,” Pritchard said.
“Is it possible he uplinked a staged photo from a different source?” Zimmer asked Warner. “If he knows he’s being watched, and wanted to mess with us, he might have sought another communication route.”
“There is that possibility,” Warner acknowledged. “With Amato’s connections, he could easily find a commercial radio telescope or foreign government satellite capable of transmitting to his fleet without us knowing it.”
“But why would he go to all that trouble?” Pritchard asked. “If he doesn’t like the fact he’s being watched, Augie’s not the type to be subtle about it. He’d just change his encryption and tell us to pound sand.”
“Didn’t you just lay out the case for a hoax?” Zimmer needled.
“I know I’m speaking out of both sides of my mouth,” Pritchard said, “but I just can’t see what Augie hopes to gain with a prank. As inexplicable as it seems, the photos must be genuine.”
“Well, I don’t think we have a choice but to consider both possibilities,” Jennings said. “Question is, what do we do about it?”
“I say we cut his balls off, right here, right now,” Zimmer said. He turned to Hawkins. “Excuse my French, Dani.”
“No excuse needed, Elliott,” Hawkins said. “If you hadn’t said it, I probably would have.”
“Are you sure that’s wise, Elliott?” Shaw asked. “Amato’s kept his word about the UMOs so far. Why provoke him? If the photos are real, he’ll go public.”
“Don’t kid yourself. If they’re real, he’s going to go public no matter what we do. It’s just a matter of when,” Zimmer said. “For that reason, I don’t think we should diddle around with trying to figure out whether the photos are real or not. We should proceed under the assumption he’s found the ship. In my mind, that means taking control of the situation.”
“And what, exactly, are you suggesting we do?” Shaw asked.
“Knock out his satellite, cut off his communications with his fleet. Knock out power and comms on Mayaguana. Barricade the facility so no one goes in or out until we have a chat with Amato. That’ll get his attention,” Zimmer said.
“Oh, you’re right about that,” Pritchard said, ire beginning to race through his veins. “It’ll get his attention all right. You don’t know Augie like I do. He’ll find a way around your barricade and blow the whole story wide open. And if he doesn’t, Paul Morgan will.”
Zimmer scowled, ready to fire back, as Pritchard appealed to Jennings. “Sir, it seems to me, before we do anything else, we should try to verify whether we’re dealing with a hoax or not.”
“Okay. How do we do that?” Jennings asked.
“We can divert Juno to Callisto. It’ll take a few days to get there, but then we can photograph the crater ourselves,” Pritchard said.
“A few days?” Zimmer roared. “We don’t have a few days! He could make an announcement tonight for Chrissakes.”
Shaw waved his hands to appeal for calm. “Let’s keep it civil, Elliott.”
“Civil? Jesus, man, do you realize the stakes here?” Zimmer said. “The midterms are less than a week away! What do you think happens if Amato pops up tonight, tomorrow or the next day and tells the world the government’s been hiding proof of aliens? That it condemned three astronauts to death to cover it up? We’re already the minority in the House, we can’t afford to lose the Senate, too!”
He rose up out of his seat and banged a fist on the table. “No way in hell we should take a chance of that happening. Your agenda will be screwed, Andy. Congress will gut the military budget, same with NASA. Hell, they’ll probably disband NASA. It’ll be a complete clusterfark!”
“Okay, Elliott. I hear you. Take a seat,” Jennings said. He turned to Warner and asked, “Can you block or jam Amato’s satellite without destroying it?”
“Yes, sir,” Warner said. “But they’ll be able to get a workaround in place in a matter of hours. That’s why Secretary Zimmer recommended disabling Mayaguana as well.”
“That won’t be enough,” Pritchard said. “Amato has a backup facility on Ascension Island. As soon as they notice the satellite and Mayaguana are out, they’ll start working the problem, too.”
“That’s not a concern. Amato will be in our hands before his folks on Ascension can interfere,” Zimmer said. “We’ll have him tell his people to stand down.”
“There’s no way Augie will agree to do that,” Pritchard said.
“Oh, yes, he will.” Zimmer smiled. “Warner, tell them the rest of the plan.”
“Yes, sir,” Warner said. He darted a look at Pritchard, then turned his attention to the president. “Once their comms are out, we can take control of the CUBEs.” Warner explained that throughout the months of surveillance, Space Command had inventoried and studied the transmissions between Mayaguana and the CUBEs. “We know their command language, their communication frequencies. All we have to do is transmit new instructions and change the encryption routine. The code’s already written, all we need to do is—”
Pritchard lurched out of his seat. “Mr. President, I strongly protest any such action. It’ll backfire just like General Ferris’ crazy ploy that started this whole mess twenty-three years ago!”
Shaw took hold of Pritchard’s arm. “Calm down, Dennis. Let’s hear Warner out.”
“Thank you, sir,” Warner said. “All we need to do is link into DSN and transmit the instructions. Then we’ll have the leverage we need to force Amato’s cooperation.”
“No fucking way will you get access to DSN as long a
s I’m running NASA!” Pritchard said.
“Shut it, Pritchard,” Jennings said. “That’s not your call.”
Shaw tugged on Pritchard’s arm again and commanded him to sit. Meanwhile, Jennings mulled Warner’s and Zimmer’s proposals. After a minute’s reflection, he asked, “Pritchard, what’s the best-case scenario, timewise, for getting Juno to Callisto?”
In his angered state, Pritchard missed the president’s question. “I’m sorry, what did you ask?”
“God damn it, man,” Zimmer said. “Get your head out of your ass. How fucking fast can you get Juno to Callisto?”
Pritchard clenched his fists under the table and glared at Zimmer. The seventy-year-old secretary of defense looked back at him with a look of exasperated disgust. “Well, are you going to answer the question or turn purple and pass out?”
In an effort to break the tension, Warner said, “If I had to guess, I’d say four days at the earliest. If they burned most of its thruster fuel, maybe three, but you’d want to have some thruster power left to get into an orbit that will allow it to take pictures of the crater. Sound about right, Dennis?”
Pritchard shifted his glare to Warner. “If everything went perfectly, yes.”
“That’s too long, Andy,” Zimmer said.
“Understood,” Jennings said. “How would you block Mayaguana’s communications?”
“Quickest way would be to send in a Hellcat and zap the compound with an EMP,” Zimmer said. “But it’s risky. The airport’s right next door.”
“That’s a nonstarter,” Jennings said.
“I figured as much,” Zimmer said. “Well, if you authorize a jump, we can drop in a SEAL team and cut comms and power cables into the building but we’d need another force to secure the perimeter while the SEALs are doing their thing. A few truckloads of Marines would do the trick. But there’s a risk to that plan, too. Amato has armed security guards. If they start shooting at my SEALs or Marines, it could turn hot lickety-split.”
“I’m not authorizing any action that might result in an armed confrontation,” Jennings said.
“If they don’t fire, we won’t fire,” Zimmer said.
“What about their cell service?” Shaw asked.
“They don’t have their own cell tower. The closest one is at the airport,” Zimmer said. “We can jam that but it probably serves most of the island. An hour outage might not attract attention, but three or four days will. I suppose we can have the SEALs place jamming devices around the compound perimeter but I can’t guarantee they’ll be one hundred percent effective.”
While Jennings mulled Zimmer’s comments, Pritchard continued to fume. It won’t work. Not a chance. Augie’s too smart, his people are too skilled. They’ll get around any jamming device. He desperately wanted to voice that opinion to Jennings but feared it would push him toward Zimmer’s EMP missile option.
He debated suggesting a diplomatic solution. “Let me call Augie and try to reason with him,” Pritchard thought. But that wouldn’t fly. The moment Amato discovered he was being surveilled, he’d start cycling his data encryption faster than Space Command’s satellite could decode, leaving NASA and Space Command blind to what was happening on Callisto. No, that would only hasten a confrontation. But there had to be a better way than this!
“Mr. President,” Pritchard said, “I don’t think Augie has any intention of making an announcement before the election. He’s devoted his whole life to space exploration. He, of all people, would understand the ripple effect an announcement would have on the election. I think we’re better off sending Juno to Callisto without doing anything else for now.
“If I know Augie, and these photos are real, right now he’s trying to figure out how Cetus Prime landed, and trying to sort out what to make of the structure. I’m certain he’s just as surprised and puzzled as we are. He’s probably working on a way to get a closer look at both. That’s what I would do. I’d try every scanner, every device I had, to make sense of what’s in these pictures. Making an announcement is the last thing on his mind. But if we push him…”
“All good points, Pritchard, but I’m afraid I can’t leave things to chance,” Jennings said. “General Warner, you are authorized to jam Amato’s satellite, but you are not authorized to shoot it down. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Elliott, I want you to coordinate a jump to disable Amato’s comms and power on Mayaguana with Warner jamming the satellite. You can land a separate team at the airport to secure the compound but you are not authorized to engage in a firefight with Amato’s security. Do you understand?”
“Understood, Mr. President,” Zimmer said.
“Pritchard, you and Warner work out the DSN link. Warner, as soon as you’ve taken care of Amato’s satellite, go ahead and transmit the new instructions.”
“Sir, this is wrong,” Pritchard said.
With his eyes glued on Pritchard, Jennings said to Shaw, “Brett, you make sure Pritchard follows through. If he doesn’t do as I just instructed, fire him and get his deputy to do it. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Shaw said.
“Good. Dani, you got all that for the record?” Jennings asked.
“Yes, Mr. President,” Hawkins said.
It happened so fast, the words were out of Pritchard’s mouth before he stopped to think. “I will not be a party to this!”
Without missing a beat, Jennings said, “Very well, resignation accepted. Dani, relieve Dr. Pritchard of his security badge and have the Secret Service escort him home. And while you’re sitting at home sucking your thumb, Doctor, if you make any effort to contact Amato or anyone at NASA, or if you leak any of this, I will have you arrested for treason.”
“Now, Andy, come on. Let’s take a deep breath here. Let me talk to Dennis and we’ll work this out. I don’t think he fully understands what you’re trying to accomplish,” Shaw said.
“What’s to understand?” Pritchard said. “You’re going to poke the bear…two of them…Amato and Skywalker…God help you all.”
Pritchard tossed his badge on the table and departed.
Mission Control
A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center
Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas
Amato was reviewing his email when Morgan walked into his office and announced he had tracked down the last person he needed for the attempt to access Cetus Prime’s computers.
“Just got off the phone with Hector. He’s in. That gives us everyone we need,” Morgan said.
Hector Jimenez had been the project manager for NASA’s tracking and data relay satellite network, known as TDRS, and had played a key role in Morgan’s valiant but unsuccessful effort to save Cetus Prime’s crew from the fate that befell them twenty-three years beforehand. Jimenez had used TDRS to send a backdoor message from Morgan to the crew’s commander, Avery Lockett, via the ship’s UHF band, alerting Lockett to the Pentagon’s plan to provoke an attack by the UMOs.
In addition to Jimenez, Morgan had tapped Don Chu, the data-processing systems engineer for the Cetus mission, to lend his expertise. Chu had been responsible for all the computer systems on the ship and, therefore, knew the necessary programming commands to access the main onboard computers and extract data from the various systems.
The final former colleague Morgan rounded up was Bobby Davenport, the instrumentation and communications officer for the Cetus mission. As INCO, Davenport had been responsible for monitoring instrumentation uplinks and downlinks between the ship and Mission Control as well as the status of the ship’s communications systems.
Together, the three men possessed all the necessary knowledge to determine whether it was possible to establish a communications link with Cetus Prime’s computers and access its systems.
“Excellent news,” Amato said. “How soon can they be here?”
“Well, Bobby and Donnie are easy. They both retired to Florida. Bobby lives in Windemere. Donnie’s in West Palm. If you’re cool with i
t, I can take your plane and go pick them up in Orlando. That’ll give me a chance to give them the full rundown on the flight back so they’re ready to go when we touch down.”
“Okay, hold on a sec,” Amato said. He craned his body toward the open office door and called for Mark. When he appeared in the doorway, Amato asked him to send the pilots to the airport to prep the plane for liftoff within the hour. Turning back to Morgan, he asked, “Now, what about Hector?”
“He’s out west. Unfortunately, we can’t get him here before CUBE-2 heads down into Nuada,” Morgan said.
“I see,” Amato said. “From the look in your eyes, I assume you’re about to make another plea to postpone CUBE-2 until Hector’s here.”
“Sorry, can’t help it,” Morgan said. “I hate the idea of sacrificing CUBE-2 if we can get Cetus Prime to give us the answers we need.”
In his earlier lobbying of Amato to gain his assent for an attempt to activate Cetus Prime’s computers, Morgan had first addressed Amato’s desire to acquire close-up video footage of the ship and the anomalous structure inside the crater. “If we can uplink commands, we might be able to take control of the ship’s outboard video cameras to look around the crater, and the internal cameras will tell us whether the ship’s intact.”
These were two of the many benefits of attempting to communicate with the ship, Morgan argued. “We might be able to downlink some or all of their stored data. Learn what happened around Mars, what they did afterward, how they got to Callisto, how they landed.”
Amato had been enticed by Morgan’s pitch, but he expressed doubts about the chances of success. “Paul, it’s been marooned for twenty-three years. It’s half-encased in ice. The temperature on the surface averages two hundred degrees below zero. The components inside the computers probably froze and shattered within the first few days after it landed.”
“Then how do you explain the radio signals, Augie?” Morgan asked. “According to Ajay’s and Kiera’s data, the ship’s been sending signals for over two years. The ham radio won’t work without power.”
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