Harbinger (The Janus Harbinger Book 1)

by Olan Thorensen

  Jill opened one eye enough to see Bobby on the floor in the adjacent room, involved with a set of six small stuffed animals for whom he supplied voice-overs. She smiled, luxuriating in a few more minutes of quiet and warmth under the covers before starting her day.

  7:37 a.m.

  Zach perused who was already seated after he filled his tray with breakfast items: a double helping of scrambled powdered eggs, four sausage links, two large biscuits slathered with butter, a bowl of canned pear halves, reconstituted orange juice, and coffee. His habit was to eat a large breakfast, if available, in case food was scarce later—an experience-based nod to the uncertainty about what might happen as the day progressed.

  His eyes stopped at a four-person table with Jane Smythe, Bre Huttleston, and two empty chairs. The latter was always a convivial companion, and he hadn’t interacted much with the site nurse, who also doubled by helping Paula Rosario and Sarah Reno with biological research.

  Zach wove his way to the targeted table, exchanging greetings with staff members who seemed at ease with him, nodding hello to those who were obviously uneasy in his presence, and deflecting two offers to join a table.

  “Hello, ladies, mind if I join you?”

  Smythe looked slightly startled and cast down her eyes after recognizing the speaker, but Bre grinned. “Sit yourself down, Mr. Safety. Are we all safe? No polar bears or one of them . . . what did Nylander call that mythical Inuit monster during his lecture on Eskimo culture last week?”

  “Tupilaqs,” said Zach. “Some kind of avenging monster a conjurer could send after an enemy.” He sat next to Bre and away from Smythe, so as not to disquiet her. “I like the part where the Tupilaq was capable of turning back on its summoner. Serves them right.”

  “Don’t let Elizabeth hear you say that, Zach,” Smythe said with a shy smile, surprising Zach. He couldn’t remember her ever addressing him, much less by his first name.

  “She’ll start lecturing you on how all God’s creatures deserve mercy.”

  “I’d better watch my tongue around her,” said Zach. “Here, I trust, are more worldly companions.”

  Further discussion was interrupted when Bobby appeared and stood between Bre’s and Jane’s chairs, glanced several times between the two women—as if making a decision—and climbed into Jane’s lap.

  Bobby liked to climb into people’s laps he approved of. Moments later, Jill appeared carrying two plates, Bobby’s with scrambled eggs, canned pineapple chunks, and a biscuit supporting a glop of strawberry jam. Jill had momentarily dreaded that her son was headed to Zach Marjek. She hesitated. The only empty chair was next to Zach.

  She sighed. Come on, girl. Get over being pissed at him. He’s been nothing but pleasant after “that” day. And Bobby likes him. She suspected her son had an innate ability to judge people. She hadn’t experienced anyone he liked who turned out to be someone she didn’t want to know or be around. Despite her initial commitment to forever dislike the man, there was obviously more to Marjek than she had thought. She’d even found herself staring at him when he wasn’t aware of it.

  “Have a seat, woman,” said Bre, loud enough for neighboring tables’ occupants to turn and look. “I swear Zach is a teddy bear you can’t always avoid.”

  Jill swallowed a curse and glowered at her friend. Zach pulled the empty chair back and smiled.

  Oh, well, she thought, I suppose Bre’s right . . . at least she’s chided me enough times.

  She gave Zach a perfunctory nod, put her tray on the table, and sat.

  Bre glanced at Zach and Jill, gave a slight involuntary shake of her head in amusement, and searched for a way to divert Jill’s attention.

  “Jill, you know Jane is Canadian, but I bet you didn’t know that her ancestors were Americans with a fascinating history.”

  “Oh, Jane, tell us about it,” said Jill, perhaps a bit eagerly.

  Jane swallowed a spoonful of oatmeal, wiped her mouth with a napkin, and laid down her spoon.

  “Well . . . most Americans think the Revolutionary War ended British control of the colonies after the Battle of Yorktown. While it’s true that the colonial and French victory started the process, two years passed before the British formally agreed with the Treaty of Paris. In 1783, New York City was still occupied by the British army, commanded by General Guy Carleton. In the final withdrawal, Carleton arranged for Crown loyalists to be evacuated to Nova Scotia if they wanted to leave the freed colonies. Among the thirty thousand who left were my ancestors, including one of my great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers whose slave parents had been granted freedom for supporting the British. She was only six years old at the time.” Jane paused and scrunched her face. “How many ‘greats’ did I say? I never remember if it’s five or six. Anyway, I still have family in Halifax where they initially landed.”

  Zach had already heard Smythe’s story, but he pretended to pay attention while managing to look causally in Jill’s direction several times.

  Bre wasn’t fooled. He likes her. Maybe more than just likes. She seems to have lost that edginess she had at first whenever I saw them interact. She also has a thoughtful look when she thinks no one sees her staring at him. Bobby certainly likes him. If I hadn’t gotten to known Zach better these last months, I’d suspect he’s trying to get at her through the kid.

  Bobby took that moment to transfer himself from Jane to Zach and reach a hand toward a sausage link, only pausing with a questioning look to the target’s owner for assent.

  8:21 a.m.

  In the six weeks since the newcomers arrived at Site 23, the day/night cycle went from equal hours to the sun never setting below a distant horizon, though it ducked briefly behind the surrounding hills. Even then, a person outdoors could read small print.

  Jill followed the advice for ameliorating the effects of endless daylight. One advantage was that on days when Bobby was still too full of energy to go to sleep after dinner, she could take him outdoors and let him run and explore for twenty to thirty minutes.

  This morning, Jill felt like taking a walk outdoors before starting the day’s work. Sitting next to Zach at breakfast had somehow disconcerted her. She bundled Bobby and left their rooms in time to see Charles Adams and Rachel Munoz exit her room at the other end of the hall. Rachel glanced at Jill, winked, and followed Adams.

  I guess that means they’re a thing, thought Jill as she led Bobby outside. The weather was a balmy 38 degrees, with a glaringly blue sky and a few wisps of high clouds. She was staring at those clouds when she turned the corner of a building and froze. A nightmare stood six feet away. Dark, long shaggy fur cascaded down the looming body. Facing her was a massive head with two wicked-looking curved horns. Large nostrils blew frosty breath at her. The cloven front feet inched toward her as if the beast were gathering for a lunge.

  She snatched Bobby off his feet and was about to turn to run, thinking to shield her son if the creature attacked, when a man’s voice said, “Don’t move! They’ll charge if you run.”

  Jill’s heart pounded. She felt like screaming, but that would have required breathing.

  The voice spoke again, this time closer behind her. Jill could see a hand and an arm appear in the corner of her vision.

  “I’ll try to distract it.” A man stepped to her right, held out his arm, and presented a hand to the creature—a hand holding a sugar cube!

  “Here you go, Harriet.”

  The monster snorted another breath toward Jill, a snort whose odor would have melted steel, and shuffled forward to lick off the sugar cube with a large tongue.

  “God damn it, George, give her a break,” exclaimed a new voice—female this time. Two hands gripped Jill’s shoulder and pulled her back a few steps, proving that Jill had not turned to stone. “George is an idiot. This is Harriet, the camp’s pet musk ox.”

  George laughed. “We think she’s less than a year old. It’s hard to tell since none of us have much up-close experience with musk ox. She just wandered in one day a
bout four months ago. We figure she either got lost, or maybe the wolves got her mama. We sort of adopted her. She hangs around for a day or two, then disappears and comes back. Probably a good thing since otherwise the wolves would pick her off in a hurry.”

  Jill looked toward the voice to see a man with grease-covered overalls.

  She remembered the reference to a “Harriet” when they first arrived, but she had forgotten. Not that the recall helped her at the moment. She slowly stepped backward, but the creature more than matched her pace, coming closer and uttering guttural sounds and extruding a saliva-covered tongue.

  “Really, it’s okay,” said George.

  At dinner that night, the encounter was the topic of amusement for many of the staff, except for those women who asserted it provided further evidence of male childishness. The riposte was that women had no sense of humor. The disagreement was not resolved.

  The novelty of newcomers faded as the adults became integrated into the community. Jill’s worry about letting her son out of her sight receded with the abundance of attention he garnered. His initial reticence to be more than a few feet from her, with the exception of being with Bre, quickly changed to at least occasional preference for other adults who fawned over him.

  As Bre had predicted, Jill’s initial feeling ended that she was an unneeded member of the community and would have nothing to keep her busy. In addition, multiple staffers were eager to take advantage of playing with or watching a child. Jill spent most of her time as a general gofer for administrators, along with helping the site’s three cooks in preparatory work, starting with Kathy Zerlang.

  “This has got to be overwhelming for you, Jill,” said Kathy when they first met. “Most of the people are really great, and there’s no better place to meet them than when they’re feeding their faces and almost everyone is in a good mood. If Bre doesn’t need you full time, how about an hour or two helping around lunchtime? That’ll free us cooks for planning and preparation. We can spec out a place for Bobby to play. He’ll always be in sight. Just come around noon on those days when you don’t have anything else to do.”

  By the end of the first week at Site 23, Jill had followed the suggestion. It had been Kathy’s turn as lead cook with assistance from Sally Ingersoll. By the end of the first month, Jill was helping two or three times a week when Kathy and Sally were lead cooks, but not with the third cook, Harry Houdin. Everyone agreed he was a fine cook and affable, but Jill didn’t like the way she caught him staring at her.

  8:52 a.m., White House

  President Chesterton didn’t realize the anomaly that when he reached the Situation Room at 8:52 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the clocks at Site 23 read the same time. Strictly speaking, Site 23 was in the Central Standard Time Zone within the western fifth of Ellesmere Island. The first time Sinclair had seen a map delineating the island’s time zone split, he blurted out, “Makes no goddamn sense to have two time zones on a huge island with less than five hundred people.” He decreed that Site 23 would follow the EST to synchronize with Washington and the only permanent settlement on the island at Grise Fiord in the south.

  When Chesterton entered the Situation Room, generals Hardesty and Wallens snapped to their feet.

  “Sit,” he said. “You indicated this wouldn’t take long. I’ve a photo op with the winner of the Westminster Dog Show in an hour. If you don’t think the sequence of meetings is weird, I’ll want to know what you would think is odd.”

  The generals gave the perfunctory chuckles, as required whenever a superior thinks he has said something amusing.

  “Generals,” Chesterton said, “here we are again. Hopefully, there’s something positive to report.”

  Hardesty always started the updates. “While significant development is still needed, the DARPA people think they have a breakthrough on armor, at least for tanks and other land vehicles.” He paused. “Mr. President, I need to ask if you know how most antitank weapons work?”

  The president’s lips twitched. “I assume it’s not simply by poking a hole in the tank and blowing it up.”

  Hardesty ignored the response and launched into a simplified explanation. “The round or missile fired at a tank does not, in and of itself, penetrate. Instead, it has a shaped charge. Imagine a solid cylinder with one end indented instead of flat, like the bottom of a wine bottle. When the charge goes off, the blast front is concentrated by the indentation. A superheated plasma is created that vaporizes the metal and burns through the armor.

  “Our current latest-model Abrams tank is protected by Chobham armor first developed by the British. It involves multilayered armor that includes ceramic plates that can shatter a projectile and disrupt the plasma enough to retard penetration. I won’t go into details about it, but if you’re interested, we can give you a briefing or send over an information packet.”

  Chesterton waved to continue without indicating further interest.

  “Theoretically, the plasma could also be partially dissipated by a magnetic field. We’ve been experimenting with generating such fields around tank armor. It works, but only in artificial conditions very different from combat. For example, one of our own Abrams tank rounds can penetrate the armor on an Abrams, but a magnetic field prevents the round from burning through. The problem is the tests only used a section of armor and not a real tank. It’s simply that the extensive equipment and energy required to generate the field haven’t so far been adapted to real-world conditions. At least, until now.

  “The holy grail in tank development is developing armor that is significantly lighter in weight with the same or greater armor protection, and that’s where we seem to be headed in the next two years.

  “The new alloys that are coming from hints about the Object’s composition are harder than anything we’ve had before and have properties that allow the creation of magnetic fields at a higher field strength and with less energy requirements. Our estimates are that we will have working models of a new generation of armored vehicles within two years.

  “I’ll emphasize this could lead to a revolution in armored warfare. It normally makes no sense to think about a new design for the main battle tank unless there’s a new technology to justify the change. That’s why the Abrams has been deployed for four decades in several upgraded models. The projection has been that this would continue for at least another twenty to forty years because there have been no developments or tactics to justify a new tank generation.”

  “So, exactly what does this mean for our combat capabilities?” asked Chesterton.

  “So far, the applications are for the army and navy. Tanks that will be far more maneuverable and survivable on a battlefield against opposing forces, likely by a factor of three to four times—as if the number of tanks increased by that number. A hundred-tank brigade would function on a battlefield as if it were three or four hundred tanks of the current Abrams model.

  “For the navy, we think it will mean above-water-level armor that’s more resistance to antiship missiles. The gain in survivability will not be as much as for tanks—in this case, perhaps two-fold. It could be more, but that’s what the simulations carried out by the navy are saying. Why not as much improvement as for tanks? You’d have to ask the admirals, but none of them have been read-in on this situation right now. However, think of it as effectively doubling the number of warships.”

  The president rubbed his chin. “Will the other sides come up with countermeasures?”

  “We assume so because that’s the history of advances in weaponry. However, as yet, we are not sure exactly what countermeasures would work. The more likely scenario is that potential opponents will copy the technology and eventually field similar tanks and warships. Given that we only headed in this direction because of our interaction with the Object, and assuming we can keep the technology secret, it may be twenty years or more before any other nations can match us.”

  Chesterton grimaced. “Okay. An arms race that doesn’t gain any advantage in the long run
. I suppose that’s the nature of things. Anything more benign coming from this fiasco you dumped on me?”

  The president’s views had been amply expressed ever since he first learned of the Object. Unfortunately, his campaign had neglected to include dealing with alien objects, violating Canadian sovereignty, or becoming involved in a conspiracy Hollywood would have laughed off as too improbable for even pulp fiction novels and B-movies.

  “Nothing that we believe is far enough along to brief you on,” said Wallens. “The people at Site 23 seem encouraged about everything they’re learning since the virtual-reality system with the Object became operational, but although there are tantalizing hints, nothing is certain yet in terms of practical applications the public would benefit from.”

  This time, Chesterton sighed. “Gentlemen, I trust you’re all doing your best, but I have to hope you can still do better. I’m starting to think that soon all this has got to come out. I’ve read the reports multiple times, going all the way back to the beginning. It doesn’t take an efficiency expert or intuitive genius to sense the jig will be up literally any day.

  “And yes . . . I suppose past presidents had the same feelings. However, it’s only so long until flights to unidentified locations, tons of supplies, and people vanishing for extended periods won’t be noticed. And that’s not to mention personnel. Even by swearing them to secrecy, as the number of people who know about Site 23 increases, the likelihood one of them blabs to a reporter or drops an unintended comment to the wrong ears is bound to blow things open.

  “I wanted to hear today’s report, but I’m thinking of bringing in some more heads in the next couple of months to brainstorm how to handle this when it does come into the open. At a minimum, it’ll have to be my chief of staff, secretaries of defense and state, and a small number of outsiders we’d have to carefully select.”