Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  I send some pictures as proof of identity. I advise you against displaying them in the general assembly—the detail is gruesome and might upset some members. Before his death, Kershaw admitted to having used new technology to kill President Sirkonen, who had been about to reveal the extent of Renkati’s treachery. All known members of the organisation Amoro Renkati have been arrested. There is no further threat to Nations of Earth. Gamra wishes to apologise deeply for this upheaval, but hopes that normal negotiations will resume.

  Meanwhile, I wish to notify you of my intention to resign from my position. I have been offered a fully funded position as negotiator, but will be available to offer assistance to my replacement. . . .

  Oh, how it pleased me to write that. He’d threatened to sack me, and now I’d made the first move, a move which he probably wouldn’t have expected. Yesterday I’d made my first down payment for the apartment which had been seized by gamra as part of the disbanding of Amoro Renkati. I’d also paid the staff outstanding wages. Money never interested me much, but I had never felt so good. And there was more to come.

  I flicked to the other message.

  Ms Hayworth,

  I hope you have arrived in Athens by now. Amarru said she has been awaiting your arrival so your training as my publicity officer can be fast-tracked—

  A light flicked on behind me, and soft footsteps entered the room. A yellow-skinned hand placed a steaming cup of manazhu between the edge of the table and my reader; its tantalising smell rose to my nose.

  I reached over my shoulder, and found Thayu’s arm.

  “I thought you might like this before we go to bed.”

  The glow from the reader silvered the soft curves of her face.

  “Bed? Is it that late?”

  “It is. You do forget yourself sometimes. You work too hard.”

  She said that a lot, in a mocking-joking way, but it was true. In the past few days, I’d spent far too much time in the semi-darkness of the communication hub. I would become anaemic at this rate.

  I half-rose and pressed “send” and again “send”.

  Then I picked up my cup and followed Thayu out of the room. My new office, my staff and the problems of the universe could wait a while. The night was warm and there were better things to do.

  Thank you for reading Ambassador 1: Seeing Red.

  In the next book in the series The Sahara Conspiracy, an aid worker in Djibouti discovers smuggled Coldi weapons. Vice President Danziger asks Cory a “please explain”. Cory investigates, but the solution is neither easy nor tidy.

  Get Ambassador 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy here.

  Visit the author’s website at http://pattyjansen.com and register for a newsletter to keep up-to-date with new releases.

  Lunar Discovery

  Discovery Series Book 1

  By

  Salvador Mercer

  * * *

  A Contemporary Sci-Fi, Techno-Thriller, by Salvador Mercer, Author of the Claire-Agon Fantasy World Books.

  When a Chinese rover discovers an alien technology on the dark side of the moon, it is up to Richard ‘Rock’ Crandon and his NASA team of scientists and engineers to devise a way to return before the Chinese and Russians.

  Forced to deal with bureaucratic oversight and a complex team of personalities, Rock Crandon pushes his team to their limits.

  With pressure mounting, the world is pushed closer to conflict and war as the NASA team finds itself seriously behind in the newly initiated space race. The future of mankind, its ideological and technological advances are at stake, as the world's super powers race to discover what lies on the dark side of the moon.

  Who will get there first, and at what cost?

  Author's note:

  Many people use the phrase "the dark side of the moon" to describe something mysterious and unknown. The dark side of the moon is supposed to be the side we never see, the side that faces away from Earth. This side of the moon faces the cold, black expanse of space. What could be on this side of the moon? (As taken from "science.howstuffworks.com/dark-side-of-moon.htm"

  Dark side is used as a literary term and a metaphor for the alien's artifact and intent. Any similarity to any popular album by any group is purely coincidental.

  Direct link to sign up for Salvador Mercer's newsletter: http://eepurl.com/benueb

  To the men and women who gave their lives in the quest and search for knowledge. May we never forget.

  Prologue

  The Neanderthal looked up in time to see the large, black, angular shape entering the earth’s atmosphere, causing the oxygen around it to ignite as it was superheated from its rapid entry. He spoke to his comrades who were hunting the blood trail from the mammoth they had wounded the day before. There was no need to point at the strange object as the sonic boom rolled over them, surprising several enough that they dropped their crude spears and fell to the ground, covering their ears.

  Kark wasn’t one of them. He stood on the edge of the forest’s tundra, feeling the cool permafrost under his feet, looking north toward the rapidly slowing object. He didn’t know what it was, but unlike his brethren, he couldn’t allow himself as leader of his clan to show fear, no matter how bizarre the display.

  The sleek-looking form seemed to stop in midair, floating a few miles north of where they stood over a glassy, ice-laden lake that started where the forest ended. Slowly his companions stood, helping one another and pointing to the mystical object. The sense of God, or any other omnipotent power, was a foreign idea to these people, and the thought wasn’t even possible in a species that had literally no culture.

  A bright beam of blue light shot out from the tip of the angular shape, illuminating the ground beneath it at the lake’s shore. The object moved again, floating southward toward Kark and his hunters. The blue ray of light pulsated, sweeping the ground from lakeshore to forest’s edge, and then it disappeared momentarily as the object swung about, hovering over the trees.

  Kark heard faint shouts from the forest before seeing the Cro-Magnon hunters running from it toward the base of the hilltop where Kark stood. His rivals had been tracking their prey, and Kark felt anger rising within him. Without warning, the object moved, once again sending out the surreal blue light sweeping the forest behind the Cro-Magnons who were now running directly at Kark’s group, the object following.

  “Prepare, battle!” Kark uttered, his voice strong and powerful but guttural. The sight of their rivals galvanized the Neanderthals into action as they picked up dropped spears and formed a rough line next to their leader, facing the fleeing Magnons. “Hold!” Kark shouted, hefting his spear and preparing to throw it.

  The Magnons ran until the blue ray of light intercepted them. Several suddenly stopped, falling where they were as the rest scattered in all directions, no longer heading toward Kark’s group. “Run,” Kark said, pulling his spear in tighter to his body and sprinting quickly downhill toward the other group and the light. Several smaller black objects dropped from the large angular one and floated just above each Cro-Magnon.

  Kark ran faster until his group was within a hundred yards of the spectacle, caution finally slowing and then stopping his advance. There were no signs of the other Magnons who had kept running either back into the forest or over the far hills near the lake. Kark would not allow fear to show in front of the Magnon, though several of his hunters looked at him apprehensively. Kark prepared his spear in his attack stance, facing the blue light and the immobile Magnons.

  Each levitating black ball had a slender, silver-looking line coming out of it, and they were placed or injected into the spine of each of the prone Cro-Magnon, none of whom moved. Then, just as quickly as they arrived, the smaller floating objects flew back to the angular object, disappearing within its massive shadow, and the blue light ceased its probing sweeps, stopping altogether.

  The angular object turned away and started to rise into the bright blue sky until it disappeared from sight over the horizon many miles distan
t. Kark’s hunters lifted their spears and shouted their war cries, triumphant in deterring the unknown object from their lands. Then the Cro-Magnon all awoke at the same time, standing and brandishing their own spears in front of them, despite being outnumbered. Kark prepared for battle, but his fate and that of his fellow hunters was sealed. The future of the Neanderthals was over; the rise of the Homo sapiens had begun.

  1 Discovery

  37,000 years later

  NASA Space Command

  Houston, Texas

  In the near future, Day 1

  * * *

  “Telemetry readings are no longer updating, Chief,” Jack said, peering over the communications console and looking at Mission Leader Richard “Rock” Crandon sitting at the main control console. “We have new signals, multiple types, multiple frequencies, but no more data from the rover or orbiter.”

  “Low gain on our interceptor or an issue with the originating signal?” Rock Crandon asked in return, leaning forward in his black leather chair.

  “Wait one,” Jack shot back, using his old military lingo and concentrating on the computer feed coming into his work station. “Marge, you getting the same readings I am on that Chinese probe?”

  Marjorie Jones was the senior-most analyst in NASA’s black ops room. She had more PhDs than the rest of the technicians combined. “You referring to those intermittent gamma bursts?” Marge replied, not bothering to raise her eyes from her console where she sat just in front of the command desk. Rock liked to keep her close. Any intelligent man would, and for the same reasons.

  “Not just gamma. I’m showing activity on the x-ray band, as well as low gain AM and higher gain FM,” Jack said, standing to look at Marge for confirmation.

  Marge began typing furiously on her keyboard, eyes constantly trained on her main monitor. After a few long seconds, she finally peered over her bank of monitors at Jack. “Confirmed on all frequencies.”

  “What the hell is going on, people?” Rock asked, standing to observe his control room better.

  “It seems the Chinese probe’s telemetry feed has been terminated,” Jack said, “and replaced with unknown radio bursts covering the entire RF band.”

  Rock was confused. “You’re saying the digital data feed has been replaced by radio waves, Jack?”

  “That’s what it looks like from my desk, sir.”

  “Something’s not quite right with that,” Lisa said from one of several consoles in the room. Only about four of the twenty consoles were being manned for the overnight mission as not every NASA staffer had been cleared by the NSA for this operation.

  Marge looked disconcerted at Lisa’s remarks, a fact that didn’t go unobserved by Rock. “Marge, you have something to say?”

  “No,” Marge shot back, returning her focus to her bank of monitors at the scientific desk she manned.

  “Lisa, what isn’t looking right from your perspective?” Rock asked.

  Lisa Wilson was the antithesis of Marge. Tall, young, and with more than her share of good looks, she commanded attention in most any room dominated by the male scientific and engineering types commonly encountered in the old school NASA ranks. Rock chalked up the unusual interaction between the two to some sort of female rivalry, which extended to not only the physical appearance but the intellectual as well.

  “Richard,” Lisa said, refusing as usual to use his nickname, “can you look at my console repeater? Specifically look at the signal strengths that are being recorded.”

  Rock sat back down, turning his attention to his third monitor which repeated what Lisa had displayed on her main console. There were several data bands that showed the radio signal telemetry that NASA’s interceptor was currently receiving. He had to pay close attention to the key metric graph to the far left of each signal line. They no longer read in the lower decibel microvolt range, but instead in the millivolt range, and the lined graphs were in the hundreds, not single digits.

  “Are these decibel readings accurate, Lisa?” Rock asked, looking even more confused at the data he was currently viewing.

  “The main housing array on board the Orca is confirming it, sir,” Lisa said, referring to their ELINT spy trawler near the Chinese coast, just within international waters.

  “That would mean the RF signals currently being broadcast would be in the gigawatt range, would it not?” Rock asked.

  “It would, sir,” Lisa said.

  “Could the Chinese probe produce something that strong? Is it even possible?” Rock ventured, standing again to look across the cavernous floor of his control center.

  “Impossible,” Marge said. “The maximum voltage from the probe, or even the main Chinese orbiter, couldn’t exceed a megawatt, even if the entire orbiter had nothing but energy capacitors on it.

  “Explanation?” Rock asked Marge, looking at her intently while she pulled up data from Lisa’s console. As the second in command of the mission, Marge had access to every work station, including the unmanned ones that automatically gathered and recorded various data from the Chinese lunar activities.

  “None,” Marge said, continuing to look at her data stream from Lisa’s console.

  “Damn it, Marge, guess then,” Rock ordered.

  Marge did look at Rock then, not accustomed to his outburst and definitely not used to him asking her to guess. He knew her well enough to never ask that question. She was a professional, and she didn’t guess. Marge pulled a stray strand of sandy brown hair from in front of her eye, tucking it behind her ear before she answered. “The RF signals are from a secondary source.”

  “What are you inferring?” Jack said now that everyone was standing. Even Tom, the mechanical engineer, stood from his desk, looking at Marge, and Tom never got excited. He was too old for that.

  “I’m not inferring anything, Jack,” Marge answered rather shortly. “These signals are coming from a different source near the probe, but definitely not the probe nor its orbiter.”

  “Lisa, run a diagnostic on the receivers. Make sure they are both functional and accurate. Do it now,” Rock said, looking at each of his analysts in turn.

  “Running diagnostics now. Should be two minutes,” Lisa replied, her focus back on her monitor.

  “Ruskies?” Tom asked, a tone of hesitation in his voice.

  “Oh, please,” Marge exclaimed, impertinence in her voice.

  “What? Why not? They have the equipment for it,” Tom said, piping up now. Tom was definitely old school. He seldom talked, but when he did, it usually was about the glory days of the Apollo program and the lunar landings back in the sixties. He was known to have a thing against them Ruskies, as he always put it.

  “That would be a hell of a way to start a war,” Jack said. “Nothing like the Chinese and Russians duking it out in space.”

  “You going to let this continue?” Marge asked Rock, giving him that look that she got when she was listening to someone less intelligent trying to explain a simple concept and failing miserably at it.

  “Well, unless them spooks didn’t tell us there was Russian equipment at the Chinese landing site, then I’d rule them out,” Rock said.

  “Spooks are them CIA folks. NSA are geeks, Rock,” Tom replied matter-of-factly.

  “I thought we were the geeks,” Jack said.

  “We are—good geeks here and bad geeks there,” Tom said, sitting back down and rubbing his back as he usually did after standing. His hair was pure white, and his face wrinkled except when he smiled. He had to be pushing seventy, if not older. Still, he was brought out of retirement specifically due to the nature of this operation, and the fact that it consisted of foreign operations on the dark side of the moon. He was one of the few living people that had actual experience with lunar operations. Screw the low orbit programs, this was a quarter of a million miles from earth, not a few mere dozen, and Tom knew his stuff well.

  “I’m sure the NSA—” Rock started, but was interrupted by Lisa who stood straight up.

  “Diagnostics c
onfirmed, everything is five by five. The signal strength is rated in the one-point-two-gigawatt range, sir,” Lisa said, smiling as if she had just won an argument.

  “So what the hell is going on up there?” Jack asked, his face revealing an unusually confused look across it.

  Rock never got a chance to respond. He was about to grab the direct phone line that had been installed months earlier when it rang first. It could only be one person. Rock looked at his team noticing that no one was monitoring their consoles anymore. They all had their eyes on him.

  Rock picked up the receiver. “Yeah, go ahead, Mr. Smith.” Rock knew the liaison officer between NASA and the NSA wasn’t really named Mr. Smith, but that was how the man was introduced to Rock’s team.

  “Are you receiving any unusual readings down there?” Smith asked. Rock could hear something of a commotion occurring in the background where Mr. Smith was at in Maryland.

  “Should we be?” Rock responded.

  “I’m serious, Crandon. What do you have?”

  Rock thought about it for a moment and then decided to roll the die. He’d had enough of Mr. Smith’s semi-abusive mannerisms and lack of information sharing. As a professional, he put science in front of politics and felt the government, his government, would do better if they operated the same way. Oh, he understood the need for national security, but he knew way too many things were cloaked under that broad umbrella and hidden from public scrutiny. He knew he was close to retirement and, while most common American taxpayers didn’t know it, most every federal employee was represented by a union including managers and directors, so he had a modicum of protection if necessary.

  “Tell me what’s going on first so we can make sense of the data,” Rock said over the phone.

  It was hard to gauge the man’s reaction from over a thousand miles away, especially when there were no body language clues to inform the speaker how the listener was accepting his words.