World Order

by David Archer

  "So he probably wasn't there of his own free will," Noah said. He stood up straight and answered the inevitable question. "It looks like we have another victim of abduction on our hands. Anything else I need to know?" he asked, and Emerson gave a small, non-committal shrug. Noah looked him in the eye. "What is it, Doc?"

  "Oh, it’s probably absolutely nothing. I mean, there’s no doubt that the bullets are what killed him."

  "But?" Noah asked, nodding for the doctor to go on. Emerson sighed and scowled, looking perplexed.

  "Well—Noah, I suspect that it may have taken all three bullets to take him down. The man’s skin is incredibly tough, my scalpel would barely go through it. None of the bullets penetrated deeply, and it was only a combination of the three wounds that caused enough bleeding for him to die of exsanguination."

  One of Noah’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Are you telling me this guy’s skin was that tough?” he asked. “Enough to resist a bullet?”

  “I’m saying that his tissues have enough density that smaller calibers probably would not have done him any harm. Had the bullets that struck him not damaged a couple of large blood vessels, he probably would’ve survived.” He scowled. “And I’m afraid that’s not all of it. I saw signs that the injuries were actually starting to heal before he died. Considering the amount of blood loss, that healing was taking place within less than a minute after he was shot. If the third bullet had missed, he probably would have recovered, and I would say that he probably would’ve been perfectly fine within a couple of hours.”

  Noah stared at him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Check those other bodies,” he said. “Tell me as soon as you can whether they also show any signs of these mutations.”

  “I certainly shall,” Emerson said.

  Noah turned away and made his way quickly to Renée's lab.

  "Hey," Renée said, turning to smile as he entered. "Great timing! I just got the results back from those bullets."

  “Good. Emerson tells me they they were some kind of special ammunition?”

  She turned and moved to the table, where the three bullets salvaged from Belcher’s body were sitting in a Petri dish. "Most definitely, and all fifty caliber, but they were not your normal lead slugs. See how pointed they are, and how they held their shape? That’s because they’re made of tungsten carbide."

  “Tungsten carbide?”

  “Yep. Just about the hardest metal there is, and capable of piercing almost any armor. These are the kind of bullets you might want to use against something that was going to be encased in steel.”

  Noah nodded, smiling slightly. "Good work, Renée. Did you get anything more on that drug?"

  Renée frowned. “No, I’m afraid not. I also think we might want to stop thinking of it as a drug. Whatever it is, the DNA component—which we still can’t identify, by the way—still has me leaning toward some sort of gene therapy program.” She shrugged and looked at him. “Reminds me of science fiction movies. It’s like somebody is trying to make monsters.”

  Noah nodded, and smiled. "Don't worry about it, Renée. We'll get these guys, and then we'll make them tell us what it is."

  Noah turned and left the lab, heading straight toward the main office area. Neil was sitting at his computer, like always, and Noah leaned down beside him.

  “Anything on Belcher’s mysterious girlfriend?” he asked.

  Neil looked around at him. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “I haven’t had any luck at all. I’ve run her through every facial recognition database there is, and haven’t gotten a single match.”

  “All right,” Noah said. “But don’t quit trying.”

  He turned away and headed into the office where Allison was sitting behind a desk, reading through a file. She looked up as he entered without knocking.

  “Well?” she asked. “Any progress so far?”

  “We know that we’re dealing with something pretty strange, and there does seem to be something alien involved. I’m not convinced it’s real just yet, but the body we picked up today has had some genetic mutations that we can’t explain at the moment.”

  Allison laid the file on her desk and looked closely at him. “Genetic mutations? Noah, this is potentially very serious. If we really are dealing with something otherworldly, then we have to keep it quiet. If any of the soldiers on this base got wind of it and started sending emails back home…”

  “The whole world could go into a panic,” Noah finished for her. “I understand, but there are already rumors going around about alien activity around that compound. One of the kidnapping suspects we picked up has heard those rumors, and was told by soldiers at the outpost that men have disappeared trying to learn more about them.”

  “I know there’s been some talk out there,” she said. “Fortunately, they are on a communications lockdown. Nobody there is going to be spreading the word, and any rumors that come out with visitors aren’t likely to be all that believable. Any idea what your next step is going to be?”

  “I’m waiting for more information about the bodies Major Wilson sent us. Doctor Emerson seems pretty competent, but even he admits he’s never seen anything like this before. I’d like to take a ride out that direction and see what I can find around the compound.”

  Allison looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the file folder laying on her desk. “Major Wilson dropped this off a bit ago,” she said. “This is a man he’d like us to incorporate into your team for the duration of this mission. I want you to take a look at this file, because Wilson believes he might be useful. And, Noah? I’m not ready to let you go out there and disappear into the jungles just yet. I want you to find out who is behind these abductions, first.”

  Noah accepted the file and glanced at it. “Yes, ma’am,” he said as he stood and left the room.

  Neil looked up as he entered the main office section. “Boss? What do we do next?”

  Noah glanced out the window at the setting sun. “We go have dinner,” he said. “We’ll be eating at the Officer’s Club, and then we might as well get some rest. I suggest we all try to get some sleep and tackle this again in the morning.”

  SIX

  Sarah came into the room she was sharing with Noah, her hair wrapped in a towel since she was returning from the shower. Noah was kicked back on the bed and reading through the file Allison had given him.

  “So, who’s the new guy?” Sarah asked.

  Noah answered without looking up. "Carl Litchfield, thirty-five years old, born in Albany, New York; got his Bachelor's Degree in physics at age 23, joined the army shortly after. He served with the 101st Airborne Division, rose to the rank of Sergeant. He served two tours in Afghanistan, and was then sent to Military Intelligence. The file ends there."

  “And why is he going to be helping us?”

  “Allison says he may have some kind of experience with the type of situation we’re dealing with. Major Wilson thought he might be helpful, but I’m not sure what he has in mind.”

  Sarah took the towel off her head and pulled a hairbrush out of her bag. She began brushing out her hair as she asked, “What kind of experience could he have in dealing with aliens?”

  “I guess we’ll have to ask him in the morning,” Noah said. “He’s scheduled to arrive around eight o’clock.”

  The whole team was up at six, and made their way to the Officer’s Club for breakfast. As they gathered around the table, Noah began to tell them about Sergeant Litchfield.

  “What do we need another ex-sergeant for?” Marco asked. “What’s so special about this guy?”

  "Actually,” said a voice behind them, causing Marco to jump, “I was only a corporal when I was discharged."

  Noah looked up and found himself looking into the same face he had seen in the photographs that accompanied the file Allison had given him.

  “Your service record says you were a Staff Sergeant,” Noah said.

  “I know, but that’s an error. I had actually been demoted just a few days before my
discharge, and somehow the records didn’t catch up in time. Are you Mr. Wolf?”

  Noah stood and extended a hand. “I am,” he said. He quickly introduced the others, and invited Litchfield to have a seat at the table. The waiter had already dropped off menus, and Noah slipped his glasses on as he picked one of them up.

  “So,” Marco said as looked over his own menu. “They tell me you’re the new expert that’s going to help us figure out what’s going on down here?”

  “I don’t know that I’m any kind of expert,” Litchfield said with a self-deprecating smile. “On the other hand, I do have some experience that may be helpful.” He looked around the room and decided that they were isolated enough that he could speak more freely. “Mr. Wolf, with your permission, I can tell you and your team the basics of what I know.”

  “Granted,” Noah said. “I’m interested in hearing it myself.”

  Litchfield grinned. “Since my discharge four years ago, I’ve been employed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which advises the president on the effects of science and technology on matters of domestic and international security. One of my duties has been to oversee security at a special government installation, and to investigate breaches of security there. I’m going to assume you’ve all heard of Area 51?”

  "Please say you’re about to tell us that little green men really do have something to do with our mission," Neil said, his eyes wide.

  Litchfield turned to look at him. “Nothing quite so dramatic, I’m afraid,” he said. “As far as I know, we don’t have any little green men stashed away anywhere. On the other hand, they would not necessarily represent the only kind of alien that would interest the scientific community. Area 51, despite the many conspiracy theories to the contrary, is not a hotbed of alien technology being reverse engineered; it’s actually a place where we can isolate bits of extraterrestrial matter for study. Meteorites that fall to Earth and are located occasionally contain minerals, microbes and spores that are not native to our world. Laboratories at Area 51 carefully examine them to determine any potential risks or benefits those samples might present to humanity. This is particularly true of any organic matter, such as the microbes and spores.”

  “Wait a minute,” Neil said. “According to everything I’ve been able to find, we’ve never discovered any sort of verifiable alien life. You’re saying that isn’t true?”

  “I’m afraid I am. We, the Chinese and the Russians, at least, have all discovered organic material in meteorites, and both we and the Russians have detected microbes even in space. Samples have been brought back to Earth for study, but this information is kept highly classified in order to avoid panic. You can blame Michael Crichton; The Andromeda Strain was a wonderful book and movie, but it also convinced the people of the world that alien microbes would be extremely dangerous to terrestrial life. The fact is that it’s highly unlikely, because a pathogen has to evolve with its host. For an alien germ to affect us, it would have to live with us for quite some time, probably generations at a minimum. After all, there are probably a billion types of microbes here in our own world, and less than fifteen hundred of them actually make us sick.”

  Noah was looking at him. “What connection does Area 51 have to the situation we are dealing with today? Obviously there must be one, or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  Litchfield’s grin became less humorous. “I was warned that you get straight to the point,” he said. “You’re right. In the late 1980s, a meteorite was discovered that contained some of the most complex microbes ever to come from outside Earth’s ecosystem. It was taken to Area 51 for study, and those microbes were found to be surprisingly compatible with our world. They fed on many of the same compounds that earthly microbes consume, and their DNA bore a lot of similarities to that of microbes we find here. Now, let me point out that this is the only alien microbe we have discovered that could possibly interact with any Earthly life form, and it didn’t take long before there was testing to see if it was likely to cause any kind of illness or disease. It did not, not in any other type of tissues it was exposed to, and yes, before you ask, it was tested on human tissues in a Petri dish. No detrimental effects were found at all.”

  “Now, hold on,” Renée said. “You’re talking about bacteria, right? If it’s that similar to Earthly bacteria, how do you know it isn’t simply a new native form that had never been discovered before?”

  “Because of the presence of certain organic carbon molecules known as tholins,” Litchfield replied. “Some of these tholins contain helium-3 atoms, and such a compound is simply not present on Earth. It’s very likely that it can only be created under greater pressures than we can even generate here, even if we had access to the helium-3. Unfortunately, it’s one of the rarest substances on Earth.”

  “But it’s common on the moon,” Neil said. “That’s one of the reasons we want to go back to the moon, to collect helium-3 to use in fusion reactors.”

  Litchfield grinned at him. “That’s correct,” he said. “However, the scientists at Area 51 discovered that this particular tholin, when it is introduced into terrestrial DNA, causes certain mutations. Those mutations…”

  “Those mutations cause changes to the physiology of humans,” Noah said.

  Litchfield turned to him, and his grin vanished. “That’s also correct,” he said. “I’ve been assigned to Area 51 for the past two years, running the security for that research department. Eight months ago, one of the scientists working on that research suddenly failed to show up for work. When that happened, I set out to learn what happened to him, and that’s when I discovered that he had taken some of his research out of the facility. His name is Alvin Branigan, and we can’t find any trace of him, anywhere. We also can’t find the samples of his compounds that he took, and that’s why I’m here.”

  Renée made a scoffing sound. “Well, that explains some of what we’ve found,” she said.

  Noah glanced at her, then turned back to Litchfield. “I take it you are aware that we have discovered some genetic mutations in a body we examined,” Noah said. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “There almost has to be,” Litchfield said. “Based on the information that was received at OSTP, I think you may be dealing with Branigan’s Cocktail, which is what we call his gene-altering mixture.”

  Noah regarded him in silence for a few seconds, but they had to wait while the server came to take their orders. Once he was gone, Noah turned back to Litchfield.

  “Is Branigan the type who might try to perform illegal experiments on human subjects? The body we found with mutations seems to have been abducted, and other soldiers have disappeared under suspicious circumstances.”

  “I don’t think Branigan would do it willingly,” Litchfield said, “but I’ve come across circumstantial evidence that leads me to believe he might be working under duress. Shortly before he disappeared from Area 51, Doctor Branigan’s daughter, Lisa, also vanished. She was a literature major at UCLA, and it turns out she had been gone for a couple of weeks before Branigan vanished. The fact that he never told anyone she was missing makes me think that she was being used as leverage to force him to steal this technology. That being the case, I suspect he’s being blackmailed into performing these experiments.”

  “That would make some sense,” Noah said.

  Allison, who had been sitting quietly as they talked, suddenly spoke up. “What do you know about the satellite images that seemed to show spaceships of some sort? Are you aware of those yet?”

  “I’ve seen them,” Litchfield said. “I don’t know enough to have an opinion, however. It strikes me as odd, though, that you are finding mutations that the missing DNA cocktail could cause while looking into the possibility of aliens being on the Earth. I can’t come up with a logical hypothesis on why aliens would want anything to do with Branigan or these mutations.”

  “I’m thinking the same way,” Noah said. “Are you aware of any secret technology that could be re
sponsible for those flying saucers?”

  Litchfield grinned again. “Well, I can tell you that we’ve never really captured a flying saucer and reverse engineered its antigravity systems. From the pictures I saw, I suspect you could be looking at something as simple as a high-tech dirigible. There’s been no footage of these things actually in flight, so we have no idea how fast or slow they may be. If somebody is trying to pull off a flying saucer hoax, a dirigible would be one way to do it.”

  “A blimp?” Neil asked, his face doubtful. “It couldn’t move very fast at all, it would be too flimsy. Besides, all we have so far are a few sightings and photographs. Surely it would have shown up on radar at some point.”

  “Not necessarily. If these things are staying over the jungle, it’s pretty doubtful they would ever be within range of any of the radar installations in the area, so all they have to do is stay low. Besides, we have technology now that can absorb or cancel radar signals. I don’t think it would be that hard to make sure it was invisible to most ground detection. And as for being flimsy, I’ve seen nanofiber material that weighs less than a half ounce per cubic foot and is eighteen times stronger than titanium. It could make a helium-filled dirigible that didn’t need an internal frame and could stand up to a fairly powerful propulsion system, even a jet engine. It could move pretty damn fast.”

  “Okay, but if they wanted to be invisible, why did they paint them white?” Marco asked. “All the pictures I’ve seen, these things are bright and shiny.”

  “But that’s exactly what you would do, if you wanted people to talk about them. You might not want them showing up on radar, but you would definitely want rumors spreading about them.”

  “That’s a valid point,” Noah said. “We’ve also seen footage of some sort of strange creatures. One of the scout teams the army sent out at that compound was attacked by something that doesn’t fit any of the local wildlife, and moved so fast it was almost impossible to see. And there are photos from the compound that seem to show extremely tall people of some sort.”