by Terry Mixon
Rex shrugged. “If we find more like him, he might have been part of a counter attack. If not, just an unlucky bastard caught in the open when the shit hit the fan. Whatever happened here happened fast.”
The corridor opened up into a large chamber. If the area behind them looked as though a battle had taken place, this room had held a war.
A glance around the circular room told her that they had hundreds of bodies. The area looked like a cargo bay. The large crates made that obvious. A number of them had been blown open in the fighting.
It also contained vehicles. Half a dozen ships like the one they’d found in Guatemala. Some were damaged, but others seemed intact. And there were smaller craft that seemed more suited to carrying troops. There had heavy armor and protrusions that looked like weapons.
All of the latter seemed damaged. And there were a lot more regular humans in armor here.
“This is where the main battle took place,” Rex said. “The normal guys pushed the heavy-worlders back here and they killed one another.”
The room was big, but Jess could see all the way around it. This was the only corridor leading out. There were a few arched alcoves, but they stopped after a few meters. The ceiling was one large, smooth piece. There was no way for the ships to get in or out.
* * * * *
Queen arrived at his office early. He’d stayed up late with the military people and representatives from other sections of the government planning what they’d do today.
They’d put those bastards in their places. Clayton Rogers and his ex-wife were going to learn not to screw with the US government.
The look on his assistant’s face told him there had been complications. He stopped beside her desk. “What?”
“There have been a few overnight developments. Here or in your office?”
Queen gestured for her to precede him. “In private.”
Once he’d settled behind his desk, he gave her his full attention. “Hit me.”
“The Chinese made a deal with Kathleen Bennett last night. They sold her the spaceport and Rainforest. That undercuts the entire premise of the seizures.”
That it did. Yes, the original sale to the Chinese was illegal. Or it would be once the Department of Justice got all its ducks in a row. That made this second sale also illegal. Technically.
The problem was that he couldn’t just seize control of the spaceport now. The national security aspects of the case had changed. BenCorp did a significant amount of work for the US government. They had all the required clearances.
Without invalidating all of that, and the critical research and production projects they had contracts for, he couldn’t just take what he wanted.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t get it, though. They’d take possession of the spaceport and Rainforest. And, by extension, the spaceship orbiting Mars.
“Yes, that is troubling, but not insurmountable,” he said. “Get Justice on the phone.”
The woman shook her head. “There’s more. Doctor Scott called. They found the missing comet.”
Irritation flashed through him. “You mean it was there the entire time? Dammit, I thought you had NASA confirm it was gone. Damned incompetent bastards. We should’ve terminated the last of their funding already.”
“A different observatory looking at the outer system saw it and word got back to Scott. The comet just passed the orbit of Neptune.”
“How could that be? They made a mistake. Comets don’t just jump from Mars to Neptune.”
His assistant shrugged. “You’d think not, but he claimed it was moving at a rapid pace. And accelerating.”
That stopped Queen cold. His anger vanished, quenched like hot steel dumped into a bucket of ice-cold water. “What did you say?” he asked carefully.
“The comet is accelerating. Both NASA and Doctor Scott verified it. Not only is it going far faster than a comet should, it’s going fast enough to leave the solar system entirely.”
“That isn’t possible. Get Scott on the phone. Wake his ass up.”
“He said he’d be ready for your call.”
Queen leaned back in his chair. This was lunacy.
His mind went around in circles for several minutes before his phone rang. He hit the speaker button. “Queen here.”
“Mister Secretary,” Doctor Scott said. “I have wonderful news!”
“I fail to see what’s so wonderful about it, Doctor. Perhaps you’d care to explain it to me.”
“Certainly,” the almost bubbly scientist said. “The comet has sped up greatly. That means that they developed a powerful space drive. We’re not seeing any exhaust, and frankly, I have no idea how they did it, but this opens up the entire solar system for exploration in our lifetimes.”
Perhaps that was enough to excite the scientist, but Queen had more realistic problems to solve.
“What the hell are they doing out there?” he asked. “Their ship went to Mars. Why split up like that?”
“You’d have to ask them that. What I find more interesting is how they moved such a large body without breaking it into pieces. Neptune is thirty astronomical units out. One AU is the distance between the Earth and Sun. That’s a vast distance to travel in only a few days, much less on a hunk of rock that size.”
Queen suppressed his exasperation. “I’m sure this is all very exciting, but I’m more concerned with the security implications. This interjects a whole new layer of complication into an already chaotic situation.”
“I’ll say. Such a body would make a most lethal weapon in the wrong hands.”
“How so?”
“If it came back to Earth at that speed, it would be a global catastrophe. Greater than the impact that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.”
That shocked Queen speechless for a moment. “You’re joking.”
“Absolutely not. While the Chicxulub meteor was ten times the diameter, this comet is going significantly faster. Speed translates to energy in an impact. I assure you that a one-kilometer comet impact at that speed would cause global devastation.
“Let me put this into perspective. The impact that killed the dinosaurs was off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, but the heat flash set most of North America on fire. Think nuclear blast, but on a much larger scale. If that comet were going fast enough, it would be an extinction level event. The kind that obliterates humanity.”
Queen blinked, slow to grasp the full implications of what he was hearing. “You’re telling me that they have a weapon more powerful than a nuclear bomb?”
“I’m telling you that they have a potential weapon more powerful than all the nuclear bombs on this planet combined. Easily. But I’m sure that they don’t intend to extinguish humanity. That’s crazy.”
“You don’t know these people, Doctor Scott. I wouldn’t be so sure. I want a complete report on what you’ve found as soon as possible. Oh. And where are they headed?”
“That comet is going fast enough to leave the solar system, but it would still take a very long time to reach the next nearest system. They aren’t even going toward any that are particularly close.
“The Kuiper Belt ranges from the orbit of Neptune out to about 50 AU. It’s also possible that they’re heading to something in the Oort cloud. They’ll probably decelerate when they get there. Once they start slowing down, we can make a more educated guess as to the destination.”
Queen vaguely remember the Oort cloud was where things like comets and Pluto came from. “What kind of time-frame are we looking at in general?”
“That’s impossible to guess with distances this vast. If the object is close, they’ll need to start slowing down soon.”
“Stay on top of this, Doctor Scott. I want to know everything we can find out about that comet and where it’s going. My assistant will give you my private cell number. Call me anytime, day or night, with any significant events or breakthroughs.”
He ended the call and sat back. This game had gotten significantly more danger
ous. What was Clayton Rogers doing? And, better yet, what was his end game? There was something big Queen was missing. It was time to disrupt their plans and get inside their heads.
He picked up his phone. Time to start the marbles rolling.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kathleen had only begun reviewing the most recent status of the wreck investigation when Nathan called. A quick mental calculation told her it was about 3 PM in Paris.
She picked up her receiver. The phone had military grade encryption and was untappable. She should know. Her company had developed the technology for the NSA.
“I saw the news,” she told her son. “It looks as though the police are coming to the right conclusions. Well done. Maybe that will get Queen off my ass.”
“Thank you,” he said, “but that’s not why I called. The ground penetrating radar found something. There are hollow areas a hundred feet down.”
“Caves?”
“A little too compact and regular for caves, I think. Someone put a small base down there.”
She leaned forward. “Are you kidding me? How big?”
“The radar isn’t a precise tool at that depth. We won’t know until we get into it.”
Just the idea of all the potential technology down there made her heart race. They needed to get in there fast. This would really put Clayton in his place.
“What about the property ownership? Can we acquire it?”
“Two steps ahead of you, Mother. I made a generous offer and the owner sold it with undue haste. The area is rocky and mostly overgrown. I have no idea what he expected to do with the land originally, but it obviously didn’t work out.
“Our lawyers are closing the paperwork as we speak. They estimate the deed will be in my hands in a couple of hours. Certainly by close of business here in Paris. We take possession as soon as I gather some excavating equipment.”
She nodded to herself. “Good. Get busy looking for a way in. And don’t destroy everything. We need some of it intact if we’re ever going to decipher this technology. How long do you expect it to take you to get in?”
“We’ll see. There’s no obvious entrance. I’ll let you know when I find one.”
She’d barely set the phone back down when her disposable cell rang. “Yes?”
“Good morning, Mrs. Bennett. Ethan Wagner here. Might you stop by this morning?”
He wouldn’t have called unless he had something interesting to tell her. “I can be there in an hour. Pick me up at the usual place.”
Setting up the covert transportation only took a few minutes, but being certain no one was aware of where she was going, or even that she was aboard, took longer. She had to be careful. One slip and the FBI agents watching her campus would know something was up. And that would bring Queen down on her.
Not that she couldn’t beat him at his own game, but she had bigger fish to fry.
The transport went off without a hitch and she was in the satellite facility an hour later. Wagner was waiting for her. She shook his hand perfunctorily. “What have you got, Doctor?”
“It would be best we speak in my office.”
This was new. The man usually couldn’t wait to spill the beans. He escorted her to his office, a cluttered, disorganized pile of paper and folders with furniture hidden under the ever-changing surface.
He cleaned off a seat by relocating a dangerously unbalanced pile of binders to a side table in even worse shape.
Kathleen eyed the stacks nearest the chair and decided she was moderately safe for a few minutes. She sat and crossed her legs. “Okay, Doctor. What have you found?”
“We’ve completely deciphered the electrical system. We now know how to read the required power on all the equipment. As the ship is unflyable, we’ve disassembled it and have the major sections in various labs for analysis. In the process of taking everything apart, we found a hidden compartment with a number of interesting items inside.”
She leaned forward with a smile. This was a tremendous stroke of luck. “Tell me more.”
“First, we found something the people that abandoned this ship must have forgotten, or perhaps didn’t know existed.” He opened the drawer and pulled out a glowing blue cube. “This is a spare power supply.”
Kathleen gasped and reached for it, but stopped. “Is it safe?”
“It seems to be. We’re detecting no radiation at all emanating from it. And the area where it normally sat in the ship wasn’t shielded.”
She took it from him. It sat on her palm, ten centimeters along each edge and lighter than she’d thought. The glow inside it was a deep blue and steady. It was beautiful. “How does it work?”
“That’s still up for debate, but I can tell you it’s capable of putting out a prodigious amount of power. We isolated the system where it plugs in and pulled as heavy a load as we could. It seemingly had no problems running this entire facility.
“Frankly, that’s not surprising. Anything that could lift a vessel off this planet has to be capable of generating much more power than that.”
She set the cube down on the desk. “Are you any closer to discovering how they did that?”
He nodded. “The ship’s hull had a number of emitters that the team associated with the drives are certain can change the curvature of space. The ship literally creates a slope for it to slide along.”
“How fast could it go?”
The scientist smiled. “Ah, now that’s an interesting question. And one with an answer that might surprise you. It could probably achieve a top speed of several tenths of the speed of light before a particle of dust destroyed it.
“A better unit of measure might be how quickly it could accelerate. Think of someone in a snow sled up on a hill. The angle of the slope determines how quickly they pick up speed. The sharper it is, the faster they go barreling down, and the sooner they reach the bottom.
“This drive most likely operates in the same manner. It creates an artificial gravity slope that the ship ‘slides’ down. As there is no barrier to higher speeds in a vacuum, that ship can theoretically get very close to light speed, given enough time, but like any sled on the slopes there are dangers to going too quickly. Like running into trees.”
She could see the example in her head and nodded. “That makes perfect sense. Thank you. What about blocking the dust in space? I seem to recall hearing about using magnetic fields to shift it out of the way, or screens to block them. Every science fiction movie has something like that.”
“As of yet, we’ve found nothing that looks to be able to generate such a thing. That would be wonderful, no doubt, but we can’t count on having such luck. If such a thing existed, it would allow this small ship to reach speeds approaching that of light. There were no signs they carried enough food or other consumables for such an extended journey.”
Kathleen frowned. “That’s twice you’ve said ‘approaching the speed of light.’ What does that mean and why couldn’t they exceed it?”
The scientist looked smug. “That’s an easy trap to fall into. As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass grows. At the speed of light, its mass would be infinite, preventing it from going any faster.”
That sounded dubious to her. “It seems to me that a falling object getting more massive helps speed it along.”
He seemed unfazed. “I know it doesn’t make logical sense, but the laws of nature break down at points like that. In any case, without shielding, a bit of hydrogen is a lethal obstacle at that speed. A tree, if you will. E = MC² is unforgiving at .99 C.
“In any case, that brings us to the last few things we found in the wreck.” He held up two slivers of metal. They looked like data chips. “These seem to be keys. We couldn’t figure out how to open the doors from the outside, but one of the interns found a spot they fit into. They might prove useful in opening other doors.”
She took one of the keys. It looked exactly like the picture of the “data stick” Nathan had found. She set it beside the cube.
/> “What else?”
He brought a deadly looking pistol out of the desk drawer and set it carefully down in front of her. “This is obviously a weapon. It doesn’t use gunpowder. The barrel generates a powerful magnetic field that hurls a sliver of metal at high velocity. The magazine doubles as a battery to power the weapon.”
“And you know this, how?”
He shrugged. “Once we determined what it fired, we read the numbers off the battery and charged it. We fired one round into a crash test dummy. It went through the dummy, causing significantly more damage than we expected, and embedded itself into the concrete wall. It made a very respectable hole, I might add.
“There’s a selector that allows for lower speed shots, most likely to prevent damage in a ship like the one you found. One at high speed would go through people and the hull, too.”
She picked the weapon up. It was light and fit her hand well. After a moment, she set it with the other objects. The only one she kept was a key. He had two, so she’d keep this one.
“I know of some military specialists that could probably help with this. Well done, Doctor Wagner. Well done. There will be large bonuses for everyone.”
He smiled. “We also found cockpit and external video on the ship. We saw the man who brought it here. We watched it crash. I had them record both the view and the screens it took to get there. I sent the video to your encrypted email account.”
Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me for a moment.”
It was her assistant. “We have a problem.”
“What?”
“The FBI is back and that agent you hate is looking for you. They have warrants for every building. And that’s not all. They have an order from the Justice Department to expel us from the property. They’re seizing it.”
Her vision dimmed as she surged to her feet. That caused a catastrophic avalanche of papers that swept around the room. Wagner leapt to his feet with a wail.
“That son of a bitch!” she shouted. “I’ll be right there.”
