The Black Knight

by Dean Crawford

‘That’s right,’ Chandler went on, ‘species grew on an immense scale back then, but the changes in atmosphere of today mean that they would be unable to survive for long as they would suffer the same kind of problems as humans at very high altitudes. They simply would not be able to breathe properly and would be rendered comatose and die very quickly. It’s one of the reasons why, despite all you read in the news, dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex could not be brought back to life even if the genetic sequence of such a species were fully decoded. They would die long before they reached their adult size.’

  Hannah seemed relieved as she looked again at the Piri Reis map.

  ‘So what do you think is in that lake and what does it have to do with this base?’

  ‘If the Nazis thought that this area was holding something unique, such as new and novel forms of life, then it may have been an extra reason for them to explore the region, given their fascination with anything unusual that could be weaponized.’

  ‘But if these species are genetically so different from anything on Earth then how could they manipulate them with technology from the Second World War?’

  Chandler’s eyes danced with excitement, glittering in the dim light as he spoke.

  ‘In the Pacific Ocean west of the southern tip of South America, the United States Navy laid an array of hydrophones to monitor the passing of Soviet submarines during the Cold War. The network was called SOSUS, an acronym for Sound Surveillance System. The phones lie deep below the ocean surface in what’s known as the deep sound channel, where temperature and pressure allow sound waves to keep travelling and not become scattered. In 1997 the sensors detected a sound that freaked out everybody who ever heard it. The varying frequency of the call bore the hallmark of a marine animal and was confirmed as a biological species by marine biologists who examined the recording. The call rose rapidly in frequency over a period of one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be detected on multiple sensors.’

  Hannah raised a cautious eyebrow. ‘So?’

  ‘The sensors were more than five thousand kilometres apart,’ Chandler revealed. ‘The frequency of the sound means that the living creature that made the call would possess a mass five times greater than that of the Blue Whale.’

  A silence filled the room as they digested the implications of what Chandler was saying.

  ‘A noise a bit like what we’ve been hearing in this chamber?’

  Chandler nodded. ‘Enough to cause cavitation in the water itself,’ he replied. ‘The land mass of Antarctica may not be able to support large species any longer, but there is nothing to prevent them surviving at sea.’

  ‘It’s not the only time it’s happened,’ the assistant confirmed. ‘The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have even given names to the disturbing sounds they’ve detected, calling them things like Train, Whistle, Upsweep and Slow Down. Upsweep turned out to be an undersea volcano. But the 1997 sound was confirmed as biological, and they named it The Bloop. Likewise, Slow Down was recorded in the same area as the Bloop, lasted for seven minutes and was powerful enough to be detected on sensors two thousand kilometres apart.’

  ‘Every other possible cause of the noises has been eliminated,’ Chandler continued. ‘Ice floes calving in Antarctica, submarine earthquakes, volcanoes and man-made events. Whatever made those noises is alive and five times larger than a Blue Whale and it’s living in the deep ocean right now.’

  The scientist stared up at the ancient Piri Reis map as he spoke.

  ‘Sailors from around the world have reported tales of huge monsters of the deep for thousands of years. For the most part it was always dismissed as the effects of re-telling and alcohol, but those same sailors would also speak of rogue waves a hundred feet high that would rear up and swallow vessels whole. Science dismissed those tales too until an orbiting satellite detected rogue waves all across the world’s oceans and large vessels started filming their encounters with them.’

  Ethan, mesmerised by the tales, looked at Chandler.

  ‘So you’re saying that the Kraken might actually exist?’

  ‘No,’ Chandler smiled. ‘We’re saying that sailor’s tales of a gigantic sea creature able to take down large vessels were born of encounters with something very real. Dead giant squid have been washed ashore that were sixty feet long, but there is no theoretical limit to the maximum size for a cephalopod, and great white sharks over twenty feet in length have been filmed off South Africa – that’s the same size as the supposedly impossibly large predator featured in the movie Jaws.’

  ‘And that’s not all,’ his assistant said. ‘Scientists created the first synthetic life form, a micro-organism with a different genetic code to all other forms of life on Earth back in 2014.

  The semi-synthetic microbe, a genetically modified E. coli bacterium, was endowed with an extra artificial piece of DNA with an expanded genetic alphabet – instead of the usual four “letters” of the alphabet its DNA molecule had six, a pair of extra base pairs, denoted by X and Y, which pair up together like the other base pairs and are fully integrated into the rest of the DNA’s genetic code. This shows that other solutions to storing information are possible and, of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications, from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology.’

  Ethan reeled with the volume of information, but he could understand the basic gist of what the two scientists were trying to say.

  ‘So life can exist in forms that don’t or haven’t yet occurred naturally on Earth, and Lake Vostok might contain forms of life that we haven’t seen before,’ he said. ‘That still doesn’t connect them to this base, right?’

  ‘Wrong,’ Chandler said. ‘Lake Vostok is a hundred and sixty miles long, thirty miles wide and at its widest point and covers nearly five thousand square miles. At fifteen hundred feet deep and with such a volume of water, it could contain life forms of considerable size. It’s an oligotrophic extreme environment, one that is supersaturated with nitrogen and oxygen to a degree fifty times higher than those typically found in ordinary freshwater lakes on Earth’s surface. The lake is under complete darkness, so there is speculation that any organisms inhabiting the lake could have evolved in a manner unique to this environment. If there exists a subglacial channel that maintains a permanent flow to the open ocean…’

  Ethan got it immediately.

  ‘Then species could move in and out of the lake, perhaps move across large regions of Antarctica, and would have a native environment with enough oxygen to allow supr-sized growth.’

  Chandler nodded.

  ‘In 2005 an island was found in the central part of the lake, and over the past few decades some hundred forty lakes have been identified beneath the ice sheet. It is suspected that these Antarctic subglacial lakes may be connected by a network of subglacial rivers. Centre for Polar Observation & Modelling glaciologists have proposed that many of the subglacial lakes of Antarctica are at least temporarily interconnected, and because of varying water pressure in individual lakes, large subsurface rivers may suddenly form and then force large amounts of water through the solid ice.’ Chandler gestured to the cavern outside. ‘That would explain the flooding regularly occurring here in the past.’

  He walked to the map and pointed to some of the rivers marked upon it.

  ‘Research by scientists from the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University suggest that the water of the lake is continually freezing and being carried away by the motion of the Antarctic ice sheet while being replaced by water melting from other parts of the ice sheet under high pressure conditions. They estimated that the water in the lake is replaced every thirteen thousand years.’

  Hannah looked at Ethan. ‘Isn’t that the same amount of time that Black Knight was estimated to have been in Earth orbit?’

  ‘Exactly the same amount of time,’ Ethan replied, thinking fast. ‘Doctor Chandler, what’s the chances that whatever Black Knight is, it was plac
ed in orbit at the same time as something descended onto the ice sheet in Antarctica thirteen thousand years ago?’

  Chandler stared briefly up at the ceiling as he considered this.

  ‘It could simply be a coincidence? Why should a correlation be found when there is no causation known?’

  ‘Because we’re assuming that Black Knight is some kind of alien craft and that it was piloted here by something. But what if that’s not the case?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ethan thought back to Iraq and Afghanistan, to the unmanned aerial vehicles that had soared through the skies and targeted the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from high above, and the satellites and GPS stations that had made the weapons of the United States’ forces so accurate during the conflict.

  ‘What if it’s not a manned craft at all, but a drone, something looking for life and sending the signals back to wherever it came from?’

  Chandler stared at Ethan in amazement.

  ‘That’s how Nikola Tesla found it,’ he said. ‘He didn’t detect its signals - it detected him!’

  ‘And began signalling, when it realized that mankind was becoming technologically advanced,’ Ethan added. ‘Maybe we’re looking at more than just a crashed alien craft here. It might be possible that it’s a communication device to whatever species created it.’

  ***

  XXX

  Manhattan

  ‘This isn’t going to work.’

  Michael Vaughn drove the pool car through the densely packed streets north of the Upper East Side and Central Park. The Pierre Hotel was just visible through the trees as Lopez peered at it and replied.

  ‘It’s going to work better than sitting around waiting for these people to just show themselves to us. Majestic Twelve aren’t going to file out of the front entrance waving at the crowds, y’know, and this is where Wilms went after we lost Mitchell. He hasn’t come out since.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest that they would,’ Vaughn countered. ‘Just that their surveillance would have ensured that every single point of access and egress would be covered in an area like this. We won’t be able to get anywhere near enough to them to record any visual or audio.’

  Lopez smiled to herself. ‘You leave that to me.’

  Vaughn shook his head as he drove. ‘It’s really just like having Hannah sitting here.’

  ‘Hannah Ford is a pale imitation, literally,’ Lopez replied without interest as she surveyed the street ahead. ‘Accept no substitutes.’

  Vaughn turned south on 5th Avenue, the trees of Central Park on one side and pale sunlight flickering through the leaves as Lopez searched for a suitable spot. She knew that they could not risk driving directly past the front of the hotel – MJ-12 would not have neglected to post guards who would most likely be on the lookout for her after the failed assassination attempt. That left Michael Vaughn, who would be able to monitor the location while Lopez got to work.

  ‘There,’ Lopez said as she saw one of the city’s distinctive yellow cabs pull away from the sidewalk.

  Vaughn pulled into the gap left by the cab as Lopez opened her door and got out before climbing back into the rear of the vehicle. Vaughn killed the engine and watched her in the rear view mirror as she grabbed a large ruck-sack and opened it.

  ‘You really think that thing will get us a good enough look at MJ-12 to break the cabal open?’

  Lopez unpacked a glossy black device, eighteen inches square with a horizontal four inch blade on each corner set into the frame. Along with it she produced a control unit, similar to those used by the operators of remote-controlled aircraft.

  ‘Hellerman is a genius,’ she replied as she set the drone down beside her on the seat and opened the battery compartment. ‘He’s bred real bees that he hooks up to electrodes and flies around, controlling their brains. Modifying one of these things is child’s play to him.’

  ‘Why not just send one of his bees in instead?’ Vaughn asked.

  ‘Too small,’ Lopez explained as she installed the batteries and then began checking the cameras attached to the underside of the drone. ‘They can’t record footage easily, so we needed something big enough to carry a high-resolution camera and a solid state drive to record the data. Hellerman figures it’ll fly with the camera working for about thirty minutes on these high-density batteries before we’ll need to land it.’

  Vaughn looked down the street at the edifice of the distant hotel.

  ‘If they spot it they’ll shoot it down,’ he pointed out. ‘If they get hold of it the whole thing’s a bust.’

  ‘Full of optimism, aren’t you?’ Lopez murmured from the back seat as she worked. ‘The drone’s fitted with a data relay device which will send everything it records back here to my laptop computer, which you’ll be monitoring. Once we have a good shot of the group, we’re out of here.’

  Vaughn said nothing more as Lopez finished setting up the drone and the computer and then looked at a cell phone attached to the dash of the vehicle. Upon the screen was a small red dot moving through Manhattan and closing in on the Pierre Hotel. Doug Jarvis had deployed a small team of DIA operatives to track Gordon LeMay as he went about his business outside of the FBI, and that business had led them to Manhattan. Whatever the Director of the FBI was up to, he’d decided to fly to New York City and that had coincided closely with Mitchell’s encounter with Wilms, before the enigmatic agent had vanished into thin air.

  ‘Almost there,’ Vaughn said as he scanned the screen. ‘You ready?’

  Lopez leaned across the back seat and opened the driver’s side rear window, the sound of the bustling traffic and a gust of cool air flooding the car as she flipped a switch on the drone and activated her control unit.

  The drone’s ducted-fan engines spun up with an electric whine and the drone lifted up off the seat alongside Lopez as she deftly hovered the craft in the rear of the vehicle and guided it toward the open window.

  ‘Stand by,’ Vaughn said as he glanced in his rear view mirror. A flow of vehicles, cabs and goods trucks eased past their car, and then a gap appeared in the traffic. ‘Go!’

  Lopez pushed the control column forward and the drone hummed out of the window and over the street outside. Lopez immediately increased the power and the drone ascended rapidly out of sight into the bright sky above as she switched her attention from the drone to another laptop propped against the rear passenger door opposite her.

  Through a camera attached to the bottom of the drone she could see the busy street below the drone as it climbed ever higher into the sky. The densely packed buildings to its right contrasted sharply with the angular expanses of greenery to its left as Central Park came into view. She smiled mischievously as she saw their own vehicle tucked in against the sidewalk.

  ‘This is cool,’ she whispered as she flew the drone.

  ‘Stay focused,’ Vaughn replied as he watched the traffic flow. ‘LeMay’s coming past us right now.’

  Lopez forced herself to focus on the screen and not look outside as she hovered the drone three hundred feet above Manhattan.

  ‘Passing us…,’ Vaughn said, ‘…now.’

  ‘Got him.’

  Lopez saw the silver Mercedes in the drone’s sights as it passed by, heard the whisper quiet engine and the hum of its tires on the asphalt as it passed them on its way to the Pierre Hotel.

  ‘You think that you can pick him up once he goes inside?’ Vaughn asked. ‘We won’t be able to see him inside the hotel, and the DIA only bugged his vehicle not his clothes.’

  Lopez nodded, replying as she kept her gaze fixed to the screen.

  ‘He’s meeting Majestic Twelve. I figure nothing else will do for them but the Penthouse Suite.’

  *

  Gordon LeMay checked his tie one last time as he walked through the foyer of the Pierre Hotel and into an elevator, the bell hop pressing the button for the top floor without the need to be asked. The hotel had been informed of LeMay’s arrival by the driver and the door staff, and everyth
ing prepared for his smooth passage through the hotel.

  The elevator hummed quickly up to the top floor and opened onto a thickly carpeted corridor. The bell hop did not follow LeMay out, under strict orders along with all of the other staff to remain clear of the top floor. The elevator door closed behind LeMay and he turned toward the only open door before him at the far end of the corridor.

  Somehow, he knew that there would be no turning back after this. Once he had been fully welcomed into the fold of Majestic Twelve there could be no leaving, no changing his mind, which was damned well fine with him. He was done with the stress of the intelligence community and more concerned with ensuring his own survival of any Congressional investigation into his conduct as Director of the FBI than anything else. Membership of Majestic Twelve would ensure that such irritations would be swept away and his future secured.

  LeMay walked through the open door and saw a figure close it behind him. Victor Wilms was standing with his hand on the door handle, sealing LeMay into the elaborate room, which was occupied by eleven men that at a glance he knew represented Majestic Twelve.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he greeted them.

  ‘What news from Antarctica?’ asked the tall, gaunt leader of the group.

  No greetings. No ceremony. Down to business it was then, LeMay realized, but as a man who often gave the President his daily intelligence briefing he was used to being prepared.

  ‘The team have accessed the tunnel system beneath the ice and have reached the base concealed within,’ he reported. ‘Communications are patchy at best, but I have it on good authority that the DIA team dispatched before us is now pinned inside with no means of escape. There have been casualties, but there will be no evidence of our presence at the site.’

  Another of the men peered at LeMay.

  ‘The DIA reached the artifact before your men?’

  ‘Yes,’ LeMay replied, ‘an unfortunate eventuality but not one that could be avoided. They are, as you are no doubt aware, supported by US Navy SEALs and well equipped. But their success in reaching the base first means nothing if they cannot escape.’