Event: A Novel

by David L. Golemon

  “Okay, I hate to order this, but let’s take a chance and go to maximum magnification. Let’s get us in close and maybe we can pick something up visually.” Niles looked at the screen. “And I want it tight on that small valley right there, because Boris and Natasha is having a hard time seeing beyond the surrounding rock walls.”

  The other technicians looked at Golding, clearly expecting him to say something.

  “Niles, a word please.” Pete took him by the elbow and walked a few paces away.

  Pete glared at the worried faces until they returned to their stations and the work they were doing. He removed his glasses and started to clean them with the white shirttail that had worked out of his black pants.

  “Niles, we’ve used a lot of power on this. Boris and Natasha is damn near out of fuel and the batteries are down to darn near nothing. The solar cells can’t keep up with the demands we’re putting on them, and we have nothing going into the batteries.” Golding looked at his boss and friend, then again at the main display as he put his glasses back on.

  Compton removed his own glasses and used the earpiece to poke at his Comp Center director’s chest. “Number one, Pete, we have to take this chance and use what’s left in her batteries to bring the lenses to a nominal position. We need detail on that section. The metal could be in that valley or so small we can’t see it. Number two, I don’t give a flying fuck about the fuel state.” He jabbed at Pete again, harder this time. “And number three, if you don’t do as I say and we don’t find that saucer”—he paused a moment to lower his voice—“we could be issuing a death sentence to everyone on this fucking planet. And four”—he gritted his teeth—“if we have to, we get into cars and planes and helicopters and go out there and find it ourselves if and when we lose REC-SAT.” He put his glasses back on and stormed back onto the main floor.

  “Lenses to full magnification on my mark,” Golding loudly ordered, startling most of the technicians, who in turn started immediately complying. “Take communications to Boris and Natasha offline as soon as I give the word. I want a clear picture and I need that extra power when we reach maximum magnification.” Out of the corner of his eye Golding saw his boss gently shake his head, whether feeling bad for his being a bully to his close friend or for sacrificing Boris and Natasha, he didn’t know.

  “Bringing maximum magnification onto site four two eight three nine, elevation four thousand three hundred feet,” the man in control of optics announced. “Satellite altitude one two zero miles.”

  “Stand by to cut communications on my go. Remember, we’ll have about three seconds of power from Boris to operate the lenses before he dies with the COM link. Another ten seconds of picture time from Natasha before everything goes, and with it, our picture, so be ready on infrared-and magnetometers, and I want video and stills on this. Let’s fucking be ready.”

  Niles knew how upset Pete Golding was. He had just given orders to basically kill Boris and Natasha, because without fuel and electrical power, the KH-11 satellite would be lost forever with a decaying orbit and no way to boost her back up without immediate refueling from the shuttle. But it couldn’t be helped.

  After the hastily relayed commands were sent through to Boris and Natasha, the picture cleared and they could now make out the small valley they had centered their maximum effort on. The infrared and ambient-light devices showed only rocks still heated from the day’s dead sunlight. As they watched, the magnetometer shot off the scale once again, and Niles winced when he didn’t see the wreckage he had hoped for.

  “We lose power in five, four, three, two—”

  But that was as far as Pete’s countdown went. The picture turned to snow just two seconds off their projected time. The room grew silent as every man and woman knew they had just witnessed the death of the reliable old KH-11 satellite. Pete Golding slammed the clipboard he was holding to the floor, then kicked it in anger.

  On the main screen and on several consoles in the computer center they saw the exact moment of death for Boris and Natasha. After the snow replaced the once clear picture of the earthbound valley, the test pattern for a lost signal came on the large screen as the communication link with the satellite was lost, possibly forever. Pete found a chair and sat down hard. Niles stood in a frozen stance and prayed he hadn’t just lost their only hope. He swallowed and waited. The magnetometers had peaked out, but that could mean anything from indigenous metal near the surface to a malfunction in an already overtaxed spy bird.

  “Goddamn! Old Boris and Natasha may have kicked the fucking bucket, but it sure as hell scored on its last play. Look!” Dave Pope, technical specialist for optical enhancement, yelled, and clapped. He quickly stood and jumped up and down and started high-fiving his assistants.

  Niles’s heart raced as he focused on the still screen to the right of the main viewing monitor as the operator calmed down and punched a few command keys, then a crystal clear image appeared. It was a still shot of the small valley, and inside it was the wreckage. It was scattered in a roughly two-mile stretch. It was metal alright, twisted into all different shapes. You could even see the point of impact and the crater it had created and the earth that had been plowed up in its slide before it fell to pieces. There were war whoops and whistles, and every man and woman was on his or her feet.

  Niles Compton closed his eyes and held them that way for a moment, content to let the others applaud and yell. He was still that way when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Niles opened his eyes and looked up into the smiling face of Pete Golding.

  “You’ve got a pair of brass balls, Niles, my man,” Pete said, shaking his head. “But dammit, Mr. Director, it was a good call.”

  Good old Boris and Natasha, Niles thought. He would have it refueled and powered back up if it was the last thing he did. He owed everything to the old KH-11.

  Niles stood and took a deep breath, trying to compose himself as best as he could. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “All right, Pete, put a call in to Alice so she cm inform Senator Lee.” Niles paused as Pete started to lift the phone. “Alert the complex and sound an Event signal and let’s get the discovery teams in the air. Let’s do it by the book.”

  Niles watched his computer technicians work quickly for a moment, never more proud of being a part of the Group. He replaced his glasses and started for the door as first one, then another, and then all the technicians were up tapping on their small consoles in a semi-silent tribute to a man who had just risked everything on a calculated hunch. Niles didn’t acknowledge them, he just opened the door and left.

  As Pete made the call upstairs, he watched his exhausted boss leave and wondered if he would ever have had the courage to risk a $485 million satellite. Then he shook his head no, he could never have done it But then again, maybe Niles knew something he wasn’t telling him.

  Pete looked at the crash site and wondered if there had been life on board. His eyes wandered over the hole at the center of the wreckage and wondered what that could be.

  At the same time Niles Compton had ordered the retasking of Boris and Natasha, Jack had made his way to the cafeteria for some coffee. He wanted to think over the news of Centauras before giving it to Lee and Compton. The ramifications of what had been discovered would shake the Group and other areas of the U.S. government to its foundations, if what Jack thought had happened had actually happened.

  It was obvious that Hendrix junior was involved in running the Frenchman. They obviously dealt in high and cutting-edge technology. And the best part was, the company that friends of the elder Hendrix’s had more than likely founded, so soon after the event in Roswell, was the direct result of the technology that had been examined and analyzed. Was the Centauras Corporation responsible for the missing evidence from Roswell? Collins wasn’t a big believer in coincidence. But the most disturbing factor was the possibility that a private company in this country was preparing for war without the backing or the knowledge of the government of the United Sta
tes. He only hoped that Centauras had done nothing since ’47 to have provoked the second attack.

  Jack was mulling these thoughts over as he entered the cafeteria, poured himself a cup, and walked over to the closest table and sat down. He didn’t see the figure as it approached his table until the shadow fell on him. Jack looked up and saw it was Sarah McIntire.

  “Hello, Major.”

  “Specialist,” he said in short greeting.

  “Well, I just wanted to say… well, sir, you have a good—”

  “What is your specialty again, Sarah?” he asked, then brought the cup to his mouth and sipped the hot coffee.

  “Mines and tunnels, soon to be an assistant director for the Geology Department. I get my master’s in three weeks from the Colorado School of Mines.”

  “Think you’ll stay in after you get your commission?”

  “I believe so; I love the Group, but may be a tad intimidated going back out into the real army as a second lieutenant.”

  McIntire smiled and looked into Jack’s eyes and was about to ask if he wanted to order something to eat, when the speakers tucked away in the far corners of the cafeteria cut her off.

  “Will Discovery Team Odin report to the briefing room please? Discovery Team Odin to briefing,” the computerized voice interrupted them.

  Sarah lowered her eyes when the call came. Her team name was Hokkaido. The name had never once been called outside of drills since she’d begun at the Event Group.

  Jack stood and pushed his chair back when he heard the code name of the advance Discovery team.

  “If you have need for a geologist or a tunnel team, think of me and my geology team, will you? We’re good, Major, we’d be an asset,” she said, saving Collins the embarrassment of asking her out.

  Jack noticed the sad smile and said, “Will do,” and winked. “And, Sarah, if you weren’t good, I doubt you’d be here.”

  Sarah watched him hurry through the double doors of the cafeteria and suddenly realized what the call for the Discovery team meant.

  “I’ll be damned, they found the crash site,” she mumbled to no one but herself. She glanced around the cafeteria at cooks hurriedly making up box lunches and throwing together coffee for the Discovery team to take into the field. How she wished she could be going out there with them.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Gus jumped when Mahjtic suddenly sprang from the bed and ran to the window opposite the door. The quick movement had to have caused great pain in the small being’s body.

  “What in the sam hell are you doin’?” Gus asked, getting to his feet.

  Mahjtic had almost ripped the blind away and was gazing outside into the night through the dirty window. The bald head turned first to the left, then quickly to the right, and its eyes were wider than normal. It first growled low under its breath, then became quiet again as it searched the area around the small house.

  Gus had given his visitor one of his old white shirts (white when Lyndon Johnson had been president anyway) after the small alien had finished eating. The shirt was overly large and was bunched around its small, slender feet, and Gus saw the movement of the cloth as the small alien trembled. Its long, strange fingers were gripping the sill tightly as it watched the darkness outside.

  “What’s eatin’ you, son?”

  Mahjtic continued to scan the dark night, head moving to a spot, looking intently for a moment, then moving on to another area in the darkness. Again it moved its head and looked toward the pen where Gus had kept Buck, and the chicken coop that sat beside it. Then it finally turned away and glanced back at Gus.

  “Maybe you heard that damn mule coming back.”

  The large lids slid closed from the side of its head as it blinked again. That strange tilt of the head followed. “Buck-kkk,” it said in that cottony, buzz-sounding voice, trying to pronounce the word correctly.

  “He’s my mule,” he finally said, then added quickly, “and my friend.”

  “He…is lost from… this… home?” Mahjtic asked, turning from the window.

  Gus didn’t know if not having the headaches and nose bleeds was worth the terrible noise of the alien’s real voice. It was like scraping your fingernails across a chalkboard.

  “Shit, Buck boy knows that damn desert better’n I do. Nah, he’s not lost”

  Mahjtic turned back to the four-paned window. It brought its hand to its bandaged head and touched it gingerly as its head turned left, then right, scanning the scrub and desert outside.

  “The Destroyer is hunting”

  The old man turned his eyes away from the window and looked at his strange guest, ignoring the pain its words caused. “You mean to say somethin’s huntin’ Buck?” Gus asked with raised eyebrows.

  The small alien closed its eyes. The smooth nose twitched once, then it opened its eyes again and looked at the old man. “Destroyer hunts” it said in its irritatingly gravelly voice, then pointed at Gus, and then its long finger turned and pointed at itself.

  “And just what is this Destroyer?” the old man asked, walking slowly away from the window.

  Mahjtic silently went back to the old bed and crawled up its height and sat down. Its small, three-toed feet dangled two and half feet off the floor as it looked from the old man to the window.

  “Aneemal,” it said, mispronouncing the word. “Destroyer is an aneemal.”

  Gus went to the table and sat in one of the two chairs. He put both elbows on his knees and looked at Mahjtic.

  “Never heard of no Destroyer, Matchstick.”

  It looked at Gus and tilted its head. “Maaaa-hJ-tiiic,” it said, pronouncing its name phonetically and far more slowly.

  The old man heard the correction and the indignant way it was said, but ignored it.

  Mahjtic shook its head, then sat up and turned to the window above the bed and pushed the blind aside. “Mine animal… my animal,” it corrected. “It is my animal captured for… work… other worlds, it is not from this… place?” It thought a moment. “It is not of Earth…It...not meant for your—world.”

  “You mean you let an animal loose from your spaceship or somethin’?”

  The small head shook back and forth quickly. “Mahjtic not hurt life here. Destroyer escapes.”

  “You’re savin’ this thing, this Destroyer, is dangerous?” Then Gus felt stupid for asking if something called the Destroyer was dangerous.

  The head bobbed up and down, up and down, still looking away from Gus and staring into the darkness outside. “It is danger, danger your world.”

  “That one animal brings all this danger? Then he better stay out of East Los Angeles,” Gus said as a small joke.

  Mahjtic looked away from the window and into Gus’s eyes, confused. “Forty and eight units, danger, forty-eight units of time from when…” It was trying to think of the right word. “I… I… boom ship… crash in ship,… forty-eight… hours?”

  “Why forty-eight hours?” he asked, not just a little nervously.

  “Babies come.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  Mahjtic squeezed its eyes closed in exasperation. “Men come here, the mountain, tomorrow, maybe? Men help Mahjtic and Gus when sun comes again?”

  “If you’re askin’ if the cops or army will be coming here, I don’t know. In my experience the army sometimes can be a day late and a dollar short, and the cops will probably give you a ticket for crashin’ your ship.”

  Mahjtic opened its eyes and looked at the old man long and hard. Then it slid from the bed and walked slowly toward Gus. It placed its small right hand on the table and looked at its host with its obsidian eyes. It tilted the large lightbulb-shaped head and concentrated, saying the words as clearly as its voice would allow it.

  “The Destroyer has babies in ten more of your time hours. We need the many people of your species that will come to look for ship. When they find my ship, these mens will have to help find Destroyer soon, or too late, too many baby, overwhelm all life on this world. My Gray
Masters live here then.”

  Gus blinked. The words had been pronounced slowly and clearly, even taking into account the bad quality of their vocalization.

  “What makes you think the men will find your spaceship; maybe we should just walk into town and call for help.”

  “No, noooo, not in dark, never in dark. Never walk on ground in light-dark. Men will come to mountain, I feel it in here.” The little green hand went to its head. “Must tell mans about Destroyer, the Talkhan, or too late your world. Some of my Master kind, the Gray ones, want planet, Gussss.” It tilted its head and touched the old man’s leg. “Gus will help Mahjtic?” it asked, eyes blinking.

  Gus stood, the hand sliding away from his leg slowly. He felt Mahjtic’s eyes on his back as he walked to the window once more and stared through the dirty panes.

  “I s’pose I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  He turned from the window and looked at Mahjtic’s downcast eyes and then shook his head.

  “This is no way to impose on a new friend,” he mumbled, “by extinctioning him, whatever you just said. But again I ask, I s’pose I haven’t a choice, have I?”

  It looked up and the small mouth formed the wondering O shape again. “Gus help?”

  “Yeah, Gus will help you, you little shit,” he answered angrily, and pulled down the yellowing blinds to shut out the darkness.

  “Gus help little shit” it repeated with awe. Then it thought a moment. The brow furrowed and the eyes narrowed. “Not shit, Gus, Mahjtic name not shit. What is shit?”

  “Shit is what I have a sinking feeling I just stepped into, son.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  July 9, 0130 Hours