"It didn't work out too well, did it?" She felt a flash of guilt. "Though of course my coming here was a big factor in bringing all this down on us."
"What brought it down in the end was all the lies and secrets," said Dennis. "All the cover-ups and corruption, the crazy obsession with controlling everyone and everything. Withholding so much technology that could help so many people. Why? So we could have the best space ships and the most powerful weapons? I hate to admit it, but knowing what I know now, your dad was right. Even the Elementals said before you ever showed up that this world was going to destroy itself."
Jamie gave her husband a wondering smile. "You really do sound like my dad."
"Yeah, well, I should've listened to him."
"Turns out we all should've."
"But everything's changed now, Jamie. And I have the strongest feeling we're never going back to that insanity. Not if I can help it."
Jamie draped an arm over his shoulder and hugged him to her.
"Not if I can help it, either," she said.
Thanks for reading Super World 2! A sequel will be arriving in the summer of 2017 (I am working on it as we speak). If you enjoyed Super World 2, please consider leaving a review here. Please check out the first chapter sample of my new novel which contains some of the characters from Super World 2, ANIMUS INTERCEPT, in the following pages!
Chapter 1
ZANE CAMERON JOGGED UP the trail to his father's house, his ex-wife's scowling face fresh in his mind. He'd cautioned her from the beginning that he worked for a largely unknown Air Force department called Air Force Special Projects Division that prohibited discussing his work with anyone lacking the requisite security clearance under the severest penalty of law. Yet Valerie apparently believed that when they were married – when she was pregnant with their child – that he would whisper his secrets to her on some dark, stormy evening or on a long walk beyond hypothetical surveillance range.
Zane had been tempted on a few occasions, but had reined himself in at the last moment. Sharing what he knew would be a great unburdening for him, but would place an unhealthy weight on her shoulders. He bore the weight because he got something incredible in return. He got to visit the stars. His wife would get to visit her therapist. And if she ever breathed a word about Zane's true employer and his true mission that would almost certainly be her last breath on this world.
Valerie had miscarried their son. And then their marriage itself had miscarried. After a two-year "trial separation," they'd been formally divorced two months ago.
Zane's father, Hank Cameron, sat on the back porch overlooking an alpine vista, watching Zane jog up the trail to the back of his house. Two frost-covered cans of Old Milwaukee Light rested on the table next to him, between two lounge chairs.
Zane settled down in the chair beside his father. The view that stretched before them was one he never tired of. Zane accepted a beer from his father and cracked it open. The icy drink soothed his dry palate. This had become a tradition during his two weeks here in Tahoe. He'd need to buy a place of his own soon – Valerie had kept their house in Spring Valley – but for now he was okay calling the Base home. This was just a much-need respite. He'd accumulated more weeks of vacation over the last ten years than he knew what to do with.
"How did the run go?" Hank asked.
"Good."
"How are you doing, son?"
"Hanging in there, I guess." Zane hesitated, then decided his dad deserved more honesty than that. "I keep wondering if I could've handled it better."
"I figured you would be."
"I keep thinking if I'd found the right words, I could've made her understand."
His dad nodded and sipped from his can. Zane traced his gaze upward, to a hawk circling overhead.
"Some people just can't deal with it," Hank said, squinting up at the hawk. "Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them. Some people just can't stand not being part of everything their mate does."
"Yeah, I guess that describes Val."
"Now Marilee was fine with it." Hank gave him a dry smile. "She had no interest in things that go bump in the night. Especially when the night and the things are on another world."
Zane chuckled with him. "I doubt Val gave a shit about that. She heard me mumble something once about how strange the universe is and never let it go."
They drank for a while in silence before his dad made a clearing-throat noise.
"You got a call."
"My lawyer? Valerie?"
"No. That other person you're married to. Colonel Hurtle."
Only an ironic god could've named his immediate superior, Zane thought. He felt the familiar buzz. Colonel Tom Hurtle didn't do "casual." If he called, it wasn't about how Zane's vacation was going. Something was up.
"He say anything?"
"Nope. Just to contact him. And he suggested you should carry your cell with you at all times."
"Right. You never know when I'll be called in to save the world."
"In his defense, it's not as if he has a long list of world-savers."
Zane made a point of finishing his beer slowly. Let the colonel stew in his own juices for a while. Everything was always a dire emergency for Tom Hurtle. One thing Zane had learned in his ten year-plus stint with United States Space Command: in terms of military might, the U.S. and international space forces were, despite being decades ahead of the mainstream technology, mere minuscule minnows in an unfathomably huge cosmic pond. There were untold numbers of alien civilizations, about which little was known – other than that many of them were considerably more advanced than Earth.
Extraterrestrials had for the most part thus far proven standoffish. They had no evidence that Zane knew of that any aliens posed a threat. War or hostilities were, according to the three species they had made contact with, exceedingly rare. Space, contrary to popular science fiction, did not appear to teem with malevolent forces bent on universal domination. Projects like Solar Warden and Safeguard were more about mundane matters such as possible deadly solar flares or approaching asteroids than about an invading alien fleet.
An overriding interest of U.S. Space Command and the Government was making certain that the balance of power and advanced technology remained tilted firmly in favor of the United States Military.
"You better call him back," said his father. "Before he sends a TR-3D here to pick you up."
"In a minute."
The older man studied him for a while before smiling. "You wouldn't happen to be holding Command a little responsible for what happened with your marriage, Zane?"
A dismissive chuckle started and died on Zane's lips. It would be silly and childish to hold anyone responsible but himself. No one had forced him to sign his life away. Still, he had to admit that Colonel Hurtle and Command's assumption that they always came first pissed him off sometimes.
"Not really," he said. "Though we wouldn't need to keep secrets if they just decided to finally tell people the truth."
"People aren't ready for that truth, son."
"It's going to come out someday."
"True. When the cows come home – and learn calculus." Hank gave his son a dark smile. "Look, when I say people aren't ready for the truth, I don't mean star drives or aliens. I mean they aren't prepared to know just how deep the deception from their leaders – their so-called elected government – goes."
Zane regarded him with sudden curiosity. His dad had hinted about his dissatisfaction with the secrecy status quo but never gone into any details.
"They could've gone the other way," Hank continued his thought. "There was a fork in the road in 1947. We took one step down the path of transparency. A few more steps would've changed everything. But they, in their infinite wisdom, called it back. We took the other road. And once you start burying a secret, it just takes more and more dirt to keep it covered, and more and more shovels to dig it up."
"Yeah," said Zane cautiously.
His father laughed and clapped him on the s
houlder. "It's the way of the world, son. That's the bottom line, and you and I ain't gonna change it."
Zane's gaze drifted up to the sky, to the sliver of the moon in the pellucid mountain sky, imagining their bases on the dark side. Zane had been to the moon twenty-seven times and served two three-month stints there. He turned back to his father, who was watching him with one cocked eyebrow, as if waiting for his verdict.
"Was it worth it, Dad?"
Surprise flickered across his father's face before he smiled. "I've walked on the ice plains of Europa, led excavations on Mars, broke bread with the Zetas on their home world for three years. I saw the rings of Saturn up close and personal. Do I have regrets about the time I spent away from you and your mom? You're damn right I do. Would I do it all over again? You're damn right I would."
Zane gazed into his father's pale grey-green eyes, shining coolly above his hard grin. The eyes of a warrior and a scientist and an inveterate explorer. Major Ezekiel James Cameron.
"Good to know," Zane said.
THE GANG was all here. Five levels down in the Nellis Air Force Base sector of the National Underground Complex.
Zane's six-person crew looked every bit as puzzled as he was about their sudden summoning. For much of the last decade, their missions had been scheduled months if not years in advance. Rarely, something unexpected came up. From the expression on Colonel Tom Hurtle's aide, standing stiffly with a sheaf of files tucked under one arm at the front of the room awaiting their superior – this looked to be one of those rare occasions.
"So what's the big emergency?" Lieutenant David Mallory asked him. Lieutenant Mallory, a Space Reconnaissance Marine, had joined the United States Space Command the same week Zane, a former Army Ranger, had. Attending a year of training classes together had cemented their friendship. "The Cardassians acting up again?"
"Colonel Hurtle will be in to brief you all soon enough."
Zane doubted it had to do with the "Cardassians." So-named because of their uncanny resemblance to the Star Trek creatures, the Cardassians were a primitive semi-sentient Martian subterranean species that occupied a vast labyrinth of underground caverns, caves, and artificial chambers – leftovers from the previous and now-extinct civilization – the Cardassians hadn't given them trouble for decades.
As far as Space Command exopaleontologists could determine, the large, lizard-like species had been domestic animals and/or pets. Whether they'd evolved into a higher intelligence or that intelligence had been bred into them by the previous sentient occupants was not clear. They were fiercely territorial, but as long as you respected their space and treated them respectfully, they returned the favor. They could even be downright friendly at times, perhaps possessing a genetic memory of their former masters.
It had taken U.S. Space Command and the World Defense Force – the primary clandestine international space organization – several years and upwards of one hundred fatalities before they'd appreciated those truths and forged a stable if uneasy mutual coexistence. We stayed out of their space and didn't shoot them and they stayed clear of and didn't dine on us.
"If the Cardassians were causing trouble, they would've brought in the Space-case Marines," said Keira Quinn.
"We're mostly scientists," Chief Scientist Malcolm Anders stated, "ergo, this is a scientific mission."
"But Captain Cameron is military," Andrea Wilkins, first navigator, pointed out. "So is Mallory. So we have a combined scientific-military mission."
"We all work for the military." Chief Engineer Dan Mueller arched his usual ironic eyebrow. "Everything we do is ultimately military, my dear."
"Could be the Alphas." Mallory's dreamy smile suggested he hoped so. "They weren't happy about our base on Proxima Beta."
"We're not in any position to take on the Alphas, David," said Zane, knowing that Mallory dreamed on a daily basis about achieving the technological level to go head-to-head with the Alphas, Zetas, Luminates, and other "uppity aliens" that he imagined looked down their noses at humans. "We're on Beta by their leave only."
"For the moment." Mallory's dreamy smile hardened. "Do you have any better ideas, Cap?"
Zane was spared devising a witty rejoinder by the entrance of their immediate superior. As usual, Colonel Tom Hurtle entered the room as if stepping off a fast-moving airport walkway, but today Hurtle's speed-walk ran out of steam about halfway into the room. He nodded to his aide, Lieutenant Christopher, who began handing out the folders he'd been brooding under his right arm. Zane and the crew joined the two men at the long table before the blackboard-sized display screen.
The title on the folder was OPERATION ANIMUS INTERCEPT.
"Congratulations, my friends," said Colonel Hurtle. "Your security clearance has just been upped to Cosmic. Please take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the contents of your folder and then we can begin."
Zane opened his folder.
IZ-5677744435 Fringe Solar Planet
Code Name: Animus
Measurements Relative Earth
Mass: ≥ 5.4
Radius: 1.7
Flux: .89
Type: Iron-Metallic Element.
Composition: Oxygen 39%, Silicon 21%, Iron, 15%, titanium 12%, Tungsten 4%, Magnesium 3%, Aluminum 2%, Other 2%.
Detected: 8-12-1973 (Saturn Starmap Telescope)
Orbit: 41 Light Years. Sun and Proxima Centauri.
Current Distance: 83 AU
Current Earth-Relative velocity: 579363 KPH
Perigee: 3.97 Mkm (5-14-2021)
Summary: Animus was impacted by a planetary body slightly larger than Mars approximately 530,000 years ago, resulting in its current dual-sun orbit. Debris from collision orbiting Animus identifies impacting body as silicate.
Animus will reach its closest approach of 3,973,235 kilometers on December 17, 2020. Earth will not begin experiencing its gravitational effects until the penultimate moment, when Animus is roughly 9,000,000 kilometers out, beginning with increased earthquakes and volcanic activity and altered weather patterns of unusual severity, increasing to major continental dislocation, magnetic fields and pole disruption, pollution and possible partial loss of atmosphere as Animus reaches nearly 1/4 of the Roche limit. The devastation will be swift and brutal.
Estimated Casualties: 91% current population within one week of of perigee, topping out at 95% within the first year following.
Proposed Mission: Intercept Animus at 81.7 AU 7-4-2018 and destroy.
Mission Commander: Captain Zane Cameron
Second in Command: Captain Horace Kinsley
Method of Elimination: Nanodevice Z98
Vehicles: Peacemaker, Star Cruiser Class 1; Cheyenne (TR-3F), Interstellar Fighter Class
Operational Drive: Space Compression Subluminal Drive 2
Average Cruising Speed: ≥4700 KPS
Estimated Length of Mission: 75 days
Mission Codename: Operation Intercept.
Zane thumbed through several glossy photos of Animus, concentrating on keeping his hands steady. Some of his compatriots were looking pretty shaky, but except for Lieutenant David Mallory, they were all just scientists. He, as their captain and a former Ranger, had to set an example. But he was plenty shaky inside. Still, knowing that Horace would be at his side provided a welcome security blanket.
He had to wonder why his old friend, who'd taken him under his wing from the start, hadn't been tapped for overall mission commander. He had fifteen hardcore years of seniority, after all. Still, it was well-known that Horace – often called "Horse" because of his dude ranch and love of riding – had burned some career bridges with impolitic comments and a few ill-chosen romantic dalliances.
Zane focused on the photos of Animus, probably taken from a few hundred miles out, which portrayed a rocky, airless planet not unlike their moon, except craggier and vastly more massive. It bore what appeared to be a large but shallow indentation on one side and two significant craters. The craters were identified as the products of two Proteus
matter-anti-matter explosive (MAME) missiles and a hyperkinetic strike by the Star Cruiser John F. Kennedy.
"So 'Niburu' is real?" Mallory asked, looking up from the papers.
"In essence, yes," Colonel Hurtle replied. "Though the orbit time is longer than popularly believed. This planet orbits our sun roughly once every 12,657 years, causing cataclysmic effects on Earth. I'm told this has been happening for several hundred thousand years. Before that, it's a bit sketchy."
"You've known about this for decades, and you're just getting around to telling us now."
"I wasn't cleared about it myself until six months ago, Lieutenant Mallory. This, as I'm sure you can imagine, is absolute need-to-know. Our leaders dole out such information only as necessary."
Two men entered. Zane recognized one as the eccentric and flamboyant Dr. Lance Spencer – others less kind used adjectives such as "flaming" – head of Artificial Intelligence Division (AID). Zane had seen the other guy, Dr. Ken Andrews, around. Dapper, maybe early sixties, grey Van Dyke beard. Astrophysicist, he thought, but they'd never worked together.
"Ah, gentlemen, thanks for making the time to join us." The rebuke, if that's what it was, lay only in the words. Colonel Hurtle's voice held its usual ironic tone. "Some of you know Dr. Lance Spencer, who heads up AID. He's done some brilliant work with nanodevices and artificial intelligence. Dr. Ken Andrews is one of our most esteemed astrophysicists, with considerable expertise in celestial mechanics and warp drive theory."
Hurtle introduced them to the crew, giving a snapshot resume of each. No one shook hands. Dr. Andrews offered everyone a semi-friendly nod. Dr. Spencer adjusted the cuff links on his standard floral dress shirt and smiled archly at no one in particular.
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