SALIENT

by Simon Rosser

  “Nice quote, but what the hell? Do you seriously think you can communicate with aliens?” Alicia asked.

  “It’s ridiculous, Tom, but it might be our only chance. I hope you’re filming all this, Bruce,” Armstrong added.

  “Damn right,” Bruce replied, propped up on his elbows and lying on his belly a short distance away. “The battery will die soon though.”

  Tom hit the send button.

  Almost immediately, another text came through from Gerry.

  NOT GOOD NEWS. THE ODYSSEY MISSION APPEARS TO HAVE GONE WRONG. ALL CONTACT HAS BEEN LOST WITH THE ASTRONAUTS AND THE WHITEHOUSE HAS ORDERED A DIRECT STRIKE ON COBALT RIDGE GLACIER. I’M SORRY, MY FRIEND, BUT IT LOOKS AS IF THIS THING IS NOW OUT OF CONTROL. GOD HELP YOU ALL.

  Tom’s stomach flipped over in fear and panic as he read the message. No, this can’t be the end! He bit his lip and stopped himself from immediately reading the message out to the others, but they had a right to know what was about to happen.

  He checked the battery life on his phone. Only 2% remained. “Shit… shit. Come on, Gerry, send me the audio file!” he screamed.

  The blue light in the cavern was getting more intense, and the electrical hum louder as the device appeared to be powering up for some kind of an event. Tom feared that another wormhole or portal was about to open up. “Gerry, sent me a text. It’s not good news. The Whitehouse have ordered a direct strike against this location. If you want to leave the cavern, now is your chance. I have to wait here for Gerry’s audio file,” Tom said, just as the power indicator on his smartphone dropped to 1%.

  “Those fucking idiots! What are they doing?” Alicia screamed. “Screw them, we’re staying here with you, Tom.” “I’m so sorry, Jess. I didn’t mean things to end like this,” Tom said, squeezing her hand.

  “It’s okay babe. You were right. We had to come back up here for Maddy and Conner,” she said, wiping away a tear.

  “Come on, Gerry, send us that god-damned audio file!” Armstrong shouted, refusing to resign to his fate.

  The five of them waited, bathed in blue light as they lay on the cavern floor, heads close together and staring at the smartphone gripped in Tom’s trembling hand.

  CHAPTER 28

  Mount Shasta, 3 A.M.

  “WHAT THE HELL do you mean they’re going to obliterate the site?” Dr Lucy Davies shouted angrily at Lieutenant Jordan, who’d just come off his sat-phone.

  “I’m afraid its game over. We have no choice, the Moon mission has failed. All contact with the astronauts has been lost. We can only fear the worst. The president has ordered a strike against the glacier and the device or transmitter, whatever is buried down there. We are expendable. A squadron of F-35s are en route now from Beale. You are free to leave if you wish, but I don’t think you’ll get very far. It’s been a pleasure to have worked with you,” Jordan said bluntly, raising his right hand in a salute.

  “Fuck you! Come on, Fred; let’s get the hell out of here, NOW!” Lucy screamed, as the distant roar of jet engines could be heard from somewhere lower down in the valley.

  Lucy and Professor Beck started to sprint along the ridge towards where the SETI truck was parked up. They were thirty feet away from the vehicle when Lucy suddenly slipped on the ice and fell to the frozen ground, screaming as she did.

  Running alongside her, Professor Beck turned as he heard her scream, seeing Lucy on her stomach, sliding towards the edge of the ridge, and a forty-foot steep drop-off to the forest below.

  Beck ran back a few paces and stooped down, reaching out to grab Lucy’s hand. As he did, there was a roar from overhead as a squadron of six F-35 stealth jets flew low over the ridge, kicking up snow and ice and whipping the tops of the fir trees below them.

  “This is Squadron Leader Colonel Gus Mitchell – Albatross. We have reached the site. Military personnel and civilians are on the ground. I repeat, military personnel and civilians on the ground. The site appears secure. Confirm strike instructions. I repeat confirm strike,” he said, speaking into his helmet mic, as he banked the 5th generation F-35 Lightning II fighter jet away from the mountain.

  The six aircraft flew low over the trees in a wide loop, as Mitchell awaited orders from Beale. As he did, he monitored the information being projected on to his Helmet Mounted Display System, which gave him data on airspeed, heading, altitude, targeting information, and warnings. It was the red warning text that had just lit up in the middle of the screen that he wasn’t expecting to see. Never in any of his operational training had he received confirmation that the advanced craft was being tracked by some kind of enemy radar system. He immediately hit the afterburners and accelerated at a near vertical climb, the aircraft rapidly accelerating to Mach 1, five seconds later. The other five aircraft followed.

  The warning text on the HMDS blinked out as Mitchell reached an altitude of nineteen thousand feet.

  “This is Beale Strike Command. Mission is a go. I repeat, mission is a go. Strike… Strike… Strike,” came the order.

  Mitchell banked the F-35 right. As he did, the jet’s Distributed Aperture System—DAS, gave him 360-degree, high resolution real-time display from six infrared cameras mounted around the aircraft of the eastern flank of Mount Shasta and the Cobalt Ridge Glacier below.

  The F-35 used Electro-Optical Targeting System—EOTS, the world’s first and only sensor that combined forward-looking infrared—FLIR, and infrared search and track—IRST functionality, allowing Mitchell to fire the jet’s precision air-to-surface missiles with pin-point accuracy towards the target embedded in the glacier. Less than a second later, the four missiles streaked towards the ridge below.

  The roar from the F-35 jets took Professor Beck by surprise, causing him to slip and misjudge Lucy’s open hand, letting Lucy slip out of reach, off the ridge, and down the forty-foot drop of towards the tree line below.

  As she fell, her view was of the deep blue sky and the four white contrails from the missiles now bearing down at the ridge from above. “Run, save yourself professor,” she screamed, as she slipped down the steep bank. The last thing she saw before blacking out was a wall of brilliant, blue light, fanning out from high up in the sky like a beautiful, blue shimmering waterfall, which seemed to envelop the entire mountain.

  Mitchell tracked the missiles from twenty-thousand feet as they streaked towards their target below. He whispered a prayer for his colleagues, and the civilians still on the ground. But then, to his utter disbelief, he watched as a spherical orb of blue light appeared from nowhere below, two thousand feet above the ridge. The light then fanned out in a blink of an eye, forming a transparent blue dome above the site and the side of the mountain. He observed the missiles as they struck the blue aura, exploding on impact. His first thought, despite the absurdity, was that it was some kind of force field.

  “Missiles have failed to hit target, I repeat failed to hit target. Launching a second wave,” Mitchell reported.

  The pilot gave the orders to his squadron to each launch two more air-to-surface missiles at the target. The five F-35 pilots complied with the directive and seconds later, another ten ASM’s blasted from the jets underbelly and streaked down towards Cobalt Ridge below.

  Colonel Mitchell’s EOTS system kept track of the missiles as they sped towards their target; ten thousand feet...eight thousand feet...six thousand feet. Suddenly, way below, the faint blue haze that had appeared earlier became more intense, and then ten bright flashes, split seconds apart, expanded into hundred-foot diameter explosions from the spent missiles, which fanned out over the curved dome of blue above the ridge.

  “Albatross to base. We have a mission failure. We are dealing with an unknown technology that appears to have created some kind of force-field over the target. I repeat...” Mitchell hesitated. “Shit, we’re being tracked again. I have enemy radar lock-on. Stealth appears inoperative. Taking evasive action,” Mitchell shouted, pushing the throttle stick on his F-35 fully forward and accelerating to Mach 1.8 in a large arc ove
r the Shasta Trinity National Park.

  The other five jets followed, but it was too late.

  “Incoming!” Mitchell screamed into his helmet as six streaks of blue light erupted from the hazy blue dome below and raced towards the jets at ten times the speed of sound. Less than a split second later, the jets vanished in flashes of tiny blue particles, leaving just empty sky, white contrails and silence.

  CHAPTER 29

  MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS ECHOED along the mineshaft, sending a small blast wave that rocked the cavern, causing the ground to rumble, and loose pieces of rock and quartz to fall from the walls and roof of the cave

  “Jesus what just happened?” Armstrong asked.

  “I don't know, but it wasn’t the volcano. It sounded like an over ground explosion. Maybe they are trying to blast their way into the cavern from above,” Tom said, still gripping and staring at his smartphone.

  Buzz... buzz, the phone suddenly vibrated in his hand. “It’s a message; the audio file!” he shouted, quickly opening up the message. Sure enough, Gerry had managed to send him an audio file attachment, timed at 03.12. There was no time to think or even listen to it, the phone's battery was about to die on him.

  He rushed over to the alien device protruding from the exposed section of melting glacier ice above, which had penetrated the far corner of the cavern’s ceiling. The weird black material the device was made from was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was black, yet translucent in places, allowing for brief flashes of the rock and ice behind it, as if the dark material were continuously moving inside the object, almost as if it were alive.

  Tom reached out and touched the device. He could feel a deep, pulsating hum coming from it. He felt warmth and then cold and could see the colours of the rainbow, prisms of light in his mind as he ran his hand over it. He brushed away a thin layer of ice crystals, hit the play button on his phone, and placed it flat against the object. He could hear the audio file, almost like whale-song in some parts, mixed with static, white noise, and a high-pitched squeaking sound that you used to hear when downloading a game onto a computer via a cassette tape in the 1980s. Then Tom heard the two beeps that confirmed the battery on his phone had finally died.

  He pulled the smartphone away from the object, and checked. The screen was black, but he’d heard the audio, it had played out. If the device could somehow absorb the sound, the message may well be on its way to whoever had sent the coded signal–or so he hoped.

  Tom turned to the others, his back to the object. “Well, the audio file has been sent. I think it’s finally time to get the hell out of here before this cave collapses.” As he spoke Alicia and Jessica screamed.

  “Mate, just bloody run and don't look back!” Armstrong shouted, as he stood and squeezed the trigger on the M14, letting off a series of three-round bursts, the sound exploding in the confines of the small cavern.

  An instant surge of adrenalin rushed into Tom’s veins in response to the fear he suddenly felt and he sprinted across the fifteen feet to the small gap where they’d entered the cavern. The other four were also scrambling to their feet, and from the look on the girl’s faces, something was seriously spooking them.

  Tom reached the cavern wall and turned back towards the device. The cavern was now filled with an indigo light, not from the device, but from the harpoon-like objects stacked up beneath the device or transmitter, whatever the thing was. A blue haze had also now formed, and an even larger black eye had opened up in the middle of the haze. About to come through the void, and shrouded in a white, misty substance, were what appeared to be a number of silver-suited, humanoid-shaped entities.

  Tom glanced at his backpack, which was still on the floor, the harpoon-like tool still sticking out the back, and now also glowing brightly, and he dived onto it, pulling the device free. It immediately welded itself to his hand again, as if it had been designed for only him to hold. His only thought was of fear and of destroying the device and black void in front of him. As he thought about it, a questioned popped into his mind.

  Are you certain you want to take this action?

  Tom answered the question with a thought—yes.

  As he did, a thin line of blue light, like a laser beam, shot out from the end of the harpoon and struck the transmitter, enveloping the ice-buried device, and causing it to spark, as if it were short circuiting. The blue aura it had been emitting suddenly faded, and the black eye vanished with a pop of static as quickly as it had appeared. As it blinked out, one of the entities appeared to make an effort to push through the vanishing void into the cavern, but was unable to make it. As the black eye disappeared, a severed forelimb, or arm, still encased in its silver spacesuit, landed on the cave floor.

  Before any of them could speak, the humming sound coming from the device started to get louder, and the device began to change colour from black, to indigo-blue and then to a burnt orange.

  “Run! I think it’s going to explode!” Tom screamed.

  The five of them dived for the narrow opening towards the mineshaft and squeezed through into the tunnel beyond. Safely through, they sprinted along the tunnel, the intense light from the cavern illuminating their way in an eerie band of colours. They ran over the bone field, reached the intersection in the tunnel, and turned left into the long passage that led to the mine’s entrance and the clearing where they’d set up camp. As they ran, a massive explosion erupted from the cavern behind them.

  “Move... Move!” Tom urged, stealing a quick glance behind him and seeing a huge fireball advancing along the tunnel towards the intersection.

  The five of them managed to run another thirty feet along the tunnel before being hit by a massive blast wave from the explosion.

  Tom was thrown forward through the air by the force and smashed against one of the tunnel’s wooden, support beams. His head spun momentarily, before everything went black.

  CHAPTER 30

  TOM’S HEAD WAS pounding, as if he’d just woken with one of the worst hangovers of his life. As he opened his eyes his vision blurred, and all he could see was a white haze. A rhythmical beep… beep… beep becoming apparent from over on his left, and a chill raced up his spine as the events in the cavern slowly came back to him. What had happened? Were they still in the mine?

  He sat bolt upright, his head spinning with confusion. As his vision slowly returned to normal and he took in his surroundings a wave of panic descended over him. Had he been abducted?

  He was wired up to the machine that was beeping away; clear tubes stretched from a cannula fitted into his left arm and were wired up to the device that was next to the bed he was lying in.

  The room was all white, clinical. As he thought about where he might be, the machine by his bed started beeping rapidly as he began to panic, causing adrenalin to flood into his veins. Flight or fight? was his only thought.

  He fell back into the bed, and reached over to pull out the tube from the cannula protruding from his arm. Just as he did, he heard a voice.

  “Don’t even think about doing that, Mr. Bishop,” a stern female voice shouted.

  Tom cricked his neck as he whipped his head around to see who had spoken, sending a burning spasm through his neck and shoulder.

  A woman, wearing a blue nurse’s uniform rushed over to the side of Tom’s bed and quickly inserted the tube back into the back of his hand. “Tut… tut… tut, now that was a very silly thing to do. You’re receiving saline and antibiotics for a nasty gash to your head and thigh. There’s no knowing what sort of bugs are lurking in that old copper mine they found you in,” she said, in a calm but authoritative voice.

  “Jeez, where am I?” Tom asked.

  “You’re in the Shasta Mount View City Hospital. A search party brought you in. They found you all in the mineshaft after the landslide on the mountain. Luckily for you, the old mines didn’t collapse. They must have been constructed well. You guys were all lucky."

  Tom closed his eyes. His head started to spin again, his memory of th
e events hazy.

  “Where are my friends?”

  “Don’t you worry about them, they will be okay. One of the chaps has had to have an emergency operation on his arm though. He’s lost it unfortunately, but he'll be okay. He’s recovering now in intensive care. Your other three friends were released yesterday. You’ve been in a medically induced coma for three days, but don’t worry, you’re on the mend, and your family have been informed. Dr Holland will be around to check on you in an hour or so. Can I get you something to drink in the meantime?”

  Tom felt dizzy as he tried to think about everything that had happened. “Yes, please, a cup of tea would be good.”

  “I’ll sort that out for you,” the nurse smiled at him as she headed for the door. “Don’t you dare try to pull that tube out again now will you.”

  “Sorry, I was a little scared and not thinking straight when I woke up. Oh do you know where my phone is? I’d like to contact my family if possible.”

  “Of course. You’re not supposed to use it in here, but I’ll fetch it for you. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken, eh!” The nurse winked and left the room.

  She returned twenty minutes later with a cup of tea and his smartphone, which had been fully charged.

  “This should help,” she said, putting the cup of tea down on the table by his bed. “Make sure you’re not on that thing when Dr Holland comes in to see you,” she said, as she turned and left the room.

  Tom grabbed his phone and opened the text messages that were waiting for him. There were two missed calls from his mother and also a text message. Naturally, she and his father were worried sick about him and had wanted to fly over, but the hospital had advised against it. They had been informed that Tom had been given a CT scan and was fine.