Future Discovered: Host Saga Book 1

by Michael Farlow

  “My apologies. Yes, there is another listening in, my partner, Harry, who is in another secure facility,” Van said.

  “My mind is buzzing with the possibilities, especially after your most recent mission, and I can’t think of a convincing reason to say no.” Dick realized the potential to the Carson Group of the demonstrated intelligence resources, to say nothing of the potential rewards—monetary and promotional. “But before we go and have some lunch, let’s discuss what’s happening in the background, one of my reasons for asking for this meet.

  “The snooping investigators, the approach by Europa coupled with a veiled threat, and the attack in the media and the patent case all suggest that trouble is brewing, and it’s escalating. With the new intel capabilities we will now share, I suggest we place our main efforts into finding out what is going on and who’s at the bottom of it. I’m thinking that we hold off on any new initiatives until we can clear this up. Too much distraction and too risky. To that end, I want to expand the local team and put Brice in charge of investigations. Barbara will coordinate among us all and work directly with your partner in setting up the system.”

  “That seems reasonable I guess,” Van said with slumping shoulders and a heavy sigh, suggesting disappointment, “even though it’s not exactly what I had hoped for at this point. Harry will be contacting you and Ms. Fuller with some ideas on how to set up an operations center with off-the-shelf equipment that will link to some of our systems, probably via the communications device I left with you last visit.”

  Then, standing up and moving to a nearby table covered with a cloth, Van looked at Brice and said, “I know you and your teams are well prepared for the operations you conduct. However, when working with us, there are a few things that we have been developing within Stellar that will be quite useful. Like everything we do, however, these are highly classified and cannot be left behind or given to anyone else. They must either be destroyed or brought back after a mission.”

  Removing the cloth cover from the table, he revealed some sort of combat suit.

  Van’s earlier disappointment disappeared as he cracked a smile and spoke. “This is a light-armor suit that has some enhanced capabilities. The suits can bend light and appear to be invisible. There is some disruption or ‘shimmer’ associated with the suits when invisible, but one would have to be looking very closely to notice it. Your team can see each other’s suits via the helmet. Using new fiber technology from Stellar, the suits are also capable of deflecting or absorbing the impact of rounds up to .30 caliber. Needless to say, it’s capable of denying penetration from sharp objects such as knives and sharp rocks as well. In addition, each suit has a more advanced version of the medical scanner we developed to monitor vitals and to assess certain injuries.

  “Associated with the suit is a detachable helmet that has protection equal to that of the suit overall. The transparent faceplate is normally dark from the outside, but can assume the same camouflage that the suit and helmet produce. Inside the faceplate is a HUD that, by pressing buttons on the side of the helmet, can show the locations of other suits using their imbedded transponders. It contains IR and night-vision capabilities, range finding, and can show the user when his weapon is on target without the use of the traditional hard sights, instead using a red-dot sight attached to a shoulder-fired or crew-served weapon.

  “All this is run by a Stellar-designed power pack integrated into the suit, which can hold an operational charge for several days of hard use. Finally, the helmet also contains secure communications capabilities with the ability to choose between a number of different channels.” What Van did not say was that these suits were less capable than the systems available to him.

  Brice was nearly drooling. “You mean these are for our use?”

  “Yes. If you agree to protect the technology. Harry will have a dozen or so delivered to your facility immediately. Harry will also assist you in learning about and using them.”

  “You know, Van, it’s always been Brice’s goal to amass the maximum amount of technology possible for his team. The only thing keeping him under control was money. I think you just let the genie out of the bottle,” Dick said with a big grin.

  “You can say that again. I’m in!” Brice said, nearly jumping out of his seat to look at the suits more closely.

  “There’re a couple of things you all should know, however,” said Van. “Harry is even more reclusive than I am, and while cooperative, he does not have much of a sense of humor. Finally, despite what you think of them, these suits are not magic. You can still get killed using them.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Peter possessed an old German name, Meier. As he sat in his Geneva townhouse he reflected on how far he had come since being born in the small German agricultural village of Demmin. Looking back, he remembered when the area had been occupied by the Russian Army after World War II. In fact, even now the town (it was no longer just a village) still had strong Slavic ties. Smiling, he realized now that he was a billionaire, most people had no idea he’d started life in near poverty or that he had once worked for the Russian security service, known then as the KGB. His only regret was that he apparently was the reason his mother had died in childbirth. It was because of his large head, according to his father, who never let him forget it.

  But today his mood of satisfaction was upset by the immediate reality of having to deal with people—specifically the fact that he was still forced to deal with Harold Iken and Arno Lom. They were growing only in their abilities to moan and complain. In fact, they were both on the phone now moaning and complaining about how Stellar had not been completely stopped by the bad press and the patent case.

  “Calm yourselves, gentlemen,” Meier said. “Eric is working on this even as we speak. I believe our problems will be over soon.” Meier abruptly hung up.

  Given what Stellar had been virtually giving away to the world, Meier could not help being angry that his profits were suffering and that his senior company leaders were a pain. But now he started to wonder if Childs had also discovered—as he had—an alien site. Probably one more advanced than Meier’s, which he’d found several years ago in the Tibesti Mountains of Chad. A new goal was to determine if this was true. And if it was, he also had to find out where it was.

  Years earlier, Meier had been in Chad working with a regional up-and-coming leader of a Libyan terrorist group. Rehman was his name, recalled Meier. Gun sales were gun sales, after all. They were both interested in secretive areas in which to store arms and equipment that Meier wanted to sell to the terrorist group through one of his arms companies. They already had several locations in Libya but thought it wise to have stash locations outside Libya. Neighboring Chad was a distinct possibility due both to its remoteness and its relative ease of access from Libya.

  Meier remembered being drawn one evening by a strong desire to walk into the growing dimness. He wasn’t sure why he’d taken the direction he had; it had been like an arbitrary choice. As he wandered alone, reveling in the night breeze and the relatively reasonable temperature, he suddenly stopped and looked around. In one of the side crevices of the narrow valley in which he was walking, he thought he saw a glimmer of light. Like a reflection from the rising Moon. He spun in the direction of the glimmer and turned on his flashlight. What he saw was a sheer rock wall about twenty feet high and maybe twice that wide with flat rock leading up to the sheer face. As he approached, he saw what caused the reflection: a small piece of metal protruding from the right face of the wall.

  This was more than curious, especially since his team had passed this way several times and had not noticed the metal. Shining his flashlight on it revealed a rectangular metal bar, which showed no signs of rust or deterioration. It looked a little like aluminum. He reached down to grab the bar to see if it would pull loose, but when he did there was a flash of light and he was knocked backward, dazed. Looking at his hand with the flashlight, he expected to see some sort of damage. However, what he saw was more t
han curious. His hand was a little red, and the faint image of a set of wings appeared and then faded. Almost at the same instant he heard a terrible rumble, which he could not account for as he started to get up and run. To his amazement, however, he had to stop. Where the rock face used to be was now a large, lighted open room. A room here in the middle of nowhere, he’d thought with puzzlement.

  Inside the room he saw piles of what looked like plastic boxes and carbon fiber containers. With some trepidation, he walked into what he now saw was a vast storage room. In just a minute after he entered, the door or doors to the room closed behind him. He tried to jump back out but was not quick enough. I’m trapped, or so he’d thought.

  Frantically he looked for a way out. He searched the various walls for some sort of control box but found none. What he did find was a large wide-screen TV on a table near the back wall. He looked for controls around the edges and even for some sort of remote but could find only a large black ball supported at the bottom by several smaller black balls and connected to the screen by a small-diameter cable. In an effort to see behind the view screen better, he absentmindedly put his hand palm-down on the screen. Instantly there was a tingling sensation in his head, which caused him some confusion. The sensation lasted only a few seconds, but he could swear it had been much longer. Then there was a swirl of light as a series of icons appeared on the screen. One looked like a door. Another looked like a book, and another looked like the view screen itself. Still worried about getting out, he touched the door icon and two options appeared. One indicateing a closed door, and the other a picture of an open door. He quickly touched the open-door icon, and to his great relief, the cavern door opened vertically. He then pressed the closed door, and the door closed.

  Relieved to know that he was not trapped, Meier then proceeded to look around the room in more detail. He opened a few of the boxes and discovered that they were full of medical supplies. Lots of bandage material, small medical tools, and some sort of pharmaceuticals. What really caught his attention was a handheld device that might be some sort of medical computer. He picked up one of these and placed it inside his shirt and continued looking around. Of all the containers, only four looked different. They were not square but rectangular. Each was about five or six feet long. Opening one was relatively easy, accomplished by undoing several snaps on the front of the box and opening the lid. Inside was another surprise. A humanoid form made of metal or some sort of plastic. A robot he guessed. It had the number “4” painted on its chest and red stripes. Recognizing the value of what he had found, he wasted no time liberating the contents back to his facilities in Germany.

  The discovery of that trove of technology treasures had been the basis for his new products and technology. The robots were inert and had no set of directions, so they were “mined” for their technology, which led to a lead for Meier in industrial robotics and a new company he called Avantek. Similarly, the medical pharmaceuticals were old and had started to deteriorate. Some of their chemical compositions could not be determined. Even so, his team managed to deduce new formulas and placed them into production successfully. The premier find was the small medical computer, which turned out to be a kind of medical scanner that appeared to diagnose a person’s medical problems and provide treatment recommendations, all by just passing the device over the afflicted area. His new company, Europa Medical, could not duplicate it completely but still made great advances. Finally, the large black ball with its supports turned out to be a computer and storage system, which resisted most of the mining attempts by his technicians. But Meier was clear that he did not want the computer device destroyed. It obviously contained a great deal of information, and he assigned a separate Avantek team to try to discover its contents, even if it took them years.

  Based mainly on these new technologies, his empire grew and prospered. What disturbed him now was that the kind and level of technology that Stellar was releasing was strikingly similar to what he had found in that buried room in Chad—but more advanced and much more detailed.

  For several years now, Meier had known he had ALS and now it was starting to show. Europa Medical was spending a huge amount of its budget looking for a cure but had found nothing yet, though the medical development team may have come up with an idea of how to slow it down.

  I wonder, Meier thought, if Childs has discovered a site, might it contain a cure? Something else I need to find out.

  Not only would that be a literal lifesaver for him, but the profits would be huge! Long life and more power were a combination he could not ignore. He dialed Eric Borman.

  “Hello, Peter,” Eric said. “How can I help you?”

  “Eric, we have tried to play nice with Stellar Projects and have even made some very plain threats, but nothing so far seems to be impressing Childs. I think it is time for he and I to have a face-to-face discussion on safe territory. Can you arrange to take him to the safe house in Bern?”

  “Normally that would not be a problem. However, it seems that he now has some security coverage, which will make grabbing him difficult—but not impossible. I will get right on it.”

  “See that you do, Eric. See that you do,” Meier said as he pushed the “End Call” button with a finger, which had just recently started to shake at unpredictable moments.

  CHAPTER 15

  A week after Dick’s visit and their new business relationship was established, Van again met with Brice Johnson and Barbara Fuller in the Rancho Bernardo SCIF. This was a meeting called by Brice to coordinate his team’s actions with regard to Van and to discuss any issues or suggestions for the intelligence cooperation. Sitting at the conference table again, Brice was quick and gave Van contact information for both his and his team’s office in San Diego. He stopped for a moment, thinking, then said, “You know, Mr. Childs, that San Diego is a big place and makes covering you more difficult than if you were in a more remote location. You might consider moving to your cabin in Arizona for much of the time, with only occasional visits to Chula Vista and San Diego.”

  “I’ll consider that, Brice,” said Van, who had no intention of moving to the cabin full-time.

  Brice didn’t appear to be convinced of Van’s sincerity, but he had to go to another meeting with his team. “You coming, Barbara?”

  “No, Brice. I drove here separately, and I have a few more things to discuss with Mr. Childs.”

  “OK, suit yourself. There’s a team close by led by Ross Taylor. I’ll see you later,” he said with a knowing wink and left them alone.

  “What’s going on?” asked Van across the table.

  “I thought that we needed to talk now that we are going to be working together. To clear the air, as they say.”

  “It’s been a long time,” Van said while thinking, And I feel at odds with myself with you around. “And you’re right, we do need to talk things over, but I prefer not here. Would you consider having dinner? I know a little place close by where the food is good.”

  Leaning in to face Van, Barbara said confidently, “I can do that. I’ll let Ross know where we’re going and take responsibility for your safety while there.” Her stern look showed total control.

  Thirty minutes later Van and Barbara met at the Barrel Room on Bernardo Center Drive where Van and Al frequently met.

  “You come here a lot?” Barbara asked as they took a seat.

  “Actually yes, usually with Stellar clients and a few friends. It’s close to work and the food is actually quite good. By the way, what did you do with Ross and his team?”

  “They’re outside, so I have the duty inside.”

  “So I’m a duty?”

  “Of course. You’re a partner with the Carson Group, plus Dick wants it this way.”

  Believing the direct approach was best, Van looked Barbara directly in the eye. “So what did you want to talk about?”

  For a split second, her features tensed, but she covered it with the old familiar half grin he remembered, the one that said, Let the game
s begin. “Same old Van. No small talk, just right to the point.”

  The direct approach wasn’t going to work here, he realized. “OK, let’s order first and then talk.” He picked up the one-page menu and casually looked it over. “I like Crispy Mary’s Chicken and a little of the house white wine. You might also.”

  Barbara agreed and they both ordered.

  In what seemed like forever in the relative silence between the two, the wine came, then finally the food.

  After a few bites, Barbara looked up at Van and said, “You’re right. The chicken is good. Almost like I remember from home.”

  “As I said, I like it and I’m glad you do as well. Now can we talk?”

  Resigned, Barbara yielded and put down her knife and fork and clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “OK, so much for the fine points of dinner. I was as surprised as you were when Dick told me who we would be working with. You and I didn’t part on the best of terms when last we met, and I had mixed emotions about working with you.”

  “Why mixed?”

  Sitting up straighter and pointing a finger at Van, she replied, “You know perfectly well what I mean. We were close. Feelings ran deep, at least for a while. I was not eager to stir them up again. To be frank, at the time you were becoming too serious. I had plans for myself, and then of course I got reassigned.”

  “I’ll admit that I was serious, but I had no idea that it bothered you. All I knew was that one day we were OK and not the next. And then you were gone. I learned to live with it.” But he hadn’t really.

  “Like you did at the War College?”

  “Well, you being there did unnerve me. It was unexpected.”