Hybrid

by Ballan, Greg

  Erik picked up the papers and began scanning the report. “If this is accurate, one must assume that these life forms originated elsewhere, or took a completely different evolutionary path, right down to the basic fundamental building blocks of life as we understand them,” Erik observed. “I think it highly unlikely that a sulfur-based life form could have developed in a carbon-based environment such as we have on Earth,” he added, scratching an unshaven cheek. “This could possibly be a reason that our weapons weren't completely effective. Our bullet weapons are designed to kill life as we know it, based on high impact shock on a central nervous system. They may not be effective against these creatures, no matter how much power the projectiles have.

  “Look at lobsters, they're exoskeleton creatures and they have a simple, almost primitive, nervous system. They don't register pain and shock like we do. What if that black creature is similar to a lobster?” Erik asked while already contemplating the question. “If these things don't have a highly developed nervous system that transmits pain or shock, guns would be of little use. Our weapons certainly didn't do too much to stop them.”

  Nelson nodded in agreement. “If these things can't be harmed by conventional means, somebody had better find something unconventional and pretty damn fast,” Nelson added as he turned toward the door. “Our friends may be in for a nasty surprise when they tangle with these creatures, but they can't say I didn't warn ‘em.” Nelson headed down the hallway.

  Erik closed the door and locked it. He slowly headed toward his long couch and flopped down on the oversized cushion. A slight wave of discomfort shot from his hamstring, and there was a sudden tightness in his chest from his wounds. His body was quickly approaching the end of its endurance. He wanted to study the lab report in greater detail, but was simply too tired. Erik closed his eyes and blissfully surrendered to the onrush of blackness that overtook him.

  “When I wake up,” he mumbled to himself as the report fell from his hands to the floor.

  * * * *

  It was early Sunday afternoon, and Richard Pendelton found himself sitting in his boardroom facing his Board of Directors and Corporate Officers. He had talked to them early yesterday afternoon and called this emergency meeting. He needed to share what he had learned of the events that transpired Friday, and more importantly, they needed to discuss how to deal with the investigation being conducted tomorrow around their tunnel site. If anyone made it to the site, especially law enforcement officials, they could—with all probability—link Pendelcorp to those creatures due to the hardware and tunneling equipment now abandoned there. Richard had spent an hour briefing the board and officers about his per chance run in with Erik Knight and what he'd learned from that conversation, plus he passed on the operation plans for Monday morning, which he received from his paid mole in the police department.

  “The bottom line, gentlemen,” Richard concluded, “is this: Do we try to get up there today and remove all traces of our equipment, both inside and outside of the tunnel?”

  A board member squirmed. “We've tried that already and it's cost us five more specialists,” he reminded the men. “If we send more men and more equipment, we risk incriminating ourselves even further, and leaving behind more bodies. Each of those men that died up there had some sort of identification on their persons. In order to assure a complete cover up, each body would have to be checked and all forms of identification removed.” He paused, sipping his glass of imported Sherry. “But then there is still the possibility of dental record identification or other means such as finger printing or any of the other dozen means, which we're probably not even aware,” he concluded. “Or,” the board member amended, “we dispose of the bodies completely, incinerate them, leaving only the hardware issues.”

  “Excellent points, Conrad,” Richard remarked. He realized that Conrad was probably the slickest operator of all the men here, and Richard needed to utilize those qualities if he wanted to keep his company afloat for more than the next forty-eight hours. “I assume you have a deeper insight to this ugly predicament in which we find ourselves?”

  Conrad smiled a Cheshire Cat smile as he placed his drink back on the table. “That's what you pay me for.” He produced a thin bound document from his briefcase and placed it on the large conference table. “We've managed to translate some small portion of the writing that our recon team photographed. Most of it is unlike anything we've ever seen before, but our computers could translate small pieces. The rest we will probably never be able to interpret.” He handed the report to Pendelton. “It seems we inadvertently opened a prison vault and freed, what I can only assume were, the jail keepers.” The room broke into silence as Conrad began the story that was told in the ancient writings that the latest doomed expedition recorded and sent back for analysis.

  “We broke into some kind of prison, near as we can interpret. The skeletons we saw in the pictures were remnants of those being jailed.” He sipped his sherry. “What we freed were the creatures used to keep those jailed in their confinement. There were two dominant symbols; we can only assume that these symbols represented two races. From what we can gather, there was some sort of war, although we couldn't translate the phrase used correctly. ‘Conflict’ is the synonym our computer chose. The losers of that war were imprisoned; we have no idea what happened to the winners of the conflict. I'm sure the data is there, we just lack the capability to interpret it.

  “As far as our scientists can tell, what we interpreted was left in a language we could decipher, based on elementary mathematics, intentionally, as a deliberate warning not to tamper.” Conrad drew in a deep breath. “Now, for some bad news. The metallic readings that our initial instrument surveys detected were simply the vault that imprisoned them. The instrument readings that the team recorded matched the recordings of our preliminary readings almost 100 percent. Simply put, there are no vast mineral deposits, no fortune in gold, or deposits of minerals. The only value that exists is the metal used in that massive tomb.”

  Richard felt his heart sink. “But all those readings that our geologists swore were precious metals, how could they be wrong?”

  “The metals and minerals are there,” Conrad answered with an ironic lilt to his voice. “They're all incorporated into the shell of the tomb, part of its alloy. The other parts our instruments can't decipher. Other mineral readings could be false echoes or from metallic objects inside the tomb itself. We just don't know at this point. The instruments picked up what they were programmed to pick up; they weren't programmed to detect alien metals, so they only picked up the native metallic compounds within the alloy and whatever was inside the tomb itself.

  “The bottom line is simple: We can't mine the prison vault. We don't have that capability to extract the metals from the alien alloy. Even if we could, any attempt to remove pieces of the chamber would most likely cause a cave-in nearly half a mile long, which would change the landscape, not to mention kill any miners inside the tunnel. This would no doubt attract undue attention. We've wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars in shareholder equity undertaking this effort, and several lives, not to mention a multi-million dollar Argon laser platform that we can't afford to replace, and at present have no way to recover. This project is a debacle, gentlemen.”

  The room was silent as each board member and officer digested the contents of what was just said. Richard detected several hostile glares from other members of the board and corporate officers. He met their gazes, each one of them. Richard knew that he had to respond, quickly.

  “Now is not the time to assign blame, gentlemen, all of our signatures were on the approval documents for this undertaking. No one man alone can shoulder all the responsibility for this. We are all at fault, just as we would all have shared in the profits had this undertaking bore fruit. What's imperative now is a decisive course of action to limit the damage already done,” he cautioned his staff. “You still haven't given us a solution, Mr. Conrad. You have the look of a man with a scheme, would you
care to share with the rest of us?”

  Conrad stood and placed both his hands on the table. “Gentlemen, the solution to this problem is already in place, up in that mountain. The very monsters themselves,” he said in an amused tone. “We don't have to do anything. Those poor bastards will never make it to the tunnel site. From what we've seen in the police reports, only Mr. Knight can detect these creatures, the other people who've encountered these things could neither see nor hear them until it was too late, again, according to the reports that were filed. Richard, you yourself said that your wife and Knight's friends convinced him not to venture back up into the mountain. I imagine that the young girl you say he's hooked up with did some fair convincing of her own.”

  The board sneered and chuckled as Conrad continued.

  “All we do is sit back and watch the impending disaster unfold before us,” he added. “The cops and the jarheads won't have any more luck than Knight and the operatives from Halls Agency did. These creatures have staked out that territory, according to the data we have from Knight and the police. Monday's excursion into that area is nothing short of a suicide run. All they'll succeed in doing is adding to the body count,” he concluded.

  “What if you're wrong, Conrad? If we do nothing and they manage to get up there, we're all done for,” a board member challenged.

  “If they make it up there, we just deny everything. We can bottleneck any litigation for years. We'll claim that these men did what they did of their own volition. It's easy to blame a corpse.” The man snickered. “They never seem to have too much to say in their own defense,” Conrad added with a voice that chilled every person in the room. “We'll monitor the frequencies that they're utilizing; our stooge on the force can give us that information. All we have to do is sit by and listen to the massacre as it happens. It should really be quite entertaining.”

  “I still say that we should do something!” Pendleton's CFO remarked. “If there's even the slightest possibility that tomorrow's mission has any chance of success, we need to have some plan of action in place.”

  Conrad shook his head in disagreement. “C'mon, man, you've seen the footage we shot of those things, read the reports and analysis from our technicians. You've been given copies of the police reports from the Hopedale Mountain incident and the encounter at the park. The people going out there tomorrow have no chance. The only ones who don't believe that will be dead by the end of the day tomorrow.” He drained his glass of sherry. “Besides, there isn't enough time to do anything anyway. Any attempts to infiltrate our campsite would probably end in the same kind of disaster.”

  The room suddenly intensified with debate as board members and corporate officers began arguing and debating amongst themselves. Conrad's opinion had clearly polarized the group. Richard allowed the debate and discussion to continue for another twenty minutes, allowing his executives time to voice their concerns or add insight to the situation. As the discussion evolved, more and more members were swayed to the ‘Do Nothing/Deny Everything’ option proposed by Conrad. Richard had to privately agree, that was the only viable alternative at the moment. They could, in fact, do nothing. Eighteen hours was not enough time to put together a reconnaissance team and gather the additional equipment that a team would need.

  “Okay, gentlemen, it's time for a decision, do we adopt plan D.N.D.E?” he asked the people in the room. Richard watched as, one by one, each member agreed to the proposed Do Nothing option.

  “Good,” he began. “We sit back and hope for the worst. I'll have my Administrative Assistant prepare a list of items that are up at the site, and we'll prepare a bogus back dated theft report to submit, just in case. It will give us some more concrete ‘Plausible Deniability’ and allow us to recoup the bulk of our hardware losses through our insurance binder. If we're going to play this game, we may as well play it right,” Richard added as he concluded the meeting.

  The board members and officers gathered their materials and began leaving the room. Richard motioned for Conrad to stay behind. Conrad nodded and sat on a large well-padded chair facing the large picture window overlooking the scenic Boston waterfront. Richard poured himself another drink and sat in another chair next to Conrad.

  “Do you really think this option will pan out?” Richard asked.

  “With Knight out of the picture, I have no doubt that tomorrow will prove to be a complete disaster,” Conrad replied in a voice booming with confidence. “Based on the video of these things, there's no way to see or hear them unless they want to be seen or heard. Knight has some sixth sense or something that allowed him to detect these things. Without that equalizer, the men going into the woodlands will be both deaf and blind.”

  Richard nodded as both men paused to watch a 757 jetliner land at Logan Airport through the large plate glass window on the high rise. “Have our people learned anything more about Knight? Who his employers are? Whom he associates with?” Richard asked.

  “It's different than it was six years ago. Knight keeps a very low profile. We know he's done some work for a high powered law firm in Boston, Denton-Marks & Priscoli, but our operatives can't get anywhere near the firm. We know Knight has dealt specifically with Denton, the senior-most partner in the firm. We can only assume that Knight is privy to some heavy casework based on that relationship. Denton is a dangerous foe—nobody who goes up against him ever walks away unscathed. I strongly advise that we not poke around this particular relationship. They have some very experienced talent in that firm. It'd be too risky to pursue any one individual. They're all corporate players; if we try to press one, they'll all know about it that same day. The last thing we need is a lawsuit or a confrontation, and the bad press that would come from it.

  “Most of his other case work is strictly small time, but totally on the level. It would be difficult to conduct any kind of smear campaign with what little we've gathered. Our friend Mr. Knight has been helping the poor and downtrodden for the past six years, barely making enough to get by. He has a history of paying bills late, but they do get paid. All of his clients, those which we spoke to, were very satisfied with the work he did. The only gray area is the Denton law firm, and that's a nut I don't think we'll ever be able to crack without serious repercussions,” he added.

  “Are we still tailing him?” Richard asked.

  “We're trying,” Conrad answered. “He has a knack for knowing when he's being followed. I've got to give the bastard credit, he's damn good at what he does,” he said admiringly.

  “Praise? From you, Conrad?”

  “Know your enemy, Mr. Pendelton,” Conrad countered quickly. “This isn't the same Erik Knight we tailed six years ago. The novice investigator is now a seasoned journeyman. He survived two encounters with those Hell-Beasts, that alone merits admiration. I can admire and respect my opponent. Understanding Knight's strengths will help us find his weakness.” Conrad suddenly chuckled. “We can partially blame ourselves for that. We helped forge the steel that made him what he is today,” he added with an ironic lilt in his voice.

  “What about the girl? What's he doing with her? I wouldn't think she'd be his type,” Richard inquired.

  “There's no real mystery there. She owns and operates a Newberry Comics franchise, does a marginal business. It appeals to the punk and off-beat, catering to the building counter-culture in today's youth. Her name is Shanda Kerwick, thirty-one years of age, born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She dropped out of college, B.U., her sophomore year to manage the store she now owns. Her academic performance was less than stellar. Someone close to her said that she'd been dating Knight on and off again, and then it went cold for some reason. There was an incident in her store several days ago that seemed to finally pull them together as a couple.” Conrad studied a photograph of the young woman in question. “Despite the punk attire, she is quite good looking,” he added with a dark tone to his voice.

  Richard sat up suddenly. “Do you know what happened?”

  “Yes,” Conrad responded
. “Two thugs accosted her, trying to force her to sell some questionable merchandise. She refused and things were beginning to get interesting. Mr. Knight was there with a bouquet of expensive roses, our source claims. Knight eliminated the two men in a rather impressive display of physical unfriendliness. One of the men is still in the hospital with a shattered tibia and femur bone, as well as a broken nose.”

  Richard nodded as Conrad concluded his quick report. “Interesting. Mr. Knight has a steady girlfriend; that alone is a weakness we can exploit if needed. If we can't keep Mr. Knight out of my plans, I can use his relationship with Ms. Kerwick as leverage.”

  Conrad was confused. “I thought we just agreed that Mr. Knight was out of the picture?”

  “He is,” Richard replied. “I'm thinking of a more personal conflict I have with Mr. Knight. He and I share some things in common and I wish to put an end to that common tie,” he said with a malicious grin. “But,” he added, “one problem at a time, Mr. Conrad, one problem at a time.” Richard looked over at his associate. Conrad was busy reviewing another stack of reports. “Something catch your interest?”

  Conrad looked up from the bound document. “Yes, a theory from one of our younger scientists. I didn't have the time to read it earlier. His peers haven't clouded his thinking. He has a different theory about the prison we've unearthed. Based on his interpretation of the data and the correlated readings he presents here, he suggests that what we originally interpreted as a vast prison is actually a massive spacecraft. He claims that the sonar echoes give the tomb an almost perfect circular shape with a flattened end. Which he proposes houses the ship's propulsion systems. It's an interesting theory, based on what little data we've actually been able to interpret. Our readings on the metallic shell are dubious at best, but there are definite traces of non-Terran elements. Shit, we can't translate 90 per cent of the writing we've recorded. It has no relation to any phonetic language in our known history.” Conrad paused as he took a long drag from a cigarette. “Could it be alien? Yes. Could it be a tomb? Yes. It could also be both, or neither. We just don't have enough information, and based on the events of the past few days, we're in no position to gather any more.”