by William Lee
General Stone Byrd of United States Space Command, a division of the United States Air Force, stood in the command center of the Moon Base overlooking dozens of officers seated at their work stations. Unlike the FBI, CIA, ATF, DHS and any number of other government agencies that had compartmentalized data, the NSA and Space Command had real time access to all computer systems and the authority to step in and assume control of any operation. The President of the United States was on a need to know basis, but was briefed, upon taking office, to whom he would be receiving orders from should the need arise. Day-to-day military operations and political bickering was handled by the President, but all strategic decisions were made by General Byrd.
General Byrd was arguably one of the most powerful men in the world. He was one of twelve people chosen to handle all issues regarding planetary defense. President Harry Truman had decided that interplanetary representation and defense was too important an issue to leave to petty politicians and political whims. Truman established the Air Force, NSC, CIA, NSA, and, perhaps, most importantly, the Majestic Twelve. These organizations, each operating in secrecy, would handle all issues pertaining to interplanetary negotiations, trade, and defense. When Truman handed the reigns to Eisenhower, he explained the situation, and Ike continued the policy through his eight years in office. After ten years of building the military industrial complex, Majestic Twelve became a force so powerful that even the U.S. President could not remove them.
General Byrd was second generation MJ-12. At sixty-five years old, he was the most senior member. General Byrd’s title within the Majestic community was MJ-1. However, even he had to yield his considerable power to an MJ-12 vote of all members. All members of MJ-12 had above top-secret clearance. General Byrd knew he held the fate of the world in his hands; billions of souls depended on his decisions, and most of them did not even know he existed. Nor would they. The Moon Base, aliens, technology, alien wars and space craft were all above top secret and would never be revealed to the public. While NASA was still sending rovers to Mars, they were sending manned space craft to Neptune. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Air Force had toyed with the idea of disclosure. Project Grudge and Operation Blue Book were attempts to gradually reveal information to the public, but those plans were canceled in favor of deception. Some of his fellow MJ-12 members were responsible for manipulating the media into portraying those who believe aliens exist as unhinged, conspiracy theorists. There was an entire division at the CIA whose sole function was to discredit and destroy the character of anyone claiming to believe in aliens, but that was not his department.
Today was quite possibly the biggest day in General Byrd’s long career. During his tenure, he had worked side by side with hundreds of Vitahician aliens, personally flown a space ship to Neptune, oversaw the development of Mach 6 AG Fighters, and even executed a few Large Gray aliens when the opportunity arose. But today would be a first, and based on his age, most likely his last first. Today, he would witness an event that had not happened in over seventy years.
“Good morning, General Byrd,” said General Johnson as he joined him in the back of the command center. General Johnson was tall, lanky, and had thinning gray hair. The men had grown close. After all, the circle of men that could relate to their activities was extraordinarily limited.
“Morning, General, are you ready for the big event?” Byrd asked as he sipped on his black coffee.
“Been ready for twenty years, Sir,” Johnson replied.
“Impegi is approaching low Earth orbit,” one of the junior officers called out.
Two huge thirty-foot display panels in the front of the command center showed the Impegi approaching a low Earth orbit. Every eye that was not staring down at their own display panel was trained on the big screen in the front of the large room. Just as the Impegi was reaching an orbital speed, the unthinkable happened; a fireball shot out of her side like a volcano erupting.
“What in the fuck was that?” General Byrd barked at the officers nearest to him while spilling some of the coffee out of his white ceramic mug.
For a moment, Byrd could not process what he was seeing. It was so unexpected and unimaginable.
“Looks like an explosion,” said one young officer.
“The antimatter reactor just exploded,” said Mudar, one of the Nordic officers. Mudar had been on the Moon Base since it was first commissioned in 1987.
“What can we do?” Byrd asked, deferring to the alien’s centuries of experience.
“Nothing, all is lost,” Mudar flatly stated, “The other antimatter reactors will be vaulted out of the ship. At this orbit, the ship will crash to Earth before we can reach it.”
“How long to impact?” Stone Byrd called out to the command center.
“Eight minutes, tops.”
“Where will the ship crash?” Byrd asked.
“All trajectories point to Siberia - Russia.”
“Will the cargo survive?”
“No way to tell, depends on the skill of the Captain,” the Nordic responded.
Byrd looked at General Johnson, “What can we do to help? Those damn Russians will be all over our cargo like stink on shit.”
Johnson shrugged and said, “We can give them cover.”
“How?” Byrd questioned.
“As it stands now, the Russians can clearly see our cargo ship crashing into Siberia. They have very limited military resources in Siberia since they moved most of their military to the Ukraine border. If we gave them more targets to track, it would dilute their fighting force, giving our guys a chance to escape or recover cargo,” Johnson quietly explained.
“Brilliant!” Byrd exclaimed. “All we have to do is nuke Russia.”
“Get Major Tom up here now!” General Byrd commanded, with a slight grin on his face. This was the perfect opportunity to test out his new missiles.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” Byrd thought to himself with a smile.
One minute later, Major Tom was snapping to attention before him with a slightly confused look on his face. “You requested my presence, Sir?”
“At ease, officer. What is the status of the ultra-dimensional missiles?” Byrd barked.
Major Tom, not at ease in the slightest, replied, “Months away from testing.”
“What do we have ready now? That we can launch at this very moment?” Byrd insisted.
“I have ten TEPNOS missiles ready to launch,” Major Tom offered.
“What’s their yield and blast radius?”
“They are variable yield, Sir. We could set a blast radius of one mile, or up to 17 miles. We can also dial back the long term radioactive effects to nearly zero,” answered Tom, somewhat proud that his invention might actually be used.
“I want six TEPNOS missiles launched at Russia right now!” Byrd called out to his command center. “We need to create a diversion, so the Russians will have something else to worry about besides our cargo ship.”
The special weapons targeting officer, sitting near the front of the command center asked, “Target locations?”
“I want each missile to strike between two and five hundred miles of the Impegi’s projected crash site,” Byrd replied, “Don’t let those missiles get so close to the Impegi that it will harm the ship, but they need to be close enough that the Russians won’t know which site to investigate first, giving our guys a chance. If you can place the missile in uninhabited zones, then do so, if not. . .” The General’s voice trailed off. Everyone understood.
Officer Denny called out, “Impegi’s projected crash site in in the middle of the Magadan district in Far East Russia, north west of the Okhotsk Sea, at the foot of the Chersky mountain range.”
Byrd mumbled, “Good, at least I won’t be responsible for killing thousands of people today. Launch the optical stealth missiles, have them targeted in a star burst pattern around the Impegi, two hundred to five hundred miles apart.”
The Magadan district of Russia
had less than 160,000 people inhabiting over 178,000 square miles of land, most of whom lived in the port city of Magadan. With an average of less than one person per square mile, there was a good chance collateral damage could be kept to a minimum.
Byrd asked, “How long do we control the trajectory of these missiles?”
Major Tom responded, “Impact will be in six minutes. We will have flight control for the next five minutes, and we can choose to disarm any time before impact.”
Tom knew the order to disarm would not be given. The thought of his team’s creation being the cause of a major war was unsettling.
“I want a population map up on the display now. Guide these missiles to low density population areas, avoid all cities and towns. They are meant to be a distraction, to give the Russians something to investigate besides my space ship. If we can do this with no collateral damage, then let’s make that happen,” Byrd ordered.
“Three minutes to impact,” officer Denny called out. “Final targeting solutions acquired, projected death toll - under two hundred.”
“Just how stealth are these things? I can’t have a trail of bread crumbs pointing back to our secret Moon Base,” Byrd asked.
“In all the tests, they were never detected by any radar or sensors, not even our advanced stuff. It’s highly unlikely that the Russians will be able to detect these prior to impact. Upon impact, they will register on every sensor on the planet.” Major Tom replied flatly. “The Russians will have plenty of holes to investigate before they find the one your space ship inhabits,” Major Tom assured the General.
Byrd pushed his lower lip up with his index finger and squinted his eyes as if he were pondering the meaning of life, which he was in a way. “Dial back the yield on each of them to between two and three kilotons. Mix it up so that the explosions are not all the exact same size. Make all of the distances from each other different. I don’t want an obvious pattern.”
“Yes Sir, impact in two minutes.”
“When will the Impegi crash?”
“One minute and fifteen seconds.”
“Close enough. the Russians will have a complete cluster fuck on their hands. This will buy us hours, if not days, before they figure it out,” commented Byrd.
He glanced over at a startled Major Tom, “Well, today did not go as planned. I guess I better call the President and let him know I just nuked Russia.”
“Better you than me,” Major Tom said, shaking his head as he turned to go back to his lab.
“Where do you think you are going?” growled Byrd. “You just nuked Russia. Finish what you started. You run the command center while I go call the President.”
“Yes Sir,” said the Major.
Byrd turned and walked into his personal office at the back of the command center. Major Tom could see him picking up a red phone through the transparent glass walls.
Standing at the rear of the command center with his back to Byrd, he looked over the dozen or so officers in the room, some of them outranked him. All of them had more experience. “What the hell am I doing? I’m just an engineer,” He thought to himself.
What was that phrase he had heard, when you wanted a status report? Oh, Yeah, “Sit Rep,” he called out.
“Ten seconds to Impegi’s impact,” someone from the front of the room responded.
“It appears multiple shuttles or escape pods were launched. Fifty seconds to first missile’s impact,” was the reply from the officer sitting nearest to him.
Shuttles, that means survivors. That means the TEPNOS cannot detonate near the shuttles.
“Will any of the shuttle’s trajectories place them near one of the TEPNOS blast zones?” Asked Major Tom.
“Five of the missiles are hundreds of miles from the shuttles’ projected trajectory. However, one of TEPNOS may impact within 100 miles of the shuttles. . .”
“Impegi has crashed,” interrupted another officer.
“Forty seconds till TEPNOS impact.”
Forty seconds. That was not enough time to change the missiles trajectory, in any meaningful way.
“Terminate the TEPNOS nearest the shuttle craft,” yelled Tom.
“Terminated,” The special weapons targeting officer reported.
“Pull up all satellite coverage of Magadan,” Tom spat out quickly.
The huge display monitors before the command center lit up with images of explosions and mushroom clouds forming over Far East Russia. The ever-expanding cloud of dust and debris slowly spread over the Magadan district, hiding the impact craters from view.
“All weapons detonated in uninhabited areas. Death toll will be due primarily to secondary causes, such as falls, heart attacks and the like,” reported an officer.
Shortly after final impact, Byrd returned.
“How is the President?” Major Tom asked.
“Pissed off,” as expected, “These idiot politicians think they are in charge. Don’t worry Major. No president has challenged MJ-12. Well, at least not since Dealey Plaza.”
Major Tom sucked in a deep breath as he realized that he still had a lot to learn.
CHAPTER NINE
Vosges Mountains, France
October 1944
Sergeant Dale Matthews sat in the deep fox hole that he had dug two days earlier, taking a final long drag on his last government-issued cigarette. He flicked the still smoldering, burnt stub into the puddle of freezing water pooling up around his boots. The other men and he had not eaten in nearly three days, and they were running low on ammunition. A few days earlier, the Germans had cut them off from the rest of their division and any opportunity to resupply. They had been ordered to “dig in” by Division, and were told that it would take several days for reinforcements to arrive due to the terrible weather and improvised road blocks set by the Germans. Up to this point, attempts to deliver food, ammunition, and medical supplies by air drop had failed.
Adam, one of Dale’s foxhole mates, scrambled out of the muddy hole, keeping low, to gather a small tin bowl he had laid out to gather rain water. “I don’t trust those damn Nazi’s not to poison the creek, just to spite us,” he grumbled.
“They use the same creek as us for drinking,” Dale objected, “It would kill them, too.”
“They could be getting water supplied to them from their rear. We are trapped with no other source. They poison the water and wait. We die, they win.”
Dale could not argue with that logic. He pushed his tin coffee cup out of the fox hole. “I see your point.”
“Does it ever stop raining here? I’m freezing, don’t think I can feel my feet anymore,” Tom Brown complained from another fox hole a few feet away. Tom, short with an olive complexion, was starting to go bald at a young age. Most of the squad was from Texas, but Tom was originally from New York.
“It’s a wonder the rain even makes it all the way down to the ground. The trees are so thick; sunlight barely makes it through,” Adam said. Overcast skies and dense tree cover had been hidden the sun for days.
“You got any . . .” Tom was interrupted by a loud explosion directly over their heads. Tom and the others instinctively dove deep into their fox holes. The German artillery was set to explode 100 feet above ground, upon contact with the tree tops. The exploding shell would rain down fiery shrapnel on their heads and shoulders.
They heard a scream from 20 meters away. They knew an American had been hit. Dale looked up from his fox hole to see if it was anyone in his squad. They had learned to cover up their fox holes with branches to shield from exploding shrapnel. The branches were not a perfect defense, but it was the best they could muster under these conditions.
Tom’s foxhole buddy, Steve, stuck his head out from the branches covering his muddy hole and asked, “Whatever happened to the patrol they sent out last night?”
“Only five of the forty-eight men returned this morning. Krauts ambushed them,” Dale hollered back over the pouring rain.
“Damn Nazi’s,” Steve spat.
; “I heard the lieutenant saying we were completely surrounded by a full division of Kraut.” Tom snarled.
“I don’t think it’s a full division, maybe a battalion or two.” Dale replied.
“But, we don’t really know. That’s the problem,” Adam complained.
Another loud explosion. Dale reached for his weapon, a Thompson machine gun, and peered out of his foxhole into the thick forest looking for signs of advancing German troops. On his hands and knees, Dale pulled himself to the edge of his foxhole and positioned himself, so that if he saw an approaching German, he could easily rise to a crouching position to fire his machine gun. Dale preferred the 20-round box magazine to the larger 100-round drum because the drum was heavier and more difficult to maneuver. Thompson had produced several models of the famous machinegun; earlier designs allowed for either a drum or straight magazine. The most recent design, made for the military, only allowed the straight magazine to attach.
Upon the order to “dig in,” the battalion commander choose high ground and set up two heavy M1917A1 30 caliber, water-cooled machine guns; one on each end of the elliptical shaped fortification. Like cowboys circling the wagons, the battalion was positioned in an oval-shaped formation, with the water-cooled machine guns guarding both ends of the trail. Of course, they did not have chuck wagons to hide behind, nor were they facing natives with bows and arrows. They were surrounded by thousands of Nazis that were armed with machine guns, mortars, artillery, sniper rifles, and the occasional lite tank.
The thick, jungle-like tree canopy, combined with nasty storms, made air support for both sides nearly impossible. The fallen trees, mountainous terrain, and thick forest, that had allowed the Germans to fortify, now offered cover to the trapped American battalion. The 270 Americans had fortified the high ridge trail using downed trees and rock formations to create a strong defensible position.
