Dark Alignment
a novel by
David Haskell
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright ©2018 by David Haskell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
First Ebook Edition: March 3, 2018
To My Dearest Alisa, You’re the Best! I Love You, a bushel and a peck.
“Gravity is the only force known to exert itself across the extra dimensions.”—D.G. Eckert, Ph.D., California Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
1.
Twelve Years Prior to Anomaly
There was a festive atmosphere at first, people grabbing cameras and dancing in the streets, such was their surprise at seeing a sudden eruption so close to home. But the mood quickly turned, as pyroclastic flows began to incinerate the hillside communities, barreling down on the horrified population like a roiling specter of death. Those who couldn’t drive were doomed. No cover was sufficient to save them. Then, a second eruption flared. This time from the south, a long dormant volcano springing to life, eliminating the chance of escape even for the ones in vehicles. An entire region destroyed in a fury of ash and terror.
Like champagne corks popping off, the ring of fire lit up like a hellish festival of lights. Unlike seismic events, this particular horror came unattached to undersea megathrusts or population decimating tsunamis, thus garnering fewer mentions in the press. Only a handful of climate alarmists took up the charge, ready to bang the drums afresh, using this unprecedented spate of activity as fodder for the cause.
The eruptions appeared unrelated except for proximity. An intercontinental ducks-in-a-row fireshow, from far to the south on up through Asia, around the horn in Siberia and Alaska, then tracking back down as far as Peru. Some extreme watchers actually booked cruises and flights in the hopes of catching an eruption in real time, but though more predictable than usual, they weren’t that predictable.
Scientists claimed it was nothing more than an odd set of coincidences. Most vulcanologists agreed, though the global warming caveat was always quick on the heels of all official statements. By and large the scientific community considered it to be nothing more than an odd footnote. Even as the incidences mounted, all was considered well. The rumblings of seismic trouble-spots elsewhere in the world raised no eyebrows until the surprise eruption in Italy. Conspiracy theorists had a field day at first, but even that event was written off as unrelated, a one-off coincidence.
In the ring, the death toll mounted, and emergency teams were assembled. Appeals for help resulted in a decent number of cash donations, but underneath it all there was little sense of concern. If a quarter of a million dead under tsunami waves in the Indian ocean couldn’t shock the unaffected, half that amount burned to death barely even registered. People wrote their checks or clicked their links, then they moved on. For the displaced and the injured, support was hard to come by in remote locations, but it came eventually, and life began getting back to normal even there.
Top-level government scientists had been placed under guard, a top-down gag order affecting all communications, so as not to be forced to confirm or deny any idle speculation. To them, this was not only expected, but something they’d been counting on since long before the notion of global warming. To them, this was the start of something even more significant, but they were in no position to share that information with outsiders. When the time was right, government leaders would do so—but the scientists themselves were only authorized to wait. And watch.
* * *
Research Fellow Dean Eckert, on loan from UC Berkeley, was under orders to observe patterns of refraction in the northern lights for comparative atmospheric data. Quite a mouthful to explain to people, but the work wasn’t particularly daunting. Most of the students who spent time in the great north returned home with a fair number of stories, and a warm recollection of the experience. It was entertaining enough, so long as you didn’t have to live there permanently.
For the locals, heavy drink and recreational smoke were the tickets to sanity. A method of escape for the forever-trapped. But for their colleagues-on-loan the abuse was more intense, a semester-long haze underwritten by their hosts. Many returned home with well established habits that had to be broken.
Dean had never been much of a party guy. More the social pariah, at least through high school. But even he wasn’t immune to the allure of the northern lifestyle. After experiencing some epic parties, regret-tinged hangovers, and plenty of that next day solution known as the Total Hangover Cure, he was beginning to get used to life in the wilderness. He even considered the possibility of a permanent assignment, either in Alaska or some other such remote outpost. For the heartiest types, there was always McMurdo Station, way down under in the south pole, but he wasn’t that much of a cold weather junkie.
His research was going much as expected, and it was coming time for the wrap-up and finalization phase of the fellowship. This was sure to be accompanied by more imbibing, at ever faster rates, but before that happened he had promised himself a decent tour of the facility. He reasoned that to get the most out of the experience, he had to see all the place had to offer. That was the plan which led him, along with a couple of freshmen assistants, down into the cosmic dustbin late on a Friday night. The distant noise of classmates gearing up for the weekend filtered into the dank dungeon, in the middle of the middle of nowhere, reminding all three of them there were better places to be. Still, he had made up his mind to catalogue the specimens, and so they set out for the dustbin.
* * *
‘The Dustbin’ was a tongue-in-cheek campus reference for the asteroid and near-Earth object repository. One of a dozen such collection centers within the research complex on the campus of the University of Alaska at Anchorage. Unimpressive though the heaps of rocks and dust might be to the untrained, countless revelations could be found under the keen gaze of an expert. Makeup and composition provided valuable hints about the cosmos. Shape and wear could indicate lifespan and interactions, myriad scrapes and scars bore the history of collision and gravitational events. The whereabouts and trajectories of these objects, prior to their fateful fall into the gravity well to their final resting place, could also be determined to a precise degree. These were just some of the intriguing facts that could be gleaned by the right observer.
One of these wanderers, an unassuming rock amid larger, shinier objects, bore a particularly significant scar. It should have raised alarm bells from the dustbin to the Houston observatory itself, if anyone had know what to look for. Instead, the rock sat in obscurity, only notable as the subject of skin-deep undergraduate papers, not a one among them noticing the vital element. The specimen, later noted as the IO-88 ‘key stone’, was a find cosmologists would later offer up their eye-teeth for a look at, but it went completely unnoticed for years.
2.
Twelve Months Prior to Anomaly
The beekeeper was adamant—he simply couldn’t lower his price any further. There was too much demand, and his supply was stretched as it was. Even the conglomerates were shelling out double and even triple payments, just to keep the hives a few extra days. Besides, the beekeeper might lose his investment in a month or even a week, an ever-increasing likelihood with hive loses on the rise. He had to strike while the iron was hot, earn whatever he could while he still had the means. This situation had put him in a bad position too, even if on the surface he seemed to be the one on top.
The two launched into a war of words, escalating into an altercation, and within minutes one was wounded and the other off to jail. The insects were left behind. When an associate returned to collect them hours later, they were all dead.
This latest disaster, the most significant predictor of all, went unnoticed by almost everyone. The decimation of the bees took them to near-extinction in a matter of months. Unrelated to the more commonly understood ‘hive collapse’ phenomenon, it sounded so similar that most people assumed it was the same. And as that had been widely reported over the years, even the media could drum up no fresh passion for the topic, even while the experts insisted this was an entirely different affliction. As the hysteria around hive collapse had petered out, so everyone assumed this would wind up the same non-story.
Unlike hive collapse, with its complex set of variables, this was entirely due to one cause, though the exact nature of it was beyond current understanding. And it affected not only bees, but all insects. The bees were simply the most noticeable victims, crushed to death as though an invisible boot had trod them into the ground. Insectologists were aghast. Nobody else gave it a second thought.
* * *
Colonel Shane Douglas was just minutes into his climb when the first alarm sounded. Not yet clear of the atmosphere, he was losing lift during a critical phase, where atmospheric drag could mean the difference between flight and free-fall. His options were severely limited. Too late for an ocean abort, not enough thrust to force his way into a parking orbit.
How is this happening? He dismissed the thought as soon as it crossed his mind. It didn’t matter. They’d work out the timeline on the ground. His job was to think forward, so he began doing just that.
Designed for multi-decade journeys, his vehicle was considered to be foolproof, able to fly itself out of any irregularity. The pilot, akin to a formality in the designer’s eyes, was forbidden from intervening in normal operations, and had limited power even in emergencies.
Colonel Douglas would do all he could to save his ship. He wasn’t, however, willing to go down with it, so he prepped the evacuation protocols without hesitation. An extreme reaction so early in the crisis, perhaps, but his record of keeping himself alive was an accomplishment in and of itself. One well worth keeping in mind, even for an otherwise failed mission.
He fought to stabilize the craft, thinking ahead to what came next. Not only would this leave a mark—the crater would be visible to any looky-loos with an internet connection—but the experimental engines he was pushing would likely create a seismic event. Property damage, if they were lucky, but unthinkably worse if he slammed into a populated area. He could set the coordinates for a non-populated spot, but the attempt might be futile if he didn’t get things under control before bail out.
He re-focused on the problem, noting a slight discrepancy in fuel consumption a split second after launch. This caused what should’ve been a straight, smooth shot into orbit to become a dangerously off-kilter trajectory. But that wasn’t enough to scuttle the mission. There was something else. Something outside his ship. The atmospherics were all wrong. It was as if he lost his cushion; not like a pocket of turbulence, but as if he’d run into vacuum too soon. Impossible, he thought. But nothing else made sense.
Now with at least a working theory as to what was happening, he realized that he only had minutes before impact. The rollover would force a steep dive, which in itself might well kill him. If not, the impact-heard-round-the-world would finish him off for sure. Going with gut instinct, he gave up trying to stabilize his ship for now, instead coaxing it into an even more wild spin.
He pulled himself out of the command seat and toward the escape pod, g-forces threatening to split his face down the middle, every muscle protesting the sudden shift. Inch by inch, he forced himself to keep moving, even as he felt the onset of the fatal roll. Almost there…
He grunted from effort as he reached to grab the hatchway with one shaking hand, then the other, then he pulled with all the strength at his command, forcing his frame into the pod. Landing hard on the jumpseat, he slammed the hatch lever shut and launched, spinning away at such a rate that he blacked out. When he came to, still spinning and about to puke, he saw his beautiful, wayward craft, above and to port, then starboard, back to port. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the mother ship was nearly out of sight. He caught a glimpse of it’s spinning frame in the corner of his eye just as his fingers grasped the remote console. Keeping a careful eye on his abandoned, but still salvageable ship, he checked the readouts. He was still in possession of a truncated version of flight controls, and he aimed to make full use of them. With a deft flick of the wrist, he forced his distant ship out of it’s deadly spin just as he punched the red switch that ignited its afterburners.
Watching his abandoned ship veer off its crash trajectory, he nudged the controls until he was satisfied the long oceanward glide was underway. In the unlikely event that a ship got in the way, the automated systems would initiate a preemptive self-destruct. Otherwise, the impact with water would initiate a water-landing protocol that would ease the craft to a half-submerged halt.
He couldn’t have done it while the spin still affected his brainpan, but it’d been an easy enough save after abandoning ship. With a sigh, he turned his attention to maneuvering his small pod oceanward, aiming for a splashdown close to his lost command. He spotted it’s intact lines far out to sea, just a few seconds past the control center, with nothing more than a bit of water damage to fix. He adjusted his trajectory closer to control, so as to pop the hatch and start bitching without even needing a pickup.
* * *
A pickup was sent anyway. Douglas made sure his flight recorder was offloaded and safe, then set off to find the brass. The minute he stepped into control, however, he was hit by applause, so thunderous it stopped him dead in his tracks. Not that he hadn’t expected some praise—a save of this magnitude was bound to impress—but the enthusiasm made his anger more difficult to convey. He was suddenly reluctant to come off the wrong way in front of his ground crew. Only the leadership deserved his full fury. So he accepted the accolades with a brief smile and a wave-off, waiting until he was behind closed doors to launch into his tirade.
Instead of a panel of superiors, though, he was faced with just one, his immediate superior. In the normal run of things, this wouldn’t stop him, but Joseph Mansfield was more than just a boss. He was a friend, and a well-respected one. Things were going from bad to worse in Shane’s mind, unable as he was to voice the frustration he so desperately needed to get off his chest. Instead, he took a deep breath, saluted, and waited to hear what his commander had to say.
“Shane, thanks for coming so soon after…” The commander looked him over, noting the tension, and motioned for his pilot to stand easy. Shane complied. “I’m sorry you had it so rough up there,” continued the commander, “I wish I could’ve given you more of a warning, but we weren’t expecting anything like this so soon.”
Soon? What in hell was he talking about?
“Christ, Joseph, what happened? That was no damned atmospheric disturbance, I can tell you that much. Do we have any data back yet?”
“Shut up and listen for a minute.” An out-of-character reply that immediately grabbed Shane’s attention. “There’s more to this than you know. I’m not authorized to get into it as much as I’d like, but the thing is…we’ve seen this before.”
Shane Douglas was too stunned to react at first. He felt a hot flash, then a sudden sense of ghostly unreality. In his years of flying he’d never encountered anything remotely like what’d just happened. How could they have seen it before? What did that even mean?
He must have looked as perplexed as he felt, because Commander Mansfield took the extraordinary step of grabbing him by both shoulders. “We had no choice. Orders came from way over our heads. We were to proceed with the test flights as long as possible, but if it happened again…”—he paused, swallowing hard, and
Shane realized how guilty his commander felt at that moment—“So I gave the go ahead. It’s my fault.”
“They sent me up there with an unknown element?” Shane managed to stammer, “You let me? Of all the…I came this fucking close…”
“I know,” Mansfield said, “and it gets a lot worse. Something’s going on, something way beyond upper atmospherics. Real bad shit.”
It took a minute for Shane to calm down, but finally he was able to collect himself. His friend wouldn’t have done anything without good reason, and he wouldn’t have obeyed a dangerous order unless the stakes demanded it. Shane sighed. “Okay, what else do I need to know?”
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