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Evening, Sunday, May 1
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HAARP Research Facility, 150 Miles West of San Diego
Dr. Lisha Breda watched the lines of data streaming down the computer screen in columns. It never stopped, and never seemed to repeat. It’s rather hypnotizing, she thought. It probably didn’t help that she was running on coffee and pep pills. The routine was familiar from her days in graduate school so many years ago. Funny how fast you return to old habits.
“Anything yet?” Oz asked, sticking his head into her office. She looked from the screen to him and shook her head. “Sorry,” he apologized, “I just don’t think we have the processing power.” She sighed and nodded her head.
“We have a damn super computer.”
“It was never configured to process stuff like this,” he reminded her. “It was configured to sequence genomes.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you’d want to hear the news.”
“What news?” she asked.
“The president is dead.”
“What?” she asked, confused. “I thought they’d gone to get her in San Diego, or something. The Army?”
“Marines,” he corrected. “Yeah, they mounted this huge operation. Several planeloads of survivors from Hawaii landed and were rescued. But when the president’s plane started to land, a Navy fighter collided with it, and they both crashed.”
“Wow,” Lisha said, “that sucks.” He nodded this time. “So, who’s in charge now, that admiral?”
“They think he’s dead too. The carrier he was on was overrun by zombies. The Marines are going to mount an effort to retake it later. Right now, they’re all back aboard their ship and are recovering.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“There’s a TV show being broadcast from the USS Ford. The person running it is Kathy Clifford.”
“The one from cable news?”
“Yep, same one. Anyway, she’s providing news and such. Calls it FTC, the Flotilla Television Channel.”
“That’s creative.”
“Not as creative as space ships.”
“What are you going on about?”
“You really should watch the show,” he said and took out his phone. “They have a sort of wireless network up too. Some guy named Wade Watts set it up.” He tapped on his phone, and a video came up. It was that big Air Force plane parked on one of the carriers. She remembered hearing something about it being landed there. That hadn’t sounded possible. However, the plane was hovering over the carrier’s deck. Hovering. The camera zoomed in showing the carrier wasn’t moving, just floating next to another Navy ship while cargo was transferred. The plane floated, steady, just above the deck.
The camera zoomed closer and showed a rope ladder down from a door on the plane to the aircraft carrier’s deck. Someone was moving up the ladder. She watched in stunned amazement. The plane was rock steady, not moving in the slightest. She could tell because the carrier was moving slightly up and down from the tidal swells.
“Holy cow,” she said finally. “How is that possible?”
“Clifford said it’s through an alien device. But then she stopped talking about it. I think whoever’s in charge of the military didn’t want her talking about it anymore.”
“Alien device,” Lisha said, and turned back slowly to look at the computer screen. Data was still streaming, carefully being recorded by data-loggers based on an algorithm, written by Oz, and analyzing the flood of data. When they’d started digging down into the EEG pulses generated by Grant Porter’s brain, they’d found Oz was right. The data had structure. The problem was they hadn’t been recording it deep enough. Or rather, with enough speed.
She moved to the adjacent room, her old lab. As soon as the door opened she missed the rhythmic thumping. Her former assistant was still there, though. Well, most of him. He was on a support bed, IVs in his arm, catheterized, a colostomy system in place, his body permanently shut down. The surgery had been simple enough. A quick entrance into the brain, a snip to the motor cortex, and he could no longer move. All autonomic functions still did their thing, running heart, lungs, etc. Just no more thumping or danger of spreading the contagion.
“He’s actually freakier now,” Oz said. Grant’s eyes tracked them like automated lasers, jerking back and forth between the two. “You can see he’s thinking and everything; he just can’t do anything about it. He’d love to eat my face off.”
“He can’t really think,” Lisha said, “his brain function is not of a higher order.”
“Right,” Oz said.
Lisha walked over to look at the computer links. While she’d been in his brain, making him harmless, so to speak, she’d inserted probes into what was left of his brain. Normally there were 12 leads to an EEG; she’d put 29 into what was left of his brain. The rest of it was in the refrigerator in nutrient fluid.
With the living brain heavily wired, Lisha’s neural team had been able to get some really good signals. She’d flat-lined him and restarted his heart after five minutes. Just like before, that reboot sequence came through. This time she was recording in super-high-definition, ultra-high speed, and from more than double the normal inputs inserted directly into the brain.
“What does it all mean?” Oz asked. “I mean, what do you think it means?” On the series of flat panel monitors were wire frame constructs of Strain Delta. These were no longer the x-ray crystallography images. These were fractal images based on data they’d assembled from further electron studies, as well as the EEG data. This view looked even less like a snowflake. It looked like a machine.
“It means this isn’t a living thing,” she said. Now if they could just make sense out of all the data strings. All 26 million of them. Grant Porter continued to watch them, and the computers continued to work.
* * *
Jeremiah Osborne watched his technology team basically scrap the 2nd alien ship. Now more familiar with them, they didn’t waste a lot of time at each step. It reminded him of an autopsy he’d seen in college, back when he’d briefly considered medicine. It was rendered down into parts on shelves or spaces on the floor of the workshop, categorized as known, probable, and unknown. Most of it fit into the latter category.
On a shelf rested four of the blue-glowing drive modules, two from each ship. The other two were accounted for aboard the Azanti and the C-17. The Navy hadn’t deigned to return that one to him. In fact, he was sent back with a pair of Marines to, in their words, “Keep an eye on things.” In addition, he expected some people the next morning to, in their words, discuss his decision to keep the alien technology to himself and learn what he knew about it.
Maria Merino had been running delicate tests with the drive clusters, as she called them. As his only surviving propulsion specialist, it was a job she was well suited for. Hooking the module to the company ship, a converted oceanic research vessel that could launch rockets, she’d been able to make it rise a few feet in the water.
“The ship’s engineer says the vessel weighs in at 69,000 tons,” she said, her voice almost a giggle.
“How much power did it take?” he asked.
“Same as the Azanti, or about a 10-milliamp draw.” He shook his head in consternation. “I know! It really likes that 9-volt supply, but I have a couple electrical engineers fiddling with it. I have a feeling we aren’t seeing a fraction of what it’s capable of.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because this newest ship has a functional power source.” Over the next hour Jeremiah listened to the electrical people and physicists babble on about quantum entanglement batteries.
“I’ve never heard of that,” he admitted.
“No, you wouldn’t,” an engineer said, “because they’ve only just theorized the things could exist. If they can be made, this could last forever.”
“You think that’s what this is?” he’d asked.
“One possibility,” the man admitted.
“What’s another?”
“Dark matter generator,” one woman said.
“ZPM, or zero-point module. They would use vacuum energy to derive power from a region of subspace. Kind of money for nothing.” Several of the other people gave the man eye-rolls.
“Okay,” Jeremiah said, holding up his hands. “Just figure out how it works.”
What was more interesting about this ship over the other one was there was no sign of a pilot. The alien creature on ice didn’t have a friend in this one. The cockpit was sealed and showed no signs that anyone had been inside it.
As evening approached, Jeremiah gathered all the team leads in the ship’s main meeting room and went over what they had, and what they could do with it.
“The Navy techs are going to be here in the morning,” he said, glancing over to where the pair of Marines were eyeing a wall covered in complicated instruments. He continued a little more quietly. “So, I want a list of what we can tell them, and what we shouldn’t tell them.”
“What does that mean?” Alex West asked.
“Look, we have a game-changer here. Do we really want to just hand it all over to the military?”
“Aren’t they better equipped to evaluate it than we are?” Jack Coldwell, the head physicist asked.
“Possibly before the world went to shit,” Alison McDill said. She snorted, then added, “Maybe not even before.”
“We’re willing to share,” Jeremiah said. “I’m not willing to hand it all over to them. However, we must admit it’s a possibility they’ll want it all. If so, I need everything backed up and secured. They don’t know how many drive clusters are on each ship, so take two and stash them as well.” He saw nods around the room. Good, no one was going to be trouble. All it would have taken was a word to one of those Marines, and that would have been it. “Yes, I have personal motivations to hang onto this discovery. After all, we made it. I’m also beginning to think there might be something here we can use to help humanity. It seems a good chance that Strain Delta was brought down by these vessels, or the aliens in them. Where better to find the cure?” More nods. “Make double sure we have all the confirmed coordinates from other ships that were found from the first ship’s communications system.”
“I’m on that,” West said.
“Good. All right, what’s next?”
“Mr. Osborne!” He looked to the door. Mariana Merino was standing there, and she was even more excited than before.
“Yes, Mariana?”
“You have got to see this?”
“Right now? We’re in the middle of a meeting.”
“It’s the Azanti. We were running a test...”
“What did you do?” he asked in a low voice. “You didn’t wreck our only functioning space ship, did you?”
“It’s easier if you come see,” she said. He looked around the room, then shrugged before following her. Everyone else did as well, since the meeting seemed to be over. The Marines watched them leave without much curiosity, electing to stay behind by the alien machine.
On the big open rear deck of the ship, the Azanti was in her hangar. The opposite side hangar held their only remaining helicopter, the other being at the bottom of the Pacific now. The ship looked fine and was surrounded by several of the engineers and mechanics that had originally helped build it. He noticed the rear docking collar had been removed for repair. His only other pilot, Patty Mize, was standing by the crew hatch.
“Okay, tell me what’s going on,” Jeremiah said after they’d all gathered around.
“Well, we figured out how the power system works. One of these,” she said and held up a star-shaped piece of bluish alien metal, “is the interface. It doesn’t seem to need dedicated wires. The power will flow through...well, any kind of metal.”
“That’s damned convenient,” an electrical engineer said.
“And dangerous,” another said. Many of the assembled agreed with head nods.
“We ran tests on interconnected metal,” Mariana told them, “everything from steel to tin. There’s no discernable energy being transferred, yet if you have one of the star connectors on both apparatuses, and metal between them, it flows perfectly.”
“Wow,” someone else said and whistled.
“While that’s wonderful to know,” Jeremiah said, “it’s not earth shattering.”
“Agreed,” she said, “so we took the power unit and interfaced it with the drive cluster on Azanti. It seemed to work just like before, with the interface designed by Ms. McDill.”
“Good,” Jeremiah said.
“Wait, that’s not all. Patty, can you show them?”
“Sure,” Patty said and climbed into the ship.
“Everyone, stand back,” Mariana said. Everyone who hadn’t been there before beat a hasty retreat. “It’s okay, just a few yards,” she assured them. Patty could be seen in the cockpit. Lights came on as the ship’s systems were powered up, then she looked at Mariana who waved. Patty returned a thumbs-up, and the Azanti seemed to...shimmer, then raised a few inches off the deck.
“What was that shimmer?” West asked.
“I saw it too,” Jeremiah said.
“We didn’t notice anything until a tech tried to go into the ship,” Mariana said, and walked over to the ship. A few feet away she stopped and put a hand out. Like a mime, she came up against an invisible wall. She leaned on it, improbably supported by nothing.
“A fucking force field?” West blurted. Leaning on thin air, Mariana grinned ear to ear. “How strong?” Mariana waved to a mechanic, who came over with a big steel sledge hammer. He swung it at the field, and it rebounded with a flash of sparks. The rebound was so energetic, he almost lost his grip on the tool. Next, he took an acetylene torch, ignited it, and applied the flame to the invisible barrier. The white-hot plume hit the wall and created a tiny sparkle from it.
“We had Patty reach out from the ship and try to feel any heat,” the mechanic said. He moved around to the rear where the pilot was waiting, obviously in on the show. He put the torch against the barrier again and turned the flow to maximum. Flame splashed against nothing. Patty reached out and put her hand next to the flame, so that Jeremiah could see her palm deform from pressing. She shrugged.
“Not even a tingle,” Mariana said. Jeremiah went over and touched the barrier. It was like touching glass, only there was no sensation of hot or cold, and it felt completely smooth. It didn’t offer any resistance to his touch at all. It might as well be completely frictionless, as he guessed it would be.
“There must have been a little of this working for us in space,” West observed.
“Especially when we were FTL,” Alison agreed.
“One more thing,” Mariana said. “It’s air tight and conforms to the contour of the ship.” They shut it down, and with help from several people, removed the drive cluster and power supply from Azanti and clamped it to the OOE ship’s deck. Jeremiah wanted to laugh at the idea, but remembered they’d levitated tens of thousands of tons. Was it such a crazy idea?
“I thought you weren’t doing any more discreet tests on the ship?”
“No,” she admitted, “we were waiting for you to do it with the alien power module.”
“Is this wise?” Jack Coldwell wondered.
“Maybe not,” Jeremiah admitted, “but I’ve never been accused of being wise. Go for it.” Mariana grinned, and they turned the drive cluster back on. For a moment, no one seemed to notice anything. Then Alison spoke up.
“You hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” Jeremiah asked.
“Nothing,” she said. He made a face, then realized what she meant. All the other ships of the flotilla. The waves against the hull. Sea birds. Nothing. All they could hear were the sounds of the ship and crew around them. The mechanic who’d helped demonstrate the field earlier snatched up an old rusty wrench and threw it over the side as hard as he could. Less than 20 feet past the railing it hit an invisible barrier with a loud clunk and bounced several times on the way down before splashing into the water.
“It doesn’t go below us?” Jeremiah wondered.
“There’s water in the field with the ship,” West said. “If we took off, it would probably just go along with us.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jeremiah said.
“You know what this means?” West asked. Jeremiah looked at him. “It means you can slap one of these on a battleship and fly it into space...” The president of the company gave him an incredulous look, “if you wanted to.”
“I guess the military is going to be thrilled,” Jeremiah said, “if anyone’s alive to shoot at.” They deactivated the drive, and all the sounds returned without fanfare.
* * *
Kathy looked up from her coffee to see Wade Watts standing in the door to her studio. He looked excited and a little confused.
“Can I help you, Wade?”
“Ms. Clifford? Have you seen Andrew Tobin?”
“You can call me Kathy, Wade.” He smiled shyly. Another man spoke up behind Wade in the hallway.
“You haven’t heard?” Chris Brown asked.
“Hear what?” Wade replied and looked from him to Kathy who didn’t want to meet his eyes.
“He’s gone, Wade.”
“Gone, where?”
“He means Andrew is dead,” Kathy clarified. Wade’s mouth made a surprised “O” shape.
“Dead? What happened?”
“He and a Navy pilot flew out in a pair of F-35s from here when we lost the Reagan,” Kathy explained. “Neither of them made it back.”
“Wait,” Wade said and held up his hands. “Lost the Reagan? I’m completely lost.”
“Where have you been the last day?” Chris asked.
“Working in the SCIF.” Chris looked at him in confusion, so Kathy explained.
“Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It’s where all the intel stuff happens.”
“Ah,” Chris said. Kathy gave Wade a quick rundown on the day’s events, from the assault, the infection taking over the Reagan, the alien device being used to get the C-17 off the Ford’s deck, and ended with the collision between a fighter and the president’s plane.
“Was it Andrew’s plane?” Wade asked.
“No one is saying,” Kathy replied.
“I know he was pretty upset with the whole situation,” Chris said.
“Are you saying maybe he did it on purpose?” Kathy asked.
Chris shook his head. “No, I don’t think he’d do that. But speaking of things that shouldn’t happen, you kind of got in trouble for mentioning the UFO stuff, huh?”
“The captain was pissed,” Kathy admitted, “but I don’t know how they expected to keep it a secret when there’s a C-17 floating in the air like a balloon!” Wade looked amazed, so Kathy showed him a couple of digital images on her phone.
“Holy crap, that’s so cool! Where did the...floaty machine come from?”
“It was Jeremiah Osborne,” Chris said. “He showed up in a half-wrecked helicopter with an alien ship inside.”
“Really?” Kathy asked, surreptitiously turning on a little digital recorder.
“Sure, I was there. They had two helicopters; one was torn all to hell. The one that wasn’t had the ship in it. Looked like a shiny silver bullet, sorta. I wasn’t there for the discussion, but the captain talked to them, and next thing you know, they took a machine into the C-17 and it shot off the deck like a ruptured duck!” The three talked about that and other events for a few minutes before Kathy remembered something.
“Wade, why were you looking for Andrew anyway?”
“Oh, yeah. I was going to tell him we got a channel to some of the military satellite coms.”
“That’s great news,” Kathy said. “Did you figure out why they were screwed up? Was it the President’s kill switch?”
“No,” Wade said, “it was someone else. Someone who had access to the high security, privileged communications networks. They inserted a worm, a virus, into the system. I know a thing or two about bugs like that.”
“I bet you do,” Chris said with a grunt. Wade gave him a mulish look.
“Any luck getting word from the outside world?” Kathy asked.
“Yeah, actually. We’re in communications with a Marine task force. They’ve just gotten through the Panama Canal. Apparently, they had to fight their way through. Lost a ship there. They set out from Florida on April 23rd, just as everything was falling apart. Bunch of people from NASA are with them, and some from the CDC in Atlanta too! They think they’ll be here by May 5th.”
“You didn’t really sound too surprised to hear about alien stuff,” Kathy pointed out. “You always been an X-files kind of guy?”
“Actually, no. I thought that was all bullshit.” He looked around, even leaning out the door to be sure no one was nearby. “I really shouldn’t tell you any of this...”
“We won’t say a thing,” Kathy said, and leaned closer, her little recorder invisible in her hand.
“Okay,” Wade said, obviously enjoying having important information. “I wasn’t surprised because the NASA people got the Marines to run a side trip while they were down in Panama. They recovered an alien ship too.”
“Wow,” Kathy said. “That’s amazing.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” he said, his voice very low. “The ship wasn’t empty. They have a live alien.”
# # # # #
