Isle of Arran, Off the Coast of Scotland
March 17, 2031
“It was touch and go there for a while, but I think he’ll pull through.”
Turning from the fireplace and its welcome, soothing heat, Mestral saw Natalie Koroma descending the wooden stairs that led to the farmhouse’s sleeping rooms as well as what passed for its infirmary.
“Is he conscious?” asked Mestral.
Koroma grimaced, running one hand across the top of her head and her shoulder-length black hair as she moved to stand next to him by the fire. “I gave him a pretty strong sedative. He’ll likely be out for at least sixteen hours. The rest will do him good.”
As she spoke, Mestral heard the fatigue in her voice, which seemed to bring out more of the accent that sometimes laced her speech. To the practiced ear, it was easy to identify her as hailing from the area of West Africa now known as Sierra Leone, though so far as he knew, Koroma had only visited that region, making her the first of her family line in centuries to do so. Her ancestors, like others taken from Earth and other worlds by the Aegis, had spent uncounted generations in preparation for their deployment in service to the mysterious organization and its largely unknown though seemingly benign goals.
“Sleep is an oft-overlooked aspect of the healing process.”
“Maybe you can teach him one of those Vulcan healing trances.” Koroma smiled. “Better yet, teach me. I could use a nap that lasts about a week.” Covering her mouth, she stifled a yawn. “Sorry.”
“No apologies are needed. If you wish to retire for a brief rest, I can work with the Beta 7 to obtain information and help us with our next course of action.” For the first time, Mestral noted the flecks marking the ebony skin of her right cheek. “Are you all right?” he asked, gesturing to indicate her face.
Reaching up to wipe her cheek, she looked at her fingers and scowled. “McAllister’s blood. He lost a lot of it, but the medical computer was able to synthesize enough plasma to stabilize him. It was pretty close, though. If you hadn’t found him when you did . . .” She let the sentence fade. Clearing her throat after a moment, she said, “I’ve done all I can for him here, but the internal damage is still pretty extensive. Even if we weren’t out here in the middle of nowhere, we can’t really take him anywhere without attracting attention.”
“What do you propose?” asked Mestral, his question accented by the crackle of a burning ember from the fireplace.
Koroma shook off another yawn. “At this point, I think the best plan is to send him home. For-real home, I mean.” She gestured toward the ceiling, though Mestral was able to infer her true meaning.
“The Aegis homeworld.” It occurred to him that he had never heard the mysterious planet even referred to by a proper name. He had inquired about that on rare occasions, going all the way back to his first shared experiences with Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln in the late 1960s. Although he always was polite during such discussions, the enigmatic Mister Seven had chosen to leave unanswered questions of that sort, right up to the point he left Earth.
Mister Seven. I wonder where you might be, and if you are doing well.
It had been thirty-five years since Gary Seven decided to leave Earth. At the time, he had been approaching the high end of a human’s typical life span, though he at least continued to benefit from generations of genetic enhancement. It was likely that he would far outlive any twenty-first-century contemporaries here on Earth, but growing older still came with costs. To that end, Seven had elected in 1996 to depart for a lower-gravity planet that was more forgiving of his aging body. He had left his friend and protégée, Roberta Lincoln, here to “mind the store,” as he put it, and the human woman—who did not enjoy the advantages of selective breeding and genetic engineering—had continued the Aegis mission on Earth for many more years before she too had retired. Mestral had witnessed these transitions, up to and including the latest transfer five years ago to Natalie Koroma and Jonathan McAllister.
Indeed, Mestral’s first encounter with the Aegis had come more than a decade after his own arrival on Earth. Formerly a member of a Vulcan survey crew sent to study Earth at a point well before it reached the ability to carry out interstellar travel, he and his companions had crashed in the mountains of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1957. They had spent months living and working in secret while attempting to blend in with the local humans until a rescue ship arrived from Vulcan. Fascinated by humans and their largely untapped potential, Mestral had opted to stay on Earth so that he might witness their continued progress and the feats he suspected they one day would accomplish. After he had convinced his surviving companions of his sincere desire to stay on Earth and bear witness to these historic milestones, they had agreed to report him as having died during their ship’s crash. In the decades since that incident, Mestral had done his best to keep a low profile, hiding his true identity and origins. Only through random chance—at least, in his estimation—had he come across evidence of advanced beings living and working on Earth, and his life was forever changed by such knowledge.
Two of those advanced beings, Koroma and McAllister, were products of the Aegis’s long-term training program. Each was a descendant of humans taken from Earth thousands of years ago and, like Gary Seven, prepared over the course of generations for their assignment on Earth. Here, they continued the mission begun by their predecessor agents, working to assist human civilization in navigating a path that would one day see it evolve into a society ready to join an interstellar community.
As for the unidentified parties who comprised the Aegis, they and their own planet would continue to remain unsolved mysteries. Even if Seven or any of the other agents had deigned to share its name, it was all but useless without access to detailed star charts, and Mestral doubted the world was listed among the Vulcan stellar cartographic information he had taken from the computer banks of his crashed vessel. His other source for comprehensive data had been the Beta 7 and its predecessors, and the advanced computer was certainly unwilling or forbidden to help him in this regard.
“It’s the best option for Jonathan in the long run,” said Koroma. “They can completely heal his injuries and have him back to us in no time. Maybe by then we’ll have some more intel about this ship.” Stepping away from the fireplace, she called out, “Computer on.”
In response to her instructions, a portion of the stone wall on the room’s opposite side lowered into the floor, revealing an advanced computer console consisting of a trio of touch-sensitive interfaces and a quartet of display screens. A large black panel dominated the wall console’s upper left corner, displaying a seemingly random pattern of multicolored lines and dots scrolling back and forth across its surface.
“Computer on,” replied the Beta 7 in its characteristic feminine voice. In keeping with its sophisticated artificial intelligence software, the computer’s tones and speech pattern sounded almost human, though Mestral was still able to detect a hint of mechanized and automated delivery even in the short response. He had been affiliated with Koroma and her predecessors long enough to have seen the computer’s previous iterations, and each version was more advanced than its older counterparts. Part of that progress was to give the machines an even greater range of human-sounding speech and delivery in their spoken interactions with the agents they supported.
Holding her hand over her mouth to cover a third yawn, Koroma said, “Report on scan readings provided by Agent 6889. Have you identified the alien ship?”
“Affirmative, Agent 5746,” replied the computer using Koroma’s own official Aegis designation. “Vessel is a long-range scout craft. Place of origin: Sralanya, fourth planet of the Vorlyntal star system. Inhabited by a sentient species, the Eizand. Technologically advanced. Ship is equipped with rudimentary interstellar propulsion, and interior scans indicate crew hibernation support systems for long-duration travel. Bio-scan readings of ship occupants indicate Eizand physiology. Crew of three. Two dead, one alive.”
Accompanying the Beta 7’s report was a page of text on one of the console’s screens, including what Mestral recognized as coordinates, though like the solar system and planet they represented, the displayed figures were not at all familiar to him.
“I do not believe my people have ever encountered this world or species,” he said. “At least, we had not prior to my departure from Vulcan.”
Koroma shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell with me either.” She tapped the Beta 7’s control console. “But our bosses seem to know who they are. Computer, what do we know about that area of space?”
“The Vorlyntal star system is located within an unexplored region, between territories currently claimed by the Klingon and Romulan Empires. The system is not aligned with any of the major interstellar powers.”
Frowning, Koroma looked away from the monitor to regard Mestral. “That’s an awfully long way to travel to come here. It would take years, even at low warp speeds, which is why the ship looks to have been equipped with hibernation systems, and we still don’t have a reason. Why would they come all this way?”
“Logical choices would include searching for resources,” replied Mestral, “or perhaps a planet of similar environmental makeup as their own world in order to establish a colony. They may even be seeking allies; someone to assist them against an enemy.”
“If that’s the case, then they certainly came to the wrong planet. We’re barely able to wander around our own solar system, let alone travel to someone else’s.”
Mestral was well aware of all of this, having borne witness to the dawn of Earth’s “Space Age.” Following the 1960s efforts by the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to land astronauts on Earth’s moon, and after the Space Shuttle missions spanning thirty years as well as the continued semipermanent presence of humans in space stations orbiting the planet, crewed spaceflight to other worlds in the Sol system had been very limited. The first bold steps in that direction had occurred rather recently, in stark contrast to the predictions offered by futurists, fiction writers, and films and television programs that since the early years of the previous century had depicted humanity pushing outward into the cosmos at some point in the “not too distant future.”
It had been little more than a decade since the first such missions to the system’s other planets had begun, with the Ares program concentrating on Earth’s nearest neighbor, Mars, while the U.S.S. Lewis & Clark had completed the first manned mission to Saturn and back in the early 2020s. The third Ares mission was scheduled to be completed in the coming months, with a fourth and fifth mission already in the planning stages for launch within the next three years. Despite these accomplishments, and others that would follow, Earth and humankind were still decades away from being able to launch a truly interstellar exploration initiative. They were confined to their own solar system, and a threat to no one beyond its boundaries.
Stepping closer to the console, Koroma swiped her hand across one of the touch-sensitive interfaces. “Jonathan wasn’t able to complete a scan of the ship’s computer, so unless we can access it remotely or get back to it, we’re out of luck.”
Mestral had participated in training for missions of this sort, though the truth was neither Koroma nor McAllister had encountered an alien spacecraft since beginning their assignment. Still, it was not possible to conclude that ships of extraterrestrial original had visited this planet without being detected by the Beta 7 or its predecessor computer. Further, Mestral knew that there were any number of organizations and other groups scattered around the world that were eager to possess such vessels and the technology they might contain.
Including McAllister’s servo.
She had not found the device among her colleague’s clothing and other items retrieved from his pockets. Was the advanced tool simply lost in the Georgia forest, or in the hands of the American military or one of the government’s numerous intelligence agencies? Her attempts to locate it via the Beta 7 were unsuccessful, either because the servo was damaged, disassembled, or somehow shielded against attempts at communication or tracking. The computer would continue its attempts to locate the device, but Koroma figured it was a lost cause.
Setting aside that thought, she returned her attention to the Eizand craft. “Computer, attempt a link to the ship’s onboard systems and access to its data storage facilities.”
“Stand by.”
He expected the computer to take at least a moment or two to complete any connection to the alien spacecraft. Instead, Mestral was surprised when the Beta 7 came back with a response in short order.
“Unable to establish link. The craft has been moved from its previous location.”
Koroma exchanged glances with Mestral, though she added a roll of her eyes. “Yeah, that was predictable. So scan for it. They couldn’t have gone too far with it this fast.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Could they? How long was I with Jonathan?”
“Four hours, seventeen minutes, thirty-six seconds,” replied Mestral. It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning, local time, but still the middle of the night on the east coast of the United States. Could the American military unit sent to investigate the downed spacecraft have moved the ship to a secure location in such a short amount of time? That seemed unlikely. “Is it possible the vessel has been destroyed?”
Frowning, Koroma replied, “That’d be out of character. We know the American government’s been working to find and warehouse any alien technology they can find. Seems odd that they’d pass up a golden opportunity like this. Computer, are you reading any signs of a detonation or other means of destroying the Eizand ship?”
“Negative, Agent 5746.”
“Okay,” said Koroma, “so it’s not where it was, and we can’t find it. That means someone from one of those dark corners of the American military or government has a new trick up their sleeve.”
Mestral nodded. “Then perhaps it is fortunate we have allies in a few of those corners as well.”