The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
August 27, 2039
It was like watching a nightmare come to life.
Standing with arms crossed before the large monitor that dominated his office’s front wall, Gerald Markham watched the scene being broadcast to him from the other side of the world. Figures in oversized protective suits walked around a hellish landscape, as though moving about on some distant planet. Background radiation was interfering even with the shielded, secure communications link connecting him to his people at the scene, resulting in a distorted, static-filled picture. In the screen’s lower left corner, a digital readout told him how long this operation had been active.
“They’ve only been on site for twenty minutes,” he said aloud. “Why does it feel like a month?”
Sitting in a nearby chair, her ubiquitous computer tablet resting in her lap, his assistant director, Heather Burden, replied, “With the radiation at those levels, they can last another forty to forty-five minutes before they’ll have to move to a safe location.”
Markham snorted. “They’re in China. ‘Safe location’ is something of a relative term, don’t you think?” Rubbing his forehead, he asked, “What are they saying on the news channels?”
“Pretty much variations on what they’ve been saying all night.” Burden studied the scroll of data streaming across her tablet. “The fires are still too intense for anyone to get too close, and the radiation threat makes the entire area a hot zone. At the rate things are going, that entire complex is going to melt before this is all over. The probe is a total loss, and there are still about a dozen people who’ve gone missing. That’s just the immediate problem, though. The explosion and resulting fire are releasing all sorts of toxic shit. That whole area’s going to be a quarantined zone for at least a decade.”
“A damned shame, if we’re being honest. The Chinese were really starting to put together a comprehensive program. They were set to send a manned mission to Mars next year. There’s no telling how long something like this will set them back.”
And it’s all our fault.
“Any indications that anybody knows about our people?”
Still looking at her tablet, Burden replied, “Not from anything being broadcast. Our liaison team in China made sure our people were covered going in, and they’ll make sure no traces are left behind when they pull out. Nobody else has the kind of gear needed to get that far into the affected area, so our team should be okay. It’s getting them in and out that’s the tricky part.”
“No kidding.” Markham drew a deep breath. “The last thing we need right now is an international incident. We’ll have a hard enough time as it is, convincing the Chinese we didn’t sabotage their launch.”
Markham began the previous day with a mixture of enthusiasm and anticipation that was tempered by the grim realities of his job. Arriving early at his office to watch the video footage being streamed from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China, he beheld yet again the thing of beauty that was the Xuanzang probe. China’s first unmanned survey craft designed for travel beyond the solar system was readying for its epic journey to the stars. Markham had followed the craft’s development for years, watching both as a space enthusiast as well as with the critical eye of someone in his chosen if unsung profession. Whereas efforts by the United States to expand its own space exploration programs had stagnated in the wake of the ill-fated Ares IV mission, other nations around the world were continuing to make progress.
Chief among those making rapid advances were India and China, who had been partnering for space-based projects for years. That relationship was an outgrowth of the two countries already being members of the Eastern Coalition, which had come together nearly twenty years earlier and counted among its signatory nations Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, and Vietnam. China and India had been at the forefront of a combined space effort, making several exchanges of technology and personnel in order to assist each other’s programs. Such cooperation had seen to it that it was an ECON-based mission that was the first manned effort to return to the Moon, nearly fifty years after America’s last landings in the early 1970s. The shared scientific effort was just one aspect of the thawing of relations between the two countries, which had been strained for decades but now were strengthened by mutual ties to the Coalition. Rivalry between the ECON and the United States was also on the upswing, on par with the tensions that stressed American interactions with Russia as well as China and North Korea in the early twenty-first century. Military and foreign policy experts within the current presidential administration were forecasting continued deterioration in relations between the U.S. and the ECON in the coming decade as the world continued to undergo a shift in global economic power as well as control and consumption of natural resources.
However, none of that had mattered to Markham yesterday morning. For a few brief, precious moments, he was able to forget the reality of the world in which he lived and focus instead on a flight of pure science and fantasy. He was even hopeful that a successful Xuanzang might somehow motivate the world’s most powerful nations to come together and work toward a common goal.
Then reality had reasserted itself, as Markham gave the order to see the probe destroyed on its launch pad. With his single command, disaster had been visited upon the Xuanzang rocket, with the world watching as years of work was consumed by flame.
For the good of humanity, he reminded himself.
“Director Markham,” said a female voice over a speaker hidden in his office ceiling. “The ground team leader is asking to speak with you.”
Glancing to Burden, who only shrugged, Markham said, “Put her through.”
A moment later, one of the suited figures on the screen moved toward whoever was controlling the camera recording everything from the site. The curved faceplate of the person’s helmet was reflective, providing Markham only with a reverse image of the camera operator.
“Hello?” said a female voice, sounding distant and weak as it was channeled through her helmet communications system and the satellite link. “Director Markham?”
“This is Markham. Who am I talking to?”
“Doctor April Hebert, sir. You asked to be notified when we had something worth reporting.”
“Time’s short, Doctor. What’ve you got?”
Hebert held up a large piece of twisted, scorched metal. There were no visible markings and no other easy means of making any sort of visual identification. “We’re still picking up pieces like this, and there are a hell of a lot of them. They don’t belong to the Xuanzang rocket or anything else you’d expect to find in China, sir. We’ve only got our portable scanners with us here, and two of them have already failed thanks to the radiation, but I’m willing to say now that this is definitely EZ31 material. More accurately, it contains elements of those compounds. If this isn’t a reuse of original elements, then it’s a pretty damned good approximation.”
“Just as we suspected all along,” said Burden.
Markham felt a weight settling upon his shoulders as everything he had feared for the past twenty hours and indeed the last five years was coming to pass. It had been that long since the last recorded sighting of an unidentified craft in low Earth orbit, which Majestic 12 satellites had confirmed as being Eizand in origin.
Then the vessel disappeared.
With American military planes moving to intercept the craft over the Pacific Ocean, the target slipped below radar. At first believing it to have crashed at sea, Markham and other MJ-12 supervisors deployed assets to the region in search of the ship or any wreckage or alien specimens that may have survived. Days of hunting the elusive craft were rewarded with nothing. Where had the ship gone? What about its crew, assuming there was one? The idea of one or more aliens running free anywhere on Earth sent MJ-12’s senior leadership into a frenzy, with personnel and other resources allocated across the planet with orders to hunt down and secure the ship and any passengers or crew it may have carried. Those efforts went unrewarded, and theories began to circulate that perhaps this ship had employed some manner of self-destruct system to prevent its capture. Unconvinced of this notion, Markham saw its merits. If the Eizand were stepping up their surveillance of Earth, and still searching for their lost probes as well as the one manned vessel Majestic had captured, then it stood to reason that they would take steps to protect themselves. Without proof in the form of wreckage, there was no way to to be sure this had indeed happened, and because of that, Markham and his people remained vigilant.
That persistence paid off when intelligence agents working in China soon reported unconfirmed rumors of the secretive government now possessing some form of alien technology. Confirmation was a much more difficult proposition, coming less than a month ago as the Xuanzang probe and its accompanying rocket were entering the final stages of assembly before beginning the lengthy series of diagnostic checks in preparation for launch. The proof had been slim, in the form of a single small piece of metallic composite smuggled out of the Jiuquan Launch Center by an undercover Majestic operative, but it was enough to send Markham scrambling.
The probe could not be allowed to launch.
With the constant threat of the Eizand returning, either to find their missing ship or to attack Earth itself, time was short. Paranoia remained high, fueled by the disappearance of the Arex IV command module seven years earlier to the apparent loss of the Charybdis, the third failure by NASA to send a manned spacecraft beyond the solar system. Communication and computer telemetry with the vessel had been lost only months earlier, two years after the ship’s launch. There was no way to ascertain whether the Charybdis experienced systems malfunctions or catastrophic failure, and there would be no opportunity to send another ship after the wayward vessel for at least another year. Had the vessel suffered from a critical design flaw, encountered some form of heretofore unknown stellar phenomenon, or been the victim of deliberate action? If the latter, were the Eizand to blame, or was this the fault of some other alien race? Such questions, though they could not be asked in a public forum, were the focus of much discussion within the hidden halls of Majestic 12’s leadership.
As for the Xuanzang, a ship constructed with components from an Eizand ship could not be allowed to leave Earth. Not yet. Majestic engineers were hard at work on their own version of such a craft, but the task was being carried out in absolute secrecy. Markham had not even told Burden, his trusted right hand, about this initiative, which was under way after being initiated nearly a decade earlier. There would be only one chance at such a launch before the Eizand became aware of humanity’s exploitation of their more advanced technology, and Markham and Majestic were going to make the most of that lone opportunity, provided China or some other world power did not first screw up things for the entire planet.
Hence, the “accident,” perpetrated by Majestic, and made to look as though the Xuanzang rocket had succumbed to a simple yet catastrophic malfunction, one with massive, lingering consequences. A single small explosive charge placed by a clandestine MJ-12 agent was all that was needed. The resulting detonation forced a chain reaction that ended up destroying the nuclear reactor that was to power the spacecraft’s ion plasma propulsion engine. There was no massive explosion as one might expect from a nuclear weapon, but the blast was enough to destroy the rocket as well as the launch gantry and surrounding infrastructure. All of this was followed by the massive fuel fire that still raged, along with an enormous amount of radioactive fallout and debris. The entire area had been quarantined until the fire died down, but the lingering radiation was enough to keep out anyone who did not possess the necessary protective equipment. In this regard, Majestic 12 had the edge.
What concerned him about this operation was the potential for interference from other outside forces. They had seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth, though Markham knew that at least one and perhaps more of the agents he had sought for years remained at large. Following Kirsten Heffron’s escape from custody and the director’s disappearance years earlier, and in the aftermath of the assault on their secret base of operations off the coast of Scotland, the agents went into hiding. All vestiges of their advanced technology were destroyed before it could be taken into Majestic 12’s possession for study. Markham knew they were out there, somewhere, likely still poking their noses into matters around the world. Would something like the Xuanzang attract their interest? Perhaps they were monitoring the launch, but from far away and beyond MJ-12’s reach. What would their reaction be to today’s “accident”? That remained to be seen, but Markham could not wait for the enigmatic troublemakers to show themselves.
“Doctor Hebert, how much longer do you think you’ll need?”
On the monitor, the figure in the bulky suit turned as though looking for other members of her team before replying, “We’ll have to leave here in about half an hour. That’s the limit of protection these suits can provide in this environment, but we have enough replacements to make three, maybe four more trips back if necessary. There’s really not much more for us to do here, though, sir. This place is an inferno. By the time anybody with regular equipment can get in there, any evidence we might be worried about will be long gone.”
“I’d rather not risk another trip. We’re pushing our luck as it is, and you’ve done remarkable work, Doctor. Get your people out of there.”
Hebert touched her hand to her helmet’s faceplate, mimicking a salute. “Understood, Director.”
“Do you think the Chinese will figure out it was sabotage?” asked Burden.
Shrugging, Markham turned from the monitor and moved toward his desk. “Hell if I know. So far as we’ve been able to figure out, they had no idea we knew they’d recovered that Eizand probe. That might be the one thing working in our favor. On the other hand, they’re paranoid, and they’re always accusing us of one thing or another. I figure the president will be getting an earful about this from the Chinese president, regardless, assuming he hasn’t already.”
This sort of saber rattling was nothing new and in fact had been on the uptick in recent years, thanks to everything from trade disputes and economic sanctions to incidents involving military vessels in disputed waters. Both sides were guilty of these transgressions, and until now both leaders had managed to smooth all ruffled feathers and maintain a semblance of civility. How much longer would that last?
Good question.
Settling into the chair behind his desk, Markham said, “It could be months or years before the Chinese can make any sort of educated guess about what happened.”
Burden rose from her chair near the monitor and approached his desk. “Yeah, but we can’t rule out one of their investigators or forensic scientists or engineers finding some shred of evidence that gives them the idea they were sabotaged.”
“Nope, we can’t, but proving it is a whole other kettle of fish, let alone pulling together enough information to level a formal accusation, at us or anybody else.” That was of little comfort, as Markham was well aware that in the world of political brinkmanship and ever-stressed diplomatic relations between global powers, accusation and innuendo were two of the most powerful weapons in any government’s arsenal.
“If they do find something,” said Burden, “then there’s a good chance we’re all going to war.”
Markham offered a humorless laugh. “If that happens, then we’ll likely end up making things a hell of a lot easier for the Eizand.”
And won’t that be grand?