Snippets of various chapters, not complete ones, just enough, but conveniently not enough to give away too much ! Unfortunately wordpress looses book text formatting …
It’s all draft copies with maybe one partial edit done and still needing some more dialogue changes and more narrative, currently have around 600 pages.
It starts around 1955 in Europe and ends when the engineers leave orbit around 2030, most places and events are real, except the made up ones ! There is a lot in between and after … oh It’s not the end of Su’Lak either or some others …
Chapter 1 – 1958 Paris France …
“So how good is this Captain of yours Pierre ?” Asked Lord Tavington nonchalantly.
“He is one of a few ranking active military people we have engaged. Highly skilled, French Foreign Legion special operations, evasive driving. Whatever you need, he does. He was deployed just recently in Algiers during the crisis. Fifty Eight was a busy year for him,” replied Pierre with a little pride in his voice, as Michel was his personal recruit into the Enlightened Group.
“I am also good enough to evade and get close to my targets,” said a man with a thick French accent from behind spoken very smugly. This startled both men and Andrew who then turned to face the French man.
…
The men discussed the expansion of European influence and some of the global plans to be rolled out of the next half dozen decades and beyond. The Captain was intrigued with how well thought out their plan was. He himself was very much bothered by how much the United States and the Soviets had gained after WWII. Europe was stronger in a way, but playing catch-up. He wanted to be part of a powerful unified Europe, although he had to deal with the fact he’d miss the final battles as those would be well beyond his lifespan.
“So the Enlightened Group,” the Captain said and then paused in thought, “They are going to be the true government when all is said and done ?”.
“Yes indeed Captain. We are now in a position to place operatives in key rolls. Those assets will then allow subordinates to rise through and replace their superiors,” said Lord Tavington, “There will be a time during the first part of the next century that we expect a critical mass to occur where the Europe you know today will just be a skin on top of a radically different animal.”
“And we will be that animal shan’t we father,” said Andrew from behind and absorbing everything his father said.
Lord Tavington gave a wry smile and looked back at his son. Yes, all will be yours to pass along my son.
“Michel, we need to get some top tier agents trained, preferably from military sources with higher than average intelligence and loyal,” said Pierre, “Also some that we can groom from a young age.”
“Yes Sir, I have a few in mind, one in particular, a young girl named Natashia.”
…
Some two months later Michel Brouchard and his wife Sabine waited nervously in a birthing room at the hospital just north of Sarlat-la-Canéda. Their first baby was about to be born. Their doctor had just came in just in time as Sabine’s contractions were very close together and she could almost feel the babies head about to show.
“Looks like the baby is about to deliver itself,” Dr Arsenault said in his native French from behind his white face mask. Michel held the hand of his wife tightly, Sabine squeezed back even harder.
“Bon ! Push more and I think you’ll have your baby shortly !” said the doctor.
Sabine screamed and pushed one last time and she sighed with relief, the baby was out.
The doctor spanked the baby to get it to perform it’s first cry and then handed the baby to Sabine and Michel.
Both parents smiled from ear to ear, Sabine hugged the wrapped up baby in her arms.
“Name. For the baby …” asked the nurse while holding a pen and clipboard.
Michel looked at the nurse still with a huge smile on his face “Oui. Natashia.”
Chapter 2 – Paris 1971 …
He dropped in to the armchair and put his briefcase on the side of the desk where he could open it and pull out the papers in to his lap. As he started to read over the papers he raised his left hand and flicked on the standing lamp to spread some light on the pages before him.
His senior had already told him that his copies of paperwork omitted about half of the meeting details due to their contents secrecy and he’d just need to play it by ear and to not act too surprised as the meeting continued.
It would be his first time visiting New York and directly dealing with the main UN security council. Not having all the information at hand made him uneasy, he’d feel better knowing all the details. All he knew was that he worked from the French government but also for an umbrella group, he wasn’t naive, he knew the other group he was involved with was more of a shadowy entity. Like many of his peers, he knew he was included due to a family member, in his case his mothers involvement in the UN and the group. Until he had shown his worth, he knew he’d not be privy of more details, including the organization’s name.
Thumbing through the various pages, most of what he saw was concerning global climate change, population issues, food supply. However he found some related to external threats – friend or foe. These had been blanked out. He also found at the very last page the index, half had been blanked off, and therefore those documents were totally missing from his set of papers. He raised his right eyebrow and let out a slight sigh. There was much senior Pierre will need to get him up to speed with. But what worried him was that the documents he had went in to some very unnerving detail related to worse case scenarios. If he had access to this, what was he missing ? Maybe the world was really totally flat ?
He was about done reading through the papers when he heard the theme tune of Arsène Lupin. This was one of his favorite shows about a rich master criminal. It also told him it was nine, which meant an hour show and quickly pack ready for New York. Paris was chilly and so would be New York, meaning he didn’t need to dig around for the right clothing, it was all to hand. He rose with a spring in his step and moved around to the couch and sat down like an excited school boy and stared at the show without moving from opening scene to ending credits.
He threw himself back in the couch C’était formidable !
What a great show he said aloud.
With the momentum of himself getting thrown back in the couch, he used that to propel himself up on to his feet and in to a quick step to his bedroom about twelve feet away to stuff some clothes in to his case and set his alarm clock for 7:30am.
Once his clothes had been packed, he headed to the kitchen to grab a quick snack of cheese and shut off the living room lights and television before falling to sleep on the top of his bed still with his outside clothes and slippers still on.
He had also forgotten to call his girlfriend yet again, she was going to be very displeased, luckily for him, he was sound a sleep and wouldn’t remember most likely until he returned to Paris.
Chapter 4 – 1975 Manchester England …
It was a nice spring day just out side of Manchester England. The sun had already risen at around 4:30 that morning, such as it was in the northern climates this time of year. Jeremy Jones, ex-resident of Hounslow and recent graduate of Oxford had awoken at around 6am which was a little early for him, usually he’d be waking thirty more minutes more to the noise of rattling bells on his wind up alarm clock he’d got a few years ago from a local Alders department store. He liked the clock as it was simple, mechanical, unlike his job which was interwoven with computers and other technology.
Taking a deep breath and exhale he rolled out of bed, sat upright, stretched his arms out as far as they could and slid his feet into his slippers. “Today I’ve got a good feeling,” he said authoritatively to himself.
He stood and walked the six feet to his bedroom door and walked through, just on the right was his bathroom, barely a bathroom, it had a toilet, sink and a thing that should he have been three foot nothing, would be a bath. He could however sit on the toilet lid and put his feet in it.
He turned the handle down and pulled the door towards himself and edged himself in, the small area where the door was had a weird forty five degree angle so the door opened about half way. Luckily he was fairly slim and also lucky he was under six feet tall, well that’s what he told people, in reality he was around five foot ten on a good day, any taller however and he’d hit his head on the lintel.
No sooner as he’d got through the narrow opening of the bathroom door that he was greeted by a reflection of himself in the mirror above the sink. “Oh god, I look terrible, and I didn’t even get drunk last night,” with a brief contemplation, “This is a new low for even me,” he said almost impressed.
…
Driving his 1974 brown Ford Cortina down the A535, he could see the main radio telescope of the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories looming over the trees in the distance, he never got used to seeing it, huge technological master piece poking it’s head up like a giant white sleeping robot. He often thought it funny they would build something like that out among the centuries old brick and stone homes dotted about the Cheshire landscape. He guessed that’s how it was going to be from now on, high tech and low tech living together.
He got to the final row of farm houses just before the drive way to the main laboratory buildings and down shifted to second, the short gear shift of the Ford was smooth and tight and it was so far one of his favorite cars he had owned.
Flicking the indicator stork to turn right, he made a quick look up the narrow road and swung the steering causing the tires to complain some.
He hadn’t noticed he had turned down his radio and could hear something familiar coming through, “Awesome!” Jeremy said to himself. He turned up the volume and was rewarded with what he thought it was, ABBA singing Waterloo. Their latest hit from 1974, he had bought the album when it first hit the shelves and had almost been successful in wearing out about half of side A with his ailing record player needle.
Last year had brought three major blessings to his life, a new job at the lab playing with the latest, or nearly latest PDP-10 computer system and multitude of connected tape drives. He bought a new car from a debatable car salesman from Salford just west of Manchester and the biggest was that his girlfriend had moved out. Although he would most likely putting the moving out of the girlfriend at the top in hindsight.
For a moment his mind flashed back to one of those final girlfriend moments “Cow was not getting to throw out my Beano’s, heck no!” he said to himself affirmatively. With that he blipped the accelerator pedal and up shifted to third while hitting the left bend right in front of the parking area of the smaller MKII telescope.
…
Brian walked back down to his office, the door was still fully open from when he and Jeremy had rushed through it on the way to the control room. With some trepidation he walked through the threshold and with the back of his hand, pushed it closed with his back to the door. This was one of those times we didn’t want government interference with something that could be an Earth changing, a real possibility that something other than humans were in the neighborhood. But, the cat was out of the bag and he had to make the call and soon or they’d be questions about why there was a delay.
He took some keys out of his pocket and thumbed through them finding a small Hales key. Bending forwards he keyed the desk drawer and pulled it opened and proceeded to finger through some of the folders until he found the red one.
He dropped it on the top of his metal task desk and causally sat down in his chair while sliding the chair towards the desk on its wheels.
The red folder was the one he’d never thought he’d be opening, it was the ‘what to do in the event aliens knock on the door, or, you get weird signals from space’. Strangely enough it was officially sequenced right next to ‘The Queen is coming for tea’.
On the front in big black letters were the words ‘TOP SECRET’. For extra security, it had built in elastic to keep the folder closed. Reassuring he thought, just in case it gets left out on a desk, no one would dare open it, or be capable as it was lock tight with a glorified elastic band.
He looked at it for a few moments and undid the high tech security band and checked the first page it held within.
He scanned down the page until he found what he was looking for, ‘In the event of unknown signal’.
The next line was easy enough for a ten year old to understand, ’01 991 372 4456′ ‘Ask for W2’. W2 was a contact at Whitehall, when he first started working at the dish, he was told very little about Whitehall, the little he was told was in a worse case scenario, there would be a phone number and you ask for W2 and there it was in black and white.
Brian leant over his desk and placed his fingers around the back of the bulky plastic two tone gray British Telecom GPO 706 rotary phone and brought it towards him.
Using his index finger he operated the rotary dial each time allowing his finger to brush against the chrome finger stop and releasing it with a rapid ratcheting sound as it reset.
When the number was complete, the ring tone at the receiver came through the handset. The number he dialed wasn’t a standard British number, it had too many digits, the number he dialed was on a special trunk line protected from EMP he assumed and eavesdropping.
Within only a few rings a somewhat posh sounding woman answered, pretty typical of your BBC newsreader Received Pronunciation ‘RP’ accent.
“Caller identification number,” she said very bluntly and without any other prompting or fanfare.
Brian forgot he needed that number she asked for and remember the small paper he kept in his wallet and started rummaging for it.
“One minute there, hang on,” Brian replied with the phone handset stuck between his ear and shoulder.
He finally found the paper and looked at the numbers “01 346 0987” which was really a disguise of the identification number.
“Six nil nine,” he replied to the operator.
The phone immediately transferred without any further conversation from the operator.
“This is W2,” a male voice with the same posh sounding accent answered.
Brian explained to the man named W2 everything he knew about the signal they received and the Argus machines being in the process of trying to decode the signal although he though it too complex for even the latest Argus computing power.
Surprisingly W2 didn’t really react the way Brian had thought he would, almost a matter-of-factly he seemed to accept Brian’s information as if it was a common thing to hear. Without much more to add he politely hung up the phone.
…
The man named W2 reclined back in his over sized black leather chair while replacing the handset on his desk phone causing a slight echo around his expansive office at Whitehall. The wood paneled walls and carpet absorbed most of the rebounding sound, but the hard floors that were exposed here and there still allowed for some sounds to reverberate.
“So they are here,“ he said to himself “About bloody time.”
W2 leaned back towards his desk and grabbed the phone again and picked up the handset.
“Joyce, get E7 for me,” W2 asked of his secretary in the adjacent office. W2 put down his handset and waited a few moments before the phone rang which he promptly picked up.
“Pierre. Our guests have arrived.”
Chapter 5 – 1975 Manchester …
He took his cuppa and walked back in to the living room to sit down and switch on the tele. He’d got as far as putting down his tea cup and saucer when the door bell rang for his specific flat.
“Bloody hell, it better not be a vacuum salesman again.” he said to himself.
Jeremy grabbed his red tartan style dressing gown that was still draped over the chair and walked out in to the hallway and down the stairs to the front door.
Through the semi opaque glass that occupied the top half of the front door he say a very similar outline, it was Stacy, girlfriend from hell, he corrected his thoughts, ex-girlfriend from hell.
“God what does she want ?” he muttered to himself as he unbolted the door like an old bolt action rifle and turned the main lock counter clockwise and with some trepidation, pulled the door open enough to expose the full width of his body, but enough to show Stacy she wasn’t immediately welcome to come in.
The air wasn’t too cold, the sun had enough warmth to make it fairly pleasant out for the time of year. Stacy was wearing her ash blond shoulder length hair in a loose curly style, which was a little different from her usual pony tail. She was wearing a just above the knee beige dress that had a multi colored waist band with matching V neck band with a faux white blouse underneath, making her look a little like a female cricket player. She was pretty and had a very European look to her soft facial features, soft green eyes, her eyebrows were darker than her hair which was fairly normal for girls he met from Europe. Stacy was definitely British, but maybe some foreign ancestry. Her nose was long and smooth and lips were almost a perfect shape and always full red lipstick.
He was only barely taller than Stacy, he was five foot ten and he liked to be much taller than his girlfriends, Stacy with high heels almost had her looking down at him.
He often thought maybe her beauty made up for some of their relationship pitfalls. He just couldn’t understand why anyone would be in need to get rid of some of his things for the sake of putting in some flower vases and other odd girlie things. He shuddered.
Nah he thought to himself, record collection, big issue, Beano’s bigger issue. Mine to keep.
“Stacy, thought you were a vacuum salesman, wore my favorite pajamas,” Jeremy joked.
Stacy smiled out of the corner of her mouth. Jeremy did have a sense of humor for the most part, she liked that about him, even though his personal priorities seemed a little self indulgent, no not indulgent, self centered was maybe a more accurate statement of fact, still a growing teen she thought half the time. He was one of those men that seemed to think everything revolved around them and their girlfriend or wife was an add on to their existence. Their four month relationship started well enough, but every time she tried to make his pigsty of a flat more like a home, Jeremy got bent out of shape like a Australian throwing stick that she couldn’t remember the name off hand. She liked her own flat far more and made a good excuse for not coming over more. Jeremy however didn’t like her flat for almost the exact opposite reasons, too much girls ‘stuff’ and smelling of flowers. The intimate part of their togetherness was good enough, he made her happy, but half the time her skin crawled with the thoughts of laying in the old bed he seemed to have for decades, she needed to gathered her thoughts.
“So I’ve been thinking. I think we can still make it together. I can change, I promise not to get you to throw out beanies or records,” Stacy said in a soft voice.
“Beano,” Jeremy corrected in a slightly condescending voice but trying not to be harsh on her.
Stacy raised an eyebrow at him. This was going to be harder than she thought. She moved towards Jeremy and put a soft hand on his arm.
“Please,” Stacy had a sullen expression, trying to get through to Jeremy’s softer side.
“I know we have a few differences, but you need to at least clean up from time to time and look at fulfilling other peoples needs too, like me, I need to feel special,” she said feeling a little emotional, oh God Stacy thought, surely she wasn’t going to start crying, has to be hormones, this shouldn’t be this hard to talk about.
She took a deep breath and continued, “Look Jeremy, I still love you ok,” Oh shit she thought, I used the L word ! She knew Jeremy didn’t like talking about that, and knew it was a mistake.
“Remember all the happy times sitting on the sofa where you held me like a pillow while we watched tele, those were fun, that was special for me,” Stacy took a break, she was doing all the talking and seemed like she was talking herself in to a far distant corner of nowhere.
“That’s just it Stacy, I like my way of doing things, I’m young, I don’t want to have flowers under my nose all the time, I like sitting by myself watching Doctor Who. Yes it was ok watching those other shows,” Jeremy said in his usual defensive way. Jeremy wasn’t good at this at all.
“Huh, you want to watch that silly show instead of being with me!” Stacy retorted. She felt furious, what a waste of time this had been, Jeremy was going to end up living like this by himself until he was eighty with hundreds of moth holes in that silly looking robe he insisted on wearing. At least he wore nice suits when they went out and had the latest hair style, that wasn’t embarrassing. Stacy caught herself trying to validate one thing for another. She was about to seemingly bury herself deeper when Jeremy cut in.
“There is just a lot going on at the dish, I’ll most likely be there a lot for the next few months,” Jeremy explained to Stacy trying to reject her offer with a valid excuse.
“It’s ok. I don’t mind,” She replied with more enthusiastic expression, trying her best to ignore all the demeaning remarks, maybe not totally deliberate, but they had thought behind them.
“Let me think about ok,” he said still giving the impression that there was a chance but really giving a maybe – probably – no way.
“Look, I have to go, have a lot to think about for Monday,” Jeremy said to her, hoping that was enough to end the conversation for now.
“Ok, think about it for me ok ?” Stacy said in a defeated tone.
“Sure, bye,” Jeremy replied as he slowly closed the door. Jesus, she is persistent Jeremy thought. He took a breath, turned and walked back up the stairs to his cold tea.
…
Looking up, she noticed the local British Telecom red phone box on the street corner and headed for it. Opening the door the odor of urine hit her nose which made her contort her nose and mouth. Some homeless or drunken person had obviously previously used it as their personal bathroom which wasn’t uncommon for street phone boxes.
“Hate this country!” she said aloud.
Placing a couple of large ten pence coins in the slot, she dialed the international operator.
“Number please,” said the operator with a polite British accent.
“Yes, Paris 1 34 19 12 12,” There was some noise on the line while the operator connected through from England to France, then a familiar French dial tone could be heard on the handset.
“Oui, qui est-il ?” (Yes, who is it?) Asked a man at the other end of the call.
“Il est Stacy,” she replied.
“Ne les choses fonctionnent ?” (“did things work out?”) Asked the man.
“Aucuns choses ne seront plus difficiles, il est trop préoccupé par le travail au laboratoire, ils ont trouvé quelque chose de grand.” (“No things will be more difficult, he is too preoccupied with work at the lab, they have found something big.”)
“Oui, oui – okay. vérifier la baisse pour obtenir des instructions,” (“check the drop for instructions”) said the man.
…
Stacy was angry at herself – breaking up wasn’t good trade craft and she shouldn’t have gotten frustrated with his idiosyncrasies, Jeremy could be ridiculous sometimes, but it was done, at least for now. She was young, younger than she looked and she knew she lacked some relationship skills and tradecraft, maybe a few more years she could have held it together to complete the assignment as directed.
For now, she’d wait until further instructions showed up at the dead drop. That’s my life right now she thought, wait.
Chapter 19 – 1995 Arizona …
With a small nervous laugh in his voice, “So who are you or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Yes Bob, you should probably ask,” Said Vicky with a very monotone voice. She wanted Bob to know something about who’s hands held his fate.
Bob raised an eyebrow not sure how to take that, he felt it wasn’t good for sure.
“You can for now call me … Natashia,” Vicky said pausing before saying her name, it wasn’t one she spoke often.
“I was hoping we would never meet again, thought you were long gone. Imagine my surprise when you end up as a transfer to my region,” said Vicky like she was talking to an old acquaintance.
“Natashia? That your real name ?” asked Bob hesitantly.
Vicky just raised her left eyebrow confirming his question. This guy asks the most obvious questions, no wonder he’s been shunted around Vicky thought to herself.
“Yes Bob, it’s my real name, Vicky is just one of many aliases if you must know,” Vicky said with a condescending tone.
“You, you were just a kid on a plane, how comes this now ?” Bob stammered.
“I mean how did you get to be deputy director ?”
…
Vicky knew it was unfortunate that Bob, weasel of a little man Bob was most likely not going to talk his way out of this. She knew things Bob didn’t, she knew a dozen different ways to kill Bob without breaking a sweat, Bob didn’t know a single way to stop those dozen things from happening, it was like she could see the future, she knew what was going to happen, when it was going to happen and to who it was going to happen. Bob was clueless, he was still talking, she was not listening. He was mistaken thinking he may still win the day.
Vicky started walking towards Bob, she was only ten or so strides away. During those final strides Vicky spoke, “Bob, I would like to say it was a pleasure. It wasn’t.”
Bob raised his hands a little in defense, “But wait, look we can come to some arrangement ok, hun come on!” Bob was starting to whine with nearly every thing he said.
Vicky aggressively doubled her march towards Bob, and with an agitated tone she spoke, “I told you – never call me hun!” and simultaneously struck him in the throat with the outside edge of her right hand.
He felt something not right, windpipe or vocal cords, he held his throat to try and ease the pain, but then to his horror he felt weightless somehow, what is it ? No! he realized he can see the edge of the parking deck, to his horror he knew he was falling! Shit! Shit! he tried to scream but couldn’t, he flailed his arms and legs around for a few seconds not knowing what to do, grab something, Got to be something to grab!! He felt the warm evening wind rush by, Maybe someone can help he me somewhere ? Bob’s vision quickly turned red, then black. Bob’s thoughts stopped, optimistic to the last he’d be saved.
“Bye – Bob,” Vicky said as she heard a sickening thud on the ground below, the sound of bones breaking within muscle tissue.
…
Within a minute she was out of the parking deck and on a parallel road to highway 101. Vicky could see blue flashing lights heading towards her and the other cars that she merged with, like some inbred natural response to emergency vehicles, they all moved over, including Vicky. The three patrol cars screamed past on the way to the hotel parking deck. Bob had drawn attention to himself.
Vicky and the other cars pulled out back on to the road and Vicky continued on to a ramp to the 101. She grabbed the handset to her bulky cell phone and pressed speed dial number one.
“Hello ?” a man answered
“Hey Mike, I left the office, on my way home, be there in ten minutes,” said Vicky with a soft sweet voice.
“Good, starving, dinner just needs heating,” replied Mike.
“Ok, see you soon, love you!” said Vicky excitedly.
“Bye baby,” Mike finished.
Vicky peered in to the night trying not to think of the evening’s events. That was Natashia, not Vicky, she had to be Vicky now.
Chapter 20 – Arizona …
Jeremy had an auto-track setup to monitor Bob from Stacy’s first venture in to the United States some ten years before. The auto-track system was based upon some of Douglas’s code recovered from the IBM tapes and then adapted by the Søren Khader Group. People like Jeremy and the other programmers at SKG developed systems that put many government national security agencies to shame as they had made it their life’s work to hack into systems that had been compromised by the Enlightened Group and by complex data parsing, heuristics and cross referencing made it possible to magically track people. It had notified Jeremy that Bob was on the move to Arizona. Arizona was where Stacy was last known to be and Jeremy was hoping two and two was going to add to four. Bob worked for the US government and so did Stacy although now Jeremy knew her to be Vicky, he just couldn’t get used to the new name.
…
They drove for about forty minutes until they got near a hotel just off the interstate. Vicky drove into the parking deck and stopped on the ground level. Then waited.
What is she waiting for ? thought Jeremy watching the time on the Buick dash board.
Jeremy called Wil on the cell phone.
“Where you at ?” he asked Wil.
“Was at a bar for a while, Bob just left and is still heading north,” Wil said.
Could he be coming here ? Jeremy Thought.
7:30pm rolled around and Jeremy was getting anxious. Then Vicky got out of the Volvo and carried what looked like a coat with her to the stair well door. Jeremy was parked a safe three lanes over and jumped out as soon as the stairwell door closed behind her. He looked around and then sprinted to the same door and looked through the little wire meshed shatter proof window.
Nothing. Jeremy carefully opened the door to listen. He could hear her climb the stairs fairly quickly and was maybe two flights up already. He pushed open the door a little further so he could get through and looked up between the stairs. Up she went to the fifth level and exited the stairs. The door was fairly noisy too. That isn’t going to work he thought. Jeremy darted back to his car and pulled out of his space and accelerated quickly to the ramp going up to deck four. Once he got there, he found the nearest place to park and ran up the ramp to deck five, thereby avoiding the stair well door.
…
He checked his watch, it was 7:58pm.
Jeremy heard the squeaky door open and Bob stepped through. What the hell is this ? Jeremy thought, a secret meeting with Bob. So maybe this is a new agent ?
Jeremy ran his fingers over the stubble on his chin thinking.
Bob was walking over to the far side of the deck to where the coat was. Wait a minute. Bob you idiot. Jeremy knew something was up, Bob was either a really competent agent or a fool.
Jeremy noticed Bob just about reaching the coat when Vicky came out of the shadows. He couldn’t tell what they were talking about from that distance. He could see part of Bob, he was making startled looking hand gestures while Vicky moved aggressively towards him.
Crap! The hairs on Jeremy’s neck stood up like bamboo shoots. Bob was gone, Vicky pushed him over the deck.
Vicky started to turn. It was time for Jeremy to get down the ramp to his car and rush down to the ground level and fast.
Jeremy had just got down to the final ramp went he saw Vicky come out of the stair well and walk towards her Volvo. She didn’t waste much time leaving, Jeremy just continued driving as if he just finished parking like a regular guest.
Vicky pulled out in to the traffic followed by Jeremy. Then a bunch of blue and white flashing lights started coming down the street.
Jeremy called Wil on the phone.
“Wil, time to leave. Bob’s dead.”
“What ? He just got out of his car five minutes ago !” replied Wil.
“Tell me about it. Tailing Vicky right now, just head home. Thanks,” said Jeremy. Jeremy had seen too many good people killed at the hands of the Enlightened Group, many by Vicky’s hands. He didn’t know Bob personally, but he worked for the good guys, the US government, he had a family too.
After the police had gone past, Vicky and the other traffic pulled out and Vicky headed towards the interstate. Jeremy followed, intent on bringing this evening to an end.
They drove for about ten miles out to Scotsdale before getting off the interstate and on to surface streets. Another fifteen minutes and Vicky pulled on to a driveway of a fairly modest suburban home. I know where you are. Jeremy continued driving, he had to resist the urge to tackle her now, but now wasn’t the time, he’d be back.
Chapter 22 – 1996 Norway …
After Jeremy spoke with his mother, he had a name and it was not an Uncle, but a cousin, Gerthorn Karlsson of Karlsson Aktiebolag AB. Gerthorn knew Jeremy’s family so it wouldn’t come as a total shock to hear from him.
Jeremy picked up his phone and dialed the number his mother had given him and the other end of the connection rang with an unfamiliar Scandinavian dial tone.
“Dette er Gerthorn som snakker ?” This is Gerthorn who is speaking ? Said his cousin in his native Norwegian.
Speaking slowly, Jeremy replied “Hello, this is Jeremy Jones from England.” Gerthorn was pretty fluent in English having dealt with Britain considerably during business transactions.
“Ah, hello. Yes. I remember you. What can I be helping you with ?” Gerthorn asked genuinely interested trying to get the order of his English words in the correct order.
“Well, honestly, I need a change of scenery, I’m a partner in a computer company that pays me well, but I am no longer interested, honestly everyone else has a better handle on it these days. I would like to come to Norway for a while, maybe a long while,” Jeremy said with a hopeful tone.
“Sure, maybe you learn about water and mining, in stead yes ?” said Gerthorn. “When are you feeling you wish to come ?”
“Ah, is next week too soon ?” asked Jeremy a little hesitantly.
…
“So you got bored with sunny America then ? You not got girl back there ?” asked Gerthorn wondering if he’d need extra space in his house.
“No. Had enough of those for now. Had one that I crossed paths with a few times and it was explosive to say the least,” Jeremy said to Gerthorn with a slight smile meant more of a sign of bad times than good.
“Ah yes, heard through grapevine I think you say when I spoke with your Mor, ah, Mother. Vicky yes. Bad news she said.”
“Bad news is or was an understatement, I could tell you stories, but would require too much alcohol to get through,” Jeremy laughed.
They sat for a while talking about their families and relations, and then the Norwegian country side. Jeremy could tell he was very proud of his country. It was getting close to four in the afternoon and time to finish for the day and Gerthorn suggested Jeremy should stay in a spare room in his house as it was close by and fairly large which Jeremy graciously accepted.
“Ok. We shall leave now for day and introduce to my family,” said Gerthorn just as his desk phone rang. Gerthorn raised his eyebrows and smiled suggesting an impromptu delay while attempting an egress from his office.
“Ja hvem snakker ?” Yes who is speaking ?
“Is he there ?” an upper class English voice asked not caring about formalities or what the native Norwegian added to his greeting.
“Ja.”
“Good. Keep him on a short leash,” the Englishman replied and then abruptly hung up.
Gerthorn paused for a few seconds and put down the receiver of the phone forcing a smile.
“Problem ?” asked Jeremy.
“Nei, wrong number.”
“We go now, looks like more snow coming soon.”
Gerthorn and Jeremy both headed for the office doors and on to Gerthorn’s home together.
Jeremy smiled to himself as they left, he felt like a huge weight had been lifted from his soul, he breathed deeply free from worry, he was ready for a new day and new start to his life.
Chapter 23 – NYC 1996 …
He walked on another few hundred yards and could no longer hear the details of the argument, but something struck him about the car repossession. He looked around and saw a few homes for sale, some listed way below list. He stopped. What if ? He thought. What if we controlled most of the banks that gave out the loans to the poorer people, then inevitably a lot, not all of those people would default. It wouldn’t help if it was a trickle of people, we’d need another set of events put in motion to push everything to the edge, but with hundreds of thousands of loans on homes and cars suddenly defaulting, that could get the effect his superiors were looking for !
“Ha, that’s it !” he spoke aloud. He’d would bring that up on Monday when he had a secure line. It would be a plan a decade in the making, but when set, it would spring like a bear trap.
Investment banks and depository banks need to work together, get intertwined, Nathan decided, right now they were separated by the Glass-Steagall Act. He decided they’d need to somehow get repealed, that way with either one could bring the other down. His idea was getting better by the minute.
But the credit rating agencies would be sure to red flag all these loans ? Nathan question himself. Unless those agencies were fed invalid numbers so they would fail to accurately the price any of the risks that normally would show up, akin to the resetting of the ILS system at an airport and having blind planes hit the ground thinking they were at a higher altitude. He had plenty to present on Monday, his financial writers block was clear. Nathan still had to come up with a good trigger.
Chapter 23 – NYC 2001 …
“Crap that was low!” said a man standing at Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan looked around and saw the whole street of people had also looked up and had expressions of disbelief as to how low it was.
It didn’t seem like more than a few seconds when everyone in the street he was standing heard a different noise, a huge gut wrenching impact, a mixture of tearing metal, a rumbling explosion and a distinct lack of engine noise.
Nathan looked around, people had come to the same conclusion, the plane that had just flown over had hit something, most likely a building, they just stood, mouths wide open.
Nathan was way too close, he hailed the first yellow cab he saw and headed north, quickly.
The cab had gotten a dozen city blocks away when Nathan and the driver heard another low flying plane. Both men looked up and out the window as they saw a dark colored commuter jet fly south.
Nathan tapped on the driver’s shoulder, “Go go!”.
Nathan sat back in the back of the cab, he knew what the trigger event was now, or so he thought. It would be a few hours until he saw the full scale of the destruction of project Tungusta.
Chapter 25 – 2015 Final run …
Joshua Leski was a senior hardware and software technician within the US intelligence agencies, NSA, CIA, FBI, he’d worked for them all and for the last nine months he was with Naval Intelligence. Each one of the agencies had computer systems, each one so far had UNCLE plugged in.
The final location in the decades long project was the NSA Utah data center. At each of the technology sites the Enlightened Group had at least one senior operative that could open enough doors that someone like Joshua could, with a certain amount of serendipity get in and have enough time to insert UNCLE to then be undetectable.
Today had been long, there was an abnormal amount of foot traffic though the server racks and Joshua had to prematurely end installing UNCLE multiple times. Unlike a simple application that had a nice clean installer for a PC, UNCLE had to be installed in a segmented fashion, each part by itself was unusable, but with all the code components communicating, it more than the some of it’s parts. Some of the components were pure binary which had been pre-compiled offsite which would override the original source code. The binary modules were carefully disguised within the motherboard chipsets of the massively powerful mainframe systems. Because UNCLE was hidden in not only hardware, but software too, it would take the removal of the entire system to rid the backdoor hack. All Joshua now needed to do was to push the passphrase into the system and it would boot. Joshua had a special interface that covered physically the compromised chip on one of the boards allowing him direct access via a smart phone.
As soon as the interface was attached, the application on his phone prompted for the phrase, Joshua typed twice the words rumpelstiltskin fenix. The second part of the phrase fenix was deliberately misspelled using the Old English spelling of Phoenix.
Watching the cell phone display, a series of percentage gauges started rapidly moving left to right signifying various stages of file transfer and encryption. It would only take about a minute, but that minute felt to him like an hour.
He was done, time to leave as soon as he could and meet his contact. Joshua gathered up the hardware components and placed them in a hidden part in his brief case, it was X ray and metallic scan protected, walking through security was no different than passing through a paper bag with a sandwich. Somehow the case could bend X rays rendering the contents effectively invisible. How this worked was above his pay-grade.
Looking around, he stood up, straightened his Navy whites and with a purpose headed for the security door where he punched the five digit code to exit the room along with swiping an electronic key card. The door lock clicked allowing him to leave the server room and head into a main hallway. Apart from a few other people in various military uniforms rushing around with stacks of folders and brief cases, he was in essence by himself. Walking at a fast pace he negotiated around the maze of corridors until he got to the main entrance and security, he was nervous even though he knew they would find nothing. Joshua placed his case on the conveyor belt and walked through the metal detector to the other side and waited for his case.
Finally his case came through, but before he could grab it he heard a voice from behind.
“Sir. Open the case please.”
Joshua could feel sweat build up on his collar.
“Sure, no problem,” he replied calmly.
Joshua opened the case and turned it towards the security officer who moved around some papers and scrutinized the felt backing for what seemed forever Joshua thought.
Finally the security officer ushered Joshua through which he was truly happy for. Outside of the pair of data warehouses he had a car waiting as their wasn’t regular parking for security reasons, the driver seeing Joshua coming got out of the drivers seat and ran around to open the rear passenger door allowing Joshua to get in.
With the driver in the car, Joshua said “Ok, lets go, quick, this place gives me the creeps.”
…
Vicky finished her coffee and kissed Mike goodbye.
Mike was also heading out to oversee installation of a large art project at a local public library. Over the years Mike had become fairly well known locally for his metallic artwork and sculptures.
Both waved to each other as they drove off the driveway and in different directions, Vicky managed to strike a deal and would be getting to keep her nearly new Ford Fusion, one of the few cars other than the ancient Mini Cooper she liked to drive.
Vicky had driven no further than a few hundred yards when her cell phone rang, it was unlisted.
“Yes,” Vicky said knowing that it would be her handler.
“Have a down agent at Flagstaff medical, there is a light aircraft waiting at Coyner airstrip. The agent has a critical key code you need to secure,” said the female handler.
“Understood, on my way,” said Vicky. Great, have to find an excuse for today she thought, luckily being far enough up the hierarchy at the bureau meant she didn’t need to explain much to anyone.
During the drive to the small airstrip west of Phoenix she called her office and Mike with the necessary plausible stories. The group often used small private airstrips to get agents in and out of town quickly mostly due to the logistics involved with scheduling a commercial flight and the time required for security and boarding.
It took Vicky only thirty or so minutes to get to the airstrip which was based in a large city block but devoid of housing. Right through the middle was one large dirt landing strip. She entered the airstrip through the north side which had a few office buildings with planes parked outside, one of which was the groups plane which she’d used before.
Standing next to it was the pilot finishing pre-flight checks on a Cessna TTx. Vicky had used the pilot a few times before and trusted his abilities. In his late thirties, he was the usual professional looking type with a chiseled jaw line and a slight tan, from prior conversations an ex-C130 hauler and now flew F15’s and C-12’s for the Florida Air National Guard.
Vicky parked her car and walked over towards the pilot who let her in to the passenger side safely as the engine was running, technically the plane didn’t have a passenger side as it was dual control, but the pilot preferred flying from the left seat. While the pilot walked around the rear of the plane Vicky put on the headset and got buckled in.
Her pilot Gregory hopped in to the pilots seat and strapped himself in and got the plane taxing along the dirt strip. The group chose the TTx specifically for it’s short take off ability, longer air time and speed.
With a short acceleration spurt, the plane was airborne and turning north towards Flagstaff.
With a slight crackle over the headset, Gregory said, “Been told this should be a quick turn around, I’ll keep the motor running.”
“Yes hopefully. This is a high value run, you have your sidearm ?” Vicky asked.
“Yes Ma’am, already been apprised of the situation. Trip should be around 45-50 minutes,” said her pilot.
Vicky spent the short time in the air thinking about the future assuming there was one and how she’d handle the next couple of hours, watching the ground gently move by a few thousand feet below helped her meditate somewhat.
Vicky watched as the pilot brought in the light aircraft into the local air strip just a few miles west of Phoenix, she’d been in similar planes so often, Vicky wondered if it was as easy as it looked, it was one of her retirement plans, learn to fly.
Getting out of the plane, Vicky headed over towards the hangers and an awaiting rental car for her to use. With any luck it’ll be a quick trip in and out she thought.
…
Dr Morrow inserted one of the syringes in to the first bottle and measured out a dose then handed the bottle back to the nurse. Then with a little hesitancy he injected it in to a port of the IV line.
They all watched intently as Joshua very slowly opened one of his eyes, he was unable to move much of his body due to broken bones and significant internal injuries. The pulse ox monitor and other equipment monitoring his vitals were already barely giving any readings, the doctors didn’t expect Joshua long to live.
Vicky leaned over to his ear and spoke quietly two words, “candlestick sunrise.”
This was a trigger word that all the GV28 agents knew, it allowed agents who had never met to authenticate themselves.
Vicky turned to the attending doctor and nurse and nodded to them to leave. Once they had closed the door behind them Vicky started asking questions of Joshua.
“What is the pass phrase ?”
Joshua blinked a few times and tried to talk but barely any noise or air emanated from his mouth.
Vicky grabbed a notepad and pen from the table and gave them to Joshua.
Very slowly and scrawly he wrote out the pass phrase, it seemed to take forever given his weakness.
“Thank you,” Vicky said as she ripped the paper from the notepad along with the subsequent half dozen more to not allow anyone to take the indented pages.
Joshua started to convulse in a reaction to the drugs and his injuries. The machines attached to him started to bleep and shrill. Moments later the doctor and a few other nurses came running in with a crash-cart. During the commotion Vicky subtly left the room, Joshua’s death appeared to have been accelerated, Vicky was actually in a way grateful as she didn’t have to hasten Joshua’s trip to the afterlife.
As quickly as she could Vicky walked to the elevators and got off the patient floor, it didn’t matter now who got in her way, she had what she had come for.
Vicky got out to her car in the parking deck and took a few breaths, her age was getting the best of her, not a spring chicken anymore babe she thought to herself. She got herself in to the drivers seat wincing a little with a sharp pain in her hip. She reached into her handbag and pulled out some over the counter pain meds and took two, she figured it’ll hold her over until she got home. Taking one last look around to make sure no one was chasing her out of the hospital she pulled away from the parking deck and headed south to the airstrip once again. Vicky expected to be back at the plane by around midday and then home by around three if she was lucky.
She hadn’t gone far when a car parked near the corner of highway 40 pulled out behind her barely missing another van who’s driver leant on his horn for what seemed like forever.
Vicky drove for a little way keeping an eye on her possible tail. Who are you ? She thought. Before she got too preoccupied by it, Vicky turned off forty and made a direct south bound drive to get on I-40 about half a mile south, it was a viable route to take so not making it obvious to a professional that she’d made them, but also something that the other car shouldn’t also do if they were just out shopping.
Looking in her mirrors she saw the car also turn, no mistaking it, Vicky had a tail by agencies unknown. For now there wasn’t much she could do except get to the plane and get airborne.
Vicky dialed her cell phone, “Gregory, get the plane running, I have a tail from the hospital.”
“Will do, we’ll be good to go,” replied the pilot in his usual professional manner.
Vicky now on the interstate saw an opportunity, a semi-tractor driving in the middle lane. Vicky accelerated past it and keeping an eye on her tail, she moved in front of the truck, then moved over to the slow lane. After about ten seconds she slowed enough to be covered by the tractor cab.
The car that was tailing her then edged in front of the semi truck, Vicky slowed and letting the truck and it’s trailer completely obscure her. The next exit was only a mile, staying where she was in the blind side of the truck kept her safe until the off ramp which she took while still checking for any other tails, but there were none all the way to the plane.
During the flight back, she was trying to think of who was tailing her, they were definitely not consummate professionals for sure, totally the opposite, rank amateurs.
Given the importance of what she was carrying, it made no sense to her.
Chapter 37 – 2021 …
By the time the ground crew and alien contingent entered the main building, a small convoy of black SUV’s entered the building perimeter road that originated from the FBI field office thirty five miles north west. The White House had decided they wanted some boots on the ground as far as the talks that were going to imminently take place.
Reporters and NASA security fumbled to get out of the way in order to let them through the impromptu check point that was set up. In perfect unison the half a dozen SUV’s screeched to a halt about fifty yards past the erected shuttle and directly in front on the main doors. The motorcade security personnel all jumped out opposite doors barely before the vehicles stopped in order to cover the building side and exposed side. All armed with short barreled M4 rifles and their usual signature dark suits and glasses.
Some of the security assisted some local government officials out that were going to be taking part in talks at the last minute. Once out, they were rushed through the doors while being covered by the armed security.
The mission crew and aliens alike were started by all the commotion at the doors and the somewhat rude injection of additional outsiders.
“Good afternoon people,” said a very boisterous and authoritative voice from a tall and well build official that had just moments ago got escorted from a government vehicle.
Senator J.P. Johnson was one of those get things done and get it done yesterday kind of people. Not a great people person, but renown for getting two groups to get on the same page by pleasantry or force.
…
Eric and Johnson caught eyes, Eric wasn’t impressed.
“We welcome some assistance, thank you” Eric said to the new interlopers.
“Well, I’m sure more than that, we’ll be needing some office space, and somewhere we can conduct negotiations,” the Senator fired back “Can you take care of making the arrangements ?” he followed.
“I’m sure someone can sort that out, I’ll get someone to look in to for you later day,” Eric said dryly.
The aliens were not worse for where, to them it was just basic human dialogue, but to the other humans present, they could tell something was up. David’s hair on the back of his neck stood up, he could feel the tension in the air about as strongly as licking a nine-volt. Susan who was tagging along with David gave him a discrete nudge and out of the side of her mouth said “Am I missing something, sounds tense.”
“Looks tense,” David replied half focused on the dueling duo.
David, not one for letting opportunity go to waste …
“So you know each other ?” David asked with a semi fake question.
Eric had gotten used to David’s off the cuff sarcasm so didn’t bat an eyelid. He managed to accomplish a sideways look and raised left eyebrow from the Senator.
Susan gave David a sharp poke in the left rib as retribution and in reply David pursed his lips together but decided not to make any noise, instead placed his right hand across on to his latest wound.
…
The same woman who had defused the Eric and Senator issue a little while before was taking various notes during the meeting, she had notice some of the humans in the room getting the ‘I need out’ look so at first opportunity spoke up.
“Senator, maybe time for a small break ?”
“Yes Nancy, maybe you are right, a good time for five minutes” the Senator agreed. The Senator trusted his assistant Nancy Glenn, she’d worked with him for a number of years and tended to be his rudder in the storm.
Slar’Mok turned to Eric and Eric anticipating the question, “Short break, humans get bored very quickly with this kind of stuff.”
“I see. We are used to long meetings, some have lasted days on previous missions,” Slar’Mok added.
“Hope you had bathroom breaks,” Eric said jokingly.
“Yes. Is that normal here too ?” the alien replied not realizing a partial joke. Eric ushered to the larger alien to get up and wonder over to the refreshment area behind them. At the same time the rest of the group rose and mingled around.
“Not sure whether any of these items you can digest ? Water, crackers?” Eric quizzed Slar’Mok and the other few aliens that had gathered.
“Water, yes that is quite normal. Crackers are something we are not as familiar. Basic food items on your planet are fine, but you also have a considerable amount of chemical additives. Our science officer Da’Luk will scan those items to make sure there are no problems,” Slar’Mok said and with that motioned for Da’Luk to scan the food items for any chemicals that could be potentially harmful and would if digested put a dampener on the day.
Da’Luk pulled a hand held sized device from his front pouch in his flight suit and laid his fingers across the smooth surface. The more technically inclined humans raised their necks so they could peer around the gathered aliens.
The device made some strange bleeps and other semi language sounding noises for a few seconds.
Da’Luk turned to the group of aliens, “All these fine, except that item,” he pointed to a bowl of triangular chips with a red coloring.
“Those will cause digestive system discomfort and many cycles in medical isolation,” he finished.
“Oh buffalo flavor,” David stated.
“I can see why, I can’t stand those either.”
“Buffalo ?” Su’Lak spoke back, “You have food items to taste like animals ?”
“Uhm sometimes,” David replied.
“Now you mention it, weird concept.”
…
“So we have water over there in bottles, those other bottles are what we call soda and the thing at the end of the table is a coffee machine, if any of you wants to try it, let us know and we’ll try and figure it out, I don’t drink coffee and that is a fancy machine with more controls than I’m comfortable with. I’ll leave the demonstration to our resident coffee expert Derek,” said Eric and making a open hand gesture to Derek.
The aliens looked around and carefully picked and poked at some of the snack items, chips, little sandwiches. Some very odd facial expression in response to taste and texture. Once they had sampled a few things, they started filling up the little bowls and chatting amongst themselves.
Su’Lak picked up one of the soda bottles and remembering on of the public broadcasts turned the red cap which made a hissing sound. He held the bottle at arms length in case it exploded.
The other humans thought this quite amusing. Once the noise stopped, Su’Lak opened the cap fully which let some of the fizzy mixture to overflow on to the carpet.
Su’Lak at this point was beside himself for causing a mess.
“It’s ok, it does that sometimes, the carpet is already dirty,” Derek re-assured Su’Lak along with a pat on the shoulder.
Su’Lak brought the bottle to his mouth and took a mouthful. Su’Lak’s eyes widened and his short stubby nose flared in panic.
He quickly swallowed the substance known as soda and gave out some very strange alien words.
He turned to Derek and said “you drink this recreationally ? It is like putting engineering clearer in ones mouth.”
…
“What is this ?” the alien inquired of Derek while pointing at a slender yellow object wrapped in clear plastic.
“It’s a ‘cheese stick’,” replied Derek.
“It has a good taste, cheese is a solidified dairy product. Meaning its an animal secretion shaped in to a stick. Ok, it doesn’t sound fun, but try one, it’s not like industrial cleaner.”
Su’Lak grabbed one and fiddled with the plastic wrapper for what seemed like forever. Then eventually got it pealed back. He took a quick smell and recoiled just a tad, then smelled again. Once he had decided that the smell was okay, he took a bite off the end. He waited for something bad to happen in his mouth for a few seconds. When nothing did, he chewed the rest.
He made a odd moo sound ironically.
“This does have a good flavor and does not taste like cleaner. These sticks of cheese I like,” Su’Lak stated satisfactory to Derek.
Su’Lak lent towards the table and grabbed a handful and put them in his flight suit pocket. He then looked back at Derek who had a facial expression that he now understood as a smile.
…
Nancy made eye contact with the Senator and he automatically made his way over.
“The crew are leaving shortly and Slar’Mok wishes to bid a brief farewell,” Nancy told the Senator in a diplomatic tone.
“Quite, safe trip and we shall be in contact with your ship tomorrow to make any additional arrangements that is usual with this kind of contact such as bringing in ground based accommodations for extended ground crew,” the Senator communicated to Slar’Mok.
“Yes we will be listening to the channel,” Slar’Mok replied. He turned away from the Senator and in his native tongue spoke to his crew members “We are returning to the Kratmor, assemble for shuttle embarkation.“
All the aliens stopped what they were doing and started to gather in an orderly three wide column. Some of the aliens who had started a report with some of the humans said farewells.
Su’Lak said his farewells to Derek and was in the process of turning and walking towards the quickly forming alien crew ranks when Derek tapped Su’Lak on the arm with a cheese stick. “You forgot one.”
Su’Lak looked down at the stick and took it from Derek.
“Yes you are quite write Derek Foster, I did forgot one,” Su’Lak replied back. He continued turning away and lined up with the rest of his crew with his pockets noticeably bulging with his cheese stick acquisitions.
2021 – 2025 European terrorist group (KEI) …
Belgium during the autumn was still fairly warm, street side restaurants in Bruges had the usual chairs and tables outside. Leon Baert was walking briskly along one of the main squares in the old town center looking for his friend from university, a long blonde haired fellow by the name of Daan Beckers. They had all arranged to meet a vibrant and what he had heard on the grape vine, opinionated, man in his late twenties who he never got the name of. But he would soon find out as right at the end of the aisles of wooden furniture he saw the group and the his friend Daan.
As he drew closer, he could see the new face of the discussion group being very animated, both in his face and the way he enthusiastically threw his hands around while talking. Reminded him of a young Magnus Pike, a television based scientist of the 1970’s and 1980’s he had seen on re-runs of British TV shows. It made him smile for a moment before leaning in and giving Daan a friendly nudge hello.
“Daan, how are you my friend,” said Leon.
“Ah Leon, glad you got here, so many demonstrations, trains and buses and messed up more than usual.”
“This is Mathis. Mathis Peeters. He also attends College of Europe, European Law and Econ,” continued Daan.
Leon nodded with satisfaction towards Mathis.
All the gathered group had one major thing in common, the arrival of extraterrestrial beings, they called them “witte plakken“ in Dutch, they all came from the north of Belgium so all spoke Dutch and English. Many people saw the “witte plakken“ as a kind of invaders even though nothing had been mentioned them as being such a thing.
The assumption was that if they hadn’t shown up guns blazing, then they were here to subvert governments to enslave humanity, becoming a new type of normality hiding social shackles. Either way, they had decided to gather members and take to the streets to spread the word with hopes to persuade each government to show the aliens the door.
Leon had pulled up one of the nearest chairs and Mathis had started talking up a storm about what the people needed to do and stating that the aliens had already started subverting Europe because of all the social crack downs that had been brought to bear. Leon lent in more, eyes wide open and let the words of freedom permeate his mind.
Leon started to get a little cold and realized darkness had surrounded them, They were mesmerized by Mathis’s personality and totally lost track of time. Mathis smiled and leaned back in his chair.
“So what do you all think ? Can you find more people, get flyer’s printed ?” Mathis said to them both.
“We need to make cells, get people in charge of those cells and gather more people, we need to be an iceberg, show the government what they need to see and have the weight of ten times to push,” Mathis said.
“Ok, lets get to work, meet here again same time in a week,” Mathis told Leon and Daan before looking around briefly and dismissing himself in to the night.
Daan and Leon looked at each other nodding in silence.
They both knew two people they could speak to that night, Lotte Smet and Lena Geerts, both girls were almost as persistent talkers as Mathis, unfortunately that was for all subjects, Leon had been on the wrong side of a three and a half hour conversation about nineteen different ways of cutting and cooking potatoes.
“Sure drop by their place on the way home, I have to give some books to my aunt this evening,” Leon said to Daan hopping to excuse himself. Knowing Daan and girls, he fell for it. Daan may kick his shins the next day, but it may be worth it.
…
“It’s pleasing to see you again Leon,” said Mathis with a smile. “What do you think of our progress?” Mathis said turning his head and gaze throughout the re-purposed coffee shop, his right arm gesturing in an outward motion with an obvious comedic flair, but containing a subtle mention of see what I have created. Leon let it go based on the humor that may have been intended, Mathis was a man of charisma after all.
“Daan, Lena, you together now ?” Leon asked.
Lena and Daan smiled confirming the question.
“Yes, things just fell in to place when we started working together on KEI,” Daan replied.
“Oh, by the way, that’s what we came up with about a week back, Keep Earth Isolated, has a ring too it don’t you think?”
“Sure does, I saw the car stickers in the box,” Leon said pointing back to the shipping boxes.
“Things seem to be really moving, how many members do we have ?” Leon asked at the group in general.
“Four thousand give or take,” Mathis said very nonchalantly, but with some pride in his voice.
Leon couldn’t help his astonished look, “Four thousand? Thousand!”. “Wow!” Leon said slapping himself on the forehead with a huge grin. Grabbing a chair, he sat down.
“We can seriously change some minds around here, Europe as a whole, few months and everyone will know us!” said Leon enthusiastically.
“Isn’t it just!” Lena chimed in with her bubbly personality.
“We’re getting some protests organized too, once more members are in, all the group leaders are going to hit the streets at the same time, billboards, everything! Going to be so cool!” Lena said to Leon.
“Lena and Lotte are going to head up our multimedia online front, website, donation sites, social media. We already have some fairly wealthy patreon’s donating directly, that how we’ve managed to get all the brochures completed so fast,” Mathis said.
“Nathan. I saw a video online yesterday showing a witte plakken, the guy doing the video said they can touch people and infect them with virus’s and that under their skin, they are really hideous. Is that true?” Leon asked.
“Donno, hard to say, could be true real easy, they could excrete viral material that’s not harmful to them. That’s why we have to convince our governments to stop them, just can’t take the chance, our entire ecosystem could get damaged. There is a lot of good computer generated video about these days, hard to separate fact from fiction.”
Everyone nodded, even some people standing nearby overhearing the talk at the table.
…
A couple of weeks had past since they had tested their guinea pig DNA, Helena was the test subject as she had already had DNA processed before for various genealogy sites when she was in her teens. With some fine tuning, the donated equipment was giving them a fairly decent match with Helena’s original sequenced results. Now they were just baby siting the class room everyday except no kids, just computers that at least didn’t speak back.
“What’s that ?” said Lars straining to hear through the heavy class room door.
“Huh?” said Enzo. Then continued “I hear to, foot steps, running.”
Lars, Enzo and Helena all stood up and moved over to the door and peered through the little square windows. It was Nathan. They opened the door so that he didn’t need to key-punch the key-code and secondly his rate of speed probably exceeded his ability to stop.
Nathan’s now amplified foot steps came to a halt with him bending over panting heavily.
The others looked at each other with bemused looks.
Nathan stood upright again “Package – sample,” with that he handed Enzo a small shipping box addressed from Texas.
The group had smiles on their faces from ear to ear. Now to see if all the gear acquisition was worth it thought Lars.
“Great, hopefully the sample from the alien actually has DNA, we’ve assumed they do. If not we’ll be figuring things out with microscopes,” Said Helena.
They all thought about that, for all their combined IQ, none of them had considered that they’d be dealing with something with no common reference DNA.
Enzo placed the package on the nearest lab counter and took the small pen knife from his pocket and slit open the box and took out the insulation. Inside there was pure gold to the science team. Not one sample but three.
“Check it out !” said Enzo pointing at the samples.
“Two liquid vials with a some kind of light blue substance, probably blood I assume, and a small zip lock bag with what looks like short hairs. No notes or anything else. No dates on the samples either,” He finished.
Nathan gestured towards the refrigerator, “We’ll keep them there until we can do another final test of the equipment,” he said.
They all nodded and got to work running another sample from Helena through the sequencer. Although the gear was old, it still made quick work of the DNA sample and it was time to test some from the alien.
Enzo got a small sample and ran it through the electron microscope. Enzo focused the eye pieces and magnification, “Wow!” he said, then focused some more “I’m maybe the first person to look at this! Amazing.”
“Guys, there is DNA here, X and Y for crying out loud !”
“Helena check it out,” Enzo said passing his seat to her.
She looked closely and indeed there were some tell-tale X and Y chromosomes that had separated from a nucleus. It wasn’t exactly what she knew from hundreds of human samples, but she knew what it was and it was close enough.
Helena sat back from the microscope and just stared at the wall for a moment. “He’s right, it’s DNA, so lets sequence it, now.”
Nathan was the true DNA guru so everyone let him run the samples through the sequencers. They had a total of three up and running and two were a pile of parts.
Nathan prepared the polymer based capillaries for the sequencers and started the machines, it would be a few hours for the initial results to show and then get assembled into something readable. To get a complete end to end sequence, they’d need to wait about three days, they had been lucky with the sequencers that when Lars Uncle stored the equipment, they had been some of the fastest, much faster than the first mass produced versions from around the 2010 era.
They all stood around like expectant fathers, including Helena, for the initial samplings to emerge. The sequencers sent the data directly to a system to ran an assembly to give a more human readable format. The screen started to render the DNA information which Nathan immediately understood.
“Yep, look at that. It’s for sure not human, but your average man in the street wouldn’t know the difference” Nathan said. “Once we have the complete genome, we’ll know what we’re dealing with, what it does and how dangerous it is,” Nathan paused “Then we meet with Mathis.”
…
“What do you have there Nathan ?” Asked Mathis with a friendly tone.
“We had no idea you would be able to get anything let alone get DNA analysis done,” said Mathis. Mathis allowed the science team considerable leeway in making contacts in the United States, he didn’t honestly believe anything would come of it, but if it did, he wanted to make sure everything came through him to handle the consequences.
Nathan hurriedly opened his laptop and put it on the nearest dusty desk after first trying to rub off some of the dirt, but it was futile.
The others in the science group watched Nathan with nervous excitement as they knew what they had found and how big that would be. Helena held back out of the way, she was ten years older than the young twenty something chemical wiz-kids and was more than content for them to run the show.
While Helena eyed the surrounding disused office, Nathan started clicking through screens of data charts and other analysis with the enthusiasm of a school kid, which he barely wasn’t.
“The real kicker was the core DNA and it’s amazing that they being aliens have a physical makeup based on DNA, it could have been anything,” said Nathan. Helena was now starting to pay attention.
“As you probably know if we compare human genome to a monkey we get a genetic difference of about 0.1 to 1.2 percent, it’s a tiny amount but enough to make us different by a long way. If you compare us with lets say Bovines,” Nathan said.
“Bovines ?” Mathis interrupted.
“Yes Bovines, uhm Cows,” Nathan replied back.
Mathis nodded with remembering some science classes.
“Anyway, Cows share about eighty percent of our DNA, that’s still a lot but it makes us even more different than us to monkeys. Cows still have four limbs, two eyes, heart, lungs and all the major organs, but they in no sense look like any humans I know,” Nathan said to Mathis.
“Except maybe that girl from last years class,” said Lars with a chuckle.
“Yes, I guess there is always an exception,” smile Nathan.
“Why are we talking about cows and monkeys ?” Mathis asked of Nathan.
“Ok, yes, getting there,” Nathan said while spinning around his laptop to show another graph and pointing to a big blue block of DNA sampling taking about 30% of the chart.
“See that blue part, well that’s our similarity with our sample alien. They share THIRTY percent with us,” Nathan said with a little more firmness than the rest of the presentation. He waited a few moments for it to sink in.
“It’s actually amazing they still look humanoid given the genetic drift, they could have quite easily showed up as six foot tall sheep looking creatures with eight legs. But well, there we have it, tall pasty white people with four digits and still two eyes and a nose with two holes. Well almost not two holes as they don’t really breath much air through their snout I guess it is, just a small amount. They’d do well climbing Everest. That’s the other thing, their DNA has been messed with, lung use is minimal but highly efficient and they have two hearts taking up the space. Unfortunately no matter what we did with the DNA samples, no nasty face eating monsters materialized,” finally Nathan finished and took a breath, Nathan deep down was a bit disappointed with their findings, he truly wanted to have something massive to show, big chest busting xenomorphs abruptly causing chaos and putting an end to their stay and Europe and the world cheering the KEI for saving them, but the truth is the truth.
The others in the group had huge smiles on their faces as they had been caught up in Nathan’s presentation and they thought that the shared DNA may happen to make the alien presence work out, contrary to what they originally thought when they joined the KEI.
It was that that caused them not to notice Mathis, Helena had seen it, or the lack of it. Mathis wasn’t phased with it at all, the truth, the hard facts of what they hoped to find. He looked like a person who had just been told something that he already knew and was a little bored almost with a retelling of a story.
Mathis pursed his lips while making some thoughts.
“Well done. I truly had no idea you’d be able to pull this off. I guess you had help at NASA no doubt ?” Mathis asked the group.
“Um yes, a man that got recruited through one of our dark web sites,” spoke Enzo.
“Yes I remember seeing the report. We were hoping to use him for another project, but never mind, it’s a win either way,” Mathis said, “Who else knows ? Hopefully you brought it here first so we can manage it ?”
The men in the group all nodded, except Helena, she had a bad feeling about something, something not right.
“That’s good. Thank you,” said Mathis while nodding to Jannes who had been patiently waiting off to the left of Mathis the whole time.
Helena suddenly got a strong electrical nervousness, just like she got when startled by something unknown.
…
Daan and Leon were panting pretty hard, they had barely escaped the French safe house and lost Lotte along the way. The Belgique security forces nearly caught them a couple of times around Bruges so they decided to get to one of the French safe houses, but the French appeared to be able to find them just as easy and the remaining trio of key KEI members couldn’t figure out how.
Daan heard the police sirens again getting closer along with helicopters nearby.
“We need to keep in the shadows, hopefully they don’t have infra-red,” Daan said to Leon.
Leon nodded back.
Daan saw a small alleyway about fifty feet away and pointed to it.
Both men darted for the opening just as the street behind them lit up with blue and red flashing lights.
Daan and Leon’s hearts sank when they realized there wasn’t any obvious way out.
They watched the opening of the alleyway as car after car sped past without stopping, except the last one in the convoy.
Both men had their rifles at the ready as four heavily armed police appeared at the alleyway about fifty feet from Daan and Leon.
“Leon, sorry brother,” said Daan as he open fired on the police officers. One of the officers went down after being hit in between his body armor and ballistic helmet.
The other officers fired back simultaneously hitting Daan in the chest multiple times, without the benefit of any armor, he dropped to the ground in front of Leon. Leon was directly behind Daan due to the alley was only five feet wide, Daan had provided Leon with enough cover that the bullets stopped hitting Leon.
“Drop your weapon! Drop it NOW!” shouted one of the French police officers in broken English.
Can I make the shot, get all three before they get me ? Leon thought to himself.
“DOWN! The weapon!” again shouted the French officer.
Leon looked down at his friend.
“Jamais vous les bâtards!” Never you bastards! Leon shouted back as he raised his rifle.
Shots rang out for a few seconds and silence.
Chapter 47 – Colorado 2027 …
The little wood cabin wasn’t fancy, but it was cosy. It was a few decades old, prefabricated log. Derek liked the intimate feel, specially during Christmas time. His family would come up there for a few weeks and decorate the place with more nik-naks than was thought possible. Right in the middle of the single story cabin was a huge two sided fireplace, the back side went through to the kitchen and was used a lot for cooking in stead of the actual oven. In the corner of the modest living room was a piano. Derek had seen the date of manufacture when moving it a few years back, it was made in 1950 by a company named McPhail. He’d researched it one afternoon and found it was one of the last they made. It made for a fine instrument of good times. Christmas carols and sometimes their Sunday family gospel hymns for when they couldn’t get to church. Derek wasn’t the most Christian of the family, he liked to think he kept his foot in the door in case of emergencies.
These days he spent a lot of his time in bed checking out the view down the mountain to the nearby town of Hotchkiss, snow had been falling a few days prior, thanksgiving was a little wet and cold. His various cancers over the years had finally got the better of him it seemed, and now he took time to read and catch up with some old television shows as that was all there was, not many new US made series these days. His family had put in a small bed in the living room in order to give him something more interesting to look at rather than plain walls.
How the mighty has fallen he thought can’t even produce decent TV shows. He smiled as a pair of crows landed just out side the window on the bird feeder. So y’all are back huh ? Should be somewhere warmer. Derek knew they found a nesting area in one of the barns that had some basic heating, yet for some reason they ventured out every few days and peered through the window at him, kind of a strange human zoo to them he reasoned.
A noise caught Derek’s attention outside on the wood decked porch. The front door handle squeaked just a little as it turned. Pair of heavy and slightly un-cordinated boots on the door mat, uhm, that’s an easy one.
The door closed behind the visitor and foot steps came plodding over to the bed over by the living room window. Then stopped.
“Hello brother. How are you today ? I see our little friends are back” Said Su’Lak.
Derek coughed roughly hoping not to bring up any blood as was the usual now.
“You know, if you gave up your day job, don’t try out as a hit man. I knew it was you. Boots are a dead give away” Derek said with a little chuckle followed by another smaller deep cough.
“Yes, I’d be a poor hitman, I’m as quiet as a mouse with a cow bell round it’s neck. Not to mention a poor shot” Su’Lak chuckled back. Over the years living with the humans, he’d learned a smoother use of the English language along with how to make jokes and understand whit. Also, dark humor to cover sad times.
“Cough not getting better ? Or did you try and eat all your breakfast in one go again without chewing” Su’Lak said.
…
“Wow that was something!” exclaimed Horris.
“Yup, sure was pop’s”
Su’Lak was a little less impressed, he’d seen quite a few space elevators in his time and some more artistic, but the humans got them built very fast he thought.
“Hey Buddy.” Derek said to Su’Lak. “Grab Harrison for me would ya”.
Su’Lak obliged by walking over to where it was hanging near the front door. They had an old handmade hat and coat stand made out of forest wood that had been cut to shape and polished with a deep red coloring. It according to Horris was made by his father back in the era of what the American human’s called the ’70’s.
Su’Lak gestured the handing over of Derek’s Stetson but Derek waved him away. “No, I don’t want it, not much use for it, it’s yours” Derek said. “You’ve always wanted it”.
Su’Lak knew how much Derek liked his hat, he looked at the hat for a little and back to Derek and nodded. He slowly put it on his head with a no uncertain amount of pride.
“How does it look ?” Su’Lak said to both men.
“Doesn’t quite match your flight suit, we need to rummage through some old clothes in the spare room and find you some jeans and a jacket that matches, think I’ve got an old Carhartt in good shape in there, but you look like a Foster” Said Horris.
Horris grabbed his walking stick and used it to get off his chair and continued to walk over to the spare room to check for the clothing he mentioned.
Su’Lak put his four digit hand in his right jump suit pocket and pulled out a small watch looking device.
“I have a gift for you to brother.” Su’Lak said to Derek.
“Oh, what ya got there?”
Su’Lak had a few of his facial stubs twitch nervously, Derek luckily couldn’t tell the difference, “It’s a sensor that Da’Luk adapted for me. It will alert me should … your vitals get low,” Su’Lak said with a certain amount of trepidation.
“I see, good idea I guess,” replied Derek.
“Yes I would like to be here …” Su’Lak didn’t finish the sentence, Derek knew. Su’Lak leaned over and laid the watch looking device on Derek’s wrist and it self wrapped and sealed. “There. Good for getting wet too. No need to remove, and … actually I’m not knowing how to remove it, Da’Luk did not give instructions.”
“Swell, does it at least tell the time?” Derek asked sarcastically.
“Actually no. But Da’Luk can remote program it for you”
“Praise be the Lord, I have a device to tell me when I’m dead,” Derek said with a smile, it’s all he did these days, he’d gotten past the stage of dread, doubts and fear, specially after many hours of conversations with his alien adopted brother Su’Lak. Even some alien races believed in the after life, which gave Derek some hope in his Lord and Jesus Christ that he’ll be among them too.
…
“Reckon you could get a seamstress in town to fix these up to fit. Some have holes the size of Mrs Watkins mouth after she’s been a drinking, those can be cut up for odds and ends” Said Horris to Su’Lak.
Su’Lak nodded and took the clothes.
“I have to get back to town and virtual-in to Houston. I shall be back in a few days.”
“Ok later bro” said Derek over his shoulder.
With that, Su’Lak turned and headed out of the front door careful not to drop anything and walked through the light snow fall to his very much used Dodge.
It wasn’t nice like Derek’s Ford, but it ran and got him around. It was however an automatic, Su’Lak never could get the hang of a manually operated vehicle. Su’Lak sat for a few minutes with the old gasoline motor running just staring down the dirt road. Well Su’Lak is between a rock and a six legged rampa. Su’Lak knew Derek had little time left before he expired, he knew Derek also knew. Neither of them had many options left. If he could, Su’Lak would simply shuttle him to the Kratmor and force some of the crew to reprogram one of the medical-indo’s to perform whatever surgery was needed. Su’Lak did however have patience and as the human’s put it, he had a trick up his sleeve, although this trick required time, more time than Derek currently had, possibly some level of El’Shad property theft along with maybe some purple marks on his record. If they pulled off all the required steps it would involve also not getting killed multiple times. Da’Luk was already part of the plan, although Su’Lak had accidentally on purpose forgot to mention some of the aforementioned listed penalties. Derek’s fate weighed heavy on Su’Lak’s hearts, his human brother would die and die soon.
With that thought, he put the old truck in gear and headed off to town.
…
“Su’Lak ! We are waiting!” shouted Slar’Mok in their native tongue from the loading ramp of the shuttle.
“I am not leaving until my father gets here !” Su’Lak snapped back at his superior, not caring about the consequences.
“You will be disciplined !” Slar’Mok replied
Su’Lak couldn’t care what Slar’Mok said, he was waiting.
“There he is, at the gate !” shouted Su’Lak over the noise of the idling shuttle engines.
Slar’Mok and the others were relieved, they’d finally get to leave the Earth and get on with another mission. Many of Su’Lak’s crew mates where appalled at his actions during the current mission, they were sure he’d be placed on discipline duties for the rest of his life time. Slar’Mok in particular would find some extra duties for him. It’s against better judgment but I wish him to fall out of an air lock at the earliest opportunity disgraceful crew member thought Slar’Mok.
Horris drove right up to the shuttle craft and hobbled out with his walking stick.
Su’Luk walked over and they embraced each other.
Slar’Mok looked away even more disgusted.
“I am glad you came father, I have something for you,” Su’Lak said loudly while handing Horris a letter. “Open it when I am gone, and before you do anything else.”
Horris leaned his head to make sure her heard over the noise and nodded. “I will. I will miss you sonny. I know Derek misses you too,” replied Horris.
Slar’Mok could contain himself no longer and walked over to Su’Lak. “We are leaving now, you disrespect us enough, get on the shuttle,” Slar’Mok said in English just to spite Horris, Su’Lak was sure, Slar’Mok could have used their own language.
Su’Lak felt furious at Slar’Mok, Horris knew exactly what Slar’Mok meant and tightened his grip on his walking stick. Su’Lak could tell by Horris’s face that he was about to do something rash with his stick to Slar’Mok, or worse, utilize his primitive firearm he always carried, a 45 colt. Primitive as it was, Su’Lak knew it would end Slar’Mok’s day badly and most likely cause an intergalactic incident. Su’Lak grabbed Horris’s arm to calm him down. Slar’Mok walked back up the loading ramp somewhat disgruntled and trying to avoid subordinates thinking they could question his orders in the future.
“It appears I must go now. Knowing you and Derek has given me purpose, farewell,” Su’Lak said.
“You’ll be ok ?” Horris said while nodding towards the departing Slar’Mok.
“Yes it will be fine, he is governed by orders of his superiors. If it becomes a problem, he will find his food tasting strange from a reprogramming of his food indo – robot,” replied Su’Lak correcting the terminology to suit Horris.
Su’Lak walked up the loading ramp while it simultaneously closed, he turned and both Su’Lak and Da’Luk watched Horris wave before the seal bonded. Su’Lak felt the thrusters roar to life and he automatically grabbed for a support handle as the shuttle tore through the atmosphere for the orbiting Kratmor. Da’Luk looked across at his friend, he too had left people on Earth and wasn’t in a happy mood either. Su’Lak stared at the bulk head door for the rest of the short trip, he was certain if he had human tear ducts, they would be very much in use.
…
The ship alert came on, time to head to hibernation once again. Wake up time was about ninety-two Earth years, maybe he’d have messages when he woke, Su’Lak grabbed a necklace made out of hemp with a ornately carved F in the middle of a cross shaped object of wood, native American Derek said, he confessed he made it out of scrap from the workshop, but Su’Lak liked it and decided it would be with him until he woke again.
“Su’Lak, are you coming ?” Da’Luk said in their native tongue while peering in through the open air-lock to Su’Lak’s cabin.
Su’Lak took a quick look around before the auto lights shut off, “Yes, I really do hate hibernation”.
Not the end …
P A Fisher Author 