Dark Dragons (10 page)

*

After the steward closed the door to his personal cabin, the
President of the United States took out the four-page document that had been
added to his Daily Brief back at the White House by a mysterious Air Force
major——a tall, blond woman with an attractive face.  She wove a menacing
story of extraterrestrial forces coveting Earth, crashed alien ships, and an
imprisoned “biological.”  Apparently,
another
crash had just
occurred somewhere in southern California this morning, prompting an enigmatic
Air Force organization to hastily assemble the president and his National
Security Team aboard Air Force One and send them west.  As far as the
White House Press Corp knew, he was still in the Oval Office working on a slow
day.  These top-secret, impromptu flights from Washington D.C. were
nothing new anyway.

Still trying to believe the Air Force woman’s incredible
story, the president opened the document:

TOP SECRET / EYES
ONLY

DO NOT COPY

COPY
ONE
OF
ONE

SUBJECT: CHARTER FOR AERIAL
PHENOMENA INVESTIGATIONS SQUADRON / NEAR-EARTH SPACE SURVEILLANCE AND TRACKING
CENTER, CHINA LAKE, CALIFORNIA.

DOCUMENT PREPARED 22 OCTOBER
1994 FOR EVENTUAL RELEASE TO CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENT (3rd UPDATE 21 MARCH 2012).

ON THIS DOCUMENT HEREAFTER,
“YOU” AND “YOUR” WILL REFER TO THE CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENT READING THE DOCUMENT.

NOTE:
This document has been prepared only as a concise operations briefing.

EXPLANATION OF APIS

The Aerial Phenomena Investigations
Squadron is a top secret research, recovery and intelligence operations group
formed as a separate division from the Air Force Office of Special
Investigations and the Office of Naval Intelligence. The APIS was established
by DOD Directive 3306.7 on 15 May 1994, and is under the command of Colonel
Martin Towsley, USAF.  Only few USAF and USN officials are aware of the
APIS and the NESSTC’s existence.  This agency determined that it was
necessary at the time of its conception to withhold sensitive information from
you, your Cabinet, Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the media. 
Members of this classified organization consider any knowledge of the
APIS/NESSTC or of the approaching extraterrestrial forces to be detrimental to
public repose and psychologically impede your duties as Commander-in-Chief.

BACKGROUND

On 14 May 1994, the NSA
intercepted a Chinese radio transmission from the Wuzhai Missile and Space Test
Center to 2nd Artillery Corp headquarters which explained details of a UFO over
the installation.  The Chinese managed to damage the object with a
low-yield nuclear-tipped SAM over the Tarim Basin.  The unidentified
aircraft then landed on its own power several hundred miles distant in NE
Afghanistan.  An ICARUS HAMMER directive, which is a code phrase for the
crash of an extraterrestrial object, was issued by the newly formed APIS to
assemble a recovery team to capture the alien craft and possible EBs
(Extraterrestrial Biologicals).  This mission proved successful.  The
craft endured minimal damage, and the recovery team discovered the sole pilot
to be alive (You have the opportunity to observe this being and its vehicle
following the closure of this briefing).

The EB breathes oxygen,
drinks liquid water and consumes only raw, room-temperature meat (preferably
beef).  During a brief medical examination in June of 1994, APIS
physicians discovered the alien is hermaphroditic, possessing both male and
female reproductive organs.  Every sixteen months, the creature gives
birth to a single infant usually weighing eight pounds (gestation period——7
months).  These infants have been terminated immediately after birth and
dissected for medical analysis.

Communication with the EB,
which members of the APIS have named “Caliban” after the sub-human character in
Shakespeare’s play
The Tempest
, began very slowly.  Since the
creature does not possess lips or a tongue, and therefore unable to communicate
in physical human speech, the APIS employed Dr. Richard Bennings from the
Anthropology Department at the University of Illinois to teach the alien
American Sign Language.  Bennings has worked with articulate gorillas and
chimpanzees at Zoo Atlanta and is the author of many scientific articles
dealing with primate communication.  As interrogation proceedings began in
November of 1994, the APIS learned that Caliban is merely the first of an
extraterrestrial armada approaching Earth.  Numerous inquiries on the
nature of this force revealed that their purpose is most likely hostile. 
It is unclear what the objectives of this apparent invasion are since Caliban
refuses to respond to that specific question when asked.  Attempts to
obtain this answer by withholding food and water have proven unsuccessful.

After numerous failed
endeavors, scientists were finally able to decipher the computer language
aboard Caliban’s spacecraft and interface with several of its hardware and
software systems.  High-altitude images of American military airfields
were discovered in a database, as were Soviet-built naval bases.  This
lead to the assumption that larger American, Russian and Chinese military
installations, such as ICBM sites, strategic bomber bases, naval yards, and C4I
posts, have also fallen under extraterrestrial scrutiny.  Therefore, the
likelihood that the United States faces a critical threat to its national
security
is genuine
.

CONCLUSIONS

Proof indicating these
beings have the capacity and impudence to mount an invasion of Earth is
verified by two facts:  (1) The existence of reconnaissance images of American,
Russian and Chinese military installations aboard Caliban’s fighter implies
their significant interest in our military strength, particularly our strategic
nuclear options, and (2) recorded testimony suggesting that Caliban considers
humanity to be a species of a “lesser order” and lacking a wide-sentient
awareness.  Because of these alarming circumstances, it is extremely
imperative that the public and the media are not informed of the aliens’
existence until an appropriate time is deemed crucial.  Procedures have
been implemented to counter this menacing state-of-affairs.

DIVINE WIND

Construction of the
Near-Earth Space Surveillance and Tracking Center (NESSTC, or “Nesstic”) began
in February of 1995 and completed in April of 2001.  The APIS/NESSTC is
“unofficially” designated as the 75th Space Wing of 14th Air Force of Air Force
Space Command, Peterson AFB, Colorado.  Its operations are Classified
Black, and therefore ARE NOT SUBJECT TO GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE INQUIRIES,
CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHTS OR BUDGETARY RESTRICTIONS.

Operations of the NESSTC are
similar to those of NORAD, however, inter-solar system surveillance is the
primary focus and not solely U.S. airspace.  The NESSTC operates a
23-telescope, surveillance satellite code named Medusa Stare with full-sweep,
360-degree tracking.  In addition to Medusa Stare, the NESSTC is the nerve
center to a large constellation of satellite weapons designed to provide a
defense when the extraterrestrial forces arrive.  They are:

* 17 DIABLO nuclear-pumped
x-ray lasers (large target utility)

* 33 EXODUS electromagnetic
railguns (small-to-intermediate target utility)

These satellite weapons were
launched between 1999 and 2003 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the Kourou ESA
launch facility in French Guiana, and the Tanegashima Space Center in
Japan.  Since monies to fund Divine Wind would have to have been
appropriated by Congress——therefore alerting the public of the NESSTC’s
existence——funds were accrued from internationally siphoned capital.

Accompanying these orbital
weapons is a new class of upper-tier surface-to-air missile designed to track
and destroy the alien vessels if they enter our atmosphere: the ScramHawk
hypersonic SAM.  This is a hydrogen-fueled, long-range SAM with scramjet
propulsion (1st boost phase - solid rocket; 2nd boost phase - ramjet; 3rd phase
- scramjet).  They are able to attain speeds of MACH 7, and each is armed
with a
non-nuclear
“plasma bomb” warhead with a dial-a-yield of 1-to-30
kilotons.  The ScramHawk has an operating range of 3,700 nautical miles
and an altitude of 420,000 feet.  Although, the ScramHawk is essentially a
“flying robot,” it has no true artificial intelligent processor but does follow
fixed, minimally adaptive programs such as Identify Friend or Foe targeting. 
The sea-based surface variant, known as the RIM-202A ScramHawk, is launched
from all
Ticonderoga
-class cruisers and
Arleigh Burke
-class
destroyers equipped with the AEGIS Combat System.

These orbital and surface
weapons are code named DIVINE WIND and can be activated only by authorization
from the National Command Authority as defined in the Goldwater-Nichols Act of
1986.

***
END OF DOCUMENT ***

The president closed the document and placed it on his
desk.  Every Commander-in-Chief had that one moment that defined his
presidency.  Lincoln had Gettysburg.  FDR, Pearl Harbor. 
Kennedy, the Cuban Missile Crisis.  This would be his.

“Alien invaders,” he murmured.

*

The spacecraft was flat, diamond-shaped and about
twenty-by-thirty feet in diameter, the engineers having propped it on large,
hydraulic lifts long ago.  A single, faceted pane of what looked like
glass appeared to be the cockpit windshield.  It was completely black,
either by design or smoked by the Chinese nuke, so the president could not see
into the cockpit.  The craft had the appearance of a large organism rather
than a machine, an aquatic creature from a Pre-Cambrian Era sea like a
metallic, wedge-shaped trilobite.  The president refused requests to
inspect the inside.  He had seen enough.

Colonel Martin Towsley, commanding officer of the APIS,
continued the tour of the gargantuan, underground hangar before escorting the
president and his entourage to the colonel’s office on Level Three.

The colonel was a robust fellow, about five-foot-ten with a finely
trimmed mustache and a graying hairline moving north and a gut moving
south.  He had a stalwart manner, an inbred trait of all military men, but
also a touch of conflicting sadness around the eyes.  He spoke big but
sounded small.  Strange.

The Near-Earth Space Surveillance and Tracking Center was a
monstrous installation.  Its design resembled NORAD in many aspects, but a
few discrepancies made it unique to its cousin in Colorado Springs. 
Constructed beneath the granite shield of the Argus Mountain Range, the NESSTC
was a five level, 230,000 square foot complex housing the Combat Operations
Center, medical labs, infirmary, an office wing, sleeping quarters, a mess
hall, a nuclear power plant, and a large research hangar.  A single,
eighty-foot wide tunnel served as the only access to the installation, its
entrance barricaded with three five-foot thick, depleted-uranium shields which
slid up from the ground.  The base was mounted on huge helical springs to
withstand the shock of a twenty megaton nuclear blast, and it contained enough
food supplies to maintain operations for three months if cut off from the
outside.  The mammoth cavern which sheltered it used to be the original
site for NORAD, but in 1955, the Air Force decided at the last minute to move
their early-warning facility to Colorado.  It had remained empty and
forgotten until Towsley, General Taggart and the APIS showed up in 1994.

The Combat Operations Center resembled the insides of a
movie theater.  Two large computer maps——one of the solar system, the
other a global projection of Earth——concealed the entire front wall. 
Smaller screens on either side of these two displayed real-time images from
Medusa Stare and bits of scrolling computer data referring to the trajectories,
direction, and speed of various comets and near-Earth asteroids.  The Ops
Center served as the nerve center for all surveillance and weapons systems,
spacecraft detection, atmosphere-entry early-warning, submarine and surface
ship positions and satellite control.  It was also linked by EMP-resistant
communications to NORAD, Strategic Command, the Pentagon, and the White House.

Forty Air Force and Navy officers were currently at their
computer consoles, reading data, tracking and communicating with airborne
traffic and monitoring the heavens for possible danger.  Other than the
natural peculiarities of the solar system——comets, solar eruptions, wandering
asteroids——Medusa Stare currently detected no alarming drive flares or the blueshift
of reflected sunlight off an incoming object’s hull.

“Mr. President,” Towsley said. “This is Lieutenant General
Lloyd Taggart, our commander-in-chief here at the Nest.”

Taggart saluted and shook the president’s hand. 
“Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“The pleasure’s mine, general.  This place looks like
Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.”

“Well, it’s a little more elaborate than Mission Control,
but it does have its similarities.”

Towsley continued the introductions.  “This is Rear
Admiral Raymond Breuer, NESSTC second-in-command.  And you met my
right-hand lady Major Deanna Weinholt, our intelligence officer, at the White
House this morning.”

The president returned salutes and shook hands.  “Good
afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.”