Don't Mess With Earth (16 page)

The personnel who were going to Area 51
loaded up on the buses and started out for that secret military
installation. Two Humvees were in front of the buses and the other
two guarded the buses from behind. The convoy made their way ninety
miles north in the hot Nevada weather, and an hour and a half
later, they arrived at Area 51. To the personnel who had never been
to Area 51, all they saw was a runway, control tower, a two story
building, and a small hangar. Once they got closer though, they
could see that most of it was not real, designed to appear as
though the buildings were really used from a distance or from
satellite photos. The vehicles entered the small hangar, and as
soon as the vehicles stopped, the concrete floor began to move
downwards, which Bridger informed them that it was a freight
elevator taking them to the actual Area 51 installation
underground. Five minutes later, the elevator stopped, and everyone
was told to get off of the buses.

Everyone departed the buses and they were
awed by the massive underground complex they were seeing. Bridger
led them to a conference room near the elevator, where laptop
computers were sitting on the tables, and a screen was set up in
front of the room. Everyone sat down, as Bridger began, “On your
laptops are the specifications of the spacecraft all of you will be
assigned to. I want all of you to know everything about this ship
backward and forward. Also, your assignments are listed if you
would click on the personnel file on the desktop screen; all of you
will know who goes where, and in case of an emergency or death, the
next one in line can take over the position. Now please direct your
attention to the screen at the front of the room, where you will be
shown what the training will entail when it comes to this
mission.”

An hour later, Bridger asked anyone if they
had questions. An Air Force officer raised her hand, Bridger
motioned for her to speak, and she said, “Sir, I’m Commander Rachel
Kell, and I see here that I’m the captain of this new starship. I
was wondering why this was kept a secret for so many years; after
all, I know a great many people who believed Area 51 actually
existed without actually knowing and thought aliens had crashed at
Roswell without the actual proof. Can you explain that to us,
sir?”

“
Yes, I can, and that’s a very good
question, Commander. President Truman and those around him felt
that the American people would be more than a little freaked out at
the possibility of an alien invasion, and we also had a Cold War
with the Soviet Union to be worried about at the same time. The
Soviets, of course, had their own version of Area 51, but, we were
more successful and there were times that we managed to sabotage
anything related to them getting to the moon or getting anything
else done in space other than spending time at one of their space
stations. Everyone has been surprised by the rate technology on
Earth has developed by leaps and bounds over the last nearly one
hundred years, especially in the last fifty. Think of what would
have happened if we introduced all of this new technology, personal
computers, internet, computer guided weapons, satellite tracking,
and everything else, all at once back in the 1960’s, what do you
think might’ve happened then, Commander?”

“I’m guessing we would have had a nuclear
war with the Soviet Union, sir?”

“
Yes, we would have, Commander. The
American people, including all of you, will never know just how
close we came to obliteration over the whole Cuban Missile Crisis.
If you include all of this new technology, the Soviets would have
more than likely launched a first strike to prevent us from using
all of the new technology on them. So, that’s why we kept it from
the public for so long, and we will continue to do so until the
President says otherwise. Anyone else have a question?”

“Sir, when will we get to meet the alien?”
asked a lieutenant.

“
Soon enough, Lieutenant. Ostoro has
been a very valuable source of information for us these last sixty
years, and he’s slowly accepted the situation he finds himself in.
He is not one of those small, gray aliens that Hollywood has in
their movies or TV shows, he’s tall, blue skinned, long-armed, and
small eyed. Any others have questions?”

“
What’s the name of our new starship,
sir? Would it happen to be the
Enterprise
?” an airman
scoffed.

“
I’m sure everyone would think that
would have been cool, but, naming it
Enterprise
would’ve been much too
obvious, Airman, as would have
Millennium Falcon
,
Galactica
,
Andromeda
,
Defiant
,
Voyager
, and maybe even
Prometheus
or
Daedalus
. Besides, we probably
would’ve had to pay for the rights to use those names from the
movie studios, so we decided to name it the
USS Reprisal
. If there are
no further questions, it’s time for all of you to get to training
for this mission. Dismissed.” Bridger stated.

Training for the
Reprisal
began the next day
and it mostly involved being in a fully immersed computer
simulator, basic virtual reality, while the Marines were practicing
taking down enemies like they would normally do on Earth, including
house to house warfare. Some of the engineers recruited for the
mission asked the Area 51 engineers about the various systems of
the
Reprisal
, the stardrive, shields, sensors, computer systems, and
whether or not the ship would be equipped with gravity. The Area 51
engineers informed them that the ship did have gravity, through the
use of an artificial gravity generator, which used a spinning
superconductor, producing a powerful gravitomagnetic field. Nearly
all of this technology was cloned off of the Ragnor ship, but the
Area 51 engineers were one hundred positive all of it would work
correctly.

A week after the
Reprisal
crew arrived at
Area 51, they met with Ostoro, who didn’t seem so thrilled to meet
them. Bridger introduced the alien, who walked over to the podium,
and said, “Greetings humans. I am Ostoro, a scout for the Ragnor
before I was shot down by your primitive aircraft. As much as I
dislike the fact that I’m here, I can really do nothing about it
but cooperate with your military and government. General Bridger
wants me to answer questions any of you might have, so lets
begin,”

Captain Kell was the first to speak, “I’d
like to know if your people will conduct a massive planetary
invasion of Earth,”

“
If my planet were to do such a
thing, we would have done so by now. You humans are not nearly
intelligent enough to go out into space or advanced enough to do
anything but stay in orbit over your planet for forty plus years,
with the small exception of your moon landings. I’ve been here so
long, if I managed to escape, I could tell my people more about you
than what has been known about your planet for the last few
centuries,”

“
Ostoro, how do we know all the
technology you’re helping us with will actually work when it comes
right down to it?” asked Commander Brian O’Rourke, the chief
engineer on the
Reprisal
.

“Have you lived on your planet for however
long you’ve been alive? Take a look around, my technology is
responsible for all of you being in the Computer Age and Space Age.
I helped out with your country being the first to break the sound
barrier with aircraft designs coming straight off my ships’
computer database. Your world wide web is based off of my ships’
network, those robot rovers on Mars are based off of technology the
Ragnor have, and those deep space probes your country have launched
are powered by fusion engines that I helped design. I’m sure all of
you remember the Y2K crisis from a few years ago, well, I helped
Nanotech and all the other computer software companies fix that
problem. If you want to know whether or not you can trust me or my
technology, then I’ve just provided you the proof that you can
trust me.”

“How about other advanced civilizations out
there, any others as hostile as your species?” asked a Marine.

“Well, there are plenty of other somewhat
advanced civilizations out in this vast galaxy. However, the Ragnor
are the only ones who are intelligent and self-aware enough to know
that we are the only ones who can bring order to every solar system
that’s inhabited, including yours, humans.”

That response brought derisive
laughter and snide comments from nearly all the humans in the room,
who have heard that all before from either completely evil human
leaders like Hitler or over-the-top movie villains. General Bridger
let this go on for five minutes before he stepped over to Ostoro,
and told him to go ahead and go back to his quarters, and then
Bridger said, “Alright people, enough is enough. We have a job to
do, and making fun of Ostoro isn’t part of it, even though he
brings it upon himself with that pathetically superior attitude he
displays. After those of you who are training in simulations for
operating the
Reprisal
are finished, we will have you conduct a real world
test in about a month. This meeting is now over with,
dismissed.”

A month later, the crew for
the
Reprisal
was ready to conduct the first real world flight test of the
starship. It was a cool winter morning in the Nevada desert when
everyone boarded for the test flight, and there was a nervous
tension in the air among some of the astronauts who were used to
going into space via space shuttle. Everyone reported to their
stations and began pre-flight checks of the ships’ systems and
co-ordinated with the Area 51 Control Center. Once Captain Kell was
satisfied her ship was go for launch, she contacted Bridger, “This
is Captain Kell, the
Reprisal
is ready to go,
General,”

“
Acknowledged,
Reprisal
. The first system
we want to test is the cloak, since the version the Ragnor had was
easy to detect, at least it was for us back in ’47. If you would go
ahead and cloak the ship, we will be able to see if the cloak
actually makes the ship invisible through our sensors and visually
through our digital video cameras,”

A few seconds later, the
Reprisal
disappeared from sensors and visually from the cameras. The
Control Center even switched to the old radar system and the ship
was still not appearing on the scope, so infared was tried, and
there was a trace amount of heat that was detected appearing around
near where the engines were supposed to be, but Bridger and the
Area 51 scientists hoped it would appear to be random if someone
were to pick it up in space. The ship was designed to fly
vertically once the engines and the guidance system was activated,
so that was the next test, once the cloak was de-activated. The
ship reappeared on sensors and began moving upward, and when it
reached one thousand feet, the main engines activated and
the
Reprisal
took off for orbit. Once in orbit, Area 51 could track the
ship through various satellites and a tracking station in
Australia, and even had someone on the
International Space Station
watch
for the
Reprisal
fly by the space station, but made sure nobody else
on the station was paying attention to the sensors on
board.

“
Reprisal
, cloak and make a heading for
Saturn, best possible speed, but just shy of using the faster than
light drive. We want to see just how long it takes to make a round
trip going sub-light speed. We have a question too,
Reprisal
, how’s
the gravity working?” asked Bridger.

“The generator is operating at peak
efficiency, sir. It feels like we’re on Earth and there seems to be
no ill effects. It would be nice if we could test the intertial
dampeners at light speed, but that’ll have to wait. General, do you
have any other orders for us?” asked Kell.

“No, just make that trip and return. Next
phase will be by order of the President, whenever that will be.
Good luck, Area 51 signing off.”

As the
Reprisal
cloaked, the Terrans on Mars
were monitoring all traffic near Earth orbit when they thought they
saw something leave Earth, but it vanished. Commander Lomanco was
informed, he went to the Control Center, and asked, “Have you
activated the cloak sensor, so that if it were a ship, we could
find it and intercept it?”

“We have, sir, it was the first thing we
did. The sensor detects no ship out there that’s cloaked. From the
readings we could get before it cloaked, it was of a configuration
we have never seen before, so we don’t know if it belongs to the
Ragnor or some other species we’ve never met.” answered one of the
techs.

“Have you extrapolated the possible flight
path of this unkown ship?”

“We have no other data besides detecting
the ship leave Earth and cloak, sir,”

“Could it have been a ship that someone on
Earth could’ve built, say the United States?” asked the
Commander.

“
It’s not very likely, sir. In the
annals of recorded time, they just briefly acquired the means to
leave their planet, albeit to just their moon and a couple probes
to Mars. The most advanced kind of spacecraft they have are space
shuttles, and those don’t even work properly. That ship couldn’t
possibly be theirs; it must be some type of new Ragnor design,
especially with that cloak we can’t seem to see through. Without
any kind of data, I can’t theorize for you who, what, when, or
where, sir.”