Origins (10 page)

Eventually he got back to his feet and turned to face south toward the Alpha vessel’s landing site.  “Damn you for making me do this,” he screamed.  He then raised his wave blaster till the muzzle came to rest against his temple.  He closed his eyes, and could only think of the profound dishonor he brought upon himself and his loved ones.  Hastelloy took a deep breath and uttered his last thought.  “For the greater good,” and pulled the trigger.

**********

Dr. Holmes watched his patient intently.  Hastelloy’s reaction was not that of a story teller simply reciting a tale; there was real passion and pain behind his words.  The man truly believed these events happened to him in the past.

Obviously it was a delusion of some sort to help cope with something traumatic he did or had done to him.  Only time would tell, so Jeffrey jotted his observations down for use in future sessions.

Feeling nervous
, Mark drove up to the checkpoint.  He was a field agent, so getting called back to the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland was usually not a good sign.  He showed his identification to the guard and was waved through. 

The compound was unassuming to the civilian eye.  On the surface there were two cube shaped low rise office buildings, but underground lay over ten acres of super computers, data storage servers, communications gear, and command centers.  The Department of Defense got all the attention with the Pentagon building.  It was big and flashy, but was also a target as 9-11 proved.  The NSA liked to stay off the radar and Fort Meade was perfect for that purpose.

Mark made his way into the smaller of the two office buildings and proceeded down into the hidden levels below ground.  How fitting, Mark thought, considering how dark and dirty most of the work that went on from this part of the agency really was. 

Everyone worked in their own little knowledge silo on a strict need to know basis.  Contrary to popular belief, no one in the agency had control
over or knew everything.  No one person or even a committee could possibly keep track of it all.  A few individuals certainly wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough to run the almost infinite number of covert operations going on at any given time.  Projects were proposed.  Once they were staffed, funded, and given a priority level, that group was left to their own devices with minimal supervision from the executive committee. 

Mark ran his own operation which had an unmatched priority level within the agency.  This basically gave him a blank check to use any resources within the NSA: money, spies, wiretaps, code breaking, and even military weaponry. This made gathering dirt on people like officer Williams a rather simple exercise.

The only limitation was keeping his executive committee watcher loosely informed.  Terrance wanted to know just enough to justify the funding, yet not enough to be jailed for any of the activities.

Mark walked into a medium sized conference room with a wall of two way mirrors opposite the entrance door and absolutely no windows or artwork to fill any of the other walls.  The recessed lights in the ceiling were dimmed to only half power, which accentuated the dark oak conference table with eight black leather chairs arranged four to a side.  The room meant business, and so did the man already seated at the table. 

Mark shut the door behind him and took a seat.  “Let’s make this quick, Terrance.  I have a lot going on right now and I need to be in the field managing things not sitting in the principal’s office.” 

Terrance regarded Mark with the look a father usually reserves for his children when they misbehave.  “You know, it’s not like I expect you to be perfect.  A bad operation every couple of years comes with the territory, but you’ve had six career ending operations in seven weeks.  Tell me why I shouldn’t ship you off to Antarctica to spend the rest of your career taking the rectal temperature of penguins?”

“I have a four letter word for you,” Mark said casually.  “NASA.”

“NASA?” Terrance repeated.  “You sure you want to bring that up, because it hasn’t been a stellar piece of work on your part these last few years either?  Besides, what does NASA have to do with this radiation frequency you keep padding after like a teenager trying to score with the prom queen?”

“Please, I landed the prom queen when I was a freshman,” Mark chided.  A curt look from Terrance let him know the flippant attitude was not scoring any points so he changed his demeanor.  “The frequency and the probe NASA is about to launch are exactly why my operation exists.  They’re all intertwined and need to be contained for the sake of national security.”

“Is that so?” Terrance sighed.  “Enlighten me then because right now I see your operation as an embarrassing money pit.  Let’s talk about NASA and this probe business then.  I thought you were supposed to keep them under control.  Now I find out NASA is due to launch the thing later today.  You said if that probe got off the ground we may as well kiss our collective ass goodbye.  Why is this still an issue?”

“Usually I can get these pet projects dismissed in the proposal stage before any real money gets spent.  This time Senator Reid has decided to use the probe project to fund his reelection bid,” Mark said as he leaned back in his chair to take a relaxed and leisurely posture.  “Boeing and Lockheed Martin landed parts of the contract in exchange for some extremely generous campaign donations.  You’ve just got to love politics in this country.  Who cares if you piss away ten billion dollars of taxpayer money as long as you get a few million to buy some votes.  A solution is in the works though, so there’s really no need for your concern.”

“A solution?”  Terrance asked gruffly.  “You mean like how you solved the Mars Lander that was supposed to search for signs of past or present life on that planet.  How much did that probe cost, $125 million?”

“That’s about right, and in my defense I tried to get that thing killed in committee, but again, they were determined,” Mark responded.  “As it happened, I thought having the probe interpret its orbit entry instructions in English units rather than metric was an elegant disguise to covertly torpedo the mission.  NASA still thinks it was their engineer’s mistake that caused the probe to burn up in the atmosphere.  It needed to be done though; otherwise they would have known for sure that life once existed on Mars, which would lead to a whole slew of problems down the road.”

“What’s so dangerous about this transmission probe?” Terrance asked point blank.  “Full disclosure this time, not your usual bob and weave to get a wink and a nod from me.  I need to know exactly what’s at stake and what’s being done to resolve it.”

“Exactly,” Mark repeated while looking around the room toward the two way mirrors.  A subtle nod from Terrance let Mark know the recording devices were off so he was free to speak candidly.  “You told me you’d never want to know the specifics so you’d still have deniability.  The situation is going to get ugly.  Now is not the time to change your policy.”

“I asked for full disclosure,” Terrance stated forcefully, ignoring the warning.”

“Alright, but just remember this phrase for future use: I do not recall, Senator.”  Mark replied as he sat up straight in his chair again.  “The probe is dangerous because it’s propelled by a fusion reactor capable of generating constant acceleration up to the speed of light.  Within a matter of hours the craft will blow right past the Voyager probes launched back in the late 1970s and head towards the core of the Milky Way Galaxy. 

“That alone is cause for concern, but the transmission equipment onboard make
s this a full-blown emergency.  The signal is powerful, and someone is likely to hear it.  It’s basically a massive beacon screaming ‘here we are; come find us at these coordinates; we’d love to talk to you.’”

“Let me guess.  Your concern is the little green men who might respond to the message won’t be very friendly.  Am I right?” Terrance asked sarcastically while shaking his head.  “Don’t you think you’re over reacting a bit?  There’s no evidence of any advanced alien civilizations.  Single celled life forms on Mars and some moons around Saturn and Jupiter maybe, but nothing even remotely advanced.

“Plus, from what I hear, something would still need to be within a couple light years of the probe to pick up the signal.  Even if the little green men do hear the message, who is to say they’ll even understand the content?  It’s not like they’ll speak English, Russian, or any other language we use.”

“You’re wrong on all three points,” Mark responded coldly.  “First, they used the one constant language in the universe – mathematics.  Any civilization advanced enough to build space ships will understand the message without difficulty. Second, I have indisputable proof that advanced alien civilizations exist outside our solar system.  And third, I know they reside directly in the probes projected course.  Contact will only be a matter of time.”

The sarcastic smirk on Terrance’s face was now gone.  It was evident he knew Mark was not joking and the matter truly warranted his concern.  “Good lord, you mean stories like the Roswell crash sight weren’t just a bunch of nerds with big imaginations and nothing better to do?  I’m a top executive in the NSA for Christ sake.  I figured if there was anything to those conspiracy theories I’d know about it by now.”

“Deniability.  You sure you want to continue with this?”  Mark asked.  With a silent nod from his boss he continued.  “Only two people on the planet know the whole story, and maybe a dozen others are aware of some fragments of the truth. 

“The best we can tell is back in 1947 two objects collided in the sky over Roswell, New Mexico.  We’re not sure what one of the objects was, but the second was an alien spacecraft with four occupants.  They were not little green men, or white men with large black eyes, as popular urban legend would have you believe.  The best description of them would be seven foot, muscular dogs with short hair.  Picture a Weimaraner on steroids standing upright.

“The ship was in pretty bad shape, but over the years we’ve reconstructed most of the components.  It had dozens of weapons systems we still can’t figure out, and only minimal sensor or communications equipment.  It was a war ship Terrance, plain and simple.  I’m in no hurry to meet the aliens who built that ship, which is why the probe mission can’t proceed.”

Terrance got up from his seat, walked to a side table and poured himself a tall glass of scotch.  He took a long drink, winced at the shock of such strong alcohol and then looked at Mark still sitting in his chair.  “If that’s the case, what makes you think they don’t already know about earth and have chosen to leave us alone?”

“My belief is whoever sent the ship that crashed in New Mexico doesn’t know about our planet yet,” Mark continued.  “We’ve evaluated every radar, communication, and telescope reading from the weeks and months before and after the crash and never detected any outbound transmissions.  The ship simply came into orbit, descended directly to the Roswell location and was promptly hit by something, causing the crash. 

“It all took place in about five seconds, so I feel confident saying the ship was destroyed before reporting their findings.  Now the real question that keeps me awake at night is what caused the crash?  Was the alien ship already damaged and simply crashed on its own, or did someone on our planet know these bad guys were coming and hit them with an object that destroyed their ship?”

Mark got up from his seat and joined Terrance in a drink.  “This is where the radiation frequency comes into the mix.  Nothing from the crashed ship works, but we have figured out the radiation frequency the weapons use.  Our satellites, the Hubble telescope in particular, routinely pick up these frequencies.  Also, a slightly higher frequency energy discharge usually accompanies these readings.  It’s just background noise to everyone else, but my group knows what it is.”

Mark paused to make sure Terrance was all caught up before clobbering him with the cold hard facts.  “Two sides are slugging it out in a massive interstellar war that spans across the entire central core of the galaxy.  We’re just lucky as hell to be so far away from the action out here on the galaxy’s outer edge. 

“A comparatively backward planet with vast natural resources and billions of able bodied people would be a very tempting target for either side of this war,” Mark continued.  “We need to remain on the sidelines as long as we can.  Having a loud mouthed probe screaming ‘here we are come find us’ heading for the war zone at the speed of light jeopardizes our national security.  Hell, it jeopardizes the security of every living creature on this planet.”

Terrance let out a loud sigh.  “Damn, I should’ve listened to you earlier.  I didn’t want to know all this.  The stars are going to look different when I see them tonight.”  He took another long drink from his glass.  “So what’s the plan to stop this probe?  Clearly another accident needs to happen.”

“I have some irons in the fire already, and I’m heading down to Cape Canaveral for the launch just in case the fires need stoking,” Mark reassured his boss.  “One way or another, that probe won’t function as intended.”

“So you’re telling me I can’t fire you until the probe is sabotaged?” Terrance grunted.  “That’s all fine and good, but what are you doing to find the mystery people who shot down the alien ship over New Mexico, if they even exist?”

“As far as discovering who might have helped us,” Mark said.  “My predecessors and I have been trying to figure that out since 1947.  The truth is we’re no closer to an answer now than we were back then.

“About twenty years ago we noticed an energy discharge from this planet that coincided with the appearance of a full moon.  The frequency of this energy pulse is an exact match for that other, slightly higher, radiation signature we detect coming from the galaxy’s core.  With one exception back in 1989, the discharge is always on a full moon, lasts about five minutes and always emanates from a different location each time.  That all changed six weeks ago when we started picking up the same mystery frequency every couple of days, and the signals are sustained long enough for us to locate their source now.”

“Christ,” Terrance exclaimed.  “You’re telling me beings from the other side of this interstellar war are here right now.”

“Either that, or someone knows what I’m looking for and is trying to distract me,” Mark corrected.