The Black Ships (9 page)

Santa Cruz, California

February 11
^th
, 2026

“T
here he is,” Callum broke the silence of the last twenty minutes as
he watched a vehicle pull into the lot in front of the store. With a quick look
to ensure Kevin was awake, Callum stepped out of his car and entered the store
ahead of his target. It had taken a little over an hour to identify the owner
of the contractor who had the expansion job at Moffett Field. Two weeks more
had identified his major habits and the liquor store was identified as the best
location for a carefully scripted
chance meeting
.

Callum headed straight for the premium
whiskey and selected a twelve-year-old bottle - good but not prohibitively
expensive, just what a tradesman might look for if he had taste but not the
means to go for the really good stuff. He looked up as his target approached
and gave him a friendly nod.

“Celebrating?” the man asked, noting the
bottle in Callum’s hands.

Callum smiled and cocked his head to the
side as if considering his response. “You might say that,” he responded. “You
could say I survived a crisis of conscience.” He grinned, knowing it would hook
the man.

“That sounds like it has a hell of a story
behind it.” The big man’s statement ended with an inquisitive inflection as he
turned to pull out a bottle of his customary fifty-year-old scotch.

Callum shrugged. “It wouldn’t be right to
name names,” he said with an air of casual dignity. “Suffice it to say, some
contractors like to take shortcuts and I don’t want to be associated with
shoddy work, so now I find myself slightly under-employed.”

He had the man’s full attention now. He
looked at Callum, from his well-used steel-toe boots to his slightly scruffy
but still presentable work clothes. “What kind of qualifications do you have?”
the man asked with a friendly smile.

 Callum gave an approving nod towards
the man’s choice in whiskey as he answered. “Journeyman carpenter,” he said. “I
have a welding ticket as well.”

The man was obviously impressed. “I happen
to have some openings right now and I need to fill them right away,” he said as
he pulled out his phone. “Mind if I look you up?”

Callum feigned a grin of surprised delight.
“Not at all! Callum McKinnon.” He waited as the man brought up his credentials
from the contractor’s registry, seeing his approving nod. “Did you say you have
a few openings?” he asked, knowing full well that the contractor had lost four
men in an incident at one of the local bars the previous night. Thanks to some
willing help from Callum’s young followers, the four men had been provoked into
a disturbance big enough to land them in jail. Given the clearance required for
Moffett Field, it was unlikely that they would ever be coming back to the
jobsite.

“I do need a few extra employees, as it
turns out,” the man replied, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. “You have some pals
with experience?”

Callum fed him the names of three more of
his cronies, the ones who had legitimate qualifications, and watched as he
confirmed them on his phone. “Name’s Lance Bryson, by the way,” the contractor
said as he looked up from the screen. “Can you wait a couple of days to start?
I have to get you all cleared for access to Moffett.”

Callum nodded. “Sure, Lance,” he said
cheerfully, putting the twelve-year-old bottle back on the shelf and reaching
for something a little more expensive. “I think my friends and I need to
upgrade our celebration!”

Lance laughed as he walked to the counter
with Callum, completely unaware that he had just agreed to insert a team of
very dangerous and unpredictable men into a secure facility.

Sixty
Meter Observatory

Mauna
Kea, Hawaii

February 15th, 2026

M
ike was out in the vestibule with Sergeant Davis when the new
arrivals walked in. All private research partnerships had been temporarily
suspended as the massive telescope became Humanity’s primary intelligence
source for alien activity on Mars. As a result, the cavernous central
vestibule, designed to accommodate large groups of academics and tourists, had
been given over to the team responsible for collecting, analyzing and
disseminating data about the enemy.

Despite his best efforts, Mike had been
rolled into the fabric of the growing team. His earlier hopes that the military
would completely take over had come true but they had shown no interest in
letting him leave. If nothing else, his technical knowledge of how the massive
telescope array worked made him indispensable. Even though Franka had the same
knowledge, Mike’s education had uniquely prepared him for familiarizing the
military with the environment on Mars as well as the mining activity that they
were now seeing from the enemy. For the first time in his life, Mike found that
he was really good at something.

He was actually enjoying it.

The shift in usage from ‘alien’ to ‘enemy’
happened the day Colonel McCutcheon and his advance team had arrived. As soon
as it became clear that the aliens were not friendly, the language had shifted
immediately. Mike suspected that the men in green were far more comfortable
wrapping their heads around the situation now that they could talk in terms of
enemy
intentions and capabilities. Their attempts to apply a logical framework to the
enemy activity had gone a long way towards explaining the data that was flowing
in whenever planetary alignment allowed observation.

The newly arrived team of three specialists
from the UN were standing just inside the door where they shivered in shorts
and t-shirts. The woman on the right was far more attractive than Mike had
expected and his hand unconsciously reached to his six-week-old beard.  
That
has to be Colbert,
he thought.
From the email, I was expecting some old
bat in tweed.
“Dr. Colbert?” he asked. Seeing a nod, he introduced himself.
“I’m Dr. Mike Wilsen from Red Flag Minerals.” He nodded over at Davis. “This is
Sergeant Wes Davis.”

“And I’m Pete McGregor from NASA,” the
engineer had appeared behind Mike as if by magic and he reached out to shake
Colbert’s hand. “Welcome to the 60’s!”

The soldiers had been the ones to start
referring to the location as the 60’s in honor of the telescope’s famed
diameter. They had reinforced the idea by playing music from the 60’s on one of
their laptops, and Mike had to admit that it did make the place a little less
clinical. Now, however, he was watching as the three newcomers failed to make
the connection. Perhaps it would have helped if the music was playing at the
moment, but it was after ten in the evening and so the tunes were off for the
night. “Just an inside joke,” he explained. “We don’t get out much.”

Colbert smiled and turned to her
colleagues. “This is Dr. Craig Pugh from Northwestern, Chicago and Dr. Hal
Tudor from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.” A second round of
handshakes ensued.

With the pleasantries out of the way, Tudor
nodded at the meeting rooms on the far side where bunks had replaced the
boardroom furniture. “Are any of those not claimed?” he asked. “I can’t speak
for Jan or Craig, but I sure as hell didn’t sleep on the flight here.”

Mike explained the accommodations as well
as the washing facilities set up by the military. McCutcheon had brought in a
forty-foot sea container with a male washroom built into one end and a female
unit at the other. They were simple but efficient, and a team of combat
engineers had constructed an enclosed area that connected the container to the
facility so that staff wouldn’t need to walk through the cold weather of the
mountain-top to have a shower. The enclosure also served as a ready room for a
small security force that had arrived a couple of days ago.

Mike and Pete watched the three newcomers
shuffle off to drop their gear. “I think I’ll go shave this beard off,” Peter
said casually. Mike looked over at him with amusement. Davis frowned. “It
itches,” the engineer said defensively. “Doesn’t your beard itch?”

“Like it itched yesterday when you saw that
hot tour guide at the Onikuza Center?” Mike countered. “Wes warned us about
this. When you spend a lot of time in the field, you start obsessing about the
opposite sex. We agreed to help keep each other from making asses out of
ourselves.”

“She was smiling at me.”

Wes was glowering at them both in silent
reproach.

“She’s a tour guide; she smiles for a
living.” Mike shook his head.
Pete would hit on a shark if he thought it was
smiling at him.
“I’m starting to think you’re not fully acclimatized. The
altitude is clouding your ability to reason.” He turned to Davis. “Wes, he’s
already forgetting about our pact. Maybe we need to put him back on anhydrase
inhibitors.”

 “Are you saying,” the sergeant began
as he glared at them, “that you went for coffee at the Onikuza Center without
me?”

Manhattan, New York

February 22
^nd
, 2026

J
ess had a sip of rooibos, smiling at the approving nod from Zhu An,
the UN Ambassador from the People’s Republic of China. She wasn’t sure if he
truly approved of the South African tea or if he was simply being polite but he
had been offered a variety of choices and he’d decided to have whatever she was
having.

One cup sat steaming on the low coffee
table. One more candidate to meet.

Jess knew his history.

China’s relatively new blue-water navy had
come to blows with an American carrier group near the coast of Taiwan a few
years earlier and most sources indicated that a frigate captain by the name of
Gao Hu had fired the first shots of what had almost become a full-out battle.
It had been a decision by the American Admiral to pull ships back from the
center of conflict that tipped the balance back towards a ceasefire. Captain
Gao was something of a hero in China, quietly celebrated in naval and civilian
circles.

Publicly, the entire incident was
regrettable but Gao soon found he was recognized by his countrymen wherever he
went.

The door opened and Tom escorted the
captain into the room. Jess and Ambassador Zhu welcomed the man and he sat,
taking a sip of the proffered tea. Jess noticed a slight raise of the eyebrows
as he processed the flavor. “Rooibos,” he said with a nod. “I developed a
fondness for it in my college days.” His English was flawless, just a slight
hint of the New England twang.

“I’m glad you like it, Captain,” Jess
replied. “What made you select Harvard?”

The man smiled. “I could have studied
engineering at any number of excellent schools in my homeland, but my father
was always of the opinion that an education should be as thorough as possible.”
He grinned at the ambassador’s frown as he went on. “By that, I mean that it
would be a better experience if I were to learn a new culture and language as
well.” He turned back to Jess. “Engineering can be a restrictive discipline,”
he said. “By forcing myself to learn a new language I found that I became more
creative.” He grinned again as he continued. “Studies here in America have
shown that creativity is measurably reduced by the time a student graduates
from an engineering program.”

“And you have found the secret to
preserving that creativity?” Jess couldn’t help but like this personable
officer despite the warnings from Parnell’s advisors.

He shrugged. “It certainly didn’t hurt,” he
said simply. “So I suppose you brought me here because of what happened in the
South China Sea?”

Jess took another drink of tea before
responding. “Do you regret your role in the engagement, Captain?” she asked
mildly.

“I miss the ability to walk the streets of
Ningbo in privacy but I stand by the decisions that I’ve made.  I had my
standing orders and a captain’s prerogative to interpret and apply those orders
as I saw fit.” He appeared to be completely at ease, despite discussing how
close the world had come to disaster.

It’s not as if he was the sole cause of
the conflict,
 Jess mused.
He was, after
all, in the South China Sea. At most, he was a hundred fifty kilometers from
his own coastline facing a fleet from the other side of the Pacific. How long
would an American Captain hold fire if the roles were reversed?
It wasn’t
lost on her that he had referenced his orders but had followed by stating
firmly that it was his own decision. This was a man who took responsibility for
his own actions; more importantly, he was a man who
took
action. He knew
he was engaging an enemy with over a century of experience fighting against
some of the best navies the world had seen. He opened fire anyway.

This was a man who wouldn’t shrink from a
fight, no matter who the enemy was. She looked over to Ambassador Zhu and saw a
slight smile in the corners of his eyes. His superiors would not object to this
appointment. She turned back to Gao. “Captain Gao, your government has sent you
here today for a job interview.” She paused to let that sink in, seeing the
frown spread on his face.

Gao had been promoted from a frigate
commander to captain of a carrier only nine months earlier and he was reluctant
to lose his beautiful new ship so soon. “Madam Secretary, I’m afraid you have
me at a disadvantage.” His gaze swung to Zhu but found no answers in the man’s
smile. “Perhaps you could tell me about this job?”

Jess leaned forward in her chair. “You know
about the ships that we are building?” As Gao nodded, she continued. “That
means there are three entire fleets in need of a full complement of crews and
officers.”

Gao was surprised to say the least. If he
was to lose his carrier, a space-ship might just compensate for it. He could
just imagine his father’s face when he heard the news. “I am being considered
as the captain of one of these new ships?” he asked, his blood coursing as the
idea lodged firmly in his mind. He realized now that some senior officers would
come from his country. There had been two admirals and two other captains
waiting before him for this meeting.

“No,” Jess responded with a smile. “Though
your navy will be providing us with complements for quite a few ships, we have
something else in mind for you.” She stood. “Ambassador, I believe we are in
agreement. Would you care to do the honors?”

Zhu stood and Gao, still smarting from his
dashed hopes, came to his feet to face his country’s representative, keeping
his turbulent thoughts from showing on his face. “Captain Gao,” Zhu began,
beaming with pleasure.  “I have been authorized to promote you to the rank
of
Hai Jun Da Xiao
.” He pumped Gao’s hand enthusiastically.

Jess smiled as she shook his hand.
“Congratulations, Rear Admiral!”  She looked over at the ambassador and
they exchanged a nod. “We have a meeting in two hours that I think you should
sit in on, in your official capacity as second in command of the response
fleet.” She guided him towards the door where Tom waited. “Tom will show you to
a room where you can look through the technical details of your new command;
you will have direct command of one of the carrier groups and you will be
second only to the overall commander.”  She and the ambassador continued
down the hall, leaving Gao in a state of euphoric shock.