Alien Enigma (3 page)

He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the strain he always felt when thinking about the situation he'd created and the hopes he had nurtured for so long. Now the United States Navy would have to see what it could find out, with a star ship enhanced by DARPA at the famed Skunk Works in Palmdale, California.

He picked up the handset of his phone and began calling the numbers of men and women he knew, ones he could trust. It was the first part of negotiations he knew would go on for days or weeks. After that it would be out of his hands and out of the purview of
Wannstead Industries
. It made him feel sad in a way but also relieved, although he did intend to ask the Navy to try finding out what had happened to his people if they managed to overcome the Xanadu enigma.

Wannstead looked at a picture of the Xanadu city while sipping a scotch. He scratched his head and meticulously looked at the image. Something in the photo of the city bugged Olson Wannstead. He couldn't put his finger on it, kind of like the Mona Lisa's smile, but the enigma of that city seemed much colder than a smile.
What was this strange looking place? Who lived there? Why weren't the ships coming back? What new technologies were there for the taking?
Only the Space Navy had a chance at answering those questions.

Chapter Two: Skunk Work Space Work

The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.

-
Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher

It wasn't unusual for Admiral Gene Mullins to meet with the Secretary of the Navy but it was a rare occasion when he went to her office without knowing what the meeting was going to be about. Today he didn't have even a hint. Mullins didn't really trust a man or woman who didn't drink, and the Navy Secretary was known to have some really good brandy. With that in mind, and a long day almost finished, the Admiral walked into the Secretary's surprisingly austere office, the one she used for real business rather than the one depicting her status.

"That will be all, Martin," Georgeanne Smith said, dismissing her admin assistant. "Thank you."

"Yes ma'am," he said and departed, though not without throwing a curious glance over his shoulder. Her assistant was almost always present at her briefings.

"Admiral, thanks for coming. I'm sorry I didn't give you more warning." She smiled at him which let him know he wasn't on the carpet about anything.

"I'm always happy to see you, Ma'am," Admiral Gene Aloysis Mullins answered.

"And I know a fib when I hear one, Gene, but never mind. Have a seat. Pour yourself some coffee first if you like." She glanced up at a clock on the wall of the simple office, a wide departure from the usual Washington opulence in the abodes of politicians at her level. It contained little more than sufficient furniture for three or four guests to sit in bare comfort, her desk, and a little alcove where her ever-present coffeepot lived. "It's after five. Add a bit of brandy if you like."

"Thank you, George. I believe I will." What with fighting a weight problem he knew he didn't need it, but decided to indulge anyway. This appeared to be a meeting of significance.

"Make one for me while you're at it. It's been a long day."

Mullins poured some Germain Robin XO Brandy into their coffees (adding a little extra into his) while he wondered even more why he was there. Georgeanne Smith was one of the few politicians he respected. Her reputation was such that she had been carried over from the previous administration, a rarity in the brutal partisanship of high-level politics. He placed her cup on the coffee table when he noted she was coming from behind her desk to sit with him rather than at her desk.
Curiouser and curiouser
, he thought.

Once comfortable, George, as she liked to be called, crossed her legs and sipped at the brandy-laced coffee while eyeing her visitor. Even at fifty, she was slim and had great looking legs. Her short dark hair and green eyes veiled a smart, tough woman. She seemed to be thinking about how to approach a subject, staring at a painting of an ocean sunset on her wall.

Mullins waited comfortably, sipping his coffee-brandy. He knew it was no use hurrying her.

"Gene, before we go any further, I need to let you know that what we talk about is strictly Navy business. The other members of the Joint Chiefs are unaware of exactly what I'm going to tell you and the President wants it kept that way. This stays with the Navy."

"My lips are sealed."

George smiled. "They'd better be, or you and I both will be in trouble. Okay, first I want to show you a couple of photos. You can examine the whole recording later if you wish, but for now this will do." She brought out two page-sized photos. One showed part of a world from space, with what looked like an artificial construct in view. The other showed a closer view, faintly fuzzy from being seen through atmosphere. It disclosed what looked like a city but one never seen on Earth. It consisted of mostly spires and domes arranged in a great thick circle around a smaller central area of vegetation. One small portion of the city close to the edge appeared to be unfinished, with spires and domes and rectangular edifices obviously in various stages of construction. From there to the arc was nothing other than a deep evacuation, a clear sign that much of the finished part of the alien metropolis was built underground as well as above.

"What ...I mean where is this? A recent discovery?"

"It was found by the first exploration ship Wannstead ever sent out in an area they're calling the Bolt Cluster. They've kept it a secret since then."

"Is it what it looks like?"

"Yes," she nodded. "It is indeed an alien city."

"Is it occupied?"

"We don't know. They didn't come close enough to detect living organisms if there are any. The main sign of possible habitation is the amount of activity associated with construction, as near as we can tell."

"You mean they didn't land?"

"That first ship couldn't land. Remember? And they were very cautious and stayed well away from the planet."

"Oh, yeah. But how about later?"

Smith smiled wryly. "Wannstead has sent four of their own ships there over the last couple of decades. The first three didn't come back and the fourth one they sent recently is more than a month overdue. They aren't expecting it to return, either."

Mullins stared at her for a moment. He nodded, more to himself than her. "So now they want the Navy to have a crack at it."

"Right you are. They have no more money to expend on the enigma, so Olson Wannstead very quietly got an appointment with the President and told him about it, along with a suggestion that we keep it just as secret as possible. President Jenson agreed, with good reason, I think. Can you imagine the hullabaloo if this got out?"

"God, yes. Every country with the capability would want to go zooming off to see, and if one country lost a ship they'd blame another. We'd wind up in a war and probably the alien city would get a nuke popped on it eventually."

"That was Wannstead's reasoning."

"Okay, I'm with you so far. But what makes him think the Navy will do any better than their ships? Oh, wait. Never mind. He must have heard the musings of what's going on at DARPA."

"I hope musing is all he's heard. Their programs are supposed to be so black they have to use flashlights to get around the place. But you're right. Wannstead's new C class interstellar ships are just now being made available. Wannstead has already delivered the first one to Palmdale and DARPA is working on it now."

Mullins sipped at his coffee, savoring the bite of the brandy. "So let me see if we're straight. The Navy fixes up this new ship into a super-duper fighting machine and we send it to the Bolt Cluster to slay whatever dragon is guarding the treasure. Right?"

"Right. Now your mission is to pick the captain and crew for the ship. Start with the captain and work down. We need to get the senior officers involved with its renovation as soon as possible."

"I can see why! Okay, I can handle that. How many assistants can I bring to the job?"

"As many as you want to, so long as they don't know what they're doing."

He laughed. "Zinged me, didn't you? Fine. I'll cook up some kind of story for them to keep curiosity down. Anything else?"

"No, just let me know when you've got the crew ready."

"Can I recall some of the officers who aren't on active duty?"

"I suppose so. Are you thinking of any in particular?"

"Just one so far, but there may be others."

"Suits. Well, that's all I had, Gene. I'll let you get started first thing tomorrow."

"I may start this evening," he said, rising to his feet at her signal of dismissal.

***

Navy Captain Trent Keane leaned over the conference room table in an office at the administrative center of the famed Lockheed Skunk Works, Palmdale, California. An aerospace physicist and a weapons specialist sat at the table on each side of his chair, and Fred Jergens, a young electronics whiz and design engineer who was well versed in quantum engineering, leaned across the table from the other side. He had to brush back his long shaggy dark hair in order to see. His hair wasn't a political or personality statement, Keane thought. He gauged him as one of the types who just hated to take time off for haircuts. Keane was still reeling from being called back from leave and told he was being reassigned as Captain of the first of Wannstead's newest line of ships. Then to top it off, he'd been sent to the Skunk Works where the ship was undergoing a radical upgrade.

"It's quite an improvement over the standard design," Jergens stated emphatically, pointing to a spot on a hard copy printout. "Quantum indeterminism, my ass. That's the excuse Wannstead claims for some ships being faster than others but that's a load of crap. We can't get into the drive mechanism to see how he makes his own ships, but we know the ones he sells to us are speedier than those going to the U.N. and other nations. If we tried opening it up, we'd probably blow up half of California, so we went at the problem from a different angle. See here, where the gravity generator couples with the drive, we were able to enhance the flow of quantum shifting so that it's almost twice as fast as regular ships, and that also makes it faster than those Wannstead's sells to us or those they keep for their own use. His engineers probably did something like this but I'll bet they didn't go near as far as we did, not unless they learned how to control the quantum flux at the high end of thrust like we have."

Interstellar ship captains had to know a little of the theory behind the quantum drive, but most of what Jergens was telling him was more akin to Greek than English, and Keane didn't know a word of Greek. He liked the concept, though, and Jergens was reputed to be one of the best electronics design engineers in the business.

"Be damned! Does Wannstead know how we've remade this one?" Keane raised his head to look at the young man and tilted a brow.

"Hell no, and damn few others do, either." He brushed at his hair again. "This is so highly classified I have to tape my mouth shut at night in case I talk in my sleep and be forced to kill my girlfriend." Jergens didn't have a girlfriend but that was no one's business.

Keane chuckled, thinking of an ex-girlfriend whose mouth he'd once wanted to tape shut to keep her from talking about ex-boyfriends in her sleep. He dropped that thought and continued. "Show me the good stuff, things I know more about, like weapons."

"Sure captain." Jergens picked up a newer looking TekPad from his desk, swiped his thumbprint, tapped a few icons, and a section of schematics drawn in red ink lit on the screen. He put the TekPad down on his desk saying, "Projector please." A hologram sprang into being with the office wall as a backdrop. "Now look at the weapon bays here and here," Jergens said, using a pointer on his TekPad that was faithfully reproduced in the hologram. "We've replaced the lasers Wannstead uses and put in heavier types that another of the gang just finished testing. They're for fine work, but there's also a module here that houses a plasma pulser we've been fooling around with the last couple of years. This seemed like a good chance to test it, seeing as how the ship is big enough to carry one of them. Besides, we had a bug put in our ears about how anything to enhance the weaponry would be more than welcome. You'll have to wait until you're in space to use it, though. It draws its power from the drive energy." He looked up and grinned like a boy who'd just outscored a long time rival at
Edge of the Universe
, an extremely popular game played by young techies.

"What in the seven hells is a plasma pulsar? And what does it do?"

"The plasma part you can probably guess, Captain Keane. The pulser ...well, just think of blobs of plasma being shot from the ship at speeds high enough that they don't dissipate much before reaching their target. In our atmosphere the range is fifty miles or so, depending on your weather. That's the minimum. The higher you are in atmosphere, the farther away you can hit a target and damage it. In space though, the range ought to be much greater since there's no atmosphere to slow the blobs down or dissipate the cohesion. Thousands of miles at least. Maybe tens of thousands."

"Tens of thousands," the nearby weapons specialist said succinctly. "The bitch is aiming it over long distances but we're working on that. We're also looking at a double whammy for cutting though the atmosphere. We can use the laser cannons to cut a temporary hole in the atmosphere, then pulse our plasma behind it. Deadly combination-and increases the range of the plasma blast. We know of no other country that has that capability yet."

"Great. I can't tell you where we're going but that ought to give us an edge, depending on what we run into."

Jergens grinned as if he knew something Keane didn't, but continued his iteration of the upgrades. "That's not all. See these two indentations here? They'll be covered when not in use, but the lids slide into recesses when you need a twenty thousand kiloklick per hour rail gun cannon. It fires steel-coated depleted uranium slugs."