Alien Enigma Read online

  Alien Enigma

  Darrell Bain and Tony Teora

  Alien Enigma

  Copyright © 2010 Darrell Bain and Tony Teora

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by Double Dragon eBooks, a division of Double Dragon Publishing Inc. of Markham Ontario, Canada.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from Double Dragon Publishing Inc.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Double Dragon eBooks

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  Cover art by Deron Douglas

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  ISBN-10: 1-55404-780-3

  ISBN-13: 978-1-55404-780-2

  First Edition December 20, 2010

  Also Available as a Large Type Paperback

  Dedications

  To my wife Betty again, for all her love and support

  Darrell Bain

  I dedicate this story to truth. Mankind will never find its proper place in the Galaxy without embracing truth

  Tony Teora

  Prolog

  "No change from Liberty's record, sir. Not that they came close enough for any fine detail," reported Serena Shaft, the ship's executive officer, as soon as the clangor of battle stations had died down. Captain Wilson wanted to make peaceful contact but he knew the Jeane Baptiste's Captain had been no fool-she and her ship went missing at this exact location five years before. He ordered the Athena to full alert as they passed the hundred thousand kilometer distance from the planet Xanadu. Their destination was the alien city of the same name, discovered on the maiden voyage of Wannstead Industries' first interstellar space ship, a survey vessel named the Liberty . The second, the Jeane Baptiste , was sent to investigate the planet but never returned. Now it was the Athena's role to get some answers.

  "Can't say I blame them, not on a first voyage," Captain Wilson replied from his central position in the control room. "We're here to find out what kind of critter inhabits the place, though. Bring us in closer, about a thousand kilometers. Com, initiate contact protocols." His voice was calm, not displaying the tension he felt, the responsibility for his crew. Nor did it display the sense of aloneness he felt this far from Earth.

  The world below grew in size as the ship made its slow approach, showing typical blue and brown and green of an earthlike planet. On a separate screen, the alien city was displayed. The image was slightly fuzzy because of the distance and magnification but it became clearer as they neared.

  "No response to protocols, Captain," the com officer said.

  "Noted. Keep broadcasting."

  "Approaching a thousand kilometers, Captain," the XO announced.

  "Noted. Let's get in a little closer. David, bring us down to five hundred kilometers and offset to keep the city in sight."

  "Yes, sir. Five hundred kilometers."

  Four minutes passed in tense silence as the ship slowly approached the alien planet.

  A flashing light obscured every screen in the control room. The ship shuttered once, hard. Rumbling noises momentarily overrode excited voices.

  "Captain, we're taking fire!"

  "Get us out of here, David! Maximum thrust! Weapons free, return fire!" The captain's voice was louder but still perfectly calm.

  Another bruising crash of noise hit the ship. The screens, which had been coming back on line again, blinked out in a haze of static. This time smoke rose from beneath the control room console.

  "Captain, we're losing power!"

  "Keep trying. Guns, what are they throwing at us?"

  "A plasma charge, I think. It's chewing us up." The weapons officer's last statement was superfluous. Red lights were dancing along those parts of the console still functioning, indicating heavy damage.

  "Captain, we've got thrust but the ship's not responding! I think they've caught us in a ...a goddamned tractor beam of some kind!"

  "Our lasers aren't working and readings show the missile tube is blocked, Captain. I can no longer return fire. Not that it was very effective, damn it to hell," the weapons officer exclaimed. His voice had a tremor of fear in it.

  The ship began a continuous, ominous vibration, interspersed with sounds of tearing metal.

  "XO, shut down the thrusters!" Captain Wilson yelled. "We'll tear the ship apart if we keep bucking whatever it is that's grabbed us!"

  The sound of the straining thrusters died. Shortly thereafter, the city's assault on Athena ceased, but the tractor beam holding it in thrall drew it down toward the planet, toward the alien city of Xanadu and whatever fate awaited the ship and its crew there.

  Chapter One: Xanadu

  On the question to renowned Cosmologist-Physicist, Stephen Hawking, on whether scientists should contact alien civilizations from other planets ...

  I think it would be a disaster. The extraterrestrials would probably be far in advance of us. The history of advanced races meeting more primitive people on this planet is not very happy, and they were the same species. I think we should keep our heads low -Stephen Hawking 2010

  " ...and no one can deny that forcing a major reform of the United Nations before allowing it to have a military, or letting it purchase interstellar space ships from America, was one of our finest hours, instigated by one of our greatest citizens. Even the treaties mandating construction of the ships only in the United States for a period of twenty years was a laudable achievement. But even that gratuitous act is overshadowed by the way the administration and Congress caved in to Olson Wannstead's other demands.

  "Yes, caved in to his demands that some of our most venerable social contracts with our citizens be discontinued, that they be abandoned like unwanted pets set out to starve in the streets! We have managed to ameliorate some of his most drastic actions but ..." the speaker paused dramatically for a moment so that his disgusted facial expression could be seen against the backdrop of a United States flag prominently displayed in the studio from which he was speaking. " ...but, my friends, that same party is still in control in Washington more than two decades later and is stealing our freedom in front of our very noses. There was no need to surrender to Wannstead's retrograde idea of government where so-called free enterprise leaves many individuals and their families destitute. There was no need to simplify the tax code so that wealthy individuals no longer pay a fair share of the wealth given to them by this great country. There was no need to balance the budget on the backs of those citizens living at poverty levels and in need of assistance for food, shelter and health care. And there was certainly no need to begin paying down a national debt that has served admirably for decade upon decade to stimulate the very economy that allowed Olson Wannstead to generate his vast fortune. Those are just a few of the reasons I need your help in the coming election. We must fight the growing ..."

  "Shut the damn thing off," Olson Wannstead ordered. He touched the button on the arm of his big easy chair to order another drink and looked across the den at Brian Wannstead, his thirty-year-old son.

  The television screen on the wall of the den died as Brian voiced it off. "Do you think Gordon will win?" his son asked.

  The elder Wannstead shrugged. "I hope not but we can live with it if he does. It doesn't make that much di
fference now since our monopoly on constructing ships is going to end soon. We've done well, better than I ever expected, if fact. Anything else we accomplish is just icing." He grinned, giving substance to his handsome face that was just beginning to show wrinkles. "Of course, we'll keep the corporate offices and manufacturing plants here so long as we can earn enough for more ships of our own, but otherwise our future is on our own planets."

  "Are you planning on setting up a new colony, Dad? We already have two and only one of them is self-supporting."

  "There are some really great earth-type planets in the Bolt Cluster. That's where I'd like for us to expand, but we'd have to learn how to solve the damned enigma of our missing ships first."

  "You think we can, Dad? We haven't had much luck so far."

  The elder Wannstead shrugged. "I don't know. We certainly can't keep throwing ships at it. If the last one we sent doesn't return, I think we'll be forced to turn the problem over to others."

  "Not the U.N! Surely there's something else we can do," Brian exclaimed. The disgust in his voice held all his and his father's dislike of the world organization, despite Wannstead's part in its reformation over two decades ago.

  "No. The United Nations has fallen back into the old pattern. It's becoming bloated and one-sided again, and the blocs of smaller nations are gradually gaining sway. Besides, even if we can't gain access to the Bolt Cluster, I don't want news of Xanadu's existence to get out. Sure as hell, it'd spark an arms race and probably lead to war. At the very least it would be destroyed, along with all that technology just sitting there, waiting to be exploited." He sighed despondently. The alien city, designated Xanadu by his own late father, was discovered when Wannstead Industries began exploring interstellar space with its first experimental ship, the Liberty. On its maiden voyage, an overlooked parameter dealing with distances threw the ship far out into interstellar space near an unnamed cluster of stars. With his usual acumen for aptness, Wannstead senior, who had insisted on going on that first flight, called it the 'Bolt Cluster' after the way the ship had bolted to such an unplanned distance from Earth.

  Luckily, that first experimental model hadn't been built to land on planets. It was strictly designed to gather information and report back, with safety a prime consideration. It merely noted the presence of the huge alien city on an earthlike planet and, playing it cautious as ordered, never came closer to the planet than a hundred thousand kilometers. That was still close enough to get a fair recording of what they saw. Wannstead named both the city and planet Xanadu, after the beautiful and opulent Kublai Khan Yuan Dynasty summer capital in China.

  It naturally became the objective of the first flight of the initial standardized models of interstellar ships manufactured by Wannstead Industries, and these were designed to land on planets. That first ship, the Jeane Baptiste, never returned, nor did a more massive militarized version, the Athena, launched five years later, even though its Captain was instructed to ease into the Bolt Cluster and check other systems first before going near Xanadu. Another decade passed and Olson Wannstead decided to try one more time to land a ship near the alien city. Its Captain was also ordered to be cautious and check out other earthlike planets in the cluster before trying again for Xanadu. That was the Bella Galax. It failed to return as well. Profits still soared so he tried again, but that ship too was overdue by a month and he had just about lost hope of it ever coming back. It was also the last vessel the company could afford to lose. The great interstellar ships were extremely expensive, costing hundreds of billions of dollars each.

  "So what will you do, Dad?"

  "I believe our only option, and the only way to keep the secret, is to turn it over to the United States Navy. I really hate it. The technology there surely would have given the company a boost after losing so much money trying to land on Xanadu. I don't see much choice, though, do you?"

  "But Dad, how will that help restore our cash flow? That last explorer took just about all our reserve." Although he had come up through engineering, Brian Olson had been transferred to the financial end of Wannstead Industries after shepherding the latest class of ships through the design and manufacturing stages.

  For the first time after breaking the news to his son, he smiled. "I believe the recordings we took of Xanadu that first voyage will suffice."

  "How so?"

  "We're just bringing the more expensive C class ships on line after the fine job you did with them, and after seeing the Xanadu recordings, I'm pretty sure President Jensen and the government will put up the money to purchase the first ship off the assembly line for the Navy, and if they're satisfied they'll be more after that. Once the Navy gets the first one refitted, I believe it will head toward the Bolt Cluster and try finding out why none of our ships ever came back. Like any military, they don't like potential threats they know nothing about. Unlike most others, they have the means to try to do something about it. All we need to do is try to make them keep the objective secret, and Jensen promised me that so far as he's able, he'll do just that. It will go from him directly to the Secretary of the Navy only, I sincerely hope, and from there only to Admiral Mullins. At least it would stay in American hands this way."

  "And what do we get out of it?" asked Brian, thinking of the cash his old man was spending on recent adventures.

  Olsen smiled. "President Jensen promised to give us part of any proceeds that come out of Xanadu by right of original discovery."

  "Can he do that? Promise that, I mean?"

  "Not alone, but with the Space Navy's backing, it should be possible."

  "Do you really think it's that important to keep it under wraps? We sure haven't realized any profit from it so far! In fact, we've lost three of our ships, four if you count the one overdue."

  "Son, I know we've lost money, but everything I've ever learned in my life tells me that if the secret of Xanadu leaks out it will mean war between nations vying for the alien technology." He sighed, wishing he could leave now and turn the business over to Brian or his partner Lance. More than twenty years of tension from trying to keep a secret of the magnitude of Xanadu, and prevent a full scale global war, made for excessive wear on both the body and the soul. He was tired of it but the inner strength that had carried him this far would have to hold for a while longer.

  "Okay, Dad, but what makes you think the Navy can land on Xanadu when we couldn't? It'll be essentially the same kind of ship even if it is our latest class. I doubt the increased laser power, or the larger size ship, will keep it from being captured or destroyed, or whatever the hell happens there."

  "It probably wouldn't but I suspect the Navy will want it delivered directly to the Skunk Works. DARPA has been working on some improvements in interstellar ship weaponry. You know about them, don't you?"

  "Yes, sir. The Skunk Works is where they dream up new weapons. I didn't know DARPA was involved with them, though."

  "They are. Hand and foot, and have been almost since its inception. I've learned a little of what they're doing, but not much. They run a tight ship, if you'll excuse the pun."

  "I've always wondered why you didn't just let the United States in on it and allow the government to help us, Dad. Why not?"

  "Because every instinct and every bit of history I know tells me to never trust politicians with crucial information. They'd sell their own goddamned souls to stay in office or keep their own party in power. Something like Xanadu would probably have put the Progressives in power a decade ago and they'd have given it to the U.N. in a heartbeat. And the U.N. wouldn't have been able to keep control because every major nation would have broken the treaties keeping spaceship construction here. By now, we'd have already had a war. Xanadu might have - probably would have - been destroyed, if that's at all possible." He sighed heavily again, wishing human nature wasn't so damned capricious. With that thought, a laugh escaped him.

  "What, Dad?"

  "Nothing. Just laughing at a silly notion I just had." He glanced at his watch. "Isn't it abou
t time for you to see Watkins?"

  "Oh yeah. I'd better hustle. Later, Dad." He rose, gave his father a mock salute and hurried out.

  Olson Wannstead remained in the den. He sipped at his glass of scotch while musing over the past. As a young man he knew he would inherit control of Wannstead Industries, but never in his wildest dreams did he think the financial empire he would build from his father's discoveries of the quantum drive, and its associated gravitational technology, would reach such heights. Without doubt, he was now the richest man in the world despite the loss of three, probably four, tremendously expensive starships. It hadn't been hard to gain that status when Wannstead Industries sold single interstellar ships for more than three hundred billion dollars, making a tremendous profit on each of them. Part of the markup was simply to keep countries he didn't care for out of space. He was proud of what he'd accomplished with the technology, too, despite the grinding pressure of handling all its implications and the guilt over the shortened lives of the men and women manning the inquisitive ships his orders had caused to be lost.

  He knew he would never be as brilliant in the physical sciences as his father had been. Hardly anyone could match him in that area, now or in the past, but the old man had a corresponding lack of understanding of human temperament and psychology, particularly the type associated with those in positions of power. His father would have released his technology to anyone who could afford it, or perhaps even given it to the government in order to turn the nation into a superpower again. He had no inkling that such steps would inevitably lead to devastating wars with other nations that wouldn't stand for such a potentially overwhelming technological edge over them.

  When he died suddenly, the first experimental interstellar ship had just returned from its test flight with himself and five others as the sole crew, the same test flight that discovered the planet they had named Xanadu, the same as the unfinished alien city discovered on it. At least one edge of the circular city looked as if it hadn't been completed. It was hard to be sure because of the distance when the recording was taken, but it looked as if large machines were going about tasks that looked suspiciously like building or maintenance in that one area. Again because of distance, nothing much smaller than different types of edifices in the city could be discerned. It was thought aliens had to be present but there had been no replies to considerable attempts at communication.