“Can you imagine?” Mitch said. “It’s gonna make the TED Conference look like a retirement home reading circle.”
When no one laughed, Mitch said, “Never mind. It’s going to be awesome.”
“Okay,” Richelle said. “What else is on the agenda? Erik, did you want to bring us up to speed on anything else?”
Before Erik could say anything the door burst open and a breathless Naoko stumbled inside. For a moment it looked like he was going to either faint, deposit his lunch on the new Persian rug, or both. When Naoko got his breathing under control, and some of the color returned to his face, he said, “You guys need to get out here.”
“What’s going on?” Richelle asked.
“I don’t know.”
They all got up and followed Naoko back through the narrow passage and down the stairs to the hangar. Before they even reached it they could hear the whine of machinery from inside. When they stepped through the door, what they saw stopped everyone in their tracks.
The hatch at the top of RP One that had last opened to launch Gandalf, was now standing open again. Francis looked up at the window of the observation room and saw a very nervous Captain Almila looking up at the cargo bay doors as they slowly inched apart to reveal a black sky dotted with bright stars. When Mitch tried to approach the gangway, Titov held him back.
But there was no launch.
What appeared from the hatch instead was a telescopic cylinder about the thickness of a telephone pole at its base. It rose ever higher, stopping only a couple of yards short of the hangar doors. A moment later they heard a soft metallic clang from somewhere inside RP One, then the pole began to sprout branches. These got longer as they descended, from only a few feet at the top to several yards at the bottom. To everyone looking on it bore an unmistakable resemblance to a giant Christmas tree circa late January.
“What is it?” Titov asked.
Heinz and Mitch answered the question in perfect unison. “It’s an antenna.”
Mitch was the first to break away. By the time the others abandoned their caution and joined him he was already seated in the commander’s chair. When Richelle stepped onto the gangway behind Francis, the ship let out a short but loud note. It sounded a bit like the first couple of seconds of an air raid siren. Richelle grabbed Francis’s arm in surprise, then pushed him away when she saw he was smiling.
“That’s hilarious,” she said. “Really.”
When she reached the bridge she pulled off the ring and was about to hand it back to Mitch. What stopped her wasn’t the look on his face, but the picture on the viewport in front of him that was responsible for it. Floating in the blackness of space against the backdrop of Jupiter’s largest satellite was Origin herself, all twelve majestic miles of her in splendid detail.
“Is it…” Richelle began.
“I think so,” Mitch said.
Mitch turned his attention to the smaller screen in front of him and asked Watkins to join him.
“What does it say?” Mitch asked.
Watkins put on his glasses and peered at the Saishan text on the screen. As he read his eyes grew wider.
“Well?”
“Remote command access is now enabled,” Watkins said. “Confirm full system override.”
Mitch moved his hand over the controls in the arm rest, then pulled it back and looked at Richelle. “What do you say, boss?”
“What does it mean?” Richelle asked.
“I think daddy is finally handing us the keys to his car,” Mitch said.
Richelle studied the faces looking back at her. “Well?”
“I don’t think it’s even a question,” Heinz said. “It’s what we’ve been trying to do from day one.”
When no one else spoke, Richelle turned back to Mitch. “Then let’s do it.”
Mitch needed no urging. He confirmed the override and sat back.
Nothing happened.
Heinz let out a sigh of frustration. Naoko glanced at Mitch and offered him a sympathetic smile.
“I guess—” Francis started to say.
“Give me the ring,” Mitch said.
Richelle handed it to him and Mitch placed it on the middle finger of his right hand. When he moved it over the control panel the stones in the ring began to glow. A second later the screen was populated by a new menu. When Mitch turned to look at them the smile on his face ended just short of his earlobes. But none of them saw it. They were all looking at the viewport.
Origin was gone. In her place was an image that might well have been a still from an upcoming big budget sci-fi film. It was a hangar of some kind. Lined up in three rows, stretching as far as the eye could see, was a giant squadron of forward-swept winged craft that looked like something you might find on the drawing board at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works or the runway at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mohave Desert. There must have been at least five hundred of the craft in all, assuming the hanger didn’t simply stretch on for miles. As they watched an eight-wheeled crane drove into the picture with one of the craft suspended in front of it. It moved up the line to a gap, deposited the craft in its place, then proceeded to pick up the one next to it and return the way it had come.
Mitch took in the scene with a fascination few children could have matched and rolled the ball under his thumb forward a notch. What replaced the picture was an almost identical one, only in this one at least two dozen of the craft were missing. About halfway up the isle on the left of the screen one of the wheeled cranes was standing idle. The craft it had been carrying appeared to have fallen off and lay at an awkward angle on the deck in front of it.
Watkins leaned closer to the screen. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?” Mitch asked.
“According to the list this is only the second of fourteen hangars.”
As his words and their mind-boggling implications worked their way through the assembled watchers the silence on the bridge grew almost unbearable.
It was Mitch who brought them all back down to Earth.
“I don’t want to freak anyone out, but if these guys came in peace what’s the deal with the imperial fleet?”
To be continued…
Nathaniel Dean James
December 2014 – February 2015
Now that you have finished this book, perhaps you would consider leaving a review. Reviews are a great way for readers to discover new books, as well as for authors to discover new readers. Most online retailers provide a facility for readers to write reviews. If you received this book through a giveaway or other promotion, you can always leave a review at Goodreads. It would be greatly appreciated.
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First of all, I would like to apologize to those readers who were promised this book would be available from November 2014. At the risk of alienating (pun not intended) your goodwill, I appeal to your understanding that life, an often tiresome and sometimes thankless distraction we must all endure, has a habit of getting in the way. That said, I am not entirely blameless. Season One has actually enjoyed a fairly decent run. It was my original intention that the proceeds from the first book would fund the publication of the second. Alas, I chose to forfeit any financial gains the book might have brought in order to make it as widely available as possible. This was a marketing decision, and while it has led to a delay of several months, I am confident that it will have the opposite effect on future volumes. I hope you can forgive me.
As you have no doubt concluded already, Season Two is a contrast to its predecessor in many ways. This is primarily because the first book was intended to serve both as a novel in its own right and an introduction to the series as a whole, while Season Two might be more accurately described as the first act in a series that will see Aurora and its members through to whatever fate awaits them in a future pregnant with peril and possibility. If you found this book less intense than the first, you have only me to blame. I admit (and some will surely make me pay for it) that we do not find ourselves being dragged along at quite the same pace. To tell the truth and shame the devil, I felt obliged to tip the scales a little in favor of the science fiction absent in so much of the first book. And now that we have achieved equilibrium, I think it will be easier to maintain it.
Season Three is scheduled for publication in early 2016.
As with the first volume, much of the work that has gone into bringing this one to fruition cannot be credited to the author alone. It may be that without the story, there would be little point in everything else, but the opposite is equally true. Thus I owe a great deal to the following people.
To Mel and Dawn, two tireless women of unshakable character who are both the editors of this work and my partners in crime at Millennium Birdhouse. Without their hard work, enthusiasm, and dedication, this book would not have seen the light of day.
To my employer, Martin Brower UK, who has provided the steady income without which my writing would become an unbearable economic burden rather than a labor of love. It stands to reason that well-paid work can be hard to find in the current climate, and I am grateful for the opportunity.
To my good friends Eddie and Mac, whose continued friendship and charity have made short shrift of many of the obstacles that might otherwise have delayed this project by many more months.
To my friends and colleagues who have taken the time to review this book prior to publication. As any avid reader will know, even the might of an established publisher, much less a start-up pocket Indie-press, is not always enough to iron out every kink in a large body of work.
To my loving family, both at home and abroad, who continue to support me as I make my way down that well-traveled and hallowed road to what I hope will someday be a full-time pursuit. I owe a great deal to your patience and endurance, and I am well aware of it.
And finally, to you, the reader. I have heard it said that some write only for the love of it, and I don’t deny that I take a great deal of pleasure in the act itself. But I do not primarily write for my own gratification, I write for yours, and I can only hope that I have done right by you with this book.
I’m a Swede, born in England and raised in the United States. In many ways I was a Caucasian gypsy for the first twenty-five years of my life, settling in Sweden, Denmark, Florida, California (Hollywood, Palmdale and San Francisco), Curacao, Mexico, Hungary, and finally the United Kingdom, where I reside today. I was a soldier for ten years in the British Army, first in the Parachute Regiment, and later in the Royal Military Police. I think the only thing that really strings all these things together is that I never stopped reading. Now a family man, I live with my wife and our twins in the south of England.
—
Cast
(in alphabetical order)
Brendan Fisher
– (
aka. The Chief
)—Former head of Security at
Aurora.
Brendan was originally recruited out of the US Army in Berlin to serve as the personal bodyguard of
Peter Bershadsky
. Brendan was killed at the end of Season One following his failed attempt to take over
Aurora
.
Captain Almila
– Captain of the
Pandora.
Captain Baraghani
– Iranian army captain sent to pick up
Francis Moore
and
Titov Kargin
and ferry them to the Pakistani border.
Captain David Williams
– Captain of the
Callisto
.
Captain MacDonald
– Captain of the
Karl Gustav
, the pocket freighter used to supply
Aurora
.
Caroline de Villepin
– Eldest daughter of
Peter Bershadsky
and chairman of the
Karl Gustav Foundation.
Charles Wentworth
– Owner and senior partner at the law firm Ritter, Wentworth and Low in Washington DC. Charles was originally
Peter Bershadsky’s
lawyer and now works exclusively for the
Karl Gustav Foundation
.
Colonel Ji
– Foreman of the
Jangdan-myeon mine
.
Commander Shen Duan
– Commanding Officer, Special Intelligence Directorate of the People’s Liberation Navy (China). Duan is also the operational head of
Project 38
for the Chinese.
Erik Breland
– Chief of Construction at
Aurora
and
Sarah Breland’s
father.
Francis Moore
– Former US Marine recruited by the CIA into
Operation Princip
before it was taken over by
Norton Weaver
. Now a permanent member of the team, Francis is in the process of taking over as head of security at
Aurora
. During his antics in Wisconsin at the beginning of this book he is using the alias Mathew Landen.
General Seo-jun Rhee
– Head of
Project 38
within the Korean People’s Army (North Korea).
Heinz Gerber
– Chief Scientist at
Aurora.
Jack Fielding
– Former member of
Aurora
and Head of Corporate Security for
Skyline Defense
in New York. He was also previously Richelle’s fiancé. Jack was killed at the end of Season One as a result of his collaboration with
Brendan Fisher
in his attempt to take over
Aurora
.
Jasper Klein
– Geological engineer at the Telford Research Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
Kim Jong-sul
– Illegitimate son of North Korea’s dear leader.
Mike Banner
– A close ally of
Francis Moore
in Season One, Mike is now the Special Agent In Charge of the FBI Field Office in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mitch Rainey
– Former technician at the FBI’s Office of System Development in Washington DC. Mitch arrived at Aurora in Season One and is now the leading authority on the computer system onboard
RP One
. Mitch is married to
Sarah
,
Erik Breland’s
daughter.