Authors: Michael Rusch
The Overrun story continues…
OVERRUN: Project Hideaway
By:
Michael Rusch
Now available on
Kindle
.
A week has passed since war has
been declared on the United States by Japan's Great Union and the Plan Zero
genocide attempt unleashed. It soon becomes evident the effects of the plan are
not what its creators intended. The United States all too quickly finds itself
about to be soundly defeated in the Dome War.
Word becomes known of the
details of Plan Zero to the outside citizenry, those ordered dead by the U. S.
government and have now survived. With the U.S. military weak and losing
ground, the President finds himself backed into a corner. After being forced to
initiate the Plan Zero genocide on the United States people, President Ford now
must answer for the sins of his administration to the rest of the world.
One piece of technology still
exists that could bring about victory for the battered U.S. forces and ease the
plight of the divided country. Launched many years before the onset of war, the
Beam Cannon Hardware, the United States solution to providing ozone protection
to all its citizens, still floats secretly in space on the sleeping ship,
Hideaway.
Possession of this technology is
considered by many to be the deciding factor in determining the outcome of the
Dome War. Construction of the Beam Cannon Hardware would mean protected life
for all United States citizens living in the outer world cities. It becomes the
one thing Ford, a President now considered outlaw, might be able to use to
appease his country.
Aboard the Hideaway, a two-man
crew is inexplicably awakened from hypersleep with no communication or
instructions from Earth. They learn that an unexpected fifty years has passed
since the onset of their mission. With no knowledge that Plan Zero or the Dome
War have occurred, the pilots struggle to decide what to do with the technology
they possess, which they know could ultimately save the plight of the dying
human race.
President Ford launches a covert
retrieval mission led by General Maxwell Tuttle. J.G.U and mercenary forces
race to do the same. The quest to obtain the prized technology becomes a
definite battle for victory in the war as well as a final determination of
survival of the planet.
Following the failed rescue
attempt from Beuford’s shopping mall and the death of the Kirken family,
General Maxwell Tuttle leads the retrieval mission into space. He is unable to
contact the Hideaway crew for fear of revealing the ship’s location to the
J.G.U. and separate mercenary forces also on the way.
After fifty years of forced
hypersleep, the Hideaway pilots wrestle with the shock of the erasure of their
lives through their extended hibernation and debate the best course of action
now to take. Fighting bitterly amongst themselves, they prepare to meet three
unknown ships advancing upon them in space.
With no acknowledgement or
instruction from their government, they organize a full-scale hostile defense
of the Hideaway cargo. Readying to forcibly retain possession of the Beam
Cannon Hardware it was their mission to protect, they also debate their return
to an unknown Earth as a means of escape.
Neither is aware of the grand
importance now placed on the outcome of their clash. They do not know their
actions will ultimately decide the final existence of the war-ruined United
States as well as the fate of the entire living world they float above.
Science Dome 15 Command Center.
Ten minutes prior to Death Wall ignition.
"Veer left! Veer left,
Ground 2!"
A trail of fire blazed after two
Bullet land fleet vehicles racing back towards Science Dome 15. A giant burst
of flame gouged a hole twice the size of the two vehicles combined deep into
the ground beneath the rear of the one furthest from reaching the landing bay.
The blast rocketed its frame into the air and hungry flames devoured it before
it hit the ground. The fiery debris rained across the path of the lead Bullet,
causing its pilot to swerve into a path where a second J.G.U. rocket then
ripped it into nothingness.
The steel from the exploding
vehicle seemed to shriek briefly before shredding into oblivion, and then no
further sound came from the battle monitor.
"As everyone has been
notified, the security of Dome 15 has been compromised," the tall figure
of Lt. Commander Dome Leader Steven Corrado loomed ominously at the head of the
large meeting table. Taking a half step to his right, his large frame covered
the large monitor screen that displayed the battle being waged on the
sun-battered outside terrain.
"A defense land fleet has
been dispatched and are heavily engaged. They are only a few miles away."
Corrado hit a button on the panel to his left, and the lights to the entirely
white meeting room became slightly brighter. "We are here to address
rumors and discuss possible scenarios and solutions as they relate to this dome
attack and the security of Mission Hideaway."
A series of explosions flashed
from the monitor, and the dozen or so gathered members of the Hideaway science
team looked again to the monitor screen to witness two more of the Bullet land
fleet burst into flames. Their fiery destruction jabbed bright light across the
still dimly lit room. A thin cloud of smoke hovered in the air from cigarettes
clutched tightly by many of those present.
"How far away are
they?" Dr. Katie Rone, head of the Hideaway Pilot Research Program,
questioned the speaker.
"The command to light the
Death Wall was given about five minutes ago," Lt. Commander Corrado
answered her. "They're very close. And as I know I needn't remind anyone,
the Death Wall has always been considered a last resort."
The room fell deathly silent.
Only a soft sound of explosions from the monitor and the quiet sucking from
deep drags on cigarettes could be heard.
"Do we wake them up?"
Corrado questioned the group. "This is one of the most difficult decisions
this facility has ever faced. I know that. But people…, we have to decide this
fast."
"Of course we wake them
up," Rone answered him. "If the Death Wall is the last resort we have
to bring them down now. While we have time."
"There is no time,"
Dr. Robert Kobus, a member of her personal research team and the man seated
directly to her left, answered curtly. “This decision should have been made
many days ago. It should have been made when we first heard we were going to
war. But now, the war has all too quickly come to us.”
Rone tried, as she always did,
to control the red-hot poker-through-the-eye emotion she always felt when offering
her colleague Kobus any sort of debate. She had always considered him a
bickering and argumentative man since the day he had come to work for her,
someone that she never really liked very much and always wished each day that
would leave the research team. Their views on how to interpret the Hideaway
crew never seemed to agree.
But the
focus of their research was much too intriguing for either of them to ever
leave the team. A ship sent up into space with every bit of technology ever
created on the planet hidden onboard. Electronic files of further information
were added since through quick unnoticeable bursts of coded transmissions on an
almost continuing daily basis to the ship’s vast array of storage equipment.
Two pilots ordered to hide the ship safely away from discovering radars and
sensors, hidden from Earth on the far side of its moon. Once hidden, the pilots
put themselves down into extended hypersleep with a mission of only to wait.
They were to wait until called sometime called upon. That was fifty years ago.
And what had become interesting to both Rone and Kobus both was that “sometime”
had now become way too long.
The job of the research team was
to monitor and research past histories of the pilots. They were to think,
rethink, and predict each pilot’s reactions to any and every set of stimuli
that could be encountered while they were on the ship.
Neither Rone nor Kobus had ever
met the two men. They had inherited the project from a screening and
implementation team now since retired. This previous team had selected these
men from a choice of more than thirteen hundred candidates referred to the
project for consideration.
Despite not knowing them
personally, through numerous lengthy discussions with her predecessors, some
done through dissertations and coursework at the dome universities, Rone felt
she had experienced the entire process firsthand. She considered herself
connected with the men inside and out and able to gaze deep within their souls
to comprehend the reason the field had been narrowed to just those two.
Of anyone in the room, she was
the foremost expert on the two men guarding the most important cargo ever to be
shot off the planet in a ship.
She had heard rumors of the
project within the earliest years of her university enrollment, and they had
drawn her…almost fanatically so. She was fascinated by the fact that these men
had been left in hibernation and never wakened from terminal sleep. She was
fascinated by the moral implications of the sin they continued to commit each
day they did not bring these men back to Earth and was morbidly curious as to
what would happen when or should these men ever awake.
Rone spent years and three
subsequent theses on the subject. More than ten years she spent with those that
screened the men. She knew the personal histories of each man by heart. She had
run and re-run their psychological evaluations and created and played out every
scenario of their return to consciousness both in report form and in her head.
She lived, breathed, and dreamt these men and always wondered, despite all her
studies, what would really happen when their time finally came to awake.
During the course of this all,
she had acquired an extreme fondness for these two men, one that bordered on
love. Impractical or unethical. Romantic or paternal. She was always never
sure. What she did know was despite whatever their personal intentions for
signing onto the project, she felt an emotion toward them based on their
individualities and what they had gone up there to do.
She feared that every day they
were left up there, and now with the country at war and the dome under attack,
there was the danger that their lights in the universe would some day be
forever lost.
These were the thoughts driving
her in this conversation. She had always felt it would be her decision and hers
alone as to when these men would finally be returned to Earth. This was the
time, if any there could be, to finally bring these men back down.
"These
men have been in hypersleep for fifty years,” Kobus said to her. “That’s
nothing to their bodies, but half a lifetime to those they knew around them.
Lost to a prolonged hibernation to which they never agreed. They will come out
of it thinking it’s been a few weeks or months that they slept. Natural human
reaction has to be taken into account. They will be disconcerted, a feeling
which will quickly be followed by fear," he said not addressing the room
so much as he was trying to lecture her personally herself.
“And then anger,” he paused and
turned away from her to the others that listened. “It will come. Our control
could become lost.”
Kobus shared some of the same
feelings as her own. However, not entirely so. Like her, he was morbidly
fascinated at the prospect of these two men left alone to float possibly
forever asleep in space. The personal connection, however, was never there. The
prospects of their fates didn’t sway his compassion or emotion in either
direction. And the fact that she was the expert, who had more authority and
knowledge on this subject, to him was always up for debate.
Rone turned her face away from
the lieutenant commander to look over at him.
"They're going to be really
pissed," Kobus again ignored the rest of the room and spoke to her
directly.
Each year the project continued,
Kobus had become squeamish of ever bringing the men back. He advocated leaving
the ship up there indefinitely rather than risking the possibility of detection
even from the minute signals required to bring it back online. He had also
grown to fear the two men.
This apprehension and his own
personal research centered on only one of the pilots. Each day he spent working
on it was another day he felt the decision made many years ago had been
entirely wrong. This pilot was wrong. He was not the one the world should count
on to keep the world and its secrets safe.
Kobus never wanted to see the
ship come down, not with this man alive and onboard.
Kobus had gone so far as argue
his case to her in court. After the ruling, there was an appellate proceeding.
But on both occasions, in the presence of both governing tribunals, he was
never able to completely convince her or those making the ruling of his fears.
Rone wondered if Kobus’ inability to make the case for this man to ever be
allowed awake on the Hideaway before dock was only due to fright of the world
they existed in or if he just wasn’t entirely convinced himself.
In either case, she had always
been able to keep Kobus and his ideas down while still keeping the project in
motion. Mission plans had never changed in all the years since it first went
up.
"I've researched both their
psychological histories thoroughly. I've been closely monitoring their
life-support and brain patterning. Nothing has been out of the ordinary,"
Rone argued to him. “There have been no complications going into or during
their hibernation states. Normal flow and action of brain waves has always been
intact. They were both given top psychological clearances when they went up.
If these men were given the
military clearance to be aware of and then safeguard one of the most important
inventions the world has ever seen, then these same men are certainly capable
of handling unforeseen contingencies and changes in mission plans. They are
United States soldiers for God's sake, not members of a suicide watch group. They
can handle this. This is what they were sent up there to do,” Rone finished.
"These are not unforeseen
changes in mission plans," a younger male voice came softly but with
authority from the far end of the briefing table.
Heads turned towards the man that
spoke. Rone could barely see the outlines of his face through the thick haze of
smoke shrouding the room. She thought it was Korcheck, Christopher Korcheck, a
member of the beam cannon technical group. Only when a burst of air from the
overhead ventilating fans cleared the air a bit was she finally sure.
Korcheck was one of the top
scientists anywhere in the collection of the United States domes. He grew up a
child prodigy, an individual whose genius many thought immeasurable. Some said
it simply couldn’t be described.
Korcheck was a young, eccentric,
and driven scientist who spent years working in the tunneled caves below the
dome. A man who declared on national news at the age of ten that he would use
his knowledge, a great gift given to him from God, to one day save the world.
The footage was carried on almost every news agency for many years that
followed.
Korcheck worked with the beam
cannon scientists. He studied their designs, examined the flaws, conducted his
own experiments into the technology, and helped the engineers just make it
through. He had discovered new means of storing and utilizing power. He created
atom chips and power control devices that were always smaller than anyone else
had ever dreamed of in design.
He refined the space necessary
to make the Beam Cannon Hardware usable. Through his own ambition, he made it
possible for the beam cannons to work. Once constructed, the technology he
refined now stored on the floating Hideaway and within the deep underground of
Science Dome 15 would be able to completely encompass the globe with an
artificial atmosphere. Not limited patches that would only be able to save and
protect a preordained few.
Once a few more things worked
into place, it would be possible to implement the technology completely. With
this done, the disease and division that ravaged the planet would one day be
forever removed.
"We need to think about
what we are going to do," Korcheck continued. "We're going to pull
these men from hibernation, a procedure that is in itself disconcerting and
stressful to the physical and mental system, and tell them the world is at war.
Not only that, their family is dead, because we decided to leave them up there
in hibernation rather than bring them back down at the specified time.
If we do this, we have to
completely follow through. We cannot bring them out and order them to just sit
up there and await the possibility of discovery by a hostile force. I think
that's a little more than you can expect from anybody.”
We need to wake them up and bring
them immediately back," Rone agreed with him.
At that moment, the lights
dimmed, the coffee mugs on the table rattled, and the walls surrounding them
seemed to shudder. Electronic voices rattled off status reports in the outside
corridors, and the flashes of red alarm lights spilled into the room.
"It may soon not be up to
us to decide," Kobus said grimly. "Since I joined the pilot research
team five years ago, a few things of note have given me great cause to concern
and make me extremely apt to disagree. Particularly in regards into Major Jeff
Barnes, co-pilot of the Hideaway.