Authors: Mark Howard
"Nice to finally meet ya, I'm Star...ah, what's this, honey? A little too much?"
"Nah, she just thought she was Dr. Strangelove there for a second with her little stunt," Roper explained. "If she knew how many hours these things logged over populated areas the last forty years she wouldn't be so concerned."
"Yeah, don't fret it," Star reassured her. "As much as I think what you did was pretty damned reckless, the ships themselves are safe as rocks. 'Bout as heavy as 'em too. Guess how much this one weighs? No, wait: guess how much the smaller one
you
took weighs?"
Though still a little light-headed, Jess had retained her curiosity. She knew a large car was about two tons, so she imagined them lined up in the shape of the triangle, stacked two high, and did the math.
"Hmmm, I'm thinking maybe thirty tons?"
"Try closer to fifteen
thousand
. And that's for your
smaller
one. This girl tops twenty-one thousand tons.
Yeah.
Give you some perspective, think of the biggest old-time steam locomotive you can. Got it? She's fifty-five of them, and then some. That's half the weight of the Titanic suspended up there. Wanna go walk under it?"
Jess thought she was joking, but then she made a move toward it, and they all followed.
Clearly this woman relishes showing off her baby to visitors,
she thought, hurrying to catch up with them.
"The weight of this ship is just about the same as an equal volume of water at thirty-nine degrees Fahrenheit," she instructed as they walked under the leading edge. "I'll leave it to you to ponder the significance of that tidbit."
Looking up, Jess examined the row of smaller circles that lined the outer edges of the ship's belly. Like the larger ones, they simply looked like oversized golf ball dimples, while powered down at least. Pulling a mag-lite from her breast pocket, Star pointed it upwards, and scanning back and forth slowly, quietly admired the underside of the ship.
"Beautiful, beautiful. It's art, really. Anodized Niobium alloy, the whole of it," she marveled to herself, as much as to the rest of them. "Course you never had a chance with that weight thing Jess; I was cheating a bit. Most of that weight's in the ring itself. The rest is pretty light, comparatively."
"What's the deal with the ring?"
"Well, that's where the magic happens. It's a super-compressed plasma that's spun up like a centrifuge. Takes the weight away. Well, I guess technically the weight's still there, let's just say it don't really matter at that point. Doesn't break the law of gravity, though, just confuses it a bit. It's powered by three Graphene super-capacitors, which in turn are trickle-charged by that nuclear stuff, like they mentioned."
Walking further, she continued to quietly admire the underside until they came upon one of the larger circular depressions at the corners.
"These are the ion engines that you use for vertical travel mostly, but they need to be in sync. If they're not in sync and you apply too much to one engine, you'll tip the ship. A couple tens of degrees of tip at full ring speed and you're suddenly a bullet from the angular momentum alone. You're lucky you lifted a Gen II, they were a lot more forgiving in that department, cause the ring was less efficient at nullifying the total weight."
"What about sonic booms? When I was onboard I didn't hear a single one, and we were going pretty fast. Or is that something you don't hear when you're inside?"
"Well, you wouldn't, true, but these don't cause sonic booms anyway. That's another little secret technology in itself — a superheated plasma field forms around the ship above a certain speed, using the waste heat from the ion engines. It burns the air around it, so there's no surfaces to allow a shockwave to form. These guys knew what they were doing. Now hold on a sec, you said 'we', I thought you were alone when you took the ship?"
"No, I meant originally. That's how I learned how they work, I went for a ride-along over in Mongolia."
"Mongolia? What in Sam Hill were you doing over there?"
"Long story...but I tailed one of them and put myself onboard before it got too far up. Then rode it home with some of the fellas. They were having a bit of fun with it — like taking out Daddy's Porsche when he's at church. But then afterwards, they 'visited' a civilian couple in Vermont. That pissed me off, honestly."
"Yeah, well. That's what they do. They got their reasons. As do we. Rip — you haven't met her yet — took Scout to about a hundred and twenty thousand feet once, but we wouldn't let her go higher than that. They'd probably work in the black, but we don't even know if they're rated for that, much less any sort of interplanetary travel. They're so hard to come by, we don't dare push the envelope on 'em — plus our work is down here, not up there. But say, how far up did you go?"
"I don't honestly know how high we got, but I could see the curvature of the earth. Then we docked, and this one fella left to board whatever we docked with — which I couldn't see — and then we dropped back down like a stone. Quite a thrill ride, for them anyway."
All three of them became very interested at this point. "Wait a second, back up. You docked? At the edge of space? Who was this guy? Was he tall with kinda fair skin?"
"Yeah, yeah, but I have no idea who he was. One of the pilots called him Senator on the way out though."
Star and the others looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
"Guess they mended that fence," Roper mumbled to Star before turning back to Jess. "Darlin' if you haven't figured out by now — he wasn't one of us."
Jess wasn't exactly shocked, but there was a part of her that wanted to believe he was human; it was all just too fantastical. A warm swimming sensation enveloped her, but then she decided to believe they meant he was Russian.
Yeah, that'll do for now,
she thought, as the feeling subsided.
"Boy, you got a lot done in your few days with the federales. No vetting either, huh? They must've needed you in a hurry. What were you doing out there, anyway?"
"Well, this guy was being held in North Korea. I busted him out," she said with a hint of bravado. They looked at each other again, impressed, and spoke in hushed tones, but loud enough for her to overhear.
"I told you they were working that angle," Roper whispered.
"Wonder what happened," Star mused, "must've been desperate for them to call on the G-Men."
"Whatever it was, they were caught with their pants down, that's for sure. It's only when they get nicked, they gotta follow the prime directive all of a sudden," Roper added, bringing a chuckle from everyone but Jess.
There were so many questions to ask, Jess couldn't hardly think straight.
"Star, you mentioned on the phone — by the way guys, what's up with the twenty-year-old cell phone?"
"That's the last of the old analogs," Sag explained. "The bug-ment don't care or even know how to tap those guys anymore. We got kinda like pirate-radio cell relays set up for it."
"Oh, wow, OK," she replied, genuinely impressed. "So anyway, Star, you said that my contacts in the 'bug-ment' wouldn't be calling me anymore, how did you know that?"
"C'mon, Jess, it was pretty easy for us to figure out you were involved in this. Maybe not if you dropped the thing down in Kazakhstan, but seriously, Wrigley Field? They know it was you, they've de-commed you already, you'll never see them again, believe you me."
"They mentioned that to me, that they'll run disinformation campaigns if I cause any trouble, but am I in any real danger?"
"Well, they won't send a hit man out for you, but they can make your life a living hell, that's for sure. Ever been worried about identity theft? How would you feel about identity assassination? It ain't death, but it ain't fun neither, is it now," Star said, looking over at Roper.
"Yeah, your wallet is probably already a relic," Roper added. "Good thing people still love cash though, otherwise we'd never get anything done. Did ya notice you haven't gotten a call or a text in the last twelve hours or so?"
Jess thought about it, and was surprised to discover she hadn't. "Ah, no...let me check though," she replied, nervously pulling her phone from her bag. "No, nothing. Hey wait, signal bar says 'Insert SIM'?"
"Yeah, they burned it remotely," Sag said. "I hate to say it, but I think they totaled you. Hope you didn't have much in your 401K. On the other hand, if you maxed out your credit cards, well you don't have to worry about
that
anymore either."
"Oh my God." Jess thought of every electronic record tied to her name, gone just like that. "What about my college transcripts?" she asked, starting to tear up.
Star stepped in and took her hand compassionately. "Sorry to say, they do tend to do a scorched-earth type of thing here, honey, considering what you did. On the bright side, if there's any physical record, like a yearbook or something, then they can't kill it completely, so they just mess it up."
"Yeah, so they like just probably turned your A's into D's," Sag offered.
"Not helping!" Roper scolded, as Jess' teary eyes widened.
"C'mon," offered Star, putting an arm around her shoulder. "We have something to attend to might make ya feel better; let's head up to the house."
Forcing a smile, Jess wiped her eyes and sniffled as she went with them back to the house.
~ 54 ~
L
eaving the building in the fading evening light, they headed back up the two-track towards the farmhouse. Lights from inside the house illuminated the gravel driveway outside, where an older model Subaru hatchback had appeared.
Entering the house, they led Jess into the kitchen where an older gentleman with short white hair, mustache and goatee turned to greet them. Sporting a sunflower-clad apron and oven mitts, he held before them a large pan containing a freshly baked cake. The words 'Disclosure 2015' were written on it in purple icing, above a cartoonish saucer-shaped silver UFO flying into the night sky. The assembled crowd applauded and whistled as they patted Jess on the back.
"Thanks for delaying her, folks, we didn't have any food coloring for the icing so I had to run into town. I hope it wasn't too obvious. Well anyway,
some
of us," he intoned, glaring at Star, "have been waiting for this day for decades, and look at this young whippersnapper who gives all of us a comeuppance! Congratulations, Jessica!"
Setting down the cake, he removed his mitts and delicately held out his hand to her. She couldn't help smiling at his immaculate presentation, juxtaposed with the amateurishly decorated cake, and took his hand with a slight bow.
"Victor. Charmed, I'm sure," he proffered, bowing even deeper in return. "That was quite a performance! And
Wrigley Field,
too. Style through and through. I like it! We have some copies of the YouTube videos before they were taken down this morning, if you'd like to see them later. Beautiful things they are. And the acrobatics! We
must
discuss. But first, cake."
Moving into an adjoining dining room, they all crowded around a long oak table. The style of the house was clean but definitely of the period; it had the appearance of a typical farmhouse from a hundred years past. Circular, yellowing portraits, presumably of the original owners, hung by wire from picture rails along each of the four walls. Behind the pictures, a yellowing wallpaper barely hid the large cracks in the horsehair lath and plaster. Her inspection of the spartan furnishings was interrupted by a slice of cake placed in front of her, the one with the flying saucer dead center, along with a cup of lemonade in a rocket-ship themed paper cup with handle.
"So, Jessica, tell us more about how you did it, if you don't mind. For starters, how did you get the codes?" Victor asked.
"Ah, codes...for what?" Jess replied, perplexed.
"Nah, that was a second gen, what she got, remember?" Roper reminded Victor, before turning to Jess. "The first and second-gen models didn't even have any startup codes — that's how confident they were of their security apparatus. Even after we got Libra. Then after Scout, they finally wised up and thought maybe they should add a password to these things!"
"So if the third-gen models have codes, then how did you get Big Mama?" Jess asked.
"She was a project," Roper continued, "lemme tell ya. Let's just say we have a little birdie on the inside who's aligned with our interests. Not everyone believes in what they're doing over there."
"OK, so let's back up a second, can you please explain to me what the deal is with these again? What is the goal here? Seems like a just a big waste of money."
"Well, they got a couple goals. And sweetie there's a whole backstory to this going on at least half a century that we know of, so this isn't just some shiny new thing. From what we've gathered over the years, we think one reason is that they're trying to co-opt public opinion on the whole UFO mess. Trying to own the story themselves."
"But I don't get it. Why? Nobody even believes in that stuff nowadays — it's a big joke. It's just, like, X-Files stuff."
"Maybe to some," Star interrupted, finishing a mouthful of cake, "but listen honey, over thirty percent of Americans believe that aliens have visited our planet. And over eighty percent believe the government has covered up information about UFO activity. So it's not as wild as you think. And talk about the X-Files, if you only knew the brouhaha that shit stirred up back in the 90's; a lot of 'em were totally against letting them go ahead with a few of those story lines — just too damn close to the truth. But the older, smarter ones prevailed — they knew putting it on T.V. would forever make it fiction. Feeding into the Crazy been workin' for 'em over thirty years now — much better tactic than the Keystone Cops coverups before then. 'Yes officer, all's I saw was Venus, that thing big as a house hovering over my backyard'...ridiculous."
"Yeah, swamp gas, right?" added Roper, laughing. "It's complicated though, man, they also sorta wanna keep that sci-fi thing going, as a cover story for what they have. So they keep it on the down low, but don't tell me the military brass of other countries don't know about it. That's part of it. 'Look what we have, we can fly right over your capital if we want, don't even try to start something with us.' Buncha cock-swagger 'sall."