Ancient Birthright (15 page)

“Did you toss them in a dumpster somewhere?”

“No, I gave them to the Breathsword trio.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I noticed their cars in the parking lot of the country club. So I pulled into employee parking near the front entrance. Their golf bags were sitting in the rack by the main entrance door, and the caddies were around the side of the building drinking soda. After wiping off my prints, I dropped a few of the modules down the club handle tubes in all three golf bags. Then casual as could be, I walked down the sidewalk back to my car.”

“No one saw you?”

“Everyone was either inside or in the shade at the table beside the building. I was opening the door of my car when the Senator, his brother the Director, and Billy came out. You know Billy must weigh close to four hundred-fifty pounds or more. He waddles from side to side when he walks and looks like a billboard for a plaid textile factory. The three didn’t even glance at their golf bags.

Billy snapped his fingers twice as the three started across the blacktop. The caddies were obviously waiting for the signal. They ran around the corner of the clubhouse, hoisted the overloaded bags to their shoulders then stood beside the trunk of the cars waiting for the three to open them so they could put the bags in. If the modules are ever found, the military will think Director Breathsword took them.” Duane grinned widely. “Problem solved.”

#

It had been three days since Striker sent Duane home, and now NRAO looked more like a military base than an observatory. Army Abrahams tanks bracketed the main gate, and sandbagged machine gun positions flanking them.

Duane’s foot jerked on the brake making his wheels chirp. “Holy crap, they even have anti-aircraft missiles setup.”

Army MPs checked cars and people as they arrived and left. At least they were letting the workers go home again, and the phones are working.

Duane parked his car and walked into the maintenance office. “Wilkins, why all the military hardware and personnel at the front gate?”

Wilkins let out a deep sigh as if he had explained everything before. “Colonel Striker was appointed installation commander. The President, through the Joint Chiefs, authorized his position and assigned the military support and equipment. The force is a combination of Army and Air Force personnel. Colonel Striker has direct oversight of the situation.”

“What situation?” Duane asked.

“When you left the other day, Striker had just called the Joint Chiefs and gotten authorization to take over NRAO. We all attended a security briefing and had to sign forms that said we will keep all knowledge of the alien craft secret.”

“Alien craft? What alien craft?”

“Try to keep up, Dumas. Someone was using the VLA to contact an alien craft. We’ve been recording the alien transmissions for several days, but so far, we haven’t had any luck in decoding the messages. We had one recording that was in English, so we think someone from the U.S. was talking to them. All the subsequent messages are in a code that we can’t break.”

“Can I listen to the recordings?”

Wilkins eyed Duane suspiciously. “You could have, but they disappeared the same day you came back to work.”

Damn, I should have kept my mouth shut.

“What does the director have to say about this? I saw him the day I came back to work, and he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. In fact, it looked like he’d just won a bundle from the lottery.”

“Where did you see him?”

“I saw him coming from the direction of this building after I finished in-processing,. Then later, I noticed his car at the country club after Striker sent me home.”

“Well, we don’t have to worry about Breathsword. Most of the executives and their support staff have been relieved of their duties and furloughed for an indefinite period.

Once Colonel Striker took over, he converted all civilian personnel contracts to what he calls essential military workforce contracts. That in essence makes the civilians working at NRAO a part of the U.S. armed forces and subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In other words, our lives belong to Colonel Striker until he decides otherwise. You need to get the security briefing and sign your contract conversion documents before I can let you back to work.”

“Where do I need to go?”

“Head over to HR in the admin building, and they’ll take care of it.”

Duane parked in the spot designated for visitors, and left his car unlocked and the keys in the ignition per directive NRAO-26.73c. Wilkins had given him a copy of the new rules before he left the maintenance office. The directive permitted access and the authorization to search all privately owned vehicles on the installation at any time. Duane entered the admin building and stepped into a world of governmental limbo.

#

Later that afternoon. “Dumas...come with me. Striker called a staff meeting and requested we attend,” snapped Wilkins as he walked past Duane’s desk.

Striker took care of the more mundane business of the staff meeting, before he got to the reason he’d ordered Wilkins and Duane to attend.

“Wilkins I want your section to design an interface to tie into NORAD’s targeting and guidance system. Several modified ICBMs with additional boost capabilities and attitude control systems for course corrections are under construction. We need precision data from the VLA for guidance.”

Striker planted his fists on the table and leaned toward the two men. “You have two months to install and test the new interface.”

“Yes, sir. We’ll get it done,” Wilkins said.

“Question, Colonel Striker,” Duane said as Wilkins frowned at him.

“Go ahead.”

“Are you telling us you are going to attack the alien ship before we know anything about the beings on board and their intentions?”

“That is need-to-know only information and way above your pay grade, Dumas. I will tell you this...in the military you plan for the worst and hope for the best. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed that the outcome is somewhere in the middle.”

Duane said, “Our readings now indicate the ship will pass between the Earth and Moon without hitting either one. So the threat of collision should not be a consideration.”

“They don’t need to hit us to launch an invasion. We don’t know anything about them. Where they come from? What they look like? How intelligent they are? What’s the level of their technology? Until we get answers to those questions, we will prepare for the worst-case scenario. Any other questions Mr. Dumas?” Striker asked.

“Not at this time, Colonel.”

“You have two months, Wilkins. Dismissed.”

Duane and Wilkins returned to the maintenance offices where Wilkins called a meeting of all personnel. He explained the task that Colonel Striker had given them then assigned portions of the effort to those most skilled in that area. The only person not assigned a task was Duane.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Duane.

“Oh, nothing on this project. Since you seem so concerned about the morals of what we’re doing, I didn’t want to strain your conscience. You’ll pick up the slack for everyone else, and take over their normally assigned duties.”

Duane almost lost his fight to keep from smiling. His mouth twitched once, but Wilkins mistook it for a grimace.

“What? You don’t care for your new duties? Too bad. Since I can’t fire you, you’ll do as I tell you, or I’ll have Colonel Striker lock you up for refusing to follow orders,” Wilkins threatened.

Duane forced himself not to react to the taunt. He thought, I have been racking my brain for weeks trying to figure a way to take over the everyday recording of the transmissions from the ship. Every time I thought I’d hit on a way to get Wilkins to assign me the duty something else came up with a higher priority. Now out-of-the-blue Wilkins assigns me the job as punishment.

Wilkins’ animosity seemed to grow the longer Duane did not respond.

Finally, Duane figured he had better say something or Wilkins would have a stroke. “Fine. I’ll do the scut work. But don’t expect me to kiss your boots for it.” He watched a look of malicious gratification flash across Wilkins’ face.

The random errors I’ve introduced into the VLA tracking system is not much, just enough to cause the signal from the Universe Explorer to fade out at random intervals and interrupt the recordings, Duane thought. It takes five to ten minutes for the problem to show up and the operator to reacquire the signal. So far, they’ve attributed the problem to the extreme distance of the ship and interference from sun spot activity. But one day soon, Colonel Striker is going to notice the intermittent gaps in the recordings and insist the maintenance crew fix the problem.

Wilkins yelled over his shoulder, “Dumas, take over monitoring the signal recording station this afternoon, so Jamison can get on this new assignment.” He walked to his office and closed the door.

Duane picked up the phone on his desk and called his wife Linda. “Hi Honey, I wanted to let you know I might be late getting off tonight, so don’t wait for me. I’ll catch a ride home on the shuttle. We just picked up a pot full of work, and Wilkins assigned me to take over the duties of six other guys including the most boring job around here, signal monitoring. Tell the kids I love them, and explain what’s happened. I’ll try to get home as soon as I can. I’m going to see if I can get my schedule shifted to match the times I have to do the monitoring… Yeah, I love you, too.”

That should get the word to Beldon that he’d be doing the monitoring, and give Bel a little more freedom in his contact with Saigg.

Now, if he could just keep from being caught, and charged with aiding and abetting the enemy, even though no one in the military knew if the beings on the ship were friend or foe. Somehow, Duane didn’t think it mattered.

Chapter-16

Universe Explorer
: Transjump plus 4 years, 187 days:

Four days into her initial seven cycle of clutching, Renna sobbed, “Saigg...Saigg, one of the eggs doesn’t smell right! Get my mother, I need her.”

Marra confirmed Renna’s suspicions that the egg was infertile.

Saigg picked up the cooling egg that Renna pushed through the flap in the screen. He heard her keening wail on the other side. The need to comfort his mate was overpowering, but Marra’s presence and her firm hand on his arm stopped him from pulling the screen down.

Saigg experienced firsthand the waste-recy scene Kaas had described to him the day Renna clutched. He carried their first egg to be recycled. Tears filled his eyes and streamed down his face. Saigg stumbled along blindly in the line of other souls on the same mission. Crushing despair nearly drove him to his knees. This was the most discouraging thing he’d ever had to do. Every species on the ship was represented in the queue. From the heavily muscled Burdons, with their three-horned heads, who acted as cargo handlers, to the diminutive Casroo with their nimble four-fingered hands that could fix any mechanical device on the ship. No one could meet his gaze. The pain in their eyes mirrored his own.

I have to find a solution to this. I will find a solution to this. I will end this pain. I will find a solution. I will end this sorrow.
The line crawled forward as Saigg repeated the affirmations silently to himself.

Two days later, Renna’s cry of anguish raised the crest of hair down the back of his head when he heard it. Her initial assessment that two more eggs were infertile proved incorrect. After separating the three closely packed eggs, she discovered that two were still alive.

He repeated the walk of sorrow, and witnessed the defeat, pain, and despair reflected in the eyes of every male shuffling in the line with him.

#

Saigg drove his research team to try anything that even remotely had a chance of offering a solution to their problems. They made amazing progress with both the written and verbal forms of English.

Beldon was transmitting the pages of every English-to-foreign language translation book he could find. his attempt to explain war and military offense and defense were harder concepts for Saigg to grasp.

Saigg thought back on his early school studies. The small group of students listened to their mentor, Command Prime Garuu, tell them about the history of their civilization
.
A history passed on by teachers who’d lived on a distant planet never seen or experienced by the students.

The teachers descriptions of the history that spawned the
Universe Explorer,
painted a picture of a planet-wide civilization that only recognized the borders of private living quarters not individual nations. Material possessions did not play a big role in the culture. Personal adornment was practiced by a few of the species but had never evolved to any great extent. The human concepts of currency and hoarding, described in the books Beldon sent, were totally unknown in their society.

The lessons on how scientists developed techniques to work metal, communicate over vast distances, and build complex machines kept the class spellbound.
But their strength was in the world of organics and bioengineering. They grew complex systems where needed. As they invented new organisms, they shared them with anyone who wanted to make use of them. They developed weapons, for protection from some of the larger, more aggressive animal species that roamed Earth, but had never considered using them to subdue another intelligent race.

The drive to build the
Universe Explorer
and establish a colony was due to curiosity, not overpopulation. A need to know what was out in the galaxy and beyond.

Saigg’s face twitched at his next memory. His confrontation to ask his father-in-law for help…

“Crew member Domm Feuua, could I have a few demibeats of your time?”

“A few demibeats of my time? Sure. Why not, you already have everything else of mine. My daughter, my job, why not take my time, too.”

“I also want your expertise.”
That threw him off his stride.
“You are the acknowledged expert on language evolution. Now that we are beginning to understand the Earth language English, my contact on Earth has begun to send translation materials to help with the other languages. I have noticed that many of the words in the various languages seem to have the same origin. I have a theory that all the other languages are just sub dialects of English and with a few truebeats of your help, I believe the team will be able to understand all the other languages.”
Was that enough of a crazy theory to hook him?