Nebula (6 page)

The other weapon was a high power, pulsed x-ray projector, based on the same technology used for the communicators but with the power scaled up by orders of magnitude. This weapon probably had an effective range of about one or two hundred kilometers, and it didn’t have destructive power anywhere near that of the plasma gun, but it could generate pulses at a much faster rate and was still a pretty impressive weapon. Giovanis mentioned, once again, that large warships probably would have x-ray guns that were more powerful.

The two weapons provided armament similar to a long range cannon and shorter range machine gun. Cannons of the type found on the ship that crashed in Roswell couldn’t fire more often than once every ten to twenty seconds, but it had the range and power to be the weapon of choice as enemy craft approached or to be used at closer ranges against heavily armored bunkers or other fortifications. The machine gun probably would be used for medium range and close-in battles against other spacecraft. The UFO that crashed in Roswell had a single cannon and three machine guns. Both of the robotic craft only had two machine guns and no cannon. Nebula’s researchers concluded that this group of spacecraft were probably exploratory in nature and that the weapons were for the unlikely situation where they had to defend themselves, or maybe they use the weapons as tools for excavation or similar tasks. They did not appear to be warships.

“We expect that they have larger battle craft with heavier armament,” Giovanis continued. “But we think that they would just be more of the same types of cannon and machine guns. We’ll give you more details later. You’ll have ample time to read up on everything we know. Now let’s look at the security situation.

“You’ve obviously noted the extreme measures that we take. These are all essential. For about ten years, the intelligence agencies in the US and Russia have been trying to penetrate Nebula. They learned of our existence quite by accident when a remnant of the early records was found among some unrelated CIA documents from back in the 1980s that were about to be destroyed. As you know, destruction of TOP SECRET documents requires a page by page review to make sure that all pages are accounted for. Well, it seems that a couple of pages related to the initial formation of Nebula had been mistakenly placed in that file. We thought that all those documents were either removed from government files or were destroyed. In this case, our departure from strict government control procedures and the resulting carelessness worked against us, and the US intelligence agencies now had something that they would make every effort to understand. At about that time, there was a high level Russian mole at CIA, and the Russians soon learned of the discovery. That put all of us in great danger of being penetrated by one country or the other.

“When we brief you to Level-3 and Level-4, you’ll understand better why we need to avoid being compromised. We had already abandoned the original headquarters in Nevada, so the leads from that direction were pretty cold. We had several other facilities in the US and Russia, plus a couple under the ocean. That’s right – at the bottom of the ocean. It’s amazing what a lot of money and competent people can do. So our facilities were pretty secure. But we still need to have outside contacts, so there’s always a chance of being detected.

“People like Brad Lincoln provide our most important shield, but each of us also has to do his or her part to protect the project above all else. The person who you are replacing did his part, and that’s why we need you to replace him.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked. “What was this part that he did?”

“He had been compromised when he left our secure facility to do a job on the outside, and he probably was about to be apprehended. We can’t allow ourselves to be taken and questioned. There’s no way to avoid breaking under the types of techniques that they use, so we have to take whatever measures are necessary to avoid that. He took the extreme measure. I don’t think that I have to give you the specific details. But it’s totally painless and very quick. He did what had to be done.”

“He killed himself?”

“Of course. What else could he do? You see, he had already disappeared, like Yuri, Ludmila, Nigel, and some others. They found that he was still alive, so they came after him to try to track him back to us. He had no choice.”

“What about me? Will I be in the same boat?”

“Look, Professor Ambrose, you are already dead to the outside world. You’re now totally buried within Nebula. We don’t intend to send you outside.”

“What? How can I be dead? What have you done?”

“When you fled from the university, we had already arranged for your car to be totally destroyed by an incendiary bomb. This was all preplanned. We got a corpse that was about your size and weight, and we made sure that the fire and the other chemicals in the bomb would do so much damage that it would rule out any direct identification, even with DNA. We also took a shoe from your house and made it look like it had been ejected from the car by the explosion. It was only slightly singed, and we made sure that there was enough of your DNA on it for the authorities to determine that the corpse in the car was you. But don’t be alarmed. We also made sure that your good name remains intact after your death. All the evidence against you will be found to have been fabricated, and the car explosion will be seen to have happened as you were about to drive to your meeting with that accountant at the Department of Justice. So you may have left the world of the living, but you will be remembered as an honest person and a first rate scientist.”

“Oh, that’s just great. Thanks a bunch. I always did want to go out with a bang and leave only good memories. So now I’m dead. Why is this necessary?”

“Later. For now, let’s continue with the briefing. You’ll understand when you know everything.”

Harry just sighed and sat back in the chair. Now he was a dead man. What next?

Giovanis went on to explain that Harry was now one of the most important people in Nebula. He’d find out why when he received the higher level briefings, but for now he needed to understand that Brad Lincoln and the other senior security people would do anything that they could to protect him – and, of course, to take any necessary measures to make sure that he didn’t fall into the hands of the intelligence agents who were trying to penetrate Nebula. The significance of this remark wasn’t lost on Harry. He was now the “property” of Nebula. They would protect him as best they could, but they also wouldn’t allow him to fall into the hands of the people who were set on finding out about Nebula and all its secrets.

Harry asked, “Why can’t Nebula just come out of the closet and reintegrate with the governments? Wouldn’t that be a lot easier and more productive?”

Giovanis replied, “No, we can’t do that for a number of reasons. Governments are notoriously bad at keeping big secrets, especially governments where the senior people are replaced every few years. Besides, we were in the midst of the Cold War, and it was very obvious that the United States and Soviet Union would probably try to capitalize on the alien technology to improve their positions relative to the other and maybe even precipitate a war that could destroy us all. Fortunately, the few government and military people who were aware of the technology were also rational people who understood this. What we’re doing needs to be kept from any potential exposure to political or public view for a while longer. You’ll understand why when you’re fully briefed in.”

At this point, Brad interjected. “Mr. Giovanis, I just got word that an intelligence agent was caught near the Level-1 facility in West Virginia. We had to eliminate him, but we expect that the location has been compromised. I ordered a full evacuation, and we’re going to activate the destruct. All the essential data has already been uploaded to our other locations. It will look like a drug bust that went wrong.”

“What about Walter Ferguson? Has he been compromised?”

“We don’t think so. The operation against our facility appears unrelated to him or to our visit with Professor Ambrose. It seems that the EPA has been doing aerial measurements of ground water in the region. They were using some sort of ground penetrating radar and found an anomaly because of our underground structures. That type of data is provided to the intelligence agencies since it could indicate narcotics or terrorist activities, and we think that’s what brought them there. It was a fluke, just an unfortunate coincidence.”

“But what about Ferguson? Are we advising him to take any precautions? He’s been to the facility a number of times, and he’s also well known to be connected with Professor Ambrose. They may start to connect the dots if they have surveillance information on the two of them and can relate it in any way to the facility.”

“That’s already been done. He knows what happened and he’s going to keep his distance from anything to do with us, including any communications, for at least a few years. I don’t think that we’ll have to bring him and his family into our black hole.”

“Good. We may need him working on the outside again, but for now, we can get by. But let’s set up covert surveillance on him for the next few months. We don’t want to risk his exposure. You know what to do.”

Brad nodded. He understood. So did Harry.

“OK,” Giovanis said. “Let’s get on with Professor Ambrose’s in-brief. Myron, please start the next set of charts.”

The screen now switched from the pictures of alien spacecraft and equipment that had been used during George Giovanis’ briefing and now showed a simple word chart, a set of statements:

• Level-1 – Existence of a secret project dealing with alien technologies, locations of least sensitive facilities, identities of cleared personnel, and general awareness of exploitation of the alien technology
  

• Level-2 – Nature and history of Nebula, including the roles of government and industry, and knowledge of the types of technology that were discovered
  

• Level-3 – Background on alien activities and objectives
  

“You’ve been briefed to Levels 1 and 2, and you have access to the detailed documents and other records that will give you a deeper understanding of those topics,” Giovanis continued. “You’ll have plenty of time to go over them once we finish all your in-briefs. We now move to Level-3. This will be as far as we can go in this location. To move to Level-4, we’ll need to go elsewhere. Are you OK so far?”

Harry nodded, and Giovanis motioned to Myron to go to the next chart. It was a map of stars that looked totally unfamiliar to Harry.

“This is one of the alien navigation charts, actually a digital map that took us a long time to decipher. The aliens have a data processing approach that is surprisingly similar to our own, but since their language and mathematics are different, it was difficult to make sense of the binary data. It actually took us a long time to get where we are now, but once we did figure it out, everything became very clear.”

Giovanis explained that the star map showed the region of our galaxy where the aliens came from. “We were able to match it to observations from Earth by doing the coordinate transformations. It seems that they came a great distance, more than fifteen hundred light years, from somewhere in the neighborhood of what we see as the Veil Nebula. You may recall that it’s the remnant of a supernova that exploded about six or seven thousand years ago. It’s interesting that they come from a region of space near a nebula; it gives the name of our organization more significance than we had intended.”

Harry wasn’t familiar with the Veil Nebula, but he did know that supernovae did produce remnants like that, as well as strange types of stellar objects as a result of the final collapse of what was left of the star after the explosion.

“They’ve been traveling for thousands of years, as measured here on Earth. But since they usually travel at high relativistic speeds, usually loitering only for ten or twenty years to reconnoiter regions of interest, we estimate that only a few hundred years would have passed in their local time. Most of the elapsed time for the fleet was the time spent loitering, since when they traveled from region to region, it was usually at about 99.999% of the speed of light.

“We quickly understood why they undertook such a difficult journey. It wasn’t just to explore space. Their home world was located about five light years from the star that would become the supernova. That was so close that their planet would have been destroyed by the explosion, or it would at least have been rendered uninhabitable. Their science was able to predict the supernova well in advance of the explosion, so they probably had several decades to decide what to do about it. The plan was to evacuate as much of the population as possible and to try to find a new home. They decided to head out toward the outer edge of the galaxy, where stars were a bit younger than where they came from, so that they could avoid settling near another star that might become a supernova within only a few hundred thousand years.”

He pointed to a set of lines on a star map that was projected on the large screen and explained that the main body of their fleet didn’t head toward our solar system at first. It went in a different direction for a long distance and then changed course several times before heading toward our region of the galaxy. That was shown by a thick line in the display. The end of the track was at a point almost fifteen light years from Earth. But many other, narrow lines also were on the star map, branching from the main line at each of the points where the direction changed.