The Menagerie 2 (Eden)
Read The Menagerie 2 (Eden) Online
Authors: Rick Jones
Tags: #Action & Adventure, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #alien invasion, #Science Fiction, #Post-Apocalyptic, #Genre fiction, #Literature & Fiction
THE MENAGERIE
Book 2 of the Eden Saga
Rick Jones
© 2013 Rick Jones. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: [email protected]
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ALSO BY RICK JONES:
Vatican Knights Series
The Vatican Knights
Shepherd One
The Iscariot Agenda
Pandora's Ark
The Eden Series
The Crypts of Eden
The Menagerie
Familiar Stranger
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sixty-Five Million Years Ago
At 25 miles per second—at a velocity barely exceeding 90,000 miles per hour—the intergalactic ark was moving too fast for it to simply carom off of Earth’s atmosphere and back into space.
Once the colossal hull breached the planet’s protective bubble, a trail of white-hot fire stretched across the night sky with such intensity the nocturnal creatures suddenly found themselves caught within a moment of passing daylight, their eyes tracing the fast-moving trajectory until it impacted with the Yucatan Peninsula, setting off the fifth and final extinction-level event.
Sea levels regressed. And volcanic activity increased from Deccan Traps, reducing surface light and disrupting the biosphere with dust and sulfate aerosols, which consequently destroyed food chains. Temperatures increased as global firestorms wiped out tropical landscapes, creating environmental stress. Tsunami waves of unimaginable height forever changed the design of shorelines. And the dinosaurs were summarily erased from existence.
The bolide that struck the planet had a diameter of six miles. And at the moment of collision it created a depression five miles deep and 112 miles wide.
Upon impact the ship was all but decimated as countless tons of alien composite became dust and minute particles, the elements becoming part of the atmosphere, part of the cloud cover, with the larger pieces exploding outward in a perfect circumference of debris.
Sitting approximately 2000 feet below the rim of the crater, a scorched compartment stuck out after it had been injected into the wall after the impact event.
It sat there on a slight angle with its front end tilted upward, as if a behemoth was trying to nose its way out of the soil. On its blackened hull was alien script, a type of cuneiform, perhaps the title of the ship, with coils of hot steam and smoke rising off its skin, the compartment nothing more than a dead hulk comprised of alien compounds.
Three thousand years before the impact its entire crew had died off when a microbe a billionth of their size escaped from its container and wiped them out, the ship thereby depending upon artificial intelligence to navigate it from one wormhole to the next, from one galaxy to the other, until a malfunction failed to slow its progress when nearing Earth.
However—even with insurmountable damage—the hold was not without its treasures.
Life from every corner of the universe lie in stasis behind fields of pure energy, this remnant of an ark containing a menagerie of apex predators collected from planets too distant to comprehend.
Most had perished upon impact, becoming matter as small as the dust that eddied in the surrounding air. Others, however, remained intact behind protective walls of energy.
And those that endured would remain perfectly preserved in stasis for more than sixty-four million years.
Time had become irrelevant.
Eighteen Days Ago
The Village of Chicxulub, Mexico
Approximately two miles inland, where a collection of clay huts gathered around an ancient mission, two blocks of earth rubbed against each other, which caused the area to shudder and heave, the seismic disturbance registering 6.8 on the Richter scale.
The foundation of the Old Mission began to crack, the fissures climbing up the wall to the bell tower, the cracks widening, pieces falling, the tower weakening then canting as the cracks became gaping wounds, the walls separating, bricks falling. And then the tower collapsed, the walls falling inward as plumes of boiling dust went everywhere.
The village huts shook as terracotta ovens imploded, the people running for the foothills clearly driven by self-preservation.
Beyond the village shores the land beneath the waves began to heave and shift with conical-shaped mounds rising and taking shape, disturbing the existing reef and forever altering its ecosystem.
When the earth finally stilled and the dust began to settle, the villagers returned to their huts and began to rebuild a life that had gone uncomplicated for ages.
But normalcy was about to come to an end.
Offshore, beneath the agitated waves of the Yucatan Peninsula, the fore of a cigar-shaped hull urged to the surface by the shifting seascape stuck out from the crater’s wall after being buried for nearly sixty-five millions years.
Immediately the eye-in-the-sky satellite moved into position to detect any alterations to the landscape. But instead of capturing reconfigurations to the shoreline, the satellite captured a massive anomaly sitting 2000 feet from the rim of the crater. The anomaly appeared dagger-like with right angles. Other aspects were that the structure possessed geometrical angles along with proportionately tapering lines, indications that the structure had been manufactured. More strikingly were the results of the thermal imaging. According to the satellite’s readings, the structure was throwing off a heat signature that was several degrees above the temperature of the water it was submerged in, and never cooled over time. Whatever this anomaly was it was massive—just a bit smaller than an aircraft carrier, but much wider.
Within hours the images were sent to the proper authorities within the scientific, military and political communities. On the following day the political overseers between the United States and Mexico agreed to unite in the anomaly’s inspection. And within the week the ships of the U.S. Navy and the Armada de México assembled at the Yucatan Peninsula and set a perimeter above the vessel.
Two days later they breached its hull.
Present Day
After the passing of her father John Moore, Alyssa Moore was elevated to the position of Senior Archeologist at the Archeological Institute of Ancient Antiquities, the AIAA. She was of Filipina descent with cocoa-colored skin and almond-shaped eyes. She was normally spirited and enthusiastic, with life more of a blessing than a constant struggle. But lately she had become the point of interest for muckraking journalists who targeted her after the media announced that she had discovered Eden—a place that was more than just the cradle of mankind, but a master civilization that held several dark secrets. Since she could not support her story, and having buried the only piece of evidence in some obscure part of the Kurak Desert in Turkey, she was on the verge of financial collapse. Money backers and grant makers quickly pulled their funding. Tabloids went with the storyline that bordered on the absurd, respectable newspapers accused her as a fraud who manufactured the tale to keep the AIAA afloat. Universities would not consider her as a respected colleague should the AIAA fall, the damage to her reputation cutting painfully deep to the bone. Other possibilities were slim as well, seeing that the field of archeology was hard to breach once the damage was done.
She sat in her office with a heavy pall lingering. It was so quiet that she could hear the clock on the wall ticking, the small pendulum swinging in equal measures. Two of the walls had floor-to-ceiling bookcases packed with dust-laden tomes and volumes, most regarding ancient civilizations. And a large window with numerous panes of glass separated by leaden latticework was closed off by a stretch of velour drapery that blocked out the light, leaving her in near darkness. Only the light of a desk lamp cast a feeble glow, which drew ghoulish shadows along the contours of her face.
In front of her were clippings from various newspapers, the derogatory articles casting her as a fraud. Upon further inspection by various authorities her claims had gone unfounded—her Eden nothing more than a gaping wound in the landscape; a crater filled with desert sand and black silica, nothing more.
She fell back into her seat and sighed.
My life is ruined
.
She closed her eyes, blocking out the glow of the desk lamp.
After a long moment of near silence, as the wall clock continued to tick off like the needle of a metronome, came a light rapping on the door. When the door opened light spilled into the room as the silhouetted shape of a woman stood against a lit backdrop.
“Alyssa?”
“Yeah, Jenny, what is it?” She never opened her eyes.
“There’s a gentleman here to see you.”
“I don’t recall having an appointment today.”
“He’s a walk in,” she said. “But you may want to talk to him.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“He says he’s from the Department of Defense.”
Alyssa’s eyes quickly opened to the size of ping-pong balls.
#
Special Agent Blaine
O’Connell was tall and Lincolnesque with a fresh-scrubbed look about him. When he spoke he did so in monotone with hardly a measure of animation reflected in his manner. And when he looked at a person it was more of looking
into
someone, at the secrets they kept.
“I’m Special Agent O’Connell,” he said, holding out his hand.
Alyssa took it in greeting. “And you’re from the DOD, no less. I wasn’t aware that the notoriety I was receiving in the press lately would prompt a response from the Defense Department.” She said this while pointing at the numerous clippings.
