Mission Origin View (Final Days Trilogy) (2 page)

“
Our main objective, which is only known by the individuals in this room, is to acquire advanced alien technology. We’ve discussed the undisclosed classified scientific research based on the Brown Gilbert DNA String Law in previous meetings. This law proves that a species of a life form cannot evolve into another species. The Darwin-based theories about the ‘primordial soup’ and ‘evolution’ have been disproved. Since this is the case, and because of the fact that no life forms have been discovered on any of the colonized planets, it is strongly believed that life was placed on Earth by alien beings long ago, beings who are possibly our distant relatives.” Senator Rimms paused, took a sip of water, and continued.

“
Once the SRS
Stephen Hawking
confirms that aliens visited Earth billions of years ago and seeded life, Doctor Layton will order the scientists aboard the
Stephen Hawking
to use the computing power of the ship’s quantum computer to calculate the probable origin of the alien ships that visited Earth. We’ll then have a good idea of where the aliens may be located, and we’ll use military-type starships like the SRS
Stephen Hawking
to find the alien civilization, make contact, and eventually obtain advanced alien technology that’ll enable the United States to protect itself from enemies on Earth and colonized planets. I’ll now open the floor for discussion, and then we’ll vote,” Senator Rimms ended.

A few seconds later, Committee Member Jane Miller,
began speaking. Senator Rimms noticed that she looked nervous as she spoke.

“
I know our primary goal is to obtain technology, but are we going to tell the peoples of the United States, Earth, and the colonized worlds that the origin of man came from aliens and risk chaos among the citizens? Who’s to say what might happen if the truth about the origin of mankind is released?” Jane asked in a frightened tone, and then continued. “I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but I’m afraid of what people might do.”

Senator Rimms turned to Admiral Frank, and used a hand to motion the admiral to join him and address Jane’s concerns. Admiral Frank stood, took a few steps to the podium and said. “Remember, our main focus is to obtain alien technology to be used to protect our country and our interest, not to discover the origin of life. It’s been decided by the current administration and military joint chiefs to make this mission ultra top secret. It will never be released to the general population that the origin of man was alien until it’s determined the public can handle such information. As a matter of fact, for security purposes, the scientists and crew going on the mission won’t know about the Brown Gilbert DNA String Theory or that they’ll discover aliens seeded life on Earth.”

Senator Rimms saw
Jane and some other committee members look somewhat relieved with the admiral’s answer.

“
What about the percentage of certainty that this mission will be successful?” President Clayton asked. “I want to make sure the mission will be a success, especially after the trillions of dollars we’ve poured into the project, which could have gone to other areas of national defense.”

Senator Rimms then motioned for Dr. Layton to join him and the admiral. Dr. Layton stepped up and used the podium microphone.
“Mister President, I…I…I can’t accurately estimate a percentage of success on such a mission as this.”

The
president didn’t look pleased with the answer and spoke again. “Doctor, I respect what you’re proposing in this mission, and I’m very pleased to know the project thus far was successful. All I want to know is, what’s your best estimate of success? If the mission has little chance of success, the
Stephen Hawking
’s advance technology and weaponry could be immediately used on one of our battle fronts.”

Dr. Layton
looked surprised at the president’s abruptness and answered. “Mr. President, I believe we have a seventy-five percent chance that we’ll complete this mission successfully.”

The
president looked stunned, but then his face relaxed, and he asked, “Will the selection of the crew affect the successful completion of this mission?”

“
Of course, Mr. President. The more qualified the crew and scientists, the better the chance for success,” Dr. Layton said. “If we used the best personnel available, I’d say our chance of success would increase to eighty-five, possibly ninety percent.”

“
I want the best on this mission, both military and civilian. Do whatever you have to do to get these people,” President Clayton ordered.

Senator Rimms stepped in this time to respond.
“Mr. President, I’ll personally see to it that the best military and civilian personnel will be selected. Admiral Frank will select the military personnel, and Doctor Layton will ensure that the best scientists will be identified and assigned to this mission.”

The
president look pleased with the senator’s response and didn’t follow up with another question or comment.

After several more comments and discussions by other committee members, a vote was finally taken
, and Mission Origin View was approved.

***

A young marine asked Dr. Harper and Dr. Jones to accompany him back to the conference room.

Everyone had gone except D
r. Layton, Senator Rimms, and Admiral Frank. All were sitting at the oval conference table. The doctors entered the room and sat down as the marine closed the conference room door behind him.

“
Mission Origin View has been approved,” Senator Rimms finally said with a smile.

Both d
octors first appeared relieved and then expressed excitement about the upcoming mission.

“
Doctor Layton, please select the rest of your scientific team,” Senator Rimms said and then swung around in his chair toward Admiral Frank. He added, “Admiral, please select the crew of the
Stephen Hawking
.”

Senator Rimms then stood,
“We’ll meet here again in two weeks to make preparations to transfer the scientists and crew to Phobos.”

Part Two:
The Crew

Earth, Near La Sal, Las Californias

0245
—February 7, 2372

The setting moon illuminated the mountainside as a United States Marine
recon green operations team slowly made their way to their objective just outside the town of La Sal, Las Californias. La Sal had once been part of Utah.

The platoon was dropped off at a landing zone (LZ) just inside the United States near Bedrock
, Colorado. The recon team had been walking for two days. Their mission: recon La Sal for five days, and deploy remote-controlled sensors to detect activities once they’ve completed their recon.

Lieutenant Gideon Klaxton walked behind h
is point man, Sergeant Manelly. Gideon stood six foot tall, muscular, blond, with a tan complexion. A four-inch scar crossed his forehead, and was the only blemish on his face. 

Sergeant
Manelly was leading the team by slowly following what looked like a deer trail down the mountainside. Corporal Gault and Staff Sergeant Kindle followed Gideon at ten-yard intervals. 

The recon team continued slowly down the mountain until Sergeant Manelly hand
-motioned for the team to stop and then signaled Gideon to join him. Gideon gestured with his hand to the marines behind him to guard their flanks and rear.

“
What’s up?” Gideon asked Manelly in a whisper after he joined him.

“
There’s La Sal, sir,” Manelly whispered back as he pointed southwest to a lighted, small town. “Looks like a small hill just north of town. I’ll head there, and we’ll set up our observation post.”

“
Looks good. Let’s go,” Gideon said.

The team continued until they reached the hill that overlooked the town. Several houses were on the hill
, but the team went around them. A few hours before dawn, the team found a spot among some pine scrubs and began digging shallow holes to conceal themselves during the day. By dawn, the holes were completed, and Gideon set up a watch schedule. One man would watch the town, note activities, and guard their perimeter, while the other three marines slept. As soon as it was dark, they would start their first recon around Las Sal.   

“
LT,” Corporal Gault whispered as he gently shook Gideon’s right shoulder. “It’s fifteen hundred hours, sir. Time for your watch.”

Gideon woke and saw Ga
ult smiling at him. Gault had a round face that was larger than normal for his five-foot-eight-inch frame. He was nineteen years old, white complected, and would have had red hair if his head wasn’t shaved.

“
Thanks, Corporal. You get some sleep. We’ll eat at twilight and start our recon as soon as it’s dark,” Gideon said.

Ga
ult crawled into his hole and lay down.

Gideon crawled to the spotter scope Manelly had set
up on the ground between two pine scrubs. From this position he could see the entire town of Las Sal. He quickly reviewed the “spotter log,” lying by the scope, for entries of any significant activity or locations of military installations. The log noted several convoys had gone through town and the locations of a fuel station, a communications station, and what looked like an ammo dump. Gideon put the log down and started watching the town.

At sunset, Gideon woke his men
, and they ate a dinner of nutrition bars. Afterward he outlined the evening’s recon mission. Their recon would take them to the places noted during the day’s observations, and they would deploy audio and visual sensors near strategic points along the way, such as highways, military installations, and so forth. He then ordered his marines to inspect their MP-92 assault weapons.

To lighten the mo
od and relax his men before the evenings recon, Gideon whispered as they inspected their weapons, “Corporal Gualt, tell us about the MP dash ninety two.”

Gualt
frowned while Sergeant’s Manelly and Kindle smiled.   

Corporal Gualt whispered
, “Sir, the MP dash ninety two is a standard marine issue personal assault weapon. It’s two weapons that share a common compact platform. The MP dash ninety two can be used as either a magnetic rail gun or a particle beam emitter. Both magnetic rail and particle beam weapons can be adjusted by the operator based on specific battle conditions and requirements.”

“Very good, Corporal,” Gideon said as
he finished inspecting his MP-92 and locked the weapon’s power pack into place. “As soon as it’s dark, we’ll move out. Manelly you’re on point.”

***

An hour into their recon, and just before the team arrived at their first objective outside Las Sal, Gideon’s earplug chimed a signal that an incoming message from headquarters was coming in on his Advanced Tactical Communication and Computer System (ATCCS), which was wrapped around the wrist of his left arm. The system was the latest in combat communications and computing technology. Marines normally used the ATCCS on their standard-issued combat helmets, but in this case, as for all special ops, no helmet was worn.

Gideon stopped and looked at his ATCCS. Before he pulled up the message
, he pressed a code into its miniature keypad, which sent a specific chime signal to his team’s earplugs to halt. He normally preferred using hand signals, but the moon wasn’t up yet for his team to properly see. The team heard the halt chime and stopped.

Gideon then keyed in the message reception code
, and the message scrolled across the ATCCS fixable display.

TO LIEUTENANT KLAXTON COMMANDER GREEN RECON TEAM FOXTROT; TERMINATE RECON AND REPORT TO LZ ZEBRA SOONEST FOR EXTRACTION. AKNOWLEDGE MESSAGE…

Gideon looked at the received transmission in disbelief and read it several more times to convince himself that he was reading it right. He finally acknowledged the message and forwarded it to his team via their ATCCS, along with a message of his own that instructed Sergeant Manelly to return to their observation post using a different route back. All chimed an acknowledgment.

“Problems, LT?” Manelly whispered after the team returned to their observation post and huddled around him.

“
You know as much as I do, marine,” Gideon said while looking at an ATCCS display of the location of LZ Zebra. “Looks like it will take a day or so to get to the extraction LZ. We’ll travel as fast as we can. We’ll move out in fifteen minutes. Police the area and make sure we don’t leave anything behind and eat a couple of ‘N’ bars. We won’t stop till dawn.”

At dawn the team had traveled half way to LZ Zebra and looked for a place to
conceal themselves for the day. They found a small gully, worked themselves into some brush, and took turns sleeping. While resting, Gideon wondered why the mission had been scrubbed. He thought about sending a message to headquarters, requesting an explanation, but didn’t. The standard operation procedure was to transmit as few messages as possible to decrease the remote possibility that the short encrypted transmission bursts would be detected and his team located.

The team was up and left at twilight. Around midnight Sergeant Manelly chimed a halt. Gideon slowly crawled ahead and joined Manelly.

“Why the halt?” Gideon asked in a whisper.

“
House ahead, sir. It’s on our direct route to LZ Zebra. If we go around it, we’ll have to cross a deep gully and lose three hours.” Manelly paused and then asked, “Should we go around, LT?”

Gideon thought for a second and whispered,
“We go by the house. We can’t afford to lose those hours if we want to be at the LZ at dawn.”

“
Yes, sir,” Manelly said.

Gideon chimed a continue signal
, and the men moved forward.

When they neared the house
, several dogs started barking. The marines lay on the ground and crawled dead slow. The dogs quieted down for a few minutes but started back again after the marines had crawled about twenty yards. Gideon thought about burning the dogs with his MPB-92 set to particle-beam mode but decided he’d kill the dogs only if he had to. He did look through his weapon’s auto-adjusting scope, could see the house clearly, and noted two dogs chained to the front porch.

Just as Gideon began to crawl again, a man opened
the front door and started shooting an old semiautomatic weapon in their general direction. The marines stopped crawling as dirt, rocks, and brush exploded around them. A few seconds later the man emptied a forty-round magazine and began screaming something in Spanish as he removed the empty magazine and inserted a full one. Gideon touched an audio-record button on his ATCCS to capture the man’s voice as he continued to scream. The man then emptied the fresh magazine in their direction and went back inside.

As Gideon was attempting to replay what the man had screamed using his ATCCS, he received a wounded chime from Sergeant Manelly. Gideon stopped what he was doing and crawled up to Manelly.

“Hurt bad, Burt?” Gideon whispered to his sergeant.

“
My back, sir. I think I took a round,” Manelly said in a low voice laced with pain.

Gideon did a quick check and noted that Manelly was bleeding. Gideon chimed for the rest of the team to join him
, and they carefully and slowly pulled Manelly away from the house. Once they were far enough from the house, they stopped in a small stand of scrub pines. Sergeant Kindle began working on Manelly’s wounds and Gideon sent Corporal Gault to backtrack and cover their trail.

Gideon watched as Sergeant Kindle used a medical kit scanner to locate any metal that might be in Manelly’s body and then watched as he applied a nano bandage over two wounds.

“
Find anything?” Gideon whispered to Sergeant Kindle.

“
Two pieces of lead, one in a shoulder muscle and another in his left lung. I’ve already targeted the metal in his lung for the extraction nanos,” Kindle said.

“
When can he be moved?”

“
Give him thirty minutes, sir, and he’ll be ready.”

An hour later the team was on their way again. The
nano bandages had stopped the bleeding, and the extraction nanos were working to remove the two pieces of lead from Manelly’s body while repairing the wounds behind them. The nanos would have the bullet fragments out of his body in a few days.

Corporal Ga
ult took point while Sergeant Kindle helped Manelly walk. Gideon brought up the rear.

An hour before dawn
, they reached LZ Zebra. Gideon used his ATCCS to notify headquarters that they were ready for extraction and had one wounded.

As they waited for extraction, Gideon remembered that he hadn
’t yet listened to the recording of what the man with the gun had yelled. He listened to it and smiled. He then translated it from Spanish to English and passed it on to the team using his ATCCS. The man had yelled,

I don’t care who you are or how many men you have. I’m not going to pay any more taxes this year! Come any closer, and I’ll blow the whole mountainside away.

Gideon smiled and figured that Las Californias taxes were probably higher than those in the United States.

***

At dawn a stealth Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) shuttle picked up the team, and minutes later they were back at their base. Gideon made sure Sergeant Manelly was taken care of and then reported to headquarters.

Gideon rapped on Captain Forest
’s door.

“
Enter!”

“
Sir, Lieutenant Klaxton reporting, sir.” Gideon stood at attention, holding his salute.

Captain Forest returned his salute.
“At ease, Lieutenant. Take a seat.”

Gideon sat down, wondering if his recon mission had been recalled because he was in some kind of trouble.

“Lieutenant, you’ve received orders,” Captain Forest said as he pulled papers from a desk drawer and looked at them. “The orders state that you’re assigned to Mount Mitchell and will report there tomorrow.

“
Son, I don’t know what this is about, but it’s not normal at all. You’ve either made somebody mad, or you’ve got a friend in DC. Either way, I hate to lose you.” Captain Forest paused and continued. “Get your stuff together and get out of my sight.”

“
Yes, sir!” Gideon yelled as he stood at attention and saluted.

Captain Forest returned his salute with a smile and said,
“Good luck, Gideon.”

USS
Roger B. Chaffee,
Mars Orbit

1000
—February 7, 2372

The
destroyer USS
Roger B. Chaffee,
stationed over Mars in geostationary orbit, was tasked to protect the United States Mars Station Viking
.
The destroyer could easily be seen by the naked eye from Station Viking at night.