The Black Ships (7 page)

Turtle Bay

Manhattan, New York

January 27
^th
, 2026

F
rank looked up as Ellen walked into his office. She hadn’t quite
believed his story when he’d arrived home late two weeks earlier but his dogged
insistence had led her to reserve judgment. The next morning when they’d driven
to the airport, she remained quiet until they approached the same spot where
Frank had passed through the fence the day before. The soldiers were still
there but a team of military engineers was now putting up a guardhouse and
permanent gate.

“This is crazy,” she muttered quietly as an
unarmed guard scanned their driver’s licenses. To the left, behind a temporary
sandbag revetment stood four men holding assault rifles. To her evident
amazement, they were waved through and Frank drove over to where the fighter
had been parked the day before. Today’s ride would be far more comfortable.

“Hello again, sir.” The same Air Force
captain was waiting for them on the tarmac as Frank climbed out of the vehicle.
“Don’t worry about your bags,” he said as an airman reached inside the driver’s
door to release the trunk. “Ma’am!” This with a nod to Ellen who was standing
by the car, looking up at the Gulfstream corporate jet that sat where the
fighter had previously parked. He looked back at Frank. “The rest of your party
is already aboard, so you can take off as soon as the bags are stowed.”

Frank nodded his thanks at the officer
before turning to Ellen who was staring up at the blue, wreathed planet on the
aircraft’s tail. “So,” he called out, waiting until she turned to look at him.
“Still think I was out drinking with Kim yesterday?” She was still on the
fence, trying to get a handle on the moment and he walked over to put an arm
around her waist. “And your dad will
still
say I’m not good enough for
you!”

She laughed and punched his shoulder, a
little too hard for comfort. “Jury’s still out!” She looked back at the waiting
aircraft and its guards. “This is all real, isn’t it?” She looked back at him.
“The UN actually sent a jet here to pick us up because they want you to build
them a fleet?” She cocked her head to the side, hesitating. “So, you made peace
with them?”

“Call it a cease fire,” he answered with a
shrug. “Anyway, I’ll have full run of the Secretariat so maybe I can find the
guy who screwed Dad over…” As usual,  the darkness lifted quickly. He knew
he wouldn’t make himself feel any better by tracking the man down and had made
a promise to himself that the project would come first. However much he might
hate the UN, humanity needed a way to defend itself.

“Actually, they didn’t just send a jet,
this one is at my permanent disposal. I’m going to be travelling everywhere our
contractors operate and we can’t afford to wait for scheduling issues with
other departments.” His grin faded as he began to think about the responsibilities.
if I screw this up, we lose our planet.
“I’m still not convinced they
got the right guy for this,” he said lamely.

Ellen moved to stand in front of him. “Who
else is dumb enough to take a job this big?” She grinned. “Seriously, Frank,
I’ve heard you and your dad complain a thousand times about how the military
contractors are always late and over budget. You’re used to working for
shareholders and they’re a hell of a lot tougher than politicians.” She reached
up and put her hands on his shoulders. “I guarantee that you will be handing
back at least five percent of the budget when this is done and it
will
be done on time.”

“Thanks babe.” He gave scooped her into a
one armed hug as they moved toward the aircraft. “I hope you realize there’s
going to be a lot more travel than before.” They started up a boarding stair
built into the door. “You’re free to come along if you want, Sarah already has
plans to visit Helsinki.”

“Sarah?” Ellen reached the top of the
ladder and followed Frank into the cabin. Kim and Sarah sat in a pair of comfy
leather loungers, Kim grinning like an escaped mental patient  and Sarah
smiling sympathetically at Ellen. Ivan was rooting through the galley.

Frank dropped into the lounger opposite Kim
and Ellen joined them. “You didn’t think I’d take on a job like this without an
experienced designer, did you?”

Now, two weeks later, he smiled at his wife
as she dropped into a chair in his office. “Finished at last?” he knew she
wouldn’t have left the apartment until she’d met her latest deadline.

She laughed. “The rotors finally work!” she
declared triumphantly. Her work as a freelance CGI designer often involved
pulling all-nighters to iron out some tricky detail. Never one to miss an
opportunity, she liked to turn her triumphs into video tutorials on her blog.
Her site quickly became a destination for those who sought to learn and it
raised her profile in the design community. “You able to go for lunch today?”
she asked.

Frank checked his watch. “We have three
hours before we leave for Germany; I have time for something quick. How about
pizza?”

“Don’t
you
know how to treat a
girl.” Ellen rolled her eyes as she got up.

Sixty
Meter Observatory

Mauna
Kea, Hawaii

January 30th, 2026

“T
hey’re here,” Mike announced as he saw a small group of men in
combat fatigues walk into the atrium of the facility. He was looking forward to
handing this mess over to the Army. Watching hostile aliens wasn’t in his job
description.

Pete ran his fingers over the control pad,
unlocking the control room door just before they reached it. “Not a moment too
soon, gentlemen. We were about to start climbing the walls in here.” He waved
at the heavily bearded astronomer. “This is Dr. Mike Wilsen from Red Flag and I’m
Pete McGregor from NASA.”

A middle-aged man shook their hands.
“Colonel Matt McCutcheon.” He turned towards his men, “This is Sergeant Wesley
Davis, Corporal Rob Farquhar and Corporal Andrew Alexander.” The men all nodded
as the introductions progressed. “Now, gentlemen, if you’ll take us through
what you have so far, we’ll set up shop and you can take a couple days off.”
His nostrils twitched. “I think the first thing you better show me is the
ventilation controls for this room.” He grinned to take some of the sting from
his words. “You boys got a serious funk going in here.”

Mike sheepishly showed the intelligence
officer how to get the air exchanger running before showing him the imagery
that they had managed to capture whenever planetary alignment cooperated. He
was running the colonel’s last sentence through his head and decided he didn’t
like how it sounded.
Take a couple of days off?
Mike hadn’t planned on
coming back while this crisis was still playing out. He was planning on hanging
out at the beach. Maybe put in an appearance at the NASA site down the hill
every afternoon; just to make sure the checks from Red Flag kept coming.

The officer stared at the video as aliens
demolished the rovers. “Wes, are you seeing this?” He looked over at his sergeant
who was looking up at the screen. He nodded to himself and turned back to the
screen. “They told us in the brief that hostile behavior was evident, but what
did they miss?”

The sergeant snorted and shook his head.
“They missed showing this to professionals; that’s what they missed,” he said
with a soldier’s disdain for amateurs. “Those little bastards aren’t just
destroying equipment for the fun of it.”

“Exactly,” breathed McCutcheon as he
watched the screen. “Alien or not, you don’t cart ordinance halfway across the
galaxy and waste it on mindless destruction.” He looked over at Mike. “Dr.
Wilsen, they blew the rovers but not the storage sheds or habitats.” He cocked
his head to the side. “Now what does that tell you about their intentions?”

Mike shrugged; his mind was Swiss cheese
after so much time in the same room. “They want to make sure the rovers are
useless?” he guessed.

The colonel nodded. “And just who are they
trying to deny mobility to?”

Mike’s eyes grew wide. He felt a shiver.
“They think some of our people are still alive!”

Manhattan, New York

February 1
^st
, 2006

J
an pushed back from her desk, her breath escaping her lips in a
tightly controlled explosion.
Three weeks now,
she thought angrily.
Three
weeks of sitting around, looking at the same videos and trying to look busy.
Does anything ever get done here?
She got up and walked out of the
bullpen, noting that the other two scientists were absent. Not knowing what
else to do in her agitated state, she decided to head down to the cafeteria and
get cup of tea.

She walked into the elevator, returning the
friendly smile of the woman already in there, but Jan’s smile foundered upon
the stony countenance of the man standing at the back.
Unfriendly sod.
She
passed the ride in awkward silence and left as soon as the doors opened,
turning to head for the cafeteria entrance.

Once she had her tea and a danish, she
headed for the windows where she found Dr. Hal Tudor from Vancouver and Dr.
Craig Pugh from Chicago. Hal waved her over and she sat next to him. “When did
you two sneak off?” she demanded with mock indignation, looking at their nearly
empty coffee cups.

Hal grinned. “About twenty minutes ago.
Five minutes after you stormed off in a huff, which seems,” he raised an
eyebrow, “to be your favorite means of transportation lately.” His raised
inflection at the end turning the statement into a rhetorical question.

Jan made a sound that was half amusement
and half frustration. “I was in the WC; call of nature if you must know.”

“And we thought you had come down here to
start a food fight,” Craig added his two cents, his speech patterns heavily
peppered with the Northern-Cities-Vowel-Shift that marked so many Chicago
natives. “We figured we’d come down and back you up since we had nothing else
going on.”

“At least we’re getting something done down
here.” Hal raised his mug as an example. “I was nice and happy back at UBC
enjoying the winter rains. Now I’m stuck in this freezing metropolis, and for
what?”

Craig stared at Hal in shock. “You mean
it’s raining up there right now? It’s twenty degrees in the Big Onion; my wife
told me we’re getting a couple of inches of snow too.”

Hal shrugged. “It’s late afternoon in
British Columbia so it’s probably around five or six degrees. That’s around
forty degrees in Fahrenheit,” he added, enjoying the looks on both colleagues.
“We do get four or five days of snow a year, so it’s not like it’s a tropical
paradise or anything. Anyway, my point was that I could drink coffee back home,
so I’m not really accomplishing anything extra by being here.”

“Do you mind if I join you?” The woman from
the elevator was standing by their table with a steaming mug of coffee; the
unfriendly man was several paces back; looking them over.

“Madam Secretary General?” Hal was gazing
up in surprise, but at least he seemed to know who she was. “Please!” He
gestured towards an empty chair.

“I had meant to look in on you earlier, but
we’ve had a lot of work to do lately.” She sighed as she sat. “We’ve had to
re-organize our military command structure, create a new Special Projects
division with extraordinary powers and then there’s the small matter of
diplomacy…” She let the last hang like a moldy fruit and smiled at the small
group. “I was thinking of coming to see you when Dr. Colbert walked onto the
elevator and joined me.”

Thank God I wasn’t rude to her!
Jan thought. “If you knew who I was, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Hah!
You
didn’t see your face when
you walked on the elevator.” She took a sip while Jan’s cheeks reddened. “You
don’t survive as long as I have in politics unless you know when to speak and
when to, as Americans like to say,
keep your piehole shut.
” She relaxed
in her chair. “So tell me, Doctor, what has you upset?”

Does she really want the truth or is
this the standard ‘pat on the head’ visit?
Jan
decided she had nothing to lose by telling the truth, so she jumped in with
both feet. “We’re wasting our time here.” She stated, exasperation in her
voice. “We’ve been over the same data a million times and we can’t see how we
can do anything more than we have already.”

She could see her two colleagues nodding
and so she drove on. “We’re like an afterthought. Every few days a short video
or some images show up and we look them over but we’re really just some useless
appendage. For all we know, our reports are simply redundant because there are
obviously other teams out there looking at this data first.”

Jess had been looking at Jan as she spoke
and nodding at each point. Jan had thought she was merely being humored but the
Secretary General’s response came as a surprise. “Perhaps it’s time for you to
leave New York,” she mused quietly.

Jan was shocked. Sure, she wanted to go
home but this was ludicrous. All she did was tell this woman the truth and now
she was going to be packed off to Oxford as a malcontent? She was just about to
tear into her when Jess continued.

“You’re right, of course, Dr. Colbert. We
have a team at the Mauna Kea observatory and their reports hit my desk before yours
do.” She swung her mug in a small circle to keep the artificial creamer mixed
in. “I think it would be much better if your team was there, where you could
each add your perspective to the analysis.”

She was looking down into her coffee now
watching the last vestige of white powder blend into the brown liquid. She
nodded to herself before looking up at the three scientists. “How soon can you
be ready to go?”

I am so glad my mum taught me to count
to five before yelling at anyone.
Jan couldn’t
believe how close she had come to making a complete arse of herself.

Hal was looking out the window at the
chunks of ice in the Hudson River. “Mauna Kea - that’s in Hawaii, right?” He
turned his head to the Secretary General with a grin. “I can go as soon as we’re
done with this conversation!”

Jess laughed. “It might not be quite so
warm as you think…”