Chapter 11
Griffith Observatory
Pieces of me are reflected in aspects of Harrison. I think most writers contribute parts of themselves to their characters at times. There are definitely things about Harrison that are also things about me.
For instance, Harrison grew up in southern California, in particular, Los Angeles. Although I did not grow up Los Angeles proper, I did grow up in its suburbs.
As with Harrison, I also visited Griffith Observatory as a kid. For him, the Observatory was a place where he spent time with his father. For me, I traveled there on what seemed like innumerable school field trips.
Situated in the hills above Los Angeles, Griffith Observatory was without a doubt one of the best places we could go on a field trip. Besides taking up the whole school day, the place was fascinating and intriguing.
And there were always lots of school buses in the parking lot…
By 11:00 a.m. on Friday, Harrison collected the last police report. He was in Los Angeles, driving a rented Chevrolet Corsica along familiar streets, with nearly three hours until his flight to Tucson. Los Angeles had been his home before he entered the FBI, and it still felt like home. He’d left much behind at the time, but these days, there was nothing and no one to return to in Los Angeles.
Except for one place.
Harrison had what seemed like an easy choice to make. Either go to the airport for three hours of boredom, or, go to the hills just above the city, to Griffith Observatory. His parents would like that. They rested in Pasadena. Too far and too risky a trip to make given the incoherent impulses of LA traffic. Besides, he had never liked cemeteries. Memories did not originate in cemeteries.
When Harrison arrived, empty school buses, rows of them, told him they had successfully delivered their hundreds of small occupants, sent to explore the lush hilltop grounds and discover, under the various Griffith Observatory domes, nothing less than the infinite horizons of their universe.
In a later scene in the book, Harrison finds himself in the Nevada desert at night. As he admires the sky overhead, his fond memories - or maybe mine? - of Griffith Observatory find their way into his consciousness…
As Harrison looked skyward, the moon hung low over the mountains. Beyond it, an infinite horizon of stars twinkled overhead. He gazed past the constellations and saw the familiar shape. In the desert, he found it easy to see the Milky Way’s thick waistline, so thick it was like a fogbank. “Fogbank” was the term the documentary narrator had used described it, a description he had heard dozens of times as a youth, father at his side, viewing the planetarium shows at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
Epilogue
Thirty-Seven Fell to the Floor
Alongside the car chases, torture, gunfights, scientific tests, and bruising climax in Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project, there is other work to be done. For Harrison and his comrades, all of the work is done at great risk and in the shadows in order to someday expose the truth, save the future, and end decades of deceit and murder.
For the Saint Mary Project, the work is also done in the shadows - because the bright light of scrutiny would reveal just how far out of control they have become.
Secrecy will do that, and for Saint Mary, they are at a point where secrecy must be kept at all costs, and where living under the dark, blood-stained cloak of secrecy has made them arrogant in their actions.
Their fear makes them desperate, and it will consume them, and anyone or anything that stands in their way.
Their true mission long forgotten, they march forward, dragging everyone else into their cold, infinite nightmare.
Will truth be mighty and prevail? Find out in the thrilling and energetic sci-fi conspiracy novel, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project…
Ninety-seven feet below Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, nobody’s office, including the one assigned to General Randolph Stone, had windows. Stone’s office occupied part of a larger cavern sunk beneath the rambling floors of Wright-Patterson’s Air Research and Development Command Headquarters. Beyond his door, a web of circular tunnels connected him and others to the laboratories, meeting rooms, security stations, dormitories, communication posts, cold storage units, and the archives of the Saint Mary Project. A centrally placed cafeteria provided meals and refreshments.
The white walls and linoleum encircled Stone. White fluorescent lights buzzed from neat rectangles arranged in the low ceiling. Fixtures corseted by white acoustic tiles revealed gray only where pockmarked.
Blue squeezed him. The furnishings—desks, chairs, credenzas, telephones, dressers, cabinets—exactly alike throughout the complex and all pale blue like a midday sky, had multiplied over the years. They left less and less white.
“I miss you too,” Stone said, trying to finish a conversation with his wife. He had been unable to visit her in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, and now, with Christmas just over two weeks away, she wanted to know his plans.
“I’m not sure, honey. Yes, I know I shouldn’t work so hard. I’ll be fine.”
Across from him, Air Force weapons specialist General Donald Lanham sat with one leg crossed over the other, the dangling foot impatiently shaking. Stone shared his colleague’s excitement, but he diligently indulged his wife.
“You don’t have to get me anything…That’s right…For them? No fruitcake…Because, they never eat it…If we have to, sure…We can celebrate on our own after the holidays…Right, maybe even Paris…I thought you would.”
General Lanham looked at the floor, his hands tapping the blue chair’s armrests. His foot still bounced.
“I love you too…Bye.”
Stone hung up the phone and looked at Lanham. “Well, Don, shall we take a walk?”
“You can walk—I think I’ll run.”
Simultaneously, they rose from their chairs, slowing only briefly to adjust their Air Force uniform jackets. They passed through an outer office, then steered themselves to a nearby stairwell. While whistling a few bars of “Little Drummer Boy,” Stone slipped his identification badge through the electronic access lock and then held the door open for Lanham. They bounded ahead, their spit-polished black shoes tapping downward.
“Are you ready to deploy?” Stone asked.
“We can go in tonight if we have to.”
“Including North Range?”
“Of course.”
“And it won’t overload?”
“No, the reactor has more than enough capacity. ELF will be ready.”
After three flights of steps, they exited the stairwell and walked briskly through a corridor that curved to their left. They moved in tandem, as the tube was too narrow and its ceiling too low for humans to walk side by side.
They reached a security station attended by two air policemen. One of the guards, a sergeant, stood next to a podium with a computer console and checked IDs. The other guard, M-16 across his chest, positioned himself adjacent to a circular hatchway. The computer chirped an authorization, and the hatchway’s double doors slid apart, revealing a dim compartment. Once both officers stepped inside, the entrance closed. Two firm clicks, and then a second hatch opened.
After walking twenty steps or so, they arrived at their destination, Arena Four. Dr. Schmidt, Saint Mary’s chief exotics physician, waited for them. An elderly, beefy woman, Schmidt retained a dense Bavarian accent despite her decades of residence in the United States.
Even in the low, almost nonexistent light of Arena Four, Stone easily spotted her, partially because of the white smock she wore, but mostly because of her face. Schmidt lived underground virtually year-round. Sunlight deprivation had taken a heavy toll on her complexion. Ghostly pale, wearing her medical garb, and stoically awaiting the two senior officers, Schmidt looked very much like a Doric column: heavy, white, and old.
An empty black box, Arena Four was about the size of a child’s suburban bedroom. A sixty-inch surveillance monitor, telephone, and intercom panel adorned one of its walls. Th
e panel hung next to where a one-way mirror once existed that allowed observation into an adjacent room, an empty white box known as Enclosure Four. Alien telepathic skills had made the mirror obsolete. The staff sealed it years ago and covered the void with interlaced metal plates to prevent the exotics in Enclosure Four from sensing the presence and thoughts of anyone observing them.
“Bring it in,” Stone said.
Schmidt lifted the telephone receiver and said, “We are ready for you.”
Arena Four’s occupants gathered around the surveillance monitor. Digital lettering, an opaque horizontal message on the lower part of the screen, read, “Class 5[Restricted]: 7 DEC (SAT) E-4/16:22:02 (EST).”
A door slid open, the blue cushions of a gurney in the corridor behind it adding a momentary splash of color to the image on the screen. Then, more white. And gray.
An exotics technician, encased in an environment suit, entered the room, gazing downward through the clear faceplate at the specimen by her side.
“Which one is that, Doctor?” Stone asked, comparing the screen’s time display with that of his Casio sport watch.
“Thirty-Seven.”
“And Thirty-Eight?”
“Thirty-Eight is still in quarantine.”
Enclosure Four’s door closed. The technician took baby steps, leading her three-and-a-half-foot-tall companion to the center of the room. Kneeling, back to the camera, the technician’s hood revealed her nodding head. Even in this position, she stood over the extraterrestrial, easily concealing from view its thin gray extremities and disproportionally large head.
“As you can see,” Schmidt said, “the tech is responding to the EBE. From what we have learned, Thirty-Seven is a botanist. It is also exceptionally talkative. Its telepathy is profusely invasive, our highest category. Some of the staff describe their experiences with it as generally pleasant, but tiring. It asks many questions, ‘why this,’ ‘why that,’ and so on, or so Professor Moresby believes.”
Lanham’s shoulders tightened. “What precautions have been taken?”
“The technician has no knowledge about the nature of this test. I told her to escort Thirty-Seven into the enclosure, as the isolation cells were in need of some maintenance. In trying to simulate field conditions, we will only visually observe the effects of ELF. The use of electrodes would tip our hand, so to speak.”
After this reassurance, Schmidt activated the intercom, instructing the technician to exit, which took approximately thirty seconds.
Alone, the creature stood with long, spindly arms at its sides, tilting its large head. Big black eyes stared at the camera recessed behind a glass plate.
“Go ahead, Don,” General Stone said.
Phone fast in hand, Lanham said, “Control, you have omega clearance. Proceed with the program.”
Its face filled the screen. Scrutiny of the equipment followed. Elongated fingers touched the transparent shield, leaving no smudge or prints. It moved away.
Stone’s palms sweated.
It poked at the seam around the doorway. In an instant, it withdrew its hand and then moved away, stumbling toward the camera.
“Boy,” Stone said, wiping his hands, “you can really feel it.”
Extremely low-frequency sound waves resonated through the building’s structure. As the sound waves grew in intensity, the volume from the associated vibration and hum also increased.
“Just like my son’s stereo,” Lanham said.
Its torso heaved.
In, out.
Black, almond-shaped pupils constricted. A milky film dripped from its slit of a mouth onto the floor. It moved erratically around the room, seeking escape. Its large face pressed against the shield over the camera, leaving an orange smudge. Its gangly legs failed.
Thirty-Seven fell to the floor.
Arena Four’s occupants coughed several times, swallowing phlegm that ELF’s deep, pulsating tones loosened. The vibrations diminished. When they ended, Stone noticed his ears rang.
Its torso heaved again.
“It looks subdued to me,” Lanham said.
“Let’s make sure.” Stone cleared his throat and picked up the telephone. “Send him in.”
The door slid open, and a blond man, about thirty years old, entered, walking to the middle of the room.
In, out.
The blond man’s black turtleneck, brown corduroy pants, crimson cardigan sweater, and brown suede loafers contrasted with the white walls of Enclosure Four. Beneath neat and trim blond hair, the man’s blue eyes examined the lump that struggled to reach out at him. The man kicked away Thirty-Seven’s hand. He stepped back, unbuttoned his sweater, and removed a Colt .380 pistol from a holster concealed in his waistline.
Aiming center mass, the man said, “Aren’t you going to stop me, Thirty-Seven?”
In.
“I’m waiting, and I’m not known for my patience.”
Out.
The .380’s sights aligned. Easy breaths. Two staccato blasts followed. A third round penetrated the target’s head.
Activating the intercom, Stone said, “Thanks, James.”
Inside Enclosure Four, the man looked at the camera and nodded.
Smiling, Stone walked to Arena Four’s exit and opened the hatch. He turned to a grinning General Lanham and said, “After you, Don.”
The Outworlds
WAR TORRENT
Author Note
War Torrent is a novella and the first book in The Outworlds series. Its anticipated release date is June 2015. Thanks for giving this excerpt a read. I’ve often said The Outworlds is a series of science fiction adventure stories set in the early twenty-fourth century at the fringe of human civilization. Although War Torrent steps outside that timeline, you can bet that its events, characters, and technology have a major influence on the storyline in The Outworlds.
In War Torrent and throughout the rest of The Outworlds series, unlikely heroes will be called upon to join extraordinary and mysterious struggles. Their sometimes-reluctant choices and actions will put them on a collision course with destiny and reveal unimaginable truths. Their survival will mean confronting personal flaws and doubts, and forging unexpected fates as inspiring new champions in the eternal battle against evil.
Prologue
Survival of the Fittest
In summary, I can say this: Since the initial discoveries began in the Outworlds only a handful of months ago, relics, remains, and data from various archeological surveys indicate that the Angorgals are an ancient but now-extinct reptilian humanoid race. And they were a rather advanced one at that. The evidence constitutes humanity’s first physical discovery of sentient, intelligent, civilization building alien life. A revolutionary development, but one that must remain classified for now due to proprietary mandates and, frankly, common sense.
Some data indicate that their home system had a single star around which orbited one gas giant planet with six habitable moons. Each moon’s population was primarily that of a distinct Angorgal subsect, but all of them originated from one moon in particular. This configuration is not a match for any system here within the Outworlds, so their home must have been beyond the current frontier. We must conclude, therefore, that the material found in the Outworlds indicates a failed colonization effort or abandoned scientific outpost.
The few FCME-SRDB team members privy to the limited collection of evidence generally agree the Angorgals perished many centuries ago, possibly because of an incurable virus that an unidentified enemy used against them in biological warfare. We can guess a good many things about them, but we just don’t know with certainty what happened to them. Further digs and study will surely reveal more about them, in particular, the cause of their demise.
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