Alien Agendas: Solar Warden Book 3

Book 3: Solar Warden

by Ian Douglas

Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Space Exploration

Synopsis

Reptilian aliens, Nazis in space, time-traveling humans, kidnapped girlfriends, government psychics—it all comes down to this: New York Times bestselling author Ian Douglas delivers the jaw-dropping finale to his action-packed military sci-fi Solar Warden adventure series.

The Saurians, a highly evolved reptilian species which escaped extinction 65 million years ago, have an agenda: to achieve behind-the-scenes dominance over Earth. Operating from hidden bases, they use psychosocial techniques to plant conspiracy theories and instill fear within the human population. Too weak in numbers to militarily conquer a world they believe to be their own, they seek to renew Nazi strongman ideologies and surrogates to gain absolute control.

Their first attempt is thwarted by the Talis, time-traveling humans from the far future. Yet, their assistance is limited as they face an all-out time war that could sweep modern humanity and their futuristic society into oblivion.

With the human species in danger, Commander Mark Hunter and his Joint Space Strike Team must work alongside Talis agents, the U.S. Space Force, and a young and talented government psychic to stop the Saurians from world dominance.

As if saving earth wasn’t challenging enough, Hunter’s girlfriend, Jerry, was kidnapped by the infamous Men in Black to control him. Now Hunter has just one chance to find and rescue his love and the rest of the captives before the Saurians bring the entire base crashing down around him and his people.

Commander Mark Hunter and his crew require a miracle, and perhaps even that might not be enough…  

 

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Release date: April 25, 2023

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Print pages: 428

Sample

Prologue

Conspiracy Theory in America is about the transformation of America’s civic culture from the Founders’ hard-nosed realism about elite political intrigue to today’s blanket condemnation of conspiracy beliefs as ludicrous by definition. This cultural reversal did not occur spontaneously; it was planned and orchestrated by the government itself.

Lance deHaven-Smith,

Conspiracy Theory in America, 2014

May 1951

Götterdämmerung . . .

Flashes lit the distant clouds on the dark horizon like lightning, and the sound of thunder rolled in unending cacophony. Berlin was now under bombardment by the Soviet army, their tanks already at the outskirts of the city.

The Twilight of the Gods.

The end of everything. . . .

Herr Oberst Viktor Albrecht watched the light show for a moment, the somber notes of Wagner’s opera of that name running through his mind. That the word Götterdämmerung was, in fact, a mistranslation, the Old Norse Ragnarok, the fate of the gods, misconstrued as ragnarokker, the twilight of the gods, was a minor historical footnote that changed nothing. Albrecht was aware of the linguistic error . . . but, like most modern Germans, was willing to see “twilight” and “fate” as very much the same.

Either way, the thousand-year Reich was falling into darkness.

But there was hope. . . .

Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Hans Otto Fegelein stood at Albrecht’s side. “You are clear on what you must do, Herr Oberst?”

“Ja wohl, Herr Generalleutnant,” Albrecht replied with stiff formality. It was a bald-faced lie, of course . . . but one did not tell the commanding general of the Waffen-SS that his orders were vague to the point of complete incoherence.

“The future,” Fegelein said, almost as though he’d read what Albrecht was thinking, “is a dark and uncertain place. But our allies assure us that social and economic conditions in the future, both in Europe and in the United States, offer us a chance to rebuild.”

“It . . . it seems like madness, Herr Generalleutnant.” He gestured with the locked briefcase he carried. “If half of what is in here is true, with such magical new technologies, why couldn’t we . . .” He trailed off, uncertain of what to say.

“Why couldn’t we what, Herr Oberst?”

“I don’t know, Mein Herr. Go back in time and kill Lenin while he was on that train heading to Russia to redirect his revolution? Communism becomes irrelevant, nonexistent, and we face a weak and divided Russia today. Or . . . or do we go back and see to it that the English never colonize North America in the first place. The place is divided by the empires of France and Spain, and never becomes a serious threat. . . .”

“And how do you know these things have not already been accomplished?”

Albrecht swept his arm to encompass the distant bombardment of Berlin. “I would say this argues rather forcefully against it, Mein Herr. The Soviets are here. And it appears the Americans will be here soon as well.”

“Our . . . allies have explained to us that changing history causes that history to

branch, to follow all possible paths. To make a difference in this reality, we must make a change farther down this path. We will change the future for our Reich.”

“Our allies. The damned Lizards.”

“The Eidechse have been most supportive. And they will be there in the future to help.”

“My impression is that they have abandoned us.”

“Not at all. They continue to fight for the Reich behind the scenes, as it were.”

Albrecht looked out at the horizon, engulfed in the strobing flashes of shellfire. How much longer did they have?

“The Wunderwaffe promised by the Lizards came too slow, too late, too . . . too insignificant in the larger effort,” he said. “Jet aircraft are all well and good . . . but if they had given us those superbomb weapons they promised . . . or one of their time ships . . .” He shrugged. “They made no difference to the cause.”

The general took a moment to strike a match, lighting a cigarette. He did not offer one to Albrecht. “This sounds disturbingly like defeatism, Herr Oberst,” the SS leader said with calm assurance. “If you would rather stay here, we can find other officers, loyal officers, to further our cause in the future!”

“Nein, Mein Herr.” He hesitated. How much could he say? “But I do fear Berlin is lost. We have nothing here to face the Soviets except for children and old men. If I can make a difference in the future, I will.”

“Good. You will find others who have gone forward as well.”

“Kammler?”

“SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler,” Fegelein said slowly, “will leave for the future in a few weeks, on board Die Glocke. As I understand it, he will be traveling just twenty years into the future . . . but he or someone from his organization should be there to prepare the way for you, and for others.”

“The Bell” was one of the secret wonder weapons, one under Kammler’s direct supervision, a German-made time ship under Eidechse control. Evidently, the Lizards didn’t entirely trust humans yet with transtemporal technology.

“You have had your immunizations?”

Albrecht rubbed a shoulder still painful from the injections. He’d been told that there were diseases in the future to which he was traveling to which he lacked immunity. “Ja, Mein Herr.”

“Excellent. I envy you, actually. An opportunity to further the Reich into the most remote reaches of futurity. And to escape this . . . hell.”

“And you, Herr General?”

Fegelein scowled. “I return this evening to the Führerbunker. It is der

Führer’s birthday today.”

The Führer, Albrecht knew, had retired to his underground stronghold in the heart of Berlin in mid-January, and had not emerged since. General Fegelein had been with him for much of that time.

“You don’t sound . . . enthusiastic.”

A casual shrug. “I will not be coerced into a suicide pact. I have other plans. But I envy you your chance to continue serving the Fatherland.”

“You said General Kammler was going twenty years into the future. What about me? I didn’t see that mentioned in my orders.”

“Ah. You will be going considerably further. As I said, the social and economic atmosphere will be perfect for your arrival. You will find willing supporters, and social chaos that you and the others can exploit. I am told that you will find ground even more fertile than that which the Führer used to establish himself twelve years ago. We are counting on you.”

“And . . . how far am I to go?”

“Seventy-five years.”

The figure was like a punch to the gut.

Chapter One

Alas, our technology has marched ahead of our spiritual and social evolution, making us, frankly, a dangerous people.

Steven M. Greer, MD,

Ufologist, founder of CSETI

4 October 1967

“What the hell is that?”

Captain Pierre Carbonneau’s attention had been snagged by something unusual in the distance, off the port side of his aircraft. At 7:15 p.m., Air Canada Flight 305 was en route from Halifax to Toronto. At the moment, they were at an altitude of twelve thousand feet above the city of Sherbrooke in southeastern Quebec, as the last trace glow of evening light faded from the sky. Carbonneau’s copilot, Bob Ralphington, leaned forward in his seat so he could see past the pilot.

“Yeah . . . that’s weird,” he said. “Is that all one thing? Or something big getting chased by little ones?”

From the cockpit, the object appeared to be an enormous black rectangle, brilliantly lit, flying on a parallel course to them several miles away. Trailing behind the main object were four smaller objects, at this distance visible only as bright stars.

Carbonneau reached for his microphone. They were in Sherbrooke’s air control space. They should be seeing this on radar. “Sherbrooke traffic control, Sherbrooke traffic control, Canada Air 305.”

“Go ahead, 305. Sherbrooke tower, over.”

“Ahh . . . I have traffic off my nine o’clock, estimate range five miles. Please advise, over.”

There was a long pause. “Three-oh-five, Sherbrooke. Nearest traffic to you is twelve miles at your one o’clock, Ottawa 97 on approach to Valcour. We have nothing at your nine o’clock. Over.”

“‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ said Alice,” Ralphington quoted.

“Okay, Sherbrooke. Thank you. Three-oh-five. Out.”

They watched the light show for several more minutes as they slowly drew ahead of the objects. “Wish I had some binoculars,” Carbonneau said.

“Shit . . . I’ve never seen one before.”

“Seen what?”

“A real, live flying saucer. A UFO.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Okay, Captain. What the hell is it?”

“Damned if I know.”

A brilliant pulse of light flared around the black rectangle, bright white swiftly fading to blue. The cloud seemed to hang behind the object as the four orbs passed through it. Carbonneau checked the clock on the control panel. It was 7:19 p.m.

Two minutes later, a second silent flash illuminated the southern sky, leaving another blue cloud hanging behind the craft. At this point, the four orange orbs closed in on the rectangle, and Carbonneau had the distinct impression that he was seeing small craft following a much larger one.

Were they helping the larger craft after it had suffered some sort of accident?

Or were they attack

ing a larger enemy?

Carbonneau had no idea . . . but he was beginning to think he needed to revise his self-assured belief that UFO stories were nonsense.

In a few more minutes, as they approached Saint-Jeans, the group changed direction, swiftly moving toward the east until they fell astern and they lost sight of it.

Of course all hell broke loose when they reported the incident in Toronto.

 

The Present Day

His tail was back.

Lieutenant Commander Mark Hunter, head of the supersecret 1-JSST and an active-duty Navy SEAL, paused at a newsstand on the concourse of the Gold Coast Janet terminal. Headlines glared at him from the racks: anti-migrant riots in Germany . . . a random beheading of a social worker by a Muslim jihadist in Paris . . . Brexit-triggered economic chaos in London . . . yet another resurgence of COVID19 in Brazil and in India . . . another police shooting in Michigan . . .

The world, Hunter decided with a sharp grimace, was one royally fucked-up place. . . .

Hunter was in an obscure corner of the Janet terminal, located in Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport. Just getting into this terminal required a clearance of top secret or above, and there were armed MPs and G4S camo dudes everywhere, as well as surveillance cams at every junction, all making certain the terminal’s security remained sacrosanct. In civilian clothing, he’d had to jump through all kinds of hoops to get a pass from his base—the notorious Area 51 just seventy miles north of Las Vegas.

He knew he should have expected it . . . but the Men in Black had been shadowing him ever since he’d landed here that morning.

Hunter picked up a copy of USA Today and paid the COVID-masked newsstand attendant. What kind of security clearance, he wondered, did a guy need to get a job like that here—pretty high, he guessed. Hunter had already passed through two security checkpoints, and there was another just ahead, leading to his gate. Leaning with his back against the wall, Hunter pretended to study the paper. In fact, he was using the maneuver to mask what he was doing . . . taking a long, hard look out of the corner of his eye at the people in the concourse behind him.

Perhaps a quarter of the people were wearing masks. As Hunter understood it, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic had largely abated, and life across the planet was very slowly returning to whatever it was that passed for normal nowadays, especially now that several new vaccines were available. However, many people continued to wear masks and maintain their distance from people they didn’t know. The COVID virus was a nasty and persistent adversary, and it kept popping up again in places thought safe from its deadly wrath. Hunter was just glad he’d been off-world through the worst of it . . . and that he and his people had been vaccinated while

 they were still up at Lunar Operations Command. By all accounts, back on Earth during the year 2020 had been a small slice of hell. . . .

Ah! There he was. Your stereotypical Mark 1 Mod 0 Man in Black. Wearing a dark suit, with tie and dark glasses, the guy stood out like a lit flare in a dark basement. He even wore a black mask across his face. Curiously, and atypically, the MiB wasn’t wearing a fedora; possibly that was his concession to blending in. Most of the people on the concourse were casually dressed or in military uniform. Hunter had been pretty sure this clown was following him . . . and now he was sure.

What the hell was this guy playing at?

It occurred to him that the MiB wanted to be noticed by his quarry if the goal was simple intimidation rather than covert surveillance. Hunter had had run-ins with these people before, and he was getting sick of it.

Hunter wanted to have a little chat with this guy, who appeared to be alone. He scanned the rest of the crowd; a backup might well not have the suit and glasses, if suit and glasses was what they wanted him to see.

Folding the paper, he strolled farther up the concourse toward the next security checkpoint, presenting his orders, his pass, his carry-on bag, and his ID to one face-masked camo dude, and submitting to a temperature check and a meticulous wanding by another. These were private security guards, members of a company once called Wackenhut, now known by the blander and more anonymous G4S Secure Solutions. They were the security firm used on the perimeter out at Dreamland—the popular name for Area 51. They were tough, no-nonsense men wearing camouflage fatigues, holstered pistols and Motorolas, and permanent scowls when they weren’t masked. Hunter considered asking these two to detain the MiB behind him . . . but the MiB would have ID, and might even be working here with their knowledge and consent. No, he would need to handle this himself.

Past the security checkpoint was a passenger lounge—rows of seats sectioned off for appropriate social distancing beneath a large picture window overlooking the tarmac. Beyond, the Luxor Hotel and Casino towered thirty stories above the city just on the other side of the Strip, an enormous Egyptian pyramid just five and a half meters shorter than the original Great Pyramid of Giza, with black, mirror-polished sides. Out front, on the Strip, were a life-size Sphinx and an obelisk displaying the name Luxor in a cartouche.

The Gold Coast, the private Janet terminal located on one corner of McCarran International, was quite close to the Luxor, which had a

lways amused Hunter. According to popular belief, aliens had built the Pyramids . . . and here one had unaccountably popped up right next to the gateway to Area 51.

“Coincidence?” Hunter muttered to himself in a conspiratorial tone. “I think not!”

But he was looking for something other than pop culture . . . something closer at hand. There were only a few passengers waiting in the lounge for their flight, all absorbed in their books, newspapers, or telephones. He lingered at the entrance to the lounge until he saw the MiB pass through the checkpoint and hurry toward him.

Good. . . .

To his left, a short hallway led off from the lounge and ended in a locked door. Dropping his bag and using a pair of short and tough plastic strips pulled from his luggage’s outside pocket, it took him all of three seconds to pick the lock. As he’d expected, it was a janitor’s storeroom. The legend “JANITOR” on the door had been his first clue. A yank on a pull chain turned on the light, revealing mops, buckets, and bottles of cleaning solvents.

Pocketing the picks, he returned to the short hallway’s entrance, counting down silently as he moved. The MiB would reach him in another three . . . two . . . one. . . .

Movement emerged from behind the corner to his right. Hunter snapped out his arm and used the target’s own momentum to swing him off-balance, forward and around the corner.

Navy SEALs are proficient in a number of hand-to-hand combat techniques, but one of the most viciously effective is Krav Maga, a form used by Israeli commandos and special forces. Its central tenet is “maximum damage, minimum time.” Stressing the practical over the flashy, Hunter’s instructors had emphasized that a hand-to-hand encounter should take no more than three to four seconds; any longer than that and the attack had failed.

As the surprised MiB spun around the corner and into the short hallway, Hunter met him with a knife-hand jab to the throat and an elbow to the side of his head; the man sagged, gasping, and Hunter pulled him around and shoved him into the closet.

No one in the lounge reacted. The attack had been so quick and silent that no one had looked up from their phones.

Dropping his bag nearby, Hunter stooped and checked the man’s pulse. He hadn’t intended to kill the guy, but . . . good. Alive but unconscious. So far, so good.

The man’s glasses had been knocked ajar by the blow to his head. Hunter removed them, and caught the gleam of microelectronics reflecting the room’s light. Tucking those into his shirt pocket, Hunter then removed the man’s mask.

Shit. His tail was . . . not right. Not quite human. The skin was so pale that Hunter thought the MiB was an albino at first, and a close inspection showed a trace of . . . were those scales? No hair . . . no beard growth. Hunter peeled back a closed eyelid and got a real shock: from the deep socket a black-and-gold, slit-pupiled eye stared up at him. Hunter had seen eyes like th

at before—on alligators, on venomous snakes . . . on domestic cats . . .

. . . and on Saurians.

No wonder the guy wore dark glasses.

He was not a Saurian, however—one of the Malok engaged, as Hunter understood it, in an eons-long war against the highly evolved humans of Earth’s remote future. Those critters walked on digitigrade legs—the knees reversed from the human plantigrade articulation, like a bird—and they were distinctly scaled, with snouts filled with teeth more like a shark’s than a man’s. This guy looked human in his joint articulation and the overall design of his body . . . but with hints and traces of more reptilian characteristics.

There were several hanks of clothesline on a shelf at the back of the storeroom. Perfect.

“Let’s have a closer look, shall we?” Hunter said to his unconscious prisoner. “Maybe a quick alien autopsy . . . ?”

Ten minutes later, the Man in Black no longer wore his suit. Hunter had peeled him completely naked and tied him hand and foot, hanging him head-down from a hook high on the wall. A rag from a nearby shelf stuffed in his mouth would keep him quiet when he came around. “Huh,” Hunter said, mildly curious. “I thought lizards had two penises. Read that somewhere . . .”

But there was one significant difference in an anatomy normally hidden by clothing.

The man had no navel.

Hunter gave this some thought. No navel meant no placenta or mother’s womb . . . and that suggested an artificial birth. The Saurians, Hunter knew, possessed sophisticated medical technologies, technologies advanced to the point of being able to keep human abductees alive for years inside transparent cylinders filled with a greenish perfluorocarbon solution and drugs to keep them asleep. Maybe they raised their babies that way, too.

Or had this guy been hatched from an egg? No. Somehow, he looked just a bit too human for that.

He decided that he was going to need to have a long chat with Dr. McClure, the senior xeno-wonk back at Area 51.

Hunter continued going through the MiB’s clothing. He could see more thread-fine wiring woven in through the man’s shirt, his shoes, and even in his underwear. Man, the tech people on base were going to love this! Hell, the guy was a walking RadioShack. He realized that he would have to hurry, though. The wiring was part of a complex communications array at the very least, which meant someone was almost certainly tracking him.

Commander Hunter had had run-ins with the so-called Men in Black before. He knew he was under almost constant surveillance when he was on Earth and away from the above-top-secret compound at Groom Lake, and he was willing to accept that people in charge of the Solar Warden program wanted to make sure he didn’t talk to unauthorized personnel about secret Earth space programs, about secret alliances with both al

iens and humans from the far future, or about Saurians working within human governments with secret agendas of their own.

But he also strongly suspected the MiBs had been responsible for abducting a young woman with whom Hunter was romantically involved—Geri Galanis. They hadn’t actually admitted to having taken her . . . but they kept turning up as Hunter searched for her. He thought they’d snatched her as a precaution, something to hold over him to ensure his obedience.

And he didn’t like that. What they seemed to have missed was the fact that Navy SEALs are very good at keeping their mouths shut. Until just now, Hunter had assumed, like most people within Solar Warden, that the Men in Black were simply members of one or another of America’s intelligence services—the CIA, perhaps . . . or Navy Intelligence.

But there was a lot of hardware here that Hunter couldn’t even begin to identify. What was it all for? A careful search revealed nothing like a battery. How was this gear powered?

Microphone on his shirt collar, probably a military-grade comm system. Sidearm—a small Glock 27 .40 mm pistol in a concealed shoulder holster. Oddly, the prisoner was carrying no ammunition, no spare magazines.

And there was something about the Glock. As a Navy SEAL, Hunter was intimately familiar with a large number of weapons, and he’d used Glocks plenty of times on the range. This one was too light, and somehow didn’t feel right in the hand. Awkward.

Too many questions. He’d not originally planned on stealing the MiB’s clothes and gear . . . but he needed the xeno and high-tech whiz kids back on the ship to take a close look at all of this, probably with an electron microscope.

The prisoner groaned. With blood flowing into his head in his upside-down position, he was regaining consciousness more quickly than Hunter had expected.

“Welcome back,” he told the man. “Sorry for the discomfort. I’m sure your people will be along soon to cut you down.”

The prisoner’s reply was a gag-muffled roar—pure rage and defiance. He struggled against the clotheslines.

“Don’t hurt yourself, mister,” Hunter told him. “I’m a sailor. That means I’m very good with knots.”

The prisoner simmered down, but he was seething, puffing hard and glaring up at Hunter as the SEAL began going through the man’s wallet. Those golden eyes were . . . disturbing.

Hunter ignored the prisoner for a moment, focusing instead on the contents of his wallet. No money at all . . . and almost nothing in the way of what intelligence services referred to as “pocket litter,” the bits and scraps and detritus of everyday life that people intended to accumulate in their pockets or billfolds. No credit or debit cards. Huh . . . How did this guy get along

in modern society?

There were a number of ID cards, though, and Hunter found these fascinating. No fewer than seven driver’s licenses from different states, with seven different bland, “John Smith” kinds of names. The list of US government agencies represented was impressive: CIA, of course . . . but also US Navy, US Air Force, FBI, NSA, CDC, and NRO. There was also a separate ID holder, the kind that could be flipped open to show a card or a badge, and this one was for one “Dennis Young” of the US Marshals Service. The silver star identified him as a US deputy marshal.

“Well, Marshal,” Hunter said at last. “I see you get around. Maybe you can tell me what happened to a friend of mine . . . Geri Galanis? I know you people have her. . . .”

That provoked another muffled bellow and another round of struggling, and Hunter decided that it would be too risky to pull the gag out of his mouth.

“Now don’t go getting all red in the face. If you’re going to be like that, I’ll have to leave you here. Like I said . . . I’m sure your friends will be along soon.” Those disturbing eyes . . . and now Hunter could feel the delicate brush of another mind within his own.

Shit . . .

Both Grays and Saurians could read human minds, at least to some extent, and could even influence a person’s actions.

This guy’s mental touch was extremely weak, but the SEAL was not going to take any chances. Hunter grabbed the prisoner’s hips and spun him around, so he was facing into the corner. Without eye contact, the intrusion seemed to fade.

“You tell your buddies that I want Geri released, safe and unharmed,” he said. Stooping, he emptied his spare clothing from his carry-on bag—a couple of dirty civilian shirts, underwear and socks, and a pair of slacks—and stuffed the bag tight-full of the MiB’s clothing, wallet, and weapon. He was taking a horrendous risk, he knew. There were enough electronics woven into the guy’s clothes that it was a forgone conclusion that someone was tracking him. Worse, Hunter now was inside the Janet airport’s innermost security zone . . . but there might be additional hidden devices at the gate that would pick up . . . say . . . a Glock pistol hidden in the bag.

He actually considered ditching the pistol in a waste can, but . . . no. He would brazen it out. Despite what popular culture claimed, a Glock pistol was not a “plastic gun” indetectable to a security scan; the frame was indeed a plastic polymer, but

 there were plenty of small metal parts detectible on a magnetic or X-ray scan.

But the missing ammo bothered him, and he wanted a closer look. Besides, he didn’t want some janitor finding the shit-canned gun and possibly hurting himself, or someone else.

In any case, the microelectronics in the clothing were probably at least as much of a danger to him as the Glock. His carry-on had been checked several times, though, and he doubted that the airport would hold up boarding at the gate for another scan. He would take the risk.

How, he wondered, had the MiB gotten through the security checkpoints? Simply by flashing an ID? Or was there more to it than that?

“You hang tight, pal,” he told the prisoner, then delivered a stinging slap to the man’s backside. “And you tell your bosses that I want Geri delivered alive and safe!”

He let himself out of the closet, locking the door behind him. His discarded clothing went into a trash can at the entrance to the passenger lounge. He found a seat, sat down, and waited for his flight to be called.

This afternoon, he knew, was going to get him into trouble . . . big trouble, the sort of trouble that might have him up on charges for assault, attacking a government agent, treason, malfeasance, chewing gum without a license, and anything else that they could throw at him and make stick. He might be lucky to get a transfer to Adak, Alaska; Rear Admiral Benjamin Kelsey had once threatened him with prison and even hinted at the possibility of his being killed if he didn’t toe the line. They took this stuff seriously in Solar Warden.

But no matter how deep the secrecy, abducting an American citizen and holding her prisoner for . . . what? Over a year now? Two? That was about as illegal and just plain wrong as it was possible to be. Hunter’s oath of service had sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic . . . and that meant upholding the rule of law.

He would deliver this bag-load of goodies to the ship’s technical staff, and accept the official ass-chewing when it came.

He waited five minutes, occasionally glancing toward the locked janitor’s closet . . . but no one appeared to be interested in that door. No one paid any attention to anyone else in the waiting room; the culture of working at a highly classified base tended

to isolate people. They didn’t chat, didn’t even acknowledge anyone else around them.

Hunter did catch sight of one man he knew in the group—Master Chief Arnold Minkowski, like Hunter a US Navy SEAL, and now a member of the 1st Joint Space Strike Team, or 1-JSST. The “Just One” was an ad hoc unit, currently at company strength with sixty-five men, way too small to be called a battalion, but divided into four smaller companies of fifteen to eighteen people each. The personnel had been drawn from elite units throughout the US armed forces—SEALs, Green Beanies, Rangers, Delta Force, even CIA direct action teams.

Minkowski looked up and met Hunter’s gaze, but gave only a slight nod of recognition. Good. Hunter didn’t want to attract attention to himself or to his people, just now.

He spotted three other Just-Oners scattered among the waiting passengers.

Master Sergeant Bruce Layton, the senior NCO and acting CO of Charlie Company; Marine Sergeant Miguilito Herrera, his linebacker frame squeezed into his narrow seat; and EN1 Thomas Taylor, another SEAL from the old unit.

Hunter felt cold. If the camo dudes or MiBs showed up and took him away, four of his people were liable to come to his rescue and that would not end well.

Thankfully, the gate attendant called their flight—Janet 6—and he stood up and filed out of the building into the blast furnace of Las Vegas’s heat, trotted down the stairs, and stepped out onto the tarmac with about twenty other passengers.

The Janet flight was a modern-looking Boeing 737-200, painted white with a red stripe along the line of windows and no tail numbers or other markings. Janets were notorious within the general UFO community. Based out of this private terminal on the northwest corner of McCarran International, they shuttled workers from their homes in and around Las Vegas to various highly classified destinations, including the more secret portions of Edwards Air Force Base, the Tonopah Test Range . . . and the infamous Area 51.

Camo dudes with H&K submachine guns watched the line as it filed across the concrete and up the boarding stairs into the 737, but no one called out or yanked him out of line. It was cooler inside as Hunter stowed his bag and took a seat. He couldn’t see outside; the windows were blacked out. He sat there for an agony of minutes, wondering if someone would hold the flight at the gate, and send someone out to remove him from the plane.

But at last the passenger jet backed away from the terminal and began taxiing toward the runway. Five minutes later, acceleration shoved him back into his seat, and the aircraft howled as it lifted into the clear blue of the desert sky. Only then did Hunter allow himself to breathe . . . though he was fully aware that there likely would be a reception committee waiting for him at Groom Lake.

But he would deal with that when the time came.

 

“Did you pick up any impression at all of time?” Dr. Bennett asked.

“Not really, Doctor.” Julia Ashley sat at a desk, several scrawled, almost childlike drawings in front of her. “I was in the past, I’m sure. The airliner didn’t feel modern . . . like it might have had propellers instead of jet engines.”

“That’s not evidence,” Bennett said. “We still have turboprops in service today.”

“I know. So . . . maybe fifty years? Sixty?”

Bennett made a note on his tablet. “Close enough. And . . . what was

your impression as to how these lights were interacting?”

“It felt like the small ones were attacking the big one. I . . . I think they shot it down. . . .”

Julia Ashley let her pen drop, marveling at how slowly it reached the desktop in one-sixth of a G. She’d been working in the small, close compartment deep within the warren of lava tubes beneath the far side of the Moon. She’d come ashore off the USSS Hillenkoetter days before, leaving the huge spacecraft carrier parked inside the cavern converted into a subsurface hangar. That low gravity was a constant reminder that she was a long way from home. Despite that, she was exhausted, as she always was at the end of a particularly grueling RV session. ...