Jubilee Year: A Science Fiction Thriller (Erelong Book 1) Read online

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  Jubilee Year

  Erelong, Book One

  Gerard O'Neill

  Gerard O’Neill Books

  To Mom and Dad

  Contents

  I. ACTION

  Desert Target

  Hot Rock

  Red Sun

  Orphan Kids

  Dropouts

  Early Morning Run

  Waiting In The Rain

  Parents

  Showing Off

  No Coincidences In Astronomy

  Killer Riders

  About Time

  The Recruiters

  Mom, I’m Enlisting!

  Another Setting Sun

  II. REACTION

  Road Trip

  Taut

  Meeting The Masses

  Sanctuary In The Mall

  Arrest

  Lockup

  Keeping Secrets

  Changes

  Good Memory

  Marsfield

  Burning Hill

  Tasmanian Devil

  Platinum Blonde

  Above The Sheep Dogs

  Jubilee Year

  Running Home

  Canberra Rescue

  Children

  People Power

  Things You Should Know

  The Sky Is A Lie

  III. SYNTHESIS

  Mobilizing The Troops

  Star Wind

  Fighting Doubt

  Anyone Home?

  Gasoline And A Dog

  Sky Pressure

  The Reclusive Orderly

  Bird Clouds

  Edge Of The Wood

  Facing Nemesis

  The Shimmering

  Road to Wingari

  Graves And Caverns

  Toady Under Fire

  Long Night

  Squeeze Space

  Survivors

  On The Road

  Finders Keepers

  Nothing But Memories

  Short And Sharp

  Epilogue

  Thank You For Reading

  About The Author

  Part I

  ACTION

  Desert Target

  Chile, 2012

  Jenkins struck the butane lighter and stared at the perfect form of the blue spearhead. The flame raised a faint glow in the dark interior of the cab. Ain’t nothing like watching a fire burn, he thought. It’s so damn pure. He glanced across at his team leader, sitting as still as stone in the driver’s seat.

  “What time you got?” Jenkins asked.

  He was hoping for a little repartee to break the monotony. For Jenkins, the wait was always going to be worse than the struggle it took to get a lung full of air at high altitude. It was his regular routine to agitate just enough to get a bite, and maybe raise a giggle, and he knew Carlston could handle it.

  In the close confines of the SUV, the team tolerated the man’s impatience because in all other respects he was a professional.

  The Atacama Large Millimeter Array had ceased to be of interest to the three men long before the Sun slid below the horizon. The grid of radio telescopes, scanning the sky beyond the visible light of stars not yet risen, sat in the middle of a desert in northern Chile, five thousand feet above sea level. There was always a wait, and this one was not going to be long, but the empty parking lot and the plain strangeness of their location had begun to play on their nerves.

  “Quit messing with that fucking lighter!” Carlston hissed, pulling off his headset. “That’s all I hear! And you’re lighting up the truck!”

  The team leader’s face was little more than a smudge in the dark, but there was no mistaking the edge in his voice. Jenkins dropped the hot metal inside his jacket pocket.

  “What time we got?” He asked once more. “You know I don’t wear a watch on the job.”

  Carlston switched on the backlight in his Rangeman and squinted at the digits. “Twenty-twenty-one,” he replied. “He’s working late tonight.”

  He turned his attention back to the side window and his view of the path lit by a row of bright lamps. There was no telling how much longer they would be playing the waiting game.

  Jenkins snorted. “Freaking scientists. They just can’t leave their desks, can they? Doesn’t he have a bitch to go home to?”

  “Lives alone,” Carlston said. “Probably got a boyfriend.”

  Jenkins laughed softly. “I remember, back in the day. When I was in the Eighty-Second Airborne, it was illegal to be homosexual. Now it’s considered optional. Did you know that?”

  “Good thing you got out before our beloved president made it mandatory,” Carlston sniggered.

  Then he sat up and adjusted his headset.

  “Okay, I’ve got him. He’s on his cell phone—and coming through the doors.”

  A side window slid open behind the two men sitting in the cab.

  “Stand by,” Mackenzie said in his raspy growl of a voice.

  Jenkins twisted around in his seat and caught a glimpse of the grim face in the green glow from the scope’s thermal display. The sniper pressed his cheek against the eyepiece and the light vanished. Jenkins grinned as he thought of Mackenzie’s nickname for the stumpy block, the stand-in for a more conventional gun barrel. ‘I-Fuck-You’. Yeah, sure, it was crude but it was suitable.

  Inside the confined space of the vehicle, the thin whine of the gun powering up sounded as noisy as hell.

  Jenkins turned his eyes front and rested his hand on the door release. He tensed up a little as he anticipated Carlston’s go signal.

  During the day, an unseasonable wind off the desert had whipped across the gardens, blowing tiny chips of volcanic rock across the pavement. Now the three men could hear the crunch of scoria as the scientist walked down the path toward the parking lot.

  Professor Sakata dropped his phone into a coat pocket. He was hoping to speak to his wife before she left their home for her work, but he had missed her again. She would listen to the message he left on her voicemail, and they could talk on the weekend. He sighed. It already felt like a year since he said goodbye to his family in Kyoto and set off to Chile to add his expertise to the ALMA project.

  Sakata’s field of expertise was in software engineering, imaging technology in particular. The data he gained from a precise arrangement of antennae provided a far clearer image of a star or planet than was possible using optical lenses. He loved his work, and he knew his latest discovery was going to be ground breaking. Or it would have been had he not received an anonymous but unequivocal directive to shut his mouth.

  He had to bring his discovery to public attention. That was critical for the continued survival of humanity, no less! He had already made up his mind and was in the process of preparing papers for publication. The announcement would mark a high point in his career, but his real concern was to get the information out to the world.

  The fact his supervisor warned him neither to question the order nor to ask where it might have originated frustrated Sakata. He had decided against signing the legal documents he had been given and was supposed to return. Perhaps they had realized it too. He had no idea because although he expected a response, none was forthcoming.

  It was a slight rustling noise that broke him from his thoughts. It was almost too faint to register at all. Maybe it was a bat or a night bird sweeping the area for its dinner. There was so much life in the desert. Nature was truly amazing.

  H
e searched his pockets for his car keys and sighed with relief when he remembered. He had dropped them into his briefcase in front of the security desk when he came through the front doors that morning. He enjoyed sharing a joke with the guard, and today he had pulled out the photo of his family. That he had done something so out of character as to show, unasked, a photo of his family had surprised him.

  He glanced across the asphalt at his car, a silver sedan parked across from a white SUV with tinted windows. He stared harder at the bigger vehicle.

  A tiny shadow flitted past a light.

  He remembered a local legend and chuckled at the thought of how bewildered ancient ghosts wandering this most desolate strip of Chilean desert would be on encountering ALMA. His empty stomach gave a loud gurgle. He remembered he had missed eating his lunch. A hot Carbonada at his local restaurant would fix that. After eating, he would enjoy a glass of brandy in his apartment while listening to the sweet sounds of Bach.

  He placed his briefcase on the car roof and flipped open the catches He remembered clipping the car keys to a D-ring inside. His fingers brushed the smooth plastic cover of the family photo his father had snapped outside the front of their new house only a day before he flew out of Kansai airport. The four of them standing together: Sakata, his wife, and their son and daughter.

  His fingers closed over the cold metal of the key ring as he gazed at the line of huge dishes pivoted towards the heavens. Shiny white giants by day, but by night, silent dark sentinels silhouetted against the glowing star cluster of the Milky Way in an enormous desert sky. The beauty of the Array was the last thing his eyes saw.

  The pulse beam hit his parietal and frontal lobes first. The damage was instantaneous and devastating. The professor was brain-dead before his body collapsed against the car and slid to the ground. For the time being, the scientist’s heart kept beating and his lungs filled and emptied, testimony to the efficiency of the human biological machine.

  Jenkins twisted the key ring free of the clenched fingers. He propped the still warm body upright in the passenger seat, making sure to fasten the seat belt. There could be no unnecessary bruising. He tossed the briefcase at the dead man’s feet, closed the door and turned to give an all-clear signal to Carlston. Then he walked around the vehicle, sat down beside the professor and switched on the engine.

  The SUV followed the sedan into the parking lot behind the dead man’s apartment block. The two men watched as Jenkins parked the car in the professor's reserved space.

  “We got company,” Carlston warned him through his earpiece. “Grandma is coming out the lobby entranceway. Looks like she’s taking her pooch for walkies.”

  Jenkins looked up and spotted the matron in her thick fur coat being led by a poodle. The two had reached the corner of the perimeter wall where they stopped. He watched the woman take a tissue from her coat and carefully wipe the animal’s underside.

  She was taking too long, he thought. He wanted to bundle both granny and her little mutt into the boot. He savored the idea a few seconds before letting it go.

  Once he was given the all clear, Jenkins lifted the professor into the driver’s seat. The man was heavier than he looked. He pulled the seat belt tight across the body and rearranged the man’s clothing. It had to look like an accident. An unfortunate twist of fate.

  Jenkins considered himself a master of his art. His medium just happened to be dead bodies. When at work, Jenkins had all the patience in the world. He was as careful as he could be, using his fingertips to sit the man's head to one side, at a correct angle, and rearranging the professor’s hair to leave everything to appear as natural as possible. It would appear that way, so long as no one was to explore the death too closely. And even if they did, they would never determine the cause. He opened the briefcase and placed it in the professor’s lap. Then he set about wiping every surface he touched with well-practiced speed and thoroughness.

  When he was done, he stood back to survey his work before folding the cleaning cloth into a neat square and returning it to his pocket. He walked briskly to the waiting SUV and without a word to the two men inside pulled the passenger door closed.

  Their mission complete, the killers made good their escape into the cold San Pedro de Atacama night.

  Hot Rock

  Australia, 2018

  It was late afternoon with dense cloud cover and still plenty of heat about. The girl of twelve years tossed aside a lock of dusty red hair and kicked the soccer ball hard across the street.

  The tall, lean man with his thinning gray hair fluffed up in unkempt tufts, trapped the ball using a spritely foot plant that belied his aged appearance. “Keep it low, Summer,” he told his daughter. “Don’t you break any more windows.”

  She flicked the sweat from her eyes. “I was testing how fast you are, Daddy.”

  “How did I do?” Pete asked.

  “Alright for an old feller,” she said and shrugged.

  “You’re a bit cheeky,” he muttered, kicking the ball across to a tall youth in the middle of the street.

  Storm was lost in a daydream and was caught off guard, but his reflexes were good and he caught the bounce off the neighbor’s paling fence with the toe of a paint-spattered sneaker.

  An old woman watering her garden, the owner of the fence, scowled at Storm as he turned and drop kicked the ball to his sister.

  “Hey! You’re not supposed to pick it up,” Summer exclaimed with a tone of aggrieved righteousness in her voice. “That’s a rule, isn’t it Daddy?”

  “Wait…” Pete Elliot said, holding up his hand.

  He spat a glob of phlegm in the gutter and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He turned to see his daughter screwing up her face, and he began coughing.

  “Are you alright?” Summer asked, picking up the ball and walking up to him. “We can go inside for a break if you want,” she said with a smile to hide her concern. “Anyway, when Storm starts messing up the rules, it isn’t a game anymore.”

  “I need to catch my breath,” he told her, turning away to spit into the gutter again.

  Summer turned to her brother. The corners of her mouth curled as she considered her options. She gave the ball a bounce like a basketball player working an opponent.

  “You’re a smartass,” Storm said.

  Pete took a few measured breaths and waited for the urge to cough to ease off. He marveled at how his two kids were growing up so quickly. Tall for her age, Summer was leaving behind the freckled, chubby little girl of yesterday. He gazed at her with considerable affection. Then, he realized she was no longer laughing. Summer was looking as though she might be about to bawl her eyes out.

  “Hey, what’s up, Sum?” Storm thought for a moment he had gone too far. “I wasn’t being mean...”

  A loud boom resonated overhead. The noise rattling the windows of nearby houses.

  Pete passed the palm of his hand over his sticky brow. It was about time the damned clouds emptied on the town. They needed the rain. He squinted up at the clouds, looking for a flash of lightning. Maybe a plane was going down. One of those terrorist incidences the newspapers were always fancying might happen over Australia. No one was safe on a plane anymore. Never mind the terrorists.

  This year, it seemed a couple of planes crashed each week somewhere around the world. No one was saying why. And they were only the ones that were being reported. He’d heard military planes were falling out of the sky and they were never reported. Anyway, this couldn’t be a plane. Apart from helicopters, the only air traffic he ever saw over Coona was the flying doctor.

  They stared up at the bright light, and when it burst through the cloud, they saw a teardrop of brilliant green. The fireball traveled over their heads with a low rumble, skimming the underside of the cloud ceiling. Taking its time. Impossibly slow.

  The soccer ball dropped from Summer’s hands to roll into the gutter as she ran to her father.

  “That plane is going down, isn’t it?”

  Pet
e shook his head. “Nah. That’s too slow for a plane. And it’s too big. Just look at the size of that thing!”

  They watched the bolloid disappear into the distance. The thick, brown trail uncoiled over the grove of eucalyptus surrounding the local Boy Scout Hall to spread across the farms and open plain.

  The excited howls from Pete’s dog were joined by the baying of Colin Ashcroft’s Rottweiler several houses down the block. Every evening come nightfall, Ashcroft and his guard dog would do the rounds of the town on security duty. Tonight would be no exception. From the tone of Ashcroft’s shouts, he was mighty upset at having his afternoon sleep disturbed.

  The old lady leaned over her fence. She still clutched the garden hose in her hand, oblivious to the water spraying over the footpath. Her eyes were wide and her jaw was working. Finally, she found her voice. “Sweet Jesus, did ya see that UFO?”

  “No, Mrs. Sedgewick,” Storm called out, correcting her. “That was a meteor.”