Contact: Book One of the Navigator Guild Series

By Eoin Kierse

The story is set in the near future and follows a group of seven young teenagers from different countries who, having discovered they have extraordinary powers, find themselves attending a school run by aliens hidden in the Australian Outback.

In the early part of the twenty-first century Earth was visited by aliens from the Galactic Confederation. Thirteen years later these aliens reveal that they, and also some humans, have powers which in more primitive societies would be regarded as supernatural. These powers are known as ‘The Ability’. People with the Ability make up the Navigator Guild who are the de facto rulers of the Galaxy.

Those rare teenagers with the Ability are chosen to become cadets attending Navigator School, where they are trained to develop and use their skills and finally become fully-fledged Navigators.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eoin Kierse
• Release date: Jul 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466007710

Eoin Kierse

I live in Ireland with my wife Jane, three boys - Liam, James and Rory, two english springer spaniels - Daisy and Jess, two ferrets - Chewie and Fizzy, two cats - Pippin and Skippy, one gecko - Iggy and some nameless fish.

Book preview

Contact:

Book 1 of the Navigator Guild Series

by

Eoin Kierse

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Eoin Kierse on Smashwords

Contact

Copyright © 2011 by Eoin Kierse

Smashwords Edition License Notes

ISBN 978-1-4660-0771-0

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

I would like to thank my wife Jane for her support, encouragement and copy editing skills. Any errors which remain are my own...

Blog : www. navigatorguild.wordpress.com

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Twitter: @NavigatorGuild

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Chapter One

Laura stared at her watch; it had never done that before. She’d thought she was familiar with all its functions. Her watch was her MP3 player, her phone, even her bio-passworded secret diary - but it had never vibrated like that or flashed News Alert in bright orange on its HD plasma screen. She looked at her twin, Ralph, who was staring at his own watch.

‘Quick, turn on the television,’ said Mike, the twins’ dad, who still hadn’t quite got the hang of the inbuilt remote control in his own watch. Simultaneously, the twins’ fingers reached out to touch their watches, but the TV seemed to turn itself on before their fingers even touched the screen.

‘Get in here quickly, Anne!’ shouted their dad, but their mother and Conor, their ten-year-old brother, were already running in.

‘What’s going on?’ asked Ralph.

‘It’s an Orange News Alert. It’s like those traffic updates that interrupt the car radio,’ explained Conor, excitedly.

‘We know it’s a News Alert, you maggot,’ said Ralph, using the twins’ not-so- affectionate nickname for their younger brother, ‘but I’ve turned that function off. Who wants boring News Alerts?’

‘But this is Orange,’ said Mike. ‘Orange and Red override everything. Red is for immediate danger like an earthquake, and Orange is for news of the highest importance.’

‘Is it them?’ asked Anne in a worried tone.

‘Must be,’ Mike replied.

***

Myriam Johansen, the ENN news anchor who was known as the Ice Maiden because of the crisp way she delivered the news and the clinical way she tore politicians apart in her interviews, was staring at her auto prompts. ‘We… we have just been notified that Taz Elen, the Galactic Confederation contact, will make an announcement to the world at 4.30 WET – that’s in 50 – no, 49 minutes’ time.’

She paused, and glanced towards her producer who suddenly snapped out of his astonishment.

‘Play the original Contact Announcement!’ he shouted into his headset.

Myriam snapped back into character and began to speak:

‘It is thirteen years since the Confederation first made contact with Earth, and no-one except Kee Cheng, the Secretary General of the United Nations, has spoken with any of their representatives since then. If it were not for the advances in medicine, farming and energy through the scientific knowledge given to Earth scientists by the Confederation, many people would doubt that it even existed’.

Myriam faded from the screen as the only known alien face came into focus. The very human-looking face smiled - if it were not for the slightly green tinge to his skin he would look completely human. Miles of newspaper columns, weeks of television debates and lots of whatever it is that internet blogs are measured in had argued about whether or not he was green. Some argued that it was just a colour cast in the broadcast, others that he probably looked completely different and that he was just a computer generated ‘human-friendly’ image. Most reasonable commentators said that it was impossible to tell, and no-one knew for certain if he really was a he, or a she, or something completely different.

‘My name is Taz Elen. I come to you in peace as a representative of the Galactic Confederation. Eleven years ago one of our explorer corps ships picked up transmissions from your planet and for the last ten years we have been observing you closely. Six of your days ago the Galactic Council approved initial contact. My task is to prepare the way for Earth to become a full member of the Confederation, if that is your wish. The process will seem very slow to you, but this is necessary. If you look at your own history, the results of a technologically advanced civilisation meeting another less advanced have generally been disastrous. We will slowly make technologies available to you as you demonstrate to us that your leaders have the ability to manage them. We will not interfere in your planet’s politics except in cases of genocide and the use of weapons of mass destruction. I will remain in regular contact with the Secretary General of the United Nations and it is up to you on Earth to work out how to govern your planet in the best interests of all your people.’

Taz Elen’s face faded from the screen to be replaced by Myriam Johansen’s slightly superior smile. She continued:

‘Since that momentous day that shook the world thirteen years ago we have heard nothing directly from the Confederation, and Kee Cheng has consistently refused to give any information to the media.’ She gave her best persecuted look and continued. ‘Stay tuned to ENN and we will bring you further analysis and the live broadcast by Taz Elen – right after this commercial break’.

***

‘Ads at this time!’ moaned Ralph.

‘With everybody in the world watching I’d say it was a perfect time,’ said Conor.

‘Shut up!’ roared both twins together. They found their younger brother extremely irritating, especially when he was right.

‘Do you remember the first announcement, Dad?’ asked Laura.

‘Who doesn’t?’ he replied.

‘I don’t,’ interjected Conor, but the look from his sister stopped him dead.

‘It was 5th June, around 4.30 on a Thursday afternoon, you two were still inside your mum. The world just seemed to stop for days afterwards, some people partied, some rioted, some prayed, but most just wondered about the future. Then things slowly got back to normal - except it was never really normal again.’

‘All you old people say that,’ said Laura. ‘Why don’t you just accept that we are not alone - don’t you want to go into space and see the galaxy?’

‘Well, maybe…’ her dad said.

‘Who turned the sound off?’ asked Conor, suddenly.

‘I did,’ said Laura, ‘I wanted to listen to Dad’.

‘I didn’t see you do it,’ persisted Conor.

‘Well, I did,’ said Laura, as Conor looked suspiciously at her.

‘You thought the sound down,’ mindspoke Ralph. Mindspeak was the twins’ way of communicating through thought. Ever since they were very young they had been able to communicate with each other by thinking rather than speaking. ‘You need to be careful, Conor already suspects that it was us that deafened Frau Muller,’ he warned.

Frau Muller was their German teacher, whom the twins disliked intensely. During a recent German class in the language lab, Laura had turned the sound up so loud in Frau Muller’s headset that she couldn’t hear properly for a week. Laura could control electronic equipment by thought alone. However, as she had only discovered this talent in the last six months she had not yet learned to control items delicately, and had turned the sound up much higher than she intended. Nobody had suspected Laura as she was on the far side of the classroom, and the mishap was put down to faulty equipment even though the repair technician could not find anything wrong with it.

Ralph had also tried to manipulate equipment by thought, but so far had failed even to adjust his own watch. But he was the star striker on the school soccer team. He was not the most skilled player, nor could he kick the ball particularly hard, but he scored with amazing regularity through goalkeeper mistakes. He claimed he was just lucky but strongly suspected that it was because he thought ‘left’ when he was about to shoot to the right, and vice versa. Somehow he was able to confuse the keeper. It didn’t always work: his attempts to send a message to the school headmaster to persuade him to give them a free day had only resulted in the headmaster stopping in his tracks, looking confused for a second, then walking away shaking his head.

The twins had never said anything about their skills to their parents. It was their secret, and they often wondered whether they could do unusual things because they were twins or if there were other people who were like them.

***

Kani was lost in thought wondering what the announcement would be. He was sitting in front of the television with his family. It was dark outside and he could see the headlights of his uncle’s electric Toyota pick up truck sweep across the yard. He heard the slam of the door and the footsteps coming closer.

‘I remember when you used to be able to hear cars, in the days when they had petrol engines,’ he was thinking. But his train of thought was interrupted as the door burst open and Ali swept in. He was Kani’s father’s brother but was twice as big, twice as loud and lost money twice as fast on crazy business schemes, as his mother never tired of telling her friends.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Ali as he helped himself to the dinner, which was going cold on the table.

‘I wonder what he’s going to say?’ said Kani, as he gave his favourite uncle a hug.

Kani’s father Abdul had never known what to make of Kani, his only son, ever since that day nine years earlier when an American officer ran into the restaurant in which they were sitting and started shouting at them and pointing across the road. None of them spoke English, so they had no idea what he was saying. Everybody in the restaurant stared at the soldier but nobody moved. They were deeply suspicious of all uniforms even though many, like Abdul himself, had been conscripted and had served in the army. Abdul had even been awarded a medal for bravery during the Ten Years War. Now, in the restaurant, the diners were cautious – twenty years of Saddam Hussein’s regime had taught them not to draw attention to themselves. They glanced nervously at their neighbours, each waiting for someone else to make the first move.

The soldier banged his fist with frustration on the table and yelled, ‘There’s a bomb about to go off! Get the hell out of here, now!’ Still nobody moved.

‘He said there is a bomb about to go off,’ said Kani, who had not taken his eyes off the soldier, ‘Run!’

The diners ran out of the back door just in time. The bomb exploded, ripping the restaurant to shreds and deafening everybody who had been sitting there seconds earlier. The soldier, who had waited to make sure everyone had left before he made a move for the door, was caught in the blast and thrown across the street.

‘I could understand what that kid said in Kurdish,’ was Lieutenant Jim King’s last thought before he slipped into unconsciousness.

Even though he told the many people who thanked Kani for saving their lives that his clever kid must have picked up enough English from television to understand the American soldier, Abdul knew that they never watched English language programmes. Kani always claimed that the American shouted the warning in Kurdish, how else could he have known what he was saying? Later, when he started school, Kani showed a great aptitude for languages and now that he was thirteen he was already fluent in English. Everyone else came to believe that it was Kani’s talent for languages that had saved them, but Abdul would replay the scene over and over again in his mind. He knew something strange had happened that day and it scared him.

***

Pippa King was sitting quietly reading a book when something suddenly disturbed her. She thought for a moment, frowned, then threw down her book and ran from the room followed by Wags, her two year old springer spaniel.

‘What’s the hurry?’ called Alice, her mother, in astonishment as they rushed past.

‘Fluffy is in trouble!’ Pippa shouted back, and she ran into the back yard just in time to see Max, their neighbour’s Siamese cat, squeeze through the half-open door of the rabbit hutch. ’STOP!’ she yelled.

Max took one last, lingering look at the rabbit cowering in the corner then bolted out of the hutch and back into his own garden, chased gleefully by Wags. Pippa could feel Fluffy’s fear as she came close and whispered softly to her. Pippa carried the rabbit indoors. She sat quietly in the armchair with Fluffy curled up on her lap and watched as the rabbit eventually relaxed and fell asleep.

‘How did you know?’ Alice asked, bringing her daughter a