Flipspace: Close Encounters For Their Kind

By John Steiner

Recouping from their losses, and breaking in replacements, Colonel Rama is briefed for a mission that potentially violates exo-solar planetary research treaties. Rediscovered among archives of a telescope considered lost in the prior century, the data includes surface changes on the alien world that may suggest intelligent life. Taking off under the cover of a scientific survey mission, the Mockingbird is actually loaded for bear. Conscious of the fact they are alien invaders, the surface team faces an indigenous species with aggressive tendencies beyond belief. The question is why?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612359731

John Steiner

John Steiner earned his Associate of Biology at Salt Lake Community College, where he is currently working as a tutor in math and chemistry. He exercises an avid interest in history, science, philosophy, mythology, martial arts as well as military tactics and technology.

Book preview

Special Smashwords Edition

FLIPSPACE:

Close Encounters For Their Kind

by John Steiner

Published by

Melange Books, LLC

White Bear Lake, MN 55110

www.melange-books.com

Flipspace: Close Encounters For Their Kind, Copyright 2014 John Steiner

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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 are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-61235-973-1

Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Becca Barnes

Table of Contents

Close Encounters For Their Kind

Chapter 1: Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

Chapter 2: Amalgamation

Chapter 3: Tag and Release

Chapter 4: Fair Play

Chapter 5: Way of the Sword

Chapter 6: Wanted Dead or Alive

Chapter 7: Scuffle of the Worlds

S.E.T.I. Protocols

Spectres

About the Author

Previews

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS FOR THEIR KIND

by John Steiner

Recouping from their losses, and breaking in replacements, Colonel Rama is briefed for a mission that potentially violates exo-solar planetary research treaties. Rediscovered among archives of a telescope considered lost in the prior century, the data includes surface changes on the alien world that may suggest intelligent life. Taking off under the cover of a scientific survey mission, the Mockingbird is actually loaded for bear. Conscious of the fact they are alien invaders, the surface team faces an indigenous species with aggressive tendencies beyond belief. The question is why?

Chapter 1

Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

Colonel Ramachandra, a Self-Ware facility administrator addressed her through the office’s Air Variation Resonance system. Lieutenant Imafidon is outside your door.

Enter. Sumitra Ramachandra’s reply was relayed directly to the new lieutenant.

For two weeks, Sumitra and the rest of Mockingbird’s crew had been stationed at Vandenberg for repairs to the ship. Her temporary office began to feel more like her quarters, for all the extra administration work she had to do. Filing numerous reports, Rama acquired a near-flawless memory for the thirty-seven crewmembers recovered from the late ISS Magpie. A third of those remained deceased with the mission commander, Colonel Laurent among them. A handful of Magpie’s crew who had been neurologically reconstituted exercised their enlistment or commissioned rights to resign.

Surviving death was a well-understood traumatic event in the 22nd century.

As for Lieutenant Imafidon, who stepped through the door and closed it, Colonel Rama had already spoken to him over telecoms prior to the interview she was about to conduct. In appearance, he looked African, but his family roots were squarely in the U.K. for five to ten generations. He proudly voiced a South-East London accent known for dropping T’s down a quantum singularity and mutating other enunciations more radically than Todd Nathanial Ash’s genetic experiments.

Lieutenant Thomas Imafidon, reporting as ordered, the twenty-eight year old stated crisply. He was a bit over average height at one-hundred eighty centimeters.

Have a seat, Lieutenant, Rama instructed, shuffling network files aside on her desk display, before returning eye contact. Or do you prefer leftenant?

Either is acceptable, Colonel, Imafidon answered in contradiction to his psyche profile.

I want you to know, Rama began, that you’re stepping into the boots of another quite talented engineer who was well thought of by her subordinates. Bear that fact in mind, when you introduce yourself to the crew.

I will, Ma’am, Thomas acknowledged with a solemn blink.

According to your file,—Rama waved a hand to now inactive displays — technical academy instructors thought you were better cut out as flight officer than an engineer.

Let’s just say that didn’t work out, Colonel, Imafidon responded in short.

Letting it go at that, Rama continued with the interview, and was about to escort Thomas Imafidon out to the Mockingbird. However, on leaving her office, she saw Brigadier General Benjamin Chaffee, Lieutenant General Roslyn Dolinsky, and two rather stern-looking young officers, Rama suspected at a glance to be from International Services Clandestine Operations or whatever their ‘unofficial’ unit designation was.

Go ahead, Lieutenant, Rama sent Imafidon on, indicating the quartet. I have a meeting.

Rama opened the door for them and followed them into her office.

I know this is a rough transition, Colonel, General Chaffee began, scratching at his nose and forgoing his manner of addressing her as Sue for Sumitra. However, we’ve got a mission and it’s a big one.

They can’t have figured out the nano-planetoid that fast, could they? Rama said.

This isn’t connected to your last op, General Dolinsky dismissed the reference, and looked to one of the officers while pointing at Rama’s desk surface. What you’re about to see straddles a precarious legal line between an Exo-Solar Research Treaty violation and SETI Protocols as they existed at the time of this find.

One of the officers plugged a wrist-top computer into her desk, rather than wirelessly send data over. Then, a display popped up that Sumitra recognized in part. It was a spreadsheet she might’ve otherwise expected in a spaceflight museum. The catalogue was of exo-solar planets and their associated data. Selecting one, the officer punched up telemetry that Rama thought came from a more recent deep space orbital observatory. Next, appeared a grainy image she recognized as a planet surrounded with two rings. The hue of blue appeared more like liquid oceans