Pandora's eyes

By James M. Corkill

An alien spacecraft is discovered under the ice in Greenland!

Geophysicist Alex Cave is called in to investigate and makes contact with the artificial intelligence in charge of the alien craft. It claims ownership of our world for her genetically superior race of humans, who have been in stasis under the ice for millions of years. She dema

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author
• Release date: Dec 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780986181054

James M. Corkill

James M. Corkill is a Veteran and retired Federal Firefighter from Washington State, USA. He was an electronic technician and studied mechanical engineering before eventually becoming a firefighter and retiring. He began writing in 1997, and was fortunate to meet a famous horror writer named Hugh B. Cave, who became his mentor. In 2002, he self-published a dozen copies of Dead Energy, just so his wife could see his book before she was taken by cancer. When his soul mate was gone, he stopped writing and began drinking heavily until 2013, when he met a stranger who recognized his name and had enjoyed an old copy of Dead Energy. When the stranger encouraged him to start writing again, he realized this chance meeting was just what he needed to hear at the right moment, and he quit drinking and began the rewrite of Dead Energy into The Alex Cave Series. He is now an award-winning author. You can contact mister Corkill through his website:  http://jamescorkill.com/

Book preview

Chapter 1

GROOM LAKE, NEVADA:

Alex Cave stares out the window of his sparsely furnished room in the barracks. Sagebrush covered desert and low mountains stretch away in all directions. The heat causes the air to shimmer, as he watches the CIA’s latest experimental stealth drone race down the runway and climb into the sky.

He grins, knowing that even the government’s most clandestine service is unaware of the alien spacecraft in Hangar 5. Since he discovered it in a dormant volcano of one of the Aleutian Islands, his life hasn’t been the same. At least things have settled down for now, he thinks.

His phone rings and he recognizes the image of a man with curly gray hair, Doctor Henry Heinz, his good friend and boss here at the base. Hey, Doc.

I think you had better come down here right away, he says with a slight German accent.

I’ll be right there.

He hurries from the room, down the hall to the stairs, and moments later, steps into his friend’s office. What’s going on?

Henry looks up at the tall man with wavy-black hair and dark blue eyes. I have recently received a copy of a recording from the International Space Station. It was taken yesterday afternoon, shortly after the launch of a new satellite called the SV1, for Space Vacuum One. I looked through their permits, and they claim it is an efficient way to collect the space debris currently in orbit.

That sounds like a good idea.

When Alex moves around to see the image on the monitor, his eyes go wide as he stares at the strange looking contraption as seen from the ISS. A ten-foot-long, orange octagonal cylinder with solar panels is floating among the stars, but what gets his attention is the twenty-foot-long, pewter-colored torpedo protruding from the center. I see why you called me down here.

That looks like one of your devices, Alex.

I think you’re correct. The other three should already be here.

Alex thinks about his best friend, Okana, who is searching for the last alien device in the Bering Sea. He’s the engineer and submarine driver onboard the high-tech research ship, Mystic. He and Okana were special agents and partners in the CIA, and his best friend got him out of Russia in one piece after his wife’s murder. Like him, Okana retired from the CIA and is now working for millionaire Mike Tanner, a private researcher, and owner of the Mystic.

Henry enters a command into his computer. The inventory shows we have three of them. One from the Pacific Ocean, one from the island, and one from the spacecraft in Hangar 5. According to this, they arrived nine months ago.

Alex stands. Let’s go, Doc. I need to see for myself.

He leads Henry to the elevator, and once inside, waits for him to insert his key into the control panel.

Henry presses a button and feels lighter as the car descends below the facility. Why would someone want to put one in space? We do not even know what they do.

Uh, that’s not exactly true, Doc. I know they’re capable of great destruction.

The door opens, and Alex hurries down the hallway. The last door on the right, correct?

Henry doesn’t answer as he tries to keep up.

Alex stops in front of a large steel door and waits while Henry enters a code and stares into the retina scanner. When he hears the click of the lock, he shoves the door open, enters the room, and slides to a stop. There’s only one of the twenty-foot-long cylinders in the room. He spins back to Henry. Damn! Let’s get back and see if we can find out how that company managed to get their hands on them.

***

EASTERN WASHINGTON. SV1 CONTROL CENTER:

Paul Carter, the day shift supervisor, stands behind a young man and a woman sitting in front of the computer monitors. He looks up at the two large televisions mounted to the wall. One shows live images from SV1’s on board cameras. The other screen shows the live video from the space station, about two-miles away. He places his hand on the man’s shoulder. All right, Scott. Let’s see what she can do.

Teresa Tylor, the night shift supervisor, turns her head to look up at Paul. So you’ve decided the SV1 has a sex?

"Hey, I’m from the old school, remember? All right. See what it can do. He looks down at Teresa. Are you happy now?"

She grins. Yes, thank you. She turns to Scott Brackenbury, one of the engineers on the SV-1 project. Ready when you are. Let’s fire it up.

Scott feels his heart rate increase. Thrusters on standby. Sending command now.

Carter stares intently at the images from the cameras, but doesn’t see anything happening. A moment later, the small end of a spinning funnel-shaped distortion appears off the pointed end of the SV1. When he looks at the image from the space station, the distortion looks like a tornado in space. Good work, people. We have a stabile attraction cone. The debris we’ve selected for the test is within a two-thousand-foot radius of the field. Let’s start with the harmonic resonance frequency to attract carbon atoms.

Scott enters the command into his computer. All set.

Teresa studies the data on her monitor. Verified. She presses a button. It’s on.

Carter stares at the wide-angle image from one of the SV1 cameras on the wall monitor. He notices a flash of reflected light, and smiles when a slowly rotating silver object enters the cone. That looks like some kind of wrench.

Scott looks up from his monitor. The field is holding. We’ve caught it!

Teresa captures a still image of the wrench and does a recognition comparison. It’s one of the tools used by the Hubble telescope repair team. It’s been floating around up there for several years.

Carter’s eyebrows bunch together in thought. I wonder how it ended up in the debris cloud created by China destroying one of their satellites.

Scott looks over at Teresa and up to Paul. We’re attracting more material. It’s working. We should have this section cleared in a few hours.

Scott sits up when he hears a soft beeping from the computer speaker. He types in a command to mark that point in the recording, while he tries to find the cause of the alarm. It appears to be a second resonate frequency, oscillating 180-degrees out from the one in use by SV1. A few moments later, it’s gone. That was strange.

***

NORDIC VOLCANOLOGICAL CENTER. REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: NORDVULK.

Estelle Burkhart studies the flashing warning light on the monitor. It shows a large geologic disturbance two-hundred-miles north of the Beauford Glacier. This cannot be right, she whispers with a strong Icelandic accent.

She hurries from her lab down the hallway to the Director’s office and taps on the open door. Do you have a minute?

Jeffery Sliven indicates for her to sit down. Of course.

Estelle sits in the chair across the desk. We had a significant event sixty-miles north of us in the Atlantic Rift. The odd part is that it was only a surface disturbance, about one-hundred meters below the crust.

That is strange. Is there any other indication of unusual volcanic activity?

Not that I can tell. It lasted thirty-seven seconds and stopped.

All right. Let’s send a ship to check the area for anything unusual. Who do we have available?

I think Terry and his people are doing research not too far from that area.

All right. I’ll have him stop and check it out before he heads back.

Estelle stands. Hopefully it is not a prelude to a new volcano forming above that section of the rift.

***

ALIEN SPACECRAFT. SOMEWHERE INSIDE THE POLAR ICE SHEET:

Seth feels a soft breeze across his face when he gasps for air. A sharp pain from unused muscles erupts in his chest, easing slightly with each shallow breath. Even the muscles in his eyelids feel stiff as they slowly open, his irises adjusting to the artificial red light inside the narrow capsule. It takes a few tries to get his vocal cords working. Pandora?

I am online, Captain. A female computer voice answers through his neural implant.

Are the surface conditions habitable again?

Negative.

Then why did you take me out of stasis?

I detected an object in orbit with similar technology as our own, and I have been trying to interface with its operating system. The signal is sporadic and it’s urgent we make contact. I initiated override protocols and brought the ship to the surface.

Seth almost sits up. That means our people have returned. Open this stasis chamber and let me out. We need to make contact with them.

The device appears to be malfunctioning. This indicates there is no one to correct the problem.

I don’t care. Open this chamber.

He feels his platform moving and the red light blinks off. Bring main lighting up in seven angstrom increments. How long has it been?

You have been in stasis for one-hundred and twenty million years.

Seth is stunned and stares up at the elevated roof of the control room. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t know what to say. He has never heard of anyone being in stasis for such an extended period of time. Are the rest of the stasis chambers intact?

Yes, Captain.

Shadows slowly grow inside the main control room as the lights come on. With great effort, he manages to sit up on the slender bed, and slowly stands up. He grabs the open door for the chamber when a rush of vertigo threatens his balance. Once everything stops swirling, he eases his way along one wall to a beverage dispenser, filling a small cup with water and draining it in two gulps. He fills it with green liquid containing electrolytes and drinks more slowly.

He looks around the interior of the forty-foot circular room, then stares up at the white ceiling. Pandora? Activate transparency.

Blue-white ice suddenly appears to be resting on top of the spaceship, filling the room with pale translucent light from the surface. What are the outside conditions?

The atmosphere contains exceedingly high levels of toxic gases. Surface conditions indicate this planet is undergoing an ice age. There is no nourishment available at this location.

Seth sits down in front of the control console and visually checks Pandora’s status. She is correct. He looks up at the ice, and releases a deep sigh of frustration. The ice age could last for thousands of years. Great. You woke me up, but we can’t wake everyone else up and start over. Any recommendations for this situation?

Return to your stasis chamber until this location is habitable.

He eases his way back onto the narrow bed. Very well. Close the chamber.

Closing chamber.

Chapter 2

EAST OF DARRINGTON, WASHINGTON:

State Patrol Officer Harry Clemens recognizes the four dump trucks and construction equipment parked in front of his grandfather’s abandoned drive-in movie theatre. As far as he knows, his family doesn’t intend to tear it down. He takes the next off ramp, drives across the over pass, and heads back to the theatre down a side road. He stops near a large motorhome, where a dozen men are sitting under the awning. He studies the men for a few moments before climbing out.

Paul Simms glances at his men, then stands as he waits for the highway patrol officer to walk over. Can I help you, Officer?

I was just wondering why you’re here. Are you staging for a job?

Yes, but not for this property. I’m just waiting to hear from my boss. We shouldn’t be here for more than a few hours.

Clemens is about to ask him more questions when a voice from his portable radio interrupts. He steps away from the group to answer. This is Clemens. Go ahead.

We have a report of a tornado touching down just north of Monroe, and its headed south. We need you to help the local police shut down the exits off the Interstate highway in that area until the storm passes.

Are you kidding? We don’t get tornadoes in this part of the Pacific Northwest.

Listen, Harry. This is not a joke, now get moving.

I’m on my way.

Clemens glances back at the truck drivers, then climbs into his patrol car and drives to the Interstate highway. He still can’t fathom the idea of a tornado in Waynesville.

When the patrol car drives away, Simms sits down and looks at his crew. It shouldn’t be much longer now.

***

NORTH OF DARRINGTON:

Rita Harrow stares up at the pewter-colored cylinder pointed up into space. When the seconds vanishing on the digital clock reach zero, she flips a switch and the device shuts down. She looks over at her partner, Steve Preston, the owner of the DAR Corporation. The effect should be over.

Preston walks up to the tall red-haired woman, gently touches her chin, and tilts her head up to give her a kiss. Are you sure you have this thing under control? I mean, your first test altered the jet stream over the Northern Pacific Ocean, and now California is suffering a massive drought. Will it return to its original course?

She crosses her arms and stares down at the ground. I hope so. I didn’t mean for that to happen.

Are you ever going to tell me how you know so much about these devices? He sees the rage in her eyes when she looks up at him.

Her hands clench into fists at her sides. I was on a research ship off the coast of Washington, when a man named Alex Cave suddenly showed up and I was fired. I couldn’t complete my mission and it pissed me off. Her hands relax. A friend did a background check on Cave. It turns out he’s a close friend of Martin Donner, the Director of National Security.

And?

The ship I was on belonged to millionaire Mike Tanner, who became Cave’s good friend. I figured me being fired meant they were up to something big, and I’ve been keeping track of Tanner’s different ships. It turns out one of them recovered another device like this one and we took it. That’s the one you have in orbit. One of our spies working at Groom Lake told us another one had suddenly arrived there, and that a third one was being shipped from Adak Island in Alaska. She tilts her head toward the trailer. You’re looking at it.

I see. How did you know what it does?

We managed to get our hands on the instruction manual.

Don’t tell me. Your spy at Area 51.

Rita doesn’t reply and presses a button on the control panel. The twenty-foot-long torpedo shaped device slowly drops back down into the custom trailer. When she hears a soft thud, she straightens her shoulders and turns back to Preston. I can hit anywhere at any time.

Preston stares back. I’m not so sure.

She puts her hands on her hips. Now that we have one in orbit, I can hit with pinpoint accuracy. When his eyes remain uncertain, she turns back to the trailer. Fine. Believe what you want.

Preston looks at his watch. I’d better get going. I need to be the first person to sign the contract to do the search and rescue, with a clause that my company gets the contract for the cleanup. He smirks. I’m going to make a fortune, controlling the weather.

She grins. I know, and I get twenty-five percent.

Preston’s smile falters for a moment. Even so, we’re talking millions of dollars. He turns and climbs into his silver SUV.

When Preston drives away, Rita walks forward to the customized motorhome that tows the trailer, climbs inside, and heads north toward US Interstate 5.

***

MONROE, WASHINGTON:

Mayor Carl Barstow scratches his head through his gray hair as he watches the patrol cars and ambulances arrive from nearby towns. The three-story apartment complex just south of the small town is destroyed. He looks over at his friend, Officer Clemens. I can’t believe this just happened, Harry. Look how it ripped up the building. Yet just a quarter mile away, there’s no damage. Like it touched down for a minute and then just disappeared.

Clemens looks down at the dry flakes of blood on his fingers and heaves a deep sigh of sorrow. I’ve found seven dead, and a lot of serious injuries. Many of the masonry walls held together, so there could be some survivors underneath the pile, but it’s going to take some time before we can get some equipment here to dig through the wreckage.

Barstow uses his hands to shade his eyes as he looks around the area. We’re just so ill prepared for such a disaster. Tornadoes just don’t pop up in our neck of the woods, and they definitely don’t just appear out of nowhere. There weren’t even any storms around. It was a perfectly sunny day, maybe a few clouds in the sky.

Clemens thinks about the construction equipment stationed at the theatre. This is an emergency, and he’s going to put them to work. I have an idea. I’ll be back in a moment.

Clemens heads for his patrol car and sees a silver Cadillac SUV leading the way for the construction equipment from the theatre. When the vehicle stops beside his patrol car, a tall man wearing gray slacks and a black shirt climbs out and walks over to greet him.

Preston holds his hand out to the officer. Do you need some help?

The Mayor hurries past Clemens and grabs the man’s hand. I’m the Mayor, Carl Barstow. We sure could. We have people trapped in the debris, so you need to hurry.

Preston suppresses a grin. Sorry to hear about that. I’m Mister Preston, owner of the DAR Corporation.  My people would be glad to lend a hand. Let’s go to my car and you can sign a waiver of liability for my company so we can get started.

You bet.

Clemens finds it odd that this Mister Preston has his equipment waiting nearby, but there is no way he could have known this would happen. At least, as far as he knows, anyway.

***

GROOM LAKE:

Neither Alex nor Henry speak until they enter the office. Henry sits down and types a command into his computer, and looks across at Alex while they wait. You did not finish telling me about these devices, Alex.

Oh, right. They were designed to attract pollutants from the atmosphere, but whoever is in control thinks it will attract the debris in space.

Is that not a good thing? All that rubble has caused millions of dollars in damage to several satellites, spacecraft, and even the International Space Station.

You’re right, Doc, if they know what they’re doing. All the information about how they operate is on board our spaceship. How could they possibly know what they’re doing with that device without some kind of instruction manual? They don’t realize they’re meant to work in unison, all connected somehow.

Henry turns to the monitor. One of our people here at the base signed for all the devices, but he quit eight months ago, right after the arrival date.

That still doesn’t explain how they know about its operating system.

Henry enters a command. An instant later, he sighs with regret and leans back in his chair. I had David make a copy and I uploaded the information. Someone hacked into my computer and made a copy of the data.

Alex remembers meeting David as a young physics student while he himself was an instructor. Since then, David has helped him with several discoveries over the past two years, and lives here at the base. He’s like a little brother, and the only person who has flown the alien spaceship.

Alex stands and pulls his phone from his front pocket. I’ll call Martin right away. On the first ring, the Director of National Security’s secretary answers. This is Alex Cave. Is Director Donner available? Okay. Please have him call me right away. He looks at Henry. He’s in a meeting.

I wish we had left them in the ocean, Alex. I have a terrible feeling about all this.

We didn’t have a choice, Doc. In order to get rid of the devices, they all must be together in one place.

Henry leans back in his chair and stares up at his friend. Will you ever tell me your secret?

"I’m sorry, Doc. If what I suspect happens, I might need to tell all of my friends."

Perhaps the Director can find out how they were stolen.

His phone rings, and Alex recognizes the image of his friend on the screen. Hey, Martin. You’re on visual and speaker with the Doc.

Hi, Alex. Are you getting settled in okay?

I’m getting there.

What can I do for you?

Three of my devices never made it to the base, and someone copied the operation manual. Now one of them is in orbit, called the SV1. Do you know anything about the company who owns it?

Yes, they’re a reputable company with several military contracts. Have you ever heard of the DAR Corporation?

Alex’s posture stiffens when he thinks about his unscrupulous dealings with the owner not too long ago. I have. I thought they were demolition and reconstruction contractors. Why?

That’s only a subsidiary of the main company. Their goal is to collect the billions of dollars’ worth of precious metals from space. In fact, they’re doing the first orbital test tomorrow afternoon, about 4:00 AM your time. The crew on the space station will be sending a live broadcast of the event.

You have to stop them, Martin. They have no idea how dangerous they can be.

I believe you, Alex. I’ll do what I can. One of these days you had better tell me more about them.

Alex shoulders slump. I know. In the meantime, could you send me all the data you have on DAR and the SV1?

I’ll have my secretary send it to your private email account.

Thanks, Martin.

Henry waits until Alex puts his phone away. "Is