Andrew Morgan - Vessel

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Vessel: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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‘We’ve done enough research,’ Sean said. ‘Now it’s time to get this story on the front cover of every newspaper, magazine, blog and pamphlet before it’s too late.”
A discovery that has the potential to change the world
Excitement is high when the crew of the International Space Station discovers a mysterious object in orbit around Earth. But something goes wrong, and contact with the station is lost. When journalist Sean Jacob gets wind of the situation, he embarks on a journey to reveal the truth, winding his way into the biggest conspiracy to ever face mankind.
But are we ready for it? As Sean investigates, what he finds is scarcely believable, and he begins to doubt his decision to get involved. But when an informant dies in suspicious circumstances, he is left with no other choice than to dig deeper. With the help of people he’s not sure he can trust, against an enemy with seemingly unstoppable power, Sean takes the fight right to its heart. What he finds there is the last thing he ever expected…

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The plane, which had been climbing, banked right and levelled out. They were flying East, towards the rising sun and into the new day. With the sun now dead ahead, Sally could slide her blind open again; she watched the criss-crossing grey lines down below give way to open wilderness, and her heart leapt knowing there was so much to explore in the world — and beyond. As she dozed, she hoped she would be getting a chance to discover a whole lot more very soon.

A screech of rubber on tarmac shuddered through the plane, jolting Sally awake. Disorientated, she brushed her hair from her face — peeling away the strands that were sticky with drool — and stretched against the seat as she remembered where she was. She didn’t recall falling asleep, let alone travelling nearly six-thousand miles; it only went to show just how sleep-deprived she was, working day and night without even realising it.

The sky was bright but bleak, glowing like a fluorescent tube. As they taxied towards the main terminal building, they turned off the painted yellow line, peeling away from the rows of huge airliners and on to the smaller hangers at the opposite end of the airfield. The nose swivelled as they approached the second to last hanger, and the small plane entered and rolled to a stop. It was dim inside, and Sally struggled to make anything out through her small window. From what she could see, it was empty. The door swung down, and a man in a nondescript dark suit and sunglasses leaned in through the gap.

‘If you’d like to come this way, Miss Fisher,’ he said, voice as stiff as his suit.

Sally did as she was told. As she descended onto the tarmac, she looked around the hanger; it was indeed empty.

‘Please follow me,’ the nondescript man said, and she did. He led her to the back of the hanger, opening a door for her. On the other side, out in the open, a black SUV with dark-tinted glass waited for them. As she approached, the back door opened. A man with white crew-cut hair stepped out and offered his hand to her.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Fisher,’ he said as she took his hand and shook it, ‘welcome to Russia. I’m John Bales, and I’d like to thank you for joining us out here on such short notice.’

‘That’s okay,’ Sally said.

The nondescript man entered the front passenger side of the vehicle, and Bales gestured to Sally to climb aboard too. She froze, her nerves taut with a sudden panic, but as quick as the feeling had come, it went, and she stepped into the SUV and slid herself along the rear bench. Her constant struggle with strange people and situations wasn’t going to get in her way today.

‘I’m sorry for all this secrecy and haste,’ Bales said, getting into the car and shutting the door behind him, ‘but we want to keep what we know and what they know entirely separate.’

The car pulled away, accelerating at an uncomfortable pace past the rear of the hangers.

‘Who are they ?’ Sally asked.

The car slowed, reaching a chain-link gate that started retracting straight away. Outside, a group of people clutching big cameras with fat lenses and tall flash guns pushed their way in through the growing gap. They crowded the car, thrusting their cameras up against the windows, blasting flash after flash through the glass. Sally recoiled, shielding her eyes from the relentless onslaught.

‘Don’t worry, they can’t see you. You’re quite safe in here,’ Bales reassured her.

The driver leaned on the horn, edging the car forward through the small crowd. It didn’t take long until they were free, and soon they were travelling along a lightly trafficked highway, overtaking everything else on it.

‘I take it there’s more to this than a simple malfunction on the International Space Station?’ Sally said, watching the traffic flying backwards on the dull, grey infrastructure.

‘Yes, there is,’ Bales said.

‘And I don’t think you need me just because I’m good with light, either,’ Sally continued, eyes jumping from tree to tree as they took over from the bricks-and-mortar landscape. A field rushed by, its crop trimmed to the ground, stumps yellow and withered.

‘No,’ Bales said.

Sally looked at him; he was studying her. His tanned face was doing well to hide it, but his searching eyes betrayed his curiosity. Sally was used to it. Her reputation often preceded her, and it was one of the reasons she had shied away from the lecture halls and seminars, retiring to the seclusion of SETI research. Ever since she was young, she had been under constant scrutiny.

‘What have you found?’ Sally asked, breaking eye contact with Bales to hide the excitement crackling inside her belly.

‘Well, you could say that it found us .’

Sally looked back at him, her eyes tracing his features to see if he was mocking her. He wasn’t. ‘So it’s true.’

‘What’s true?’

‘Well, it was just a rumour,’ she said, playing with her fingers, ‘but word is that the ISS had made contact with an entity… not of this world.’

The rumour wasn’t true at all, but Sally thought she might be able to squeeze more truth out of the man if he believed his information had already been compromised. She knew how these things worked: information was dished out on a need-to-know basis, and no one ever needed to know — especially not her. She was a component in a machine, a piece in a puzzle.

They considered each other, and she worried for a fleeting moment that he had seen straight through her ruse. He broke his gaze with her and looked out the window as concrete expanse began to consume nature once again, not saying anything. Sally took this as a cue to drop the conversation — at least for now.

The car slowed as it threaded its way through the tightening asphalt canyons between the tall industrial structures of West Korolyov. It came to a stop outside a dominating yellow brick building whose tall, cuboid structure seemed to have far too few windows for its size, almost like a prison. The barrier opened as they pulled up to it, and closed behind them again right away.

‘Please put this on,’ the nondescript man said, handing her a lanyard with a plastic card dangling from the end. Although she understood the languages of the cosmos unlike anyone else, she struggled with the languages of other countries, and the Russian text on the card meant nothing to her. She slipped it over her head.

They parked up and climbed out the SUV, and Bales alone led her into the building. They followed corridor after corridor, taking left turn after right turn, burrowing deeper and deeper into the maze until they reached a room whose Russian signage actually meant something to her. Not because she could read it, but because she recognised the pattern of shapes from documentation she had seen before: Mission Control.

She showed her pass to the security officer stationed outside and followed Bales in through the double doors. The room inside was dim, which, as her eyes adjusted, disguised its cavernous space. The walls curved around the perimeter, and row upon row of desks filled the width. At the front of the room were three huge screens relaying information about the ISS, and she stopped to take it all in, drinking in the moment. Her involvement in science had never put her on the front line, but here she was and she was overwhelmed with awe.

‘It’s quite something,’ Bales said. ‘If you’d like to follow me, we need to get down to business as soon as we can. I’m sorry for the haste, but time is of the essence.’

Sally nodded understanding, and they walked around the room until Bales stopped at a row of desks, guiding her in to an empty seat next to a man who was adjusting his headset.

‘If you’d like to take a seat next to our CAPCOM Mr Dezhurov here. He’ll be able to fill you in with the details. Mr Dezhurov, Miss Fisher; Miss Fisher, Mr Dezhurov.’

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