David Sakmyster - The Cydonia Objective

Up two more flights, and then–

Gunfire roared and echoed back and forth inside the stairwell. Something struck the underside of the platform below his running feet. Another shot punched through the wall to his left. Nina squeezed off two blind rounds, hoping to slow them down.

“Calderon’s men,” she yelled back. “My escorts. Must’ve realized I turned on them.”

“Or maybe,” Caleb said, wheezing. “They got new intel. From the twins.”

“Cocky kids, Caleb.” She flashed him the start of a smile. “And creepy. Definitely missed out on years of discipline.”

“Something to remedy if we make it out alive.” He leapt up three stairs to catch up. They were nearing the pedestal top, and he could hear the rain and rumbling thunder, broken by another gunshot that went wild. “And how exactly are we getting out?” He stopped at the top of the stairs, doubled over and feeling the start of a cramp.

But his attention remained fixed on the view out of the tunnel to the exterior, where he saw something that wasn’t there before.

“Is that a ladder?”

Nina turned back and hauled him up by his sleeve. “Helicopter. Pilot’s loyal to me. Had him circling. Then just told him where we’d be coming out.”

“Wait. I am not–”

Another gunshot, one that cracked the glass around the elevator cage. Calderon’s men were right around the bend.

He took off, passing Nina who had dropped to a knee and squeezed off three more rounds, one striking home as the first man ran into view.

Heading for that shaking ladder, he couldn’t tell if it was on this side of the balustrade or outside, with one hundred and fifty feet separating it from the base. He started to slow down just as he hit the rain, but then felt a hand on the back of his shirt, drawing him backwards, slowing his momentum, and then she was sling-shotting past him. She had hooked her gun under her belt, and like a gymnast, used her hands to vault up onto the slick stone wall and still in a crouch, she pushed off.

Nina launched, swan-like, into the air just as a lightning bolt ripped across the gray-black clouds. She caught the ladder, swung all the way out and then back, gripping it with one hand and using her weight and momentum to propel it back, right to the edge of the wall…

Where Caleb, seeing her intention and realizing he only had one chance at this, vaulted up as she did—and then just reached out and grabbed the rungs beneath her. He hooked an elbow around one rung, and his knees around another, leaving his left hand free to grip the bar and his prize.

Two gunshots roared in his ears, Nina firing on the men who darted into the passage. But Caleb couldn’t look to see the result. The helicopter swung away, and he was soaring out into space, pelted with stinging missiles of rain, completely drenched and hanging precipitously to a slippery ladder far above the ground. Then they were over the churning waves.

And only later did he realize he was laughing, his emotions overwhelmed. He looked up, seeing Nina climb into the helicopter, and then he raised the metal shaft, shaking it victoriously in defiance of the lightning-rippled storm.

Mount Shasta—Stargate Facility

“Two space programs?” Orlando asked. “You mean us and the Russians?”

“No, I mean a public one and a secret program. The Russians,” Diana said, “were in on it. We may have been Cold War enemies to all other purposes, but once the early probes got out there, once the Russians shared with us what they found on the far side, well… after that point we were really all on the same side.”

“Just not as far as the public knew,” Temple said. “Tell them about the Brookings Report.”

Diana nodded. “The Brookings Institution, a Washington DC think-tank, put together a report entitled The Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, commissioned by NASA and delivered to Congress in 1961. It talks about the need for research into a lot of areas of space exploration, but the explosive section that has gained the most attention is the part called Implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life.” She took a breath, then turned to her notebook and read a passage. “Page two-fifteen. While face-to-face meetings with intelligent extraterrestrial life will not occur within the next 20 years (unless its technology is more advanced than ours, qualifying it to visit Earth), artifacts left at some point in time by these life forms might possibly be discovered through our space activities on the moon, Mars, or Venus.”

“Cool,” said Orlando. “How did I miss that?”

“Too busy with video games?” Phoebe quipped.

“Page two-fifteen and two-sixteen,” Diana continued, “go on to talk about the consequences of such discoveries. They cite cultures that have disintegrated when faced with unfamiliar and more advanced societies, resulting in a breakdown of values, and sometimes complete destruction of the people itself.”

“And,” urged Temple, “what was the recommendation of this section, on the question of such a discovery and its implications?”

Diana smiled. “The only logical one. They posed a question that might shape policy. How might such information, under what circumstances, be presented to or withheld from the public for what ends?”

“ Withheld ,” Temple said, “being the key word.”

Orlando nodded. “So they were scared shitless out of what they found up there, and for our own good decided to hush it up.”

Diana clicked the button and started the presentation. “After seeing these images, I can’t say as I blame them. Not sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

Photos started playing across the screens. And Phoebe and Orlando moved to the edge of their seats, open mouthed. “And you got these…”

“Through great difficulty, and danger,” Diana said.

Orlando was rapt with interest, barely taking a breath as he watched the images—impossible sights of things that looked like domes set in the sides of craters, then long, straight walls that went on for miles, casting enormous shadows. Tall, glass-like spires, transparent, set in groups around octagon-shaped structures. Something that looked like a castle, gleaming half-covered in the shadow of a lunar crater. A glass-like tunnel stretching many miles, connecting the rims of two craters.

Diana continued, “Astronaut Gordon Cooper went on record, and then recanted, that all the missions had been followed by UFOs, discreetly, and the astronauts had instructions on how to react, what to say as to alert Mission Control, and yet not alarm anybody. They had code phrase, little jokes like ‘There’s a Santa Claus sighting out our port window.’”

“Nice,” Orlando said in a whisper, still gazing at the pictures. “So if I tried to RV these things, could you give me coordinates?”

Diana shook her head. “You don’t want to try that. Colonel Temple will tell you why in a moment. Just let me wrap up, as you’re looking at all this… All these things that if they got out—and some of them have, the less obvious ones that they didn’t censor in time—NASA would just claim they were tricks of light and shadow. Sunspots.”

“Swamp gas,” Orlando offered with a grin. When Phoebe frowned at him he said, “It’s what UFO debunkers here have been offering as an excuse for UFO witnesses for years. Kind of a running joke.”

“Anyway,” Diana continued. “The timeline, and real history of the space program kind of goes like this. We had a pretty good idea, before we sent humans up there, that they’d find something. There was enough visual confirmation from probe flybys that there would be evidence. It didn’t look like a full-fledged civilization or anything, but possibly as the Brookings Report theorized, we’d find remnants of a lost civilization, and possibly something that would explain the moon’s mysteries and the unanswered questions about our own evolution and history.”