Earth Liberation
Audiobook · Earth Liberation: The Novel (Part I)
Chapter 1
Pacific barrier embankment
California, the United States of Americas
April, 4, 2077
Every day, no matter the weather, General Wane Mauritz swims in the sea, from precisely 8 to 8:30am.
Here, in the lagoon, the water was always warmer and calmer than in the open sea. His age made him unfit to swim in the open ocean, but he was not yet old enough to be confined to the swimming pool.
The old man came out of the water that dazzled in the sun and bent, breathing heavily. The morning swims were a rough ride for him. Perhaps, it was time to make them ten minutes shorter.
Having recovered his breath, he put on his bathrobe and walked to his villa terrace through the garden. Sarah was already waiting for him, with the table laid for breakfast: Toasts, yoghurt, decaffeinated coffee. She smiled at her husband with the same smile she'd given him every morning for the last forty years. It seemed that she didn't notice his shortness of breath wind - or she pretended not to.
From 8.30 to 8.50am, the general had breakfast. At 9.00 he sat to dictate his memoirs. Sarah went into the house, leaving her husband alone on the terrace, with his tablet. Mauritz leaned back in the lounge chair, folded his aged varicose hands on his chest and began staring at the skyscrapers of San Diego above the sun-drenched lagoon. The tablet was waiting patiently. But the words didn't come to his mind.
He has already dictated the story of Belujistan operation, in which he was running the UN peacekeeping forces. It was the final tour of his long and glorious career, that began as early as in Iraq in the 2020-s. There was retirement next, and veteran honors, one unremarkable tenure in Congress and finally nowadays, the lack of an occupation, lightly diversified by the UN jobs. There was nothing to tell about it. The dictated life story was coming to its end even sooner than the life itself.
The tablet made a liquid sound breaking the stagnant thread of his thought. A secretary was calling, from one of those obscure UN committees that Mauritz belonged to. He couldn't recall now exactly which committee. He wondered why they were calling at all: Before now, they'd never disturbed him at this time of day. He pushed the button and answered the call.
"General, we're holding an extraordinary extended session," The robot-secretary with the ceramic face looked at him, wide-eyed. "A jet from Wandenberg base was sent for you. Please, get ready to fly in twenty minutes."
"Why the rush? And why can't I participate remotely?"
"I'm sorry, I can't tell anything further. This line isn't secure. The jet will land on
the highway near your house. See you later, general!" The robot disconnected. Mauritz wasn’t even trying to guess what had happened.
He didn’t want to be troubled and didn't want to fly anywhere, but he was duty bound. He went inside to get into full uniform. "I was called to New York," He told his wife. "I likely won’t be back today. The meeting promises to be long".
"What kind of meeting?"
"UNCETT. I’ve told you about it - the Committee For Extra-Terrestrial Threats".
Mauritz examined himself in the mirror, dressed in a perfectly fitted uniform. After a short pause, he opened a drawer and removed from it a white, warm diamond-shaped amulet with a spiked lower corner. He put it on and hid it under the uniform. He picked up his briefcase and left.
There wasn’t a single car on the ten-lane highway that lined out the whole Barrier embankment. When Mauritz walked on the roadside, the jet was already landing. An F-180, “Quetzalcoatl”, hypersonic near-orbital fighter. The general recognised at once its harsh, unnatural outlines. With terrible roaring and a hot wind that bent palms and prickly pears, “Quetzal” landed on the highway, taxied up to Mauritz and stopped in front of him with perfect accuracy.
Later, when the F-180 had already reached the mesosphere, Mauritz was sitting in the navigator’s seat dressed in the G-suit and space helmet, debating in his mind the gravity of the problem. Up to now the UNCETT had been useless. It's primary role was to give away grants from its scanty budget, for programs searching for signs of alien life. For a hundred years, nobody had picked up any signal. But today obviously something extraordinary happened as judged by the privacy and tearing hurry surrounding the call to Mauritz. It was so serious that the government had put “Quetzal’ at Mauritz’s disposal and diverted the traffic on the central highway to save his time.
Yes, this was something more than a detected signal sent many years ago from some distant galaxy. The aliens were discovered somewhere nearby. Or they had discovered us.
Mauritz touched his chest, felt the amulet under the jumpsuit. It was an incredible notion, but... could it be that very thing?
He became a member of the Dragon Fighters Society early - while he was studying at college, mainly because he was curious and partly for the sake of career. Drinking was the main occupation of the brotherhood. There were also various ceremonies, but Mauritz had never taken them seriously.
There were some legends about reptiloids from Orion, about their war against preglacial civilization, about the hard-won victory, about the foundation of the Order and about the comeback of dragons. Could there be a speck of truth there? Perhaps it’s worth getting in touch with the Great Spearman...convoking the lodge of amulet holders. No- these are nothing more than tales. And Mauritz tried to keep his mind off them.
An hour later, the F-180 landed at the military airfield not far from New York. There, a helicopter was already waiting for Mauritz. Twenty minutes later he was in the UN headquarters. The General wasn’t a bit surprised when the security officer met him and led him not to the well-known UNCETT office, but to underground facilities behind three steel plated doors with biometric locks. He also wasn’t surprised that the session was extended, as the secretary had told him. It seemed that the heads of all state-members of the UN Security Council had arrived here.
"Oh, General!," Mendoza, the president of the United States, exclaimed from his
chair. "I’m sorry for beginning in your absence. All the materials are in your folder. Take a minute to familiarise yourself with them. "
Still unfazed, Mauritz took his place. He opened the folder containing a single sheet of paper and saw the top secret message. He had expected something like this. On the periphery of the Solar System, a three-km wide object had been discovered. And it was moving contrary to Keller’s law. He began listening to the report. Some expert was speaking.
"...The object is slowing down - this is specified - but we don’t observe a radioactive jet. Perhaps, plasma of quantum vacuum virtual particles serves the working medium. We’re testing similar engine units, but for the moment their draught is too poor. Such powerful engines as they have are far beyond the limits of our technology…"
"Where's it heading to? Do we know that already?" The President of the European
Union asked.
"Its pathway leads to Mars".
"And where's it coming from?" Mauritz jumped into the conversation. Some looked at him askew.
The expert shrugged his shoulders. "The object is observed in Oreon, nearby a galactic plane. It’s difficult to see from which concrete star it is from, if that's what you mean."
"Does it respond to any interrogations?" Mendoza asked.
"We are trying to signal and hear it on a hundred different frequencies - nothing, complete silence. We keep trying new frequencies."
The President nodded. "Distinguished members of the committee, I want your expert opinion. Does this silence mean hostility?"
"No, not until it's arrived at Earth," said the chairman of the UNCETT, the
same sort of military retiree as Mauritz. "But we should be prepared for the worst".
"Yes, it’s obvious. But we want some certainty. Not everybody who is present
knows, that a secret international agreement exists. In case of alien aggression all the armies of the member states of the UN come under sole command...don’t they?"
The President took a look at the other heads of state. "As you understand, the main political question is - can it be considered aggression?".
Nobody answered, and the President frowned grimly.
"It goes without saying, in any case, that we shouldn’t be the first to attack when
there is a chance for peace," One of the committee members said carefully. But nobody took note of his platitude.
"Are there any means of surprising them, gentlemen? " Mendoza asked. "Can
our rockets reach them?"
"In outer space there’s no chance, but on the Earth’s orbit - reasonably," Mauritz said.
The President nodded. "But we know nothing about their ballistic missile defence. They might surprise us as well, and that could be more than we bargained for. "
The President cast a glance at the heads again. "I intend to raise the DEFCON level and recommend the nuclear club colleagues to do the same. And, meanwhile," - he turned to the NASA expert, "we should give them signals again and again! We must decipher their intentions by any means necessary".
"What about secrecy?" asked some Arab in a white head scarf, who was unknown to Mauritz.
"I consider secrecy absolutely urgent. The public's panic can be more dangerous than a straight attack." The heads of state nodded simultaneously. The committee members kept silent, demonstrating their inefficiency once again, and Mauritz decided to take a stand for everybody.
"I’m all for transparency," The General said. The President looked at him in amazement. "Firstly, on the Earth’s orbit, anyone can see a three-km object with the naked eye. Panic will happen anyway, and secrecy will turn out a proper mess because we'll lose the public's trust. Secondly - and this is more important - if the aliens have quantum vacuum high-performance engines, it means that we are hundreds of years behind them. Dispatching our missiles is like throwing bread pellets at them. All we can do is to pray that they turn out to be good guys, because if they're bad boys - we’ve already lost."
Mendoza furrowed his brows. "Maybe, we should throw out a white flag at once?"
"No. I suggest we recognise the inevitable invasion of the Earth. All we can do is to start getting ready for guerrilla war right now. We should store as much as possible in buried shelters. We should distribute small weapons among the population and train them in guerrilla tactics, and so on. Secrecy in this situation can only do harm. The sooner we announce it, the better it will be". Mauritz sat back in his chair.
Some in the room were indignant at his speech, but he was pleased, almost happy. Life hadn’t come to its end, it was going on. Making war with dragons wasn’t the same as hunting after terrorists in Belujistan. Maybe another chapter will appear in his memoirs?