Project U.L.F. Read online

  In hindsight, he realized that he had been extremely selfish. They had called each other infrequently, but soon that had petered out to nothing. Months later, fate conspired to deal him a cruel blow. The U.L.F. department expanded and Wyatt’s responsibilities and workload increased. Without really seeing it happening, Wyatt had become promoted to I.Z.P. middle management, confined to offices on Earth and on the Moon. Wyatt just didn’t go out with the teams any more.

  He tried to locate her again but she had moved on without leaving a contact number or forwarding address. He wondered what she was doing now. Who she was with.

  He despised himself for not getting over her. That seemed to banish the longing he could feel rising within him as his thoughts dwelt upon her, but the ache of loss, which seemed to infest every part of him would not be dismissed so easily.

  He wandered back to the heart of the room before collapsing in his armchair, which seemed to engulf him in its vastness, the leather creaking in complaint of the burden he represented. After selecting a program he could tolerate he sat and watched television, looking but not seeing, his mind elsewhere. His thoughts were haphazard, shooting off at illogical tangents but somehow always coming back to Tanya, like fingers prodding a healing wound, withdrawing with the resurgence of pain that the investigation evoked but always returning even though the action was imprudent.

  The last thing he heard before sleep reclaimed him was the glass hitting the floor as it fell from his hand. He dreamt of her and slept fitfully.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Douglas Mannheim placed his hand on the plate and watched the door slide open with a whispered hiss. It was the sound that always welcomed him into his office.

  Even though an entire side of his office was comprised of four huge fortified glass windows, which spanned the distance from floor to ceiling, the room was dark. It was 4:47 AM.

  He paced across to his desk and deposited his electronic newspaper on top of it before turning and walking to a grand mahogany cabinet, one of many antique furnishings in the room. Lifting the stopper of the brandy decanter he poured himself a large measure. He checked his wristwatch, a large gold attachment. Being at work, even being awake this early was uncommon for him, and he raised his eyebrows in vague amusement. He turned and half leaned, half sat on the cabinet. Sipping from the glass he contemplated what the next half hour might bring.

  His pager had beeped yesterday, in the early evening. He had been at a business dinner and the noise had been a nuisance so he had acknowledged the call without even checking who it was from, and carried on his conversation. Shortly afterwards the pager had beeped again and again he had acknowledged the call to silence it. On the third occasion he had begrudgingly excused himself from the table and made his way to the nearest comms booth.

  He saw the telelink screen come on out of the corner of his eye as he looked back toward the table and gestured toward the friends he had so unwillingly been made to leave.

  “What is it?” he had snapped. The two eyes that appeared on the screen regarded him with such icy malice that he immediately regretted his tone. The face that looked back at him was that of General Kurt Leonardson.

  Leonardson was a hard, ruthless man, a fact emphasized by features so sharp they could have been sculpted from granite. His blonde hair was shaved so short that what remained on his head seemed to stand upright of its own accord, as if to attention. His cheekbones were high and his jaw square and well-defined. His nose was sharp and pointed, the bridge perfectly straight. His eyes were flat, pale blue and as hard and cold as steel, sunk so deep into sockets they appeared as nothing more than tiny specks of light. In profile his face was all angles and lines.

  His stockiness he owed to his military training. He had served with Earth’s regular army for nine years before one of a series of promotions meant he was pushing pens around instead of people. Within the year he had requested a transfer out of the army and to a position where his level of responsibility would be similar and his rank would be a valid and respected title. He had found himself at the CSETI—the Continuing Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It was a department of the government that had been started when the first reply from an alien civilization to the message carried on Voyager I had been received. The CSETI was named in tribute to the organization known as SETI, which had been deemed a failure and aborted in 2120.

  Leonardson’s job required he play a double role. He was a front man for the organization, dissolving rumors that were mostly started by the popular press, and claiming truths to be rumors when leaked from inside. There were, after all, things that Joe Public needed to be protected from. Behind the scenes he liased with the Finance Department for project funding.

  Seeing Leonardson’s face so unexpectedly caused Mannheim a sharp intake of breath. Normally Leonardson was not a man to be trifled with, but these two men had a special relationship. The face on the screen brought the whole story back to him, as it always did. Mannheim played it over in his mind, to dispel the cold fear evoked by Leonardson’s icy gaze, to remind himself who was in charge here.

  He remembered their meeting. They were both young men then, and Mannheim had just been recruited to the IZP management training program. He had graduated with a degree in xenobiological science and spent a couple of years in business. It had been arranged for him to join a CSETI project expedition. Mannheim recalled that at that time Leonardson was also new to the CSETI and was making waves within the organization. Some of the projects he was giving the green light to were radical and went against CSETI protocol. On this particular outing, Leonardson set out to prove his critics wrong, and went along to supervise the expedition.

  They had landed on a relatively unexplored planet, which, it had been confirmed, harbored life. Leonardson had a team of fifteen. The team was deployed and told to maintain radio contact. Mannheim watched Leonardson with admiration. There was no doubt that this was his arena and the man was in charge.

  Within minutes the squad leader had called his team to a halt. They had encountered a life form, which, although savage in appearance, had shown no aggressive intent. He told them to start the monitoring equipment. Almost immediately the creature had begun to jabber and chitter and then, they were told, it had turned and disappeared into the bushes.

  Leonardson had ordered the team to follow it, which they had duly done. The computer had registered a number of distinct, different noises and sixteen different tones. There was sufficient evidence just from vocalization that this animal exhibited a low to mid-range intelligence. Occasionally the creature would stop and allow the team to catch up with it, before it started off again. The squad leader had called back to the two men sitting in the all-terrain vehicle, voicing his concern at this behavior. It was, he said, characteristic pack hunting behavior, and he believed they were being led into an ambush. Despite it being a new, alien life form, Mannheim, with all his zoological and xenobiological training was inclined to agree. By contrast, Leonardson was not prepared to listen. He ordered that the squad continue to follow the animal and to consider possibly acquiring the specimen. After all, he had put his reputation on the line.

  The squad leader remained anxious, feeling that the safety of his team was being compromised, and this had infuriated Leonardson. He had almost accused the man of mutiny and reminded him of exactly who was in charge, threatening the man with his job. Mannheim had watched as Leonardson, hunched over the consoles, fumed silently.

  Another voice had come through on their headsets then. It was another member of the team and he was tracking movement from behind the squad. Then their headsets exploded with noise.

  All members of the team were shouting now, they were surrounded; creatures were coming at them from all directions, from the trees, through the scrub. They were hopelessly outnumbered. Above the chatter of gunfire they could hear the squad leader appealing for calm, calling his men around him so they could cover all sides, but the screams had already started. The last th
ing Mannheim heard before he ripped off his headset, appalled, was the squad leader cursing Leonardson.

  When the vehicle had arrived at the ambush site approximately an hour later, the cameras mounted on the outside of the vehicle conveyed a bleak picture to the two men anxiously seated inside. The ground was littered with spent bullet cartridges and, of the fifteen-strong team, only three bodies remained as a legacy to their slaughtered comrades, their limbs haphazardly arranged as if they were puppets whose strings had been unexpectedly severed. A hurried search found no trace of the others.

  Years later, Mannheim, already working his way up the corporate ladder at the IZP, acquired a specimen of the creature involved in that fateful confrontation for the zoo. As part of his research on the animal, he thought it would be beneficial to acquire a copy of the tapes from the expedition. He was surprised when the city mainframe informed him that no such tape existed. His investigation of the animal soon became an investigation of Leonardson.

  A CSETI report chip stated that all the team had lost their lives in a landslide. No bodies had been recovered. Mannheim later learned that certain data recordings had “got lost” during a reshuffle of the CSETI data library.

  When he confronted Leonardson and told him what he had discovered, Leonardson had pleaded with him not to tell anyone else about the cover-up. It was a pitiful sight, Mannheim recalled. To see such a large man, large both in stature and power, reduced to a sniveling, whimpering caricature of his normal self, was, well, embarrassing.

  Mannheim took good advantage of his upper hand. He struck a deal. In exchange for keeping Leonardson’s secret he would be supplied with certain classified information. It was vital to Mannheim that the IZP learn about new life forms well in advance of its rivals so that acquirement teams could be deployed and specimens brought back and exhibited.

  Over the years, as the smaller zoos were forced to close, the IZP flourished and within a few years Mannheim had manipulated his way to the top. Knowing that Leonardson would never want the truth to be common knowledge gave Mannheim an extreme power over the other man. It was a position he relished and Leonardson resented. He could, effectively, demand what he wanted and he had on numerous occasions turned the screw a little further, applying more pressure to Leonardson. Even now he congratulated himself on his foresight all those years ago.

  Project U.L.F. was created as a direct result of Leonardson’s information. As the mining fleets went beyond the boundaries of charted space they encountered new planets, which they duly reported to the World Space Exploration Agency (WSEA) who in turn informed the CSETI. When Leonardson had told Mannheim that this information was available, Mannheim had sprung upon the idea of sending out acquirement teams. Leonardson had told him that it was crazy; that these were unexplored planets and that Mannheim’s teams would have no idea what they would encounter. It would be far better to send experienced CSETI teams to make the initial investigations before squads of gung-ho trappers waded in. However, Mannheim was set on the idea. Project U.L.F. was born.

  “I’m…I’m sorry, Kurt,” Mannheim had stammered the apology under Leonardson’s look of contempt, forgetting in that brief moment who wielded the power in this relationship. “I had no idea it was you,” he continued, with a degree of smugness. Leonardson oozed hatred on the screen.

  The conversation had been short, practically a monologue. Leonardson had told him that his department had received some very sensitive information. Copies of these files had been encrypted and electronically mailed to Mannheim’s office. He was to access the files, view them and then delete them. Their contents were highly confidential.

  Leonardson had seemed rushed, nervous. He glanced furtively about throughout their conversation. When the call was finished, Mannheim was left somewhat bemused in the telelink booth, looking at a blank screen reflecting a miniature monochrome version of himself.

  Mannheim had returned to the table but Leonardson’s apparent uneasiness had intrigued him, and he had made little contribution to the rest of the evening’s proceedings.

  * * * * *

  The ceiling appeared distorted through the base of the glass as Mannheim drained the remainder of his brandy. He poured himself another before moving to his desk. He wondered what it was that Leonardson thought so important. Sitting in his chair, he flipped a small panel on one of the arms open and punched in his PIN number on the keypad revealed there. A pane of smoked glass rose up from a slat in his desk and a touch-sensitive keyboard appeared on the glass surface in front of him, shimmering into view as if it had just been hauled up through a great depth of water.

  He accessed his electronic mail account. The screen registered three messages. Leonardson’s, one from engineering, and a third from an address he did not recognize. Probably another reporter wanting an interview or permission to film.

  He opened the message from Leonardson. Almost immediately a life-sized holographic image of the man’s head appeared to his right. Mannheim started. Leonardson was daunting enough in the flesh, let alone as some computer-generated specter. He still wore the worried look that Mannheim had seen the previous evening and the grays of the holo-image gave him a sickly, pallid complexion. Mannheim guessed this recording was made shortly before or after the call he had received the previous evening.

  Leonardson spoke quickly and clearly. “Douglas, the information you are about to receive has been distributed as top-secret among senior staff here. The planet in question has been designated code black by my organization, which means we are the only people to know of it. You will be the only other person to have knowledge of it outside of the CSETI. This cannot be leaked. The details are too sensitive and would provoke too many questions. I suggest you erase the attached files once you have accessed them. The first is a copy of a message we received and the second charts our resulting course of action and its outcome.”

  Leonardson’s image disappeared. The message had been so abruptly terminated that Mannheim wondered if there might have originally been more.

  He accessed the second file and a second image appeared to replace Leonardson’s. It was the head of a young man, but the recording was of such poor quality that on occasion the image distorted and broke up. The accompanying hiss of static was interrupted only by fragments of garbled speech. “Mayday....deep space mining ship....failure....put down....two point...light years....Centari Red 603. Food....onth....Mayday. Help. Please.” The image broke up and vanished.

  Mannheim was still none the wiser as to how all this information was of importance to him. He was puzzled yet curious.

  The third file comprised a number of documents from the CSETI. Fortunately the distress message had contained some vital information. Centari Red 603 was a giant red star on the very boundary of charted space and there was only one deep space mining fleet reported beyond the Centari sector at that time. Assuming the mining ship had been forced to put down on its return then an investigative team would only need to travel directly from Centari Red 603 on a course which would eventually result in a rendezvous with the mining fleet, and somewhere between two and three light years beyond the star they would encounter the planet where the ship had been forced to land. It would take time but it was exactly what the CSETI did.

  The search was aided by the fact that the mining ship was constructed relatively recently and by law had to be fitted with a transmitting radio beacon. These beacons regularly transmitted a radio signal that was unique for that ship. Since their introduction they had proved invaluable in rapid identification and searches such as this one.

  The CSETI craft dispatched had found the mining ship but reported no trace of any of the crew even though there was still at least one week’s worth of supplies still on board. As their search continued over the next few days, two of the investigative team had mysteriously disappeared. Shortly afterward, all contact with the team had been lost. CSETI command and control had not ruled out the possibility of radio malfunction, but when the ship did not return as schedu
led it was realized that something was dreadfully amiss. At the present time the CSETI was licking its wounds. All information regarding the failed mission was being carefully scrutinized and there were no plans to send out another team until their safe return could be ensured. What had originally begun as a routine find-and-rescue assignment was developing into something far more sinister.

  Mannheim grasped the arms of his chair and eased himself back into it. He brought his hands together in front of him and steepled his fingers, tapping them together thoughtfully. Two ships had landed on this remote, uncharted planet and not one member of either crew had returned. An idea began to take form in his mind and with it came a grin that spread across his face.

  * * * * *

  He was barely conscious, but conscious enough to know that his neck hurt like hell. Wyatt stretched and tried to rub away the stiffness. He didn’t need to open his eyes to realize he was still slumped in the armchair he had fallen asleep in last night. He opened one eye with a grimace and brought up his arm to check the time on his watch. 8:03 AM. For a split second the time didn’t really register, either because he hadn’t really taken it on board or because he didn’t want to believe it was true. But then again, watches didn’t lie. “Aaah shit!” in a second he was up and bolting for the shower.

  Twenty minutes later Wyatt was speeding up the ramp out of the underground car park. He screeched to a halt before joining the traffic on the road which was moving at a much more sedate pace.

  He was grateful that this was the last day of his shift. He was exhausted. The nightmare and thoughts of Tanya seemed to be conspiring to deprive him of as much sleep as possible lately. He yawned, absently rubbing one eye while keeping the other firmly fixed on the taillights of the vehicle in front of him. The traffic was getting unbelievable these days. He recalled the politicians from the television the night before. There was indeed an overcrowding problem.