Teramar: The Gathering Night by Thomas Michael Murray

Author:Thomas Michael Murray [Murray, Thomas Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-03-13T23:00:00+00:00

Cat and Mouse

Her colossal mass hovered above earth’s atmosphere silently watching and waiting. Without having to simultaneously lead an assault on the queen’s main computer as well as maintain operations a galaxy away, Jessica could now easily merge with all of earth’s systems and effectively run the planet as she chose. After the accidental sighting by the Americans, Jessica threw a new cloak around herself, a fastidiously hand painted one. She simultaneously placed a dense shroud of silence over Hadrian and all of his technology. And due to the failed mission to save the king, Jessica had to decisively detach from all operations on Teramar as Cataline and the others hunted her.

Miles below the starship in an office in the United States capital, Dr. Justine Martin, NASA’s Managing Director, was delivering a presentation to the security council’s two old men, Jolly Perkens, the FBI Director and Robert McNamara of the NSA. After three or four newsless slides rolled across the screen, Director Perkens suspected that this normally efficient woman really didn’t have the information they sought. He asked her point blank, “Is there an alien ship hovering above the planet or not?”

The room was getting warm. Jolly’s glistening forehead began to shine at her in a distracting manner. The two men were obviously anxious and becoming impatient. This was the team that had to deliver a palpable explanation to the president. Justine offered a tart reply, “Am I allowed to say maybe?”

The bull let the steam roll from his snout. Justine ignored the dramatics and continued in a purposely-unemotional tone, “We’ve been running endless regressions to identify patterns in the signal. Whenever our analysts were near a breakthrough, our main computers would unintentionally flip to whirling beach balls. The interference was persistent and quickly became anticipated.”

“What are you saying, Justine? There’s a space creature out there that’s fighting with you,” drawled the former agent. McNamara looked on with an icy assent. This wasn’t the first time the two directors had seen unknown phenomenon. These kinds of investigations always overlooked some obvious clue, never holding up to be the great mystery they purported at the outset.

“Justine, you got nothing but paranoia,” drawled Jolly Perkens. “The White House is calling my office every day now. You’re saying we tell the president you can’t figure it out?”

Sometimes, Justine hated these two. The old bastards still treated her like a hippy scientist. “I flew jets in combat for Christ’s sake!”

Rallying a battered patience, she said, “Gentlemen, there’s more.” Her face now offered amused confidence. Looking each in the eye, she finished, “After repeatedly being frustrated by this thing - shall we call it - the president authorized the build of a completely separate laboratory in the deepest heart of NORAD. There, we sealed the room from all connections to outside machines, from the Internet, the electrical grid and our phone systems. All personal communication devices were left outside the room and the lab ran on it’s own power with a generator inside. We created the most secure computer room in the history of mankind.

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