Destroyer from the Lost Planet by Neal Roberts

Author:Neal Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Thriller
ISBN: 9798987431634
Publisher: Neal Roberts
Published: 2023-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Back at Nellis AFB, it was two in the morning on a warm Sunday. Gary was sound asleep when there was a knock at his door. It was Buck, in uniform.

Gary ran his hands over his face. “Hey, Buck,” he mumbled in his West Texas drawl gazing at his friend’s face through bleary eyes, “was I supposed to report or somethin’? I thought I had nothin’ scheduled—”

Buck was distracted from whatever had caused him to visit in the middle of the night. He pointed at Gary incredulously. “You wear pajamas?”

Gary rolled his eyes. “Well, at least I don’t sleep in uniform, like you apparently do. Gonna put me on report?”

Buck shook his head, as though he couldn’t afford to get caught up in trivialities just now (much as he would have liked to). “No, it’s just—Come with me to comms. There’s no brass there, just somethin’ I want you to see. Throw on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt.”

Gary put on the civilian clothes he’d been wearing before he changed into his PJs, consisting of a pair of black Levi’s jeans, a brightly colored, billowy Hawaiian shirt, and leather sandals.

Buck silently shook his head disapprovingly. “Shoulda stayed in the pajamas,” he muttered, and beckoned Gary to follow him to the Jeep.

An unexpected wave of jet-fuel vapor wafted over Gary’s face, nearly making him choke. He glanced at the driver. “Thurston,” he said, “is this guy makin’ you drive around all night? That’s against navy regs.”

“Welcome to Space Force, sir,” Thurston snickered. “It’s okay. I was on duty anyway.”

Before getting into the back seat, Gary glanced all around him. The hairs on the back of his head tingled. He’d seen preparations for conflict before, and the base was bustling with the telltale signs. Light shone out of widely separated windows in all the command-and-control buildings. There was more ground-crew activity on the tarmac than he’d ever seen on a Sunday night, and many more pedestrians on the street, virtually all in uniform and moving with evident purpose. An old quotation returned to him unsummoned: Something about preparations for war not “dividing the Sunday from the week.”

He knew well that such hypervigilance could hang in the air for weeks (or even months), only to be instantly dispelled once the crisis was averted. But then there were the other times … when events got out of hand.

The Jeep jerked to a halt in front of the radio shack. Gary and Buck got out and Thurston drove off without a word.

Every light in the radio shack was on, and a small group of techs had gathered around a large screen showing a radar sweep.

Gary was a little disoriented when Lorraine (of all people) popped out of the crowd to greet him. His puzzlement must have been evident, because she laughed and said, “I’m not in your imagination, Lieutenant Sullivan; I was just transferred here from Ellsworth.” She regarded Buck skeptically. “I was the one who asked Lieutenant Buchanan to fetch you, though I assume he didn’t mention that.

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