Star Trek: The Original Series: From History's Shadow Read online

  Carlson took a long pull of his cigarette and blew a stream of smoke into the air above his head. “I still think that story of theirs about an invasion fleet is crap, but I can’t rule it out. Besides, even if that Ferengi might’ve been screwing with us, some other bunch of aliens from a whole other planet might well be gunning for us. In fact, there are people in Washington who think this kind of thing has been going on for years. Remember the brouhaha back in thirty-eight, when that radio show ran a fake broadcast pretending to be an invasion from Mars?”

  “You mean The War of the Worlds?” Wainwright had not heard the broadcast, but he had read about the national reaction in the following day’s newspaper. “I remember. It was a dumb stunt.”

  Shaking his head, Carlson smiled. “There are those who think the fake radio-show story was just a cover-up for someone finding a real alien ship.”

  “Come on.” Wainwright shook his head in disbelief. “That’s crazy.”

  Carlson shrugged. “Granted, there’s never been any proof. Then again, nobody’s got any proof about what happened at Roswell, either. Still, plans for what to do if Martians or somebody else comes calling have been in motion for some time, but they really started heating up after Roswell. That’s why I’m here, and why you’re here.”

  Wainwright stopped himself from taking another drag of his cigarette as he regarded the professor. “What are you talking about?”

  “The National Security Act signed by President Truman last week?” Carlson asked. “The one creating the National Military Establishment and making the Air Force its own branch of the military? Well, buried deep in all of that red tape is another project with a simple, twofold mission: seek out any and all evidence of extraterrestrial activity on Earth, and develop strategies to combat any aliens who are proven to pose a threat. The group’s code name is Majestic 12, or MJ-12 for short. Officially, it doesn’t exist, but as of 0700 hours this morning, you’re a part of it.” Sticking his cigarette in his mouth, he extended his hand to Wainwright. “Welcome aboard.”

  Caught off guard by this revelation as he shook Carlson’s hand for a second time, Wainwright was unsure what to say. During their joint time at Roswell, particularly during the incident involving the three aliens, he figured the professor believed him to be little more than a typical brainwashed military robot, incapable of exercising any thoughts not already programmed into him by his superiors. In truth, Wainwright had not been very impressed with Carlson’s behavior during the Ferengi affair. Part of him still believed the civilian and his fiancée, a nurse with the Air Corps—now the Air Force—named Faith Garland, had helped the aliens to escape. Despite Carlson’s insistence that they had been manipulated by the Ferengi’s so-called “insidious mind-control powers,” Wainwright still harbored suspicions that the professor and his fiancée had acted of their own free will. Both Carlson and Garland had struck him as naïve in their hopes and beliefs that the aliens had come in peace rather than with conquest in mind.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Carlson said, as though he indeed possessed the ability to read Wainwright’s thoughts. “You’re still wondering what might really have happened with me and Faith back at Roswell. The truth is I really don’t know what to think about the Ferengi, whether they were yanking our chains or if they were a scouting party for some kind of invasion fleet. My gut tells me those three weren’t a threat to anybody, but this project is bigger than that. Much bigger.”

  Wainwright leaned forward, reaching to stub out his cigarette in the ashtray sitting on the desk between them. “So, what is it I’m supposed to be doing?”

  “Initially, you’ll be working with me,” Carlson replied. “Our primary job at this point is to investigate reports of any unidentified craft. Since Roswell, there’s been a surge in reports of people seeing flying saucers all over the place. We’ll conduct interviews, gather any evidence that might present itself, and go from there.”

  “Evidence?” Wainwright asked, frowning. Though originally a skeptic so far as the existence of beings from other worlds was concerned, Roswell had made him a believer. That did not mean he would accept without strict scrutiny anything presented to him as proof of extraterrestrials.

  Carlson nodded. “A few of the reports we’ve received have included photographs of strange flying objects, or figures the witness purports to be aliens. Most of the pictures I’ve seen are terrible—out of focus, bad exposure, double exposure, whatever—but a few of them will definitely get your attention, Jim. There may be other evidence, too, of a sort similar to what our Ferengi friends had.”

  That indeed got Wainwright’s undivided attention. “What? You mean ships, or other technology?”

  Shrugging, Carlson stood up from his chair. “I don’t know for sure, yet. The top brass is being very tight-lipped until we get our team together and organized. You probably already know that everything we do here, every last thing we see, hear, read, or talk about, is classified top secret, Jim. Not a breath about anything to anyone.”

  “What about my wife?” Wainwright asked. “I wasn’t able to tell her a damned thing before I left Roswell yesterday. What’s my cover story?”

  “All of that will be given to you,” the professor replied. “Everything will be handled. Arrangements are already being made for your family here. You’ll move them just like any other change of assignment. So far as anyone not affiliated with the project is concerned, you’ll just be another officer with duties requiring frequent travel. The Air Force is chock-full of men and women just like that. You’ll blend in fine.”

  The decree that he would, in essence, be forced to lie to his wife, Deborah, as part of the normal consequences of his job at first troubled Wainwright, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that it would not be the first time duty had made such demands on him. During the war, the months leading up to Operation Overlord had been fraught with secrecy, with the success of the entire campaign hinging on the allies’ ability to keep even the slightest hint of its planning and preparation from making its way to the Germans. Likewise, the American development of atomic weapons also had been conceived and carried out in near-total isolation, with no one suspecting the mammoth, even horrifying results of that endeavor until one fateful August morning in 1945 in the sky above the now-devastated Japanese city of Hiroshima. Keeping secrets, Wainwright knew, even from his own wife, was just part of the job.

  The idea of refusing this assignment—if indeed that even was an option—was laughable. For Wainwright, this was the job of a career, or a lifetime, even if everything he did or saw while attached to this new project—Majestic 12—never was revealed to the public. This was important; it was historic, and here he was, James Wainwright, at the beginning of it all.

  “Tell me something, Professor,” he said after a moment. “What do you think we’ll really find? I mean, once we start digging, what are you hoping for?”

  Pursing his lips, Carlson pondered the question for several seconds before answering. “You mean do I hope we find friends out there, with all manner of advanced technology they’re willing to share with us? Absolutely.” Sighing, he took one last puff on his cigarette, watching the smoke swirling above him before crushing the butt in the ashtray. “But if there are enemies out there looking to kick our asses? Then, yeah, I want to be ready for that, too.”

  FOUR

  Muroc, California

  October 15, 1947

  With his back to the wall in the corner booth of Jack’s Roadside Diner, Adlar divided his attention among the other patrons, the door, and the two-lane highway beyond the restaurant’s gravel parking lot. Only the occasional passing car disrupted the otherwise tranquil scene of the arid, barren terrain bordering the western edge of Muroc Army Air Field. Dust from a car leaving the diner was carried on the slight breeze, adding new layers of grime to the other vehicles scattered across the lot. Inside the restaurant was a mix of men and women, many of them dressed in military uniforms. There were a few examples of men d
ressed in clothing denoting some form of social or financial stature, but to Adlar, most of the diner’s other patrons appeared to represent various forms of labor-intensive if not outright servile endeavor. Listening to several of the conversations taking place at other tables, Adlar heard more than one person complaining about the heat. He found the warm temperatures here rather comfortable, given the similarity to the climate on his home planet.

  The various, competing odors of fried, boiled, and grilled foodstuffs filled the air inside the diner. It had taken some time for him and his companions to acclimate themselves to the numerous forms of human sustenance. Even now, three years after their arrival, Adlar and the others still relied upon the nutritional supplements that were part of the equipment and supplies brought with them to Earth. Still, Adlar had acquired a taste for a broad spectrum of Earth-centric cuisines. Careful scans of some of the meals he had prepared using native ingredients had yielded an interesting, often humorous and sometimes frightening array of information regarding the different foods’ dietary usefulness. To his occasional amusement, Adlar was forced to admit to the odd contrast between a particular item’s taste and its worth with respect to his health. One food in particular, bacon, had become a personal indulgence during his time on Earth, yet appeared to contain no discernible nutritional value.

  As his waitress—a middle-aged, bored-looking female with the name “Maxine” stitched on her blue shirt—delivered a plate containing eggs, toast, and bacon, Adlar’s attention was drawn to the diner’s front door. He looked over to see his companion, Gejalik, entering the diner. Like him, and thanks to her own mobile camouflage emitter, she was able to effect an outward human appearance. In keeping with her current cover identity, Gejalik presented herself as a human female. Her long brunette hair was pulled back and secured in a ponytail, and she wore a conservative gray skirt and white silk blouse. The heels of her shoes clicked on the diner’s tile floor as she approached, before she slid into the booth to sit across from him.

  “You’re late,” Adlar said by way of greeting, the subcutaneous translator inserted beneath the skin of his throat rendering his speech in flawless human English.

  Gejalik nodded. “I know. I wasn’t able to leave the office until the colonel returned from his staff briefing. Things are very busy on the base.”

  “I can imagine,” Adlar replied as he picked up one of his utensils and began partaking of his breakfast. The simple act of holding and using the implement had required practice in order for him to appear natural while eating in public, but after this much time spent among humans, such things now were second nature. “What are they saying?”

  The previous day had brought with it an impressive feat, at least so far as measured by the current level of human technological advancement. An experimental aircraft guided by a human pilot had accelerated to heretofore unattainable speeds, traveling faster than sound itself. Though pre-mission briefings regarding Earth’s supposed “normal” timeline provided him with historical facts surrounding the prior day’s events, Adlar still wished he could have witnessed it for himself.

  “Despite the inconsequential nature of the accomplishment, the military leaders are very proud of themselves,” Gejalik said, keeping her voice low so as to avoid being overheard by other diner patrons.

  Adlar frowned. “It’s not inconsequential when viewed in the proper context. You’re forgetting where these people are, technologically. They’ve barely taken their first steps toward the future you and I take for granted.”

  For the first time since her arrival, Gejalik smiled, an expression Adlar found appealing on her human façade. “You always seem to be defending them.”

  Shaking his head, Adlar countered, “I don’t defend them. I prefer to view such things with the correct perspective. Think of our home planet, and where our people are, technologically and socially, at this precise point in time. One could argue that Earth in many ways is currently on par with if not superior to Certoss Ajahlan as it exists in this era.”

  He could see that his remarks, as often happened when he spoke in this fashion, were beginning to irritate his companion. Perhaps she wondered or worried that expressing such views suggested he might not be up to the task they had been given. Even with the obstacles that had arisen since their arrival on Earth, Adlar never had wavered from their mission. One could still admire a civilization, he felt, even while working to bring about its eventual destruction.

  It was not the primary mission to which he and Gejalik along with their two companions, Jaecz and Etlun, had been assigned by their military superiors on Certoss Ajahlan. Instead, they originally were to have been part of a larger effort to disrupt the efforts here on Earth of the Na’khul, a rival race that had become an enemy of the Certoss people as a consequence of the Temporal Cold War. That conflict, waged across time itself and all but consuming numerous civilizations, was being fought on multiple fronts spanning centuries. Earth at this point in its nascent history had been one of those fronts, though not of its people’s own design. According to the briefings provided to Adlar and his companions prior to setting out on their mission, the Na’khul had inserted themselves into a global conflict that had been raging here. Working in secret, Na’khul operatives undertook several actions to alter key events in the war’s earliest days, along with providing advanced technology in order to favor one of the smaller, more militaristic nation-states.

  Though the Certoss had fought a largely defensive action during the temporal campaigns, there were occasions where more aggressive tactics had been required. Earth presented one such example in the eyes of Certoss government and military leaders who had come to know that—either because of or in spite of Na’khul interference in its history—humanity would develop to a point of technological advancement that ultimately presented a direct threat to the Certoss people. War between the two civilizations would result in the fall of Certoss Ajahlan. For obvious reasons, that could not be allowed to happen. Thwarting the Na’khul’s efforts here on Earth was a logical first step toward preventing any future conflicts between humans and the Certoss.

  Fate, it seemed, had other ideas.

  Waiting until the waitress took her order and moved on to assist diners at another table, Gejalik asked in a low voice, “Has there been any new contact from Jaecz?”

  “No,” Adlar replied, “not since his letter.” He retrieved an envelope from his jacket’s interior pocket. Inside were two sheets of folded paper filled with handwritten script in Jaecz’s home language. Though he understood most of the passages, a few words or phrases still required additional scrutiny. Adlar, like Gejalik, had grown up speaking, reading, and writing a different language, only later learning his friend’s native tongue. “I’ve found nothing in any of the avenues we established for exchanging communication. Jaecz has not attempted contact in more than three months.”

  “I wonder if he found anything at that base in New Mexico.”

  “Whatever was there,” Adlar said, pausing to verify that no eavesdroppers might be lurking within hearing range, “the Air Force has since taken to denying everything.”

  In his own capacity, using one of his human personas in order to pose as an intelligence officer in the United States Army, Adlar had determined that an unidentified craft had crashed three months earlier in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. The events that had transpired in the immediate aftermath were the focus of much speculation, given the military’s initial reporting of the crash and the subsequent retraction of their statements to that effect. Rumors abounded about the recovery of an extraterrestrial vessel along with other artifacts of technology and even the bodies of the ship’s dead occupants. As to the craft’s present location, Adlar’s surreptitious investigation had determined that if it did exist, it no longer was at Roswell but instead had been transported to some other, undisclosed location.

  “Perhaps Jaecz was captured or killed,” Gejalik said. The waitress had deposited a cup of coffee for her, but it sat untouch
ed. Unlike Adlar, she was far more discerning with respect to human cuisine, instead preferring organic foods eaten without much in the way of preparation.

  Adlar nodded. “I considered that possibility and even attempted to investigate it. I found nothing to indicate he’s been taken into human custody.” Such a report, like the Roswell Incident, would without doubt attract all manner of attention throughout the ranks of the American government’s intelligence community. “Wherever he is, it’s more probable that he’s simply gone into hiding. Maybe he’s even trying to make his way to us. I’ve left messages, letting him know we’ll be staying here, at least for now.”

  Eyeing the coffee before pushing it away from her, Gejalik released a small sigh. “It’s a pity we couldn’t confirm the existence of the spacecraft. Accessing its communications systems alone could have proven worthwhile.”

  “Indeed,” Adlar replied, nodding in agreement.

  It had been his hope that such a vessel might provide them with a means of contacting their homeworld. There had been no interaction with their superiors or any other member of their race since arriving on Earth three years earlier and after having traveled across time more than five hundred years. The communications equipment they had brought with them for that purpose, modified to interface with the temporal displacement apparatus that had transported them here, had failed to make contact across the centuries. No malfunction or other fault had been found in the device itself, leading Adlar and the others to believe something must be amiss either with the other apparatus, or else some other, larger, and as yet unknown issue had manifested itself. Adlar’s main concern with any situation on Certoss Ajahlan was similar to what he and the others faced here, as the mission for which they had trained seemed at odds with the current reality.