Sentinel

Thanks to my son Brandon for his technical talent and time in a Baylor cad lab illustrating the deep-solar space transport. And to my wife Kim, for inspiration and providing a wonderful sounding board; thanks for persevering through several re-writes.

Introduction

As a kid, how wonderful it was to lose myself in the wonder and fantasy of science fiction. To this day I get a chill when I recall Bowman’s last message as he entered the giant monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s epic Space Odyssey: My God—it’s full of stars! I imagined how cool it would have been to wake up each day on Moonbase Alpha, or cruise around the Pacific in Admiral Nelson’s flying sub. And, of course, voyages aboard the iconic starship Enterprise have thrilled for decades. I will never forget Star Wars opening weekend when I was a high school freshman hanging out with a bunch of upperclassmen, watching in awe as Luke piloted through the trench, the three-story theater screen in Seattle placing the entire audience in the x-wing pilot’s seat. Unforgettable.

As a young adult, the science became more interesting than the fiction. When Carl Sagan explained during one of his Cosmos episodes how the Drake Equation estimated the number of planets theoretically capable of hosting a technological civilization, I knew right then and there: We will, someday, encounter extra-terrestrials. How arrogant of us to think otherwise.

Many questions come to mind when contemplating this: What will aliens look like? Where will they come from? Will they be more advanced than us? How will humans react? In this book I suggest one possible thesis. There are an infinite number of others. I hope readers will consider their own. In all those possible scenarios, I hold a fundamental belief: It won’t be as bad as everyone thinks. God wouldn’t do that to us.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

PRELUDE: The Last Shuttle

PART ONE: Genesis

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

PART TWO: Discovery

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

PART THREE: Illumination

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

PART FOUR: Revelation

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Epilogue

About the Author

Part One - Genesis

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

- Carl Sagan

Prologue

Summer, 2023

Earth, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

AN EAR-SPLITTING klaxon sent Airman First Class Stanley Johnson reeling backwards over his chair. Sitting with his feet up on the console had proven unwise. Wincing with pain, he was grateful the emergency alarm had drowned out the thud of his head hitting the concrete floor. A red flashing strobe nearly blinded him as he crawled to his knees, disoriented. Damn! he yowled, rubbing his head with one hand and picking up his shattered Digipendium with the other; his elbow had crushed it when he tried to break his fall. It would require half a month’s pay to repair and reload the dozens of issues from his ZombieMania e-zine subscription.

The newest greenhorn on station, Airman Johnson was stuck alone on the graveyard shift babysitting the dedicated tracking computer monitoring the Genesis satellite.

Manned twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, the main control room at United States Space Surveillance Network’s Space Control Center kept watch on every piece of man-made hardware orbiting Earth. The SCC housed large, powerful computers to collect and process the enormous amount of data flowing continuously in from dozens of Space Surveillance Network sites across the globe. SCC’s task was daunting. Of the more than 24,000 space objects orbiting Earth since 1957 when the Soviets began the space age with the launch of Sputnik I, more than 8,000 remained, circling the planet hundreds of miles above the surface. The others had burned up re-entering the atmosphere or impacting the ground.

Over three-quarters of those still in orbit were space junk—spent rocket bodies and satellite fragments, baseball sized and larger. Less than 600 were operational satellites. One such device, dubbed Genesis, small by satellite standards and seemingly innocuous, received special attention—much more than orbital tracking.

After a few seconds of uncertainty, Johnson regained lucidity. He had just completed special training two days ago on Genesis protocols. The alarms signified a satellite emergency. He staggered over to the main Genesis monitor. Red letters were flashing on the screen: ALERT – URO.

He found it hard to concentrate amid the screeching alarms and flashing lights. Fumbling, he dropped the codebook—the only hardcopy in the room, which belied the satellite’s modern age as ops manuals had been digitized years ago—picked it up, and thumbed through until he found the page heading URO. The protocol for Un-Registered Object occupied two lines of text:

INITIATE ALPHA ALERT SYSTEM BY DEPRESSING RED ACTIVATE CONTROL, GENESIS COMPUTER CONSOLE, CENTER;

UPON VOICE PROMPT, PROVIDE VERBAL RESPONSE CODE FIRESTORM. REPEAT RESPONSE CODE ONCE AND PRESS END KEY, GENESIS COMPUTER CONSOLE, TO DISENGAGE.

Jesus. Libowicz ain’t gonna believe this! He removed the metal key hanging around his neck, also one of a kind and uniquely archaic, inserted it into the Genesis computer console, unlocked a small glass door labeled Firestorm and opened it. Like the SIM training he had received, the small red button in the console blinked in unison with the klaxon. He pressed it. The klaxon and the red flashing lights stopped at once.

A holographic vidphone display appeared in front of him, with a NASA logo hovering in the position normally occupied by a headshot of the person being called. A ring tone sounded; during the third, someone answered.

Yes? asked a man’s voice, casually.

Ahh...Firestorm, sir. Repeat: Firestorm.

Acknowledged.

The call ended before Stanley finished drawing his breath to ask a question.

Just as quickly as the emergency had erupted, the SCC monitoring room was peaceful again, exactly as before.

Specialist Stanley Johnson picked up his chair and flopped down in it.

What the hell just happened? he wondered aloud. Despite his two years of assignments on top-secret programs with access to classified data on a daily basis, he still hadn’t absorbed the fact that curiosity was an undesirable quality in his current line of work, despite a stern warning from his Duty Sergeant, Charles Libowicz.

* * *

Hey Charlie, what’s the deal with this bird up there? Whatsit do?

Sergeant Libowicz lifted an eyebrow as he answered. I asked the lieutenant the same thing my first day. Know what she told me?

Stanley shook his head.

‘Ask about Genesis again and you will be transferred to Alaska.’ She was dead serious, too. Take some advice, kid: Don’t ask questions.

Christ. We all got T.S. clearance, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. How are we supposed to solve a problem if we don’t know what we’re dealing with?

Libowicz snorted. Didn’t you pay attention during training class, kid? You don’t solve. You report. You open that little panel there, press the red button, and say the code word. People making a helluva lot more money than you or I will solve the problem.

We’re nothin’ more than a damn bunch of trained monkeys, Stanley muttered.

* * *

Less than an hour after the Firestorm call, a squad of Air Force military policemen escorted Specialist Stanley Johnson to the base commander’s private jet idling on the taxiway near Vandenberg’s main runway. One of the MP’s guided him by the elbow to a seat, ordered him to keep the window shades closed while in flight, and disembarked. There were no other passengers on the plane.

The small jet arrived at its destination a few hours after takeoff. Without his precious Digipendium to entertain him during the long and boring flight, a frustrated Stanley angrily slid the window shade open as soon as the airplane wheels touched down. Seeing a flat expanse of concrete surrounded by thick stands of pine trees, the daylight scene offered him no clues to his specific location.

The plane came to a rest outside a small hangar. The cabin door was opened from the outside. Jacketless, Stanley clambered down the ladder and looked around; despite a bright sun, he shivered in the frigid air. His heart sank when he looked up at the sign above the hangar. It read EIELSON AFB – Welcome to North Pole, Alaska.

His personal gear would arrive the next day.

Chapter 1

Summer, 2023

Kent, Washington D.C.

LIKE MOST MEN in their late sixties, NASA Administrator Benson Davis was a light sleeper. A thunderstorm had kept him awake for the past hour. He lay in bed propped up by two pillows, watching the distant flashes of light through his bedroom windows as the front slowly drifted off to the east. He was afforded an extra pillow due to the fact that his wife of 33 years, finally exhausted of playing second fiddle to NASA, had moved out three weeks ago.

Having kicked the habit after decades of smoking, he was fighting the urge to light up, his doctor’s ever-present voice in the back of his head warning the onset of emphysema if he didn’t quit cold turkey. A chain-smoker most of his adult life, he was pretty sure his body would have succumbed years ago if not for the exercise regimen he had maintained religiously since his youth.

Answer. Audio only, he coughed when the vidphone chimed. The Genesis logo he had designed years before appeared in front of him, which immediately grabbed his attention. He sat up.

"Ahh...Firestorm, sir. Repeat: Firestorm."

He acknowledged the message. Disconnect.

Could it be? He walked over to the closet, donned his black silk robe, and proceeded to the library.

Activating the console inset in the surface of his mahogany desk, he enabled a secure connection to a little-known NASA computer hub tied into the Space Surveillance Network. The hardware was buried deep inside Space Control Center at Vandenberg AFB and completely dedicated to receiving and storing data from Genesis, his brain-child and the successor to the first extra-terrestrial search program he had led decades ago. Firestorm was the code word he had established to indicate a visual anomaly detected by the satellite’s telescope, which had been trained on the same region of space in Alpha Centauri as its predecessor had been, more than a decade ago.

Five years since Genesis was launched, he hoped his wait might finally be over.

* * *

Summer 2018

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

10...9...8, go for main engine start, 6, main engine ignition, 4...3...2...1... We have lift-off of Space Launch System’s inaugural flight! SLS-1 climbs toward its rendezvous with the International Space Station, delivering scientific instruments and supplies.

The announcer’s voice from NASA’s Mission Control carried over Kennedy Space Center’s loud speakers, heard by thousands of onlookers as well as millions of television viewers, all witnessing the heir of the vaunted Space Shuttle program ascend to the stars.

With a restrained smile, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration administrator leaned back in his observation chair from the V.I.P. pavilion as he watched the rocket ascend. The deputy administrator and other senior NASA officials walked over and shook Benson Davis’ hand, offering their congratulations.

For the second time in his career, Davis had orchestrated a secret mission concealed within the public one. Unknown to everyone watching, save a small technical team and handful of government personnel, a nondescript satellite rode alongside SLS-1’s official cargo. The device, code-named Genesis, was his second attempt to contact intelligent life outside the Solar system.

This time, he thought, all doubt will be erased...

* * *

Summer, 2023

Firestorm! Davis could hardly contain his excitement. Was this alert the one he had been waiting for all these years? He made a typo on his first attempt to enter a complicated alpha-numeric password to access the server. Although archaic, he still preferred a manual computer login, always worried that voice repeaters were outsmarting verbal security protocols.

Within seconds of his repeated login attempt, he was inside the firewall. Now that he was connected, voice navigation was required.

He began with a high-level command. System status.

A computer-generated male voice responded.

Alert URO

Specify classification, Davis ordered.

BFO

Davis was proud of his acronym: Benson Foreign Object.

Display sequence.

A series of six high-resolution photos were projected in front of him, side by side, each frame progressing chronologically left to right representing 30 minutes total. The first two images offered a star field, a pattern he was intimately familiar with, having studied for uncounted hours the satellite images Essie had taken before her destruction over ten years ago.

The Essie project, a nickname for Extra-solar Search Satellite and Emissions, had been supremely unsatisfying, ending with a disintegrated satellite, wrecked space shuttle, injured astronauts, and more questions than answers, no thanks to his former employee, Dr. Frank Carver, who may or may not have come into contact with an extra-terrestrial from a planet within the constellation Alpha Centauri. Decades ago, Davis had chosen to focus his efforts on Alpha Centauri for two reasons: It was the closest star system to Earth and, he believed, might contain a planetary system capable of supporting life. The system itself was quite uninteresting from an astronomical standpoint, offering no nebulae or stellar nurseries, not even a gas giant. Noteworthy were only three objects: a binary pair of stars, and a small red dwarf.

Gambling that Carver’s encounter during Space Shuttle Discovery’s rescue mission had been genuine, he had once again deployed a space telescope to gaze into that same region of space, and transmit a message that an intelligent alien would understand. The program name Genesis was apropos, he thought, if he turned out to be right.

He found what he was looking for in the last four shots: Background stars obscured by a black spot, growing larger in each subsequent shot. An intense feeling of déjà vu gave him goose bumps.

Excitedly, he offered another voice command to the console.

Contact Alpha Team, message as follows: BFO confirm, secure vidcon 0800 EST.

Davis disconnected from the SSN, leaned back in his chair, and smiled.

* * *

Thank you all for rearranging your schedules. Joining us this morning is Dr. Jonathan Smith, White House Science Advisor, CIA Director Curtis Kirkpatrick, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Marcus Powell, and NASA Deputy Administrator Christine Everest. This is a secure line, and what we are about to discuss is classified. The following information is to be shared with no one outside this group.

Davis was seated at his desk inside NASA’s Washington D.C. headquarters, the virtual assembly gathered before him hovering in front of his desk, four computer-generated heads facing him left to right, each enjoying a similar arrangement from their respective locations scattered across the eastern seaboard. Everyone nodded curtly.

"You’ve all been briefed on Project Genesis, a top-secret satellite currently in geo-sync low earth orbit, programmed to observe the Alpha Centauri system via radio, infrared and visual telescope arrays, collecting and transmitting data to the Space Surveillance Network. Genesis has been on task since 2013 and, until now, has been passive.

At 0230 this morning, Genesis detected a visual anomaly which initiated a Firestorm alert. Davis tapped his desktop touchscreen, replacing the projected image of his face with a star field. The image scrolled through a sequence of ten views, and repeated.

He added commentary as his colleagues viewed the repeated images. The photographic sequence you are seeing was recorded by Genesis early this morning. He paused and let the sequence cycle three times. His audience readily noticed the small black hole in the star field that grew in size with each subsequent photo, obscuring almost a third of the stars in the last.

General Powell was the first to speak. What the hell is that?

Before I attempt to answer that, I want to show you another series of images, said Davis. He keyed his touchpad again. Another sequence of images scrolled through, similar to the first.

This series was taken by another satellite. Project E.S.S.E., Davis explained.

I thought that project was cancelled years ago? Director Kirkpatrick asked.

Davis answered matter-of-factly. Essie was destroyed during the final Space Shuttle mission in 2012.

Then how—

The second set of images you are seeing were taken eleven years ago, just before that mission. He paused for effect. I want to remind you again that this briefing is top-secret. E.S.S.E. was the predecessor to Genesis. Both satellites have recorded this same black spot anomaly, originating from the same region of space. The images suggest an object on a direct course for Earth.

The group issued quiet murmurs of skepticism. Turing off the image sequence, Davis continued. Eleven years ago, after this data from Essie was evaluated, I sent a crew up in Space Shuttle Discovery to investigate.

You’re referring to the last mission, right? The flight commander suffered serious injury and the shuttle had to be piloted by one of the mission specialists, Christine Everest, Davis’ deputy, offered.

Correct. Dr. Frank Carver, who had designed Essie’s power system, was sent up there to determine why Essie had lost power, and retrieve her stored data if the satellite could not be repaired. Something went wrong, and Essie was lost. The damaged shuttle was forced to make an emergency landing.

What happened? General Powell asked.

Unknown. But, I have a theory. Davis cleared his throat, nervously shifting in his seat. Both Essie and Genesis were designed with a secondary function. Each was equipped with a powerful microwave transmitter, and sent continuous radio signals to Alpha Centauri. I believe this black spot is an alien intelligence sent to investigate our satellite transmissions.

The formality of the briefing was abandoned as Advisor Smith, Kirkpatrick, Powell and Everest all began rapid-firing incredulous questions at Davis. He waited until the chorus died down.

He held up both hands. "Folks, please, allow me to explain. When the black spot first appeared years ago, it made a beeline for Essie, then disappeared. The satellite immediately began losing power and the orbit started to decay.

During Carver’s spacewalk to rescue Essie, he experienced something. A few seconds later, the satellite crashed into Discovery, and you know the rest.

What did Carver see?

Here goes nothin’. He believes he encountered an alien intelligence. An extra-terrestrial from a planetary system in the Alpha Centauri region. His statement was met with stunned silence.

After a few seconds, the General didn’t mince words. Bullshit.

I understand, General. It’s unbelievable. And precisely why Carver told no one about his experience, except me. But he claims to have conversed with the alien. I think he was telling the truth. I was authorized by the White House to replace Essie with Genesis, this time sending a more direct message. It seems that message has been received.

Does the President know about this? Director Smith asked.

The President’s science advisor answered. She knows about Genesis’ existence, but not about the transmissions.

I was given approval for Genesis by the Obama administration, Davis added.

The General’s face was turning red. "Let me see if I’ve got this straight, Davis. Let’s say for a moment that your man Carver wasn’t a total wacko, and what he said happened