Alex Cave Series, Book 5
Science Fiction
The color of your eyes will determine if you live or die!
When an alien spacecraft is discovered under the ice in Greenland, geophysicist Alex Cave is called in to investigate and makes contact with the artificial intelligence named Pandora, who claims ownership of our world for her genetically superior race of humans.
Other Books in the Alex Cave Sci-fi Series:
Dead Energy
The Alex Cave Series, Book 1
Oil starts to disappear around the world, and the only clue is a dollar-size crystal found in the hold of an empty oil tanker.
Alex Cave quit the CIA for a less stressful life as a geophysics instructor. At least, that was his plan.
While on vacation sailing the waters of the Puget Sound, Alex sees a brilliant flash of neon blue light from an oil tanker and changes course to help. He discovers there was no explosion, no one on board, and the oil has mysteriously vanished without a trace. The bodies of the missing crew are found in the snow on Mount Baker, but there are no footprints leading in or out of the area.
Oil supplies begin to vanish without a trace and society starts to crumble.
Cold Energy
The Alex Cave Series, Book 2
Sudden freezing temperatures threaten a catastrophe that will affect the entire world!
Geophysicist Alex Cave is called in to investigate the situation. He leads a small group of volunteers on the high-tech research vessel named Mystic in a desperate attempt to remedy the situation before civilization faces ecological disaster, but some of the crew have their own agenda.
Red Energy
The Alex Cave Series. Book 3
Geophysicist Alex Cave discovers alien technology on one of the Aleutian Islands!
Before he can take device to a safe location, it’s stolen and taken to COBRA, a top-secret research facility south of Yellowstone National Park. The scientist in charge has no idea what she’s dealing with and things go horribly wrong.
Alex goes back in time to stop the super-eruption, but starts a chain of events with far worse consequences for his new love and her little girl.
Gravity
The Alex Cave Series, Book 4
The moon suddenly moves two-thousand-miles closer to Earth!
The tidal affect is destroying shorelines around the world, and Geophysicist Alex Cave is asked to find the reason. He leads his team on a harrowing journey from Iceland to Nevada, but they don’t realize they are being followed by Janice Sloan, a ruthless woman dealing in stolen technology.
Sloan finds what Alex is seeking, and takes it to a private research complex in the Nevada desert belonging to billionaire scientist John Essex, who is fanatical about conquering outer space and mining the moon. When she turns it on, satellites start falling from the sky and the International Space Station is pulled from orbit.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
GROOM LAKE, NEVADA:
Alex Cave stares out the window of his sparsely furnished room in the barracks. Sagebrush covered desert and low mountains stretch away in all directions. The heat causes the air to shimmer, as he watches the CIA’s latest experimental stealth drone race down the runway and climb into the sky.
He grins, knowing that even the government’s most clandestine service is unaware of the alien spacecraft in Hangar 5. Since he discovered it in a dormant volcano of one of the Aleutian Islands, his life hasn’t been the same. At least things have settled down for now, he thinks.
His phone rings and he recognizes the image of a man with curly gray hair, Doctor Henry Heinz, his good friend and boss here at the base. “Hey, Doc.”
“I think you had better come down here right away,” he says with a slight German accent.
“I’ll be right there.”
He hurries from the room, down the hall to the stairs, and moments later, steps into his friend’s office. “What’s going on?”
Henry looks up at the tall man with wavy-black hair and dark blue eyes. “I have recently received a copy of a recording from the International Space Station. It was taken yesterday afternoon, shortly after the launch of a new satellite called the SV1, for Space Vacuum One. I looked through their permits, and they claim it is an efficient way to collect the space debris currently in orbit.”
“That sounds like a good idea.”
When Alex moves around to see the image on the monitor, his eyes go wide as he stares at the strange looking contraption as seen from the ISS. A ten-foot-long, orange octagonal cylinder with solar panels is floating among the stars, but what gets his attention is the twenty-foot-long, pewter-colored torpedo protruding from the center. “I see why you called me down here.”
“That looks like one of your devices, Alex.”
“I think you’re correct. The other three should already be here.”
Alex thinks about his best friend, Okana, who is searching for the last alien device in the Bering Sea. He’s the engineer and submarine driver onboard the high-tech research ship, Mystic. He and Okana were special agents and partners in the CIA, and his best friend got him out of Russia in one piece after his wife’s murder. Like him, Okana retired from the CIA and is now working for millionaire Mike Tanner, a private researcher, and owner of the Mystic.
Henry enters a command into his computer. “The inventory shows we have three of them. One from the Pacific Ocean, one from the island, and one from the spacecraft in Hangar 5. According to this, they arrived nine months ago.”
Alex stands. “Let’s go, Doc. I need to see for myself.”
He leads Henry to the elevator, and once inside, waits for him to insert his key into the control panel.
Henry presses a button and feels lighter as the car descends below the facility. “Why would someone want to put one in space? We do not even know what they do.”
“Uh, that’s not exactly true, Doc. I know they’re capable of great destruction.”
The door opens, and Alex hurries down the hallway. “The last door on the right, correct?”
Henry doesn’t answer as he tries to keep up.
Alex stops in front of a large steel door and waits while Henry enters a code and stares into the retina scanner. When he hears the click of the lock, he shoves the door open, enters the room, and slides to a stop. There’s only one of the twenty-foot-long cylinders in the room. He spins back to Henry. “Damn! Let’s get back and see if we can find out how that company managed to get their hands on them.”
***
EASTERN WASHINGTON. SV1 CONTROL CENTER:
Paul Carter, the day shift supervisor, stands behind a young man and a woman sitting in front of the computer monitors. He looks up at the two large televisions mounted to the wall. One shows live images from SV1’s on board cameras. The other screen shows the live video from the space station, about two-miles away. He places his hand on the man’s shoulder. “All right, Scott. Let’s see what she can do.”
Teresa Tylor, the night shift supervisor, turns her head to look up at Paul. “So you’ve decided the SV1 has a sex?”
“Hey, I’m from the old school, remember? All right. See what it can do.” He looks down at Teresa. “Are you happy now?”
She grins. “Yes, thank you.” She turns to Scott Brackenbury, one of the engineers on the SV-1 project. “Ready when you are. Let’s fire it up.”
Scott feels his heart rate increase. “Thrusters on standby. Sending command now.”
Carter stares intently at the images from the cameras, but doesn’t see anything happening. A moment later, the small end of a spinning funnel-shaped distortion appears off the pointed end of the SV1. When he looks at the image from the space station, the distortion looks like a tornado in space. “Good work, people. We have a stabile attraction cone. The debris we’ve selected for the test is within a two-thousand-foot radius of the field. Let’s start with the harmonic resonance frequency to attract carbon atoms.”
Scott enters the command into his computer. “All set.”
Teresa studies the data on her monitor. “Verified.” She presses a button. “It’s on.”
Carter stares at the wide-angle image from one of the SV1 cameras on the wall monitor. He notices a flash of reflected light, and smiles when a slowly rotating silver object enters the cone. “That looks like some kind of wrench.”
Scott looks up from his monitor. “The field is holding. We’ve caught it!”
Teresa captures a still image of the wrench and does a recognition comparison. “It’s one of the tools used by the Hubble telescope repair team. It’s been floating around up there for several years.”
Carter’s eyebrows bunch together in thought. “I wonder how it ended up in the debris cloud created by China destroying one of their satellites.”
Scott looks over at Teresa and up to Paul. “We’re attracting more material. It’s working. We should have this section cleared in a few hours.”
Scott sits up when he hears a soft beeping from the computer speaker. He types in a command to mark that point in the recording, while he tries to find the cause of the alarm. It appears to be a second resonate frequency, oscillating 180-degrees out from the one in use by SV1. A few moments later, it’s gone. That was strange.
***
NORDIC VOLCANOLOGICAL CENTER. REYKJAVIK, ICELAND: NORDVULK.
Estelle Burkhart studies the flashing warning light on the monitor. It shows a large geologic disturbance two-hundred-miles north of the Beauford Glacier. “This cannot be right”, she whispers with a strong Icelandic accent.
She hurries from her lab down the hallway to the Director’s office and taps on the open door. “Do you have a minute?”
Jeffery Sliven indicates for her to sit down. “Of course.”
Estelle sits in the chair across the desk. “We had a significant event sixty-miles north of us in the Atlantic Rift. The odd part is that it was only a surface disturbance, about one-hundred meters below the crust.”
“That is strange. Is there any other indication of unusual volcanic activity?”
“Not that I can tell. It lasted thirty-seven seconds and stopped.”
“All right. Let’s send a ship to check the area for anything unusual. Who do we have available?”
“I think Terry and his people are doing research not too far from that area.”
“All right. I’ll have him stop and check it out before he heads back.”
Estelle stands. “Hopefully it is not a prelude to a new volcano forming above that section of the rift.”
***
ALIEN SPACECRAFT. SOMEWHERE INSIDE THE POLAR ICE SHEET:
Seth feels a soft breeze across his face when he gasps for air. A sharp pain from unused muscles erupts in his chest, easing slightly with each shallow breath. Even the muscles in his eyelids feel stiff as they slowly open, his irises adjusting to the artificial red light inside the narrow capsule. It takes a few tries to get his vocal cords working. “Pandora?”
“I am online, Captain.” A female computer voice answers through his neural implant.
“Are the surface conditions habitable again?”
“Negative.”
“Then why did you take me out of stasis?”
“I detected an object in orbit with similar technology as our own, and I have been trying to interface with its operating system. The signal is sporadic and it’s urgent we make contact. I initiated override protocols and brought the ship to the surface.”
Seth almost sits up. “That means our people have returned. Open this stasis chamber and let me out. We need to make contact with them.”
“The device appears to be malfunctioning. This indicates there is no one to correct the problem. “
“I don’t care. Open this chamber.”
He feels his platform moving and the red light blinks off. “Bring main lighting up in seven angstrom increments. How long has it been?”
“You have been in stasis for one-hundred and twenty million years.”
Seth is stunned and stares up at the elevated roof of the control room. His mouth opens, but he doesn’t know what to say. He has never heard of anyone being in stasis for such an extended period of time. “Are the rest of the stasis chambers intact?”
“Yes, Captain.”
Shadows slowly grow inside the main control room as the lights come on. With great effort, he manages to sit up on the slender bed, and slowly stands up. He grabs the open door for the chamber when a rush of vertigo threatens his balance. Once everything stops swirling, he eases his way along one wall to a beverage dispenser, filling a small cup with water and draining it in two gulps. He fills it with green liquid containing electrolytes and drinks more slowly.
He looks around the interior of the forty-foot circular room, then stares up at the white ceiling. “Pandora? Activate transparency.”
Blue-white ice suddenly appears to be resting on top of the spaceship, filling the room with pale translucent light from the surface. “What are the outside conditions?”
“The atmosphere contains exceedingly high levels of toxic gases. Surface conditions indicate this planet is undergoing an ice age. There is no nourishment available at this location.”
Seth sits down in front of the control console and visually checks Pandora’s status. She is correct. He looks up at the ice, and releases a deep sigh of frustration. The ice age could last for thousands of years. “Great. You woke me up, but we can’t wake everyone else up and start over. Any recommendations for this situation?”
“Return to your stasis chamber until this location is habitable.”
He eases his way back onto the narrow bed. “Very well. Close the chamber.”
“Closing chamber.”
About the Author
Bestselling and award-winning author James M. Corkill, is a Veteran, and retired Federal Firefighter from Washington State, USA. He was an electronic technician and studied mechanical engineering in his spare time before eventually becoming a firefighter for 32-years and retiring. He began writing in 1997, and was fortunate to meet the famous horror writer Hugh B. Cave, who became his mentor. He now lives in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.
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