Legacy: An Event Group Thriller Read online

  This novel is dedicated to the men and women who have given their lives in the American Space Program

  Theodore Freeman Elliot See Charles Bassett—training accident

  Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee—Apollo I

  Clifton Williams—training accident

  Michael J. Adams—X-15 accident

  Robert H. Lawrence, Jr—test accident

  Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, and Christa McAuliffe—STS-51-L Space Shuttle Challenger

  M. L. “Sonny” Carter—accidental death

  Rich D. Husband, William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel Clark, and Ilan Ramon—STS-107 Space Shuttle Columbia

  And also to the astronauts and cosmonauts the world over who have given their lives for the chance to make us a far greater species than we are—we will always need heroes!

  And finally—

  To a brilliant British author and one of the more intelligent writers of any genre—James P. Hogan personified science fiction and gave it a human face. And he was right; we have a chance to inherit the stars. Let’s not blow it.

  Acknowledgments

  Legacy has been my most challenging novel to date, simply because it involves something close to the heart of this author—the space program.

  As there are close to twelve hundred men and women who offered their expertise on the future of space travel, I found it impossible to single them out one at a time without my editor and publisher complaining about the length of the book; that is how many pages I would have to add just to thank everyone who assisted me in the technical details of this novel. Suffice it to say I would have been lost without the valuable input of some of the most amazing people at NASA, DARPA, and the defense department.

  There is one thing I want to add on a more personal basis—we have to continue our endeavors in the arena of space—without that challenge we will wither and die as a people. We are explorers, so let’s get back to exploring—it’s what we do best above all else.

  DLG

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue: To Gaze into the Face of God

  Part One: The Killing of Innocence

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two: Inherit the Stars

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Part Three: Operation Columbus

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue: Genesis According to Columbus

  Also by David Lynn Golemon

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  TO GAZE INTO THE FACE OF GOD

  FEBRUARY 23, 2007

  The old shack stood in stark contrast to the gleaming new structure that towered over it. The larger structure, a two-story house, had been built at great expense following the gold strike in the Superstition Mountains two years earlier. It had been occupied for exactly seventy-two hours before the old man and his houseguest decided it just wasn’t their style to live in such opulence. Much to the consternation of the military police and the security team that patrolled the property at the base of the mountains, Gus Tilly had moved back into his original shack along with the small being who had become his closest friend. The one-room shack had been repaired and a few creature comforts, such as new lamps and two new beds, had been added, but other than that the walls still leaked cold air in the winter.

  Gus Tilly’s net worth was something in the neighborhood of $160 million according to close government sources, but he still worked by himself at the Lost Dutchman Mine with occasional help from his houseguest and the young man who lived in Chato’s Crawl. The boy in town was named Billy Dawes and he could only assist Gus on the weekends and holidays now because of his college schedule—a schedule that was paid for by the proceeds from the mine.

  The Lost Dutchman, discovered by accident in 2006 during the incident in the desert, had been bestowed on Gus by the U.S. government after his assistance in that event had been deemed invaluable, but that wasn’t the reason for the massive military presence that guarded not only the mine but the shack and the empty house as well. The real value of the property was the creature that Gus watched over. Tilly had sat with his friend for hours at a time during the ten thousand hours of debriefing by other friends based many hundreds of miles away in the desert sands beneath Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Four years’ worth of valuable intelligence, covering a period that had begun in the time of Harry Truman and ended in a battle that had claimed hundreds of lives in 2006.

  The existence of this small being was known only to a few people. He was referred to by the code name he had been given as part of the highly classified Operation Case Blue. Mahjtic, or Matchstick as he was nicknamed by Gus, was the most valuable and precious being the world had ever known. Only the president of the United States, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and an organization known as Department 5656 knew of his existence—an existence that provided the intelligence that would assist in safeguarding the world from a threat that had been coming for many generations, beginning one stormy night in 1947 in a small town in New Mexico named Roswell.

  Gus Tilly rolled over on his oversized bed as he heard the whimpering sound coming from the child’s bed to his left. He raised his head and looked down at the small creature lying restlessly beneath the thick covers. Mahjtic kicked at the blanket that had been draped over him, his movements violent at first, then gradually slowing. The Mickey Mouse night-light that Mahjtic loved glowed softly in the wall socket only a foot away from the small bed. The old man watched as Mahjtic’s large green head and small hands and feet became still, but in the dim light he could see that his large slanted eyes were working beneath the almond-shaped lids—the small being was dreaming, an extremely rare occurrence that only happened when Mahjtic became aware of the enemy known as the Grays.

  Gus was just about to lie back down when Mahjtic sat bolt upright in the bed and began screaming, kicking the covers free of his small body. He pushed himself into a sitting position and stared wide-eyed at the far wall of the shack. Gus’s heart raced as he saw the terror that filled those large, obsidian eyes. He jumped when the front door opened and two men came into the one-room house with nine-millimeter automatics drawn. They looked around and saw that all was still except for the otherworldly screeching of the small being they were there to protect. They looked about as if they had no idea what to do. The first plainclothes soldier reached for the light switch.

  “No!” Gus hissed. “No lights. He’s dreaming. He’s still asleep.” The old man tossed his own covers away and eased out of his much larger bed. The two security men watched as Gus lowered his eighty-four-year-old frame next to the small bed and took the creature’s hand. They all noticed that the cowboy-and-Indian pajamas that Matchstick wore were soaked through with the tiny being’s perspiration. “Hey, old boy, wake up,” Gus said as he gently patted Mahjtic’s small, long-fingered hand. “You’re having a doozy of a nightmare.”

  Matchstick was shaking and his eyes were still focused on the far wall, or on something far beyond it that the men couldn’t see. Outside the shack’s thin walls the winter wind blew cold against the aged wood and made a moaning sound that didn’t add any comfort to the strange si
tuation.

  “Hey, big fella, now you come on and wake up. You’re scarin’ old Gus.”

  Mahjtic blinked and then screamed once more. It was a piercing sound and something that Gus hadn’t heard since 2006. Mahjtic was terrified.

  “Oh, shit,” the tallest of the security men said. “Should I get a call into Director Compton?” he asked Gus.

  Gus ignored the question, instead placing an age-spotted hand against the soft green skin of the alien’s cheek. “Come on, old boy. Come back to Gus, I ain’t goin’ to let nothing get ya.”

  Finally Mahjtic blinked. A large tear rolled from his right eye and soaked quickly into the yellow pajama top. He blinked again and then his eyes opened wide and settled on Gus’s craggy face.

  “There ya go, son. Gus is here.”

  The eyes of the small creature drooped as they took in his friend’s features. He placed its hand over the old man’s.

  “They come, Gus.”

  The old man’s heart froze in his chest. He knew exactly who “they” were. He closed his eyes and nodded his head. “I thought it had something to do with those bastards.”

  “The Moon.”

  Gus opened his eyes and saw that Matchstick was again staring off into space. “What’s that?”

  “The Moon.”

  Gus turned toward the man who had spoken earlier. “Get on the radio and get Director Compton out here. Tell him to hurry.”

  The two men quickly left the shack and disappeared into one of the six trailers that circled the two houses.

  “Now, tell me what’s so important about the Moon, and then we’ll talk about those other fellas that are coming.”

  Mahjtic moved his eyes and looked at Gus once more. The shaking had stopped and in the dim glow of the Mickey Mouse night-light Gus could see Mahjtic trying to focus.

  “The Moon, Gus. The Moon—”

  700 MILLION YEARS AGO

  The war had lasted exactly three years, two months, and twenty-one days and had ended civilization as they knew it. Never again would the voices of children at play be heard, or those of men and women expressing thoughts or feelings of love.

  Now the last desperate hope of their species had dwindled to a small outpost on a moon orbiting a hostile world—a blue, volcanic planet with a shifting crust and so harsh an environment that even their enemies wouldn’t want it for millions of years. The moon orbiting this explosive and angry world had once had a larger twin, and that had been where the last hope of the people had been found. Their salvation had been an ore of amazing quality and properties. It had been mined, smelted, and turned into the magical energy needed to fight the invader. This great moon, where the powerful ore had been found, was now gone. Its sudden, system-wrenching death had taken with it the hope of an entire civilization, causing a home world of red sands, green oceans, and emerald skies to be voluntarily reduced by its own people to a dead and drifting planet with all traces of life erased from its face forever, and the survivors had found that there is no honor in death—just death.

  The destruction of the large moon Ophillias had been intentional. The ignition of its mineral mines did just what the planners of the final solution had intended. The enemy fleet and their devilish mechanized invasion troops were blotted out in a nanosecond of stunning violence. Only things didn’t go as planned; they seldom do in wartime. Instead of the eruption taking out only the mineral mines and the enemy saucers in orbit around the moon and their home world, the moon had been shattered. First the mineral deposits ignited. Then the core of the moon, rich with energy, had exploded, slamming the nearby home world and this, the lone surviving moon. First one world and then its larger twin were hit so hard with debris from the exploding Ophillias that their orbits had been ripped apart, while the home world was sanitized of all life and pushed deeper into space. Entire cities, oceans, and continents were wrenched into the vacuum. The other blue and still burning world with its small moon, Phobos, was nearly thrown into the sun. It was now the third planet in orbit around the large star.

  * * *

  The large man thanked the heavens above him that this desolate and barren rock was only a brief stop before the planned jump to the giant blue and green colored world 240,000 miles away. The new orbit taken by that world and its moon was still unstable, but the survivors of their race had little choice in the matter. They were going to call it home, volcanic environment or not.

  The helmeted man, standing on the edge of an enormous crater, stared upward into the face of what would be their new home. The days it had taken for the surviving warships to follow this rock and the giant volcanic world below to their new orbit had been harrowing, but the new orbits had finally stabilized just as their scientists had said they would.

  In a billion years, the great world below could possibly have become a twin to their home planet. He could see its single great supercontinent, partly hidden beneath billowing white clouds. The man could even make out its hundred thousand volcanoes spewing fire, gas, and steam. This world was a familiar giant that once was so close to their home world that they could see its oceans moving at night through telescopes. Now it was the only planet within ten light-years that had breathable air. The scientists at the base were saying that the great landmass was still in motion, destabilized by the sudden push toward the sun provided by the explosion of Ophillias.

  The man looked away and down, kicking at the dust that covered the old moon as its new parent watched over it. He knelt and retrieved a piece of rock that didn’t belong on this moon’s surface. As he examined it, he knew it was the one element that had been their deliverance in defeating the invaders—Trillinium, an amazing ore that when laced with oxygen and water produced vast amounts of pure, clean energy. That energy had allowed them to create new light weapons that had proved invaluable in the fight with the saucer people and in the end it had become the instrument that destroyed both the defender and the conqueror. He rolled the stone over and looked at it. Then he took a deep breath, though it sounded hollow and empty in his helmet.

  He knew this moon would be inundated with massive amounts of ore from the Ophillias explosion, as would their new home on the hostile planet below. Perhaps on their new world they could recover some of the magical ore and put it back to work producing energy.

  The man let the small rock slip from his fingers and fall into the lunar dust. He wasn’t used to regrets, but he had come to learn that even a man like himself, someone who always looked forward in life, could not ignore the fact that they had destroyed their own civilization. Oh yes, he thought, he was capable of regret.

  The three remaining battleships of the home fleet were in orbit around the moon. He could see them high above as they made their hourly circuit across the inky, star-filled sky. They were only small specks of light, but he knew them for what they were, the last haven of a self-vanquished people whose home world was now void of air and sea, a rotating ball of red dirt orbiting the same star as the hostile planet he now looked upon. Sister worlds, one smaller than the other, ripped apart like conjoined twins, killing them both. He kicked at the chunk of Trillinium, sending the rock out into a low trajectory. He watched as it sailed through the airless environment and landed a hundred yards away.

  He shook his head and looked at the readout on his sleeve. The needle indicated he was starting to run into his oxygen reserve. He glanced up one last time at their future home and knew this would be a good place to salvage what remained of their civilization. Hell, he thought, it’s the only place.

  As he started down the steep slope feeling the pain of guilt once more as he had on other days since that horrible moment when his own red planet had come to an end, the man slid to a stop and reached over to his left shoulder. He pulled the small flag from his suit, not caring that he risked damaging the vital material that protected him from the harsh environment. He looked at the small flag and its four circles representing the great society of twin planets and their two moons. He smiled without humor and all
owed the stiff material that made up the flag to fall through his gloved fingers to the gray dust at his boots.

  He shook his head inside his helmet as he continued to make his way down the crater’s side.

  “Gideon, are you receiving?”

  As he reached the bottom outer wall of the crater he pushed the transmit button on his wrist. He started whistling and spitting, blowing air through his pursed lips. “I—unable—radio—static—”

  “Knock it off, Gideon, I know you’re hearing and transmitting just fine. The computer says you’re low on oxygen, so you’d better get back. Things here are starting to get weird.”

  Major Gideon smiled at hearing the sweet and calm voice of the youngest member of their lunar team. Lydia was cute and sassy, but had a no-nonsense streak that was suffocating to men like himself. But she had the cutest pointed ears of any woman he could remember.

  “Yes, mother, I am very capable of reading an oxygen gauge.”

  “Hmm, you could’ve fooled me. It seems I have to remind you on a daily basis. Dr. Joshua says you could hurt yourself if you get low on O2 every time you go out on your little strolls.”

  “I get the drift, Doc,” he said as he heard Lydia talking with someone on her end. Apparently she had inadvertently left her transmit key on.

  “Major, I have a request from Professor Remiss to observe the eastern quadrant as Guidon, Vortex, and Ranger pass overhead. He wants you to measure their orbits with your laser range finder. Ours is malfunctioning at the moment along with everything else. Radar and sonar echoing is down also. Can you manage that while in transit back to base?”

  Gideon heard the request and froze. He frantically looked at the timepiece on the lower portion of his left wrist and then back at the western sky. It was barren, devoid of anything but the immense star field.