Season of the Witch

  Copyright © 2019 by David L Golemon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For my best friend Gary Dog Golemon...friend, mentor and agent

  ...and, harshest critic.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank J.K. Rowling, the premier influence on the greatest asset in the entire world—our children. Plus she made the subject of witches actually fun again!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part II

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part III

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Listening to Tchaikovsky

  * * *

  “Stay close by the hearth, if you be faint of heart, for the ghosts and the ghouls are at play…” ~ Judy Ball , Season of the Witch.

  Vostochny Cosmodrome,

  Amur Oblast, Far East Russia

  The latest Russian achievement in space operations geared at protecting her secrets from the western powers began official operational status in the months leading up to the joint Russian, American, and Chinese moon shots during the frantic chase for alien technology discovered on the moon in an effort to gain military superiority over the Greys in the recently concluded war. While not officially a secret of the hidden and shadowy Russian government, the cosmodrome’s activities were. Vostochny was now referred to by the American, German, and British intelligence services as the most secure facility in the secretive and hidden Russian government. Under the cover of future missions to launch rovers to Mars and the moon, the newest Cosmodrome had become the most advanced mission control center in the world.

  Operation Tchaikovsky had been born after a routine discovery of frozen water on the dark side of the moon that had been uncovered by accident during the alien technology recovery two months after the joint mission to the moon by the world’s governments. The Russian find had sent shock waves through the government and was immediately hushed up by the shadow regime now governing from their hidden facilities in Siberia and publicly operated by their puppets in Moscow. In the three years since official Russian participation and cooperation had officially ended in the technology recovery of the ancient Mars built warships that had crashed on the moon’s surface a billion years before, the shadow lords running Russia had authorized four secretly held launches back to the dark side of the moon. The Tchaikovsky mission was now to be their crowning achievement and a way to augment their newfound desire for technological domination over the western powers.

  Mission control was full this day as the remote rover Gagarin slowly traversed the moon’s darkened surface in a location that had never been mapped before the Russian discovery three years prior when an accidental low-orbit flyover had caught the photo imagery that sent Russia’s secretive Central Committee ensconced in Siberia into a frenzy. A form of nervous confidence was being displayed by every technician on the control room floor of the new facility.

  “Telemetry, please report the current surface temperature please?” asked Pavlov Urisky, the mission head from his perch high above the mission control center.

  “Negative two hundred-and eighty-two-degrees Fahrenheit, control,” called out the surface condition specialist.

  “Audio and visual, are your mic’s and camera’s clear?” Urisky called out.

  “Yes control. We had a minor buildup of frost, but the heaters automatically activated.”

  “Thank you.” Urisky rubbed his temples trying to chase away the headache that wanted to rear its head at this most inopportune time. He took a large swallow from a water bottle as he adjusted his mic and headphones. He was about to order his assistant to find some aspirin but was stopped when another of the technicians handed him a note. He read and then as his headache increased, he wadded up the note and tossed it in the trash receptacle. “Just what I needed,” he said in exasperation.

  He stood and eased into his suit jacket that had been where it normally was during a mission, on the back of his chair. He shrugged into the black jacket just as the double doors opened and two uniformed men of the new, re-created KGB, Russia’s security arm, entered. They were quickly followed by four more. These next men were in plain clothes. The last closing the doors behind a fifth. The man needed no introduction as he quickly spied the mission commander at his high-rise desk in the control center.

  “Doctor Urisky, I am glad I was able to make it on time.” The man did not hold out a hand in greeting, but instead sat in Urisky’s chair.

  “Mr. Sokol, I was not informed you would be attending today,” Doctor Urisky said as he slid another chair over and sat next to the tenth most powerful man in the nation. A man the world did not know existed, and one that had little love for small-time exploits of mere space travel. As the new head of the science division of the hidden central committee he felt above such mundane things.

  “Ah, it was either me or that fool Putin and I don’t want that stuffed animal anywhere near one of my facilities. I am shocked the Americans haven’t figured out that little game, as stupid as our fake President is. I swear that fool robs your brain blind of its IQ points whenever he speaks. Soon other arrangements will have to be made regarding our fearless leader. But, I’m only one vote in twelve—for now anyway.”

  Urisky had heard the rumors years before when the new Cosmodrome was in the process of its construction, but the aspect of having a puppet leader was just too unbelievable for the rumors to be true. Now he wasn’t so sure. He was sure however that if Sokol and his other committee members thought he or his scientists would talk, they would all be joining the puppet figure head, Vladimir Putin, in a ‘planned’ sudden death as so many others of recent note.

  “So, how long?”

  Urisky cleared his throat as he sat next to the new science director. The man Sokol had replaced had mysteriously vanished after the disastrous encounter with American and other NATO naval forces in the Atlantic Ocean the year before. He had hoped his replacement would be easier to work with, but as he looked at Sokol’s dark eyes he had a deep suspicion this man would be much worse. He figured him as a ‘power seeker’ of major consequence.

  “The rover Gagarin will soon crest the Krutov Rise.” The director saw the confused look on Sokol’s face and elaborated. “The craters rim. The remains of the vessel should be visible at that time with the assistance of the infrared and night adaptable cameras.”

  “If you find any retrievable material, is your plan for getting it back to Russia still viable?”

  “Yes, sir. The rover will take any actionable material back to its base platform above the crater and will transfer its load to Tchaikovsky for its return. Transit time back home is ninety-six hours.”

  “When the committee chose you, I had my doubts Doctor. I see now my fears were groundless. You seem to have all under control. I just wanted to check on your progress. So, with that I have more important things to accomplish today.” Sokol started to rise.

  “Gagarin has stopped control. We are bringing up the picture of the craters interior now.”

  Letting out a breath
of exasperation, Sokol sat back in his chair. His thought was even though he didn’t like being away from the backstabbers in Siberia for any period of time, that while he was all the way out here in eastern Russia in the wastelands he may as well stay for the show, if there was to be one.

  Urisky, disappointed that Sokol had decided to stay, watched as the delayed signal of the rover Gagarin started broadcasting. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the picture, he chanced a look over to the central committee member. Sokol had his index fingers templed like a church steeple as he watched, the smile never leaving his face.

  “The automated program will send it into the crater and our find.”

  The Gagarin rover started moving. Its small spotlight came on and the infrared cameras were able to switch off to conserve power. The down angle of its decent made the traversing of the craters rim hard to watch as its tracks fought for purchase.

  “Are you sure the rover will able to enter the craft?” Sokol asked while he stifled a yawn, after all, inspecting downed alien saucers had become routine and boring after the recent war.

  Doctor Urisky reached out and snapped on a small computer terminal and brought up a reconnaissance picture taken by a low-altitude flyover of the crater eight months before on the third exploratory mission to the moon soon after the accidental discovery of the find that had nothing to do with the publicly announced frozen water deposits. The picture was from a mile above the surface and it showed the disc-shaped object. “As you can see here Mr. Sokol, the craft is in three large pieces. Due to the moon dust buildup from nearby meteor strikes over the years our astrologists estimate its age at under ten thousand years. A relatively newer craft than even those that attacked Earth.”

  “That is far younger than the American discovery two years ago,” Sokol said, becoming concerned. “By nearly a billion years.”

  “Yes, quite recent in astrological terms. But one that gives us hope of viable design recovery and possibly more up-to-date sciences the craft may have onboard. In other words, a newer model car.”

  The dawning of understanding made Sokol broaden his smile. Then he sat forward in his chair. Now far more interested than he had been. The long private jet ride out to these wastes may just have been worth it.

  “My God look at that,” he said as the rover’s cameras started to pick up more detail as it grew close to the bottom of the crater.

  Even Doctor Urisky had to smile at the slowly pixelizing image of the downed saucer.

  “As you can see, the military consultants your committee had so graciously offered were right in their assumption. There is no sign of damage other than accidental crash related destruction. In other words, sir, it was not shot down. The chance of finding viable genetic material and more advanced technology in its interior has risen to acceptable odds. The technology retrieved would far surpass that of the American discovery of the Mars built battleships near Shackleton Crater three years ago.”

  “Lets us hope the odds allow us to run the table then,” Sokol said.

  “Gagarin is approaching damage location AE-seventy-four, control. Permission to signal rover to proceed?”

  “Permission granted,” Sokol said to the surface remote controller before Urisky could open his mouth. If there was ever anyone in doubt as to who was truly in charge, that had been laid to rest by Sokol’s growing excitement.

  On the large screen beneath the telemetry data scrolling across its bottom, the view changed to show a giant slice of hull had been torn open as if a giant can opener had sliced into it. Pieces of silverish hull materiel lay over most of the surface of the deep crater.

  “Unlike the destroyed saucers of the alien fleet and those from Camp Alamo in Antarctica after the battle there, the interior of this craft should be far more complete. Not even the Americans know what we may have accidentally discovered here on the dark side.”

  The rover neared the rip in the largest section of surviving hull. It stopped and the bright floodlight panned around. It focused on the saucer’s damage.

  “Yes, definitely impact related. No sign of weapon’s fire anywhere,” Urisky said, his excitement growing.

  “Accident?” Sokol asked, not really caring.

  “Some have speculated that with the outer damage it may be that it was intentionally brought down. You can see no trail left by a controlled attempt at landing.” Urisky shook his head. He used a computer-generated cursor to highlight an area at the extreme end. “You see here that the craft came down at an extreme angle due to the ‘accordion’-like damage.”

  “Rover has commenced its entrance into the craft, control.”

  “Thank you. Start a video file and order it to make a three-hundred- and sixty-degree record, please.”

  “Already done, control.”

  The view was dark. The floodlights could only do so much in dispelling the gloom. The motion and vibration of the large rover’s tracks made a mist of moon dust fall from on high once the rover entered the craft.

  Soon chambers of some sort started to become clear. Men and women of the technical team leaned forward to better see. The chambers were covered by thick, clear glass-like material. The enclosures looked thick and strong.

  “Remote, let’s get a better view of the interior of one of those chambers. Lighting to full,” Urisky ordered.

  “What could they be?” Sokol asked as even he had stopped fidgeting and was leaning forward, just as interested as Urisky’s people. “I counted close to two hundred, but there’s obviously more.”

  As the mission controller watched, he started to get an uneasy feeling. The camera angle was jostled as the tracks of the rover rode over chunks of debris on the flooring of the craft. The Gagarin moved up to the cracked glass of the first chamber it came to.

  “What is that in the far corner?” Sokol asked.

  “Camera two, zoom in to the far-right section of the chamber.”

  As they watched and after the expected delay in radio transmission, the rover obeyed the relayed signal. The angle showed what looked like a cot of some sort. The moon dust obscured much. Then one of the techs on the floor let out a gasp. In the corner, half buried in moon silt was a large body. It looked to be mummified. Although the skin was petrified and dried out, it was clear as to what they were looking at.

  Sokol stood. “Our guess was right. It’s a Grey.”

  The details were becoming clear on the large viewing screen. The long dead body of the enemy that had attacked Earth many months before had died in the impact of the saucer upon the crater’s interior. Its long legs had been sliced free during impact and only its upper torso remained. But the large head was unmistakable. They knew the species well enough from the many autopsies performed on the enemy remains after the war. The mummy had the clear teeth and the empty eye sockets were those of the larger race of beings that had attacked Earth, triple in size to the smaller Green race of slaves.

  “Stabilize the camera boom and bring up the claw. What is that on the bastard’s wrist?” Urisky did not bother to hold back his disgust at the old enemy for what they had attempted to do to humankind.

  During the transmission delay in relaying the request, Sokol eased over next to the mission director. “What are we looking at, a barracks or dorm room perhaps of a troop transport?”

  Urisky remained silent as the rover’s robotic arm started moving. The headache that had begun with the arrival of the central committee member had morphed into a gut-wrenching fear of what they were possibly seeing.

  On the screen the robotic arm reached out and the clamp-like claw touched the large, mummified wrist and raised it. As dust cascaded from the ancient find, many in the control center gasped. It was a chain. The creature had been chained to the back wall of what they knew now was not a barracks or a dorm facility and most assuredly not a troop transport.

  “A cell,” Urisky said as he tried to steady his breathing.

  As the rover Gagarin backed out of the cell the camera angle went to wide lens. T
he expanse of the main deck of the saucer steadied and became visible.

  “What in the name of Peter the Great have we found?” Sokol asked in amazement.

  Urisky sat hard into his chair as the view on the screen expanded even more. He looked from his frightened people below to turn and see the face of the excited committee man, Sokol.

  “What we are looking at is a prison ship, Mr. Director.”

  * * *

  After twenty-four hours of mapping and recording the interior of what they knew now was an alien prison ship, Dimitri Sokol was preparing to leave after the disappointment of the previous day. The suspected treasure trove of technology had failed to be delivered into Russian hands anything of significance that the Americans and the British did not already possess. Sokol figured he had gained his first stain on an otherwise spotless committee record. He had decided to show Doctor Urisky the depth of his disappointment before leaving. He stepped into the control center.

  He was shocked at the amount of activity still occurring on the mission floor. Curious, he spotted mission controller Urisky shouting orders from his high perch.

  “What has happened, Doctor?” Sokol asked as he tried to gauge the amount of excitement he was witnessing.

  “Its truly amazing. We were preparing the Rover Gagarin for departure back to the lander Tchaikovsky. Moments before it left the saucer, audio tracking picked up strange noises from the saucer’s interior. Investigating to make sure we missed nothing, we sent Gagarin back into the depths of the craft.” Urisky spoke into his mic. “Video replay, show Central Committee Member Sokol what we have discovered.”