Contact Read online

  THE EXPANSION BOOK 2

  CONTACT

  DEVON C. FORD

  Copyright © Devon C Ford 2020

  The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No affiliation is implied or intended to any organisation or recognisable body mentioned within.

  First published by DHP Publishing in 2018

  Published by Vulpine Press in the United Kingdom in 2020

  Cover by Jamie Glover at www.eruleanfuture.com

  ISBN: 978-1-83919-068-1

  www.vulpine-press.com

  “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

  Arthur C. Clarke

  PROLOGUE

  Proxima Centauri B

  The four armored shapes walked slowly, tactically. They had left the noisy landing site under the guard of three other armored soldiers and advanced as though patrolling a potentially hostile environment, but they would have been fools not to consider hostility to be a permanent threat where they were.

  The one in the lead, moving as stealthily as one of the big cats that lived on their home world, crept slowly towards the source of the signal they had detected. That world was trillions of kilometers away. It would take years to reach their home world were it not for the revolutionary new technology that had brought them here. Now they had the ability to reach beyond their own solar system, to actually travel to places where otherwise only the most powerful of deep space telescopes could see. Now they could go to the dull, red star that bathed their environment in a dark light, and cast eerie and unnatural shadows.

  Those telescopes had surmised that there was a planet there, and even guessed its size. After waiting for the suspected planet to cross between Earth and the small red dwarf star, its circumference could be measured and calculated against the passage of time.

  Well, that planet was no longer a theory to them; it was no longer a speck of black silhouetted against the red glow but was real dirt beneath their feet. The scientists had gone crazy at the first scans of the exoplanet carried out by their unmanned drones, and Kyle Torres, the unexpected captain of their ship, had to remind them of protocol. They were expected to put their safety and the mission above scientific discovery.

  He had enough nightmares about alien DNA infecting them from watching movies, but when faced with the slightest possibility that this unseen world could harm them, he had become almost paranoid about the risks.

  The soldier on point stopped; the sudden lack of careful movement resonated as a movement in itself, such was the smooth fluidity of his precise steps. He held his right hand up in a fist, his left still firmly holding the grip of the prototype bullpup carbine he carried in the high ready position. The three others froze similarly until he gave further instructions. None of them was so inexperienced as to ask what he had seen. They merely waited silently and dialed in their senses.

  The figure nearest him in their spread-out configuration held her body still as her eyes scanned everything in her field of vision. Her HUD, flashing insanely on the inside of her visor, annoyed her as it worked overtime to identify the new structures of trees and leaves it registered. She had yet to find a way to disable the function with the interactive menus at her disposal. Everything that couldn’t be identified was highlighted and logged for analysis as a potential threat, and since they were the first humans ever to set foot on the alien planet orbiting this very strange kind of sun, everything her suit tried to identify existed in no database she could access. Her equipment registered everything as possibly dangerous.

  The raised fist ahead of her split into four fingers and a thumb spread wide and her body moved on instinct. The servos of her powered armor responded in a fraction of a second, which most of the time wasn’t noticeable. But when her lead soldier had given the signal for them to disperse, her body had released adrenaline into her bloodstream and heightened every sense at her disposal to make even the smallest of reactionary delays apparent.

  They dispersed, dropping low and taking whatever small cover they could find with no advanced warning. They trained their guns ahead of them to wait for either the all-clear or until whatever had spooked their pet ghost, their Specter, came out fighting.

  Long seconds ticked by until she couldn’t bear the inactivity any longer. Nothing showed on her suit’s HUD. Whatever he had seen or heard was imperceptible to her. Commander Leslie Brandt was not a woman taken to flights of fancy or possessing a superstitious mentality, but she had an ominously bad feeling creeping up from the pit of her stomach.

  “Specter,” she whispered into the helmet, knowing that her voice would be carried over their wireless connection to play in perfect clarity for him. “What’s the deal?”

  Specter, the man who had once been the commander’s friend and fellow United Nations Peacekeeper but who was now cybernetically rebuilt, answered her. She had learned over the last few weeks not to call him by the name she had known him as, but that self-enforced distance didn’t stop his words from chilling her skin and making the tiny hairs stand up, His response prompted an involuntary shudder that she tried to control.

  “There’s something here, Commander,” he said. “It isn’t registering on the HUD, but there is something nearby. Something alive.”

  “How do you know?” came the sweet but steely voice of the other female on the team, Amare Eze.

  “Because I think I’m looking at it,” Specter answered icily, “and I think it’s looking straight at me.”

  “What can you see?” Brandt whispered as she fought to control her tensed muscles. She was painfully aware that the cover she was behind—a small tree with black, moist bark—was just cover from view. It wouldn’t protect her from any dangerous projectiles. Her mind flew off on a wild tangent, wondering if whatever alien was stalking them could camouflage itself and if it would have weaponry capable of carving through the wood and her armor behind it.

  “Humanoid, tall,” Specter said softly, his body unmoving. “Large eyes.”

  “Increase optical wavelength,” Eze’s voice said from behind and to her right. “Turn it right down to the end of the visible light spectrum.”

  “It’s already dialed down to red light spectrum,” Brandt answered.

  “I know, mine too. Just… just wiggle it around a little,” Eze told her.

  Brandt did so, scrolling through the menu with her eyes and activating the controls she needed without moving her body to twitch the spectrum up and down. The slight change in the depth of the shadows gave away her adjustment, and in that bending light she saw the faint outline of what Specter had seen.

  Thin limbs that seemed insufficient to support the weight of the large head that bore big, black elliptical eyes. She gasped, her brain registering the actual proof of the existence of alien life standing thirty paces from her.

  It turned its head, looking directly at her.

  No way it could have heard me, she thought. My suit is sealed. The figure cocked its head, very slowly, as if regarding her before taking any action. Brandt’s fingers tightened involuntarily on the grip of her weapon. As if sensing the fear-induced threat of violence, the alien recoiled and moved backwards fast into shadow as a series of croaks and rattling clicks sounded in their ears. Brandt’s suit software tried to re
cognize the sound as a form of spoken communication and gave her a waiting icon as it tried to decipher and translate it.

  “Wait!” Eze called aloud, making all of them freeze momentarily. “It is not hostile. It’s… it’s scared.”

  Scared of what? Brandt thought with shock. Oh, right. Us. The armed aliens.

  “It’s alright,” Specter said aloud, surprising them all as he stepped out into the open with slung weapons to show empty hands.

  “Specter,” Brandt hissed. “Stand down!”

  “It’s okay, Commander,” he said confidently. “It doesn’t want to hurt us.”

  “He’s right,” Eze said from behind her as she too stepped out of cover. “It needs our help.”

  Brandt lowered her weapon, flipping the carbine onto her back where it magnetically locked into place. She was overcome with an unnaturally sudden sense of reassurance and calm. She stepped into the open, joining Specter and Eze in a line as the shadows in the dull, low red glow ahead of them moved and morphed into the tall, big-eyed alien that stood a full head higher than them.

  Not understanding why, they each felt a new sensation: relief.

  And hope.

  CHAPTER 1

  UN American Territory HQ, NYC, Earth

  “It’s unfortunate, Commander,” one of the two UNID men said without conviction.

  “Unfortunate?” the other man asked dangerously, turning halfway and eyeing the man who had spoken. “It’s more than unfortunate, it’s… it’s mutiny. That’s what it is. These brigands you left in charge of my ship have stolen it. Taken it without permission. They are pirates!”

  “Sir,” the other suited man crooned placatingly, “the main event is yet to happen, as you know. The colony ships are progressing far ahead of schedule, and as there will be a small fleet, the senior commander would be named admiral.”

  At the mention of the elevation in rank, the man stopped pacing and pricked up his ears. He was short, only slightly below average height but enough to make him self-conscious and defensive. He was irascible and permanently in a foul temper thanks to the stomach cramps that plagued him daily. The commander ran a tight ship, as he liked to claim often and loudly. His strictness meant rigorous discipline and the men and women under his command working to avoid punishment, as opposed to doing their best to please a leader they respected. His style, according to some, served only to make those men and women under his command better at shirking their duties and not getting caught. That said, he was a well-qualified and capable captain.

  “An admiralcy, you say?”

  The older of the suited men, the one who had introduced himself as Curtis, smiled. He had the man firmly on his hook now. They had been tasked with calming the officer, UNPF commander Wright, who had transferred from the British section of the European territory some years earlier. He had been promoted quickly and sent across the Atlantic with a glowing reference. What soon became obvious to his new hosts was that the praise and promotion had been a clever coup on the part of the Brits, as they had saddled the American UN with a loud, arrogant, yet annoyingly competent senior officer who had dreams of chasing his career further up the ladder. The sheer number of senior commanders who had specialized to command ships in space meant that an admiral’s position would be very difficult to attain before the enforced termination of his career after twenty-five years; only those serving longer were the top echelons of the senior ranks.

  The task of commanding the colony ships, each with a token frigate escort flanking them, had been an opportunity for the man to gain long-term command experience in deep space. His maneuverings had landed him the job of commanding the Bōken sha Ichi on its reconnaissance journey, on humanity’s first journey, beyond their solar system. The events that unfolded on the surface of the moon two weeks before had thrown all of those well-laid plans well and truly out of the window, and the would-be captain had to face the ignominious return journey after nearly five hours in transit to the moon.

  He had been informed of the events unfolding while in flight. He had already been forced to share the ship with a team of brooding CP men and women lounging around in their armor and not sitting in the regulation allocated berths. Their disregard of protocol annoyed him.

  His luggage, all of his books and empty journals that he’d intended to keep in his neat handwriting, all had to be unloaded back on Earth, where he had already given up his accommodation.

  Now, after being asked many times over the previous two weeks to wait for further orders, the carrot of overall fleet command dangled in front of him. Or so he thought. Next to Curtis, the younger suited man’s comm device bleeped softly, making him turn away slightly to view it. He was unable to mask his face registering a sudden drop and a mischievous smile before Curtis interrupted his thoughts.

  “What is it, kid?” he growled, annoyed that the younger man had yet to tell him what had interrupted his conversation. In answer, Ward showed him the message he had just received.

  “What is it?” the short commander with dreams of an admiral’s wreathed star adorning his chest asked irritably.

  “Commander, my superior would like to speak to you,” Curtis said as he stood and smoothed down his suit jacket. He turned to open the door, but it swung inward by itself before he could get there, making him jump out of the way of a severe woman with a buzz-cut hairdo. She regarded him briefly, wondering why he stood startled in the middle of the room, and dismissed him instantly.

  “Commander Wright?” she asked, not waiting for any response or offering a hand to shake. “My name is Crawford. I’m the section chief in joint command of these missions.”

  The commander nodded, standing stiffly and finding himself outmatched by her slightly above-average height.

  “Commander, I’m not at liberty to discuss the finer points, but what I can say is that the mission parameters have changed. The UNID thanks you for your service, but we will be appointing a different commanding officer from here on and you will be reassigned.” She nodded, offered the slightest hint of a smile as though she had seen someone do that once and tried to emulate it, and turned to walk away.

  She had made it as far as reaching for the door handle before he found his voice.

  “This… this is preposterous,” he exploded. “I did not give up my previous command, my quarters, almost all of my possessions simply for the UNI-bloody-D to change its mind and cast me aside like some common seaman. I demand to speak to your superiors; perhaps they will see my worth and reward me with command, as they previously promised.”

  Crawford stopped and turned to face him. Seeing the short bull of a man’s chest heaving up and down reminded her of a toddler who was on the verge of throwing the mother of all tantrums.

  “Sir,” she said, this time with a small smile that was genuine. “Before I respond, might I enquire as to why you feel that you’re the best qualified and most appropriate officer to command the fleet we aim to send out of the solar system?”

  Commander Wright stammered, unable to answer after being put on the spot and covering that uncertainty in himself with bluster.

  “Who are you to ask me that?” he said in a voice slightly louder than he intended. “How dare you question my abili—”

  “Would you order your ships to fire on other UN vessels, if required, to achieve the mission objectives?” she asked, silencing him. “Would you order the troops put under your command to board a ship and capture or kill the crew to seize control of it? Are you competent enough to strategize battle plans to secure facilities on alien worlds?”

  “Why on Earth would I?” he blurted out, his face red with temper and frustration. “What possible circumstances would dictate that I—”

  “Sir, very simply put, we feel that you lack the tenacity to get the job done. We have assigned a man who is battle-tested to lead the fleet, and frankly, I believe that to award you a command of one of those ships would jeopardize the mission through your own need to undermine the overall commander.”
br />   He stopped his next words before they started to come out of his mouth. That was exactly what he would do, if he was being honest with himself. In an instant of clarity, he knew that what she said was right, but what was more, it would doubtless be backed up by any number of psych-evals and anecdotal evidence. He tried another approach, still desperate to get on the mission and immortalize his name.

  “If,” he said carefully, “I knew the person you were planning to make admiral, I could give assurances that I would abide by their command unquestioningly.”

  Crawford seemed to assess him, to weigh up his words to find any hidden agenda in them. In the end, she saw no harm in revealing the identity of their prime candidate to lead the colony fleet to Proxima.

  “We have someone in mind,” she said just as carefully, “but he has power of veto over all UN personnel listings. It’s not me you’d have to convince.”

  Wright’s eyebrows rose to silently ask the question of who exactly he had to blow around there to get a job.

  “Commander Dassiova will be promoted to admiral prior to mission launch.”

  UN Shipbuilding Yards, Earth Orbit

  “It’s a helluva responsibility, Elias,” said the old man dismissively.

  His wrinkled face was too close to the viewscreen, as though the previous two decades of having a newer video unit as his home comm device were still a novelty to him. Dassiova fought the urge to tell his father to lean back so he could see him, because he knew he was leaning closer to see the screen where his son was displayed. The stubborn old man, a veteran of the UNPF himself, had refused the laser corrective eye surgery so many times that the healthcare program given to everyone who served simply stopped offering him the option. That meant that every time the dutiful son logged on his weekly call to the old man, he had to suffer a conversation with a close-up of his hairy nostrils and just deal with it.