First Contact - Chapter 616: Interlude (1/2)
The air was climate controlled, fully filtered, and nearly canned. Not one molecule or atom was spared multiple filtration systems before it moved to the more secure levels deep beneath the earth. The air had a dry chill to it, one that seemed to seep through clothing and into the skin, setting into the muscle and fat beneath. The climate control kept the internal thermostat at 68F, supposedly comfortable to the occupants of the high security facility.
The man hated it.
He hated secure facilities like this. Constructed under the Atlas Missile Silo program, funded by FEMA's eternally black budgets, and so far off the books that no whisper of their existence reached those who were not cleared to know about them.
He viewed the nearly three hundred million dollars spent on it in the 1950's as an indulgence of a bygone era, despite the fact the facility was completed a little over a decade ago. Blasted out with dynamite, carved out by jackhammers, built by men he considered almost an alien species, the type of men who took such jobs and never spoke of them, merely cashed their paycheck and moved onto the next paycheck without regards to favors, possible hush money, or how it could benefit them beyond that meager paycheck.
The walls this far down were brushed metal, stencils here and there with strange acronyms that he didn't bother trying to understand.
He wasn't here to decipher strange glyphs on steel walls.
He was here to see the Queen of the facility.
A woman who's work was so closely guarded that her name was not redacted, it was never written down anywhere. She was referred to only as ”Dark Queen”, a nickname given to her by someone from within the labyrinth of government secret project administration.
On either side of him were his body guards. CIA agents of known reliability, who knew who granted favors and approved budgets. He had waived the military escort that had been offered when he had landed and the helicopter had been withdrawn into the facility.
He understood the soldiers as much as he understood the men who had carved out and assembled the facility.
The agents, those he understood.
The door he stopped at was heavy, inches thick, a heavy blast door that belonged somewhere else, not hundreds of feet inside the guts of a mountain.
He waited, looking up at the camera. There were no controls on this side beyond an alphanumeric keypad with several keys denoting 'color shift' and enter/delete buttons.
The door clunked, then hissed as it slowly rose, the bottom of it was a wedge. He waited impatiently as all eight feet of it withdrew into the top of the doorframe.
Satisfied, he moved through.
A single escort waited. A young woman, Japanese from the looks of her, maybe South Korean, wearing a lab coat and corrective lens glasses. Her black hair was cut brutally short and her face was expressionless.
”Follow,” was all she said, her accent thick.
He felt some disdain for her as he followed her through the labyrinth high security section.
The heart of the facility.
”Why are we going to one of the labs? Wasn't she notified of my arrival?” He asked.
The woman waited a moment before answering. ”She is reviewing the results of an experiment. She has instructed that you be brought to her or that you may return to the upper levels and await her,” the woman said.
He felt a dull burn of anger.
But he was careful. The person he was here to see, the Queen, was dangerous.
Lethally dangerous.
It galled him to know that she could kill him with no repercussions to her career, her livelihood, or her status. That his political office would not shield him if she decided that his life was her price to continue her work.
The Asian woman stopped at a door. She motioned at his two escorts. ”They are not permitted beyond this point,” she said. She pointed at two sets of four chairs. ”They may wait here.”
”They're with me,” he said.
The Asian woman shook her head. ”It does not matter. She has said that only you are to be admitted and that if you disagree, you may return to that badly drained swamp that they built DC on and wail and gnash your teeth to your betters,” the woman said, her voice monotone and emotionless as her face.
”Wait here,” he ordered.
The two agents nodded, their eyes hidden by their sunglasses.
The Asian woman opened the door, motioning to him to follow, and went inside.
The door slotted into place, tons of armor, concrete core, and steel bolts sliding into place with a controlled thud.
It felt even colder to him.
The Asian woman led him to a lab, where the object of his mission stood, looking over a circuit board with a round magnifying glass held in an oval that held a fluorescent light.
”Wait, and be silent,” the Asian woman ordered.
He watched as the Asian woman moved over to another work station, turning on the ring of light and shifting the large magnifying glass to examine another circuit board.
He paid no attention to the Asian woman. She was a functionary, a replaceable (as far as he was concerned) cog in the machine that worked in the heart of the facility.
The Queen, on the other hand, was irreplaceable. She was short, not even five foot, thick bodied, well endowed, and shapely. He had seen file footage of her when she was younger and noted that her hourglass figure had been lost to time and sweets. Her black hair was in what people were calling ”Beatles Style” now, her gun-metal gray eyes were intent on what she was examining, and her lips full and plump.
He reminded himself that she was deadly as a wasp and that any plans of impressing her with his political office and looks in hopes of seducing her would be crushed with glee by the Queen.
Finally she looked up and motioned at him.
”You have five minutes,” she stated. Her voice was low, what some called a whiskey voice, slightly rough and breathy. She picked up a lighter and a pack of cigarettes, lighting one and exhaling smoke as he approached.
She stared at him as if he was nothing more than an object of mild curiosity. The expression, the dismissal, the boredom in his eyes burned at his pride.
”I bring news from the Department of Defense,” he said, staying out of arms reach.
”I already know,” she said. She picked up a bottle, pushing on the wire under the ceramic stopper to pop it loose. She took a swig and closed the bottle. ”Ginger ale. We brew it here.”
”Oh,” he said. He frowned. ”You already know?”
She nodded. ”I do.”
”Then why not let the Department of Defense know so I wasn't sent here,” he said, feeling his temper rise.
She smiled, a pitiless, cold thing that compressed her full lips into a blade.
”I wanted one of you to have to tell me, face to face,” she said. She twitched her wrist and he stared as she lifted up a long blade that had dropped into her hand. ”An Arkansas Toothpick,” she said, looking at it. ”My father taught me to use it after Okies ate my dog.”
His temper vanished as a cold trickle of fear moved down his spine as she opened her hand and the blade vanished up her sleeve. She stared at her sleeve for a moment, then turned her gaze on him.
He suddenly realized that her the iris of her eyes looked like molten iron.
”Say it, dog,” she hissed, her face coldly angry. ”Say what your masters sent you to tell me.”
”The Department of Defense and Department of the Army regret to inform you that your son was killed in battle in Khe Sanh,” he said. ”His body has not been recovered.”
She just nodded.
He stood there, waiting for her to say something.
”Is that all?” she asked, flicking her ashes in a beanbag ashtray on the workbench.
”My God, woman, don't you care?” he asked, startled by her emotionless response.
”That's not your business,” she said. She exhaled smoke and he realized her could see her eyes clearly through the smoke. ”You drafted him, you trained him, you sent him into battle where he got killed,” she took another drag. ”Then you came here, hoping to gain gratification in seeing a mother's grief at the news her only child was killed in battle because the Marine Corps, for all their shit talking about 'leave no man behind' couldn't be bothered to rescue my son and his fellow Special Forces, just because General Thompkins doesn't like Army Special Forces.”
He blinked and stepped back at her cold words.
”You want a reaction? Fine. You go back, you to that worthless hovel of plotters and brain dead morons, you pick up the phone, you call Vietnam, you tell General Thompkins of the United States Marine Corps that he better stay in the Corps, because the minute he leaves, he is mine. He can try to blame Colonel Lownds all he wants, but I know who ordered the Marine tanks to train their guns on the SOG base, know what he called men like my son,” she said, stepping forward through the cloud of smoke. ”You tell Thompkins that when he leaves the Corps, he becomes my property. If he's killed, he better hope they can't find his body, because I'll use his body for my experiments,” she said. ”He better hope that one of you works up the balls to dispose of me before he leaves his beloved Corps.”
He was aware he was gaping at her.
”What? Did you expect me to harbor hatred and anger for the rice paddy farmer that pulled the trigger on a gun that might as well be magic to him?” she laughed coldly. ”It was war. He was defending his country, his misguided belief in communism, from the round eyed foreign barbarians. I hold no malice or anger toward someone like that.”
”No, I hold my disdain and contempt for men like you,” she said. She stepped back and leaned against the work bench. ”Don't bother waiting for tears. I will not allow myself to cry, to demean his memory with feminine weakness,” she sneered. ”Now, get out.”
He turned and hurried from the room, his fantasies of watching the Queen break down and cry shattering as he stumbled to the door, where another lab assistant waited to escort him out.
The Asian woman looked at the Queen.
”My condolences, Doctor,” she said softly.
”Thank you, Doctor Jin,” the woman said. She took a drink off of her bottle and replaced the ceramic cap. ”I am aware that you know the pain of a mother losing her only child to war.”
”Indeed,” Doctor Jin said. ”Will you tell the father?” Jin asked after a long moment of silence.
She shook her head. ”No. I will not tell the father he had a son and then tell him that son is dead in the same breath. It is an unnecessary cruelty.”
Doctor Jin nodded.
The two women turned their attention back to the dark science they were laboring on in the heart of a mountain.
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Not enough time had gone by as far as he was concerned, since the last time he had visited such a place.
Another mountain.
Another underground facility carved out of the mountain's heart by silent men who took the money and kept their secrets, even to the grave.
Where what was known as the Dark Queen was housed.
This time he was escorted by more than a handful of CIA agents. There were generals, admirals, several politicians, and even a few scientists that could be trusted with secrets dark and silent enough that a mere whisper of the Overproject's code name or SIGMA code would result in a cratered head wound within hours.
The helicopters had landed on the pads, which had lowered into the mountain, heavy blast doors normally seen on silos, camouflaged to look like barren rock, sliding into place over the top of the shafts. From there the visitors were searched, despite any objections, forced to walk through fluoroscopes and X-ray machines, subjected to cavity searches, and given jumpsuits to wear. Corrective lens glasses brought in by the visitors were replaced by ones already present in the facility.
Decades of work had resulted in many scientific advancements, many of which opened up new lines of scientific inquiry in order to utilize the discoveries, others esoteric enough that the advancements were merely questions that required new scientific knowledge to explain.
It was the results of tens of billions of US dollars over decades.
Born of the Development of Substitute Materials Overproject, the latest discovery or accomplishment was important enough that even the Dark Queen was willing to allow it to be witnessed by more than her subordinates or a few assigned watchers.
He felt a slight bit of disconcerting deja-vu as he moved through the brushed steel corridors, despite the additional people around him.
The last time he had walked halls such as these, he had carried a simple message to the Dark Queen herself. It was a message he had not understood, even though he had looked at it. A message from a physicist regarding a complex equation.
It made him feel illiterate and ignorant that she had merely glanced at the message, shook her head, and told one of her assistants that she owed him a bottle of whiskey, that he was right after all.
It had been humiliating that he had been relegated to a courier after he had lost reelection and the new administration had declined his services.
The Dark Queen herself greeted the guests, coldly and remotely, her face as expressionless as always, her gray eyes smouldering with something he did not understand but he could see left the others slightly disturbed.
She led them into a room full of large heavy computer consoles. The walls were lined with computers displaying scopes, blinking lights, dials, magnetic tape reels clicked, and the entire thing hummed with purpose.
Video display terminals were at heavy desks and work stations, the high resolution cathode ray tube screens showing streams of texts, graphs, sine-waves, and other esoteric data.
The visitors were curious, but stayed silent.
In the middle of the room was a large hexagonal chamber, made of some kind of thick glass that was blue, with red edging and white threads through it. The heavy door was open, showing dime sized copper contacts on the edge of the door. The floor was hexagons of heavy glass, dark and opaque.
Sitting on a table in front of the hexagonal chamber was a table with a wooden box, open to show it was empty, and a stack of index cards as well as jar with pens in it.
The Asian woman that he recognized from his previous visits stepped forward and lifted a finger to gain everyone attention.
”If you would all line up, and one at a time write something on the index card before placing it inside the box, you may then take your seats,” she said, her accent still as thick he remembered it.
Everyone lined up and moved forward one by one. He wrote ”Sixteen Tons of Number Nine Coal” on the index card, folded it, and placed it in the box, a reference to one of his favorite songs when he was younger. He reached forward with the pen and scratched the bottom inside of the lid of the wooden box.
The box was picked up and put in the chamber. Mirrors at the corners of the room allowed everyone to see that the single door was the only way in. As they all took their seats, following the tags on the chairs, a large dedicated screen lit up, showing the interior of the hexagonal chamber.
He knew that the screen had been custom made, at great expense, then moved through multiple cutouts and military bases, before finding its way to that wall. He knew that the shell-game to hide it had been a significant percentage of its cost.
Another screen came on, showing another hexagonal chamber in a room almost identical. The chamber's walls were dark green with gold edging and red swirls. The screen divided into quarters. One showing the chamber's interior, one showing the room the chamber was inside of, one showing a closeup of the table, and the other showing the mirrors so it was obvious that there was only one entrance.
”This chamber, designated platform beta, is in a secure facility on the other side of the continent,” the Asian woman said.
Many of the visitors, the man included, looked at the Dark Queen, who merely nodded.