Forlorn Hope

Chapter Six

Target acquired, initializing geolocation.

Target approaching designated no access area.

Running program Montana-1.

A single light blinked rapidly on a strange and futuristic panel. A communications satellite activated its propulsion system and settled into a geosynchronous orbit above the former border of Wyoming and Montana. The satellite deployed multiple pieces of monitoring and recording equipment - all pointed towards the globe below. A continuous stream of data flowed from the satellite to a ground installation somewhere in Idaho. A phone emitted a single chirp and vibrated a preprogrammed sequence – short, then long and finally short again.

Lieutenant Colonel James Mathers set his pen on his desk, and reached for the phone in his breast pocket. He didn't need to look at the phone display, but he needed to verify he received the communiqué. He peered at the phone now in his hand and saw the display blinking the same pattern as the vibration: short - long - short. Mathers picked up the receiver of a phone on the corner of his desk. He was greeted not by a dial tone, but a single click.

A disembodied voice immediately speaks in his ear, "Access code?"

"Mathers. Alpha three seven bravo."

"Connecting."

Two more clicks and another voice, "Logistics."

"I need a skimmer, a pilot and a four man extraction team at..." He cradled the phone between his cheek and shoulder, pushing back the sleeve of his blue overalls to get a better look at the photo-luminescent hands of his watch, "twenty-two thirty."

"Yes sir. Your team and vehicle will be waiting for you in bay nine at twenty-two thirty."

"Acknowledged."

After replacing the handset, Mathers glanced at his watch again; in twenty-five minutes he and his team would be leaving bay nine en route to Gardiner, Montana.

* * *

Anna walked silently beside Garret, the road ahead illuminated by their headgear. Garret spoke so sincerely; Anna was forced to consider the crazy things he said.

"Ninety-five years ago, back when this was the United States of America, the American military tracked what they thought was an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. They predicted it would make landfall somewhere in Montana. It landed right smack in between Gardiner and Livingston, Montana. The ejecta and devastation spanned fifty miles in all directions. Both towns were inundated with debris from the asteroid.

"They expected trace elements of iron and other inert compounds, but they never expected to find what they did. They found complex alloys, which was impossible since alloys are man-made. They initially thought a satellite or other space junk had impacted the asteroid before it entered our atmosphere, but they were totally wrong.

"When the impact cloud cleared, satellite imagery showed a ship of some sort impacted into the bedrock of Montana. The U.S. Air Force immediately dispatched planes for aerial reconnaissance and Nuclear Emergency Response Teams were placed on standby."

Anna appeared shocked at this information. "Well? What the hell was it?"

"It was a spaceship from a technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization."

Anna stopped mid-stride. "Are you telling me E.T. crashed into Montana?"

"I am, but the situation was more dire than they had imagined."

"What happened to the aliens?"

"I'll get to that. A one hundred mile perimeter was established; Livingston, Gardiner and Yellowstone National Park were evacuated. Some people were even evacuated in the middle of eating dinner. A team of government specialists, linguists and scientists converged on the site just after the military.

"They found a group of aliens that had survived the impact. The aliens were shipped off via military transport while their ship was examined. Fortunately for us, they were bipedal and very similar to ourselves – only much taller. The tallest measured over nine feet.

"Fast forward five years. We studied their technology and figured out it was about five decades ahead of our own. We never learned their language, but they quickly learned ours. Some sort of global disaster destroyed their world. They had already colonized their own moons and those colonies were all that was left of their civilization."

Anna interrupted, "Moons, plural?"

"Yeah three. One the size of our own moon, the other two smaller – but that's not important."

Anna scowled, "So what is important?" She heaped as much sarcasm onto that 'is' as she could.

Garret was oblivious to her sarcasm. "The ship! Their power generating technology was so advanced. They had photovoltaic cells with eighty-five percent efficiency. At the time, we could only get to the low twenties."

He didn't see Anna roll her eyes. She had many talents known and unknown. Power generating systems was one of her known talents. She knew even their best solar tech only reached forty to sixty percent efficiency and those facilities were massive.

She didn't interrupt him this time, so he continued. "The best tech was some sort of high energy plasma. It generated power on an enormous scale. Of course the military was only interested in weaponizing it.

"The problem was this plasma reacted to the inert gasses in our atmosphere and triggered the ice age you already know about. The bulk of their ship is buried by ice, snow and debris, but the power source is still active.

"They were returned to Montana and they built a village on top of the wreckage. They continue to draw power from it and that's what's causing our ice age."

Anna thought for a moment. "Do you think you can stop it from reacting with our atmosphere?"

"No! I aim to disable or destroy it. When the device stops functioning, our planet should begin to heal itself."

"If they get power from it, what will happen to the aliens?"

"The American Union should admit these aliens are here and see if they will help us reverse the reaction with their plasma power."

"Will they?"

"I hope so. This is our planet after all; they are merely trespassers."

"Thirteen planets in our system and they had to land on ours!"

"Fourteen, don't forget Sedna."

"Thanks for the correction, oh wizened one." The barb was without malice - their marriage seemed based on mutual sarcasm.

She continued, "Why are you, a geologist, involved with this?"

"A few months before we got together I worked on a geothermal fracking project. We pumped a plasma slurry into the bore holes and allowed the heated plasma from the fractures create steam and drive turbines." He stopped and looked intently at Anna, "The scientists couldn't figure out how to remove the plasma from the system. Before I disable it, I'll study the plasma and see if we can learn anything from it. I just hope their plasma technology is as advanced as their photovoltaic tech was."

They headed northwest as Highway Eighty-Nine turned to avoid the Yellowstone River. When the highway crooked dead east, just after Roosevelt Arch, Anna started to follow the road, but Garret grabbed her shoulder and pointed to what must have been a park at one time. There was a building across the park that appeared to be what Garret was pointing at.

"There's the public library, let's see if we can stay there tonight."