Dragonstar Destiny (2 page)

“THEY’RE WAITING
for you, sir,” said the Admins Aide who appeared on Gregor Kolenkhov’s Deskmate monitor.

“I know
they are waiting,” said the large, beefy Russian. He did not bother to look at the screen as he spoke, but continued to pace back and forth within his private office. “Tell them I will be coming out in several minutes.”

In Colonel Kemp’s absence, Kolenkhov, as senior member of the Joints Chiefs of Staff at Copernicus Base on Luna, was in charge of all base operations. At present, it was a job he wished belonged to someone else.

Gregor wondered if Kemp was still alive, if he would ever see the man again.

After the catastrophe on worldwide holovision, there was no place to hide. The lASA lunar base was being, swamped with media journalists, government agency representatives, and various other political dignitaries all being shuttled up from Earth as quickly as possible. The International Aeronautics and Space Administration had no choice but to allow the whole pack of agency wolves and news jackals into Copernicus Base. After broadcasting the disaster to an audience of more than 4 billion people, the IASA’s ass was in one hell of a crack.

Now the world was demanding some answers, and Kolenkhov was the jack-in-the-box, the squirrel in the wheel cage, He, would have to face them and answer their questions. It would be a major task, trying to make sense out of the insanity which had been visited upon the IASA ever since the gigantic alien artifact had been discovered.

Goddammit all! Why could not Colonel Kemp be here to handle this fucking circus?

Of course, there was no telling
where
Kemp might be now ... It was one of those things which Kolenkhov tried not to think about.

Gregor paused in front of the mirror and smoothed down his black hair, combed back and slicked down across his partially bald head. Squaring his shoulders, he assessed himself in his Informal Officer’s jumpsuit. For a man of his age and obvious overweight tendencies, he figured he did not look too bad. He exhaled and shook his head slowly, moving toward the door.

No sense putting it off any longer, he thought, palming it open.

He stepped into a corridor and stared into the faces of those who stood waiting to accompany him to the assembly hall. Oscar Rheinhardt, Marcia Bertholde, and an attractive, young female Admins Aide by the name of Fleisher.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Gregor,” said Marcia Bertholde, a tall, graying, no-nonsense woman who looked every one of her fifty years. She had the irritating habit of smoking long, thin cigarettes in public, as if she believed her high rank carried the privilege of making the air rank for others.

“With the three of you huddled outside my door like a pack of simpering dogs, I would have never guessed!”

Oscar Rheinhardt tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Now, now ... there’s no sense in getting testy, comrade. We’re all in this mess together, you know.”

“That may be true, Oscar, but it is
I
who must talk to these people.”

“It comes with the territory,” said Bertholde. She dragged on her cigarette, exhaled the smoke in a tight bluish stream.

Gregor ignored this last crack. To Fleisher he said: “Did you get those notes faxed for me?”

The aide handed him a folder jammed with a sheaf of papers. “Here you are, sir.”

Taking the reports and data sheets, Gregor took in a deep breath, exhaled dramatically. “All right,” he said. “Let us get down in the mud with these scavengers.”

The group walked to the elevators in silence and took the waiting car up to the main concourse of the underground base. Here the corridors were wide and brightly illuminated. There were even occasional skylight shafts which brought in real sunlight from the harsh 336-hour lunar-days. But today, the moon was in its nocturnal phase and no natural light poured in from the light shafts. Bathed only in the artificial glow of the wall panels, Gregor found the passageway dim and full of gloom.

Approaching the assembly hall, Fleisher guided them down a ramp to a set of doors which opened upon the proscenium. As she palmed open the barrier, Gregor felt the wash of a hundred murmuring conversations inundate him simultaneously. It was like plunging into a quiet glade where the trees and shrubs seemed to vibrate with the susurrous life of a million locusts. As he entered the room, he could feel the collective gaze of his audience focusing upon him, pinning him like a butterfly to a piece of cork. As he approached the speaker’s console, the other Joint Chiefs took seats behind him.

He looked up, trying to coolly assess his audience of more than three hundred men and women from every conceivable organization and agency, and waited for the inevitable hush to settle upon them. The lenses of cameras, like the multifaceted eyes of giant insects, zoomed in upon him. He cleared his throat as the last murmurs faded away. He could feel their attention drawing a bead on him like a target in cross-hairs.

From the speaker’s console, Gregor keyed in the mike and loudspeaker, cleared his throat, and started talking. He had tried to come up with a prepared statement, but now found himself (to use one of Kemp’s favorite phrases) “winging it.”

“Good afternoon, everyone. For any of you who may not know me, I am IASA Colonel Gregor Yurianovich Kolenkhov, senior member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff here at Copernicus Base. I will attempt to make some sense out of the terrible tragedy we have all witnessed within the last thirty-six hours, and will, if possible, answer any questions you might have.” Gregor cleared his throat and signaled for Fleisher to get him a flask of water, wishing that she had the presence of mind to substitute a liter or so of vodka.

Looking up, he continued: “I have here a prepared report, and I will be happy to present it to you intact. You will also receive copies of the report as you all leave the assembly hall. Or, if you wish, we can forget about the report for now and carry on like a regular press conference. I leave it up to all of you ...”

Gregor paused and looked off to the right where Fleisher had returned with a flask and small glass. He nodded, and she brought it quickly to the podium, then moved back into the wing of the proscenium. As Kolenkhov poured some of the clear liquid into the glass, then raised it to his lips, he detected the familiar bouquet he had first smelled in his father’s
dacha
many, many years ago.

Vodka! Fuck-your-mother, the girl had done it!

Despite the crowd staring at him, he almost broke into a smile as he threw down several fingers of the crisp, clear burning liquid. Hah! Several of those and he could handle anything! He shot a raised eyebrow and the slightest of grins to Aide Fleisher, who smiled, and then looked shyly down at the floor.

Looking back to the audience, Gregor spied a man near the back of the stepped bank of seats who was raising his hand.

“Yes, sir?”

“Ashley Littlejohn from the
Smithsonian,
Colonel. We are filming this entire presentation, and for the sake of history and posterity and all that sort of thing ... would you mind summarizing the events which have led up to this point in the whole
Dragonstar
affair?”

A collective groan rose up from the body of the crowd as Gregor held up his hands for silence. “What? You mean all the events? From the very beginning?”

Mr. Littlejohn scowled at the crowd, then nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so ...”

Actually Gregor did not mind this request as much as one might expect. Summarizing the events leading up to this point would at least give him a chance to “warm up” to the audience, to relax, and to allow the vodka time to do its job.

“Very well,” he said after a decently dramatic pause. “But I promise you: I will be very brief.”

Mr. Littlejohn nodded perfunctorily and sat down. There was a low murmur running through the assemblage, which faded away as Gregor began speaking.

“Seven months ago, the Lunar Observatory on Copernicus Base discovered an alien artifact which became known as the
Dragonstar.
The
artifact was an immense cylindrical ship, more than three hundred twenty- kilometers in length and sixty-five kilometers in diameter. The cylinder rotated on its longitudinal axis once every three hundred sixty seconds. It was moving in it highly stable cometary orbit with a period of two hundred ten years.

“First visual intercept was made by a survey/prospecting vessel just as it entered the asteroid belt. A boarding party from the IASA
Heinlein
successfully entered the alien vessel, and discovered the enclosed Mesozoic ecology lining the interior of the cylinder. Lakes, rivers, mountains, plateaus, and valleys perfectly re-created—an exact duplicate of the Earth more than one hundred sixty million years ago. However, the boarding party was not very prepared to deal with the carnivorous dinosaurs which soon attacked them, and only Rebecca Thalberg and Ian Coopersmith survived.”

Gregor paused for a short sip from his glass. The vodka blazed a new path of confidence through his chest as he continued:

“A second, specially equipped expedition soon arrived on board the
Dragonstar
and established a permanent base of operations. Colonel Phineas Kemp headed up the team which intended to attach outrigger impulse engines to the alien vessel, break it free from its comet-like orbit, and ferry it back to the Earth-Moon system where it could be placed in a stable Lagrange Point orbit. While this operation was being completed, Kemp organized a search party through the Mesozoic Preserve to find Thalberg and Coopersmith.

“Meanwhile, these same two survivors trekked across the hostile terrain until they discovered the equivalent of the Great Wall of China ringing the interior of the cylinder, effectively isolating the last forty klicks of environment before it abutted against the flat end of the enclosure. Beyond this artificially constructed barrier lay the civilization of a species dubbed the Saurians by Coopersmith arid Thalberg. The creatures were a species of bipedal dinosaur, which evolved to intelligence during the last fifty million years within the sealed universe of the ship. The Saurian technology was based partly on biological as well as mechanical innovations, and operated roughly on a level equivalent to eighteenth-century Earth.

“While Thalberg and Coopersmith established contact with the Saurians, Colonel Kemp and his crew succeeded in bringing the
Dragonstar
back to the Earth-Moon system. After defeating an attempted hijacking of the alien ship by terrorists of the Third World Confederation, the IASA expedition rescued Thalberg and Coopersmith and began the long project of unraveling the mysteries of the
Dragonstar.
”

Gregor risked several additional fingers of vodka before pressing onward:

“Several uneventful months passed in which a large team of scientists established permanent installations within the alien ship. Finally succumbing to combined pressure from the media and various world governments, the IASA agreed to open up the
Dragonstar
’s
doors, so to speak, by producing an epic documentary to be broadcast on a worldwide basis. While the production was being prepared, scientists began detecting changes in the radiation levels on the ship. The radiation caused cancer-like mutations in some of the Mesozoic fauna and began to affect the mental stability of the Saurians, too.

“Despite warnings from various members of the scientific community on board the
Dragonstar
that something might be wrong, the decision was made by Colonel Kemp to go ahead with the scheduled broadcast of the documentary. And it was during the final live segment that the current disaster occurred—the massive riot of the Saurian population, and the slaughter of hundreds of Saurians and humans while the holo-cams rolled. Several small groups of human survivors managed to escape from the-radiation-maddened Saurians and await rescue from Copernicus Base.

“There was only one problem—the one for which you have all gathered here today. When the IASA dispatched rescue teams aboard shuttle craft, they found that they could no longer gain access to the
Dragonstar.
The last messages we received from Colonel Kemp and his people on the inside reported that the alien ship seemed to be ‘coming to life,’ turning itself on, and operating on its own. All outside hatches were sealed and all communications frequencies from the interior were either jammed or in some other way blanketed.”

Gregor paused and looked at the clear liquid in the flask. His head was beginning to feel a bit light, and his tongue felt loose and limber. The temptation to take another drink passed over him, but he knew he had reached his limit. What the hell, he thought, he was almost finished, anyway. Drawing in a breath, then exhaling with an almost audible sigh, he wrapped it up: