Project U.L.F. (3 page)

The program served three purposes. One, it solved the prison overcrowding problem. Two, it meant there would always be employees for high risk jobs which very few people were willing to do, and thirdly, it dispatched many of society’s undesirable elements.

Wyatt had been reasonably lucky. He had found himself posted to the Interplanetary Zoological Park, working as part of a team dedicated to the capture of specimens to be exhibited at the IZP. Many of the people on the specimen capture team were indeed people who had applied for their positions. Some were genuinely interested in the work—biologists, zoologists, botanists—all educated. Others were waifs and strays for whom the excitement or danger was appeal enough, and for the remainder, the prospect of interstellar travel was the attraction, the risks they took from day to day being an unfortunate consequence of their line of work.

It was a large division of people, staffed by maybe two hundred and fifty, and Wyatt was constantly amazed at how well the group worked together considering their diversity of backgrounds. The other thing that struck him as uncanny was the ease with which his newfound colleagues accepted him. They knew his background but he was never quizzed about his circumstances and for that he was grateful.

The reason for the good rapport among the people was made clear to Wyatt when he had commented on the blasé attitude possessed by most people in the division. The man sat opposite him in the refectory had stopped eating, dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin before leaning over the table and said, “We work together or we may never work again.” He had then continued his meal as if the conversation had never happened. It was then that Wyatt had realized that these people didn’t just live each day—they survived
each day. Every person in a team trusted the next man and, as Wyatt had found out on some of his early expeditions, sometimes that trust extended to putting your life in another person’s hands. The bonds that were forged from such faith transcended the artificial boundaries that most people liked to throw around themselves. Strength of character and integrity were important here.

 
The uncertainty of what each day might bring also made many people appreciate what they ordinarily took for granted. Wyatt had found that appreciation also brought reflection, and he had spent a number of months examining himself and his situation. He put the past behind him and emerged happier and more extroverted, full of drive and optimism.

He had met Tanya three and a half years into his placement. It had been his day off but he had come in to check up on a marsupial recently acquired from one of the more distant expedition zones that was having trouble acclimating. He had come to respect animals; they gave him the opportunity to care for something—and after being inside he hadn’t cared about anything for a long time.

He had been coaxing the animal to feed when he had seen her through the plexiglass. She was taking a class of children around the zoo and was having trouble with a few disruptive individuals. Wyatt appeared at her shoulder.

“Hey kids, you wanna see some animals up close?” he had said. The children were silenced instantly. They turned, amazed, and Wyatt suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious as sixteen pairs of eyes fell on him. Tanya was looking at him too, half surprised and half amused at his dashing entrance.

He had spent the rest of the day with Tanya and her class, using his security pass to enable them to see more than a day ticket would normally allow. When they had exhausted the exhibits she had thanked him and kissed him lightly on the cheek, much to the amusement of the schoolchildren, before boarding the monorail that would take them back to the main entrance.

Two days later he had received a call at work. It was her. She thanked him for his kindness and inquired as to how his work was going before asking if he would be interested in hosting another school excursion. He agreed. As it transpired, she was the only member of the party.

Their date was a success and the first of many. As he grew to like her he began to trust her. He felt he ought to tell her what had brought him to the zoo, even though he feared the reaction it might provoke. She sat stony-faced as he recounted his story, and when he finished she had clasped his hand in hers, kissed him and told him that none of what had happened mattered to her; it had happened to a Wyatt who existed long before the one she had known. She did not care about his past, so long as he promised to quit his job at the zoo when his contract was over. She worried about him taking the risks he did, and missed him when he was away on expeditions. He had promised.

Within a year of their meeting, Tanya had moved in with him. Wyatt looked forward to leaving his job and starting a new life with her. As a short-termer with only a few months left on his contract he was put on jobs with significantly less risk than he was accustomed to. His final day was both a happy and sad occasion for him.

At first his life with Tanya was more than he had hoped for. She was beautiful, carefree, generous, and for some reason, which he could not figure out, she loved him. He also had his freedom, and the sensation seemed to infuse him with new life. His future had never looked so good. Then, one day, as he watched her playing with some of the children in her care it had dawned on him that besides her, there was no one else in his life. He had immediately felt foolish, selfish. Many others would be happy enough to have Tanya alone in their lives, but the more he thought about it in the following weeks, the more he came to realize that he missed his old life at the zoo. Tanya had talked of marriage and a family, but Wyatt’s old colleagues were his family. They had accepted him when no one else would. They had trusted him when no one else would. They believed in him when no one else would. How could he give up something he knew for something he did not yet have?

He had discussed his feelings with her and she had been unhappy but understanding. It was agreed that he would return to the IZP.

His return to the zoo had been greeted with smiles and back claps. Everybody had been pleased to see him. Some thought he was a little crazy, but were pleased to see him nonetheless.

He had been back at his job almost two months when he received a call summoning him to Mannheim’s office. Mannheim had beckoned him to sit, offered him a drink, which he politely accepted, and then sat opposite him. “I have a proposal for you…” he had begun.

The proposal involved money. Lots of money. Money Wyatt could look forward to receiving if he agreed to head up a new division called Project U.L.F. The acronym, Wyatt understood, stood for Unidentified Life Form. The group would be a small sub-division of the current specimen acquirement team and would comprise some sixty to seventy people. Their job would be to travel to newly discovered star systems and astral bodies, and capture new life forms for study and eventual exhibition at the zoo. The dangers were great but the salary reflected the hazards.

He had thought about the offer for a long time. He did not tell Tanya but she sensed something was troubling him.

When he did tell her it was after he had signed the contract accepting the position. He would not have believed her reaction, had he not seen it with his own eyes. She went into a rage that he did not know she was capable of, screaming and pacing like some frustrated caged animal. She had thrown herself at him, pounding his chest with her delicate hands clenched into unfamiliar fists. He had grabbed her by the wrists and overpowered her and she had fallen into his arms sobbing. She wondered about their future together and he told her that everything would be all right.

Everything was not all right. On their first expedition Wyatt and his team had found the equipment they were used to using wholly inadequate. Three men were dead and two more seriously injured. With each subsequent expedition, even though the equipment was modified to cater to their needs and new traps were designed, the toll continued to rise. Then, finally, after six months, they recorded their first outing with no casualties.

When he returned home to tell Tanya the good news, he found the letter. She had left him. The letter said that she could not continue their now part-time relationship. She needed someone around her and she missed him when he was away. She lived in constant fear, not knowing whether the next telelink call would be from him or from someone with news of him. It was a situation she could no longer bear. She hoped they would remain friends.

In hindsight, he realized that he had been extremely selfish. They had called each other infrequently, but soon that had petered out to nothing. Months later, fate conspired to deal him a cruel blow. The U.L.F. department expanded and Wyatt’s responsibilities and workload increased. Without really seeing it happening, Wyatt had become promoted to I.Z.P. middle management, confined to offices on Earth and on the Moon. Wyatt just didn’t go out with the teams any more.

He tried to locate her again but she had moved on without leaving a contact number or forwarding address. He wondered what she was doing now. Who she was with.

He despised himself for not getting over her. That seemed to banish the longing he could feel rising within him as his thoughts dwelt upon her, but the ache of loss, which seemed to infest every part of him would not be dismissed so easily.

He wandered back to the heart of the room before collapsing in his armchair, which seemed to engulf him in its vastness, the leather creaking in complaint of the burden he represented. After selecting a program he could tolerate he sat and watched television, looking but not seeing, his mind elsewhere. His thoughts were haphazard, shooting off at illogical tangents but somehow always coming back to Tanya, like fingers prodding a healing wound, withdrawing with the resurgence of pain that the investigation evoked but always returning even though the action was imprudent.

The last thing he heard before sleep reclaimed him was the glass hitting the floor as it fell from his hand. He dreamt of her and slept fitfully.

CHAPTER

2

Douglas Mannheim placed his hand on the plate and watched the door slide open with a whispered hiss. It was the sound that always welcomed him into his office.

Even though an entire side of his office was comprised of four huge fortified glass windows, which spanned the distance from floor to ceiling, the room was dark. It was 4:47 AM.

He paced across to his desk and deposited his electronic newspaper on top of it before turning and walking to a grand mahogany cabinet, one of many antique furnishings in the room. Lifting the stopper of the brandy decanter he poured himself a large measure. He checked his wristwatch, a large gold attachment. Being at work, even being awake this early was uncommon for him, and he raised his eyebrows in vague amusement. He turned and half leaned, half sat on the cabinet. Sipping from the glass he contemplated what the next half hour might bring.

His pager had beeped yesterday, in the early evening. He had been at a business dinner and the noise had been a nuisance so he had acknowledged the call without even checking who it was from, and carried on his conversation. Shortly afterwards the pager had beeped again and again he had acknowledged the call to silence it. On the third occasion he had begrudgingly excused himself from the table and made his way to the nearest comms booth.

He saw the telelink screen come on out of the corner of his eye as he looked back toward the table and gestured toward the friends he had so unwillingly been made to leave.

“What is it?” he had snapped. The two eyes that appeared on the screen regarded him with such icy malice that he immediately regretted his tone. The face that looked back at him was that of General Kurt Leonardson.

Leonardson was a hard, ruthless man, a fact emphasized by features so sharp they could have been sculpted from granite. His blonde hair was shaved so short that what remained on his head seemed to stand upright of its own accord, as if to attention. His cheekbones were high and his jaw square and well-defined. His nose was sharp and pointed, the bridge perfectly straight. His eyes were flat, pale blue and as hard and cold as steel, sunk so deep into sockets they appeared as nothing more than tiny specks of light. In profile his face was all angles and lines.

His stockiness he owed to his military training. He had served with Earth’s regular army for nine years before one of a series of promotions meant he was pushing pens around instead of people. Within the year he had requested a transfer out of the army and to a position where his level of responsibility would be similar and his rank would be a valid and respected title. He had found himself at the CSETI—the Continuing Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It was a department of the government that had been started when the first reply from an alien civilization to the message carried on Voyager I had been received. The CSETI was named in tribute to the organization known as SETI, which had been deemed a failure and aborted in 2120.

Leonardson’s job required he play a double role. He was a front man for the organization, dissolving rumors that were mostly started by the popular press, and claiming truths to be rumors when leaked from inside. There were, after all, things that Joe Public needed to be protected from. Behind the scenes he liased with the Finance Department for project funding.

Seeing Leonardson’s face so unexpectedly caused Mannheim a sharp intake of breath. Normally Leonardson was not a man to be trifled with, but these two men had a special relationship. The face on the screen brought the whole story back to him, as it always did. Mannheim played it over in his mind, to dispel the cold fear evoked by Leonardson’s icy gaze, to remind himself who was in charge here.

He remembered their meeting. They were both young men then, and Mannheim had just been recruited to the IZP management training program. He had graduated with a degree in xenobiological science and spent a couple of years in business. It had been arranged for him to join a CSETI project expedition. Mannheim recalled that at that time Leonardson was also new to the CSETI and was making waves within the organization. Some of the projects he was giving the green light to were radical and went against CSETI protocol. On this particular outing, Leonardson set out to prove his critics wrong, and went along to supervise the expedition.

They had landed on a relatively unexplored planet, which, it had been confirmed, harbored life. Leonardson had a team of fifteen. The team was deployed and told to maintain radio contact. Mannheim watched Leonardson with admiration. There was no doubt that this was his arena and the man was in charge.

Within minutes the squad leader had called his team to a halt. They had encountered a life form, which, although savage in appearance, had shown no aggressive intent. He told them to start the monitoring equipment. Almost immediately the creature had begun to jabber and chitter and then, they were told, it had turned and disappeared into the bushes.

Leonardson had ordered the team to follow it, which they had duly done. The computer had registered a number of distinct, different noises and sixteen different tones. There was sufficient evidence just from vocalization that this animal exhibited a low to mid-range intelligence. Occasionally the creature would stop and allow the team to catch up with it, before it started off again. The squad leader had called back to the two men sitting in the all-terrain vehicle, voicing his concern at this behavior. It was, he said, characteristic pack hunting behavior, and he believed they were being led into an ambush. Despite it being a new, alien life form, Mannheim, with all his zoological and xenobiological training was inclined to agree. By contrast, Leonardson was not prepared to listen. He ordered that the squad continue to follow the animal and to consider possibly acquiring the specimen. After all, he had put his reputation on the line.

The squad leader remained anxious, feeling that the safety of his team was being compromised, and this had infuriated Leonardson. He had almost accused the man of mutiny and reminded him of exactly who was in charge, threatening the man with his job. Mannheim had watched as Leonardson, hunched over the consoles, fumed silently.

Another voice had come through on their headsets then. It was another member of the team and he was tracking movement from behind the squad. Then their headsets exploded with noise.

All members of the team were shouting now, they were surrounded; creatures were coming at them from all directions, from the trees, through the scrub. They were hopelessly outnumbered. Above the chatter of gunfire they could hear the squad leader appealing for calm, calling his men around him so they could cover all sides, but the screams had already started. The last thing Mannheim heard before he ripped off his headset, appalled, was the squad leader cursing Leonardson.

When the vehicle had arrived at the ambush site approximately an hour later, the cameras mounted on the outside of the vehicle conveyed a bleak picture to the two men anxiously seated inside. The ground was littered with spent bullet cartridges and, of the fifteen-strong team, only three bodies remained as a legacy to their slaughtered comrades, their limbs haphazardly arranged as if they were puppets whose strings had been unexpectedly severed. A hurried search found no trace of the others.

Years later, Mannheim, already working his way up the corporate ladder at the IZP, acquired a specimen of the creature involved in that fateful confrontation for the zoo. As part of his research on the animal, he thought it would be beneficial to acquire a copy of the tapes from the expedition. He was surprised when the city mainframe informed him that no such tape existed. His investigation of the animal soon became an investigation of Leonardson.

A CSETI report chip stated that all the team had lost their lives in a landslide. No bodies had been recovered. Mannheim later learned that certain data recordings had “got lost” during a reshuffle of the CSETI data library.

When he confronted Leonardson and told him what he had discovered, Leonardson had pleaded with him not to tell anyone else about the cover-up. It was a pitiful sight, Mannheim recalled. To see such a large man, large both in stature and power, reduced to a sniveling, whimpering caricature of his normal self, was, well, embarrassing.

Mannheim took good advantage of his upper hand. He struck a deal. In exchange for keeping Leonardson’s secret he would be supplied with certain classified information. It was vital to Mannheim that the IZP learn about new life forms well in advance of its rivals so that acquirement teams could be deployed and specimens brought back and exhibited.

Over the years, as the smaller zoos were forced to close, the IZP flourished and within a few years Mannheim had manipulated his way to the top. Knowing that Leonardson would never want the truth to be common knowledge gave Mannheim an extreme power over the other man. It was a position he relished and Leonardson resented. He could, effectively, demand what he wanted and he had on numerous occasions turned the screw a little further, applying more pressure to Leonardson. Even now he congratulated himself on his foresight all those years ago.

Project U.L.F. was created as a direct result of Leonardson’s information. As the mining fleets went beyond the boundaries of charted space they encountered new planets, which they duly reported to the World Space Exploration Agency (WSEA) who in turn informed the CSETI. When Leonardson had told Mannheim that this information was available, Mannheim had sprung upon the idea of sending out acquirement teams. Leonardson had told him that it was crazy; that these were unexplored planets and that Mannheim’s teams would have no idea what they would encounter. It would be far better to send experienced CSETI teams to make the initial investigations before squads of gung-ho trappers waded in. However, Mannheim was set on the idea. Project U.L.F. was born.

“I’m…I’m sorry, Kurt,” Mannheim had stammered the apology under Leonardson’s look of contempt, forgetting in that brief moment who wielded the power in this relationship. “I had no idea it was you,” he continued, with a degree of smugness. Leonardson oozed hatred on the screen.

The conversation had been short, practically a monologue. Leonardson had told him that his department had received some very sensitive information. Copies of these files had been encrypted and electronically mailed to Mannheim’s office. He was to access the files, view them and then delete them. Their contents were highly confidential.

Leonardson had seemed rushed, nervous. He glanced furtively about throughout their conversation. When the call was finished, Mannheim was left somewhat bemused in the telelink booth, looking at a blank screen reflecting a miniature monochrome version of himself.

Mannheim had returned to the table but Leonardson’s apparent uneasiness had intrigued him, and he had made little contribution to the rest of the evening’s proceedings.

*
  
*
  
*
  
*
  
*

The ceiling appeared distorted through the base of the glass as Mannheim drained the remainder of his brandy. He poured himself another before moving to his desk. He wondered what it was that Leonardson thought so important. Sitting in his chair, he flipped a small panel on one of the arms open and punched in his PIN number on the keypad revealed there. A pane of smoked glass rose up from a slat in his desk and a touch-sensitive keyboard appeared on the glass surface in front of him, shimmering into view as if it had just been hauled up through a great depth of water.

He accessed his electronic mail account. The screen registered three messages. Leonardson’s, one from engineering, and a third from an address he did not recognize. Probably another reporter wanting an interview or permission to film.

He opened the message from Leonardson. Almost immediately a life-sized holographic image of the man’s head appeared to his right. Mannheim started. Leonardson was daunting enough in the flesh, let alone as some computer-generated specter. He still wore the worried look that Mannheim had seen the previous evening and the grays of the holo-image gave him a sickly, pallid complexion. Mannheim guessed this recording was made shortly before or after the call he had received the previous evening.

Leonardson spoke quickly and clearly. “Douglas, the information you are about to receive has been distributed as top-secret among senior staff here. The planet in question has been designated code black by my organization, which means we are the only people to know of it. You will be the only other person to have knowledge of it outside of the CSETI. This
cannot
be leaked. The details are too sensitive and would provoke too many questions. I suggest you erase the attached files once you have accessed them. The first is a copy of a message we received and the second charts our resulting course of action and its outcome.”