The Intern (The Forbidden World Book 1) Read online

  Igor Vlasov

  The Intern

  Forbidden World. Book one

  Interlude

  To: Richard Branson, Chief

  5th Dept of Galactic Security Service

  Priority: Urgent

  Confidentiality level: Top secret

  Date: December 29, 2710

  Time: 01:33, Middle-Earth time

  From: Ivan Krotov, team leader of Research Base Z-2

  RE: “Pandora’s Box”

  Dear Authorized Officer:

  This is the repeat report. Navel Cord is not stable. Our energy resources are half-depleted. We are expecting a space collapse at any moment. Please speed up deployment of the Trojan Horse to the Base.

  P.S.

  Richard, between us, my team is now experiencing temporary amnesia more often. The mentoscopy tests we conducted have failed to establish the cause. I had to insist on bio-psychological conditioning of the entire crew.

  The situation is worsened by a wide meteor current approaching the station. I have no idea where it appeared from in my sector. We’ve estimated that its core will reach us in 15 earth days. We will be forced to take a part of the quantum generators’ energy and use it for a protective field, which will inevitably result into the Navel Cord rupture.

  End of the document

  ********

  To: Karl Lvovich Yepifantsev, Chair of the Galactic Security Service, World Council Member

  Confidentiality level: Top secret

  Date: December 29, 2710

  Time: 01:45, Middle-Earth time

  From: Richard Branson, Chief of the 5th Dept of GSS, Far Outer Earth section

  RE: “Pandora’s Box”

  Mission: “Trojan Horse”

  Message:

  Dear Karl Lvovich:

  Regretfully, I have to report that the Trojan Horse mission is under the threat of failure. The Cassiopeia cargo shuttle with the X cargo on board has been stuck in the fluctuating singularity 150 parsecs away from Sector F-14056/0002. Also, communication with the Cepheus backup starship has been lost. It has not appeared in the control exit point. We have started a search mission.

  The reports and memos from my subordinate units are attached.

  End of the document

  ********

  To: Committee for Control over Outer Earth Activity

  Urgent

  For the eyes of: Patrick O’Hara, Chair of the Contactrol Committee, and member of the World Council.

  Confidentiality level: extremely classified, triple encrypted with C-5 code, intended the one-time reading by the addressee only.

  Date: December 29, 2710

  Time: 02:10, Middle-Earth time

  From: Karl Lvovich Yepifantsev, Chair of the Galactic Security Service, World Council Member

  RE: “Beekeepers”

  RE1: “Pandora’s Box”

  Message: Trojan Horse Mission

  Greetings, dear Patrick O'Hara:

  Regarding the closed Council meeting of August 21, 2710, where, as you remember, the Council members discussed the issue of possible activity by a hypothetical unknown force in the Human-Inhabited Space and Periphery;

  Having analyzed the recent events, I am greatly concerned and have to agree with a number of points you presented during the discussion at the above Council meeting. Under the Pandora Box subtopic, as of today, we have a large totality of indirect factors indicating a possible invisible outside interference with our activity in the F-14056/0002 sector.

  Taking into consideration the new circumstances, I, Karl Lvovich Epifantsev, the GSS Chair and World Council member, give my permission to undertake the set of measures you specified in Protocol 7/113 of August 20, 2710. Authorization status: extended. The identity verification key is enclosed. It will be automatically replicated and sent to all World Council members.

  End of the document

  ********

  Haiti Island, south coast, Cap Can residence

  Date: December 29, 2710

  Time: 03:25, Middle-Earth

  Local time: 06:25

  He liked to start his day on the beach. The sun lazily tore itself from the emerald surface of the Caribbean and slowly, as if unwillingly, started to climb the dark horizon, casting the light on the white curls of the fluffy clouds. The heat will start in an hour, not earlier, but meanwhile the early morning breeze pleasantly cooled his body.

  From a side table, the man picked up a cup with a smoking hot, freshly made coffee and took a sip with obvious pleasure. Nodding in satisfaction, he lay back on the beach chair and skillfully started to light a cigar. Finally, the cigar tip flickered in red and the man deeply inhaled and slowly let out a blue string of smoke.

  His morning bliss was interrupted by a melodic bell of top-secret communication device.

  The man stayed still for some time, then looked with one eye at the device resembling a small case standing next to his chair. With a deep sigh, he touched the matte surface with his hand, turning off the hibernation regime.

  The device first dinged joyfully and then produced a buzzing bass. A bright ray broke through into the sky from inside. In a flash, it divided itself into thousands of similar rays and everything in the radius of 30 feet was covered with an impenetrable blue sphere.

  Nothing happened for some time. And then, the air at the sphere’s dome started to dense forming a small cloud. It became denser and denser and finally quietly busted.

  “Message received,” a melodic female voice announced.

  “Wow,” the man was surprised to see a small square piece of paper descending slowly, like a leaf torn away fro a tree by a wind, and finally falling to his feet.

  “This is new,” he crouched next to it. It was a digital photograph, in retro style. The man used two fingers to carefully lift the picture, completely out of place and time here, blew off stuck sand grains and couldn’t resist letting out a whistle in surprise. The photo must have been 50 years old, or a little less. It depicted seven young men, full of energy and youthful vigor, wearing military field fatigues. Three of them were squatting; the other four were standing behind them, embracing each other, with their left arms placed on the sitting comrades’ shoulders. All of them had broad smiles showing their white teeth.

  The man said “hmm” to himself, still puzzled and surprised. He was the second one in the picture. This was a group photo, taken the day before the Aldebaran landing.

  “I would have never thought this picture still existed,” he thought to himself, reminiscing. “I believe it was Karl who suggested to take it then.”

  The man smiled and turned over the photograph. On the back, there was a hand-written note, «Los zu stürmen!» (German for «Going to storm!», storm troopers)

  And the names below, arranged in a column, said:

  “Conrad Loren,

  John Rolls,

  Karl L. Epifantsev,

  Ramachandra Bhi,

  Roman Sobolev,

  Patrick O’Hara,

  Livius Paulian.

  Aldebaran, May 2660.”

  The inscription was old. The gel ink was smudged and passé in some places, but he did not have to peer into it. He knew the names of his old friends and comrades. Especially because now two of them were the members of the World Council, and Patrick O’Hara was its de-factor leader.

  As a confirmation of his thoughts, the light ink appeared on the old paper yellowed by age, “All right, Wild Boar, go ahead! Seems you were right. Extended authority. No time to waste!”

  The light ink started to disappear, but before it did, the P.O’H. initials came through. They disappeared in a second as well.

  John Rolls sat in the beach
chair, took the cup of now cold coffee and drank some of it mindlessly. The protective sphere collapsed with a buzz, and a light sea breeze started to blow again. The man listened to his own feelings. Nothing. He must have been waiting for this moment so long that now that an opportunity presented itself to fight the invisible enemy face to face, his emotions, a long time ago consuming his entire being, have simply burnt out.

  “Well, so be it,” he pushed something on the device, got up, stretched so that his bones and joints crackled and strolled toward a bungalow surrounded by fruit trees.

  Irena was still sleeping, and he slipped into the bathroom trying to make no noise. John always shaved before an important mission. When it became a tradition – he could never remember. He always used a close-shave straight razor, dismissing the modern gels that instantly removed all facial hair. Not to mention the laser depilation that produced smooth hairless skin for several years.

  Something boomed in the garden quietly, and he unmistakably recognized the muffled sound of the landing Ghost.

  John kissed his sleeping wife and contemplated for several moments what message to leave for her. However, nothing but unconvincing trivialities came to his mind, and Irena, as he knew by now too well, hated only two things in life: lies and triviality.

  “All right, I’ll think of something on the way,” he slipped into the back yard quietly, picked up the special communication device and entered the Ghost’s welcoming mouth.

  ********

  John Rolls hardly managed to make himself comfortable in the back seat when the door closed, the glider unfolded its arrow-like wings and suddenly, after a quick jump, took a sharp upward start. So sharp that he felt a hard sour clot in his throat, his body became heavy and immobile.

  “No time to waste!” John could only think to himself with a smirk. The “evacuation plan,” as he himself called it, was spelled out literally by seconds. Behind his back, he was sure of it, many of his team members thought he was paranoid. He took no offense, and perhaps it was not too far from the truth. But when you are engaged by an invisible enemy that is many times stronger than you on all parameters, such devices stop seeming exorbitant. In any case, it did not seem so to him now.

  The Ghost finally steadied itself, rapidly and quietly moving forward. The panoramic view screens turned on. The west view was completely dark, and in the east the first rays of Sun were shining through. Soon they entered the dark blue stratosphere. And the glider was still going up and up. Only when the dimmed knot of light on the top started to resemble a Lunar disk, and when straight ahead the first stars started to flicker, the glider stopped its maneuvers and flew westward at a blazing speed.

  “It’s time,” the man got up from the chair and quickly went to the glider’s tail. The drum separating the glider’s sectors has disappeared with a chewing sound. He entered the semi-round aperture and stopped in front of an egg-shaped capsule. John quickly dialed a combination of numbers on the panel, and the top part of the egg glided open to the side with a hissing sound, revealing a lodgment shaped as a human body.

  John took his time to remove a bracelet from his wrist, held it in his hand for a second, as if contemplating something, and then swung it toward the command panel.

  “This is better,” he mumbled climbing into the capsule’s lodgment.

  ********

  John threw a quick look at the information panel right in front of him. Everything was going according to the plan so far. He only had less than a minute before the leap. His heart started to race. He took turns of three short and three deep breaths. He knew that the risk was great. The zero-leaps to the objects moving with a near-light speed were strictly prohibited. All the civilian and even military starships had blocks against such leaps. The navigation margin of error was too great. However, the opportunity for an outside observer to determine the entry point was near zero as well.

  “The egg,” as he called the capsule, was an experimental device, in theory capable of throwing up to 450 pounds of cargo at the distance of up to 1,500 parsec. John kept telling himself that his destination was “only” 800 parsec away, practically two times closer than the device’s capacity. He almost succeeded in ignoring the warnings by Michael Lucciatti, chief engineer of the secret lab he commanded, that as the test cargo to be leaped through such great distances they had used only titan breaks up to this point.

  “Everything will be fine,” John tried to convince himself, clenching his teeth. His Ghost was equipped with the newest communication system, plus the entry and exit was synchronized with the docking station well in advance. Nonetheless, this was still a risky endeavor.

  The glider trembled a little. Somewhere down, under the shuttle’s deck, an accelerating boom started, the shuttle’s body began to vibrate, and the transformer chair gently, but at the same time tightly hugged him, taking a horizontal position.

  John peered at the numbers counting down. Five, four, three, two, one. The boom was accelerating and became louder in waves, as if the glider turned on its jet turbines. John clenched his teeth. Finally, the number “0” appeared on the screen. The shuttle shook violently, the boom turned into an unbearable shriek accompanied by small all-penetrating vibration. John felt his teeth ache so strongly as if he rinsed his mouth with ice-cold water, and then he heard blunt hits at the shuttle’s deck: “chug, chug, chug, chug…” The Ghost’s armored body whimpered almost like a human, a long moan of the deforming walls came out and when John Rolls decided that was the end, everything suddenly quieted down.

  Nothing happened for some time, only his heart was rhythmically pushing the blood through his arteries, with loud thumps echoing in his head. Then a quiet click opened “the egg’s” top, sliding upward with a hissing sound.

  He looked around apprehensively. His vision was blurred, he was not able to focus it immediately. When the screen finally stopped appearing in doubles, he was relieved to read the message, “Zero-leap is completed, welcome to Board 2!”

  “Everything’s worked just fine,” his thoughts were now coming back to order. He was on Ghost-2, 800 parsec away from the Earth. He tried to get up, but felt his back unpleasantly sweating and his legs letting him down. The holders embraced his knees with irritating care, gently forcing him back into his seat. He felt a sting to his right thigh. His delayed reaction prompted that the shuttle’s AI had diagnosed his state and gave him a shot of fortifying tranquilizers.

  “No time to waste!” the man gave a command to himself. His second attempt to leave the lodgment was a success. John rolled over “the egg’s” board, his numbed feet felt the carpeted floor and he took his time to straighten up. He tensed and relaxed his body several times. His head stopped spinning, and his body’s coordination and balance gradually restored.

  He gave an alarmed look at the clock. No time to waste. Holding on to the passenger seats for support, he rushed clumsily to the command post. His legs did not obey him, as if they were not his, and he was seriously concerned that he could fall flat on the floor.

  Only when he finally plunged into the chair that immediately busied itself adapting for his body shape, John caught his breath.

  "Overview!" he commanded.

  A holographic screen appeared above the command dashboard. John raised his eyebrows in surprise: why did the shuttle's AI provide not the general overview, but projected the surroundings onto the holoscreen? But then he realized that at relative speeds the human vision did not work. The screen remained blank for some time, but then it started to show a picture, at first blurry, with large grainy spots. Then the picture started to become clearer and gradually reached good resolution. It was not exactly like a direct feed from the outside surveillance cameras, more like an image simulated by a computer.

  On the Ghost's right side, an Astra class starship was hanging like a massive dark monstrosity. Three centuries ago, the first brave explorers used this class of star-ships to go into Deep Space. Their crews, for the most part, were married couples, because very ofte
n their adventure was a one-way ticket. The possibilities of zero-leaps at that time were severely limited. The leap's distance did not exceed five parsec, and the accuracy of reaching the destination desired to be much better.

  Back then, the starship had a proud name "Fulgarating." However, currently all databases listed it as missing in action. It was accidentally discovered by the intelligence unit of the Deep Space Search Department, when it was drifting around the double star Algole in Perseus constellation. The entire crew was long dead. It was decided to transfer the Fulgarating to John Rolls' department, "just in case."

  And the case has presented itself now. Three years ago, while working on the "Evacuation Plan," John remembered about the Fulgarating that had been collecting dust in one of the secret docks, forgotten by everyone. At that point, John did not know when he would have to implement the plan, if ever. When a mysterious object Z-2 was found in the F-14025 sector, however, his hair stood on end, so to say. If nothing else, he had the heightened animal-like ability to feel an eminent threat. He must have inherited that ability from his ancient ancestors, who had to leave their safe and comfortable tree tops and come down to the wild savanna full of dangers, in search for food.

  The starship was transferred to the Arkansas Institute for Human Studies, officially for research purposes. There, a group of young enthusiastic scientists had been long planning an experiment to find out what and how affects the human body when traveling long distance at the near-light speeds.

  John never got into the experiment details. The ship was transferred to sector А-12378, where the density of space dust was considered to be the minimal in the known space, and the Fulgarating started to develop and accelerate its speed. By today, its speed was already approaching 90% of the light speed.