LITMIR.BIZ

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not down.

      “Airman. Requisition the Transat Four satellite cluster, please. We need situational awareness on this, exquisite level.”

      “Ma’am, that’s a collateral system. It’s being used by someone else. Currently logged for … CIA overseas usage—”

      “You have my authorization to transmit Clear Eyes priority.”

      Sugarman swallowed. “Yes, ma’am. We are seizing the satellite feed now.”

      After a flurry of keypunches, an active satellite image blinked onto the front screens. It showed an infrared view of a jeep convoy speeding across dark desert terrain, leaving twin white tire tracks visible in the sand. Crisp black targeting crosshairs were overlaid on the image, above horizontal range lines.

      From the in-room speakers, an unfamiliar and angry voice began to sputter, “Attention unidentified Clear Eyes permission. Get off this channel. You are currently interrupting a sensitive—”

      “Rezone that eye to our coordinates,” said Hopper. “And mute that man.”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      The room fell back into silence, except for the frantic typing of the analysts, each focusing their laser-like attention on a few drops of the rolling tide of data pouring into their monitors from the trunk feed.

      Somewhere above, on a classified orbital trajectory, the lens of a spy satellite adjusted silently in the vacuum of space. The image of the jeep convoy blurred and disappeared from the monitors. Seconds later, the eye settled onto a patch of the Amazon jungle, and the camera iris spiraled into crystal clarity.

      Across the monitors hanging high at the front of the room, the anomaly appeared in complex detail—its metallic-looking surface beaded with droplets of jungle mist, faint hexagonal imprints etched into its skin, and the whole of it gleaming like a beetle’s waxy shell in the rising midday sun.

      “Infrared,” said Hopper.

      On the second monitor, the image appeared in gray scale, with lighter pixels indicating hotter surface temperatures. The image of the surrounding jungle canopy dissolved into a grayish mass of what looked like storm clouds. The anomaly itself was pure white now, so bright it briefly washed out the rest of the image.

      “It’s hot, ma’am. Really hot,” said an analyst. “See how the nearby vegetation is curling back?”

      Hopper nodded, pointing at the monitor. “What are those faint speckles? All of them seem to be the same temperature, but cooling fast.”

      At his desk, Sugarman put his face close to his dedicated feed. He spoke briefly into his headset to another analyst. Finally, he responded.

      “We believe those are dead bodies, ma’am. About fourteen of them. Human.”

      “You can’t possibly confirm that, Airman. Plenty of large primates live in that area of the world.”

      “Some of them are carrying spears, ma’am.”

      Hopper was silent for a moment.

      “I see,” she said.

      On screen, the thermal image flashed to white, saturating the sensor and washing out the screen. As the exposure slowly returned to normal, the anomaly seemed different. The fading specks were now closer to it.

      “What was that?” asked Hopper.

      “I … it appears to be growing,” responded Sugarman. “And there’s something new emerging from the middle of the lake. A smaller, six-sided structure.”

      The third monitor lit up with splotches of color. A hazy cloud of blue and orange appeared in the atmosphere above the anomaly. It seemed to be drifting east on a slight wind current.

      “We’ve got an ash cloud,” said another analyst. “The atmosphere down there is soaked with it. It must have been ejected from the anomaly somehow. More readings incoming …”

      The colonel drew a finger down a column of figures on the top-secret laminated binder page. The vital information had been laid down as simply as a child’s book report, created with the age-old maxim of K.I.S.S.—“Keep it simple, stupid”—in mind.

      Her finger stopped at a mass spectrum graph. There was a tremor in her voice as she issued her next command:

      “Get the mass spec readings from the drone.”

      “Already on it, ma’am.”

      Seconds later, a junior analyst slid a mass spectrograph onto the colonel’s desk.

      Once again, Hopper ran a finger across the laminated sheet. When she stopped and looked up, the tremor in her voice was gone.

      “We have positive ID,” she said.

      “Of what?” asked Sugarman, pivoting to face his boss. His lips were pale, voice dry and on the verge of cracking. Behind him, the entire room of analysts had turned to watch Hopper, solemn in their fear.

       “The signature peaks are an almost exact match,” she replied, “to the Andromeda Strain recovered in Piedmont, Arizona, over fifty years ago. Somehow, something made of a similar substance is down in that jungle right now. And based on the visuals, it’s getting bigger. Those bodies are almost underneath it.”

      “But that’s not—” Sugarman stopped himself. “You mean to say …”

      Every person in the room knew the purpose of this mission. Yet none of them had ever actually believed the strain would reappear. Not even now, in the face of overwhelming evidence. Except for one.

      Hopper stood and addressed her incredulous staff, tucking the binder under her arm.

      “Project Eternal Vigilance has just fulfilled her purpose. Our work here is done. I wish you well on your future assignments, whatever they may be.”

      Colonel Hopper then turned and walked directly toward the high-priority communications room—a soundproofed closet, really. The analysts watched her go with their mouths open, speechless.

      Over her shoulder, Hopper issued her final orders.

      “Alert your colleagues at Peterson AFB and transfer those feeds. Based on an exponential rate of growth, tell them I estimate we’ve got less than four days.”

      “Four days? Until what?” asked Sugarman.

      “Until that anomaly spreads all the way to the ocean.”

      And with that, Project Eternal Vigilance was complete.

       Alert

      RAND L. STERN WAS ALREADY DEAD TIRED, AND THE day had hardly begun. A four-star general with a sprawling family and a rocket-powered career, Stern faced a constant and overwhelming demand for his attention. For his own part, he was simply looking forward to eating lunch for fifteen uninterrupted minutes.

      Stern was a compact African American man in his fifties and only now going gray at the temples. A top graduate of the US Air Force Academy, he had spent thousands of hours as a command pilot in an F-16 Fighting Falcon, hundreds of those in combat. Afterward, he had done a stint as a professor at West Point. And for the last three years, he had been in charge of the United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), after his nomination was confirmed unanimously by the US Senate in 2016.

      Stationed at Peterson Air Force Base in central Colorado, General Stern oversaw the activities of thirty-eight thousand individuals concerned with monitoring and protecting American interests in the area from two hundred to twenty-two thousand miles up, a volume of space dwarfing that of the entire planet. His annual budget was in the tens of billions, twice that of any existing multinational company.

      If asked, he would respond that his most complex command assignment was the parenting of four preteen girls

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