The Black Ships Read online

  Both men stood. “Thank you Thomas. Please show him straight in.” Parnell straightened his coat, doing up the top button. “All right Sam, let’s see if the same old tired bullshit will get us through one more uncomfortable meeting.”

  Moffett Field

  Mountain View, California

  January 4th, 2026

  Charles Gray sat at the conference table, not quite sure he heard correctly. “Mr. McAdam, it’s a little late to ask for that kind of payload increase.” He reached for his coffee, needing time to think. Without the capital from Red Flag Minerals we’ll be left with four half-built airships and a public relations nightmare. “The first four will have to lift off the graving docks with five-hundred ton capacity. We can start work on larger models right away, but the units in construction now probably can’t be changed. Tim?” He looked over at the team leader, an engineer from Chimera.

  The engineer frowned, shaking his head. “Administrator Gray is right. We would likely end up with an airframe that collapsed in the first heavy wind.” He launched into an explanation of the structure of the massive adaptive buoyancy aircraft as an assistant approached Charles.

  “Sir,” the assistant whispered, “we have a call for you from the White House press office.” He backed up to give Charles room to stand, then led him to a side room where the call could be taken while still seeing what was happening in the boardroom.

  Charles sat down at the small table, taking a deep breath before reaching for the phone. Surprise calls from the White House are rarely a good thing, he thought as he picked up the receiver. “This is Charles Gray.”

  “Hi Chuck. It’s Mary. We’re about to announce NASA’s enthusiastic offer of help to JAXA in sorting out the comms glitch and we figured we should let you know about it before you get ambushed by some reporter.” She sounded apologetic, no doubt fully aware that it was all just window dressing.

  “Hey, Mary. Thanks for the heads-up. We’re already in discussion with JAXA but beyond prepping a hybrid rocket for an extra backup unit, there isn’t really all that much we can do for them.” Out in the boardroom, Ed McAdam was holding up a hand to cut Tim off, pulling out his cell phone with the other hand and putting it to his ear.

  “That’s all I need to hear, Chuck.” There was a pause. “Actually, Jack and I will put that into the release. The president doesn’t want it to look like we’re asleep at the switch so we have to go through the motions. Can you spare a minute to go over the wording with us?”

  “Yeah, sure. That’s fine by me.” Charles realized that Ed had started heading for the door of Charles’ temporary call room, his face a riot of emotion. Oh God, if he’s coming in here to tell me he‘s pulling out over a last minute payload change, I’ll be lucky to save my job, let alone NASA’s future. “Hang on a second, Mary. I may have a fire to put out here first.” He hit the mute button as Ed stormed into the room.

  Ed was holding his phone in his left hand. He stabbed at it with his right index finger, releasing a soft layer of ambient noise as the speaker activated. “Mr. Gray, I have one of our scientists from Mauna Kea on the line. You’re going to want to hear this.” His voice level rose as he spoke to the phone, his voice laced with strain. “Dr. Willsen, I have the Administrator of NASA in the room with me; please repeat everything you just told me.”

  Mammoth Cruise Lines

  Engineering Office, Dodge Island,

  Miami, Florida

  January 4th, 2026

  "Off to Finland tomorrow, you poor stiff?” Davidoff’s tone clearly indicated that sympathy was not being offered. Frank Bender kept working for a few seconds, finishing his train of thought before turning from his 243rd email of the day to face the designer.

  “I am,” he said in his usual tone of mild surprise and amusement. “Leaving at 9:00 am, getting back Friday at four in the afternoon.” Davidoff held out a plastic container and Frank reached over to take an apple slice. “Looks like I’ll have to catch up on emails when I get there; I have another eighty or so to go before I’m up to date with all your damn changes!”

  “Hey, they ask for it and I draw it in.” The designer waved off Frank’s accusation with his free hand. “If they want a toilet put in the middle of the casino floor, I’ll put out a rocket to the architects.” He leaned against the drawing table as he grinned at Frank. “Passengers would likely start dropping casino chips in and pulling the handle, especially the three-day cruisers.”

  Frank could feel a rant coming on so he pulled out his new tablet, plugging it into his laptop so he could be sure of a full charge. The distraction worked. Instead of an increasingly angry tirade about the lack of manners among short-duration cruisers, Frank was rewarded with a low whistle.

  “That the new version with the full density holographic screen?” Davidoff came over to the cubicle entrance, unable to resist a neat gadget.

  “Yep,” Frank replied. “No pretending to work on my laptop like all the other idiots on the flight. I’ve got this baby loaded to the gills with graphic novels, music and the whole second season of Legacy.”

  The sci fi series about a Mars colony had come out as the first ISS mission was on its way to set up habitats on the red planet. It portrayed a future where Earth was wiped out by a massive comet, leaving fifty colonists as the only humans in the universe. The timing couldn’t have been better and the show was a massive hit. Bender had been a fan after borrowing the first season from one of the other engineers.

  “Speaking of graphic novels, when does yours go on sale?” Davidoff asked as he moved back to his comfortable perch on the drawing table.

  “Dunno. I figured the first would be up by now but all the big retailers have had the file for over two weeks and still no sign of it anywhere.” He gave a good natured shrug. “Probably the soundtrack that’s slowing everything down.”

  “Will you still remember all of us little people when you’re rich and famous?” The designer smirked but he still sounded like he believed that day would come.

  “Oh sure, you can design the environments for me when I switch over to 3D.” Frank’s smile had a wistful edge to it. “Just imagine, building an entire city, or even a cruise ship without having to deal with execs screaming at you over timelines and budgets.” He shook his head, not willing to let himself believe the dream until he had solid sales figures first. “If that story takes off, I’ll be out of this stinking job so fast it’ll make my own head spin!”

  “I thought you enjoyed swanning about Europe, building the largest cruise ship on Earth,” the designer frowned. “At least the largest for a couple of months; I’m hearing rumors already from the other end of the harbor.”

  Frank sighed. “That’s part of it. I take a lot of heat from hundreds of people and when it’s all done, I get to stand at the back of a large crowd and watch the Operations guys take a Bow. Leviathan will be the largest in the world but it means nothing. Two months after she launches, a dry dock in Italy will open their flood valves and the latest largest ship will slip out into the Mediterranean.”

  He shook his head and stared out the window as a rival line’s ship sailed out into the Atlantic. “It’s the constant pressure. I get heat from the fourth floor about the budget, I get heat from the second floor about nailing down a guaranteed shakedown date, and those idiots in Operations are constantly trying to change the designs without going through channels. I caught the Staff Captain telling our systems integrator to move half of the bridge equipment. I dropped on that moron like a crane accident.”

  “You gotta watch out for the Ops guys,” Davidoff warned. “They’re the folk that deal with the paying customers. Howard is always reminding us that it’s the crews that bring in the actual revenue. They can make a lot of trouble for us.”

  “See, that doesn’t make sense to me,” Frank countered. “Sure they deal with the customers but they’d be absolutely useless if we didn’t build ships for them.” He raised one eyebrow. “How exactly would a crew make money for us if we weren’t doing our own jobs?” He sighed in exasperation. “This whole business of treating them like royalty is bullshit. They need to start taking their responsibilities to the project more seriously and quit playing politics.”

  “You know they can’t resist trying to blow their own mistakes out of proportion and then pin it on some patsy.” Davidoff was getting into a bad mood. “You should hear the fuss they’re making about the size of the central atrium on the second ship in the Leviathan class. Everything’s their idea until they don’t like it and then it suddenly seems like I do the damn layouts single handedly.” He wagged a warning finger at Frank. “Mark my words, that staff captain is pushing a whiny complaint straight to the top.”

  “Oh, I’m counting on that,” Frank answered in a dark tone. “I’m pretty sure that genius sent a blistering email all the way up the chain to Howard’s office.” He gazed out the window as a speedboat burbled its way through a restricted speed zone. “As soon as it gets to me, it’s going to get a reply-to-all explaining how he exposed us to huge liability.

  “For one thing, talking to a sub-contractor violates the Prime Contractor clause. If an accident happens at the shipyard and he’s been giving orders to the subs, He ends up in jail, not the lead contractor’s superintendent. Doesn’t even need to be related to the console he had changed. Some tin-basher falls off a scaffold and dies – the staff captain’ll find himself in court.

  “Even worse, if any one of those panels were to malfunction and cause the ship to run aground, the designers would point to his changes and say it’s our problem.”

  “Did his changes make sense at least?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Frank grinned. “And that’s part of the point I want to make when Howard comes to next week’s progress meeting. The Captain and Staff Captain were part of the layout consultations right from the start. They would rather show up on site and give last minute orders than simply ask for it to be fixed at the start. Makes ‘em feel important. They saw the console layout and actually signed each one.”

  “Seems to me, that would have been a pretty good time to correct obvious errors in the layout,” Davidoff mused. “So what was the issue?”

  “A lot of consoles need to be moved. Policy on watch keeping changed a year ago and most of the operators will end up needing their terminals switched.” He raised an eyebrow. “You might recall, Kim, that we’ve been rotating the rest of the fleet through the dockyards to update the older bridges?” Not for the first time, Frank wondered if his friend had been named for Kim Philby, the high ranking Soviet double-agent. Old Ivan Davidoff never did talk about his childhood in Russia.

  Davidoff smacked his forehead. “Sorry, Frank; I must have pulled an old template when we drew up the bridge layout for Leviathan. Want me to send a change request to the Architects?”

  “No, I should send it. They’re supposed to be the ones that know where the terminals go in the first place. That way, if I have it on one of my own change requests, I can track the cost of the change to my Stupid crap that Ops want done at the last minute total.” He reached out for a second slice of apple. “The last fifty changes have all been over the budget line so I have to take every new one upstairs to get Howard’s autograph.”

  “So,” Davidoff’s face reflected the import, “every week Howard hears about how Jim decided to change the thruster wattage, or…”

  “Or how the Staff Captain waited until the last minute to blunder in with an expensive change?” Frank got up and started stuffing his gear into his carry-on. “I should be able to keep your name out of this. If push comes to shove, we can always throw the architects under the bus; the whole watch change idea was their recommendation anyway.”

  “Yeah, those idiots!” Davidoff half-joked.

  “Seriously, I have to agree with that sentiment.” Frank turned back to the designer, his carry-on in his hand. “They shouldn’t even be looking at the individual terminal names on your layouts – you’re responsible for traffic flow. They’re supposed to be the ones who call the technical shots. All they really end up doing is copying your cad files and pasting whole sections into their title blocks and it’s their drawings that I’m gonna take upstairs next week.”

  “Thanks, Frank.” Davidoff smiled. “If you get them to send the change before you leave Finland. I’ll hammer them about the conduit changes so they remember to sort it all out in time.”

  “Thanks, moi droog You want me to bring back a bottle of Lakka for your dad?”

  “Sure. You know, he’s still waiting to hear when you and Ellen can come over for some ‘gator.”

  Frank had started down the hall but paused to think for a moment. “Let’s aim for this Saturday and I’ll clear it with Ellen tonight.” He continued towards the elevators. “See you Monday, Kim.” Then, with a wave over his shoulder – “Saturday, I mean!”

  The War Room

  Washington, D.C.

  January 4th, 2026

  Nathaniel Parnell walked into the room, followed by Sam and Mary. “Mary, if you want to talk about aliens, shouldn’t you be standing in front of a tar-paper shack or a pile of gravel or something?” He strode to his seat, nodding at the military and civilian staff arrayed around the table who all sprung to their feet. “I mean, the stuff my son watches on TV - the UFO interviews always show some borderline lunatic with a pint-shaped lump in his pocket.” He dropped into his seat, the rest of the room following suit. “Nice start on a story, but maybe throw in some zombies or a couple of sensitive vampires.”

  Mary, her attempt at a heads-up having failed utterly, nodded to the young captain who held the remote. “Mr. President, we were advised by the head of NASA that we lost contact with Vinland Station for a very specific, very alarming reason.” The screen at the end of the room flickered on, the image showed Mars. She reached out and took the remote from the officer.

  Parnell leaned forward, his right hand touching the frame of his glasses. “So, what am I looking for here?”

  Mary touched the remote and the video feed began to run. The scene pulled back to reveal a massive ship with a profusion of modules and antennae hanging from underneath. The hull was a dull dark grey – almost black, and it consisted of a central docking framework that could hold six independent triangular vessels in a circular array. Three of the sub-vessels were still docked. She paused it again. “These ships are believed to be connected with our loss of communications with Vinland Station.”

  Parnell tore his gaze from the screen to look at Mary, one eyebrow arched. “Director Perdue, are you telling me that someone built this thing and launched it to Mars without any of our high tech gee-gaws letting us know about it?”

  Mary hit the play button. “Technically, sir, that’s the long and short of it.”

  Parnell was still staring at her. “How the hell could anyone pull that off?”

  Mary paused the video at the next marker. “Because, Mr. President, that ship didn’t come from this solar system. “ Having learned from her parents – both Hollywood producers - she let the scene on the monitor do the rest of the talking for her.

  Quiet gasps and exclamations rippled around the room as realization dawned. The scene showed an insect-like landing vehicle hovering outside the mine entrance on Olympus Mons. A squad of figures were frozen in their advance on the entrance, their proximity to a NASA surface rover making it easy to estimate their height.

  “They’re the size of children,” the Secretary of Defense mused. “What is that behind them? It almost looks like they have…”

  “Tails?” Mary finished for him. “That’s the general consensus upstairs. Whoever these little guys are, they’re definitely not from here, folks.”

  The president reached behind his lenses to rub his eyes. “I suppose there’s no chance of someone flinging the doors open and yelling Surprise!”. He looked back up. “Mary, where did you get this imagery from?

  “Chuck Gray got it from Ed McAdam, the CEO of Red Flag Minerals. They were over at Moffett field for a progress meeting on their heavy-lift airship project when one of Ed’s minions called him with the news. I was on the phone with Chuck at the time talking about assistance to JAXA.”

  “Haven’t I met Ed? The ribbon cutting at Moffett?” The president turned to Sam. “Tall guy, sour face, chewed my ear off for ten minutes about a registry for mineral claims on the moon?” He looked around the room. “Is this guy reliable? I mean, it could be a hoax that got out of hand, couldn’t it?”

  Mary shrugged. “Hockey could be a hoax for all I know - a bunch of grown men in short pants chasing a puck around the ice. I’d believe you if you told me it was all some sort of mob front for money laundering.”

  Parnell pointed a finger at her, “Watch yourself, young lady. You’re on thin ice, talking about hockey like that.” Nobody was certain whether Parnell truly loved the Capitals, or whether he just thought it wise to support the hometown team.

  Mary was pretty sure he was jumping on the hockey comment to give himself a few seconds to wrap his head around an almost unbelievable dilemma. “Mr. President, Chuck has staff in Hilo and they’re probably arriving at the observatory on Mauna Kea as we speak. We’ll have independent confirmation from them any minute now. Until then, I thought it best if we proceed as if we were sure of the threat.”

  Parnell nodded. “You made the right call, pulling everyone together. If this does turn out to be a hoax, I’ll be more relieved than angry. Hell, I’ll take all of you up to the residence for a kegger!” He looked around the room, taking a deep breath. “So, if it’s not a hoax, what do we do about it?”

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  January 4th, 2026

  "Evening, Mike.” Pete McGregor walked into the control room with a bag of food, handing it to the Red Flag astronomer. “Mr. Gray tells me you’ve been up here since the discovery? Sorry to barge in, but he wanted independent confirmation.”