Red Hope: An Adventure Thriller - Book 1 Read online

  RED

  HOPE

  Book 1

  -- This is the first part of a two-novel series --

  JOHN DREESE

  RED HOPE

  Copyright © 2014 by John J. Dreese.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-0-692-32906-1

  Pages: 251

  The characters and events in this book are entirely fictional. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by any means without the express permission of the author. This includes reprints, excerpts, photocopying, recording, or any future means of reproducing text.

  Edited by Kristen Warthen and Jason Defenbaugh.

  Cover art by Elena Greer.

  Email: [email protected]

  Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JJDreese/

  Amazon Details Page:

  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RA7QOHY

  Version 1.428, Updated December 2, 2016

  Published in the United States of America.

  Soft Science Fiction (Sci-Fi)

  Red Hope is an adventure story with elements of soft sci-fi. Don't be afraid. It has simple scientific principles that anybody can understand - you won't need a calculator or a slide rule to enjoy this tale. With that said, let's get started on an adventure that began only two hours ago...

  For Lee, Daniel, Caroline,

  George, and Martha

  Table of Contents

  Artifact Image

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Author's Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  The Artifact

  CHAPTER 1

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  Good news is rarely born after midnight. A ringing telephone cracked open the silence just before 3:00 a.m. It rattled on an antique nightstand, only an arm’s reach away from the most powerful leader of the free world.

  Hours earlier, President Daggett Jennings finished the first campaign fundraiser of what was sure to be a long season. Collapsing poll numbers forced the process on him much earlier than usual. When the event was over, the president staggered into bed barely conscious; his head melted into the pillow. Now the phone was ringing. That awful phone. The president reached out of bed to pick up the receiver. He reluctantly brought it back to his ear.

  “Hello,” he groaned.

  “Sorry to wake you at this hour Mr. President. The Director of NASA is trying to reach you. He says it’s urgent. Shall I patch him through?” asked the voice of the overnight White House operator.

  “Not again,” whispered the president.

  “Excuse me, sir?” questioned the operator.

  “Nothing. Please patch him through. Thanks.”

  The NASA director was an old friend. The president had to take this call. After he heard the phone call transfer click, the president cleared his throat with a cough and asked, “Chris, are you bleeding to death? Because you better be to call me this late.”

  On the other end of the line was the longtime head of NASA, a short man named Chris Tankovitch who sported a full head of dark black hair. He had a beet-red face and looked like the poster child for hypertension. Chris was taken aback by the irritation buried in the president’s voice, but nothing was going to stop him tonight.

  “I have some incredible news that can’t wait until morning. It’s going to change our lives forever.”

  President Jennings let out a painful sigh. “Wait, wait, wait. Is this about the budget meeting tomorrow? Because that can wait. Really. Good night, Chris.”

  “No, wait, hang on! This is more of an interplanetary issue, okay? Look, I don't think the budget will be a problem after tonight.”

  That caught the president’s attention.

  “Okay, tell me what it is,” demanded the frustrated president. He glanced over to see if the phone call woke up his wife. It did. She stared back with worry.

  Miles away, Chris smiled in anticipation.

  “It's something that I have to show you in person.”

  The president imagined Chris pushing his glasses back up onto his nose as he was talking.

  “All right, come on over. I’ll tell the guards to expect you.”

  The president hung up the phone. He leaned over to give his wife a kiss on the forehead.

  “I’ll be back in a little bit,” he whispered.

  “Everything okay?” she asked with a groggy voice.

  “Yes, it’s just Chris. He’s got another wild hair up his rear end that he needs to talk about.”

  “I hope that’s figurative,” she said. “Go easy on Chris. He’s the only reason you passed physics.”

  The president chuckled and said, “I know, I know, and that’s why I made him the director of NASA.”

  He sat up on the bed, put his feet on the floor, and his hands on his knees. His brain was still foggy from being in such a deep sleep.

  The presidency had grayed his hair and drained the part of his soul which he hadn’t auctioned off during his rise to power. He breathed slowly, desperately wanting to close his eyes and slip back into sleep. Still in his pajamas, he wandered haphazardly toward the door, quietly opened it, and disappeared down the darkened hallway.

  Just outside the White House, the head of NASA ran up the sidewalk after going through the security gate. The cool night breeze tried to shake the papers out of his tightly gripped hands. It only managed to mess up his hair. His cellphone was alive with beeps and glowing lights. Messages were rolling in for him even at this early hour. His expression was a mix of determination and excitement.

  Chris finally arrived at the main door. A Secret Service agent let him in.

  He stepped into the Oval Office where the president was already sitting, sipping a cup of coffee. Chris was amped up and knew he wouldn’t sleep for days. The president stood up and shook Chris’s hand in that political, two-fisted type of handshake.

  “Chris, you look like death warmed over,” chided the president.

  “Well, it’s been a long night,” complained Chris.

  The president pointed toward the sofa and said in a fatherly voice, “All right. Have a seat. Have a seat right there. Would you like some coffee?”

  Chris declined with the wave of his hand. The president motioned for the night butler to leave the room.

  As they both sat down, the president said, “Please tell me what all the fuss is about.”

  “I’ll get right to it, DJ,” said Chris informally.

  “Stop right there,” interrupted the president. “Please show some respect for this office. I worked hard to get here.”

  The awkward silence that followed was a bookend on nearly twenty-five years of friendship, one which started when they attended the Ohio State University together. That was n
ow the past and no longer mattered. Chris understood.

  “Okay. Mr. President,” said Chris, apologetically.

  “See? That’s more like it. Please continue.”

  “So, Mr. President, as you know, we sent a rover called Curiosity to Mars, right? Well, it's been driving around for years digging holes and running tests with extremely advanced scientific equipment. It’s found some evidence of ice below the surface and we’ve learned some amazing things about the geology of the Red Planet. With regards to life, however, it hasn't really found anything. Just traces of organic gases.”

  Chris’s arms shot into the air to emphasize his frustration.

  The president nodded and said, “Yes, of course. I remember when it landed. It was a proud moment for our country. That engineer with the mohawk and all.”

  “Yes, that’s the one,” Chris agreed with a head nod. “It really was a proud moment. We sent all of that scientific equipment to Mars, you know, to hopefully find signs of life, whether it be bacteria, or lichen or something. Anything, really. It would be the greatest discovery of our lifetime. But most importantly, it would justify my budget requests,” laughed Chris.

  The president shifted in his chair, obviously getting more interested in what the NASA director was itching to tell him. A similar meeting had taken place years before, but that discovery hadn’t panned out. The president was still skeptical about what Chris was going to say.

  “Mr. President…” he paused.

  “Mr. President, we just found signs of life. Ironically, we didn't need any scientific equipment. All we needed was a camera,” said Chris as his serious face opened up to a smile. His arms spread out wide to personify the word WOW.

  The president sat upright.

  “Well, what did you find? Plants? Animals? I thought Mars was too cold for life. Speak up man!”

  “No sir, we found fossils.”

  The president’s brow furrowed, “A fossil?”

  “No, I said fossils.”

  The president rolled his eyes at the correction.

  Chris realized his social blunder and quickly said, “Yes, but not the kind we’d hoped for or ever expected.”

  As Chris spoke so enthusiastically, he pulled out a photo marked “D” in the corner. He delicately turned it around to reveal a black and white image to the president. The word fossil was reverberating in both of their minds now.

  The president took the photo and slowly sat back into his chair to soak in the image. He took a long deep breath; his left eyebrow lifted to show his skepticism.

  “Okay, Chris, this looks like a picture of a big sparkly boulder.”

  “Look closer,” said Chris. He picked up the president’s reading glasses from the end table and handed them to him.

  The president put them on and held the picture closer. He stared at what he thought had been white streaks and suddenly realized what he missed, narrating his own discovery.

  “Oh my. That looks like the skeleton of a hand. Like the bones of a human hand and maybe even an arm? What’s it holding? There’s a rectangular object in one of the hands; it has some writing. Hard to tell though. Um, a circle. Some lines. A cross or a plus sign? I just don’t get it. Exactly what am I looking at here, Chris?”

  Chris took a moment to form his answer. His fingers tapped nervously on the table edge.

  “It’s some type of human-like hand for sure. However, we don’t know what the object is. Or the symbols. Unfortunately, the object is only readable in the ‘D’ photo that you’re holding. The other pictures just show the fossils from different angles. We’ll have some paleographers at the NSA look at this in the morning.”

  “They study fossils, right?” asked the president.

  “No, you’re thinking of paleontologists. Paleographers study ancient written languages. The NSA keeps a group of them on staff, just in case the bad guys try to use ancient languages to communicate with each other.”

  The president nodded his head. He understood.

  “We’ll find out if these symbols are letters or numbers. We just don’t know right now, but the important thing is that they are symbols of some kind. They are not random lines. Only intelligent life forms create symbols like this.”

  Chris shifted in his seat and continued, “These images started streaming into the branch office here in Washington, D.C. just a few hours ago. We saw something shimmering next to a very unusual stone structure, like a truncated pyramid of sorts. We drove closer. This gem-encrusted boulder with the fossils was the first thing that we found. We had the Curiosity stop there and take some pictures, and the results are just amazing. This is beyond our wildest dreams.”

  The president stood up and walked over to the big window facing the National Mall. He stared out at the night skyline in silence, barely able to make out the silhouette of the Washington Monument. He continued to talk to Chris while facing outward.

  “Are you absolutely sure this isn't some joke your engineers are playing on you?”

  Chris craned his neck around to look toward the president while he spoke to him.

  “It’s no joke. There were five people on duty at the rover control center in Pasadena when these images started streaming in tonight. They called me right away. I told the engineers not to talk about it with anybody yet. We brought in the head of security immediately and this is officially confidential for now. At least, until you say otherwise. Security briefed our engineers on this, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they've already told their friends.”

  Rather than showing excitement, the president’s face showed concern and puzzlement. He turned around and leaned back on the window sill and began gnawing at his finger nail. Chris spread the other three photos out on the table like playing cards.

  “Here are the other photos: marked A, B, and C. These show the skeleton fossils from a few angles, but none of them show the symbols written on the object or even the building in the background. Photo D is the special one for that. However, these first few photos do show something that looks like part of a skull.”

  “Do you have an estimate for how old the fossils are?” inquired the president as he bit through the edge of a fingernail.

  “The Curiosity has some analysis tools on board. Our guys estimate they’re around two or three million years old. It’s a rough guess.”

  The president ran his hand through his receding hair to help get a grip on this avalanche of information.

  “Look, I’m the president. I’m not a fossil expert. When you said fossils, I expected seashells, trilobites, or even petrified dino poop. But not this. I mean, do we even have human fossils that old here on Earth?”

  Chris blurted out, “I hear what you’re saying. We do have fossils that old here, but they aren’t exactly modern-looking humanoids like this one. We’re simply too new.”

  The president lifted his coffee and took a big drink.

  “So what’s the next step? Are there other fossils nearby? Are you photographing those, too? What about that pyramid structure?”

  The smile on Chris’s face vanished. He hesitated before answering.

  “We can’t do any of that. Unfortunately, Curiosity stopped communicating after the pictures were sent.”

  “What?” gasped the president.

  “We suspect that the RTG finally exhausted itself after that final data transmission.”

  “Okay, what’s an RTG?” asked the confused president.

  “Well, the Curiosity isn’t like the other rovers that we’ve sent; it doesn’t use solar panels for power. Instead, it has a tiny radio-isotope thermoelectric generator. Big words, I know, so we call them RTG’s for short.”

  “Great, now there are two things I don’t understand,” complained the president.

  “Um, think of the RTG as a tiny nuclear reactor that generates heat and electricity for the Curiosity. As with all nuclear power sources, RTG’s eventually decay to a point where they simply stop working.”

  The president was incredulo
us. He walked over and dropped into his chair.

  “You mean it sent pictures of the first intelligent life we’ve ever encountered in the universe, and then it just died?”

  Chris shrugged his shoulders and he replied, “I know. I realize it’s a crazy coincidence, but it was already near its expected service life. That final transmission took a lot of power. We’re lucky that we got what we got.”

  “I almost can’t believe the unfortunate timing,” said the president as his head slumped. He continued, “Well, I guess we don’t have many choices available now, do we?”

  “I agree, Mr. President. I agree,” said the NASA director.

  The president leaned forward in his chair. He put one hand on Chris’s shoulder and said, “I guess we're going to Mars.”

  Chris nodded with a large grin.

  “I was hoping you would say that. And we’re going to need more than just a new machine. We need to send people. Definitely a geologist and a paleontologist.”

  President Jennings stared down at the photograph of the skeleton hand holding the rectangular object. He studied the precise, yet simple, symbols on it. The president smiled and started laughing out loud. Chris couldn’t help but mimic with his own smile.

  “So, why exactly are we laughing?” asked Chris.

  The president leaned back and stared at the NASA director.

  “This is really huge, Chris. I think you just saved my presidential legacy from mediocrity.”

  They both shared a laugh that broke the tension. The president set the photo down on the table and took another sip of coffee. He looked at the NASA director with concerned eyes.

  “Chris, I am worried about something. I think a discovery of this magnitude might affect my voter base in, well, unpredictable ways. Some may be afraid. Some may be excited. And some, I just can’t predict.”

  The NASA director held his hand up to pause the president.

  “I get what you’re saying, but keep in mind these aren’t pictures of some grinning alien staring back at us. The culture that we found seems to be long extinct.”