The pilot, Colonel Richards, received a go from the Area 51 tower, and gradually began accelerating the aircraft using the plane’s conventional turbo-jet engine. It took over three miles of runway before the unique shape of the plane produced enough lift for the plane to separate from the ground.
Richards pointed the nose upward at a sixty degree angle, while turning the plane to the south. The acceleration pressed all three crew-members deep into their seats. As the SR-75 passed through ten kilometers it also broke the sound barrier. Richards kept the craft angled up, gaining altitude as it accelerated. When they reached twenty kilometers, he began to level them out. His display indicated they were moving at Mach Two. The conventional turbo-jet engine was beginning to struggle to get enough oxygen at this altitude.
“Switching to PDWE,” Richards announced over the intercom.
He moved his finger over the stick and pressed a red button. The entire plane shuddered as the high speed engine kicked in. PDWE stood for pulsed-detonation-wave-engine. Underneath the conventional engines, the PDWE consisted of a series of high-strength compression chambers. A special fuel mixture, including oxygen, was being pumped into them. An explosion occurred in each chamber in sequence, which formed the high pressure pulse they had just felt. The pulse was sent out of specially designed vents on the rear of the aircraft providing propulsion.
As the explosions occurred faster and faster, the shuddering almost settled into a steady rumble. Aurora passed through Mach 3, then 4 and was still accelerating. The plane was already over Mexico and only eight minutes out from Area 51.
Richards kept a tight eye on the controls and when a display indicated relative speed at Mach 7—over five thousand miles an hour, he finally locked down the throttle. They were covering a mile and a third every second.
“Nav, give me a fix,” Richards asked. His screen flickered for a second, then a green line indicating their planned route appeared. A moment later a red line indicating the craft’s true position updated every five seconds via ground positioning satellites appeared on his main screen. The red was right on top of the green from Nevada through their current location.
“Right on track,” his navigator confirmed what the screen displayed.
“What are we heading toward?” Richards asked his systems officer, Major Rodriguez.
“Target is located one hundred and twenty miles east of the Falklands,” Rodriguez reported. “It is moving on a northward course at a speed of two hundred miles an hour. Target information is originating from muon transmissions being tracked by the super-kamiokande in Japan.”
Richards frowned. He’d read the classified reports on the Gates and they’d been told upon alert that this had something to do with that, but he preferred hard targeting data. “Anything from satellites?” he asked.
“No current coverage of that area,” Rodriguez reported.
Other than the British during the Falkland War, Richards knew, no one much cared about what happened in that part of the world, so it made sense there would be no spy satellites covering the area.
“Nav, ETA at target?” he asked.
“Twelve minutes, thirty-six seconds and counting.”
“What the hell is down there?” Richards wondered out loud.
The water level had dropped over fifty feet already in Lake Baikal. Stunned Russians lined the shore, watching.
Stunned Americans looked out over a massive lake eighty miles long by twenty miles wide, stretching from New Madrid up and downstream. The current of the Mississippi ran through the center of the lake. Corpses continued to surface.
“Let’s take this slow,” Richards said as he throttled back Aurora from Mach 7. They were over Bolivia with the Paraguay/Argentinean border rapidly approaching. Piloting Aurora was vastly different than even a jet fighter. When Richards thought of turning, he had to consider entire countries to be crossed. He wasn’t worried about violating sovereign airspace — they were so high no radar would pick them up as no one would think of ‘painting’ their altitude. By the time Richards had them ‘slowed’ to Mach 3, they were over Buenos Aires and then over the South Atlantic.
“Range?” Richards called out. Technically he could glance at his display and see the read-out, but he was old-school. He believed they were a crew and each man had to be responsible for his specific area. It was also good for morale if the other two crew members felt like they were pulling their weight. He continued to slow the plane below Mach 2.
“Two hundred clicks,” the navigator announced. “ETA in two minutes.”
“Paint me something,” Richards told Rodriguez.
“Extending imaging pod,” Rodriguez announced.
From the belly of the SR-75, a small door slid back. A hydraulic arm extended downward holding a cluster of sophisticated cameras that could pick up from infrared through ultraviolet and thermal images. If they were traveling any faster the entire array would be ripped off, another reason for Richard’s throttle back.
“One minute, thirty seconds,” the navigator reported.
Richards glanced down. Next to his forward looking display a smaller screen showed the imaging. “What the hell?” Richards muttered. A black rectangle filled the screen, almost filling from top to bottom and extending beyond the left and right limits. “Wide angle,” he ordered.
“That is wide angle,” Rodriguez said.
“Geez.” The word came out of Richards’s mouth without conscious thought even as he automatically pulled back on the throttle. “How big is that?” he asked, even though he had no idea what ‘that’ was.
“Radar indicates over two hundred miles wide by twenty high,” Rodriguez reported.
“What is it?” Richards asked as he checked his speed. Almost down to Mach 1.
“Thirty seconds,” the navigator announced.
Richards pushed his stick hard left, beginning a turn. He ignored his screens and looked out the small, thick windows in front of him, twisting his head to the right as the plane turned.
He saw it.
He would have been blind not to see it.
Stretching from horizon to horizon, left to right, a lattice work of black struts supported panels of gray material. The scale was beyond what Richards or his two crewmembers could comprehend. And in the very center was a black sphere a half mile in diameter. Even as they watched, more panels were unfolding at the ends, extending it further and further.
Lightning crackled around the panels and even forty kilometers away, the men aboard Aurora could feel the hair on the back of their necks tingle and raise.
“What the hell is that thing doing?” Richards wondered as he completed the turn.
On board the FLIP, Foreman echoed Richards’ question. And he received an answer. “Water and air,” Ahana whispered, staring at the image relayed from Aurora.
“What?” Foreman demanded.
“The Shadow is draining Baikal, getting fresh water.” Ahana pointed up. “We have a better idea of the layers of the atmosphere surrounding the planet than the layers inside the planet given the simple fact that man has traveled through all those layers on their way into space. That doesn’t necessarily mean that any intelligence has been attached to the knowledge gained.” She tapped the imagery. “From the surface of the planet reaching up to fifteen kilometers is the troposphere. The next five kilometers — where this thing is- is the transition between troposphere and stratosphere, which extends outward from twenty to fifty kilometers. A relatively small constituent element of the stratosphere is made of three oxygen molecules bonded together. It is called ozone.”