The blue black had turned to just black. There was a white border around the world. Lights edged the slick tarmac with their necessary illumination. Drops of rain glittered on the chain link fence. Beyond which a vast empty silence of floodlit grass stretched into the blackness of distance.
Everything was very simple. Purposeful. Nothing left to chance.
Midnight 55.
The hangar was blue black too and the usual cavern. The teeming rivulets of water on the ground ended abruptly at the open door. Nothing unwanted got inside.
Inside, it waited quietly, hummed to itself with poise and purpose.
If you've never seen a helicopter gunship up close, the mass, the density, will surprise you. See it in the air and it's all about sleekness dancing in the air, and deadly force. On the ground, it's an ugly, brooding beast.
The helicopter gunship was not why the core people were here however, post rain, post being whipped by the wind. Post briefing.
The real reason lay deeper in, further into the cavern, behind its black, massive protector, it's clumsy older brother.
No, something sleek awaited there. Something lithe and improbable. No technology of Earth that people in the wider world knew about anyway. Silver, flat, the shape of a tear drop. Impenetrable and fresh from near-Earth orbit, this was Midnight 55. A call sign, a moniker, a locus of action. Secret and resourced beyond most people's dreams of a defense budget, this humming thing was absolutely brand new yet ancient at the same time.
What secrets it could tell us, if it could only talk. And yet, talk it could. When it chose to.
YOU ARE READING
Midnight 55
Science FictionWhat is Midnight 55? What is its purpose, and where has its technology come from? Only these five people know.
