Cimmerian Moon - Prequel
Cheyenne Mountain
March 22, 2012
General of the Armies Moore strode into the Communication’s Room exhibiting his authority, as he should. He held the highest military rank of the United States. It didn’t matter if it was 0145 or 1345. He was on and ready twenty-four hours of the day. On paper there was only one man higher on the totem pole than him—the President of the United States. And contrary to what everyone believed, that was on paper only.
Everyone assumed the president was the one who had his finger on the little red button. No. If something like that was going to go down, Moore would call the president and tell him to push that little red button. There would be no asking for permission or wondering what to do while the president was deciding what the American people would think of him. This wasn’t like the G-D movies.
“Talk to me Bradley,” he said, focusing on the junior officer fifteen feet in front of him.
As he walked through the room, his boots thumped against the linoleum that had been laid over the cement floor and echoed off the walls. No one turned to greet him as he strode past. Instead they focused all their attention on their workstation monitors.
He knew they were scared of him, so turning to greet him would have been out of character for anyone here. They kept their earpieces in, pretending they hadn’t heard him. That was fine with him. He knew he didn’t wield his power recklessly. They were scared of him because he was allergic to BS and didn’t have time for formalities. There would never be, “How are the wife and kids?” or “Did little Johnny make it on the baseball team?” coming from him. No, he was all about business.
As Moore made it to Bradley, the junior officer turned to address him. “Sir, it’s traveling at a high rate of speed. If it stays on its course we’ll have an ETA in T-minus fifty minutes.”
“Where the hell did it come from? And while you’re answering that, tell me what the hell it is.” Moore’s voice thundered out.
Bradley swiveled in his chair to view his monitor. He tapped the screen with the eraser of his pencil. Moore, peering over Bradley’s shoulder, viewed the mark where Bradley indicated. “Out of nowhere, it just showed up right here,” Bradley said. “Right before it appeared, there was a four-second anomaly. We didn’t have enough time to blink before it appeared.”
Moore looked from the spot Bradley had pointed out to where the large dots were now on the screen. Shit. No wonder no one had time to react. The anomaly had appeared in the galactic barrier. Nothing ever happened in that sector of space. They hadn’t even known there was a galactic highway drop-off point over there.
“But, I still don’t know what it is.” Moore blinked a couple of times, just in case his eyes were deceiving him.
“Well, um…it appears to be a fleet, Sir.” Bradley paused for a few beats and, as he did, Moore let the words he had just spoken sink in. Then, using the same pencil, Bradley drew an imaginary outline around the cluster of unidentified objects. “They’re arranged in an organized fashion, see?”
