The Tomb of the Unknown World

1

The sun came up over a dead world. The only trace of life was that which danced over the gleaming and now crystal clear water. Lying alone on his uncomfortable bunk Captain John Barret allowed his mind to wonder away from the present. Soon enough he would land and be reminded all to well of fickel and tragic thing that some call reality. It didn't seam like that long ago that he was at home with his family enjoying life on the sunny coast of California. It was the information age and the media had become obselete. One could find out anything over the internet at the speed of light. People never turned their computers off anymore. He remembered when he had first heard the horibel news.

Washington D.C. has been bombed. He knew what that meant. Among other things it meant that he would be going back to work soon. He was commanding officer in the special forces of the army. The government had been monitering the activities of a misguided and heavily armored colt in the Middle East. In the history of the United States, very few times has war ever actually been declared. Likewise, there was no cause to interfear with the afairs of another country's problem.

Ten years ago, Russia broke up into seperate nations just as the U.S.S.R. did in the 80's. When they finally made a hostile move by invading the Republic of Moscow and stole chemical and nuclear weapons from the national armory it was clear that the time to interfeare had come.

Since the turn of the century, the United Nations had been losing power. Even with the strength of powerful nations behind it and the United States recent proclomation to longer negosiate with terrorists, things had never been the same since the split up.

When the military derived their motice we determaned that we were dealing with a misguided group of deadfast comunists. And before the U.N. had time to decide on what action should be taken, the group had been permenently desolved when a group somehow infiltrated the building and set off a bomb killing all of the diplimats.

How could anyone in the world have such a blatent disreguard for human life and order. The name of the ringleader, Cregon Iscoch, and that of Hitler, were now used interchangably.

With all of our technowledgy we couldn't do anything. If it had been thirty years ago and we were dealing with China of the former Iraq, we could have locked on a warhead big enough to level the country. But we weren't dealing with an entire army that we could just bomb. Instead we had been put in the position of dealing with ratical terrorists at the point in time when the United States had just specifficly stated that we would not negociate with their kind. But millions of inocent lives were in the balance. If we interfear we may risk hurting a populous of woman and children. If we don't they may be killed anyway. And when they bombed Washington it was like a bad dream. The human race and the pride of a nation are a lot alike. We think that we're so secure, and even that technowlegy will save us. But technowlegy improoves and when the sun comes up, we're still just as vain as we were the day before.

It seemed uterly amazing that with all of our technowlegy they had managed to level the capital of the most powerful nation in the world. If we were going to stand a chance we were going to have to rethink our defense systems.

He rembered the way things had been the last time he was in a war. It had been years since the Gulf War and still more since Vietnam. That had been a scuffle compared to what we were facing now. In 2003 Sadam Hussein had gone to far and was captured and locked up causing the calapse of the Middle Eastern savagry and creating peace for the time.

It seemed rather trite for him to lie there fealing sorry for himself. He was a good commander and the time had come for him to commmand again. The problem with war is that once you've killed a person you never really get over it. Unfortunatly, it gets a little easier every time until you have no sense of decency left and your more machine than man.

***

He stepped off the transport jet and soluted the waiting guards. It was colder than he had remembered. The Antarctic wind bit into him a little. Hurrying into the bunker, he was greated by comrads. After going through a seris of checkpoints and scanners, the guards led him onto the elevator which led to the sub-teranian breifing room. He cringed at the familiar grinding sound of the gears. The doors slid open.

I part of the wall to his left was covered by a huge computer generated map, superimposed with some other numbers and flashing dots. Facing the wall where a hundred or so manned consols. Two men in admerals' uniforms approaced him.

"Captain John Barret, reporting for duty sir; service number, 2837e."

"Welcome back Captain," said one of the men, returning his solute.

"I can't say that I'm thuroughly enjoying myself," said Barret abrasively.

Knowing him to posess such an atitude and excersicing it quite freaquently, Admeral B. J. Smeling forced a cough to break the silence and said,

"Yes, well...Ah, John, I'd like you to meet Admeral James Duff. He came here on assignment and what with the cauyous decided to stay on a while."

This was an attempt at humor, for everyone knew full well that this was all that was left of enlisted personell. Duff couldn't have left if he wanted to.

"Nice to meet you," said Barret with a firm handshake, as was the way in which he comported himself.

"Same to you," said Duff.

"Ya, John and I go way back, don't we John," said Smeling.

"Ya, we sure do," replied Barret.

They stood looking at each other for several moments. If they were indeed friends, Duff noticed an exchanged glance which momentarily controdicted the statement. Each pair of eyes seamed to stare into the other man's soul. Then, both faces turned to smiling, and they nodded understandingly.

Not knowing what to make of it, Duff continued with the prebriefing.

"You know why you're here?" said he with a tone of patronage.

"I have an idea."

"Follow us. We'll breif you on the way."

They walked through the room past the feild of consols. Duff slid a key card through a scanner and they entered a small, sound proofed, windowless room. Taking their seats, Smeling turned on a moniter which displayed a miniture projection of the image on the large wall outside.

"Those red dots, they're a shipment of nuclear weapons that we've been tracking."

"I couldn't help but notice that readout there, if I'm not mistaken, that's half a million megatons. Enough..."

"...to turn the entire planet into a lifless smoldering dead rock," completed Duff.

"If put to their full potential, a genocide of biblical proportion," said the other man.

"We're in way over our heads, and there's no way we can crawl out without finding ourselves looking down a gun barrel," said Duff.

"Yes, but we're missing the underlying point. This isn't about the pride of a nation any more-this is a free-for-all," said Smeling.

"So this is about doing the right thing," said Duff retorically.

"There are lives to consider," said Smeling, about the trail off into one of his tademark ramblings.

Before he could, Barret interupted, saying,

"These weapons-I trust they require a self-destruct command. They can't be blown up by another explosion."

"Well, yes, of course," said Smeling.

"Where are they coming from," asked Barret.

"How are you tracking them?"

"Satalite," said Duff, "but we're sure they'll be making stelf convoys soon enough."

It did seam like the logical thing to do. If they had discovered some new material, it would be invaluable to science, to humanity, and would bring in a fortune for whoever had it.

"We've analized the debris from Washington," said Duff. "It's not even close to anything that is now on record." Scientists are still working on it, and I don't claim to know everything yet, but," he looked very thoughtfuly at the floor for a moment, like a child that had just been scolded, "we haven't ruled out the possibility of some sort of extraterestrial substance."

"So, you're saying that what we've got is a bunch of wackos, running around with nuclear weapons, collecting souvinears from Area 51, and comprimising global security," exclaimed Barret.

The two other men looked at each other and exchanged a gllance which seemed to say, "Well...yes?"