NHI, page 1
NHI
Non-Human Intelligence
Isaac Hooke
To my Dad
My most devoted fan
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Author’s Notes & Resources
About the Author
VIP Readers’ Group
Prologue
The dark void of the sky loomed above the even blacker void of the ocean, an eerie peace that was abruptly interrupted by a flashing glow from the annunciator panel.
Captain Lucas Morrison glanced down. A warning message appeared on the Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) display, accompanied by the Boeing 777’s aural fire bell.
FIRE CARGO FWD.
On cue, the faint, noxious smell of something burning hit the captain’s nostrils.
He glanced at his copilot. Anton was staring at him urgently.
The repeated chime of the aural bell was getting under Lucas’ skin… he hit the reset switch and the aural bell ceased. The warning message remained on the EICAS, while the light on the annunciator continued to glow bright red.
Anton began to read the non-normal checklist from the EICAS.
“Forward cargo fire arm switch,” Anton said.
Lucas reached up and found the prerequisite switch in the flight compartment overhead panel. This would de-energize the recirculation fan and close the air vents in the forward cargo compartment in an effort to minimize the amount of smoke entering the cabin.
He flipped it. “Armed.”
“Cargo fire discharge switch,” Anton continued.
Lucas pushed and held the switch for one second, discharging the Halon stored in the two fire extinguisher bottles located in the forward cargo compartment.
“Activated,” Lucas said.
“LDG ALT selector, set to 8000,” Anton read.
Lucas pulled the Landing Altitude selector to the on position and then turned it to eight thousand. Normally this was used to set the expected landing altitude for the arrival at the destination airport. In addition to calculating the approach and landing speeds, it would also make the necessary adjustments to cabin pressure, in this case decreasing it—the goal being to minimize Halon leakage from the cargo compartment, where the pressure was currently somewhat less than that of the cabin.
“Engaged.” Lucas hit the intercom button. “This is the captain, cabin crew to your stations.”
“Issuing mayday.” Anton was flipping through his tablet with his index finger. “The closest airport is Veer Savarkar, Andaman Island.” Anton activated his headset. “Lufthansa 778, mayday mayday mayday. Cargo fire. We intend to divert to Veer Savarkar. Confirm.”
Lucas changed course, making for the designated airport.
Without warning all the indicators on the instrument panel went out. As did the cockpit and running lights. The cabin was plunged into darkness.
“Why aren’t the emergency lights kicking in?” Anton asked.
“I don’t know,” Lucas responded.
“Lufthansa 778, mayday mayday mayday,” Anton tried again. “We intend to divert to Veer Savarkar. Confirm.”
Lucas reached for his phone, intending to activate the flashlight feature. But before he could fish it out of his pocket his gaze latched on to something outside.
What…?
“Mayday mayday mayday,” Anton was saying.
“Anton,” Lucas interrupted. “We have another problem.”
Evan Fischer opened his eyes. It took a moment for him to get his bearings. It was pitch black. The last he remembered, he was aboard Lufthansa 778 en route to Singapore from Frankfort. It felt like he was indeed still in a Lufthansa cabin, replete with the awkward economy seat that unnaturally contorted the lower back, inflicting a pain that would take days to walk off. So unless he was having one of those confused moments where one woke up in a hotel room bed or recliner and momentarily mistook it for one’s own bed, then he was still aboard the flight.
If so, something was wrong. There was no illumination in the cabin at all. No nighttime lighting of the aisle and cabin edges, and all the seat-back displays were off.
And then there was the smell. Smoky. Like burning electronics. Or worse.
With both arms he reached out in the dark and felt the armrests beside him, and then the itchy fabric of the sweater worn by the person in the seat next to his, confirming that he was indeed still aboard the Boeing 777.
His next thought was of the cargo. Was it safe? Had there been an accident? A leak?
He had the window seat, so he slid his fingers along the smooth surface of the wall beside him until he found the window screen and slid it upward so he could look outside. A bright, flashing light forced him to shield his eyes.
“Hey—” someone shouted. But the person’s voice cut off, or rather choked off, as if they couldn’t breath.
Evan felt like he was choking as well. Had the cabin depressurized? If so, why hadn’t the oxygen masks dropped? He heard other people coughing.
He looked away from the flashing light and reached up, groping around the gasper vent nozzle above him, hoping to find some sort of manual release for the oxygen mask. He couldn’t remember from the in-flight video if there was such a thing. He never paid attention to those safety briefings. He regretted that now.
The flashing light from outside illuminated the console above him at intervals, but there weren’t any obvious release switches. He fumbled with the gasper nozzle, twisting it open. Nothing. Earlier one of the flight attendants had told him there was something wrong with the ventilation system. Indeed.
He crinkled his nose. The sharp redolence of smoke was only getting stronger. He tried closing the nozzle but it didn’t affect the smell. The cabin was becoming uncomfortably hot. Or maybe that was simply the sense of impending doom that was kicking in, elevating his core temperature.
He tried to get up, but as soon as he pushed himself upward he suddenly felt dizzy and collapsed into his seat.
The light continued flashing outside… oddly, he was reminded of the raves he’d attended in his youth. Monstrous gatherings of teens replete with strobing lights and booming music. Those lights often gave the illusion of time slowing down and distorting, which was only amplified by the drugs he had been taking at the time.
Strange that he would remember something like that now, of all times.
He was tugged back to the present moment by his failing body… he felt so weak, a tunnel of stars spreading across his vision.
There were still a few people coughing somewhere in the cabin. They sounded so distant. Wait. That was him coughing.
He gazed one last time at the bright, flashing strobe light outside. He realized it wasn’t a light, but a craft of some kind, orbiting the plane. No, two craft. Three.
He smiled sadly. These were not airplanes. Nor drones.
How did they know?
The tunnel of stars quickly overcame his vision and he lost consciousness.
Derek Blackwell stared at the paused footage from Spy Satellite USA-229. It depicted a Boeing 777, Lufthansa 778 en route to Singapore from Frankfort. According to the logs provided by Lufthansa, the original Boeing 747 reserved for that particular flight had been grounded due to unscheduled maintenance. He wasn’t sure if the aircraft substitution played a part in what he was seeing now.
Had Jackson Kane or other hostile actors been involved? Perhaps Jackson or his agents had smuggled something aboard the Boeing 777 and forced a last minute substitution that allowed the breach to escape detection by airport security. Blackwell had heard chatter that Jackson and his cabal were planning something big…
Blackwell had ordered an MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone sent out to scout the area of the disappearance for debris, but so far it had found nothing. Blackwell knew the only thing it would find was open ocean, but he would be remiss if he didn’t at least look for signs of the flight.
He replayed the color-corrected spy satellite footage from the beginning. The plane appeared a bright white against the dark blue of the ocean. Shortly, the aircraft changed course. This would be after the pilots detected the cargo hold fire and issued the distress call before diverting toward Andaman Island.
And then, as if from nowhere, he saw them. Three orbs. Metallic, beautiful, yet terrible things. They were so much smaller than the plane, each of them roughly ten feet in diameter. They accompanied the Boeing 777 at first, and then begin to orbit it in a clockwise fashion. They maintained their spacing, remaining equidistant from one another and the plane. Their orbital speeds seemed to increase slightly, and they closed in with the plane, while still remaining equidistant from one another. And then, just like that, the plane and the orbs were gone.
He replayed the final section again, slowing it down and zooming in. It appeared as if the plane and orbs were sucked into some sort of central point. Like a black hole.
Or a wormhole.
He restarted the video again and stared closely at the footage. Was that…? He paused it and zoomed in once more. Yes, that was definitely an orb, following in the wake of the plane about two hundred feet behind it. He panned the zoomed footage around until he found the second sphere, and the third.
The objects had been following the plane for quite some time then. It was possible they had started the cargo fire. Either that, or the fire was the impetus for them to act, as if they had known it was coming.
He wasn’t sure whether to be pissed off or terrified.
His channelers had told him there was a convergence coming in the time stream. He just hadn’t expected it so soon. Then again, it was possible that this event was meant to obscure the real convergence.
With shaking hands he dismissed the footage from his augmented reality glasses and his gaze drifted to the tapestry on the wall that he had hung several years ago. One of the few decorations in his office, it depicted a lone man standing at the top of a rock pile, grasping a glowing jewel, single-handedly holding back the darkness all around him. Long, sinewy fingers stretched out from that darkness, reaching toward him, held back only by the bright light of the jewel in hand. If the light from that jewel ever went out, the darkness would swallow the man.
Blackwell grunted softly. It wouldn’t swallow just the man, but the entire world.
The tapestry was given to him by his granddaughter. An amazing young woman, she was. Thinking of her calmed him a bit, and his hands stopped shaking at least.
As he continued to stare at the tapestry, he thought he could see the individual threads making up the fabric. A delicate weave. It had taken much patience and effort to put together.
All of the threads were related to one another in some small way. If even one thread was torn or went astray, the whole tapestry would eventually unravel.
Strands upon strands, all intertwined.
A knock came at the door to his office.
“Enter,” Blackwell ordered.
Lieutenant Marcus Mitchell stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. Like Blackwell, he wore a pair of augmented reality glasses, which appeared similar to regular prescription glasses save for the light blue tint on both lenses. If one looked carefully, one could see the tiny outlines of purple-blue light on the surface of the lenses, comprising the heads-up-display Marcus had configured on the glasses.
“Any news from the MQ-1?” Blackwell asked.
“Negative,” the lieutenant replied.
Blackwell nodded. “There won’t be.”
“Have you decided how you’d like to explain this one to the public?” Mitchell leaned forward inquisitively. “Boeing 777s carrying over three hundred passengers don’t just vanish over the middle of the ocean.”
“No,” Blackwell agreed. If news of this ever got out and people actually believed it, the delicate aviation economy could very easily crash, bringing along everything else tied to it. So many strings.
Strands upon strands, all intertwined.
A lesser person might be tempted to short a few airline stocks before letting the news run wild.
But not Blackwell. He had principles.
“Get some debris out there,” Blackwell ordered. “Make sure it washes up on the nearby shores.”
“I’ll get it done,” the lieutenant promised.
“And plant something incriminating in the pilot’s home,” Blackwell added. “A suicide note would work.”
Mitchell tapped his lips, pondering. “In it, he admits to killing himself and everyone else aboard…”
Blackwell nodded. Yes, he had principles.
To a degree.
“Also leak the satellite video,” Blackwell said. “Via the usual disinformation agents. And have them come up with three or four competing conspiracy theories.”
The lieutenant bowed his head. “I’ll see that it gets done.”
People would believe anything online, especially if it seemed like a consensus had formed in the tribe they were a part of. Controlling consensus reality was something his disinformation team had gotten very good at when it came to the online conversation.
When and if the truth ever came out, no one would believe it.
“That is all,” Blackwell said.
Mitchell remained motionless in front of Blackwell.
“Well?” Blackwell raised an eyebrow. “What else, then? Out with it.”
Was he going to ask the unspoken question? What do we do if this happens again? And then again?
But the lieutenant cleared his throat. “There is another matter. This one is unrelated, but still important."
So the question remained unspoken, and unanswered. For now. Good. Because Blackwell didn’t have an answer.
Mitchell held out an empty palm, then made a sliding motion with his index finger followed by a tapping gesture.
A share request promptly popped up on Blackwell’s augmented reality glasses.
He accepted and scrolled through a series of what appeared to be intercepted messages. At first he was relieved that the contents had nothing to do with vanishing planes, but as he further skimmed the contents, his eyes widened in alarm.
He quickly dismissed the display, clearing his vision, then explained in detail what he wanted Mitchell to do about this latest problem.
When the lieutenant confirmed that everything would be done according to his specifications, Blackwell asked: “Anything else?”
Mitchell smiled wanly. “That was it. For now.”
Blackwell exhaled in barely concealed relief. “Good. Always putting out fires.”
“That’s what we do,” Mitchell agreed.
Blackwell smiled patiently. “That will be all.”
“Thank you, General.” Mitchell turned to go.
General, he thought to himself vaguely. They still call me General. He had retired from the army years ago. His men called him by his former rank only to honor him.
Actually, retired perhaps wasn’t the best term. You could never leave the army, not really. He smiled sadly. Once a general, always a general.
Even so, to the rest of the world his official job title was ‘Managing Director.’
As he watched Mitchel go, Blackwell’s thoughts returned to the plane. The original question, though unspoken, still burned inside him.
What do we do if this happens again?
When Mitchell had gone, Blackwell navigated to his virtual inbox with his augmented reality glasses and sent a message to his channeler team lead:
Ask our friends why we’re having our civilian planes attacked now, and whether or not we should expect more such incidents. Also, was that the coming convergence you spoke of?
He dismissed the virtual inbox and sat back. With a sigh, he lay his hands on his desk and intertwined his fingers.
Even if the channelers were able to make contact and get an actual response to the question, and that was a big if, it would be impossible to tell whether the answer was truth or falsehood.
Blackwell wasn’t the only one staging a disinformation campaign.
He stared at the tapestry.
Strands upon strands, all intertwined.
1
Garrett stared into the burning flames.
He was seated on his patio, the fire table situated about six feet in front of him. The clear stones glistened beneath the flames, the air above distorting with heat. Beyond the shelter of his canopy, the rainfall had diminished to a mere sprinkle.
