Nothing much more had changed except the days and the same was for the admiral and mission control, but they were going to launch the Hubble II and hope for the best.
"Sir the crew is ready to take off any thing you want to add before they go?" John asked.
"No I told them in the briefing." he replied. "Are you sure we can trust the shuttle not to kill the crew?"
"It has performed well in ten missions without a hitch and each satellite we launched is in its proper orbit. As long as we don't go passed the Lagrange point we are safe as it will ever be." John stated.
"Good tell them they are cleared to takeoff when ready." the admiral said and walked to the viewing room.
He had started watching every mission since the crew boarded the Nautilus and vanished behind the moon. The team that built the Hubble II had received one problem after another and delayed the launch for three months. The Nautilus had vanished January tenth and it was now May tenth exactly 120 days. The admiral hoped that they would see what had happened and the Hubble II would provide that answer also the scientist had figured in a continuous orbit around both the Earth and the moon. Which was better then expected. How they had figured it out was beyond his high school level math, but they did. He watched until the satellite's engine fired to bring it higher in orbit and now they just had to wait the two days to get a peak behind the moon. An hour later the shuttle returned to the center and the crew went to get debriefed. Only then did the admiral return to his office. He sat down and went over the the key part of his budget and wondered what the Nautilus would have cost if it was built by a contractor. He once had an estimate that the craft cost seventy million in just material and labor. If you added in the greedy contractors you were looking at least five billion and he was glad that they built the ship in secret. What really amazed him that this was the only project that the government had that paid for itself over the years in fact it was responsible for thousands of improvements over the years and much of the technology of the last fifty years. The biggest hurtle had been the the fusion torch drive as it had to built not just from scratch but in secret. Once a fusion core was active it had a live span of fifty years and if anything went wrong it just melted itself and that was it. True they kept theirs encased in ten feet of concrete but a simple concrete and steel building would be enough. He had though many times of releasing the design to the world and it would not only pay for itself instantly, but would take care of the US debt in a matter of a month. The biggest problem would be that being nuclear in nature it would be blocked by tons of red tape. The fact that the system could not be weaponized or made to go critical. He never intended to release the design but sitting on his desk was an order to do just that, signed by the president himself. The president even suggested the company to give it to and that galled the admiral. He wasn't stupid and saw that the administrator of his businesses had invested heavily in those companies. What the president didn't know was that these companies knew nothing about nuclear reactors and had never even been part of any testing or development. He knew it would cause problems but his charter was clear and the list of companies he had were solely own by Americans and had to be for at least twenty years. He picked up the phone and made the call to a small research company that had been trying to develop a fusion reactor for thirty years. They agreed to send their top scientist and in one week little did they know that all their efforts would yield impressive results. He loved his country and he was a patriot, but the projects charter was clear in the matter. He had complete say of what goes where and to who, the president can ask, but that was it. His order was illegal and if he said anything the admiral had enough on him to get him impeached.
Two days later the admiral was watching the live feed from the Hubble two in ten minutes it would be able to see behind the moon and confirm the ship. The staff was all watching and waiting. The moon filled half the screen and the far side was fully in sun light and any object behind the moon would also be exposed. The operator zoomed in and waited and then they saw it a small triangular speck and as the telescope zoomed in it came into focus and the staff let out a gasp of utter shock at its size.
"No one is going to believe this is real." John said breaking the silence. "That ship looks like a star destroyer from the movies." Many tones and murmurs of agreement spreed through the staff.
"That won't matter. This is the first look in twenty years on the far side of the moon." the admiral replied. "They will believe it. The public won't but those politicians will and they will panic."
"Oh my oh my. Captain a word with you." Perky came wobbling up.
"Yes what is it?" Tom replied, setting down the weights he had been working with.
"Your world is looking at us and my circuits are burning out." Perky said as he shook. "My captain's orders were clear any satellite that came to this side of your moon was to be destroyed, but another order states that we must remain behind the moon at all times. This time your satellite is way out of range for our weapons and to follow the one order we must break another. What am I to do?"
"Can you show me the satellite?" the captain asked. Why the droid was coming to him he didn't know, but then again he was an officer and not a droid. The droid help up a screen showing a very clear image of the satellite, and he saw that it was not your normal type. He looked closer then smiled. This was the Hubble telescope how they got it this far out was beyond him. "That is a problem and you are too late to do anything. Your orders are clear, and breaking one to comply with the other is not an option only choice you do have is to wait until the satellite is behind the moon then take it out."
"I can't have that the satellite will have hours of time to search for us and find us." the droid complained. "That is hardly an acceptable solution."
"It is the only one you have and seeing that is not a normal satellite but a telescope designed to search out planets light years away..." the captain paused. "You have been seen by my world and my people are behind it. They don't move billion dollar telescopes on a one way trip for nothing."
"We have been seen oh my oh my." the droid started to walk in circles. The captain reached out and stopped him.
"Look if it is my leader then your secret is safe, but if it is another organization or a public one then the cat is out of the bag and you won't be able to put the cat back in and make seven billion people forget they saw an alien ship parked behind the moon." the captain stated and the droid stopped.
"Thank you now I know what to do." Perky replied and marched off.
"What was all that about?" Abigale asked.
"Possibly our ticket home." Pete replied. "They sent the Hubble telescope to take a look and the only way to do that was to use the shuttle. Get everybody in the lounge it is time they knew."
Aric Lorn was sitting in front of his computer he had just graduated and he was now looking for a job worthy of his knowledge and skills. MTU wasn't as highly ranked as MIT or Cal Tech but it was close and Aric had two degrees one in Mechanical Engineering and the other in Aerospace Engineering. He didn't know what company he wanted to work for and being the top graduate he had at least twenty guaranteed jobs. What he wanted was NASA or another space based company and he hadn't heard a single word back from them and didn't expect one for a month or so, but there was a few that he could apply to and he could freelance with them until he got the answer he wanted. Josh had graduated too with honors in Electrical Engineering and was also looking for work. They had never discussed it but this would be a critical point in their friendship. Aric had met Josh in kindergarten and did everything together. His dad had been as much of a father to Aric as he was to Josh and Aric's mom had thank him more then once. Jorus Lorn, Aric's father walked out of his life the day after his fifth birthday. Aric was hurt and angry, but now he was a distant memory. His mother had a good job and it wasn't a struggle growing up and when he was sixteen she had remarried to a man that was good for her and left Aric alone. He never tried to be his father and that made Aric respect the man. The fact that Aric had told him that he would respect him so long as Max would respect him. Model student, model athlete, and model son was what Max had said one day. Aric just shrugged his shoulders and that was it. Aric had did what he was told and did what he had to do without being told. School came easy, but he never wanted to go faster or advance to another grade sooner. He only studied when he needed information that didn't just come to mind. Math, Languages, and Sciences he just knew, but not before he got his text books and he would read each from front to back and then as his school year went on he would empty the library of all relevant texts. Many times he wanted to challenge the teachers that this was wrong or there was an easier way, but he felt a bit of dread each time. The only words he remembered from his father was simple.
"Learn, do sports, excel, but don't be in the spot light put others in the spot light and their joy and pride will reward you ten times over. If something is wrong except it and dump it when it is no longer needed. Make small waves not big ones." Jorus told him when he was five. "All you need to learn you already know."
Profound words for a five year old, but he had followed them. Secretly when he was older, he sent letters to the authors telling them how wrong their math was or why didn't you do it this way. Aric's penmanship was perfect and no one wrote like he did. Sure if he had put return addresses on them he would have been discovered even without he could possibly be discovered but he had two styles of writing one for school mirrored from the other male students and his personal style. Josh was the only one who knew his true writing style, and with the leaps and bound in the internet Aric could make his corrections without ever revealing where he was in the world. He knew four other languages and had resisted learning more. Spanish, French, Japanese, and Chinese. English, Spanish and Chinese the top most spoken languages French because he wanted to figure out why it was the romance language and Japanese because he loved watching anime. Rose and Beth were computer science majors, but Aric knew more then they did about programing and Rose still couldn't figure out how not only did his system run faster then any computer she had used but how he didn't use any anti virus software. Josh's laptop ran the same hidden operating system Aric used and secretly he had upgraded the girl's computers too, so the questions had died quickly. The girls could program but wrote code more then they did programs. Aric could write programs to read other programs or code and then write his own version. Which was different then the original and unless a virus was written to work with his hidden operating system it couldn't affect his systems.
Aric wanted to find his father and that was the reason for his specially built system, and he had tracked his father's life for seven years through government records and other means. He wished he had started sooner cause he lost track in 2005, and he could only find records dated just before he was born. His father had gotten a driver's license, Social and marriage certificate a year before he was conceived. What happened to his father was a mystery that he thought he would solve once he got to college. Either his father just disappeared or he got disappeared by someone. The likely hood that he had changed his name just as easily as he appeared the first time was a possibility. Aric stared at the screen and typed in his father's name and hit search. The only links that came back was the ones the carried Aric Lorn's name, plus many Lorne's, Loren's, and Lorna's.
"What ya doing honey?" Rose asked. "Jorus Lorn is that your biological father?"
"Ya, I wonder where he is from time to time." Aric replied.
"Do you remember much about him?" Rose asked.
"Not much. His smile and how warm he was and the last thing he said to me." Aric explained. "What I can not understand was how he just left. My mom never felt bad that he left and neither did I, and we somehow knew it was his time to go."
"Wow my mom would have cursed the ground he walked on if my dad ever took off." Rose said wrapping her arms around Aric. "You never felt sad that he missed seeing you grow up?"
"No not exactly more disappointed then anything." Aric said kissing her arm. "I don't think I would even ask him why if I saw him again. He would be back and that was that."
"Well, have you tried alternate names? Like Horus or the like?" Rose asked.
"No, I haven't." Aric replied and he typed in twenty different searches in less then a minute and when he finished the last he went back to the first. Rose watched as he went over the results and he did more searches and checked not just links but pictures when he did the same on state and federal police records Rose inhaled sharply. Aric had forgotten she was there even with her arms around his neck. "Your going to get caught."
"Sorry I don't know how to explain but I won't." Aric said. He continued to search and he found a man that he knew was his father and even with the beard and the hollow look he just knew. James Horn 42 convicted of thirty counts of murder and another fifty crimes. With five more minutes of work Aric had a current picture. The hollow look was gone and the warmth he remembered was back. His father was in one of the toughest federal prisons in the US and was serving a 257 year sentence for those crimes. He was now 52 but looked younger then he did when he was arrested, and only his eyes showed his age. Aric wanted to know everything and he needed to know. He didn't even notice that Rose had left and it was twenty hours later before he finally turned the computer off and went to bed.
