Korea
October 26, 20_
4:00 KTZ
He had spent the last several hours in total silence, punctuated by occasional episodes of attempted, though ultimately unsuccessful sleep. Although the screaming had long since mercifully ceased, the lights of his cell remained as bright as ever. They were obviously controlled by an outside source. There was a not a single switch to be found on any of the walls.
Kyle lay supine upon the cell's single cot, his eyes fixed upon the ceiling. He had long since come to terms with the fact of his own entrapment. But his anger remained, fueled and renewed by the cries of terror and pain his captors had broadcast into his cell.
Sunny was here. It was that knowledge that kept him from falling into the despaired torpor that would have otherwise consumed him. Though he lay motionless, his body and senses could not be more alive. He heard every sound, smelled every odor. His muscles were tense and warm, ready for action at a moment's notice.
His ears immediately detected the tell-tale hiss several seconds before the noxious-sweet smell entered his nostrils.
Instinctively, he turned his head away from the source of the smell and took in a breath of clean air. To any observers, the action would have seemed too miniscule to be taken for anything different from regular breathing. But he had just absorbed a supply of oxygen that would be sufficient to support him for the next seven minutes.
Part of this talent was natural. Since his earliest years, he had been known for the ability to hold his breath far beyond that of the average human being. Since then he had refined his ability through years of practice. Much of it had started as a source of fun. But in the years since the invasion, he perfected it as an essential tool of survival.
None of this would have been known to his captors. Which was exactly his intent. He took care that his body showed all the signs of sedative-induced unconsciousness. His arms and head were allowed to drop limply over the sides of the cot. His body as a whole sagged loosely, all the muscles completely relaxed.
He remained in this position for the next four minutes as the cell became saturated with the fumes. Kyle awaited the process patiently.
The fruit of his efforts was not delayed in arriving. There was an sharp, acute, buzzing sound, followed immediately by the cell door itself shifting upwards into the ceiling to leave an open entrance. Through partially close eyelids, Kyle clearly saw the two men that entered. The faces of both were concealed beneath respiratory masks. The one who entered first was dressed in black military fatigues and armed with an assault rifle. The barrel of his weapon was swept twice across the immediate area of the entrance before he stepped to the side to admit his companion. This man was dressed in a white, full-body suit that seemed like it belonged in a laboratory.
He was unarmed.
Kyle did not hesitate.
His leg lashed out and around, impacting against the white-garbed technician's chest and propelling him physically backwards. The armed guard let off a single off-target shot as the other man's body slammed into his own. Kyle's fist cut off all further conscious thought before he could get off another.
The elder O'Shea brother snatched up the assault rifle and gave a final kick to the head of the technician to ensure that he joined his companion's coma. He also grabbed the key card he had clearly seen the guard place inside his front shirt pocket before darting outside the open doorway, taking his first breath of oxygen since the gas had been released in his cell.
He took the briefest of moments to stand still and absorb his surroundings despite the adrenaline streaming through his veins. In less than a second, he saw that he stood in what appeared to be the middle portion of a long cell block with a circular arc that placed much of it beyond sight. The color of the hall was uniformly gray and metallic. He saw at least a dozen cell doors on either side, most of which were open and empty.
Two others, located near the far end to his right, were closed.
He immediately took off down the hall towards the first of the doors, his right hand gripping the rifle while his left held the key card out and ready. It took him approximately one second to reach the door and swipe the card through the slot at the side. The door obediently swished upwards.
Unlike his own cell, this one was completely darkened, and it took his eyes a split second to adjust before he caught sight of the small figure huddled and trembling at the back wall. It was wearing a grey one-piece suit identical to his own, though tailored to accommodate a more slight and feminine figure. She tentatively lifted her head to face him, and the light danced off of her eyes. They widened as she looked at him in mutual recognition.
"Kyle?"
He did not respond immediately. His eyes were fixed on the wounds that littered her face. A simmering rage slowly built inside him as he saw dried blood spread across bruises, cuts and burn marks. He recalled the screams he had heard mere hours before.
He stepped forward. "Who did this to you?" His voice was cold with anger.
She lowered her eyes from his. Her hands gripped tighter around her eyes as fresh moisture began to spill down her checks. She gave no answer.
Kyle tightened both his jaw and his grip on the assault rifle, consciously suppressing the blinding fury inside him. There would be another time. Escape was all that mattered now.
"Let's go. We have to get out of here." He reached down and grabbed her arm as gently has he could while maintaining speed. She gave a slight whimper as he drew her to her feet, and he immediately knew the wounds were not confined to her face alone. He laid one more curse on the monsters that had put them there. Whatever happened, he would be back one day. And he would kill them one by one.
He was ready to take off the moment they stepped outside the door. So far, he had not heard any alarms, but he knew better than to assume whoever controlled this place did not already have them under surveillance. Kyle began to pull Sunny along with him in the direction he deemed most likely to have an exit at the end. But completely against all expectations, she resisted him.
"Kyle, wait. They have someone else here. I saw them enter the cell and close it as they came out."
"Sunny, we don't have time – "
"Kyle, please! We can't just leave him!"
It went against all his better judgment. But Kyle gave in the moment her saw the desperate pleading in her eyes.
Still keeping her close, he dashed in the exact opposite direction he had intended, reaching the cell door in three quick steps. He yanked the keycard through the slot at the side.
This door gave off a sharp buzz before it slid upward, revealing a darkened room that was somehow cavernous despite its miniscule size. There was a large, human shape inside that suddenly drew backwards.
"Shtoh Etoh? Shtoh vy khotiteh?!"
Kyle momentarily blinked at the stream of unintelligible words, understanding nothing save for the clear note of fear. He squinted into the receding darkness of the cell as he stepped forward. The occupant had plastered his body against the far wall. He could see now that it was an older man, perhaps in his late sixties or early seventies. A thick, graying beard outlined a haggard, worn face weary with suffering. As if the man had been a prisoner in this place for years. He was blinking rapidly against the light intruding into his cell, apparently long shrouded in darkness.
Kyle raised his left arm in a pacifying gesture. "It's alright. We're not going to hurt you." He spoke as soothingly as he could, doubting the man could understand his words. "We're to hel –" He abruptly froze. The man had finally been able to fully open his eyes as they adjusted to the brightness. His blue orbs stared directly into Kyle's own, fully illuminated by the outside lights.
He was a soul.
Sunny had seen it too. She stepped around him, holding out both hands to the prisoner and making sure he had a clear view of her own eyes.
"Don't be afraid. We're friends." She spoke in the same soothing tone, communicating as best she could through the language barrier. It apparently had some effect. The man visibly relaxed in her presence, although he still cast fearful glances in Kyle's direction.
"K'to ty?"
"Come with us." Sunny made beckoning gestures with her hands as she stepped closer to him. She gently took hold of his wrist. The prisoner tensed for a split second, but relaxed again when he saw her reassuring look. He made an attempt to step forward with her, but abruptly stumbled, crumpling to the floor.
Kyle's sharp eyes immediately saw that nothing in the cell had disrupted the man's footing. He had simply collapsed – instantly unconscious. His emaciated frame left no doubt that he was suffering from malnutrition.
"Kyle?" Sunny looked up at him helplessly as she knelt beside the prisoner's body. But Kyle had anticipated what she asked. He leaned down and grabbed the man's body with his left hand, hoisting it over his shoulder in one swift motion. He gave only a slight grunt from the effort. The man was far lighter than he should have been.
"Let's go." He jerked his head towards the outside hall and immediately stepped out. This time Sunny followed him in complete obedience.
The timing seemed almost deliberate. The entire cell block suddenly erupted in flashing red lights accompanied by the wail of sirens. Someone had finally tripped the alarms Kyle and expected from the beginning.
"Come on!" Kyle barked at Sunny to follow him as he darted down the cell block to his right. His eyes began furiously scanning the walls for something resembling an exit. The few signs he saw were written in foreign, vaguely oriental lettering he did not recognize.
A pictographic representation finally stood out depicting a downward flight of stairs. There was a door right beside it. The additional red lettering confirmed it as an emergency exit. They made straight for it, not caring where it led.
As expected it opened to a flight of stairs leading down towards what was apparently the ground level of the complex. They rushed downwards, the blaring of the alarms following all the way. In the distance, Kyle was sure he also heard the sound of pounding footsteps. He gripped the assault rifle as best he could in his right hand while maintaining the human load on his shoulders with the left.
The stairs finally ended at the entrance into another hallway, this one different from the cell block they had left. Had he any time for reflection, Kyle might have perplexed himself with the possible reasons this facility's builders could have for placing prisoner's quarters above rather than below most everything else. But those thoughts would have to wait.
Both of them continued on at break-neck speed, zig-zagging through a veritable maze of halls and doors. Kyle continued to interpret the various signs as best he could on the run. On this level, they were mostly pictographs rather than text. Many of them carried a red insignia that he immediately recognized as a biohazard symbol. He instinctively went in the direction opposite to the one they indicated. The alarms continued to blare all the while, and this time he was sure he heard the sounds of pursuit.
They were running out. Both of time and of breath.
Then a miracle occurred.
Kyle suddenly caught sight of another pictograph. This one depicting an object with which he was intimately familiar. He followed the arrow immediately, coming upon a final door which he threw open.
The sight that lay behind it was almost unbelievable. The doorway opened onto a balcony overlooking a vast hangar filled with aircraft of both human and alien derivation. At the far end was a massive opening that gave way to open sky – a simple point of embarkation for craft that required no runway of any kind.
But what they saw at its very center completed the miracle. A single, empty shuttle stood atop its landing gear with its nose faced straight towards the exit. An open ramp lay extended from its rear entrance, seeming to beckon any who wished to board and fly.
Kyle and Sunny gave each other a brief wordless glance before sprinting for the ramp. They had no plan to speak of for how they would pilot the shuttle. But they would figure that out once they were safe inside.
They made it down the balcony, across the hangar floor, and up the ramp in approximately five seconds. Kyle allowed Sunny to board first, reaching out and tripping to button to raise the ramp behind him. He had visited enough shuttle fields to know exactly where it was.
The interior of the craft was remarkably spacious, if a bit bare. This shuttle was almost certainly used for cargo transport and had not yet been loaded. Towards the front, they saw the open door to a cockpit with three unoccupied seats. Strapping themselves and their still-unconscious companion in place, they finally turned to the controls.
Sunny shot Kyle a look of trepidation. He replied to it automatically. "I can fly this." His voice carried more confidence then he really felt. He focused on the switches and handles he saw before him, his thoughts reviewing the basics of the flight lessons he had taken years before. Every aircraft had three basic functions: roll, pitch, yaw…
There were several sudden cracks of gunfire outside, and impact marks suddenly appeared across the forward window of the cockpit. Both conscious occupants instinctively ducked down in their seats, catching a brief glance of the swarm of guards that was pouring into the hangar from all directions. Kyle irrelevantly observed that they had been a tad slower than the Imperial Stormtroopers that had pursued Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon.
Even though his ducked position obscured his vision outside the cockpit, he began rapidly pushing buttons on the dashboard. He had only a vague idea of their functions. But they need to get out of here. Now.
Completely contrary to his expectations, the shuttle responded exactly as he had wanted. There was a brief vibration that reverberated through the entire craft as it lifted vertically upwards and retracted its landing gear, hovering in place several feet above the hangar floor. Bullets bounced of its outer surface as the soldiers vainly continued their firing.
Kyle slammed his hand down on one final button, this one clearly labeled with a forward arrow.
The effect was instantaneous. The shuttle propelled forward almost as fast as the bullets that pursued it, zooming outwards through the hangar exit and into the open air.
Kyle grabbed another device on the dashboard that resembled a joystick. Now that they were airborne, he knew exactly how to control the craft. He brought it around in a brief turn so they caught a glimpse of the point from which they emerged. They saw now that the hangar had been carved directly into the side of a massive cliff that jutted out over a vast forest of pine trees. The entire facility seemed to be on the interior of a mountain formation.
He turned the craft around and increased their elevation. They were soon leaving the entire facility behind.
There was a sudden, blaring noise that sounded from within the cockpit. Looking back down at the dashboard, Kyle saw a small radar-like screen in the middle currently displaying two flashing red dots coming up fast behind a neutral green object. He was able to interpret it instantly. They were being followed.
There was another crack of gunfire, this one louder and far more powerful anything from a handheld weapon. The entire shuttle shook violently. Two aerodynamic shapes suddenly became visible outside the cockpit as they zoomed ahead before turning around for a second run. They were instantly recognizable as fighter jets. Kyle was able to identify the type as soon as he spotted the red stars painted on the wings and stabilizer fins.
MiG-35s.
Kyle had made a hobby of studying the various fighter jets of the world's military forces prior to the invasion. He had heard of these planes, developed by the Russian Air Force as a deadlier, more advanced version of the previous Soviet MiG-29.
Whoever their captors were, they had no intentions of recapturing them alive.
He banked hard to the left to avoid the stream of fire from one of the plane's cannons as it dove back towards them. The other came up alongside the shuttle. It was close enough that Kyle made direct eye contact with the pilot. The man coldly narrowed his eyes before breaking away for yet another run. So far, both of them were using only their forward-mounted machine guns. But it was only a matter of time before they released their heat-seeking missiles.
Kyle hesitated only a moment before making his decision. He turned towards Sunny.
"You remember a few years back when I got kicked out of flight school?"
She looked at him, confused. Then understanding slowly dawned. A look of pure terror metastasized across her face.
"Kyle…"
"You're about to find out why."
"KYLE!"
He ignored her shout, yanking the joy-stick hard the right. The entire shuttle immediately entered a helical barrel roll. The attacking aircraft were forced to flight out ahead of them in an overshoot, but they immediately began to correct, attempting to follow the shuttle's path.
Kyle knew the scenario. All three aircraft would soon be locked in a maneuver known among combat pilots as the "rolling scissors." It would be an infinitely extended contest decided by the aircraft with the higher turn rate.
He had a sudden thought. This shuttle was not just an aircraft.
His hand gripped the joystick, maintaining the roll as he took the craft higher and higher. All three of the craft seemed to climb for hours. They went to a height rarely reached by any atmospheric craft. The blue sky above them slowly darkened, giving way to back. The landscape below them receded ever farther, assuming a curved, globular shape. The stars became visible as they reached the very edge of space.
Far below, Kyle finally saw the two MiGs break off their pursuit, forced back to their home base both by a lack of fuel and their inability to operate outside the atmosphere. He finally released his hand from the control, leaning back in the seat with a sigh of relief.
With their safety now assured, he took a moment to absorb the wonder of the sights around them. He could barely believe the reality of their position.
They were in orbit. In space.
Far beneath, he could see the curvature of the earth. There was the outline of a peninsular formation surrounded by the ocean. Though geography had never been his strong suit, Kyle instantly recognized it.
Korea.
He looked back towards Sunny. Aside from a slightly green tinge to her face, she seemed none the worse for wear. "You okay?"
She closed her eyes and swallowed. "A little nauseous, but I'm fine. Please don't do that again."
"Sorry." Kyle looked back at screen on the dashboard. He had another sudden thought that he tested by tapping his finger against the glass. The display instantly responded to his touch, brining up a menu of options. It was obviously a link to an onboard computer. He was pleased to see that one of the options was a GPS.
He looked back up at Sunny. "Let's go home."
Groom Lake, Nevada
Area 51
October 26, 20_
8:15 MST
From the time they had entered the gate, Jeb Stryder had felt for all the world as if he was on hallowed ground.
He had been fascinated with this place almost the entirety of his adult life, much of it through the many novels, films and television programs that had built its reputation in the minds of the American public. But he had delved deeper than that. He had consumed everything piece of real-world information he could about this facility, often spending hours poring over aerial maps of the complex itself and comparing various firsthand accounts of those who tried to enter it. He had thirstily drank in the disparate theories that surrounded this base and its purpose, most of all those asserting its storage of captured alien remains and technology.
And now, finally, unbelievably, he had achieved the dream of so many who had tried to probe this place's secrets.
He was inside Area 51.
Dylan was still at the wheel of the truck, guiding it down a paved route that took it into the very midst of the facility's clustered buildings and infrastructure. Jeb maintained a near-reverent silence as his eyes eagerly scanned them all, matching each one with its place on the maps he had studied. From this vantage point, he saw that several of the towers and larger buildings were wrecked and scorched – some of them completely in ruins. Just as if they had seen both explosions and fire.
That perplexed him. The images that had been available to him had never revealed any form of damage to the base. What could have caused it? How recently had it happened?
Jeb suddenly had a darker thought, remembering the attackers that had destroyed their haven in the caves. As he pondered the buildings' condition further, he now saw that the effect would have been consistent with aerial missile strikes.
What had happened here?
He turned to face Reeves, his mouth opening with an unformed question that the other man quickly anticipated.
"Patience, Mr. Stryder. We're almost where we need to be."
Jeb looked forward on the path they were currently taking. In the distance towards the south, he saw a large, metallic structure which in front of a towering dirt berm, off away from the main dormitories. He recognized it from the maps – Hangar 25. Reeves continued driving for a short distance before coming to a stop several yards short of the building. They all remained inside the vehicle as the rest of the trucks behind them pulled up and parked in a cluster near the building's north entrance.
Reeves was the first to step outside, followed by Jeb and the other occupants of his truck as they spilled out the front and back doors. The occupants of the other vehicles followed suit. A sizeable mass of people soon materialized, gathered in silent expectation.
Nate was the first to break the silence with a low whistle. "I gotta say I wasn't expecting this…". He mused aloud as he looked both the hangar and the rest of the complex up and down. "Last time I saw this place was in Independence Day."
"The last time I saw it was one week before the base commander and personnel were massacred in cold blood." Reeves spoke ever so softly, his voice grim and seeming to deliberately enforce a harsh return to reality. He ignored the taken aback looks on the others' faces as he stepped toward the building's entrance, producing a small plastic card from a shirt pocket.
There was a brief buzz and a resounding, hollow click as he swiped the card through a slot on the wall beside the doorway. The door itself offered no resistance as he pushed it inwards, holding it open so that the others behind him could enter. The group that followed consisted of himself, Jenna, Nate, Rob, Jeb, Doc, Jared, Ian, Wanda, Melanie, Jamie, Fords, Burns, and Dr. White. The others, most of them fully armed, stayed behind to stand watch over the vehicles.
The first thing to greet them was a suffocating darkness. But it was suddenly dispelled by a light switch that Reeves flipped on the side wall. It escaped none of them how intimately familiar he seemed with this place. The interior of the hangar was vast and empty, steel walls framing a massive, metallic floor that may have once held numerous aircraft. Or perhaps spacecraft. Jeb still held out an anticipatory hope.
Reeves fingers barely ceased their activity. He spoke again as he entered in a sequence on a dial pad right next to the switch he had thrown.
"Step to the center."
There was a sudden, massive vibration that seemed to shake the whole building. Reeves alone was unshaken by it. He calmly stepped back into the center of the floor just as the others suddenly realized that it was moving. Not just moving – sinking. The walls of the hangar began rising higher and higher, the floor now revealing itself as a single, massive hydraulic platform. Nate immediately recognized the similarity to the elevators used for lifting planes on aircraft carriers.
The platform continued lowering for approximately 15 seconds before coming to halt before a large open doorway that marked the beginning of a massively wide tunnel. Jeb's mind connected the dots about a split-second before the others did. Whatever this hanger had held, it was stored underground. And this was the way it had been taken. His heartbeat quickened.
Reeves led the way as his awestruck followers trailed behind him, taking in their surroundings. His voice echoed through the tunnel, the tone almost conversational now.
"Contrary to the rumors you may have heard, this facility never housed any alien life-forms or their ships. But what they did do here was just as exotic."
The tunnel abruptly terminated, opening into another, larger chamber. Like the rest of this facility, shadows and darkness suffused everything. But two large, black, vaguely aerodynamic objects were barely visible in the center, even before Reeves flipped another switch that bathed the room in light.
Ian blinked momentarily as the sudden visibility. "Are those… B-2s?" A deep awe infused his voice, and it was felt by the rest of the group. He had picked up enough of his brother's interest in aviation to immediately identify the two massive, delta-shaped craft , and their reputation did not escape him. They were the most advanced stealth bombers in the United States Air Force, able to fly in absolute silence and wreak absolute havoc beyond the sight of radar. Only a limited number of them had ever been in existence, and that spoke volumes about their presence here.
"Yes and no." Reeves responded to Ian's question somewhat cryptically as he ran a hand over the sharp-nosed surface of one of the planes. His touch seemed almost reverent. "These are the last remaining trace of Project Sunfire."
"Project Sunfire?" Nate stared at Reeves, his face perplexed at the meaningless term none of them had heard.
Reeves lifted his hand and began walking roundabout the two aircraft. He spoke as he moved, seemingly citing a long-memorized script.
"To give you all a full appreciation for its meaning, I'll have to start at the very beginning – which will be with a man named Thomas Townsend Brown. It's likely none of you have ever heard of him. That's a shame. He was one of the most brilliant scientists and inventors of his day, and his discoveries arguably outstrip both Newton and Einstein.
"His complete life-story would take far more time to relate in full than we have here. He was born in 1905 and was most active from the 20s to the 50s. He explored many areas of research, but he started on his most significant one quite inadvertently during a high school experiment involving a Coolidge tube – an x-ray emitting vacuum tube similar to those used in dentistry. He mounted the device upon a delicate balance, intending to see if it produced any thrust when turned on. At the time, the exercise was little more than a diversion, and he expected no significant results.
"But the results were more than just significant. The machine moved every single time he switched it on. At first, the phenomenon perplexed him. But he worked out a theoretical explanation after ruling out X-rays – the tube's gravitational field was being affected by the high voltage he applied to the plates.
"You have to understand how revolutionary the implications of this were. Conventional models of physics tell us that gravity is a basic, immutable force of the universe, a phenomenon of mass warping space-time. Something completely immune to manipulation."
Reeves paused momentarily, looking them all in the eye one by one as he willed them to understand the meaning of his statement.
"In time, Brown conducted further experiments to test his theory. For this purpose, he constructed a wooden box that contained a series of electrically conductive plates made of lead and separated by sheets of glass. I'll summarize just one of the tests he conducted: when energized with 150,000 volts of direct current, the device developed thrust in the direction of its positively charged end; when placed upright, it would lose weight when the positive end faced upward and gain it when the negative end was placed downward. The application of electrical current was altering its gravitational field."
He stressed the last syllables of his sentence with a fierce intensity. His eyes were once again glued to the aircraft before them. His pace quickened, and he seemed to roam the chamber like a caged animal.
"Brown didn't stop his experiments there. He developed another rotating pendulum device that operated on the same principles. This one was advanced enough that he obtained a patent. A British one, since the scientific community in the United States wouldn't take him seriously enough. This device displayed another intriguing effect – it produced forward thrust with no back-directed recoil – something that is supposed to be manifestly impossible under Newton's third law of motion. If you all remember your high school physics, I'm referring the principle of every action having an equal and opposite reaction.
"But that wasn't all this device could do. Its pendular motion made it a natural energy generator. But it generated more energy than it took in – sometimes on a ratio of a million to one. I'm sure you can guess what that would make it – a perpetual motion machine. Something that effectively nullifies the first law of thermodynamics and represents the Holy Grail of the energy sciences."
If anyone's attention had been wavering at the beginning, they were now fully captivated. The audacity of his impossible statement held them speechless. Jeb suddenly began to observe the two aircraft with an intensified focus, attempting to anticipate where Reeves was going with his account. The other man seemed to notice, for he immediately picked up where he left off.
"Brown's career over the next few decades was varied. He participated in a variety of both civilian and military research projects, one of the more significant of which was the Philadelphia Experiment of 1943. That represents a story in its own right, but one which we'll leave for a later time.
"He continued to refine the technology of gravitational field manipulation, which he referred to as 'electrogravitics', seeking - quite naturally – to expand it into the field of aviation. He produced more prototypes – this time saucer-like discs that could achieve flight and levitation."
If it were possible, Jeb suddenly became even more transfixed than he was before. His expression was not lost on Reeves, who gave a quiet smile before continuing.
"His ultimate vision in this area was the production of passenger-carrying saucer craft – able to accelerate thousands of miles per hour, change direction, and decelerate instantaneously. All of it accomplished simply by altering the intensity, polarity, and direction of an electric charge. The gravitational field would pull with equal force on all particles of matter in both the ship and its occupants. There would be no 'g-forces' experienced whatsoever by the passengers."
"All those UFO sightings…" Jeb spoke for the first time since entering the complex, his voice slow and measured, the light dawning in his eyes.
"Highly experimental aircraft being used in field tests by the Air Force." Reeves finished the thought for him. "Brown demonstrated his saucer discs several times to a military audience in the 1950s and proposed a project for the further development of electrogravitic technology both for immediate military use and ultimately for the benefit of the world at large. Project Winterhaven, as he called it, was unfortunately never implemented in the way he envisioned. But its ideas lived on in a variety of highly-classified military R&Ds – the most significant of which ultimately produced the B-2 bomber, a hybrid craft incorporating both conventional jet engines and electrogravitic propulsion."
Reeves paused once more to run his hand over aircraft's surface. The faces of all his companions were uniformly stupefied. Some of them had just experienced a complete turnaround in their sense of reality. Reeves allowed them several seconds to adjust before he spoke again.
"Sunfire was the latest, most revolutionary, of these projects, seeking to further develop electrogravitic technology to a level it had never achieved before. But before I describe exactly how, there's something else I'll need to explain. By this time, you can see that the electrogravitic phenomenon cannot be explained using our current models of physics. Brown saw that too, but he never worked out a complete theory to explain. That was left to various other researchers beginning in the 1970s. The theory that arose from their work is called 'subquantum kinetics'. It's every bit as complex as Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, so I'll just give its most relevant points.
"Subquantum kinetics can be looked at in many ways as an expansion of quantum mechanics, the main difference being that it explores phenomenon on a subatomic rather than atomic level. According to the theory, once we explore subatomic phenomena, there is no longer a law of conservation of matter or energy. Both new matter and new energy can come into existence from a subatomic ether that underlies all physical reality.
"In addition, the theory has three other points that directly contradict general relativity. First of all, space is assumed to be geometrical flat and conforming to geometrical rules we are all familiar with. Mass creates a gravity potential field, with a gradient exerting force on a remote body by affecting how subatomic particles regenerated their physical form. This, rather than mass warping space-time, is responsible for the gravitational effect.
"Secondly, it assumed that mass both attracts and repels other objects, depending on the charge of the gravitational field – something that is assumed to be impossible under general relativity.
"Third – and most significant – the speed of light is not, in fact, the absolute speed limit of the universe."
The intensity returned to Reeves' eyes – if it had ever left. No one else spoke a word.
"You have to understand what this all means. Overnight a host of seemingly impossible technologies suddenly become all too real. Artificial gravity generators. Gyroscopic inertial drives. Propulsion through microwave phase conjugation… faster-than-light interstellar travel.
"It completely redefines our place in the universe. Suddenly our aspirations have no limits. And our horizons have no boundaries.
"This is what Sunfire sought to realize. And this –" He turned and motioned directly toward both of the aircraft – "is what they achieved: a combined air and space craft able to surpass the speed of light and powered by an unlimited fuel supply produced internally by a perpetual motion generator. The next and final evolution of the B-2 bomber – the B-X."
Reeves had never struck any of them as an orator. But he ended his speech now with a flourish, seemingly proud of how skillfully he had built to the final climax.
The expressions on their faces displayed varying states of disbelief, astonishment, and awed acceptance. Jeb, quite unusually, was slack-jawed and speechless, looking between Reeves, the aircraft, and back again. The other man stared straight into his eyes, his gaze full of significance.
"Think of every dream you've ever had, Mr. Stryder. This makes them all real."