"Peekaboo One, bogey still continuing on vector one five zero. Speed three hundred, angles ten, six kilometers. Alpha-bravo advises warning yellow: weapons hold." The transmission came from a Royal Air Force Nimrod AWACS jet doing a routine survey off the British coast. Even though the Soviet Union had collapsed the year before, the constant patrol of national borders for foreign aircraft and ships was still considered a high priority, and with the enormous radar dish mounted in its nose, the Nimrod was designed for that exact task.
"Roger that, Eagle Eye. Should be getting visual in a couple of minutes." The reply was from Lieutenant Peter Damon, the pilot of a Fairey Delta IV jet fighter. He'd been on a regular training flight when, along with a second fighter, he had been redirected to investigate an unidentified aircraft that had inexplicably appeared over the town of Little Whinging.
"You still tracking it, Eagle Eye? I haven't gotten visual yet, and it seems to be moving in and out of my—wait just a minute there! Kingfish, you seeing what I'm seeing?"
The pilot of the second fighter, whose name was David Pierce, replied, "Like hell I am. Whatever it is, it's doing two hundred knots without leaving a contrail. Doesn't seem to have any wings, or any rotors either. Never seen anything like it in my life. I'm gonna get me some gun camera footage of this thing!"
"You are?" Damon said. "You heard Eagle Eye—weapons hold. Send out an IDFF squawk first."
"I did that. No reply. I wonder if it's hostile, or just not much of a talker," said Pierce.
"Well then, whose do you suppose it is? The Russians? The Americans? The Chinese? The . . . Canadians?"
"If any of us knew, we wouldn't be up here. All I know for sure is that it's not one of ours, and we need to find out whose it is. But we can't do that until we have a good visual contact on—Jesus Christ!"
Damon looked down at his radar screen and saw what Pierce had been surprised by. The thing they were following—whatever it was—had just stopped in midair and shot backwards at nearly the same speed it had been flying forwards.
"Eagle Eye!" shouted Damon. "Bogey just pulled a cobra at two hundred knots. Nothing can fly like that. Nothing we've got, nothing the Americans have, and nothing the Russians have. And it's not reacting to our IDFF request."
"Well," came the reply from the AWACS jet, "have you got visual yet?"
"No . . . wait. . . yes! It seems to be. . . metallic, blue, and not very large. And it has—wait a second. There are windows, and I can see people in it! Oh my God, I see people in this thing!"
"People? Please, tell me more."
"Can't," said Damon. "Lost visual. What do you think it is, anyway? Can't be a commercial flight? Scratch that, too small. Unauthorized private aircraft, maybe? No, can't be that. I've never seen a private plane do a cobra before."
The radio feed from the AWACS paused for a moment, during which time both Damon and Pierce noticed that the thing they had been following had completely disappeared. "Not a clue. Does it appear hostile?"
"Not sure," replied Damon. "But it hasn't responded to any of our communications attempts. Eagle Eye, requesting permission to open fire? Better to be safe than sorry, after all."
"Permission granted."
Damon's hand closed around the firing lever. He'd taken off with the intent of this being a training flight, so the Delta's gun wasn't loaded. The only active weapons he had on board were two Sidewinder anti-aircraft missiles. Instinctively pressing the lever, he counted down until he saw the familiar yellow flame of the missile launching. It never came. He pressed the lever again. Still, nothing happened.
"Kingfish, can you hear me? The firing mechanism seems to be broken, and I'm not sure what the problem is. It just, you know, isn't working!" There was no reply whatsoever from Pierce. The radio replied with a flickering expanse of static. Frustrated, Damon banged on it with his fist, momentarily letting go of the controls, but this had absolutely no effect. Staring at the control panel, he noticed that the radar screen had also shut off.
"Scratch that, all systems are offline. I repeat, all systems are offline!" Damon shouted into the radio. There was still no reply. Now flying, as the saying went, "by the seat of his pants," Damon could only watch as the mysterious aircraft, whatever it was, accelerated away.
What the hell is going on here? I'm pretty sure I didn't see any bugs in our last checkup, and if there was a glitch in the AWACS the telemetry sure didn't show it. But on the other hand, it would take a pretty powerful EMP weapon to knock out the electronics on a Delta IV, and I'm not aware of any aircraft that's equipped for that kind of combat. So what, exactly, are we up against here?
Meanwhile, Pierce was not having any better luck. He had been trying to follow close behind the mysterious aircraft in hopes of photographing it, but like Damon his electronics shorted out as soon as he approached it. But he was close enough that he could see Damon's description of it was right: it was metallic, blue, and it looked as though he could see the silhouettes of people in it.
Suddenly the thing he had been chasing, whatever it was, disappeared completely. It didn't simply recede into the distance, but rather dove downwards toward the ground at an alarming speed, and vanished from sight. As it did, Pierce's electronics began to come back online, and Damon began noticing the same thing.
"Eagle Eye, bogey just splashed itself!" Pierce called into the radio
"Say what, Kingfish?"
"It's gone. It's not there anymore. Last we. . . I mean I . . . saw it it was headed out of Little Whinging."
Damon, for his own part, didn't bother asking Pierce any questions about what he had seen or where it was now. Instead he simply asked himself, "What . . . the Hell. . . was that?"
Far away, inside an airborne blue Ford Anglia, two twelve-year old boys—one with dark hair, round glasses, and a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, and the other with red hair and an abundance of freckles, exchanged nervous glances, and spent several minutes in utter silence. Finally, the red-haired boy broke the silence, and asked the exact same question that Damon and Pierce were asking: "What the Hell was that?"