The Alien’s Secret
Volume 1
The Rankin Cube
Robert M. Doroghazi
Copyright © 2015 Robert M. Doroghazi, MD
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical or by any information or storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author or publisher.
Cover art by Jessica Parks
Edited by Geoffrey Doyle
Published in eBook format by AKA-Publishing
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-9421-6803-4
AKA-Publishing
Columbia, Missouri
Author’s Note
I hated college English class. The word symbolism brings back nothing but unpleasant memories. My interpretation of everything was inevitably different than the instructor’s, which meant I was always wrong. A guy in a wife-beater undershirt kills a woman in a drunken rage with a pick ax between the eyes: that sounded pretty nasty to me. Sorry, Robert: you didn’t appreciate the irony, the sarcasm, the pathos, and the inner turmoil. Nope, guess I missed that. I’m not sure whether it was my crew cut, or that I suggested we read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island or Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, rather than Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice that upset them. I was told I would never get into medical school with an attitude like that. You’re lucky to get a B minus there, fella. Looking back, I think they were all just a bunch of pot-smoking hippies.
I’ll save you all that phooey and tell you straightaway what this story is about. There is no doubt who the bad guys are: they say bad things and do bad things; they manipulate people, steal from them, lie to them, and abuse, then discard them. The good guys are the Lone Ranger, Sergeant York, Audie Murphy, June and Ward Cleaver type: clean-cut, hard-working, loyal, honest people of character, willing to die for what they believe in.
Since political (in)correctness now mandates trigger warnings, I caution you that this book will make you sad, mad, and happy, make you laugh and cry, make you feel humbled, proud and embarrassed, make you want to hug and kiss your kids—and could offend you.
Chapter One
The Meeting
“Sir, I believe this is the most serious threat of the war,” said General Raton, Chief of the Orian Armed Forces.
“I agree,” replied Chairman Rommeler with a nod. “I’ll call an emergency meeting of the Committee of Ten for 1300 hours tomorrow to discuss the situation.” As Rommeler glanced down at the clock on his desk, he said, “Seventeen hours should be sufficient time for all of the Committee members to return to DiGamma.”
I believe it will be,” replied the general.
“We’ll meet in the Suppay Room. General, be prepared to present the options we’ve just discussed and any other legitimate possibilities we might come up with in the interim.”
“Yes, Sir,” replied Raton.
The chairman was already keying in the instructions to summon the Committee members as Raton stood up and turned to leave. It would be a long night.
Makeup can hide a scar, but it can’t hide the pain, and it can’t change reality.
All of the physical damage to DiGamma, the capital city of the planet Oria, was now just a memory. Even the greater sasz, a majestic bird, the largest raptor on the planet, the symbol of royal power when kings still ruled the land, whose ten centimeter talons could snatch a lamb, had returned to their traditional nesting sites atop the tallest buildings, like a feathered crown on the capital city. The people welcomed the return of the great white birds with their chisel-hard beaks, reddish-tipped wings and black tails as a sign that daily life had returned—almost—to normal. Because the sasz had long-ago been genetically programmed to take only bisms and prinzs, the capital was again free of vermin.
The revolution, a word that to most meant only dark memories and awful associations, began fourteen months ago with such a pile-driving suddenness that the central government was taken completely by surprise. On the first day, three of the rebel’s quark-drive fighters broke through DiGamma’s defenses and headed straight toward the capitol building, the Hall of Rankin, raking everything in their path with the fire from their lepton cannons. Sye W. Kanaduh, 112 year-old member of the Committee of One Hundred, was among the 2,350 civilians that died in the surprise attack. An interplanetary transportation facility and power sub-station were completely destroyed, and eighteen homes and two hospitals were damaged.
Even before the central government regained the initiative, the rebels turned to terror. They claimed to be fighting for the freedom of the oppressed, but it was just an excuse; they wanted power. With their only seismic weapon, they directed a class four tremor at a grade school in the provincial capital of Pawlee, burying almost three thousand children in the rubble. They had planned a second quake for two hours later, just the right amount of time to also kill the rescue workers. But a daring raid by the elite Rankin Star Commandos, led by Captain Meir, took out the facility just as the weapon was being recharged.
The last suicide attack on the capital was seven months ago. A grandmother, a widow known for her generosity and pleasant manner, who would do anything for anybody, because that’s just how she was, was taking her daughter and her two children into the city for a day of treats, a little indulgence, some shopping and a show to celebrate the older girl’s birthday. “That’s what grandmas are supposed to do,” she would say.
She also had a package she was delivering as a favor for a friend of a friend, which she was told was a hand-sewn dress. It was in fact, the cellulose-based explosive ammit, which was near-impossible to detect because it gave the same signal as a candy bar on all the routine monitoring devices. It was initially hoped that one of the children may have been left at a friend’s and not involved in the tragedy, but genetic testing of material scraped off the sidewalk confirmed that the four year old had also been pulverized.
On Orian television, radio, and internet, on the broadcasts from other planets, from the soldiers returning from the fighting to savor the hugs from their family and the well-deserved respect of their neighbors, all the news of the recent fighting was positive. The Orian stock market lost 60 percent of its value during the first two weeks of fighting, but was now on the verge of breaking to a new high. Many, even those whose job it was to be cynical and skeptical, such as pawn shop owners and high school assistant principals, openly predicted victory in six weeks, or maybe if things went well, as little as four weeks.
But the Orians are a pragmatic, sanguine people; they never let bliss dilute reality. Although they had every reason to be optimistic, the fact that there would inevitably be more deaths and destruction before the final victory was not sublimated. More Orians had died in the fourteen month Civil War than had died in the last two hundred years of all of Oria’s interplanetary conflicts, including the seemingly endless fighting with the barbarian Grog. Neighbor fighting neighbor, brother fighting brother, is always more vicious than when warriors meet on the field of battle. Of the casualties, 70 percent were civilians that had never touched a weapon.
The skyline of DiGamma was dominated by three grayish-white energy receptor panels. Each round panel was more than two kilometers in diameter and stood atop towers that were a kilometer square at the base and more than six kilometers high—thirty times taller than the St. Louis Arch. The towers were visible from more than 350 kilometers away. At least one panel was visible to more than 90 percent of Orians from their front yards. Far from eyesores, they represented power and security. These panels, and the forty-five others strategically