Skywave Read online

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A NOTE TO READERS

  PROLOGUE

  1: LIFTOFF

  2: WISH UPON A STAR

  3: ONE CLICK LEADS TO ANOTHER

  4: SMOKE SIGNALS

  5: CETUS

  6: START YOUR ENGINES

  7: FLY ME TO THE MOON

  8: BIRDS AND BEES

  9: MINEFIELD BALLET

  10: SOL SEAKER

  11: WAKING THE DEAD

  12: FRENZY

  13: WAGGLE DANCE

  14: TEETERING ON THE BRINK

  15: CALLISTO APPROACH

  16: SIBERIAN SURPRISE

  17: BLACKOUT

  18: FIGHTING IONS WITH IONS

  19: ON THE WINGS OF ANGELS

  20: SILENT NO MORE

  21: DATA DUMP

  22: DECOMPRESSION

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  To my sister-in-law, Susan Patton,

  for her friendship, grace and courage

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A special mention of thanks to my editor, Katherine Pickett of POP Editorial Services, LLC, cover designer, Asha Hossain of Asha Hossain Design, LLC, print edition interior designer Amber Colleran and copyeditors Cheryl Hollenbeck and Lisa Weinberg, for their collective help in the creation of Skywave.

  A NOTE TO READERS

  Greetings, friends, fans and new readers! Thank you in advance for choosing to read Skywave, the first book in my new sci-fi thriller series, The Rorschach Explorer Missions.

  The Rorschach Explorer Missions series is my first foray into the realm of science fiction, and readers familiar with my mystery/thriller/suspense series, The Anlon Cully Chronicles, will observe similarities in storyline elements between the two series. I like to blend mystery, alternative history, fantasy and suspense-twists into my plots, and Skywave is no exception.

  For those interested, there is a novella prequel to Skywave entitled UMO. While it isn’t necessary to read UMO to understand the Skywave story, or vice versa, UMO does provide a deep dive into the U.S.S. Cetus Prime backstory that runs throughout Skywave. UMO is currently only available as a Kindle eBook via Amazon.com.

  I hope you enjoy the space exploration adventure presented in Skywave and look forward to follow-on installments in the series.

  PROLOGUE

  ALL HAIL 3LR0Y

  Apartment 4B, Cocoa Waves Condominium

  Cocoa Beach, Florida

  May 11, 2018

  Kiera Walsh clicked the hyperlink embedded in the text message and waited for her tablet to connect to the podcast. During the wait, she stared out at the ocean and mumbled, “I can’t believe I got suckered into doing this.”

  The site took a full minute to load, providing Kiera enough time to lay her tablet on the balcony table and head inside for another glass of iced tea. When she returned outside, she set the glass down next to her tablet, catching a glimpse of the podcast home page. She lifted the tablet to take a closer look and began to laugh. “Oh, my God. Unbelievable.”

  The center of the screen was dominated by the frozen video image of a scraggly-bearded man wearing a paper crown from a popular burger chain. The crown was cocked to the side of his head, presumably to reinforce the “gangsta” vibe apparent on the rest of the page. Kiera assumed the man in the video was none other than the channel’s host, “hizz boi 3lr0y,” as she noticed the T-shirt he wore depicted the sixties cartoon character, Elroy.

  Below the video was a caption that read, “Dey keep throwin shade, but 3lr0y unswayed!” Kiera laughed again. “Ah, our boy Elroy is a gangsta and a poet. How awful! No wonder NASA shot him down.”

  Her opinion of 3lr0y, a.k.a. Ajay Joshi, didn’t improve as she scanned the rest of the site. The right sidebar provided thumbnail images of other recent video diatribes, each displaying captions with cringe-worthy, rap-inspired rhymes. Beneath the center-screen feature video, there was a section titled “Da truf is 0ut der!” It contained links to recent “news” articles about UFO sightings, alien conspiracies and the like.

  But the most hilarious section ran down the left-hand sidebar. Here, 3lr0y had created a pithy bio that was more of a dating-site profile than a listing of his bona fides, with categories such as favorite places to stargaze, best sci-fi flicks and hottest superhero vixens. For turn-ons, he listed “all thangs Jupiter,” while he limited his turn-offs to “suck hole non-believers.” This latter category had accumulated over five hundred thumbs-up votes. For grins, Kiera clicked on the vote tally to view the list of 3lr0y’s like-minded visitors. As expected, the avatars and usernames revealed his followers to be a collection of anti-establishment, aliens-are-among-us fanatics.

  Kiera hadn’t paid attention to the vote totals below 3lr0y’s videos when she first scanned the page, so she scrolled up to check out the stats. She was surprised to see that several of them had over a thousand views, each with hundreds of thumbs-up votes. While perusing the tallies, she noticed a flashing banner at the top of the page. It hadn’t been there when the site initially loaded, so she presumed 3lr0y was in the midst of updating the site. The banner read, “Stay tuned, dawgs and bitches…New pruf coming 2m0rr0w!”

  “Okay, I’ve seen enough,” Kiera said as she closed the tablet’s web browser. Opening her text app, she clicked on the message from Sarah and typed, “K. Looked at the link as promised.”

  To Kiera’s dismay, Sarah replied within seconds. “So…what do u think? Can u help AJ?”

  “AJ needs help all right, but not from me!” Kiera typed back. She included an emoticon of a tongue-drooping, cross-eyed smiley face.

  “Yeah…I know. He’s wacky, but he’s really sweet,” Sarah answered. There was a pause and then Sarah followed up with another text. “And he’s really bummed out. Won’t you please meet with him?”

  “I’m an aerospace engineer, not a shrink,” Kiera responded.

  “I know, but you’re the best AE I know!” came Sarah’s swift reply. Attached to the text were several wide-smile emoticons.

  “Um…I’m the only AE you know.”

  “PLEEEAAASSEEE!!! I’m on my knees begging.”

  Kiera sighed and rattled off her response. “Look, I get one week off a month. I’m not devoting a second of it to meet with a crude, misogynistic nutjob…no offense.”

  For several minutes, there was no response from Sarah. Kiera hated to be so blunt about it, but there was no way she was going to waste her time listening to 3lr0y’s wacked-out theory about aliens on Callisto broadcasting radio greetings to Earth. The dude was an accountant, not a scientist. And he had zero experience analyzing radio signals. He was just an amateur astronomer with a homemade radio telescope in his backyard who’d watched a few too many Star Trek reruns as a child.

  Kiera lowered the tablet to her lap and reached for her iced tea. In midgulp, she felt a buzz from the device. Sarah had written back. With another sigh, this one deeper, Kiera pressed her thumb on the lock-screen button to view the text.

  “Didn’t want to do this…but u leave me no choice. Meet with AJ or suffer the consequences,” read Sarah’s message. A second text followed close behind, accompanied by a winking smiley face. “I still have the video, u know…the FULL, UNCENSORED version.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Kiera responded.

  “Watch me, twinkle toes.”

  Friends shouldn’t let friends record karaoke performances, Kiera thought. Ever. Especially when alcohol is involved. Doubly so when the staggering, off-key rendition includes a raunchy striptease and pole dance. While Kiera doubted Sarah was serious about posting the video, she knew her old roommate would continue to pester her until she got what she wanted. The thre
atened revenge porn was just Sarah’s way of short-circuiting the pestering process.

  “Fine. 30 minutes, no more,” Kiera replied.

  “Yay! He’ll be in Cocoa day after tomorrow,” came Sarah’s immediate reply. “I gave him ur # yesterday. He’ll contact u to arrange time & place.”

  “You did what?!!!”

  “Kisses,” said Sarah’s final text.

  Kiera searched her emoticon menu for the one depicting a middle-finger salute. She fired off a reply filled with two rows of the icon. Unsatisfied, Kiera blurted a stream of expletives loud enough to catch the attention of a woman and child walking along the surf a hundred yards in the distance. The sour-faced woman glared up at Kiera’s fourth-floor balcony and shook her head. Red-faced, Kiera waved and shouted out an apology. When the woman was out of view, Kiera said, “Great way to start the vacay.”

  Later in the evening, with her takeout dinner of egg rolls and Szechuan chicken consumed, Kiera sat in the corner of her living room sofa with a half-empty glass of Chardonnay. On her lap rested her tablet, and once again she found herself gazing at Ajay Joshi’s podcast channel. Whether driven by curiosity or sadism, Kiera had resolved to view his videos before she called it a night, and now it was time to make her first selection.

  There were a dozen videos available on the home page and an archive link to thirty others. As Kiera scanned the lyrical captions of the twelve main clips, it was apparent that most were devoted to Ajay’s obsession with his supposed discovery of alien radio signals and his frustration with NASA and other “suck hole non-believers” who ignored his “pruf.”

  Among these clips, his featured video appeared to be the most recent, so she opted to start there and work backward in time. Before pressing play, Kiera whisked down the remainder of her wine and set the glass aside.

  The video began with a dark screen and the sound of ocean waves. After several seconds, the waves soundtrack faded and a voice said, “Greetings, playas…It is I, Elroy, come to drop mo’ fo-one-one on yo sorry asses.”

  The dark screen began to lighten, revealing a blur of changing shapes and colors. As the camera’s focus adjusted, Ajay appeared. Seated before the webcam, arms crossed like a posing hip-hop star, he had a scowl on his face and the burger-joint crown on his head.

  Kiera winced, wondering if Ajay realized how comical his tough-guy presentation came across. The dark-skinned Nepali was string-bean thin, with biceps that looked like broomsticks poking out from the drooping sleeves of his Elroy T-shirt. Hardly the stuff of gangstas, she thought.

  The laughable quality of the video was further bolstered by Ajay’s speech pattern. His attempt to mesh contemporary American urban slang with the high-toned inflections common among East Indian cultures only exacerbated the goofiness of his delivery…all this before he dropped a morsel of “fo-one-one.”

  He held up a piece of paper and shook it at the camera. “Another diss from the naysayers!”

  A subtitle appeared on the screen to clarify for his audience the identity of the antagonists who’d disrespected Ajay. The subtitle read, “Down wit NASAyerz.”

  “Good Lord,” Kiera said. “This might call for another glass of wine.”

  The early part of Ajay’s rant focused on a letter he’d received from a NASA “scrub” on the day the video was shot. The bottom-feeding lackey, as Ajay also labeled him, had dared to challenge Ajay’s interpretation of intermittent clicks on a recording of radio waves from Jupiter.

  This injustice, Ajay explained, was the latest evidence of a massive cover-up to hide the presence of aliens on Jupiter’s outermost moon, Callisto. Several groups within NASA had rejected his theory. Ajay reminded his viewers that scrubs from the European Space Agency, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, the China National Space Administration and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, hadn’t even bothered to respond to his emails.

  While he railed against their collective ignorance, Kiera noticed Ajay’s language and demeanor begin to change. The angrier he became, the more forceful his delivery. There was authority in his voice. Aided by the discard of his crown, Ajay morphed from slapstick foil to impassioned crusader.

  “They say the clicks come from Earthbound interference. Skywaves, they call them. Ionosondes,” he said, using his fingers to form air quotes around the two technical terms. “Well, I say, ionosondes, my ass!”

  His expression was stern as he rattled off his rebuttal. “The sounds are clicks. They are not chirps. They are not lightning-induced static. They were recorded over a year-and-a-half period, by different Radio JOVE contributors in six different states, and the clicks occur only when Callisto passes in front of Io and Jupiter. The clicks make the same exact sounds in the same exact pattern, in exactly three-minute intervals, on all six recordings.

  “Are we to believe that skywaves are capable of bouncing off the ionosphere with such precision, and that they inherently know to invade Io-B recordings when Callisto transits Jupiter?

  “Some of the scrubs claim the clicks are electrical interference from appliances, or shortwave-radio pranksters tapping out Morse code. Really? Are we to believe that the exact same type of appliance resides near the six different radio telescopes that have picked up the clicks? Hmmm? And that these appliances are turned on and off at precisely the same interval, producing identical click patterns? Or that a devious prankster travels around the country, perfectly guessing which Radio JOVE contributors will be recording Io-B storms on nights when Callisto, Io, Jupiter and Earth all line up, and only on those nights? This devious prankster is apparently so clever, he is able to then set up his ham radio near the contributors’ telescopes and insert Morse-like, repeating signals?”

  Kiera paused the recording as Ajay rose from his chair to emphasize his next point. She stood herself and headed for the kitchen. “Yep, more wine is definitely in order.”

  As she poured the Chardonnay, she considered Ajay’s points. Although he was oversimplifying the explanations provided by his space agency villains, she had to admit his rebuttals contained rational challenges. Whether they were accurate or not was another matter, but at least he appeared to have counterarguments that weren’t based on comic book gibberish.

  On her way back to the living room sofa, she made a mental note to learn more about Radio JOVE before meeting Ajay. She’d heard of the NASA program before and knew it was created to investigate magnetic storms on Jupiter, but that was the extent of her knowledge.

  Seated before the tablet again, Kiera unpaused the video. Ajay, now in full meltdown, walked about the room, shouting, “No! I say no! And no, again! The signals come from Callisto, not Earth. They are being purposely broadcast by an intelligent life-form. They are not ionosondes, on Earth, Io, Callisto or Jupiter! It is an alien greeting. Or a distress call. I don’t know which, but I do know this: I will not be silenced!”

  Out of breath, Ajay slumped back in his chair and glared at the camera. He planted the crown back on top of his thick, black hair with defiance chiseled on his face. As his respiration settled down, he flashed a gang sign and said, “’Til next time, peace out, bros and bitches!”

  Fade to black.

  1: LIFTOFF

  Bahama Bettie’s Beachside Bistro

  Cocoa Beach, Florida

  May 13, 2018

  From beneath the patio umbrella, Ajay fanned his face with the bar menu and spied the crowded beach for a blonde in an orange visor. Seeing none, he lowered his gaze to the table and the collage underneath its laminated surface.

  The photographs showed different beach scenes from previous eras. There were snaps of surfers riding longboards, children building sand castles and bikini-clad girls posing next to lifeguards. Others showed sunbathers, picnic partiers and couples holding hands at sunset. Dozens more depicted other idyllic seaside memories. Among the collection, there was only one that struck a chord with Ajay.

  He studied the photograph with envy in his heart. It showed hundreds of beachgoers watching the arcing
contrail of a rocket launch from nearby Cape Canaveral. Ajay guessed it to be a Space Shuttle launch from the 1980s, given the hair and clothing styles of the people gawking at the smoke trail. It must have been a thrilling experience, Ajay thought. The sound of it must have been deafening. He lifted his eyes from the picture and stared in the direction of Canaveral, some five miles away.

  Ajay had made past pilgrimages from his home in Phoenix to beaches near Vandenberg Air Force Base to watch a few nighttime satellite launches, but he had never seen a Shuttle launch. As awesome as it had been to watch Atlas rockets light up the darkness over the Pacific Ocean, Ajay was certain the Vandenberg launches paled in comparison to the spectacle of a Shuttle launch, day or night.

  Dipping his head back down, he ran his finger over the contrail and felt the familiar ache in his chest. It was an ache that had first stirred when he viewed the stars from his boyhood home near the base of Mount Everest.

  At eleven thousand feet above sea level, Ajay’s hometown of Namache Bazaar was dwarfed by the famous twenty-nine-thousand-foot peak. Yet, on cloudless nights it provided vistas so clear, Ajay could see the Sun reflect off the orbiting Space Shuttle. With a naked eye, he would watch the bright dot traverse the star-filled sky. After it passed, he’d then join his father at the family telescope to take in views of the Moon and the other planets in the solar system.

  Of Earth’s neighbors, Ajay had always been most fascinated by Jupiter. Even through their medium-grade telescope, its color striations gave the planet a mysterious aura. When NASA published high-quality images of the planet taken by its Galileo and Cassini probes, Ajay was further awed. The images made Jupiter seem alive, feeding Ajay’s imagination of what might lie below its swirling clouds. His father would ask him why he favored Jupiter over Saturn. The old man would argue Saturn’s distinctive rings were the most unusual planetary feature in the solar system and therefore deserved greater respect from Ajay.