Inception, p.1
Inception, page 1
part #1 of The Genesis Machine Series
INCEPTION
THE GENESIS MACHINE
BOOK 1
K. J. GILLENWATER
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Inception
Copyright© 2023 K. J. Gillenwater
ISBN Print: 978-1-7357207-7-7
ISBN eBook: 978-1-7357207-6-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Decryption
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
July 2022
Fort Madison, Iowa
Petty Officer Ryan Ledbetter stepped through the rising waters outside the secure perimeter of the NAVSECGRU detachment headquarters on Fort Madison. Rain pummeled him and ran off his raincoat in sheets. His watch cap was soaked through.
"This is bullshit. We should be following evac procedures." He shone his flashlight through the murky dark, and it bounced off the chain link fence which surrounded the compound. "There's nothing out here. Rounds are done." He snapped off his flashlight and headed for the gates. He'd be damned if he'd wade through rounds the rest of his twelve hour shift. The commander should've let them leave hours ago.
"Wait." Seaman Bradley Conlon, his watch partner, stood still. "Do you hear that?"
Newbies always took this watch shit too seriously. "There's nothing there, Conlon. Come on, let's go back inside." His flashlight flickered out. He shook it. The light wavered. "Dammit."
A tremendous roar filled his ears. Like a tornado. A shrieking blast of sound. Instinctually, he covered them to protect himself from the noise. His whole body shook with the force of it.
Conlon was yelling something at him. He pointed at the sky.
Ledbetter looked up. Overhead, less than twenty feet above them, a huge ball of fire streaked by.
The object lost altitude rapidly and headed toward the swollen Mississippi, which edged the base. It slammed into the shallows sending flames and chunks of debris everywhere. Within minutes, the fire was doused by the flood waters and rain.
Ledbetter pressed the button on his walkie talkie. "This is Petty Officer Ledbetter. I think a plane crashed. We need emergency vehicles on site ASAP." He ran toward the rubble even before he was done speaking. "Come on Conlon. There might be survivors."
Conlon held back. "That was no plane."
Ledbetter turned and slowed his run through the mushy, flooded grass. "What do you mean?"
"It was just a big ball. There weren't any wings, no tail." Conlon splashed down the slope to him. "Let's go check it out."
Through the sheet-like rain they slipped and slid their way down the riverbank. Visibility was practically nil. Ledbetter shook his flashlight once more. It popped on. He played the white light across the grassy shoreline, now under a foot of water and rising. The beam caught a jagged edge of something sticking up from the ground.
"Over here." Ledbetter headed for the strange thing only a few yards away. The water came up over his chukka boots, wetting his wool socks. He paid it no mind. The object in the shallow water grabbed his attention.
A blob, about eight feet across and cracked open like a nut, sat in front of him. Smoke rose from the center, and the whole thing hissed in the rain and damp. He reached out to touch one jagged edge. His fingers hit something spongy and slimy. Like snot. "What the hell?" He yanked back his hand and wiped it on his dungarees. A chill ran through him.
Conlon stood right behind him. "What is it?" He reached out to touch it, too, but Ledbetter stopped him.
"Don't. I don't know what the hell that thing is, but it ain't no plane, and it ain't no meteor." Ledbetter picked up his radio once more and pushed the talk button. "This is Ledbetter again. I think you need to get someone down here."
CHAPTER 2
Defense Language Institute, Monterey, CA
August 2023
Charlie Cutter sliced into the water, her arms in perfect rhythm. The silence under water soothed her as she focused on her freestyle stroke—her routine four times a week. Her mind clear, her breathing timed.
One, two, three. Breathe. One, two, three. Breathe.
Swimming was one of two things she'd been naturally gifted at from an early age.
Two more laps, and she'd be done with her two thousand meters.
She hit the end of the pool, prepared to flip, but a hand touched her arm.
She came up out of the water with a gasp. Concentration broken. The quiet calm of her routine interrupted.
"Petty Officer Cutter?" A pimply-faced seaman in his summer whites crouched down at the edge of the pool.
Charlie looked past him at the clock on the wall. She'd been on her best time. Dammit. "Could you hand me that?" She nodded at her plain white towel sitting on a bench near the women's locker room door.
The seaman's face reddened, but he did what she asked.
Newbies, like this one, who waited for a new cycle of language classes to start, pulled odd assignments to fill in the empty days. A linguist-in-training at the Defense Language Institute might wait months for his spot in class, which meant he spent every day 'on duty.' Only the lucky ones got plum assignments. Looked like this poor seaman, bewildered and nervous, must've gotten a crap job of some kind.
Charlie climbed out of the pool, adjusted her racing suit, and wrapped the thin towel around her. "What can I do for you, Hansen?" She read the nametag pinned crookedly to his pressed white cotton shirt. He'd been lucky there'd been no surprise uniform inspection this morning at muster. The Petty Officer-in-Charge would've noticed that.
"Commander Niels wanted me to find you. Your roommate told me you'd be here at the gym." He cleared his throat. "I didn't know you'd be in the pool."
Was it her fault the kid had probably never been this close to a woman in a swimsuit before? She was surprised he'd made it through the rigors of Boot Camp with his spindly arms and nervous jack rabbit twitches. "Lieutenant Commander Niels?" She'd met him once, the day after she'd arrived in Monterey. He'd been a classmate of her father's. Even from three thousand miles away, Captain Harrison Cutter kept tabs on her.
"Something about your orders?" Hansen stood at parade rest, a horrible habit leftover from training. It took a few months for most to lose such an obvious newbie trademark. "I have a van parked out front. I'll wait for you there."
She dried her hair with the towel. "Give me five."
Charlie, her hair braided but dripping under her cover, shivered in the passenger van. Although it was mid-August, air conditioning was unneeded in the mild Central Coast climate. She gave Hansen the evil eye from the bench seat behind him, but he kept his gaze focused on the winding road.
"So tell me, how hard is it?" Hansen stopped at the bottom of the hill and sneaked a glance at her in the mirror. "Class, I mean."
"What are you taking?" DLI offered every language under the sun. She'd even run into a few civvies from the FBI here to take a Tagalog course once.
"Persian-Farsi."
"My roommate's taking that. Not bad, she says. Do you know French?"
"No."
"Well, I've heard it's similar to French. I'm sure you'll be fine. Forty-seven weeks, just like Russian, and I survived."
"Yeah, but you're—" He broke eye contact with her and made the turn toward the administration buildings. "—different."
Her heart seized up. She'd heard that before. Languages came naturally to her, maybe a little too naturally. Her teachers, little old ladies from the Ukraine and Russia, had suspected she'd studied Russian before. She hadn’t. "Don't worry, Hansen. You'll be fine. It takes a lot to rock out."
"Guess I'll find out in September."
Charlie nodded. Most students did well at DLI. But most of them studied their hearts out. Flashcards with vocab, doing assignments for hours in their heavy workbooks, listening to the foreign news stations. For her, that was all a waste of time. Her brain latched onto language like a wolverine did its prey. Russian had been a bit more of a challenge with its four declensions, however. After a few weeks she'd gobbled down the grammar rules so quickly, her instructors kept her busy with new vocabulary while teaching the rest of her class. Most expected her to pass her Defense Language Proficiency Test, or DLPT, with an across the board four-rating on a five point scale. Almost impossible for someone new to the language.
"Here we are." Hansen parked outside the two-story cement block building that served as the Navy administration headquarters for the language students.
"Thanks. Good luck in class." She stepped out of the van and made sure her cover sat level on her head and her white cotton uniform skirt was wrinkle free. The commander of the naval detachment would notice those details. The last thing she wanted was Lieutenant Commander Niels re porting to her father about her less-than-perfect appearance.
When she walked inside, a young admin sat behind a desk. By the hashes on the sleeve of her uniform, Charlie could see she was an E-2, Petty Officer Second Class.
"I'm here to see Lieutenant Commander Niels." Charlie took off her cover. The inside brim was damp from her hair. A slight chill ran through her. She'd been a good student, never been in trouble, and did well on her physical fitness tests. Had her father decided to meddle again?
The E-2 pressed a few buttons on her phone and talked quietly into the receiver. "The Lieutenant Commander wants me to send you up."
Charlie headed for the stairwell. She was so close to finishing her class—of course her father would intervene and make a mess of things. Calling in a favor, probably. He couldn't sign her up for Officer Candidate School without her permission, could he?
She headed right for the commander's door, a wooden placard with his name painted in gold lettering next to a ship's wheel. She knocked.
"Come."
She took a deep breath and opened the door.
Lieutenant Commander Niels had ruddy cheeks and a halo of gray hair around a shiny bald crown. "Petty Officer Cutter, have a seat, please."
Charlie stood stiffly in front of his desk. She had to know. She couldn't wait for him to explain the point of her visit. "Sir, I want to be a linguist. I wouldn't have joined if I didn't. If my father thinks that I'd give that up to please him, well—"
Niels cracked a smile. "Please, have a seat, Cutter. Your father didn't have anything to do with this meeting."
When she heard those words, she lost her train of thought. Why else would he ask her here? She sat in the hard metal seat with a blue fabric cushion—standard Navy issue.
Niels settled back in his chair. "It's come to my attention your skills would be better suited to a different assignment than your original orders. I've never seen this type of request come across my desk. Instead of heading to Goodfellow in Texas after graduation, you've been reassigned to the Naval Criminal Investigative Services."
"What?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't understand. I have orders to Japan—Misawa. I want to be airborne. That's why I joined." Did her father have something to do with this unprecedented shift in plans despite what the commander said? He'd never liked the idea of his daughter being enlisted much less riding in a spy plane gathering enemy comms. "If Captain Cutter gave you some idea that I'm unhappy here—"
"I told you, Cutter, I haven't spoken with your father. In fact, I'm rather insulted you'd believe that as commander of the naval detachment here at DLI I wouldn't have any say over the students in my purview. Or that I'd listen to a suggestion from an old Academy friend. That's not how things work in the Navy." Lieutenant Commander Niels's eyes snapped with fire, and his once smiling mouth turned down in a frown.
"No, sir."
"Good. Now, let me continue. You have new orders. After you've finished class, you will be headed directly to the Washington Navy Yard and will check in there to find out more about your assignment."
"Yes, sir."
"Do you have any questions?"
A million questions ran through her head, but most of them not ones she'd ask the Lieutenant Commander. "They want a CTI straight from school with no equipment training? Why me?"
"The request came directly from the head of BUPERS. As I said, I've never had a request like this before, but you’re an exceptional student, Cutter. This is a great opportunity for you." He handed her a manila envelope with her name scribbled across the front in black marker. "I wish you luck, sailor."
"Thank you, sir." She took the envelope.
"Take that with you and hand it to the Officer-in-Charge. Your PCS orders will be ready with the rest of your classmates' after graduation."
He stood up. Her cue to leave. "Yes, sir."
Once she'd left his office, her mind raced. Her father had to be wrapped up in this somehow because it didn't make any sense. She was nobody. A brand new E-4 fresh from language training. What could she possibly have that NCIS would want? Besides wasn't their mission internal? They investigated crimes within the Navy and the Marines. It didn't make sense.
The envelope grew heavy in her hands. No matter who'd been behind this switch, she was upset. Everything had been perfect. She was supposed to take her final language exam, transfer to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo for equipment training, and then flight school, followed by her final orders to Japan flying recon out of Misawa.
She wasn't a desk jockey.
She strode past the admin's desk and headed out the door, popping her cover back on her head. Hansen waited for her in the van, its engine running while parked next to the curb. She strolled right past him.
From her skirt pocket she plucked her cell phone. She chose a number out of her contact list and, while she waited for an answer on the other end, headed straight for the barracks up the hill.
"Cutter here," a gruff voice rumbled in her ear.
"What did you do?" She could hear the strained anger in her own words. The accusations she wanted to let fly. But she was determined to keep a cool head this time. Show him she could act the grown up and not like the typical teenager he still liked to compare her to. "Why did you have them change my orders?"
"Charlene, what are you talking about? Where are you?"
Why did he call her that? He knew she hated it. "You know very well where I am. You're screwing with my life again. Why don't you just admit it?"
He sighed. "I'd love to say I have been. Trust me, I've been chomping at the bit to get you out of there—but I swear to you, I've kept my word."
He sounded sincere. Charlie, her pace so quick she was out of breath, stopped in mid-stride. "You swear?"
"Yes."
Silence settled. Charlie's mind raced. "Then I don't understand." If her father wasn't involved in all of this, what was going on?
"You say you received new orders?"
"Yes. To some place called—" She opened up the manila envelope. "—NCIS-A Division. Do you know what that is?" Her father had been in the Navy her whole life. Captain Harrison Cutter was a well-respected intelligence analyst at the National Security Agency. She might butt heads with him frequently, but occasionally he was good for a few things.
"No. But why would they want you? That's police work. You're only a linguistics major."
The usual dig at her choice in college majors. She reined in her temper as best she could and let the slight roll off her back. "Look, I was hoping you might have been responsible for this, that's all. But since you clearly don't believe I'm qualified for the job in the first place, I guess I can throw that idea out the window. Say hi to Chad for me when you see him."
"Charlene, I didn't mean—"
Charlie hung up. He had a way of cutting her down every time she talked to him. Nothing was ever good enough for him. The last thing she needed to hear was his typical lecture about how she'd failed his expectations and why she made a huge mistake enlisting in the Navy rather than going to OCS.
She needed to burn off some of her anxious energy. A few more laps in the pool would do it. Her roommate thought she worked out too much, too hard, but it was one way for her to clear her head and forget about her dad's disappointments in her life choices.
There had to be a way out of this. If her father hadn't been the one behind it, she'd figure out who was. Damned if some idiot from NCIS would be telling her what to do. They'd already changed her orders once. There must be a way to change them again.
CHAPTER 3
Charlie sat in the security lobby of Building forty-two—a nondescript, blocky structure. She needed a good swim to shake off her nerves. After working for months to perfect her language skills and be the best damned Russian linguist the Navy had, she found herself at the Washington Navy Yard surrounded by a bunch of civilians and contractors.
