2049-09-09

From: Lt. El Ray
To: Cdr. Ezra Stone

Subject: Operation: 52 Pickup Debriefing Report

Event Summary:

Operation: 52 Pickup was supposed to be simple. As Quillroy put it, it should have been a “most least-extreme mission.” After fighting disgruntled cyborgs and psychotic cryptids, sweating in the sun all day recovering heavy airplane wreckage sounded downright boring. But that was the mission, and our job is to complete our mission—no matter how dull. 

The Thunderbird was an experimental hypervelocity aircraft the fellows at Area 51 had been testing. It had crashed on an uninhabited island in the Bahamas. Lucky for me, my job was to recover the black-box recorder. A bit more fun, if you ask me, as the box lay deep in the waters of the North Atlantic. Safety precautions called for it to be ejected from the aircraft in the case of a crash—you know, in case the hypervelocity scramjet engine vaporized the vehicle on impact. 

The black-box was an easy enough find, just five meters down. I snatched it and stowed it away in my pack. That’s when I noticed lights coming from beyond the famous Bimini Road—a strange, underwater formation of ancient limestone. I knew the rest of the team would be at it a little longer, so I decided to check it out. 

I eyed the limestone road, wondering how any human had managed to place such an intricate formation of cut stone so far beneath the sea. Whoever had built it had done so thousands of years ago, without any of our modern technology! I couldn’t help but wonder if the creators had been ancestors of mine, rather than humans? Perhaps I am one of the last living lifeforms from an ancient sea species.

The Dulles was sailing in open water, so I knew I’d have to make it quick. We could not afford to draw the attention of any prying eyes from the nearby resort islands. Per Cdr. Stone’s last radio message,  I knew the Dulles aircraft carrier would transform back into its cruise liner disguise at fourteen hundred hours. That meant I had about two hours to get back to the ship.  

I radioed in to tell Cdr. Stone I was heading back, but received no response.

Instead, I heard Quillroy report that he completed loading the heaviest parts of the scamjet’s fuselage onto a K1-Python amphibious ATV modified for hauling. Daart and Albert VII, he said, had recovered and accounted for the aircraft’s smaller parts and had rendezvoused with him at the hauler. 

When Cdr. Stone asked why the mission’s second in command was responding, I tried to radio in again. I would not find out until later that they couldn’t hear any of my responses. 

Something—or someone—was disrupting communication in the Bermuda Triangle.