Strange Visitor (from another planet) was written by Bryce Zabel
Since this should be short, I might actually get it finished in a reasonable time. Maybe.
This takes place a few days after '
The Smallville Connection '.
“I thought you were having lunch with George Thompson today,” Alec Freeman told his old friend and commanding officer, Ed Straker. Freeman knew that Straker had scheduled a helicopter to fly him from Metropolis to Langley, Virginia, to meet with the man the CIA director had assigned to oversee the agency charged with keeping the USA safe from aliens from outer space.
“I thought so, too,” Straker admitted. Freeman noted the worry in Straker’s ice blue eyes. Another man might have missed the signs, but Freeman had been Straker’s right-hand man in SHADO for more years than either cared to recall. He knew the blond man’s tells better than anyone aside from, maybe, Straker’s wife.
“Trask is up to something?” Freeman guessed. Jason Trask and his team had been a problem for SHADO since before there was a Supreme Headquarters - Alien Defense Organization.
“When has Trask ever
not been up to something?” Straker asked. It was a rhetorical question. Freeman knew he didn’t expect an answer.
“The director agreed with the IAC’s assessment that Bureau 39 was an unwarranted duplication of cost and effort and under Trask’s command, it was dangerously out of control.”
“I’m sure Trask took that well,” Freeman commented.
“He was ordered to meet with Thompson this morning in the director’s office.”
“Let me guess,” Freeman interjected grimly. “Trask didn’t show.”
“If this thing with Trask goes down as badly as it potentially could, it could get very, very, bad… for the whole planet.”
“Knowing Trask, he’ll be planning on going after Superman,” Freeman said. “We could just tell him we know we can control him.”
“Do you honestly believe that madman would believe anything anyone said that disagreed with what he’s already decided is true?”
Straker sighed and Freeman knew that once again there was much more going on than Straker was telling him.
“Ed, assuming Trask does have a way to hurt Superman, exactly how bad would the results be?” Freeman asked. “Are we looking at possible retribution from his people on New Krypton?”
“I wish it was that simple,” Straker told him. “I think we could handle a simple invasion.”
“So, what has you so worried?”
“A dream,” Straker said, making it sound like the most logical thing in the world.
“A dream?” Freeman repeated, trying to keep the disbelief out of his voice.
“A dream I had ten years ago,” Straker continued. “I dreamed that you and I were in Metropolis and there was a Superman and Trask succeeded in killing him. And one month later, the Earth has hit by an extinction-level-size meteorite because Superman wasn’t there to stop it.”
“I wouldn’t call that a dream,” Freeman commented. “Sounds more like one doozey of a nightmare.”
“Except that I’m not sure it was a dream,” Straker said. “At the time, I made a check of all the known Earth-crossing bodies that would be big enough to cause that much damage. There was one. The orbital computations at the time showed it would miss the planet by a good margin.”
“At the time?” Freeman repeated.
“I checked on its orbit from time to time,” Straker admitted. “Last year its orbit shifted slightly. Maybe it got hit by another object, maybe something else happened but I doubt we’ll ever know. In any case, it’s going to intersect Earth’s orbit and the Earth is going to be there.”
“And even with the technology we have available to us from the Rokan-shou and the Aurisans, we don’t have the ability to divert it, do we?”
Straker shook his head.
“Who else knows about it?”
“EPRAD, NASA, ESA, some astronomers,” Straker listed. “Their calculations indicate it’ll be a close miss. I ran my figures past a couple of the Rokan-shou navigators. It’s not going to miss, unless we happen to have a helpful Kryptonian around to take care of it for us.”
“Maybe we could tell Trask we need Superman,” Freeman suggested, only half joking.
“In my dream, he knew and didn’t care. And that’s why I killed him.”
