The Black Ships



   

   

  THE BLACK SHIPS

   

  Published by A.G. Claymore

  Edited by B.H. MacFadyen

  Copyright 2012 A.G. Claymore

   

  This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Places, Incidents and Brands are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark owners of any products referenced in this work of fiction which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  The Black Ships

  Japanese Edo Period Kyoka

  Awoken from sleep

  of a peaceful quiet world

  by Jokisen tea;

  with only four cups of it

  one can't sleep even at night.

   

  Deliberate Alternate Meaning

  The steam-powered ships

  break the halcyon slumber

  of the Pacific;

  a mere four boats are enough

  to make us lose sleep at night.

   

  Table Of Contents

  Enlightenment

  Conception

  Commencement

  Turbulence

  Falling Towards Change

  From Darkness – Light

  The Flood Tide

  Coming to Grips

  Epilogue

  A Fireside Chat

   

  Enlightenment

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  January 3rd, 2026

  Four degrees below freezing. Mike Willsen shivered as he crossed the atrium beneath the massive telescope array. You’d never know it was Hawaii.

  The huge room was actually colder than the outside. The heaters didn’t serve the large central space so it tended to preserve the night-time cold until well into the afternoon.

  He stopped at a steel door and keyed in his passcode. The bolts in the door retracted with a low metallic groan and he entered the control room, located off to the left side of the huge central area. He shuddered in appreciation as he passed through the door, greeted by a wave of heat and the scent of old coffee.

  They had better coffee at the Onikuza Center, where he always stopped on the way up, but he preferred to have his caffeine while he worked. It was part of his comfortable weekly ritual – drinking stale crystal coffee and recording images from other planets.

  His regular stops at the center down the slope weren’t optional.  At an elevation of just under 14,000 feet, the atmospheric pressure at the observatory was forty percent less than at Mike’s apartment in Hilo. Without his two-hour stop at the Visitor Information Center, he knew from experience that he would suffer from severe headaches and poor judgment – well, worse than usual.  As it was, he barely trusted himself to drive the last few miles for fear he would send his jeep crashing over the edge of the rough road.

  He had come to admire the people of Tibet – many of them lived their lives at even higher elevations.

  Though the sixty-meter array was shared by a large collection of universities and national agencies, this morning was set aside for Red Flag’s weekly mapping of their facility on the Olympus Mons site. Every week, for corporate records, Mike would record imagery of the tailings ejected from tunnels bored into the side of the twenty-seven-kilometer-high volcano in the Tharsis region of Mars. So far, the small team hadn’t managed to find anything that would even come close to paying off the company’s investment, but Red Flag had deep pockets and a long outlook. Though the miners sent regular reports back to Earth, Red Flag wanted the imagery and so Mike had to make his weekly pilgrimage. The rest of his telescope time was spent mapping out likely locations for deposits throughout the solar system but it wasn’t as time sensitive. He could do that remotely.

  Mike walked over to the six-meter touch screen that controlled the mirror and selected a macro that ran the imaging process for him. He could set it to run remotely but, if it failed and he wasn’t here, there’d be hell to pay.

  Considering the carefree lifestyle he enjoyed, driving up the mountain every few days to press a few buttons was a small price. He enjoyed decent pay and very little in the way of responsibility.

  His only other tangible role was as a liaison to the NASA center, farther down the slopes of the mountain. In recent years, Red Flag had begun to turn their enormous resources to off-planet exploration. With the growing Sino-American space rivalry, it was only a matter of time before extra-terrestrial sources of ore would become commercially viable. Red Flag had been working closely with NASA and the ISS for several years and had managed to include a small, exploratory mining mission when the ISS had launched the Vinland colony to Mars the previous year. It was little more than a hole in the ground and a small habitat, but the potential payoff, if there was a payoff, was enormous.

  Habitation on Mars was now a fact, though a very fragile one. It wouldn’t be long before a local source of minerals would be needed to support the next steps.

  Mike’s claim to fame at the NASA compound was his specialty in geology. His first doctorate had been in physics but upon its completion he had realized that he had no desire to go out into the ‘real world’, as his father liked to describe it. He had developed a sudden passion for rocks and soils, much to his father’s dismay, and had launched himself back into the world of academics.

  As he approached the end of his masters degree in geology, his father had made it quite clear that he would no longer support his academic inclinations and that he had better open his mind to the possibility of getting a job. That conversation had terrified Mike. He really couldn’t see how others did it – going out there and finding an employer, being responsible for children and mortgages.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t have to find out. His father had made his fortune in the mining industry and an old partner of his had offered to take Mike on. Ed McAdam, a gentleman of few words, had shown up at the University of California’s Berkeley campus looking for him.

  To call it a conversation would have been stretching it. Mike couldn’t remember saying anything. Ed simply appeared next to him in front of the Hearst building, told him that he had a job running the remote sensing operation in Hawaii and that if he failed to report for work in three weeks – one week after completing his latest degree – he would be fired. He handed him a card from his human resources department and strolled away.

  He knew his free academic ride was coming to an end and he had been studiously avoiding the whole job and life issue as the graduation ceremony approached. Suddenly, out of the blue, an easy answer had been dropped in his lap. He liked easy answers. Maybe he wouldn’t have to grow up after all…

  Hawaii sounded nice. He had always liked the idea of surfing. Only the idea, of course,
as he had a nearly pathological certainty that every shark in the Pacific was waiting for the day when he would finally rent a board and take his first lesson.

  Still, Hawaii sounded nice.

  Now, after a year on the Islands, he’d managed to avoid surfing, though he did enjoy swimming – as long as there were other, less agile swimmers around for the sharks to eat first. He had just been down to the beach for a quick dip before coming to the mountain, but he still wasn’t fully awake. He walked over to the percolator to find that Franka had left a half pot from three hours ago.

  He poured cream into a cup of the stale brew and watched it form a tiny storm cloud as he walked to the table in the middle of the room.

  He looked up, hoping to spot one of the miners on the close-up.

  His coffee mug struck the floor, ejecting its contents in a graceful wave.

  After a moment of stunned disbelief, he ran to the screen and touched the security menu, closing all of the shutters and locking down the door.

  Oxford University

  South East England

  January 3rd, 2026

  Jan Colbert waited impatiently while a technician pounded away at the keys. An entire room of students sat chattering, reading or simply looking bored as they sat in the tiered rows of the lecture room.

  This was more than a simple question of her room usage statistics – the technical issue would offset that – their scheduled communication slot with the ISS facility on Mars would likely be lost if they didn’t manage to connect. The team in tech support had rolled their eyes at her yesterday when she requested a dry run. It was obvious now that her request would have saved a great deal of trouble.

  Even worse, Edward sat there in the front row, along with several other faculty members, smiling with condescension as the highlight of the winter semester slowly slipped through her fingers. She had been surprised to see him in the tiers when she walked into the hall but she could hardly ban him; she had extended an open invitation to all her colleagues. Even a self-absorbed professor from the English Literature department could claim a seat and smirk to his heart’s content. Jan steadfastly told herself she was ignoring his presence as she stalked the stage. Perhaps he sabotaged the equipment, she mused to herself as she paced.

  The technician’s shoulders relaxed as he finished a flourish of keystrokes. An image of a control room came up on the projection screen behind Jan but no astronauts were in sight. At least we have the connection,  she thought. This was the high point of the semester; a video discussion between the first Mars settlers and her fourth-year exobiology class. She had wanted to do it on the 2nd, the third anniversary of their departure from Earth, but there was no room on the communication link. Today was the best she could get.

  Her relief was interrupted when she realized that the technician was explaining to her, in great detail, what he had done to fix the problem. He was in the midst of a bizarre discourse on IP’s and security certificates.

  “Not now,” she said quietly as she turned him, none too gently, towards the door. “This wouldn’t be such a dog’s breakfast if you’d done a dry run yesterday.” Do I really need to listen to this fool when I have another planet on hold?

  She walked over to the little cross of masking tape on the floor and turned to face the camera. “Hello Vinland Station, this is Dr. Jan Colbert. Is anyone home?” The students finally settled down as they watched an image from an alien world. The backdrop transmitting from Mars was a workbench beneath a whiteboard. The board was splattered with hydraulic fluid and the bench littered with tools and binders. You’d think they would clean up for this.

  “We’ll have to wait four minutes for them to hear that,” she said, turning to face the class, “and another four before they can answer – unless they went out for dinner!” She was rewarded with a few chuckles from the class. The lamest of jokes can get results if you don’t act like you’re making a joke.

  Getting a good laugh always helped to relieve the stress. Jan was just about to remind her Q&A panel to have their questions ready when the stress came back. The half of the class still looking at the screen gave a variety of small involuntary twitches or warding arm movements; a preliminary fight-or-flight reaction. One of the students in the third row let out a scream as Jan was still turning to see what had happened on screen.

  A figure looked out at them. It was perhaps half the average size of a human and its charcoal grey suit looked to be made of interlocking plates of some hard material. It had unusual red glyphs adorning the front of one of the shoulder plates that sat closest to its neck. The iridescent face visor was spattered with the same hydraulic fluid as the bench and whiteboard. Is that hydraulic fluid, or blood?

  Jan cut the microphone. It was still three minutes before the creature would hear her greeting. Whoever that was, he didn’t have a friendly feeling about him and she shuddered to think it would soon be hearing her voice. She stood there, rooted to her mark on the floor for a moment of indecision before she pulled out her cell phone and dialed the chancellor of the university.

   

  The Oval Office

  Washington, D.C.

  January 4th, 2026

  "Okay Sam, are we done?” President Parnell took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. It had been a long night - another drone attack inside Pakistani territory. He had been roused at three in the morning to authorize it and he would be needed again very soon to mollify an outraged Pakistani diplomat because of it. The Spartans had the right idea, he thought. Two kings instead of just one, I could be in bed right now while some other jerk picks up the slack.

  “Just one more item, Mr. President.” The chief of staff nodded over at the Director from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, who had been standing with the rest of the staff during the morning brief.

  “Oh hell!” Parnell surprised even himself by the outburst, but he was too tired to hold back. “Mary, if this is about weapons of mass destruction, you can save it for the next president.” He stared at her as though regarding a live grenade.

  Director Perdue smiled and shook her head. “Nothing like that, sir. We’ve lost all contact with the Vinland Station. No contact with the colonists since the day before yesterday. Even the beacon is down.” She shrugged. “The comms gear was provided by the Japanese Space Agency so NASA won’t get any egg on their faces. Our exposure looks minimal for now.”

  Parnell’s shoulders relaxed as Mary outlined the issue. “Administrative exposure is somewhat limited,” he amended her assessment, using the calm, lyrical, reassuring voice that had won over so many voters. “There are eight Americans at that station, Mary. Eight families here on Earth are wondering why they can’t reach their loved ones. Considering how far from help our eight colonists are, imaginations will spin this out of control before you can say one term president.”

  He nodded to Jack Kitzhaber. “Jack, sit down with Mary and put together a release. Reassure the public that this is a minor glitch and NASA is offering JAXA whatever they might need by way of assistance.” He turned back to Mary. “Mary, ensure Gray knows what he’s volunteering before the release goes out.” He put his glasses back on. “Thank you, everyone.”

  Sam Worthington remained as his staff filed out. “Sir, the meeting with the Pakistani ambassador is at nine.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s gonna be pissed.”

  “So what do you suggest, we let him bomb an American village of his choosing?” The president was tired and he was short on polite conversation at the moment.

  Sam stood before the desk, just to the left where a door led to his own office. “We tell him the same old thing, There just wasn’t time to confer with them. Our target was high value and he was only stopping there for a quick meeting. It all happened too quickly.”

  Parnell pushed back his chair and stood. “Which takes some of the oxygen away from the fire,” he shrugged into his jacket, “but the fire is still burning.”

  “M
r. President?”

  Parnell came around the desk, stopping to face his Chief of Staff, his oldest friend. “Sam, how many bombs have been dropped remotely by some twenty-year-old kid sitting in an Air Force base somewhere in California? How many times have we cited the War on Terror when we send military force into someone’s sovereign space to kill a couple of people?”

  His personal assistant opened a door and poked his head in, “Mr. President, the Secretary of Defense is here.”

  “Good, we’ll want to talk to him but he can cool his heels until we’ve met the ambassador. This mess is his doing, after all. Put him in the mural room for now. I don’t want the ambassador running into him in the outer office; angry words might ensue.” He turned back to Sam. “Do you feel any safer?”

  “Safer, sir?

  “Yeah, you know – not as afraid. We killed two guys last night and God only knows how many civilians. Are we any safer?” They moved to the elegant armchairs opposite the desk. “I don’t feel any more secure this morning than I did yesterday – to tell the truth, I think we only made things worse.” He dropped into the chair, Sam sitting opposite him. “We may have gotten a couple of bad guys, but we also created a ton of grieving relatives and, if they had no reason to hate us before, they do now.”

  ‘Those civilians were sheltering the guy…”

  Parnel cut him off. “I know. If we let them operate without consequence they just get bolder. My problem is I can’t tell if were conducting a war or a criminal investigation. We just wrote off collateral deaths by saying they were ‘aiding and abetting’ but when have you ever seen that listed as a war crime?”

  “Do you have something in mind, Mr. President?”

  “Not for the life of me, but we need to come up with a better plan. Remember that kid who used to beat the crap out of us in high school?

  “I remember you torched his car in our senior year.” Sam’s tone was light but slightly guarded.

  “I seem to recall a future White House Chief of Staff being present with his dad’s gas can.” The president chuckled and shook his head. “If forensics had been a little better back then, the only meetings we’d be having would be parole hearings.”

  “We had no way of knowing the whole parking lot would go up like that.”

  “No, but it illustrates my point. If we keep hammering away at every little target that presents itself, sooner or later we’re gonna get our cars torched.”

  The door opened, the aide again. “Mr. President, the Pakistani ambassador is on his way up the hall.”

  Both men stood. “Thank you Thomas. Please show him straight in.” Parnell straightened his coat, doing up the top button. “All right Sam, let’s see if the same old tired bullshit will get us through one more uncomfortable meeting.”

   

  Moffett Field

  Mountain View, California

  January 4th, 2026

  Charles Gray sat at the conference table, not quite sure he heard correctly. “Mr. McAdam, it’s a little late to ask for that kind of payload increase.” He reached for his coffee, needing time to think. Without the capital from Red Flag Minerals we’ll be left with four half-built airships and a public relations nightmare. “The first four will have to lift off the graving docks with five-hundred ton capacity. We can start work on larger models right away, but the units in construction now probably can’t be changed. Tim?” He looked over at the team leader, an engineer from Chimera.

  The engineer frowned, shaking his head. “Administrator Gray is right. We would likely end up with an airframe that collapsed in the first heavy wind.” He launched into an explanation of the structure of the massive adaptive buoyancy aircraft as an assistant approached Charles.

  “Sir,” the assistant whispered, “we have a call for you from the White House press office.” He backed up to give Charles room to stand, then led him to a side room where the call could be taken while still seeing what was happening in the boardroom.

  Charles sat down at the small table, taking a deep breath before reaching for the phone. Surprise calls from the White House are rarely a good thing, he thought as he picked up the receiver. “This is Charles Gray.”

  “Hi Chuck. It’s Mary. We’re about to announce NASA’s enthusiastic offer of help to JAXA in sorting out the comms glitch and we figured we should let you know about it before you get ambushed by some reporter.” She sounded apologetic, no doubt fully aware that it was all just window dressing.

  “Hey, Mary. Thanks for the heads-up. We’re already in discussion with JAXA but beyond prepping a hybrid rocket for an extra backup unit, there isn’t really all that much we can do for them.” Out in the boardroom, Ed McAdam was holding up a hand to cut Tim off, pulling out his cell phone with the other hand and putting it to his ear.

  “That’s all I need to hear, Chuck.” There was a pause. “Actually, Jack and I will put that into the release. The president doesn’t want it to look like we’re asleep at the switch so we have to go through the motions. Can you spare a minute to go over the wording with  us?”

  “Yeah, sure. That’s fine by me.” Charles realized that Ed had started heading for the door of Charles’ temporary call room, his face a riot of emotion. Oh God, if he’s coming in here to tell me he‘s pulling out over a last minute payload change, I’ll be lucky to save my job, let alone NASA’s future. “Hang on a second, Mary. I may have a fire to put out here first.” He hit the mute button as Ed stormed into the room.

  Ed was holding his phone in his left hand. He stabbed at it with his right index finger, releasing a soft layer of ambient noise as the speaker activated. “Mr. Gray, I have one of our scientists from Mauna Kea on the line. You’re going to want to hear this.” His voice level rose as he spoke to the phone, his voice laced with strain. “Dr. Willsen, I have the Administrator of NASA in the room with me; please repeat everything you just told me.”

   

  Mammoth Cruise Lines

  Engineering Office, Dodge Island,

  Miami, Florida

  January 4th, 2026

  "Off to Finland tomorrow, you poor stiff?” Davidoff’s tone clearly indicated that sympathy was not being offered. Frank Bender kept working for a few seconds, finishing his train of thought before turning from his 243rd email of the day to face the designer.

  “I am,” he said in his usual tone of mild surprise and amusement. “Leaving at 9:00 am, getting back Friday at four in the afternoon.” Davidoff held out a plastic container and Frank reached over to take an apple slice. “Looks like I’ll have to catch up on emails when I get there; I have another eighty or so to go before I’m up to date with all your damn changes!”

  “Hey, they ask for it and I draw it in.” The designer waved off Frank’s accusation with his free hand. “If they want a toilet put in the middle of the casino floor, I’ll put out a rocket to the architects.” He leaned against the drawing table as he grinned at Frank. “Passengers would likely start dropping casino chips in and pulling the handle, especially the three-day cruisers.”

    Frank could feel a rant coming on so he pulled out his new tablet, plugging it into his laptop so he could be sure of a full charge. The distraction worked. Instead of an increasingly angry tirade about the lack of manners among short-duration cruisers, Frank was rewarded with a low whistle.

  “That the new version with the full density holographic screen?” Davidoff came over to the cubicle entrance, unable to resist a neat gadget.

  “Yep,” Frank replied. “No pretending to work on my laptop like all the other idiots on the flight. I’ve got this baby loaded to the gills with graphic novels, music and the whole second season of Legacy.”

  The sci fi series about a Mars colony had come out as the first ISS mission was on its way to set up habitats on the red planet. It portrayed a future where Earth was wiped out by a massive comet, leaving fifty colonists as the only humans in the universe. The timing couldn’t have been better and the show was a massive hit. Bender had bee
n a fan after borrowing the first season from one of the other engineers.

  “Speaking of graphic novels, when does yours go on sale?” Davidoff asked as he moved back to his comfortable perch on the drawing table.

  “Dunno. I figured the first would be up by now but all the big retailers have had the file for over two weeks and still no sign of it anywhere.” He gave a good natured shrug. “Probably the soundtrack that’s slowing everything down.”

  “Will you still remember all of us little people when you’re rich and famous?” The designer smirked but he still sounded like he believed that day would come.

  “Oh sure, you can design the environments for me when I switch over to 3D.” Frank’s smile had a wistful edge to it. “Just imagine, building an entire city, or even a cruise ship without having to deal with execs screaming at you over timelines and budgets.” He shook his head, not willing to let himself believe the dream until he had solid sales figures first. “If that story takes off, I’ll be out of this stinking job so fast it’ll make my own head spin!”

  “I thought you enjoyed swanning about Europe, building the largest cruise ship on Earth,” the designer frowned. “At least the largest for a couple of months; I’m hearing rumors already from the other end of the harbor.”

  Frank sighed. “That’s part of it. I take a lot of heat from hundreds of people and when it’s all done, I get to stand at the back of a large crowd and watch the Operations guys take a Bow. Leviathan will be the largest in the world but it means nothing. Two months after she launches, a dry dock in Italy will open their flood valves and the latest largest ship will slip out into the Mediterranean.”

  He shook his head and stared out the window as a rival line’s ship sailed out into the Atlantic. “It’s the constant pressure. I get heat from the fourth floor about the budget, I get heat from the second floor about nailing down a guaranteed shakedown date, and those idiots in Operations are constantly trying to change the designs without going through channels. I caught the Staff Captain telling our systems integrator to move half of the bridge equipment. I dropped on that moron like a crane accident.”

  “You gotta watch out for the Ops guys,” Davidoff warned. “They’re the folk that deal with the paying customers. Howard is always reminding us that it’s the crews that bring in the actual revenue. They can make a lot of trouble for us.”

  “See, that doesn’t make sense to me,” Frank countered. “Sure they deal with the customers but they’d be absolutely useless if we didn’t build ships for them.” He raised one eyebrow. “How exactly would a crew make money for us if we weren’t doing our own jobs?” He sighed in exasperation. “This whole business of treating them like royalty is bullshit. They need to start taking their responsibilities to the project more seriously and quit playing politics.”

  “You know they can’t resist trying to blow their own mistakes out of proportion and then pin it on some patsy.” Davidoff was getting into a bad mood. “You should hear the fuss they’re making about the size of the central atrium on the second ship in the Leviathan  class. Everything’s their idea until they don’t like it and then it suddenly seems like I do the damn layouts single handedly.” He wagged a warning finger at Frank. “Mark my words, that staff captain is pushing a whiny complaint straight to the top.”

  “Oh, I’m counting on that,” Frank answered in a dark tone. “I’m pretty sure that genius sent a blistering email all the way up the chain to Howard’s office.” He gazed out the window as a speedboat burbled its way through a restricted speed zone. “As soon as it gets to me, it’s going to get a reply-to-all  explaining how he exposed us to huge liability.

  “For one thing, talking to a sub-contractor violates the Prime Contractor clause. If an accident happens at the shipyard and he’s been giving orders to the subs, He ends up in jail, not the lead contractor’s superintendent. Doesn’t even need to be related to the console he had changed. Some tin-basher falls off a scaffold and dies – the staff captain’ll find himself in court.

  “Even worse, if any one of those panels were to malfunction and cause the ship to run aground, the designers would point to his changes and say it’s our problem.”

  “Did his changes make sense at least?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Frank grinned. “And that’s part of the point I want to make when Howard comes to next week’s progress meeting. The Captain and Staff Captain were part of the layout consultations right from the start. They would rather show up on site and give last minute orders than simply ask for it to be fixed at the start. Makes ‘em feel important. They saw the console layout and actually signed each one.”

  “Seems to me, that would have been a pretty good time to correct obvious errors in  the layout,” Davidoff mused. “So what was the issue?”

  “A lot of consoles need to be moved. Policy on watch keeping changed a year ago and most of the operators will end up needing their terminals switched.” He raised an eyebrow. “You might recall, Kim,  that we’ve been rotating the rest of the fleet through the dockyards to update the older bridges?” Not for the first time, Frank wondered if his friend had been named for Kim Philby, the high ranking Soviet double-agent.  Old Ivan Davidoff never did talk about his childhood in Russia.

  Davidoff smacked his forehead. “Sorry, Frank; I must have pulled an old template when we drew up the bridge layout for Leviathan. Want me to send a change request to the Architects?”

  “No, I should send it. They’re supposed to be the ones that know where the terminals go in the first place.  That way, if I have it on one of my own change requests, I can track the cost of the change to my Stupid crap that Ops want done at the last minute total.” He reached out for a second slice of apple. “The last fifty changes have all been over the budget line so I have to take every new one upstairs to get Howard’s autograph.”

  “So,” Davidoff’s face reflected the import, “every week Howard hears about how Jim decided to change the thruster wattage, or…”

  “Or how the Staff Captain waited until the last minute to blunder in with an expensive change?” Frank got up and started stuffing his gear into his carry-on. “I should be able to keep your name out of this. If push comes to shove, we can always throw the architects under the bus; the whole watch change idea was their recommendation anyway.”

  “Yeah, those idiots!” Davidoff half-joked.

  “Seriously, I have to agree with that sentiment.” Frank turned back to the designer, his carry-on in his hand. “They shouldn’t even be looking at the individual terminal names on your layouts – you’re responsible for traffic flow. They’re supposed to be the ones who call the technical shots. All they really end up doing is copying your cad files and pasting whole sections into their title blocks and it’s their drawings that I’m gonna take upstairs next week.”

  “Thanks, Frank.” Davidoff smiled. “If you get them to send the change before you leave Finland. I’ll hammer them about the conduit changes so they remember to sort it all out in time.”

  “Thanks, moi droog You want me to bring back a bottle of Lakka  for your dad?”

  “Sure. You know, he’s still waiting to hear when you and Ellen can come over for some ‘gator.”

  Frank had started down the hall but paused to think for a moment. “Let’s aim for this Saturday and I’ll clear it with Ellen tonight.” He continued towards the elevators. “See you Monday, Kim.” Then, with a wave over his shoulder – “Saturday, I mean!”

   

  The War Room

  Washington, D.C.

  January 4th, 2026

  Nathaniel Parnell walked into the room, followed by Sam and Mary. “Mary, if you want to talk about aliens, shouldn’t you be standing in front of a tar-paper shack or a pile of gravel or something?” He strode to his seat, nodding at the military and civilian staff arrayed around the table who all sprung to their feet. “I mean, the stuff my son watches on TV - the UFO interviews always show some borderline lunatic with a pint-shaped
lump in his pocket.” He dropped into his seat, the rest of the room following suit.  “Nice start on a story, but maybe throw in some zombies or a couple of sensitive vampires.”

  Mary, her attempt at a heads-up having failed utterly, nodded to the young captain who held the remote. “Mr. President, we were advised by the head of NASA that we lost contact with Vinland Station for a very specific, very alarming reason.” The screen at the end of the room flickered on, the image showed Mars. She reached out and took the remote from the officer.

  Parnell leaned forward, his right hand touching the frame of his glasses. “So, what am I looking for here?”

  Mary touched the remote and the video feed began to run. The scene pulled back to reveal a massive ship with a profusion of modules and antennae hanging from underneath. The hull was a dull dark grey – almost black, and it consisted of a central docking framework that could hold six independent triangular vessels in a circular array. Three of the sub-vessels were still docked. She paused it again. “These ships are believed to be connected with our loss of communications with Vinland Station.”

  Parnell tore his gaze from the screen to look at Mary, one eyebrow arched. “Director Perdue, are you telling me that someone built this thing and launched it to Mars without any of our high tech gee-gaws letting us know about it?”

  Mary hit the play button. “Technically, sir, that’s the long and short of it.”

  Parnell was still staring at her. “How the hell could anyone pull that off?”

  Mary paused the video at the next marker. “Because, Mr. President, that ship didn’t come from this solar system. “ Having learned from her parents – both Hollywood producers - she let the scene on the monitor do the rest of the talking for her.

  Quiet gasps and exclamations rippled around the room as realization dawned. The scene showed an insect-like landing vehicle hovering outside the mine entrance on Olympus Mons. A squad of figures were frozen in their advance on the entrance, their proximity to a NASA surface rover making it easy to estimate their height.

  “They’re the size of children,” the Secretary of Defense mused. “What is that behind them? It almost looks like they have…”

  “Tails?” Mary finished for him. “That’s the general consensus upstairs. Whoever these little guys are, they’re definitely not from here, folks.”

  The president reached behind his lenses to rub his eyes. “I suppose there’s no chance of someone flinging the doors open and yelling Surprise!”. He looked back up. “Mary, where did you get this imagery from?

  “Chuck Gray got it from Ed McAdam, the CEO of Red Flag Minerals. They were over at Moffett field for a progress meeting on their heavy-lift airship project when one of Ed’s minions called him with the news. I was on the phone with Chuck at the time talking about assistance to JAXA.”

  “Haven’t I met Ed? The ribbon cutting at Moffett?” The president turned to Sam. “Tall guy, sour face, chewed my ear off for ten minutes about a registry for mineral claims on the moon?” He looked around the room. “Is this guy reliable? I mean, it could be a hoax that got out of hand, couldn’t it?”

  Mary shrugged. “Hockey could be a hoax for all I know - a bunch of grown men in short pants chasing a puck around the ice. I’d believe you if you told me it was all some sort of mob front for money laundering.”

  Parnell pointed a finger at her, “Watch yourself, young lady. You’re on thin ice, talking about hockey like that.” Nobody was certain whether Parnell truly loved the Capitals, or whether he just thought it wise to support the hometown team.

  Mary was pretty sure he was jumping on the hockey comment to give himself a few seconds to wrap his head around an almost unbelievable dilemma. “Mr. President, Chuck has staff in Hilo and they’re probably arriving at the observatory on Mauna Kea as we speak. We’ll have independent confirmation from them any minute now. Until then, I thought it best if we proceed as if we were sure of the threat.”

  Parnell nodded. “You made the right call, pulling everyone together. If this does turn out to be a hoax, I’ll be more relieved than angry. Hell, I’ll take all of you up to the residence for a kegger!” He looked around the room, taking a deep breath. “So, if it’s not a hoax, what do we do about it?”

   

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  January 4th, 2026

  "Evening, Mike.” Pete McGregor walked into the control room with a bag of food, handing it to the Red Flag astronomer. “Mr. Gray tells me you’ve been up here since the discovery? Sorry to barge in, but he wanted independent confirmation.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m glad to have someone else look at this; I’m worried that I might be losing it!” Mike set down the bag, pulling out a burger with a fried egg on it. During his time on the islands, he had never been tempted by any of the variations on the local loco moco dish, but he was too hungry now to care. He crammed the burger into his mouth, biting off half while Pete looked up at the stills on the monitor. Mike wasn’t sure if it was just hunger, but it was the best damned burger he had eaten in his entire life. Having taken the edge off, he finished off the remainder at a more normal pace while watching his friend’s reaction.

  The engineer from NASA was shaking his head as he looked at the screen. “It’s crazy. They knocked out both facilities?”

  Mike put down his food. “I don’t see any bodies but those little guys are all over the ISS site and our mining operation.” He walked over to the touch screen and turned to face Pete. “No human activity since we started seeing them, and then, they did this last night.” He reached up to a cluster of control tabs and hit a play icon. A window flew up in the center of the screen, showing a video recording from the mining site.

  Pete watched for a moment. “They’re fiddling with the rovers? Stands to reason; they want to gauge our technology and the obvious place to…”

  Mike had raised his hand, cutting Pete off. “What ever reason it stands to, Pete, it’s not the one you’re talking about.” He stepped away from the screen to watch with the engineer. The small figures were rapidly moving away from the rover park.

  “What the hell …” Pete stopped suddenly as a series of orange-red blossoms replaced each rover. “They blew up all of your rovers?”

  Mike nodded. Picking up the tablet on the table behind them, he stabbed his finger at the control widget, then grabbed the remains of the burger, stuffing it into his mouth. “Not jush oursh,” he mumbled, dribbling bread crumbs into his scruffy goatee as a new window opened, showing the habitats of the Vinland station. Their rover park had been blown as well.

  Peter stared at the screen. “So much for paying off my student loans.”

  The War Room

  Washington, D.C.

  January 4th, 2026

  Parnell stared up at the monitor as the last of the stills filled the screen, ten scorched wrecks that used to be rovers. What the hell am I supposed to do about this?  he wondered. Good God, what president has ever had to deal with anything even remotely like this? He came out of his reverie when he realized that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was speaking.

  “…makes it abundantly clear that these are hostile forces and we have to prepare to face them.” Admiral Kelly pounded his hand on the table in emphasis. “ Despite what Administrator Gray thinks, I would rather meet them with force and be wrong than meet them in peace and be wrong.”

  Charles Gray leaned forward, turning to the right to aim his retort at the Admiral. “Why do we always fall back on Hollywood and assume that an alien presence will automatically mean a violent invasion? The destruction of our equipment might have had a less sinister purpose.” He glared about the room. “Let’s consider for a moment that these creatures come from a civilization advanced enough to travel between solar systems. Isn’t it possible that they might be just a bit more enlightened than us?”

  Parnell had been listening idly, still wonder
ing what he was supposed to do in a case like this when the NASA Administrator’s comment brought him back to the present. “No doubt the native tribes had similar arguments when they spotted the first European ships anchored offshore,” he interjected with a dry tone. “Things didn’t go too well for them, as I recall.”

  Kelly sat back, looking across the table at the president. “Sir, it may surprise you to learn that NASA has had a team working with DARPA for almost eight years now and this type of scenario has pretty much been the sole focus of their work.

  Gray was obviously caught off guard by this but kept silent. Good, thought Parnell. He has the sense to know when he’s been flanked. He knows not to compound his lack of knowledge with empty bluster. “What do you have, gentlemen?” The plural was a salve for Gray. It’s like looking after my brother’s kids sometimes.

  Admiral Kelly touched the remote pad, bringing a series of schematics up on the screen. Each set of drawings was followed by a three dimensional rendering. The Admiral was showing them ships – spaceships. “Essentially, the plan is similar to one of our current carrier groups. The recommendation is for a series of carriers each with a collection of escorts. Obviously, launching such vessels from the surface would be impossible so we would have to get the construction materials into orbit and assemble everything up there.”

  “Obviously,” the president interjected dryly. “Charles, do you have any comments about the feasibility of shipping a fleet’s worth of steel into space?”

  Gray took a sip of his coffee before setting the mug down. “Sir, our primary bottleneck would be the physical dimensions of the payloads. We wouldn’t even be able to ship an F-22 into space in one piece.” He leaned forward, looking directly at the president. “And we’re talking about building a carrier in space?” He glared down at Kelly. “Do you realize how much welding would have to be done in space suits? How many astronauts would be needed for that kind of work?”

  Parnell watched the grin spread on Kelly’s face. Chuck, you might be a hell of a smart guy, but Tom Kelly makes a living as a fighter and there’s no way he would walk into this meeting with his agenda and not have you firmly tied down. The Admiral had something tucked up his sleeve.

  “Perhaps, Mr. Gray, you could explain the orbital airship concept that your administration has been holding back for the last few years?” Kelly leaned on his right elbow, enjoying the look of anger on Gray’s face.

  Maybe it’s time to reign them in, Parnell mused. Still, there might be more useful information to shake loose while these two are riled up. Time to poke the fire a bit. “Chuck, what’s Tom talking about?” he asked, all innocence. “What technology are you holding back? I thought it was your mandate to expand on any possible advances.”

  Gray bristled. “Mr. President, there are a few organizations out there advocating the use of airships to get into orbit. My predecessor had a policy of discouraging private capital from backing the concept and, frankly, I agree.” He sounded defensive but certain. “The last seven decades, we have poured Billions into rocket development. Now that private enterprise has started to step in and pick up the torch, we’re supposed to simply throw all that away and start over again with a whole new concept?” His tone was becoming strident. “How the hell are we supposed to get out there if we can’t pick a method and commit to making it work?”

    Parnell looked back at Kelly. “Tom, you better have a reason for bringing this up; we don’t have time to sit around taking pot-shots at each other. Do orbital airships come into the DARPA plan?”

  Kelly nodded, his face now under rigid control – the sparring was over. “Sir, the plan calls for the construction of the ships in modules that we fabricate here on the ground. We load them onto heavy lift airships that would then transit to a way station at forty thousand meters. The way station then transfers the cargo to a second type of airship that’s designed to go into low Earth orbit. Orbital assembly would be greatly simplified.”

  Director Perdue cut in. “Admiral, are you saying that this can’t be done with current launch capabilities?”

  Kelly’s face showed the slightest hint of a smile. “Mary, that’s exactly what I’m leading up to.” He looked down the table at Gray. “How much can you put into LEO with those old engines from the shuttle, Chuck, seventy tons?” His smile grew. “Or as your press release put it, the equivalent of forty SUV’s?” Gray fumed as the room broke out in chuckles. “Were you worried that the American public wouldn’t understand?” Kelly was making sure he kept Gray on the ropes. “Maybe you should throw in a conversion factor for stadiums full of popcorn?”

  “And how much did your team tell you it would cost?” Gray wasn’t about to just lay on the floor and take a pummeling. He may not have earned a living in combat, but he knew what weapons he could use in a situation like this.

  The president looked at Kelly and he could see the hesitation. Parnell was a politician, and like the rest of his kind, he could smell blood in the water.  “Tom, how much are we looking at, including the cost of getting these airships up and running?”

  Admiral Kelly had been staring at Gray, knowing the moment had been forced too soon. He turned to Parnell and looked him straight in the eye. “Mr. President, the total budget will be thirty-four Trillion, including assembly.” He remained stock still, looking at the man with the purse strings.

  Parnell stared back at him in a silent room. Did I hear that right? “Tom, did you just ask me to spend one and a half times our current national debt?”

  Sam, oddly enough the only economist on Parnell’s staff, spoke into the silence. “Sir, even if we nationalize the contractors and suppliers to enforce cost controls, this would completely bankrupt us. No bank on Earth would touch us with a ten foot pole. Our economy would tank within a year; massive unemployment, rampant crime, riots.” He shook his head. “We might save the planet from aliens, but we would end up a failed state. It would turn America into a massive prison with Tom here as the warden.”

  Silence fell again on a sobered room.

  Charles Gray broke the silence. “We’re talking about this as if the aliens would only be interested in attacking the United States.” He looked around the room. “We have a whole planet full of countries to work with. We didn’t send up the ISS missions on our own; we spread the work and costs between ourselves, the Russians, the Japanese, the Canadians and the Europeans.”

  Parnell felt a surge of hope as Gray spoke. He has the right idea, his scale is just off. “Charles is right, Sam. We just need to expand on it. Dividing the cost five ways still won’t work; it’s not enough.”

  “We need China,” Kelly said flatly.

  “We need everybody,” Sam insisted.

  Parnell sighed. “Everybody. Suddenly I’m not so sure I like where this is heading.” He turned his head to look at Sam, sitting to his right. “If we go down that road, we may not be able to come back. Don’t they still claim we owe them money?”

  “They can go suck eggs!” Kelly’s sudden outburst had every eye in the room on him. “What are they talking about, a couple Billion? We’ve given them ten times that in military support but they conveniently forget that when they come calling with their hat in hand.” He pointed a finger at Sam. "If we give them more money, they're just going to waste it on magic beans, and you sure as hell can't put a military force in their hands. We need this force under NATO command."

  “And what are you going to tell the Chinese?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "I'm no fan of giving money to the UN either, but imagine what would happen if we went to the Chinese and asked them nicely to give several Trillion dollars to NATO." He kept his trademark deadpan expression as he continued. "They'd probably wonder if we should be kept under observation for a few days, just to be sure we're not a danger to ourselves or others."

  Parnell nodded. “You won’t find me disagreeing, Tom, but Sam is right: this has to happen, and we can't coordinate this through NATO. We need an organization that everybody belongs to and
there just isn’t time to build one from scratch. We need to use what tools already exist. NATO will have to 'encourage' the western financial contributors, and China will do the same in the east.” He looked back to Sam. “Get me a meeting.”

   

  Conception

  Turtle Bay

  Manhattan, New York

  January 6th , 2026

  Jess Sisulu came out from behind her desk. No matter what direction this meeting takes, let it not be said that I didn’t start it on a friendly footing. She smiled as her visitor was ushered in, noticing his involuntary reaction to her appearance. In her thirty eight years of public service – first in her homeland of Transkei, later in post-apartheid South Africa - she had little need to rely on her looks but she didn’t begrudge their effect.  

  She shook his hand in the center of the office. “Mr. President, please, won’t you have a seat?” She indicated an arrangement of lounge chairs to one side of her office.

  Parnell sat down, looking around him. “Very nice, Madam Secretary General. They’ve really captured the look of the fifties in here.”

  Jess smiled. “I believe maintained is a more accurate description. I’m pretty sure this paneling was here since the building was completed. It still smells faintly of cigars if you stand close enough; I was told once that Dag Hammarskjöld stocked up on Cubans when things were heating up.” I can chat all day if you don’t want to come to the point. I know what brought you here, she thought.

  The American president brought his gaze back from the décor to look at his host. “I suppose you have some idea of why I’m here…”

  “I imagine it has something to do with the startling news out of Oxford?”

  Parnell nodded. “We were hoping to keep things under wraps for the time being to avoid panic but when an entire lecture hall filled with students conducts a teleconference with aliens…” He spread his hands. “Half the world thinks it’s just another tabloid headline, the other half is stocking up on water and dry goods.”

  “And assault rifles, no doubt.” Jess smiled. “My people tell me that the NRA website has crashed,” she continued as the President nodded. “It’s only been a few short hours and the world is going mad. We need to show them that we are taking this seriously.”

  “We need to show the world that we are taking appropriate, concrete action to protect our planet from outside aggression,” Parnell jumped in.

  Jess looked at the President for a long moment, sensing that something was not being said. “Are you aware of evidence beyond what was discovered at Oxford?” She leaned forward. “You speak of aggression, but the video link merely showed an alien walking past the camera a few times before he heard Dr. Colbert’s voice. At that point, he disabled the camera. What else do you have?”

  Parnell didn’t hesitate; he had obviously decided beforehand that he would reveal his knowledge if pressed. “We have video evidence of equipment being destroyed by armed individuals. These creatures want Mars all to themselves. How long before they decide the same about Earth?”

  “Why do I get the feeling that you have come here to press your own idea of appropriate concrete action?” Jess asked.

  “Probably because I have.” The American was certainly frank about it. “Are you familiar with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency?”

  “Typically referred to as DARPA?” Jess had been briefed on them as part of the weekly intelligence roundup.

  Parnell nodded. “They’ve been working on designs for a space-based combat fleet for several years now. I don’t think any of them ever expected it to be taken seriously but events have overtaken us. They have an impressive series of designs for three groups of carriers and escorts but…”

  Jess knew the next step in this dance. “But the costs of building such a fleet would be ruinous.” So that’s it, she mused. I knew what brought you here; now I know what you want from the UN. “You wish to use us to coordinate the effort.” Her mind was racing through the implications, both near-term and long. “No country will give you a single dollar if they think it goes to a unilateral response, no matter how necessary.”

  Parnell sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “We could pay for the fleet ourselves, but it would be an extreme difficulty,” he said with the air of a man making a minor concession.

  Jess schooled her features to show nothing of what went on in her mind. He wouldn’t come here unless they really needed the money. No American president would ever bring this plan here if he could act on his own. Paying for such a fleet might be possible but it would destroy them in the end. “The best option would likely be to share the total costs based on each member nation’s GDP,” she said.

  “Our thoughts exactly,” agreed Parnell. “Even if that nation only pays a few million dollars, every bit will help. It should help to keep the planet’s economies from self-destructing.”

  And if you tried on your own and failed, thought Jess, we would all have to learn a new language when our new neighbors get here. A sudden thought prompted her. “The fleet will be a permanent trust of the UN of course. The rest of the world will hardly be keen on paying to provide the United States with such a potent force.”

  The American looked as though he had been expecting this. “As this fleet is proposed and designed by us, we believe it should be led by an American,” he stated evenly.

  Jess nodded. “Led by an American general officer, seconded to duty as a UN officer.” She saw the unmistakable tells of a man who believes he has won and she finished her proposal. “The commanders of the three carrier groups to be commanded by general officers and staff from the three remaining nations of the ISS group.” She could see that this was not being received well but she still plunged ahead with the final idea; one which had just crystalized for her. “The fleet captain should be a general officer from the Chinese military.”

  “How the hell do you expect such a hodgepodge of different languages to work in combat?” Parnell was scraping the bottom of the barrel with that excuse and had to know it.

  “The same way it works when you operate with NATO. The working language of the fleet will have to be English and I’m sure the nations who are going to be providing their hard-earned capital will be able to find plenty of competent personnel who speak English.” And the Chinese own a large portion of your national debt, she thought, looking down at the coffee table. She looked back up at Parnell. “There is one more thing,” her tone was darker.

  “What?” Parnell looked guarded.

  “I will need your support to sell this to the General Assembly; we need a firm commitment from everyone for money and material support. We will need all of the diplomatic pressure that you can bring to bear and,” she paused for a moment, taking a deep breath, “and, God help us, force.”

  “We've already been in touch with the PRC.” Parnell sighed. "They will support this measure. The moment it passes the vote downstairs, troops from both our countries will be boarding transports."

   

  Palm Island

  Miami, Florida

  January 9th, 2026

  Frank took a pull on his beer and reflected on the changes a week could make. When he had left for Finland on Tuesday, he would have assumed that Saturday’s conversation would be the usual round of shop talk with Davidoff; mutual bitching about the prima donnas that they had to deal with in building cruise ships. Of course, there would have been the usual due paid to Davidoff’s father, Ivan,  regarding his latest culinary delight – it was hot Italian ‘gator sausage this time – but it was a perfunctory performance.

  The conversation out in the back yard was entirely about them – the aliens. Frank had learned about the attack on the Mars station as he was sitting in a boardroom overlooking the half-built hulk of the  Leviathan. He had thought the whole thing a joke or worse, a distraction cooked up by one of his subcontractors. Frank knew that one of the décor suppliers was being pressured by a rival cruise line to move them up on
their schedule. It would have no impact on the rival’s launch date but it would almost certainly cost Frank a week that he didn’t have.

  A quick surf on his laptop, however, had confirmed the incredible news. An entire classroom filled with students had seen one of the aliens on a video link and the British Home Office had released a press package that confirmed the incident and urged citizens to Keep Calm and Carry On.

  Now, standing in Kim’s back yard, he looked across the causeway at the cruise ships docked at Dodge Island. “Do you think people will still want to pay for cruises?” He looked over at Kim, who was poking unnecessarily at the sausages while Ivan dozed by the pool. “With a possible invasion just around the corner, would you want to spend a week or two stuck on a boat?”

  Davidoff finally left the poor sausages alone and stared across the water at Fury, the last ship to come out before the Leviathan class. He shrugged. “Too early to tell,” he said simply. “It could go either way; people will either hide in their basements or decide that life is too short to deny themselves the good life.” He grinned. “You know the old saying. Live every day as if it were your last,”

  “And one day you’ll be right?” Frank cut in, one eyebrow raised. “So, it’s either business as usual, a huge jump in business or a complete collapse of the cruise industry?”

  “In which case, we would need to get the hell out of Dodge?” Davidoff smirked at his own wit.

  “See your problem,” Frank sighed, “is that you think you’re funny, but you really aren’t.  You’re so un-funny that it’s kind of amusing.”

  “Exactly!” Kim pounced on Frank’s last sentence like a triumphant cat on a mouse. “It’s part of my natural charm!”

  Frank nodded absently, looking down the waterway as his boat, a confection in fiberglass and horsepower, came rumbling towards the dock. “I suppose that’s why you’re in your fifties and still live with your dad?”

  “Hey, Dad lives with me, with us,” he asserted with a smile. “It was Sarah’s idea, by the way. I never would have expected those two to get along but they sure as hell ganged up on me!”

  “A likely story,” mused Frank. “As soon as she’s finished tying up my boat, I’ll go down there and ask her.” He looked over at Kim who was rooting through his cooler, sacred ground at the Davidoff household.

  “What you’ll do,” Kim said as he stood and twisted off a cap, “is shut your damn piehole and have another red ale.” He handed over the bottle, trading it for his friend’s hastily drained empty.

  Blackmail accomplished, Frank enjoyed that perfect first taste of a newly opened beer and treated himself to a moment of relaxation. Aliens or not, I’ll land on my feet somehow, he thought, waving  to Ellen as she walked up the Davidoff’s private jetty with Sarah. It’ll be at least another six months on my current project before I would have to look for work. They couldn’t afford to cancel at this stage.

   

  The Prime Minister’s Office

  10 Downing Street, London

  January 9th , 2026

  Jan was ushered into the room by an aide. The Prime Minister, at least, was easy to identify: he was the man behind the desk, frowning up at her. There were six other people standing in front of him and they all turned as she entered, all but one frowning in confusion and lack of recognition.

  Jan had been picked up at home where she was grading papers over a bottle of wine. She had been on her third glass when the policeman knocked on her door. A flurry of preparation had ensued, a quick pass over the hair, and a change of clothes – one didn’t go to the PMO in a vest and jogging bottoms. She left the half-empty bottle sitting open on top of a stack of boxes labeled Edward. Stopping at the door, she had taken a quick look around the flat, eyes resting on the stack for a moment before she turned off the light and closed the door.

  Now she stood looking back at the assembled group as another door quietly closed behind her and she began to feel annoyed. They called me here and this is the reception I get? Well, if they expect me to explain who I am, they can go to hell. They can ponce about all day for all I care. Jan was no stranger to scrutiny: she made a living in front of hundreds of twenty-something graduate students. “Sorry if I’m late,” she breezed. “Traffic was a right Elliot.” She was quite pleased with herself for her performance. It was a safe bet that none of them would understand the slang that she had picked up from her students. It was obvious that the PM had no clue who she was and equally obvious that he expected her to identify herself.

  A man in a poorly-fitted suit stepped over. “Dr. Colbert?” he asked as he held out his hand. “Dr. Harold Livingston; Home Office Science, Research and Statistics.”

  Jan took his hand. “Dr. Livingston” Don’t say ‘I presume’. “I presume you can explain why I’ve been asked to come here?” Bugger, I kind of said it anyway. In vino veritas… Pull yourself together!

  “As you may have already guessed, it has to do with your rather unusual conference call on Sunday morning.” Livingston’s face gave the impression that they were discussing nothing more serious than a crank call.

  The Prime Minister looked relieved to know who she was. “Dr. Colbert, thank you for taking the time to join us,” he began. “What can you tell us beyond what was in your report?”

  Jan wasn’t bothered by the company but the question did manage to catch her off guard. “Beyond the report?” she asked, buying a few seconds to think. There was something I was thinking about when I was lurching to the door with my third glass of wine in hand, but what? Her eyebrows raised involuntarily as it hit her. The way they walked – their balance as they turned in front of the camera. They probably have tails. She shook her head. “Nothing of any import, I’m afraid.”

  Dr. Livingston was not to be deterred. “Then there might be something of no import?”

  Jan shrugged. “From the way they moved, it looked like they were balanced by tails.” She could see the PM raise an ironic eyebrow. Livingston, however, smiled and nodded.

  “We received imagery from the Americans that confirms your suspicion, Doctor,” he said. “And I  believe, sir, that it supports my suggestion. Perhaps the information itself is unimportant, but Dr. Colbert managed to determine it from almost no data at all.” Livingston had turned his head back towards the PM as he spoke.

  “And almost no data rather sums up our current situation at the moment.” With a slight nod, the PM turned to Jan. “Dr. Colbert, we would like to send you to New York. The UN has been given the task of organizing our planet’s response to the alien incursion and we’re sending staff to represent our government. “ He looked at her for a moment. “I am certain you will have no difficulties in proving your value to the team.” He nodded at Livingston who politely ushered her out of the room with a smile.

  Jan was less than settled on the matter. New York? I have papers to grade, lectures to give. “Dr. Livingston, I haven’t agreed to go anywhere, or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Livingston stopped in the hallway outside the door to the cabinet room and smiled indulgently at her. “Yes, it was all rather abrupt, wasn’t it? Three minutes in that room and they expect you to uproot your life and save the world!” He leaned forward a bit, lowering his voice in mock conspiracy. “You wouldn’t really refuse such a request, would you? Not when you can make a difference, surely?”

  Jan sighed. “Not if you put it that way,” she said as she stared down the hallway. If only I had gotten a teleconference booking for the second instead of the third. She was suddenly very sober.

   

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  January 9th, 2026

  Mike sat up on his cot, staring at the coffee maker where a half pot of sullen, black liquid sat on a cold heating element. “You let the pot go cold.” He looked over at Pete with an expression of betrayal. The engineer from NASA hardly acknowledged the statement. He was staring at the screen with a frown.
Upon standing, Mike was able to see the screen and he froze for a moment. “What the hell are those?”

  “If I had to hazard a guess,” Pete finally took his eyes off the screen, “and I’ve been working on my guess for two hours now, I would say they’re for mining supplies.” He shrugged at Mike. “They landed near your operation on Olympus Mons. The whole reason Red Flag set up there is because volcanoes and asteroid impacts bring mineral wealth to the surface, right?” He continued when Mike nodded. “They leveled a patch this morning and dropped those big boxy numbers about an hour ago.” He walked to the sink and dumped his coffee out.

  “They could have parked anywhere,” Mike thought out loud. “But going to that kind of trouble to park on the slopes of a volcano…”

                  “Means they have minerals on their minds,” the engineer finished for him. He grabbed his coat from a chair. “I’ll go out for food and I’ll bring you back some decent coffee.” He stopped by the door. “Do us both a favor: throw out that can of crystals and I’ll bring back some fresh-ground Kona.”

  Mike smiled and nodded; the crystals were only there for occasional use. They had never been intended to keep a two-man watch fuelled with caffeine for over a week. “Fine.” He did his best to sound grudging. “But no more spam sushi.”

  The engineer laughed. “C’mon, it’s an acquired taste. You have to give it a chance.”

  The Red Flag astronomer gave a disapproving shake of his head. “Seriously, dude, there is something wrong with the way your head works. And why,” his voice grew louder, “do we always label disgusting food as an acquired taste?” He jabbed a thumb at his own chest. “This is one guy who won’t fall for the oldest marketing scam in the books.”

  “Uh-huh…” Pete’s voice was thick with sarcasm as he opened the door. “You do still want the bottle of scotch, though?”

  Mike chuckled. “Not in here, but point taken; I have acquired a few tastes, but NO DAMN SPAM,” he yelled as the door closed behind his friend.

   

  Turtle Bay

  Manhattan, New York

  January 11th , 2026

  Frank sat in an old Danish-style chair. It looked like it had been there since the ‘50’s when that kind of mid-century modern was all the rage. I tried to tell them they had the wrong guy; now what the hell do I say? He was a mess; and this was no simple mistake. This was a fail of epic proportions.

  At least he’d tried to tell them – several times.

  Just over two hours ago, he had been in a meeting in Howard’s office where they were trying to smooth things over between Ops and Engineering. Frank had sensed that Howard knew he was in the right, but the VP of Operations still wanted his head on a platter. Howard was playing the peacemaker, as usual; suggesting that apologies be offered all around. Frank was about to employ some rather shocking language when a commotion erupted on the other side of the door.

  All eyes were already on the door when it opened. A young Air Force captain strode in with a middle-aged man in a light grey suit. A shield on his belt identified him as a detective with the Miami police. “It’s all right, Alan.” Howard nodded his assistant out of the office before addressing the intruders. “Gentlemen, how can I help you?” He was too curious to be annoyed at the intrusion and Frank was pretty sure he was glad to interrupt the meeting before it got even more out of hand.

  The military officer was first to speak. “Sir, we’re looking for a Mr. Frank Bender. I believe he’s one of your project managers?”

  What the hell? Frank knew he had heard it right but that didn’t mean it made any sense. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Grant, the VP of Ops, smirking at him but he had bigger problems at the moment than Grant. What the hell would the military want with me? And what’s with the cop?   

  As if in answer, the detective spoke up. “I realize this is very unusual but we have been tasked by the highest authority to ensure that Mr. Bender is located and delivered to Miami International immediately.” His gaze slipped from Howard to follow Grant’s confused stare. The VP of Ops no longer looked quite so smug, but he still couldn’t tear his eyes away from Frank. “Mr. Bender?” the detective asked.

  Screw it, anything beats apologizing to that jackass. “I’m Frank Bender,” he acknowledged. “What exactly is going on here?”

  The cop shrugged looking over at the Air Force captain who answered. “Mr. Bender, I can’t tell you much. Your presence is urgently required and we have been tasked with delivering you.”

  Can’t tell me because it’s classified or just because you don’t know? Frank looked over at Howard who merely shrugged helplessly. At least ‘presence is required’ sounds better than ‘we’ve come to lock your ass up’. He looked up at the captain. “I think you have the wrong man; I just build cruise ships.”

  The detective pulled out a notebook and flipped it open. “Frank Philip Bender?” He looked up to see Frank nod before continuing. “Born March 18th, 1984, son of Captain Samuel Bender, USN Deceased?”

  Frank nodded slowly. This just keeps getting stranger, but they seem pretty sure I’m their guy. He was unable to keep the troubled look from his face as a new thought occurred to him.  Is the cop here to reassure me that this is legit, or is he here  to make sure I come? He stood. “Well, I still think you have the wrong guy here, but let’s go.”

  The ride down the Dolphin Expressway did little to settle his mind. There were no other vehicles on the westbound lanes. Every on-ramp had a patrol car with flashing lights to turn drivers away. They reached Le Jeune in minutes where they turned the wrong way at the 30th street intersection, driving over the curb and up to a fence where a platoon of soldiers stood guard over a temporary opening. To Frank’s surprise they drove right through and onto the tarmac of Miami International after crossing over a rough patch of dead grass.

  The vehicle headed right, pulling up to a fighter jet. Frank, whose father had served as a naval aviator recognized the F-22 raptor. The detective followed the parking signals of an armed soldier and shut off the engine. “Well gentlemen, I believe this is the end of my involvement in this bullshit.” He turned in his seat to look at Frank as the captain stepped out of the passenger side. “Mr. Bender, I have no idea what you’ve been dragged into, but best of luck.” He grinned and turned to face out the windshield.

  An airman pulled the door open and beckoned Frank out, handing him a flight suit.

  Now, sitting in the Danish chair, still in the flight suit, Frank looked up at the row of portraits. He assumed they must be the previous Secretary Generals. Or is it Secretaries General? He stood and walked over to the first portrait. Might as well see the sights while I’m here, he mused as he leaned over to read the engraved brass inset at the bottom of the photo. Gladwn Jeb,  he raised his eyes to scan the photo but noticed his reflection where the man’s dark suit gave the glazing an almost mirror-like quality.

  Shit! he thought in mild alarm. The experience of flying at more than two times the speed of sound was thrilling but stressful and his hair was a sweaty mess plastered to his head like a huge dead spider. He tried running his hands through his hair to at least get it off his scalp but it just dropped right back down again.

  He looked around in desperation, spotting a fabric runner under a floral arrangement on a corner table. He pulled it from under the vase and began to rub it on his hair to wick up as much moisture as possible. He would have to stuff the cloth behind the table and hope that it went un-noticed for a day or two. He could definitely feel his hair getting a bit drier.

  “Um, Mr. Bender?”

  Frank turned, taking the cloth from his head with his left hand. A young man stood there with one eyebrow raised. Nicely done, Frank; sit here for ten minutes and THEN decide to fix your hair. Well, nothing else to do except act like this is normal – this is hardly the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever been caught doing. “Yes, that’s me.” He flashed a friendly grin. “And you are?”  

  “Th
omas, Tom – Ramus. I’m Ms. Sisulu’s personal assistant.” To his credit, Tom was only momentarily flustered. Perhaps this wasn’t the most embarrassing thing he had ever caught a visitor doing. “She’s ready for you now.” He smiled as he gestured through the doorway with his hand.

  Frank tossed the runner on the chair and quickly bent to check the results in Mr. Jeb’s photo as he ran his fingers through his hair. It looked like a bad gel job from the eighties and there was an alarming cow-lick sticking up but it would have to do. He stood and followed Tom into the office. It was large. Near the windows sat a desk facing a huge conference table. Beyond the table was a discussion area with more Danish-style chairs.

  Jess Sisulu walked towards him extending a hand. “Mr. Bender,” she said, unable to stop herself from glancing up at his hair and flashing a slight, diplomatic grin. “I’m sorry we had to bring you here under such unusual circumstances.” She stepped back to her left, waving her right hand towards the discussion area. “Won’t you have a seat?”

  Frank moved with her towards the chairs, sitting across from her. “Madame Secretary, um, is that what I call you, or?” He trailed off, feeling like an idiot. Good job, genius. You could have looked it up on your smartphone ten minutes ago. He shrugged mentally. Oh well , it’s not like I really care what these yahoos think.

  Jess had a disarming smile and she turned it loose on Frank. “Mr. Bender, considering how much time you will be spending in this office, I think we can dispense with the formalities. Please call me Jess.”

  “Frank,” he replied. OK this is getting out of hand for a simple case of mistaken identity. I’m now on a first-name basis with the Secretary General of the UN? He gave a slight shake of the head, his mouth a tight mask, the bearer of bad news. “Jess, I think there has been a mistake,” he began, his voice filled with the calm confidence that he would soon be on the sidewalk looking up flight times on his phone. “I build cruise ships. Has the UN suddenly gone into the entertainment industry?”

  Jess grinned. “I hear there is a lot of money to be had in cruise ships, perhaps we could fund ourselves?” She shook  her head, smiling. “You don’t just build cruise ships, Frank, you are building the largest ship on the planet and in record time, from what we hear.”

  “Must have been something in that bagel,” Frank mused out loud, then seeing the look on Jess’ face he explained. “Sorry, Jess, but I must have food poisoning. You see, I’m probably sitting in my cubicle right now with drool running out of my mouth while one of my co-workers calls Poison Control.” He shrugged. “I’m hallucinating that I’ve been flown at twice the speed of sound to chat with an improbably attractive politician about my work." There was an edge to his voice. Frank was getting a little tired of the bizarre twists in his Monday and he was trying to throw Jess off her balance a little. Start making sense, dammit. What’s this all about?

  Jess gave a nod of acquiescence. “Fair enough, Frank, I’ll come right to it.” She leaned forward. “By now, you have heard of the footage out of Oxford?” Seeing him nod, she went on. “There’s footage from another source that indicates hostility.” She stared into his eyes. “The consensus is that they will come here next but nobody knows when. When they do, we need to be ready. That’s where you come in.” She sat back.

  “You want to ship me over there so they can beat me to death in front of a camera?” he demanded coldly. When they had pulled up in front of the Secretariat building in New York, he had almost thought this was some high handed attempt to apologize for what had happened to his father. He was ready to blow his top if that were the case, being dragged out of a meeting by armed men and flown up the coast at someone else’s whim, but it sounded like they actually expected him to do something for them.

  She had the grace to look ashamed, even though she had still been working in Africa at the time. “It was wrong to leave him behind like that.” She admitted. “So many missions had been poorly thought out and the support was almost non existent.”

  “Poorly thought out?” Frank radiated anger. “That mission was properly thought out by the officers who were assigned to lead it.” He remained in his seat, afraid he might throw a chair out the window if he came to his feet. “I remember the last day I saw my dad, before he shipped out,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. His voice grew quiet but it still held an edge. “He told me how the troop strengths, the equipment recommendations, the rules of engagement; all were overridden by some flunky in this building.” He rapped a knuckle on the coffee table as he spoke.

  He looked at her in silence for a few moments. “It took the local warlords about a month to figure out the weakness of the force and how restrictive their rules were,” he said. “If you feel the need to send soldiers on a peace keeping mission, you have to give them the right to defend themselves without having to go through a flowchart in some damned handbook or call a desk jockey in New York. If it wasn’t for the French Navy, none of them would have gotten out alive.”

  The French Naval commandos had shown no bureaucratic compunction about opening fire and had come ashore once it became clear that the UN force was being overrun. They had established a secure beachhead and ferried the survivors out to the Charles de Gaulle by landing helicopters in the tide zone. Smaller teams had worked their way inland to search for isolated pockets of friendly troops. Though many were saved, Samuel Bender had not been one of the lucky ones. Two months later, he had been beaten to death in front of a camera after refusing to read a prepared statement.

  That was three years ago.

  Frank had hated the UN ever since.

  “Mr. Bender, the UN hasn’t always been the best instrument to force peace on the unwilling, and in some cases, it has failed completely – failed the citizens it sought to aid as well as the soldiers we sent to protect them.” She paused to catch her breath, and her thoughts. “In this endeavor, we assume a more fitting role. We serve as a framework for the nations of the Earth to work together. To channel all of our efforts and resources into the most difficult construction project our species has ever attempted.”

  The hair on the back of Frank’s neck suddenly stood on end as he stared back at her. Is this going where I think it is? “Jess, do you need me to build something for you?” An orbital defense station? Couldn’t NASA or the ISS group do a better job?

  “We have the backing of every nation on Earth - finance, materials and expertise.” She leaned in again. “Three carrier groups, Frank;  three battle groups to send to Mars and you are the best qualified for what we have in mind.” She carried on over his inarticulate grunt of disbelief. “The major naval powers have let their shipbuilding industries fall into decline. They can still help with weapon systems but when it comes to constructing massive modular hulls, they can’t do it quickly and they have never done it efficiently.”

  She stabbed a finger at him. “You have.”

   

  The Oval Office

  Washington, D.C.

  January 11th, 2026

  “They’ll try to use this to bring us down.” Sam followed Parnell into the Oval Office through the door from the West Colonnade, the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to both of them.

  “Of course they will,” Parnell replied reasonably. “They’re politicians. We’d be doing the same in their shoes.” He shrugged out of the jacket, throwing it over the back of one of the ornate chairs in the seating area. “So, what kind of ammunition will he use this morning and what will he hold in reserve?”

  “Bob might develop a sudden fondness for limiting presidential powers.” Sam gazed at the Resolute Desk as he mused. “Practically every president to sit behind that desk has cooked up a war to boost his numbers and most have done it without congressional permission.”

  “So, now that we need to go to war to preserve the species, he’s going to play a card like that?”

  “He might,” Sam answered frankly. “This is going to be the most important conflict in human history and the Republicans ar
e itching to be in the saddle.” He looked up as his old friend sat behind the desk. “And they’ll make sure the public hears how you’ve never worn a uniform in your life. Not as an attack, mind you, but every Republican pundit on the talk show circuit will start dropping that little nugget in casual interviews.”

  “What about the Scouts?” Parnell’s features clouded with mock outrage. I used to cut a dashing figure in my little uniform, I’ll have you know.”

  “I’ll have Jack put that into a press packet right away.” Sam’s face was deadpan. Sometimes it was hard to know when he was being serious.

  “So, that’s their ready ammunition,” Parnell said. “What do they have in the powder keg? What will they throw at us when the bill goes up for vote?”

  Sam shrugged. “The bill itself.” He was still working his fingers, restoring circulation after standing outside on a brisk January morning. “Spending this much cash on a fleet that ends up belonging to the UN?” He grimaced. “There’s no way in hell the taxpayers are going to like it.”

  The door to the secretary’s office opened, Parnell’s aide, Thomas, leaning in. “Mr. President, Congressman Cochrane is here.

  “Thank you, Thomas,” Parnell nodded to Sam, who left by the side door. “Please show him in.” He walked over to the main door as Bob Cochrane imposed himself on the space. The congressional majority leader was a huge man, over six feet tall and he carried his two hundred fifty pounds like an aircraft carrier. The  president shook his hand. “Bob, thanks for coming on short notice.” He waved the man over to the couches in the center of the room.

  “I think we can dispense with the fencing, Mr. President and come straight to the matter at hand.” Cochrane eased his bulk onto the seat with surprising agility. “You want to pass a bill giving eight Trillion to the UN and you can’t get it through congress unless you get a hell of a lot of Republican help.” His countenance held no gloating, just the workaday expression of a man who could round up enough votes to make or break any Democrat legislation.

  The president sat at one of the ornate chairs that faced down the corridor between the two couches, not wanting to sit across from Cochrane where he would appear to be an opposing force. He leaned forward as he spoke. “Bob, you’re right,” he agreed. “I can’t move ahead without your help and, frankly, given the nature of the threat, we shouldn’t move ahead divided in any case.” Without even realizing it, he was moving into speech mode. The lyrical quality, so reassuring and promising of hope, often surfaced when he was trying to persuade and cajole.

  Bob had heard it too many times to be lulled and he cut in. “Mr. President, you propose spending a third of our GDP on a fleet that we won’t control. Even worse,” he continued in a cautionary tone, “it could one day be used against us.” He frowned. “Sir, many of my colleagues are wondering what exactly you were thinking when you made this deal in New York.”

  Parnell nodded. “It’s a fair question, Bob. But have they considered the alternatives? They are aware that the projected cost is thirty-four Trillion? When has a projected military budget ever come in on target?” He sighed. “There’s just no way for us to afford that and to build anything less would be foolhardy in the extreme.” He saw that his words were having some impact and so he pushed on. “We’re contributing twenty-three percent of the total budget. The European Union is kicking in twenty-six. China is covering fifteen percent. We can’t expect the world to come together and pay for this only to watch us claim it for our own.

  “The aliens won’t just come to invade the U.S., Bob, they’ll come after the whole damn planet and they’ll probably want it to themselves. This is not the time to worry about who sits in some office; it’s not the time to worry about partisan politics. We have an enemy at the gates and we need to meet them as a united species.”  He stabbed a finger at the huge man. “Can you tell the American people that no ships are currently on their way? Can you tell them that they won’t wake up tomorrow to see a fleet blocking out the sun?”

  Parnell fought the urge to stand, his nerves making him want to pace the floor but it would show weakness and he couldn’t afford it. “Bob, I know you have your doubts about leaving this in the hands of a man with no military experience, but I’m the man you’ve got so you’d better learn to work with me.”

  “So we let an Illinois lawyer lead us to war?” Cochrane took a deep breath. “Mr. President, you’re the one part of this whole equation that doesn’t fit.” He was leaning forward facing to the right towards Parnell, his arms balancing his bulk. “You plan to commit us to war with an alien species and you have zero military experience.”

  “I seem to recall a story about a country lawyer from Illinois who occupied the office of President and brought us through the Civil War,” Parnell said mildly. “And he had no combat experience either.”

  Cochrane jumped on that as Parnell had hoped he would. “Lincoln was a captain in the Black Hawk War.” He smiled in triumph. “Perhaps the Illinois school system should do a better job teaching about local heroes.”

  “Bob, I’m glad to hear I can count on your help in the school standardization bill, but we have bigger fish to fry at the moment.” Parnell kept his tone light. “Yes, Lincoln was elected a captain by his militia company and later served as a private but he saw no combat and often said as much.” He was becoming much more relaxed as he thought of his role models.

  “Congressman, I haven’t served in any military capacity aside from Commander-in-Chief, but I came to that job with the knowledge that I have to listen to the experts.” He considered for a moment and then plunged ahead. “My Dad fought in Vietnam and, when I told him I was running for the state senate, he said he should have strangled me at birth.” Though he heard nothing, he could see a silent chuckle shake the congressman’s shoulders.

  “I felt the same way about politicians when I was in the Gulf, flying missions off the Independence.” Cochrane said, his mind suddenly a lifetime away.

  “Well, that was the day that I finally started to learn what my Dad went through.” Parnell wanted to drive his point home while the majority leader was in the right frame of mind. “After two decades of silence, he suddenly unloaded everything. I learned about what men can do when the rules of civilized behavior are stripped away and I learned how politicians will abandon those men if it means a few more votes.”

  “Bob, I have no military experience but this situation goes far beyond anything in human history,” he spoke calmly. “I have a staff of military experts, I have the theorists at DARPA and my job is simple: make their job possible and then get out of their way.” He leaned back in his chair. “If you plan to jeopardize our way of life for some minor political gains, then my job is to get you out of the way.”

  Bob’s gaze met the president’s and locked. “Mr. President, exactly what kind of threat are you making?” His eyebrows lowered a fraction. “You’re hardly in a position to make threats or had you forgotten who holds the majority in Congress?”

  Parnell held Cochrane’s gaze as he responded. “There can be no doubt that we need to build this fleet. There can be no doubt that we need to answer the threat.” He draped his arms casually on the chair, forcing a relaxed pose. “There is no telling whether a similar enemy fleet is on their way here right now. We can’t afford a single moment of delay in developing our military capabilities and that is something the American public can easily identify with. If you think you can stop us and take the reins, keep in mind that I still have another year to serve and the chances are good that we’ll be invaded by then.” He smiled wolfishly. “Do you think the people will think it’s worth the risk? If you hold up this bill, I’ll personally nail your ass to the barn door in front of the press.”

  Cochrane looked uneasy, plainly inclined to wring every ounce of political leverage he could from this meeting and yet convinced that the bill was necessary. “It’s going to be a hard sell,” he said grudgingly. “Even for the twelve measly votes you need me to delive
r.”

  Parnell hid his surprise. So he knows we already have Gillibrand and Murkowski. “For the love of God, Bob, it’s not all doom and gloom. We’ll be providing the airship technology that makes it all possible – that should take a huge chunk of the eight Trillion and keep it right here.” He raised an eyebrow as he leaned in. “The commercial spinoffs of a thousand-ton fast freighter alone could give our economy the jumpstart it’s been needing. Let’s not forget about how much this will accelerate our fledgling extra planetary economy.

  “How about I make it easier?” Parnell was acting on sudden inspiration but he knew it could work. “I’ll get Jack to set up a press conference for this afternoon where we lay it  all out - the cost, the impact on our economy of going solo, the advantages of going out to fight in Mars orbit rather than waiting here.” He grinned. “You come with me and we present this as a completely non-partisan plan. It’ll look good on you: the congressman who put his fellow man ahead of politics.”

  Bob gave the tiniest of nods, his face locked into a tight ghost of a smile; his constituency encompassed Moffett Field  and all of its employees. “If you had asked me a month ago, I would never have thought to be considering something like this. Hell, if you asked me this morning, I would have said the same.” He looked over at the president. “Let’s get this over with. I'll back you for now." He stood. "I'll also be watching you. If you screw this up, I'll nail your ass to the White House door and our fellow citizens will thank me for it.

   

  The Freehold Taphouse

  Antioch, California

  January 26th, 2026

  Callum McKinnon sat with his cronies at his usual table in the back corner of the pub. He liked to keep the front door in sight and the kitchen door was just five feet to his right. It wasn’t that he expected trouble but his parents had drilled him in field craft since he was old enough to talk and old habits died hard.

  Gary and Susan McKinnon had worked for two decades with the CIA, slowly growing disillusioned with every passing year. In 1995, they quietly resigned from the agency and moved to Montana with their three year old son. Callum knew that something that year had been the final straw but they never spoke of it in his presence, nor would they even tell him where they were stationed at the time.

  They had a hard time at first; Montana was a land of proud, independent people and it was difficult for two former government employees to fit in. The fact that they didn’t hide their agency past did little to help them… in the beginning.

  The McKinnon’s set up as writers and managed to find a small publisher to carry their work. It was almost two years before a neighbor read one of their books and learned that the two former agents were staunchly against big government. Their unique perspective, looking at government from inside its seedy underbelly, really appealed to many of their neighbors and they soon found themselves fitting in.

  Callum may have grown up with a mistrust of the government, but his dislike of cold weather was even stronger, and he left for California when he was nineteen. He easily found work as a carpenter, which left his mind free to ruminate on all that was wrong with the world. At the freehold, he soon found like-minded friends and they spent their evenings drinking local beer while discussing the latest atrocities passed by the government in the guise of law.

  From there, it had been an easy step for Callum to start teaching his new friends the same lessons that he had learned from his parents. He reveled in their admiration as they learned lessons usually reserved for field agents. Before long, he was surrounded by a staunch cadre of friends who could blend into any crowd, spot the alert eyes of an enemy and take their weapon with an economy of force and movement.

  Now, sitting at his usual table, he was watching the television above the bar. The story was the only news anyone cared about at the moment - the passing of a bill to help fund the new UN Fleet. “It’s bullshit,” Callum growled.

  “You got that right,” Kevin Frey added. “There was never any Goddamn aliens.” He waved at Chrissie with four fingers extended. She nodded and continued on her way. “It’s like you said, Cal; just a scam to help the UN take over.” The other two members of Callum’s inner circle nodded their agreement. “Maybe it won’t pass?”

  Callum shook his head, biting back a stronger response. Kevin might not be particularly astute, but he was loyal and that wasn’t something you took lightly. “They went after Congress first because that was the Republican majority,” he explained to his friends who nodded sagely. “The senate is in Democrat hands so he’s leaving it for the end. If he needs to rework the bill or deal with a poison pill, it saves time not having to mess around with a sure vote for each round.”

  “Bastards,” Kevin said softly as the final tally came up on the screen. “And America agrees to pay for her own chains.” The bill had passed the vote and would now be rubber stamped by the senate. “So now my tax dollars are heading to the UN?”

  Callum  chuckled at that. “Your tax dollars?” he asked with a grin. “Doesn’t the government have you listed as unemployed?”

  Kevin laughed back as their two friends smiled. “Fine, my fellow Americans’ tax dollars are being sent to the UN. I’m still pissed about it.”

  “Forget about the tax dollars, Kev.” Callum waited as Chrissie delivered four pewter mugs of draft. “Did you notice what Parnell said about our technological contribution?”

  Kevin looked blankly at Callum. “You mean about the orbital airships?” he asked, furrowing his brow. “The ones that can lift a thousand tons into space at a time? Sounds a little unrealistic…”

  “I’ve been checking up on that,” Callum answered as he leaned in, the rest following his example. “There’re a couple of consortiums that’ve been working on the idea for a few years now. It looks like most of the science has been sorted out since the start of the century, but it’s not the technical side that worries me.  An airship that can take a thousand tons into space can also drop a thousand tons of armor and troops anywhere on Earth, runway or not.”

  He let his words sink in for a few seconds. “The UN can drop a platoon of tanks anywhere they want, with supporting infantry and artillery. That’s what this is all really about.” He looked at the faces that hovered in front of them. Good, it’s finally getting through their skulls. “There’s not going to be any space fleet and you know it, just those airships and a private UN army.” He nodded to give his own words emphasis. “And where are they going to build those airships?”

   

  Commencement

  Turtle Bay

  Manhattan, New York

  January 27th, 2026

  Frank looked up as Ellen walked into his office. She hadn’t quite believed his story when he’d arrived home late two weeks earlier but his dogged insistence had led her to reserve judgment. The next morning when they’d driven to the airport, she remained quiet until they approached the same spot where Frank had passed through the fence the day before. The soldiers were still there but a team of military engineers was now putting up a guardhouse and permanent gate.

  “This is crazy,” she muttered quietly as an unarmed guard scanned their driver’s licenses. To the left, behind a temporary sandbag revetment stood four men holding assault rifles. To her evident amazement, they were waved through and Frank drove over to where the fighter had been parked the day before. Today’s ride would be far more comfortable.

  “Hello again, sir.” The same Air Force captain was waiting for them on the tarmac as Frank climbed out of the vehicle. “Don’t worry about your bags,” he said as an airman reached inside the driver’s door to release the trunk. “Ma’am!” This with a nod to Ellen who was standing by the car, looking up at the Gulfstream corporate jet that sat where the fighter had previously parked. He looked back at Frank. “The rest of your party is already aboard, so you can take off as soon as the bags are stowed.”

  Frank nodded his thanks at the officer before turning to Ellen who was staring up at th
e blue, wreathed planet on the aircraft’s tail. “So,” he called out, waiting until she turned to look at him. “Still think I was out drinking with Kim yesterday?” She was still on the fence, trying to get a handle on the moment and he walked over to put an arm around her waist. “And your dad will still say I’m not good enough for you!”

  She laughed and punched his shoulder, a little too hard for comfort. “Jury’s still out!” She looked back at the waiting aircraft and its guards. “This is all real, isn’t it?” She looked back at him. “The UN actually sent a jet here to pick us up because they want you to build them a fleet?” She cocked her head to the side, hesitating. “So, you made peace with them?”

  “Call it a cease fire,” he answered with a shrug. “Anyway, I’ll have full run of the Secretariat so maybe I can find the guy who screwed Dad over…” As usual,  the darkness lifted quickly. He knew he wouldn’t make himself feel any better by tracking the man down and had made a promise to himself that the project would come first. However much he might hate the UN, humanity needed a way to defend itself.

  “Actually, they didn’t just send a jet, this one is at my permanent disposal. I’m going to be travelling everywhere our contractors operate and we can’t afford to wait for scheduling issues with other departments.” His grin faded as he began to think about the responsibilities. if I screw this up, we lose our planet. “I’m still not convinced they got the right guy for this,” he said lamely.

  Ellen moved to stand in front of him. “Who else is dumb enough to take a job this big?” She grinned. “Seriously, Frank, I’ve heard you and your dad complain a thousand times about how the military contractors are always late and over budget. You’re used to working for shareholders and they’re a hell of a lot tougher than politicians.” She reached up and put her hands on his shoulders. “I guarantee that you will be handing back at least five percent of the budget when this is done and it will be done on time.”

  “Thanks babe.” He gave scooped her into a one armed hug as they moved toward the aircraft. “I hope you realize there’s going to be a lot more travel than before.” They started up a boarding stair built into the door. “You’re free to come along if you want, Sarah already has plans to visit Helsinki.”

  “Sarah?” Ellen reached the top of the ladder and followed Frank into the cabin. Kim and Sarah sat in a pair of comfy leather loungers, Kim grinning like an escaped mental patient  and Sarah smiling sympathetically at Ellen. Ivan was rooting through the galley.

  Frank dropped into the lounger opposite Kim and Ellen joined them. “You didn’t think I’d take on a job like this without an experienced designer, did you?”

  Now, two weeks later, he smiled at his wife as she dropped into a chair in his office. “Finished at last?” he knew she wouldn’t have left the apartment until she’d met her latest deadline.

  She laughed. “The rotors finally work!” she declared triumphantly. Her work as a freelance CGI designer often involved pulling all-nighters to iron out some tricky detail. Never one to miss an opportunity, she liked to turn her triumphs into video tutorials on her blog. Her site quickly became a destination for those who sought to learn and it raised her profile in the design community. “You able to go for lunch today?” she asked.

  Frank checked his watch. “We have three hours before we leave for Germany; I have time for something quick. How about pizza?”

  “Don’t you know how to treat a girl.” Ellen rolled her eyes as she got up.

   

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  January 30th, 2026

  “They’re here,” Mike announced as he saw a small group of men in combat fatigues walk into the atrium of the facility. He was looking forward to handing this mess over to the Army. Watching hostile aliens wasn’t in his job description.

  Pete ran his fingers over the control pad, unlocking the control room door just before they reached it. “Not a moment too soon, gentlemen. We were about to start climbing the walls in here.” He waved at the heavily bearded astronomer. “This is Dr. Mike Wilsen from Red Flag and I’m Pete McGregor from NASA.”

  A middle-aged man shook their hands. “Colonel Matt McCutcheon.” He turned towards his men, “This is Sergeant Wesley Davis, Corporal Rob Farquhar and Corporal Andrew Alexander.” The men all nodded as the introductions progressed. “Now, gentlemen, if you’ll take us through what you have so far, we’ll set up shop and you can take a couple days off.” His nostrils twitched. “I think the first thing you better show me is the ventilation controls for this room.” He grinned to take some of the sting from his words. “You boys got a serious funk going in here.”

  Mike sheepishly showed the intelligence officer how to get the air exchanger running before showing him the imagery that they had managed to capture whenever planetary alignment cooperated. He was running the colonel’s last sentence through his head and decided he didn’t like how it sounded. Take a couple of days off? Mike hadn’t planned on coming back while this crisis was still playing out. He was planning on hanging out at the beach. Maybe put in an appearance at the NASA site down the hill every afternoon; just to make sure the checks from Red Flag kept coming.

  The officer stared at the video as aliens demolished the rovers. “Wes, are you seeing this?” He looked over at his sergeant who was looking up at the screen. He nodded to himself and turned back to the screen. “They told us in the brief that hostile behavior was evident, but what did they miss?”

  The sergeant snorted and shook his head. “They missed showing this to professionals; that’s what they missed,” he said with a soldier’s disdain for amateurs. “Those little bastards aren’t just destroying equipment for the fun of it.”

  “Exactly,” breathed McCutcheon as he watched the screen. “Alien or not, you don’t cart ordinance halfway across the galaxy and waste it on mindless destruction.” He looked over at Mike. “Dr. Wilsen, they blew the rovers but not the storage sheds or habitats.” He cocked his head to the side. “Now what does that tell you about their intentions?”

  Mike shrugged; his mind was Swiss cheese after so much time in the same room. “They want to make sure the rovers are useless?” he guessed.

  The colonel nodded. “And just who are they trying to deny mobility to?”

  Mike’s eyes grew wide. He felt a shiver. “They think some of our people are still alive!”

   

  Turtle Bay

  Manhattan, New York

  February 1st, 2006

  Jan pushed back from her desk, her breath escaping her lips in a tightly controlled explosion. Three weeks now, she thought angrily. Three weeks of sitting around, looking at the same videos and trying to look busy. Does anything ever get done here? She got up and walked out of the bullpen, noting that the other two scientists were absent. Not knowing what else to do in her agitated state, she decided to head down to the cafeteria and get cup of tea.

  She walked into the elevator, returning the friendly smile of the woman already in there, but Jan’s smile foundered upon the stony countenance of the man standing at the back. Unfriendly sod. She passed the ride in awkward silence and left as soon as the doors opened, turning to head for the cafeteria entrance.

  Once she had her tea and a danish, she headed for the windows where she found Dr. Hal Tudor from Vancouver and Dr. Craig Pugh from Chicago. Hal waved her over and she sat next to him. “When did you two sneak off?” she demanded with mock indignation, looking at their nearly empty coffee cups.

  Hal grinned. “About twenty minutes ago. Five minutes after you stormed off in a huff, which seems,” he raised an eyebrow, “to be your favorite means of transportation lately.” His raised inflection at the end turning the statement into a rhetorical question.

  Jan made a sound that was half amusement and half frustration. “I was in the WC; call of nature if you must know.”

  “And we thought you had come down here to start a foo
d fight,” Craig added his two cents, his speech patterns heavily peppered with the Northern-Cities-Vowel-Shift that marked so many Chicago natives. “We figured we’d come down and back you up since we had nothing else going on.”

  “At least we’re getting something done down here.” Hal raised his mug as an example. “I was nice and happy back at UBC enjoying the winter rains. Now I’m stuck in this freezing metropolis, and for what?”

  Craig stared at Hal in shock. “You mean it’s raining up there right now? It’s twenty degrees in the Big Onion; my wife told me we’re getting a couple of inches of snow too.”

  Hal shrugged. “It’s late afternoon in British Columbia so it’s probably around five or six degrees. That’s around forty degrees in Fahrenheit,” he added, enjoying the looks on both colleagues. “We do get four or five days of snow a year, so it’s not like it’s a tropical paradise or anything. Anyway, my point was that I could drink coffee back home, so I’m not really accomplishing anything extra by being here.”

  “Do you mind if I join you?” The woman from the elevator was standing by their table with a steaming mug of coffee; the unfriendly man was several paces back; looking them over.

  “Madam Secretary General?” Hal was gazing up in surprise, but at least he seemed to know who she was. “Please!” He gestured towards an empty chair.

  “I had meant to look in on you earlier, but we’ve had a lot of work to do lately.” She sighed as she sat. “We’ve had to re-organize our military command structure, create a new Special Projects division with extraordinary powers and then there’s the small matter of diplomacy…” She let the last hang like a moldy fruit and smiled at the small group. “I was thinking of coming to see you when Dr. Colbert walked onto the elevator and joined me.”

  Thank God I wasn’t rude to her! Jan thought. “If you knew who I was, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Hah! You didn’t see your face when you walked on the elevator.” She took a sip while Jan’s cheeks reddened. “You don’t survive as long as I have in politics unless you know when to speak and when to, as Americans like to say, keep your piehole shut.” She relaxed in her chair. “So tell me, Doctor, what has you upset?”

  Does she really want the truth or is this the standard ‘pat on the head’ visit? Jan decided she had nothing to lose by telling the truth, so she jumped in with both feet. “We’re wasting our time here.” She stated, exasperation in her voice. “We’ve been over the same data a million times and we can’t see how we can do anything more than we have already.”

  She could see her two colleagues nodding and so she drove on. “We’re like an afterthought. Every few days a short video or some images show up and we look them over but we’re really just some useless appendage. For all we know, our reports are simply redundant because there are obviously other teams out there looking at this data first.”

  Jess had been looking at Jan as she spoke and nodding at each point. Jan had thought she was merely being humored but the Secretary General’s response came as a surprise. “Perhaps it’s time for you to leave New York,” she mused quietly.

  Jan was shocked. Sure, she wanted to go home but this was ludicrous. All she did was tell this woman the truth and now she was going to be packed off to Oxford as a malcontent? She was just about to tear into her when Jess continued.

  “You’re right, of course, Dr. Colbert. We have a team at the Mauna Kea observatory and their reports hit my desk before yours do.” She swung her mug in a small circle to keep the artificial creamer mixed in. “I think it would be much better if your team was there, where you could each add your perspective to the analysis.”

  She was looking down into her coffee now watching the last vestige of white powder blend into the brown liquid. She nodded to herself before looking up at the three scientists. “How soon can you be ready to go?”

  I am so glad my mum taught me to count to five before yelling at anyone. Jan couldn’t believe how close she had come to making a complete arse of herself.

  Hal was looking out the window at the chunks of ice in the Hudson River. “Mauna Kea - that’s in Hawaii, right?” He turned his head to the Secretary General with a grin. “I can go as soon as we’re done with this conversation!”

  Jess laughed. “It might not be quite so warm as you think…”

   

  Moffett Field

  Mountain View, California

  February 10th, 2026

  Chuck watched out the boardroom window as the small group walked towards the building from the Gulfstream on the corner of the tarmac. From what he had learned so far, the big guy leading the pack had been building cruise ships until a month ago. Cruise ships! Chuck thought angrily. I’ve been putting people and equipment into space my whole working life and now he’s going to sort me out? The group had stopped to talk to one of the contractors working on a frenzied extension to the facilities. The man pointed towards Chuck, indicating the building that they sought. He turned back to the room. Ed McAdam from Red Flag and Tim Harrison from Chimera were both sitting at the table, working at their laptops. Both men had been quiet since their arrival a half hour earlier.

  The NASA administrator remained standing as the group filed in. Somehow, it felt like a less subservient position. He walked over and extended a hand. “Mr. Bender?” he asked.

  “Frank,” the big man answered. “And this is Kim Davidoff, our chief designer.” He continued with the group. “Captain Ted Murray from DARPA, Tony Caldeira from Modular Marine and the man with all the weapons,” he said as he indicated a tall man in black fatigues, “is Herman Brecker, our new friend from the UN.”

  Brecker was unsettling to say the least. He had a Glock on a hip holster and wore a load-bearing vest that carried a series of canisters. A deadly-looking little submachine gun rested in a quick-release holster on his chest. His eyes ran over Chuck, dismissing him as a threat. After a quick scan of the room, he moved over to the edge of the window, where he could keep an eye on the aircraft as well as the entrance to the room.

  “Evidently, our deaths could potentially set our work back so the UN assigned Herm here to keep us in one piece,” Frank explained with a slightly embarrassed grin. “He insists on entering a room first but it kind of starts meetings off on  the wrong foot, don’t you think?”

  “It’s different, I’ll give you that,” Chuck said, as he realized he hadn’t fulfilled his side of the introductions. Pull it together, Chuck. He nodded towards Ed. “This is Ed McAdams, the CEO of Red Flag Minerals and Tim Harrison, a design engineer from Chimera.” Both men shook hands with the group before sitting back down.

  Chuck watched from the head of the table for a few seconds as Frank pulled out a laptop and Kim began setting up a small projector. “Perhaps we should start with a brief on where we’re at with the current airships?”

  Frank stopped with the power adapter in his right hand and thought for a moment while his eyes drifted to Tim. “Uh, yeah sure Chuck. Good idea. Why don’t you boys take us through it while we finish setting up.”

  Is this guy on drugs? He doesn’t even seem to care! “Tim, you want to take us through it?” Chuck handed over to the engineer and started to stroll over to the window, changing his mind when he realized the bodyguard was still there. Trying to make it look natural, he headed over to the end of the table again.

   “The first two airships should lift off in two weeks, the third will follow a month after that.” Tim read the facts off his screen. “Number four has run into problems due to that windstorm.” Ed chuckled and shook his head as Tim continued. “It picked up a sheet of plywood and put it right through the shed wall, taking out two supports under the starboard side; we were still checking the frame for fractures until yesterday.”

  Yesterday? Chuck was surprised. The engineer had said he needed at least another week to finish. How did he get it done so fast?

  Frank nodded as a square of light appeared on Chuck’s chest. “The windstorm was a bit of good lu
ck,” he said. “Tim, let’s get some cranes in here and start lifting the remains of number four out of there. The sooner we can reconfigure that hangar for the sub-orbital airships the better.”

  This is spiraling out of control, Chuck thought with alarm. Not two minutes into the meeting and Cruise-ship-Boy was already giving out orders. “Hold on, folks,” he said, working to keep calm. “With another week of inspections, we can get number four back on track.” He looked around the room but didn’t see any overt support for his contribution. He pushed on. “We already have four months invested in that airframe; it would be a waste to abandon it now.” He could see surprise on the faces of his visitors. Good, I’ve gotten through! The feeling didn’t last.

  “Four months? For a keel and six lower rib sections?” Tony blurted in genuine surprise before turning to Bender. “Frank, if I need to halt the process on the first modules, you need to tell me now. I can have the first sections rolling off the line in six weeks but my yard can’t hold many modules. Real estate is too expensive at the dockyards.”

  Frank made a subtle hand gesture to the contractor, asking him for a moment as he turned to Chuck. “As you just heard, we will have modules for the first escort ready to go into space in,” he stopped for a moment and shot Tony a shrewd look before continuing, “two months.” He kept talking before Caldeira’s protest could gain momentum. “In all likelihood, Tony, the design will need a bit more tweaking before you can fire up the cutters.” He looked over to Davidoff who nodded.

  “There’s a bit more work to do on pipe junctions and bulkhead placement,” Davidoff stated.  “Ted’s team wasn’t really thinking about modular construction methods when they came up with these designs, but I think we can turn Tony loose in about four weeks; Ted?”

  The Air Force captain nodded thoughtfully. “Four weeks is a dependable number.” He looked over at Frank. “I might be tempted to say three but four is a safer target for the first escort.” He shrugged. “Better than aiming for three and missing the date; we’d end up having to change everyone’s targets.”

  “So we’re just going to abandon the fourth airship?” Chuck hated to waste the effort and materials. “You could be using them to move materials around and you’re going to be able to start moving the segments into orbit pretty quickly once we get the system up and running.”

  Frank looked up at him for a few moments before answering. “My dad spent a lifetime in the navy and if there’s one thing he taught me it was: never reinforce failure.” He pointed past the window to where the airship hangars stood. “Those first ships can’t reach the transfer station which, by the way, is nearly ready for pre-fabrication thanks largely to our partnership with the new alliance of telecommunication companies.”

  Frank stood and walked over to the window, Herman showing obvious disapproval of his exposure. He looked out towards the hangars. “We can use the first three to move materials but we already have trains committed to that task.” He turned slowly, frowning at a new thought. “Tony, what sort of weight are we looking at per module?”

  The dark-haired man pulled out his smart phone and raised an eyebrow at Kim as he nodded to the projector. Kim tapped the control pad a few times and a warbling tone followed from Tony’s phone. “Chuck, you wanna get out of the way, buddy?” The contractor grinned as Chuck looked down at the projection on his abdomen and scuttled out of the way.

  A file showed up on the far wall presenting a column of module renderings with text summaries to the right of each. After a few pokes at his phone’s screen the list sorted itself by mass. “Sixty-five tons for the heaviest module.” he said, squinting up at the screen.

  “So we could use the first three terrestrial airships to move segments from your yard to a transfer station outside of town where the first stage airships can land and pick them up.” Frank strolled back over to the table where he leaned on his chair, lost in thought for a moment. “We pave a huge lot, put up some large Quonset huts and run rails inside all of them that lead out to a sunken landing pad.” He took a couple of steps closer to where Kim and the DARPA officer sat. “What do you think, guys?” He was sounding excited now. “We use a roller system just like we put on the Leviathan class, kind of like what they use to handle baggage containers at airports,” he explained for the benefit of the room.

  Kim nodded thoughtfully. “Tim, you could incorporate heavy duty rollers into the deck of each class of airship? If you can, it would be a no-brainer for us to put together a transfer yard; a couple hundred acres of asphalt and some rail, and we’re ready to go.”

  Tim beamed around the room. “You know, I’ve done so many crazy design projects; I never expected that anything would come of them and yet here we are - making the craziest one of all come to life.” He turned to Kim. “I was the lead designer on the orbital airship program and I can have the rollers integrated by the end of the week.”

  “Ed, you haven’t said much.” Chuck was hoping the taciturn mining executive who was bankrolling the airship project would help to put the brakes on. “You might be supporting the orbital program for obvious reasons of your own, but this essentially kills the terrestrial program.”

  Ed nodded calmly. “I don’t mind paying for orbital ships,” he drawled. “Once the fleet is built, I’ll be talking with Tony here about putting my own freighters in space.” He finally looked up from his keyboard to meet Chuck’s gaze. “Some day, I’ll get my airships back, and I’ll be able to start bringing rare elements down here from the moon.” He gave Chuck his own particular version of a smile. “There’s already enough helium isotope in our recently registered claims to cover the cost.”

  Why am I the only person in the room who seems surprised by what’s happening here? Chuck remembered how Ed and Tim had been quiet since their arrival that morning. He also remembered that the president had mentioned Ed carping about lunar mineral rights. Sonofabitch! He darted an involuntary glance at Bender. He made this deal already. I’m the only one who didn’t know. He looked over at the young captain who had been in the war room when Chuck was sparring with Admiral Kelly. Bender thinks I won’t play nice, so he made sure I couldn’t get in the way.

  Chuck suppressed a sigh. He had to admit, he really wasn’t making this any easier. The path had already been chosen and there was nothing left to do except get to work. He had to stop clinging to the old, bureaucratic way of doing things. Maybe I should stop trying to pick a fight. “I can have cranes in here by eight tomorrow morning,” he offered. “What can we do to start getting ready for the first-phase airships?”

  Bender raised an eyebrow in surprise, taking a moment to respond. “I see you have contractors working on enlarging the infrastructure. We need you to get someone in here to raise the roof on Hangar Four and add a hundred feet to its length.” He nodded over at Caldeira. “There’s a reason I brought this lazy bastard along today,” he said with a grin. Tony smiled back, silently mouthing his favorite obscenity before turning to Chuck.

  “Fabricating the world’s largest ship in fourteen months is our current claim to fame,” the contractor began. “But we had to do exactly the same modifications to our shops that you need to make on your hangars.” He gave a Gallic shrug as he continued. “I hate paying someone else to come and do work that I can do myself so I came up with a simple hydraulic lifter that lets us cut the columns and raise a roof in a matter of hours. We have to fabricate a few more units, but we can have them here in a week.”

  “Tony will get the first hangar raised,” Frank added, “and then he’ll stick around for a couple of weeks and see if he can help you to speed up construction on the first airship. He has a knack for weeding out the dead wood.”

  Is that a warning? “We’d be glad to have the help,” Chuck said, hoping it would be true.

   

  The Oval Office

  Washington, D.C.

  February 11th, 2026

  “So he sure as hell did an end run on poor Chuck!” The president said to Sam
as the staff filed out the hall door at the end of the briefing.

  “Tom Kelly probably had his DARPA boys warn him,” Sam replied as he leaned against one of the chairs in front of the president’s desk. “It must have worked or we would have heard from him by now.”

  “So how do we make sure Red Flag keeps their mineral rights?”

  Sam considered for a moment. “The UN is obviously behind it, seeing as the Secretary General proposed it to you.” He paused again as he thought it through. “They’ll likely find a way to get equipment up there in the very near future so it will be occupied. If we can get him to carry some scientific staff for us, we can put in a territorial claim that covers his area of exploration.” He nodded to himself, finishing the thought. “It would be a lot like the claims on Antarctica,” he explained. “Our federally funded scientific teams would lend some credibility, so Ed should be willing to carry them there for us.”

  “I like it,” Parnell said decisively. That’s one problem neatly dealt with. “I knew I kept you around for more than your looks!” It was an old joke between the two friends. While Parnell was pursuing his fledgling legal career, Sam had joined the navy.

  He’d been leading a boarding party in the Gulf when a jittery freighter crewman had fired a burst from an AK-47 at him. Amazingly, the only round to strike Sam had passed between his upper and lower jaw, punching out through the soft tissue of his cheek before burying itself in a crate to his side. Had he not been shouting at the time, he probably would have died.

  Despite the best medical help, Sam would always carry an impressive scar. It was, in fact, his looks that had helped to persuade the voters who had been told ad nauseum that Parnell had no military background. One had only to look at the man who would serve as Chief of Staff to see that the administration would not be entirely without military experience.

  As he was ruminating on his own lack of military experience, Parnell spotted Admiral Kelly standing at the open hall door with a puzzled frown and waved the officer in. “It’s Kitzhaber,” Parnell explained the open door. “He always assumes Sam is following him out the door so it never gets closed when Sam stays behind after a staff meeting.”

  “So put a buzzer in his office that links to the door,” the Admiral suggested mildly. “Or better yet, some electrodes in his chair.”

  “I checked it out with legal,” Parnell breezed, glad of some light conversation. “They tell me you can’t electrocute your employees.” He nodded to the file in the Admiral’s hand. “Those the stills you wanted to show me?”

  The Admiral nodded and laid them out on the desk as Parnell put his glasses on. “Sir, it’s pretty cut and dried; someone is still alive out there.” He pointed to the first image as Sam moved around to Kelly’s right to get a better view. “This was taken the morning of the attack.” The image showed a steep cliff-face with a large shadow roughly centered in the page.

  “What exactly are we seeing here, Tom?” Parnell looked up at the Admiral.

  “Sir, this shows the emergency site,” Kelly explained. “It was blasted out of the cliff-side shortly after the main habitat was operational. It was intended to shelter the colony in the event of a natural disaster that wiped out the main site.” He pulled an engineer’s drawing from the folder and spread it on the desk, revealing an isometric drawing of an inflatable habitat. “Mr. President, once the cavern is roughly to the right size and shape, this habitat is laid inside and a series of catalyst vials are cracked open. That starts a reaction, expanding a foam between the inner and outer layers of the structure.”

  “The foam hardens?” Sam asked, looking down at the text beside the drawing.

  Kelly nodded. “In an hour, it forms a solid structure that can stand up to most cave-ins.” He stabbed a finger at the image. “This one was built to house the entire colony for up to a year while they wait for rescue from Earth. Mary tells me it could even have taken in the miners from the Red Flag site as long as they were careful about their resources.”

  Parnell pulled the second image from under the drawing, looking at it as Kelly folded the large sheet and laid it aside. “So there’s tracks here,” he mused as he set it back on the desk. “When was this taken?”

  “Within an hour of the attack,” the Admiral replied. “Only one set of tire tracks and a scattering of footprints just outside the cave entrance. Looks like they drove the one missing rover into the mouth of the cave and someone came out for a quick last look before going inside.”

  “How many people?” Parnell took his glasses off and looked up at Kelly.

  “With one rover?” Kelly shrugged. “Mary figures six at the most. The rest are either dead or captured.”

  “What about,” Parnell paused while he checked a list on his desk, “Jennifer Grayson?” Her particular story was known only to a handful of people on Earth.

  Kelly shook his head. “All we know is that a maximum of six colonists survived. Considering that we started out with almost thirty people, the chances are roughly twenty percent for any given individual.” He sighed. “The odds are against her.”

  Parnell sat back and looked at the images absently for a few moments. He looked up at the two men in front of him. “So, there’s no question that we need to use this information to light a fire under the nay-sayers. Now we just have to decide on when.”

  “There’s something else to consider, sir,” Kelly added. “Our current plans don’t allow for landing troops on the planet surface. We were planning on the bombardment of alien sites once we achieve orbital superiority.” He gestured towards the photographs on the desk. “There can be no doubt about the need to land forces and pick up our people.”

  “Admiral Kelly’s right.” Sam’s tone brooked no disagreement. “We need to set up a meeting with the UN, the DARPA designers and the major military contributors. We need landing craft as well as air cover, not to mention troops for a planetary insertion.”

  “Space Marines?” Parnell raised an eyebrow.

  Both men on the other side of the desk rolled their eyes in horror. It was Sam who responded. “I swear to God, Nate, if you ever use that term in public, Bob Cochrane will be in here within the week, measuring for new curtains.”

  Parnell was properly abashed; Sam almost never called him by his first name anymore. Especially not in front of others. “Okay, you guys come up with a name.” He focused now on Sam. “Get the major stakeholders lined up for a meeting at  the UN and make sure my schedule is cleared.”

  Both men nodded and left, Sam closing the door behind him.

   

  Willy’s Liquor and Convenience

  Santa Cruz, California

  February 11th, 2026

  “There he is,” Callum broke the silence of the last twenty minutes as he watched a vehicle pull into the lot in front of the store. With a quick look to ensure Kevin was awake, Callum stepped out of his car and entered the store ahead of his target. It had taken a little over an hour to identify the owner of the contractor who had the expansion job at Moffett Field. Two weeks more had identified his major habits and the liquor store was identified as the best location for a carefully scripted chance meeting.

  Callum headed straight for the premium whiskey and selected a twelve-year-old bottle - good but not prohibitively expensive, just what a tradesman might look for if he had taste but not the means to go for the really good stuff. He looked up as his target approached and gave him a friendly nod.

  “Celebrating?” the man asked, noting the bottle in Callum’s hands.

  Callum smiled and cocked his head to the side as if considering his response. “You might say that,” he responded. “You could say I survived a crisis of conscience.” He grinned, knowing it would hook the man.

  “That sounds like it has a hell of a story behind it.” The big man’s statement ended with an inquisitive inflection as he turned to pull out a bottle of his customary fifty-year-old scotch.

  Callum shrugged. “It wouldn’t be right to n
ame names,” he said with an air of casual dignity. “Suffice it to say, some contractors like to take shortcuts and I don’t want to be associated with shoddy work, so now I find myself slightly under-employed.”

  He had the man’s full attention now. He looked at Callum, from his well-used steel-toe boots to his slightly scruffy but still presentable work clothes. “What kind of qualifications do you have?” the man asked with a friendly smile.

   Callum gave an approving nod towards the man’s choice in whiskey as he answered. “Journeyman carpenter,” he said. “I have a welding ticket as well.”

  The man was obviously impressed. “I happen to have some openings right now and I need to fill them right away,” he said as he pulled out his phone. “Mind if I look you up?”

  Callum feigned a grin of surprised delight. “Not at all! Callum McKinnon.” He waited as the man brought up his credentials from the contractor’s registry, seeing his approving nod. “Did you say you have a few openings?” he asked, knowing full well that the contractor had lost four men in an incident at one of the local bars the previous night. Thanks to some willing help from Callum’s young followers, the four men had been provoked into a disturbance big enough to land them in jail. Given the clearance required for Moffett Field, it was unlikely that they would ever be coming back to the jobsite.

  “I do need a few extra employees, as it turns out,” the man replied, raising an inquisitive eyebrow. “You have some pals with experience?”

  Callum fed him the names of three more of his cronies, the ones who had legitimate qualifications, and watched as he confirmed them on his phone. “Name’s Lance Bryson, by the way,” the contractor said as he looked up from the screen. “Can you wait a couple of days to start? I have to get you all cleared for access to Moffett.”

  Callum nodded. “Sure, Lance,” he said cheerfully, putting the twelve-year-old bottle back on the shelf and reaching for something a little more expensive. “I think my friends and I need to upgrade our celebration!”

  Lance laughed as he walked to the counter with Callum, completely unaware that he had just agreed to insert a team of very dangerous and unpredictable men into a secure facility.

   

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  February 15th, 2026

  Mike was out in the vestibule with Sergeant Davis when the new arrivals walked in. All private research partnerships had been temporarily suspended as the massive telescope became Humanity’s primary intelligence source for alien activity on Mars. As a result, the cavernous central vestibule, designed to accommodate large groups of academics and tourists, had been given over to the team responsible for collecting, analyzing and disseminating data about the enemy.

  Despite his best efforts, Mike had been rolled into the fabric of the growing team. His earlier hopes that the military would completely take over had come true but they had shown no interest in letting him leave. If nothing else, his technical knowledge of how the massive telescope array worked made him indispensable. Even though Franka had the same knowledge, Mike’s education had uniquely prepared him for familiarizing the military with the environment on Mars as well as the mining activity that they were now seeing from the enemy. For the first time in his life, Mike found that he was really good at something.

  He was actually enjoying it.

  The shift in usage from ‘alien’ to ‘enemy’ happened the day Colonel McCutcheon and his advance team had arrived. As soon as it became clear that the aliens were not friendly, the language had shifted immediately. Mike suspected that the men in green were far more comfortable wrapping their heads around the situation now that they could talk in terms of enemy intentions and capabilities. Their attempts to apply a logical framework to the enemy activity had gone a long way towards explaining the data that was flowing in whenever planetary alignment allowed observation.

  The newly arrived team of three specialists from the UN were standing just inside the door where they shivered in shorts and t-shirts. The woman on the right was far more attractive than Mike had expected and his hand unconsciously reached to his six-week-old beard.  That has to be Colbert, he thought. From the email, I was expecting some old bat in tweed. “Dr. Colbert?” he asked. Seeing a nod, he introduced himself. “I’m Dr. Mike Wilsen from Red Flag Minerals.” He nodded over at Davis. “This is Sergeant Wes Davis.”

  “And I’m Pete McGregor from NASA,” the engineer had appeared behind Mike as if by magic and he reached out to shake Colbert’s hand. “Welcome to the 60’s!”

  The soldiers had been the ones to start referring to the location as the 60’s in honor of the telescope’s famed diameter. They had reinforced the idea by playing music from the 60’s on one of their laptops, and Mike had to admit that it did make the place a little less clinical. Now, however, he was watching as the three newcomers failed to make the connection. Perhaps it would have helped if the music was playing at the moment, but it was after ten in the evening and so the tunes were off for the night. “Just an inside joke,” he explained. “We don’t get out much.”

  Colbert smiled and turned to her colleagues. “This is Dr. Craig Pugh from Northwestern, Chicago and Dr. Hal Tudor from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.” A second round of handshakes ensued.

  With the pleasantries out of the way, Tudor nodded at the meeting rooms on the far side where bunks had replaced the boardroom furniture. “Are any of those not claimed?” he asked. “I can’t speak for Jan or Craig, but I sure as hell didn’t sleep on the flight here.”

  Mike explained the accommodations as well as the washing facilities set up by the military. McCutcheon had brought in a forty-foot sea container with a male washroom built into one end and a female unit at the other. They were simple but efficient, and a team of combat engineers had constructed an enclosed area that connected the container to the facility so that staff wouldn’t need to walk through the cold weather of the mountain-top to have a shower. The enclosure also served as a ready room for a small security force that had arrived a couple of days ago.

  Mike and Pete watched the three newcomers shuffle off to drop their gear. “I think I’ll go shave this beard off,” Peter said casually. Mike looked over at him with amusement. Davis frowned. “It itches,” the engineer said defensively. “Doesn’t your beard itch?”

  “Like it itched yesterday when you saw that hot tour guide at the Onikuza Center?” Mike countered. “Wes warned us about this. When you spend a lot of time in the field, you start obsessing about the opposite sex. We agreed to help keep each other from making asses out of ourselves.”

  “She was smiling at me.”

  Wes was glowering at them both in silent reproach.

  “She’s a tour guide; she smiles for a living.” Mike shook his head. Pete would hit on a shark if he thought it was smiling at him. “I’m starting to think you’re not fully acclimatized. The altitude is clouding your ability to reason.” He turned to Davis. “Wes, he’s already forgetting about our pact. Maybe we need to put him back on anhydrase inhibitors.”

   “Are you saying,” the sergeant began as he glared at them, “that you went for coffee at the Onikuza Center without me?”

   

  Turtle Bay

  Manhattan, New York

  February 22nd, 2026

  Jess had a sip of rooibos, smiling at the approving nod from Zhu An, the UN Ambassador from the People’s Republic of China. She wasn’t sure if he truly approved of the South African tea or if he was simply being polite but he had been offered a variety of choices and he’d decided to have whatever she was having.

  One cup sat steaming on the low coffee table. One more candidate to meet.

  Jess knew his history.

  China’s relatively new blue-water navy had come to blows with an American carrier group near the coast of Taiwan a few years earlier and most sources indicated that a frigate captain by the name of Gao Hu had fired th
e first shots of what had almost become a full-out battle. It had been a decision by the American Admiral to pull ships back from the center of conflict that tipped the balance back towards a ceasefire. Captain Gao was something of a hero in China, quietly celebrated in naval and civilian circles.

  Publicly, the entire incident was regrettable but Gao soon found he was recognized by his countrymen wherever he went.

  The door opened and Tom escorted the captain into the room. Jess and Ambassador Zhu welcomed the man and he sat, taking a sip of the proffered tea. Jess noticed a slight raise of the eyebrows as he processed the flavor. “Rooibos,” he said with a nod. “I developed a fondness for it in my college days.” His English was flawless, just a slight hint of the New England twang.

  “I’m glad you like it, Captain,” Jess replied. “What made you select Harvard?”

  The man smiled. “I could have studied engineering at any number of excellent schools in my homeland, but my father was always of the opinion that an education should be as thorough as possible.” He grinned at the ambassador’s frown as he went on. “By that, I mean that it would be a better experience if I were to learn a new culture and language as well.” He turned back to Jess. “Engineering can be a restrictive discipline,” he said. “By forcing myself to learn a new language I found that I became more creative.” He grinned again as he continued. “Studies here in America have shown that creativity is measurably reduced by the time a student graduates from an engineering program.”

  “And you have found the secret to preserving that creativity?” Jess couldn’t help but like this personable officer despite the warnings from Parnell’s advisors.

  He shrugged. “It certainly didn’t hurt,” he said simply. “So I suppose you brought me here because of what happened in the South China Sea?”

  Jess took another drink of tea before responding. “Do you regret your role in the engagement, Captain?” she asked mildly.

  “I miss the ability to walk the streets of Ningbo in privacy but I stand by the decisions that I’ve made.  I had my standing orders and a captain’s prerogative to interpret and apply those orders as I saw fit.” He appeared to be completely at ease, despite discussing how close the world had come to disaster.

  It’s not as if he was the sole cause of the conflict,  Jess mused. He was, after all, in the South China Sea. At most, he was a hundred fifty kilometers from his own coastline facing a fleet from the other side of the Pacific. How long would an American Captain hold fire if the roles were reversed? It wasn’t lost on her that he had referenced his orders but had followed by stating firmly that it was his own decision. This was a man who took responsibility for his own actions; more importantly, he was a man who took action. He knew he was engaging an enemy with over a century of experience fighting against some of the best navies the world had seen. He opened fire anyway.

  This was a man who wouldn’t shrink from a fight, no matter who the enemy was. She looked over to Ambassador Zhu and saw a slight smile in the corners of his eyes. His superiors would not object to this appointment. She turned back to Gao. “Captain Gao, your government has sent you here today for a job interview.” She paused to let that sink in, seeing the frown spread on his face.

  Gao had been promoted from a frigate commander to captain of a carrier only nine months earlier and he was reluctant to lose his beautiful new ship so soon. “Madam Secretary, I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” His gaze swung to Zhu but found no answers in the man’s smile. “Perhaps you could tell me about this job?”

  Jess leaned forward in her chair. “You know about the ships that we are building?” As Gao nodded, she continued. “That means there are three entire fleets in need of a full complement of crews and officers.”

  Gao was surprised to say the least. If he was to lose his carrier, a space-ship might just compensate for it. He could just imagine his father’s face when he heard the news. “I am being considered as the captain of one of these new ships?” he asked, his blood coursing as the idea lodged firmly in his mind. He realized now that some senior officers would come from his country. There had been two admirals and two other captains waiting before him for this meeting.

  “No,” Jess responded with a smile. “Though your navy will be providing us with complements for quite a few ships, we have something else in mind for you.” She stood. “Ambassador, I believe we are in agreement. Would you care to do the honors?”

  Zhu stood and Gao, still smarting from his dashed hopes, came to his feet to face his country’s representative, keeping his turbulent thoughts from showing on his face. “Captain Gao,” Zhu began, beaming with pleasure.  “I have been authorized to promote you to the rank of Hai Jun Da Xiao.” He pumped Gao’s hand enthusiastically.

  Jess smiled as she shook his hand. “Congratulations, Rear Admiral!”  She looked over at the ambassador and they exchanged a nod. “We have a meeting in two hours that I think you should sit in on, in your official capacity as second in command of the response fleet.” She guided him towards the door where Tom waited. “Tom will show you to a room where you can look through the technical details of your new command; you will have direct command of one of the carrier groups and you will be second only to the overall commander.”  She and the ambassador continued down the hall, leaving Gao in a state of euphoric shock.

   

  Midtown East

  Manhattan, New York

  February 22nd , 2026

  "It sounds crazy.” Parnell gazed out the armored windows of the limo at the pedestrians who ignored his motorcade. In most other cities, a motorcade like this would garner attention and press but the denizens of this part of Manhattan were more or less immune to the sight of yet another self-important functionary being whisked in from the airport.

  “Probably because it is crazy,” Sam replied, his face showing his opinion of the designers at DARPA. “Jack, would you climb into one of these capsules and drop onto an alien world with four days of water?”

  “My mom always told me that I should take at least ten days of water if I was going to drop onto a hostile planet, and to make sure I took a warm sweater,” Kitzhaber muttered as he looked through the papers in his valise. He looked up at Sam. “You’re the big war hero,” he accused. “Would you climb into one of those things?”

  “If I was still in my twenties maybe.” Sam grinned back. “Fighting is a young man’s game,” he explained. “The longer you stay in it, the more you start to realize how mortal you are.” He tapped his cheek. “Getting shot in the face has a way of knocking sense into a man.”

  “So, how soon after the three carrier groups are finished do we wait before starting on our own fleet?” Parnell cut in. “If we don’t try to match the UN in space, we’re in trouble, but we don’t want to risk being too obvious.”

  Jack seemed to have put some thought into that very question and he jumped in immediately. “I think we should be completely obvious,” he began. “We come out with something like what if the current forces in space are not enough? We should be building up our own capabilities anyhow, just in case the UN defensive fleet is overwhelmed while the response fleet is off fighting around Mars. Anyway, who the hell would want to trust the UN to protect them?”

  He looked at the two men sitting across from him, seeing that they weren’t quite convinced. “Look, people expect us to have secret programs and hidden agendas for world domination.” He paused for a moment as a wry smile toyed with the corners of his mouth. “For all I know, you probably do but it’s not the kind of thing you tell your press secretary about.” The three men shared a laugh. “Anyway, if we do this openly, it draws the teeth of the conspiracy theorists.”

  The vehicle pulled off 1st Avenue, coming to a stop at the portico of the Secretariat building where the men were ushered inside by Secret Service agents. Once inside, they headed straight for the elevators, riding to the 38th floor. When the doors opened, an aide was there waiting to conduct them to the Secretary General?
??s office. He frowned momentarily at the two armed agents flanking Parnell before leading the group down the hall where he opened the doors and announced them.

  Parnell made the rounds, greeting the assembled ambassadors who represented the major contributors. He reached the small group of military officers and shook hands with Admiral Towers, the commander of the response fleet. “Any relation to John Henry?” the president asked.

  “Sixth generation, Sir, but yes I am.” Towers looked pleased to have his famous ancestor brought up by his president. In all likelihood, Parnell knew more about John Henry Towers than his descendant did. Jack had briefed the president on the admiral’s background during the flight down from Washington.

  “Fitting, don’t you think?” Parnell asked the man. “John Henry was the first aviator to reach flag rank and now his descendant will command the first carrier task force in space.” Tower’s eyebrows raised in surprise at the knowledge displayed by a man he tended to think of as a civilian. A surprised murmur ran through the small group of officers as they absorbed the generational connection.

  “Not that he was chosen because of that,” the president added with a grin. “It was purely a matter of dedication and stellar performance!” He was rewarded with a few chuckles and a couple of outright groans at this obviously lame attempt at humor. He saw one Chinese officer in the group and knew what that meant. From the briefing photos, he knew the faces of the three officers on the short list and this man would have been his own first choice, despite Sam’s misgivings. He extended a hand. “Admiral Gao?”

  Gao shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. President.”

  Parnell was momentarily surprised by the man’s flawless New England accent, even though he had read about his time in Boston. “Strange old world isn’t it?” he asked. “A few years ago, the so-called experts said we would be at each other’s throats by now and yet, here we are, building an integrated military structure.”

  Gao nodded. “When two groups do as much business with each other as we do, quarrels happen,” he said simply as Ambassador Zhu drifted over. “We have been shown that there are more important things to worry about but, if we defeat the new enemy, how long will we remember that it was done together?” He looked at his brother officers, seeing solemn agreement on their faces.

  It was always the curse of those who served in uniform. People forgot the human cost of conflict far too easily. “My people have a saying that was meant to apply to money but it has truth for this situation as well,” Gao said. “Wealth does not pass three generations.”

  “We have that as well,” said Towers in surprise. “Except we say shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations. I suppose it’s universal.”

  “Perhaps that’s why our alien friends have decided to attack us?” Parnell mused. “They may have had peace for a few generations and now they’ve come looking for conquest and adventure.” He grinned at the officers. “Perhaps when we finish with them on Mars, we should pay them a visit on their own home world. Just to remind us that we have better things to do than kill each other.”

  The projection screen came on and Jess stepped to the back of her seat. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. Shall we begin with a presentation of our current progress?” Her question was politely rhetorical and the attendees moved to their seats as a complicated Gantt chart appeared on the screen. “For those of you who haven’t met him yet, Frank Bender is our project manager,” she said as she sat. Bender nodded absently at the assembled dignitaries as he leaned forward. He activated his tablet, causing the main screen to display the latest progress report.

  “We have the first escort module scheduled to come off the line in Portugal in roughly four weeks,” said the big man. “The first two heavy-lift airships will launch the end of this week and the third will be a month later. We’ll get them busy moving raw materials and weapons to the transfer yard and shift them over to module pickups as needed.”

  He opened one of the progress bars on the screen and a sub-chart popped up. “The two airship models needed  to get all this into orbit will take roughly three months before the first set are operational.” He switched the display to a split screen showing company profiles. “Four companies are currently under contract to provide airships and we are looking for more but, frankly, there just aren’t that many airship manufacturers out there that can even begin to imagine what we need.”

  “How many airships do you really need?” asked the German Ambassador. He knew the staff at Zeppelin would like to know what to expect.

  Frank brought up a spreadsheet. “Sorry I didn’t have time to tidy this up,” he said as he scrolled over to the left. “We’ve calculated that we need to do just a little over a thousand lifts for each carrier group.” He typed in a ‘5’ in one cell and a ‘4’ beneath it before putting a quick formula below the two numbers, referencing them as well as the total module per fleet estimate.

  “If each company builds one set of airships,” he said as he hit the enter key. “We would need two thousand three hundred and seventy days to lift one fleet into orbit. That’s based on a nine day round trip for each pair of airships. This is definitely our current bottleneck.”

  There were a few sounds of dismay at this revelation but most simply looked at Frank with grim determination. They realized they were hearing the worst case scenario. Parnell turned from the screen to face Bender. “Frank, how many sets of airships do you feel we need?”

  Frank’s fingers tapped the pad, overwriting the number ‘4’ to a ‘40’ as he spoke. “If we want the first fleet lifted within a year, we need forty operational pairs. That’s forty ships to reach the transfer stations at a forty-kilometer altitude and forty to go from there to Low-Earth-Orbit.” He paused for a moment as if considering whether to reveal bad news and then resumed speaking. “Keep in mind that we will only have eight operational pairs by mid-summer. In all likelihood, we won’t have three fleets lifted and assembled for another three and a half years.”

  He sat back as the room erupted in turmoil. After a few moments of frenzied side discussion and shouted argument, Jess reigned in the chaos. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began forcefully from the head of the table. “I believe the first question we should answer at this point is how to employ the first fleet: should we launch a strike at Mars as soon as we have sufficient force or should we wait until all three carrier groups are operational?”

  She watched as Parnell held back from the general argument that ensued. When it became clear that the same arguments were now being chewed over for a third time, she took control back. “You have been very quiet on this matter, Mr. President. Perhaps the United States would like to weigh in on the subject?”

  Parnell smiled at Jess as he replied. “I’m not much of a fighter except where votes are concerned,” he said to a few chuckles from around the table. “But we have proven, professional fighters here with us.” He indicated the small group of senior officers who sat at the table with their respective ambassadors. “It would be foolish in the extreme for politicians to decide on this matter without seeking their advice. Admiral?” He turned to face Powers.

  The anger that had been building on the officer’s face began to fade as he realized that disaster might yet be averted. “What is our first priority?” he demanded as he glared around the room.

  “Driving the aliens away from Mars, I should think,” replied the British ambassador. Most of the representatives nodded in agreement.

  “Protecting Earth,” said Gao.

  “Exactly,” Powers cocked an eyebrow at the Brit. “Won’t do us a damn bit of good to go racing off to Mars if a second alien force shows up here and starts slinging asteroids at our cities.” He leaned forward and poked a finger at the table. “We keep one fleet here in orbit from now on,” he stated forcefully. “One foot on the ground at all times or we fall down.” Leaning back, he gave a curt nod to Gao who inclined his head slightly in return.

  “I don’t t
hink there can be any disagreement with the points as put forward by our fleet commanders,” Jess said. “Our next order of business should be to determine just how quickly we will have the means to fight in our own backyard. Frank?”

  Bender must not have expected to be dragged back into the discussion because it took him a moment to frame an answer. “We plan to have the modules for two frigates and a cruiser lifted into orbit by early December of this year. The first frigate will start going up in July and will be operational by early October, the following two ships will be ready in January and March of next year.”

  “So we can start putting up a fight in eight months?” Towers asked. He looked over at Gao. “There might just be hope for us after all.”

  “Shouldn’t we address the elephant in the room?” The German ambassador rose from his chair and walked over to a large wall screen where images of the enemy facility were displayed.

  “Only one elephant?” A French officer raised an eloquent eyebrow. “Quelle chance! This is a relief…” A low chuckle ran around the table.

  A nod from the German. “Just so. I pick one from the herd, but it has been nagging at me.” He waved at the screen. “Why come all the way to our solar system and attack Mars? Why not come straight to Earth?”

  “An advance base, perhaps?” A British captain suggested.

  “But their ships should be base enough,” Towers grumbled. “We have nothing in orbit that can even scratch their paint.”

  “Taking orbit is one thing,” Gao asserted, “Taking the planet, against billions of citizens, is quite another.”

  Towers nodded in acknowledgement. He opened his mouth to speak but was cut off.

  “Insufficient force.” Frank said bitterly. He looked around the room. “A document from this building listed three reasons for the failure of my father’s mission and his eventual death. The first was insufficient force, the second was restrictive mission parameters and the third was overextension.”

  He nodded to the screen on the wall. “They may well be working to overcome restrictions placed on them by an incompetent administration.” He couldn’t stay seated any longer. He got up and joined the German, looking at the screen.

  “Our admirals are both right,” he said quietly. “They can take orbit, but I’ll bet you anything they can’t take the surface with the troops they were given. Otherwise they’d come straight at us.”

  The British ambassador let out a strangled laugh of disbelief. “You really think a civilization that can cross the stars would send an inadequate force?”

  “Absolutely,” Frank replied with complete conviction. “The more technically advanced a civilization, the less effective it’s government.” He turned to face the room. “When dad was posted to the South Pacific, I saw tribes where a headman ran the whole show. Every problem was resolved quickly or he got replaced.

  “How much deadwood do you think we have in the U.S. government?” He looked at the President.

  Parnell nodded. “No argument there. We have a ton of overlapping programs and competing agencies, but we’re working on it.”

  Since the launch of the fleet building program, the American government had become the administrative equivalent of a liposuction patient. Programs had been slashed left and right, and many agencies were little more than collapsing shells.

  Frank sighed. “When we add a new layer to that,” he waved to indicate the building they sat in, “it certainly doesn’t alleviate the problem.” He nodded over his shoulder at the screen. “Just imagine what those poor bastards must have to put up with.”

  Turbulence

  St. Peter’s Square

  Vatican City, Rome

  March 9th, 2026

  Märti Bohren waited by the obelisk in the center of the square as the crowd slowly drifted past. The faces in the crowd ran the gamut from reassured to troubled to outright furious. Small wonder,  thought Märti. They came expecting easy answers and got none. The Pope had spoken about the aliens for the first time and many had expected today’s address to fit them into the church’s framework.

  The only specific detail had been an acknowledgement of the aliens as God’s children but that had done little to mollify a flock whose faith had been shaken to learn Humanity was not alone in the universe. Some of the crowd walked by lost in solitary reflection, while others passed the obelisk in small knots of raised voices and angry gesticulation.

  Märti smiled as the crowd thinned and he saw his brother, Theisli, approaching with a broad grin. He hadn’t seen his brother since four years ago, when the family was seeing the younger Bohren off to his training for the Swiss Guard. Märti had tried to convince his brother to remain in the army but Theisli had always dreamed of serving in the world’s oldest military unit and so he had left their native Graubünden for what he had thought would be a two-year stint.

  Now, four years later, Theisli approached his brother wearing a dark suit rather than the brightly-colored uniform that the Guard was known for. “Hello, Hauptman Bohren!” Theisli wrapped his brother in a fierce hug before stepping back to look him over. They were the same rank, though in vastly different units.

  “Hello yourself, Hauptman Bohren!” Märti reached out and gave his younger sibling a light push just above the pistol he wore beneath his suit jacket. “Should I be extra polite while you’re wearing that thing?”

  Theisli grinned. “I’m on duty,” he explained. “It’s not like I’m some glorified militia captain, you know!”

  “And where would my little brother get his men from if not for glorified militia captains like me?” Märti demanded good naturedly. “Speaking of which, how are Jeurgen and Lukas doing?” The two men, former conscripts in Märti’s unit, had been sworn into the ranks of the Swiss Guard the previous May.

  “They’re doing well,” Theisli said after pausing briefly to place the two names. “Lukas thinks he may stay beyond the first two years. Both would love a chance to talk with you, I’m sure. Why don’t you come to the barracks with me?”

  The two brothers headed off for the north side of the square. “So what’s the big news that you had to tell me in person?” Theisli asked. “Not that I’m complaining, you understand!” he quickly amended as he waved his brother to a huge crenellated gatehouse. “ I hope it’s good news?”

  “It’s interesting news,” began Märti guardedly. “Some good, some not so much, I suppose.” He followed Theisli into a long narrow courtyard where a small girl chased her ball, her father may well have served under me at some point. Thought Märti. He returned his thoughts to the topic that brought him here, seeking the right way to frame his news. They walked through a door leading from the courtyard and soon found a lounge where several men were enjoying their off-duty time.

  “Hauptman Bohren!” A young man bounded off a sofa, bringing his body to rigid attention in his surprise.

  Märti did likewise, releasing the young guard from his un-uniformed salute before extending his hand. “Hello, Lukas. My brother tells me you’re doing well despite bad lessons learned from previous officers!”

  Jeurgen was fetched and the four men engaged in the usual happy but slightly uncomfortable small talk that occurs whenever non-coms run into their old officers. Old exploits and mishaps were duly trotted out and re-told to the amusement of the men in the lounge. Finally the topic turned back to the reason for Märti’s visit.

  The men waited expectantly as Märti chose his words. “As you know, a fleet is being built in space to protect us against our new neighbors on Mars,” he began, noticing the wide eyes that now regarded him with growing excitement. “As Switzerland has no navy to speak of, we will not be providing any ship crews but we are keen nonetheless to provide some military assistance to the fight and our financial contribution entitles us to an active role.” He paused. This was why he had to come in person. He was not entirely happy with his news.

  “So what will you be doing?” Theisli asked guardedly, alerted by his brother’s obvio
us discomfort in relating this story and his need to tell him in person. It indicated momentous news but it seemed to have a few thorns in it as well.

  Märti took a deep breath. “We will be keeping the current class of conscripts beyond their term of service and training them for combat duty on the surface of Mars and for ship-board defense.” He looked up at his brother. “Since we will not have our own ships, we will be integrated with the forces carried by the Hermann. Our conscripts will be selected from the German-speaking cantons ” He waited for the implications to sink in. He knew what was coming and he was ready for it.

  “You’re going to work for the Germans?” his brother blurted. “Does the UN just assume that we can understand their gibberish?” The two young guardsmen were equally shocked. Since the treaty of Westphalia, the two peoples had gone their separate ways and, though Swiss German was vaguely similar to what was spoken in Germany, they had little else in common.

  Still, most Swiss German speakers could converse in regular German, if necessary.

  “You’re one to talk,” Märti responded with a grin. “Have you forgotten where the Holy Father comes from?” He could see from the faces of his two former men that they hadn’t given the matter much thought but his brother was unmoved.

  “That’s different,” he responded with an easy confidence that Märti had not expected. “He took a new name and citizenship when he became the head of this state.” The younger brother waved a hand to indicate his surroundings as he spoke.

  “Speaking of your head of state,” Märti changed the subject rather than argue. “The crowd seemed less than pleased about today’s address.”

  “We expected as much,” Theisli said. “That’s why we had so many men in the crowd today.” He shook his head. “Too many people come here looking for a specific answer and when they don’t get it…” He spread his hands. “With the kind of questions that plague mankind nowadays, emotions are running higher than usual, and it may only be a matter of time before some lunatic smuggles in a weapon or tries to incite a riot.”

  “Maybe this is no different than when Europeans started showing up in Asia,” Lukas mused. He noticed the questioning looks from the others and, slightly embarrassed, hastened to explain. “Sure they tended to get exploited but look at them now,” he said. “India got rid of the British, then the French were polite enough to leave when asked.” He grinned. “When the Portuguese refused to go, they were driven out by the Indian military.”

  “So what are you trying to say, Lukas?” There might be something to this, Märti thought.

  Lukas thought for a moment, frowning at Märti’s shoes. “What if the Brits tried to invade India now?” he asked, looking up at the men around him. “The Indian military would either take them on, toe to toe or they would fall back and just nuke them, right?”

  “So,” Theisli began slowly, “you’re saying they got invaded but they came through it strong enough to hold their own.” His gaze was far away as he thought. “What was the name of that American Commodore who sailed his fleet into a Japanese port and forced them to open up to trade with the West?” This was directed at his brother, who loved to study historical interactions between cultures.

  “Perry,” Märti answered. “The Japanese called them the Black Ships in memory of the old Portuguese carracks in the 16th century; they used to paint their hulls with pitch. They were really the first to open trade with Japan. The Japanese did OK in the long run. They damn near captured the whole Western Pacific in the Second World War. When that didn’t pan out, they almost bought their enemies in the eighties.”

  Jeurgen laughed. “So the best course of action is to wait here for the aliens?” He grinned wolfishly. “We play like nice little colonial subjects and then when their guard is down, we rob them blind?”

  Maybe we should, Märti thought. For all we know, their capabilities could be far greater than anyone assumes. He felt a chill run down his spine as the other men laughed. We could be biting off more than we can chew.

   

  Moffett Field

  Mountain View, California

  March 11th, 2026

  Callum gazed up at the ingenious lifting rigs crawling their way up the columns of shed number three. It was the last of the massive airship hangars to have its roof raised and the final terrestrial airship had left for duty from this very building only two days prior. Callum had considered destroying those vessels before they could launch but the work being done to shed number four had convinced him that a bigger target of opportunity was about to present itself. Already, the keels of three massive airships had been laid and they were almost twice the size of the originals.

  “Salmon again?”

  Callum turned to see his employer, Lance, and looked down at the sandwich in his hand, nodding. “When I get a taste for something, I tend to eat it for a few days in a row,” he responded. “I like to stick with things when they’re going well. Bet there’s some real money in that kind of work,” he said waving his sandwich at the hydraulic units that would not only support the columns while they were being cut but also lift them so that inserts could be welded in place to make room for the huge new airframes. The work was being done by a European company.

  “No kidding.” Lance sounded wistful as he surveyed the busy site. His eyes settled on a figure, picking its way through the debris to the west of the building. “Shit!” He grabbed Callum’s shoulder. “Cal, you haven’t seen me at all today, got it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He ducked into the three-story structure that his crew was framing as offices for the hangar and slipped out another door on the eastern side.

  Callum was watching him disappear into the offices of hangar number-two when he became aware of approaching footsteps. He turned to see one of the contract security guards who had been hired to patrol the site. In accordance with the tradition of such things, she seemed to spend most of her time sitting in her car watching movies on her netbook.

  She was a relatively pretty young woman and Cal knew that if she were working at a trendy restaurant where beauty was expected, she would no doubt have done very well on tips. Expectation is more than half the battle. One of his parents’ endless lessons suddenly surfaced. It was one he had taken to heart as a child. Once his teachers had come to expect good grades from him, he had been able to slack off just a bit and still maintain his good average. He frowned now. She seemed to be coming straight for him.

  “Have you seen Lance?” She smiled in a dreamy sort of way.

  You gotta be kidding me. Callum had heard stories from some of Lance’s other employees. He possessed decent looks and a natural charm that never failed to work miracles with his sub-contractors. It wasn’t much of a stretch to see what that combination could mean when it came to women. Callum toyed with the idea of sending her over to hangar two but dismissed it. Though it might amuse him to rat Lance out, he didn’t want them causing a public fuss that might get them kicked off the job.

  Especially now that he was forming a plan.

  “I think he went to check on a job in Oakland,” Callum said, watching her frown. “Do you want me to pass a message for you?”

  She considered for a moment and, to Cal’s relief, shook her head. “I’ll just try his cell,” she said as she pulled out her phone and slowly strolled away, looking down at the screen.

  Callum was just turning his thoughts back to the columns when his phone started to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked down at the screen. The call display showed Guilderson. Who do I know that’s named… Oh, you dumbass! Cal poked his finger at the mute tab, forcing a calm face as he looked up at the young woman who had turned to stare angrily at him.

  Lance had given her Callum’s phone number instead of his own. He had obviously felt it was an amusing joke on the new guy. He raised the phone to his ear. “Hey, Mike, sorry I didn’t call back but I still haven’t managed to find a keg.” He smiled and gave a theatrical roll of his eyes for Ms. Guilderson’s benefit
. She smiled and walked away. “I don’t think it even comes in kegs yet; let’s just get enough bottles to cover everyone…”

  Cal judged that she was far enough away and he ceased his fake conversation. He started to block her number and then, deciding to turn it back on his boss, forwarded her number to Lance’s cell. She had already suspected that she had been given Callum’s number and was bound to figure it out if her calls kept getting ignored. He turned his attention back to the columns. He had come up with an idea.

  When most children were learning to catch a football or swing a bat, Cal was learning how to construct a bunker so that shrapnel from a near hit wouldn’t find its way inside. He knew how to field strip most assault rifles and handguns and reassemble them in the dark. He knew how to tell the civilians from the agents in a public situation. Their bearing was a good indicator but alert eyes were always the best give-away.

  Now, looking up at the columns he remembered the childhood lesson that would serve him best in stopping the UN plan and drawing media scrutiny to what was really happening. He would use thermite. Thermite was an incendiary composition used in countless roles. From welding railway tracks together to disabling enemy equipment, the ignition of a metal powder mixed with an oxide of iron could produce temperatures in excess of five thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

  Cal smiled as his plan began to take shape. He knew that steel melted at twenty-five hundred degrees so he would have no problems there. His only problems were access, placement and timing. His smile remained as he walked back to the scaffolding surrounding the new office block. He would take his time. There were still several months before the first of the new airships would lift off, and he could afford to plan properly. He and his fellow new-hires would have to learn what security precautions were in place at night: was the perimeter fence patrolled, did it have alarms, how far away was the nearest response team?

  He stopped as his phone rang. He looked down at the flashing message. Guilderson – Forward to Bryson? Acting on a sudden inspiration, he took the call.

   

  Almada

  Lisbon, Portugal

  March 28th, 2026

  Frank jumped out of the way of a ground crewman racing to grab mooring lines from Red One. Ed McAdam’s unimaginative name choices were a not-too-subtle reminder that he expected to regain control over the airships after the current state of emergency was put to rest.  The first of the non-orbital ships was slowly coming down into its landing pit, her mooring lines caught in a computer-controlled tether similar to the system employed on frigates to reel in helicopters in rough seas.

  “If you get killed, I’m just gonna dump you in the harbor and claim I never saw you.” Caldeira stood grinning as he watched Frank get in the way yet again.

  “It’s not that dangerous, where I’m standing ,” Frank protested.

  “Then you don’t know some of my guys!” Caldeira waved Frank over. “Seriously though, if Damiãno has to shove you out of his way one more time, he’s likely to flatten your nose.” He was putting on a brave show of indifference but he had to be a little nervous and it came out in his next sentence. “We followed the drawings to the letter,” he stated forcefully, his gravelly voice almost too deep for a man of his size. “If there’s any problems with docking, it’ll be because of our friends in California.”

  Let’s see what problems we have, if any, before we figure out who’s to blame, Frank thought as the huge ship continued to lower itself. Tony’s comment revealed just how much his nerves were wearing on him. If there was a problem on his end, he would own it without argument. If there was a problem with the docking station, or with the airship, he would throw his team at it and make the docking process work.

  Even if it took explosives – he really liked explosives.

  Red One had come down from cruising altitude by pumping huge quantities of helium from her internal bladders back into compressed storage. The last few yards would be completed by the tether system. Releasing some of the helium back into the bladders allowed enough tension to prevent the wind from blowing it into the sides of the docking pit.

  Despite Tony’s advice, Frank edged forward again as the last few feet shrank to inches and then, with a cheer from Modular Marine’s ground crew, disappeared completely. He gave a sigh of relief as the clamps engaged along the length of the vessel. Turning, he could see Tony walking over while gesturing to the one photographer who’d been given accreditation for this event. Frank watched as the photographer jumped down into the first terrace of the docking pit, crab walking under the side of the ship.

  “Get over here!” Tony was standing on a chalked ‘X’ and waving at Frank, who joined him with a bemused smile. “Look up at the cockpit windows.” Caldeira struck a thoughtful pose and Frank was dazzled by the bright flashes coming from under the nose of Red One. The photographer shouted up at them in Portuguese and Tony shoved Frank gently to the left a few feet. Another series of photos and the man climbed back out.

  Turning to see what he had moved for, Frank laughed when he saw the seaward end of Caldeira’s fabrication facility. In huge letters a sign that probably still had wet paint proclaimed ‘Marinho Modular’. “This is going out on the usual newswires?” he asked with a grin.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I want some eight-by-tens for posterity,” Frank answered. “And can you get me a couple in that old-timey sepia?”

  “Let’s get a module out of my yard before we start picking out frames.” Tony spoke into his headset and a double-wide flatbed on heavy-gauge rails began to shunt towards the transfer block as the loading ramp of Red One started to lower. The huge flatbed carried the first module for one of the smaller escorts.

  Contrary to popular belief, this first module was from the center of the ship. The decision to start in the middle was almost overlooked until Frank had questioned the assumption that they would start at one end of the keel. “We could start at the exact center of the ship,” he had suggested. “We could build out from the middle and put four welding crews to work simultaneously.”

  Now, looking up at module A-5, Frank had a hard time imagining how many lifts were planned for the project. This frigate would require eleven modules but it was the smallest of the ships being built. The cruisers were roughly six times the size of the frigates and the carriers would be fifteen times the size of a cruiser.

  Each carrier would be escorted by five frigates and five cruisers. The planning committee had been shocked to hear that each carrier group would need more than a thousand modules lifted into orbit. An additional thirty pairs of orbital airships had finally been added to the planning board and Frank had been given authority to enlist as many modular constructors as he saw fit. Tony had laughed at hearing of his competitors being press-ganged into building modules.

  The cruise ship construction industry had ground to a complete halt.

  The flatbed slowed to a crawl, bumping softly against the heavy, padded concrete transfer block and ground crew swarmed both vehicles. Frank and Tony climbed the metal stairs to the top of the three-foot-high transfer block where they watched the crew lock down the flatbed and release the restraints on the module. The photographer continued to circle, taking time exposures. “If this goes sideways on us,” Tony muttered, “that photographer will have an accident with his camera.”

  Happily, the rollers worked as intended and the module made its slow progress across the transfer block and into the hold of Red One. Frank held his breath as the leading edge of the module approached the opening to the hold. Though there was over a yard of clearance, it looked much closer from where the two men stood.

  Finally, the huge collection of bulkheads, decks, pipes and wires came to a stop and Tony turned to Frank, extending a hand. “Congratulations,” he said as he pumped Bender’s hand enthusiastically. “That roller idea was simple but effective - kind of like my brother-in-law.” He cocked his head with a grin. “You don’t get many ideas but sometimes you manag
e to surprise everyone!”

  Frank’s cheerful reply made reference to Tony’s ancestry and the dark haired-man roared with laughter, clapping him on the back as they turned to face the photographer who had climbed onto the empty flatbed. “He’s just taking stills, right?” Frank had no desire for his previous remark to wind up on the nine-o’clock news.

  “He knows better,” said Caldeira as he looked over his shoulder to ensure that the occupied hold would be visible in the shot. “Or he will when I’m done with him.”

   

  Red Flag Mineral Co.

  Sixty Meter Observatory

  Mauna Kea, Hawaii

  June 7th, 2026

  Jan dropped a bag on her bunk and stopped to think through the items that she would need for three days. Every couple of months, the staff were sent down the mountain for a few days to clear their heads. It might have been more enjoyable if they could all go together but that would have left the facility empty and so groups of two were the maximum.

  Jan knew that both Mike and Pete would have liked to be the second in her group. She had been aware of their attraction when she arrived and a casual mention of her recent bad relationship had been enough to cool their ardor, but she knew it hadn’t been quite extinguished, at least in Pete’s case.

  Mike had changed in the last month. His attitude towards her had relaxed, almost as if he had re-classified her as a relative who might be attractive but who was definitely off-limits. She smiled as she thought it through. In the last six weeks, the mountaintop site had transformed into a small, green town. The terrain on the mountain slope was an ideal analogue for the surface of Mars and it was NASA that had first started using it to train astronauts and test equipment.

  Now that the military was expanding the training facilities, a service battalion had set up shop next to the large telescope complex. They had brought along a field laundry, a mobile kitchen, larger shower facilities and also a permanent detachment from a combat engineering unit. The officer in charge of that detachment was a young lieutenant.

  Keira, Jan remembered the name as she resumed packing. The young woman had taken a great interest in the workings of the massive telescope and Mike had been delighted to show her around. That’s why he’s so much easier to have a conversation with. Jan mused. I wonder how far it’s gone. She zipped the bag and slung it over her shoulder. A helicopter was waiting to ferry her to Waikiki.

  She was going alone. She didn’t want to spend a long weekend fending off advances from the single men on the team and she couldn’t go with her married colleagues because they always flew their families in when they had time off. The only other woman she knew was the young engineering officer but Keira had been a little distant since Mike’s new relaxed attitude.

  She was almost to the main door when it opened and a small group of officers walked in. There was nothing uncommon about that and she almost passed them without a word, but then she stopped and took a second look at the group. “Liam?” she said in a quiet, shocked voice.

  The man in the sand-colored beret turned towards her, eyes widening as he recognized her. “Jan?” his reply was surprised, almost a whisper. “What are you..,” he trailed off, shaking his head with a grin. “Of course,” he said. “You were the one who made first contact. I knew that, but somehow it got pushed to the back of my mind lately.” He nodded assent to the other officers who were indicating that they would catch up with him later.

  They had met at London Metropolitan University. Jan had been drawn to the school’s new science center, billed as one of Europe’s most advanced science teaching facilities. Liam had chosen the school primarily due to their lower tuition. His major was chemistry and, though Jan was taking biology, the curriculum required several overlapping courses and they had met in second year when she needed a lab partner for organic chemistry.

  Their flame burned brightly for almost two years but, as it became clearer that Liam had no plans for graduate work, Jan began to wonder what the future would hold for them. When she announced in her senior year that she had been accepted to the Molecular Ecology program at Queen’s University in Belfast, Liam had floored her with his plan to join the army.

  She had stared at him in silence for almost half a minute, realizing that the end had come. She had wanted to be angry with herself for choosing Queen’s; Liam had some distant relatives in Belfast and she was secretly hoping it would entice him to go with her.

  Liam or not, she knew that Queen’s had the right program for her and so they had gone their separate ways.

  Now, looking up at the face she had once thought to see every morning, she felt that familiar old flutter in her chest. Oh God, that never happened when I looked at Edward, she thought. Has that been waiting deep inside my mind all these years, secretly poisoning every relationship I’ve had since? She tore her eyes away from his face and took a look around the room, needing time to compose herself, almost certain from his expression that he needed a moment as well.

  “So, what sort of exciting adventures did you leave behind to come here,” she asked, raising an eybrow as she noticed the badge on his beret. She knew what the winged sword stood for; her uncle had served in the SAS over a decade ago, and the question provided a welcome distraction from what was really going through her mind. He does look good in that uniform.

  “I was captured in Afghanistan when a local warlord shot down our Chinook,” he said dryly. “I spent the better part of the last year in chains and, when I was finally released, I was more than a little surprised to hear about our new neighbors.”

  “Liam!” Jan was flooded with unreasonable guilt that she had been free and relatively happy while someone who had been so close to her had been in such peril. “Was it…” she stopped herself. Of course it was bad you bloody fool. He was in chains! “I can’t imagine what that must have been like,” she finally said.

  He nodded. “I’ve had better accommodations,” he said with a rueful grin but his expression quickly grew serious. “Listen, Jan…”

  Jan was feeling another tug in her chest from the way he said her name and almost didn’t notice that he had stopped talking and was looking over her shoulder. She turned, seeing a young soldier trotting towards them.

  “Dr. Colbert,” he began after saluting Liam. “Your chopper needs to leave, ma’am.” He stepped back a few paces and turned to face the center of the room, obviously aware that he’d interrupted a private conversation.

  She turned back to Liam, seeing the turmoil on his face, and she spoke before he could say anything that might spoil the potential of the moment. “Liam,” she began, reaching out to place a hand on his forearm. “I have to leave right now for Waikiki.” She shrugged. “Bad timing for R&R, I suppose, but I’ll be back in three days. You’ll still be here?”

  He was visibly more relaxed. “My orders have me here for training until we launch,” he replied with a smile, then, with a glint in his eye, “I’ll look for you later.”

   

  The Frey House

  Antioch, California

  June 7th, 2026

  “Is it all here?” Callum asked as Kevin opened the door. They had bought the materials online using the names of relatives; not their own relatives of course, but they must have been related to someone, or so Cal liked to joke.

  Kevin nodded. “It’s out in the garage; Gram never goes out there.” He stepped out and locked the door behind him. The two men walked around the corner of the house and up the driveway to the garage in the backyard where Kevin took out a remote and opened the overhead door. Inside sat paper sacks, some filled with iron oxide and some with aluminum. Both metals had been purchased in powder form and were ready for mixing. Beside those were sheets of rigid foam insulation and sacks of cement.

  Cal nodded approvingly at the collected material. “The magnesium?” he asked.

  Kevin nodded over at the workbench. “Four hundred strips.”

  “Good.” Cal reached over to Kevin’s s
hirt pocket and pushed the button on the remote through the fabric. The door started to descend. “Let’s make some fireworks!”

   

  The Pacific Ocean

  The Hawaiian Islands

  June 7th, 2026

  Sitting in the Blackhawk, Jan watched out the starboard door as the central islands of Maui, Kaho’olawe, Lana’i and Moloka’i slipped past, pretending to herself that she was enthralled by the beautiful scenery. Try as she might, her mind kept coming back to Liam. Had he met someone else? Did he have a family somewhere? Was she wasting time daydreaming about a renewed future?

  Her self-imposed torment continued for an hour and a half until the pilot’s voice shook her out of her reverie. Her right hand automatically reached up to touch the headset as he informed her that they would be passing Waikiki beach in a couple of minutes on their approach to Honolulu International. She leaned out the opening as far as her harness would allow, straining to see the island of O’ahu.

  It was the island that she had first landed on when she’d come to work at the observatory but the visit had been nothing more than a quick walk through the open-air terminal. Jan and her two colleagues from the UN had been taken to an access door leading out onto the tarmac where a civilian charter jet waited to ferry them to Hilo.

  Now, as the island rolled by her open loading door, she spotted something that looked like a very bad idea. She clicked the intercom. “What is that volcano, the one with the buildings and parking lots in it?”

  “That’s Diamond Head,” the pilot answered. “It’s a state park and it hasn’t erupted in over a hundred and fifty thousand years, so you should be ok. The next thing you’ll see will be Waikiki.”

  Jan watched the high-rises come into view. Her hotel was down there in that jumble and she could see that, wherever it was, it would be a short walk to the beach. After five months at the observatory, she was finally getting a chance to come back and check out O’ahu. She smiled to herself. She knew the only thing she was likely to check out was the beach, and maybe a good book. Her meals would be room service or takeout as it had been on her visits to Hilo; why spend all that time getting ready just so you could sit in a restaurant by yourself?

  Once on the ground at HIA, a civilian pattern sedan with military plates took her from the tarmac, passing through a heavily-guarded gate and dropped her at a small boutique hotel, two blocks from the beach. After checking in, she changed quickly and followed the sound of the waves. She found a good spot near the stone wall where palm trees cast a decent shade and settled in. After a few moments of watching the crowds of sun worshipers, she pulled out her reader and selected Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.

  Jan had been trying to keep her mind on the saintly behavior of a bishop named Myriel but her thoughts kept drifting back to Liam. She exited her first choice of novels and opened The Count of Monte Cristo, hoping the faster pace of the second book would hold her attention. She had just read of the arrival of the Pharaon in Marseilles and was finally becoming interested in the story when she heard a commotion around her. Looking up, she realized that people were pointing at a Blackhawk that hovered just beyond the farthest swimmers, no more than ten feet from the surface of the water.

  Having just spent more than an hour in the same type of aircraft, she had little fascination for the spectacle and was turning her eyes to the screen when they were drawn back to the hovering aircraft. A number of dark shapes seemed to drop into the Pacific before the big Sikorsky clawed its way back into the sky.

  “Search and Rescue training,” a man to her right said diffidently, probably showing off his knowledge to the woman who sat on his other side.

  “Not bad work for a young man.” The woman on Jan’s left smiled as she looked over. She was an older woman, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and she gazed back out across the gently rolling ocean.  “Jumping out of airplanes, swimming, saving lives…” She smiled to herself. “My Henry was in the Coast Guard and I know he loved it, God rest his soul, but he would never admit it to me!”

  Jan smiled and returned to her book, hoping her new companion would leave her in peace. She had just reached the reunion of Edmond and Mercedes when she was interrupted again.

  “Ooh my!” the older woman said with obvious approval. “If I were just forty years younger…”

  Jan couldn’t resist curiosity after a statement like that, so she looked over at her neighbor and followed her gaze to the man climbing up onto the low stone wall of an artificial tidal pool. He paused to strap black swim fins and a mask onto a large waterproof bag before he stood. He slung the bag over a shoulder and followed the low wall around to the sand of the beach.

  “If that’s Search and Rescue,” said the woman to Jan’s right, “then I’m off to find a nice leaky boat!” The man sitting with her pretended a sudden intense interest in the surfers, his ears a dark red.

  The man walking up the beach was tall and lean with a subtle musculature. They weren’t the flamboyant muscles of a bodybuilder but the hard, purpose-built muscles of a man who made a living in harsh environments. Jan watched him with surprise. He had always been fit, but he had never looked like this when they were students.

  She felt a thrill of possessive pride as it became clear that Liam was coming straight towards her - to the surprise of her neighbors. How did he find me that quickly? She smiled at him as he dropped his gear on the sand and dropped to recline at her feet, one arm casually draped over the bag. “How did you find me in this crowd?” she asked as her eyes took in the tracery of old scars on his skin. We really did choose different paths.

  He flashed a charming grin. “I was headed for HIA when I spotted you with the binocs.” He looked around the beach before continuing. “The pilot was heading for Hickam after he got rid of me so he was more than happy to drop me out there and save a stop.” He grew serious. “I’m not intruding, am I? It’s just that it’s so bloody cold up there on that mountain and my mates aren’t nearly so interesting once you’ve heard the same old war stories for the hundredth time.”

  Jan smiled and his grin came back instantly. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I hear the Surfrider does the best ribs you’ll ever taste!”

  “Famished,” he said as they stood up. He hefted his bag. “Do you have somewhere I can change first?”

  The older lady turned her head to look towards Diamond Head. Jan had seen the knowing smile that she was politely concealing.

   

  The Frey House

  Antioch, California

  June 7th, 2026

  Kevin finished dumping the last bag of powdered aluminum into the cement mixer before walking over to the bench where Callum was working. He watched in silence for a few moments as Cal test-fit the two hollow half pyramids of rigid Styrofoam. “We’ll mix in carbon fiber to give added strength to the concrete, in case the heat causes it to crack.” he explained to his friend.

  “Wouldn’t chicken wire have been cheaper?” asked Kevin dubiously. “We have some left over from when Gram used to keep a garden out back.”

  Cal shook his head. “No, think about it, Kev. This has to contain a reaction at five thousand degrees.” He looked over at his co-conspirator. “Chicken wire can’t stand up to that kind of heat.” He placed the inner half of the mold and tacked on the closers at the bottom and sides.  It would produce a crude, semi-pyramidal shape with the top cut off. When two halves were placed together, it would look exactly like a hollow pyramid, with the capstone missing.

  Callum had to refrain from snapping at Kevin. It was easy to forget that he didn’t know the whole picture. None of his cadre would know the full plan until the moment of implementation. That way, Cal reduced the risk of rumors getting out. He trusted his people as far as he could, but only a fool laid out a plan like this for all to see.

  More importantly, he was aware that few of his helpers would be likely to stand up under a police interrogation. He knew that there was a very real risk of some of them being picked u
p by city police for any number of infractions. Most of them had serious problems with government authority and laws in general. That was what made them so easy to recruit, but it also made them potential liabilities.

  Though Kevin knew more than the others, he still had no idea what the strange shapes were meant for. He shrugged and went back to the cement mixer, tying a plastic sheet over the mouth before turning it on.

  As the noise filled the small garage, Callum looked at his mold, wondering if there was a way to mass-produce the shapes. He would need forty-eight pyramids, which meant ninety-six molds, unless he could find a way to make five or six re-useable molds. He laughed suddenly as the answer came to him, waving off Kevin’s inquiring look.

  He had been working on construction sites for years and had never really paid attention to the concrete form workers. He realized, now that he gave it some thought, that they often employed re-usable forms. In Callum’s mind, he could already see the forms he would use, reinforced with two-by-two lumber and held shut with clamps. With some motor oil as a releasing agent, they would be able to make several each night.

  He had almost a month before they would be needed, so time wouldn’t be a problem.

  KLM Flight 5332

  Over the Pacific

  June 19th, 2026

  Märti was exhausted. He rarely traveled long distances and, when he did, he invariably remained awake for the entire duration. Now, two hours into the flight out of Los Angeles and almost twenty hours since leaving Zurich, he found his mind coming back to the conversation at the Swiss Guard barracks in the Vatican. The looming presence of aliens in the solar system had been hanging over Humanity for months now.

  What are they doing out there?  Märti wondered in a purgatorial state of almost-sleep. Why settle on a planet with very little atmosphere when they could come straight here? Maybe God really did send them and he’s giving us time to accept that. He stared at the LCD screen in front of him, not really seeing the English language mini-series that he had selected. Between Zurich and Amsterdam, he had enjoyed the first episode, showing the training of Marines for the fight in the Pacific during the Second World War.

  On the way to Los Angeles, he had watched the same men in Australia and then in combat against the Japanese but his coffee was wearing off and his thoughts continued to wander back to his own struggle. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that young Lukas had been on to something.

  When colonial forces arrived, they tended to do so with overwhelming technological superiority. The mere fact of arrival was usually possible because of that technical difference. The European explorers had landed in North America more than once. The Norse settled on Newfoundland five centuries before the birth of Columbus,  Märti mused. Their technological advantage was less pronounced and they were few in numbers, so the local natives drove them off.

  His eyes had been drooping but they flew wide open, staring heedlessly at scenes of landing craft hitting the beach of some Pacific island. What would have happened if the locals had welcomed the Norse when they were so weak in numbers? Märti knew he had just put his finger on what was bothering him. The, what did the Norse call them – Skraelings, might have learned the secrets of iron. He felt the hairs on his arms standing on end as he worked through the implications.

  The knowledge of iron would have diffused its way to the mainland and spread like wildfire across the entire continent and down into Central and South America. Larger groups such as the Iroquois Confederacy, who were already accomplished farmers, would have been able to dramatically increase their output. Märti was wide awake now. With a surplus of food, they might have had a Renaissance era of their own. North America was rich in resources. Who could say what the European explorers might have faced when they arrived after five centuries of divergent technological development?

  Märti felt certain that the continual raiding and warfare between the tribes would likely have driven technological development. Bone armor would have given way to metal, clubs to maces and swords. Gunpowder was not so certain but he knew that bow and arrow technology would have been refined in its place and all military historians knew that a good bowman was worth five musketeers in any battle.

  The range, accuracy and rate of fire of a proper war bow was vastly superior to that of any musket. The only reason muskets became popular in combat was the fact that you could train a man to use a musket in a few days while it took a lifetime of practice to be an effective archer.

  In his mind’s eye, Märti could see the famous encounters between Europeans and the Confederacy re-played under the new scenario. A much larger and more powerful Confederacy may have been surprised by the belching smoke of cannon and musket, but would have had iron armor to protect them from some of the small arms fire and would have quickly come to recognize the superiority of their own bows.

  He imagined their warriors, known for originating the same guerrilla tactics that American revolutionaries had used to defeat the British, quietly boarding and over-running enemy ships at anchor or ambushing enemy forces on land. They would have eventually found willing prisoners who could catch them up on technologies such as guns and sailing vessels.

  The modern countries of the Americas may never have existed if the Norse had managed to get along better with their new neighbors, Märti thought as the small LCD screen showed a sweeping panorama of the captured beach before pulling back to show the massive invasion fleet. What would happen if we were to learn from these aliens rather than fight them?

  Could we be avoiding a weak colonization force now, only to fall prey to a much more powerful enemy in the near future? He closed his eyes. “Did God put me here to stop us from fighting?” He didn’t consider himself to be particularly devout, but then, neither did his brother and he was serving at the Vatican. Having been raised in a Catholic family, it seemed as much a part of him as the color of his eyes.

  He got up and looked at the line for the first class washroom, seeing two of his fellow officers waiting. Looking to the back, past the men of his company, he could see a much longer line and so he shrugged mentally and headed to the front, resisting the urge to pull rank on the two lieutenants.

   

  Moffett Field

  Mountain View, California

  July 3rd, 2026

  Frank finished his sub and rolled up the wrapper, throwing it in the trash bin by the boardroom door. “Ready, Chuck?” The two men got up and put their hardhats on before heading out of the room and down the stairs.  Brecker, bristling with weapons as usual, joined them as they stepped out the door. Frank pulled out his phone and opened the Friend Finder app. “Looks like he’s over at number two,” Frank said as he led Chuck towards the office and storage structure that stuck out from the side of the large hangar.

  As they drew near the main door, it opened and Lance stepped out with a clipboard. “Mr. Bender,” he shook Frank’s hand with mock formality. “Chuckie!” He grinned and slapped Chuck on the back.

  Frank watched Chuck grin back. I don’t think there’s another person on this planet that could get away with calling him that. He smiled to himself as he watched the contractor work his usual magic, turning Charles Gray from a stuffy administrator into an affable old pal.

  Bender had been on site a couple of months ago when the electrical sub-contractor was packing up and leaving the site, claiming they were all too sick to work that day. He knew it was the ‘forty-ounce flu’ because they were all out celebrating the night before. He’d tried to convince them to stay and tough it out but they were doggedly insisting on leaving.

  Losing them for a day meant losing the concrete contractor for over a month because they insisted on proper lighting before pouring the floor extension in the hangar. If they didn’t have the required illumination, they would refuse to guarantee the super-flat specification for the job and they had another contract to get to.

  Lance had shown up and spent two minutes with them, joking, cajoling and confiding to
them that he would consider it a personal favor if they could help him out and finish the lighting. They not only went back to work, but they did it cheerfully. They had finished a full day’s work by noon and left the hangar extension with working lights. Even though half the crew failed to keep their breakfast down as they worked, they still did what was needed to keep the project on track.

  “Before you two end up heading for Tia Juana, maybe we should go through the deficiencies?” He interrupted the increasingly bizarre banter between the two men. “You planning to use just a clipboard?”

  “You ever see the batteries run out on a clipboard?” Lance pulled out a pen and looked down at the list in his hands. “Besides, I can write a hell of a lot faster with a pen than with a finger.”

  Frank knew Lance had an aversion to computers but his people-skills more than made up for it, and he had staff that took care of the spreadsheets for him. “Let’s start with the landscaping.” He pulled out a tablet from his shoulder bag and opened the architectural drawings. The men crowded in and looked at the plan before orienting themselves to the site.

  “Yep, everything looks good here!” Lance grinned. “Let’s go get a pitcher to celebrate.”

  “The trees look to be in the right spots,” Frank replied, knowing he didn’t need to challenge Lance’s last statement. He was mostly joking and a few pitchers of beer did sound like a good plan. “The trees are all larger caliper than specified but I’m hardly inclined to complain about that.”

  “I managed to get a free upgrade from my supplier and I figured I’d use it here.” Lance nudged Chuck in the ribs. “Gotta take care of my best customer, right Chuck?”

  “And I thought it was just because we’re buds!” Chuck jostled him back.

  Frank almost rolled his eyes but he knew it would only help things if Chuck could stay in a good mood. They were in the business of building airships and Frank couldn’t care less if the door trim was the wrong spec or a tree was a spruce instead of a pine. He just needed the place to look good for tomorrow.

  The last thing he needed was to have Chuck develop a sudden  interest in the trivial details because they were out of time to have any of it changed. The big dog-and-pony-show was happening tomorrow. After that, nobody important would be hanging around.

  As they headed towards the path that led from one hangar to the next, Frank came to a stop and enlarged that section of the drawing. “OK, Lance, I don’t even care that these planters are the wrong shape, but the cypresses in them are all turning brown.” He looked up at the contractor. “I don’t need them replaced, I just want you to get them out of here. The president would never notice that they aren’t here but he would sure as hell have a bad impression of us if they were sitting here looking like that.”

  “Sure, bud,” Lance nodded. “Sorry about that.” He pushed a button on the side of his phone. “Cal, meet me out on the south path right away.”

  The men continued down the path, looking at the drawing as they walked, until a young man walked out of number three to meet them.

  “Cal, these trees are all dead.” Lance indicated the row of planters that ran the length of the walkway. “I need them loaded up and taken to our yard; we can take them back to Greenhand later but we have to get them off the site pronto.”

  Cal frowned. “Lance, I’ve got my hands full right now; can I bring a couple of the boys back after dinner and pick them up?”

  “You’re a good man, Cal!” Lance grinned. “Whoever you pick, buy their dinner and expense it and I’ll make sure to leave a clearance at the gate for tonight.”

  “Alright, guys, let’s take a look inside the buildings next.” Frank led the way towards the office of number four. Another hour and we can get to the beer!

   

  The Freehold Taphouse

  Antioch California

  July 3rd, 2026

  Cal smiled as the three men across the table gaped at him in amazement. Sometimes it was best to let people get the wrong idea. They had put a great deal of planning into penetrating the airfield’s security tonight. Cal had spent a lot of time with the attractive young security guard, to the wry amusement of his comrades. Though he had gathered the necessary intelligence from her, he had been unsuccessful in moving their association beyond friendship.

  Now A.J. and Chris were picking up security passes from the table where Cal had casually dropped them. They wouldn’t need wire-cutters or blackened faces; they were going to drive in through the front gate and straight over to the hangars. Callum told himself that he had invited Kevin to dinner because he was the second in command and should know of the change in plans, but he really just wanted to impress him with the passes.

  “The cypress trees are dying,” he explained. “Not a surprise, seeing as the soil’s been replaced with thermite.” He chuckled. “Anyway, I asked if we could come in tonight and pick them up.” He stretched casually, looking for the server and waving four fingers at him. “Fitting,” he said grinning at the men, “since the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” He noticed the screen above the bar and leaned in to read the caption beneath the video. “Euro-Zone announces a deal to protect the French banks,” he muttered, squinting up at the screen.

  He turned back to his friends. “It won’t work, of course, and that means a run on the French banks.” They sat quietly as the server reached the table, setting down four glasses of draft from his heavily-laden tray.  “Paying the new UN debt is killing most of the world’s economies. The rest of Europe has been teetering on the brink since Germany went back to the Mark, and this will push them all over the edge.”

  “Civil unrest on a continental scale,” Kevin muttered as he watched the big screen. He looked over at Callum. “Just what the UN wants, an excuse to occupy Europe and lock it down.”

  Cal knew it was unjust for him to be surprised. Kevin wasn’t stupid. I probably underestimate him because he lives with his grandmother. He nodded in agreement. “That’s it in a nutshell, Kev. And when the financial meltdown spreads across the Atlantic, we’ll see UN troops in every damned town in America.”

  Kevin looked absurdly pleased that he was being recognized for his analysis. I should do more to bring him along, Cal mused. He might do all right here if we decide to open up a new cell on the East Coast. His thoughts drifted to what might happen after they were done with Moffett Field. If we get through the next twenty-four hours without getting pinched, we can look at expanding. He looked at Kevin in a new light. Can he run things here if I head East? His operation here had given him confidence and a taste for something bigger.

  The real enemy was in New York.

  He drained his glass and dropped some bills on the table. “Kev, tell him to keep the change.” He looked at A.J. and Chris with a wolfish grin. “Let’s go earn some overtime.” 

   

  Moffett Field

  Mountain View, California

  July 3rd, 2026

  Chuck belched in the empty boardroom, the heady scent of beer in his nostrils. He would rather be back at his hotel room but, with Bender coming back for a last look, he knew it would look bad if he didn’t come along. He had fought against Frank’s changes at first, but he’d come to see they made sense and had thrown himself behind the new program whole-heartedly. 

  In response, Bender had brought Chuck back into the circle, consulting him on the best way to get past problems rather than simply going around him. The production of the first Earth-to-Orbital-Station airships had moved faster than Chuck could ever have imagined and the president had been keen on celebrating the Fourth of July at Moffett to showcase a major part of America’s contribution to the global project.

  He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and, looking out the window, he saw Frank coming down the stairs of his Gulfstream. Both men had needed to use the washroom rather urgently after several pitchers of beer with Lance followed by a circuitous taxi ride. Bender had lo
udly insisted that the driver was ‘jacking them’ and the poor man, afraid of Bender’s size and the heavily-armed Brecker, gave them a discount.

  Their solution to the urgent washroom logjam had been solved when Frank yielded the main office facilities to Chuck and headed for his aircraft. “You use yours, I’ll use mine!” he had said in a North Florida drawl that he only seemed to have after a few drinks.

  Chuck joined him in front of the main administration building. “Ready?” he asked.

  Frank belched loudly. “Pardon me, Chuck,” he intoned mildly. For such an imposing giant, he was surprisingly polite. “Sure, let’s have a look at the place.”

  They set off towards the hangars and noticed as they came around the corner that the planters were already gone. Good thing Frank noticed those. thought Chuck. Little stuff like that does make a bad impression, even when we have two EOS airships ready to go into service at the end of the week. He let out another burst of carbon dioxide as they walked, Frank chuckling quietly. I suppose working in a customer-oriented business gave him an eye for the small details that we tend to miss in a government agency.

  The site looked good from the outside. They walked to the press area where Chuck pulled out a remote. The podium had been set up with the hangar door of number one behind it. The three men watched as the huge doors slid back to reveal the rounded aerodynamic shape of Red Flag EOS-1. The massive ramp was open showing the cavernous cargo hold.

  “Ever been inside?” Chuck asked as he gazed up at Humanity’s largest sub-orbital aircraft.

  “Nope,” Bender replied. “I’ve been in the smaller airships that travel between our shipyards and the transfer facilities.” He looked over at Chuck. “Can we look at the cockpit?”

  The three men wandered over to the open ramp but Chuck stopped when they were about twenty feet away and frowned at the wall of the hangar. Yesterday, the walls and structure were entirely white but now there are gray lumps on the columns. “What are those?” he asked as he walked over to the nearest column with Frank and Brecker in tow.

  The lumps were concrete containers that appeared to be made in two halves and then strapped together around each column. The top surface was a waxy material and Chuck pulled out a pen and broke through revealing a reddish powder. A pair of wires emerged from the wax and snaked their way along the wall battens, leading to the next column. “Frank, do these look like those planters you noticed earlier?”

  “Now that you mention it.” He frowned at the odd sight. “What the hell is going on here?”

  Chuck had spent two years working for a rail  company before starting his first degree and he’d used thermite to weld dozens of rails together. He knew what it could do to steel. “Sabotage,” he said in a tone of disbelief before pulling himself together.

  “Frank, get to the other side and start pulling the wires out of these damned things.” He reached out and put a hand on his shoulder as he spoke. “These are thermite incendiary devices, the wires probably lead to some kind of magnesium strip or flare so you can pull them out without worrying about lighting the powder. If we don’t disable these, they’ll put out enough heat to melt right through these columns and bring down the roof.

  “Shit!” Frank’s eyes were wide. “Who do we call?”

  “I’ll get Security on the phone before I start on this side. Brecker, go check out the next hangar.” He pulled out his phone as Frank ran under the belly of the airship, heading left to reach the first column behind the twenty-foot-high bank of helium tanks. Sure enough, there were devices planted on this side as well.