| |
“THANK YOU AGAIN for coming in. We’ll see you tomorrow. Be sharp.” Liam escorted the final candidate for Percy’s security team out of his new office. The man thanked him for the opportunity and left the room. He returned to his oversized desk where Percy occupied one of the two chairs on the other side.
“That’s a good team you brought in. I sensed no hesitation with any...potential job requirements they may face.”
“I told you my people are good,” Percy said. He grabbed a pen off Liam’s desk and started tapping his knee to a beat in his head. “But, listen. If I’m going to be the lead man on this commission-approved mercenary security team, there are things I need to know; places I need access to. My badge only opens half the doors on this campus. I can’t secure the other half if I can’t even get in.”
“That is an excellent point, my friend. I’ll check into raising your clearance level.”
“Great. Where’s Ann? Maybe the three of us could grab lunch?”
“She’s out of town. Her dad in Tennessee isn’t doing so well so she’s taking some time. Flew up there yesterday morning.”
“Oh, bachelor pad at your place then. Party? Strippers?”
Liam laughed sarcastically. “You wish. I’m afraid my party days are long behind me. Somehow I became an adult with responsibilities. Not sure the suits on the commission would appreciate me slacking on those responsibilities.”
“I hear you. You can never please the big wigs. But remember, to me in my position, you are the big wig.”
“Scary thought there, Percy. Can you believe people let me be in charge of anything?”
“You kiddin’ me? Are you forgetting what kind of leader you were back in the day? How many times did you save my ass?”
“Same amount of times you saved mine. And Foster saved us both. And on down the line. We watched each other’s backs out there. Now your job is to watch mine, and everyone else’s here. You and your team. We’re the guinea pigs for a new security plan. If our ideas succeed here, the commission will implement them at all the other campuses. Spotlight is on us—on you in particular.”
“The pressure! You’ve got me, my eight guys, and the twenty-three security guards already here. We’re going to retrain them to step up. My eight will be thirty-one in no time. We’ll be a damn strong force.”
“Ideally, we won’t have to find out how strong.” Liam’s stomach growled. “Come on, let’s find some lunch. I know a good place down—” He was interrupted by the phone on his desk ringing. He held up a finger signaling Percy to wait. The screen displayed a Columbus, Ohio area code. The White House. He pressed the answer icon on the screen.
“Hello, this is Liam Donovan.”
“Mr. Donovan, this is Todd Blake.”
Liam met the Secretary of Defense on a few occasions whenever he had commission business in Columbus. Blake had been on the commission for the better part of the last decade.
“Secretary Blake, what can I do for you?”
“I need you to gather all of your department heads into a conference room. There’s been a...development that must be addressed. Once you’re all gathered call me back.” Blake gave them the number to reach him. “Don’t make me wait, Mr. Donovan. You have twenty minutes.”
“I will get right on it, sir.”
The video went to black. “Well, Percy. How about we up your clearance level right now?”
Several hundred miles away Ann brought a ham sandwich to her father, Gary Caldwell. He was even weaker than he had appeared in the video call. Hardly able to climb out of bed, he looked nothing like the man she grew up with. Already a scarce commodity in this poorer area of the country, food was hard to come by for her father in his weakened state. The first thing she did after the hovercopter dropped her off in the front lawn was borrow her father’s truck and go shopping. She bought him two months’ worth of food—easy things to prepare after she left, like soup.
Miles away from any semblance of civilization, the one story house sat alone off the side of a rarely used road. It was a small, modest home with only two bedrooms. Her parents remodeled it in the 2090s, but it remained largely untouched since. In the backyard a small garden once grew that backed into the tree line at the bottom of one of the Appalachian Mountains. The neglected garden hadn’t seen a fresh vegetable in at least a decade. If she had thought about it she would’ve brought some seeds with her, but she doubted her father’s capability to tend to them after she left.
She sat at his bedside and handed him the plate, placing his glass of water on his nightstand table. He took a slow, deliberate bite savoring the taste. She couldn’t help but pity him.
“Thank you, Annie. It’s delicious.” He patted her leg before bringing the sandwich up for another bite.
“It’s nothing. Your pantry is more stocked up than it has ever been. I had to hit up three stores, but you should be good for a while. And don’t be afraid to get someone over here to help you cook if you need it. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week. Who knows what could have happened if you hadn’t called.”
“I would have been fine. I always am. Like I said, you didn’t need to come up here on my behalf.”
“You’re stubborn is what you are. And of course I did.”
“You know,” he said, changing the subject, “that young man in town was asking about you last month. What was his name? Marvin? Marty? No, it’s Martin. Anyway, I told him next time I saw you I’d pass on that he said hello.”
“Dad, you know I’m still with Liam. Why’d you go and get the poor boy’s hopes up?”
“I’m just the messenger. Don’t shoot.”
She laughed it off, but wondered if her father had an ulterior motive like wanting her close by more often. He had always been a hard man to read, so she wasn’t sure. Instead she changed the subject. She caught him up on all the research her and her team had accomplished while preparing for the STS mission. Their most recent development involved the altering of a lady fern’s DNA to potentially thrive in the type of soil they were guessing was present on Proxima. It was their first successful test in growing an Earth seed on alien soil. There was always the strong possibility that their guess of the soil compounds on Proxima were way off base, but re-engineering the DNA made for good practice nonetheless.
Moments after her father finished his sandwich, her cell vibrated in her pocket. “One minute, Dad. Liam’s calling.” She excused herself and stepped into the hall. “Liam? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you until tonight. I barely have a signal up here, so if you break up I’ll call you back. How did your interviews go with Percy’s guys?”
“Ann, I just got a call from Secretary Blake. Something is up. All department heads are needed for a conference call in fifteen minutes. Call in to this number.” He relayed the number that would connect to the conference room.
“Any idea what this is about? Was there another attack?”
“I’m with Percy. He’ll be representing our security team for this call. And we don’t know anything, yet. If there was an attack, I’m sure we’d already be aware of it.”
“You’re right. This is strange. Has he or anybody else on the commission ever scheduled a conference call on such short notice?”
“No, this is a first. And the way he sounded, Ann—he seemed shook. My gut is telling me something big is going on.”
“I hate your gut sometimes. It’s right more than I am. I’ll call the number and we can talk about whatever it is later. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye.”
The call ended, leaving her to her thoughts as she stood outside her father’s half-closed bedroom door. A department head conference call with the Secretary of Defense? Why? She led the small botany department with a total of two people. Technically that did make her a department head, but she could think of no reason she would need to be on a call with, say, the head of maintenance and sanitation. This must be big. And did this call concern the United States’ or the commission’s interest? Likely both, she considered.
“What’s going on, honey?” Gary asked from inside his room.
“I don’t know, Dad.” She came back inside and stood in the door frame. “I have to make a call in a few minutes then I’ll know more. I’ll fill you in if I can. On second thought, I’ll fill you in anyway. I don’t care much about classification.”
“If they tell you to keep a secret, keep it secret. What if I blabbed about it on the net?”
“Yes, you’re a regular Wikileaks.”
“A what?”
“Never mind. I’m going to go find a place to make the call. Somewhere with better reception. Might have to climb the damn mountain. Are you going to be alright?”
“I’m fed and happy. I’ll probably be asleep as soon as you leave.”
“Have a good nap.”
While she didn’t have to climb a mountain, she did have to walk two hundred yards up the road before her signal improved enough for her to trust it wouldn’t drop out. She found a comfortable spot in the grass, sat down, and dialed the number. “This is Ann Caldwell, botany department. Present.”
“Welcome, Ann,” Liam said. Of course Liam greeted her. He was probably the first one in the conference room. She only knew of herself and a handful of other department heads who were out of town. She guessed the room was packed by now, everyone waiting for Secretary Blake.
Impressed they managed to fit everyone, Liam lost count how many crammed their way into the conference room. He sat at the head of the long table, but most stood along the edge. Thirty-six people in all gathered in a room with a ten person table in the center. Whispers circulated rumors ranging from an attack in Brazil to the STS cancelling the entire project. He could have told everyone to be quiet, to stop the speculation, but it was time to dial the number and get Blake to put the rumor mill to rest. He entered the digits into the datapad in front of him. A dark screen at the far end of the room lit up with the message: Connecting Blake, Todd. The people standing in front of the monitor quickly moved aside as the message was replaced with live video of the secretary sitting at his desk in Columbus.
“Good afternoon, everyone. All present?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied. The room grew quiet, all eyes on Blake.
“Colleagues on the STS commission are making similar calls to the other campuses as we speak. You are all receiving this news simultaneously. Let me preface you with this: what you’re about to hear is classified. When we are ready, the news will be made public. For now, this remains between us. Is that understood?”
Murmurs of agreement floated around the room. “Excellent. Seventeen hours ago, an observatory the commission has leased out of Chile picked up on something strange. We were called in immediately to investigate their findings. After observing for several hours, we can only conclude that their telescope discovered...a, well...a fleet. Three ships were spotted at the edge of our solar system near the heliopause. They seem to be heading in our direction.”
Silence filled the room. One second passed. Two. Three. Then like an explosion most of the room erupted in shouts. Liam shot to his full height and screamed over everyone else. “Quiet! Everyone, shut up!” They did. Nervous glances crossed the room, but nobody talked. “Mr. Secretary. Are you positive? I’m sorry, but obviously this seems absurd.”
“We are quite positive, Mr. Donovan. The shape of the objects suggest an intelligent design. Here’s an image so you can see for yourselves.” Blake pressed a few buttons off camera and a satellite image filled the monitor. Sure enough three long objects evenly spaced apart presented themselves on the screen. Each object matched the others from length, width, and overall shape. They most certainly were not rocks.
More murmuring stirred through the crowd, but no shouting.
Panicked and confused faces surrounded him. He stole a glance toward Percy who stared intently at nothing with a firm expression on his face. They were trained to stay under control, but even Liam was fighting back the urge to throw his hands up and walk out of the room.
Between trying to find enough food and water for everyone, the blistering heat, extreme weather, and not to mention the occasional viral outbreak, humanity was already near the breaking point. Why not add an alien invasion to the mess?
“Sir,” Liam began, “the STS fleet is over a year away from leaving Earth. How soon will those ships be here?”
“We are still studying that, but our best guess as of now puts it at six months. Maybe less.”
“Does the commission believe them to be hostile, sir?” Percy asked.
“You must be the new head of security Liam told me about. Percy Alvarez, right? Well, Percy, we have experienced rising sea levels flooding our cities, a virus that nearly wiped us out, and a famine that tried to starve the rest. There are constant diseases running rampant, water shortages, wars, a falling birth rate, and mass suicides. Do I think they’re hostile? I think they’re here to put us out of our fucking misery.”
“Do we have a plan?” asked The Hawking’s captain, Landon Jameson.
“We cancel construction on ships six through eight. We transfer those crews to ships three through five. One and two of course are both in space. The Christensen will have its assembly finished in just a few weeks. We will have five ships in our fleet. I know that is a serious time crunch, especially for you guys. I get it. You were the fifth ship to get started so naturally you’re the furthest behind, not including six through eight. Liam, I need an estimate on what you need for your ship to be space worthy and assembled in five to six months. That is your first priority. You may have to skip some of the fancier bells and whistles, but so be it. When the construction is finished on STS three, the crew will move to the warehouse most in need. We’ll have crews working around the clock. In six months five ships will depart. That's your goal.”
“We'll make it happen,” Liam said.
“What about defense? Assuming they are hostile,” Jameson said.
“More concrete plans will come into place over time, but my first thought is to launch a full assault on them from the planet to draw their attention away from your escape.”
“What if they're here to help?” asked a woman named Kelsey Hamrick, the lone linguist on the ship's crew. Her job would be to help communicate with any potential alien life on Proxima.
“Communication will be attempted, Mrs. Hamrick. But if we are unable to successfully communicate we will be left with no choice but to strike first. There is too much at risk.”
“Yes, sir,” Kelsey said.
“With your permission Mr. Secretary, I would like to examine the possibility of arming our ships. We need to be ready if they come after us or we will be defenseless,” Liam said.
“Is it possible to retrofit the ships for weaponry?”
Liam looked to his chief engineer, Brian Whitt. “I will look into it. It might be ugly, but I think it can be done. I’ll need a list of what weapons you will need and where you want them installed.”
“Don't forget each ship will be carrying dozens of Z56 fighter crafts that will already be armed to the teeth so you won’t be completely defenseless. Miss Sizemore, our pilots need to brush up on their combat training,” Blake said.
“They will, sir. We have the best pilots straight out of the Air Force. We couldn't ask for better,” responded Commander Debra Sizemore.
“Also, once you escape, you will be under strict orders to not send any signals of any kind back to Earth. We don’t know their technology, but it’s a safe bet they can intercept and track a signal back to its source,” Blake said.
“When will you tell the public?” Liam asked.
“Soon. We expected a certain level of panic to set in with the general population after the lottery, which will need to be moved up now that I think about it. With this news, though—the public will lose their shit. We have to play the odds that a civilian telescope won’t see what we did. When our timetable is more certain, we will draft an announcement.
“I’ll leave you all to it. I’m sure you have much to do. This isn’t the hand we were expecting, but it’s what we’ve been dealt. We’ve come together and conquered so many challenges over the past century. This is just one more. Let’s get to work.”
Blake ended the connection and voices erupted around the room. A few broke down to tears. Others leaning against the walls slid down to sit on the floor, heads in hands. Everyone else yelled over each other. Liam let them talk. His mind was thinking ahead—five days from now, ten, a hundred. Somehow he had to get his ship space worthy months sooner than expected. Could it be done? He ran through it in his head and decided on: maybe. If they worked hard enough and long enough with crew members brought in from other facilities, it may just be possible.
He needed to talk this out with someone, Ann in particular. Checking the conference call line he saw that she had already hung up. So instead he gave a head nod to Percy motioning toward the hallway. They both left the chaotic room to the scared and confused within. Stepping into the hallway and shutting the door behind them, he instructed Percy to follow and he led him to an empty room thirty feet down the hall where they could have privacy.
“What. The. Fuck?” Percy asked, shutting the door behind him.
“My thoughts exactly. Aliens? My God, Percy, when this goes public...we were expecting riots before just from folks not getting selected in the lottery, but this? It will be ten times worse.”
“Yeah, riots, sure. But, aliens? The timing of this is unbelievable. Here we are, on the verge of going extinct, and they come knocking. What’s that tell you?”
“They’ve been watching us. Fifteen minutes ago I thought maybe we might find some alien plant-life or simple life forms on Proxima. But now we’re being told that intelligent alien life exists and has been observing us, just waiting for us to be at our weakest so they could come in and take us out.”
“That’s what I would do. Watch your enemy, strike when they’re down. They must know about the STS commission and our plan to relocate humans. So they’re coming to stop us.”
Liam considered a moment. He rubbed a hand on the back of his bald head, thinking. “If they know about our ships, if they know about the commission, then—”
“They know that we know about them. Maybe.”
“They know. I would almost guarantee it. Who knows how long they’ve been hiding out there before we just so happened to spot them? And Blake is an idiot if he thinks this can stay quiet from the press for long. How many amateurs with telescopes are watching us assemble our ships? How many keep an eye on Proxima? This will come out, sooner than he’d like.”
“You’re right. Shit.” Percy took a seat behind an empty desk, leaned back to look at the ceiling. “Fuck. Liam, I have to tell you something.”
“If you tell me you’re secretly an alien wearing human skin I’m going to shoot you in the face.”
“Not an alien, but there is a secret and you might still want to shoot me in the face.”