April (58 page)

* * *

Jeff was busy working, when Heather showed up unexpected at his elbow. He turned and smiled at her and then became concerned when he saw the look on her face. She leaned across from behind and interrupted his work which was so unlike her he didn't object. At least she saved it before she opened another screen. The expression she had was such he wouldn't have challenged anything she did even, if it she had wiped some hours of work.

"Watch this," she commanded and played the video of his dad declaring war. Then she shared the specs of the machines they were requested to have waiting.

When it was done she expected anger. Instead he was his father's son. He actually smiled.

"Well, it seems they cannot leave us alone. If they have to be shown the folly of it we will need tools. This won't be subtle work so I will need some hammers. Big ones. Could you find time to lend me a hand dear friend?" he asked and put his hand over her hand on his shoulder.

Chapter 28

"Yes, Mr. President." General Horton of the Space Defense commander spoke. He looked around. The others present were all members of the Security Council, or advisers much more powerful than him. They were all visibly frightened, sitting back from the table and holding their hands in their laps, like they were scared they would touch something of this mess and dirty themselves. None were eager to speak, in the charged dangerous atmosphere.

He by contrast felt a strange freedom to speak candidly. He was sure he had personally lost everything already. He had been called in to advise, after causing a fuss with his pushy demands for information. He was sure they were shoving him forward where he could complete the destruction of his career. So there was simply nothing left to desperately try to salvage. He went on without prompting after the unnatural long pause. "They have destroyed most of the satellites which carry TV and data."

He thought off the top of his head what the effect would be. "It disrupts inventory and paging, long distance voice phone and conferencing. I'd expect the banking system will not lose any data, but it will be unable to continue processing new transactions such as ATM requests."  "Most retailers will be unable to conduct sales, even if a few people do have cash. Securities trading and settlement, freight tracking systems, police data to the cars and officers on patrol, EMS dispatch and communication with the hospital, Fire department coordination, Customs and Border Patrol, all will be down."

"That's just off the top of my head. There will be thousands of little problems that aren't life threatening, like soda machines not calling in to report they are low."

"The civilian land lines just can't carry the increased load and we have no way to cut out the less important users, without extensively reconfiguring the systems. No remote control for backing up the flight crew of aircraft, military or civilian. In fact, some of the newer planes don't have radios for non-satellite contact away from local control, so the airlines won't fly them, without contact and tracking over the middle of their flight. Almost no ability to manage unmanned vehicles, or 'bots of any kind in all the services."

"They have left the weather sats, except for one Naval one and they left such things as crop observation platforms and some sats which watch ground movement for earth quake and tsunami warning. Scientific sats like astronomy telescopes. So you see it's pretty bad. That's just a rough outline of problems. I could go on and on."

"The fool who advised me earlier, said these pirates couldn't hurt us further," the President said. "I'm starting to doubt everything I'm told about this crisis. How about other countries' satellites? Are we going to face a storm of criticism and retaliation for allowing this to happen?"

"Actually Sir. They are asking other countries to ID their sats, so they can avoid harming them. We can't be sure of all of them, but the Brits, French, Swiss, all the Europeans actually, Indians, Indonesians, Iranians, Japanese,  Israelis, South Africans and a few others have all spoke up and specified what belongs to them, they'd like preserved. The Chinese are in even worse shape than us. They have never revealed what many of their sats were dedicated to do and won't speak with them to avoid losing anything non-military. So, when in doubt, they are shooting the lot of them."

"Of all the countries the Chinese should be the last in line to blame us, since their ship was hunting the
Happy Lewis
too. If anything they should get some of the blame from others. It's complicated though, because a lot of LEO sats have been knocked down by rivals, using the opportunity to clear their competitors' sats and blame it on someone else. We've lost a lot of spy sats and even GPS sats. We're pretty sure if they're not out on the 35k level, it wasn't the crew of the Lewis who destroyed  them. The Paks were screaming at them about one of theirs being hit earlier and we intercepted the pilot of the Lewis telling them they had not touched anything in LEO. However he put it in this context. He said not
yet
."

"How bad is it?" the president asked still not picturing what those outages meant. "How long to fix it and how much will it cost us?" The Space Defense man looked at the other advisers and nobody seemed to want to take the floor. The Chief Economic adviser even made a small brushing sweep with his hand which said - go ahead - so he elaborated.

"If we impose martial law on the whole continent and call out all the reserves we can maintain order until we curtail all private use of the telephone land lines and fiber, to use them for needed public service. Once we have basic commercial communications again, we should have the basis of restarting a normal economy. If the foodstuffs we have are not distributed by ration, where they are needed, there will be massive starvation and unrest this winter. The stores won't be able to manage distribution or process the sale and the people won't be able to get cash. We probably don't even have enough cash in circulation to buy just food."

"When people have no food they don't all sit and die peacefully. They migrate looking for it, leaving their jobs. They'll fight for it and some will try to reach a warmer climate. Even if they have to walk. The police and military we need for control would be refugees themselves. Also if we can't communicate real time with them, we have to trust the commanders of our military forces to act with initiative, if they see an incursion on our borders or a threat to our ships or planes. We'll have to hope they don't get us in a war we can't handle. We simply can't micromanage them from a central command anymore."

"There won't be as much power to use in homes and businesses, because we won't have the fine and instantaneous data control, to keep the power flowing at near the full capacity of the grids. We can't limit or stop power with remote meters. There has never been any excess capacity built in for the hottest and coldest days. We'll have brown outs and if the grid goes down from storm or overload, it will take longer to bring back up. We can survive this winter with minimal casualties and with new ground networks and a few key launches of replacement satellites, assuming they aren't destroyed, we can start reconstructing this spring. The economy will be a fraction of normal this next year and it will take several years to really recover. Assuming we are not attacked by anyone hoping to take advantage of the situation."

The President spoke with his fists clutched in anger. "How long before we have these enemy combatants before cameras, showing them being locked away? We need to make an example of them. The public needs to see them hooded and bound in chains. If people think they can get away with defying us, we can lose control completely. There are still plenty of Mexicans and Quebecois, who are eager to break back away if they see opportunity."

"They have a better ship than anything we have. Or any other Earth power." Such a distinction was a new thing. No one had ever had to speak of non-Earth powers before. "Frankly I hope they stay out at the Clarke orbit, or even go to the moon. Because if they are waiting at M3 when the
Cincinnati
tries to dock there I don't hold out much hope for our ship surviving the encounter. If we reach M3 first, we better get our men inboard the station quickly, if we don't want them slaughtered." He suddenly realized the President had never mentioned a very pertinent matter. "Has nobody shown you the latest BBC video? Or were they all too afraid to show it to you?" he asked bitterly.

The anger which flashed on President Hadley's face was answer enough. "What video? Damn these cowardly traitors anyway. First they don't tell me about this new technology, now they are hiding something else? Somebody just did a career killer if I've been bypassed again." A wave of fear washed across the faces in the room. Thus the bloodletting and culling started within his administration, which would help disassemble it. "Show me this video."

General Horton talked to the technician helping with the presentation and arranged for the material to be put on the wall screen. He regarded with amusement the fear etched on all the faces among the President's advisors. That's what I'm here for, he reaffirmed to himself. A massager to be slaughtered instead of them. How terrified they are some part of the taint will reach out and mark them. He found deep humor in his detachment.

He wondered if he would be fired today, or if he would have opportunity to quit first? Perhaps either way, he would just be taken out the door and shot out of hand. Things were as chaotic now in the world's greatest power, as any two bit little Third World dictatorship. At least, he doubted he would be alone, if they dragged him out to be executed.

When the technician looked at him and indicated he had the feed, he just nodded to go ahead. There was nothing to be said to soften it. On the screen Easy informed them of the plan to destroy the satellites. Nobody had considered it a serious enough threat, to pass up the line of command. Then Ajay Singh made his speech declaring his one man war. To most of them, it was a frightening face, because it was not the irrational propaganda vid most wild-eyed terrorists sent in, laced with stale ideological phrases and religious hatred. It was a reasoned voice, self depreciating even, but obviously an educated man and absolutely unyielding in saying, "I will not submit."

Their memories too recently placed this same angry face driving a sword through his enemy, to not have a visceral response. He threatened to nibble on their ankles. They would have been more comfortable if he had ranted and screamed great threats, they could dismiss. This was not some posturing politician, who talked when threatened. He actually did something.

"He has the gall to suggest a great nation might sue for peace with one man? Is he really saying that? The man is mad. What kind of colossal ego would conceive of such a thing?" the President raged.

The General considered the question seriously. "The sort of a ego which is backed by the intellect to invent an entirely new fusion power technology. The sort of ego which has destroyed about a hundred billion dollars of spacecraft and satellites in the last two days and crippled our economy and military for at least the winter. He
does
hope others will join him, even if it was a rather indifferent call to battle he made, I must say, but we have no evidence anyone has done so, except for his companions on the spacecraft."

"He didn't start this confrontation actually, you should be aware. It all started a few days ago, when the
Happy Lewis
asked for clearance to return home to Mitsubishi 3 from ISSII. We made the error of refusing the flight plan, so we could betray his bride to be arrested by the Chinese, rather than grant her asylum. It was his pilot who refused the command to sit and surrender to them."

"We don't know if he did so at Singh's urging, or at his own initiative, but he seems every bit as uncowed as the Doctor. It hindsight it might have been much, much, cheaper to grant them passage and accept the woman's application than to deny it. I don't suppose we could offer to correct the initial point of dispute and see if we couldn't stand down in a sort of armistice?" he asked hopefully.

The President was visibly hyperventilating. "You," he said in a squeaky voice, pointing a quivering finger at the calm General, "are relieved of your command and stripped of all rank and standing for cowardice. You are removed from service and instructed to put yourself in house arrest. You are forbidden to communicate with your previous associates or the media. You will be very fortunate if you are not charged with aiding the enemy."

"You sad old man," Horton told him. "if you destroy everyone who brings you bad news you'll soon run out of advisers, because I can tell you, there's not a whole lot of good news coming to show you. I'll leave you with this warning. We have no idea at all what other capabilities these people might have. Don't be surprised if there is more than the fusion device. When someone is so far ahead of you technologically it rarely is in one tiny particular. And when you have to finally deal with the reality of this problem, don't call me back to discuss it because I won't work for a fool anymore."

"Military service in this country was just reduced by my firing without a board, to a cult of the personality. A defective personality. You'll come to regret it," he said over his shoulder, as the guards led him away. And yet the guards were surprisingly gentle with their touch. They had hesitated to take him away, even as the President was gesturing to remove him. There was more of fear in their faces than anger. The proper order of things which defined their world was crumbling and they didn't know what direction events might take.

* * *

Eddie was as tired as he had ever felt. He looked at the wreckage of the sat he had just burned, through their front ports.

"Thanks for the shooting lessons, but I'm ready to go home," he informed them.  Everybody was whipped aboard the Happy. Nobody was arguing with him. They were low on supplies and fuel and dirty with no change of clothing and to the point of danger from stupid fatigue generated errors trying to operate a spacecraft.  They could vacuum clean a set of clothing, but they were out of wipes to clean up with. Their known targets, within the envelope of their maneuvering capacity were pretty much gone. It was time to go home. Easy plotted a steep burn to drop them into M3, with a minimal exposure to Earth systems. It was a hot maneuver which would use almost every kilogram of their remaining fuel and reactive mass, but once they were home they would either get supplied again, or be arrested.