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“It’s not really a drive system,” Dr. Silver started, but Kris cut her off.

“Does it matter? What matters is what it’s
capable
of. And I’ll remind you of what we were all concerned about when we thought we were talking about a freight system.”

Kris did not need to elaborate. Calvin himself remembered the sick feeling he’d had when he suspected Dr. Silver of arming one of her freight test-beds and sending it out… “You’re suggesting threatening them,” Calvin said aloud.

Kris inclined her head sadly. “It seems to be the best defensive weapon we have.”

“Speaking of which,” Julian said, “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get busy again on the defensive system Dr. Rios proposed. Assuming, Doctor,” he directed this at Silver, “that you don’t see any reason why it can’t be made to work, given enough time.”

In response, Dr. Silver shook her head. “No I don’t. I agree, we should continue to work on it, especially now that the immediate crisis is over.”

“Julian,” Aaron said slowly, considering his words carefully. “There may be another defensive option. Staying right here.”

Julian regarded him with confusion. “You already said—”

“I said we’d run out of supplies in a few months,” Aaron said. “But if we can get our supplies delivered to us…”

“Out here? How?”

“The same way we got here, through Dr. Silver’s… uh… y’know, we really should figure out what we’re gonna call the blessed thing.” He waved his hands at the non-sequitur. “Anyway, Jacqueline scaled this process up from two test-beds, to the entire satellite. We ought to be able to do something in-between.”

Calvin caught on immediately, and snapped his fingers. “Like a freighter!”

Everyone turned to Dr. Silver, who shrugged. “We could adapt the large test-bed to a freighter, yes. It would only need more power, and the proper equations to handle the appropriate change in dimensions.”

“Excellent!” Calvin smiled. “So we send a freighter back, and we can use that to get more supplies, while Verdant stays here out of harm’s way.”

“That sounds like a good beginning,” Julian nodded. “At the very least, it will buy us time to develop our defensive system before we return.” He looked at Silver. “Doctor, that’s your next task: A freighter capable of returning to Earth, and bringing supplies back to us here. And if you can, we may need to equip more than one ship with your… system.”

“Understood,” Dr. Silver nodded.

“Good. Aaron… Dr. Rios? We need to prepare a message to send to Earth, and we should do that next.”

“Julian,” Aaron said, “it occurs to me that we have citizens and visitors on Verdant that will want to go home, and some of our citizens were probably stuck on Earth. Surely we’ll have to make arrangements to return their people to them, and get our people back.”

“Of course,” Julian agreed. He turned to Kris. “Miss Fawkes, I have a task for you.” He approached her, and Kris stood up as he reached her. “I realize that you don’t officially work for the United States anymore, but you’re probably the best person suited to the task of speaking to the President’s staff, and explaining the situation to them. We’re going to have to arrange for the transportation of his staff, and all American citizens, back to Earth, and they will have to be involved in coordinating that.”

“I understand,” Kris said apprehensively.

Julian nodded. “Don’t worry. As of now, you are a member of the command staff… an official liaison from CnC, with all requisite diplomatic privileges and immunities. You’re working for me, now.”

Upon hearing this, Kris’ face went from surprise, to gratitude, to determination, in the space of a second. “Thank you, sir. Should I go see them now?”

“Not yet,” Julian smiled. “Let’s work out our messages to Mankind first.”

~

Maria Rios was awake when Dr. Jervis entered her room. It was a little after seven A.M., and the daylights had already been brought up throughout the hospital. A small video monitor played next to Maria’s bed, and she had been watching it for some time. When she saw Dr. Jervis, she smiled.

“Good morning, Maria,” Dr. Jervis greeted her. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” she replied, and gave him a half smile. “I always feel fine after an episode. Well-rested.” She nodded at the monitor. “But it seems like things aren’t much better around here, are they?”

“If anything,” Dr. Jervis admitted, “they’re even more confused. But that’s not why I came by. You have visitors.”

Maria quickly perked up. “Cal? Erin?”

“Yes,” Jervis smiled. “They’re waiting in the park for you. Considering your episode, I’d like to give you a power chair for your visit. Are you up for it?”

“Of course,” Maria replied brightly.

Ten minutes later, a nurse wheeled Maria out to the visitation park outside the hospital. Calvin and Erin were seated on a bench near the edge of the floor, overlooking Verdant’s interior. Erin saw Maria first, and heaved off of the bench and rushed over to her. Calvin followed, not quite as quickly as his daughter, but enthusiastically nonetheless. Maria stood up out of the chair to hug them both.

“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!” Maria said, caressing Erin’s face gently. Then she looked closer at Calvin. “Cal, you look exhausted! You’ve been up all night, haven’t you?”

Calvin nodded. “It’s been that kind of night. How are you feeling?”

“Oh, I feel fine,” Maria replied, sitting back into the chair in response to the nurse’s silent glare. “Honey, I’m so sorry, this is all my fault. I should have listened to you and stayed home. Instead, I ran right out to find Erin, and my heart lost control almost immediately. I sat down, and I hoped it would just go away, but it didn’t, and I just became so exhausted…”

“I know,” Calvin said, “I spoke to Dr. Jervis. But it’s all right, no harm done.”

“No harm!” Maria goggled. “I must have scared you two to death!”

“Actually,” Erin responded quickly, “yes, you did! But as long as you’re all right.” She reached down and hugged her mother, who responded warmly.

When they separated again, Maria looked at Calvin. “Cal, what’s going on everywhere? I’ve heard everything imaginable… Earth has been destroyed… Yellowstone has re-erupted and America is gone… Verdant is orbiting Mars… we’re all dead and in heaven… it’s crazy!”

“Well, I can confirm that something big happened.”

“Were you part of it?”

“Actually, I almost prevented it from happening,” Calvin said wryly. “Sometimes, I’m just not the sharpest knife in the drawer…”

“I’m sure you did your part.”

“Well, if you consider that my part was to be someone else’s distraction, I suppose so.” Not for the first time, Calvin reflected on the diversion of resources his force field project—admittedly given to him by Julian Lenz, but based closely on ideas he supported—had forced upon the sciences section, and what might have happened if that diversion had meant Dr. Silver’s system would not have been ready at the critical moment. Part of his discomfort was simple embarrassment, for being taken so thoroughly by surprise as everyone else had been. But there was also a small hit taken by his pride, at knowing he had not been the savior of Verdant, but merely a pawn in someone else’s game. Probably not for the last time, Calvin shoved all of that back into a dark corner of his musings, to sort through later. “But despite my efforts, it all worked out okay anyway.”

“Is this why you’ve been up all night?”

“‘Fraid so, honey,” Calvin replied. “But actually, Ceo Lenz is planning to address Verdant in…” he consulted his watch. “…just a few minutes now. It will answer most of everyone’s questions. In fact, we should see if we can find a monitor to watch it.”

“Will it explain everything?” Maria asked.

~

“You know,” Julian told Dr. Silver as they prepared for the broadcast, “I’m not saying ‘translated’ to them. Scientifically accurate or not, I’m just telling them we’ve moved.”

“I understand,” Dr. Silver nodded soberly.

~

Calvin considered his wife’s question. “Well… it’ll be a big help.”

“Citizens and visitors of Verdant. Please listen to the following message. It is important that you understand the events of the last twenty-four hours.”

“Good morning. This is Ceo Julian Lenz. As most of you are no doubt aware, Verdant, along with her sister satellites, was just today under threat of forced occupation, by countries on Earth seeking refuge from the damage being done by the effects of the Yellowstone Caldera. This occupation would have been disastrous for Verdant and the other satellites, all of whom are already at or over capacity for sustainable operations, and could not have maintained larger populations or demands on their limited resources. But those on Earth either disbelieved this fact, or simply dismissed it, and they came anyway.

“We had limited information from the other satellites, for various reasons, during this period of forced occupation. We do not know whether the occupation of Qing met with any resistance, as Qing is directly controlled by the Chinese government. We do know that a non-Chinese ship with refugees was forced by Qing to turn back to Earth, and unfortunately that ship crash-landed, with the loss of all passengers. We also know that Fertile’s occupation resulted in armed riots aboard the satellite, and subsequent loss of life. And we know that the chaos caused by a sky full of orbital military and civilian craft caused a catastrophic accident on Tranquil, which we believe at this point resulted in the deaths of everyone in their Command and Control center. And despite that accident, ground-based craft continued to move to occupy Tranquil.

“At that same time, ground-based craft were also attempting to occupy Verdant. Ultimately, we would have stood no chance to deter the ground-based forces, and it was considered only a matter of time before we were boarded and occupied by hostiles.

“But while all of this was going on, a classified initiative was being developed by our sciences sections. At a critical moment, new and experimental systems were activated. The result of those systems’ activation was that Verdant has been removed from Earth orbit, and the threat represented by the hostile forces. At this moment, we are now orbiting in relative safety… over the planet Mars.

“We realize how absolutely incredible this sounds, especially as there was no sense of motion involved with our change of position. The process involved the complex manipulation of exotic properties of quantum physics, the details of which will be saved for another time. For now, I’ll just say that the process worked as expected, and we made the move from Earth to Mars with no mishaps or issues.

“It must be understood that, although the action was successful, this was an act of desperation, designed to preserve the integrity of Verdant, and the lives of its citizens and visitors. We would not have taken this step, if we thought there was any other way of preventing the assaults being directed at us. Verdant is not equipped to remain over Mars, so we can not consider this a safe or long-term refuge by any means. Therefore, we are already planning the process of returning to Earth orbit as soon as it is considered safe for us to do so.

“The Command and Control staff is actively preparing a message to be sent to Earth, with two goals in mind: First, to assure those on Earth that Verdant’s citizens and visitors are alive and well; and second, to make arrangements to return to Earth orbit under a flag of truce and a promise of no occupation, and resume our position as a sovereign nation under U.N. protection. We expect there will be negotiations involved in the process, so we have no way of predicting a timeframe or procedures to return to Earth at this time. Suffice to say, we will be doing everything we can to facilitate our return to Earth as soon as possible, and we hope Earth’s governments will be equally cooperative.

“CnC will schedule a press conference within the next twelve hours or so, to keep you informed, and to answer any questions you may have about our situation. In the meantime, we are maintaining Verdant at level three conservation restrictions for the present time. We ask you all to remain calm and do your jobs, and rest assured we will see this situation to its end. Thank you.”

~

After some deliberation, it was decided to send messages to Earth in a series, to assure it would not be missed. An initial message would be sent, then repeated in more detail one hour later, because they expected that only a few people would happen to intercept the first message, and many would assume it was a hoax… but everyone would be waiting for the existence of a second message. Therefore, the messages would provide coordinates to locate Verdant in the night sky, using one or all of the orbital telescopes suited to the task.

“Maybe we should set off some kind of bright flash,” Aaron Hardy had suggested. “To make sure they can find us.”

“At this stage,” Julian countered, “they’d probably think we were shooting something at them. Did you ever read
War of the Worlds
? No, no flashes of light… just coordinates for them to use. They’ll see us.”

“What about the message?” Chiu asked. “Should we mention how we did what we did?”

“I’d recommend,” Dr. Silver suggested, “that we simply assure them we can do it again. At the moment, the operation of our quantum translation system may be the biggest bargaining tool we have.”

“‘Quantum translation system,’ huh?” Julian considered it. “Kind of long.”

“That’s what it is,” Silver shrugged.

“Doesn’t make any difference,” Aaron said, “if we’re not going to tell them about it. Call it ‘fairy dust,’ for all it matters, and let them puzzle it out.”

“Let’s table that for now. We need to write our message. Let’s get started.”

~

On Earth, the speculation as to the fate of Verdant was wild and unchecked. Everything from secret American weapons to sophisticated cloaking technology to divine providence was being proposed and discussed. News services duly mentioned all of them, and lively debate filled the airwaves.

The United States was at the center of every conspiracy theory. It was assumed by all parties that, whatever had happened to Verdant, the United States must have done it to them. The U.S. was already being directly blamed for the freighter that had crashed into Tranquil’s CnC, which conveniently made it easy for U.S. forces to move in and occupy it. Vice President Lena Carruthers, who had largely been acting through orders being sent from President Lambert aboard Verdant, was being attacked from two sides: While some believed she had acted incompetently, misunderstanding Lambert’s orders and accidentally destroying Verdant in the process; others believed she had acted deliberately, in order to destroy Verdant and kill the President, and thereby take over the country as President herself. In fact, Carruthers had barely participated in the attack, her Chief of Staff had been the one to pass the instructions on to the departments involved; and now, “Cocktail Barbie” was being referred to as “Black Widow Barbie,” as her tenuous house of political cards was being torched from every side. By doing virtually nothing, her political career was now over, and the parallels to an early twenty-first-century Governor and her bid for a White House position were not lost on—or unspoken by—the media and pundits.