Acting President of the United States, Rihanna Hollis, felt trapped in the United Nations Headquarters. Looking out the window to the ground twenty floors below, she knew it was more than a feeling. Hundreds of protesters surrounded the UN compound now, and nothing went in or out. The crowd, emboldened by the missile attack on the Hrwang craft, grew aggressive even as its ranks swelled.
Rihanna didn’t know what they wanted. She suspected they didn’t even know what they wanted. But they invested the building and she could do nothing about it.
Her four secret service agents were no match for the hundreds out there. And four was really three, but she wouldn’t let her husband out of her sight once they had become aware of the apocalypse, so it was easiest for him to be inducted into the Secret Service.
He would take a bullet for her. She knew that. She just didn’t want him to.
The one-sided, interstellar war with the Hrwang had occurred while Rihanna and her family were on a cruise in the Caribbean. They had found DC devastated, so they went to New York to find out what was going on. Secret Service sought her out there and told her she was probably the highest ranking officer remaining in the executive branch of the government. They declared her Acting President and had provided escort ever since.
Sort of like the Praetorian Guard deciding who the next Roman Emperor would be. Rihanna wondered what the Supreme Court would think, if any of them remained alive. She was pretty sure the succession plan didn’t reach all the way down to Under Secretaries, but then it never accounted for what would happen in the case of total war.
Cut off from the rest of the Secret Service when the crowd invested the UN compound, only her three immediate escorts remained. Rihanna wondered if the leaderless organization had abandoned her to anoint some other Under Secretary as President.
The top of the building was just as cut off, housing dozens of Hrwang soldiers. Just as the attack against them had brought more protesters, it had brought more aliens, with three or four of their aircraft hovering over the building at all times. They owned the top three stories of the building. After one brief firefight costing the UN twelve security guards, the rest of the diplomats had decided to leave them there. It was easier to defend the lower levels than to try to retake the upper three. They had left two floors between humans and aliens as a sort of demilitarized zone.
How do you get out of a building when you can’t exit at either the bottom and or the top?
She continued to stare out the window. It was a long way down.
Rihanna, her Secret Service detail, her husband, her two children, a few other odd Americans who’d been trapped in the building with them, and a Norwegian administrative assistant who’d been the only Norwegian left in the building and had no one to follow, occupied some office space reserved for the United States Ambassador to the UN. The Norwegian girl had volunteered to nanny Rihanna’s little children.
That was Rihanna’s domain. That was her presidency. Eighteen people, a conference room, and four offices. At least there were still working restrooms.
The ironic thing was, the rest of the United Nations looked to her for leadership. Once she became Acting President, not knowing what else to do, she had led her followers to the United Nations. They had taken up residence in the government buildings across the street from the UN Headquarters and had gone back and forth, trying to negotiate with the other nation’s ambassadors. It had been a mostly fruitless exercise. Cut off from their home countries, the ambassadors didn’t know what to do. The Secretary-General had been killed by the Hrwang and no one else knew how to govern or to lead the fractured group that was the United Nations.
After she and her group were separated from the rest of the US ‘government’, and had taken up shop in the offices they now occupied, the leaderless UN organization increasingly began coming to her with questions and deferring to her for decisions. The UN staff, many of whom, particularly the security, were American, also looked to her for leadership.
And she hadn’t known what to do either.
In keeping with UN tradition, the Secretary-General had been from a small, third world country with little reason to support one of the major powers. The now deceased Secretary-General had been from Burkina Faso, and his nation’s delegates conducted the investigation into his death and had provided Rihanna with a report on video that she had watched three times, making sure she understood the importance of it. She knew the Hrwang had killed the Secretary-General, but she hadn’t known why until she’d seen the report.
She thought knowing why would help, but it only deepened the mystery of the Hrwang. She and her team finally decided on a course of action and had decided she needed to meet with the aliens. The first step was to learn more about them. How better to do that than to meet with the astronaut who had spent time with them? He called himself an ambassador; maybe it was time for him to fulfill that role. Since the attack by outsiders against them on the roof and the gun battle with security guards below, Stanley Russell had been trying to contact her and she finally accepted his call. They agreed to meet, with strict safety protocols, on one of the empty floors between the two groups.
In order to get to know more about Captain Russell himself before her meeting with him, she summoned his second-in-command, Commander Irina Samovitch. The woman had fled the aliens during the missile attack on the roof, but Rihanna hadn’t talked to her yet.
She felt a little bureaucratic, having a meeting to prepare for a meeting that had the purpose of preparing for yet another meeting. But her days in government had taught her that preparation for negotiations was essential. She would do all that she could to prepare for that ultimate meeting.
Captain Russell’s second-in-command arrived. She looked tired. Rihanna felt an immediate kinship to the woman and offered her something to eat. At least the UN kitchen staff were able to work and did a good job of keeping the rest of the building supplied with good food. Rihanna wondered when it would run out. Her team had been unable to get an answer. The staff had been evasive, which probably wasn’t a good sign.
Something else she needed to negotiate before they ran out of food. A way out of the building.
Rihanna watched Commander Samovitch eat and, when the astronaut was finished, asked her first question.
“How are you feeling, Commander?”
“Please, call me Irina. I’ve been up and down this building and there isn’t a single moron left who knows how to run anything, let alone the UN Navy. I resigned.”
“Okay, Irina. What do you think we should do?” It wasn’t the question Rihanna had planned to ask next, but the woman wasn’t following the script Rihanna had played out in her mind before the discussion. Samovitch’s first answer had caught her off guard.
“We fight. I don’t care what the aliens say, they started this war. We fight back.”
“The aliens say we started it?”
“Of course they did. No one admits to starting a war.”
“Did they say why they think we started it?”
“We’re an aggressive and warlike race,” Irina quoted, emphasizing the quote with her fingers.
“That’s probably true.”
“Then let’s be aggressive. Let’s be warlike. Let’s fight back. Whoever shot that missile at them had the right idea.”
“We could have overpowered the Hrwang in the building at any time leading up to the missile attack. Now they’ve reinforced and there’s nothing we can do against them.”
Irina swore.
“I think negotiation is the best approach,” Rihanna continued. This discussion wasn’t going at all in the direction she’d hoped. She wanted to get the astronaut back on track. “I’ve decided to talk to your Captain.”
“He’s not my Captain.”
“Okay. Your former Captain. Tell me about him.”
“You mean you want to know something about the self-aggrandizing, overweening, delusional...” Her words tra
iled off as she struggled to think of more derogatory adjectives.
Rihanna held up her hand. “I get the picture. You don’t like him.”
“Not like him?” Irina asked incredulously. “I hate him. I hated him before he let those aliens kill two human beings. Right in front of us. For just doing their job. Now I loathe him. I despise him. Hate’s not strong enough.”
“I’m going to meet with him.”
“You should just shoot him.”
Rihanna laughed in disbelief. “That’s a bit extreme, Commander.” She forgot momentarily that the astronaut claimed to have resigned from the UN Navy. Irina ignored the error. She lit into Rihanna.
“He’s their lackey. You said it yourself. You called him a quisling. He didn’t even know what you meant, but you were right on the money. I think the Hrwang want to set up a puppet government and they’re going to use him to do it. Just kill him now. It’ll stop their plans.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this. Didn’t you work with the man for months?”
“Over a year.” Irina buried her face in her hands. “A year of hell.” She looked up at Rihanna. “Do you know what he was doing to that poor little chemist? It was borderline abuse. The woman was clueless about life and he just went in and forced himself on her whenever he felt like it.” And thought he was keeping it a secret, Irina thought bitterly. There were no secrets on a spaceship. “And he’s married,” she added.
“Doctor Pennacott?”
Irina nodded.
“Didn’t she report him?”
“The woman didn’t even know how to get dressed in the morning.”
“Did you report it? That’s a serious allegation.”
Irina shook her head sadly. “Doctor Pennacott wouldn’t have backed me up.”
“So it’s just your opinion that he forced himself on her.”
Irina slammed her hands on the table. Rihanna’s husband and the one Secret Service agent with him both stiffened. Rihanna saw that Irina noticed it and was trying to calm down.
“I’m sorry,” Rihanna said, making a peace offering. “The close quarters on a spaceship make things difficult. I didn’t mean to question your judgment. I’m sorry.”
Irina took the peace offering. “I’m sorry, too, Madam President.”
“You don’t need to call me that,” Rihanna said. “I don’t feel like much of a President.”
“Okay. But just shoot him, please? He’s bought the alien’s story hook, line, and sinker. He’ll be their puppet leader if you let him. I don’t know what their plans are, but I doubt our best interests are part of them.”
“Do you think they came to Earth to take our resources? Like in the movies?”
“I don’t know why they’re here. They’re a little fanatical, that’s for sure. But they have technologies beyond our imagination. They returned us home from Mars just like that.” Irina snapped her fingers. “I don’t know how they did it. And their ships are huge. Nothing that we could build. Those spaceships up on the roof? They can go anywhere they want, just like that. Just like they brought us back from Mars. They can even go out into space. We came back to Earth on one of them.”
“I always thought anyone who could cross interstellar space could squash us like a bug. I guess I was right.”
“You’ve given up, haven’t you?” Irina accused.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re defeated. You’ve given up. You want to talk to Stanley ‘cause you’re desperate. You can’t leave because of the protestors below, although you probably could if you had the guts. They’re not going to kill you. The Hrwang certainly will.”
Rihanna thought of the video the Burkina Faso delegation had assembled and wondered if the astronaut sitting across from her understood more than she knew. She had spent time with the aliens. But she was insolent. Insolent subordinates were impossible to work with and Rihanna had always found it best to cut them loose. It was time to do the same for this one.
“Thank you for your time, Commander. Irina,” she corrected.
“You have given up. You’re not going to do anything, are you? You’re not going to fight.”
“We’ve already lost the war. We need to negotiate the surrender.”
“Then Stanley’s your man. He’s even got a message from the Lord Admiral himself. Good luck with that. I’m going to fight.”
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Rihanna said.
“Like you aren’t?” Irina replied cooly and stood. She left without another word.
Rihanna stared at Samovitch’s vacated seat. Was the woman right? she wondered. Should she fight? With what? She needed to negotiate. But with what?
She needed to know what the aliens wanted. Not what Captain Russell might tell her, but what they really wanted. If she knew that, maybe she could bargain with them. Peace, a chance to restore the world, was what Rihanna wanted. What did they want? Could she give them some small part of the Earth? Somewhere isolated, like Australia or something? Could humans and aliens coexist on the same planet?
She needed to talk to the aliens directly. To find out what they really wanted, not just what they said they wanted or what they communicated through a puppet. She and others had already debated how best to achieve that and had come up with a solution. A rocket was being prepared at White Sands, New Mexico that she could take to visit the aliens in space. All of the obvious UNSA and NASA launch sites had been destroyed, but White Sands was a test facility and it had been spared. It was also fully capable of launching a rocket into orbit. And they just so happened to have one on hand.
Rihanna would go up in it and talk to whoever. An alien. She would let them have Australia if they’d agree to that, and then once they were on the ground...
The aliens had eliminated most of the space and air forces of the United States. But there were plenty of people and maybe plenty of soldiers. The aliens couldn’t fight all of humanity if humanity banded together.
Ideas and notions freewheeled in Rihanna’s imagination. If she could get the aliens to come down from the high ground, she could fight them.
First, she had to get to White Sands.
Then she had to talk to the aliens.
Which meant now she had to talk to Stanley.
“How much food is left in the building?” she asked her husband, meaning, how much time did she have?
“The staff still won’t say.”
“Then find out.”
“Yes, ma’am,” her husband replied. He winked at her. She hated it and loved it when he treated her like that.
Stanley prepared for his visit with the Acting President. Finally, the woman had seen reason. He regretted the shootout that had killed so many humans, but they had attacked first. The Hrwang were furious. He’d have to do something to pacify them.
Even the Lord Admiral had been furious. He’d yelled at the Second Colonel Grenadier over the ship’s radio for a long time, then yelled at Stanley for broadcasting sensitive information, even if the communication was triply encrypted. Any broadcast could be decoded with enough computer power. Stanley was to limit himself to direct contact in the future, downloading messages onto Hrwang craft and allowing them to be transported directly to the Lord Admiral at the palace.
Stanley had been too afraid to ask what the palace was.
But the Lord Admiral had sent reinforcements.
Stanley decided the UN tower was the perfect spot for his new headquarters. He discussed non-lethal means of dispersing the protestors at the base of it with the Colonel and Stanley was confident it could be done.
The symbol of the United Nations building, it’s goal to force nations to cooperate, resonated with Stanley. It’s what he needed to do. It’s what the Hrwang told him he needed to do. To get the nations of the Earth to cooperate with each other and with the Hrwang, and allow the Hrwang to help them recover from the devastatin
g war.
The Lord Admiral had provided an unencrypted assessment of the damage to the Earth. He said he didn’t care if other people saw it. They needed to know what they were facing. Stanley was horrified by the damage tally and made notes on it to share with the Acting President. Maybe it would get her to do something sensible.
The nuclear attacks on the European continent had killed hundreds of millions and at least two billion more people were threatened by clouds of fallout. Nothing could be done about them.
In order to defend themselves, the Hrwang had used drones with AIs to direct meteors to neutralize military targets in much the same manner as a drone had transported Beagle from Mars back to Earth orbit. An unfortunate consequence: dust kicked up by the meteors had triggered a cold summer worldwide and crops were failing. Some of the Hrwang troops patrolling in various parts of the world reporting widespread looting and rioting. They were afraid to land and tended to do so only in isolated locations, like the desert where they had taken Stanley and Irina.
How could the Hrwang help if they couldn’t even land?
The end of their communication had disturbed Stanley. He trusted the Lord Admiral, but he had a hard time reading the man. He knew the Lord Admiral wanted to help, but he had a short temper. He had snapped at Stanley.
Stanley had tried to defend himself, to defend the Earth, when the Lord Admiral complained about the rioting that prevented his soldiers from helping distribute food and tend to the injured.
“They’re doing worse than rioting, Ambassador,” the Lord Admiral said. “Murder, rape, slavery. It’s appalling. My people aren’t safe.”
“I don’t know what I can do about it,” Stanley replied. The anger evident in the Lord Admiral’s eyes on the view screen made it clear Stanley had said the wrong thing.
“You are the Ambassador for your entire world to my people. You need to think globally. You need to think bigger. Don’t limit yourself to the scope of one person or even one tiny group. You need to figure out how to save your entire world from the devastation you have wrought upon it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Start by stopping the violence!”
“How, Lord Admiral? How am I supposed to do that? How do you make someone stop fighting? How do you change human nature? They’re hungry. And I’m sure there are criminal elements who have taken advantage of the situation. I don’t know how to stop them, short of killing them...”
The Lord Admiral cut him off. “Excellent suggestion,” he said and disconnected.
“What?” Stanley cried. What had he meant? “Get him back on,” he commanded the Hrwang soldier who had established the communication. The man shrugged. “Get him on. Now!” The man just shrugged again.
Stanley left the ship in disgust and returned to the offices they had commandeered.
The Second Colonel Grenadier sympathized with Stanley. He sat across from Stanley and offered him a cup of water.
“The Lord Admiral is angry,” he said to Stanley. “He did not like losing soldiers. The three killed were half my command.”
“He sent you more soldiers.”
“But to lose half my command. Very bad. I will never be promoted.”
“Oh,” Stanley said. “I’m sorry.”
“I should have done more. I should have anticipated something like this. Your people are violent.”
Stanley had a headache. He needed a good night’s sleep. Sleeping on the floors of spaceships and conference rooms was not how he thought his life would be as Ambassador to the Hrwang. He felt bad for the Colonel but worse for himself.
“We need to end this,” he said. “Somehow. I need to figure out how to reach people.”
Not long after that, the Acting President finally accepted his call and wanted to meet. They agreed on a time and a place and on security procedures. Stanley prepared for the meeting by making notes on the damage to the Earth. Maybe, working with her together, they could do something about it.
He had to try. He had to succeed. He was the Ambassador.
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