Never Again

by M. A. Rothman

  “Please take Senator Hoffman into custody.” She pointed at the dark-haired senator. Two soldiers jogged forward, grabbed him by his arms, and dragged him kicking and screaming from the chambers.

  “By this declaration, I’m suspending all committee operations in Congress. There’s no need for them, because soon we’ll all be suffering through a curfew and a relocation process. Yes, even me. We’ll discuss the details at a later time, but I would like all of you in these chambers to step in line with a new set of assignments. Your priorities will be to help maintain public order.

  “In the upcoming months, we will suffer many inconveniences. But we need all of you to communicate with your constituents and to keep things calm. The last thing we need are riots in the streets, but trust me—any public unrest will be treated in the harshest manner imaginable.

  “Is there anyone in the chamber who feels that they cannot comply with these expectations? Speak now and I’ll contact your state’s governor and arrange for you to be replaced so you can go home. However, if I find that any of you are somehow subverting the cause or working against the people’s best interests, you will be locked up for an indefinite period of time. Certainly until this crisis is over.”

  Burt stared at the sea of faces, all of them seeming to have frozen into statues. Evidently, none wanted to give the impression that they were going to argue with this no-nonsense president.

  “Good.” Margaret nodded. “However, I do want to give you this solemn pledge. Once the danger is over, I will return everything back to the way it was. Trust me, I don’t relish what I’m doing.”

  The president glanced at Burt, and with a barely suppressed smile, she asked, “You ready for more questions? I think things will be more productive now.”

  Burt nodded, and the president leaned closer to the microphone. “Now that that’s over, Doctor Radcliffe, I hope you can overlook some of the unpleasantness of one bad egg. Many of these people are much more reasonable, and I consider many of them to be close, personal friends. They’re going to need your help explaining what’s going on to their constituents.

  “The floor is yours.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Neeta watched as Dave studied one of DefenseNet’s space anchors. It was a giant metal box that easily weighed five tons, and it was ready for deployment. However, Dave insisted on inspecting the laser and the rest of the payload. He lifted one of the access panels to look inside and asked, “The laser is rated at six megawatts, right?”

  “Yup.” Neeta nodded. “The ISF folks finally managed a design that was reliable once it’s up in space. All things considered, if we actually needed to shove an incoming asteroid in another direction to avoid us, we’ll have nearly 200 megawatts of coordinated laser power to bring to bear.”

  “That won’t be enough,” said Bella ominously, who’d been standing next to the wall of the supply room. “While you could destroy some smaller objects, the larger ones are your problem. Even if you fired the lasers today at an incoming asteroid in excess of 20 miles wide, all it would do is ablate parts of the surface, nudging it ever so slightly. Any effect would need to be done with the asteroid further away.”

  “She’s right, Neeta,” said Dave. “And besides, even though the lasers on DefenseNet are good on paper and it’s how we get the public to understand what we’re doing, it doesn’t address our immediate needs. We don’t have the time necessary for it to be effective against some of what’s incoming, and you and I both know that it won’t do crap against the black hole.”

  Having removed the side panel, Dave stared at the text printed on the side of the multi-ton components built into the space anchor. “What about the battery? Can it sustain drops in the power flow coming from the ground without interrupting laser operations?”

  “If we encounter a power interruption from the ground, the battery can store enough energy to sustain max output from the laser for probably half a day or so before we see a drop-off. I didn’t think we’d need more than that.”

  Dave gave her the same sidelong glance he used to give when she said something inordinately stupid. “For our immediate purposes, I don’t actually give a damn about the laser. The laser is there to justify the rest of this stuff. People can understand the laser, but they don’t understand the rest of this. Remember back in the Situation Room when I said that we’d be feeding nearly seventy percent of the world’s power output through these so-called elevators? A six mega-watt laser doesn’t need anything even resembling that kind of power. Crap, if that’s all we needed the lasers for, we’d have stationed them up above with large solar power aggregators to store enough energy for their use. No, in total, we’ll be feeding nearly thirty terawatts of power and shunting it across the connected ring at the end of the elevator’s spokes.”

  “Whoa, I didn’t think....” Neeta quickly crunched the numbers in her head. “Well, if we have thirty-six of these flying above us, and if you needed to power the ring through the batteries, I don’t think you can get all of the power you need out of them fast enough. But even if you could, I’d wager it would drain them in a couple of seconds.” Neeta’s eyes widened as she envisioned a glowing ring of power encircling the Earth, and only then did things snap visually into place for her. “But there’s no way these batteries can handle that kind of power flow. They’ll be incinerated.”

  Dave gave Neeta a knowing smile. “Don’t worry, I’ve asked for some of the goodies I designed to be transported here from the Moon base where I’ve been hiding for the last couple years. They’ll help route and switch the incoming power feeding into what I’m calling the Warp Ring. Just so you know, from my experiments, I got much better results creating a stable bubble by running off the direct current from a battery than I did from what the power grid gives us. That being said, the only reason I designed this with the batteries as the space anchor was to normalize the spikes and drop-offs inherent to the power coming from our electrical substations.”

  Neeta shuddered. “Um, I don’t even want to contemplate what might happen if we’re traveling at high speed and that bubble of yours collapses.”

  “That’s why we have the batteries,” replied Dave. “A couple seconds should be good enough for any hiccups. Hell, we could even sustain a complete shutdown of one or two spokes at a time, and the power incoming from the rest should be enough to maintain the gravity bubble. I just don’t want to take any chances, for some of the reasons you noted.” Dave resealed the space anchor’s metal enclosure and stood. “This looks good enough. Show me what’s been done with the graphene spools. If we can’t get this beast up in space and attached to a power source down here, this is all for naught anyway.”

  ###

  As Dave and Bella stood near the doorway, Neeta riffled through a file cabinet in one of the crowded storage offices located within the ISF’s headquarters building. It took a few moments, but she finally found the folder that contained the production samples she’d approved just prior to her leaving to work on the West Coast for NASA. She handed to Dave one of the sample sheets of the graphene the ISF had been producing ever since she’d left. “If you look closely at it, it’s much thicker than the production methods you’d been using to create your original spools. We discovered a way of creating a thicker fused array of graphene sheets that preserved all of its electrical and thermal conductivity properties while also maintaining the structural integrity.”

  Waving the nearly transparent sheet in the air, Dave studied it under one of the bright lights on a nearby desk and asked, “How much have we made, and can its production be accelerated?”

  Flipping through the sheaf of papers, Neeta skimmed the inventory of the various ISF warehouses across the globe. “I’d say we have nearly 700,000 miles of material, all on gigantic spools, ready to be deployed.”

  Letting out a deep sigh, Dave grumbled, “That’s not enough. We need closer to a million miles if we’re going to place an elevator along every ten-degree parallel al
ong the equator.”

  Neeta frowned, knowing that it had taken almost three years to create what they already had in stock. “Are you sure we need that much? I’ll make some calls and see what can be done.”

  Bella’s normally quiet voice carried a worried tone as she blurted, “We must have 828,000 miles of the ribbon for the thirty-six elevators at 23,000 miles each and approximately 170,000 miles to connect all of the space-anchors together.”

  With a warm smile, Dave reached out to Bella and rubbed the back of her neck. “As Bella affirmed, and if my math is correct, I think 828,000 and 170,000 is just shy of a million miles of material. If we can’t get enough material, we can try to space the elevators out further so that we have fewer of them. But I’m not sure if the current flowing through steeper angles are going to change the effectiveness—”

  “Enough, we’ll get it done one way or another.” Neeta groused, as she tapped on her ear bud and said, “Dial Burt Radcliffe.”

  She waited a moment as her cell phone projected a ringing tone in her ear. One ring ... two rings ... and Burt answered, “What do you want, I’m about to walk into a meeting with more generals than I’d like to ever meet in my life.”

  “Burt, we’ve got issues,” she said. “We’ve only got about seventy percent of the graphene we need for Indigo. I don’t think the production facilities we have online can make up the difference in time, and we’ve only got five months—”

  Dave tapped Neeta’s shoulder, shook his head, and whispered, “Four months ... we need time for testing of all the power station connections and....”

  “Scratch that, Burt, we’ve only got four months. Can you help?”

  “As soon as I get out of this meeting, I’ll get right on it. Send me the details in an e-mail, as well as who the manufacturing techs are that we know can do this right now. Whoever needs to get sent to Lord-knows-where to train other facilities, I’ll make sure it gets done. You just focus on helping Dave deploy the Indigo solution. Let me worry about getting you what you need. Hey, I have to go; send the details.”

  The connection dropped, and Neeta turned to Dave with a brief nod. “We’ll have what we need.”

  With a grim expression, Dave wrapped his arm around Bella’s waist and gave her a one-armed hug. “While that’s being arranged, I’ll get the modifications done on the space-based anchors. As we get those deployed, Burt can help get us the supplies we need, and Neeta, can you find out how we’re doing on getting power to all of the Earth-based anchor stations? As you know, without power, all of this is pointless.”

  Neeta sighed, knowing he was right and hating that her life had suddenly gotten so complicated. Working with Dave again reminded her of the pressure she felt when working with someone who seemingly had unlimited intellect and energy.

  It made her miss working with Burt and the rest of the crew at JPL.

  “I’ve got a call in to the Secretary of State and the head of the Department of Energy as well. Connections from the national power grid systems to the base stations have been arranged with almost everyone, but I’ll check again.”

  Dave gave her his all-too-familiar expression, the one he got when his mind was churning at a million miles an hour and he was losing patience with everyone around him. “Check right away. I plan on getting my ass up on a shuttle and starting this business as soon as possible. The first station south of us is just outside of Quito, Ecuador, and I want to test the connections as we go along. Those are the failure points. We don’t have time for delays.”

  “Fine, let me go find a secure line somewhere in this building, and I’ll get on it now.”

  As Neeta left the office, with Dave and Bella following close behind, she silently wished for the quiet times she’d experienced when all she had to worry about was monitoring near-Earth objects.

  ###

  Only a few hours earlier, Neeta, Dave, and Bella had arrived at the Mariscal Sucre Air Base in Quito, Ecuador. Neeta had expected the heat to be overwhelming. Instead, the altitude was what gave her discomfort. At nearly 8,000 feet, the air was cool, but the lower oxygen levels were giving her a terrible headache.

  They’d been assigned a multi-bedroom suite in a rather fancy hotel, and as Dave droned on about the upcoming day’s plans, Bella had gone to sleep, while Neeta was leaning back in her chair and wishing she could get rid of her headache.

  Suddenly, there was a loud knock on the hotel room’s door. Neeta hopped out of her chair, and as Dave approached from behind, she peered through the peephole. The familiar voice of one of the Secret Service agents echoed through the door. “Doctor Patel, Doctor Holmes, I’ve got a courier message for you.”

  Opening the door, Neeta was met with the steely-eyed gaze of the leader from their security detail. Behind him stood a wide-eyed woman holding a notebook-sized canvas bag to her chest. With Dave hovering behind Neeta, the agent leaned closer and spoke in a very low voice, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but the DCS sent a message.” He motioned toward the nervous-looking woman. “She has something coded for your eyes only. I figured it might be urgent.”

  Neeta asked the courier, “DCS?”

  “I work for the Defense Courier Service, ma’am. I carry secure dispatches—”

  “I understand,” Neeta quipped, and extended her hand. The courier gave her the locked canvas bag, and a three-foot-long metal chain extended from the woman’s wrist to the bag.

  Neeta glanced at the three-man security detail stationed outside their hotel room and noticed for the first time that a handful of agents stood at each end of the hallway as well. She wondered if they’d always been there, or if something had happened.

  “Let’s get out of the hallway,” Dave suggested.

  Turning back toward her room, Neeta motioned for the courier to follow.

  Neeta and Dave both took their seats around the dining room table, which they’d covered with a mess of maps and scribbled logistics notes. The courier stood over Neeta, her face expressionless. One of their security agents stood watch only five feet away. Turning the bag over, she saw that the only information written on it was the hotel name and her room number. A heavy-duty metal zipper sealed the bag with a fingerprint lock. Neeta pressed her thumb to the fingerprint scanner, and almost immediately heard a soft click.

  The woman nodded. “Doctor Patel, now that the bag’s inner seal has been exposed to air, I’m supposed to inform you that the ink will ignite the paper in thirty minutes. I’m to return the remains of the document in the fireproof carrier.”

  With Dave leaning over her shoulder, Neeta retrieved the envelope from the courier’s bag, ignored the “Top Secret—INDIGO” emblazoned across the envelope in glaring red letters, and began reading the contents of the ominous envelope.

  Doctors Holmes and Patel,

  The president has asked that certain pieces of intelligence be disclosed to both of you.

  We have quadrupled your security detail and further work is being done to safeguard your mission.

  Unfortunately, we have been made aware of a security breach we believe has come from the maintenance crew working in Andrews. Despite the leak of information, we do not believe that your mission has been compromised.

  Our intelligence operatives have intercepted a transmission that indicates Doctor Holmes has become a target.

  Rest assured, we’ll keep you safe.

  ----------------------------------------------------------

  Intercepted transmission dated: 13 JUL 2066

  Timestamp: 13:51 GMT

  “An unscheduled military flight has been booked with presidential authority to the Mariscal Sucre International Airport.

  Doctor David Wendell Holmes is currently boarding with several other unidentified civilians. There’s a heavy security contingent accompanying them.”

  ----------------------------------------------------------

  Intercepted transmission dated: 13 JUL 2066

  Timestamp: 15
:23 GMT

  Automatically Translated From: Bulgarian

  “Praise to God and all his faithful, the time of Armageddon is at hand.

  Only through His will can the savior be brought forth, yet we have received confirmation that the Ecuadorian government is cooperating with the U.S. on something that concerns all of the Brotherhood.

  An American scientist, David Wendell Holmes, is scheduled to arrive on an American military transport at Mariscal Sucre International Airport. His sudden appearance is unsettling, and we fear that he is working to alter God’s plan. He must be stopped at all costs; God’s will must be carried out. None can be allowed to interfere.

  Spare no expense and have no mercy.

  -BR”

  Neeta stared at the paper as a chill raced up her spine. If these lunatics knew where they were going, someone inside the government must have leaked the information. She turned to Dave with a worried expression; he sat back in his chair, staring vacantly at nothing whatsoever.

  The agent in charge of their security detail pressed his hand to his earpiece and turned to Neeta and Dave. “The hotel has been cordoned off and they’re doing a security sweep as we speak. The windows in this room are bulletproof, so you’ll be safe staying here until our departure for the anchor site. We’ll have a large escort on the way there.”

  Letting out a deep shuddering breath, Neeta stuffed the papers back into the fireproof bag, handed it to the courier, and whispered, “Tell them, ‘Thanks for letting us know.’”

  ###

  Evidently there’d been an attack on the hotel while they slept, but with well over one hundred soldiers safeguarding their location, Neeta would never have known had their security detail not informed them during breakfast.

  She wouldn’t have thought it possible to get her mind off the anxiety of being a target for some religious nutcases, but the rough trip through the jungle had done the job.