Mr. Khan stays quiet.
Ms. Fontana looks at the Assistant Secretary again. "That's exactly why I invited my guests. Because the people know exactly what the issues are, but you elites never do. This isn't about pride or your honor. This is about innocent women. These are Brazilian women...Spanish American women. Were you not born of a woman, or are we mistaken?"
"Don't waste your breath," Serena says to her and looks at the man in white again. "No, Mr. Khan, I can see the future. The eye that is covered by my patch sees the future. It sees the darkness in others. It sees you as it's seen so many others before you." She turns away from him and focuses on one of the other women of Fontana's group—Persia. She hugs her and says, "I'm so sorry."
Persia doesn't know what she means. Serena walks past the men into the general assembly auditorium as they watch her.
The Assistant Secretary looks back at Fontana. "What is she doing? None of them are allowed to speak."
He follows with the men around him. Fontana and her group trail in after them. Serena is talking to a little boy in one of the rear seats a few yards away. Khan tries to hide his surprise, but says nothing as the group stops in place.
The interior of the general assembly auditorium is massive, open, and concave in structure, with the top of the ceiling twenty feet up. At the head of the auditorium, behind the rows of member nation seats, are giant flags on translucent poles, three rows, of each of the Spanish American nations.
Khan says to himself, "Why is she talking to my son?"
"What's that under your chair, young man?" Serena asks.
The boy hesitates in answering. "I have to pretend it's not here. I'll get in trouble."
"Is that a real hover-board? The one you can do all those tricks with?"
"Yeah."
"How far can it hover?"
"One and a half meters off the ground, but it can shoot you up."
"Very good."
"What are you supposed to be?"
"Me? I'm a nun of the Catholic Order."
"Oh, a church lady. My parents say church people are stupid."
"That isn't a very nice thing to say, young man, to people who you don't even know. You should be nice to everyone, except for those doing bad or evil things to others. What if I was to make such assumptions about you? We wouldn't be having this friendly conversation."
"What does the Catholic Order do anyway?"
Sister Serena puts her hands on her hips. "Do you want to talk religion or hover-boards?"
The boy starts laughing. "You know what I'm going to say."
"So do we have a deal or what?"
"Deal? What deal?"
She leans down and whispers to talk to the boy.
The men watch but they are too far away to hear. The Assistant Secretary looks back at Fontana. "I said what I said, so I will continue with my duties. Please keep your party in observance of the assembly guest rules or they will be escorted out by security."
"Why are you doing this?" Fontana asks. "These are our girls. Our boys. Our children. Crimes against the children of all of the Spanish Americas. Why are you disgracing yourself like this?"
"Good day, Ms. Fontana," he says and walks away with his two aides and the rest of the men.
They move down the main aisle and pass Sister Serena. The Assistant Secretary glances at her talking to the boy, but ignores them. Halfway down they hear a commotion and turn.
"Oh my..." The Assistant Secretary and everyone else are shocked.
Sister Serena zips past all of them, six feet in the air on a silver hover-board. People duck as she flies over them and then jumps off it when she reaches the main stage. Security appear from everywhere and rush to the stage.
She is already speaking into the invisible sound zone. "Women, it's 2096 and these men are still trying to shut us up in the Spanish Americas on the issues we care about. All together now." She raises her hands in the air. Everyone notices the illegal cross on the necklace around her neck. "No sex...till no sex slavery."
Some burst out laughing, others are in complete disbelief, but soon all the women in the assembly rise to their feet from their seats, both delegates and citizens, and begin chanting, getting louder and louder.
The Secretary General appears from the side with several aides. His face is distraught, not knowing what to do. He angrily looks at the Assistant Secretary.
Khan takes his seat and watches with a smirk.
"What is it?" his aide asks.
"She's putting on a show."
What do you mean?"
"The imaginary god believers run circles around my truth-thinking atheist people, but to watch you'd have to say they are more superior than us."
"I don't know what you mean, sir. What show?"
"Misdirection. I remember when I was in Venezuela when these imaginary god believers played their tricks with the government. Keep us occupied with the left hand, while they do something else with the right. I've seen them do it before."
The shouts by all the women get louder in unison. "No sex until no sex slavery!"
Jungle location, Brazil
2:50 p.m., 1 October 2096
Under the thick tree cover and anti-satellite camouflage nets, dozens of armed men in black military uniforms wait. Some sit in all-terrain vehicles; others stand around three large army-green helicopter personnel carriers.
A man stands up from his passenger seat in one of the Jeeps, gesturing to the men. He continues to listen carefully to the messages coming though his ear-set communicator.
"We move! Move out now!" he yells in Portuguese. "The military is coming."
The men rush to the heli-transports and board as the Jeeps drive to the rear of the transports' opening cargo bay doors and then inside. In moments, they are airborne.
"This is the Brazilian Armed Forces. Unidentified transports, you are to immediately reverse your ascent and land," a male voice booms through the overhead of each transport.
The uniformed men ignore it. In the cockpit of the lead heli-transport, the senior man gestures to the pilots. They increase their upward velocity.
"This is the Brazilian Armed Forces. You will be fired upon—"
"Brazilian military," a female voice interrupts him on the same frequency. "You will not fire upon those transports. They are filled with illegal sex slaves. You will stand down and return to your base."
"Who is this? Get off this channel. You are not to interfere with official military operations."
"Brazilian military, stand down or we will open fire on you."
"Who is this?"
"This is the military forces of the Underground Railroad. The slaves on those transports will be liberated. The slavers will be captured or killed. Any interference from you will be dealt with by deadly force."
The men in the transports look at each other with worried looks. The boss man touches his ear-set to talk.
"This is the captain of the transport. No one fire on us. We are transporting legal cargo."
"Captain of the unidentified transports," the male voice says, "we have been tracking your Jeep convoy for the last two hours and we tracked your three heli-transports as soon as they entered Brazilian airspace. We scanned the transports and you have six thousand persons in your cargo holds. You are to land immediately."
"Captain," the female voice says, "my sister and I are going to slice your head off and give it to the children to play football with in the streets."
"Underground Railroad, get off this channel!" the male voice yells.
"Captain, we will be face-to-face soon," she says.
The captain looks at his men. "Where are they?"
"We don't see anything in the air," a man in the cockpit answers, his eyes fixed on his display console. "And nothing is on radar."
"Find them. How far is the military?"
"They're in target range now."
Three jets close in on the four heli-transports. From within the clouds, a volley of laser tracer missiles s
trike. The lead Brazilian military jet's tail bursts into fire and the wings of the second and third erupt. All three spiral down into jungles below. Multiple eject seats shoot away into the sky as the jets explode on impact.
The rotary blades of the heli-transports are hit next. The sky-ships rapidly descend as spoiler wings automatically pop out from the sides. The four transports crash violently through the tree canopy to the ground.
The uniformed slave runners exit the transports or fall out. The captain hops on his left leg out of the lead ship and gestures to his men.
"Set up defense positions now! Make the perimeter farther into the jungle."
The captain is shot first. Gunfire erupts from within the trees. After a few moments, bipedal robot 'hounds' exit the jungle and run to the bodies of the dead uniformed men scattered everywhere. They scan each body for life signs. One man is alive and the robot fires a round from its face turret into his head, killing him. The hounds power down to stand-by mode.
Heavily armed men and women in camouflaged uniforms come out of the jungle towards the transports. They all are wearing green tinted goggles and swarm around the area, re-scanning for any bio or heat signatures. The fighters speak Spanish to each other.
The Twins appear with a bodyguard detail of fighters. Their code name used to be The Betty Boop Twins for their fascination and unique slicked-back hairstyles from the 1940s cartoon character of the same name. Now it is simply The Twins. They are the 'conductors' of the slave rescue operation. Their belts have a gun holster each, but most prominent is the various kinds of knives lining it. Around their necks on a chain is also a dagger each.
"Notify Archangel that the packages have been secured," one of the Twins says to a squad member.
"Yes, ma'am."
As the comm person starts to call in, a female and male team run to them.
"Multiple casualties," he says.
One Twin asks, "Are we secure?"
"One secure," a voice comes in through her ear-set.
"Two, secure," a new voice says.
"Three, secure."
"Four, secure."
The Twins turn to look at another member of their squad. The squad member looks up from her wrist display and says, "No approaching military on the board."
"That won't remain the case for long," one Twin says.
The other Twin says into her ear-set line, "We need Med Corps in here now. Multiple packages have been damaged."
"Touching down now," a female voice responds.
Two sky-ships appear above them, hovering. They begin to descend slowly. As the wind whips up dirt and debris, its doors begin to open. The first person to jump off is Rabba Silva, even before the Amish and Mennonite men can help her. She's wearing a white headscarf and a white apron with a large Star of David over her casual black dress attire. Silva is one of the few female rabbis in the Orthodox Jewish Order and the mission's medical operational leader. She counts each person of the initial line of Amish and Mennonite men as they jump onto the ground. The Amish men wear dark denim pants, a light blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and suspenders, with their wide-brimmed straw hats. The Mennonite men have blue denim overalls over their dark-colored shirts and wear black fedoras. For both Orders, men don't shave their beards after they marry and never allow mustaches to grow. None of the men have beards. Silva begins to count the Christian women (Amish, Mennonite, and Catholic nuns) and Jewish women (Hasidic and Orthodox) as they exit the gunship too. Amish women are in standard dress—hair worn in a bun under white bonnets, long-sleeved calf-length blue dresses, black shoes, and stockings. Mennonite women dress similar to Amish women, but wear wide-brimmed hats.
The Twins walk to Rabba Silva, but wait until she finishes counting. The juxtaposition of Amish, Mennonite, and Old World Jews, all whose dress hadn't changed in some two hundred years on high-tek sky-ships with robots running about still elicits slight amusement in the Twins. The Medical Corps teams quickly move to the transports.
"How many are there?" Rabba Silva asks.
"Six thousand," one Twin answers.
"Offensive. How many millennia have to pass before this evil institution is no more?" Rabba Silva says, shaking her head.
"How is your team doing?"
"My girls and my boys are all doing splendid. I see the new Medical Corps as being a permanent structure within the Continuum. Don't you agree?"
"I don't know why we didn't do it sooner," a Twin says.
"We need to be out of here yesterday," her sister says.
Rabba Silva nods. "We will have the uninjured board your helicopters and the wounded on ours. Not quite in time for yesterday, but in time for fifteen to twenty minutes from now."
The Twins smile.
"Thank you, Rabba," they say.
"Thank you, Sisters," Silva answers back.
The Twins are formally the Sisters Guerras, senior leaders in the New Catholic Order.
"You'll be back in time to see that nice young man of yours made pope," Silva adds.
"We'll save you a seat."
Inside the transport is like a massive cattle car, virtually dark except for the dim glow of red lights above. The women are shackled, row after row of benches. They all sit quietly with all eyes on the main cargo doors—tired, ragged, shaken, and scared. They had heard the explosions outside. Their own transport practically crashed vertically to the ground.
The massive rear cargo hold door begins to open—retracting away and down. A couple of the women jump up from their benches and run to the sides of the opening bay door for cover—they have broken free from their shackles due to the crash. The door is about halfway down when the figure of the first man approaches. One of the women raises with both hands what looks to be a giant dome metal nut and slams it down on the man's head as soon as he sets a foot inside. The man falls forward to the ground.
The door is completely open and with the full light, the women can see that it is actually a surrogate robot. Outside are several more and behind them are real men and women in camo-fatigues. Behind them are strangely dressed men with wide-brimmed hats and women in bonnets.
"Hey!" a woman's voice in English says. The Amish woman tries to walk forward, but is restrained by the Amish men and the soldiers. "Why isn't this working?" she asks one of the soldiers. One of the women soldiers pushes the button on the small device clipped to her dress. "Testing," she says in English.
"Testing," the translator repeats in Portuguese.
"That's better," she says with the device repeating.
"Hey! I said. Why did you knock over our robot?" She looks at the soldiers. "I keep telling you that your robots look too mean. You need to make fluffy robots."
The soldiers smile and laugh.
Kristiana returns her attention back to the women. "We're the good guys, so put down that weapon. I'm Kristiana of the Amish Order. Do you know about us?"
The device repeats her words.
The woman drops the metal component and it crashes to the metal floor with an echoing thud. She nods.
"My friends here are Catholics, Mennonites, Hasidim, Orthodox, and other Amish like me. We're here to help you. These soldiers are going to check everything inside first and then release all your restraints. Then you'll come with us," Kristiana says. "We're the Underground Railroad."
"They don't know what that is," says one of the male soldiers. "Underground Railroad is the northern term—from America, Mexico, and Canada. Say 'The Invisible Fighters.' That's the term here. It's short for 'The Fighters for Invisible Women.'"
"Oh," she says. The device repeats exactly, making her smile. "We're the Fighters for Invisible Women."
All the women stand after the translator repeats.
"That got their attention," Kristiana says. "And we're the Medical Corps. We'll make sure you're safe and medically well. Then we'll take you to your homes. You're free. Is that okay?"
The women nod; some begin to cry.
"Kristiana, for a pacifist you're ver
y bold," says one of the Orthodox Jewish women. "I'd say it's a good thing you're a pacifist."
"I told her when she was in my classes that she was a pacifist with the warrior's heart," Rabba Silva says.
She smiles at her. "I don't know about that. I like to get to things and cut out all the nonsense. I think that's the best way. And these women need us to be that way for them now."
The Catholic fighters have every bay door open on all three of the heli-transports and closely watch both the area and the surrounding jungle. The Medical Corps of Amish, Mennonite, Catholic, and Jewish women use hover-gurneys to move the more seriously wounded of the women; others help or lead the able to the two medical sky-ships. Amish and Mennonite men stay close to give a sense of security, keeping an active watch of the surroundings. Most of the women are scantily dressed, all are young, and none of them have seen daylight or food for days.
"Movement!" one of the watchers yells, looking up from her wrist display.
Everyone moves faster. A squad member snaps her fingers and the robot hounds re-activate and run back into the jungle.
"Everyone is aboard," a squad member says to the Twins.
They see Rabba Silva step back onto her lead med-ship and give the Twins a thumbs up signal.
The Twins nod and lead the remaining Catholic fighter squads back into the jungle.
Two new Brazilian military gun-ships slow to a stop above the jungle. Multiple tracer missiles strike and explode both helicopters, with eject seats launching. The convoy appears from under the trees—seven hover-jets of the Underground Railroad and the two Med Corps med-ships—and rocket away as the pilots of the destroyed military gun-ships parachute down as fragments and debris rain down to the ground.
The Palácio do Planalto, Brasília, Brazil
7:50 p.m., 1 October 2096
The Brazilian president listens to the briefing of his men.
Pure Conspiracy (The After Eden Series): The Genesis of World War III Page 6
