by Greg Keyes
His sensors told him he had registered a non-lethal hit in his wing. Just a flesh wound. Then he saw that he was approaching an open plain. He pulled back the stick and turned up, just as more laser fire went by.
“Ah, shoot,” Fiona said. “I’m out, but I got your eye-in-the-sky, Dylan.”
“Thanks, Three,” Dylan said. “I owe you one.”
Another near miss blazed by, and he began veering randomly to present a harder target.
“Lance Two? Jake?”
“Right here, buddy,” Jake said as his fighter emerged over the lip of the last crater and pelted the enemy on his tail with green light.
“Squadron report,” Dylan said.
Of the twelve, only five were still considered operative. Most of the enemy was gone, but Twelve, Eight, and Six were driving those that remained away from the moon.
“Find that lunar target,” Twelve said. “We’ll keep these off of you.”
* * *
“I think I see it,” Jake said.
The dogfight had taken them pretty far from the moon base and eaten up a good bit of their lead over the other squadrons—maybe too much.
“Yeah, I see it, Lance Two,” Dylan responded.
Jake’s radar showed a blip approaching the base, something larger than the fighter drones. He gained a little more altitude, glancing down at the rugged pockmarks of the moonscape below. A cluster of radar signals appeared, coming from the near side of the debris field.
“What’s that?” Jake said. “More aliens?”
“Claymore Squadron,” Dylan said. “Dammit, they’re closer than we are now.”
Heart pounding, Jake checked his readings.
“No,” Jake said. “We can do this. We just have to push it, that’s all. They have to decelerate to keep from whomping into the moon. Big Mama there is about fifty klicks from the base. We’re lower than that…”
“So we can accelerate,” Dylan finished. “It’s gonna be close.”
As they pushed their H-7s to their maximum acceleration, Jake felt like a comet, like a missile, like nothing he had ever known before. None of it was real, but it felt real, and they were kicking ass. All they had to do was pull off this last little trick.
This was what he had worked for, fought for, and he knew now that he could never get enough of it. Let the real aliens come back, let them try. He would fly rings around them and blow them out of the sky, and he would do it in Legacy Squadron. It didn’t matter what the world thought.
He believed. Charlie believed.
“Buddy,” Dylan said. “You need to trim back. You’re on a possible collision course with Claymore Three.”
“He’ll blink,” Jake said.
“What if he doesn’t?” Dylan said. “This is a training mission.”
“I can do this, Dylan,” Jake said. “I can take the shot.”
“No,” Dylan said. “I can do it, and without ramming into one of our own.”
“It’s my shot,” Jake said. “Dylan, I can see it. You’re still too far away.” He had visual contact with a silver sphere that almost screamed “target.” He began trying to get a lock. Meanwhile, Claymore Squadron also came into sight.
Whatever the target was, it seemed to have some sort of field that was preventing him from locking on. Which just meant he had to go to visual and get closer.
“I’ve got it, Jake,” Dylan said. “Peel off.”
Jake ignored him, concentrating on the target. He began firing his laser, hoping to establish a range, use the lasers to paint the target for the missile, rather than radar.
Claymore Three was getting very large in his two o’clock, very quickly. He cut to the left to get out of its way—and it followed him.
“What the—”
He suddenly realized that Claymore Three wasn’t an H-7—it was a drone.
Another little twist in the test.
He fired his missile and rolled desperately, but it wasn’t enough. Emergency shields on both craft flashed on as they nicked each other and both went wildly out of control. He saw stars and craters, spinning around him, but he pulled back on the stick and kicked it hard, still trying to stabilize. Saw the target and made that his axis, gradually killing the spin.
He realized his missile had missed, and began arming another.
Suddenly a fighter cut in front of him.
Dylan.
“Get your craft under control,” Dylan said. “I have this. That’s a direct order, Lance Two.”
For a moment, Jake almost didn’t comply. Then, cursing to himself, he dropped back, watching helplessly as Dylan took the shot and won the day for Lance Squadron.
He knew he should be happy they’d won. Maybe he would have enough time on the way back to convince himself of that.
But he doubted it.
As they turned back toward Earth, however, his mind drifted toward other things. To Patricia, wherever she was, whatever she was doing. He wished he could talk to her, but their communications were limited to Control and the other participants in the drill.
Their most recent phone conversation had left him a bit worried. Nothing in particular that she said, but just the general tone. As if maybe she was having second thoughts about the whole long-distance thing. Or maybe he was just reading that in.
He would see her again in thirty days.
It was going to be a long month.
* * *
Some of Patricia’s earliest memories were of the National Mall, but like most childhood memories, they were distant, full of color but little detail. Two images remained clear, however.
One was of her father, standing with his back to the Lincoln Memorial, his face and the face of the statue at nearly the same angle. The other was of her mother, in a blue dress, with her hand touching the wall of the Vietnam Memorial, pointing out a certain name to her.
What she remembered more vividly was seeing the Mall rebuilt, watching wasted landscape made green, construction crews that numbered in thousands and lived in temporary government housing that was now long gone. It still wasn’t finished—the construction was ongoing, but the big push was over.
The original mall had been the product of accretion, adding monuments one at a time over a period of roughly a century and a half. The new one sprang up of a piece, the Washington Monument completed at about the same time as the Vietnam War memorial. And like the White House, the new National Mall was bigger than the old.
Patricia looked out from the podium at the enormous crowd, gripped her father’s hand, and wished she was anyplace else.
“In this place,” President Lanford was saying, “we have memorialized the dead of our great leaders, made material the symbols of our ideals—and yes, paid tribute to those who fought and died on behalf of this country. Today we add a new monument in memory of what is without any doubt the very darkest moment of this nation—and of the world. It would be impossible to write the names of everyone who died in what was also our shortest war, even if we knew them all. If we cannot speak their names, though, we can still honor them, and honor those who fought so hard to preserve those of us who remain.”
The cheer was nearly deafening, and her father squeezed her hand, hard. She looked up at him, saw something like panic in his eyes.
“It’s okay,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m right here. Just a few more minutes.”
“President Whitmore?” Lanford said. “Would you do the honors?”
She had to let go of his hand then, as he stepped to the microphone. She saw him straighten a little as he faced the crowd.
You can do it, Dad, she thought, with more prayer than confidence.
“It is my great honor to stand before you today,” he said. “Those of you who remember me may also remember me as being a bit long-winded. If so, don’t worry, I’ll keep it brief.”
A little ripple of laughter traveled through the crowd.
“I only want to say this,” he said. “This monument is more than a memorial, or an elegy m
ade concrete. It is also a celebration of our accomplishments since that day, and the bright hope of our future.” He paused, and she saw a vacant look pass over his face. Then he cleared his throat.
“My fellow Americans,” Whitmore said, “my fellow citizens of the world—I give you the Fourth of July Monument. I declare it open to the nation and to the world.”
Patricia let out the breath she had been holding.
He’d made it.
The monument was surrounded by what the tech people called an optical phase screen, a spin-off of force field technology. So up until that moment, they had been looking at something like a reflective surface, albeit one that flowed sluggishly, as if it were made of mercury. That suddenly vanished.
She had seen the plans for it, but the reality was something else again.
The monument was an enormous sphere, or more precisely a globe, with each continent and island fashioned in fine detail. No national or state boundaries were present, but each city that had been destroyed in 1996 was signified by a small, five-pointed star. The globe itself was dark and burnished, but the stars were of some brighter material. So too were the words etched in the oceans and seas, connecting the continents to one another. It was one phrase, written in every script and language on Earth.
We’re going to live on.
Like everyone else, she was looking at the monument when her father staggered back and lost his footing. By the time she realized it had happened, a young secret service man had caught him.
“No, no, no…” her father was whispering.
Patricia looked around. Had anyone seen?
“Let’s go,” she told the agent. “Help me get him to the car.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
They were halfway there when Patricia saw from the corner of her eye McKenna Morgan from FOX News. The reporter and her crew were almost running, trying to catch up with her. So someone had noticed after all.
“Get him there,” she told the agent. “Don’t let anyone talk to him.”
“Okay,” he said.
Patricia spun around and placed herself in front of the approaching crew.
“Ms. Morgan,” she said. “So nice to see you.”
The other woman dithered for a moment, then nodded to her crew. She held up her microphone as the camera light came on.
“I’m here with Patricia Whitmore, daughter of President Thomas Whitmore, and aide to President Lanford. Ms. Whitmore, just a moment ago, we saw President Whitmore fall. Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” Patricia said. “He had a muscle cramp in his calf. You know how those hurt.”
“Can you comment about his health in general?” the reporter pushed on. “Can you confirm or deny the rumors of his illness?”
“I don’t know what rumors you’re referring to,” Patricia said, “but he saw his doctor last week and got a clean bill of health.”
“Can you explain, then, why he’s become so reclusive lately?”
“My father was at the center of the world’s attention for a long time,” Patricia said. “I think he has earned the right to some privacy and some peace and quiet. I’m sure your viewers will agree.”
She saw more reporters were on the way.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said.
“Wait—” the reporter began, but then the agent was there, taking her arm.
“This way, ma’am,” he said, as behind her a wall of secret service formed.
“Thank you, Agent…”
“Travis, ma’am,” he said.
“Thank you, Agent Travis,” she said.
In the car, she found her father still white faced and mumbling. She took his hand.
“It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “We’re going home.” She wanted to cry, but she fought it down, for his sake.
“I can’t,” he said, voice breaking. “I can’t.”
“I know,” she said, and she made yet another decision she had been putting off. No more appearances. If she had her way, the public at large had just seen the last of President Thomas J. Whitmore.
She intended to have her way.
33
OCTOBER
Jake stood in the White House foyer, feeling uncomfortable in his class-A uniform. A steady stream of humanity swirled around him, as if everyone was on some sort of important mission. Maybe they were. He felt conspicuous in his lack of motion. He glanced at his watch and saw she was five minutes late.
Maybe this had been a mistake. They hadn’t seen each other in four months. Maybe…
“Damn, I love a man in uniform. If I didn’t have a boyfriend, but heck, it’s not like he’s here…”
She had somehow snuck up behind him.
“Listen, lady,” he said. “I know everybody thinks us fly-boys are easy, but—well, who am I kidding? We are pretty easy.” He reached for her.
“Whoa,” she said. “Not out here.”
She led him through the grand corridors of the nearly completed White House. He felt a little put-off. She’d been the one to talk about coming out of the shadows, not having to hide anything anymore. What was going on?
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “My meeting with the president went long.”
“So you couldn’t tell her, ‘Hey, the love of my life is waiting downstairs, so get to the point, lady’?”
“Listen to you, with all of your assumptions,” Patricia said. “‘Love of my life.’ Really.”
“So I’m not the love of your life?” he said.
“You got an audition,” she said. “I never said you nailed the part.”
He tried to find a comeback for that, but his brain wasn’t working right. He felt like there was sort of a cloud in there. This wasn’t going as he’d expected, so he decided to change the subject.
“I’ve gotta say, I never thought I’d end up here—in the White House.”
“I never thought I would be back,” Patricia said. “But here I am.”
“It must have been interesting, growing up here,” he said.
“Oh, very,” she said. “There’s nothing more interesting to a seven-year-old than a bunch of politicians and lobbyists.”
“Well,” he said, “now that you put it that way.” But he remembered the stories. How she and Dylan slid down the banisters, eluded secret service in elaborate hide-and-seek games, stole ice cream from the kitchen. To hear Dylan tell it, they’d had a ball here.
She ushered him into a small office and closed the door. He noticed a picture of President Whitmore and the first lady on the desk, and a photo of him, Patricia, and Dylan, posed against a hybrid fighter—the shot taken after their first flight together. The picture hadn’t been taken that long ago, but already it seemed like a window into a different universe.
“This is my office, such as it is,” she said.
“It’s nice,” he began.
“You need to kiss me immediately,” she said.
For some time after that, neither of them said anything.
“Fine,” she said when they came up for air. “You can have the part.”
* * *
At dinner that night, over Italian, she asked him about the series.
“They’re framing them as special-training missions,” he said, “but everyone knows they’re really tests. A lot of pilots have already dropped out, some others have been cut. I’m hanging in there, and so is Dylan.”
“So I heard,” she said. “He called me the other day.”
“Really?” he said.
“Okay,” she warned, “don’t you start. You’ve got no reason to be jealous.”
“Who said I was jealous?” he said, but sometimes, when confronted with exactly how much history Patricia and Dylan had together, he felt, well, something. It didn’t help that Dylan had told him to his face that he wasn’t good enough for her. Or that she didn’t seem willing for their relationship to be public, probably because no one else would think he deserved her, either.
He was used to losing thin
gs, and people. It was a central feature of his life. But he couldn’t stand the thought of losing Patricia.
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she replied. “So when does this finish up? When do you know?”
“They gave us all leave,” he said. “Time to relax, get a little sloppy. When we get back, there’s no timetable. Dylan thinks it will be a series of emergency scenarios where they wake us up in the middle of the night or whatever.”
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
“No, not really,” he said.
She looked at him skeptically.
“Okay, yes,” he said. “I get high technical marks, but for some reason they seem to be under this impression that I have trouble with authority.”
“Impression?” Patricia said. “Why on earth would anyone get such an impression? You’re so dutiful, respectful, self-controlled.”
“Now you’re just being mean,” he said.
“Jake,” she said. “I love you—I hope you know I do—but this squadron they’re putting together, it’s not about who has the best technical flying skills. It’s supposed to be the living embodiment of global cooperation. A team. A well-oiled machine. You have no idea how much the top is building this thing up.”
“So you think I’m screwed?” he said.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” she said. “But, step back a minute. Your lifelong dream was to become a fighter pilot, right?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Mission accomplished. Would it be so bad if you stopped killing yourself to get into this PR firestorm, and just became captain of a kick-ass squadron of your own?”
He looked at his pasta for a moment, trying to parse out what she was saying. He pushed it around a little with his fork, and then reached for his wine.
“You think it’s going to be Dylan, don’t you?” he finally said. “No matter what?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth,” she said. “Jake, I believe in you. I believe you can do this, and I have always told you so.”
“Then why are you suggesting—?”
He realized his tone was a little sharp, so he took five and started again.
“Yes, I’ve always wanted to be a fighter pilot, but if you’re going to be something, why not be the best at it?”
