“Right, Dad! But I’m scared.”
“I know, and I understand. But you know what your mom would want you to be right now? Brave, like she was. Can you be brave? For her?” Jesse asks his son.
“I will,” Marcus says with a smile.
“Okay, then let’s go, it’s a little dingy in here, don’t you think?” and his father gets off his knee, holds his hand, and they quietly venture out of the storm cellar. The night is dark and completely silent. In the distance towards town, smoke is still billowing from the embers of Frozos’s destruction. Nayan has no moon, so while the night sky is filled with a voluminous number of stars and constellations, this night is exceptionally dark. They walk behind the house, where Jesse has brought his and Marcus’s bicycles. He’s filled up the baskets of each bike with water and other essential supplies and fixed a flashlight on top of the handle bars. There are also two backpacks, a large hiking pack that Jesse puts on, and a smaller one that Marcus can wear while biking.
As they mount their bikes, Jesse turns on each of the flashlights, and looks to his son. “Just stay right behind me. We’ll take it nice and slowly.”
Marcus nods in agreement, and they begin biking across the backyard and towards the large agricultural fields. They bike for several hours as the agricultural fields stretch for hundreds of acres. Rather than riding on the clearly cut paths, they ride between rows of plants just in case soldiers have been left behind to monitor activity. Every forty-five minutes or so, Jesse stops to give Marcus a few minutes break—a chance to drink water and catch his breath. Occasionally, a siren or the thud of a distant blast is heard emanating from the faraway mine that Frozos is securing.
After about an hour and a half of riding, they come to the end of the fields. As they break for water, Marcus is desperate to stop but even more desperate to hide that fact from his father. But Jesse can see his exhaustion. Putting his hand on Marcus’s shoulder, he encourages him, “Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”
Marcus’s young face quickly turns to one of relief, but he defiantly insists, “I can ride like this for a lot longer, Dad.”
Smiling, his father tells him it is time to go, and they venture onward. They pass through stretches of desolation before coming to a wildlife preserve that extends for over fifty miles deep and seven miles wide. Biking into the wood, the terrain gets increasingly rugged and rocky. It is incredibly dark. The woods are filled with an uncountable number of Nayan Pines, similar to pine trees on Earth, but often passing a hundred feet in height. The tree coverings block out what little light there is in the night sky, leaving Jesse and Marcus to be guided just by their flashlights. It is nearly impossible to avoid the stray rock on the paths, and Marcus occasionally tumbles off his bike, scraping his elbows and knees. He refuses to show his pain, and he hopes his father can’t hear him sniffling.
Finally, after about an hour of biking through the forest, they stop. They’ve long left the official hiking paths, heading onto a trail that would barely be visible in the full light of day. Jesse is only able to lead from knowledge and the few esoteric markings that he and his wife had left. On foot, they walk their bikes carefully down the side of a steep embankment. At the base of the slope, they walk down to the right behind some trees. Jesse pulls aside some brush to reveal about a three-foot-high opening to a cave and pushes through the bikes on their side. Then, Marcus crawls through the hole followed by his father, revealing a cave that must be underneath the slope they had just climbed down.
Once Jesse crawls through the opening, he pushes a button, turning on lights hung against the cavern walls. Marcus is surprised at the size of the cave, about twenty feet wide and thirty-five feet deep. The ceiling is generally seven to eleven feet high; it’s actually a comfortable space. Most importantly, Jesse tells Marcus, it’s a space one is highly unlikely to find without already knowing where it is. As far as Jesse knows, there are only two people alive who know its location. Marcus is shocked to see two cots, a reserve of canned foods and water, some playing cards and board games, and what appears to be a two-way radio that he had seen in old textbooks but never in person. In addition to these goods, under the cots, there are dozens of textbooks which Marcus will be acquainting himself with in coming years.
But for now, after a frightening day and exhausting night of riding, it is time for some well-deserved sleep, so Jesse tucks Marcus into bed and kisses him goodnight. His father would stay awake watching over his son for several hours, periodically peering out the covered entrances of the cave to ensure they weren’t followed. He had deliberately taken a roundabout way in case they were being tracked, but it appears they had not been followed.
The next day, Marcus eventually awakens—it is past noon, but his father let him sleep in, given the rigors of the night. During the morning, he quietly takes to assembling some odds and ends in the cave, unpacking bags, essentially trying to make it a bit more of a home for the two of them, not that they were ever likely to return to normal or anything like it. As Marcus gets out of bed, his father makes him a breakfast of an oatmeal-like substance. There is a small wooden table in the back corner of the cave next to a simple kitchen with hot plates and a fire pit, though they couldn’t cook large meals without causing smoke to fill the cave. They’d be living on simple dishes and off the land, which was fine as Jesse was never much of a cook anyway. Sitting down, Marcus stares longingly at the empty third chair where his mother is supposed to be sitting. Having let his son eat and regain some strength, Jesse decides it is time to explain circumstances to his son.
“Marcus, I need to explain to why your mother was killed and why we are here.”
“Okay, Dad.”
And so, Jesse begins telling snippets of a story he would repeat often and expound upon in coming years.
Marcus’s parents worked for years as members of Nayan’s resistance. The resistance was a multi-planetary group of freedom fighters, loosely connected. For several years, Marcus’s parents helped to house members from other planets. Prior to his birth, they had lived in the mining city where the university was located. Resistance fighters needed minerals from Nayan’s mines to power their ships and would arrive discreetly to secure supplies. After Marcus was born, his mother felt this was too dangerous.
So they moved to a rural town and had left the resistance, though they were always loyal to its cause. After about two years out of the fight, word was coming that Frozos’s rule was becoming ever more brutal. There were food shortages throughout the League, and so he was aggressively expanding his empire and utilizing more and more slave labor to produce the necessary supplies to keep the populace happy and fed. Fearing that Nayan with its resource-rich nature would become a target, both in terms of minerals and agriculture, Marcus’s parents felt that they had to get back into the fight. Their rural town became a resistance outpost with raw materials smuggled from the mine into the village, and then picked up by supply ships friendly to the resistance.
Indeed, much of the town was involved, but it was never spoken of, particularly in front of the children, to avoid loose remarks in front of the occasional visitor that could sink the effort. Over the past five years, there would go periods of months when no contact with members of the resistance had been heard, causing fear that the effort had totally collapsed against the weight of Frozos’s unmatched military power, which grew by the day. Fortunately, contact would eventually resume.
In the past two years, hope had been building that anti-Frozos forces were getting more organized. One planet, an aquatic world, had mounted an unmatched fight against the invading forces. They had destroyed seven transport destroyers, countless supply ships, and withstood an over seven month siege. By tying up so much of the League’s resources, resistance activity had been flourishing with the volumes of shipments out of Nayan surging. More material was being taken than could be used, so it appeared the resistance was stockpiling resources to prepare for a prolonge
d effort, or so was Jesse’s theory.
About three months ago, word came that the aquatic planet, entirely covered in oceans, had fallen, giving Frozos a critical reserve of water. However, rumors had been flying that the planet’s ruler, known as King Hammerhead, always regarded as among the galaxy’s wisest and most just had escaped prior to the fall of the planet, along with several dozen ships. The valiant effort of his military had bought resistance efforts elsewhere invaluable time, and if he had escaped, perhaps he could unify anti-Frozos forces and help bring peace and freedom back to this enslaved portion of the galaxy.
Jesse speculated that with Frozos having secured a supply of water, his focus shifted to cracking down on the resistance and securing other supplies. Increased smuggling out of this village and elsewhere was also likely not to go unnoticed, so Frozos conquered Nayan to snuff out rebel towns and secure the resources necessary to sustain his fleet. Knowing this day was bound to come, Marcus’s parents had been scouting out a refuge for them to hide during and after the invasion, which is why they had filled this cave with supplies. Unfortunately, Marcus’s mother was not here to be with them.
For the next four years, Marcus and his father would live together in these woods. As a mathematics professor, Jesse was well equipped to teach Marcus advanced math and science, and these lessons dominated much of their days while they lived in the woods. Jesse believed that somehow, some way, education would provide Marcus with a path to a better life. Aside from math, there was a healthy dose of stories of his mother, the resistance, and training for how to sustain himself in the outdoors.
Not a week would go by these four years without Jesse reminding his son that the greatest weapon against Frozos is love. It is for love that people, like his mother, make true sacrifice and accomplish the impossible. Love can drive people to do the impossible, creating boundless opportunity to do good. Indeed, Jesse’s last words to Marcus were, “Don’t let them embitter you or drive you to hate. Let them hate. Act out of love, and they can never beat you.”
Chapter 14
Washington D.C.
April 6, 2029
Robert Wilson and Chris Bailey are sitting in a waiting room next to the Oval Office in the White House. Both men are in black suits, Robert in a red tie with thin black stripes, and Chris in a green tie. The two men flew down this morning on an Arbor Ridge owned plane while Mark Morrison remained in the Jersey City office tower. Despite the precautions he had taken, Robert is not comfortable with all three co-founders out of the office at any one time. Robert has a thick manila folder on his lap, with the proposal he has drafted. They are sitting silently, aware that the room is undoubtedly bugged and not wanting any of their thinking known. It is nearly 10:15 AM, and they’ve been waiting a while. Finally, the secretary signals they can go in.
They walk in, Robert first, Chris second. President Victoria Larom, wearing a navy-blue skirt suit, gets up from behind her desk to greet them. Across from her large, wooden desk are two empty chairs, and behind them are two couches where several aides and military officials are sitting.
“Welcome, Mister Wilson. I didn’t realize Mister Bailey was coming as well.” Larom walks over to greet them and shake hands.
“Madam President. Yes, it’s important for Chris to be here. I don’t decide much without Chris or Mark Morrison, who couldn’t be here today, being involved.”
“It’s a pleasure, Madam President,” Chris says.
“Please sit down,” she gestures. Once everyone is seated, Larom jokes, “You know some in the Pentagon felt I should just hold you hostage until you give us the force field.”
Turning around to address the officials behind him, Robert says, “I figured as much, which is why the force field automatically powers off if I am not back by midnight.” He says it in just such a way that it seems like a joke but no one can be completely sure.
Chris lets out an awkward laugh.
“Well, let’s get back to the issues at hand. Tell me, Mister Wilson, why do we need to do anything beyond just getting used to life with a force field around us?”
“If you’re asking me what will break the force field, I don’t know. But that’s how the French felt in the 1930s after they built the Maginot Line. Problem was, once the Germans got past it, there was nothing that stopped them from reaching Paris. I want to be sure that New York isn’t lost the day we discover the force field may not be impenetrable.”
“Well, from a risk management perspective, that seems sound. What do you recommend?”
Robert pulls the plan out of his manila folder. There’s one copy for Larom, one for her aides to review, one for Chris, and one for himself. He passes them around. “This is my proposal. You said your Administration’s priority is ensuring you aren’t the last President. This will achieve that I think. Shall we walk through it?” Robert sits silently as Larom and her aides thumb through the four-page document.
Putting the document down, President Larom says, “Let me ask you a question, Mister Wilson. It seems to me you want to wage war on Frozos. Am I wrong?”
“War with him is inevitable, and I want to be sure we win it,” Robert responds after a brief pause.
“Yes, but is it a good or a bad inevitability? We, or at least I, need to understand your motivations.”
“Frozos murdered my mother and enslaved my birth planet. I won’t pretend to hold him in anything but contempt. But I don’t relish the idea of others dying on behalf of a personal vendetta. I seek justice, not revenge. I do know that if we beat him here; it can be a rallying cry across the galaxy. That’s why he will need to expend every resource to take over Earth. If he lets us go on with our lives, we will be a symbol to the resistance. To him, me putting a force field around this planet was a provocative—not a defensive—act.”
“How do we know you won’t take further provocative action?”
“You have to trust me. And the fact is, I could blow Tiberius up right now, but we haven’t. You don’t have to accept my terms. I can walk out of here and go on with my life. But if you want me involved, those are my terms.”
“And why aren’t we using Air Force pilots?” asks a military advisor on the couch.
“For the mission at hand, I believe my pilots are the best trained. We can’t have people in the planes who’ve never seen them before.”
“I’ll need to get Congress; they’ll have questions, and then there’s the rest of the world,” Larom says.
“If you back this agreement, let me address Congress, and I’ll let you sign up the world. I’d think Malvodov will join given we’ve already saved his country once,” Robert says.
The negotiations continue for two hours before Robert, Chris, and Larom sign a memorandum of understanding to be ratified by the U.S. Congress and immediately joinable by any other foreign nation. Project Ridley, which houses Robert’s top secret jet program, moon base, and force field—essentially the weapons of war—would be separated from the rest of Arbor Ridge. The U.S. government would pay $150 billion, a quarter of their cost, for a 50 percent stake in a new legal entity that would own all of these assets. Arbor Ridge would own the other 50 percent. The U.S. government was essentially buying in at a half-off discount. With Robert having control over Arbor Ridge, this amounted to a personal stake in the endeavor. The U.S. government could sell half of its own stake to other nations who wished to participate to ensure it truly is a global security cooperative.
All of the employees of Arbor Ridge who worked on Project Ridley would be moved into this new entity. As a fee for the force field, participating nations would contribute enough funds to grow the jet count from 10,000 to at least 50,000 and sustain at that level. Project Ridley forces would only be allowed to fire weapons outside of the force field (nearly 40,000 miles above the Earth’s surface) unless alien ships were inside the force field. It is only authorized to act if the force field or the planet face imminent danger. If th
ree months pass with no alien contact and no presence of alien ships within 2.5 million miles of Earth (for perspective the moon is about 240,000 miles away), a 75 percent vote among the government ownership of the entity would trigger its dissolution with the jets distributed on a pro rata basis to participating governments and ownership of the force field returned to Arbor Ridge.
Robert Wilson will be the Commander of Project Ridley, which is being renamed PEACE (Protecting Earth against Alien Conquest and Exploitation). While serving as Commander of PEACE, he would resign as Chairman and CEO of Arbor Ridge, hand over day-to-day operational decisions to Chris and Mark, and would not exercise any control over its business, excepting its stake in PEACE. He is guaranteed to remain Commander for a term of six months effective immediately. After six months, a 75 percent vote among the government ownership can trigger a leadership change, at which point Robert would have the right to dissolve the partnership under the same terms as a government dissolution. A representative of each government’s military would be able to participate in military strategy and operations meetings but would not have the ability to overrule Robert’s, or a future commander’s, decisions.
These terms leave no one thrilled, but everyone comfortable. Members of the military are not comfortable with the creation of a new military organization out of their control, though the restrictions on its ability to operate within Earth’s atmosphere help to placate them. President Larom is not pleased about the cash contributions, but Chris Bailey is insistent that legally Arbor Ridge needs to ensure it acts in the interests in shareholders, even if Robert is uninterested in the financials. Robert is saddened to be taking a leave of absence from the company he had built, but he recognizes that there is no other way to proceed. Besides, he trusts the company will be in good hands with Mark and Chris as co-CEOs.
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