The Last Crusade

by Ira Tabankin

  Another reporter boos him, the President nods to the secret service agent who grabs the reporter, removing him from the room.

  “Remove him from the White House, revoke his press pass and kick him out.”

  The other reporters are shocked at the President’s actions, one yells, “what about freedom of the press?”

  “What about our dead, what about the death they caused, what about them singing and dancing in the streets over the bodies of our dead children. Why are you supporting the murderers? Why do you always support the Muslims over the rest of us? Why do you always support them? Are you really secret Muslims? Why do you always take their side? Why don’t you tell the truth about the crisis? Why did most of you cheer when our military lost the last Crusade? Why did you try to shame the parents of the lost military members? Since I’m not running for office again, I can get away with saying what so many people want to say, Are you Americans?”

  The reporters are shocked into silence; no one has ever spoken to them like this before. They are the fifth estate, the chosen ones, the ones who make or break political careers. A low sound begins to break to the surface in the Situation Room, a growl of anger from the press.

  “Let me be very clear, I don’t care what you think of me. I have no further offices to run for. You can’t hurt me; you can’t print or broadcast anything about me that I care about. I know some of you are thinking you can raise enough noise to get me impeached, all I have to say to you is, try it. Let’s see who the people support. I’m the President, I’m going to address the American people, let’s see who they believe, you or me. I think it’s time you returned to reporting the news and not trying to make the news. Report both sides of a story, not just the side that matches your agenda. The people no longer trust you. I don’t trust you. Your careers are the ones which are at risk! Remember that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to address the American people, if you try to interrupt me, you’ll be removed from the White House and your press credentials will be revoked.”

  The media stands in front of the president in shock. No one has ever spoken to them like this before. Most swear to themselves they’ll find a way to get even with the upstart President.

  President Bentley ignores the media, he turns his attention to the lead cameraman who nods to the President, he counts down with his fingers, five, four, three, two, one, the red recording light turns on.

  “Good evening my fellow Americans. I would like to address the many rumors that are spreading like wildfire. Rumors such as a nuclear war, new terror attacks, I’ve even heard that some believe aliens have landed. As sure as I’m standing here, I can assure you there’s no reason to worry. In fact, there’s a very good reason to celebrate. The rumor of many nuclear weapons exploding is TRUE.” President Bentley pauses to allow his comments to sink in. “The nuclear weapons were OURS! We did the attacking. We attacked the Caliphate for their attacks against our children, for their attempts to start another war between Russia and us. We attacked the Caliphate in retaliation for their nuclear attack against our Crusader base in the Sinai. They struck our base with at least ten nuclear weapons, here are images of their attack on our base.” He omitted the fact that less than three hundred people were on the base and half of those were in deep underground bunkers when the attack took place.

  “Our stated strategy has always been to respond in kind if WMD are used against us. Our allies and I made a decision that enough was enough. The Caliphate wasn’t going to allow us to live in peace. No matter what terms we offered them, their response was peace was only possible if we accepted Allah as Lord. I don’t know about you, but I take our Constitution very seriously, I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Our way of life isn’t possible under Caliphate rule. Our two cultures can not coexist. One can study history to see that Islam isn’t a peaceful religion. They have been trying to conquer the world for over fifteen hundred years, their idea of peace is when they rule the world. Every offer of peace and terms we made to the Caliphate was turned down with the demand we accept Allah.

  Our allies, which are NATO, Russia, Egypt, Israel, the Latin American countries and the Pope all agreed that we wouldn’t surrender our freedom. You know we attempted to fight a conventional war against the Caliphate before, we lost that battle because the Caliphate armed their citizens, citizens we bypassed as noncombatants. We paid dearly for underestimating them. We withdrew our forces and offered terms which were refused. How did the Caliphate respond? They tried to set Russia and us against each other by killing Russian President Putin and blaming us. Thankfully we had an AWACS plane in the area that recorded the incident and shared the radar recordings with the Russians. When we and Russia didn’t take the bait and attack each other, the Caliphate attacked our schools. They attacked our innocent children, not just here but in all our allies’ countries! That’s when we decided we had to settle the question of the Caliphate once and for all. We were already building our forces in the Sinai for a conventional attack when the Caliphate struck them with nuclear weapons. I’m sorry to say there was a very heavy loss of life and equipment.

  We responded in kind, we and our allies acted as one military, we struck the Caliphate with an overwhelming punch to knock them out of the game. We decided we couldn’t continue to play this game with them. They only play by their rules, rules which allow them to kill any non-Muslim simply because they’re not a Muslim. Our allies and I decided if we were going to respond in kind we should do so with such force as to knock them out of the game. There’s no reason to fight them today and in again in every future generation.

  I want to make this point very clear. This was a very difficult decision. We’re talking about the extermination of millions of people. You may ask, what made us decide to exterminate them? It was their reaction to the attacks on our children. You saw them dancing in their streets, cheering, happy our most innocent young children were massacred. They took pleasure in our pain and suffering. If they took pleasure in the death of our children, how could we deal with them? How could we ensure the security of future children? We feared they would continue to attack us until they wore us down and conquered the world.

  Frankly, I don’t understand why the media in this country and Europe supported the idea the Muslims were poor people who just wanted to live and be left alone. I believe the majority of us know this is pure BS. I don’t know why the media choose to support terrorists, maybe one day they will be able to explain their side of the story.

  The Caliphate hates our freedoms, they hate our way of life, they lived to bring pain and suffering to those who didn’t share their religion. We, the other Crusader leaders and myself were faced with a horrible choice, we could attempt another conventional invasion and lose millions of lives or we could stand off and use WMD in response to their attack on our people.

  Many of you are going to worry about fallout, I’m happy to report most of our weapons are the newest generation that are very clean, only a small number are ground penetrators which will generate fallout, almost all of it will fall over Caliphate land. Some of you are worried about us creating Nuclear Winter, our best climate scientists worked for a month to calculate the number of weapons we could use to avoid Nuclear Winter. I promise you we stayed under the number they suggested. There shouldn’t be any Nuclear Winter, so don’t worry about any impact on climate change. Some of you may be worried about the spread of oil into the sea and the destruction it will cause. We’re going to be releasing images of the oil fields to prove to the world only a very small number of wells are burning, we have special teams being sent to cap those wells. They are recording their work so the entire world knows the wells are capped and we’re not spilling millions of barrels of oil into the environment.

  The Caliphate no longer exists, their military has no long range weapons to strike us, we are finally safe from their attacks. Together we are going to rebuild. I’m declaring a period of thirty days to mourn for our dead. I’m also signing an Executive
Order overturning all restrictive gun laws. Gun free zones don’t work; these schools were selected because the attackers knew there wouldn’t be anyone to stop them. If just one person had been armed in each school, we might have saved hundreds. I’m also signing an Executive Order hiring retired police officers and military personnel to be armed guards at schools and shopping malls, we’re not going to place ourselves in the position of being lambs led to slaughter again. If you don’t like guns, then don’t buy one. Your dislike of guns shouldn’t mean the rest of us are placed in danger.

  I know some of you are worried about repercussions and attacks of vengeance from Muslims already in the country. I’ve signed an executive order calling for the rounding up of all known Muslims, they will face questioning to ensure they pose no threat to our communities, any Muslim that opens fire at our first responders or troops will be met with deadly force. National Guard and Army troops will be arriving to collect all known Muslims. They have a list of all who are in the country legally, if you’re here illegally, turn yourself in. You will be treated much better than if we have to find you. Don’t try to hide, if you do, the troops will assume you mean them harm. All Mosques are hereby closed; National Guard troops will patrol them to ensure they aren’t damaged. Muslim stores are at this moment closed for the duration. I make the following promise to our Muslim population, if you desire peace, you shall have peace. Peace means accepting others, we’re not going to change for your sake. If you desire vengeance and war, you will know death. I pray to God that you desire peace, the world has seen enough killing and death tonight. Don’t be fooled into thinking that we are weak, we’ve been fooled by you before, we’re not going to be fooled again. If you desire peace, show it when the troops arrive to take you to your new temporary homes. Muslims will be taken to camps in the Southwest desert where they can’t easily cause us harm. If they pass loyalty tests, they will be allowed to return to their homes. I will not turn these people loose on our citizens knowing they mean to do our citizens harm. They will have to prove they will assimilate into our country, we are not going to change our laws and way of life for them, they will have to change theirs for the rest of us. I strongly believe in religious freedom. That doesn’t mean we have to bend over backward to accommodate their religion. They will be free to practice their religion as long as they also accept our religion or even our lack of religion.

  On a very positive note, a miracle has happened tonight, Catholic, Protestant, Russian Orthodox, Baptist, Mormon, Muslims, and Jews have come together to destroy the threat of the Caliphate. We’ve agreed to sit down in a week to begin discussing how we can ensure there is real peace in our time. Our goal is a new format for all of us to discuss differences and problems so WMD are never used again. This isn’t a one world government, the one thing we’re all agreed to is we all want our own governments, we don’t want to form a central government, nor do we want to repeat the mistakes of the previous United Nations.

  To those have you who think we’ve entered the end times and the final battle took place tonight, that the Messiah or Jesus is coming to set up God’s kingdom on Earth, I’m sorry to say, I think not. The battle this evening didn’t match what was written in any version of the Bible. This wasn’t a war between God and Satan, this was a war between good and evil. Our goal is to bring a real lasting peace to the world, one where we don’t have to worry about our children. Our attack on the Caliphate was executed purely to save our children and their children. Tonight we finished what our forefathers started, tonight we have completed the Last Crusade, we are ending the more than fifteen hundred years of pain and suffering caused by Mohammad. There’s been too much bloodshed tonight, let’s try to live together in peace. May God Bless the United States of America.”

  The mushroom clouds over the Caliphate dissipate, the fires burn themselves out, the radioactive fallout settles on the ground killing those who receive too high a dose. The cities and military bases of the Caliphate are completely destroyed. More than 90% of the people living in the Caliphate die within three years. The Crusaders blockaded and stop anyone from entering the Caliphate. Some countries and many liberal groups strongly protest, a few try to sue the governments blocking them from bringing aid to the survivors. The World Court determines the aid groups don’t have the standing to bring a suit. The World Court says, “The Crusaders acted in a time of war, they retaliated to a Caliphate WMD attack.” The new Russian President wanted to send five complete Army groups into the Caliphate to eliminate any remaining survivors, President Bentley said he couldn’t support the action. The two leaders come nose to nose, the Egyptian President brokered a comprise between the two. They agreed to build a wall around the Caliphate’s old borders to keep any survivors inside. No trade with the old Caliphate was allowed. President Bentley agreed to provide military resources to patrol the wall. The Caliphate’s oil is split among the countries who are members of the Crusade. The protest from other countries falls on deaf ears.

  Life inside the remaining Caliphate is very hard, most of their population died from the war, radiation sickness, starvation or common illnesses because they no longer have access to outside medication. The Crusaders drop leaflets over the Caliphate informing them there is hope if they agreed to denounce Islam and live in peace with other people’s religions.

  Those who agreed are taken to camps in either Siberia or America’s deserts to test them, those that pass the tests are allowed to enter Western countries. Those who couldn’t adapt are left to die from exposure.

  Three years after the last Crusade, the number of worldwide terrorist attacks could be counted on a single hand. Islam is dying out. Small groups hide from the world, praying to Allah for the time when they will grow strong enough to rebuild their Caliphate and take their revenge on the world.

  End.

  Following is a snippet from a science fiction story. It’s a story about an alien object heading to Earth. It tells the how the governments of the world try to hide the news. When the story is announced, survivalists bug out fearing the worst. Their worst fears turn out to not to be as bad as reality. When the aliens arrive, the story revolves around how average people deal with their impact. I hope you enjoy the start of a new story.

  A Novel

  “We Knew They Were Coming.”

  Background

  Since the beginning of time, man has looked into the star filled night sky asking a question that has been repeated millions of times. For more than ten millennium man has asked, “are we alone?” Early man didn’t understand what the lights in the night sky were, some thought they were Gods, some thought they were lights shining down from heaven. Comets and meteors were thought to be a predictor of future events. Astrology tried to foretell people’s future based on their birthdates and position of the stars. People have used the stars to plot their travels since the beginning of time. The Bible says that a bright star led the three holy men to the site of Jesus’ birth. As mankind gained knowledge, he learned that the lights in the sky were stars, like our own sun, many of these stars have planets orbiting them, planets which could sustain life. Man studied the heavens, he sent probes into the darkness broadcasting messages of welcome and peace. He built telescopes which could look at the light emitted from the stars, thus looking into the past.

  Rumors of alien visitation are as old as humans themselves. Wall paintings of beings wearing helmets cover hundreds of caves. Even in the early 21st century, humans looked into the sky asking. “Are we alone?” NASA spent billions trying to figure out the Fermi paradox. (Where are all of the alien races?)

  Book One

  The Unicorn.

  Chapter 1

  In March 2009, NASA launched the Kepler space telescope with the goal of determining how frequently Earth-like planets occur in the Milky Way galaxy. To date, it has discovered over 1,000 alien planets with 3,200 hundred additional potential targets. A handful of these alien planets are in what is called the “Goldilocks” region. The region of space wh
ere a planet is within a range from its star where liquid water can be found on its surface.

  The Kepler telescope uses the ‘transit method’ to spot alien planets. It looks for telltale brightness dips caused when an orbiting planet crosses the face of its host star. The Kepler collects data and images for six days, on the seventh day, it sends the collected data to NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas. On Saturday, January 9th, 2016, Kepler downloaded its normal weekly data dump to NASA’s headquarters in Houston, Texas. It uploaded coordinates for its search for the following week.

  Unknown to the programmes at NASA or the Kepler, who didn’t care, the previous week’s coordinates had a few digits in the coordinates misplaced. Someone mixed up the numbers when they typed in the Kepler’s instructions. Under the current administration, many mid-level NASA managers just went through the motions hoping they survived the many budget cuts to make it to the next administration. They hoped the new President had an interest in space exploration. No one checked the input, most didn’t care as long as the weekly up and download happened they had performed their job. The Kepler telescope shifted to search a different region of space than NASA thought. The Kepler didn’t know it was searching the wrong sector, it simply followed its instructions. Kepler’s data streamed down to NASA’s supercomputers. They ‘crunched’ the data for 48 hours over the weekend without interruption. When the data is compiled, the Kepler’s ground-based software reviews the pixels and shadows. An anomaly is discovered which doesn’t fit into the computer’s programmed categories. The computer can’t figure out how to mark the anomaly, so it follows its flow chart and sends an alert email to the Kepler, program manager. Richard Browning. On a cold for Houston, Monday, January, 11th, Richard arrives at his office in his usual manner. He stands in front of his office door at exactly7:30 AM. He balances his cup of Starbucks on the back of his tablet computer, while his bagged lunch is hanging from his teeth, while he fumbles with his office keys. An associate walks past Richard, smiling at him, Richard tries to nod, almost dropping his coffee and tablet. He grunts hi to his coworker. Unlocking his office, he drops his keys so he can put his coffee, tablet and lunch on his paper-covered desk. He exhales the breath he was holding as he balanced everything. I’ve really got to get all of this paperwork sorted and filed. The pile gets deeper every week, almost as if the papers are multiplying themselves over the weekend. He piles the reports and folders into a three-foot-high stack on the left-hand corner of his desk. Sitting down behind his desk, he smiled, just another day in the salt mine.