They ended up in a grotty nightclub a couple of blocks from the Justus Lipsius building, sucking down Belgian beer. Lance pronounced it “cruddy.” Skyler was too upset to care what he was drinking.
Lance leaned closer to him and shouted over the thumping hardstyle music, “I don’t understand one bit of that data you were looking at on the plane. So lay it out for me.”
Lance wasn’t a science guy. Skyler disliked having to explain things in words of one syllable, but over the years, he’d gotten better at it. “The pictures that have been published were snapped with a phone camera off a monitor. But I’ve managed to grab a whole series of high-rez originals from JPL. I’ve overlaid several images of the same place, taken from different orbital positions, and managed to interpolate from them, but the resolution is still fairly crappy. However, the ship in orbit is, to be blunt, fucking huge. The best resolution I could get is about 30 pixels long, but even so there are signs of blackened sections on the hull. And you can see on the infrared filter that it’s bleeding heat like anything from a section near the middle. So, and this was also the conclusion of the analysts at NASA, there’s basically zero chance there is anything alive on that ship.”
“And NASA has not released this data.”
“Jeez, Lance, you’re the one who visited JPL with a bunch of Feebs in tow, waving the Espionage Act at them.”
Lance frowned. “The Feebs went in way too hard,” he said. “It’s all they know how to do.” He gulped his beer and wiped his lips.
“I know you’re worried about unauthorized leaks,” Skyler said. “I am, too. The analysts are human. But we’ve done what we can. Right?”
Lance nodded grudgingly. Skyler knew what he was thinking: the JPL analysts who’d seen the images would not leak it if they were dead. FBI-style intimidation could be counter-productive without a credible threat of follow-through. However, Skyler believed—he devoutly hoped—secrecy could be maintained without killing anyone.
The NXC required all its agents to have basic self-defense skills. Skyler had had to get a gun license, and a concealed-carry permit no less. But he remained morally and physically uncomfortable with violence. The humiliating episode at the Firebird facility in Nevada had underlined that Skyler was never gonna be a man of action. He’d leave that up to guys like Lance.
“Those NASA analysts are patriots at heart,” he said uneasily. “They signed up to serve their country.”
“You should’ve been there,” Lance said. “Transparency, disclosure, baa baa baa. I looked up their policy. It says appropriate disclosure of information. What part of appropriate do they not understand?” He leaned forward, grinning. “I had to sit down at a computer at two in the freaking morning and write their press release for them.”
“It was a thing of beauty,” Skyler said.
The official NASA press release on the Juno observations—penned by Lance, and signed under protest by NASA director Bill Walker—stated that the JunoCam pictures already disseminated were all they had. In reality, the probe had sent back another 300 seconds’ worth of data before it crashed. Skyler was one of only a few people in the world to have seen that data. That’s what he’d based his talking points on.
He hugged his laptop bag to his side. Even though it had full disk encryption, he was still paranoid about losing it.
“There are no aliens,” he said. “There’s only a beaten-up old interstellar jalopy. It may have been travelling STL for millions of years, before winding up here.”
“STL?”
“Slower than light.”
“If the ship was just drifting, why’d it brake at Jupiter and go into orbit around Europa?”
“AI,” Skyler said succintly.
“Uh huh,” Lance said.
“Now you’re getting it,” Skyler said, enjoying the sight of Lance’s face as the implications sank in. “That ship could contain the holy grail of artificial intelligence. Not to mention an interstellar drive. There must be the mother of all energy sources in that thing too, to survive an interstellar trip of who knows how many years, and still bring it into an orbit. It could be the first workable fusion reactor we’ve ever seen!”
“Sounds like we should blow it the hell up,” Lance said.
Skyler was surprised to hear Lance take that line, even flippantly. “Well, I disagree. And so does Bob.”
Director Flaherty had made the NXC’s policy very clear to them. They were to push for the retrieval of the alien ship, at all costs.
Skyler had designed his talking points to help the president argue for precisely this objective.
He rubbed his forehead. They just had to get a few minutes with Obama before the first working session ...
Lance snatched his phone out of his pocket. Skyler hadn’t heard it ringing. The music was too loud.
Clamping his hand to his free ear, Lance stood up and shoved towards the exit. Skyler settled their tab and hurried out into the warm July night. The roar of a demonstration carried from elsewhere in the city.
Lance was already walking back towards the Justus Lipsius building. “Hurry up!”
“Who was that?”
“What’s her name, that aide. Prez wants to meet with us now!”
*
The media still besieged the Justus Lipsius building, although it was after midnight. This time, Skyler and Lance didn’t have to wait in line. They got special passes to hang around their necks. It reminded Skyler of the time a high school friend had gotten backstage passes for an Iron Maiden concert. Skyler hadn’t really been into Iron Maiden, even at that age, but he still remembered the overwhelming thrill of being among the elite, walking the same grungy floors as Bruce Dickinson. He’d known—not just felt, but known—he was more special than all the wailing fans out front.
Now, his illusions of his own specialness dissipated quickly. Security personnel escorted them to a conference suite on the fifth floor. Every corner of the ante-room was packed with power brokers holding hushed conversations. Half the people in the room held exalted government positions and the other half were there to wipe their asses for them. A seasoned political celeb-spotter, Lance mouthed famous names under his breath. Skyler felt like a pimply teenager in Bruce Dickinson’s dressing-room.
“I thought we were going to meet with the president?” he muttered.
“Looks like we’re going to meet with all of them.”
Lance was right. Except for one thing. He was not going to meet with the G8 leaders. Someone had told Obama’s people that Skyler was the data guy, so it was him they wanted.
“You can’t take that in,” a Secret Service agent said, pointing to his computer. “Cell phone, too. Gotta leave it here.”
So Skyler stumbled into the presence of the eight most powerful men and women in the world, emptyhanded except for the single A4 sheet of talking points clutched in his hand.
The conference room was smaller than he’d expected, a low-ceilinged box with insipid pale blue walls. The fixtures looked as dated as everything else in Brussels. The presidents and prime ministers sat around a large, round table.
Their interpreters sat just behind them. Each politician spoke in his or her own language, pausing now and then to let seven different interpreters catch up.
The outermost circle consisted of aides standing against the walls. Skyler squeezed in between the two advisors who stood behind Obama. “I’ve got talking points from the NXC,” he whispered to the friendlier-looking advisor. That sounded better than ‘talking points from Skyler Taft,’ which was what they actually were.
The advisor knelt obsequiously, reached around one of Obama’s interpreters (he had two), and slid the sheet of paper onto the table near Obama’s left elbow. The president glanced down once and then went back to his trademark chin-in-hand listening pose.
Mission accomplished, Skyler told himself. It’s out of your hands now.
As his heart rate slowed down to normal, he listened intently. If he wasn’t going to be tossed out,
this was a golden opportunity to find out what the truly powerful were thinking about the alien spaceship.
The agenda of the summit had called for the ‘first contact event’ to be discussed at two working sessions tomorrow. Instead, the leaders had decided to hold an unannounced meeting in the dead of night. Skyler figured they wanted to get the drop on the media who would be hounding them for decisions tomorrow. The pressure on each of them must be intense.
Only the flower arrangements didn’t look tired.
With mauve bags under her eyes, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany presented a nuanced argument for watching and waiting. Oh, that sounds great, Skyler thought. Let’s do nothing and hope it goes away.
He scrutinized the Russian president, who sat directly across the room from where Skyler was standing. Like all the other politicians, Vladimir Putin looked smaller and older in the flesh. Unlike the others, he appeared relaxed and confident.
The G8 had been the G7 since 2014, when the rest suspended Russia for its actions in the Crimea. As of yesterday, it was the G8 again. No wonder Putin looked like the cat that got the cream. He had to know exactly what had prompted this sudden, embarrassing climbdown.
Russia was the only country in the world with an operational manned spaceflight program …
… except for its Eastern rival, which was conspicuously not present at this summit.
No one had so much as suggested inviting China, to Skyler’s knowledge.The existing G8 format didn’t allow for it, and the G7 powers distrusted China even more than they distrusted Russia, which was saying something.
Even Vladimir Putin looked like a good partner in comparison to the unpredictable, rabidly nationalistic Chinese president.
But of course, Putin was not here to kiss and make up with the Western powers. He was here to extract maximum advantage for Russia.
When Merkel finished speaking, Putin raised one hand slightly off the table. “I can’t agree,” he said—or rather, his interpreter said. “The people of Russia won’t agree to sit and wait for something to happen. Will your people? I don’t know.” Putin offered a raised eyebrow and a disarming hint of a smile. “But as you must know, we have already announced a manned expedition to Europa. This is independent of whatever is decided here. Would it be better to cooperate? Yes, yes, of course. But that is up to you.”
Skyler suppressed a smile. His colleague Lance, for one, had a total man-crush on the Russian president. Skyler was less enamored of Putin’s ruthless style, but even he had to admire the way Putin had checkmated the Europeans.
They could watch and wait—and let Putin walk away from this summit clad in the mantle of a global leader. Or they could join the Russian bandwagon. Win-win for Putin.
Unless the USA stepped up to the plate.
Skyler fixed his gaze on the back of Obama’s head, willing the president to glance down at those damn talking points.
Obama sipped from his glass of water. The glasses were the finest crystal, relics of a bygone age of elegance. “Well, I get the feeling that we’re failing to adequately consider this problem in all its dimensions. Fine, great, Vladimir, so you’re going to send a ship out there without any information about this alien craft. That is your prerogative. However, the United States has done years of work assessing potential first contact scenarios. Our allies in Great Britain have joined in that effort.” Obama nodded to Theresa May, the recently appointed British prime minister. “Based on these scenarios, and the thinking of the world’s best astrophysicists, we believe this is an existential threat to humanity.”
Skyler’s mouth fell open.
“Therefore,” Obama said, “the United States intends to destroy it.”
Shocked murmurs filled the room. The president drank from his crystal glass again.
The blood roared in Skyler’s ears. This could not be happening. The president hadn’t even looked at the damn talking points.
“We’ll find out if a Soyuz can outrun a nuke,” Obama added. Some people laughed.
Skyler wanted to scream. Where had this idea come from? Maybe from NASA. No, those wimps would never recommend destroying anything. Maybe from the Pentagon. Or no, more likely, it had come from the Brits. He scowled at May, cool and composed as a fashion model. She looked like she’d personally give the order to shoot alien visitors without turning a hair, assuming there were any alien visitors, which there weren’t. But none of the politicos knew that.
Obama would know it if he bothered to look down.
The Italian prime minister carried Putin’s water, denouncing the reckless urge to shoot first and ask questions later.
Obama just listened, his profile impassive. And Skyler realized: this was the president’s own idea.
The man sitting an arm’s length from him wasn’t the vacillating, feckless president of Lance’s imagination. This was the president who’d watched Osama bin Laden die in real time. The commander in chief who dispatched lethal drones. The cold-blooded realist who’d watched the Middle East go up in flames rather than risk a single American life.
And now he was about to unwittingly throw away the biggest potential advantage America ever had, for the same reasons …
But wait! Skyler’s mind raced. Like a rube, he was taking the president’s tough declaration at face value. There had to be more to it than that …
Of course there was! Obama could not allow the alien craft to fall into Russia’s hands. So he had to promise its destruction, on the pretext of eliminating a threat. Because the USA didn’t even have a manned spacecraft capable of reaching orbit.
Whose fault was that? Who could say? Successive presidents had slashed NASA’s budget to the bone. The US nuclear thermal research program had been put on ice in the 1970s, due to public anti-nuclear hysteria. America’s propulsion technology deficit went back to the Carter administration, at least.
But that could change.
Skyler acted without thinking. He pushed past the interpreter in front of him and knelt beside Obama. “Mr. President, sir,” he hissed. “I’m from the NXC. Please listen. We have the capability to build a manned spacecraft that can reach Europa.”
“I haven’t heard about that,” the president said quietly.
Hands grabbed the back of Skyler’s shirt, trying to pull him away from the conference table. The pulling stopped as the president engaged with the impudent ‘data guy.’
“This is the result of very recent breakthroughs,” Skyler whispered.
Specifically, the confiscation of Firebird Systems’s revolutionary nuclear spaceship drive.
“We can do it, Mr. President. I’ve been on the road for two days straight to tell you that we can do it. We can.”
God, if You exist, please let it not be a dud.
“Can we do it without them?” Obama murmured, twitching an eyebrow in the direction of Putin.
Skyler had had an email from the DEFSEC guys, summing up their preliminary analysis of the unit and the intel that went with it. He conquered the urge to over-promise. “No. Realistically, we would need their launch capacity and manufacturing, at least.”
He allowed himself to be pulled back from the table, knowing that whether or not the US nuked the alien spaceship, Skyler Taft had probably nuked his own career.
From the New York Times, Monday, July 11th, 2016:
MULTINATIONAL MISSION “SPIRIT OF HUMANITY” ANNOUNCED
President Barack Obama on Sunday, standing shoulder to shoulder with other G8 leaders in Brussels, announced a multilateral project to build a spaceship capable of carrying a multinational crew to Europa. The recent discovery of an assumed alien spacecraft in orbit around the remote moon has roiled international tensions, which the announcement was expected to calm. "We view this as an opportunity for the nations of Earth to come together," said Mr. Obama, citing technology-sharing commitments from the United States, Russia, Japan, and Europe. The ship, dubbed "Spirit of Humanity," will be jointly built by NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, and the European Space Agenc
y. Its crew, yet to be chosen, will represent all the nations involved. President Vladimir Putin of Russia commented, "We do not know if the aliens are friendly. But we will approach them in a spirit of diplomacy, and this means that first we must strengthen the bonds of friendship among ourselves." Estimates of the project's likely pricetag range from $10 billion up to $1 trillion. While the figures involved dwarf the existing budgets of national space programs, economist Paul Krugman observed, "This is frankly a bargain price for peace on earth. It may be that the little green men have done us a tremendous favor."
CHINA RECALLS AMBASSADOR TO E.U.
BEIJING— Retaliating against its perceived exclusion from the “Spirit of Humanity” project, China on Monday recalled its ambassador to the European Union, dealing a fresh blow to international relations. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Li Diao said, “We strongly protest the decision of the US, EU, and Russia to proceed with this mission without reference to China’s global leadership in aerospace technology.” However, a source within the CIA commented, “Anything the Chinese could contribute, they stole from us to begin with.”
CHAPTER 18
United States Senator Russ Colbert edged into the bathroom alongside his wife. It was a tight squeeze. The realtor had euphemistically described their Georgetown apartment as “cozy” and “characterful.” The bathroom smelled of mildew. Colbert wasn’t doing this for the money.
He combed his hair and then ran his hands through it, mussing it again.
Xue Hua, stroking a mascara brush over her eyelashes, said, “Why do you even bother with the comb?”
“Likably rumpled: good. Dreadlocks: bad.”
She turned and pursed her lips. Colbert pecked her, careful not to spoil her make-up. She was getting ready to go out to some charitable event. One of her Christian things.
She had no idea what he would be doing tonight.
She’d never been part of his secret life, although it was all for her. Everything he did was wrapped up with his love for her. With that came an iron resolve to protect her.
Freefall: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 1) Page 10
