April 2: Down to Earth

by Mackey Chandler

  "Thanks I'll try not to step in the lion's den now. We'll talk more when I come home," she promised and ended the call.

  * * *

  "My friend's are worried I'm pushing the opposition a little too hard," she admitted.

  "I do believe, they thought arresting one lone teenage girl would probably be a little easier, than it turned out to be," Papa allowed. "If I were you, I'd become more concerned now, that they will try to just bump you off, by a method that will not expose them to as much risk as arresting you in public. I'd limit shopping, where you walk around exposed. And be careful driving around where you can be targeted in the truck, since its purchase will be in the public records. You might consider a Plain Jane car, to throw them off. Maybe turn it in after a couple days and get another."

  "I'll do that, but I think it's time for me to move on to the mainland soon. I need to get the rest of my things from Frank and go. Are you going with me Adzusa, or is it too hot being with me now?"

  Adzusa laughed at that. "If I was worried about the hot zone around you I'd have stopped hanging around you a year ago, when I shot the pics of you on Home. It got pretty hot out in the corridors then, with bullets and beams all over the place. But at least I got some pics out of it. How you going to the mainland? Commercial airline? They may look at it as a new chance to hassle you about carrying. They won't even give you a plastic fork anymore, in an airliner."

  "I don't know," April admitted. "I could afford to charter a biz jet if I wanted." What do you think of that Papa-san?

  He considered it gravely, with his lips pursed up. "If you do, take steps to hide who is renting it. A small plane with just a few passengers is a lot easier to conveniently ‘disappear', than a commercial airliner with a couple hundred people. And there just isn't anything available to rent, that is as fast as military, or has much defense ability, past a few flares and decoys to stop shoulder fired missiles, when you are taking off or landing. There are a few transonic small biz planes, but most are owned and very few are available to rent or lease. Even those only fly at Mach 1.6 to 1.8 or so. The military has lots of planes that can run those down. I'd feel safer on a public flight, bought and boarded at the last minute."

  "I told Eddie we needed a lander capability. I guess whatever we make should have the ability to transport us around, once we're down here too," she speculated.

  "If you just need to get down, you could use an old fashioned capsule with an ablative heat shield and a parachute. You could even land it at an airport if you wanted, as long as it wasn't too windy that day to blow you off course. They make parachutes you can steer, so that would be a possibility to deal with a mild breeze and still land pinpoint. But if you want something that will take off, you'll need a lifting shape, or a winged vehicle that can survive heating. If you have enough power you could do a powered decent of course. Nobody has tried to do a design for a long time that required that, but what I'm hearing is you might have enough power capacity now to do that."

  April made some notes and questions on the whole idea, chatting with Papa about it and sent them off copied to Dave, Jeff and Eddie. Maybe they'd laugh at her, but she asked if a standard aircar could be modified with a Singh power plant to run the fans and a Singh powered drive that would do a powered descent, until there was enough air for the fans to bite. She sent that off and wondered again what Jeff had come up with for the acceleration.

  The dinner dishes were cleared away, there were a few desserts laid out and Papa's young men hung around. She thought they were enjoying the inside privilege, of eating with the family. They both were confident enough to not feel the need to add to a conversation, just because they were there and had quietly conferred with each other a few times.

  Chapter 37

  April's pad chimed again and she frowned at it. She was tired and stressed and really didn't want to keep taking calls all evening. "I'm going to turn this thing off, to take voice mail pretty soon," she declared. She left the pad configured as it was, the bigger screen still folded open on the table and accepted the call, not setting down the desert she was working on, since it would melt.

  The older lady on the screen was not familiar to April, but she noticed both Li and Akira, the other young man, sat bolt upright and had a mask of neutrality fall across their faces. You'd think they were on camera, but she know the pickup was only showing her, because she had it open in a small window, in the corner of the bigger screen.

  Then the face clicked and April was almost as surprised as the other two. She just wasn't used to seeing President Wiggen in a bathrobe, without the formal makeup she normally wore and the elaborate settings they always used to emphasize her power. She wasn't sitting in the Oval Office. She was sitting on what looked like a fairly normal, if comfortable, sofa, with an iced drink in her hand.

  "Ah, Miss Lewis, can we speak a moment?" she asked. The woman seemed seriously irritated. "Eat your ice cream," she added. "Though I don't know how you can enjoy it, after all the people you killed today. Don't they weigh on your conscience at all?"

  "I'm finding it hard to feel very badly about that," she informed Wiggen, without any problem finding words. "I went to the CNN studios to talk with Preston Harrison and Kyrah Armstrong. The creep found he couldn't lie freely, like the despicable son of a bitch he was, so he moved straight away to using force. He didn't show any more talent for bullying than he did for lying. What exactly did you expect me to do when the man swore to kill my family and nation to my face and them tried to cut me off from contact with my people and arrest me? Would you just quietly let yourself be lead off to probable execution? Maybe you would. Maybe you'll get a chance to find out, because it doesn't look like a lot of them care for you, much better than me. I think Harrison would have been as delighted to stuff your butt in an aircar and whisk you off to a real rough interrogation and extended hospitality."

  Wiggen started to say something and then stopped and looked thoughtful. She took a drink before she continued. "Yes, I imagine that would have made his day. There have been a few attempts at pretty much that exact scenario the last few months," she confided. "For all I know, Harrison might have been the source of one of them. Keeping the country stable and my hold on power, are not easy right now and for all that I'm one of the few that want to treat Home well, you're not making my job any easier Miss Lewis."

  "Will you drop the Miss Lewis, thing please. Every time somebody calls me that, I feel like I'm caught up in a Victorian novel," she begged.

  "And how shall you address me?" she asked. "Do you want to flaunt some egalitarian policy, by us being informal?"

  "Would you please ask President Wiggen, if she would expand the conversation beyond you two, to allow me to address her also?" Papa-san asked.

  "Who is that?" Wiggen demanded. "I didn't know we were sharing this conversation."

  "You caught me having supper with my hosts," April informed her. "I've taken other calls and right now it's rather difficult for me to move around freely, because I got hurt in the fighting. I didn't run off for privacy with my other calls either. I would assume you'd feel free to share this call with your friends and advisers, if you needed their take on it. Shouldn't I have the same privilege? She zoomed the camera angle out until Papa-san and Lin were included in the pickup range. "Ms. Wiggen, President of the United States of North America, my hosts Tetsuo and Lin Satos," she introduced them. "There is probably some diplomatic protocol I messed up and didn't use, but it isn't out of egalitarian stubbornness or disrespect. It's just I was never trained in all that silliness, any more than I know how to curtsey properly, or would know how to address the Queen of England or the Pope, in a manner satisfactory to all the flappers and toadies around them."

  The President looked tired and sighed. "I suppose I am used to having everyone primed how to address me, before they get near. Right now I don't have many flappers and toadies around me. In fact I have two naval guards in opposite corners of the room, watching me, weapons in hand and maybe watchin
g each other. They're afraid to sit outside in the hallway, because this has been a night of the long knives and I've probably had as many people killed tonight protecting me, as you killed protecting yourself."

  "Then how can you sit and enjoy your drink, anymore than I can enjoy my ice cream?" April tossed back in her face.

  "Because I'm a world weary old woman who's hardened to this ugliness and you're supposed to be a innocent young gir,l whose conscience would be offended at such things."

  "If you will release me from my role playing part, I won't expect you to follow your script and we can move right past all the play acting," April offered. "What do you want to be called? Just tell me and we can move on to something more important. Ms. Wiggen? Mrs. Wiggen? Madame President? President Wiggen? I have no problem with any of them."

  Wiggen seemed to be unexpectedly relaxing from April's offer. "So, what do you call your hosts there, who are older than you? she asked, seemingly amused now and willing to spar.

  "Well, he started out suggesting Illustrious Lord or Benevolent Master," she remarked offhand and her host looked stricken that she remembered that, much less was telling it to the President of the USNA, "although I haven't heard any of the servants using those, but we sort of agreed on Papa-san being acceptable, since he didn't seem to like Hey-You. His wife here, though Mistress of the House, seems to be called Mother by everyone, but she offered me Lin to use. But then they have fed me at their table and sheltered me under their roof and offered advice how to deal with the locals and where to go to get everything from fish sandwiches to carpet tape. Papa-san even shot a drone out of the sky, that was to snoop on me. So I owe them a huge debt of gratitude, as I do their daughter Adzusa. I'd call them anything they asked and figure they earned it on top of owing respect for their age."

  "I was told our drone showed you walking out of a convenience store and lifting a weapon to aim right at it, the instant before it was destroyed," Pres. Wiggen told her. "Sorry, but I have to pin that one on you."

  "Yeah, but that was the military one," April assured her. "There are so many of the damn things buzzing around here, I think they went feral and are nesting in the trees breeding," she exaggerated. "The one he shot belonged to Disney. Then he crushed it into a cube around a chicken, so it would smell interesting in a couple days and shipped it back to them. Even I'm not that artistic," she admitted. "But I learn by observing," she noted brightly.

  Even President Wiggen could see the humor in the chicken, enough to roll her eyes. But she settled the question before them. "Just call me Wiggen then. When I was a young woman in a law firm they couldn't decide what to call me and I wasn't going to put up with the crap of Honey and Dear, or they'd have thought they could order me to fetch their coffee and pat my bottom in a week. We called a truce with plain old Wiggen. I kind of miss it anyway. I take it you like April? She asked.

  "That's entirely satisfactory. I'm not worried anyone will try to pat my bottom."

  "I bet not," Wiggen agreed with a wry expression. "So Mr. Satos aren't you concerned you may not appear the loyal citizen, having an agent of Home as your house guest?"

  "If that is meant as intimidation I resent it," Papa-san said mildly. "If you mean it as a serious question I'm not a USNA citizen and when I was a civilian employee of the DOD they never doubted my loyalty due to that. As a matter of fact I will assure you I never acted against the interests of my employers. I always knew you don't bite the hand that feeds you. However my employment is ended and if my daughter brings friends and colleagues home. I'll have anyone I wish under my roof." He had a flat, matter of fact tone, April found scary.

  "It was meant as a serious question. Most people would be terrified to have such a house guest. But I don't think it matters, because obviously you don't intimidate worth a damn. Who did you work for under the DOD?"

  "You should call and ask," he suggested. "I might be in violation of agreements to tell you, even now," he said.

  "I'm the President. Don't you think I'm cleared to hear anything I want?"

  "Technically yes," he agreed. "But I saw things that weren't passed up the line of command when I served and I bet this young lady," he said nodding at April, "has told me things about the Office of the President, you haven't been told."

  "Such as?" she asked, skepticism written on her face.

  "How President Hadley died last year," Papa-san said.

  April looked surprised. "Do you really think the government doesn't know?"

  "Oh, some part of the government knows, I'm sure. But I bet anything they didn't tell her," he said, pointing to the screen, or they would have changed who is guarding her, even though it wouldn't do a thing to help the root cause of the problem. It was a similar mess that prompted them to switch from the Secret Service to the Navy after all."

  "President Hadley was killed and a bunch of others in the succession, when the bunker complex at Deepwell in West Virginia was destroyed by Home last year," Wiggen said with conviction and visible irritation. "What kind of conspiracy fantasy are you going to run past me? We've heard every variation, from Home getting help from flying saucers, to people reporting Home troops rampaging through the streets of Idaho."

  "You want to tell her, or you think she won't believe you anyway?" Papa asked.

  "I'm sure she has good biometric software, confirming what we believe about our statements," April pointed out. "So I'll tell her and if she doesn't believe us what's lost? Maybe she'll let me pick them up and remove them easier if she doesn't believe."

  "Wiggen, they got President Hadley out safely at Deepwell. He didn't die in the bunker. But he was a raving nut case the last couple weeks and at the end he kept trying to go back in the bunker, even though it was plainly being destroyed. His security detail had to literally drag him outside the facility to safety. But when they tried to hand him off to another security detail outside, he refused to cooperate any further, unless the two who brought him out were lined up and executed before his eyes, for laying hands on him. They apparently were going to do just that, but the lieutenants who rescued him didn't appreciate his ingratitude and didn't agree with their reward, so they refused to surrender their arms and shot it out with the B team. They shot all of them dead and Hadley too."

  Wiggen sat looking at them and her eyes went down to the side where they knew she was looking at the veracity of April's statement. She didn't look happy and she looked a little confused. "How could you possibly know such a thing? And if somebody told you this story, why would you believe them?"

  "Because the two who shot their President dead, want to come to Home and contacted me to help. And although you have agreed not to restrict travel to Home, they figure they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting on a plane or shuttle, because of what they did. I totally agree with them, because I had to help my friend Don Adams get through Homeland Security at gunpoint just a couple weeks ago, or their thugs would have him in a cell, or a shallow grave right now, without my help. These two aren't bragging on the deed at all. They did it most reluctantly. It was clear at the time they didn't do it as a political act. They just were not the sort to go meekly to their slaughter. If it doesn't matter to you, we'll take them quietly. Their story isn't exactly complimentary to how your country treats its service people. So maybe keeping it quiet would be a fair trade for their exit."

  "Let me check on something. I'll split the screen and allow you to watch." The screen split vertically and President Wiggen called to one of her guards, "Tell your commander I want him talking to me on my screen here, five minutes ago. I don't need him all dressed and fancied up, just awake."

  A man in a white t-shirt appeared, in a surprisingly fast two minutes. He looked groggy, but he also looked worried. "Yes, Madam President. What can I do for you?"

  "Are you familiar with the men that were in President Hadley's security unit last year and how they were organized?"

  "No Ma'am. I assembled your detail from scratch, at the direction of my superior and I was
advised there were none of the old unit available, to make use of their training. That was one of my first questions when I was tasked. I was also told that most of them were dead, in the destruction of Deepwell."

  "Most of them? Did anyone tell you why any survivors wouldn't be retained?"

  "No Ma'am, when you are asked to do high security work, you learn to proceed with what you are assigned, without asking a lot of questions. I've learned to trust my superior, to provide what I need to accomplish my task and not make a habit of too many questions, or I may create an impression I'm critical of my assignment, or my superior. I've found I have everything I need and sufficient support to accomplish my duty so far. The fact that the purges today didn't touch your detail should testify to that, I believe."

  "Thank you Commander. I want to assure you I've found no fault with my security. I do however want some information about President Hadley's security group. Do you know if your superior would be able to answer any questions about that, or do you know someone else I should call?"

  "Ma'am, I am not sure what information Captain Ridley my superior can provide, but I know no better source to direct you to. If he doesn't know what you want, he is in a much better position than I am, to advice you of a source."

  "Thank you for your attention at this late hour. If you'd have your Captain call me immediately, I am through with you for the evening."