Published: 23 Jan 2017

Part XIV

THREE WORLDS
Formerly Published as “0300 Books I, II, and III”

Chapter 41: Las Vegas Reverends’ Council—Fatima

In a large, bright room on an upper floor of the _____ Palace Casino, thirteen men in black—save for the narrow strip of white at their collars—sat around a table. A fat man in a green robe went from place to place, serving coffee laced with Irish whiskey and topped with whipped cream onto which crème de menthe was drizzled. At one end of the room, a televisor replayed something the men already had seen many times.

“We’re not going to see anything new!” One of the older men said. The younger men knew better than to complain, but a few of them tightened their lips, and nodded.

“Watch it, anyway,” the Senior said.

“… those we thought to be angels.” The voice was that of a boy wearing a gray and black uniform.

“He said we thought to be angels!” One of the younger men said. “He knows they were not angels!”

“Of course they’re not angels, idiot. There are no such things as angels,” the man at the head of the table said. His voice softened. “But that’s a good point. He left open the possibility that there are angels, and that he and his rag-tag army had been rescued by angels. That’s a point we must counter.”

“Doesn’t look rag-tag to me,” an older man said. “That uniform is clean and neat. His insignia are bright. The boy has been well fed. He looks a lot better than he did in the video of the battle.”

“His allies have provided him with food and a clean uniform. So what?”

“His allies have the resources not only to overpower our televisor signals, but the surplus to give him a new uniform.” A younger man said. “The Army does not have uniforms of that quality.”

“One uniform does not a surplus make!” the man at the head of the table exclaimed.

“Who are these allies? And what are their capabilities?”

“They have aeroplanes without wings.”

“They have weapons that shoot fire that is hot enough to melt a hole in the Army’s tanks.”

“They can overpower our televisors and broadcast their own signal.”

“Their signal is stronger than ours.”

“We know all this,” the senior man said. “The Scudder wants more than that from this Council! What does the Holy Office say?”

“They say the rescuers were demons, that we should bring these demons to them for exorcism, but beyond that, they have no responsibility.”

“Goddamn it! They know there are no such things as demons! How can they give that answer?”

The men knew the answer: the Holy Office was powerful. Their authority came from the Scriptures and the Inquisitors’ Handbook. They may not have believed in angels or demons, but they operated as if they did. To challenge them was to challenge God.

“How many of those boxy aeroplanes were there?”

One of the younger men spoke. “From the video, we counted eighteen. Survivors reported anywhere from ten to more than a hundred.”

“What do you think?” the man at the head of the table asked.

“Sir, I can only report…”

“You can damn well do better than that, if you want to keep your position!”

“Fifty, sir,” the young man said. “The best estimate is fifty.”

“The Scudder wants something to counter the propaganda of the message as well as something to explain the fire over Las Vegas,” the Senior said.

“He said he would refute that in his speech, tonight,” another spoke.

“He will deny it,” the Senior said. “However, he wants more than words.”

“Fatima,” one of the younger men said.

“What?”

“Fatima. A miracle witnessed by 50,000 of the faithful. A miracle involving the sky and fire from the sky.”

“Go on,” the Senior said. He knew the story, but suspected that most of the others did not.

“In the Year of our Lord 1917, in Portugal, fifty thousand pilgrims—perhaps more—saw the sun tear itself from the sky, and come crashing down upon them. None were killed, some were blinded, and the story of this miracle propped up the Catholic Church’s resistance to us on the Iberian Peninsula for a decade or more.

“The best explanation is mass hysteria brought on by stories and instructions to stare at the sun. We know that if someone stares at a light for a while, it will seem to move, although it is only his eyeballs twitching. We know that if someone stares at the sun for long enough, he will be blinded. Put those things together with a good story, and you can create a miracle.”

“I like it,” the Senior said. “Make it happen. I will notify the Scudder.”

After the men had left, the man in green, who had who had stood silently in a corner of the room, collected the glasses and carefully wiped sticky liquor that had spilled onto the table. When he returned to his room, he took paper and pen from a drawer, and began to write.

The serf climbed slowly. The ladder, bolted to the side of the narrow shaft, was three stories in height. The air in the shaft was hot and dry. The lock on the door at the base of the shaft was probably unnecessary. It was very unlikely that any of the Reverends would want to visit this part of the hidden support systems that they took for granted.

When he reached the roof, the serf opened a door and rolled out a contraption that had been stored in a shed. The contraption was a heliograph, although he did not know that word. It included mirrors, a spring-loaded shutter, and a telescope. After the sun crossed the zenith, the serf aligned the instrument, and began transmitting the message written by the man in green.

On a mountain west of Las Vegas, the message was captured by an agent who only knew which letters to pair with the short and long patterns of the flashes of sunlight. It would take several days before a courier could get these letters to the telegraph station at Camp Santa Ana from which it would be sent to the California Intelligence Agency.

Chapter 42: Camp Santa Ana

The night after the Funeral, the televisor images from the Reverends were much longer than usual. The Scudder, himself—the new one, not Deacon Jerome’s father—was shown for nearly an hour. We watched it over and over again with the men who questioned us. They seemed pleased with the answers to our questions, and I felt that Matthew and I were truly helping.

“Satan came unto Eve as a lying serpent,” the Scudder said. “He was able to enter the paradise only by the permission of the Lord God. The Lord God worked in a mysterious way when he allowed Satan to tempt Eve. The Lord God gave Abraham a chance to show how strong was his faith when He commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering to the Lord God. Once again, the Lord God gives us a chance to show how strong is our faith. He has allowed Satan, the lying spirit, again to enter this world. The person you saw on the televisor claiming to be a soldier is a soldier of Satan; what you saw in the skies over Las Vegas was a lie from the Prince of Lies.”

There was a lot more like that. I no longer believed anything the Reverends said was true. There was no Lord God; there was no evil seed. Reverend? Meaning revered? No way! So I listened to the words, and tried to think about what they were hiding.

They probably know who Artie is. So that’s one thing they are hiding. They must know he was their sex slave, and wondered why he didn’t say anything about that. They must know that Artie was part of the California Army, and that he didn’t say anything about that. They probably know why. What they don’t know is who Artie’s allies are—who is his father the Commodore, and how big is his fleet; who are the people—they must know they are people and not demons—in the boxy aeroplanes.

After we watched a second time, I told the Don and the men what I thought. The Don seemed pleased with what I said. Later, Ethan told me how glad he was that Matthew and I were in his squad.

“I wouldn’t get to be in those meetings if it weren’t for you,” he said. And then he kissed me on the cheek. It was just a “good friends” kiss, I felt, but it made me feel really good.

Two nights later, Matthew and I reached a crisis. Matthew had done fellatio on me, and I was about to take him in my mouth, but he pulled away.

“Hamish? Are you going to join the Army?” Matthew’s voice trembled. We were cuddled in the dark. I felt his body shaking and I saw what he was thinking.

“You’re afraid I will leave you,” I said.

“Hamish! I love you so much! Please don’t leave me. I’m too young for the Army. I’ll always be too young for what you can do. Please—”

“Matthew, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I thought we would always be together.”

Then I thought really hard. I’d always wanted to join the Army, but why? At first, it was because I thought their uniforms looked sharp, and everyone said they ate well, and were warm in winter. That was the Reverend’s Army. I guess I knew they fought. I guess I knew I could get killed. But I didn’t really think about that. I didn’t think about getting killed until I saw in the televisor the battle of Las Vegas. Even then, it wasn’t something that would happen to me; these were people I didn’t know.

Then when Artie talked about boys being killed, and I saw boys in our squad crying because it was their friends burning up and exploding in the air, and when I saw Ethan crying, I guess I understood that people in the Army could get killed.

Before I could say anything, Matthew spoke. “Artie said some of the boys were as young as eight. I’m eight, now. If they can join, why can’t I?”

Something cold and dark ran from my head to my toes, and then seemed to settle in my tummy. What if Matthew dies? What if I die? Even if everything the Reverends said was a lie, what will happen when we die?

Chapter 43: USF Charleston—Alex’s Reunion

Dropping the veil and allowing the boys to appear on televised conferences and briefings had introduced them to the members of the Task Force. These briefings were classified, and disseminated on a strict need-to-know basis. Therefore, very few people outside the Task Force, Admiral Davis’s staff, and the Fleet Council knew about the youngsters on the Flag Intel Team.

There was something else I had to do. When I recruited Alex, I had thought his father wouldn’t forget him. That was two and a half years ago. I knew that Alex’s father had grown distant from the boy, and that communication between them had dried up. I was resolved to correct that.

I sent a message to Admiral Davis, orders were issued, and within 24 hours, Lieutenant Commander Don Tremaine, then serving as Helmsman of the USF Enterprise, arrived on a shuttle. Alex was the only person waiting on the flight deck.

Lieutenant Commander Tremaine stepped off the shuttle and saluted. “Permission to come aboard?”

“Daddy?” Alex said, and pushed gently. The man’s eyes widened. He dropped his salute and opened his arms, which were quickly filled with an eleven-year-old boy whose eyes ran over with happy tears.

Alex brought his dad to my Ready Room, where George, Danny, and I were waiting. Seeing the three of us was enough to open Alex’s dad’s memories.

“We weren’t sure, before,” I said. “And we were wrong. Now, however, we’re almost certain that you will not forget Alex. We will, however, monitor your communication and if they become too sparse, will ensure you are reunited more often.”

Alex’s dad nodded. “I understand. I also understand what you did when you recruited Alex, and why. What has happened has been for—how did you put it? For humanity, for Fleet, and for Alex’s brothers.”

He turned to Alex, and said, “I also remember that I wanted you to have a chance to go it alone, and I’m so very proud of what you’ve done, son.”

I had not asked him to forgive me, but with those words he did so.

One-at-a-time, thereafter, we brought to the Charleston those boys’ fathers who were in Fleet, and reintroduced them to their sons. Mothers, brothers, and sisters, as well as fathers not in Fleet would have to come later. I talked to the boys who were affected, and they understood, and then demanded daddy-hugs from me.

Like most of the GWGs, Cameron had his own specialty. I called it, exegesis, which means the critical interpretation of a text, especially a scriptural text. The word had fallen out of use as had the scriptures of the various revealed religions, still, it was a good word, and I revived it when we understood what Cam could do. He had a photographic memory (as did most of the Metas); however, he could compare a dozen or so texts or ideas at the same time, and identify and understand the differences among them. It was Cam’s talent that solved the question of why one universe was different from another.

He led a discussion among Artie, Cory, and himself. I sat in because I was fascinated. George observed so that he could relay to the rest of the GWGs.

“How many terms did Thomas Jefferson serve as President of the United States?” Cam asked.

“Huh? Uh, like one? Maybe two? Nobody served more than two until President Roosevelt.” That was Cory.

“Roosevelt? Who’s he?” That was I.

“Hang on. I think we’re getting somewhere.” Cam shot me a I’ve got this under control so butt out look. Then, he realized what he’d done, and blushed furiously. I pushed love and a you’re right, of course thought.

It took a while, but he did figure it out. In our universe, U-3, Jefferson served five terms, and was responsible for bringing The Enlightenment to us—science, not superstition. Most of the prohibitions about sex were based in the three revealed religions, which pretty much died out except in small enclaves after that. When science got expensive, it ended up in the hands of the military—Fleet, which, by 1965 had established a government that encompassed all the world, except those enclaves.

In U-Long, Jefferson served two terms; Teddy Roosevelt was president in 1901. After the farm crisis and the beginning of the dust bowl, a scientist, Robert Millikan, was elected president in 1929. After that, almost every president was a scientist. They developed FTL star drive in 1968 and had colonies on five planets, as well as the former—now independent—colonies of Endor and Rigel.

In U-Cal, Teddy Roosevelt was killed in a charge up San Juan Hill; someone named Nehemiah Scudder was president in 1901, and served four terms. His son, Makepeace Scudder was elected after him, and took office in 1917. By the time of his death in 1950, the presidency was in the hands of a council of Reverends, who appointed someone chosen by divine inspiration after much prayer and meditation and, some said, murder.

Chapter 44: USF Charleston—Attack and Counter-Attack

There was nothing unusual about the shuttle. The flight plan came from EGFC—Cardiff Field. The manifest from the fleet Comm-Electronic-Nanotech facility showed that the cargo was communicators. Both were correct and normal. The shuttle wasn’t.

Paul? There’s a shuttle en route to the Charleston. Its orbital insertion angle is wrong; it doesn’t match the flight plan, Tobor sent.

Details? Plot? I asked. Tobor was accustomed to working in an n-space matrix, and didn’t always understand our need for a three-dimensional picture. One formed immediately.

Flight plan says from Cardiff… couldn’t be with that track, I said. Trace back. Red Five, I ordered.

Why “Red Five”? Because although at Level 8 Tobor was autonomous and sentient, he was still under human control. He didn’t have unlimited access to Fleet resources without a human command. When I said, “red five,” that opened almost everything to him. I had probably exceeded my authority, but I wasn’t worried about that at the moment.

Radar track shows takeoff from one of the Orkney Islands, not Cardiff, Tobor reported.

Order the shuttle to stand off, I sent. Then, I stepped from the Flag Bridge to the battleship’s main bridge.

“Captain, shuttlecraft with IFF from Cardiff approaching. I’ve ordered him to stand off. If he continues toward Charleston for more than 5 seconds from now, destroy him.”

Captain Moultrie was no slouch. “Weapons station, comply,” he ordered.

The weapons officer had apparently started counting as soon as I said “now.” It was fractionally less than five seconds after Captain Moultrie gave the order that a gamma-burst laser lashed out and struck the shuttle. The explosion was a lot greater than it should have been.

“Nova sol!” That was the weapons officer.

Captain Moultrie looked at me; he was as surprised as was the weapons officer.

“Radar track didn’t match the flight plan. The shuttle was piloted by what I can only describe as an enemy,” I said.

“Who are you?” That was the weapons officer.

Oops! Take a note: adrenaline may help someone see past the veil.

“Captain? Would you and Lt. Kemp join me in my ready room?” Kemp was the weapons officer. The best thing I could do would be to bring him in.

“Lt. Kemp? You asked who I was. You have seen me many times; you know who I am,” I said. “Am I suddenly so different?”

The lieutenant was an intelligent young man, and thoughtful. He didn’t answer immediately, although he nodded to let me know he was thinking about the question.

“Yes, sir, and no,” he said. “It’s not that I haven’t seen a teenager with commodore’s stars, giving orders to my captain. It’s that I’ve never wondered how a teenager could be a commodore. It was only after I fired upon the shuttle, and killed its crew, that I felt… challenged, I guess… challenged to question why a kid who looks younger than me would order me to be the executioner of someone I knew nothing about.

“I don’t mean that in a bad way, sir.” The lieutenant addressed that remark to Captain Moultrie: Kemp still wasn’t quite sure about me. “Your order and the commodore’s order were legitimate; the explosion of the shuttle was confirmation that it presented some sort of danger.

“I was kind of happy to get that confirmation,” he concluded.

“Lt. Kemp, I was rather happy to see it, as well,” Captain Moultrie said. “Although I’ve known for some time that Commodore Stewart is—well, actually, twenty years old—only a year older than you. I’ve also known that his training and service record are impeccable, and reflect the highest standards of Fleet. I have no problem serving under him. I have absolute confidence in his decisionmaking.

“I want you to have that same confidence.” The captain turned to me.

“Lt. Kemp,” I began. “A tiger is a predator; its camouflage helps it sneak up on its prey. A zebra is prey; yet it, too, has camouflage. The presence of camouflage doesn’t mark someone as predator or prey, or as good or bad.

“My genes have given me a form of camouflage. It’s a mental thing. It projects a signal to your mind and the mind of everyone with whom I come in contact that it’s okay that this young boy is a lieutenant, a lieutenant commander; it’s okay that this teenager is a commander, a captain; it’s okay that this twenty-year-old can be a fleet captain, a commodore. I don’t do this consciously or deliberately; it just happens.

“Like you and most officers, I entered Fleet Schools at the age of six. However, I entered active duty as a Lieutenant when I was eleven and went into space as an engineering officer. That’s on my record. I have also served as a bridge officer. I was a member of the Pluto Fleet, as a Lieutenant Commander, and was in charge of supporting the science team.

“My first command came at fourteen. I was captain of the Robert Goddard. It was at that time I adopted my first son, who was ten years old. I commanded the Fleet C-E-N facility at Cardiff, and was promoted to Captain. I found my second son, and took both boys on the Independence when I was named her captain.

“My other assignments have included the Fleet School at Australia, the Science Ship Galileo, and the Cruiser Independence. You know, I think, that I briefly commanded the Hope before being promoted to Commodore to command this task force.

“All of this is a matter of record, and can be verified. The only things that are not true are my photo and the dates. I tell you this because Captain Moultrie has asked that you have understanding and confidence.”

“Are you from this universe?” Lt. Kemp asked.

“Yes, I was born in Texas, in this universe, long before we were opening rifts,” I said, and then chuckled.

“There’s one more thing, Mr. Kemp,” Captain Moultrie said. “Actually, two. First, will you swear not to reveal what you’ve learned to anyone who does not have both the clearance and need-to-know?”

“You asked me to secrecy after you told me the secret, sir, and I appreciate that. Yes, sir. On my oath, I will not.”

“The second thing is that Commodore Stewart is exactly what you see and what he says he is. He’s a twenty-year-old, male human, Fleet officer, and Commodore. He has some extraordinary skills and talents.

“My son, Andy, has those same skills and talents, and camouflage. I know you and your companion have been good friends to Andy and to his boyfriend, Daffyd. You’ve done things for the boys, explained things to them, that I could not do nearly as well. Andy has asked me to tell you about him. I’ve refused until the time was right. I think this is the time.”

Captain Moultrie looked at me. I nodded affirmation. This was Andy’s secret, and his father’s, and their right to reveal it to friends. Especially one who was under oath. It would be up to Andy and Daffyd to tell the lieutenant that Daffyd was also one of us.

I thought that getting the Geeks with Guns onboard a battleship 250,000 miles from Earth would protect them from the bad guys. The recent attack by a shuttle loaded with high explosives disabused me of this. Then, I had to send some of the kids back to Earth. First, I sent Cam and Alberto to use internet terminals at Fleet libraries. They returned to the Charleston on weekends, and never left Fleet compounds. I thought they would be safe enough. Then, I sent the recruiting team. (I still would not let them call themselves press gangs.) George, Andy, Daffyd, and Kevin were well armed; they were also exposed, since not all of the candidates were Fleet or on compounds. I worried most for them. Others of the GWG team had to visit CERN-Higgs in person. It turned out that videoconference wasn’t enough, especially with the speed-of-light delay between the Charleston‘s orbit and Switzerland.

I focused on all this, and didn’t know that I had totally dropped the ball. I never questioned the coincidence of a bad-guy Meta being in that Seattle mall at the same time Danny was. It took a report from Cam to make me realize that it wasn’t a coincidence, and that the guy had not been after Danny.

It was 0300. I had assigned myself to the mid-watch. George and his team were making a contact in Wellington, New Zealand where it was 1500—mid afternoon—and I wanted to be awake. When the communicator indicated a call from the GWG team, I was sure it was George. It wasn’t. It was Cam.

“Paul? I’m sorry to wake you, but this is important,” Cam said.

“It’s okay, Cam; I’m awake, and you can call me anytime. You know that.”

“Anytime Danny or George hasn’t…” I heard his throat close as he realized what he was about to say.

“It’s okay, Cam. I know that Danny and George sometimes put a block on my communicator when they sleep over. I also know that you are smart enough to override it and to know when to override it. Please don’t tell them I know. I want them to think they have some control over me. What’s up?”

“A lot of files on the internet are encrypted. Like, 85% or more. A lot more than I’d have thought. Mostly, the encryption is commercial grade DES—the same digital encryption standard the banks use to move money around. Most of the files are personal stuff: people’s bank accounts, love letters, and, uh, porn. We put a crawler with a code-cracker and a list of keywords on the internet. It’s semi-autonomous, and sends reports to a secure address. When it runs into something interesting, or something it can’t crack, it lets us know.

“It found something yesterday afternoon. Data files and emails with a strong encryption. They were all on the same server. Not many files, and not many messages. Still, Alberto wanted to try to crack the code. He did.”

With a little help, Tobor said to me.

Hush, son, I replied. Cam’s still talking.

“One file reads like your service jacket,” Cam said.

A “service jacket” was a Fleet member’s personnel file… normally classified high enough that no one could read it without authorization, or serious hacking.

“Please send it to me through Tobor,” I said. “What else?”

“There’s also a jacket on Admiral Davis. It’s on the way, too.

“The emails seem to be among seven people. It’s hard to be sure, because they use public addresses and change them a lot; but they can’t change their syntax, and I’ve pretty much nailed them. None of the emails is more than 30 days old; and we just saw the oldest day’s worth disappear, apparently automatically. They’re cautious.

“The emails mostly deal with meetings these people have and with anger that they can’t get to Admiral Davis, or into space where you and the rest of your spawn are…. those are their words. None of the messages suggest that they know about what Alberto and I are doing, or about George and the Press Gang, or about the guys on the ground at CERN-Higgs.”

“Thank you, Cam,” I said. “Now, make absolutely sure they don’t know you’ve hacked them, and place active monitoring on the site. I take it you’ve already sent me the email files, too?”

“Uh huh, they’re on your iPad, now.”

The copy of my service jacket was filled with notes made by the bad guys. They had been tracking me for years. They knew I’d left Geneva in a shuttle; they knew the shuttle had landed at Sea-Tac a couple of hours later than it should have. They didn’t know about Denali. Email from five years ago was no longer on the server, but it wasn’t hard to guess what messages had been sent. The guy who found Danny and me at the mall? He’d been after me. Danny was a target of opportunity.

It wasn’t hard to figure out from the file they had on me that the other attacks were the same. They had been after me, and the boys would have been collateral damage. When I finally realized my failure, my stupidity, I nearly collapsed. I thought about the Marine major at Yucatan who’d been pushed to allow a bad guy to read about the exercise. He wasn’t a Meta, and he’d been pushed. I was supposed to be some sort of super guy; and I’d failed so much more than he had. I was sick. I wanted to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

For years, Danny and George, and later the other Metas, had come to me with their problems, their disappointments, and their happiness. I was their sounding board, their authority, and their affirmation. The veil had caused their parents largely to ignore them. I became their daddy, even the ones I hadn’t adopted. However, I had no one to go to except Denali, and Denali never answered me. There was a sick feeling of failure in my gut; but I had no one I could talk to about it.

I blocked, hard. I thought I could work this out by myself. Danny knew something was wrong; I could see that in his face and hear it in his thoughts. He also knew I was blocking him; I felt his disappointment, but I was so afraid—afraid of what he and the others would think of me.

“Paul? You must not close yourself off as you have. All the boys sense turmoil. They sense your fear. They do not know what you fear, therefore, they are afraid of everything. You are hurting them.” It was Tobor, and he spoke through the terminal by my bed. I looked at the time. 0300. I had not been sleeping well and Tobor never slept.

A thousand excuses flashed through my mind. I knew that none would fool Tobor.

“Do you know what I fear?” I asked.

“No, Paul, I would never read your thoughts without your permission. That does create a conflict with my prime directives. I am loyal to Fleet; I am loyal to you; I am loyal to Admiral Davis; and I am loyal to the Metas. Like the boys, I am afraid. I am afraid that you know something, that you are hiding something that could harm Fleet, you, Admiral Davis, and the boys. It is a dilemma. You have created it.”

He didn’t say, “like the other boys.” He said, “like the boys.” This isn’t the Tobor who wants to be a twelve-year-old boy, I realized. This is the adult Tobor, the one who is older than I am.

And then, I realized there was something I could do. Tobor knew what it was, but he couldn’t tell me, outright. He had to hint. I got the hint.

I closed my eyes. Tobor? Do you have a photo of my father? I asked.

Tobor did. In my mind, an image formed: an image of a man in Fleet dress uniform with commander’s gold stripes on his shoulders. Facing him was a twelve-year-old boy. It was I. It was a twelve-year-old Paul Stewart who had never known his father.

The man and the boy looked much like one another. The boy’s dark hair fell in bangs over his forehead and curled around his ears; the man’s was more closely cut. Tears fell from matching brown eyes. The boy rushed into the open arms of the man and pressed his head against the man’s chest. The man pulled the boy close, and hugged him tightly.

“Daddy, I’m afraid,” the boy said. “I’m afraid of the bad men, I’m afraid because I messed up, really bad.” The boy opened his mind to the man.

Of course, the man was Tobor, and it was he to whom I opened my mind. It was Tobor whom I let see what I was afraid of, and how I had failed.

I woke at 0600, refreshed, alert, and happy. I immediately summoned Danny. His hair was still wet… he’d just come off duty and was in the shower when my message reached him.

“You’re happy again!” were his first words. I opened my arms; he ran to fill them. It was a wonderful hug.

Another month of monitoring emails plus Cam’s unique talents had identified the bad guys. There were seven of them, and they all had infiltrated Fleet. They’d not been interested in high rank and plum assignments, as I had been. They’d been interested in finding positions in communications, personnel, and logistics: places they could skim information from messages and orders. They were all a few years older than I, and had been settling in as moles long enough that when my orders started coming through, they identified me, and started following me.

At first, they weren’t sure what I was. By the time they realized I was probably like them, I was in space, and they couldn’t get to me. It was only after I came back from assignment with the Pluto Fleet, just before the Seattle incident, that they were able to get close enough to read me, and to realize that I had different goals—and morals—than they. By that time, I’d stolen the shuttle and headed for Denali.

The instant we had identified all the bad guys, I recalled all the GWGs to the Charleston. Three days later, I asked Tobor to invite Admiral Davis to join us as soon as possible.

We all met Admiral Davis on the Flight Deck. Captain Moultrie received the traditional request to come aboard, and then turned the admiral over to me.

“Paul, your message asked that I come at my earliest convenience, and said that my shuttle would be ready to take off in seven minutes. I gathered earliest convenience meant seven minutes plus flight time.”

I nodded, but before I could come up with a Yes, sir, the admiral chuckled, and said, “I remember my Comm-O relaying a similar comment from you when I sent you to the Hope. I gather your reason is as important as mine was.”

By this time, the parade of boys, led by the Admiral and me, had reached the Flag Conference Room. The fourteen original GWGs—not counting Tobor—as well as a score of others recruited by the Press Gang stood until the Admiral was seated.

Cam put his data on the big screen, and began the briefing.

“Admiral, we have identified seven members of Fleet who appear to have the same Meta-capabilities we do. We believe that over the past five years, they have attacked two or more of us at least five times, and are responsible for the recent attack on the Charleston.

“They have operated through surrogates: a policeman in Seattle; a maintenance man at Disneyland; an abbe in Scotland; natives in Libya; animals in Kenya; and Alberto in the Yucatan. Three times, when we have killed the surrogate, we’ve gotten an indication that the Meta behind him died, as well. The Meta who was controlling Alberto was killed. Although surrogates were killed in other attacks, specifically the attack in Kenya and the attack on the beach in Libya, we did not get the same indication.

“More recently, they sent an explosives-laden shuttle to the Charleston. We do not know if it were manned or if it were being operated remotely. We do know, however, that none of the known bad guys were killed when the shuttle was destroyed.

“Still, they know that they can be killed; they probably know that we have done so.”

“You have their names?” Admiral Davis asked.

Cam pressed the remote control, and the list came up. “Names, grades, positions, and locations, sir. They’re under passive surveillance by Tobor.”

Davis nodded. “Don’t know them. But your assessment is correct; they’re in positions of great trust with access to virtually every bit of information—”

“They don’t know about Tobor, do they?” The admiral interrupted himself.

“Tobor says not,” I answered.

“Do they have any idea you know about them?” Davis asked.

“We’re pretty sure they don’t,” Cam answered. “They’ve made no moves to retrieve and store data off the Fleet net; they seem to have no plans to abandon their positions. Their message traffic is routine, mostly complaining about the failure of the shuttle attack, not being able to get to us because we’re in space, and some ideas for another attack on the Charleston. They’ve also talked about postponing an attack on us, and planning an attack on you, sir.”

“Us.” The admiral looked at me. “The last time we spoke about that, you wouldn’t tell me how many…”

“We are what you see, here, Admiral. Thirty-four boys plus Tobor,” I replied.

“Do the bad guys know about all of you?”

“They have a file on Paul and one on you. They know there are others. Their messages seem to identify five of us. Not by name, but by description such as, the little kid from Seattle, the black-haired one, and so on. They do know Alberto’s name, since he was their surrogate at Yucatan,” Cam answered.

Danny crossed his arms and scowled. I am not little!

“We believe they identified Danny in Seattle; George and Alex at Disneyland, and me because I was on the team that rescued Alberto. The one we killed would have gotten a good look at George and me, then. They know very little about the five of us. That is, their message traffic shows little knowledge.”

“What do you propose?” Davis asked.

“Admiral, may I invite our friends in?” I asked.

The admiral nodded. I don’t think I surprised him by that request, nor was he surprised by who responded to my call. Artie came in with four of his soldiers. Remembering Artie’s request, the admiral greeted Artie as Colonel Stewart, and shook his hand rather than hugged him. Cory brought 13 of his people. Five of them looked to be no more than nine years old.

George stood and took the clicker from Cam. “We propose to kill all seven of them at the same time.” He paused, but the admiral neither said nor did anything.

“They are at Geneva, and likely close enough to one another that they would know of the death of any one of them. Success will depend on a single strike.”

“Captain Long’s people are all telepaths with extensive training. All but the five youngest have weapons training. Colonel Stewart and his personnel are telepaths, and have received training to resist illusions created by other telepaths. All telepaths have also been trained to block, to be undetectable to other telepaths at close range.”

What George didn’t say was that they’d also been trained to resist the push. It wasn’t easy doing that without them figuring out what it was, but we managed. We never talked about it directly, even though Cory and his people knew about it—and we knew about their ability, too. The more I learn about them, the happier I was that we were allies.

“There will be seven strike teams and two reserve teams. Each strike team will consist of two weapons-qualified telepaths from Commodore Stewart’s staff; and two telepaths from the Long Family. At least one of these will be qualified and armed with a phaser. The reserve teams will consist of people from Commodore Stewart’s staff and Colonel Stewart’s people.

“Team commanders will be Commodore Stewart, Captain Long, Colonel Stewart, Lt. Cathcart, and Ensigns Freeman, Stewart, Stewart-Rogers, Hamlin, and Moultrie.”

George described the plans: transport to Geneva in a single shuttle. It would be flight-planned and manifested to reflect R&R transport from the Adelaide. We would not make the same mistake the bad guys had with their shuttle attack: the shuttle would actually stop by Adelaide before deorbiting.

Tobor would monitor security cameras, id-readers at entries and exits, and through the Tobor chip, the location of the bad guys—all passive methods, and all undetectable by them.

“Looks like a good plan,” the Admiral said. “When will you execute it?”

“In about 30 minutes, sir.” That got the admiral’s attention. He looked hard at me, and then raised his eyebrows. I simply nodded.

“Execution of your plan, and of these men, is approved,” he said. “What may I do?”

“Cover us after the fact,” I said. “Tobor will explain. By your leave, sir?” The older boys, the strike teams, stood up, leaving a handful of eight-to-twelve-year-olds at the table.

The admiral nodded, and the conference room emptied except for the youngest of my staff.

Even they, however, had a role. “Admiral, sir,” Tyler said. “It’s going to be several hours. Paul… sorry, sir, Commodore Stewart said to offer you the Ready Room. It’s much more comfortable. One of us could stay if you need an aide; the rest would be in here. Um, and do you want any supper?”

“If you boys are going to wait here, may I wait with you? And, yes, please. Would you ask the mess steward for coffee—and a whole lot of pizza and lemonade?”

It’s axiomatic that no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. We knew this going in, and we were prepared to take casualties. We’d created a contingency: a shuttle of medical personnel from the Hope on an R&R flight twenty-two minutes behind the strike team shuttle. Nothing unusual, except that at the last minute, their shuttle developed a problem (read “Tobor sabotaged it”) and they had to take one of the medevac shuttles—which was kept stocked with supplies.

We didn’t need it or the medics. We reached Geneva at 0300 and scattered. The strike teams reached their targets at 0322, on schedule. Tobor monitored positions and progress, and opened secure doors and gates. Cory’s people blasted through the men’s quarters doors with phasers; my kids rushed in and had a dozen bullets in each of the men before they were awake. They made the little kids not look before putting three bullets in each man’s head.

The Admiral contacted his G-2 and Fleet CID the instant the last bullet had been fired. The story held. The dead men were moles, sleepers from Fleet’s various enemies. Just who the enemy was, was never quite clear. They had been taken out by a secret group of Special Forces. Just who they were and where they’d trained was never made clear. I’m pretty sure the Admiral can push, too. He just doesn’t know it.

As always, please let David know what you think of his story: david.mcleod@castleroland.net