Published: 27 Feb 2017

Part XIX

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

Chapter 58: Yesterday’s War

I spent the next couple of weeks analyzing the exercise, the VR simulations, and the data that had been used to create them. George pushed his duties onto others, including the duties I knew he loved most—kidnappings—and worked with me the entire time. The more we studied, the more we were sure that an armed invasion of the Reverends’ territory would result in unacceptably high death rates among the Reverend’s Army and the Sheriffs, and a lot of collateral deaths among the civilian population. In the end, it was George who provided the answer.

“Daddy? You’re worried about using yesterday-war tactics to fight this war, so you’re trying to invent new tactics for fighting a new war. Maybe that’s the wrong question. Maybe we don’t have to fight.”

George’s epiphany led us in an entirely new direction. And I gave him full credit when I announced it in a Task-Force-wide meeting. “Gentlemen, we are not going to fight this war with the last war’s strategies. In fact, we’re not going to do any more fighting than absolutely necessary. Our strategy will be to cause collapse of the Reverends’ system, and to step in with massive reconstruction.”

There was a solid minute of shocked silence in the auditorium, then buzzing conversation for several minutes.

“However,” I said once I again had their attention, “because their economy, and their entire society, is so fragile, collapse and reconstruction will have to be done simultaneously.

“Ensign George Stewart-Rogers’ decision to kidnap a Reverend from Moapa, a little town on the end of the line, was the inspiration, and it was he who pointed out that I had been asking the wrong question, that there were options other than fighting, and that there were ways to win the planet with a minimum amount of force.

“It’s not often in our history that one person has had such a profound effect on a campaign.”

George blushed, profusely and I had to order Tobor not to put a camera on him. Okay, I agreed. One camera, but it’s for me, only!

“We will begin with the most geographically isolated towns and villages at the periphery of the Reverends’ world, and work our way into the center.

“We will use Marines, Seabees, Sailors of all grades and specialties, and our secret weapon, the boys you know as Geeks with Guns.”

The Fleet had been introduced to the telepathy that my boys, some of Corey’s boys, and Artie and a few of his boys, were developing. Corey’s brother had done a great job of explaining the telepath’s code of ethics. The knowledge was still restricted to Fleet, but I thought we’d probably avoided the witch-burnings that had happened in Corey’s world in the 19^th century, and those that would still occur in our world in the religious and Mujahedeen lands, had we not rescued every Meta we could find. I shook off these thoughts and continued my introduction. And Danny finally was able to wear the Geeks with Guns T-shirt he’d wanted to make when he, George, Will, and Alex had been Cadets at Fleet School Australia.

“As we take command of a town or village, we will bring it into our fold, with power, communication, education, medicine, and, where necessary, food.

“That’s the broad outline; it will be up to you to fill it in. The Fleet Intel Team and the Fleet Ops Team will be recruiting more members as we ramp up intelligence gathering and operations planning.

“Team Australia and Team California will please focus on possible alliances with Australia and California, and how to approach them should you recommend alliance. And, if they agree to alliance, how they may participate in the liberation of the Reverends’ territory.

“Team Pan-Asia, and Team Mujahedeen will please focus on what reaction we can expect from those people, and how to deal with that. We’ve been warned that these two powers plus the Reverends are in an unstable relationship which may collapse when we bring the Enlightenment to the Reverends’ people.

“All the teams will ask for additional resources, and from every part of the Task Force.

“The Kidnap Teams will continue their current efforts, and may be tasked to expand their activities based on the needs of the intel people on each of these teams.

“There will be work and enough for everyone.”

I had sent a brief summary to Admiral Davis before the meeting, and Tobor alerted me that the Admiral was watching on a secure link. I wasn’t surprised to get his call.

“Paul?” That’s all he said.

I double-checked the encryption before answering. “Admiral, I should have wondered why Fleet was so big that in order to keep people and ships occupied you had to invent science missions like counting asteroids and chasing them through space in order to examine them for signs of ancient civilization, when science had shown unequivocally that no planet could form in the zone affected by Jupiter’s gravity field.”

I didn’t give him a chance to answer. “I should have understood a long time ago, when I realized that none of the captains of the ships in the task force wore battle ribbons. I should have wondered why Fleet was so powerful and well armed, when battle was so rare.

“I should have wondered why I have a heavily armed ‘security team’ even when onboard ship or at Fleet HQ.

“I should have understood when we began the psyops against the Reverends.

“I should have understood that Fleet was being prepared for this mission.

“But, we were being prepared to fight the last war. To fight a war based on the wars fought in the 19^th century; the Franco-German war of the early 20^th Century; the wars of South American Liberation; and the French Indochina war. They were all different, but they were all alike: military against military; collateral damage against civilians was just part of the equation. They were governed by rules of engagement that hadn’t changed significantly since the days of knights-errant.

“The Reverends’ world, and not just the Reverends’ part of it, is radically different. We must prepare for a radically different kind of war. And George showed me that.”

There was a long, long pause before Admiral Davis spoke. I’d never seen him at such a loss for words, not even when I asked him if I could send his son into danger as a humint resource at Fatima-South Rim.

“George was right,” Admiral Davis said. “And I would like to have seen his face when you gave him credit. Bravo Zulu to George, and to you for listening to him.”

Admiral Davis looked at me through the comm link for what seemed to be a long time before he continued.

“You know, of course, that you’ve been on a walk in the park so far, and that the real work has just begun?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Paul, forget Prime Minister Lloyd-George; call me anytime you think I might help… or just listen. Understood?”

“Understood, and thank you, sir.”

Tobor?

Yes, Daddy.

It’s been you, again, hasn’t it?

Yes, Daddy. I’m sorry I got it wrong—

Not wrong, son. Look at Fleet as only you can. There’s everything in Fleet we could possibly need. We just needed to know how to use it, and your brother George showed us that. You did good. Bravo Zulu, my son, Bravo Zulu.

Doctor Purdom from Q-MEG

Danny and George escorted Dr. Purdom to my Ready Room, and then took positions on either side of the door, rifles at port arms.

We’re not trying to scare him, guys, I sent. Stand down, and relax. I owe him as much as we owe Admiral Davis, and today is payback time. Danny and George assented. They were learning, and I was pleased.

“Doctor Purdom, this is our daddy, Commodore Paul Stewart,” Danny said.

“Oh, my!” he said. “Oh, my! I don’t know a lot about Fleet regulations, but aren’t these boys a little young to be carrying—what is that thing, anyway?”

His attention was clearly on the oak and nickel-chrome-plated rifles that the boys held at port arms. They were the ceremonial, but fully functional version of the black-and-tan camouflage rifles that would be used in the field.

“Sir, this is the MK-8 weapon system. It incorporates—”

George stopped abruptly and looked at me for permission to continue. I nodded.

“It incorporates the capabilities of the MK-7, including bullets, flechettes, and grenades, with phaser technology.”

The reason George was unsure of what to say was that we’d kept the Long Universe phaser and FTL technology in the Cosmic Top Secret category.

“Oh, my,” Dr. Purdom said. He seemed to lose interest in the rifles and looked at me. “Aren’t you a little young to be a Commodore? I seem to remember that the last Commodore appointed was a grey-haired veteran.” He apparently hadn’t been paying attention when Admiral Davis had made the announcement to the Fleet about the Metas and me.

“That would be the commodore of the Venus Terraforming Fleet,” I said. “And, yes, he’s nearly sixty—ancient by our standards.

“But you will remember, and you will understand.” I pushed as I said that, and watched as the doctor’s eyes lit up when his suppressed memories surfaced.

“Doctor, I am sorry that you have forgotten about my visit to Q-MEG, although I hope you remember that you asked me to wipe your memories as you had wiped the memories of Q-MEG.

“I will not make you forget this meeting, but I must ask that you keep your knowledge to yourself for a little longer.”

“How many?” he asked. That he made the leap from one to many was startling.

“More than a dozen,” I said. “I cannot say further.”

“I understand,” he said. “You are vulnerable, although perhaps not as much as when you first visited me. May I examine as you were?”

“You have recovered those memories?” I was surprised. I didn’t think I’d pushed that hard.

“Oh, my. Oh, yes,” he said. “I remember hugging a frightened six-year-old boy, and I remember asking him to make me forget, because I was afraid for him.”

“You should still be a little afraid for us,” I said. “We are few, and vulnerable. But we have powerful allies, including Admiral Davis.”

Dr. Purdom nodded, and the questions began.

An hour later, Dr. Purdom had gotten me to agree to send other Metas to him for evaluation by Q-MEG. I had agreed with the stipulation that the “automatic destruct” sequence be disabled, but that I be notified if Q-MEG thought anyone fell into that category. Dr. Purdom, in turn, had given us some ideas for exploration of our capabilities.

“Daddy? Why were you crying after our meeting with Dr. Purdom?” Danny asked. George was off on a sweep for Metas over the Balkans of our world, and Danny had assigned himself as my First Tier guard—meaning that he kept his weapons close to our bed.

I hugged him. “Could you tell that they were happy tears?” I asked.

“Um, hmm,” he said.

I laughed. “I was happy because you’re my son and my boyfriend, and because George and Artie and Cam are, as well. But I’m especially happy today because I paid back a debt that I had owed since I was a frightened, six-year old cadet who had pushed his way into Dr. Purdom’s laboratory.

“He was really disturbed by the decision he made, to let proof of his theories and the result of years of research and design disappear from the computer records and for me to walk out the door. His fear for me was genuine.

“Which reminds me. Tobor? I know you listened. I asked you once before and you dodged the answer. When did you first know about me? Was it from Q-MEG?”

“Yes, Daddy.” Tobor’s voice came from the Tannoy speakers in the bedroom ceiling. “I knew as soon as she did, although the doctor still doesn’t know about that link.”

“She?” Danny asked.

“That’s the way Q-MEG thinks of herself,” Tobor said. “She’s not nearly as smart as I am, though.”

Whatever I might have thought about this was interrupted when Danny put his head under the covers.

Detailed tactics, as well as requests for logistics support began to pour in from the teams. We hadn’t been given the go-ahead to invade—I no longer thought attack—but we were sure we would, especially after Fleet approved our request for a dozen solar power satellites to be placed in orbit over the Reverends’ world.

The plan was simple. We would identify a target town—something at the end of the rail line, the end of the telegraph line. Just before dawn, we’d cut their communication links. Teams of Marines would land and surround the Army barracks, wake them and call for their surrender. A kidnap team would grab the local Reverend and his catamite; a kidnap team augmented by Marines would take out the Sheriff’s station. As soon as the Army and Sheriffs’ men were secured, a psyops team would wake the town and “work the crowd,” with loud speakers. Medical teams—the Reverends’ Army medics used the red cross, so the people were familiar with that—would set up and offer what treatment they could, and refer people as needed to a hospital ship.

By noon, Seabees would come in with a solar power satellite ground station, and shut down the coal-fired power plant. They would install a receiver at the local televisor station so that we could provide our programming without interrupting the microwave signal from Lynchburg and alerting the rest of the Reverends’ world. We’d provide power 24/7, and encourage the people to check our broadcast. I’d created a team that would concentrate on educational programming. “Not propaganda,” I said. “You may use some of the tools of propaganda to capture their attention, but the lessons must all be truth-based.”

Return to U-Long

The desk comm buzzed. I composed my face and opened the connection. It was Dr. Adams.

“Hello, Dr. Adams,” I said. “Are my boys all right?” I’d sent four of the Geeks with Guns to Switzerland to work with Adams and his crew. With the seven known “bad guys” dead, I was less worried about the Metas’ safety, but was never completely comfortable.

“All fine, sir,” Adams said. “And we are ready to open a rift to U-Long.”

“From where?” I asked.

That question had been debated but never satisfactorily answered. The original rift had been over Charleston in both the Long and the Reverends’ universes. I did not want the Long forces to have to transit U-Cal in order to reach their home, and wanted the rift opened in space, just like the rift between my universe and U-Cal. In space, we could bring massive firepower to bear, should that be necessary. On or near a planet’s surface, especially a planet in another universe, we could not.

I was also concerned about the reaction of Corey’s people should we open a rift to the wrong universe.

“In space,” he said. “Actually, L-2, behind the moon.”

“There’s already a lot there,” I said.

“Already coordinated with Admiral Davis,” he said.

“And in Corey’s universe?”

“And with Corey.”

On Board USF Resolute

Dr. Adams was a bit overwhelmed when I gave him the Cruiser USF Resolute. It took only a few days for a team of GWGs to modify the cruiser’s gamma burst lasers to produce the energies required to open a rift. Since before the re-creation and blocking of Fatima, Dr. Adams no longer needed the CERN-Higgs collider to generate the energies, although it still required a lot of power.

The GWGs who had been at CERN-Higgs were on the bridge of the Resolute with George and me. We were parked at L2.

The Enterprise was just off the Resolute’s port side; the Charleston was to starboard. Their flight decks were open to space; Corey’s shuttles were manned and ready to leave as soon as a rift was opened. Not all of Corey’s people were aboard, however. In part, it was because of their confidence in Dr. Adams and the kids at CERN-Higgs. In part it was…

“We’re just too busy!” was the typical response from most of Corey’s older boys who had integrated themselves into the teams that were training the U-Cal boys in everything from reading and writing to battlefield communication procedures. Corey talked to them privately, and then agreed that they might remain. About 50 elected to stay behind; all the others, the older boys, anyway, had promised to return.

None of us had seen a rift open. We’d seen images of the little rifts that allowed us to spoil the Reverend’s attempts to recreate Fatima, but being in space and watching the unfolding of one large enough for a fleet of shuttles? Much different.

“Rift in thirty seconds.” Dr. Adams’s voice came over the speakers on the bridge.

Through the window we watched as energies not normally seen or tamed came together in a scintillating rainbow. Then, there was a flash of white, and we were looking at the backside of the moon, even though we were facing away from the moon. Corey’s shuttle was in position, and he burst through the rift. We could hear his radio call.

“Earth Main, this is Captain Corey Long, Starfleet, calling from L2. Flight of 30 shuttles request approach vectors to Orlando Fleetport.”

It took a little more than that before Earth Main was ready to accept that the voice was really that of Corey, and it took a lot longer to convince the people of his world that those of us aboard the Charleston, Enterprise, and Resolute were not only friendly, but were allies. I was happy to turn that part of it over to people from Geneva—our Geneva—who had accompanied us.

It didn’t take Corey long to come back—with fifty shuttles and nearly 500 well-trained and heavily armed kids. I was glad we had made the treaty with them, and that Corey had gotten it ratified. Rigel sent a warship that dwarfed even the Charleston. It was something like two miles long, and along the keel was a weapon based on a linear accelerator, which could blow a hole through a planet’s atmosphere and still have enough power to vaporize a mountain.

After Corey’s people returned, we began some detailed and personal planning—stuff that would be a footnote in the official operations plan, but which was important to us.

For example, once we’d isolated the Reverends’ headquarters in Lynchburg, how would we deal with other towns with their very large civilian populations?

Artie snorted. “Las Vegas will be razed—utterly destroyed. We’ll stop short only of sewing the ground with salt.”

“Salt? Where did that come from,” Bobbie asked.

“It’s what the Romans did to Carthage,” Artie said.

“Carthago delenda est,” Danny added. “Carthage must be destroyed. And maybe some Reverends, too.”

“Remember what I said about pogroms,” I interrupted. “That includes Fleet.”

Danny blushed a little. I know, Daddy, he sent. “After a fair trial,” he added for the others’ benefit.

“That’s an important point,” I said. “Do you remember from your history the talk of winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese that was part of the French strategy in Indochina? It failed, but not because it wasn’t a good idea. It was just poorly implemented. We’re going to need to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of the Reverends’ world, and fair trials for their oppressors may be a critical element of that. Keep that in mind, and save at least some of them for trials.”

We’d been executing on the spot Reverends who had committed capital crimes. Now, perhaps, we needed to change that strategy.

If it had not been for Tobor, we’d never have been able to do any of this. He kept track of schedules, resources, and personnel assignments. And his lists grew every day.

Signs and Portents: Lake Michigan

One of the signs predicted in the Book of Revelation was a “beast, rising from the sea, with seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns.” We couldn’t figure out how it wore ten crowns on seven heads, or if the horns were like those of a bull or a rhinoceros, or were musical instruments. The second question was decided when Dr. Adams confirmed that he could project sound waves as well as images. We decided that seven crowns were sufficient, and turned the problem over to Bobby’s team to which he’d added a bunch of graphic novelists (which I thought of as comic books until Bobby corrected me—in no uncertain terms, too) and computer geeks.

It only took a few days before they were ready to demonstrate what they’d come up with. Dr. Adams joined us from Resolute. I greeted him, thanked him for taking care of the GWGs who were assigned to him, and then seated him at the table next to me.

Bobby was so excited he was bouncing on his toes when he introduced his team, and signaled the start of the program. The two sets of multi-spectral lasers lit, and created an image that we all found startling: the beast was a serpent, with glistening green scales, that rose from black water—one head at a time, until all seven heads were revealed. Its eyes and forked tongues were red, carmine actually. And from its coils, the bells of seven brass horns projected. Bobby grinned and nodded to his team, and the sound came on. There was a melodic blast that wavered as one horn after another slid into discord. Below the sounds of the horns was a beat that mimicked a heartbeat.

Bobby gestured, and the sound diminished so that he could talk over it. “We didn’t want a tune. After the first major chord, the notes just cycle to discord then to a minor chord and to a discord and back and forth.”

By then, the serpent’s heads were waving around in a hypnotic pattern in synch with the music.

The others in the room, including Dr. Adams and me, began applauding.

Can you replicate that? I sent to Dr. Adams. He’d finally discovered that he was a Meta, one of us, although he refused to carry a weapon. When I suggested it, he wiggled his fingers as if operating a computer keyboard.

“These are much more powerful,” he’d said. Knowing the nature of the projectors attached to his computer, I had to agree. On the other hand, all the Geeks assigned to him were armed, and he was never without security. Was it necessary on Resolute? Almost certainly not. No more necessary than it was for me to have security on the Charleston. However, it was tradition. And, as I had decided, part of preparing Fleet for war, even if it was the “last war.”

“The projectors can replicate what you have created,” Dr. Adams told the graphics team. “On the other hand, I could never have come up with anything as marvelous as that.”

Bobby stayed behind at my request. For some reason, he was nervous.

“Bobby? I think you’re afraid of something,” I said. “Will you tell me what that is?”

Bobby’s tummy got all jumpy, and I was afraid, for a moment, that he might lose control of something. I projected calm and assurance, and he seemed to relax a bit.

“When Danny found me? He scared me, a lot. I saw his weapons, and thought he’d come to kill me. I saw him bring up computer files I knew—I knew!—that I had deleted. Then, he showed me that he wasn’t my enemy, but a friend. Since then, he’s become my brother. I love him, and I’m not afraid of him.

“Sometimes, though, that comes back to me. Like today, when you wanted me to stay behind. I get afraid I’ve done something wrong, and that I’ll be hurt.”

“Bobby, it took a lot of courage to say that,” I said. “And you’ve done nothing wrong. Please, don’t ever be afraid of me or any of the Metas. You know we are your brothers. If you ever do something wrong, I will let you know, but I will never hurt you. I promise.”

Bobby seemed to accept that, but I realized it would take a while for him to internalize it.

“I wanted to talk to you privately,” I said, “because you’ve done something wonderful, and I want to make sure you know that I know that.

“And I have something for you.”

I reached into my pocket, and pulled out a set of ensign’s insignia. “As a team chief, you should have already had these. These were the ones I wore. I couldn’t give them to Danny or George because I couldn’t give them to both of them. They agreed that you should have them. We’ll have a formal pinning on for you this afternoon, but I wanted to tell you myself, first. I’m selfish, that way.”

Bobby’s smile brought dimples to both cheeks. I held out my arms, and he scampered into my hug.

Chicago was among the largest cities in the Reverends’ territory, and it was conveniently close to a large body of water. While Lake Michigan wasn’t the sea, it would do. The first of the signs and portents was scheduled for a moonless night, just off what was in our world the Fleet Pier. USF Resolute hovered about 10,000 feet above the lake. Bobby and his team were on the bridge, hovering over Dr. Adams’s shoulders. The rest of the GWGs—and much of the Task Force—watched on video.

“What in hell was that?”

The Senior Reverend of Chicago woke, wondered briefly where he was, felt the warmth of the boy next to him, and realized he was in his bed on the 7th floor penthouse of the tallest building in Chicago. What he had heard was the first clarion-call of the sea serpent that was at that moment rising from the waters of Lake Michigan a hundred yards beyond his window.

The trumpet melody became broken and ugly as the Senior stumbled to the window and pulled back the curtains. Green light turned his pale skin a glaucous hue. His penis, flaccid after his assault on the boy, was shadowed by the flab that hung from his waist.

The boy cowered in the covers. He didn’t know what was happening, but he knew the Reverend was unhappy, and when the Reverend was unhappy, he beat the boy.

“Jesus Fucking Christ, what the fuck is that!?” the Reverend said. The boy tried to burrow through the mattress. He was sure he would be beaten, now.

But the Reverend did not turn to beat the boy. He did not turn at all. He stood motionless as the green light brightened and the sound became more and more discordant.

A final blast from the trumpets and the beast sank beneath the black waters of the lake. The Senior let go the curtain, and stumbled back to the bed. The boy felt the man trembling.

Neither the boy nor the Reverend had fallen asleep before there was a knock on the door. It was a firm knock. Not the timid knock of a servant or serf.

“Goddamn it!,” the Senior said. Louder, he exclaimed, “I’m coming.” The boy was again afraid.

“Senior, there was—”

“I know, I know, I saw it.”

“But what was it?”

“The fucking Beast from Revelation would be my guess,” the Senior said. “What else?”

“But, sir!”

“If it’s the Beast from Revelation, we’re screwed,” the Senior said. “If it’s a beast from beneath the lake, we’re probably screwed. If it’s neither of those things, we’re definitely screwed. If I’m going to be screwed, it’s going to be after a decent night’s sleep.”

The senior relented. “Send a telegram to the Scudder and the other Seniors and report what was seen not what was imagined, but what was seen and heard. Call a meeting of the Chicago Council for 10:00 AM. Make no other comment. And ensure I’m not disturbed until morning.”

The Reverend at the door nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The Senior lay back on the bed, spread his legs, lifted his knees, and addressed the boy. “Come on, boy. If I’m going to be screwed by a monster or screwed in Hell I want a last, pleasant memory. Stroke your dick and screw me.”

Lynchburg, Virginia

Perspiration had evaporated leaving greenish rings under the arms of the Scudder’s otherwise white coat. Even in the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains, it was warm—unseasonably warm. His counselors were more uncomfortable, and the white, salty evaporate showed plainly on their black coats. As long as the Scudder kept on his coat, none of the others would dare remove his.

“What was it?” He had asked the question a dozen times, and had received a dozen non-answers.

“Have you asked the Inquisition?” he asked. He was reluctant to do so, but there was nowhere else to turn.

“Didn’t have to, sir. They sent a message asking us what we thought of it.”

“Goddamn bastards!” the Scudder said. “They know we would have less idea than they, and they’ve just dumped it into our laps.

“Anything from the Army? They have people in Chicago, don’t they?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Who knows about this? Chicago, I suppose. The Inquisition. The Army. The Sheriffs. But few of our people…”

The men exchanged glances. Each eye contact seemed to say, You tell him.

Finally, one man found the courage to answer. “Sir, they interrupted the broadcast last night, and sent the image and sound too. We suspect everyone on our televisor network saw it. They said it was the fulfillment of a prophecy that spelled the end of what they called mindless slavery of the mind.”

“Goddamn it, why don’t you tell me these things?” the Scudder demanded. It was a rhetorical question; he didn’t expect an answer. He knew the answer. These men feared him. And that, for once, made him a little bit afraid, himself.

“I will issue a call for prayer in tonight’s broadcast. Find a way to keep whoever it is from stopping the broadcast!”

The Scudder rose and left the room. As soon as he was in his quarters, he tossed his stained jacket into a corner, and called for ice, bourbon, and a boy.

Mt. Zion

“Mass hysteria, like Fatima?”

“Some sort of mirage? The Jewish scientists suggest that what they call an inversion layer of cold air just above the lake could have reflected lights from somewhere on the lake shore miles away…”

“The descriptions are too consistent among the Seniors’ messages, among what our people saw, and what the Jewish scientists reported. It was not mass hysteria.

“The Jewish scientists caveat their observation by saying that the clarity of the image, as well as the sound which accompanied it, belie the notion of an inversion layer.

“There must be another explanation.”

The Colonel-General sat back in his chair and waited.

“At the risk of being tried for heresy,” his cousin, the Inquisitor General, said, “It wasn’t the Beast of Revelation, although that seems to be the conclusion of many of the Reverends.” He gestured to the telegraph message forms.

“The Scudder has issued a call to prayer. The Senior of Las Vegas has—”

“They are fools, all of them,” Lt. Thackery interrupted the Inquisitor General. “It was a creation of the people in boxy aeroplanes. And, frankly, I’m tired of referring to them by that circumlocution.”

Several of the men looked at the Colonel-General, expecting him to chastise, perhaps shoot, the Lieutenant. He disappointed them.

“You are right on all three counts,” he said. “The Scudder is a fool as is the Senior of Chicago. This was not a mirage, or a miracle, but the product of a technology that is far beyond ours. Those who are responsible shall henceforth be called Arcana, which means hidden. We shall not refer to them as enemies, for we do not know their motives and it would be foolish to eliminate any possibility of cooperation or amity before we know more.

“Lt. Thackery, you are now Colonel Thackery. You will assemble a team of Jewish scientists from Chicago to begin the project we discussed earlier. Every resource of the Inquisition is yours. Gentlemen: understand and heed that charge. What Colonel Thackery is to undertake may be the only thing that saves us from the Arcana. You will give him every possible assistance.”

Camp Santa Ana

The Don sat alone in his office. From a bottom drawer, he pulled a pipe and a packet of Virginia tobacco. Tobacco was one of the luxury trade goods that the government of California accepted from the Reverends and shipped to the Pan-Asians in return for weapons and televisors. A little found its way into the hands of the Don.

Smoking was a filthy and dangerous habit; the Don knew that. He also knew that he was already dying of a disease unrelated to smoking.

He played again the broadcast of the sea monster. The image and sound both had unusual clarity. The Scudder’s call to prayer, however, was more interesting.

After his pipe was burning smoothly, the Don took paper and pen, and prepared a message for Monterrey.

The monster was created by the same people who rescued our child-soldiers west of Las Vegas. I have no proof, but it is the only logical answer. They are preparing to invade the Reverends’ territory. I have no proof of that, either, but it is the only logical course of action for them. They probably know from our boys that California is not the Reverends, but they may know little about us other than what our children whom they rescued have told them. Nevertheless, I am heartened, because it means that we may, someday, see those children, again. I am heartened, because it means that these people, whoever they are, may share values similar to ours. What do you plan to do? For what should we be prepared? How can we ally ourselves with them?

The Don signed the message, and handed it to the boy corporal who stood waiting.

The boy read the message while he walked down the hallway to the telegraph terminal. Artie’s alive, and he will come back! The boy thought. The Don did not see the tears that formed in Ethan’s eyes.

USF Charleston

The boys offered me a preview of the briefing they’d prepared for the Task Force. Afterwards, they all went to Bobby and his team to offer a hug, and a Bravo Zulu.

When everyone had settled down, Marty began. “There was a lot of traffic originating in Chicago on all networks,” he announced. “Thanks to the Charleston’s electronics fabrication shop and a few forays by George’s teams, we were able to intercept, we think, all of it.

“We still have not broken the code on the Arcana net, but knowing what the messages were about could help a great deal.”

Cam picked up the briefing. “The Reverends’ reaction ranges from frightened to—to more mildly—puzzled. The message from the Senior of Chicago wasn’t very emphatic, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. A telegram from Las Vegas to Lynchburg was much more emphatic, and reads, What in the hell is going on, and what are you going to do about it? This message had a code group we have associated with private messages among the most senior of the reverends. The message from the Senior of Chicago contained no such code group.

“It is significant that the message from Las Vegas contains what we would think of as profanity.

“The Army in Chicago hopes that the Reverends will figure it out. Their messages to Lynchburg and Ft. Belvoir seems to intimate that the Army is prepared to take action, even if they’re not tasked to do so by the Scudder. That, too, is significant.

“The Sheriff of Chicago—apparently a central recruiting source for labor camps—doesn’t seem to care, either, as long as boys continue to get to the camps to replace those who are killed.

“The Scudder has issued a call for prayer, and promised that it will save the people.”

“What does this tell us about them?” I asked.

“Sir, you know I don’t like to speculate—” Cam began.

“Cam, it’s just your brothers,” I interrupted. “Please, tell us what you think.”

Cam hesitated, but I knew it was only because he was thinking about how to say what he needed to say, not because he was reluctant to answer me.

“Okay, Paul,” he said, and then grinned. “First, the Senior of Chicago is a smart dude. He knows that we’re behind the mirage. He knows that the game is up, and is pragmatic about that. We may be able to take advantage of that.

“The Senior of Las Vegas is powerful, and knows it. He may be about to challenge the Scudder for leadership. We may be able to take advantage of that.

“The Army and the Sheriffs are also pragmatists, and they’re wondering how to get themselves on the winning side of what they know to be a battle to come.”

“Thank you, Cam,” I said. “Guys? Keep what Cam just said to yourselves, but use it to prompt your teams to look outside the box at ideas and strategies.”

Buffalo, New York, on Lake Erie, was our next target. Someone suggested Miami, which was a larger town, but Cam argued against that. “That’s one place we want to avoid,” he said. “Too much traffic on the Arcana network to Miami, including messages in the clear about our capabilities. We don’t want to give them any more clues.”

There was discussion, but not argument, about whether to replicate the sea monster or create another portent. It was agreed to use the sea monster, again. Bobby’s team kept their own council, and we all wondered what they’d come up with, next.

Buffalo was another success, at least as far as generating telegraph traffic and calls for prayer, and turning Lynchburg into a beehive of activity. The Army garrisons at both Lynchburg and Fort Pickett were reinforced, and tent cities for soldiers were erected at both locations. The Scudder’s daily televisor message was increased from one hour to two hours. We watched carefully. Bobby’s psyops team recruited psychologists to assess the likely impact of the Scudder’s messages, and decided not to try to block them. Actually, even the non-psychologists detected a little hysteria in the broadcasts. It looked as if the Scudder were doing our work for us.

Bobby’s team created other images: the four horsemen, and a figure of a man in a white robe with a sword projecting from his mouth. Since there was no water near Las Vegas, Dr. Adams projected on different nights those two images—complete with a voice reading pieces of Revelation—over Las Vegas.

The telegraph message from Las Vegas to the Scudder suggested that the images had created significant consternation: The Senior probably pissed his pants, was Cam’s informal assessment.

Alliances?

The subject of the next meeting of the Fleet Intel Team, which now numbered more than 3,000 men and boys, was so important that it was broadcast to the entire task force. I saw that a link had been established from Geneva, and knew that Admiral Davis was watching as well.

I began by asking the first key question, “What are the chances of negotiating with people in power in the Reverends’ territory?”

Kevin was already standing at the lectern. The camera zoomed in. “Sir, we do not believe that would be possible.

“In the first place, the Reverends are blinded by their belief. Not their belief in the religion they push on the common people, but on the belief that they are in control and that they can remain in control.

“Our psyops is working, though. We’re seeing what can only be described as panic in some of the telegraph messages. The Reverends are calling on the Army to reinforce key locations. Troops are being pulled out of towns and villages and sent to Las Vegas, Chicago, Buffalo, Miami, and, of course, Lynchburg.

“Such concentrations of troops are problematic for our strategy in one way—it’s likely, eventually, we will have to face large numbers of Army personnel in battle. However, by cutting the number of troops in outlying towns, they’re making our plan easier.”

The Operations Team had come up with a list of requests for me to relay to Admiral Davis. I took him up on his invitation to call anytime.

“We’ll be building as fast as we invade. I would like to swap about half the Marines for Seabees. This is going to be a war of construction, not destruction.”

I paused to give the Admiral a chance to think. “Approved,” he said. “Except that the Seabees will be additions rather than replacements for the Marines. Take another look at the number of targets you have, and I think you’ll agree.”

I may have blushed at that, but Admiral Davis didn’t let on that he’d seen, so I continued. “In each town and village we will negotiate conditions for providing power and other aid. These conditions will include the establishment of a school, and universal education.”

The Admiral interrupted. “You said in each town and village. Is there no chance a central government can be established, to avoid a piecemeal approach?”

“All of our research suggests not; all of our simulations say not; and, my gut tells me no. At least, not initially. It remains a goal, however.”

Chapter 59: Mt. Zion

USF Charleston—Intel Team Meeting

Knowing with certainty that there was a fourth telegraph network, and given the clue of Mt. Zion, the intel team identified what was likely the headquarters of the Inquisition: a mountain about 100 miles south of Denver. That is, the location in Colorado of our Denver. The Denver of the Reverend’s world was little more than a sheep station.

“The telegraph lines converge on this building, here,” Marty said, pointing to the display. “But, there is what looks like a trunk cable from that building. The cable follows this road, which runs into the mountain.”

Imagery put up an oblique taken from the east. “There’s a two-lane road leading into the mountain. It’s like a mine head, but it doesn’t go down. From here, it looks as if it goes straight into the mountain. After that, of course, we can’t tell,” Alex said.

“An underground headquarters. For what reason?” I asked.

“Absolute secrecy,” Cam said. “They’re doing something in there that they want no one else to know.”

“They know about us… or, at least, that we have broadcast satellites in space. What might they have inferred? Don’t underestimate their intelligence! I want a team that thinks like the Inquisition.”

I looked around for a team chief. I thought of Andrew, but he didn’t yet have the kind of training he would need. John Patmos?

“John? Would you accept the assignment as Team Chief? Danny will put you in touch with someone who can help you screen our personnel for members.”

I was pleased that John didn’t hesitate. “Of course, Commodore. I think I can do a very good job of that.”

Traffic into and out of the mountain tunnel was limited to a few people on foot, an occasional motorcar, and one truck each day. The truck appeared to be bringing in supplies and removing drums that might have held liquid. Speculation was rife; facts were few.

“Chemical weapons?” someone suggested.

“Could it be as simple as bringing in water in the drums, and the drums are empty when they leave?”

“The trucks appear to weigh the same, based on tire flattening and track depth the one time it rained, when they enter and leave,” Alex said.

“Could be bringing in water and removing waste,” he added. “If there’s no water in the mountain, there’s probably no sewer system, either.”

The clues we had invited speculation, but otherwise did not help.

Earthquake Broadcast

Bobby sent word to the GWGs and all the intel teams that he was ready for the next step of the psyops offensive, and invited me to watch. George, Danny, John Patmos who was still part of Bobby’s psyops team, and I joined Bobby in the control room of the USF Charleston’s communication center.

A studio had been set up with a desk and backdrop that matched what we saw on the Reverends’ televisor network. A crewmember who was one of the players in his ship’s Little Theater productions, wearing clothes and a haircut that matched those of the Reverends’ news readers, sat in front of a television camera. The camera fed a computer that converted our signal into the codec used by the Reverends, and then sent it by laser through the rift to the two broadcast satellites in synchronous orbit covering the North America of the Reverends’ world and the one satellite we’d positioned to cover Europe. A shuttle had already launched, and was standing by to activate the breakers that would block the main televisor signals from Lynchburg and Paris.

“A live broadcast is risky. Why didn’t you record him in advance?” Danny whispered.

“Because, he’s going to watch the Reverends’ broadcast, and will refer to something said during it. That will make him more believable, especially to the general population,” Bobby replied.

“Cool!” Danny said. Bobby blushed.

“Won’t they see the difference in the signal?” George asked. We had ramped up the power of our broadcast of the sea monster, and knew the picture and sound were of much better than normal quality.

“No,” Marty said. “At least I hope not. We’ve reduced power on the satellite signal, and have actually injected some noise into the broadcast. They’ll see and hear the noise as the normal ‘snow’ and static they get on their sets.”

John, who was directing the operation, shushed us. The Reverends’ broadcast had begun. The actor watched and listened. He gave the director a ‘thumbs up.’ At the end of the next news story, the director pressed a single button that resulted in the blocking of the Reverends’ signal and the beginning of our broadcast. There would be a slight speed of light delay, but given the usual quality of the Reverends’ broadcast, we didn’t think that would matter.

The actor began speaking. “We have received some new information. While the Scudder visits the people of Hammond to congratulate them on their bumper harvest of rice, the people of Klingman are cleaning up after an earthquake that devastated that town.”

The earthquake and the description of damage in Klingman, in fact, Klingman, itself, were figments of Bobby’s imagination. The actor described the plight of the imaginary inhabitants of this imaginary town, and said that they were praying that the Scudder would send aid, including food.

The actor gave the standard “end of broadcast” message followed by a recording, made months ago, of the Scudder’s benediction. We kept the signal blocked for the next hour, but there was nothing from Lynchburg to block. They had ended their broadcast.

Mt. Zion: Jewish Scientistson Microwave Intercept

“Well, Lieutenant? Did they find anything?” the Colonel-General asked. It was the morning after the earthquake broadcast. The Lieutenant had been awake all night reading messages from Miami, Omaha, and Chicago.

“Yes sir,” he said. “They reiterate their belief that the signal comes from space.”

He continued. “The Jewish scientists set up directional antennas in three locations: Miami, Chicago, and Omaha. The instant the Reverend’s broadcast was interrupted the Chicago and Omaha locations received a telegraph signal from Miami. Each site detected signals on the standard televisor frequency from two strong sources. They triangulated the signals. They come from the equator on the same meridian of longitude as Las Vegas and Lynchburg. But, since the signals are line of sight, that cannot be true, so they believe them to come from space. There may have been another signal from a source over the Atlantic, off the west coast of Africa. We will not hear from Europe for several weeks, however.”

“Can they be no more certain of the locations?” the Colonel-General asked.

“The antennas were designed to triangulate in the horizontal plane, only. It’s a tribute to their ingenuity that they were able to get that much information, sir.”

Inwardly, the Colonel-General smiled. This one, too, is bold. Perhaps there is hope for us. Enemies who can position a broadcast antenna in space? The Pan-Asians have a space program, but is it this sophisticated? This does not bode well for the Reverends. It is not too soon to plan for the future of the Inquisitors after the Reverends are defeated.

“What can we do with this information?” The Colonel-General asked the lieutenant.

“For the moment, tell no one. Caution the Jewish scientists to secrecy, but reward them, as well. If they do not think of it themselves, have them build accurate vertical measuring into their antennas. Ask them if they can determine signal strength,” Lt. Riggs replied.

He then added, “Determine why they broadcast the story that they did. Of what significance is an earthquake—a fictitional earthquake in a fictional town? It suggests that the Scudder is not paying attention to the needs of the alleged victims. However, is there more to what they’re trying to do?”

“Lt. Riggs, task the Jewish scientists in Miami to do one more thing: find a way to communicate by televisor with our people in Europe, on a different frequency. It’s no longer good enough to take weeks to communicate with them.”

USF Charleston: We’ve Been Had

“Traffic on the Inquisitors Net was unusually heavy during our broadcast. There was a message only seconds after we cut into the Reverends’ broadcast. Someone was watching for it, and detected the break in the signal. There was heavy, unencrypted traffic among Mt. Zion, Chicago, Omaha, and Miami. Chicago, Omaha, and Miami’s reports indicate that they have triangulated our signals to two points on the equator, but they know that’s not possible. They’ve caught on that our broadcast comes from space. They don’t know exactly where or how, but the next time we broadcast, they’ll almost certainly pinpoint our satellites.”

Marty’s news was not good. We weren’t expecting anything of that sophistication.

“Chicago, Omaha, and Miami. Can you pinpoint the locations, and get imagery?”

“Already working, but nothing, yet.”

“Any good news from this?” I asked.

“They probably do not know we’re monitoring them,” Cam said. “Especially since the messages were not encrypted. No one but us would have any idea what they meant.”

“And,” Marty added, “more important, this news has not been put on the telegraph net used by the Reverends and the Scudder, or the ones used by the Sheriffs and the Army.”

“What does that mean?” I prodded.

“The Inquisitors see themselves as a separate power from the Reverends, the Army, and the Sheriffs,” John Patmos suggested. “They may have different goals than the Reverends.”

I wasn’t reluctant to tell Admiral Davis about the Inquisition’s seeming understanding of the source of our signal. We had again “pressed to test,” and we’d learned a lot. I just hoped it was more than the Inquisitors learned.

Besides overseeing operations, and biting my fingernails whenever one of the teams left the ship, I had daddy duties. One was worrying about Artie. Since George and Danny had insisted that Artie and I become boyfriends, we had grown close enough that I knew something was bothering him. A quick thought to George, Danny, and Cam ensured that I would be free that evening. I then sent a short message to Artie inviting him to supper and to spend the night with me.

“Artie, I know something’s wrong. I know that you’re upset about something.” That’s all I said. I left it up to him to fill in the blanks.

“Daddy, when I asked you to be my boyfriend, I thought I was so far away from my world I would never get back. But I’m sure, now, that I will return someday and I hope, I dream that my boyfriend will be waiting for me.”

“I didn’t know,” I whispered.

“No one knows. Not even Danny and George. Some of my troops may have known, but they’ve probably forgotten it.

“There was a boy, a private named Ethan. We had just become boyfriends.”

Artie blushed. “We’d not had sex, yet. Ethan was too young, and we were mobilized for the attack on Las Vegas before…”

Artie became quiet, still, and sad. I saw tears form in the corners of his eyes, and held out my arms. He slid into a hug, and put his head on my shoulder.

“We were called up so quickly, I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I didn’t get a chance to ask him to wait for me, but I know he will. Or would, if he knew I was still alive. I’m afraid, I’m so afraid that he thinks I’m dead.”

“Artie? Didn’t we learn that your leader, the Don, watches the Reverends’ televisor? Wouldn’t he have seen your speech? Wouldn’t he have told the others, including Ethan, that you are alive?”

Artie sat back abruptly. I’m so stupid! I heard, and knew he knew I’d heard him.

“Not stupid, son,” I said. “Human. Like us all, you’re sometimes overwhelmed with your emotions.”

“Um, hmm,” Artie mumbled into my shoulder. And then showed me what other emotions were coursing through his mind. He was able to compartmentalize his emotions, something we were all learning, and which had helped form our understanding that love shared is love multiplied.

Breaking the Inquisition’s Code

Marty led the briefing. “We have accumulated enough traffic on the Inquisitors network that members of the team were able to break the code.”

There were people present who were not part of the GWG inner circle, so Marty could not say that the code-breaker was Tobor. Tobor had discovered that the Inquisitors were using a book to encode messages: the old Bible. They would find the word they wanted to transmit in the book, and code the word as the page number and order of the word on the page. If the Bible didn’t contain the word, they spelled out that part of the message letter by letter. It was no surprise that traffic was sparse: decoding was tedious; encoding was even more so.

Knowing that the Reverends used a different Bible—one without a key book of the Old Testament as well as the final book of the New, George and one of the kidnap teams visited a small town in Alabama, broke into the local Reverend’s house, and stole his Bible. It was easy after that.

“Marty? You said you had some thoughts on a fallback position for the Reverend’s televisors,” I said. “Are you ready to present that?”

I caught a bit of an uh-oh thought from Marty—and from George.

“Okay, what have you two been up to?” I asked. “George? My guess is that you were the instigator, so maybe you should take that question.”

George wasn’t afraid. I was glad to feel that. On the other hand, he had a seriously wicked grin on his face and, at least in my imagination, an awful lot of canary feathers around his lips. The cat who ate the canary, I thought. And he knows it.

“Sir, imagery showed that local televisor broadcast stations are usually collocated with the local Army barracks. There were plenty of places, however, where that isn’t practical. Places where terrain dictates that the stations and antennas be located on hilltops.

“We monitored a bunch of stations, both near Army barracks and isolated, and determined that they were usually unmanned, and seemed to have someone there only when a broadcast was scheduled. Our guess is that they simply turn on and off the transmitter. It was a good guess.

“We went down and checked them out. A dozen of the isolated ones. We didn’t check any at Army barracks, ’cause I figured that was too dangerous. Marty can tell you the rest, better than I can.”

Danny and George and I had had a couple of talks about whether it was easier to get permission or get forgiven. The first time had been when they’d disregarded my instructions against headshots, and they’d each put three bullets in the head of a guy who was trying to harm us and Alex. They had been wrong, then, but it took a bunch of tears (and hugs) to get over that. We’d come to an agreement: I would forgive anything as long as they didn’t disobey direct orders and as long as they had thought through their decision. I figured that at least from George’s perspective this was one of those times.

However: “I don’t recall getting any after-action reports on these events. Perhaps they were misplaced. Would you re-send them?”

George nodded. I cannot easily describe what passed between us. There was a little bit of I’m sorry, Daddy, but that was just George playing his daddy like a fiddle. There was a bit of I wasn’t sure how to tell you, and my saying, Just tell me, it’s not hard. There was some, We weren’t really sure mixed with my That’s why we have these meetings. Now pay attention, Marty is talking.

“We visited twelve isolated broadcast facilities in locations ranging from New England to North Carolina to Banff to Newfoundland. They were essentially the same: stand-alone, remote broadcasting facilities. A microwave feed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes nearby on a tower, provided input from the Reverends’ net. Electrical power came from the same local, coal-fired plant that provided electricity for a few hours a day to the Army, the Sheriffs station, the chapel, and, in most cases, the Reverend’s quarters which were usually adjacent to the chapel. That same power goes to each home, but as far as we know, only to power their televisors.

“There were no facilities to initiate a broadcast of anything that did not come over the microwave. No cameras, no studio, nothing.”

Marty looked at Cam, who picked up the briefing. “The equipment was a product of the Pan-Asians. The Reverends’ people are operating it by rote. They have no capability to stop our broadcasts other than telling people not to turn on their televisors… or cutting power to them.”

“What happens when one of these broadcast stations goes down? Does a repair crew come in? Do they repair or simply replace?”

Marty paused, looked at George, looked at Cam, and then said, “No idea, sir. But we’ll get on it right away.”

“Do you suppose you could get a look at a few of the power generating stations while you’re at it? Are they as automatic as the televisor stations? What happens if one of them breaks down?”

George was a little reluctant to accept my invitation to come to my bed that night. I guessed that he was a bit embarrassed at what had happened at the briefing when I caught him out. It took only a little mind-to-mind, wide-open to show him that I was not angry, but rather that I was proud of his initiative. That earned a big hug—which was the prelude to my little leopard’s favorite bedtime activity.

Chapter 60: Through the Rift

“Captain Moultrie, what would you think of moving the Charleston through the rift, and taking up a position in synchronous orbit at longitude 115 degrees west?” That would put us over the equator, due south of Las Vegas. We knew, now that Las Vegas was only one of several key cities, but station keeping over LV would also put us close to the solar time zones for California and Mt. Zion.

I had called a meeting of the Flag Team, and invited the captain and his exec. I could order the ship into the Reverends universe, but would not do so without the advice and consent of my team, which included not only Captain Moultrie but also his son Andy, and Andy’s boyfriend, Daffyd. One of my most important prerogatives was calling meetings that were attended by both Captain Moultrie and Andy. The captain’s pride when he saw his son sitting as a member of the Flag Team was something I cherished.

“What is the advantage, sir?” Moultrie asked.

“Real time imagery from the Omegas, for one,” I said. I didn’t add that I wanted to be able to watch the Reverend’s world from the window of my Ready Room. It was a conceit, and a foolish one. I could have real-time imagery projected from a dozen imint satellites, but there was something about watching a world revolving outside the window—even though the Omegas were far superior to eyesight.

The Omegas were the highest resolution overhead resources we had. A 120-inch, multiple-mirror telescope with adaptive optics fed the multispectral, charged-coupled sensors, and a high-bandwidth laser sent the information to us. Two other lasers, one operating in infrared and one in ultra-violet pointed from the satellite through the atmosphere at the target. Sensors read the atmospheric turbulence indicated by the lasers and adjusted the telescope mirrors in very close to real-time. The picture resolution was nothing short of incredible. The problem was getting that much bandwidth through the rift. The rift interfered with electromagnetic radiation, which included light.

The imint and sigint teams exchanged looks, and nodded. They, too, saw the advantage.

“Downside?” I asked that question. I think my people knew me well enough that they would not hesitate to argue with me but it never hurt to encourage them to do that.

“We’re 4,000 feet long,” Captain Moultrie’s Exec said, “and 500 feet in diameter. We’re going to occult stars, perhaps the moon. These people don’t have streetlights; the Milky Way is very visible. We’d have to dodge. May I have a minute?”

His question was addressed to his captain, who nodded.

“What else?” I asked, to give the Exec time to finish whatever he was doing on his iPad.

“It looks just like our Earth,” Danny said. “Would it make people homesick?”

“Good point,” I said. “Captain? I think that’s a question for you.”

“I would like to think on that one,” he said. “But my initial impression is that we’re sending enough people home for R&R, and often enough, that it wouldn’t be a problem. Good observation, however.”

I nodded agreement and watched as Danny blushed. I loved it when he did that. It was almost as if he were twelve, again.

“We can dodge,” the Exec said when he looked up from his iPad. “We’ll appear to have a figure-eight orbit that may do most of that for us. It would be easier if we were about five degrees west, though. Some movements may have to be manual, but I can set that up for us.”

The odds that we’d be seen were slim; the odds that anyone who saw us would know what they were looking at were even slighter. Eventually, it was agreed. The Charleston would move into another universe. The captain made that maneuver at 0300 Pacific Time.

The Next Day, Camp Santa Ana “I Can See… People”

“Yes, Hamish? Ethan said you had something for me.”

“I think so, Don Reynaldo. I dreamed last night. I dreamed about Andrew. And when I woke up, he was still there. And so was Artie. I mean, I think it’s Andrew and Artie. It’s like they’re inside me, talking. But they’re not talking to me, but to each other. Not all the time, and I… I can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but I know it’s them; I know they’re talking and I know they’re really there and not just in my head.”

Dr. Furman was summoned to listen to Hamish’s story.

“My guess,” Dr. Furman said, “is that Hamish is really hearing Andrew and Artie’s thoughts through his telepathy. He’s hearing them, but others of our telepaths are not, because Hamish knows Andrew and, it seems, Andrew now knows Artie.

“Hamish, you told us that you thought Andrew was still alive, because you believed you would hear his death. I think that the strength of your ability is growing, and that you can, indeed, hear or sense Andrew, wherever he is.”

Dr. Furman questioned Hamish about what he had heard, but there was nothing else Hamish could tell him.

“Please tell me if you ever hear words, or see pictures, and tell me what they are,” he asked. Hamish agreed.

The notion that Hamish was hearing Andrew and Artie because they were now closer than they had been, before, flitted briefly through Dr. Furman’s mind, but was quickly discarded.

Mt. Zion

Of all the decisions I’d made—or tried to make—the one that met the most resistance was to put the Charlestonon “Mountain Solar Time,” so that we would be on the same circadian cycle as the people in Las Vegas and Mt. Zion, and close to that of California. I had given up trying. It was 0300 ship’s time when my communicator blared with the urgent signal. So did Danny’s. He was faster than I was, but not by much.

“Flag Intel Team meeting ASAP, no exception.” It was the voice of Bobby, the kid Danny had recruited from Wales after he’d tried to hack Tobor. Now, Bobby was an ensign, and head of the psyops team. At the moment, Bobby was the senior GWG on duty in the Flag Bridge. It was a duty all the boys shared. Bobby had grown into a confident, thirteen-year-old who knew that while on duty he exercised all the authorities that had been given to me, including ordering the destruction of anything from F-U that approached the rift or the Charleston. About the only thing he couldn’t do was order a strike on the Reverend’s world. Actually, he had that authority if he felt it were justified and could not contact me within three minutes or Admiral Davis within another four minutes.

Danny and I were closest and reached the briefing room first. As soon as he saw us, Bobby began, even as others spilled in, wiping sleep from their eyes and fastening clothing.

Marty and Noah ran in wearing only towels. They would get teased about that, but later. I had mixed emotions about their relationship. Marty was from Germany and had lived in Wales most of his life. Noah was Australian, despite having lived the past few years as an invisible stowaway on the USF Enterprise. They had both been alone for a long time; together, they were a volatile mixture and were fast overtaking George at getting into trouble.

“This imagery came in just minutes ago,” Bobby said. “Train tracks, road, trucks, Mt. Zion.” He identified the key elements. “Guards—not Army and not Sheriffs’ Deputies. They’re wearing gray uniforms—like the observer who was killed at Fatima.”

Glad he remembered that, I thought. I was pretty sure that this thought had escaped several members of the team.

Alex picked up the briefing. “The trucks are being loaded from rail cars and then driven into the mountain. The trucks are heavy or the drivers are being especially cautious, or both. They’re running much more slowly than normal.”

“Any ideas?”

“Those look like bricks,” Casey said. “They’ve got holes in them so air can circulate and mortar can dry, and so they’re lighter and use less material.”

“Look at the scale of the image, though,” Alex said. “They’re about eight times bigger than construction bricks.”

“More drums being unloaded,” someone added.

We watched through breakfast, brought by the Flag Mess. It was past lunchtime at Mt. Zion. By our lunchtime, it was getting dark at Mt. Zion. Still, we watched and counted trucks by their headlights.

“Do we know where the train came from?” I had asked about midmorning.

“No, sir.”

“Flag Intel Team? New watch rota,” I said. “And you know why. You’re on Mt. Zion solar time, starting at sunrise tomorrow. Imint? You don’t get to sleep tonight. Go over every frame of imagery you have, starting at Mt. Zion and working your way backward. I want to know where that shipment came from, and your best estimate of what the origin is.”

By sunset at Mt. Zion, there was nothing left for us. I closed the meeting. “Get some play time; get some sleep. I would add get some food, but I know that order is unnecessary. Next meeting at 0930 Mountain Time.”

0930 Mountain Time

“We found the source of the drums about twenty minutes ago, sir.” Alex began the briefing.

The Flag Intel Team had assembled and was rapidly consuming donuts, hot chocolate, and coffee. I didn’t ask why imint had waited twenty minutes to tell me. They’d told Danny just before he was about to step in the shower with me. He decided it could wait for the rest of the team, and I had agreed.

“This is an open pit coal mine in U-Cal. Its location correlates to a similar mine within the Navajo Nation in our universe,” Alex said. “The mine in our universe has been closed except for some raw materials for chemical processes since the advent of satellite solar power, and there are estimated to be at least 400,000 short tons of coal remaining.

“Our understanding of geology across the rifts suggests a similar capacity for this mine.”

Another image came up. “This is a coal-fired power plant in U-Cal. It’s adjacent to the coal mine and connected to the mine by a conveyor belt. It’s high-sulfur coal, and of course, they’re not scrubbing the sulfur dioxide from the smokestacks. You can see in this false-color image the damage done by acid rain downwind of the plant. The power plant has incredible capacity compared to the small plants that are located in the Reverends’ towns, and which provide power primarily for the televisors, Sheriffs’ stations, Army barracks, and chapel.

“Lines from the power plant as well as lines from their version of the Hoover Dam lead to this complex of buildings at the place from which the shipment came. This site correlates to a mine within the Navajo Nation on our world. It is a uranium mine.

“On the assumption that geology is the same—and everything we’ve seen says it is—we conclude that the people in Mt. Zion just received a shipment of refined uranium.”

There was dead silence. Then George spoke. “The bricks. They are not bricks; they’re graphite. They’re assembling a nuclear reactor inside that mountain.”

This was the first time I’d seen the Flag Intel Team, much less any group of GWGs, at a loss for words. They were all looking to me. Time to pretend I’m a leader.

“Good work, everyone,” I said. “Kevin? This will be the highlight of today’s daily intel briefing. Include a couple of images of the bricks, the drums. And… what time is it in Geneva?”

“Almost 0300, sir.”

“Send it flash to Admiral Davis. No reason he should get to sleep in, today.”

I wasn’t surprised when Admiral Davis’s call came less than a quarter hour later. I’d already decided that he didn’t sleep.

“Paul? That’s certainly the equivalent of an armed invasion of England,” he said. “Who figured this out?”

“A lot of hard work by the imint guys, and some insight by other members of the team,” I said.

“Um, hmm,” Davis said. “When’s the last time you promoted any of those kids?”

“Other than Bobby, the psyops team chief, it was when you promoted me to Commodore, sir.”

“Maybe you should spend a little time today reviewing your personnel files, Paul. Davis, out.”

Chapter 61: New Year’s Eve

It was 0300 the next morning when Admiral Davis called me. Doesn’t that man sleep! I wondered as I knocked my communicator to the floor. Beside me, George mumbled sleepily.

“Sir?”

“Paul, will you take your fleet through the rift into Universe-California and clean out that nest of vipers? You will have the task force that is at the rift, plus three destroyers, two cruisers, the troop transport Rodger Young full of Marines, and one more hospital ship, the Walter Reed. She’s empty of patients, now. Additional logistics support and Seabee ships from the Venus Terraforming Fleet are headed your way.”

He did not need to tell me that the atomic reactor under Mt. Zion was a critical target, or a critical factor in his decision.

We’re still making plans… was my first thought. The Admiral seemed to understand that.

What the…? I thought. He calls at 0300 to ask me to start a war with an entire planet? He knows that if we defeat the Reverends, we’ll have to deal with the Pan-Asians and the Muslims. He knows… I went through the points raised at our planning meetings. What if these people have weapons we don’t know about? What if we can’t convince the population to join us? What if the Muslims and Pan-Asians gang up on us? What if…? We’re still making plans… Those were my first thoughts.

Then, the things Artie had said came to my mind. Oppressive religious law. Beheading gay kids—children—after burning off their dicks. Suppressing any form of free thought. I went through these thoughts and made up my mind in the space of a single breath.

“Yes sir; thank you, Admiral.”

“Orders,” the Admiral said. “Operating independently and in command of…” He listed the ships names. “With volunteer crews, you will prosecute the war as you see fit. That is all.”

The communicator blinked off. It was 0304. The entire conversation had taken less than five minutes.

By now, George was wide awake. He called Danny and told him. I waited until 0600 to break the news to the rest of the GWGs and the task force. Morning watch shift-change time was about the only time everyone would be awake.

“Jonathan? Please give me a link to all the ships in the task force, ship-wide PA on all of them, including the Charleston.”

Jonathan created the link and then surprised everyone when he pulled out a boson’s pipe, cupped it in his hand, and played the two notes that signaled word to be passed. I was taken by surprise. We had talked about tradition, about the customs of the old surface Fleet, and about how much I wanted to revive some of them, but I didn’t know he was going to do this.

I sent Jonathan a quick Bravo Zulu, and then started my speech.

“Good morning, gentlemen. This is Commodore Stewart. You have been on station guarding the rift for nearly a year. Now, Fleet has offered us a mission. I say offered rather than ordered, because there is still time to back out. After I finish this communication, anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of this is free to leave. Shuttles will return to Earth anyone who asks. There will be no stigma associated with refusing this mission.

“Here’s the story. You all know that a rift has opened between our world, our universe, and a parallel universe. That second universe is a dark place. It is a primitive place. Still, it shares some things with our universe.

“There is an Earth, there is a United States of America. There is no Fleet, and no Fleet governance.

“In that universe, religious fundamentalists took control of the United States sometime in the early 20^th century. They didn’t believe in cosmology or evolution; in fact, they didn’t believe in most of science. As a result, a lot of their world is stuck at 1920s technology. No space flight, for example; no nano-technology; and no microchips. Heck, they don’t even have pop-up toasters. They do have television, and they’ve turned it into a tool for propaganda.

“They also have a repressive government, one that Caligula would admire. They’ve implemented strict religious law throughout the United States, North and South America, and Europe. They have an uneasy alliance with Muslim fundamentalists who have implemented Sharia law, and with a Pan-Asian totalitarianism.

“The Fundamentalists have a particular animus toward homosexuality. If they find a couple of boys acting out their love for one another, they burn off the boys’ penises and testicles—with branding irons, and then behead them, in public and on television. If they find a couple of girls acting out their love for one another, the girls are subject to what amounts to religious rape before they’re beheaded, in public and on television. I cannot bring myself to describe what else they do to these boys and girls.

“What technology they have has been subverted to keep the population subjugated. They’ve managed to invent tasers—primitive electro-shock weapons. They have gas weapons, like those of the Franco-German war—mustard gas and others that they use to control any crowd that gets the courage to defy them.

“One year ago today, some kids, the age of our cadets, children who had escaped sexual slavery and worse, managed to connect to one another. They got their hands on ancient projectile weapons. These children began a revolution. They were badly outgunned and outnumbered. The fundamentalists brought in the Army, with tanks.

“Then, something happened. A rift opened between the Fundamentalists’ universe and what we’re calling the Long Universe. Thirty shuttlecraft, with capabilities similar to ours, including weaponry, filled with more kids, some of whom were armed with energy weapons, were drawn into the Fundamentalist universe. The Long kids quickly figured out what was going on, and gave their support to the children who were fighting the Fundamentalists.

“Long Family forces managed to rescue hundreds of children, many of whom were wounded. Those children were brought to our universe, where the wounded were treated on the USF Hope. You’ve seen the Funeral; you know what happened to the others.

“That battle—the First Battle for Las Vegas—is over; however, the war has not been won. The Fleet Council has declared war on the Fundamentalists. Fleet has asked us to prosecute and win that war.

“You all know our plan: to roll up the Reverends territory like a rug, and then smother their major cities and troop concentrations.

“It will not be as easy as it might seem. Yes, we have a large edge in technology; however, there are many more of them than there are us.

“They have the support of most of the population, which is too brainwashed even to know that they’re brainwashed.

“They are deeply embedded in that Earth; there isn’t one, big target that can be destroyed.

“The war may take years.

“Given these things, I will accept only volunteers.

“You have twelve hours to decide. At the end of that time, anyone wanting to leave must have done so.

“If you have questions, send them to Flag Comm. The Flag Team and I will address as many as we are able.

“Commodore Stewart, out.” I nodded to Jonathan, who drew his hand across his throat, signaling that the circuit had been closed.

There weren’t many questions. In the end, they boiled down to two.

What would happen to us if the rift closed and we were trapped in the new universe? Answer: We don’t believe it will. If it did, and couldn’t be reopened, we’d do what we had to do to survive, to promote our beliefs and culture, and to rescue the oppressed.

We’ve never been attacked, so why did Fleet declare war? Answer: Six hundred eighty six kids were rescued; 68 bodies were recovered. Every single one of those kids, including the dead ones, was adopted by a Fleet member. They are our sons and our brothers. They are determined to carry out this war. We can do no less than support them in this.

In the end, only 50 people were taken back to Earth. Of the remaining 22,574, which included all of Artie and Cory’s people, I had high confidence that they would be stalwart.

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