A Learning Experience

Chapter Seventeen

Washington DC, USA

The world had changed. Gunter Dawlish knew it, even though he could never have put the feeling into words. It was as if something was just lurking under the world’s collective awareness, something big enough to leave hints of its presence even as it remained unseen. He knew it was there. But what was it?

He’d spent long enough as an embedded reporter to know when he was being fed a line of bullshit. Hell, his report suggesting that some kind of new weapons system had been deployed against the Taliban-held town had earned him some more enemies in official Washington. But the next set of reports were even stranger. The Taliban leadership had started dying in large numbers.

There was always someone, he knew, who had pulled the trigger. It was a media age, after all, and few things remained secret indefinitely. If a weapon was fired, someone had to have fired it and that person would want his ten minutes of fame. Hell, several of the SEALs who had gone after Bin Laden and killed him had talked, within the year. But there was no one talking about the sudden drop in Taliban leadership.

It puzzled him. If drones had been deployed in such vast numbers, there would have been an outcry from the Pakistanis. Gunter knew better than to believe the Pakistani Government gave a damn about women and children killed in the northern parts of their deeply divided country, but they would have to make a public statement just to avoid more unrest. But they’d said nothing… and nor had anyone flying the drones. Or had the SEALs been sent over the border to slaughter their way through the Taliban leadership? It was a heartening thought, a display of nerve he’d thought missing from the President’s administration, but as far as he could tell no one had been placed on alert.

He finally passed through the TSA checkpoint — they always paid close attention to anyone coming back from Afghanistan and the Middle East — and headed for the taxi rack. The driver chatted endlessly about the latest baseball statistics as Gunter opened his laptop and skimmed his emails. As always, there were a hundred pieces of junk for every tip he received from his sources. Being a reporter meant that everyone and their dog felt they could feed him a line, whenever they felt like it. But he still went through every email. Watergate had started as a minor break-in, after all. Who knew where the next story of the century would come from?

He’d made it his business to cultivate relationships with a number of military officers in various positions, providing advice on handling the press and keeping them calm. In exchange, they sometimes fed him tips, although nothing classified. Asking for classified information was a good way to lose a contact altogether; they might not report him to anyone, but they certainly wouldn’t want to risk their careers any further. After Snowden, the White House and the Pentagon had become more than a little paranoid over unauthorised leakers in senior positions. It was ironic — most of the leaks in Washington came out of the bureaucracy, trying to sway political opinion one way or the other — but unsurprising.

Four of his contacts claimed — and, with collaboration, he believed them — that a covert military alert had been called a day ago. Military bases across the United States had rushed to full alert status, recalling troops, launching aircraft and generally preparing for war. It looked like some kind of exercise — God knew that the military had been caught on the hop before — but if so, his contacts noted, there hadn’t been a single whisper that it was coming from higher up. And there was always a tip-off from higher authority…

“Here you are, man,” the driver said. “Long flight?”

“Very long,” Gunter said, as he closed the laptop. He’d stopped telling people he was flying from Afghanistan after several of them had eyed him suspiciously for the rest of the drive. “Thank you for the ride.”

He paid, then climbed out of the cab and walked up to his house. It was in one of the better parts of Washington, a gated community with a very effective security service. Part of him disliked the idea of having to hide behind a wire fence and armed guards, but there was little choice. Crime in Washington had been on the rise for years, with the police seemingly helpless to do anything about it. And there was almost no crime within the community. The owners screened all their new residents, ensuring that children could play in the streets freely without fear. Shaking his head, he opened the door and stepped inside, looking longingly at his bed. It still felt like late night in his head.

Instead, he sat down at his desk and continued going through his emails. Several more had arrived while he’d been paying the driver, including one odd report of a series of high-energy bursts in outer space, alarmingly close to the planet. From what his source said, civilian astronomers were going berserk trying to understand what had happened. Was it a solar flare or something like it… or was it unnatural as hell? Gunter looked down at the dates and shivered, suddenly, as realisation struck him. The event in outer space matched the date and time of the unscheduled military alert.

But was there something really there? Carefully, he started to look though the rest of his files, all the tips shared between independent reporters who couldn’t call on the vast resources and influence of the Mainstream Media. Over the last week, stocks and shares in companies that produced space hardware had risen, sharply. Someone was apparently buying enough of their produce to ensure their shares rose quite significantly. But who? NASA wasn’t doing anything, as far as he could tell, and even the military space program had been cut back sharply. Or was there a program so secret that most government officials didn’t know a thing about it?

There had been one odd whisper from a friend in Afghanistan. Apparently — and it could easily have been rumour — there had been a new black ops team inserted into the country from an unknown nation. And yet they’d had near-complete access to American intelligence and resources, something not offered to any nation. Maybe they’d been an American team, so secret that they’d been mistaken for foreigners, or maybe there was something else going on. Were they connected with the Taliban deaths?

Shaking his head, wondering if it was all the result of jet-lag and tiredness, he started to try to put the pieces together. But none of the results he got seemed to make sense.

The President looked haggard, Jürgen realised, as he stepped into the Oval Office. He had spent an uncomfortable night in the bunker underneath the White House while his wife and children were whisked away to an highly-classified location. Behind him, Craig Henderson looked concerned. He didn’t think much of the President — Jürgen could read his body language, even if his voice was nothing but respectful — but he was still their Commander-in-Chief. And he’d spent the night wondering if Earth was on the verge of being destroyed.

“Be seated,” the President said, as the CIA and NSA directors entered, followed by two more officials Jürgen didn’t know personally. “We have received a communication from the Russians. They know that something happened in orbit.”

Jürgen wasn’t surprised. Whatever Mr. Stuart and his men used to keep their shuttles undetected by purely human technology — and he had some theories about how that technology worked — it hadn’t managed to hide the brief and violent battle in orbit. NSA’s network of satellites had picked up the energy flashes, as had a number of civilian systems and — apparently — the Russians. There was no point, Jürgen suspected, in trying to cover the whole affair up. After all, there was nothing so conspicuous as a man ducking for cover.

“I received a very tart note from the Russians earlier this morning,” the President continued. “They out-and-out accused us of violating several treaties, including the one forbidding the deployment of nuclear weapons to orbit. Reading between the lines, they don’t have the faintest idea of what actually happened, but they think we do.”

“The emergency alert,” Jürgen said.

“Yes,” the President said. “They know we called an alert before the fireworks started in orbit and they don’t believe in coincidences.”

CIA nodded. “They won’t be the only ones, Mr. President,” he said. “There isn’t another government in the world who knows about Mr. Stuart and his band of… lunar settlers. They will all be demanding answers.”

It was funny, Jürgen reflected, how CIA could make settling the moon sound like a crime worthy of good old-fashioned hanging. But then, the CIA had been thoroughly embarrassed by the near-complete extermination of the Taliban leadership. They hadn’t been responsible for it. If they had, the news would probably have leaked right now. No more than the DHS, the CIA needed a success to secure their position in the world.

“There will be others putting the pieces together,” one of the unnamed men said. “I’ve had several calls from various independent reporters, the ones willing to take chances on something… a little out of the ordinary. So far, there’s nothing from the mainstream media, but I wouldn’t expect that to last. There’s just too many sources of information for them to assume that someone is trying to hoax them into making an embarrassing mistake.”

“Not to mention the Russians threatening to lodge protests at the UN,” the President muttered. “So… what do we tell them?”

“The truth?” NSA suggested. He smirked. “Let them lodge their complaints with Mr. Stuart?”

CIA eyed him, nastily. “There are two problems with that,” he said. “Either they would believe us or they wouldn’t. If the latter, they would assume that we were covering up something and take the whole affair public. If the former, they would believe that a group of Americans has taken over the moon and declared themselves an independent nation. They’d start panicking, then they’d start blaming us for the whole affair.”

NSA looked back at him. “How — exactly — can Washington be blamed for Mr. Stuart’s actions?”

“He’s American — or he was American,” CIA said. “Whatever, the Russians will have good reason to blame us. And if they decide that he’s acting completely without restraint, Mr. President, they are likely to do something drastic.”

“But if we lie to them,” the President said, “eventually the truth will come out and we’ll look dishonest.”

He snorted. “And what is to stop Mr. Stuart announcing himself to the world?”

“Nothing,” Jürgen said, simply. “They were planning a public announcement soon enough in any case.”

“And what,” the President said, “will happen when the news gets out?”

There would be panic, Jürgen knew. Maybe not over Heinlein Colony, but over the existence of aliens, aliens who had come alarmingly close to bombarding Earth. Hell, there was definite proof — now — that aliens had abducted humans from the planet and turned them into cyborg soldiers. There would be colossal panic right around the globe. And then… who knew what would happen then? How would humanity cope with the thought of no longer being alone in the universe?

He recalled the files Kevin Stuart had given him to read. They were immensely detailed, too detailed for him to believe them a hoax. There were upwards of ten thousand intelligent races known to exist — at least, known to the starship’s designer — and most of them were far more advanced than humanity. At best, Earth was a tiny primitive tribe in a jungle, utterly unaware of the surrounding world. The shock of discovering just how badly humanity was outmatched would shake the world to its core.

He’d read some of the scenarios devised over the years concerning alien contact. The writers had been more than a little paranoid, pointing to the prospect of humans adopting alien religions or abandoning homebuilt tech and becoming entirely dependent on alien technology. Or there would be humans who would embrace xenophobia and attack everything alien, to the point they accidentally started a war, a war humanity couldn’t hope to win. Even the most optimistic scenarios had been thoroughly ominous. The very foundations of human society were about to shake and shake badly.

The President cleared his throat. “I will speak with Mr. Stuart later today,” he said. “However, we need a contingency plan to release the information as soon as possible.”

CIA leaned forward. “I agree that we should level with the Russians and the rest of the world governments,” he said. “Or at least the ones we can trust to keep a secret. However, I do not believe we should tell the general public just yet.”

The President lifted his eyebrows. “You propose to keep it a secret indefinitely?”

“Mr. Stuart’s people have been hellishly effective against the Taliban,” CIA pointed out, carefully. “And most of the involved governments don’t have the slightest idea of what happened in Afghanistan. But if we reveal the truth, the Pakistani Government — among others — will tremble, perhaps fall. And they’re not the only ones.”

He took a breath. “Fusion power and super batteries, Mr. President, offer the chance to break the oil dependency once and for all. If that news leaks, we will see a sudden upsurge in trouble from the Middle East. Nations like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, nations dependent on oil revenue, will do whatever it takes to delay the introduction of fusion power. They will stroke the fires of anti-nuclear feeling, throw money at political candidates who will pledge to delay the introduction of fusion indefinitely and probably finance terrorist attacks aimed at Mr. Stuart and his people.”

The President smiled. “And your real concern?”

CIA smiled back, humourlessly. “Right now, we have a chance to exterminate the senior terrorist leadership all over the world,” he said. “I would prefer not to risk giving them warning of what we could do.”

The President looked at Jürgen. “Is that a valid point?”

Jürgen swallowed, nervously. He would have preferred not to take sides in a dispute between two people who were both immensely senior to him, but he had no choice.

“I do not believe the terrorists could escape the bugs,” he said, carefully. “And if they go underground, Mr. President, their ability to strike at us will be minimised anyway.”

“True,” the President agreed. He gave CIA a droll look. “Sorry.”

CIA shrugged, seemingly unbothered.

Craig Henderson leaned forward. “Mr. President?”

The President nodded, inviting him to speak.

“There will be panic, Mr. President, whatever we do,” he said. There was no doubt whatsoever in his tone. “I would suggest placing the military and police on full alert before making the broadcast.”

“We will,” the President said, grimly. “And how will your friend react to all of this?”

“People like him, Mr. President, believe in getting the matter over and done with as quickly as possible,” Henderson said. “He wouldn’t pussyfoot around, but just tell the world and then let everyone work through their panic.”

He shrugged. “But we do have some encouraging news,” he added. “We did turn back the alien attack on Earth.”

“You mean Mr. Stuart and his friends turned back the assault,” CIA said. There was a sardonic tone to his voice. “The government isn’t going to look very good, no matter what we do.”

“Then we may as well make it look as though we are cooperating with them,” the President said. “We can spin that to our advantage, if necessary. Congress will probably accept it, provided they don’t interfere with our affairs. And we can let the foreign affairs take care of themselves.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

Gunter fell asleep over the laptop and only woke up, several hours later, when one of his cell phones started to shrill loudly. Pulling himself upright, he reached for the phone just in time to miss the call. Cursing under his breath, he put the phone down and yawned; moments later, the phone vibrated. Someone — he didn’t save numbers in the phone, knowing it could be confiscated — had sent him a text message.

He frowned. It read WHITE HOUSE MEDIA STATEMENT, 1800HRS. GLOBAL BCAST. BE THERE.

Frowning, Gunter glanced at his watch. It was 1600 and he’d slept for over five hours. The laptop had placed itself on standby, conserving power. Unsurprisingly, he discovered when he moved the mouse, a couple of hundred more messages had arrived while he’d been sleeping. One of them insisted that the United States Government — or the Russians or Chinese — had been testing secret weapons in orbit. Another, a press release from a well-known researcher, stated that the whole event was nothing more than a series of zero-point energy releases. Gunter couldn’t understand the technobabble the researcher had included, but it looked far too much like someone was trying to squash all opposition through scientific-sounding gibberish.

Shaking his head, he stood up and pulled off his clothes, then headed for the shower. There was just time, by his watch, to shower, shave and then call a taxi to take him to the White House. As an independent reporter, he might have some problems getting in, but if it was a global broadcast there would be little point in impeding him. There would be no exclusive scoop for anyone. It was irritating, yet it couldn’t be helped. Besides, if there were any exclusives coming from the White House, they’d be given to the reporters who kissed up to the administration.

Or spend all of their time writing paeans to the President, he thought, as he turned on the tap and water cascaded down over his body. But how could I compromise my independence so badly?