Never Again

by M. A. Rothman

  “I wish I could remember smelling this before,” Bella said, and then sighed.

  Dave wrapped his arm around her waist as they left the shadow of the large Moon transport. It had been nearly four years since he’d been to Earth, and even though he worked out regularly on the Moon, he acutely felt his weight as they walked the quarter mile between the shuttle and the Arrivals Gate. “Bella, are you okay with the weight change?”

  She nodded as she flicked away a strand of her red hair that had blown into her face. “I’m not feeling too fat, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Just as Dave was about to protest, she nudged him and smiled. “I’m teasing you. I feel fine. It’s a little weird going from twenty-five pounds on the Moon to almost one hundred and fifty here, but that’s why you’ve had me wear weight belts up there, right?”

  “Well, it’s so we can keep up our bone density and not waste away while we’re on the moon.”

  As they approached the Arrivals Gate, a man jogged toward the line of recently disembarked passengers. Wearing an ISF badge, the man approached Dave and motioned for him to halt. “Joshua Carter, can I please see your identification?”

  Dave nodded and handed the pudgy, red-faced man his falsified passport.

  The ISF normally didn’t involve themselves with immigration activities, but when the Moon base had been established almost twenty years earlier, transport to and from the Moon became their domain. As the ISF officer studied his passport, he noted, “Mister Carter, you must have friends in high places, because I was asked to find you and immediately escort you and your guests through customs.” He glanced at Bella and the other members of their party. “Can I see the rest of your party’s paperwork as well?”

  Bella and the four rather beefy members of the security crew handed the man their passports, as the other passengers from the shuttle walked past them toward the Arrivals Gate.

  The ISF officer waved a handheld scanner over the passports. Seconds passed, and a green light flashed on the scanner. The officer nodded, but just as he returned the passport to Dave, he paused. His eyes met Dave’s, and his mouth hung open with a stunned expression. “Holy shit, it’s you!”

  A chill ran up Dave’s spine. Suddenly, the man blurted, “I always believed in you even when they said ... never mind. Sir, it’s an honor.”

  Before Dave could respond, the officer cleared his throat, returned the rest of the passports, and asked, “Did any of you have baggage you needed to retrieve from Baggage Claim?”

  “No,” Dave shook his head. “Officer Kirkpatrick, we’re all traveling light today.”

  At first the ISF official appeared surprised, and then he glanced at his own badge with his name printed on it and smiled. He nodded and motioned for them to follow. “I’ll take you through the diplomatic wing. Nobody will see you, and I’ll get you where you need to go.”

  “Officer Kirkpatrick, it would be much better if you kept what you knew to yourself, the—”

  The officer turned abruptly with a look of determination. “I swear on my children that your presence here will go to my grave. I simply feel better knowing that you’re still around, and I have all the faith in the world that you’ll do what’s best for us all. Sir, if I might add, you still have a lot of support in the ISF, despite all that’s been said.”

  Dave placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and gave him a light squeeze. “I appreciate that. The quicker we finish some things here, the better.”

  Officer Kirkpatrick nodded curtly, turned, and set a vigorous pace toward a lonely-looking door that led into the Arrivals building.

  Holding Bella’s hand as they raced after the officer, the burden of guilt weighed heavily on Dave. He knew what fate had in store for Officer Kirkpatrick and everyone else on Earth. That nagging seed of shame grew within him, reminding him that he was letting the world down.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it. Earth was doomed.

  ###

  Scanning the desolate beaches of Rum Cay, a remote island in the Bahamas, Dave searched the darkness as the rest of the crew disembarked from the motorboat. The tropical breeze was like a warm breath carrying the scent of the ocean, while the sound of waves crashing on the beach competed with the squawking of a flock of seagulls overhead. The birds seemed quite agitated, clearly unused to nighttime invaders disturbing their nesting site.

  Glancing up at the annoyed birds, Dave whispered, “I’m sorry to wake you guys, but it can’t be avoided.”

  It was almost midnight and the crescent Moon hovering above the horizon gave just enough light for Dave to spot a darkened building in the distance.

  With Bella lightly holding onto his arm, Dave motioned silently for the men to follow as he stepped off the lonely wooden pier and began trudging up the sand embankment.

  After a few minutes of climbing, a square-shaped warehouse emerged from the shadows near the top of the hill. It was larger than Dave remembered; the nearest wall was almost one-hundred-feet long. Spotting a side entrance, Dave led his entourage to a metal door that seemed small for the fifteen-foot-tall building. The stone-like stucco that covered the exterior acted as camouflage during the day, but underneath the thin veneer, he knew that the warehouse was constructed like a fortress.

  The ISF’s warehouses were often located in remote places, and when Dave had commissioned their construction, he’d focused on preventing unauthorized access. Composed largely of steel-reinforced concrete, these buildings contained millions upon millions of dollars worth of supplies, but it wasn’t the cost of the materials that worried him. Most people had no idea that the fate of the world rested on having available the material that was stored in the ISF warehouses scattered throughout the world. Now, much of that material would be used solely for saving the Moon.

  Flipping open a rectangular weatherproof box attached to the metal door’s frame, Dave revealed a keypad onto which he typed a long sequence of numbers. Just as he pressed the last digit, a green LED lit, followed immediately by the sound of a heavy lock disengaging. The well-oiled hinges swung inward as old-style fluorescent lights flickered to life along the ceiling.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Dave motioned everyone to come closer. “Let’s get this over with quickly.”

  The shadows lurking throughout the warehouse vanished as the lights grew brighter. Long rows of cryptically labeled wooden crates were arranged throughout the building. There were hundreds of crates with labels such as “ISF-BT10000,” which Dave knew were 10,000 amp-hour batteries. These industrial high-capacity batteries had been designed to be used as part of DefenseNet.

  Dave smirked as he thought about DefenseNet. The whole concept behind it had been a ruse that he’d used with the governmental types. Everyone could understand the concept of needing to destroy or nudge a wayward asteroid that threatened Earth. Even though many of the components he needed to deal with the impending danger were the same, he would never have been able to gain approval for what he’d been planning. The ultimate solution was beyond most people’s ability to accept.

  Dave strode quickly to the far end of the warehouse. He felt barely aware of the footsteps of his companions as they rushed to keep up with him. At the far end of the warehouse, a brushed steel wall greeted him. Scanning the expanse of the blank metal wall, he nodded, knowing what was hidden behind it. He’d built the vault to house some key components that had proven oh-so-difficult to produce in mass quantity.

  Dave looked up at the corner of the warehouse ceiling, then panned his gaze across thirteen of the soundproof ceiling tiles. From that position, he trailed his focus down the brushed-steel wall until he locked onto a blank space directly in front of him. Placing his hand on the cold metal, Dave felt a tingle of electricity, just as a beam of green light shot out from the wall. Squinting through the uncomfortable brightness of the scanner, he remained still until he felt a click under his hand.

  With a sigh of relief, Dave gave the metal
wall a slight push. Slowly, the half-ton door noiselessly swiveled, revealing another room, and what he’d ultimately come for.

  Stacked from floor to ceiling were giant spools of graphene ribbon. Previously, graphene had only been manufactured in small quantities. Only through sheer luck had Dave finally stumbled onto a practical means to mass-produce it.

  He glanced over his shoulder, past Bella and the burly men, to the assortment of advanced batteries, generators, and engines strewn throughout the warehouse. Unlike the graphene, which represented years’ worth of manufacturing time, the rest of the warehouse’s contents were known technology that could be replaced without much worry. Knowing that practical quantities of graphene were still extremely hard to create, Dave couldn’t afford to lose what little he’d managed to make. He motioned toward the large spools. “Guys, be careful with this stuff. Treat this like your life depended on it.”

  “Your lives do depend on this,” Bella abruptly added matter-of-factly.

  ###

  The squawking of gulls in the pre-dawn seemed to come from all over the island as Dave nervously watched spool after spool of the precious graphene exit the warehouse. Even though the ribbon was stronger than steel, Dave couldn’t risk damaging it by rolling the spools over the rough terrain of the island. The men staggered under the weight of each spool as they slowly trudged toward the boat.

  The eastern horizon was just beginning to lighten. Morning wasn’t far away, and they needed to get going.

  Dave reentered the warehouse, brushing past Bella, and walked into the inner storeroom. He frowned as he settled his gaze on the remaining stacks of graphene spools laying floor to ceiling. “It looks like we have about half of them still in here.” He glanced at Bella, who stood in the doorway; her tousled red hair framed her green eyes. “Is that enough for what we need?”

  With only a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “It should be—”

  The lights suddenly flicked off, plunging the warehouse into darkness.

  “What the hell!” Dave yelled, figuring someone had accidentally turned off the lights. He immediately reached for and found Bella’s hand, then felt his way toward the warehouse’s exit. As he trailed his hand along the wooden crates lining one of the aisles, Dave could barely make out the slight variation in the shades of darkness.

  “Damn it, I guess either the solar chargers on the roof aren’t working or the batteries that are supposed to be powering this place aren’t any—”

  Without warning, Bella screamed. Her hand ripped away from Dave’s grasp, and he was suddenly struck by something hard on the back of his head.

  As his knees buckled, Dave felt hands grab him by his arms just as he lost consciousness.

  Chapter Eleven

  Margaret sat on the sofa, where despite her exhaustion, she bore a bittersweet smile as she watched her three-year-old son George run around the desk in the Oval Office, screaming with a three-year-old’s exuberance. In the week since the scientists had informed her of the danger facing the world, she’d been plagued by disturbing dreams of disembodied voices and images of chaos in the streets. They kept her up at night. Little George had just had a birthday party, and she couldn’t help but worry that her son would never get to have another.

  George hopped up onto the sofa and sat next to her, his favorite book about animals in his hand. Margaret swelled with emotion as he carefully flipped the pages and pointed at pictures, naming everything with complete confidence. Having gone through infertility treatment for years without success, she’d scrubbed having children from her life’s plan. And then George happened.

  Now, she couldn’t imagine what life would be like without him. She only wished that her grandfather, who she’d named George after, were still alive to see him. She could almost sense her pappy’s presence in the room, watching over them.

  As she ruffled George’s dark-brown hair, Margaret’s attention veered to the Secret Service agent standing at the entrance to the Oval Office. He briefly pressed his hand to his ear, nodded, and peered in her direction. “Madam President, Doug Fisher and the members of the senior staff you asked for are in the building.”

  She nodded. “Tell Brenda to let them in when they arrive.” Margaret held up a finger, holding the agent in place, as she kissed the top of George’s head and whispered, “Go with Agent King. He’ll take you to Daddy. I’ll be upstairs to play later.”

  Without another word, George gave her a sloppy kiss on her nose. Then he obediently walked to Agent King and grabbed his hand as they exited the room.

  Almost as soon as the door closed, it opened again, and Doug Fisher, her Chief of Staff, entered with a couple of grim-looking people following in his wake. “Good afternoon, Madam President—”

  “Nothing good about it, Doug.” Margaret groused. “Last I heard, we’re all still screwed.” She motioned toward the other sofas in the room. “Let’s dispense with the niceties and get down to business.”

  As the cabinet heads sat down, Margaret’s focus settled on Doug. He was a short, wrinkled man in his early seventies, but despite his age and size, he still had the spring of youth and the booming voice of someone ten times his size. He was deeply connected into the heartbeat of the capitol, seemed to know everyone in D.C., and made a point of keeping her apprised of the comings and goings of people outside her inner circle. He was also especially good at running these types of meetings and unobtrusively keeping everyone on point.

  Just as her eyes connected with Doug’s, he gave a quick nod and glanced at his notepad through glasses that sat low on the bridge of his nose. “Jim, what were the results of the discussion with the other countries regarding Indigo?”

  Margaret’s attention focused on James Arroyo, her mustachioed Secretary of State, as he flipped through his notes on Indigo, the codename linked to the upcoming disaster.

  “Madam President, I’ve talked with representatives from Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the People’s Republic of China. They’re all briefed on Indigo and what looms ahead. For now, they’ve each bottled up any possible leaks from their respective countries, hoping that someone out of the ISF will have some insight on what the next steps should be.”

  Margaret glanced at the disarmingly handsome man sitting on an old Victorian chair opposite her. Kevin Baker was the Director of the CIA, one of the few in that position who’d actually spent time as an operations officer. In fact, he’d spent his entire thirty-year service at the Agency. Unlike Arroyo, who was charged with diplomatic relations, Kevin was tasked with international intelligence gathering.

  “Kevin, the ISF has remained silent, I presume? Also, any other chatter about Indigo elsewhere?”

  “All our monitored resources have been silent on Indigo,” Kevin immediately responded, without looking at any notes. “The scientists that know are mum, and I cross-checked with the NSA’s Utah Datacenter—neither of us have caught whiff of unusual communications anywhere else.”

  “Good,” Margaret leaned back on the sofa with a sigh. “I don’t need to tell you guys what would happen if the public knew about Indigo. I already received a briefing from Carol Chance—”

  “Secretary of Agriculture,” Doug interjected.

  “She’s using a significant portion of her allocated budget to incentivize farmers to produce excess supplies, and with that, we’ll almost certainly have granaries and other storage facilities at near capacity by the end of the next growing season. Obviously, whatever additional prep we do needs to be masked under other projects or initiatives.”

  “Excuse me, Madam President.” Walter Keane, the Secretary of Defense interjected. “But do you know when we’ll learn more about possible contingencies? We have the greatest military force known to man, but with Indigo, it’s a difficult task to plan for without more data—”

  “Walt, trust me.” The president held up her hand, interrupting the former General’s comment. “I know where you’re going with this, and for the f
iftieth time, I don’t yet have what you need. We don’t yet have an enemy that you can fight.”

  Just as Walt opened his mouth, Doug’s booming voice cut him off. “Excuse me, but it might make sense to hear what in-country intel we have.”

  Margaret glanced at the reed-thin woman to her left, who was charged with all in-country intelligence. “Karen, what does the FBI have to say about Indigo’s main actors?”

  Karen Fultondale, the Director of the FBI, opened a large three-ring-binder sitting on her lap and trailed her finger across her notes. “Madam President, I pulled the records you’d previously requested and I’ll start with Greg Hildebrand. We have a surprisingly thick file on him, since he’d previously applied for several government positions over the years. We have a detailed psychological profile on him. Mister Hildebrand is a borderline narcissist with a strong sense of self-importance; he’s preoccupied with advancement and also has a strong sense of entitlement. These, along with violent domestic disagreements, were the contributing factors for his three failed marriages. Coincident with his failed marriages, he’s had to declare personal bankruptcy, and is currently at a high risk of having his clearances pulled.”

  Margaret sighed and made a rolling motion with her hand for Karen to move on. Greg had been a friend of the family, and she hated hearing about how he was failing at life.

  The FBI Director flipped to the next tab in her binder and paused as her eyes darted across the data. “It is true that David Wendell Holmes was placed in protective custody under Mister Hildebrand’s direction. However, that only lasted a few weeks before Doctor Holmes managed to escape with the help of another patient.”

  “Who was the other patient?” Margaret asked, her interest piqued.