by Mich Moore
was difficult to interpret, but he pulled up a dusty chair and sat down. Occasionally, he would sigh or noisily shift about in his seat.
Dawes muted these sounds and kept his focus upon the tasks at hand. His aid handed him a series of documents. He scanned them from top to bottom and left to right, signed their bottoms, and then handed them back. The incident aboard the airplane would have to be reported to the higher-ups in Georgia from at least five different angles of fact and conjecture. The vessel itself would have to be lowered down into the base's subhangar and towed to New York via the East Tunnel. (No aircraft ever flew out of the Port Newark base.) Gracious conversation for his special guests would have to invented and convincingly delivered ... . After the last paper had been reviewed and signed, he turned his attention to the politicians.
"My apologies," he said congenially. "Business first."
"General," Peterson asked, "do you have any idea why Mark wanted this meeting here?"
"No idea," the general answered. "I was as surprised as you and the senator were. But you know Mark; he's an unpredictable character."
Senator Dillon took on an expression of long suffering. "That's one word for it."
Peterson obviously felt comfortable enough to voice some genuine frustration. "It's one thing to delay the Sierra demonstration. It's another to deliberately send us directly into harm's way."
Port Newark was the Advance South's most eastern forward operating base, and contrary to the governor's fears, it was several kilometers away from 'harm's way,' Newark's highly volatile airport district.
"If you stay on your toes," Dawes said, "Newark is as safe as any other city in the country."
Peterson's hefty jaw tightened. "Tell that to Kelly and Theresa Haverson."
"The Haversons are high-value targets."
Peterson did not respond to the obvious slight, but Senator Dillon did. "And we aren't?"
"At the moment, no." Dawes had not intended to insult the governor. It was a simple truth. The Haversons would bring in four times as much ransom money as Peterson or any of the other governors for the simple reason that old America's economy was still being backed by the British government and a veritable mountain of Italian and Swiss gold. The Advance South had no gold reserves to speak of, which produced a flaccid US-AS dollar. And the few international allies it had were almost just as weak.
Dawes waved the ill feelings away. "Mark and Paul must have a good reason to interrupt the project. Let's put away our misgivings for now." He glanced at his wristwatch. "They should be joining us shortly. Why don't we have some coffee while we wait?"
The Sierra project was Mark and Paul's latest creation in a string of highly successful creations dating back three decades. Childhood friends who had lived across the street from one another in Santa Clara, California, straight out of college they had invented a method for reducing the half-life of irradiated water by almost one hundred percent. Afterwards, they both completed stints in the American Naval Intelligence department, working in the ultra-secretive analog signal division. Bored after one year, they both left to join forces and finance several highly successful Hollywood films over the course of six years. They then returned to their technical roots and began to manufacture a transceiver device that could broadcast over any type of receiver, analog or digital. The Department of Defense forced them to turn the machines into two-way communication devices that allowed a user to listen in on conversations conducted near a targeted receiver. Unhappy with such meddling, the men dropped off the radar and formed their own next-tech corporation in Austin. By the time the two boyhood friends from Santa Clara had reached their mid-thirties, they were billionaires many times over. Six years after the transceiver launch, the DOD approached them and practically gave them a blank check and five years to develop a machine that would remove ozone and other pollutants from the atmosphere, without using fossil fuels or hydroelectric engines. Within two years, Mark and Paul had the world's first terraforming equipment up and running. Within the next four years, they had gone global and sold more than ten thousand units at the base retail price of twenty million dollars each. When the civil war had begun the pair, both hardline agnostics, had promptly sided with the decidedly fanatical secessionists (mainly on the belief that zealots were arguably better focused workers than the average uncommitted individual) and took their company with them. Two years into the war, the governor's council approached them about the creation of a defensive weapon that would be strong enough to deter any enemies but gentle enough to enrich the environment, in accordance with the Denver Treaty. The project was to become the metal muscle of Operation Defrag and the first true test of the new nation's high technology abilities. And so the Sierra project was born.
At the core of the United States-Advance South marriage was the simple idea that the regenerated United States should return to its founding principles of being a great yet benevolent meritocracy. Yes, the best and the most gifted should be recognized and promoted for the common good, but the avenues through which the gifted and talented progressed were numerous. In the new United States, a law-abiding man who remained faithful to his wife and family was just as valuable as the man who held the office of secretary of education. The woman who oversaw the Advance South's terraforming operations in Asia was no greater in prestige than the housewife who gracefully performed her duties to the delight of her family and neighbors. In fact, Paul's wife was a housewife, and Mark's wife was scheduled to hang up her doctor's shingle after she gave birth to their first child later that month. Many in the new government grumbled that this 'new' system resembled a younger sibling of socialism ... or worse. Neither Mark nor Paul would disagree, but both would argue that the last eight hundred years had taught mankind that no single system of government would work one hundred percent, one hundred percent of the time. The US-AS's hybrid democracy, too, would eventually run its course, and then it would come time to ease into another mode of survival. Or not.
There was a sharp rap on a cracked door situated a couple of meters behind the general's desk. Neither Peterson nor Dillon had noticed it before. Dawes's aid rushed over and pulled it open with a ceremonial flourish ... and out walked Mark Advance and Paul South.
As was their custom, the men who ran the Advance-South Corporation spoke briefly and to the point.
"Gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice," Mark began. "We have two rather urgent situations that need our immediate attention."
The others watched him with rapt attention.
Mark held up a single finger. "Item one: We have some intel coming out of Chicago that is ... disturbing to say the least." He drew a breath. "America has supposedly manufactured a weapon ... a 'super' weapon. It's supposed to be an atomic device that is virtually undetectable to man, dog or machine."
The other men were momentarily stunned into silence.
"How credible is this information?" Dawes asked.
"It's highly credible," he answered. "And if true, a direct violation of the Denver Treaty."
Peterson was aghast. "I don't believe it. I know the president. He is many things, but he is a man of his word."
Paul nodded sympathetically. "President Haverson has a lot on his plate right now. We're not exactly sure if he's still in charge."
"Any ideas as to who might be?" Dawes asked.
"One," Paul replied. "John Voode. The guy running DARPA. He's got the manpower and the paranoia to pull off something like this."
General Dawes shook his head, his mind clouding with even more unhappy thoughts. "What do you suggest we do about this?"
Mark answered. "We propose that the report be verified, and we'll rely on the general's expertise to get that done."
General Dawes nodded.
"And then we propose that the Sierra demo be moved to Illinois. We're pretty sure that they're planning on moving their weapon to the Chicago area within the next few days."
Dawes looked surprised. "What? Why? We show our hand now and we lose the element of
surprise. And we don't even know if Sierra will work."
"It will work," Paul countered confidently. "Sierra was created as a deterrent device, in order to curtail these crime waves and to make our enemies think twice before attacking us. I—we—believe that we can gain ground with the second goal."
The room grew quiet and sad.
"Paul, we may be starting another war," Senator Dillon said. His eyes closed and he muttered to himself, "A war within a war."
"I don't think so," Paul answered with the same unnerving confidence.
Governor Peterson cleared his throat for attention. "Fellas, with all due respect, this could have been discussed at Sierra City. My schedule has been thrown into shambles by diverting us here."
Mark nodded. "Which brings us to item two: New Jersey. This area is ground zero for an exponential growth of organized crime. Which makes it highly profitable ... and extremely dangerous. If the United States stands by and does nothing, it will only be a matter of time before it will be operating under their laws and not the other way around."
"What's your thinking?" General Dawes asked.
"Paul and I propose that we either establish an effective governorship here by the next midterm elections, or we terminate New Jersey's statehood." The others said nothing. There was no effective argument against the strategies of Mark Advance or Paul