by Mich Moore
eyes. They seemed to be speaking to him. It's okay, son. Let go. And then something too large and too solid slammed him from behind, smashing every bone in his body. His last breath quickly escaped from his open mouth and was instantly lapped up by the blue cube. It then detached itself from Broussard's face and rode out the twister's torrential winds until the tornado itself breathed its last and dissipated some fifteen kilometers northeast of the Johnson farm.
17
Six Months Later
Gilmer, Texas
It was early in the evening. A harvest moon hung in the sky like the Great Pumpkin. With the exception of a lone horse feeding on sweet hay, nothing moved.
A long black car stopped in front of a long brick house set right beside the road. Three men got out. Two of them were supporting the third as they made their way up the paved driveway. The horse stopped eating and watched the scene with only passing interest as the men moved in the darkness. The two men deposited the third man on the front porch and returned to their car and then quickly drove away. The moon completed its transit; the heavens then waited for the arrival of the sun. Twelve hours later Mr. Darryl Smith and his family, dressed in their Sunday finery, stepped out onto their front porch to find the stranger lying unconscious next to Mrs. Smith's clay pot of orange poppies. Mr. Smith commanded his family to return inside while he examined the trespasser. There was a handwritten note pinned to his jacket. It read: "My name is Frederick Fields. I work for the president of America. I have been kidnapped and tortured and am presently unable to communicate my needs effectively. Please call (703) 555-1648, state your name and location, and read the contents of this note to the person who takes the call. Thank you."
The man stirred, and Mr. Smith immediately felt a wave of nausea hit him like a freight train. He reached out to the rim of the flowerpot to steady himself. His youngest son must have been watching from inside the foyer because the front door opened and the child ran to him.
"Daddy, are you all right?"
"I'm fine, Billy. Go back inside."
The strange man moved again, and this time the physical reaction was so severe that Mr. Smith felt ready to swoon like a woman. He fell back against the porch's railing and reflexively hooked his arm around it to catch himself before he went down. The maneuver caused his vision to pan around erractically, and he saw Billy fall to the floorboards like a stone. Mr. Smith struggled to his knees. "Billy, are you all right, boy? Billy? Answer me!"
The house began to tilt and twirl. Before he passed out, he managed to shout inside the house, "Jerrie Mae, call 9-1-1! Tell 'em we've got an unconscious man out here! Tell 'em that he's got some kind of chemical on him! It's strong! Hurry!"
18
Three Years Later...
Aboard HMS Fox8, Eleven Kilometers Above the Swiss Alps
For the umpteenth time he readjusted his rear end in his new executive chair. Five minutes in one position and the thing became a veritable torture chamber. Damn it all! I'm still the prime minister! Doesn't that title at least rate a comfortable chair?
He tried to jot down some notes. Questions that he wanted to put to the team. But his mind kept buzzing from topic to topic. There were so many things to consider now.
He looked at his digital watch. It was eight o'clock on the morning of Saturday, 28 November.
A knock at his door sounded like Elizabeth Tower and he bade them enter. The team filed in—Pierre Laurent, the French Minister of Defense; Matthew Grodin (SECAF, America); Air Chief Marshal Sir Moffett Tarkin (RAF); Bill Thompson, acting director of NASA; and Lord Cedric McCool, MOD's replacement for the now retired Frederick Fields. They were all gathered in Prime Minister Tennyson's airborne office to witness the first official flight of Archangel.
The prime minister had spent the last three days and nights wringing his hands with worry like an old woman. The situation below had gone from bad to worse. There were new players in the game and all of them hostile towards his party and its goals. The pressure was enormous and unrelenting. At one point, he had become so desperate for a way to silence his critics that he had half-jokingly suggested that he be given a public blessing by His Majesty. Looking back, it had truly been a foolhardy notion. No more than a desperate Hail Mary kick in the last seconds of an American football game. But of course, if it had happened ...
General Chambers began. "Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for receiving us today. Sir, in light of the urgent nature of our current situation, would you mind if we dispensed with the usual formalities and got the demonstration underway?"
"Not at all," Tennyson responded wholeheartedly. "I believe that we are all sufficiently acquainted with one another." He acknowledged the small group with a congenial look.
"Then, please," Chambers continued, "let's make our way to the cockpit."
He was led to the BAe's roomy flight deck. Robert "Corny" Cornfield, an old friend, was seated in the captain's chair (which looked a hell of a lot more comfortable than his own). The co-pilot was a stranger. Tennyson and Cornfield exchanged the polite questions and updates about family but the conversation soon turned to the matters at hand.
Chambers steered him towards the third seat, normally reserved for the flight engineer. "Sir, as you are aware, due to recent developments in the attack strategy of the Advance South, and in accordance with NATO's modified North American treaty, we would like to demonstrate a new tactical weapon that we at the MOD and the American Department of Defense strongly feel will give our side a strong and new advantage."
Tennyson fought to control his impatience. He had specifically told everyone that he wanted any Jobsian rollout spin kept to a minimum. He knew all about the Archangel program. In short, it was bleeding edge technology grafted onto old. The SR-71, the fabled American spy plane, had been pulled from the mothballs and thrown into a pit of the sharpest aviation minds in the world. It had a new flex-jointed body, lighter innards, Cray-Linux computers on board, and near invisibility from conventional radar. It even had a new designation to signify its role as a strategic ambassador on behalf of the G5. It was now known as the SA-72. The "A" stood for Ambassador. He did not have every detail—most of the new bells and whistles on the thing were so classified that only the program's scientists and engineers had intimate knowledge of them. Chambers had been adamant about the tight security. And the man generally knew how to perform his job but it still felt like a slight. Some egghead obviously did not think that he could be trusted to chew gum and walk across the street at the same time. But he quickly got over any bruised feelings. They needed something—anything—to gain traction with the enemy. After the Huntsville Disaster in the States, it was clear that any ground-based campaign was probably destined for failure. Up in the skies they might stand a chance of a win.
Tennyson rubbed his hands together. "Okay, let's get this show on the road."
Captain Cornfield took control of the presentation. "Mr. Prime Minister, if you will look directly ahead, you should see the craft in six seconds."
They waited. Six seconds passed. Clouds like homemade biscuits lazed by. Then ten seconds. The prime minister was just about to make a remark when their plane suddenly bucked and reared up nose first about four meters. He grabbed onto his armrest. Captain Cornfield grabbed the yoke and to wrestle the plane back down to straight and level flight.
Something huge and dark was rising directly beneath Fox8, wildly displacing the air and causing the big plane to experience intense turbulence. And then the SA-72 shot out and ahead of them to temporarily blot out the sun.
“LORD God!" Tennyson stared at the aircraft in open awe. He had always admired the Blackbird for its unique design and its prowess, but now it was a thing of beauty as well. The new designers had not simply scaled up the original airplane. The smooth, chocolate brown skin of the fuselage now bristled with ornate and incomprehensible weapons and defensive gear. The vessel glistened in the sun as it flexed along its articulated spine and took the air currents like a pterodactyl dipped in hot Lamborghini s
auce. As it flew ahead of the jet and darted to the upper right, it literally flapped its wings at them.
"WOW!" he shouted as another Archangel shot into view and then seemed to park itself in the upper left hand corner of Fox8's windshield, all, Haverson surmised, within the space of maybe half a second.
Chambers was beaming. "Mr. Prime Minister, meet the Archangels."
Tennyson was trembling. "AHHH!" He wiped his forehead with a now sweaty palm. "Pardon my language." He sucked in some air to cool his nervous system down. "What can they do?"
Lord McCool interjected himself into the presentation. "Just about everything. Archangel has a full-thrust horizontal range of thirty-five million kilometers, a low-power vertical range of seventy million kilometers, full cloaking ability, multi-directional laser canons, fore and aft electromagnetic force fields, WhisperTouch Rolls Royce fusion engines, curve radar, and nuclear strike capability using gold-based enrichment."
"Brilliant." Faced with such a large minefield of technical information, Tennyson tried a subtle tack. "Tell me about the engines."
McCool continued smoothly. "They run virtually silent. If you were on the ground and Archangel passed by thirty meters above you, you wouldn't hear him."
That did not quite sound right to the prime minister but he