Quarantine

by William Hayashi

  “But three damn hours ahead of time? Frankly, this is bullshit. And where is the Chief of Staff?”

  “He was in Georgetown having dinner, ma’am. He’s been picked up and is inbound. His ETA is—seven minutes,” Miller replied. “And as for why so early, the colonists have demonstrated that their ships can cover the distance between Earth and the moon in less than an hour. The Secretary of the Treasury has mandated that we move the President downstairs to the PEOC the moment an inbound bogey is detected.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” said Wilcox, clearly pissed off. “If they’re not going to be here in a couple of hours…”

  “Excuse me, Madam President.”

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Both ships have sped up and will be in Earth orbit in approximately thirty minutes.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. You and your cohort can quit looking so smug, Agent Miller,” Wilcox said, with a slight smile.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  A few minutes later, Nathan Slade arrived under escort.

  “Have a seat, Nate. Apparently, the colonists from that space station are inbound in two of their ships,” Wilcox said.

  “Any idea why?” Slade asked, joining President Wilcox at the conference room table.

  “No, but they’re going to be inside Earth orbit in less than half an hour. Colonel, are there any scheduled space launches anywhere around the globe?”

  “Not as far as we, or intelligence, knows about. We’re still checking the satellites for any launch detection, Madam President.”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” she said, turning to Slade. “So we wait.”

  “At least it won’t be long,” Slade said as the indicator on the wall changed from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 3.

  “Madam President?”

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “I have the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on the line. He’s asking if you would like to speak to him?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said, picking up the handset of the phone on the table. “Go ahead, General.”

  “Madam President. As you can see, two ships departed the colonist’s space station and will be arriving in less than fifteen minutes. Their destination is unknown, we’re searching to see if anyone else has launched anything into orbit. That’s all we have at this time.”

  “Thank you, General. Don’t let me keep you.”

  “Thank you, Madam President. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Well that was a big nothing,” she said cradling the handset.

  They sat in silence, watching the progress of the two ships. And when they were just outside the atmosphere, everyone sat up and paid closer attention to the readout from Shelter 14.

  “What country are they over right now, Colonel?” asked Wilcox.

  “They’re coming in over the North Atlantic, tracking west to east. Moving north, passing over Greenland and slowing, going subsonic,” he reported.

  “We have any jets in the area?” asked Wilcox.

  “The closest are in Germany, ma’am. Unless you want to alert any of our allies.”

  “Negative on that, Colonel. The last thing we need is for some trigger-happy someone else to get in a lucky shot and get their hands on one of those ships. Let’s let this play out and see what they’re doing. How high are they?”

  “They’ve descended down to thirty thousand feet, it’s pretty dark the farther they go. Okay, they’ve dropped to five thousand feet over a lake, ma’am.”

  “What lake?” she asked.

  “I can’t pronounce the name, ma’am,” he replied, embarrassed. “There’s the map. Both bogies are now sitting on the surface of the lake, ma’am.”

  * * *

  The two jumpers sank silently toward the surface of the lake. Their radar scanned the immediate area, as well as G2 monitoring military channels for any traffic concerning the jumpers. The U.S. military had raised their alert status. Dr. Harris’ detector had tracked the two spacecraft from the moment they left the space station, but no alert about exactly why the status of the military was heightened.

  Those who held high enough clearance in the U.S. were able to watch the feed from Shelter 14 as the ships approached Earth. Once the jumpers were settled on the surface, with the water tanks completely submerged, the collection and venting hatches were triggered.

  The water along the sides of the jumpers was roiled by bubbles as the air in the tanks was displaced by the icy water. The tanks filled without incident. Those in the jumpers scanned the horizon for any indication of inbound aircraft, even though the radar was clear. The last thing they needed was for Christopher to hear that they had mixed it up with someone’s military.

  Minutes later both tanks were full, with hatches secured.

  Rachel radioed, as she lifted off the surface of the lake, “Okay, let’s take it slow, no sense in straining the attachments.”

  “Roger that,” Larry replied at the helm of the other jumper.

  Both spacecraft rose smoothly into the sky, quickly leaving the atmosphere.

  “I still can’t get over how these G-waves work, even with an extra thirty-five tons of water, we’re flying as smooth as silk! G2?”

  “Yes, Jonathan. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Please inform Operations that the collection mission has been accomplished successfully with twenty thousand gallons of fresh water on its way to replenishing the station’s reserve tank.”

  “The report has been sent, Jonathan. Is there anything else I may assist you with at this time?”

  “No, G2. That will be all.”

  Once both jumpers were secured in the space station’s hanger, Larry and Jonathan attached the transfer hoses to the tanks and began to pump them dry, emptying the two collection tanks into the station’s reservoir in a little over twenty minutes.

  Cheryl took samples to test the purity of water while Rachel performed a close visual inspection of the exteriors of the jumpers. With small rocks and space debris flying around at speeds over twice what they were commonly used to, even with the improved shields, she wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  When the tanks were emptied, detached from the jumpers and stowed away, Larry gathered several trout from the tank on the environmental deck to rustle up a celebratory meal for the crew having pulled off a flawless mission.

  * * *

  “Any sign that someone has seen them?”

  “No, Madam President. No alerts from NATO, nothing being launched. No one knows they’re there except us.”

  “Any sign of surface ships, Colonel?”

  “Unknown. The feed from Shelter 14 only tracks gravitational anomalies. We’re retasking a satellite to try to see what’s going on down there.”

  Wilcox turned to Slade and whispered, “If they’re trading with some foreign power, we damn sure need to know about it.” She raised her voice and asked the Colonel, “What’s taking so long? We need to see what’s going on down there!”

  “Eight minutes, Madam President—stand by. Both ships are airborne, climbing vertically. Fifty thousand feet, seventy-five, two hundred. . . they are both out of the atmosphere and heading directly toward the space station.”

  “I want to know if there are any boats in the immediate area. I’m sure there’s no sub in a lake, we should see if they met with anyone. Dammit, I want to know who they were meeting! If someone on Earth is in contact with those people, we need to know about it yesterday.”

  “What’s on your mind, Lauren?” Slade quietly asked, eyebrow cocked.

  “I want the National Security Team here in an hour. Colonel?”

  “Yes, Madam President?”

  “Please prepare a briefing packet, including the telemetry from Shelter 14, flight plan and a list of assets we have in and around Iceland. Something’s up over there and I want us to get to the bottom of it, ASAP, understand?”

  “Right away, ma’am.”

  “Nate, would you put together a brief sum
mary to go along with the Colonel’s presentation, and call the director of the CIA and let him know what’s up before he gets here for the briefing.”

  “Right away,” he said, immediately getting up from the table.

  Wilcox looked at Agent Miller “Can we get the hell out of the basement, now?” Miller made a discrete call over her radio, paused, listened to the reply, then nodded as the sign above the wall screens returned to DEFCON 5. “After you, Madam President.”

  Them Changes

  America’s history on race, especially with blacks, was tumultuous from the very beginning. African slaves first arrived on the continent in the year 1619, with any dream of living like anyone else, anyone white, as elusive as ever over four hundred years later. More than anything, the discovery of the African American space colonists complicated matters of race across the country. Statistically, crimes against African Americans had been on the rise since the discovery, with the murder of unarmed black men, women and children by white police officers also increasing. This upward trend did not go unnoticed by the media, the Department of Justice, the black community, or internationally by America’s allies and enemies.

  The hypocrisy of the American Dream being attainable for anyone who works hard, plays by the rules, and believes in equality and justice for all was on display for all to see. The different experiences whites had with the police compared to nonwhites was now impossible to ignore and yet little was changing for the better.

  Jealousy and anger were the two prevalent emotions whites held toward the space colonists. Their anger was over being denied the riches they imagined the colonists enjoyed. American whites were completely unused to being denied anything they desired. Being denied antigravity technology and life extending medical science was intolerable. Wealthy whites had spent billions of dollars to maintain their health and extend their lives, who wouldn’t if the world revolved around your every desire? Now, not only was a priceless treasure being denied them, but it was being hoarded by blacks, a group of Americans treated little better than slaves for their entire existence.

  The pressure America’s wealthiest citizens were putting on the nation’s policy makers was untenable. Donations to politicians were at the heart of the pressure put on Congress, to focus policies on either duplicating the science and technologies the colonists owned, to convince the colonists to share their largess with the rest of the country, or to take their riches by force. Even though the colonists had demonstrated their superiority over the United States military, the demand was always there, implicit whether stated out loud or not. Those who paid for politicians to get elected and remain in office to do America’s oligarch’s bidding, expected a return on their investment.

  Over the past twenty-five years conservatives had voted for more money going to research than in the entire hundred years previous. Everyone wanted to live longer, and truth be told, should some research facility funded by the federal government make a breakthrough in gerontological research, the chances of everyone in America benefiting were extremely slim.

  There were practical considerations. If everyone in the U.S. suddenly lived twice as long, the consequences in food production, potable water, lodging, et cetera, would all be heavily impacted by such a new reality without a corresponding drop in birthrate. The best funded medical research projects were being conducted in secret, with no expectation that any discovery in life extending treatments would be shared with the general public.

  A decade back, when the FBI detained two members of the colony caught by the Chicago Police Department because of a traffic accident, remains of the two colonists meals, urine, and feces were secretly collected to try to discover any differences in DNA, intestinal flora or chemical profile of their urine that would yield any clues about whatever treatment they had undergone to extend their lifespan. Over eighteen billion dollars was spent by the government analyzing the food and waste with no results. There was nothing found that even hinted at the kind of treatment the authorities presumed the two had undergone.

  One of the original colonists, Patricia Cornwall, now Patricia Wright, had developed a retrovirus that rewrote the genetic code of each colonist that slowed the deterioration of the telomeres. Patricia’s research suggested that the life spans of the colonists could double or more, but only a fraction of the community were in their seventies and there was no real baseline from which to draw any real conclusions.

  Genesis constantly scoured the gerontological research for Patricia, on the lookout for anyone duplicating her line of research, or a line of work that could improve her treatment. The colony’s research scientists and engineers, on the whole, were obviously without peer.

  In the years since the colonists imposed the space embargo on Earth, the stock market, which practically crashed at the onset of the embargo, experienced anemic growth over the next decade. Over that time, 75% of the space-related technology companies had either folded or were absorbed by Global Space Technologies. Many of the big pharmacological conglomerates had fractured into several much smaller companies. Investors had lost confidence in the entire medical technology industry. GST’s pharmacological research department had been running at a loss since the collapse of the stock market. But their overall diversification enabled the multinational to better weather the financial storm.

  One of the results of the discovery of the racial makeup of the colonists was the paucity of African Americans in the country’s most sensitive positions in government and private industry. This was partly due to the suspicion that no black could truly be trusted, the other reason was punitive. America’s blacks had to be punished for the temerity for even thinking about getting above their traditional station in American society. Even the white man in the street had little good to say about blacks, the complete destruction of the notion of white exceptionalism always at the forefront of America’s conscience.

  The one place where resentment and anger was worse in the United States was in the nation’s military. In every confrontation with the colonists, the military had come in second, beginning with sending armed men to the moon to try to steal a colony spaceship over the barrel of a gun.

  Those soldiers, on what was at the time a one-way trip to the lunar surface, found nothing but an outpost that still had atmosphere, power, and water that ended up saving their lives. The outpost kept them alive for over a decade, with NASA dropping supplies to the lunar surface, supposedly until the technology was developed to bring them home. They were finally brought home by the colonists when they cleared everyone from outer space.

  In every confrontation with the colonist’s jumpers, the Air Force could neither catch them, nor shoot them down.

  To say that General Archer lacked enough respect for President Wilcox because she was a woman was an understatement. He respected the chain of command, but he had no confidence that she was competent to wield control over the nation’s military. His frustration over President Wilcox’s resistance to giving him a completely free hand in formulating policy, especially military policy, towards the colony drove his motivation. He had a lot of latitude, especially since the Department of Homeland Security was inaugurated, essentially putting more than a quarter of the country’s budget out of sight from its citizens. The military had been handed what turned out to be a blank check every year for generations, none of the branches of the military had any real clue where and how they spent their appropriations. And it should not be forgotten that President Eisenhower’s Military/Industrial Complex was just as complicit in the screwing of the American taxpayer as it had ever been.

  For General Archer to believe that he could act without any measure of accountability was just tradition. He knew that there would be few questions about his ordering an additional twenty-five of GST’s premier railguns, at least not until they were delivered, and the military began to deploy them across the country.

  GST was not going to let an opportunity to sell billions of dollars in hardware and support services p
ass, but they walked the line between commerce and questionable ethics. GST’s Ted Franks had numerous sources at all levels of the government, and it took two phone calls to find out that General Archer had no formal authorization to purchase the twenty-five model DS500 railguns. He passed the decision to play ball with the general up the chain at GST, which eventually made its way to the Board of Directors. They knew how it would look if it was discovered that the board was in cahoots with General Archer to circumnavigate the proper procurement process to supply him with the DS500s essentially under the table.

  GST’s board had no love lost for those who inhabited the colony, especially for the person or persons who made the decision to move their orbiting factory out to the L5 position in the moon’s orbit. After spending half a trillion dollars building the orbital factory, and another half trillion to build the mission probe that took an exploratory team out with nothing to show for it, did not endear the colony to the world’s largest multinational corporation.

  The colonists had forced the Jove mission probe to the Earth, landing it in a parking lot at NASA’s Houston headquarters, never to be lifted into space again. With the crash of GST’s stock, the year the embargo was imposed, and the billions of dollars spent on the probe and space station lost, GST lost over a trillion dollars just that year. Since then, GST’s stock value had taken a dive, losing half its value compared to before the embargo began. The only way the board believed it could regain the revenue lost was by acquiring the technologies. Doing so was the challenge. They tried to stack the deck with the Jove mission, secretly embedding the only person on Earth who was in a serious relationship with one of the last colonists to leave Earth. He had been left behind on Earth because he was white. But his inclusion on the Jove mission made no difference in trying to develop any kind of ongoing relationship with the colony or the woman he loved who left him behind.