The Rise of the Speaker

by Pete Driscoll

  “Yes, a number of armoured vehicles - including a detachment of M1A2 Abrams tanks – were deployed into the battle to support our infantry. However, the enemy had mined the only road with ordinance powerful enough to disable lead and rear tanks in the column, these tanks are recoverable and the crews all escaped unharmed, the tanks that were not disabled are undamaged but cannot pass the obstacles due to the nature of the terrain. With the area now being sealed as an active crime scene by federal authorities, we will be unable to repair and recover these vehicles for quite some time.” He gestured to one last reporter.

  “Colonel. There are reports of cobra gunships and A-10 warthogs also being used against the compound, including pictures that verify the authenticity of those reports. Would you like to comment on the fact that neither of these aircraft are currently utilised by any American National Guard units. Nor, for that matter, are the Abrams tanks or Bradley fighting vehicles - that you have already confirmed were deployed - allocated to any of the Kentucky Militia detachments. Can you comment on the involvement of regular military units on US soil, colonel? or would you prefer to keep spinning this fiction?”

  “I don’t know where you are getting these details from,” The colonel flustered as the reported started shouting out his sources. “but all National Guard deployments are conducted in strict accordance with the law. Thank you, I have nothing further to add.” With that, the red-faced colonel walked away from the podium amid a ferocious uproar from the reporters clambering for clarification. The screen flashed back to the brown hair journalist.

  “As you can see, there are still many unanswered questions in respects to the military’s involvement in the battle that was fought on domestic soil over the past two days. Some sources are also quick to point out the coincidence of an air force training accident - which resulted in the loss of 3 state-of-the-art F-22 Raptors and their pilots - less than 50 miles away. In any case, the tragic deaths of 87 National Guard soldiers is the highest loss of American military personal in a single day since the Vietnam war.

  The White House has yet to release a statement regarding the events here in Harlan, they did however issue a message of sympathy and support for the families of the lost soldiers. The White House press secretary has told reporters that the incident is currently being investigated by federal authorities and the President will make a statement when he has been briefed on their findings.

  The identities of the terrorists, how many there were and how many of those were captured or killed is still unknown but – judging by the charred and cratered landscape that is easily visible, even from here – the investigation that will answer those questions will a very long and very difficult endeavour. We at CNN will keep you up to date as new information becomes available. Back to you Diane”

  “there’s still one thing that I’m puzzled about.” Jonathan said slowly, the thirty-year-old news report fading to black. “All the people you spoke to – all of them representatives of the government in one way or another – each of them betrayed the US by cooperating with you. Yet none of them seemed to take much convincing.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” Penny answered. “Morgan Blake took a lot of convincing to believe that the government were being duplicitous and even more convincing to believe his friend was involved. Even then, he expected the government to intervene and stop it, he was distraught when they didn’t. He had faith in the government right until they refused to act”

  “Reaves still believed whole heartedly in the military until the day he died,” I continued, “even after he found out he had been framed by the country he had defended. He resigned because he was an honourable man and the government had involved him in some very dishonourable activities.”

  “Benson, McCleary and the other conspirators into Maria’s death were either terrified or were… err… ‘coerced’ into giving information” Penny added.

  “And the federal agents – Kincaid, Burrows and Strider – all had misgivings about the op against the safe house long before they spoke to me, I just filled in some missing information for them and the pieces just fell into place.” I finished. “Even then, you have to understand that the public’s confidence in the government had been shattered by David Turnbull snr and never really recovered, the FBI especially had been heavily criticised for not intervening the illegal actions of that President, so even the slightest hint of malpractice or bad intel made them take notice. The administration had given the authorities plenty of reasons to doubt them, my information just ‘nudged’ them over the line.”

  “I suppose the lack of confidence is easy to understand when you see blatant propaganda like that.” Jonathan finally said, nodding towards the now empty screen. “It’s still hard to understand how a government can lie to their people like that. I know it happens, my parents were American – from Chicago – and even now they talk about the differences between the US government and the Atlantian leadership. They told me once that it was a matter of trust in your country’s leadership… they didn’t have it there, here they do. I never really understood, until now.”

  “I find it fascinating!” Penny announced after a reflective pause. I don’t know why, but I felt an immense swell of pride at the opinions of my aide’s parents. “I have lived here for as long as I can remember and like most people, I have a basic understanding of how Atlantia came into existence but hearing about all the intricacies and complexities from a first-hand account is… well… it’s fascinating.”

  Jonathan was grinning at his girlfriend, as impressed by her enthusiasm as I was. But once again, the sun had set over the city and the hour had grown late. “Perhaps it is time to call it a night,” I finally said, “and pick this up again in a few days.”

  “I just have one more question, before we go.” Penny asked as they both rose to their feet. “What happened to Douglas Reaves? You just said he believed in the military until the day he died… did they…”

  “No,” I answered, “General Reaves realised the danger he was in after the battle at the cabin and backed down. He still had a part to play in Atlantia’s history but not for a while yet. Douglas Reaves died peacefully in his home in South Dakota about 10 years ago, Morgan Blake is still alive but followed through on his resignation. Last I heard, he was living with his wife in Arkansas. I would appreciate it, though, if their current whereabouts are kept out of your article; there are still people out there that would do them harm for their involvement in Atlantia’s history.”

  “Of course, mister… Marcus.” Penny said before checking her watch. “It will take me a couple of days to get this all sorted out and typed up. I have more than enough for the next section of my work.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Mr Speaker.” Jonathan bowed eliciting a quiet chuckle from Penny and a frown from me. “Goodnight, sir.”

  Chapter 23

  The morning that follows the night

  “Alright… take me through it… one more time” I said slowly as I looked along the pristine golden sandy beach that stretched out in either discretion from where I was stood, a warm breeze kissed my neck as pleasantly cool water lapped against the tideline a few feet in front of me.

  I had been exhausted after the battle and had fallen asleep almost as soon as our aircraft had crossed into international waters, it had taken another 3 hours of hypersonic flight while I slept before we reached our final destination. I had woken – to my surprise – in a comfortable and curtained double bed inside a small brick house on the shores of a tropical – and apparently deserted – island. Alice had been waiting for me as I stepped through the door and onto a small deck bathed in the mid-afternoon sun. I had absolutely no idea how long I been asleep, nor did I have the faintest clue as to where we were.

  Months ago – even before the attack on the Montana safe house – Alice had sent out teams of Artisans to scout potential sites for our new home. She had given me a few updates on their progress, but the subject had been lost in the confusion of su
bsequent events and I had never really followed up, events had overtaken me but more than that, I had been afraid of the answer. This new haven would have been our only destination of escape, if the mission to scout and build a new home had not been successful, we would have been escaping the cabin with nowhere to go. As the cabin battle approached, I had become more concerned with the act of escaping than I had been with where we were escaping to. Clearly – judging by my surroundings – there had been little cause for concern.

  I was – as Alice explained – on an Island, at almost the exact mid-point between Florida and the Canary Islands off the North-western coast Africa, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 2500 miles from the nearest major landmass. The island was roughly circular shaped with my new home situated on the southern beach of the island and a large aircraft landing pad on the North. Palm trees and other forms of vegetation were dotted around the empty space giving the Island a tropical and almost Caribbean feel. Otherwise, the island was deserted.

  More impressive – and the detail I was struggling with most – was the fact that this island had been ‘built’ entirely out of massive quantities of carbonite.

  Taking into account oceanic currents and international shipping and aviation lanes, the Artisans had located an area of ‘dead’ space in the vast Atlantic and had started building a massive honeycomb-like structure reaching from the ocean floor to the surface. The structure itself consisted of cavernous empty ‘rooms’ – each over 30ft high and 150ft long – dissected and separated by 3ft thick walls of carbonite, each level’s rooms partially overlapping the level below in the shape of an ever-narrowing pyramid until the roof of the uppermost level breached the ocean surface.

  I suppose the word ‘island’ wasn’t a particularly accurate one, technically I was standing on a colossal and permanent deep-sea platform. The genius of the design was that each of the sub-surface rooms – or ‘catacombs’, as Alice called them - was accessible from the surface and could be used for any function imaginable. Two of the four rooms directly below my feet, for example, had already been utilized; one room housed the new collection of forges; I hadn’t seen them yet but Alice told me that each one was more than triple the size of the forges we had built in the cabin. Alice’s memory core was also housed in this massive underground vault.

  The second room was below the landing pad, an elaborate elevator allowed the platform to be lowered into the island interior where the aircraft would be stored in this massive hanger. This was where our escape aircraft had landed and were now situated. This room also housed all the Spartan soldiers and the Artisans when they weren’t working. We had brought 50 Spartans and 90 Artisans with us, a further 20 Artisans had already been here, constructing the island. The other 80 Artisans – the ones who had been sent to scout other locations before this one was chosen – were still making their way here, even still – the room was nowhere near full capacity and there were still another 10 levels below that one, each with more rooms than the level above. In total, there were over 200 individual rooms between my feet and the ocean floor

  Alice’s connection to the outside world had been achieved by laying a massive undersea cable from the bottommost level of the catacombs – the one directly on top of the seabed – to the Florida coast, intersecting the trunk cables that connected the Florida Keys to the US mainland. Another was in the process of being laid between our island and the island of Madeira – almost 1800 miles away - and their connection to the Portuguese mainland.

  “Just how much carbonite are we producing?” I asked, still confused about the details, “I thought we were running at almost full capacity in the cabin just to build the hanger, the aircraft and the Spartans before we were attacked. I cannot even begin to calculate how much carbonite would be needed to build this place.” I gestured to the Island around me.

  “No, not even close.” Alice answered plainly. “We were running at almost full capacity after I had taken into account the materials needed to build the island. 92% of capacity was being used by this project, 7% was being used at the cabin.”

  Alice continued as the look of utter astonishment failed to leave my face. “We have capped enough of the US to gather enough carbon to produce about 80,000 tonnes of carbonite every month, now that the 7% capacity from the cabin is available again – and the island being almost finished – I estimate that the rest of the North American continent, including vehicles, should be capped within the next six to 8 weeks, at which point, we will be able to produce almost 250,000 tonnes of carbonite per month.

  “Jesus… that is a lot of carbonite.” I muttered without having any real reference point for how much carbonite that actually was; I mean, how much did a Spartan weigh? How much carbonite was in one of those aircraft? How much was in this Island, for that matter? “What about other materials?” I asked after trying to bend my brain around those numbers, “surely we need more than just carbonite?”

  “I had foreseen that when I settled on building this Island,” Alice answered with a prideful smile, “I had developed a whole system for acquiring the other materials we would need, but it turns out that we didn’t need it.”

  “You’re going to have to elaborate…”

  “well, Billions of years ago, all of earths landmasses were contained on a single super-continent…”

  “Pangea,” I interrupted, a half remembered high school science lesson flashing though my mind.

  “exactly. Now, when that continent started to drift apart, the oceans that we now recognise were created, some parts were simply submerged areas of that old continent, but others were created by volcanic activity.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “the seabed in this part of the Atlantic was created almost entirely by volcanic eruption and volcanic activity is the main source of the worlds mineral supply, so there are hundreds of mineral deposits and different types of soil on the ocean floor if you can get to them. Iron, Lithium, Potassium, Aluminium, copper, Magnesium, Titanium, Zinc, Gold, Platinum” she started counting fingers as the list continued, “dozens of types of rock, clay pits for making bricks, marble, granite, even Uranium! All these deposits can be found beneath the ocean floor within 500 miles of where we are standing and all of them can be mined by the Artisans. In fact, the only really useful material we haven’t found is oil.

  “Your house,” she went on, “is made entirely out of materials mined from beneath the sea; the bricks, the mortar, the slate roof, even the wooden furniture is made out of collected driftwood – although we will need to find a more reliable source for that if we need more. The tides washed up all of the sand on the Island and the Spartans gathered fertile soil from the seabed for the rest of the Island, the grass started to grow on its own. The palm trees were… borrowed… from the Florida coast after the Artisans had laid the first undersea cable.”

  “And I’m guessing these minerals are processed in…”

  “The forges, yes. Maybe at not quite the same temperatures as carbonite, but we have a full manufacturing plant that can make everything we need for the foreseeable future.”

  “What about food?”

  “I am still working on food. A farm is being developed around the landing pad but will take a while for the crops to grow. In the meantime, how do you feel about fish?”

  Months passed. The farm had started to produce crops, the seeds from which were re-sown in a massive underground hydroponics lab with full irrigation, the ultra-fertile undersea soil and 24hour artificial sunlight produced by the artificial suns of the forges. Within another few months a steady stream of produce was being grown – more than enough to satisfy the hunger of the island’s single resident. I cannot begin to tell you my joy at eating my first slice of bread in months.

  The Artisans had also been busy mining all manner of materials from the ocean floor. The manufacturing plant in the catacombs creating a plethora of everyday items; everything from eating utensils and clothes to lightbulbs and irrigation pipes, there weren’t ma
ny things that you could buy from Walmart that couldn’t be produced in the plant, almost every imaginable home comfort was available to me, it was a true marvel of engineering.

  I had been most impressed with the aircraft that Alice had designed and used for our escape. There were two different types; the smaller class, which we had called the Pelican, and a larger model – the Condor. Both had been roughly based on the US air force CV-22 Osprey, with a significantly larger airframe – even on the Pelican – and the same triple plate and tube armour system as the Spartans with the additional magnetic shielding emitters housed in the frame. They had withstood a withering attack during our escape without so much as a scratch.

  The pelican was about the same size as a learjet - with a squarer, more angular shape. The sides of the hull were almost flat with a single door on each side, the rear of the plane sloped up to the two stabilising fins and could be lowered into an access ramp and the cockpit sat above the nose which slimmed to an aerodynamic point. The wings on the pelican – halfway along the fuselage – ended in the bulbous, square engines which could be aimed at the ground – for vertical take-off and landing, or even hovering – or aimed backwards to provide eye-watering amounts of thrust. The Condor was slightly different; significantly larger than the Pelican – a little smaller that a C-130 Hercules – it had four wings, with an engine on the end of each, the foremost wings were about a third of the way down the fuselage and the rear wings at the very back of the aircraft. The entire sides of the hull could be folded up like huge garage doors allowing almost instant boarding or alighting of the Aircraft.

  As I had asked, both classes of aircraft were armed. Two small domes on the roof of the Pelican, and four on the condor – one on the upper side of each wing – each housed duel variants of the X1 rifle; considerable larger than the type carried by the Spartans, they were designed for rapid fire and huge ammunition reserves rather than for additional power. The turrets were remotely operated from inside, either by the Spartans or the Artisans, and had shot down three of the four attacking fighters over the Appalachian Mountains with ease.