"Damage reports?" Jefferson said as he scanned his own DTM inputs. The damage had been minimal exterior hull dings. They were far enough above the exploding enemy ship that the debris field was scattered, and since their relative velocity had been matched, the debris only had the velocity given to it from the explosion. The hull plating of a supercarrier could handle much worse.
"We're good, sir." EndRun consulted with his AIC and tapped at his console for moment and then added with some enthusiasm, "We're a damned sight better now that there ain't a goddamned ship beneath us blasting us with DEGs."
"Good. Air Boss, how're our pilots doing?"
"They've caught up and are now superior numbers, Captain. It's only a matter of time before they've mopped up."
"Ground Boss?"
"Same story, Captain. The Warlords suffered pretty heavy casualties, but Warboys had pushed them all the way to the southwest wall of the facility."
"Have the Angels been deployed?"
"Search and rescue are in theater, Captain. They're staging them here and to the Blair," the air boss replied.
"CO, Captain Walker is hailing us," the communications officer announced.
"Sharon? What can I do for you?"
"Well, Wally, that was going to be my question. Your ship looks like it has seen better days. What can we do to help?" Fullback asked.
"CO, we could take casualties and let them focus on the mop-up," the XO commented, rubbing at his elbow.
"Good idea, Larry. Sharon, route your SARs here. We'll be the hospital. You mop up this mess."
"Roger that, Wally."
"Once we've got this station completely under control, then we'll figure out what we need in the way of repairs. Good hunting."
"Aye, Captain." Sharon showed Wallace a white, toothy smile in the DTM videolink and then saluted the Flagship's CO.
"Air Boss, let's get those wounded in here."
Chapter 23
November 1, 2388 AD
Washington, D.C.
Sunday, 8:05 AM, Earth Eastern Standard Time
"Yes, Howard-son, but out of nearly two billion people, we only have eight senators and only twenty-two representatives. How is that fair representation, Howard-son?" Congressman Zhi muttered and shrugged his shoulders as he took his seat next to the esteemed gentlelady from Nebraska and fellow Independent Congresswoman Sharon Howard.
"Mark, Mark, that is a century's worth of water under the bridge, just like that faked-up Chinese accent of yours. And after all, your ancestors started the war, not mine. Ancient history." Sharon grinned and elbowed her colleague from the great state of Henan. "Shhh. I think it's starting."
"My accent is authentic, mind you. I trained with old movies for years to get it that way. War? Humph, it only lasted three days. Wasn't much of a war."
"Yes, but how many millions died in those three days, huh? Now shush. I want to hear this. That was then. This is now and important." Sharon leaned back in her chair and thought to her staffer a few instructions.
Johnny, translate this immediately and run it in American real time for me.
Sure thing, Congresswoman.
And as soon as it is over, I want immediate wide-sample polling data all the way out to Mars. I need to know how I should vote, after all.
Yes, ma'am.
"The chair recognizes the honorable gentlelady from the great state of Nigeria. Mrs. Amaka Chi, you have the podium." The speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America banged the gavel and sat down.
Amaka Chi was approaching eighty-nine years old and could remember before Nigeria had been joined to the United States, but the last thirty years or so of her life had led her to truly believe that the Great Capitalists could accomplish anything. In fact, in her lifetime, she had seen the eradication of famines and diseases and tribal war that had forced her beautiful homeland to be a third-world slum for ages. But that was no more. As soon as Amaka realized that the Americans would change her country and elevate its economic stature in the world, she had put down her freedom fighter's banner and rifle and picked up a copy of the Great Constitution. Her people from the state of Nigeria would long remember what she had done for them— what she would do for them. There had basically been an end to the underclass in humanity until the Martian Separatist movement. President Madira had put a big stop to it mostly, but decades later, they had resurfaced. More recently, the Separatists had caused major turmoil in the Sol System.
Amaka flipped her long, dark hair over her shoulders and leaned her long, slender, two-meter-tall ebony frame against the podium. She smiled first to the speaker and the vice president and then turned to the floor, facing both houses of the great governing body at once— along with the entire seven billion voters in the solar system.
Okoro, play me the speech in native tongue and translate on all channels in all tongues.
Yes, Your Highness.
"Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, colleagues of both great houses and from all seven hundred and thirty states and territories of our great nation, I thank you for having me speak with you tonight." Amaka smiled and nodded, then cleared her throat lightly and smiled again.
"I rise tonight to talk to you about what I think is certainly one of the gravest issues to face this nation in the twenty-three years that I have had the honor of serving in this body.
"In this great Congress, Mr. Speaker, I have taken much pride in working with members of the other parties on national security issues, and I have been one of the first and few to acknowledge that many of the struggles that we have won in this body were unfortunately against the White House. Issues that the current administration thinks will go unnoticed or that it feels unworthy of attention involving national security were brought to light by due diligence and were won only because we had the support of strong leadership on the Democratic side, the Independent side, and the Republican side as well. I give those comments today, Mr. Speaker, because I want to focus on what is happening with the debate surrounding the investigation we performed via the Tau Ceti Commission, of which I was a member, and the resultant information that has been put forward to the American people about a matter that needs to be thoroughly investigated.
"As you well know, Mr. Speaker, after the unfortunate events and breakdown of diplomacy with the Separatists at the Mars Summit and then the Martian Exodus that took place four years ago, we have been forced to maintain a tight grip on new technologies that could be used for destructive purposes. An example of this is our new quantum membrane transportation system that will allow us to transport supplies and people the vast distances between stars in mere minutes. The details of this technology have been kept out of the public information simply because we fear that if the Separatists already controlled such technology, they might use it for a preemptive strike against American targets. We saw the use of this techonology yesterday on national television for the first time by President Alexander Moore himself. Now the general public knows that this technology exists, and we also realize that the Separatists already have this technology; otherwise, they could not have teleported a battle cruiser into Earth space with the intent of crashing it into Luna City! This is just the beginning. The Separatists could have an army on our doorstep in no time, catching us off-guard and decimating our system's defenses and destroying our great way of life." Amaka pounded her fists against the podium and scanned left to right for all the news camera angles.
"Now, would the people in the Tau Ceti System make such a bold move against us on such a massive scale? I say that they would. It has been part of the Separatist culture from its inception before the Martian Desert Campaigns that all others outside their philosophy are a pestilence to their way of life. In other words, there is no room in the universe for any philosophy other than theirs. Other than the tyrant General Elle Ahmi's.
"I bring this up, Mr. Speaker, because the Tau Ceti Commission report was completed almost nine months ago by forty-three of us from both houses of Congress and
from all three parties. We took great pride in the fact that we worked in a nonpartisan manner with the sole driving philosophy of understanding the Tau Ceti problem and shoring up America's national security to prevent attacks like the one we had yesterday in Orlando, Florida, and against Luna City. If the quantum membrane transportation technology details were kept Top Secret, how, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, did a Separatist battle cruiser appear in Lunarspace with the intent to detonate dead center of the great Luna City? How did Separatists take control of the AIs of the great American monument that is Walt Disney World? We are fortunate that our great soldiers of the United States military stood in their way and stopped them. Again, how, Mr. Speaker, were the fanatic followers of the Separatist leader Elle Ahmi able to come so close to killing millions of American citizens on the Moon before our defense net even knew there was a ship coming? And how did they manage to place weapons in the hands of the crazed robots at an amusement park and likewise murder more than forty civilians in the process?
"The reason is quite simple, Mr. Speaker. Somehow, the Separatists were given the designs of the transportation technology! Mr. Speaker, I want to call attention to my colleagues here tonight and to the American people listening and watching throughout our great system to this article found in the July 1, 2385, issue of U.S. News and System Report, entitled 'Destruction from Outside the Universe,' documenting the annihilation and destruction that would be caused by a terrorist attack from M-space. In this article, Mr. Speaker, is an artist's conception and illustration of the prototype QMT-4 transportation system. Mr. Speaker, in 2385, this technology was classified and is still today. So how did the detailed design information of a Top Secret program appear in a magazine article three years ago?
"Mr. Speaker, there is only one explanation. The White House, in 2385, leaked this document to U.S. News and System Report, giving the entire populace of the solar system including the Separatist spies, through this article, access to the design of the QMT-4 transportation technology. How could the executive officer and commander in chief of our Great Republic be so carefree in protecting our security?
"But how deep does the problem go, Mr. Speaker? When this article first appeared, the Department of Defense, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Defense Appropriations Committee, and the FBI all began internal investigations as to who would have leaked this design of the QMT-4 to this particular magazine. It is only today that we reveal that the article was based on real classified technology. Mr. Speaker, on several occasions, I have been approached by members of these investigations that were told to stop the investigation because they knew where it was going to lead!
"In this hand, I hold a document that will indeed tell us where the investigation was going to lead. This is a manifest of campaign funds for the Republican National Convention for the previous two elections. On page two hundred and thirty-one of the document, we see that there is an allotment of funds that add up to be on the order of a billion dollars to the RNC from more than thirteen different suspected Separatist sympathizer organizations. At the time of the elections, this information would have been little more than information to be spun against the RNC candidate as sympathizing or having a soft spot for the Separatists. But in light of the events on Mars, the Moon, and in Orlando, I say we can no longer follow that line of reasoning.
"Mr. Speaker, I call tonight to the American people for an official authority to impeach the president of the United States of America on the grounds of treason for leaking information to the press that in turn has led to the deaths over forty American citizens and put at risk many more!"
"Hear, hear!" erupted from left side of the house. The DNC- dominated Congress all had a finger they could point and now somewhere to point it besides toward themselves. The White House was the perfect patsy, and the timing two days before the election couldn't have been better. Amaka finished her speech and stood tall and stern at the podium, looking up at the speaker for a motion and welling with pride at the response her speech was getting. Amaka had been thrilled when the DNC had approached her about making this speech. A political move of this caliber would place her in the higher echelon of the DNC and possibly catapult her career even higher.
"Harrumph!" Congresswoman Howard rose, applauding and shouting.
"Order! Order!" The Speaker of the House banged the gavel a few times. "Do I have acknowledgment for the motion on the floor? Mr. Talbot of New Zealand, you are recognized!"
"The great state of New Zealand seconds the motion to vote for impeachment proceedings, Mr. Speaker!" The Democrat politician pumped his fist in the air and then clapped his hands.
"We have a second of the motion. We will all now vote yea or nay to proceed with an impeachment process of the president of the United States." The speaker banged the gavel once again. "Open voting will be allowed for three minutes."
Alexander leaned back in his chair, letting his bathrobe hang loose a moment, and then he picked up his coffe mug. He laughed to himself at the presidential seal on the mug that matched the one on his robe. The coffee was warm and extra harsh with no sugar, and it was barely enough to snap him out of his morning haze, not to mention the hangover from the stimulants he had taken. The doctor had offered him some counteragents for the drugs, but he wanted to feel the remains of the previous day. It made him remember it more vividly, and it would stick in his mind longer, but it would also help him deal with it and put it behind him. The previous day's events had been plenty to keep him awake most of the night. He had had nightmare after nightmare that Sehera and Deanna hadn't made it out safely. His nightmares pissed him off.
After the marines had mopped up in Orlando, he had dropped to the city in his armored e-suit and surveyed the damage. The damned AI bots had caused a serious mess, and it would take billions of dollars to fix the amusement parks. Disney was already pressuring the White House to let them in to start the cleanup and repair so business could get back to usual. Every day, more than half a million people filtered through the Walt Disney World complex and the corporation was losing millions of dollars with each sunset. Moore didn't care. He wanted to make certain that something like that would never happen again, and the parks would have to stay closed until the Secret Service and the FBI had finished their investigations. Besides, he was still having trouble coping with the roller coaster of emotions from the previous day, and now the damned Dems were trying to impeach him. That was a crock of shit. What was the point of trying to impeach him just a couple days before the election? Moore was sure that the Dems had nothing on him, so the impeachment couldn't stick. It was just a piece of very nasty pastisan politics.
Abigail had warned him that there was something brewing on the Hill, but he hadn't expected this after the terrorist attacks at Orlando and Luna City. She was convinced that this was nothing more than a DNC ploy to sway the election and get Alberts back in, but labeling him as a traitor was over the top. Way over the top. He flipped the channel to ENN to see what his old buddy Gail Fehrer had to say about it.
"The Dems and the Indies are having a field day with yesterday's events, and they are claiming that security leaks from the White House were not only careless but intentional." The ENN news anchor woman turned to look into a different camera and made a sour face. "That smells of political posturing and gaming to me. Look at this footage from yesterday. This is ENN exclusive footage purchased from the Disney Corporation. It is conglomerated from several different camera angles." She nodded to roll the video.
Video from inside the Magic Kingdom began. It became quite clear that there was a group of people taking cover behind a small rock wall in a corner by an amphitheater. The video paused, and a circle was drawn around a man and then another around a woman and a child.
"This is President Moore, and this is the First Lady and their daughter, here." The circles had brighter contrast than the rest of the scene for a moment. "Now watch this," Fehrer's voice said. The circle containing the president zoomed in to see his face. It was c
lear he was cursing angrily, and then dust and debris flew up around his head, only centimeters from his face.
"That, if you've never seen it before, friends, was a hypervelocity railgun bullet vaporizing against the wall only centimeters from President Moore's head. I ask you this, do you seriously believe that Alexander Moore conspired to be fired upon? And look at this."
The video rolled again, and it was clear that Moore was cursing at his bodyguards about something until one of them handed him a pistol. Moore slid the action on the railgun and rose over the wall and started firing away.
"Now we go to Colonel Roger Sauro, U.S. Army, retired, our ENN military analyst. Colonel, you have an analysis of what happened at the park?"
The colonel started breaking down the day's events step by step with the aid of computer simulations mixed with the Disney footage. It was clear that the Moores had been caught by surprise and in the middle of the terrorist attack. They had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Then they finished up by showing the footage of President Moore in an armored e-suit holding an HVAR to the forehead of the lead AI bot and telling it to let the hostages go.
"I don't think there are more than a handful of presidents in history that have ever performed above and beyond the call of duty like this. And I can't recall a single time when a president actually took up arms and put his own life at risk, literally like this." The colonel finished his analysis and sounded thoroughly disgusted with the politicians on Capitol Hill and how they were attacking Moore after such a fine display of true heroism.
"Thanks, Colonel Sauro. We have a physicist from Princeton's Wheeler Laboratories here with us next, and we will be discussing this quantum membrane technology. Stay with us here at the only place for real news, Earth's News Network . . ."
The Tau Ceti Agenda s-2 Page 27