by Bob Blanton
“You are an ass,” one of the girls said. “He lost a leg, and you’re thinking about food.”
“Hey, free pizza,” the guy said.
“You can have your free pizza whenever you guys feel up to it,” Natalia said. “It's registered on your comms. Now, go to the hospital.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Back at the protest, Kal signaled everyone that the situation was under control. One of the constables waved to Gabriel that he should finish up.
“And that is why we came to this beautiful city,” Gabriel announced. “Here, they have laws and a constitution that protect people. They have a wonderful king who treats all the people like they are his children. Not like in Russia where the government is so busy helping its friends steal from the people.”
Leslie Walters captured the last of the speech then ran over to the constable. “What were those two explosions that we heard?” she demanded.
“You’ll need to talk to the public relations office about it,” the constable said.
“I was told I would have complete access,” Leslie argued.
“And you do. You have complete access to the public relations office where they’ll tell you what happened. I don’t know, so I can’t tell you.”
Leslie and her camerawoman started to go down toward the corner where the explosions had occurred.
“I’m sorry, but that street has been sealed off,” the constable said.
Leslie signaled for her camerawoman to try to get a picture of what was going on down the street from behind the barricade, but all they could see was the ambulance helicopter.
“What’s the ambulance for?” Leslie asked.
“Some people have been injured,” the constable answered. “You’ll be able to get more information from the public relations office.”
The ambulance took off, exposing a second ambulance farther along the street.
“It must be serious if you’re using helicopters,” Leslie said.
“All our fast-response vehicles are helicopters,” the constable said. “We don’t allow high-speed vehicles on our streets.”
A third helicopter landed beyond the second ambulance. “What is that helicopter for?” Leslie asked.
“I don’t know,” the constable answered, “you’ll . . .”
“Need to talk to the public relations office,” Leslie finished for her.
◆ ◆ ◆
“How is Takurō doing?” Marc asked Liz as she came into the boardroom for the debrief the next day.
“Dr. Sharmila says he’s going to be fine,” Liz said. “She’s attaching his new leg now, and will be holding him in a coma for a week while it integrates and his other injuries heal.”
“What about the Russians?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Only two survived,” Kal replied. “Mariana shot two of them, and the grenade killed two. The two survivors will be in intensive care for a few days. They ate a lot of shrapnel.”
“So how did they manage to bring the weapons in?” Marc asked.
“As you saw on the video, they were bringing up yellowfin tuna. I assume the Russians on the fishing boat out there caught them a few days ago. They gutted them and then inserted the weapons and grenades. Then they had a diver swim the twelve miles to the city, pulling the fish behind him. He was attaching them to the hooks and letting the Russians here on the city pull them in,” Kal said.
“Have we picked the diver up yet?” Marc asked.
“They just pulled him in,” Kal said. “Apparently he was running low on air, and when the fishing boat wasn’t where it was supposed to be, he didn’t have much choice.”
“Is he talking?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Not yet,” Kal said.
“What about our friends on the fishing boat?” Marc asked.
“They’re still holding out,” Kal said. “We pushed the boat back into our territorial waters. We did a few surgical strikes to take out their engines and backup generator, so I think a day or two like that, and they’ll be ready to surrender. I’m having a Fox buzz them every thirty minutes just to remind them we’re still waiting.”
“What are we going to do with them?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Since Leslie Walters’ report revealed that the protests were being orchestrated by the Russians, they’re claiming it was an unauthorized mission by zealous patriots,” Samantha said. “By the way, she’s really pushing hard to do a full report on the space station.”
“We did promise her something special if she reported on the protest,” Marc said. “But right now, we need to figure out what they’ve learned about our defenses and how to counter their methods.”
“We’re working on it,” Kal said. “We’re all very embarrassed; we should have our recommendations ready next week.”
“At least we survived this attempt,” Blake said. “Hopefully we get a few months to prepare and recover before something else happens.”
“You didn’t just say that,” Samantha groaned.
“What?” Blake asked.
“Tempting the gods!” Samantha said. “Every time one of you says all is well, we have another disaster on our hands.”
“Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous,” Blake said. “ADI, is there anything happening that should concern us?”
“Cer Blake, there are no immediate threats that I can detect,” ADI said. “However, NASA has recently detected a large asteroid that is heading toward the solar system.”
“See!” Samantha hissed.
“It’s just an asteroid,” Blake said. “How big is it?”
“It is eight hundred kilometers in diameter,” ADI said.
“That’s huge; it’s almost as big as Ceres,” Catie gasped.
“How long before it gets here?” Marc asked.
“It will take it seven months to enter the solar system and 3.5 years before it crosses Earth’s orbit,” ADI replied.
“See, we’ve got plenty of time to deal with it, that is, if we even need to do anything,” Blake said.
“I’ll remind you of that,” Samantha said, “because I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Okay, Blake, Admiral, and Kal, we’ll meet on Monday to review the situation. I’d like to know how we’re going to beef up our defenses,” Marc said. “Let’s all get some rest.”
Afterword
Thanks for reading Delphi Nation!
I hope you’ve enjoyed the fourth book in the Delphi in Space series. If you would like to join my newsletter group, click here, Delphi in Space News. The newsletter provides interesting science facts for SciFi fans, book recommendations based on books I truly loved reading, and notification of when the next book in my series is available.
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The story continues in Delphi Alliance. The McCormacks have their floating city growing in the South Pacific, and their space station well underway. As they continue their quest to unite Earth and bring her into the modern age of space travel and repair her environment before it’s too late, they have to fight with the major powers that aren’t too sure they want to change the status quo.
Now they have discovered an incoming asteroid the size of Ceres. What will it take to unite Earth to deal with this threat to its very existence? And what other threats may be lurking there? Now it’s time to step up, for Delphi and all the nations of Earth.
Acknowledgments
It is impossible to say how much I am indebted to my beta readers and copy editors. Without them, you would not be able to read my books due to all the grammar and spelling errors. I have always subscribed to Andrew Jackson’s opinion that “It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
So special thanks to:
My co
py editor Ann Clark, who also happens to be my wife.
My beta reader and editor, Theresa Holmes.
My beta reader and cheerleader, Roger Blanton, who happens to be my brother.