The curious crowd of spectators watched the slide show, anxious to witness a celestial exhibition.
“And … freeze,” Chad called to his assistants running the video equipment.
“At exactly 2:18 a.m., Pacific-Standard time, something peculiar and of high interest occurred. Two objects collided directly in the line of focus of the IRTF, and remarkably, temporarily obscured the presence of Aldebaran. Now, you might be asking yourself ‘What does the eye of Taurus have to with missing satellites?’ May ninth, at 2:18 a.m., was the moment when contact was lost with this….”
The television switched from the looped film footage to a close-up picture of an artist’s rendering of a satellite.
“The AsiaStar communication satellite. Launched from the ELA-3 in French Guyana in March of 2000, this 6,000-pound, American-owned communication satellite was constructed through a joint venture between Alcatel Space and Marconi Space, but was operated by One World Space before changes in ownership. For well over a decade, the AsiaStar provided broadband and internet support to Australia, India, and Southeast Asia for hundreds of thousands of people. It was placed in geostationary orbit, specifically at 105 degrees east. So, to make a long story short, on May ninth, a telescope in Hawaii just so happened to be aimed at the Taurus constellation, when the AsiaStar entered the telescope’s line of vision. At that very moment, an unidentified object collided with the AsiaStar, and….”
“Doctor?” a man politely interrupted. “If you have pictures of the collision, can’t you identify what it is that struck the satellite?”
“Well, yes and no. Because mostly all observatories and satellites use high-resolution and high-speed cameras and film, normally we’re able to do just that. But in this particular case, and the three others, we’ve remained unsuccessful in correctly identifying the craft….”
“Craft?!” some of the reporters repeated, raising their hands. “Craft as in alien? A spacecraft? Do you mean a flying saucer?”
“No, no, no … people, we’re not implying a flying saucer is up there attacking our satellites. We’re using the term loosely because when we watched the full video of the collision, this appeared….”
The television monitor resumed playing the images recorded by the Hawaiian observatory.
“Okay, now, look here … here … here … and, here,” Chad stated, pointing his laser at the screen as the still images scrolled by.
“It’s changing course!” the man in front of the podium hollered.
“Exactly!” Dr. Sagesur replied, smiling at the man. “Not only is it altering its path, it’s rapidly descending. Whatever this is, it was capable of positioning itself in a predetermined location, and, after surviving a direct impact, for all accounts an intentional, direct impact, it then reengaged its propulsion systems and moved to a new location.”
The throng of reporters, journalists, and tech bloggers quickly hopped to their feet, shouting their questions over one another.
“Please, please…,” Dr. Sagesur bellowed, holding his hands above his head. “I can’t answer you all at once … please, calm down and I’ll … yes, okay, you sir….”
“Don’t we have penetrating radar that can see into these crafts?” a woman inquired.
“Yes, we have the technological know-how, as do many other nations, organizations, and agencies of foreign governments. However, from what we’ve learned, these four crafts have deflecting and cloaking technologies that, so far as we know, make it impossible to track their movements and view their internal structure. In addition, our resources are being depleted most rapidly.”
“Doctor?” a man in the rear of the room shouted. “Can you tell us what kind of satellites have been destroyed?”
“Yes. Our teams identified a trend in satellite technological capabilities that are obviously the primary reason for their targeted destruction. The satellites have been grouped into five categories: first, defense support, which are those that monitor for and warn of an attack by detecting ballistic missile launches. Then nuclear explosion detection, photo surveillance, electronic reconnaissance, and lastly, radar imaging. These marauders are hunting down defense systems components. And I use the term ‘hunt’ specifically, because it can’t be interpreted in any other way. It doesn’t matter if they’re in a low Earth orbit of a couple hundred miles or a geostationary orbit of 22,000 miles. The US isn’t isolated in these attacks … the defense satellites of the world’s governments are being systematically eliminated, thereby rendering each nation helpless. These attacks are being observed by our allies as well in Canada, England, Germany, Australia, Japan, and others. Israel has lost numerous Ofeq reconnaissance and Amos telecommunication satellites. The Russians have lost nearly twenty of their Cosmos, Luch, and GLONASS satellites. In fact, to let you know of the severity of our situation, just prior to this press conference, we were notified by the deputy prime minister of Germany that they had lost contact with their SAR-Lupe 5 satellite. That makes….”
***
“Turn it off,” Cain drolly stated. “I’ve heard enough.”
Dr. White reached out for the remote control and turned off the live, televised press conference.
The two men sat quietly on the couch in Dr. Wyczthack’s private quarters, tapping on the screens of their tablet computers.
“That went well,” Dr. White mumbled. “It appears Chad’s usage of the word ‘craft’ shifted their focus. You were right.”
“Yes,” Cain robotically replied.
“Would you care for a drink?”
“Um…,” Cain began, but was too distracted to complete his answer.
Dr. White set his tablet on the couch cushion and slowly rose. He sauntered across the spacious sitting room to the handsomely ornate and well-stocked private bar.
“What’ll you have?” he called out while grabbing two glasses.
“Uh … Four Roses … neat,” Cain answered as he, too, placed his tablet on the couch.
The aged scientist approached the bar, pulled out a chair, and plopped himself down.
“Ah, that’s the stuff!” Cain commented as his partner poured a hefty amount of bourbon in a glass. “And you?”
“The Dimple,” Dr. White answered with a smile. “One doesn’t fix what’s not broke.”
After serving his own stout portion of Scotch, Dr. White set his glass on the countertop and walked around the bar to join his friend.
“What shall we drink to?”
“How about … the destiny of mankind,” Cain drably suggested, raising his glass.
“Destiny, eh?” Dr. White repeated, pulling out a bar stool. “I’ll drink to that.”
The two men nodded to each other and sipped their spirits.
“We need to talk,” Cain flatly stated, loosening his necktie.
Dr. White sat motionless and silent.
“Chloe Rover Seven and Evan Armada Nine. They vanished two weeks ago. What’s happening?”
“Well, one, we’re still investigating. I have hundreds of our staff dedicated to tracking them down. Two, something tells me they’re still on the SUBOS. They’ve either successfully located a defibrillator, or … gained access to an MRI in one of our medical services facilities to knock out their RFID chips … making it impossible to track their movements.”
Without turning away from Dr. White, Cain slowly rose his glass to his lips and took another sip of his bourbon.
“Continue.”
“I can’t explain how, but both Chloe and Armada have devised a method of avoiding retinal scanners and motion detection cameras. We have some of our best employees from the design labs working on this.”
Dr. Wyczthack stared intensely at Dr. White.
Cain swiveled away from the bar, with whiskey in hand, and ejected himself. After swaggering out into the middle of the expansive living room, he took another sip of his drink.
“I’ll not have our plans railroaded by a couple of runaways. We have too much to lose to allow them to remain free and
roaming about.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Find them!” Cain suddenly shrieked and threw the lead crystal highball glass across the room.
“Find them! Now! Kill them! Now!” he screamed, whirling around to face Dr. White. “We can’t take delivery from Oak Ridge with them walking the halls! We can’t proceed as planned with those two roaming from place to place, sticking their noses where they don’t belong. The last thing we need is to have two computer-literate supergeniuses who can’t be tracked delaying our plans!”
“No, sir.”
“We can’t control the world … if we can’t control Chloe and Armada!”
CHAPTER 31
RECESS
“Oh, you are so utterly and thoroughly doomed!” Armada declared as he prepared to serve, crouching slightly.
“Oooh!” Chloe taunted, wiggling her fingers. “I’m absolutely petrified! I don’t know if I can handle the mental torture. Please … stop … it … I’m … gonna … start … crying … if….”
Before she could finish her sarcastic rebuttal, Armada released the new, white ping-pong ball from his left hand and gave it a mighty whack. The ball zipped across the net to the farthest corner of the table. Chloe’s reaction was swift, almost effortless: she backhanded the ball to the outermost edge, just behind the net, landing it perfectly inbounds before lightly bouncing off the table.
“Augh!” Armada loudly growled, flopping himself face down. “I don’t believe it! Five games? You’ve never played ping-pong and yet you smoke me five games in a row?”
“Beginner’s luck,” she jokingly commented.
“Ugh!” he grumbled, rising off the table. “I’m not gonna go through this every day. We gotta find something else to play.”
“Well, let’s see what all they’ve got buried in there,” she suggested as she wrapped her arms around Armada’s waist.
The happy couple pecked their lips together and briefly hugged.
Armada took his wife by the hand and led her to a gargantuan stack of cardboard boxes and crates located at the furthest end of an open area they dubbed ‘the playground.’ Even though the collection of boxes appeared to have been sorted out with regards to content, with so many of the labels printed in foreign languages it was difficult to ascertain what they were looking at.
“Okay, what about these?” Armada asked, placing his hand on the end of a long, wide box lying on its side.
“Sure.”
Armada began pulling on the end flap while Chloe used the small pry bar from the liquor warehouse to remove the heavy-duty staples.
“Man! They don’t want anyone get’n into this, do they?” he grunted, struggling to tear away the cardboard. “Way too much glue!”
“Aw, it’s not too bad, Princess.”
“I’ll make you think Princess!” he quipped and gave the box flap one final tug.
After having removed several staples, the cardboard finally yielded to Armada and sent him rolling backwards. Chloe couldn’t suppress her laughter and failed miserably in trying to hide it.
“So, you think that’s funny?” he gruffly asked.
“Oh, yeah!”
Armada chuckled to himself and crawled to the partially opened box.
“Pry the rest of these on the bottom,” he requested, pointing at the staples near the corner.
Chloe leaned over and attempted to insert the tip of the pry bar under a staple, but Armada began gently poking her in her ribs, just below her armpit.
“C’mon! C’mon!” he playfully taunted. “Hurry up.”
“Stop it! You know I’m ticklish!” she laughingly demanded. “I have a weapon!”
Chloe’s veiled threat failed to discourage her husband from antagonizing her all the more.
“C’mon, do your job. Whatsamatter with you? You’re jumpy all of a sudden.”
While trying to stave off the tickle assault, Chloe managed to pry loose four more staples.
“Augh!” she growled, tossing the bar to her side. “You just don’t know when to quit, do you?”
Chloe dove on top of Armada with her fingers outstretched like talons. She dug into his abdomen and love handles while simultaneously gnawing at his neck.
“Get it off me! Get it off me!” he squealed, pushing her away.
The more Armada squirmed and fought, the more Chloe ratcheted up her attack. The couple rolled over each other as they wrestled, goosed, pinched, and laughed.
“All right, all right!” she shouted, clutching her arms tightly against her sides.
Armada sat on his wife’s rump, relentlessly poking her in her ribs.
“You win! You win! Knock it off!”
He stopped his assault, leaned down, and tenderly kissed his wife’s neck.
“Showed you, didn’t I?” he whispered.
“Oh, yeah. You sure showed me.”
Armada rolled off his wife and lay beside her, then started running his hand through her hair. Chloe turned to face her husband and scooted closer, took his free hand, and clutched it tightly against her chest.
“How are you feeling?”
“I feel fine,” she softly answered, kissing the end of his nose.
“Any more fevers? Are you still getting sick?”
“No, no more fevers, and I haven’t been sick.”
“Have you been experiencing any….”
“I’m fine,” she reassured her overprotective beaux. “Don’t worry so much. I’ll be okay, Doctor Armada.”
The father-to-be looked down, placed his palm against Chloe’s belly, and proudly stated, “We love you, Abdiel.”
Without saying a word, Armada crawled to his feet, extended a hand, and pulled Chloe to her feet.
“Now, let’s find out what’s in the box and, after that … we’ll round us up something to eat.”
Armada spun around and proceeded to tear away the remaining cardboard from the massive container.
“Do me a favor, please,” he grunted. “Count out how many boxes there are.”
Chloe stepped to his side and started calculating the quantity of crates and number of individual boxes in each.
“And, we’re done,” he declared as he threw a piece of corrugate on the floor.
“Twenty-five crates of four,” she said.
Armada forced his hand through an outer layer of shrink wrap and an interior layer of bubble wrap. With his arm outstretched shoulder-deep into the long box, he blindly explored its contents, trying to discern what his fingers were touching.
“Well, whatever this is, it’s flat and smooth, but feels kinda fuzzy. Wait a minute … I think I got something.”
“What is it?” Chloe curiously inquired.
“Uh … it definitely feels like a possum carcass.”
“Shut up!” she said with a light slap to his shoulder. “I’m serious.”
“You shut up!” Armada demanded and lashed out at his wife’s leg.
Finally, he withdrew his arm and pinched between his fingers was a clear, ziplock-style plastic bag.
“Warranty,” he stated, reading aloud the printed wording on the outside of the bag.
After handing it to Chloe, she quickly separated the two flaps and extracted the paperwork.
“Here,” she said, handing him an instruction manual as she examined a packing slip.
“What’s Olhausen?” she asked. “It says here, contents, one, Americana series Excalibur, Mahogany, eight-foot, cherry finish, red felt….”
“No way!” Armada joyously exclaimed, flipping the pages. “It’s a pool table! Sweet!”
“The packing slip says this thing cost forty-five hundred dollars.”
“Wow!”
“Wyczthack and White forked out half a million bucks … for pool tables?”
“Well?” Armada shrugged as he reviewed the assembly instructions. “I imagine they’re concerned with how to keep thirty thousand people entertained and preoccupied.”
“And just what do you know about playing pool?” s
he playfully asked, yanking the booklet out of his hands.
“I know nothing about pool, but have heard Garret mention on more than one occasion that he plays on some kind of team on the SUBOS. He told Euclid and me that he’s quite a … a, uh … shark. He says he’s a pool shark.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I don’t know … maybe you should ask him.”
“Can we eat now? I’m starving!”
“Tell you what … I’ll run to the kitchen and scrounge around for something to eat while you, Mrs. Armada, count out everything. Okay?”
“I’m okay with that as long as you bring me back some chocolate.”
“You know, you’re gonna deplete our supply before everyone even gets here.”
“Ha!” she mocked him and spun him around.
“Now … go … your child and I are famished!”
Chloe teasingly pushed him and gave his rear a gentle kick.
“Yes, thank you, Armada,” he sarcastically stated as he shuffled away. “I love you, Armada. You’re a good man, Armada. Thank you for providing for me, Armada. You’re the best husband a woman could ever….”
“I’m not listening to you!” Chloe shouted and turned away.
***
“Okay, we know there’s a hundred pool tables and two hundred ping-pong tables,” she said before tossing a handful of cashews into her mouth.
“Add to that two hundred sets of paddle ball, five hundred dart boards, and one hundred sets of bocce ball.”
“Right,” she stated after guzzling half a bottle of water and hopped off the ping-pong table, pointing, “Those weigh a ton … we’ve got two hundred fifty. We’ll need to bust one open.”
Chloe stepped to the section of boxes she was referring to and tapped on the top of one.
“Two hundred fifty of these. And … over there … in the corner … there’s another hundred boxes that are similar in shape to the pool tables but are longer and wider. Those weigh a ton as well.”
Chloe had started walking back when Armada hollered out, “So, three different size boxes that we don’t know what’s in ‘em? Is that right?”
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