Critical Asset

by Ian Tonnessen

  “What do you mean?”

  “I work in the molecular dynamics lab. My team has something in there that may help us.”

  “Will!” exclaimed one of the new arrivals from the accelerator. It was Mike Trevino, shaking his head and mouthing No.

  “Mike, under the circumstances, I think we need to.”

  “I agree,” Lynch said. “We’re rather desperate here.”

  On the wall next to the group, the comms screen beeped with an incoming call. The display read Main Cafeteria – Terminal 2.

  “That’s them,” Pierce said. “Shit. If we answer it, they’ll only pressure us with threats. So we ignore it for now.”

  “Captain, please,” Groves said. “Come with me to the lab with some of your people. We might be able to turn all this around.” He cast a look at Mike Trevino, who hesitated before nodding.

  “I’ll go as well,” Lynch said. “I know what it is you’re referring to.” Lina Schaube and the six other arrivals from the accelerator traded puzzled looks with each other.

  “Fine. Cheng, you’re with me. XO, take over here for now. Let team three know we’re walking over. Keep the other teams in place, and call me if anything happens. I can run back here in a minute. And don’t answer that call,” she said, pointing to the blinking comms screen.

  The White House – National Security Advisor’s Office

  9:30 a.m. (1430Z), 24 December 2065

  Eli Drennan walked into Diandra Stone’s office and shut the door.

  “Room status?” he sighed.

  “Cleared not ten minutes ago, and no one in here since,” Stone replied, holding up her microscanner. It verified that her office was free of eavesdropping equipment down to the nanotech level. “I knew you’d be coming by.”

  The national intelligence director sat down. “Then you know what we have to talk about.”

  “No need to patronize me, Eli. We’re behind schedule.”

  “There was supposed to be a great big kaboom in space an hour ago. There’s still no kaboom.”

  “We talked earlier about my contingency plan for this. It’s time to bring the president in on the Plan.”

  Drennan scoffed and wanted to dispute the idea, but he had already gamed it out in his head. The missile attack on Dirac’s relay satellite had prompted the DA to raise its readiness level to DEFCON Three, followed by a small retaliation strike against Turkey, all as expected. But the leap to DEFCON One and full-scale war hadn’t happened yet. Dirac’s destruction should have triggered that. Now there was no choice but to shift to Plan B.

  “The president’s back in the oval, talking to Dante,” he replied, referring to Secretary of State Gonzalez. “They’re going over diplomatic options. The Turks aren’t going to respond to our hits on that cable and the launch pad. They’d have done so by now. Those weasels aren’t as hotheaded as I had hoped. Maybe we should’ve recommended strikes that produced some real casualties.”

  “No, we’d have some public backlash here. Have you seen the news? It’s hectic enough since going to DEFCON Three.”

  “Ankara doesn’t give a damn. They’re squashing this in their own media, not letting anyone cover the strikes.”

  “They’re probably too busy trying to figure out what’s happening on their own end,” Stone said. “They know they’re not trying to start a fight. But word about the raid on Dirac is bound to come out sooner or later. If Dirac is still in friendly hands they might manage to communicate through another relay site. Mars, probably. But if the raid comes off as a failure–”

  “The DA won’t make the full jump into war. At least, I wouldn’t bet on it. So… yeah. We have to expose ourselves and push her. Let’s find out if Plan B is still possible.”

  “We always knew this could happen. But it’s worth it. And you know Erik agrees. He’ll head back here from the Pentagon as soon as I signal him.”

  “You’d better do it, before peace breaks out with the HM. I’ll call upstairs and tell them we have to see her right away.”

  Dirac Station

  1510Z, 24 December 2065

  Pierce and Waters followed Groves, Trevino and Lynch into the molecular dynamics lab. They were greeted by the sight of two Lincoln crewmembers inside the access hatch, both clutching hydro-bombs and stun guns. The two waved the group through and shut the access hatch again.

  Molecular Dynamics was one of Dirac’s smaller labs, not needing large equipment like most of the others. Instead, the space was dominated by workstation desks, all surrounded by several floor-to-ceiling screens used for visualizing particles down to subatomic levels. Just below the ceiling on the lab’s front wall was a large plaque displaying a quote by Louis Pasteur: The role of the infinitely small is infinitely large.

  Pierce and Waters visited the station once before, four years earlier when they served on Theodore Roosevelt together. Like the rest of the crew, they took a tour of all the labs. This time, they knew right away that Molecular Dynamics had undergone a major alteration. Two thirds of the way down the overall length of the long lab area was an interior wall and another set of access doors. These looked different from the other sealer hatches all over the Labs, as did the walls around them. On closer look, Pierce and Waters saw a small screen embedded in the wall, a control panel for claytronic atoms, the morphable matter which made up this new partition. Behind the temporary walls was another large room.

  “Will, are you sure about this?” Trevino asked as they walked through the empty lab.

  “We either use this or we might lose it. We’re up against the ropes here,” Groves said, coming to the inner access doors. He paused and turned to Pierce and Waters. “I must ask you both for extreme discretion. What we’re working on in here is highly classified. Most of the other people in Dirac don’t even know about this project.”

  “Yes, whatever you need. If it helps us take back this station, let’s have a look.”

  For a moment Groves looked as uneasy as Trevino, but then he placed his left hand flat on a screen next to the access controls. Rows of pixelated light moved up and down on the screen, scanning his handprint while he spoke his voice authentication. “William Groves, six two five nine one. Project Njord.”

  The doors unlocked with an audible click, then slid open to reveal a small access chamber. The chamber was featureless besides an overhead light and more doors at the opposite wall. The group stepped inside, and the outer doors slid shut and automatically locked again.

  “Nye-ord?” said Waters.

  “Njord was the Norse god of prosperity,” Groves explained as he opened the next set of doors. “He was the overseer of the seas and winds, granting rich harvests to fishermen and farmers. It’s my fault. I’ve always had an interest in Viking mythology.”

  The inner room was four hundred square meters and cluttered with typical desks and workspace counters, but otherwise dominated by two large and imposing pieces of equipment. One was the size of a small bus, capsule-shaped and covered by two dozen cables which radiated from the capsule’s exterior every few meters and wrapped like rope into a single cable above the device, which plugged into the ceiling and the station’s main power supply. A large sliding hatch on the side of the device faced into the lab, which gave Pierce and Waters the correct impression that most of the interior was hollow. There were no windows anywhere on it, but two large screens were set up in front of the device. The displays were dark other than being labelled “interior cameras”.

  Another cable, this one for data rather than power, connected the capsule with the other large piece of equipment in the room: a Penning trap. It was a sphere five meters across, also connected to the station’s main power, but otherwise not coupled to anything except a single workstation outfitted with an array of display screens.

  “That’s the largest trap I’ve ever seen!” Waters said, almost with a gasp.

  “Is that a singular AI?” Pierce asked. “I know the station’s primary computer is in a trap in the Hub.”

 
; “It’s a powerful AI, but let’s not focus on that,” Groves said. “This other device is what may help us. Captain, our goal is to overpower these intruders and save the station. Tell me what you need to do this.”

  Waters walked over to the capsule device while Pierce gave Groves a quizzical look. “What I need?”

  “Yes, Captain. Tell me what you need,” Groves said. His voice had a tense pitch to it.

  Waters peered at a messy stack of papers on a desk in front of the device and saw the name of it. This time he did gasp. “It’s impossible,” he said to nobody, then turned to the group. “Captain! Come see this!”

  CHAPTER 16

  The White House – Oval Office

  10:20 a.m. (1520Z), 24 December 2065

  Eli Drennan, Diandra Stone, and Erik Stendahl entered the oval office as Secretary of State Gonzalez walked out. President Loughlin and her chief of staff, Luke Powell, looked puzzled as the trio entered the room for a meeting they had requested only minutes earlier. The full National Security Council, the fifteen-member team who had met earlier that morning, wasn’t supposed to meet again until noon.

  “Luke, I’m afraid we need to speak to the president alone for a bit. Would you mind excusing us?”

  “Eli, I’m as cleared and up-to-speed on every piece of information as the president. Do you have something new?”

  “It’s codeword-related and for the president’s ears only. I’m afraid I have to insist about this.” The chief of staff looked to the president and received a short nod, along with a still-puzzled expression. Powell walked out and closed the door.

  “So, what’s this about? Has something new come up? The Sit Room is supposed to call me directly if there’s a development.”

  “Not exactly, ma’am,” Drennan began. “We’re here because the situation we’re in is past a point of no return, and the whole world may very well come apart if we don’t move forward.”

  “Eli, what on Earth are you talking about?”

  “Are we good?” Drennan asked, looking at Stone.

  “All clear, no recording devices,” she replied. Stone’s microscanner was in the pocket of her jacket, searching the room for electronics and relaying the negative detection to the display in her contact lens.

  “Madam President, we’re here to bring you in on what’s really happening. The missile which destroyed our relay satellite with Dirac Station… this attack was orchestrated by dissidents in Turkey, not by its government. It was done as a false flag operation, so that we would, in time, respond forcibly enough to remove the regime in Ankara. A provisional government is waiting in the wings for us to do that. Similar rebels are standing by inside the United Caliphate, should our attack remove their government as well.”

  Loughlin’s face turned red before she began speaking quietly. “Eli, you will tell me exactly how you know all that.”

  “You recall that the CIA has a high-level contact in the Turkish underground? I mentioned this in a brief a few months ago.”

  “One of their generals.”

  “That contact is General Devrim Candemir, the commander of Turkey’s special forces. A few days ago his organization, which has been growing for years under their government’s nose, put a plan to bring about the Silvers’ downfall into motion. One of the keys to the plan was to modify that rocket with antimatter and use it against our satellite, knowing that its illegal power source would be blamed on Ankara and trigger a response from us.”

  “You had better start making sense. Our response has been proportional. Nobody’s been killed, Eli. How is this supposed to start a war?”

  “Because another key to their plan has not yet happened, and it was supposed to happen two hours ago,” Drennan said, suppressing a sigh. “Dirac Station itself was supposed to be destroyed by Turkish commandos, men acting on orders fabricated by Candemir. That certainly would’ve produced a more violent response from us.”

  The president’s eyes burned into Drennan’s. “Their… plan…” Loughlin didn’t notice her fists clenching. “You mean there are men attacking that station right now? And that missile’s antimatter came from us, didn’t it? From Dirac Station!”

  “Yes there are, ma’am. And yes, it did.”

  “And how long have you been working on this plan right under my nose?!”

  “This specific plan has only existed for three months, since we were able to have a sympathizer on Dirac siphon over two kilos of the material out of the station’s inventory without it being detected. But the effort to one day replace the regime in Turkey has existed for decades, ever since the onset of the second cold war.”

  “And you lunatics were willing to destroy Dirac Station to make that happen?!”

  “Turkey’s underground has been intent on starting the war soon no matter what. And we agree with them that there is no other way to remove their government. Would you rather they destroyed a city, or caused some other mass-casualty attack here on Earth that they could pin on Ankara? Or let me ask you this: would you rather wait for a war with the HM under some circumstances we couldn’t control?”

  “War with the HM is inevitable, Madam President,” Erik Stendahl added. “The second cold war will not end quietly. Almost every analysis run by our strategic experts has concluded that much. These governments will not accept collapse and reform as gently as the Soviets did.”

  “Maybe in their early years the Silvers used religious fervor as a tool to advance themselves into power,” Stone said. “But now we’re dealing with the second and third generations of those leaders. They’re ideological, and they’re committed.”

  “But by controlling the conditions of the conflict,” Stendahl continued, “we can limit the collateral damage and achieve a quick victory with minimal cost. Dirac Station and a few hundred people onboard there, plus a few thousand enemy soldiers. Nothing more. And around the world the blame will fall on the HM, or at least on Ankara.”

  “And the station was supposed to explode two hours ago? Those soldiers failed a suicide mission? How the hell did they get there in the first place?”

  “They hijacked a supply vessel. And the soldiers didn’t know they weren’t coming back. They have a scientist from Candemir’s underground with them. He’s the only one who knows that it was a suicide mission.”

  “Lunacy. This is treason, and this is lunacy…”

  “You’ve been skiing in the Rockies, ma’am,” Stone said. “But you’ve never been caught in an avalanche. And the reason you don’t need to worry is because when a ski resort sees that the snow has built up too much, they fire a cannon at the mountainside and cause a controlled avalanche. They create one on their terms when they know there won’t be unacceptable damage. They don’t watch the snow getting thicker and simply hope that the avalanche won’t ever happen. They don’t watch the weather getting worse and hope that somehow the snow will melt. We have the same problem. It involves human beings and the fates of nations and it is distasteful, but it’s just as necessary. This is statecraft. This is the strategic difficulty that you were elected to deal with.”

  “It’s the most important lesson our country took away from the second world war,” Drennan added. “An ounce of prevention. Interventionism costs far less than wishful thinking.”

  Loughlin shook her head. “This is surreal. Diandra, I’ve known you for years. I’ve never known you to be reckless. I wanted you to be my national security advisor because I thought you’d be cautious enough to stay practical about your advice.”

  “You know that I’m a realist. And this is a moment that has been in preparation for decades. I learned of it after you appointed me, and at first, my head was spinning just like I’m sure yours is right now, ma’am. But I’m convinced of the necessity of it, so please hear us out. We are the latest of a select cadre of planners that go back over thirty years. The emergence of the caliphate and the loss of Turkey as our ally were seen as foreign policy disasters, but they weren’t. The west was just playing the long game. They k
new we couldn’t attack and dismantle a sovereign new caliphate directly, but we could control the dynamic. Raise it like a pig for slaughter.”

  “The entire second cold war was allowed to begin so that one day it could be ended on our terms,” Drennan said. “We’ve never been at a military disadvantage. The theocracies in the HM will be discredited by their own people for having started the war, and in Turkey at least there are still some people able to replace them.”

  Loughlin shook her head in disbelief, but Stone knew she had to try this line of reasoning. “Think of it, Madam President. Within days if not hours, the cold war could be effectively over. The arms race, the tension, the proxy wars in Asia and Africa, the trading blocs… they’ll all fade away. And religion will lose its last grip on political power. History will remember you for all of that.”

  The president sat at her desk and put her hand up to keep the others from speaking. She did not say anything for over a minute.

  “You need my orders. That’s what you meant when you said this will all come apart if we don’t move forward, isn’t it, Eli?” she asked. Drennan nodded. “You need me to escalate this mess since you weren’t able to destroy that station and trick me into escalating anyway. Tell me, if everything in your genius conspiracy went according to plan, would you have ever told me what really happened?”

  “No, ma’am,” Drennan replied. “Of course not.”

  Loughlin sprung to her feet. “And why would the world fall apart now, if I don’t help you? Your plan will fall apart, that’s all. It already has. There isn’t going to be some popular revolt in Turkey over the missile. You needed Dirac to be destroyed, so there’s cause for war. And the HM isn’t going to respond to our strikes. We’re going to de-escalate this thing. By tomorrow, we’ll be back to DEFCON Five. Status quo ante. There will be no war, Eli. So tell me… why shouldn’t I walk right over to the press corps and tell them everything you just told me? Why shouldn’t I buzz the secret service in here and have you three arrested this minute on charges of treason?”