The Manhattan Incident

by Raymond Poincelot

  “Here’s our deal. We will go easy on you, if you cooperate. You will admit to the twice attempted murder of Dr. Cabrot aka Dr. Laurent. That way you avoid a long, drawn out trial. Of course, the admission will be made public and you will resign from your Church and have no contact with your church while in prison. If you do, something will happen to you that won’t be pleasant. In exchange, we will put you into a high comfort prison with CEOs and other big shots that run afoul of the law. You will have limited access to your wealth while in prison to buy whatever comforts you need. You will get excellent health care, but you will never leave prison until you die. Do we have a deal?” “I’ll give it some thought.” In his mind Cooper was preoccupied, wondering that since he hadn’t succeeded in killing Laurent, God might not place him at his left hand. Still the effort might get him a position at his feet or somewhere else in the heavenly kingdom. God might go easy on him because of his loyal service as God’s implement. Cooper’s reverie was harshly interrupted. “Reverend, if you go to trial, I guarantee you that you will be found guilty and go to the harshest prison we can find. You will have no money, as the Government will seize it all. In prison you will find a large crowd of big men who will want you as their sex toy. Do you get the picture?”

  Cooper shuddered as he said, “Yes, I do. Still I want to talk with my lawyers before I decide. They need to see and judge the evidence that you have on me.” Dubrov smiled. “That will be no problem. We are happy to share. Don’t drag the process out. Here’s a phone. Call your lawyers and get their collective asses in court so that we can go through the formal arrest on attempted murder charges in front of a judge and you post bail. I’ll come back when you have finished making the arrangements. I’ll send a med tech in to remove the IV. However, you’ll have to remain in restraints here until the court date.” Cooper wasted no time making his phone calls.

  The next day Judge Emanuel Akoyo looked sternly at Cooper and his lawyers. “You have been arrested and charged with the attempted murders of Dr. Cabrot and Dr. Laurent. Given the serious nature of these charges, bond will be posted at ten million dollars. Upon your release from lockup, you will be fitted with a monitoring device and confined to house and office arrest. Any violation of this court directive will have you thrown into jail until your trial. Are you able to post bond?” The head lawyer, Attorney Abraham Goldblat, retorted. “Yes, of course. We will make arrangements as soon as we are done here. We look forward to proving these allegations against this respected man of God to be false and maliciously contrived.” “Good. Take the Reverend back to his holding cell, Bailiff. Upon posting of bond and fitting of the electronic surveillance device, you will be released. As for you, Agent Dubrov, these charges are very serious, indeed. I hope they hold up to the scrutiny of the legal system.” Dubrov smiled broadly. “They do, your honor, and the government stands ready to share all our findings with the Reverend’s lawyers.” At that Attorney Goldblat looked worried. The overt offer of cooperation did not bode well for Reverend Cooper. The Bailiff shuffled Cooper out of the courtroom with his leg irons making a clanking noise on the polished wood floor. The lone courtroom reporter finished recording the session and ran out with his scoop for the New York Times. Dubrov smiled again. The reporter had been anonymously tipped off to something big. Now who could have done that?

  A few weeks later, Attorney Goldblat, sat in his posh Fifth Avenue office. Cooper sat in front of his desk in a nice chair set slightly lower so that he had to look up a bit at Goldblat. Goldblat put his fingers in a steeple position for a few seconds, and then stared intently at Cooper. “I’m going to be straight with you. The government’s case for attempted murder of Dr. Laurent is foolproof. Less so for Cabrot, but one conviction is good enough to convince the jury you are guilty. There is a reasonable chance we could get you off on the basis of insanity. It shouldn’t be too difficult for a psychiatrist to convince the jury that you are insane, given your visions from God and your belief God actually talked you into killing the Antichrist. Of course, that conviction would likely result in you spending the rest of your life in a psychiatric facility.”

  Cooper frowned. “If guilty without the insanity plea, can you get me into a good prison?” “No, the government will send you to wherever they want. The same goes for the psychiatric facility” “What do you think of the deal they offered me?” “It’s a good deal. Of course, we would want it all in writing, nice and legally enforceable, and have it monitored to make sure they keep their word.” Cooper blurted out “What do you recommend.” Goldblat thought to himself. His reputation had been built on winning every case to date. This one was sure to have an unfavorable outcome for his client, even using the insanity route. Sending a client to prison or the insane asylum would not be viewed as favorable by future clients. It could damage his reputation and hurt his future earning potential. It certainly would be messy. Still, his fees would be high. On the other hand, he could inflate the billing hours for the agreement and maintain his reputation and make almost as much money. With that in mind, he said “I would take the deal. It is surprisingly generous.” Cooper sagged. “OK, set it up legally.”

  Over the next couple of months, the press had a field day vilifying Cooper. The Church of the Rapture governing board met and fired Reverend Cooper. In order to distance themselves even further from the damaging revelations, they renamed the church. It was no longer the Church of the Rapture, but was now known as the Church of the Universal Peace. They claimed that their tenet of the aliens bringing about the Rapture was clearly a vision foisted on their Church by a deranged leader and did not reflect their real mission. Their real spiritual mission, ignored by Reverend Cooper, was to find peace with the aliens. Their membership soon dropped rapidly, causing the Board to panic about funding. A huge legal fight broke out about the Church’s finances, with Reverend Cooper claiming much of it, while the Board disagreed. A settlement was reached, leaving Cooper much poorer, but with sufficient funds to be comfortable in prison. Eventually, Cooper entered prison and the membership started to rise again. Evidently, some people felt comfortable with the idea of making peace with the aliens.

  General Straub sat in his office after all of these events came to pass. It turned out to be a good year. The threat from the Church of the Rapture and its depraved Reverend no longer troubled the General. He could live with those members wanting to find peace with the aliens rather than taking sides with them to achieve the Rapture. Besides the peace view was in the minority. The majority of survivors wanted nothing more than to end the alien threat, even if that meant total all-out war. President Chung had been roundly defeated in the election. The military buildup of GAF was moving ahead well given the support of the republican President Darius Rushmore. No one had connected the General with the leakage at the Moscow meeting.

  General Straub had reluctantly agreed with his friend Paul Laurent that his real identity could be returned, since Cooper was no longer a threat. When the public learned about his secret, Paul, now known again as John Cabrot, rose highly in public esteem. A ripple effect was a movement of more bright minds into the STEMEO program. The bright minds contributed much to improving peoples’ welfare across the globe and accelerating the advanced weaponry programs still directed by General Douglas. The outcome comforted Tyler as his only troubling thought was not knowing when the aliens might return and what weaponry would they bring. Still, the world was much better equipped to deal with the threat. Early-warning satellites were placed throughout the solar system monitoring the spectrum of radiations associated with the generation of a wormhole. Predator-smart asteroid mimics equipped with atomic weaponry would seek out wormholes and emerging ships. Other asteroid mimics with atomic weaponry were also scattered around; they were essentially space proximity mines adrift in the emptiness of space. Should alien vessel get past all of this, inner orbital weaponry around Earth would come into play, followed by ground based advanced particle beams, lasers, and rail guns. Aliens that made it to ground would
be met by assault rifles carried by well-trained, heavily armored GAF infantry supported by armored vehicles with that could take down a charging elephant in one shot. Every citizen would have been alerted at the very beginning by the global P-Com system and would have access to protective gas masks and assault rifles at their local armory. That was the last gasp effort and Tyler hoped it would not come to that.

  Cooper also had time to think every day. God no longer came to Cooper in his dreams. Cooper felt forsaken and doubted that he would end up at God’s side. His best hope was to at least be admitted to God’s eternal kingdom. Toward that end, he prayed daily for forgiveness and spent his days helping others in prison to find God’s love. He felt at peace and even achieved the grudging respect of fellow prisoners. While in prison, he wrote his autobiography which was truthful and unembellished. It was carefully read by many and found useful by historians.

  11. YEAR SEVEN, PRESENT TIME, RETURN ENGAGEMENT

  The silvery gray Spectral Radiation Satellite, SRS-198, suddenly awoke from sleep mode. Signal detection was in progress. Program analysis confirmed that the radiation was a mix of gamma and x-rays emanating from a single point source. Confidence levels indicated a 90% probability that it was a wormhole opening in progress. An alert signal was immediately sent to Earth. It would be some 30 minutes before the radio communication reached Earth. Search and destroy protocols kicked in immediately in the satellite’s CPU. The nearest killer asteroid to the wormhole formation was within kill distance as luck would have it. Just in case the satellite instructed a second killer asteroid further away to fire up its propulsion system. The small atomic reactor sent a stream of hot gases out the asteroid’s end and moved it toward striking range. All this information was sent via radio signal again to Earth. Telescopic video imaging was initiated.

  The closer asteroid was designated as AIDAW-100, Artificial Intelligence Directed Atomic Weaponry-Unit 100. Its cameras saw the opening of the wormhole. Its primary command was to enter the wormhole and detonate its nuclear warhead. It activated its propulsion system and moved toward intercept. Suddenly a vessel emerged from the opening. Unit 100 immediately recognized it as an alien vessel known as the Wedgie type. New programming kicked in, stopping the killer asteroid in its forward movement. Now that a vessel was seen, its command changed to destruction of as many vessels as possible. It watched for about 15 seconds and another vessel emerged. Both started moving inward to Earth. Parameters were rapidly calculated. While the command was to kill as many ships as possible, another over-riding command was to not let the first ship escape and head toward Earth. Speeds, positions and probable destruction windows were calculated in a few microseconds. The critical juncture was calculated to be three minutes. The safety window was about to end in 30 seconds. Unit 100 detonated its nuclear warhead. The resulting blast wave obliterated the vessels in a fiery blast of white light. The blast caused the wormhole to collapse. If any ships were still in transit, they were likely destroyed.

  The satellite recorded the entire sequence and sent it Earth bound. The second killer asteroid was instructed to move toward the original wormhole coordinates from its safe station point. If the wormhole opened again, unit 101 would enter immediately and destroy the wormhole. The wormhole was not reestablished over the next few hours. The satellite reentered sleep mode to conserve its energy resources. Its solar panels folded outward to capture as many as possible of the far sun’s photons to recharge the system.

  Some 30 minutes later, a satellite in the Wormhole Early-Warning System, known as WHEWS, received the first radio signals. It was one of many satellites in WHEWS that blanketed the Earth. The dense network of satellites ensured that no matter where the signals originated, one would be in place to receive the signal. The signal was beamed into the Threat Assessment Communication System, TACS. Klaxons immediately sounded in the TACS room. Master Technical Sergeant Munger walked rapidly over to the console and asked “Private Kelso, what is it?” “Radio transmissions from Mars orbit from a wormhole detection satellite. I’ll have it decoded and put on speakers in a few minutes. Sir, a second signal is coming in now!” Munger picked up the red phone, a direct line to General Straub’s P-Com. “What is it, Master Technical Sergeant Munger?” “Sir, we have wormhole detection out around Mars, two transmissions.” Private Ailig Kelso looked over and said, “Video imagining now arriving.” “Make that three now, General. The last is video imaging.” ”I’m on my way. Sound General Quarters for the base, Stage One and issue a recall for all our GAF troops currently on leave. Notify all other GAF global bases to go to Alert Level One” “Yes, Sir.”

  Klaxons began to blear in a steady cacophony throughout the entire complex. Rapid footsteps were heard throughout the corridors and many vehicles could be heard starting up. Munger then pressed the button on the P-Com master and the electronic signal for Alert Level One went out globally to all GAF troops and stations. General Straub walked in. He had been thinking of retirement a short time ago. So much for that idea, he thought. He read the decoded messages and watched the video. Munger said, “Do you think we stopped them dead in their tracks, Sir?” “It is hard to say with certainty, Master Technical Sergeant Munger. Let’s not take any chances. Send out a report to all GAF commanders detailing these messages with video imagery. Have all wormhole detection satellites placed on full alert status. Keep all GAF bases at Alert Level One.”

  Several hours later, when General Straub had gone to sleep, SRS-77, began to record a single source x-ray and gamma event in its quadrant at the backside of the moon. The satellite confirmed the signature as similar to what SRS-198 had seen. There was one difference; however, the magnitude was twice that of the earlier event. The observation was immediately relayed to TACS, taking only 1.5 seconds to reach TACS. SRS-77 instructed AIDAW-49 to close in on the source. Unfortunately, no other AIDAW units were close enough to get there as backups in time. SRS-77 sent a signal alerting all AIDAW units between itself and Earth to maintain full observation and deterrence capabilities. The signal had just reached TACS when the SRS-77‘s camera started to record the opening of the wormhole. AIDAW-49’s programming calculated the distance to wormhole destruction and initiated a two minute countdown to the maximal window for destruction of the wormhole. SRS-77 recorded the opening of the wormhole and the emergence of a large, barrel like device. SRS-77 tagged the image as important, since it did not match the alien ship profile. It was sent to TACS immediately. Suddenly SRS-77 and AIDAW-49 vanished, their structures vaporized into molecular form by the blast of intense white light arising from the barrel’s position.

  Klaxons sounded in TACs and General Straub and Master Technical Sergeant Munger awoke from their troubled sleep and raced to the TACS room. Munger took over the operation and immediately set up the decoded transmission and imagery. The imagery ended showing a barrel like device leaving the wormhole. General Straub, out of breath from running, didn’t like what he saw. “Are there any detectable signals from the SRS and AIDAW?” “No, Sir. Not a trace. I now have the moon space radar on screen. It shows a large number of blips heading our way.” “Master Technical Sergeant Munger, please begin a recording of my message and send it out with my order to go to GQ-2 for all GAF troops and bases. Send it to all GAF command levels and all Presidents, Prime Ministers, Earth First Council, and so forth. We must prepare for the worst. Issue the Hard Shelter order to all top level government leaders. Tell them to mobilize their national troops and other security people. Place all GAF troops at orbital space stations and weapon platforms along with ground weaponry units on battle imminent status. Let me know the instance that any new wormhole activity is detected or any message comes in from the space station near the moon’s face. Start the recorder for my message.”

  Munger started the digital audio-video recording system and pointed at General Straub to begin. While the General recorded his message, Munger turned to the TACS staff and began issuing orders, while the General spoke. His first order was to place Area 51 on
GQ-2.

  “The aliens appear to be very fast learners. Their last invasion wasn’t hindered in any way as they left their wormhole and reached Earth. We had no resources and weapons in place throughout the solar system. Since then our determination and technological advancement have made the solar system more dangerous for the aliens. Their first assault wave was completely destroyed out around Mars thanks to our preparation. Unfortunately, the aliens figured out the defenses and neutralized them in their second assault wave originating behind our moon. They opened a wormhole and shoved out a nuclear device, wiping out our nearby SRS and AIDAW units.”

  “Moon space radar shows an assault armada now heading to Earth. My guess is that any AIDAWs between us and their advancement will be neutralized. Any object moving toward the crafts will probably be taken out with lasers before they can do any damage to the crafts. Even those AIDAWs that are instructed to not move, but detonate when chances for a kill or kills are high, will probably be detected by their radiation signature. It is highly probable that the aliens will have the tech to do so. Our non-nuclear AIDAWs will probably work for a short run, acting as space mines. However, the aliens will then likely resort to laser vaporization of any objects within their destructive radius. The good news is that this effort will slow down their advance, and with any luck, the few successful mines will reduce their numbers. It appears unavoidable that some part of their assault wave will reach Earth in three days. How many depends upon the ability of our weapons platforms and space stations in orbit around the Earth. I’m sure they will do considerable damage to the alien armada before they are wiped out. May God bless the troops manning our orbital defenses.”