The First Protectors: A Novel

by Godinez Victor

  When the roof had finished opening, Ben looked up, and with a flick of his brain fired the weapon, unleashing a massive negative electrical charge that repelled the negatively charged hydrogen ions and accelerated them to nearly the speed of light.

  A searing javelin of red energy tore from the satellite, carving through the one unfortunate cloud hovering overhead. The electron particle beam burned for just a fraction of a moment, unleashing a petajoule of energy; a 50-megaton nuclear explosion poured down a pathway no thicker than a drinking straw, then disappeared with a thunderclap that shook the room. The cloud was now a vaporous donut, blue sky visible through a seared hole in the fluffy white.

  Silence for a second, then pandemonium. The engineers and other workers in the room hollered and clambered to their feet, surrounding but not quite daring to touch this quiet, gray, motionless figure who had obviously triggered the shot. Even Rickert gaped at Ben, who looked over at Rickert and gave a small shrug. He was still discovering his own capabilities. He hadn’t known he could fire the weapon until he walked into the room and his vision and senses lit up with information and a subliminal, intuitive understanding of what to do next. Still much he didn’t know. Worse, no way to know how much there still was to know. What was it the poet had said? I contain multitudes? At least he could intuit his own depths. Ben felt like he was staring down a dark mineshaft and maybe it extended 50 feet or 5,000 feet. Or maybe it had no end.

  He had power he couldn’t understand, and maybe not even fully control. Super soldier . . . or time bomb?

  “That was interesting,” Ben said, looking at Rickert.

  “Think you can do it again?”

  “Yes, sir, like flipping a light switch now. And I’d estimate a rate of fire between 35 and 40 shots per minute. If we can get these birds in the sky, we might have a chance.”

  By now, Winterton had all but lost control of the small crowd in the assembly room. He finally turned to the two soldiers and raised his hands in surrender. “Gentlemen, I’m going to let you field this one.”

  Rickert gestured toward the curious, nervous faces. “All yours, sailor.”

  9

  General Dimitri Gretchenko gazed at Ben and Rickert as he methodically prepared his tea.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked, gesturing at the metal urn at his elbow. “It is called a samovar,” he said without waiting for a reply, his thick accent emerging from beneath a bushy mustache.

  “You boil the water in the urn using a metal heating rod that runs down the center of the device,” the Russian continued. “In the old days, but not so long ago, fuel for the heating tube could be coal, oil, anything that burned. Now, of course, it is electric. But the process is same, yes? Heat the water, which then heats the zavarka, the water and tea leaves in the container here at the top. You pour a small amount of zavarka in the cup when it is hot, like so, then add the hot water from the samovar. More water or less, for weaker or stronger tea.”

  The old general stared intently at his American visitors as he completed the ritual. The white porcelain cup sat in a white saucer, unornamented. The dark, nearly black tea was hot, too hot to drink yet.

  “It is a tradition, part of Russian life. Tsars, peasants, communists and capitalists, all drink tea in this way. A simple drink. But very important to Russians.”

  Steam curled out of the cup, unhurried. Outside, bitter wind howled through icy teeth.

  “But tea did not come from Russia,” Gretchencko said, folding his hands on the table in front of him and ignoring the steam and the storm. “In 1638, an envoy from Tsar Michael I to Altyn Khan, a Mongolian ruler, came back with these dried leaves, a strange gift. But it was not long before Russians saw the value of this new material and adopted tea as our own, a national drink. And you, Lt. Shepherd, are tea, a strange new thing from a very distant place.”

  Gretchenko finally lifted his cup and blew softly over the hot liquid, his eyes never leaving his visitors. He sipped, expressionless. “The only question is, are you a gift, or something else?”

  Ben and Rickert said nothing. Ben slid his plain, porcelain cup containing the puddle of black zavarka under the small faucet at the base of the samovar and turned the metal key to release the hot water. When his cup was nearly full, he turned the key shut. The samovar was old, but the key moved silently, a machine well and long maintained. Ben waited a moment for the drink to cool, then lifted it to his lips.

  “Excellent, sir. The finest I’ve ever had,” Ben said.

  “Of course it is,” Gretchenko replied with a grin, his eyes still cold. “It is the first real tea you have ever tasted.”

  Ben could sense Rickert’s impatience, but the process seemed important, almost sacramental. Ben knew this trip was as much diplomatic as military. Outside, a cold wind smacked anyone unfortunate enough to have to scuttle between buildings. It would be a bracing walk back to their airplane waiting on the tarmac of JSC Information Satellite Systems in Zheleznogorsk, central Russia. Ben had never been to Russia before. Every mental image he had of it certainly seemed to be validated here—except for this Russian general. He didn’t seem to be an enemy, but not quite a friend, either. He was wary, which Ben could understand. Something seemed to be troubling him even more than the mrill invasion.

  Rickert, who was bored by the tea ritual and yearned for coffee, cleared his throat.

  “General, as you know, we have given you everything. The details of Lt. Shepherd’s . . . encounter, the schematics, the initial test results, everything. Very few countries have received the details you have seen.”

  Rickert pointed to a thin, sleek laptop computer opened next to the antique samovar. A series of schematics and construction reports flashed across the LCD screen.

  “Yes,” Gretchenko said, “I have seen the data. But the data is not what interests me. Correction, the data is tremendously interesting. For my engineers, this is probably as close as they will ever come to a religious experience.”

  “So what’s the issue?” Rickert asked.

  “You have, what’s the word, ‘outsourced’? Yes, that is correct. You have outsourced this work to us, and to other governments, I presume. We will build your weapons. Guns more powerful than any I expected to see in my lifetime. And then we will turn them over to you. This is not a comfortable position for my government, for my nation, to be in.”

  “I understand,” Rickert said.

  “Do you?” Gretchenko replied, one eyebrow arching, the closest thing to emotion he’d shown since they’d met. “It is not so long since the Cold War, my friend, and there are many who remember when our missiles were pointed at each other. Some in my country preferred it that way. This new arrangement . . . they will say Russia surrendered without ever firing a shot. There will be problems.”

  “What are you saying?” Rickert asked.

  Gretchenko smiled, but Ben thought he could read sadness in the Russian’s face and voice. “It’s been a long time since you Americans faced revolution and civil war. But not so for Russia. Blood flows easier, and hotter, than tea in some parts of the world.”

  A Russian captain entered the room and handed the general a phone. He glanced at the screen and stood up.

  “I have ordered all production to full speed. My men will work night and day. We will have our machines ready in time, and I pray, yes, pray, even an old communist like me, that you will have the strength to protect our planet. But even in victory, not all things can be preserved. You may find this world much changed, even should you win the day. Go, now, and report back to your leaders, and I shall do the same.”

  “This isn’t going to help matters,” Ben said as they walked out on the airstrip.

  Zheleznogorsk was a “closed town,” locked down with strict travel restrictions, one of several in the always-suspicious motherland. Once an official state secret and devoted to producing weapons-grade plutonium for the Soviet Union’s nuclear program, Zheleznogorsk was now largely a company town for JSC, which had dev
eloped the GLONASS navigation system, the Russian answer to the US military’s network of global positioning system satellites. Nearly thirty years after Glasnost, openness in the heart of Russia was still more rumor than reality.

  So the town was self-contained, drab and plain, but well stocked for its 86,000 or so citizens. That included the twin runways on JSC’s corporate campus, mammoth stretches of high-grade asphalt capable of launching and landing the hulking Tupolev Tu-160 and Tu-95 strategic bombers that had once been designed to drop nuclear bombs from Sacramento to Savannah. A Tu-160, which to Ben looked a bit like a weaponized Concorde passenger jet, was parked in one of the open hangers.

  “If the Russian government crumbles in the middle of their construction effort, we’re in a bad way,” Ben said. “We’re down to the bare minimum number of planned satellite launches as it is. Without the Russians, we’re doomed. We have to share our info with the world, make it clear this isn’t a hoax or a conspiracy to destabilize other governments.”

  It was January, six weeks after the first encounter in New Mexico, and it was late, cold, and dark. This place redefines “dead of winter,” Ben thought. But the stark, blunt JSC buildings hummed with activity and light. Ben’s test fire demo had guaranteed that buzz wouldn’t die down anytime soon. Ben ignored the slice of cold wind and dry snow across his face as he and Rickert walked to their waiting US Air Force cargo plane, a Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. Rickert was not as stoic, gasping at the frigid finger of winter that snaked down through his tightly fastened collar.

  “I don’t disagree. It just isn’t my call,” he said, nearly yelling over the wind. “The president has convened another advisory council meeting for Tuesday, so you’ll get another chance to make your case.”

  Ben started to reply but stopped as a new information readout appeared before his eyes. The first satellites they’d built, small surveillance birds, had already been launched several weeks ago. These early warning systems detected the electromagnetic disturbances, or “cuts,” as the scientists were calling them, created when alien spacecrafts traveled across interstellar distances. The data Ben was receiving indicated a small force of mrill spy satellites would soon enter the solar system. Unsure what intelligence the brin had shared with the humans, the mrill were treading carefully. Ben knew Earth wasn’t ready. The mrill would soon realize that, and then the strike force would come.

  Rickert noticed the look on Ben’s face, the vacant expression as a new wave of digital information sprawled across his eyes.

  “What is it?”

  Ben at last blinked and refocused on Rickert.

  “I don’t think we have until Tuesday, sir. They’re almost here.”

  The two Americans paused for a moment on the frozen runway of the Russian satellite maker. Then they ran for their waiting jet.

  10

  “This is crap.”

  President Lockerman frowned at the pile of papers on his desk in the Oval Office. Cameras went live in 30 minutes, and he’d rather dance nude for the networks than recite a word of the script laid out in front of him. The page was covered in red ink, but he was no closer to a useable document than he had been an hour ago when he started.

  “‘An epic hour, a critical moment?’” Lockerman said to the cluster of aides huddling on the other side of his desk. “Christ, guys, I’d be less embarrassed if I broke wind during a state dinner attended by the pope and my mother. We don’t need Shakespeare. We just need to be clear. Terry, get this out of here and have the writers take another crack.” Lockerman waved the sheaf of papers at his chief speechwriter, who grabbed them and went on his way, aides trailing in his wake.

  Lockerman leaned back and rubbed his eyes. Hawthorne, his science adviser, sat on a nearby stool, shuffling through her own crop of paperwork. She had one pencil tucked behind her right ear, but appeared to have forgotten it was there, and was scribbling on the sheaf with another one, just about worn down to the nub.

  She frowned, upgraded to a scowl, and wrote furiously. The taut tendons in her forearms made Lockerman wonder if she’d break the pencil. He knew she was looking at reports of the satellite production. Work was behind schedule and seemed likely to slow even more before it got better. Now she was thumbing through the pages, as if better numbers might show up somewhere in the footnotes.

  “Dammit, Miranda, that bad?” Lockerman asked.

  “It’s fucking bad enough, man—I mean, uh, Mr. President.”

  “No, please, don’t stand on ceremony, Miranda.”

  She ignored his jibe and the slightly horrified looks of the aides and assistants scuttling through the room.

  “We’re ass-deep in trying to run assembly lines for stuff that a few months ago was considered theoretical physics, at best. It’s like we just fast-forwarded through a century of scientific research. It’s insane. It’s awesome, don’t get me wrong. It’s also totally nuts.”

  “You’ve got the blueprints. Just follow the specs.”

  Hawthorne shoved her glasses up on her forehead, pinched the bridge of her nose, and set the papers aside.

  “Not that simple. It’s like the Wright brothers land after their first flight, and you show up with the schematics for a 747 and tell them you want a fleet in a couple months.”

  “Are we going to get our fleet?”

  “I . . . we’ll have something. I think it will be enough. We’ll need to rerun the algorithms for where we park them in orbit, how we overlap the fields of fire, all that stuff, if we end up with a smaller force than we’d planned. We’ll be stretched thin, though.”

  “So where do we stand?”

  Hawthorne took a deep breath. “We have fifteen satellites that will be ready to launch within the next four days. Another ten are likely to be completed within three weeks. Ten more within two months. That is short of the fifty originally called for. Like I said, I think we can make it work. People are asking questions, you know. Our assembly facilities are running hot, 24/7. It’s the ultimate tech bubble. Too bad I didn’t buy stock in the satellite industry before this mess happened.”

  “You and me both,” Lockerman said.

  He was surprised how quickly he had come to terms with the absurdity of this predicament. There was no clause in the Constitution, no Federalist Paper that gave any insight, any illumination of the path ahead. Budget disputes, international rivalries, political scandals. As excruciating as each could be, they all also had a sort of accepted ritual, a ceremonial formality where each participant knew their roles, even if the outcome was uncertain. They’d been done a thousand times before. Just play your part and get off the stage when it was time so the next bunch could take over. This, on the other hand, was wholly new. Like being the first ancient amphibian that found itself thrown ashore and needed to learn how to breathe, walk, and survive.

  Not to say you didn’t get a choice. There was always a choice. You could go forward or go back. Live or die. Often, forward meant death, too. Or you could just freeze in place, hope someone else came along to make your decision for you. But that’s usually when a bigger predator gobbled you up. So it was time to go on TV and announce that a war of the worlds was imminent. The first shots had already been fired, and the second battle for Earth was only days away.

  “Ten minutes to air, Mr. President,” an assistant said. The makeup crew descended on Lockerman like a flock of pigeons as the technicians fiddled with the camera.

  “Did you evacuate your family to the safe zone yet?” Lockerman asked Hawthorne.

  “Don’t have any. Only child. Parents died a few years ago. They were only children, too. You?”

  “Sorry to hear that. And yeah, I sent Maggie and the kids off to Arizona last week. At least it’s warmer there.”

  “Hmph.”

  Hawthorne wasn’t much for small talk.

  “Where the hell is Terry?” Lockerman asked. “That script might have been crap, but it sure beats the giant plate of nothing I’ve got in front me right now.”

  T
erry Strazzinski bounded through the swarm, sweat stains groping at his armpits.

  “Here, sir.” Strazzinski handed over a stack of papers still warm from the printer.

  Lockerman scanned through. Just a few pages of text, but maybe the most portentous words any president had ever had to speak. Thirty minutes later, he’d be down in the press room, talking to reporters. Everyone in the White House had agreed that it was best to air the speech first, let the reporters gather their wits, and then hold the Q&A. This was going to be a wild ride, and Lockerman wanted to keep the chaos to a minimum.

  “Good enough,” Lockerman said after scanning through the new script. “I can ad lib over some of this, but it works. Thanks, Terry.”

  He nodded at Strazzinski, who was nearly bug-eyed, having only learned the content of the speech an hour ago.

  “Thank you, Mr. President. Good luck.”

  The speechwriter melted back into the throng, leaving the president alone at his desk. Lockerman settled in as the cameras came to life. Thirty seconds. He took a measured swallow of water from a bottle. Wouldn’t do to choke now. Five seconds. Four, three, two, one . . .

  My fellow Americans, good evening. I come to you tonight with urgent and difficult news. As hard as it may be to hear, we have irrefutable evidence that the United States of America, and indeed the entire world, is confronted with an imminent military threat. More than a military threat, an existential crisis. Once I’ve concluded my remarks, additional details will be available on the White House website and I’ll be taking a few questions from media, but I want to give you the overview.

  A little over a month ago, a retired officer in the United States military—I am not disclosing his name, rank, or branch of service for national security reasons—encountered in New Mexico what we are now confident was a hostile extraterrestrial being.