07: Self-Sacrifice for the Common Good

“And then, when the teacher asked Martha for her answer—”

“Pardon me, Mr. President,” the president’s Chief of Staff said, entering the room and interrupting the president’s daughter, Felicity, “we have a situation on our hands.”

“Of course,” President Atkinson responded, getting up without further preamble. “Sorry, Felicity, but as you well know, this job awaits no man.”

“I understand, Daddy,” Felicity responded, even as the door closed behind her father and his security staff. She swallowed her disappointment even as her mother took her in her arms, wishing once more that her father had lost the last election. While she didn’t wish to hurt him, she’d rather have her father and her old life back rather than all the perks of being a wallflower in her own home. But still, if the rumors she’d heard lately were true, he had a tremendous surprise in store for her. If he could arrange a special show with her favorite star, she might almost be able to forgive him.

President Alan and Samuel White, though, were a bit too preoccupied to be concerned about such minor concerns at the moment.

“What’s wrong?” Alan asked.

“It’s Anton again,” Samuel responded, not bothering to cover himself anymore. “We’ve assembled a few people in the Situation Room. It’s a better place to discuss the newest developments.”

Alan nodded, not bothering to ask questions, though his curiosity was killing him. If they were including the Security Council, there must now be a direct threat to the nation’s security.

“We can’t release this information to anyone we’re not sure of,” Alan pointed out, speaking softly so it couldn’t be easily overheard by the security staff accompanying them. “We’re likely to act quickly using drastic actions. The last thing we need is some mamby-pamby do-gooder leaking news of what’s happening and creating a problem which prevents us from doing what we need to do. Something like that could cause a panic, which we aren’t prepared to deal with.”

“Don’t worry. We’ve taken care of that,” Samuel assured him. “You’ve established our priorities and I’ve done the rest. We’ve invited only those we trust, essentially career people. No ‘politicians’ who’d only be concerned with people’s perception.”.

“Good. That’s just what we need. Good job.” Alan smiled to encourage his Chief of Staff to continue anticipating his decisions. Good men like that are hard to find. There were just too many uncommitted people within his own White House for his taste.

It was a hike from the president’s quarters in the East Wing to the Situation Room in the inner recesses of the West Wing. No one spoke the entire way and everyone they encountered scrambled out of their way, as their demeanor brooked no distractions.

Reaching one of three specific ‘Situation Rooms’ in the White House—each designed to provide the latest intelligence on a constant basis for the president—two military guards opened the doors for the dignitaries to pass. Though the president and his Chief of Staff didn’t say anything, the two Secret Service agents knew better than to follow, instead stopping and waiting, hands folded and standing for however long it required. Curiosity was not a positive trait in this Service. In fact, raising any question wasn’t good for one’s career.

The president glanced around, noticing the absence of the normal buzz of the technicians and analysts. Normally each Situation Room had a staff of around thirty personnel from a variety of agencies. There were only a few senior staff here now. “Is everyone here authorized to hear this?” he asked.

“We’ve kept the people to a minimum,” Samuel said as he and Alan sat down at the large table. “The other Situation Rooms are functioning as normal. This one is staffed by a select group of specialists and concentrating exclusively on ‘Anton’ related information,” Samuel explained.

Glancing around, Alan noted the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force were absent, as were the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Homeland Security Council, and the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In fact the only leaders present were the non-civilians: Chiefs of Staff for the Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as the heads of the FBI and CIA. The only ‘civilian’ at the table was Tom Rogers, the current head of the NSA. Alan had stressed earlier that he wanted this information kept on a much stricter need-to-know basis than usual, and he’d instructed it be restricted to those they absolutely trusted. Everyone else was deemed inconsequential or a liability.

“There are two recent items of note which require your immediate attention,” Samuel began, surveying the senior leaders listening. “First, a local TV station broadcast the following report over the air in a remote section of Arizona a little more than an hour ago. We’ll play that for you now,” he said, starting the recorded video of the broadcast staring Natalie and Alicia.

“Shit,” the president sputtered, to which the various heads around the table nodded in agreement.

“Next, there was a single report—in the same vicinity—by a pilot of a small plane flying above the cloud line at 20,000 feet. He reported seeing a ‘black cargo container falling out of the sky’.”

“A cargo container?” Alan asked, looking at his Chief of Staff in confusion.

“Yes, Sir. As you know, most planes don’t carry full cargo containers, and those that do keep them secured. What’s more, although there are plenty of cargo flights over Arizona, there weren’t any scheduled cargo planes flying over that area of the country at the time of the sighting.”

“Do we have any idea what this ‘container’ was?”

“Alas, it didn’t show up on radar or any of our satellites, nor did any of our observatories report any supposed meteor activity or any signs of anything entering the atmosphere. And, as I’m sure you’re aware, we were closely monitoring this area of the country.”

“You don’t think it’s one of the ‘meteors’ we detected earlier?” Alan asked.

“No, Sir. Those were each much smaller, and they were plainly visible entering the atmosphere, although we lost them shortly afterwards. This was larger, and it escaped all our monitors.”

“So you feel certain this was one of ... Anton’s friends?” President Atkinson asked, not sure how much the others at the table had been briefed.

“Yes, Sir, we do. What’s more, it shows they have the necessary resources to escape all our tracking methods, other than a haphazard and ultimately lucky visual observation.”

“Damn, I suspected this was bad, but this means we’re defenseless in this conflict,” the president said, more to himself than anyone else in the room, though they all noted he had effectively declared it an open conflict already, which had precise and specific meaning to them all.

The president leaned back, closed his eyes, took a couple deep breaths and ran his fingers through his hair. “Could this pilot identify where he saw this ‘cargo container’ land?” he prompted.

“Well, since this wasn’t a pilot for a major organization and doesn’t report to us, he took a while before he radioed the nearest control tower. Luckily, we were monitoring all the airports’ transmissions at the time. We now have this pilot in detention and he’s still undergoing questioning.”

“That doesn’t answer the question, though,” Alan pointed out, staring at his Chief of Staff. “Where the hell was the object?”

“He couldn’t designate a specific location. He had no GPS on board and the ground was obscured by thunder clouds at the time. We can’t narrow it any closer than a 100 mile diameter in a remote area of south western Arizona.” Samuel frowned, knowing the president wouldn’t appreciate the multiple failures in intelligence this report represented.

“Isn’t it odd that an aircraft wouldn’t have GPS?” Admiral Winfield, the Navy Chief of Staff asked.

“Most aircraft nowadays do,” the highest officer of the Air Force, General McGinn, said. “Unfortunately, most small older aircraft aren’t equipped with them, so many noncommercial pilots don’t install them.”

“The pilot also said he was busy fighting heavy headwinds,” Samuel explained. “However, this ‘cargo vessel’ never lost its vertical alignment. It fell with its largest surface buffeted by the wind and its descent, but was undisturbed by it.”

“Really?” the president asked. “That would mean it’s incredibly heavy. It would also mean it was either stabilized or it was ‘dropped’ under very specific conditions. Do you suspect this is a cargo drop? Possibly some type of weapons systems those other ships who already landed could utilize?”

“I couldn’t say, Sir, but it’s entirely possible.”

“Damn! We need to find the craft and whoever is waiting for it. Still, one hundred miles is a hell of a lot closer than we were before.” Alan leaned forward and rested his chin in his hand as he contemplated the information. “And you triangulated the broadcast with this observation?”

“It didn’t help much. The broadcast was from their studio over two hundred miles away, and the station manager had no idea where his people were reporting from. They didn’t mention a specific town in the broadcast.”

“Hell!” the president cursed under his breath. “I assume we’ve recovered all copies of this damn recording?”

“Not all.” Samuel frowned as he shook his head. “We’ve examined the TV station. The manager turned over all their copies of the tape, but the original news crew that recorded it hasn’t checked in and the station doesn’t know where they are.”

“Don’t their crews have GPS tracking in their vans to monitor where they are?” the Secretary of the Army, General Reddick, asked.

“They do,” Samuel sighed. “Unfortunately it was apparently disabled, so they have no clue where they or the object were. They don’t know if the tracker was turned off before or after the broadcast, nor how they managed to deactivate it. We’ve notified all local police departments to be on the lookout, but so far no one has any sign of it.”

“So we either have a rogue news crew—who may have faked their broadcast to capitalize on rumors—or something happened to them after their broadcast,” Gen. McGinn pointed out. But Samuel shrugged that they had no clue.

“How many people could this broadcast have reached?” Alan asked, his brow furrowing.

“It was broadcast during the six o’clock news, that’s their biggest audience, but it was at the end of the broadcast when they have their lowest viewership, as that’s when most people wander off once the major news is finished. They claim a viewership of 300,000, but that’s just their on-air numbers, Satellite and Cable subscribers in the region would push those numbers up.”

“Shit! While that’s not a lot, it’s still three to five hundred thousand people who know, and any of whom could spread the news,” Alan said.

“Did the pilot report any more information on what this... ‘craft’ looked like?” Gen. McGinn asked, his professional curiosity prompting him to press for details.

“He reported that it was oblong and squarish, though the ends were rounded and the whole thing was an odd shade of black. He said it didn’t look like any cargo container he’d ever seen, but he figured it had fallen out of an airplane as it had no means of flight and was freefalling at the time.”

“And it couldn’t be a simple cargo container that smashed into the ground?” the Chief of Staff of the Navy asked, to rule that out as a possibility.

“Again, there were no reports of any flights in that region at the time and the pilot reported he hadn’t seen any aircraft, although he explained his airplane didn’t allow him to observe the airspace above him.”

Samuel halted as one of the analysts whispered something to him, and then continued. “It’s been reported that if it had been a cargo container crash we would have detected it via our national seismic sensors. However, there was nothing detected. Whatever it was, however fast it was falling, it made a ‘soft’ landing.”

“Given that, why are we assuming it was capable of flight?” Robert Towers, the Director of the CIA, asked.

“Because that’s the only thing which would make sense,” Samuel argued. “There’s no other source from which this thing could have originated, and even if there was, there’s no man-made structures that match the described specifications. If it was from an alien vessel then I can’t imagine it was simply jettisoned for no purpose.”

“Alright,” Gen. McGinn, the Secretary of the Air Force said, “let’s assume that it originated from space; could it have landed like a spaceship, utilizing thrusters to slow its descent? Or would it have required a landing strip? That would go a long ways towards determining where to search.”

“All I can suggest is that such a landing would have set off seismic vibrations,” Samuel said, shrugging to show he didn’t know. “The fact we haven’t recorded any discounts—but doesn’t disprove—such conjecture.”

“Have we considered that it may be some type of weapon?” General Reddick asked. “Or possibly that it contained a cargo which could have been released in a designed crash landing, like possibly an aerosol distribution or maybe remote monitoring equipment?”

“We haven’t ruled anything out,” Samuel stressed, “but again, the size of the vessel would argue against such a use. You don’t need a vessel that large to disburse a small load.”

“So, do we have any clue why it was freefalling from space?” Alan asked. “Or at least some hint as to its function?”

“Again, we have no hints, though we surmise they were afraid we’d detect their energy signature, so they turned off their engines until they fell below the obscuring clouds.”

“If that were true, then we’d have observed it while it was in the upper atmosphere,” the president’s science advisor, Alex Peterson, pointed out. “Since we didn’t detect any energy signature, either in the upper atmosphere or below the clouds, we have to assume we were unable to monitor their craft in any manner other than blind luck.”

“This just gets worse the more we learn,” Alan groused, folding his arms across his chest and scowling at his Chief of Staff.

“Would anyone have observed it from the ground?” Gen. McGinn asked, tapping his temple.

“There was a torrential rainfall at the time, so nearly everyone was either inside or under shelter. Without interviewing everyone who might have been driving at the time, we’ll never know. And since we don’t know how much of a disturbance it created, we won’t know how many might have noticed it until we can locate exactly where it landed.”

“We’ll start tracking anyone who may have noticed anything,” Tom Rogers said, speaking up for the first time. Everyone knew he meant the NSA would intercept all the telephone calls, cell phone and computer messages, emails or other forms of instant communications. “If anyone is talking about this, we’ll identify who it is.”

“Yeah, just like you’ve been so productive finding the last several suicide bombers,” President Atkinson scoffed. He was still peeved at the NSA’s inability to utilize their vast collections of data in any meaningful way. The last couple of highly visible failures had cost him politically, and while he defended the agency for its potential, he wasn’t overly convinced of their effectiveness in parsing the massive datasets they collected willy-nilly.

“Don’t worry. Once we know what to look for we can find virtually anything,” Tom countered.

“I’ll tell you what, just to be sure you do, select some of your best people, remove them from the rest of the analysts, and dedicate them to it,” President Alan insisted. “I consider this a bigger security threat than any lone terrorist. A bombing, no matter how bad, is embarrassing, but someone with the technology to do massive damage with weapons and delivery systems we can’t detect represents a much bigger danger.”

Ignoring Tom as inconsequential, the president turned to the others. “Damn. Assuming we don’t get lucky again, we can’t ask the public for information without tipping our hands.”

“We could always set up roadblocks, stopping and asking everyone if they observed anything, and stopping anyone who looks suspicious,” the Director of the FBI suggested.

This line of speculation infuriated Tom, as he saw it as a bunch of small minded old stooges unable to give up on the investigative tools of previous centuries. No matter how much they kept reminding everyone what they could uncover, no one ever seemed to take him and his agency seriously.

“Yeah, and that wouldn’t raise any questions,” Alan reminded him, sounding annoyed. “And what would constitute ‘suspicious’? Little green men? Somehow I doubt they’d hire a cab to get around once they’ve landed.”

The president sat back and considered it for a moment as silence descended, since no one else wanted to disturb his concentration. He leaned forward with an intensely focused gleam in his eyes. “How many bodies could we get on the ground in that region, hopefully without anyone noticing?” he asked the room in general, tapping his fingers on the massive oak table as if sending Morse Code signals.

“It would take time to get people on the ground, which would also entail alerting all those people that something was up,” Gen. Reddick advised, peering at the president, wondering which tack he’d take in this case.

“I’d suggest you strategically place select individuals to ‘interface’ with the local officials,” Robert Towers offered. “Put out orders for the local police to stop any and all traffic, asking them to report on any ‘unusual activity’ but don’t specify what we’re looking for. If they turn up anything, have them report it directly to someone we can trust with the information. That way, if anyone starts asking questions we can release an Amber warning or something later on, telling them it’s concerning someone we want to shelter from public scrutiny.”

“That’s what I love about you guys,” the president replied with a smile, “you’ve got the most devious minds. Could we use your people for this?”

“Well, Sir, this is the kind of thing we specialize in, but as you know, we’ll need an official Patriot Act declaration,” he reminded the President with a telling grin.

“Ha, that’s nothing. Since the Patriot Act prevents anyone from reading the details, it’s not a problem. I’ll rubberstamp a notice for you. But just to prevent anyone from jumping to conclusions, make sure no one flashes any badges.”

“We could give them army credentials,” Gen. Reddick suggested, “and possibly include some of our intelligence officers to boost the number of personnel on the ground. That way we can ensure no one leaks anything.”

“That sounds like a decent alternative. Think up some excuse for us to be snooping in the business of the local officials and let’s get some people there. If we have to schedule flights into the area, it might be too late. See if we can drop personnel using high speed helicopters. We need to address this before the opportunity passes us by. We’ve got no idea what they’re after or what they’re trying to accomplish. This is of the utmost importance and it requires immediate responses across the board. Nothing goes unreported! Do you all understand?”

Tom Rodgers once more bristled, thinking it insulting the president would ask everyone else to take a lead role while ignoring the role of his agency. But knowing he didn’t have the president’s ear at the moment he bit his tongue, biding his time.

“What do you want to do with anyone we find,” General Reddick asked, “whether aliens or locals who’ve encountered them?”

“Yeah, it will be problematic if people start talking about what they’ve seen,” the FBI chairman said.

“This is much too vital to waste time worrying about legalities,” Alan said, glaring at the various officials. “Do whatever you have to in order to provide answers quickly. Everyone will forgive a few excesses once we reveal what we were facing. As they say, it’s better to ask forgiveness than request permission. If we try to do this ‘legally’, it would take months before we could get started. We might lose the entire planet if we wait days!

“Set up a secure camp in the area, someplace we can hide people indefinitely without raising questions,” President Atkinson insisted. “Ideally we could ship them to Gitmo, but there are too damn many civil rights lawyers watching it, so it would be reported if we used it.”

They all nodded, silently agreeing with him and evaluating how they’d need to implement his orders. With that President Alan dismissed them, already thinking of other ways of addressing the possible complications of either this approach or some unforeseen action by these damn aliens.

“So, President Alan,” Representative Frank Sanders, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee began the secret proceedings, “why did you call this close-door meeting with us?”

“I’ve got some very important news to report that’s vital for your committee and the country in general.”

“And you didn’t think it was necessary to let anyone else know?” the Republican Chairman pressed, trying to figure out what the president was fishing for.

“Frankly, this is important enough I haven’t even informed my own Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, or the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Representative Sanders leaned forward, as did the more junior members of the influential committee. “Is that because you filled those positions with fellow Democrats who helped you in the election, rather than seasoned officials?”

“Each of those positions were filled because the men were highly qualified and well respected in their fields,” President Atkinson stressed, taking offense at how Frank kept referring to him as ‘President Alan’, a clear sign of disrespect. But he needed the man too much to make an issue of it—at least for now. “However,” he continued after a pause, “they also got their positions because of their contacts, and as such, they... talk to a lot of people, and I don’t want this information leaking out.”

“And you don’t think we’ll leak it?” Representative Baker, a Democrat from Wisconsin asked, glancing at the Chairman, the implications clear even though he never mentioned it.

“Absolutely, because this Committee deals with funding of ‘secret agencies’. You already know our deepest darkest secrets, and so far no one has ever revealed any of it.”

“So,” Chairman Sanders asked, “I take it you’re here because you need funding for yet another secret agency?”

“Frankly, yes. Gentlemen, we have an invasion on our hands. Not an invasion by the Russians, North Koreans or even Al Qaeda. Instead we have an alien invasion by a fleet of ships, all equipped with advanced technology that make ours look like tinker toys.”

“Wait, are you serious?” Representative Moore from Wyoming asked, sitting back and regarding the president and his people, looking for any evidence he was trying to pull a fast one.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” the president answered, throwing away all sense of decorum. “Samuel, play the video we confiscated from the TV studio. Bear in mind, gentlemen, that this was broadcast over the open air to hundreds of thousands of people.”

The president and his people sat silently as the short news report played once again. When Natalie Romanus revealed the dead alien the committee members collectively leaned forward, peering at the image on the screen. When it was over, they turned to the president, all doubts erased and nothing but questions remaining. Not a person there assumed what the general public had, that it was an elaborate hoax.

“How did it die?” Rep. Baker asked.

“How did it fall into the woman’s hands?” the Republican Senator from South Carolina asked. “If we were responsible for its death, shouldn’t we have recovered it before it reached the public?”

“Do we know anything about their resources? How dangerous they are?” the Committee Chairman asked.

“Slow down, gentlemen,” President Atkinson told them, smiling slightly as he enjoyed how easy it was to manipulate these men. You wait your entire career and frequently never get the chance to wield this kind of power. But then, one day it just drops into your lap and you can play people and achieve anything you want. What’s more, no matter the outcome, you’ll always be remembered as the person responsible for both calling attention to it and dealing with it—even if the problem persists for longer than your term.

“Yes, the creature on the video is very real, but it was ‘recovered’ before we could gain access to it, and the members of the news team that broadcast this video have gone missing. We’re currently conducting an extensive search for anyone who witnessed anything which would tell us what happened to them.”

“So you’ve got no clue how it died?” Rep. Baker asked, nervously drumming his fingers, a clear sign he was eager to take action, not debate the details.

“We have no evidence of how it died, but we think it was either an accident with one of their weapons or it was the effect of something in our atmosphere.”

Frank Sanders laughed out loud at that point, surprising everyone in the room. “You’re telling me that Global Warming and Air Pollution—which we’ve been fighting implementing restrictions on—have done more to protect us than the US military has?”

“We can’t be sure of that, and I’m not sure we can depend on pollution to protect American lives. I’m sure these aliens have filtration systems and know how to sterilize their environments. Just because one died doesn’t mean the crisis facing us is any less real. What it was, was lucky in that it alerted us to what we face.”

“So this was the first we knew of them?” Rep. Baker asked, wiping his brow as he tried to calculate the extent of the problem.

“No, we’ve been monitoring them for some time. We detected communications originating from the outer edges of our solar system, but we couldn’t determine what they meant. We now believe it was a demand for our surrender, and when we didn’t respond they launched their invasion—or at least sent their agents to set up supplies and plan their strategies.”

“How long ago was this?”

“It was almost a week ago,” Atkinson told them.

“Wait? They reached here from the edge of the solar system in only a week?” Frank Sanders asked, looking shocked. At least someone here understood a little about science, Alan thought, though that shouldn’t get in my way.

“They arrived here several days ago. We’ve been trying to locate and track them but their technology is beyond our ability to detect, which is why this is so serious. This was a lucky break which told us where to look. But we’ve got to act quickly now that we know.”

“And we’re only hearing about it now?” Frank Sanders demanded.

“We were trying to keep it under wraps for obvious reasons. If news of this leaked out the country, no, the entire world, would be in turmoil. Instead we’ve been scouring the world for where they went and have been organizing our troops to respond as soon as we found them.”

“So you had no evidence of them between then and now?”

“We’ve been tracking them all along. We detected them when their initial scouts entered the atmosphere, but we lost them after that. But we’ve isolated them to the Western United States. It seems their ships are equipped with technology which can evade our best sensors. However this televised report and a pilot’s sighting of a larger ship landing earlier today helped us locate them to a specific fifty-mile region. We’re now sending troops in to search the entire region.”

“And you want us to authorize you to circumvent the privacy rights of the people in the line of danger?” the South Carolina representative asked.

“Partially,” Alan explained. “For that purpose, we mostly just need you to not support any congressional actions to investigate it. But we need a little more than that.”

“And what would that be?” Frank asked.

“Let me answer that by describing a separate meeting I had earlier,” the president answered, leaning back and letting the committee members stew in their own fear and nervousness. “I had an unexpected visitor. A member of another secret agency your committee created back in the fifties. He works in an area commonly referred to as ‘Area 51’, although they long ago changed that designation.”

That revelation caused them all to sit up, even the president’s own people who hadn’t been involved in that meeting. His Chief of Staff had wondered why the president was wasting time with an unknown small town official when there were bigger things to worry about.

“He detailed exactly what happened all those years ago,” the president revealed as he continued, looking each committee member in the eyes as he panned over the table. “He only came to me because they’d heard enough to realize we faced a similar situation. Ordinarily, the President of the United States isn’t deemed essential enough to be included, just like I’m doing with my own staff. Presidents change every four to eight years, and the work they’re doing on what they uncovered has been ongoing for over fifty years. And gentlemen, the things they’ve discovered by examining the one ship they couldn’t understand has literally revolutionized this country.