Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

The President smiled. “And your real concern?”

CIA smiled back, humourlessly. “Right now, we have a chance to exterminate the senior terrorist leadership all over the world,” he said. “I would prefer not to risk giving them warning of what we could do.”

The President looked at Jürgen. “Is that a valid point?”

Jürgen swallowed, nervously. He would have preferred not to take sides in a dispute between two people who were both immensely senior to him, but he had no choice.

“I do not believe the terrorists could escape the bugs,” he said, carefully. “And if they go underground, Mr. President, their ability to strike at us will be minimised anyway.”

“True,” the President agreed. He gave CIA a droll look. “Sorry.”

CIA shrugged, seemingly unbothered.

Craig Henderson leaned forward. “Mr. President?”

The President nodded, inviting him to speak.

“There will be panic, Mr. President, whatever we do,” he said. There was no doubt whatsoever in his tone. “I would suggest placing the military and police on full alert before making the broadcast.”

“We will,” the President said, grimly. “And how will your friend react to all of this?”

“People like him, Mr. President, believe in getting the matter over and done with as quickly as possible,” Henderson said. “He wouldn’t pussyfoot around, but just tell the world and then let everyone work through their panic.”

He shrugged. “But we do have some encouraging news,” he added. “We did turn back the alien attack on Earth.”

“You mean Mr. Stuart and his friends turned back the assault,” CIA said. There was a sardonic tone to his voice. “The government isn’t going to look very good, no matter what we do.”

“Then we may as well make it look as though we are cooperating with them,” the President said. “We can spin that to our advantage, if necessary. Congress will probably accept it, provided they don’t interfere with our affairs. And we can let the foreign affairs take care of themselves.”

On that note, the meeting ended.

Gunter fell asleep over the laptop and only woke up, several hours later, when one of his cell phones started to shrill loudly. Pulling himself upright, he reached for the phone just in time to miss the call. Cursing under his breath, he put the phone down and yawned; moments later, the phone vibrated. Someone — he didn’t save numbers in the phone, knowing it could be confiscated — had sent him a text message.

He frowned. It read WHITE HOUSE MEDIA STATEMENT, 1800HRS. GLOBAL BCAST. BE THERE.

Frowning, Gunter glanced at his watch. It was 1600 and he’d slept for over five hours. The laptop had placed itself on standby, conserving power. Unsurprisingly, he discovered when he moved the mouse, a couple of hundred more messages had arrived while he’d been sleeping. One of them insisted that the United States Government — or the Russians or Chinese — had been testing secret weapons in orbit. Another, a press release from a well-known researcher, stated that the whole event was nothing more than a series of zero-point energy releases. Gunter couldn’t understand the technobabble the researcher had included, but it looked far too much like someone was trying to squash all opposition through scientific-sounding gibberish.

Shaking his head, he stood up and pulled off his clothes, then headed for the shower. There was just time, by his watch, to shower, shave and then call a taxi to take him to the White House. As an independent reporter, he might have some problems getting in, but if it was a global broadcast there would be little point in impeding him. There would be no exclusive scoop for anyone. It was irritating, yet it couldn’t be helped. Besides, if there were any exclusives coming from the White House, they’d be given to the reporters who kissed up to the administration.

Or spend all of their time writing paeans to the President , he thought, as he turned on the tap and water cascaded down over his body. But how could I compromise my independence so badly ?

Shadow Warrior , Earth Orbit

“Smile,” Mariko said. “You’re on television.”

“The President is on television,” Steve muttered. The President was welcome to it, as far as Steve was concerned. If he had to face a horde of reporters shouting inane questions, he might just have started screaming at them or ordering the Secret Service to turn their guns on the mob. He was all in favour of grace under pressure, but there were limits. “And he’s trying to spin this in his favour.”

He snorted. The President’s logic, when he’d called, had been unarguable. Too much had been seen for any sort of cover-up to work, the President had pointed out, and it was better to release the information while they could still control it to some extent. Steve would have preferred to wait until they had a working constitution and a legal code, but events had moved out of his control. They’d just have to grin and bear it.

“The planet was defended,” the President said. Mentioning the alien attack had worked a miracle. The reporters had been struck dumb. “And humanity is reaching out towards the stars.”

Steve rolled his eyes as the President came to the end of his speech. It wasn’t a bad one, as political speeches went, but it glossed over quite a few details. For a start, the President had implied that Heinlein Colony was an independent nation, yet he hadn’t quite come out and said it outright. And then he’d hinted the US Government had access to alien technology without suggesting that it didn’t have complete control over alien technology. And he’d finished by promising that more information would be revealed soon.

“It could have been worse,” Kevin said, mildly. “Can I upload the data packet now?”

Steve nodded. In the time between the President’s decision to go public and the actual broadcast, Kevin had worked frantically to put together a data packet for the internet, starting with a brief overview of the whole story and ending with a statement about their plans for the future. Unlike the President’s broadcast, the data packet made it clear that Heinlein Colony was an independent state, as were the planned future colonies on Mars, Titan and the asteroid belt. He’d also included a great many photographs of Heinlein Colony and a number of other lunar sights, as well as selected data from the alien files.

“Make it so,” he ordered.

Kevin rolled his eyes, then sent the command through the interface. “It should be interesting to watch,” he said. “I rather doubt that most people will believe it at first, even with the President vouching for us.”

Steve shrugged. The politics in the US had grown poisonous long before the current President had taken office. Republicans wouldn’t believe a word that came out of a Democratic President’s mouth and vice versa. Hell, most people assumed automatically that politicians lied whenever they started to speak. It was hard, given the number of scandals that had washed through Washington one day only to be forgotten the next, to fault anyone for believing that politicians were out for themselves, first and foremost, and to hell with the rest of the country.

“That isn’t our problem,” he said, as he stood up. “Keep an eye on it; let me know if something happens that requires immediate attention. I’m going to work.”

Kevin lifted an eyebrow. “You are?”

“We need a constitution,” Steve reminded him. “And a legal code. It’s time I started writing them both.”

“Let me read it before you start uploading it,” Kevin called after him. “And make sure Mongo and a few others read it too.”