The Takeover, page 8
“One hundred percent with you there, Chief,” McMillan said. “Hang on tight for a sec; I’m gonna tell ‘em to get started.”
As Bill Cohen had suspected, remote detonation wasn’t an option, since a signal wouldn’t carry through the dome wall. That meant one soldier had to stand just outside the force field with a signaling device that flashed green or red depending on whether the operation was a go or no-go. At present it was flashing red, as it would continue to do until the moment its operator got the word from General McMillan to proceed.
Inside the dome was another soldier whose job it was to watch for the green “go” signal, then set the timer for fifteen minutes and hightail it out of there like his life depended on it—which it did.
They all watched as the soldier outside the dome got the word from General McMillan. He fussed with the signaling device for a second, then held it above his head so the soldier on the inside could see the flashing green “go” signal.
The volunteer on the inside gave a thumbs up, set the timer, checked to make sure everything was set, then flipped the switch to start the countdown. He stared at the timer for several seconds to make sure it was counting down properly, then ran like hell, passing through the dome wall at a sprint and diving into the waiting Humvee.
The other soldier was already behind the wheel, and as soon as his comrade jumped in, they peeled out of there like actual aliens were chasing after them. They made a beeline due east across the Nevada Test Site. There were no formal roads in such a remote place, only dirt tracks in the scrub that hinted at a way to go, but before long they had put plenty of distance between themselves and the nuclear bomb that was counting its way down to zero. Eventually they disappeared out of the zoomed-out video and were presumed safe.
The cameras zoomed back in on the dome itself. Five minutes to go and counting.
For the President and his cabinet members and military advisors waiting inside the Situation Room, those were the longest five minutes of their lives. They sat there in complete silence, waiting to see what would happen.
General McMillan announced the one-minute mark, and they all sat up straighter in their chairs.
“Okay, commencing countdown,” General McMillan said. “That mother-effer should go off in ten, nine, eight…”
Everyone leaned forward. The President squinted and wished for the big-screen TV in his living room.
“…seven, six, five…”
If this didn’t work they were screwed. He had no more aces up his sleeve. This was it—their last hope of fighting back.
“…four, three, two…”
What on God’s green earth was he going to tell the American people if this didn’t work?
“…one…”
A blinding flash of light appeared on the screen.
Their eyes turned away involuntarily for a second, as if they might be blinded from a nuclear blast even as seen through the lens of a television camera. The screen remained dazzling white for several seconds, then fuzzy blackness slowly returned to the four corners of the screen and crept inwards, finally returning them to a picture that made sense.
But it didn’t make sense. The dome was still there— down at the bottom of a brand-new crater, but still there. Above it rose a huge, roiling mushroom cloud, expanding even as they watched.
They all remained silent for a long time.
General McMillan sounded subdued when his voice finally came over the speaker. “Not in a million years did I see that coming.”
“I think you speak for all of us, General,” said the President heavily.
One of the most powerful nuclear weapons in the United States arsenal had just detonated inside a dome the size of a Walgreens and had done no discernible damage to it.
*****
President Mark Gardner prided himself on being calm in a crisis. He had served bravely in the war in Afghanistan, he had witnessed death and destruction with his own eyes, and he had been in tough spots before and had always risen to the occasion. But now, for the first time in his life, and certainly for the first time in his presidency, he felt real panic. Serious, overwhelming panic.
He was back in the Oval Office now, and the Oval Office was spinning. For some reason that struck him as funny—the Oval Office spinning—and it made him laugh out loud.
He realized he was having a full-blown panic attack and decided to lie down on the couch right in front of his Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense.
Everyone was looking to him for leadership, and guess what? He had absolutely no idea what to say or do next.
What could he say? “Sorry, folks, we’re in a bit of a pickle here. Seems the most powerful nukes in our arsenal are completely useless against this threat.” He laughed again, much louder than he intended to.
“Can we get you anything, Mark?” Gil Lametti asked tentatively.
The President took several deep breaths and tried to calm himself. He sat up on the couch and tried to act normal, whatever normal looked like in times like these.
“What next?” he managed to croak out.
Lametti and Cohen both looked down at their feet. Clearly they were just as gobsmacked as he was.
“Gil?”
“Well, I don’t know, Mark. I suppose we could try variations on a theme. Try exploding a bunker buster from inside a dome or dropping a nuclear bomb on the outside. Maybe see if our scientists have come up with any more bright ideas. Maybe something with magnets?”
We’ve tried those already,” the President said with a frustrated wave of his hand.
“I know, I’m just grasping at straws at this point.”
“That’s okay, Gil,” said the President, nodding and trying to be supportive. He took some more deep breaths and felt the panic subside to something more manageable. “And you’re right. Hey, why not? Let’s try out some bigger magnets. What do they call those things? Hallek Arrays?” he asked Bill Cohen.
“Halbach arrays, sir.”
“Right. Let’s try out some monster-sized ones. I mean, what the hell, what have we got to lose? Get our scientists on it right away.”
Gil nodded and wrote it down in his notepad.
“Bill, what have you got?”
His Secretary of Defense looked flummoxed for the first time in his career. He didn’t have a single military option to recommend that he thought would really work. Cohen finally shrugged and forced himself to speak. “There’s nothing left, sir. We’ve blown our wad. We’ve tried everything realistic that I can think of.”
“Everything?”
“Well…there are some newfangled DARPA weapons out there we could try. Futuristic stuff, but hell, half of them are still in the development stage, and the other half…well, they’re powerful, but not as powerful as a nuclear weapon. And we’ve already tried that.”
“Tell me about them anyway.”
“Yes sir.” Cohen thought for a moment. “Well, we could try using an electromagnetic rail gun. It’s essentially a monster cannon that uses laser energy to fire projectiles at almost five thousand miles per hour. The projectiles can smash through concrete structures over a hundred miles away—but whether they’ll work against a force field is anyone’s guess.”
“Okay, that sounds worth trying. Make a note of that, will you, Gil? What else have you got, Bill?”
“Well, there’s MAHEM. That’s another DARPA special. It stands for magneto hydrodynamic explosive munition. It uses a magnetic flux generator to fire a projectile—like molten metal—that can penetrate enemy armored vehicles. They’re lethal on the battlefield, but I have no idea if they’ll have any effect on a dome. Personally I doubt it, sir.”
“Let’s try it anyway. What else have you got?”
Cohen pondered for a minute. “Maybe an e-bomb?”
“What’s that?”
“An electromagnetic pulse or EMP weapon. Essentially it’s a high-powered pulse that can be used to knock out electronics by inducing a surge of electric current. A conventional EMP bomb generates a pretty intense pulse—but we have nuclear versions that can really wreak havoc.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It could be. The nuclear version produces some pretty incredible current and voltage surges—and the gamma radiation emitted from the blast ionizes the surrounding air, creating a secondary EMP.”
“I like the sound of that,” said the President. “Gil, write that one down. Anything else?”
Cohen thought for awhile. “Nothing else that I can think of.”
The President nodded. “Okay. Every military option that we can come up with, let’s throw it at those domes, and I mean everything. Meanwhile, I’m going to need to address the American people—and to be honest, I have no idea what to say.” He turned towards Gil Lametti, his oldest and most trusted friend.
Lametti thought for a moment. “The truth,” he said at last, spreading his hands. “Tell them the truth. They deserve that much, at least.”
“Won’t that create a panic?” Cohen asked.
“Isn’t a panic already underway?” Lametti replied. “The truth may help calm people down, especially if we sprinkle in some half-truths about additional military options that are still on the table.”
“Okay,” said the President. “Okay, I like that. People already know the bunker busters and the nuke didn’t work—the media will have taken care of that for us. But I’m still going to have to address the American people directly; they’re going to want to hear it from me.”
“Agreed,” said Lametti. “And you may want to start preparing them for the fact that we may simply have no viable answer to this alien technology.”
“What good would that do?” demanded Cohen. He sounded outraged at the very thought of admitting such a thing in public.
“Maybe none. But it might help prepare people for the inevitable. For the new reality that’s coming.”
“And what reality is that?” inquired Cohen.
“That we’re going to be hosting guests from out of state soon,” Lametti replied dryly.“
“Hosting guests! Boy, that’s a nice way of putting it. Welcome, aliens: mi casa es su casa.”
“Look,” said Lametti. “If aliens really are coming, and you’re a bright-eyed optimist, then the best-case scenario is that we’ll have to learn to share our planet with them. That’s if we’re lucky. Maybe they’ll be like benevolent monarchs who will have our best interests at heart once they arrive. Think Frederick the Great, only greener.“
“Monarchs,” Cohen growled. “Despots, you mean.”
“Tomato tomahto. Benevolent ones, anyway.”
“Who will lord it over us in every possible way.”
“Who may help us in ways we never could have imagined. They could be light-years ahead of us in medicine, for example. Maybe they’ll show us how to cure cancer.”
“That would be wonderful, of course,” Cohen conceded, “but I hate the idea of kowtowing to anyone. I hate it to my very core.”
“Hear, hear,” said the President.
“I’m not saying we should like it,” Lametti said. “I’m just saying we may have no choice.”
“We could die fighting,” Cohen pointed out.
“If we can even get to them. Once they’re inside their domes, what can we do, exactly?”
They thought about that for awhile.
“We’ll be on the outside looking in,” Lametti continued. “They’ll be on the inside looking out.”
“Like some strange new apartheid,” said the President. “Segregation taken to the extreme.”
“If they were as friendly as you make them out to be,” Cohen observed, “they wouldn’t need domes. And they certainly wouldn’t have put them right in the middle of our goddamn cities. They could have located them in remote places where they’d have done less damage.”
“The domes weren’t domes at the beginning,” Lametti pointed out. “According to our scientists, they were seeds or spores that fell from the sky. Randomly. It doesn’t sound like the aliens directed them to fall anywhere specific.”
“Maybe they should have,” replied Cohen. “If they’re so advanced and all.”
“You really think they might be friendly?” the President asked.
Lametti shrugged. “They might be. Consider this: if they really wanted to kill us outright, they could have just sent spores containing a tailored virus that would have exterminated us all in an instant. Instead, we have these domes, these force fields, which seems to suggest they’re occupiers, not terminators.”
Cohen grunted. “Occupiers is just a euphemism for invaders. For all we know, it’s not apartheid or segregation they’re after but slavery.”
“What a terrible thought,” murmured the President.
“It is,” Lametti agreed. “And now we’re on to the more pessimistic side of the equation. If you’re cynical, then you can imagine other reasons why the aliens might be coming—and what they might do with us once they arrive.”
“They might use us as slaves to work in their factories or mines for their own benefit,” Cohen suggested. “Or to work in the fields to provide them with food.”
“Or maybe we are the food,” observed Lametti.
“Jesus,” exclaimed the President.
Lametti shrugged. “That’s the worst-case scenario I can come up with, Mark. Sorry, but we need to consider all the possibilities so we can prepare as best we can.”
“How the hell can you prepare for something like that?” demanded the President.
“I don’t know,” replied Lametti. “Distribute cyanide pills, maybe?”
Cohen barked a laugh. “Razor blades would be cheaper.”
“This conversation is turning far too bleak,” said the President. “We’re not committing mass suicide as a people. We’re going to fight to the death, not give up to the death.”
“Agreed,” said Lametti. “I wasn’t being wholly serious. Just a little gallows humor there.”
“Frankly,” said Cohen, “I’d rather be wiped off the face of the planet than become a food source.”
“Me too,” said Lametti.“
“Me three,” said the President.
All three sat there soberly, reflecting on their dismal prospects.
“Either way, optimist or pessimist, our days of having the Earth to ourselves as the sole dominant species appear to be numbered,” said Lametti.
More silence as they digested that thought.
“Well, that sucks,” said Bill Cohen finally.
The President laughed ruefully. “Don’t it ever. I sure as hell can’t tell the American people that.”
“No, you can’t,” admitted Lametti. “I think I’ve talked myself out of it: you can’t tell the American public the whole truth. No one wants to hear it—it’s just too depressing. And I’m not sure what good it would do anyway.”
“So what do I tell them?”
“That we’re fighting like hell, and that we’ll keep on fighting,” declared Cohen. “That America never gives up.”
“That sounds…presidential enough,” said the President. “What do you think, Gil?”
“Sounds about right to me,” said Lametti with a sigh. “And hell, who knows? I’m no fortune teller. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe those domes weren’t sent by aliens. Maybe they’re just harmless barnacles floating through the vastness of space—barnacles that somehow managed to get stuck to the bottom of spaceship Earth. Maybe they’ll detach and float away one day without our ever having to lift a finger.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” demanded Cohen.
Lametti shook his head. “No, I don’t. But I’d like to. And as long as there’s a possibility of no aliens, however remote, then that’s a story we can tell to the American people without sending them into a panic. It’s not a lie—not exactly. It could be true. It just probably isn’t.
“Well, half truth is a politician’s bread and butter,” said the President, getting up to his feet. Lametti and Cohen stood up with him.
“I feel better already,” the President said. “I can sell that idea. Maybe the domes are the worst of it. Maybe there are no aliens coming behind them. That would at least explain why it’s so quiet up there, wouldn’t it?”
“Too quiet by half,” growled Cohen. “Not to rain on your parade, Mr. President, but I’m a military man, and whenever the enemy is this radio-silent, we know we’re in for some serious trouble. Whatever they have up their sleeves, if they even have sleeves, I think a serious shitstorm is coming our way.”
October 9 – Fort Bliss, Texas
“Well, Mr. President, I’m afraid I have some more crappy news to report,” said General McMillan by way of video. “Those newfangled weapons of ours didn’t work worth a damn.”
The President blew out a long breath. “Strike three,” he murmured. “And we’re out.”
The General chuckled wearily. “More like strike thirty, if you ask me.”
“I’m not surprised, really,” said the President. “After we dropped that second nuke and watched it fail, well… let’s just say I didn’t hold out much hope.”
“Me neither, sir.”
“Tell me what happened anyway, General. I’m curious.”
“Well, we tried each one in turn, just like you asked. The Halbach array of magnets—those are the ones that augment the magnetic field on one side of the array while cancelling the field to near-zero on the other side—those were a complete bust.”
“As expected.”
“And the electromagnetic rail gun—well, sir, that was a treat to watch. I’ve never seen a projectile fired at those speeds before—but in the end it deflected off the dome wall just like them bullets did. Punched quite a hole in a nearby mountainside, though.”
“Of course it did.”
“Next up was MAHEM. That’s the one that uses the magnetic flux generator to fire a molten metal projectile. It made a big fiery splash against the dome wall, but that was about it.”
“And what about the e-bomb?”
