Final Assault (9 page)

Mickelson felt his heart leap with the words. They were Franklin’s words and they were the right ones. Mickelson no longer worried about the changes that Franklin had made in the speech.

“We need the cooperation of every person in the world for this plan to succeed. We must stop fighting each other and look toward the heavens. That’s where the threat is coming from. And if we stand united, we can defeat that threat.”

Every time he repeated that, Mickelson noted, people in the Oval Office stood taller.

“Now to the plan,” Franklin said. “We have established safe zones so that no one need die in the horrible manner that we saw last April. Because the aliens are coming here for food and supplies, we are certain they will not attack the deserts. Nor will they send spacecraft over the ocean. We have established places in the deserts where people may stay. We will also launch every available oceangoing ship, and there will be room on all of them for passengers.

“The most important safe zones, though, will be our cities. Every major city on Earth will be safe from alien attack.”

Mickelson saw some of the reporters frown. They hadn’t expected this.

“We have developed a technology that will destroy the alien harvesters. Because we are on a tight deadline, and we only recently discovered this solution, we have limited amounts of it. We had to choose how best to allocate it. We decided to deploy it in the major cities and the surrounding areas within a twenty-mile radius.”

Mickelson sighed with relief. Franklin had not mentioned exactly what the defense was, nor had he said that it would be dusted over the cities. The advisers had disagreed about that, but most of the world leaders were afraid that average citizens, hearing about more tiny machines from the skies, would be afraid to come into the cities.

The leaders had decided that it was better to be vague. Franklin hadn’t agreed with that at first, when Mickelson had presented it to him. But at least he had listened.

Franklin was saying, “Anyone living outside this defense area must move to shelters inside the protected areas. Reporters are being given lists of protected cities and maps of each protected area. These maps will also air after this speech and can be downloaded on any link.”

The Web sites were being activated as Franklin spoke. None of the sites had been online until that moment.

Mickelson leaned against the cool wall. So many precautions to prevent an even worse panic than the one that was happening right now.

“Individually, you can do a thousand things to help us prepare for this mass influx into the cities. We will need help setting up shelters, preparing food, coordinating things. The details on how you may join this effort will follow this speech and may also be downloaded. The information is located by city.”

Aldrich hovered near the door to the study. He was holding packets, with all the important information. Mickelson hadn’t even seen him get it.

“If you live in the desert or are within a twenty-mile radius of any major city, you will be safe from alien attack,” Franklin was saying. “If you are not, make plans to get to one of those locations in the next twenty-nine days.”

Franklin leaned forward. “I have promised you that we will fight back. Indeed, we already have. The attack we made on the tenth planet was only the first step in a coordinated effort that began as soon as we realized that the tenth planet existed.”

Mickelson felt his shoulders stiffen. Again, Franklin was off the script. He wasn’t going to mention the Tenth Planet Project, was he? Conspiracy nuts would hate to know just how many people were involved and how coordinated the effort was.

“Because of our planning,” Franklin said, “we have found ways to attack the alien ships. We have conducted tests on the downed alien crafts and know that our plans will work. Every plane that can be equipped to fight will be in the air in the coming battle with the new technology and weapons. The aliens will not know what hit them.”

“Good,” one of the reporters near Mickelson whispered.

Mickelson suppressed a grin. He hoped other people were having the same reaction. Across the room, he saw Tavi Bernstein glance at him. Apparently, she, too, had been worried that Franklin was going to mention the Project and was relieved that he hadn’t.

Franklin’s intensity seemed to have grown. “Our plan is defensive—we will protect our people and we will attack any ship that comes into our atmosphere— and offensive. We will fight the aliens from space.

“Let me say this again:
we will win this fight.”

Mickelson actually found himself nodding. He felt like he was in a high school pep rally and he felt the president’s magic working on him.

Franklin paused for a moment as if he were going to say something grave. Mickelson’s heart pounded. He hoped that Franklin wasn’t going to ruin the mood he had just created.

“The only way for us to succeed in our plan is to work together,” Franklin said. His tone was both gentle and chastising. “All rioting must stop immediately. We need cities to house all of our people. Our enemy is coming from space. We must work together, as one race, the human race, to fight back. We do not have the time or the resources to fight among ourselves.”

Mickelson nodded. That was well done. It wasn’t too harsh and it wasn’t too specific.

Franklin had already declared martial law when the rioting started, but now he was going to enforce it to the fullest of his powers. He was going to use the armed forces to keep the peace and set up shelters. Anyone caught looting or rioting would probably be shot.

The argument was that people needed to know this in order to stop. But Mickelson had said that U.S. policies would distract from the international nature of the speech. Mickelson knew full well that some countries would think the U.S. response too harsh, while others would think it too soft.

This issue had been settled before Franklin got frustrated. The U.S. policies would be announced after the speech, not by Franklin—who didn’t want to dilute his message—but by the vice president. The vice president’s presence would send a subtle message to Americans that while the president was tending to world business, the vice president would watch over the home front.

It was supposed to be reassuring. Mickelson hoped that the people of the U.S. trusted the vice president more than he did.

“Until now,” Franklin was saying, “you had only vague promises that we were working on solutions. Tonight, I have shared our plans with you. Our goals— the goals of every citizen on Earth—are exactly the same.

“Whenever you find something difficult—and the next few weeks will be difficult—look at the sky. Remember what you saw last April. And do your part to defeat our joint enemy.

“For the next twenty-nine days, we are not individuals. We are a race, united against a common enemy. We must do everything we can to save our planet—our home. We have the plans in place. Let’s work together to achieve them.”

With his left hand, Franklin turned over the hard copy he had been holding.

“We will win this battle. We will preserve the Earth for our children and our children’s children. Our planet will be ours once again.”

Franklin stared into the cameras, and after a moment, the lights shut off.

The silence echoed for the longest time and then someone in the press corps started to clap.

The clapping continued and grew throughout the room. No one was getting this on tape. This was a spontaneous outgrowth of the speech.

Mickelson found himself clapping, too.

In this room, filled with the ghosts of ex-presidents and a history so deep that he didn’t like to contemplate it, Mickelson had just experienced something he had never thought he would feel again.

He had felt hope.

October 12, 2018
5:28 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time

29 Days Until Second Harvest

Leo Cross had two reactions to the president’s speech: one was an overwhelmingly positive emotional reaction—he wanted to get up and cheer at several points in the speech—and the other was a cool intellectual reaction, filled with skepticism and doubt. He didn’t say anything, though, as President Franklin spoke. Instead he watched Britt, who stared at the screens intently.

They were in his new office on the second floor of Britt’s lab. The office was small and had clearly been cleaned out just for him. Dozens of screens covered the small walls, and he had access to even more screens through his desk. He had never been in a place so wired in his life. There were several systems here, each with a different level of security hardwired in. He could have several different conversations, at several different security clearances, all at the same time.

Britt had assured him that the systems were easy to use. He hoped so. He didn’t have the time to catch himself up on the newest technologies. If it got too complicated, he’d go to his own media room at home.

The room smelled faintly of dust and fresh plastic. There were boxes outside the door—apparently from the room’s previous occupant—and some of the details hadn’t been finished before Cross arrived. His lamps hadn’t been plugged in. Someone had not finished assembling his chair and he had nearly fallen off the loose seat onto the floor. But those were minor irritations.

He had spent the afternoon getting ready to coordinate the largest information feed in the history of the project.

And then he had tuned all of his screens to Franklin’s speech. After a few moments of that, though, he had shut off most of them. He liked Franklin; the man was a bit too charming and too political, but he was a good president. But more than one of him repeated on various screens was completely overwhelming.

As the speech started, Britt had joined Cross. He liked being this close to her. If he hadn’t gotten this assignment, they would have been watching the speech in separate parts of the city.

When the speech ended and the maps appeared on the screens, she touched his desktop and muted the sound. She knew the systems here better than Cross did.

“What’d you think?” Her reaction was obvious. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. She had been inspired.

Cross wasn’t sure he wanted to ruin that reaction. Britt had been getting increasingly morose the longer this had gone on.

“I thought it was an effective speech,” Cross said. “I think it’ll accomplish most of Franklin’s goals.”

Britt must have caught the skepticism in his tone. “Are they different from ours?”

Cross let out a small sigh. They had had these kinds of conversations before. A large part of his archaeology training had included a study of history, and a large part of the study of history had included analysis of political systems.

Politicians in times of crisis had several jobs, but their main job was to rally the civilians behind the cause, to make certain the troops remained loyal, and to stem unrest at home. Franklin’s speech did all three of those things.

“Leo?” Britt put her fingers on his arm. They were warm and dry, and felt good against his skin. “What’s bothering you?”

“Some things he said.”

The brightness in her eyes dimmed slightly, just as he was afraid it would.

“Not,” he said quickly, “because he’s wrong or anything. I think we have a good shot at fighting back. I think this speech will go a long way toward settling the unrest and I think we’ll be able to keep people looking toward the skies. I think all of that’s good.” “Me, too,” Britt said. “So what else is going on?”

Cross put his hand over her fingers. “When a politician gives a speech you have to listen to the words he chooses and the details he leaves out. He’s going to try to grab your emotions—”

“Franklin did that.”

“Yes, and he needed to,” Cross said. “This was probably the best speech of his career. But he also gave out what seemed to be a large amount of information.”

“You mean it wasn’t?”

He wasn’t going to be able to get out of this conversation. Cross sighed. “Well, I got a piece of information out of Franklin that I couldn’t get out of Maddox.”

“What was that?”

“That we are going to fight in space. That the fight will be an offensive one. But he hasn’t told us the plan.”

“Why should he? This was a speech to the general public.”

Cross nodded. “My point exactly. You and I feel like we got a lot of information out of the speech because we already know a lot of this information. I’d love to know how other people reacted to it.”

“I’ll poll the lab,” Britt said, standing. Apparently she didn’t want him to spoil her reaction to the speech either.

“You don’t have to. We’ll find out public reaction soon enough.” Cross stood, too, and kissed her gently. “I’ve got a lot of setting up to do. I want to be able to contact most of the group later tonight. Maybe you and I can catch a bite of pizza together when the lab does its nightly order?”

“We haven’t been able to do that since the rioting started. We’re stuck with canned cafeteria food.” “Uck,” Cross said. “All right. How about a date over Spam?”

She grinned. “You’re on. Maybe I’ll make you my special Spam and tuna surprise.”

He grimaced and ushered her out. Then he leaned against the door, letting the disquiet that had begun during the speech settle in.