Warp Speed (34 page)

At one point 'Becca had expressed her enthusiasm about getting to fire the warp missile but was disappointed that she couldn't see how it performed. Hell, I'm just glad it was ready and it worked. She and Calvin did tell me later that they had a rather boring ride otherwise. From where they stood, they never saw outside but for brief flashes and never knew what was going on.

Pretty much the same was discovered throughout the rest of the facility. Many people never even realized that we had left the ground. Alarms were sounded and people were told to stay where they were. The entirety of the final battle of World War III had pretty much taken place in a matter of a couple of hours and was now basically over. China, Russia, and North Korea were bleeding profusely. So was the United States, but we were still an unstoppable military might with the mastery of warp field technology. Not that that is what I had set out to do with my life. But we do what must be done in order for our way of life to go on.
Or, it will cease being our way of life
.

We discussed our next moves with General Tapscott who in turn discussed this with the President. He was still in hiding and only had direct links to certain facilities. Mike patched him through to all of us. We discussed the possibility that our secret was out. I assured the President that if any average people saw anything it was just a big blurry spot in the sky since the warp field would have forced light around it instead of reflecting it. Since we had modulated the outer field in order to communicate with our ground facilities and the TDRSS satellites, it is possible that the other military radar systems of the world detected us. That might just be a good thing. They have seen what we can do. They had better keep their damn mouths shut and stay out of it. And of course we could always leak misinformation about a Secret War with aliens or some nonsense to the tabloids. The truth of World War III would never be public knowledge. To add even more fuel to the conspiracy fire, I landed the base right back in the hole in the Earth that it came out of. I sat the base down and compared the view from the cameras to the view I had seen a few hours before when we lifted off and presto! We were back on good old terra firma. I cycled the software off and Jim assured me that the warp field was down.

"Calvin, this is Anson. How are you guys up there?" I called over the walkie talkie.

"We're getting wet, Anson. It is raining cats and dogs out here."

"Can we come in yet?" Anne Marie asked.

"Get inside," Tabitha interjected.

"Is it over?" 'Becca asked.

"Did we win?" that was Al.

I nodded at Tabitha. She pressed her walkie talkie button.

"We won."

CHAPTER 20

I relaxed in my chair and Tabitha finally sat down and joined me. We both had to let the day's events sink in. A few seconds of reflection was all the luxury that we were awarded. The flat screen had not yet faded out to blue and General Tapscott was still on the other end.

"Give us an update on your status General Ames, and realize that the President is listening," Mike ordered.

Tabitha sat up straight. "Yes, General. The Roswell facility is now grounded in Roswell as if it had never left New Mexico. There is most likely major damage along the periphery of the installation that will need repairing.

"As I'm sure that satellite imagery will verify, all launch facilities in China, Russia, and North Korea have been totally eradicated. The governments of each of these countries have been destroyed along with their abilities to make war. In fact, we would like to see global satellite imagery data here to see the extent of the damage. Perhaps we will learn more efficient methods for using this technology. And it's always good to see the havoc one has caused after a battle to maintain perspective of its horror. Hopefully, we won't need it for warfare again.

"It is possible that some of the knowledge of the warp technologies used in today's battles remains in the enemy locations since we didn't remove the entire populations of these countries. And it is always possible that they have sleeper contingencies. However, they have much larger problems now than building weapons to take over the world. Survival should be first and foremost on their minds. Most likely they won't be able to survive without aid from the rest of the world. My guess is that our economy will suffer greatly from our disaster relief also.

"I would suggest two efforts. One is to continue ahead with plans to place the warp research and development facility on the far side of the moon. This technology needs to be advanced and protected at the same time. We saw today that the masters of this technology were nearly unstoppable. We should maintain the only mastery of this awesome power. I should mention here, that it is also likely that we will find a way to use the technology as a defensive shield itself.

"Second, I also suggest to create an intensive intelligence gathering effort to determine if anybody on the planet has any knowledge of this technology and track them. What if terrorists got their hands on this thing also, or another group bent on global domination? In order to maintain the secrecy of this technology, this intelligence group should be placed under the same compartmentalization as the research and development facility. Perhaps the new intelligence group should even be located on the Moon. Travel to and from Earth will be simple and cheap. This way we will be able to know when and if someone is conducting an operation.

"Since the destruction of the Space Shuttle, this has been a global war of proportions great enough to remove the human race from existence. We can only now realize the devastating ability of warp weapons and of the sheer gall and lack of humanity of an enemy that would initiate a preemptive strike with such a weapon. I hope it will never happen again. However, in order to prevent it from recurring, a constant vigil must be kept." Tabitha remained straight in her chair and didn't move a muscle.

"I would like to add something." I interrupted the uncomfortable silence following Tabitha's speech, debrief, or whatever it was. "My original plans for this technology was simply to travel to the stars and see if there is other life and inhabitable planets out there. As it turns out, the power required for that goal can be twisted and used for more evil purposes. I for one never wanted to see that. As long as we maintain the possession of this capability, we can never let it fall into the wrong hands. We saw that today. However, I would hate to deny the world some of the awesome peaceful applications the warp drive can bring us. I can think of some applications useful right now in the disaster relief efforts.

"But, I guess I have to agree that Earth isn't ready for power like this yet. Perhaps after the effects of this war are tended to and the governments of the superpowers become more aligned, we can have a space-faring society, one with various civilian uses of warp field technology. I don't know. In the meantime, we can't let our guard down. And today is absolute proof as to why we can't." I slouched back into my chair again. I was tired and wanted to go home.

The President had little to say other than the fact that nobody would ever know that World War III ever took place. The events of today would be reported as impacts of meteors from space. He issued an executive order compartmentalizing all knowledge of the warp technologies and all data was to be moved to the far side of the Moon away from the Earth.

In essence, he had excommunicated all of us from the human race. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad. Once we got there and got settled, living on the Moon could be pretty cool. Maybe. Besides, we would have to be awarded near infinite resources to maintain such a facility and conspiracy. We had infinite power with the flubells. And if we ever needed anything, hell, we could just fly down to Earth at night and abduct it. I thought of some funny crop circle patterns that I was planning to make with a warp field on some of those trips also. Hey if there is a fire, you have to throw gas on it.

Well, we were going to live outside of the Earthly society and develop technologies years ahead of anything anybody had ever dreamed of. Living on the Moon would be cool. How about that?

* * *

It took us several days to gather our thoughts, technologies, personal stuff, and implement a security plan. The entire facility was surrounded and protected by armed guards from various branches of the military. Any individuals who knew anything about what had happened were debriefed, sworn to far far above top secrecy, and then reassigned to Tabitha or to Alaska or they were discharged immediately. During the debrief all individuals were warned that if any of the details of the technology or events were leaked they would be publicly and actively ridiculed by expert sources. Debunking government conspiracy nuts is always easy. Who really believes in Roswell, alien abductions, and flying saucers? Nobody does in public, because it labels him or her as nuts. Well, there are some that are making money off of the alien folklore; they are either brave to put themselves out on such a limb, smart for raking in the money from the entertainment industry, or just don't care what happens to their reputation in quest for the truth.

But nobody really believes them, do they? Seeing how the really secret world works, I was beginning to wonder.

Oh well, the security plan was in place and it was working. About fifty personnel had to remain on the payroll. Tabitha and I discussed it and decided to take a month off. She ordered leave for the fifty personnel and told them to return in exactly one month. The facility was locked down and placed under armed guards. The rest of us went home.

By the time we got to Huntsville International Airport, our parents were already there waiting for us. My mom had been carrying Friday in a travel cage. I'm sure she didn't like that, Mom not Friday. Friday is a lazy cat. She was probably asleep, Mom on the other hand was tired of carrying her. Tabitha and Annie hugged and kissed their parents/grandparents and cried. It was a lot of fun. We rented a minivan and headed for my house.

My house had been trashed. Probably by the same team that got Al's house. We weren't really concerned about our personal safety any longer for two reasons. The first is that mercenaries usually only kill for money and their paying customers had been smashed into the Earth or pushed into the sea. The second reason is that we were always being shadowed by plain-clothes security. Tabitha had ordered my house to be a safe zone. So, there were guards waiting for us when we arrived. I guess this is how life would be for all of us from now on.

I took Friday out of the cage and nuzzled her to me as we entered the living room. I sat her down and she looked around, then up at me and said, "Raaooww?"

"I know it's a mess girl, but it's home. Go on." I said. I looked around at the mess and wasn't sure where to start.

Jim dragged in behind with his arms full of luggage, "Ah, home crap home." He laughed. "Nobody worry about the luggage, I've got it," he said sarcastically. Al and I turned to help him.

We spent a few hours cleaning up. It made us all feel normal again to do menial daily type tasks. Jim, Al, and I drove to town and picked up some steaks, hamburgers, hotdogs, buns, potatoes, charcoal, chips, dips, limes, lemons, margarita mix, and a lot of beer. We stopped by the package store on the way back and picked up some ice and tequila and triple sec and decided we better get more beer.

By the time the grill was ready for the steaks, burgers, and dogs, I had about three beers down. My fiance stepped through the back door wielding two very large margaritas. The sunlight nowadays was redder than usual because of all of the dust thrown into the upper atmosphere from the Warp Weapons of the Secret War. The strange reddish summer sun illuminated the glitter in Tabitha's blue bikini top in a most unusual way. Her cutoff denim shorts brought out her, uh Southern charm. And the fifteen or twenty degrees cooler weather than usual for July brought out some of her other, uh perky, features. She sure didn't look like General Tabitha Ames the astronaut and warrior-leader of the super secret Warp Weapons Contingent of the United States Space Force. I chuckled inside.

"Hey Anson, brought you something." She said. I reached for one of the margaritas and she pulled it back. "Not that. These are for me. I brought you this." She leaned forward and kissed me deeply. "August fifteenth." She said, "And happy birthday!" She kissed me again and then took a big draw from her left margarita and then her right one.

"Thanks," I replied. Then I thought about what she had said for a second longer. "Hey that is like three weeks from now."

"Uh huh." She said. "We're a fixin' to git hitched!" she said in her best Texan and then hit the margaritas in reverse order this time.

"Okay with me. Can we get it arranged that fast?"

"Our moms, 'Becca, and Anne Marie are in there just a plottin' and a schemin' as we speak."

I wiped my hands off on my
Kiss the Physicist Please
apron and then planted my hands on each side of her face. "I love you," I told her, then kissed her again. Then the hamburgers flared up and I had to attend to the grill. I never did get a margarita.

CHAPTER 21

The wedding planning had gone off without a hitch. The girls had decided it would be best to have it in the big nondenominational church downtown. Tabitha somehow pulled some strings and managed to get us in on such short notice. She spread the rumor that the NASA Administrator, Secretary of Defense, and the Vice President were on the invitation list. Things started happening. Of course, I'm not sure that Tabitha hadn't really gotten an R.S.V.P. from any of their offices, but it was a good ploy one way or the other. Imagine my surprise when not only were they there, but they were seated next to the President himself.

Jim was my best man and Al and Calvin and my brother stood up with me. The bridesmaids were Sara, 'Becca, and an old flight school buddy of Tabitha's, Colonel Margie Finest. Anne Marie stood beside her as her maid of honor. The men were wearing charcoal tuxedos with tails except for my brother, who wore his dress blues. The ladies all wore long slender sky blue gowns, except for Anne Marie and Colonel Finest, of course, who were both in their Air Force dress blues. Tabitha, not being General Ames at the moment, of course was wearing white. She sported a long white form-fitting backless gown with lace trim covering the chest and open cleavage and a train that had to be carried by two flower girls. Fortunately, a cousin of mine had two twin youngsters who fit the bill perfectly.