Interlude 4

"Black and White." I though that was a nice touch. But nothing's going to be as simple as us versus them. It's never that simple. It's going to be humans versus aliens yes, but humanity's going to have a few more problems to deal with than it realizes.

I will not allow this unexpected development to stop my plans. The alien's approach is unfortunate to be sure, but I had no delusions about this being a bloodless coup. By the very nature of this plan that is impossible.

So please, my dear preventers, turn your gaze skyward and prepare. For so you shall be all the better preoccupied when the snake that has been waiting so patiently under your feet strikes. President Yui and her pilots still have no inkling of this plan, and more fools they for not seeing that which has been laid dormant for years.

Humanity may yet meet these unwanted visitors as a united front. We have been briefed and we hold no illusions as to the strength of our enemy. But if humankind wishes to survive this threat, it will acknowledge the Barton Foundation as its rightful leadership.

I have just received word from my facility in Jordan that the contagion is ready. My automated factory in the Pacific ocean has reported success in the production of our five dispersal devices.

Most importantly of all, my recruiters on the colonies have reported that we have sufficient forces to carry out our attack. After all these years, Operation: Meteor is ready to be carried out in its truest sense. Thank you again, my dear uncle Dekim.

Humanity will meet these aliens united under me…
Or humanity will die.

- So reads the log of Senator Jackson Brays, L3 Colonial cluster.

* * *

The shuttle hit the atmosphere in a fiery jolt. The captain adjusted attitude carefully so as to get the optimum affect of the heat shielding. A halo of searing flame surrounded the ship as it dropped like a stone into the rapidly thickening air. When it had reached the altitude of fifty thousand feet, the pilot threw the yoke forward, bringing the nose down to point at the nearing surface. Retros kicked in to slow the decent and at forty five thousand feet, the shuttle leveled off and dropped a bit more slowly.

The pilot checked airspeed and flipped a switch above his head labeled Full Atmosphere Mode. With a roaring, explosive succession of bangs, magnetic clamps all along the sides of the ship popped free. Hydraulics hissed and a pair of wings swung out gracefully from their low slung bays on the shuttle's flanks. Jet engines on high air resistance rails followed the wings out of the bays.

The engines cut in with a low whine and the turbines began to pick up to speed. Inside the cockpit a light flickered on that read; Engines 1 and 2 have reached optimum output. The pilot reached over and pulled a ring labeled Fusion Engine/Decent Retro Cutout. All the switched and lights in the shuttle flickered for a moment as the fusion reactor shut down. Then the backup battery switched all of the functions over to the jet engines.

The pilot flipped the intercom on and spoke to his only passenger. "Entering final atmospheric descent stage, Ma'am. Do you have any requests for the tower before we land?"

Back in the passenger section Force Commander Midi Une tapped her own intercom button. "No thank you Colonial, I will brief the commanders upon my arrival."

"Yes Ma'am. ETA for Lake Victoria Airfield is ten minutes." The intercom clicked off. Midi shook her long brown hair and stared out of her small window at the rushing landscape below. I leave for three days and look what happens! She though with a wry smile. Zechs had informed her personally of the impact only an hour after it had occurred, but she had not been able to extricate herself from her investigation until early this morning. A military shuttle had been waiting to whisk her back to her command as soon as she arrived at the military dock on colony L3 X-2637.

Her mind wandered back over what she had discovered on her trip. Things were starting to appear dangerous in the colonies, but nowhere was it more alarming than in the L3 cluster. A Preventer cell had been at work for almost a year in that cluster and the situation was degenerating at an alarming rate.

Political extremists were spreading propaganda through a network that was so old and complicated that its groundwork might very well have been laid in the early days of the Barton Foundation. A large re-armament faction had formed among the right wing of the local government. Tension was becoming almost palpable and an invisible network of recruiters were at work among the youth of the colonies, especially at universities and college campuses.

What was most alarming was how widely this propaganda had been spread and how thoroughly it had saturated the political atmosphere of the colonies in that cluster. Most of the propaganda was false, but it claimed that elitists on Earth were plotting to take away the representation of the colonies in the government. There were whispers of secret troop movements among the Preventers and plans to turn the colonies into slave stations or municipal labor districts. As such, a strong hatred for the Earth-based ESUN was brewing.

As a former revolutionary herself, Midi had recognized just how easily the situation could turn into a bloody uprising. As of yet, Senator Brays, who represented the L3 cluster, did not show any discontentment in his dealings with the government on Earth, but Midi was sure that he had to be at least aware of, if not partially responsible for, the current atmosphere in his colonies.

Midi had run a background check in the colony on Brays but had found it surprisingly sparse for a public member of the government. More so for such a high office as a colony cluster's Senator. This worried her and she planned to ask Trent to run a more thorough background check as soon as she arrived.

The shuttle began to buffet wildly. The multistage decent shuttle was a very efficient way to land a craft and so it was favored by the military. It was however, considered to jarring for civilian use. The shuttle had begun it's final one hundred foot descent and as such was working to quickly diminish its airspeed so the ungainly craft would not rip itself to shreds upon touch-down.

The wheels hit the tarmac with a bump and bounced. After a few more bounces, it mad full contact with the landing strip. The engines cut to one sixteenth power and the flaps deployed fully to further slow the spacecraft. Finally, after about a minute of rolling down the landing field, the shuttle came to a full stop.

The intercom, clicked back on. "All right back there Ma'am?"

Midi hit her own intercom again. "Just fine Colonial. Put me through to Commander Zechs while we taxi."

"Yes Ma'am, switching to private receiver."

The intercom clicked off once more. After a moment, a yellow light began to blink on the phone receiver built into her chair's armrest. She picked it up. "Zechs?"

Zechs's voice was a bit distorted and tinny sounding because of the relay. "Yes Ma'am."

"Is everyone in the briefing amphitheater?"

"Yes Ma'am. The whole senior staff will be ready to begin when you arrive."

Midi nodded even though there was no visual pick up on this phone. "Good, one last thing before we dock."

"Yes?"

"Is Trent available? I need him to do some work for me."

"No," came his immediate reply.

Midi shook her head in mild frustration. "Where is he?"

"He's been in hard-line isolation since 0304 hours this morning."

Une cocked an eyebrow. "Really? What's he up to?"

"No idea. But he's all ready uncovered something interesting that you'll need to be told in person and I think it has to do with that."

There was a dull thud as the shuttle connected with the airlock, followed by a hiss of pressurized air. "Gotta go Zechs. See you in a minute."

"Right. Welcome home Lady Une." The line disconnected. With a smile, Lady Une tossed off an imaginary salute. Then, sighing, she undid her crash webbing and stood. She wobbled for a moment and got her balance as she got used to being back on Earth. Colony gravity was usually set at about three quarters that of Earth, there for it took her body a moment to adjust.

The hatch hissed open and the pilot stuck his head in. "You may depart now Ma'am."

Midi took an experimental step and, finding it satisfactory, threw a salute and grabbed her brief case. Then she strode out of the shuttle and into the brightly lit air base concourse. She saw that a ground vehicle was waiting to take her over to the main base and hurried towards it.

The driver nodded a salute and allowed her to throw her brief case into the back seat. She then vaulted into the front passenger seat and waited for them to go. The driver drove out onto the tarmac and hit the switch that pulled a glass bubble over the top of the car. It was foggy outside and pockets of rain would pour down intermittently.

Midi turned to the driver and remarked, "Awfully strange weather for this time of year."

The driver nodded but kept his eyes on the task of negotiating through the thick mist. "It's from the crash Ma'am. When the ship hit the lake it pretty much vaporized the lot of it. If it had been much larger, or if it had hit the land, it probably would have completely wiped out the base regardless of it blowing up or not."

"I see."

The driver did not comment but concentrated on driving through the ambiguous landscape towards the looming building ahead where Lady Une would brief her troops.

* * *

It was 1307 hours according to the clock above the door. Trent had been working straight for the past ten hours. His system was full of stim-pills, special pills that allowed him to stay awake and focused for the duration. He had spent the entire time wading through endless references and subroutines, trying to find the origin of the code block.

He was locked directly into the Preventer secure database. The secure database could only be accessed by a direct hard-line. It was not connected to any outside sources of input. It was, in fact, kept in an entirely different set of computers and could only be accessed by an operator confirming a request from a verified agent of Blue level security clearance.

For all of his ten hours of work, Trent had found exactly nothing. The stimulants pumping through his blood were beginning to wear away at his focus, the main reason for restricting Hard-line use to twelve hours. After twelve hours, he would be disconnected and his monitor purged. He had to find out what the code block was hiding before that happened or he would have to wait twenty four to forty eight hours and start from scratch.

CAN YOU GUESS MY NAME?

CAN YOU GUESS MY NAME?

CAN YOU GUESS MY NAME?

"No." Trent growled, "So why don't you just tell me?" Most of the time, messages like these were the only thing that told Trent he had hit close to home.

ENTER CODE :\

Trent sighed and ground the heel his palms into his aching eyes. He briefly entertained the idea that when he opened them, the maddening question would be gone and would be replaced by some simple explanation.

Suddenly, an idea hit him. He tapped out his query.

ENTER CODE :\ INFORMATION QUERY FOR "DR. J/NAME"

. . .WAITING. . .

DR. J(/+)NAME: HELLO, I AM DOCTOR J. MY ASSOCIATES AND I HAVE SPENT MUCH TIME AND EFFORT TO THWART THE PLANS OF THE BARTON FOUNDATION. TO THE EFFECTS OF THESE EFFORTS WE TRAINED FIVE YOUNG BOYS TO BECOME PILOTS FOR THE GUNDAMS WE CREATED. HOWEVER, ALL WITH THESE PILOTS IS NOT AS IT SEEMS. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, ENTER MY NAME.

WE HAVE PLAYED GOD.

"We have played God?" Trent shook his head. Only two ore hours to figure this out.

ENTER CODE :\

Trent tapped his teeth for a moment. Something about the question "What is my name?" and this seemingly unrelated comment about god had sent the gears in his head turning. There was a correlation, some elusive connection his stimulant packed brain could not grasp.

He found his mind drifting back to an old movie he had seen as a kid. He didn't remember what it was called but it dealt with a man who was searching for the Holy Grail. He and his father were chased through temples by an army and only the father knew how to get past the traps. A bit of conversation drifted through his mind.

"In the name of God, ye shall pass."

The name of God?

"It sounds like a J but in Hebrew it's spelled with an I…"

Spelled with an I? God? Trent's brain clicked a bit more.

Dr. J…

Name of God…

J…

Trent sat up as the solution hit him like a thunder bolt.

ENTER CODE :\ JAHOVA

"AND GOD CAME DOWN FROM THE HEAVENS AND SAW THE TOWER THAT THE PEOPLE HAD MADE AND WAS ANGERED."

YOU HAVE GUESSED MY NAME. NOW I WILL TELL YOU ALL.

* * *

Gloval had discovered something during the time he and his crew had spent on their grim and dreading vigil. He had found that it was utterly impossible to truly comprehend the idea of a million ships. There was no basis for such a number. It had no right to exist outside the context of people, money, or grains of sand. Nothing so large as a warship could possibly number in the millions. Hundreds, yes. Thousands, maybe. Millions? Never!

But there they were, and they were getting closer. Getting closer while Gloval and his crew sat beneath a glass bubble and watched helplessly as what they had reluctantly come to acknowledge as their home became humanity's first line of defense.

Well, there is one good thing about this mess, Gloval reflected in a daze, the coffee's gotten better.

Suddenly a klaxon began to blare and a voice resounded from the newly wired station address system. "All hands report to battle stations. Senior staff report to the command deck at once!"

The fleet had crossed the middle sensor perimeter.

Weapons Range.

* * *

Midi sat back in her briefing chair and regarded the senior agents arrayed before her. "And we have no idea why their coming?"

Wufie shook his head. "No ma'am."

"I see. Do we have any ideas?"

A glance confirmed that no, nobody had any ideas.

Then a voice drifted casually from one of the shadowed corners of the packed amphitheater. A voice full of disdain and a southern accent. "Who cares?"

Midi turned her chair slowly to cover her surprise. She arched an eyebrow. "You have something to contribute, General Duke?"

The fat general emerged smiling from the shadows. "Why yes, yes I do. Ma'am." This last token of respect was loaded with sarcasm. He sauntered forward and leaned heavily on an unused podium. "Why do we care why their coming. It could be anything for all we know. Maybe they got a hankering for some good old fashioned Kentucky Fried Human. Maybe they found a brochure in an intergalactic tourist trap and good ol' Earth sounded like some prime real estate. Hell, maybe they was just mindin' their own business when they intercepted some old radio signals from Earth, and 'I like chicken, I like liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix please deliver,' is the most horrible insult you can give in their language.

"As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter why they're comin'. Because all we know for sure is that they are comin'. And by thunderin' Hell, they're comin' fast."

Just then an aid burst into the Amphitheater. He was waving a dispatch and the guards let him pass. He sprinted to where Une sat and tossed a perfunctory salute. Midi leaned forward in surprise and anticipation. "What? What is it?"

The aid slammed the dispatch down onto the desk in front of her. "We've just received word from the crews on board YTL-70999. They are awaiting orders."

"Awaiting orders? Why?"

"The fleet has entered weapons range. They want to know if they should fire."

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Next in Every Star A Candle, While the preventers must quickly decide how to deal with the rapidly approaching alien fleet, Trent Jacobs has made an alarming discovery that must be followed up on. Also, Senator Brays is now finally ready to begin his plan for take over. Will Releena be able to hold the Earth Sphere United Nation together as it is attacked from all sides and the threat of Martial law looms ever higher?

Find out in the next chapter, Showdown on the Forgotten Star

Note: Please people, if you read this, review. I gladly accept flamers as I consider them constructive criticism.