Reckoning ~ Indian Hill 2 ~ A Michael Talbot Adventure (6 page)

I thought about telling him that I’d never be “fine” again but he didn’t really seem the type to care. I looked down at my Nav-Gat system and noticed it was an aerial view of the Pentagon and the outlying parking lot. My route was marked out in yellow on the map and my car position was in red. What they failed to tell me was that I would get so absorbed in the little plasma screen that I would forgot to watch out for the minor details like parked cars and pedestrians. I think I pissed off half of the chiefs-of-staff. Oh well, that’s what they got for inviting me there.

My entry point was on the far side from where I drove in. I parked the Hummer in a brigadier general’s spot; I didn’t think that he would be too pleased. I was now wishing that I had maybe donned the uniform. I would have been hard pressed to stand out anymore than I did right now. Here I was, a twenty-two-year-old kid with a scraggly beard, blue jeans and a Widespread Panic T-shirt, heading into the military capital of the world. I could have built a car out of all the brass that was walking around there. Captains were a dime a dozen, basically just high ranking coffee-fetchers. I was going to have to talk to the general about my rank; I wasn’t getting coffee for anybody. I didn’t even like the stuff.

“Ah, Mike, how was your drive?” The general put on a jovial façade as he put his arm around my shoulder. I think I caught him off guard coming here all disheveled and in civvies. “Come on; the president is waiting.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I stopped. “The president? You didn’t say anything about the president being here.”

“Why? Would you have dressed more appropriately?”

“I might have.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry; the president doesn’t look too much better than you. We had to go pick him up off his ranch; he was fixing one of the cattle fences.”

“The President of the United States was fixing his cattle fence? Doesn’t he have people that do that kind of thing for him?”

“Sure he does, but he says it relaxes him. Son, he’s the president. If he wants to knock those fences down, who’s going to tell him he can’t?”

“Good point.” I felt better about meeting the president but my stomach was still tied up in knots. We walked into a huge conference room that must have held half of all the generals in the armed forces. And there sat the president, directly in the middle of them. All of them jockeying for position, trying to have their ideas heard.

“Welcome to political hell,” the general mumbled. Everyone stopped talking, almost on cue. The president turned to see what had taken the pressure off him.

“Mike Talbot, I presume.” The president knew my name!

“Uh, yes sir.”

“Call me Jack.”

“Ah yes, Mr. Pres… I mean Jack.”

“Gentlemen, I truly want to hear all of your ideas and opinions, but my very distinguished guest here has finally arrived and I wish to speak privately with him. I value all of your opinions; so if you could all please draft up your proposals in triplicate and have them on the secretary general’s desk by nine o’clock tomorrow, I will personally make sure he goes through all of them. Now if you could please excuse me.”

The generals shuffled out the door as fast as their feet would take them. General Burkhalter shut the door when the last of them left.

“Well, looks like I’ve killed two birds with one stone.”

“Sir?” General Burkhalter asked.

“Well, all of those generals will be so busy tonight drafting proposals that none of them will dare come back here tonight and waste any more valuable time. And all day tomorrow, the secretary general will be reading said proposals. That'll keep them all busy for a while” I couldn’t help it; I snorted out laughter.

“You think that’s funny, Mr. Talbot?” the president asked.

“Ah, yes sir, I do.”

“That’s good! I like people that actually say what they are thinking. If you stay in this town long enough, you’ll realize that that is a rare thing indeed. The general showed me the tape of your debriefing. I would imagine that you are beginning to tire of telling the tale.”

“A little bit, sir. I’m getting to the point where I wish I could just get on with my life and put this behind me.”

“You know that that isn’t going to happen.”

“Yes sir, I realized that a long time ago. You can never go home, even if home is planet Earth.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing, sir, just reflecting.”

“Have you made up your mind on the general’s and my decision to have you commissioned into the service?”

“I have, sir, but just one question.”

“Shoot, son.”

“I’m not going to have to get coffee, am I?”

“What?” the president asked with a sidelong glance.

“Mr. President, there is so much brass in this building that captains are relegated to messenger boy. If I were to accept the commission, I have no desire to be a glorified secretary.”

The president laughed. “That’s funny, I never noticed before, but I guess you’re right. No, that would never happen, and anyway, you would be reporting directly to General Burkhalter here and nobody else. He reports directly to me and nobody else.”

“Then I accept the commission, sir.”

“Good; then let’s get started. General, if you could please dim the lights.” The general dimmed the lights as the president started the projector located in the corner of the conference room. It was difficult to tell exactly what we were looking at on the TV screen. It was mostly darkness punctuated with bright bursts of light. I was about to ask what we were watching when the image cleared up dramatically.

“This footage was taken from our deep space probe, Orion,” the general noted. He didn’t have need to further clarify what we were seeing. Chills ran up my spine as I glanced at the ship that held me captive for over eighteen months. The general continued, “We have reason to believe that they will complete their repairs much sooner than we had anticipated.”

“What kind of time frame are we looking at, General?” the president asked as if this were the first time he had viewed this tape. Could that be possible? Why on Earth would they have waited for me?

“It’s hard to say, sir. It would appear that they have the technology and the motivation, considering that we have their supreme commander, to have the repairs done in a matter of weeks. They honestly almost appear to be dragging their feet.”

“Reinforcements,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?” the president asked.

“Reinforcements, sir. They may be waiting for battle cruisers before they launch an invasion.”

“Whatever would give you that idea, Captain?” the president asked as he wiped his glasses.

“Sir, during my stay on the ship I was informed that the Progerians have been attacking planets around the universe for thousands of years. We’re probably one of the first races they have encountered that has given them pause to reconsider their efforts. Or quite possibly, they have radioed for help because they no longer have a supreme commander, and just don’t know what to do.”

“That makes no sense,” the general said. “They must have some sort of contingency plan in effect if and when their supreme commander dies.”

“Maybe this is it, sir,” I suggested.

“So they just sit there like ducks in a puddle?” the general asked.

“Well, first off, General, it’s a very large puddle and I am under the impression that they will never allow one of our ships to leave Earth’s orbit, much less get inside their mother ship again. What say you, Captain?” the president intoned.

“I agree with both of you. They are just sitting there, and I wish that we had some sort of long-range strike capabilities. But they’ll never let us launch an attack. They may be without leadership, but they certainly aren’t helpless.”

“So now what?” the president asked his general.

“We wait, sir. We wait and we prepare. We pull back all the military we can and we defend our shores.”

“General, you know how I feel about pulling back our troops. It will destabilize the world to near anarchic conditions.”

“And you know how I feel, Mr. President.”

“Yes, and I fully empathize with your patriotism, but this is now a global conflict, not solely an American one,” the president chimed in.

“Sir, if America is attacked and we fall, there will be nobody on this planet who could stand up to these invaders.”

“General, if we abandon our posts worldwide, there won’t be anything worth defending.” The president was beginning to raise his voice. Apparently, they had been round and round on this topic before. I wanted to quell things before this turned into a shouting match.

“Mr. President, General Burkhalter, please!” I yelled, definitely louder than my station warranted. “I will be as honest with you both as possible. I do not believe that anything we do now will stop or even diminish their initial assault. You’ve seen their ships and their weaponry. Our best course of action will be to evacuate the largest cities worldwide and hide.”

“You would have us stick our head in the sand, and just hide?!” the general asked incredulously.

“Yes, sir, I would. That would be our best defense. We wait until they are done ‘beating us down and sapping our will’ then we come out from hiding and strike with everything we’ve got.”

“I don’t agree, Captain.” The general said in an attempt to browbeat me. “We will need to stop them before they ever get a toe hold on planet Earth.”

“I’m sorry, Captain Talbot, but I have to agree with the general on this one. And what do we tell the citizens of the world as we evacuate them?” the president asked.

“The truth, sir. I think it might be getting to the point where we have no choice in the matter.”

“No, we always have a choice, and to paraphrase, I don’t think they can handle the truth.”

“See sir? That’s where I think you have it wrong.” The general looked up at me as if I were performing Hari kari. “People, when pushed to extremes, can do amazing things. And no matter what you decide here today, they are going to find out. Whether it’s this week or the next, by our media or by the alien gunships.” I was hot, and I definitely didn’t want to start cussing at the president of the United States or end up in some secret underground jail cell, so I went over to the water cooler to calm down a bit.

“Captain, we appreciate your candor, but if you could please excuse us, the general and I have some logistics we need to work out.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Captain,” the general motioned. “Wait for me in the officers’ lounge.”

“Yes, sir.” I walked out the door, careful to make sure that I didn’t slam it and show my true feelings.

Chapter 5

“Definitely outspoken, isn’t he, general?”

“That he is, Mr. President, but you’ve got to remember he’s been through a lot and he knows this enemy better than anyone on the planet. He’s even killed a dozen or so of them.”

“And what of his plan?”

“I’ve got to admit, General, it has merit. We know technologically and logistically they have a huge edge over us. But I strongly feel that they will be like cockroaches; once they get on the planet we’ll never be able to get them off. No, it’s better to never let them footfall on this planet.” All the while, the general was thinking of how he could hedge his bets with Paul’s militia.