The Gemini Divergence (70 page)

The AC and the DCO locked eyes with each
other from their chairs as they displayed silent apprehension in
reaction to the towers response, “Edward’s tower… Please tell me
this is a drill.”

“No drill! I repeat. No drill. We are under
attack by intruders that will probably retreat to space upon your
arrival.”

“Excuse me, did you say ‘retreat to
space?’”

“That’s affirmative.”

“What… or who, are you being attacked
by?”

“If I could answer that, I would tell you,
but they’re round, they’re fast and they’re ornery… It’s been a
long night.”

“Edward’s Tower, what is our mission
objective?”

“You are to lock onto the largest intruder as
they amscray and fire your device when you are certain that it will
detonate outside of the atmosphere, preferably within LEO.”

“Do we have proper authorization?”

“SAC Command has assured us that the
authority comes all the way from the White House.”

One Hot Bird’s crew sat stunned, locking
stares with each other as they realized they only had a short time
to get ready.

The AC looked out of the front windows to now
see the multiple city lights of the vast valley surrounding Muroc
Dry Lake and Edwards AFB.

He could also see the tiny bright lights,
like Disney fairies, darting up and down within the perimeter of
the base.

“I’ll be damned… Look at those things.”

The largest of the objects was now hovering
at a high enough altitude for the DCO to read it on his
instruments, “I have the largest object… I am initiating locking
sequence.”

Suddenly the largest saucer froze in its
tracks, as if it had suddenly detected the new aggressor entering
the fray.

In only a moment, it had obviously signaled
the other craft, because they all dropped what they were doing and
fled into a loose formation towards the sky.

“We have lock on target,” reported the DCO,
“at their present rate of acceleration they will reach space in
…wait a minute, they’re accelerating exponentially… We need to fire
now! We could lose them.”

“Launch the damn thing!” cried the AC, “God
help us all.”

The silent projectile fell gracefully out of
the bomb bay until it had cleared the aircraft… far enough to
suddenly ignite its engine and slowly start creeping ahead.

From what at first seemed to be a crawl, the
missile began to scream away at an incredible velocity.

“Edward’s tower, this is One Hot Bird’s DCO;
Satan’s Stinger is away… We have a live one in the air.”

“Excuse me… did you say that the missile has
been launched?”

“Yes sir, we just lit it’s ass on fire.”

Tower technicians began to take refuge under
desks as they saw the contrail left by the incoming missile
approaching from their south east that was illuminated by the moon
as the Ops CO snarled sarcastically at them, “Ha, like that’s gonna
help… It either goes off in space or we don’t have to worry about
it anyway.”

The Hot Bird crew watched as the brightly
lunar illuminated trail of the missile began to curve upwards at
the spectral fairy lights that were ascending up into the stars
over the city lights of the valley.

Higher and higher they climbed as the missile
seemed to be closing the gap, until they all vanished into
oblivion.

They sat and looked at each other in the
silence; the only sound being the sound of their engines.

“Was that it?” the AC commented, “Honestly, I
was expecting more than…”

Suddenly there was an extremely bright flash
in the sky that lit the sky horizon to horizon.

They immediately covered their eyes and could
feel the intense heat.

The light seemed to shine right through their
hands and eyelids, so they instinctively averted their heads.

Once the blinding light had relinquished they
looked again to see a quickly expanding smoke ring vapor cloud that
was dissipating in the vacuum of space as fast as it was expanding
outwards.

All the while the ring seamed to have a flat
bottom that appeared to be floating on the atmosphere.

Brightly colored auroral lights began to
appear in their periphery of the heavens as storm clouds, with
lightning sporadically crashing, began to quickly materialize in
the lower atmosphere below the blast point; with the lightning
clouds at ground level being the largest part of a cone that
extended up into the atmosphere towards the blast point, with
sporadic sprites lighting the stratosphere like a strobe.

As the storm began to materialize, they could
see the city lights begin to go dark, section by section, until the
entire valley was black and all that could be seen was the moon
light reflecting on the distant mountains and the tops of the
quickly forming storm clouds, with the valley being occasionally
lit by the lightning.

*~*

The Air Force clamored to get everybody on
base that witnessed the event to swear to secrecy.

Just like all other aspects of the Gemini
War, the dead were written off as KIA or MIA in Vietnam and the
wounded were sworn to tell different stories to justify their
injuries.

The local media was led to believe that the
blackout was caused by the sudden electrical storm and the bright
flash was just another meteor from this year’s historic meteor
shower.

Air Force CE immediately started to rebuild
the base.

*~*

Schwerig was sitting at his desk when there
was a knock at his door.

He beckoned, “Enter.”

In walked Graff, now a General, and given his
own military station to command, “Good day, Feldmarschall
Schwerig.”

Schwerig leaned back in his chair and
scoffed, “I know that you did not come to greet me in person to
tell me how well the mission went… Something is obviously wrong…
What is it?”

“Well, Feldmarschall, the actual assault went
spectacularly as planned.”

“But?” interrupted Schwerig.

“Yes, but, the Americans arrived with one of
their B-58 anti-satellite aircraft armed with a tactical nuclear
warhead.”

“Your ships couldn’t outrun the missile?”

“Not in the atmosphere, and it caught our
squadron on the precipice of space. The burst had the atmosphere as
a back plate for the blast, so it was more effective than a normal
space blast.”

“Did you lose your entire expeditionary
force?”

“No, Feldmarschall, two small fighters that
were out and ahead of the rest of the pack survived the blast and
were able to return to station.”

“Were they able to report anything of
significance?”

“The American Air Force will need months to
repair the damaged Gemini capsule refurbishment facilities at the
North Base section of Edwards, but there is something even better
to report.”

Schwerig’s eyes perked up, “Oh yes, what
might that be?”

The capsule parts were being delivered in
McDonnell Corporation trucks, with Missouri license plates… We
believe that the Blue Gemini capsules are being manufactured at
McDonnell’s main facilities at Lambert Field in St. Louis, as well
as the NASA variant… Should I strike the McDonnell facilities
immediately?”

“No… We will in due time… First we will go
ahead with the mission on New York.”

~~~**^**~~~

The Gemini War / The New York Blackout Of
65’

It wasn’t quite freezing, but it was a very cold
winter rain; chattering on the tin roof of the hanger that Hughes
and Jack were held up within.

They were waiting at Niagara Falls ANG base for the
Overseers to show up at the Robert Moses and Lewiston power plants
which were just to the north of the base.

The combination of the Canadian and American power
plants around Niagara Falls was the largest conglomeration of
hydroelectric power in the entire world, and the largest single
supplier of electricity for the state of New York.

It seemed like the obvious place for the
Raumsfahrtwaffe to show up if they were truly intent on knocking
out the north eastern power grid. So here is where Howard and Jack
were staked out and waiting for them to appear.

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” grudgingly declared
Hughes, “where the hell did you learn to play poker like that?”

Jack flicked his cigar on the hanger floor and
started to rake in the pile of wagers in the middle of the table as
he gloated, “I have spent an enormous amount of time during my
career waiting in hangers like this for aircraft to return from
missions.”

As Jack started to open the folded pieces of paper
that he had just collected and started to read them, Hughes
commented, “I think that I got into the wrong side of the aerospace
business… this seems like much less work… I’ll wager that it
doesn’t quite pay as much though.”

“I don’t know,” sarcastically
quipped Jack as he held up an open IOU, “It doesn’t seem like
you’re loaded quite as well as the news papers tout ‘you’ to
be.”

Jack then held up a few more of the pile of IOUs
that he had been collecting from Hughes all night, as Hughes was
famous for never carrying cash or ID of any kind.

As a matter of fact, Hughes had been arrested for
vagrancy several times in his life by police that didn’t recognize
him, but had seemingly come across a man with no identification or
money whatsoever.

Jack continued to groan, “I’ve waited my entire life
to get into a game with a whale like you, and I had to lend you a
damn dime so that you could have a root beer while we played.”

Hughes chuckled and winked as he smiled and held up
his root beer in a facetious salute to Jack, “I have never been
comfortable being rich. I’ve always preferred to get my hands
dirty… I guess that I never felt as if I deserved it all unless I
worked for it like everybody else.”

“Well I’ll give you that… You don’t act like any of
the other rich snobs that I ‘ve ever met in my life.”

“What does the Air Force call you boys that sit
around and wait anyway?”

“Mushrooms.”

“Mushrooms?”

“Yeah, they keep us in the dark and feed us
shit.”

Hughes burst into laughter.

“I’m serious,” insisted Jack, “They have us collect
all of their most sensitive secrets, but they never tell us crap
about what’s actually going on… They just continuously send us into
the lion’s den to see if he’s sleeping.”

Jack pulled out a pair of dimes and handed them to
Hughes.

Hughes asked, “What are these? Did you want me to
get us more sodas?”

Jack looked at Hughes like he was stupid and
sarcastically quipped, “No, I wanted you to see what it felt like
to have two dimes to rub together… Of course I want you to get us
some more pops.”

As Hughes was walking towards the soda machine Jack
suddenly realized something and yelled after him, “Hey! Where and
when am I supposed to cash these damn things in, if you ‘never’
carry money?”

*~*

“We must factor the response times of those infernal
delta winged bombers into our missions within continental America,”
demanded Schwerig as he planned for the power grid assault with
Graff as they inspected the specially constructed power grid
disrupter saucers.

“Yes, the men have already nicknamed them ‘Pikes of
Mephistopheles,’ and the closest ones to Pennsylvania and New York
are the ones based at Bunker Hill AFB in Indiana,” reported
Graff.

“That only gives us a half of an hour to finish our
task and depart.”

“Unless, Herr Feldmarschall, we could come from the
ocean, dropping from space somewhere around the Azores, and then
NORAD would not see us enter the atmosphere… That should give us a
propagation delay from first report till first scramble orders of
at least twenty minutes.”

Schwerig smiled, “Yes, that’s very good General
Graff… You may get the hang of this after all… Do you have any
other good ideas while you’re on a roll?”

Perhaps, Herr Feldmarschall, I believe that they
would never detonate one of their nuclear weapons within the
atmosphere over their own territory… As they are sure to respond
with another nuclear tipped weapon, since it worked so well for
them over Edwards. I believe that when they arrive on station that
instead of retreating towards space as a densely packed group, we
should scatter to all points of the compass just above tree top
level and use our superior speed to put safe distances between
their B-58 and our retreating assault saucers.”

“Marvelous… That is quite cunning, General Graff… If
you pull this one off successfully, I may just put you in charge of
more than just one space station.”

Graff snapped to attention, “That would be the
highest honor of my life, Feldmarschall Schwerig.”

Schwerig then started to look at some objects within
one of the saucers that looked like 50 gallon drums, “What are
these devices?”