seawasp | FENRIR: Chapter 13

So Stephanie had made a call to action...

Part II: Welcome Wagon

Chapter 13: Politics as Usual

"Dr. Bronson did a bang-up job at that conference," George Green said, as they seated themselves following the President's arrival.

"She did," Jeanne said, with a combination of pride and guilt. "I don't think she realizes how good she is at that kind of thing."

"Many people are rather good at arguing for things they believe passionately in," observed Hailey Vanderman. "But are you ready for her to figure out the trick?"

Jeanne sighed. "Honestly, I hope she'll just come to understand it more as… choosing a particular part of the story to tell."

Hailey shook his head, and Eva Filipek fixed her with a cynical stare. "She is not stupid, just idealistic. Which is why you put her out there."

Jeanne rolled her eyes. "Of course that's the reason. If Dr. Stephanie Bronson gives a speech like that, everyone's going to take it at face value – which they did, and why her declaration of a rescue mission is catching fire." She tapped the cover of Time, which showed Stephanie, caught on camera when Fenrir had flared and disappeared; the expression showed her concern and shock, fitting the headline "To The Rescue."

"And no one would have believed it at all if you made that speech," agreed George. "But 'let's get out there and loot the bodies' isn't going to play so well."

"George!" snapped Jeanne, exasperated. "There are a lot of reasons for us to go catch up with Fenrir –"

"—all of which, aside from Stephanie's, amount to either 'get them before they get us,' or 'see what we can beg, borrow, or steal from the Fens,'" Hailey said bluntly. "Which are all the reasons the other countries will work with us on this. No one wants to be left out of the greatest opportunity in the history of the world."

She shrugged and smiled. "Yes, all right, but I would prefer not to put it that… crudely, especially if anyone's ever going to be interviewed about it. Roger, we've already got the appropriations being run through the House and Senate?"

"Yes, and unless some terrible scandal hits in the next few days it'll go through; even your mortal enemies in Congress aren't going to go down as the people who said 'fuck you' to an entire species. There might be one or two dissenters for form's sake, but I don't envy whichever Congressional members are chosen for that particular fate."

"How much are we putting through? It's obviously going to be deficit spending from hell," Eva asked.

"Overall package looks to be about three point two trillion," Roger replied.

"Ooof!" George said. "That's gonna be popular once the fever wears off. Not."

"Not quite as bad as it sounds," Roger said. "A lot of that is funding a lot of work on things related to Fenrir, which will stimulate major upswings in multiple industries. In less than two years we, with our partners, are going to have to build a giant nuclear-powered spaceship capable of flying, and if necessary fighting, at speeds greater than anything we've ever built. There'll be everything from support for basic research on a fast track to major contracts for manufacturing industries in this bill. That'll also stimulate the economy through smaller businesses – hell, the SBIR budget alone will skyrocket."

Jeanne nodded. The Small Business Innovation Research program promoted the use of small companies in basic and applied research through allocating a small percentage of every large Federal agency's budget to SBIR grants. A huge number of innovative ideas came from that program and found their way into military, government, and private applications. "We'll have to play up all the advantages of this funding bill heavily, Roger."

"On the positive side, it's not a disaster-recovery program where people can just accuse the government of giving away money it doesn't have for no purpose," Hailey Vanderman said. "It's working towards a concrete result and we're riding on a big wave of sentiment."

"Who are our partners in this?" Eva asked. "Realistically, I mean. I know that practically every country on the planet will want to have something in on Welcome Wagon, but no project like this could work with a hundred-plus groups involved."

Jeanne nodded to Roger, who brought up a graphic. "Let's be blunt: making a nuclear pulse rocket the size of a regular warship in less than two years is going to be a matter of money and technical skill. So from our point of view, we're really looking at us, China, Japan, Germany, and our friends in the UK, with some participation from India and France. Any country with an economy less than a tenth of ours just isn't in the running. We'll have to find diplomatic ways of making it look like the others are participating, but the combination of those seven is well over 60% of the entire world's GDP; the others, all put together, can't manage 40% among them all."

"And the US and China are the lion's share even there, over 40% of the world total," pointed out George. "So, leaving out PR, it's really us and China with some important minor partners."

Hailey Vanderman grimaced. "I don't like the idea of working that closely with China on something that's obviously going to use the most vital secrets of, well, both countries."

"I know the headaches this will cause," Jeanne said, "but let's try to look at this as an opportunity. China has huge industrial capability but we have some reason to be cautious; both sides are going to have to agree to having neutral inspectors check every major component provided by either side. China may have a checkered reputation in terms of the quality of work on occasion, but the USA isn't flawless either; we all could name at least three projects off the tops of our heads where our contractors lost us billions through accidental or deliberate failures to meet specs."

"That inspection requirement's something we need to get nailed down fast," Hailey said emphatically. "Some of the things Welcome Wagon will need have never been built before, and we're not going to get second chances on them."

"In fact, we should probably have two of everything in that category manufactured by separate vendors," Eva said, and George and Hailey nodded, along with Roger. "Especially the pusher plate; it will be either the largest cast steel object ever made or one of the largest, if not the largest, pieces of welded steel ever manufactured."

"Roger, get on that with FORT," Jeanne said. "I want it negotiated before the euphoria wears off."

"China's ahead of us there," Roger said. "They sent in a query that implied the need for such an agreement just before we started this meeting."

"This is going to be a security nightmare," Hailey muttered.

"Security will be the least of our problems," Jeanne said, in her Presidential voice. "Hailey, we're going to be needing to build trust in areas we've traditionally tried to promote suspicion, and we can't afford to fail. Isn't it true that most of our technological secrets are at best short-term and at worst things that the other side can already guess and just have trouble replicating?"

Looking as though the answer actively pained him, and exchanging a similar glance with George Green, Hailey nodded. "Yes, in general. They know pretty much what we can do, and we know pretty much what they can do. You can sometimes mislead intelligence on one thing or another but… yes, overall."

"And our whole purpose on this project – ignoring the, um… sapientarian? Whatever 'humanitarian' is for things that aren't human, those aspects – is to either protect the entirety of humanity from possible invaders, or to get us technology we haven't even got a start on from the aliens, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then cooperation – including just letting our allies know what we know about how to do things – is our best hope for getting either of those results. Let's not screw up the design of a nuclear spaceship because we were trying to keep secrets."

"I will advise you strongly to place limits on that," Hailey said. "And by the law there's things we can't do easily in that area."

"Then your assignment, Hailey, is to work with everyone in our security groups at DHS and elsewhere to determine what we should be letting our allies have – regardless of how much it makes people scream – what we absolutely don't want them to have, and what laws we have to change or suspend or whatever to make it work," Jeanne said bluntly. "Because I will be damned if we're going to spend three trillion of the taxpayers' dollars on a ship that doesn’t quite work right because we were too afraid to share. They'll have to do the same thing, of course, and we both have spies on every side to tell is who's holding out. But figure it out. I want a report on my desk by next week on this."

Hailey was visibly biting back a response, so she softened her tone. "Look, Hailey – and George, I see you're already getting a headache – the technology is the easier part of security here. We're not going to let them into our computers, show them our bases, any of that. Welcome Wagon – and we've got to get a better name for it, by the way – it's going to need technology that we're all already working on. They know how to make nuclear bombs. They already know about antimatter confinement research, particle accelerators, all the key aspects of the ship. We just want to make sure it's made the best way possible, because we have literally one shot at this."

Hailey sighed. "Yes, Madame President. You're probably right, but it goes against the grain of, well, every security agency ever, and I am a lot more open-minded than some of my predecessors."

"If it was easy, I wouldn't need you to do it, Hailey, George. Now, Eva," she turned to the head of the Department of Energy, "some of that funding will help with the antimatter and nuclear propulsion design work, yes?"

"Yes, and we'll appreciate it. CERN's making good strides forward on converting to antimatter production, thank God, and both some of our special research groups at Sandia and in France think they're really progressing on making long-term antimatter storage. Oak Ridge and Sandia's joint report on uranium fuel tailoring says it should be feasible to do it on the fly at least a couple of ways, but I'm waiting to see more concrete results."

"Good. Are we getting anything from other countries on those areas?"

"Some. With this new public support I hope to see increased transparency, at least, letting us see which of us could best do the rest of the work – and there is a lot of work to do, since nuclear research has been heavily slowed down for decades."

"Keep me posted." She checked the time on the monitor. "Almost out of time. Roger's already blocked out time for a follow-up meeting next week, make sure you all set that time aside."

Jeanne rose, with everyone else following suit. "Thank you all, and let me know if you run into any roadblocks; I'll try to keep some dynamite on hand."

She left, trying to project the same calm confidence that had served her all the way through her race to the White House, but it wasn't easy. While she was convinced that technological secrecy surrounding Welcome Wagon was likely to cause major problems they could not afford, Hailey Vanderman's concerns were very real; if there was a key technological element an enemy had been missing that, for example, suddenly allowed them to decrypt secure transmissions faster, there were agents in that country who might die because of it.

Her advisors told her that Welcome Wagon wouldn't cause major fallout problems, but she couldn't help think of the nightmarish consequences if they were wrong.

China had a lot to gain from Welcome Wagon's success, and there was no practical way to do it without their support… but they were not a simple and trustworthy friend of the USA, and with their economy now close to matching that of the United States – by some metrics, already passing it – they posed a huge threat – and opportunity.

Every decision she was making here would affect the lives of everyone on Earth, and something she had learned – and come to a very uneasy acceptance of – in her rise through politics was this: even the right decisions could kill.

True dat.