FENRIR: Chapter 29

[seawasp]

Business as usual isn't as usual as business is...

 

 

Chapter 29. Plots and Plotters

Days to Launch: 196

The President sat in her seat in Air Force One and luxuriated in the short period of quiet as the craft prepared for takeoff, everyone strapped in for the ascent. For those few minutes, she had no responsibilities, no demands other than to sit still and let the aircraft do its job. It was surprisingly refreshing.

     And she needed it. As soon as the chime sounded and the seatbelt sign dimmed, she unsnapped her seatbelt and stretched, then moved aft to the conference room.

     It was relatively empty; just her and Roger Stone. "All right, Roger. Update me, before I have to get to all the other work."

     "Yes, Boss," he said with a quick smile. "Good news first: Carpathia's running a little ahead of schedule now. The military and astronaut crews have been getting actual time in space on some of Young's SpaceShip One vehicles. The civilian crew doesn't need the experience, but there's a big gap between surviving acceleration and weightlessness in short spurts and having to do top-notch work under those conditions."

"Why under those conditions? Can't the… command deck, bridge, whatever we call it, rotate as well?"

"The short answer is 'no.' Longer answer is that the command and as many other vital elements as possible are buried towards the center of Carpathia to protect them in case of emergencies, so they cannot, practically, spin at all. Also, for any emergency maneuvers, the residential areas will likely be spun down so there's no additional gyroscope effect interfering with piloting."

"Understood," Jeanne said, committing another set of details to memory. "Go on."

     He flipped to another set of notes. "They're excavating the launch pit now and once that's done, they'll be coating the plate."

     "Fuel charges?"

     "More are being assembled every day," confirmed Roger. "There will be several thousand available by launch. As discussed before, the actual launch will start with a very large mass of conventional explosives – probably something around a kiloton, given the inefficiencies in the system – to make sure that the Carpathia is several hundred feet in the air before it detonates its first antimatter-triggered nuclear drive charge. That should minimize any possibility of fallout."

     Another page. "Other supplies are being accumulated and stored for the trip. We are supplying Carpathia with a two year trip in mind, even though it should be well under half of that."

     "If we can, add more; no ship ever complained about being over-supplied, and there are no supermarkets out there," Jeanne said.

     "I'll go over it with the team," agreed Roger.

     After a moment, Jeanne sighed. "So, what's the bad news?"

     "To an extent, the same we've been having the past few months: no bad news."

     Roger didn't need to explain that one. "I thought we'd actually caught a bunch of these people. It isn't possible that we've simply shut them down?"

     "I wish it were, Jeanne," he said. He reached into his briefcase and brought out a folder. "You're right, we've caught at least twenty cells of this group. Which is all they call themselves, by the way – The Group."

     "Anonymous enough, at least. I presume we've questioned them."

     "All of them have been subjected to extensive interrogation." At her glance, he shook his head. "No torture; no point in it, as we agreed. But it wasn't necessarily pleasant."

     "Did we learn anything, Roger? I can't imagine we could get twenty cells – how many people is that? – and learn nothing."

     "They were three-person cells, in general, so about sixty," Roger answered. "And we learned things, but so far, not very helpful things.

     "Several of the cells were extreme anti-nuke fanatics. Not a terrible surprise, of course, that was one of our first assumptions. They were recruited and guided into the Group based on that, and they assured us that their entire group was against nuclear power in all its forms.

     "Several others were … well, call them speculative paranoids. They don't want the Fens rescued. They believe the Fens were here to invade, kill, or otherwise do really bad things to us, and their accident is either luck or god-sent miracle, and we shouldn't aid them, but wait until we're sure they're dead. They want to prevent Carpathia from flying until it's too late to do anything but dissect the dead and salvage the ship."

     Jeanne was already getting an inkling of the problem. "And these people were also certain that was the overall purpose of the Group."

     "Exactly. Another set of them were anti-globalist types with various dislikes of other countries, feeling we were being suckered into this to make us vulnerable. A few believe that Carpathia is a new nuclear battleship for the Illuminati or whatever they think the 'Deep State' is this year."

     "This isn't an accident."

     "No. Whoever is running the Group is very clever. They have a goal – stop Carpathia – and they've recruited useful people from every possible type of anti-Carpathia organization they could find, using cutouts to make each group think this is their cause. Meanwhile, the top organizers are accomplishing their goal to act against Carpathia, but without knowing why they actual want to do this, we have a much harder time predicting what they're going to do next, let alone find out who's really running the show."

     "Conspiracies are usually small, though. Isn't it possible we've already cut out enough of the operatives to cripple them, and that's why we haven't seen any more hostile action towards the project?"

     Roger Stone pursed his lips, then closed his eyes and shook his head. "Possible, of course. But none of the security services believe so. All the cells we caught clearly had to be at least one or two levels from the top, and more likely three or four, to ensure that they're partitioned completely from each other. We don't believe we've gotten within striking distance of any of the leaders; we don't even know if the leaders are a single cell, or even one person with a cutout cell below them, or a larger group that organized The Group to be their catspaw."

     Jeanne rubbed her temples, feeling one of the far-too-common headaches starting. "I hate to ask, but what about the possibility that the 'larger group' is one of our supposed allies?"

     "Unfortunately possible. We don't believe that is the case – partly because a governmental organization could probably have managed a more decisive strike by now – but it is not yet ruled out. We're fairly close to ruling out it being a home-grown internal problem – that Army study was just one of their typical concept wargames, for instance – but anyone else, no.

     "But we are looking much more closely at it being a private organization, bankrolled by one or two wealthy individuals."

     Jeanne nodded. "And why haven't they done anything lately?"

     "Lots of guesses, but Hailey Vanderman over at the CIA says – and I agree – that they stopped and reassessed after we blocked their prior attempts. Hailey thinks that they're preparing for a large, single strike that will probably have a couple of prongs – striking two or three places at once. This allows them to focus their resources and have a better chance to disrupt the project in one shot, especially when they know we're on to them and any premature action now could lead to them being caught."

     "Do we know when they will do this?"

     "There's a couple of high-probability events. Problem is…" Roger hesitated.

     "Let me guess. I'm one of the targets Hailey thinks they'll go after."

     "There's a good chance of it," admitted Stone. "You or Stephanie seem the most likely targets, with a couple lower-probability people in the mix. Plus installations or components of Carpathia at  the same time. The real advantage to them of doing this later on is that if they can do real damage – either to morale or to Carpathia itself – it's going to be much harder for us to recover from it in time to launch."

     "Shooting me isn't going to stop the project, Roger. Andrea Perez's not going to swear in and then dump Carpathia." Her Vice President was not quite as enthusiastic about the project as she was, but even Andrea knew what political advantage was.

     "By itself, no. Possibly they'll target someone else – Flint, for instance, he's going to be crucial to keeping the ship running. But we have to assume you're high on the list, no matter what you think."

     She sighed. "All right, Roger. Let's assume that's true, and get assets in place for the high-probability events. But you realize that means I will still have to be present at those events if we want our enemies to come out in the open."

     She could see the tension in Roger Stone's face at the thought of using the President of the United States as bait. But at the same time, he knew he didn't have much choice.

     So as she knew he would, he just nodded and said, "Yes, Madame President."

She calls the shots in the end.