27
INTERLUDE 4
THE KINGMAKER
The White House
1145 Local Time
(One hour after the Battle of San Francisco)
Sarah Sherwood drove through the gates of the White House complex, passing by the South Lawn, and parked her car in the underground garage. It had only been five hours since she left the office so that she could sleep at her own apartment and feed her cats (Cat babysitters were expensive).
She had been at the White House for two days straight since the aliens attacked New York and four other cities. Not enough time to go home, get a proper meal and get a hot shower. She expected emergency calls when she worked as a Deputy Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, a daily occurrence since she started working under Howell’s administration.
But every day was now an emergency.
It was a thankless job, lots of sleepless nights, and most of all, Sarah just wanted to jab an expensive-looking pen right into her jugular so she could end her suffering. Why’d she choose this job anyway? To help people? Yeah, well, fuck that noise. She didn’t remember why she took it. For fun? A challenge? Was she a masochist? To bloat her resume? Three years and she was already ready to bolt for the private sector. She had many friends clamoring to hire her at the drop of a hat.
Not when aliens are murdering everyone, you’re not.
As hard as it might be, the game was all she cared about. Politics was a wheel of risk and reward, and it was addicting. Sometimes she hated herself for wanting more of it.
She checked her light makeup in the rearview mirror, touching up her lip gloss and making sure she wouldn’t look like an extra of The Walking Dead. It’s a habit of hers. She only had three hours of sleep last night. She might as well not have come home, but she feared poor Legolas and Aragorn, her two ragdoll cats, missed her terribly.
Sarah let out a breath. Since when did I become the cat lady? At thirty years old, she didn’t have time for relationships. Practically a White House job was like a marriage in itself. You get divorced once the president you served either got voted out or ended their second term. Not when you helped the youngest president to take the highest office in the land after a brutal campaign trail. There were some close calls, but Sarah turned that around. It was an eight-year-long commitment, and Sarah still had five more years to go.
For the past three days, the White House looked like a war zone; at least, that’s what Sarah saw it. There were soldiers everywhere, guarding every entrance and exit. Men in camouflage patrolled the roofs, and dozens of armored vehicles parked outside the perimeter. Some of them stood attention as she walked through the front doors. She nodded at them but kept walking, ignoring some of the staffers’ attempts at conversation. She couldn’t muster enough strength to listen to what they had to say. She plastered the best ‘bitch face’ she could ever come up with to deter them from pulling her aside. She saw Emmett Landy standing by one of the entrances, talking to a man in his mid-fifties wearing a military uniform. What was his name? Lieutenant General Parkins or something?
Emmett marched toward her, sweating. “You’re late.”
“By five minutes. There’s traffic. Everyone’s out. Have you heard about San Francisco?”
“How could I not? My sister and her family live near Oakland.”
“Jesus Christ. Are they alright?”
“Yeah. I got in contact with them an hour ago. They’re evacuating the city.”
“So, what’s the emergency? Why’d you call me back here?”
Emmett frowned. “Well, they’re all in the Oval Office. Follow me.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“Everyone.”
She followed him toward the Oval Office.
She was surprised to find that Emmett’s ‘everyone’ included most of the cabinet members, their respective staff, a few high-ranking military officers, and William Tremblay, President Howell’s Chief of Staff. There were at least sixty people in the cramped room.
President Douglas “Dougie” Howell quietly sat behind his desk, wearing a dark gray suit, elbow resting on the armrest, thumb and index finger under the chin. For someone who was supposed to be the youngest US president ever sworn in, he had aged over a decade three years into his first term. His dark brown hair started to have grays at the side, putting almost twenty pounds since he took office, and he had grown a beard; that way, people would take him more seriously instead of sporting his next-door, boyish movie-star looks (An advice he took to heart from William). The latter worked for the campaign trail. Not so much for the office.
Howell looked up when he noticed Sarah enter, and William gestured for her and Emmett to come in. The rest of the occupants stared at her with unreadable expressions. There was nowhere to sit, so she stood behind two men from the policy council. They were all listening to the phone sitting on the president’s desk.
Sarah was about to ask Emmett who they were talking to, but Emmett shushed her.
“Can I count on you, Mr. President?” A man said in the other line.
Howell looked around the room. Most of his advisers wanted to jump in and answer for him, but they gestured for him to wait. “Can I get back to you in a few minutes?” Howell asked.
“Take your time. The aliens sure are.”
Howell frowned while William pressed the button to hold the call. Sarah could tell he didn’t like that. The moment they heard the ping, everyone in the room burst into a million conversations, debating what they should do. Half the room wanted the president to work with the man behind the phone. The other half wanted whatever he had for themselves.
“An American found it,” the Secretary of Defense, a balding man in his early fifties, said. “He said so himself. He’s a Marine. He should hand it to us. Technically, he is still on active duty! He has a responsibility to hand this tech to the United States government!”
“I doubt he’d do such a thing,” the Secretary of State, a woman with short blonde hair and steely eyes, said. Out of everyone in the room, she was the only one who looked like she bothered to dress nicely for the occasion. Sarah didn’t even have time to put on makeup. “Staff Sergeant Segerstrom doesn’t sound like he’s going to give up his new toy, American or not. I wouldn’t if I were him.”
By then, everyone has chimed in with their opinions.
“He wants soldiers!”
“Our soldiers, no less!”
“We shouldn’t give it to him! It’s to protect Earth!”
“Shouldn’t we think this through? He’s an ally!”
“I don’t trust anyone close to one of those things!”
“He could be mind-controlled by those aliens! Maybe it’s not even him!”
Sarah leaned toward Emmett’s ear. “Who are they talking about?”
It took Emmett a moment. “Uh, Yeah. Tony Segerstrom.”
“And who the fuck is Tony Segerstrom?”
Emmett gave him a shrug and told her how a human was currently controlling the space stations orbiting around the planet. By that point, Sarah was lost. A human controlling the aliens? She tried to follow the conversation (mostly the arguing) about whether they should accept Segerstrom’s offer. It seemed the Marine was sitting on a mountain of resources up in space, and he would gladly trade those resources if the Americans and their allies allowed him to “borrow” their soldiers or at least form a joint alliance. Mainly he was aiming for the latter. He asked permission to conduct a joint military invasion of San Francisco, where the aliens held the trapped civilians hostage.
“Why did he make it sound like he’s a separate entity?” Sarah whispered.
“I don’t know,” Emmett said. “I overheard earlier about forming some organization. The president offered him a comfy military position before William told me to call you.”
“How long has this call been going?”
“Almost an hour. Maybe more.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t that phone supposed to be secure?”
Emmett paused his lips. “Yeah. Then this Segerstrom guy blitzed through it and called the president right on his personal cellphone. Scared him half to death.”
“Did they trace the call?”
“Yeah.” Emmett pointed up to the ceiling. “In space.”
Who the fuck is this guy?
As the entire room argued for about half an hour, Sarah caught on to what was happening by scrolling through various Twitter posts and the news on her phone. She found out that the Marine was one of the abductees from USC three days ago and that a guy in their mid-twenties was calling the freaking President of the United States like a beck-and-call was funny. They even made Tony Segerstrom into a meme: the Marine standing over the dead alien on top of a taxi’s caved-in roof, a scimitar-looking weapon in his hand, the alien’s decapitated head nearby.
“That’s a campaign poster right there,” Emmett commented.
Everyone online called him a hero, and the word was spreading fast.
Eventually, they returned to the Marine waiting in the other line for half an hour. Sarah admired his patience. But Howell sided with the other half in the room salivating over the tech’s potential. Promises were made. Offers of enviable positions were thrown around that the guy could take. Money, too. Tony Segerstrom rejected all of them, insisting that he answered to no one. Not even to the president. To a room filled with people heading their own departments, organizations, councils, and everything else, everyone wanted a piece of Segerstrom’s tech.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Sarah couldn’t help but chuckle. “He’s got spine,” she whispered to Emmett. “I’ll give him that.”
To say no to the president’s face without as much as a stutter was impressive. The Marine made him look like a petulant child, and Howell almost turned beet-red, embarrassed. Everyone in the room heard the Marine reject him loud and clear. Sarah could pinpoint when everyone lowered their gaze, afraid to meet Howell’s glare.
Then, the word treason and sedition were added into the mix. President Howell demanded that the Marine hand over the tech as the call turned to its second hour. “For the good of the nation,” he added as if that would salve his words.
A brief pause. “Can’t say I’m disappointed, but it was a pleasure talking to you, Mr. President. I’ll think of something else,” he said almost calmly before he dropped the call.
Howell stared at the phone for a long moment. Nobody hangs up a call to the President of the United States. Nobody.
“D—did he just hang up?” The Secretary of Defense asked.
Howell took a deep breath and leaned deeper into his chair. “Cancel all my meetings for tonight. Call everyone. We’re going to deal with this…bastard…and get me in contact with every motherfucker who knows what we’re dealing with.”
“He’s recruiting,” William Tremblay said. “We can kneecap him if we get the word out to our allies to ignore his call. Make sure he has no choice but to turn to us.”
Howell nodded. “Good. Make sure the British and the Germans are on the same page about this.”
“Is that wise?” Sarah spoke up, startling herself. Everyone turned to face her, and she tried to regain her composure. “I mean, he technically has his finger over a loaded nuke, so to speak, er, Mr. President.”
“He doesn’t have a nuke,” the Secretary of Defense said.
“We don’t know that, sir. All we know is that he can destroy the alien ships and maybe even our cities. Haven’t you seen what’s up in the sky? He’s got the tech to wipe us out. Now, is it wise to alienate him?”
“Ms. Sherwood—” William tried to interject, but Sarah wasn’t done.
“If he has nowhere to turn to, he could go to China, North Korea, or Russia. I know no one in this room wants that.”
“That’s enough, Sarah,” William said lowly. “We’ll discuss this with our respective committee. We’ll work overnight and ensure we get a press conference ready early this afternoon to respond to Segerstrom’s online presence.”
“Why? What’s happening online?” President Howell said.
“He’s gone viral, sir. The press is asking for our statement. They’re wondering if we have anything to do with it since he’s a Marine and all.”
“With saving the city?”
“Yes.”
Howell pondered. “Draft a quick response about Tony Segerstrom. I want to deliver it myself.”
“What about San Francisco, Mr. President?” The Secretary of State asked. “I hear the aliens are still alive and have taken control of most of the city. It has become a bloodbath.”
“Wasn’t the Pacific Fleet and the National Guard there?”
“We should at least send more military presence within the area, sir,” the Secretary of Defense said. “Perhaps we can contact Mr. Segerstrom again and offer—”
“What about it? We don’t need his help. We’ll do it ourselves! We are the United States of America. We got the biggest military budget in the world, so I reckon you put that to some fucking use, Hank, and blow these bastards out of my goddamn city! Now, draft me a speech for the press conference.”
In other words, we need to think about a narrative to present, Sarah thought. She had a bad feeling she would be relegated to that task.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to. An hour later, Tony Segerstrom beat them to the punch by broadcasting to everyone on Earth about his intentions. He stayed on the air for eleven uninterrupted minutes as he “recruited” people to join him in space. He even admitted that President Howell had already refused his offer of partnership.
Howell was not pleased.
They tried calling Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and most major stations to stop the broadcast, but they quickly realized it wasn’t coming from them. Something inside their system took over and locked them out. By the time they regained control, the footage had already been copied and posted on YouTube and Twitter. It didn’t take long before it reached TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.
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Tony Segerstrom’s speech racked up hundreds of millions of views. Sarah watched it again several times before William banned everyone from bringing it up across the office. Distribution of the coordinates for the “pickup sites” had been scrubbed from the internet, including Segerstrom’s website, where you could sign up to join his cause. But the old adage reared its ugly head that once something was online, you could never truly get rid of it. Four of the pickup sites were within the continental United States. It was shared. Screenshotted. Sent on anonymous texts. The list was on everyone’s phones. You couldn’t delete it even if you tried. It’ll just show up in the next hour, including the registration website.
By the end of the afternoon, a quarter of the planet watched the speech.
By the end of the week, mostly everyone had seen it.
When Sarah Sherwood walked into the White House doors again, Emmett and two other staffers had already sent in their resignation letters. They didn’t say why they were quitting. They practically ignored President Howell’s refusal of their resignation. Emmett Landy was just gone. Half a dozen more sent theirs within the following week. It didn’t take long to figure out where they went by Emmett’s last known picture on Twitter, geolocated just outside of Glendale, Nevada…nine miles away from one of Segerstrom’s new pickup sites. The coordinates would change every time the military cordoned one area, and thousands of people still continued to fly up to the space stations daily.
Sarah even wondered what it would be like living up there. She sometimes looked up to the stars at night every time one of the stations flew above Washington, DC, looming like a second moon.
What if…?
She had been ignoring William’s calls for the past hour. All he wanted her to do was play gatekeeper to some of the vicious piranhas from the press to a president who would rather blame his fuckups on Segerstrom than deal with the crisis in San Francisco. His popularity had dwindled massively compared to the Marine.
President Howell tried to salvage it by storming San Francisco to “Kill the quartz!”
It was televised nationwide. What was supposed to be a patriotic and prideful display of America’s might was one of the greatest defeats in military history, with ten thousand soldiers dead—no, massacred. The survivors tucked their tails and retreated fifty miles away to San Jose, licking their wounds like dogs caught under the rain. By then, everyone in the White House staff was clamoring for President Howell to extend an olive branch to Tony Segerstrom. Hard-headed as always, Howell refused to form a diplomatic channel.
Sarah spat a curse and returned to her desk. She had been dealing with the press since the Battle of San Francisco. She felt sorry for Jerry Atwell, the current Press Secretary (the third replacement in the past two weeks!), answering their questions about the Americans’ defeat. She could practically see him sweating through his fucking suit. She feared he would drop dead on the podium from a heart attack, roasted like that by the media.
Her phone’s notification ping roused her from her thoughts. One of her high school friends on Facebook (who posted a lot of shit about her kids’ lives on her profile) just shared a link to another Segerstrom registration website. She wondered how long it would take for this new version to go down. The last one barely lasted ten hours.
For the first time, Sarah clicked the link. It put her on a blank website with a typical government registration form. A name. Her current job. The country she lived in. Her phone number. And then the submit button. She wondered how they accepted applicants with such sparse information. It didn’t even ask for her passport credentials or her social security.
She put all the required information within two minutes. She didn’t know why she did it. Curiosity got the best of her, she reckoned. When she returned to work on the proposal William wanted triple-checked for the domestic policy council, her phone chimed again.
In barely a minute of registering, she got accepted.
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There was no traffic when she drove to Lancaster, Ohio, and purchased a one-night stay at a nearby motel. The next day, she drove toward Wayne National Forest near Rush Creek and waited for the transport ship to arrive.
The first thing Sarah worried about was if her cats were allowed up in space, but once all her bags had been packed, she decided to bring them with her anyway. There was little information about how much they should bring. But ever since she worked at the White House, she didn’t have a lot of stuff to pack because she rarely spent her time at home. She paid off what was left of her rent, got her deposit back, and shoved all her belongings inside her car with Legolas and Aragorn in tow.
The mass exodus swept across the world. Everyone wanted to work in space, while almost every government was cracking down to stop them from doing so. William tried to convince her not to go. She didn’t even have to tell him why because he already knew.
“Haven’t you had enough?” William seethed. “Are you that irrational that Dougie didn’t choose you as his Chief of Staff, so you’re off galavanting to another shiny prize?”
“Oh, this is not about the fucking Chief of Staff, Will. And you know that. This was long before those ugly fuckers arrived. I feel like I’m wasting my time here. New York and San Francisco just got attacked, and instead, we’re sitting here with our thumbs up our asses, staring at the loaded gun from across the room. I’ve had enough.”
“We’ve been through so much over the years. You’re gonna give it up?”
“I’m not giving it up, Will. I’m looking for something worth my time.”
“And what? You’ll take your chances up there?”
“Why not? They’re the ones with another loaded gun. At least they had the guts to shoot back.”
Sarah left William’s office then. There were several texts, but she didn’t bother opening them.
The president threatened to call those who joined Tony Segerstrom’s cause treasonous for technically joining a foreign power. Some of it stuck. People online began accusing each other of being “un-American.” The swathes of online hate were vile to behold.
Sarah didn’t feel like she was doing anything wrong. Not a lot of folks know that she’s going up there. Not even her family. I’m fighting for my country, she thought. I’m fighting for Earth.
Frankly, Sarah had enough of their bullshit. The Americans couldn’t fight this new war alone. Not even with China, Russia, and Great Britain’s help. She thought about meeting this Tony Segerstrom she’d heard much about online. Every media outlet worth its hide had posted a puff piece about the Marine that killed and destroyed three quartz ships. He seemed like a decent guy, and if his promises were real, maybe there’s hope for humanity after all. She didn’t know what job they had for her up there, but she was glad she was doing something instead of being stuck behind the desk while she watched the administration flounder about how to deal with San Francisco’s alien occupation and the violence and riots erupting in New York due to the refugee crisis.
If they strapped a rifle on her hand and told her to fight in the front lines, she might as well do that, too. The quartz killed millions of people. It might be the end of the world, and if they all die, at least Sarah Sherwood fought for her planet when the call came.
When she reached Rush Creek along Geneva Drive, three dozen cars were already parked on the side of the road. She saw no one around except two men in their early twenties unpacking their luggage from the trunk. Sarah parked behind them and started unpacking as well.
“Hey, do you know where we’re supposed to meet?” Sarah asked one of the men.
“You registered as well?” The man wearing a Philadelphia Eagles hat asked.
“Yep,” Sarah replied, gesturing to her bags as if it were obvious. The man nodded and studied the cat kennel resting on one of her luggage. Sarah chuckled nervously. “They’re family,” she said.
“Sure. Follow us.”
She followed them down a short trail to an open field a few hundred feet behind a lone auto-body workshop. At least a hundred people were waiting by the hill, surrounded by blooming patches of poppies and daisies. Sarah dragged her bags closer and waited just like everyone else.
It didn’t take long for the transport ship to arrive, gliding down from the cloudless sky without leaving a wake. Hit was the first time Sarah had seen the alien vessels with her naked eye, and they were a lot bigger than the ones shown online. The crowd quickly formed up a line where the ramp descended, and six men wearing combat fatigues of gray and black walked down to greet them. Two more men wearing blue buttoned-up shirts and slacks followed after them, carrying electronic tablets, and they walked toward the front of the line and started letting people in. Sarah’s heart was beating so fast; she could hardly contain herself. She would be flying up there in a few moments, watching Earth from space! The thought made her stomach flutter.
The two soldiers started walking down the line. Sarah could’ve sworn they were both looking at her. Were they? She wasn’t sure. But then they stopped in front of her luggage.
“Are you Sarah Sherwood?” The first soldier asked.
Sarah blinked. “Uh, yeah. That’s me.”
“I’m Corporal Alonso Ruiz. Are these your bags?”
“Yes, but—” Ruiz nodded to the other soldier behind him, and the man lifted her bags and started walking toward the ship. “Hey, um, what’s this about?”
“Oh. I’m here to escort you to the ship personally, ma’am.”
An escort? “Sarah’s fine, corporal,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ruiz said without skipping a beat.
Sarah felt a little exposed when she realized she was overtaking the queue. The other travelers shot her curious and strange looks as she walked up the ramp. “May I ask why I’m being personally escorted, corporal?”
“Of course. The Forerunner wants to see you.”
“The…Forerunner?”
“It’s the title the Architects gave him, and it kinda stuck. You know him as Tony Segerstrom.”
“Tony Segerstrom personally wants to see me?”
“Prime flagged your application for the forerunner’s evaluation. Aren’t you President Howell’s Deputy Chief of Staff?”
“One of them,” she quickly replied. “There’s like ten of us.”
“But the one who stuck by him during the campaign trail, right?”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
“They called you Kingmaker. Made the youngest president in American history.”
“That’s William Tremblay’s achievement, corporal.”
Ruiz wasn’t fazed. “Not according to our sources. Anyway, Stokes will put your bags in the cargo hold. You can bring your furry friends up with you in your seat. You’ll be sitting up front, by the way. Lucky you.”
“Why? It got the best view?” Sarah asked too eagerly.
Ruiz grinned. “Well, you don’t have a lot of people puking at you. You’d be surprised how many folks suddenly get an existential crisis viewing our ball of dirt from up there.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. The front seats are closer to the bathroom.”