United Launch Alliance main facility. Decatur, Alabama. Ten minutes before the DC attack.

Chao never thought she’d think this, but here she was, sitting at a table in a conference room which looked out into a giant assembly room holding multiple huge rockets in various stages of construction. She also was sitting next to an alien, one who was fast becoming a good friend, while talking in-depth about technical things. And yet she was bored out of her skull. It was now the sixth day of trying to somehow figure out how to best repair the Rithro. During the first day, the four engineers assigned by different companies to this task group were tripping over themselves getting to talk to an actual alien, while Grakosh had in turn quizzed them endlessly about how the rockets worked and even gotten a tour…shadowed by multiple Secret Service agents, of course. By now things had settled down to the task at hand.

Fortunately, the distant crippled ship contained a veritable army of drones capable of quite complex tasks, so manpower…or alien-power…was not the problem. The problem was more a matter of having the proper raw materials available, especially for the damaged hydrogen tanks. The latter used a specialized lightweight but low-permeability alloy; in order to have any patches hold, whatever metal the humans provided needed to be close enough to its properties to properly bond or weld to it. Chao was not a metallurgist, but she was getting a crash course in it thanks to the endless discussions between Grakosh and the four engineers.

Then there was the matter of hauling it up to the L5 point. Trying to carry the needed tonnage in the ship’s landing boats would be like trying to drink a lake dry using a straw. But humans, right now, didn’t have any single rocket capable of carrying such a payload into orbit.

She, Grakosh, and the four engineers were spread out around a small table set before a whiteboard; the latter was not quite yet full. Next to the doors into the conference room stood a pair of Secret Service agents; Chao felt a bit sorry for them having to stand on their feet for so long.

“So Falcon Heavy can do about 26 tons to geostationary,” said one of the engineers, a gray-haired balding man named Blake. He was a metallurgist from SpaceX. “That’s fully expendable, of course. We did look a while back at how much it could take in a trans-lunar injection, I think it was somewhere around 18 tons, but we’d need to go back and redo that math.” He turned to Chao. “Will TLI be close to the delta-vee needed to get to L5?”

Chao perked up, now grateful she had something to contribute. After a bit of tapping on her laptop, she nodded. “It’s not exactly the same, but for initial planning purposes using TLI figures can work.”

One of the ULA engineers, a young blonde woman named Clara, regarded the whiteboard with a thousand-yard stare. Chao knew that Clara was not really looking at it. “Vulcan can do…somewhere around five and a half tons to TLI, if you strap six solids to it. Less mass, but it does have a bigger fairing than the Heavy.” She grinned at Blake.

“So we’ll need multiple launches?” Grakosh, of course, did not have a laptop or chair, and instead sat coiled up next to Chao. “Hmmm. I’d like to have at least thirty tons of patch material, just to have a comfortable margin.”

“So two to three launches of Heavy, or five of Vulcan, or some mix.” Clara looked over at Ned, the other ULA engineer. “That’s a lot of rockets. Our pipeline isn’t set up to crank out that many, that quickly.”

Blake nodded in sympathy. “We’ve got similar issues with using Heavy. We can use side boosters that have been well-reused and are close to end-of-life, but the center core is another matter. We don’t have that many of them, just because we didn’t have that much demand. Now we’d have to spool up production on them. Not my area of expertise, but you’re talking many months.”

The man from Raytheon, a skinny guy named Dwight, tapped the table in absent thought. “We could try something else.”

“If you’re thinking of using SLS, forget it,” said Ned, the other ULA engineer. “It’s got a lot of throw, even out to lunar orbit, but way too slow of a manufacturing speed. Even if we do repurpose some of the Artemis launches, it’ll be at least a year or two.”

Dwight smiled beatifically. “Keep in mind, we’re not talking about sending up boutique billion-dollar satellites. It’s gonna be mostly metal plates, at least at first. We can afford to swing for the fences.” He leaned forward. “Sea Dragon.”

“Oh fuck no,” said Ned. “First off, the original design study is from the damned Sixties. The redesign and approval alone will take a year at best, unless you just want to slap something together and go for it and then have everything explode on you.”

“What is ‘Sea Dragon’?” asked Grakosh.

Dwight rose and walked to the whiteboard. He flipped it over to the as-yet unmarked side and began sketching. “A super heavy-lift vehicle proposed a while ago, back when we were still trying to get to the moon. It’s two stage, like Falcon and Vulcan, but a lot bigger. A LOT bigger.”

He sketched something that looked like a child’s first drawing of a rocket; a big stubby tube with a single huge engine bell at the bottom and a conical nose. Dwight then added a dimension along its height showing the scale of the thing: 150 meters.

Grakosh let out a little trill; Chao wasn’t quite sure what that vocalization meant. “Hmm, yes, that is quite large for a chemical-engined craft.”

Clara snorted. “Dwight, nobody has ever made a pressure-fed engine anywhere near that large. Damn thing’s a bomb, I mean, even more of a bomb than a normal fueled rocket.”

“Pressure-fed,” mused Grakosh. “Ah, you use high-pressure gas to push the fuel and oxidizer into the combustion chamber, instead of those ‘turbopumps’ you showed me earlier.”

Dwight nodded. “Exactly. The problem with pressure-fed engines is that the tanks need to be a lot thicker to take the pressure, which of course adds a lot of mass and reduces the available payload. But you make it big enough and it becomes more feasible. This thing was designed to be constructed at a shipyard out of steel, not out of any sort of aluminum or other fancy alloys. Then it would get floated out into the ocean and launched vertically from the water. Estimated total payload…five hundred and fifty tons into Low Earth Orbit.”

“Admit it, Dwight,” replied Blake with a smile. “Your inner nine-year old wants it built just to see the spectacle when they light the candle on that giant sonofabitch. Am I right?”

Dwight set the marker down with a chuckle. “You’re not wrong.” Then his smile faded. “But seriously, folks. Our industry is used to doing things onsey-twosey. Even our illustrious colleague from SpaceX will admit that. But now we need to get a lot of shit into orbit, and yesterday. We are so far behind the technological eight ball that it isn’t even funny. Now, yes, we hope that our new allies will help us out with gravitic drives and all sorts of other lovely tech…once the various countries stop yelling at each other about how exactly to do that. But Grakosh, let’s assume we snap our fingers and, poof, the Rithro is magically fixed. How long will it take for you to get back and bring support?”

“Well, we did leave relay drones at each system, so we’ll be able to report to them well before we get there physically, but to scramble a proper defense fleet…let’s say twelve to eighteen months before they arrive in-system. That’s assuming we head back, of course.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Clara.

“Because once the Rithro is repaired, it will be the only ship in-system possibly able to fight a Breaker drone. We do not need to report in-person to the CEB; we only need to jump back to Barnard’s star to plant a relay drone and send our message. If we left to travel all the way back…well, humans would be defenseless. You have no orbital combat capability.”

Grakosh pondered the sketch. “At the moment, as impressive as that design is, it is theoretical. So. We need to have fewer launches…am I correct that if you go into low orbit, you can lift more?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dwight. “Literally tons more.”

“Then perhaps we can do a hybrid solution. The landing boats are limited in their internal volume, but they have far more thrust capability. We were able to push our ship with them, at least for a while. If you loft the repair materials up inside a proper container, we might be able to tow them out to the Rithro using the boats. That way we don’t have any political problems with tech transfer.” He gestured with his single ‘tailhand’ in front of him, and a holographic display appeared. With great agility, he began tapping on nothing; a schematic of one of the landing boats appeared, with alien text on one side and below.

Every single engineer plus Chao looked at the display and a single thought ran through their minds.

I Want One.

Grakosh then switched to a schematic of the Earth-moon system and sketched out a rough transfer orbit out to a blinking dot at the trailing L5 point. “I do hope the visual translators are working properly. Unit conversion is such a pain in the tail. Chao, would you mind checking the math on this?”

The alien text then shimmered into readable figures. “Um sure!”

As she leaned over to examine the display, the two agents at the back of the room straightened up as one. Chao caught the movement out of the corner of her eye; by the time she glanced over both men already had pistols drawn.

One of the agents, a thin guy named Hanson, motioned towards the far corner of the room, away from the window and the door. “Everyone, please move over to there. Sit on the floor, and keep your heads down.”

Chao stuck out an arm, and Grakosh quickly coiled himself around it. Her heart started to beat faster, but she tried to remain outwardly calm. The engineers seated themselves as instructed with confused looks. She sat as well, and Grakosh unwrapped himself from her arm to sit in her lap. She tried to breathe slow, although by now she could practically feel her pulse. Hanson and the other agent backpedaled into the room; Hanson kept his pistol trained at the door, while the other agent went low and with impressive speed duck-walked to one edge of the room’s panorama out into the assembly area. He did a quick peek outside.

“Looks normal,” he said. Meanwhile Hanson was in the midst of muttering into his sleeve.

“What…what happened?” asked Chao.

“Not sure, ma’am,” replied Hanson. “There was some sort of attack in Washington, at Captain Sadaf’s speech. Some casualties, we don’t know details. There might be another attack in progress as well. The rest of the team is performing a sweep for any hostiles here.”

The other agent crouched again and gave Chao what he must have figured was a calming smile. “Just standard procedure, ma’am.”

Chao was not calmed. If the captain had been hurt, or worse…this was not going to go well.

Somehow Grakosh picked up on her inner turmoil. “Don’t worry, Chao,” he said quietly. “Captain Sadaf has the luck of the auhn’s Sacred Mothers. She’s seen us through worse.”

The engineers had finally picked up that there might be some physical danger coming their way, at least if the way the color left their faces was any indication.

Grakosh glanced at them all, again somehow intuiting that they needed something to get their minds off of the situation. “So!” he said brightly. “I believe we can solve the patching problem. I am more concerned about the damaged fusion engine. I did some remote surveying of the engine during our flight to Earth, and it is not going to be repairable with our on-board components. We’ll need to manufacture replacements here and ship them up.”

Clara made a pushing-away gesture with one hand. “Oh, no. That’s definite tech transfer, and we can’t be part of that…not yet, at least.” That was by far the biggest stipulation which had allowed the Rithro’s crew to remain on US soil. There was to be no transfer of alien technology to the USA; at the moment, most countries were in favor of setting up an international committee of scientists and engineers who would reverse-engineer what tech they could and hand out the blueprints to any country that asked.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

But that didn’t satisfy everyone. Who would pay for the effort? What about countries with a smaller manufacturing base, who couldn’t properly take advantage of the new technology? For technologies with possible destructive applications, would they have to set up separate agencies to monitor and control their use? There was a lot of political and practical fiddly bits to get sorted, even among countries who were supposed allies.

Blake rubbed his bald spot. “I watched the UN debating the other day. First time ever. I have never seen so much said with so little actual content.”

Ned shrugged. “For once, I don’t envy the politicians. This whole thing is a hot potato.”

Grakosh looked with curiosity at Ned. “Hot potato?”

“Just a saying,” replied Dwight. “A potato is a starchy vegetable, you can make it a bunch of ways.”

“Ah, yes!” Grakosh perked up. “I have had mashed potatoes. Quite delicious.”

“Right, well you can also bake them whole. The notion is that after baking it’s really hot, so if you try to pick it up with bare hands…” Dwight now mimed juggling a potato back and forth. “Ow, ow, ow, too hot!”

“Interesting metaphor.”

Agent Hanson murmured into his sleeve again. “Confirm.” He kept his eyes fixed on the door. “Okay, folks, the sweep is almost over. Nobody here on campus who shouldn’t be here.”

“They might not have known I was here,” said Grakosh. “I am assuming this is an organized effort to kill me and my crew. Might be a bad assumption.”

“Could be,” said Chao. Now her guts went cold again, wondering if Sadaf or anyone else she knew were dead.

Both agents then stood, each touching their earpiece as if they didn’t quite believe what they were hearing. “No fuckin’ way,” said Hanson.

The other agent grinned, this time in true mirth. “Oh, that is too precious.” The two men looked at each other and chuckled, which Chao figured counted as a full-throated belly laugh for a Secret Service agent.

“Well?” asked Blake. “Care to let us in on the joke?”

Hanson shrugged. “It’s gonna be all over the news soon enough, reporters are already on the scene. We just got a report from the Decatur PD. About five miles from here, a delivery van was heading in this direction, well over the speed limit. The driver took a corner too fast and flipped the damn thing right onto its side. Slid into a few parked cars, but no bystanders hurt. Witnesses saw a bunch of dudes in black armor, toting rifles, un-ass out of the back of the thing and run off like headless chickens…in the other direction from here. Our guess is they were headed to this location, but we’re double-checking just to make sure none of ‘em made it to the campus. We all should be able to head out in ten minutes.”

“All head out?” asked Clara. “But we’re not a target.”

“That you know of,” replied Hanson. “Until we get this whole shitshow straightened out, right now y’all are considered potential targets. They might have some contingency in place.” He snickered. “I cannot believe that shit. You ever heard of anything like that?” he asked the other agent.

“Nah.” The man winked at the huddled people. “Important tip, folks. Never, ever let the FNG drive the car.”

“FNG?” asked Ned.

“Fuckin’ New Guy,” said Blake.

__________

Horace raised his head with a groan as he came to. Okay…check surroundings. Darkened room, with a single light from above illuminating the area around him. He was in a chair…no he was in a chair, with his wrists handcuffed to each arm and duct-tape around his ankles. He felt like he’d been on the wrong end of a few punches from Mike Tyson. Of course, all of his gear was gone. But he still wore clothes, at least.

In front of his chair, about five feet away, stretched a big oak table. Seated on the other side of the table was a man who put Horace in mind of a college professor. The man’s light-gray suit was impeccably pressed and didn’t have a speck of lint on it. His pale blue tie was neatly knotted at his neck. He had dark, slicked-back hair and wore wire-rimmed spectacles with round lenses. The spectacles sat perched on the end of his aquiline nose as he wrote with a flowing hand in a yellow legal pad in front of him. Two manila folders, each filled with multiple pages, lay neatly before him.

The man looked up as Horace let out a soft groan. “Ah, you’re awake!” His accent was British and quite proper. “Excellent. I fear my colleagues were a little over-enthusiastic in bringing you here. I do apologize.”

Horace probed his teeth with his tongue; one of his rear molars might be loose. “I want a lawyer. You can’t interrogate me without a lawyer present.”

The man leaned back and smiled. “Of course. Unfortunately, there are certain circumstances which have turned this from a simple matter of charging you with six homicides…of federal agents, no less…into something more of a, shall we say, existential crisis. I shall do my best to explain it to you, and if you need clarification at any time, please feel free to ask.”

Horace snorted. “So you must be good cop. Where’s bad cop? Waiting behind me with a rubber hose?”

“My colleague is on his way, he should arrive shortly. There was certain information he wanted me to see…information relevant to this interview.”

“Interview? I am a United States citizen. I have my rights.”

“Of course you do, Mister Bradshaw.” The man pulled the leftmost folder towards him and flipped it open, then began paging through its contents. “Horace Eugene Bradshaw. Graduated from high school with middling grades, applied to the Baltimore police academy. Was subsequently ‘kicked out’, as you say, after a rather unfortunate altercation with a superior officer. Held multiple jobs since; retail, some building maintenance. A few cases of assault, all involving alcohol. The profile of a bitter man without purpose. Exactly the type to wind up being taken under the wing of some radical group.”

“I want a lawyer present.”

“Patience, Mr. Bradshaw. As I said, I will explain. Now, as you may be aware, there were multiple attacks on the various locations where our alien guests were located. These attacks were coordinated, and appear to be well-funded. The attack in Washington, in particular, showed a quite high level of technical competence.”

He slid Horace’s file off to one side and pulled the other file towards him. “We did recover enough of the projectile to know it was a modified mortar round. Modified to have increased range, plus it had a quite ingenious home-made and fin-guided GPS system to ensure a precision strike with only one shot.”

The man then held up a picture showing a long tube, canted at an angle, sitting on a gravel rooftop. “We found the tube itself five kilometers from the site of the strike. Longer than the standard portable mortar barrel, again for increased range. It was rather foolish of your comrades not to take it with them; we suspect they were spooked and ran right after firing the round. Which is fortunate, I suppose. Multiple rounds might have resulted in a much greater number of casualties, including Captain Sadaf. Assuming you had more than one round, of course.”

“I want…”

“Yes, I know. Please, let me finish. Right now, the FBI is searching for who purchased the components of that mortar round; it should not take them long to track down the buyer or buyers. After all, you can’t purchase such things at one’s local shop.”

The man shut the folder and steepled his fingers. “I hope you can understand our dilemma. Putting this together with your attack on Camp David, we have a well-armed, technically competent group with inside help who is seeking to murder our alien guests and perhaps trigger a two-front war against humanity with the Coalition on one side and some genocidal robots on the other. Where there are three attacks, there could be more planned, even as we speak. Of course, we are moving our guests to a new, secure location…a location which I will not reveal, of course…and there could be ambushes already planned. You see, even if this was a normal legal case you would not be necessarily entitled to a lawyer if there is a so-called ‘ticking clock’ involved.” He smiled ruefully. “And I fear that there is some almighty ticking going on.”

Horace shook his head. Why did everybody take them the aliens at their word that these so-called ‘Breakers’ even existed? He took in a breath to tell this posh bastard that, again, he wanted a lawyer, when a door behind him opened and flooded the room with light. As he blinked, the door shut again. A lean man strolled into view, wearing military fatigues and with a folder under one arm…oh, no. It was him.

“Hey, Little Buddy-O!” said the newcomer, grinning as he saw Horace flinch.

The man at the table rose and gravely shook the other’s hand. “Good to see you, Matthew.”

“Tristan,” replied Matt. “Looking sharp, as always.”

“Well, one must look smart even with such a distasteful job before us.” Tristan turned to face Horace. “I have just explained to Mr. Bradshaw the gravity of the situation, in particular the need to know as soon as possible if any other attacks are planned. Mr. Bradshaw, were there any points I covered which require clarification?”

Matt grinned as he leaned on one corner of the table. “Shithead probably doesn’t know anything.”

“Most likely not,” sighed Tristan as he seated himself again. “If they had any sense they’ll have a proper cell structure.”

“Oh, hey, check this out.” Matt dropped his folder onto the table next to Tristan, then continued his smiling at Horace. “You’ll get a kick out of it.”

With a raised eyebrow, Tristan began reading. “Hmm…ah, yes. very nice. I see our friends at the FBI have followed up on the leads from that mortar round with their usual zeal.”

“Yeah, they’re good at tracking unusual purchases. They love that shit. But flip past that, get to the good stuff.”

Tristan did so, and for the first time Horace saw a look of genuine shock on the man’s face. “They did what?”

Matt laughed. “Dumped the fuckin’ van on its side. Then they all piled out and took off like jackrabbits.”

Tristan let out a small, sensible chuckle. “Well. It seems I may have overestimated our opponents’ competence.”

Horace tried to look stoic, but inside he felt dread. The van must be the one for the ULA attack; it sounded like they had failed.

Matt shook a playful finger at Horace. “Aw, now. Don’t try to play all serious with me. I saw that look. You know what that means, don’t you? I think you know more than you let on.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” said Horace. “Not without a lawyer present.” He clung to the notion like a mantra, although he was now getting a sense of just how fucked he was.

Matt walked forward and squatted, putting himself below Horace’s eye-level. “Now, my Little Buddy-O. I get it, you’re committed to the cause. You’ve psyched yourself up for this, you promised yourself that you’d die rather than roll over on your comrades. But. Let’s be reasonable. At least tell us what you know about any raids planned, even if you don't know much. You might have overheard something, something that could help us. Help all of us. We’ll keep the questions all about that. You don’t have to say a word about anything else. We can wait to ask you about that other stuff when you have a lawyer present, and we’ll do it all legal and proper. But I gotta warn ya, pretty much any attorney worth anything is gonna tell you it doesn’t look good for y’all. We got you and your buddies nailed. We got ballistics matches with the rounds which killed the six agents, and you were interrupted in the act of trying to kill a bunch more people…which presumably included all of the aliens at Camp David.”

Horace said nothing. This was how they did it, he knew that much from his time in the academy. The worst thing a suspect could do was remain silent. The police had to get them talking, about anything. If he started talking they’d worm everything out of him…then probably drop him down a deep hole somewhere.

Tristan sighed and stood. “Well, it seems we will be here for a while. I fancy a cup of tea, even if it is an American brand. Matthew, would you care for something?”

Matthew rose as well. “Sure! Coffee, two creams and one sugar.” He pointed down at Horace. “How about you? You want some coffee?”

Horace blinked in surprise. “Um, sure,” he said automatically. “Black, please.”

“Are you sure?” asked Matt. “If I’m honest, the coffee here is kinda meh at best.”

Upon Horace’s nod, Tristan walked with an even tread behind him. There was once again a bright, brief light as he exited the room.

Horace took a deep breath. This was it, this bastard was gonna start beating on him.

But instead Matt walked around the table and began flipping idly through the second file, the one on the mortar attack. His voice was mild. “I gotta say, you must have someone in your group with quite a bit of techie knowhow. I have seen some GPS-guided mortar rounds in action, but they’re not really what you would call man-portable. And built in somebody’s basement, no less.”

He continued flipping. “Interesting mix, though. Some very competent behavior, plus your gear was first-rate. You’ve got some funding and resources behind you. But man, when it comes to squad tactics you make the Keystone Kops look like fuckin’ Seal Team Six.”

Horace said nothing, waiting for the beating to start. But instead Matt just continued his casual perusal. After a few long, long minutes of silence, however, the room was once again briefly flooded with light as Tristan entered. He walked into view carrying a cardboard tray with three Styrofoam cups. He handed two of them to Matt. “Two cream, one sugar. And this is black, as the gentleman requested.” Tristan walked back around to his chair, and picked his own cup off of the tray. He blew on it a bit and grimaced. “I do wish you Americans would stop boiling your tea with the leaves in it. Tea needs to be encouraged, not bullied.”

Meanwhile, Matt set his own coffee down and walked towards Horace. The latter flinched as the man reached into a pocket with his free hand. But all that came out was a small key; with a deft touch Matt unlocked the cuff around Horace’s left sleeve and then pressed the cup into the now-freed hand. “It’s lukewarm, I’m afraid. Pot must be almost empty.”

Now that he saw the coffee in his hand, Horace wondered if something was slipped into it. It would be the ideal way to get him to drop his defenses without realizing.

Matt must have picked up on his trepidation and shrugged. “Hey, drink it or don’t. Pour it on your foot for all I care. I’ll swap, if you want.”

With a trembling hand, Horace took a sip. As Matthew had promised, it was bitter and barely hot. But it tasted like coffee.

“I don’t suppose Mr. Bradshaw spoke of anything while I was out?” asked Tristan.

“Nope. He’s gone full clam.”

“Unfortunate.”

Horace drank more coffee and said nothing.

“Yeah.” Matt sipped at his coffee and made a grimace of his own. “Jesus, this is almost cold. All right, I gotta go nuke this thing.”

“For the last time, you heathen, you ‘microwave’ something, not ‘nuke’ it.” Tristan began unbuttoning his suit jacket.

Matt chuckled as he strolled off. “Oh hey, they refilled the vending machine. You wanna cherry-cheese danish?”

With great care, Tristan hung his jacket on the back of the chair. “Good lord, no. Those things are revolting.” He unfastened his tie and with equal gravity laid it over the top of his jacket.

“Nah, all the preservatives give it that extra flavor.” With another bright slam, the pair were once again alone in the shadowed room.

Horace was, by now, thoroughly confused as Tristan unbuttoned his collar. The latter then took a careful sip of his tea. “Still too bloody hot,” he muttered. “Damned Yanks. Ah, Mr. Bradshaw, forgive me. On occasion I tend to slip into the vernacular, as one might say.” He walked around the desk and gripped Horace’s coffee cup. The sudden physical contact with his fingers made Horace flinch. “May I?” He pulled the cup from Horace’s unresisting grasp and turned to place it on the table, then re-locked Horace’s left hand to the chair. As Tristan walked back towards his tea, he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to the elbow, then took off his spectacles and placed them on the table.

“What the fuck is going on?” snapped Horace. “This is bullshit, you’re just running around, going in and out, giving me coffee, taking it away. You’re trying to confuse me and make me say something. I know how this works.”

Tristan picked up his tea and returned to stand in front of the bound man. “No, Mr. Bradshaw, I fear you have completely mis-read the relationship between myself and my esteemed colleague.”

The man leaned forward as his face hardened into an emotionless mask. “You see, Matthew is the one who always plays good cop.”

With that, Tristan up-ended his scalding-hot tea right into Horace’s crotch.