Returned

Momentum

Six

Momentum

Major General Ronald Axwood had just turned in for the night. He switched off his electronic book, in which he had been reading the biography of one of his military heroes of all time, General George S. Patton, and had barely turned off his bed lamp when his bedside beeper indicated that he had a message. He thought he should ignore the message and attend to it when he woke up in the early hours of the following day. But a curious part of him decided to turn and take a quick peek at the beeper, just in case. The small action found him scrambling to his feet. The indication he saw was Code Red and the handle on which it appeared was the president’s.

Axwood quickly grabbed the sleek silver miniature plate and snapped on the bedside lamp. He placed the receiver a few inches from his eye and a blue laser light shot to his eyeball and scanned. There was a click in the gadget and the electronic voice said, “Processing!” there was another click and a voice message read – “General R.G Axwood, this is an encrypted message from the President. There is a Red Call for the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon. You are expected in thirty!”

“What in the bloody hell is running?” Axwood asked aloud. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was the one to have initiated the meeting of the Service Chiefs, but now it seemed the President, through his Chief of Staff had initiated the call and he was being invited as a guest in his own office. That notwithstanding, Gen. Axwood knew something was seriously amiss, perhaps a terrorist attack that was imminent or had possibly been initiated.

Fifty-nine years old Ronald Axwood was a man of sizeable ambition. He had hoped to retire from the military and run for presidency in the next election when the reelected president, Brandon Hillock, had appointed him the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This was a great setback for Axwood’s political ambitions, but he could not turn down the opportunity to serve his country. Besides, President Hillock had offered him the position as a surprise to honour him for his meritorious military career.

But Axwood had never been happy for the United States’ loss of grip on the international scene. He hated China and Russia and hoped that an opportunity should present itself in his capacity to punish those who had come to make mockery of the US might. It was one of the reasons he so much wanted to become president, so as to reclaim the country’s lost glory. He always regretted that the recent generation of presidents were pure bred politicians, but he was a soldier. He had been trained to take decisions that were hard, and true, and result-oriented. What America needed at the time, according to him, was a president who was not ready to employ diplomacy with anyone, anymore, just to carve a piece of the moon. It was a president who would take the whole moon and ask everyone else to leave, and without apologies.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Axwood had set to enforcing reforms that would strengthen the US military and uphold the military might it once had before the great recession of 2034. Everyone, including the president, had commended Axwood for a job well done so far at the pentagon. All he was waiting for, now, was that one opportunity to strut his stuff and call the world to a show of might and valour, where the US would prove itself superior to all nations once again.

As he put on his uniform, he began to wish that this would be that moment he had always waited for. When he finished putting on his military suit, he opened the door to the next room to see if his wife was still awake, but she was fast asleep. He thought it was best to leave her a message on her beeper as he flew out. There was no need to bother her now. Whenever he saw his wife, he always saw the perfect figure for a First Lady of the United States just waiting to take office. He closed the door gently, crossed his room and went downstairs. He pressed the call pad he wore on his wrist and dialed. The blue light on his earlobe flickered on.

“William, please ready the car, I am coming out now. We are needed at the office right away.”

By the time Axwood marched unto the terrace of his building, Willie, his robot assistant, was already there with his vehicle. The General marched swiftly and lurched into the passenger seat.

“I am ten minutes behind schedule,” the he said.

“Alright sir,” Willie, who looked every inch human, said. William was one of the recent brands of robots that had been released into the Market by Croc Robotics, a company that had recently been acquired by Mark Zuckerberg. Their only difference with the humans was their flickering eye pupils that also served as a camera and could snap, store, and transmit pictures and other data on-the-go.

The robot shot the vehicle on top gear and soon eased it into flight mode. In flight mode, the vehicle took a mid-air turn and headed in the direction of the pentagon. Axwood loved every iota of action taken by Willie any time they were together. The robot was more proactive than he had imagined when he ordered for it. It had good precision. The current smoothness of action and the alacrity gave Axwood a confident feeling that he was ready for whatever it was that waited for his attention at the Pentagon just now. He secretly prayed it was a terrorist attack that was already underway, just for him to prove how quickly he could mobilize forces to strangle it before it could breathe.

“We’re here sir,” Willie said in his coarse quasi-human voice, interrupting the General’s fine thoughts.

The robot then lowered the vehicle and landed it on the runway to the parking lot and drove speedily into the General’s gapping lot that automatically closed behind them as soon as the vehicle entered. Axwood came out of the vehicle and Willie followed close at his heels and they disappeared in the door leading into the building that served as the access point of the General into his office from the car park.

Axwood did not go to his office. He entered a carriage that rolled him into the belly of the building, leaving Willie behind. If Tile had seen this carriage, he would bet that the Americans had visited Eris and had stolen the Mugulubu technology. Axwood looked to the beeper on his wrist and was satisfied that he had been punctual. He was only three minutes shy of the thirty minutes call. Thanks again to Willie. The door soon clicked and slid silently, vomiting the General into the Situation Room. But as he stepped into the room, he was surprised to see that he was late… at least later than the others. All the joint chiefs were seated and waiting. The president, his Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser and NASA Administrator were also present.

“You’re late General,” President Hillock remarked.

“I’m sorry Mr. President,” Axwood replied meekly, feeling sorry for himself. He wondered how come the others had beaten him to punctuality when he had not lost one minute behind. Were they privy to some information he wasn’t? He could tolerate been beaten to anything but not punctuality!

“Brace yourselves gentlemen, we have something new and daunting,” the president announced, interrupting Axwood’s thoughts. “Over to you Alex, we have no time to waste.”

Alexander Brannon had been NASA administrator for barely four months. He had been yet to settle down to his office when alien contact came for him to prove himself. He took his silver briefcase and walked briskly to the center of the room. He placed the briefcase on the large, sleek, sliver table in the middle of the room and fitted it into a space made specially for it. The case clicked and opened automatically and the table came alive like a screen. The case had a small screen built into its cover like a laptop. There was a screen touch keypad on the lower side of the case fitted into the table. A remote control sat in its fitting and a crusted orb sat delicately on a perch built specifically for it, like a golf ball made ready for play. Rainbow lights radiated from the orb, reflecting mostly on Administrator Brannon. A few scattered rays fell on the President and his Chief of Staff, who sat directly behind.

Axwood shifted in his seat and wondered what was coming up. Brannon took out the remote controller from the case and pressed a button, pointing to the opposite wall. A large screen came alive. Most of what transmitted on the silver table now projected onto the screen. It was mostly random rainbow lights.

“Gentlemen,” Brannon called. “My team picked up this technology several hours ago in the Mojave Desert. Captain Roger Prescott had observed its landing at exactly 14 hours 22 minutes. A dispatch team was sent to bring it in and after due analysis, it was found that it was alien material from a planet we have never accessed before.”

There was absolute still in the room such that one could faintly hear the footsteps of an ant. Brannon now used the screen touch pad on the case. Several identification numbers and a NASA drone appeared on the screen.

“In the course of the evaluations, something strange happened,” Brannon continued. “We picked up signals from our own drone that had gone off course and lost in the galaxy nearly forty years ago. It was live signal, coming from beyond the Kuiper Belt. And something else happened.”

Brannon worked again on the screen touch pad and six pictures appeared on the screen. They were the pictures of Tile Atu, James Charlatan, Rita Baxter, Carina Goodblood, Azura and Ipotu,

“These four humans, we believe,” Brannon proceeded. “Have been visitors beyond the Kuiper Belt, precisely, planet Eris. These other two, we believe, are the host species.”