Pantheon Snippet 4

 Still in chapter 2...

A reporter managed to score an interview with the visiting aliens. She did so by offering a piece of palladium. The interview was over video chat and brief. She was limited to twenty questions.

She asked the usual questions as a warmup and then got into more detail about the aliens, life on the ships, and what they were running from.

“None have survived to know more,” the alien stated when she pressed for details.

She frowned and made a note on the tablet in front of her. “What do you see as the chances of humanity's survival once first contact with the Celestials is made?”

“Below 50 percent. It depends upon who comes. If it is Death, your agony will be torturous but brief. If it is war, your population will be maddened into a rage that will destroy you.”

She shivered, paling slightly. “And the chances of winning against them?”

“Below point zero cubed one percent. None have won against them more than twice. Those that do are destroyed.”

She shivered openly. “Last question then. Do you see a path for survival of our species? By that I mean, should we just surrender or what?”

“Fighting is not an option. Surrender or not, they do not care. The only high chance of survival is to flee.”

“We can't move a population of seven billion!”

“Nor could we. Only the chosen survived while others fought and died to allow them to escape. But a portion of each of our species survived. This concludes the interview,” the alien said and then cut the channel.

The reporter sat there for a moment before someone prompted her on the earwig. She jerked. “Well, that's it, folks. We need to go to a commercial break as we line up experts to dissect that rather fascinating encounter,” she said with a nod to the viewers.

~~>*<~~

Tobin watched the video and shook his head. Penny sought out his hand and gave it a squeeze.

He shook his head again as she leaned into him for comfort. He didn't know what to say. All that he did know was that he fully intended to beat those odds.

Or die trying.

~~>*<~~

Colonel McCoy heard the interview and saw people going into a tailspin over it. “Look folks, they haven't fought us. Yes, it's grim. Yeah, we know it's bad. But any chance above zero is still a chance. Now,” he surveyed the people in the room. “Remember a couple of things. One, they aren't here yet.”

He looked at them again as he paused.

“Two, we're not done building what we can. We've got the best minds in the world working on the problem. So remember that. Fixate on that. Don't be a part of the problem, be a part of the solution. Got it?”

A few heads nodded.

“And three, we're not headless chickens. We're officers and enlisted of the greatest nation on this planet. So act like it. Professionalism people. It comes from the top down. If others see us not panicking, they won't panic either. So keep the faith,” he said.

A few people nodded.

~~>*<~~

Colonel Pryde strode through his section of intelligence. He had been selected as second-in-command to General Morehouse to glean as much data about the Celestials and alien survivors as possible.

It was proving to be easier said than done. They had little detail other than what had been publicly released. For an Intelligence officer in the puzzle palace, that was considered a bad thing in capital letters.

Everything they had to this point, all of the analysts and stuff, was rehash shit, speculation, and innuendo from bad movies and sci-fi. Like any intelligence based on a series of assumptions, it was a house of cards.

If one wrong assumption was in there, and there usually was, it could bring the entire thing tumbling down. The phrase assumptions were “the mother of all fuck-ups” kept running through his head.

Too much was riding on them getting it right. Therefore, they had to get it right. There was a problem though, well several of them.

The first was the red tape. The typical red tape in that they had to go through the State Department to communicate with the aliens in orbit. It put a monumental delay and crimp on things. They also couldn't get data downloads; there was a fear of being hacked that he couldn't quite disagree with.

The second problem was a doozy. They were trying to get a grasp on the enemy known as the Celestials, but the alien survivors were not very forthcoming. All data came with a price. They had to provide rare materials in exchange for a select amount of questions to ask. It was very vexing, made even more so by State's insistence on their own importance and that they'll “get to the bottom of things eventually.”

When you needed answers to build a battle plan, you couldn't wait on “eventually.” Recon and intelligence were keystones of winning any battle.

He also wasn't very impressed with the stuff TNT was turning out. They were putting out promises of a new quantum leap in war technology without showing anything.

It was acting as a general anesthetic to the public though, calming them down and returning things to normal. He was dubious about that too. Some people thought that they had it in the bag and were already complaining about costs involved and how it was diverting attention from saving the world in other ways.

~~>*<~~

Gabe Amirul read the missive from on high and groaned softly to himself. Things just got interesting, very interesting, or would shortly. He was grateful though that they weren't just going to sit back and watch TNT fuck it up. Doing something was infinitely preferable to sitting on the sidelines and twiddling their thumbs.

He was a former major in army intelligence who'd gotten out and become the security chief of the Safrin Tech company. He was personal friends with Greg who had recommended him for the job.

He knew Colonel McCoy and Colonel Pryde had been his former boss at one time at the puzzle palace. They kept a back channel open to him.

What he was hearing about the TNT project gave him fits. So, he was glad the boss wanted to get into the game. He didn't have any skin in the game though, no money, so he wasn't sure how far the boss would be able to go before he went bankrupt.

The other problem was corporate and industrial espionage. That was the bane of his job; it kept things lively. TNT was a big culprit in trying to pull crap on his watch. To date they'd only managed to pull over a few minor things, nothing major.

It was a concern though as was the idea of TNT hearing about the unwanted competition and coming after them to do something about it.

He thought about that idea and then called his senior supervisors in to have a little pow-wow session.

~~>*<~~