“Stop you guys; you’re freaking Dr. Marulli out.” Rachel wiped mayo from the corner of her mouth. “Besides, it could have been an overdose. I mean — you know, Scott. He had issues.”
“What sort of issues?” Jessica asked.
“He had a conscience,” Chris Mull replied. “Morality and MAJI go together like mayo on an Italian sub.”
Sarah shook her head. “This is entirely improper. The walls have ears—”
“Not today they don’t,” Peter winked. “The Hive’s security system is wired into the EMP shield. By removing one of the panels to access the A/C duct, I may have accidentally severed the circuit. Until I replace the panel we can speak freely.”
“Then I’ll start,” said Ian, holding up his copper extraterrestrial. “Interstellars, new Boss Lady. Are you for ’em or against them?”
“Extraterrestrials? I can’t really say. I mean… I know they’re out there; I’ve just never crossed paths with one.”
“But you helped create a satellite array designed to fry them as they cross into our dimension. Surely you must have something against them?”
“Sorry… Ian, is it? Ian, I think you have the wrong impression about Zeus. It wasn’t designed to be a weapons platform; it simply tracks physical objects moving out of the higher dimensions—”
“—using a scalar wave-based targeting device, which can not only lock on to and track them, but with a bit more juice, it can also vaporize them… poof!” Ian crushed the copper ET in his fist, handing it to Jessica.
“Easy Ian,” Rachel said. “Maybe she didn’t know?”
“I didn’t.”
Lukas held his guinea pig up to his ear. “Hmm… Mr. Nibbles says you’re a brilliant engineer but a bad liar. Any post-graduate physics major knows the only difference between a scalar tracking device and a scalar weapon is the strength of the wave. And… you… just… lobbied… Council… for… more… power,” he said, pretending his pet was speaking
Chris Mull nodded. “The ‘Rodent Whisperer’ speaks the truth. You and the douche bags at Lockheed conjured up that whole wobble story in order to justify equipping each SAT with a nano-crystal zero-point-energy generator. With a device that powerful, you could take down that big mothership parked out by Saturn.”
“Jupiter.” Lois Stern groaned, coming up from her yoga pose. “Anyway, I seriously doubt the Interstellars will allow anything that powerful in orbit.”
Ian retorted, “They won’t know, Lolly, until Zeus starts picking them off like a game of Asteroids. MAJI is setting us up for a war mankind is clearly instigating and can’t possibly win. This whole thing is insane.”
“Then quit!” Jessica snapped, silencing Ian, as well as several cross-conversations. “I’m serious, if you don’t want to be here — resign. That goes for any one of you. If MAJI’s politics don’t suit you, then come and speak to me in private and I’ll transfer you to a job designing widgets.”
She gazed around the break area, all eyes now locked on her. “As I said before, having never met any of these purported species, I have no reason to like or hate them, and the last thing I want is to start a war. But I’m an engineer and a physicist and I was hired to do a job. As far as jacking up the juice on the Zeus SATS… yes, Lockheed’s engineers made it clear that change was necessary. Does that mean I’m happy about placing a scalar device, powered by an advanced ZPE device, aboard these satellites? Hell, no. But no one asked me my opinion when I signed up for this gig and they’re not asking for it now. As for initiating a war, the Air Force has been using scalar waves to shoot down these interstellar craft since 1947. Maybe the array’s threat alone will be enough to convince our out-of-town guests to shut down their bases on the far side of our moon and go annoy some other Type-Zero civilization.
“But it’s not our job to question Council’s motives. My mother was a scientist working on a USAP back when the entity was still calling itself MJ-12. She taught me long ago never to discuss politics with anyone on the inside or outside because there’s always another perspective you can’t see from your limited scope in history. What if the American team working on the atomic bomb back in 1943 had taken the time to debate the ethics of killing tens of thousands of innocent Japanese men, women, and children? If they had, the delay might have allowed Hitler’s scientists to finish their bomb first and we’d all be speaking German. As scientists, it’s our job to provide our military with options; after that, all we can do is pray the powers that be know what the hell they are doing.”
Her fists clenched, Jessica waited for what she anticipated would be an in-her-face rebuttal.
Instead, her staff shocked her by applauding.
Ian Concannon was among the loudest. “None of us want a war with the Interstellars, Doc. To be honest, the whole thing freaks us out. But it’s like you said, each of us was recruited to do a job; now we just want to get it over with and go home to our families.”
Jeffrey nodded. “Your predecessor was a good guy, but he took his work home with him, if you know what I mean.”
She didn’t, until Sarah clarified the statement.
“In dealing with UFOs and ETs, the wonderment of working with cutting-edge science comes with a harsh price. Constantly having to lie about what we do to our loved ones can cause emotional stress. The suicide rate among subterranean techs working on interstellar-related USAPs is over thirty-five percent.”
Jessica turned to Sarah, “How do we requisition twenty of the advanced zero-point-energy devices?”
“That’s Ian’s department.”
“I’m on it. Ladybug. Has Jessica seen the chariots?”
“Not yet. Why don’t you get Dr. Marulli a vest and show her.”
“The chariots?” Jessica turned to the engineer who was sorting through a selection of anti-gravitics vests and helmets hanging from hooks along the partition.
“Trust me, you’ll enjoy this.” Estimating her size, he held out a small vest for Jessica to slip her arms through. “Have you ever worn one of these?”
“I didn’t know they existed until fifteen minutes ago.”
He snapped the three horizontal straps in place, pulling them snugly across her chest. “The Hive’s large enough, but as you’ll see in a moment, this entire Atlas launch facility spans miles, making these vests invaluable. Ah, who am I kidding; we love using them. Inside the back of the vest is a ZPE unit. When you want to go weightless turn this gauge here,” he pointed to the small knob by her left shoulder. “That will cause a high-voltage charge to strike the zero-point-energy field, creating an anti-gravity bubble around you and up you’ll go.”
“How do I steer?”
“That’s a little bizarre. Put this helmet on, then think the direction you want to go, and you’ll go in that direction.”
“You’re kidding?”
“That’s how the Interstellars do it.”
Her heart pounding with adrenaline, Jessica secured the helmet’s chin strap in place and then turned the gauge by her left shoulder to the ON position.
A vibration rose from the bottom of her feet and up through her spinal cord, the sensation tickling her nose as she shed the gravitational forces of Earth and rose off the floor, giggling.
“Oh wow… I could definitely get used to this.”
Securing his own vest and helmet in place, Ian joined her, the two engineers thirty feet above the group, Jessica banking from side to side to get used to sensation of being weightless.
“I love this! I feel like a bee in a hive.”