First... Ch2.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            “Madam Secretary, they are ready to receive you.”

            “Thank you, Mr. Lozano.”

 

            She looked down at her artificial limbs. She had had these a long time. An arm and two legs, the finest medical biomechanics had to offer. Gifts from Mars, the angry red planet. She had left more than just a flag on that planet. She stopped herself mentally. She was the first human on Mars. She was a heroine, after all. The first woman on Mars. No, she was better than the propaganda of politics, she decided. She was the first human on Mars, and that was enough. She wondered if these limbs were the reason why she was elected Secretary-General. Sacrifices to space exploration. Who knew better, eh? It doesn’t matter, she thought. Papa Booker would say, “Use what you have to do what you need to do. It is usually enough.” Is it Papa? She asked herself. Pushing herself up from her chair, she stood a moment. It had become her practice. She would stand for a moment to be sure of her balance before she moved any further. She smoothed-out her dress. With her good hand she picked up the portfolio that contained her speech and passed it to her other hand. It looks nearly normal until you touch it, she thought. She stopped shaking hands a long time ago. The look in their faces when the realization hits. It is just not worth it. Better to be thought a prude for not shaking hands than to have to deal with that every time. She reached for the door and opened it.

            There was her team. The faces all too familiar now. Comfortable. Reassuring. Lozano, her personal assistant, ever vigilant to keep her on schedule and to keep a bubble around her. Brittany McCune, press liaison and speech writer. Mark Dawson, the ever able second in command, her campaign manager, attorney, confidant, and Chief of Staff. Her son Matthew and his wife Virginia, Gina for short, and their children Matthew Junior, Emily, and Victoria… she prefers Vikki now. To be 15 again. And, the love of her life, Archer. Between Mark’s constant pushing and Archer’s constant consoling, she made it out of rehab to a chair to prosthetics to politics. Her team. She could not do without any one of them. She looked into their faces and smiled.

 

            “I think I am ready for this. We have waited a long time and worked too hard. Thank you.” She paused a moment to study each face as if to immortalize this moment. “Thank you, each one of you. You have helped make this dream a reality.”

 

It was just a short walk down the hallway. She steeled herself for the gauntlet to come. Lozano opened the outer door, and Brittany McCune rushed into the crowd waiting outside. The bright lights, the vids, the questions were immediate. They all clamored for some answer to a question. She thought it ironic that all of the questions sounding at once only helped her to ignore every question asked.

 

            “There will be no comments at this time,” Brittany began repeating. It was her mantra.

 

Her handlers pushed the crowd of reporters, photographers, and hangers-on out of the way to allow her to pass through them to the waiting car. Janey Tomlinson paused a moment and waved to the lights and smiled cheerily before turning to enter the car. Once she was safely ensconced inside, it sped away toward the jet port.

 

*                     *                     *

 

Much had changed in the last few years. Traffic to and from Lunar City had become passé. The risks of lunar transit had been reduced to the level of transglobal flight. A flight to Bangkok or Madrid or NYC or Sydney was just as easy to book and just as safe to take. Earth Space Agency citizens were ceded lands from various nation blocks around the globe. It was decided that only the best locations should be assigned to the ESA. The Nevada Flats of North America, the Victoria the Great Flatlands of Australia, the Gobi Heights of Mongolia, the Karakum Plains of Turkmenistan, the Western Saharan Flats, the Thar Highlands of Greater Hindi, the Atacama of Chile, and the Namib Preserve of the Southern Africa Consortium. Deserts. The least most hospitable environments on Earth. This was to ensure ESA’s dependence on the Earth Conclave of Nations. It did not work out quite as planned.

As ESA began bio-dome construction in each of these sites, it became clear that it was more for control by the host nations or conglomerates. ESA representatives sued for treaty negotiations with the Earth Conclave, the G14, and the United Nations. After arduous negotiations and compromises, ESA was left with the Victoria the Great Flatlands of Australia. It seems the Prime Minister of their government was the most forward thinking and least greedy initially. The PM knew this would mean additional business for Australia and everyone would be coming to them to transit to Lunar City. The Queen Victoria Space Port was birthed. Alice Springs, a near forgotten Outback township, would blossom in a few short years as a key port city and stopover for all extra-planetary travel. The ESA made it their unofficial capital.

The Nevada Flats were ceded back to NASA and the United States, who immediately began duplicate space port works for their own purposes. Canaveral and most of southern Florida had long since been converted into research and debarkation facilities for NASA. The North African Space Authority was birthed shortly after discussions failed for the Saharan project. However, new discussions, international legal battles, and United Nations bickering quickly ensued over the naming of this new space authority and its abbreviation, NASA. It seemed the United States was calling “dibs” and the North African nations and their NASA were not listening. Not to be out done, SASA was formed by the nations of the Southern Africa Consortium. The United Nations became awash in diplomats stating their cases and making their demands.

Russia and the reworked CIS tried to make a go of their facilities in Turkmenistan and the Siberian-Kamchatka Compromise. Labor, technology, and other pressing civic-fiscal demands distracted their leadership. It seemed with open borders the best CIS scientists were going where the ¢redits were highest paid. The Russians turned to the Greater Sino-Nippon-Goryeo Protectorate for a joint effort in Mongolia’s Gobi Heights. Both sides failed to discuss this with the Mongols who lived there. Brief armed conflict broke out. The Mongols discovered simple fire arms were no match for Russian or Chinese advanced mechanized forces. Mongolian representatives brought their case to the United Nations. All attempted sanctions were vetoed by two of the sitting permanent members. The UN charter maintained its effectiveness.

The QVSP was quickly established near Alice Springs with the usual funding and more specific funding from the Austral-Asia Economic Union. AAEU acted quickly. It was not long before regular supply and construction flights were leaving from Australia for Lunar One on the Moon. The ESA base was the point of entry and control for the Moon until Lunar City could be constructed, tested, and certified. Lunar City was being constructed as a permanent, self sufficient habitation for the ESA and continued operations beyond Earth. This is not to say that other economic and technology giants on Earth did not have their stations on the Moon.

The United States had laid claim to wide areas of the Moon around the locations of their initial Moon landings. The Russians, Chinese, French, Japanese, and Indians had made claims to areas of the Moon, too. Various “research” stations were set up across the face of the Moon. The ESA projects of Lunar One and Lunar City were the only true international cooperatives on the Moon. Multi-national corporations had been drilling the Moon for decades looking for various ore deposits. What was being pulled from the Moon was not being stated to the public. Sponsoring nations keep things quiet as long as these multi-national corporations continued to share the profits and paid their taxes. The dark side of the Moon was not so dark any more. It was pot-marked with the bright lights of commercial and research stations. Some of the debris spewed forth by the various Lunar works cast a pallor on the face of the Moon; some quite visible to the naked eye.

As Lunar City neared completion and large areas were certified as habitable, the United States’ NASA began motions and deliberations in the international courts and the UN to have Lunar One returned to their custody. Their argument being most solidly founded on their bearing greater than 90% of the costs of construction and maintenance. The negotiations were concluded and treaties signed and ratified, with arguments and protestations. The terms of the Sea of Serenity Treaty allowed that as soon as Lunar City reached habitable capacity able to absorb Lunar One all ESA personnel and equipment would be transitioned to their new facility and the US would resume control of Lunar One. It was not equitable for all G14 countries but it was accepted and pushed through the UN.

Lunar City began to thrive. The ESA governing offices and Parliament had long since relocated to Alice Springs. It was more convenient to be close to the QVSP for transit to Lunar City. The connector thrived. Australia prospered. And, Lunar City grew.

            The ESA continued to maintain offices on every continent. They recruited from every nation, maintained ambassador level relations with the Earth Conclave, the G14, and the United Nations, and begged constantly for funding. It was the Secretary-General’s responsibility to bear the brunt of most of this begging in the form of concessions, meetings, and negotiating future discoveries with the various funding nations. A job no Secretary-General enjoyed. Janey Tomlinson would be no exception. She had been on every tour imaginable as an ESA operative, representative, delegate, ambassadorial aide, ambassador, and Member of Parliament. She knew everyone who held the power of purse strings or who could get her close to that person. She was well equipped for her assignments, but never taken seriously. She was a former starjockey, an international celebrity, and a poster child for the dangers of space exploration. She had vowed to not let these things get in her way.

            Jane B. Tomlinson, MP, campaigned hard for the Earth Space Agency. She had given up her national citizenship many years ago to be a starjockey. It had been in the early days of unified efforts to explore space. She had worked hard to achieve the rank and position she had. She was a top-honors student and starjockey. When the opportunity came for a landing team for Mars, she was one of the first to volunteer and one of the first to be selected for training. She sacrificed time with her husband and son, justifying it with “But, it’s Mars!” She had sacrificed more than anyone realized. She was also Mars’ first victim, losing her right arm and two legs in a fall while rediscovering a lost Mars lander. Somehow she did not think it was worth it. Old space junk for a life as an invalid. She was meritoriously promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and then full Colonel by the ESA Parliament upon recommendation by the ESA General Staff, and then medically retired. Learning to do everything all over again from a left-handed perspective created a fire in her. She used her celebrity to bring additional freshness to inter-planetary exploration.

 

            “Do not give up on the dream. Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Kennedy were correct. Our futures lay out there. Do not give up on the dream. I was there. Together we can go to the farthest reaches our science can take us.”

 

Rousing applause, standing ovations, the same speech repeated many times. The faces changed, but they remained the same. Always awestruck, always full of hope and possibility. Always, always. The same yet different. And later today, a different speech. A different audience. A different setting. But, the same purpose. To set a fire in others, to keep a dream alive, to create a compelling future where Mankind is in space and among the planets.

Looking out her window as the lights of cities passed below, she pondered again the view of it all from space.

 

*                     *                     *

 

“But, Mr. Secretary!” Her voiced raised in indignation.

 

“You are out of order, Colonel,” the Speaker announced.

 

“Members of Parliament, I implore you to review the recommendations of this report!” She held up a presentation folder in her left hand. She swayed momentarily, catching her balance.

 

“You are out of order, Colonel!” the Speaker announced in a much too strong voice.

 

            The Secretary-General stood and held his hand up to the Speaker. He approached the podium where he customarily accepted questions from Parliament. He eyed the younger woman opposite him at the Petitioner’s Podium. She stood braced by a crutch under her left arm. A clearly prosthetic hand protruded from the right-hand sleeve of her jacket.

 

 “Madame Colonel, I have reviewed the report. It clearly shows a reckless, irresponsible officer of the ESA going beyond her station and background. We recognize the price you paid.” He paused, looking her in the eyes, not looking at her bio-mechanical prosthetics as he knew everyone else in the room would be doing. “We recognize your passion in support of these findings. Passion and voracity aside, we cannot support this bill or its position. I will not create a commission or committee to further explore its findings.

            “Please accept that this government understands. And that this government can only move forward on projects that are currently at hand. The additional funding and staffing to support the initiatives you outline in your unsanctioned, unconfirmed findings cannot be supported in the foreseeable future.

            “Madame Colonel.” The Secretary changed the timbre of his voice to be more conciliatory. “I have this ‘dream’ too. But as Secretary-General, I must be responsive to what the Earth Space Agency can do now and in the foreseeable future. Your report reads more to the possibility of fiction than it does to the possibility of hard factual scientific effort.

            “Madame Colonel, we live in the real world of budgets, of limited supply, of limited manpower, of limited everything. The Earth Space Agency is not an entity unto itself. It exists and operates at the pleasure of our host nations; without which we cannot survive. Your report, if seriously considered, will put this government and all it stands for, all it hopes to accomplish for Earth, at risk. This government is not a government unto itself. Your report tacitly suggests that ESA separate itself from its dependor nations to be a nation unto itself. Madame, that will never be.

            “Madame Colonel. Your petition was heard, reviewed, and denied. You may withdraw from the podium.”

 

            She just stared at him. Was it so simple to be dismissed? Apparently it was. Unsteadily, she moved away from the podium and made her way out of the Hall. It was a defeat for her and ten years of struggle and expense.

 

Reviews

[SM Davis]

all I can say is well done!

[Dave "Doc" Rogers]

Okay, First is back. A big 'thank you' to those that gave this a read/review previously. Now to get back on track with the story.

Cheers!
Doc.