Theogony 1: Janissaries by Chris Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

be
treated equally, but everyone will be held to the same standards. If some
nations don’t want to participate to that standard, so be it.” He paused. “Lady
and gentlemen, we are at a crossroads in human history. We have been told that
the Drakuls have wiped out nearly every civilization that they have faced. I
intend to do everything I can to ensure that doesn’t happen to us. Even with
the injection of Psiclopes technology, it is unlikely that we will be
successful by ourselves. We need everyone to work together to help save the
human race.”
    “OK,” said the British prime minister, “you have our
support. If we can’t discuss this publicly for a year, why are you telling us
about it now?”
    “The purpose of this meeting today is two-fold,” said the
president. “First, as friends, I wanted to make you aware, so that you can
begin looking at options as to how you will bring your economies up to a full
war footing. That way, when the time comes, the transition can be made as
seamlessly as possible. The announcement of aliens is going to cause turmoil;
this will give us time to plan for it so that we can reduce the chaos to a
minimum. For our part, we are going to announce that we are looking at ways of
preventing another event like the Chinese invasion of Seattle. That will give
us an excellent cover story for studies to transition our economy to a state of
war. It also provides a cover for looking at fighting wars in places we never
expected and the development of new technology.”
    “The second reason for today’s meeting is to invite you to
participate in our first journey into space. We will be sending a mission to
assist the Psiclopes, who have a spaceship that we will be crewing for the
journey. We are inviting you to participate in both the space fighter wing that
we will be deploying, as well as in the ground unit that will be accompanying
them. The Psiclopes have asked for a certain group from the war to be the basis
of the ground force, but it will need augmentation, and we want to include you
in this from the beginning. We have looked at our needs and the capabilities of
your forces, and we have come up with some suggestions for where you might best
be able to participate.” The president passed the stack of folders in front of
him down the conference table. Each one had a country’s name and flag on the outside.
    “If you would take the folder with your country’s flag on
the outside,” President Jacobs continued, “you can see what we would like you
to provide. The cover story for both of these units is that we are forming ‘Centers
of Excellence’ (COE) to develop new methods of training and employing special
operations troops and aviation units, based on our experiences during the war.
We are going to tell the press that we have analyzed the world’s forces and are
opening up the COEs for our allies to participate. We will be looking for ‘free
thinkers’ from your militaries; we want soldiers and airmen that will be able
to deal with aliens, new technologies and a journey into space.”
    “This trip also opens up some additional prospects for the
future. For example, the Psiclopes’ ship runs on Helium-3. While it is fueled
for this trip, they will need more for the next time it goes out. One thing we
noted on our moon landings last century was a relative abundance of Helium-3 on
the moon. I am also proposing a new, joint mission to build a base on the moon.
We can say it is to collect Helium-3 for a new fusion reactor project, which we
want to use to generate clean, safe power. My experts tell me that Helium-3
fusion is possible and that as much as 70% of the energy in the fuel could be
captured and put directly to work. We would, however, need a much larger source
than what is naturally found on the Earth; we’d need to extract it from the
moon. Not only will we harvest it from the moon for additional trips through
space, but the Helium-3 will also give us an additional