Free Final Assault by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page B

him. Apparently, she, too, had been worried that Franklin was going to mention the Project and was relieved that he hadn’t.
    Franklin’s intensity seemed to have grown. “Our plan is defensive—we will protect our people and we will attack any ship that comes into our atmosphere— and offensive. We will fight the aliens from space.
    “Let me say this again: we will win this fight.”
    Mickelson actually found himself nodding. He felt like he was in a high school pep rally and he felt the president’s magic working on him.
    Franklin paused for a moment as if he were going to say something grave. Mickelson’s heart pounded. He hoped that Franklin wasn’t going to ruin the mood he had just created.
    “The only way for us to succeed in our plan is to work together,” Franklin said. His tone was both gentle and chastising. “All rioting must stop immediately. We need cities to house all of our people. Our enemy is coming from space. We must work together, as one race, the human race, to fight back. We do not have the time or the resources to fight among ourselves.”
    Mickelson nodded. That was well done. It wasn’t too harsh and it wasn’t too specific.
    Franklin had already declared martial law when the rioting started, but now he was going to enforce it to the fullest of his powers. He was going to use the armed forces to keep the peace and set up shelters. Anyone caught looting or rioting would probably be shot.
    The argument was that people needed to know this in order to stop. But Mickelson had said that U.S. policies would distract from the international nature of the speech. Mickelson knew full well that some countries would think the U.S. response too harsh, while others would think it too soft.
    This issue had been settled before Franklin got frustrated. The U.S. policies would be announced after the speech, not by Franklin—who didn’t want to dilute his message—but by the vice president. The vice president’s presence would send a subtle message to Americans that while the president was tending to world business, the vice president would watch over the home front.
    It was supposed to be reassuring. Mickelson hoped that the people of the U.S. trusted the vice president more than he did.
    “Until now,” Franklin was saying, “you had only vague promises that we were working on solutions. Tonight, I have shared our plans with you. Our goals— the goals of every citizen on Earth—are exactly the same.
    “Whenever you find something difficult—and the next few weeks will be difficult—look at the sky. Remember what you saw last April. And do your part to defeat our joint enemy.
    “For the next twenty-nine days, we are not individuals. We are a race, united against a common enemy. We must do everything we can to save our planet—our home. We have the plans in place. Let’s work together to achieve them.”
    With his left hand, Franklin turned over the hard copy he had been holding.
    “We will win this battle. We will preserve the Earth for our children and our children’s children. Our planet will be ours once again.”
    Franklin stared into the cameras, and after a moment, the lights shut off.
    The silence echoed for the longest time and then someone in the press corps started to clap.
    The clapping continued and grew throughout the room. No one was getting this on tape. This was a spontaneous outgrowth of the speech.
    Mickelson found himself clapping, too.
    In this room, filled with the ghosts of ex-presidents and a history so deep that he didn’t like to contemplate it, Mickelson had just experienced something he had never thought he would feel again.
    He had felt hope.
    October 12, 2018
5:28 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
    29 Days Until Second Harvest
    Leo Cross had two reactions to the president’s speech: one was an overwhelmingly positive emotional reaction—he wanted to get up and cheer at several points in the speech—and the other was a cool intellectual reaction, filled with