Free Oblivion by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page A

the phony pictures of those alien ships, and they’re the ones who say, ‘believe in the president,’ and they’re the ones who’re encouraging allying with other countries. We’re going to lose our sovereignty. We’re going to become part of a worldwide dictatorship, run by godless people. It’s been happening for a while. But now your daddy and my daughter, they been caught in the first assault.”
    “You think our government did that to our own people?” She raised her eyes to his. His look was flat, even. He didn’t seem shocked. “You do, too.”
    He nodded.
    “Sit down. We got a lot of talking.”
    He found a place in the crowd. She stared at them for a moment, wishing Dale was here instead of in California. He’d be proud of her. Whenever he had a group needed convincing, whenever he had a difficult customer who needed coddling, he called her.
    You missed your calling, baby doll, he used to say. You shoulda been some sort of preacher, a leader. You wasted it sitting home.
    Don't never say I wasted time raising our girl, Dale Hartlein, she used to say in response. She hadn’t wasted time.
    But she had lost it.
    She stood in front of the crowd and raised her arms. They looked wary. Then she started to speak, and they all looked at her as if she was going to lead them to the promised land.
    They was in the promised land. She was going to show them that. And then she was going to show them how to cast out the evil ones and take the land back.
    It would not be easy.
    But it would be right.
    April 27, 2018
12:55 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time
    170 Days Until Second Harvest
    Dr. Leo Cross wished he had never seen this room.
    It was a standard conference room, built in the middle of the last century, and furnished in the 1980s. The conference table, which stood on wobbly legs, carried coffee rings so old that they were practically fossilized. The cushions on the chairs had been worn thin fifteen years ago.
    Cross had sat in this room more than he wanted to think about, ever since the Tenth Planet Project was founded earlier that year. The discussions here were often a prelude to gaining more information in the days before the attacks. In those days, he had considered the meetings successful.
    Now he wasn’t so sure.
    He kept going over and over information in his mind, wondering if he had spoken up sooner—maybe even a year sooner—about his suspicions, the first attacks wouldn’t have gone as badly as they had.
    But if he had spoken up then, he might have been dismissed as a crackpot. He didn’t have all the evidence then that he had when he finally approached his friend, Doug Mickelson, who was the secretary of state. Doug had opened a pile of doors for him, and in many very real ways, got the Tenth Planet Project started.
    Britt set down the Starbucks travel mug that Cross had bought for her after the last Tenth Planet Project meeting. The mug was steaming. She set down a Starbucks paper cup for him, filled with the lattè he’d asked for. He wasn’t sure, with the heavy breakfast, the interrupted sleep, and the awful way he’d been eating, that his stomach could take any more caffeine.
    Robert Shane of the President’s Special Committee on Space Sciences, and one of the Project’s cooler heads, sat down across from Britt. Shane was a tanned, athletic man whose blond hair was cropped short. He had sharp blue eyes and a quick wit that, Cross suspected, served him well in his government post. Shane was first and foremost a scientist, and in all the meetings, through all the debates, Shane never forgot that, which was something Cross appreciated.
    Britt took a sip from her mug, and tapped on her wrist-’puter. Taking time away from the office to spend the morning with Cross had cost her a lot. She had been working around the clock, canceling research times on the various space telescopes and trying to determine which agency now had priority with the vast machines. Before the aliens had arrived, the