“Very interesting,” Rochester said. “Do you realise we can make diamonds in orbit? There is an endless demand for diamonds of certain specifications and we can produce them, very cheaply. And then there’s the supplies of raw materials from the asteroids, once we start mining them. They’re even working out a Homesteading Kit for anyone who wants to set up as an asteroid miner. Once we get them out to the asteroid belt…”
He broke off as Steve’s communicator buzzed. “Steve, this is Mongo,” Mongo said. “You need to get back to the ship. We may have a serious problem.”
Steve looked up at Rochester. “I’m sorry to cut this short,” he said, “but I need to go.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rochester said. He gave Steve a smile that looked somehow inhuman on his modified face. “Give them hell.”
Chapter Nine
Washington DC, USA
“That’s odd,” Jürgen Affenzeller muttered.
It was a largely unacknowledged fact that the Department of Homeland Security kept an eye on military veterans. The rationale for the policy had never been fully codified and, indeed, had started out as a sop to political correctness. Besides, veterans were trained in using weapons, they often had experience in urban combat and they sometimes suffered from PTSD and other problems after their service. It was just common sense, the DHS had argued, to keep an eye on them.
Jürgen had never really believe in the logic, if there was any logic in the decision. Indeed, it made much more sense, to him, to keep an eye on radical Islamic groups operating within the United States. But the simple truth was that any hint of racial profiling would cause a political shitstorm, while veterans had far fewer people willing to go to bat for them. It made little sense, but politics rarely did. Besides, he had a wife and two small daughters to feed and raising a stink about it would have cost him his job.
He’d never seen much of anything to convince him that there was a real danger. Sure, some veterans were politically active, proud members of the Gun Community and very opposed to any threats to the Second Amendment, but few of them seemed dangerous. Indeed, veterans were often stanchly patriotic, unwilling to consider using violence against their own countrymen. Compared to some of the noises coming from radical groups — and they had expanded rapidly in the wake of the economic crisis — there was no strong reason to worry about the vets. But he didn’t seem to have any choice.
But now there was something odd flowing into the system.
It was hard, almost impossible, to move around the United States without leaving some kind of electronic trace. The DHS — and NSA and several other government organisations — monitored human traces, looking for patterns that might signify trouble. It was, in many ways, a flawed replacement for having men and women out on the beat, but it did have the advantage of causing almost no disturbance at all for the suspect to pick up on. Quite a few criminal cases had been blown, Jürgen knew, because the suspect had seen the FBI agent shadowing him and panicked.
He looked down at the list of reports, trying to put them together into a coherent whole. His instincts told him there was a pattern, even if he couldn’t see it clearly. But what did it signify?
A large number of veterans claimed benefits of one kind or another from the government. Over the last three weeks, a surprisingly high number — over three thousand — had stopped claiming benefits. It was an odd pattern, made all the odder by the simple fact that most of those veterans seemed to have vanished. They weren’t dead, as far as he could tell; they’d just dropped out of sight. And then he’d cross-referenced the data and discovered that half of the veterans in the list were crippled. They had been unable to return to a normal life.
So where had they gone?
A call to a handful of residence homes revealed that the men had been transferred, without notice, to another residence home in Montana. Jürgen had frowned, then checked with Montana and discovered that there was no such residence home. But when he did yet another cross-reference, it became clear that the veterans who weren’t crippled had also gone to Montana. And then they’d dropped off the grid.
He shook his head in disbelief, then started poking around the data. A man called Kevin Stuart had visited thirty of the nursing homes, then he’d been replaced by several other men… all of whom were included on the list of disappeared veterans. And veterans weren’t the only ones. Keith Glass, a writer of military science-fiction, had also vanished… and so had a large percentage of the Space Settlement Society. Some of them were vets, others were civilians who had been very involved with NASA and civilian space programs… there was a pattern, Jürgen was sure. But what did it all mean?
Shaking his head, he put a brief report together and emailed it to his superior officer. Maybe there was nothing going on, maybe it was just a false alarm. But he honestly couldn’t see how nearly four thousand men, some of them crippled, could fit into a relatively small ranch. They wouldn’t have anything like enough water, for starters, or food… unless they were shipping it in by the truckload. But why would anyone do that?
Five minutes later, he received two emails in return. The first one, from his boss, ordered him to cooperate with the second email. Puzzled, he opened the second email and discovered orders to report to Fort Meade, ASAP. The NSA? It made no sense to him at all. What would a number of missing veterans have to do with the National Security Agency?
“Thank you for coming,” the NSA agent said, when he arrived at Fort Meade. He hadn’t bothered to give his name. “Your investigation has crossed paths with one of our investigations and we need to share information.”
Jürgen kept his opinion of that to himself. The NSA wasn’t known for sharing information with anyone, unless someone with real authority got behind them and pushed. It was far more likely, he knew, that they’d take what he’d found and then order him to keep his mouth shut in future. It would annoy his boss — the Department of Homeland Security desperately needed a big win, something they could use to justify their existence — but crossing the NSA was considered inadvisable. They could end his career with a word or two in the right ears.
“For the moment, you are being seconded to my team,” the agent continued. “You’ll be given papers to sign later, but for the moment keep your mouth shut outside the team, understand?”
“Yes,” Jürgen said, tightly. “I don’t suppose I have a choice.”
“No,” the agent agreed. “You don’t.”
Jürgen gritted his teeth, then followed the agent down through a series of security checks and into a SCIF facility deep under the building. It was less impressive than he’d expected, he decided, as he looked around; there was a large table, a handful of comfortable chairs and a simple projector and computer terminal. But it would be secure, he knew, as he took the seat he was offered and waited. No one outside the room would be able to eavesdrop on them, nor would any recording devices work within the room’s field. It was as secure as human ingenuity could make it.
“We will be briefing a handful of very high-ranking officials on the progress of a monitoring program,” the agent added. “Say nothing until I call on you to speak, then stick to the facts alone.”