Apparently the last group had already finished when Bill arrived. On a Sunday afternoon there wasn’t exactly heavy traffic back and forth. In the morning there would be, as commuters to DC headed out. Recently, given that Glasses meant you could go as far as you wanted in no time at all, people had started using them to commute some really incredible distances. One guy Bill knew lived in Portland, Oregon, and worked in DC. It took him less time to get to his house than it had when he lived in Alexandria, and most of it was driving through Portland’s traffic. But given the differential in time, he missed even Portland’s rush hour on his way home. Of course, he had to get up at oh-my-god thirty to get to work.
The light over the Glass went green and Bill joined the group of eight or so that lined up, dropped a token or swiped a card through the turnstile and stepped through the Glass. On previous trips there had been some balkers, people who hadn’t quite gotten the hang of going through a Glass. But this group, clearly, was experienced with the trip. All of them just went through, no muss, no fuss.
The other side wasn’t at Reagan National; the Glass exited in Union Station, the main rail and metro station in DC. Bill headed down two escalators and along a nearly deserted metro platform to the now familiar Glass to Newport News. There were, in fact, three Glasses on the platform, one for Newport News, one for Little Creek and one for Norfolk Naval Station. They had been installed since the last mission and Bill had already gotten in the habit of using them to get from one base to the other. It was quicker and easier to go to DC then back to Norfolk than it was to drive across town.
The light over the Glass was green — the count-down timer having a bit over five minutes left before the next switch — so he just swiped his card again and stepped through. The card he used was also his military ID and a charge card; the charge for the transfer would be automatically debited from his bank through it. There was a website he could access where he could adjust the charge to the military, given that he had been recalled. But it really wasn’t worth the two bucks the trip was costing.
The exit at Newport News was in a recently constructed semi-secure building. The room was secured by a bored-looking guard who was there to prevent troublemakers and the unworthy from entering the base. Hell, there were people who just stepped through the wrong Glass.
Bill held up his card and gestured at the exit door to the room.
“Go ahead, Commander,” the guard said, nodding from behind the aliglass. “I got the word you were on the way. There’s a field car waiting for you.”
The “field car” was a golf cart driven by a warrant officer. Notably, Chief Warrant Officer Todd Miller, U.S. Navy SEALs. Bill slipped into the passenger seat and the SEAL pushed down the pedal, sending them deeper into the base at the cart’s maximum speed of slightly faster than a trot.
“What’s up, if you can say?” Bill asked.
“I dunno, sir,” Miller said. “I just got here, my own self. And got told to go pick you up. But Greg Townsend’s chairing the meet.”
“Admiral Townsend’s here?” Bill asked. Townsend was the commander of Norfolk Naval Base. As one of his “other duties” he was also the senior officer of the Vorpal Blade project. He was being bruted as the next commander of the operational arm of Space Command as soon as the Powers That Be went public with the Blade and turned it into the Space Navy.
“Everybody got the word to come to the ship instead of to Norfolk, sir,” Miller said with a shrug. “Usual cluster fuck.”
“Great,” Bill replied, crossing his arms. It was just a tad chilly for spandex bike shorts and an Underarmor top.
“Nice outfit,” Miller said with a grin. He was wearing a pair of cut-off desert BDU pants and a Hawaiian shirt.
“I was biking,” Bill replied.
“I was getting ready to have a family barbeque,” Miller said, clearly trying not to snarl. “My wife was less than thrilled.”
“How’s she handling your reactivation?” Bill asked.
“Not too happy,” Miller admitted. “But the nice thing about Glasses is that I can commute from Diego. And if she couldn’t handle the thought of me buying it on a mission we would have divorced decades ago.”
They pulled to a stop in front of the headquarters for the Blade project and went through the usual security rigmarole. It was a bit harder than getting on the base. There were four steel doors to negotiate and a guard station. From there, Miller led the way to Secure Room Four. Bill turned over his cellbud and PDA at the guard station, then entered.
The secure room had mostly familiar faces in it. Admiral Townsend was at the head of the table. He was in civilian clothes as well, wearing a polo shirt. Captain Steven “Spectre” Blankemeier, the ship’s CO, was wearing a T-shirt with an ace of spades on it and a squadron number. The new XO, Commander Rey Coldsmith, was the only one of the senior officers in uniform. Coldsmith was a submarine officer who’d come up through engineering. With degrees in both nuclear engineering and physics, he was a close second to Weaver in his understanding of the new drive. He did not, however, have Weaver’s background in quantum mechanics and astronomy.
Captain James Zanella, the new Marine company commander and First Sergeant Jeffrey Powell were also present. Powell was one of the five Marine survivors of the previous mission. Tall and slim with a deeply wrinkled face from lots of time in the sunshine, the Marine Senior NCO had a masters degree in international relations from the Sorbonne. The latter had come in handy in negotiating with the Cheerick on their previous mission. Zanella was even taller than his first sergeant with a greyhound physique and black hair shot with premature gray. Zanella was in a polo shirt but the first sergeant was wearing a T-shirt with a dragon fighting a wizard on the front.
The one face Weaver couldn’t place was a lieutenant in undress uniform. His nametag read: Fey.
Weaver was, by far, the most underdressed. But he could handle that.
“Glad you finally made it, Commander,” Admiral Townsend said without any notable rancor.
“I was near the top of a mountain in Alabama, sir,” Bill said, taking a seat. “It took me a while to bike down then get to the glassport.”
“Understood,” Townsend said, looking around and letting loose a grim smile. “This caught us all flat-footed. Lieutenant?”
“To introduce myself, I’m Lieutenant Chris Fey with SpaceCom’s Office of Alien Technologies,” the LT said. “This got routed through SpaceCom and I was the officer they dispatched to give the good news.”
“Which is?” Bill asked.
“Not good,” the lieutenant said, keying on his computer and projecting a starmap on the wall. A star was highlighted. “This is HD 36951, located just north of Orion’s Belt in the sky and is about five hundred and fourteen light-years from Earth. It is a Class A3 type star. Its Gamma planet is a gate world, one of the most distant we have. The gate opens about fifty miles from Wichita, Kansas, in a wheat field. What is called a Type Six boson resonance, for those familiar with the term. Not a Dreen Type Three, in other words. There has been a small science party there for some time gathering astronomical and archaeological data. It’s quite close to the Orion Cluster and had recently gotten some upgraded equipment and personnel due to recent work on Dreen gates. Admiral, I need to elaborate.”