"Relax, Trev," Brewer assured. "This is a good meeting."
"Mister Trevor," Omar spoke in the stereotypical accent to match his ethnicity, something he did by design. It grew worse whenever he grew agitated, and disappeared when shocked or scared. He seemed to enjoy playing the part. "We having a proposal you will much like."
Brewer translated, "We have an idea. I think you're going to like it."
Trevor asked, "Is this the Isaac’s Apple project?"
"The idea grew from that, yes," Jon answered as Omar pulled a set of blue prints from the cardboard tube and unfurled them on Trevor's desktop.
"What am I looking at?"
Brewer pitched, "Our forces are stretched thin, even with the two new divisions. There’s just so much territory to cover as we head west."
Stone said, "We always find a way to get by."
"Here’s our new way to get by," Brewer tapped a finger on the blue prints.
Trevor let the lines take shape to his eye. At first, he thought he viewed a large navy ship, maybe a battleship or an aircraft carrier. Yet the hull did not look quite right.
Brewer said, "This is something we were kicking around and realized it might work. Omar drew up the plans and Brett checked with our production capabilities. I spoke with Shep and Stonewall about it last week during our meeting in Chattanooga."
"Fine, great, what is it?"
"Take a good look, Trev, at a Dreadnought."
"A what?"
"Dreadnought. Just a name I thought up but it could be anything; air carrier, air ship…whatever. The point isn’t the name but what it can do for us."
"And what is that?"
"Project power," Brewer told him. "The same way navies used aircraft carriers to project power around the world. Except, in this case, it isn’t limited to oceans but can go anywhere."
"Break it down for me."
Omar pointed to different parts of the blueprint as he spoke. "It utilizes a greatly expanded version of the anti-gravity circuitry that is in the Eagle air ships. Now if you look here, you can see that we've incorporated more reverse-engineered alien technology, particularly-"
Trevor held his hand in a 'stop' sign. "What is this thing? What do you see it doing?"
Brewer said, "An airship nearly five thousand feet long-that’s about four times an aircraft carrier-and twenty-five hundred feet wide. That gives us a huge flight deck, heavy weapons mounts, and major transport capability, all with a crew under three hundred."
Omar added, "We are a mind of such that the anti-gravity technology can be adapted to assist in the landing of the jet planes. Combined with the long deck, this will be making it much easier to recover and launch even at the higher of altitudes."
"Right," Jon agreed. "We also see this thing being armed to the teeth with heavy-duty energy batteries based on Redcoat technology. The thing could pack a wallop, launch planes, and deliver hundreds of troops to the battlefield."
Trevor leaned back in his seat and let the idea of such a craft sink in.
"Think of it," Brewer salivated. "We send Dreadnoughts in advance of our armies. They pulverize enemy positions, land troops, and airlift out survivors. Remember my expedition up north? It would have been easy with one of these. We could have flown to the Arctic Circle in a day or two instead of going by sub and would have had air support, more troops, more supplies."
Trevor turned to Brett Stanton. While Omar dreamed up such things and Brewer could use it on the battlefield, Brett Stanton would ultimately make it a reality.
"Can this be done?"
"Yep. But wait now, it won’t be easy and it won’t be fast. I’m figuring eight months from go to prototype. That’s assuming I have the materials I’ll need."
"You will have all of the materials you will be needing," Omar insisted.
"The technology this is based on, it’s all sound?"
Omar answered, "It is simply expanding on things that are working for us already."
"And our resources are best spent on something like this?"
General Jon Brewer answered, "Trev, I mean wow, our response time will be faster, we’ll be able to explore remote areas easier. Hell, build a bunch of these and send a fleet around the world to hit The Order’s main facilities or gather survivors in Europe. All that will be possible."
Trevor gazed at the blueprint and saw what Omar and Jon envisioned: jets lifting off the deck, alien fortresses pounded by the guns, a thousand soldiers landing behind enemy lines.
"Okay, start work on the prototype. Do it real careful, though."
Instead of the smiles and nods of enthusiasm he expected, Trevor saw the men-one after another-look away from him as if they had something more to say but feared sharing.
"What? What is it?"
"Well," Jon said sheepishly. "Don’t we have to first get funding through the Senate?"
Of course. The recently elected Senate that busied itself debating food inspection regulations and labor laws with no practical application in the reality of the new world.
Trevor’s blood boiled. "Do what I say. If any of those damned politicians say a word, send them to me. The only power the Senate has is what I allow it to have. It's a present I gave to Evan Godfrey and his protestors to get them back to work and away from my front yard."
Jon nodded his head although Trevor saw doubt in his eyes. Nonetheless, his best General told him, "You won’t regret this, this could really change things."
Trevor glanced at the map on his desk.
"Yep. It’ll give me a whole new set of pins to push around."
3. Capital Idea
Most of the crowd wore crude wool overcoats, a few dressed in fading leather jackets left over from the old world. Regardless, they all shivered as the Capitol Building's long shadow cast over them and made a cold morning colder.
Their attention focused on a podium positioned between the two massive stairways ascending what had once been the home of the United States Congress.
The building itself-strong and sturdy-suffered damage from bombs and energy weapons during the early months of the invasion, including the destruction of the 17-foot-tall "Columbus Doors."
Inside, fire badly scorched the Frieze of American history in the rotunda but that loss represented merely the beginning of damage from flames and smoke. After the alien armies moved off, a Crawling Tube Worm nested inside and ensured that no post-apocalyptic vandals entered the Capitol Building. Or, rather, that no post-apocalyptic vandals left the Capitol Building.
And so it remained for several years until Trevor's shock troops cleared the city during the first months of the war against the Hivvans.
While Trevor gave the artifacts of America's old government no attention, Evan Godfrey recruited volunteers and oversaw the restoration of those hallowed halls, starting with the clearing of hundreds of decayed bodies of Capitol police, Secret Service, and CIA paramilitary.
Now Evan stood at the podium to celebrate another triumph in a series of significant personal victories starting when he gave voice to those shocked by the destruction at New Winnabow. That popularity soared even higher when he calmed protests that otherwise could have torn the newborn Empire apart.
His place at the forefront of post-invasion politics was sealed when Trevor Stone accepted Evan's compromise and allowed the planting of the seeds of democracy.
"This is a great beginning," Godfrey’s voice echoed to the shivering crowd of three hundred spectators and nearly a dozen members of the new world's version of the news media. "It has been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. As I take this first step with you, I am reminded of the many great words inscribed in the walls and recesses of this building behind me. Novus ordo seclorum. Or 'a new order of the ages is born.'
"I was once told that our new world would be an order only of fighting and warfare. That humanity would be nothing more than a mass of soldiers combating the horrid invaders who sully our planet. That our children had nothing to look forward to other than a warrior’s life.