The Rescue by Don Ellis

Author:Don Ellis [Ellis, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780446604918
Publisher: Aspect
Published: 2000-06-30T14:00:00+00:00

16

They were already deep in discussion of the anomaly and David’s theories for how to go back through it when Raedawn rejoined them.

“Vodka tonic,” she said before Lamott could ask.

“Not many people drink vodka these days,” he said, nonetheless finding a bottle of Stolichnaya in his cabinet and mixing her drink with a generous jigger.

“More for me,” she said. “Besides, it’s part of our new alliance on Mars. We drink vodka, they drink beer.”

“New alliance?” Lamott waited for her to sit down. When she took the other end of the same couch where David was seated, Lamott changed seats to sit in a recliner across from her instead of David. He had to turn his head sideways to say to David, “You didn’t tell me the Union had formed an alliance with the Neo-Soviets on Mars.”

David nearly choked on his scotch. He had used that cover story on the farmer, but he hadn’t planned to lie to the military. Especially not to a former friend who could probably see through him in a second.

Raedawn had no such worry. “There’s nothing like watching your home planet vanish to make you feel alone in the universe. Neither side had the stomach for fighting afterward.” She glanced over at David.

Lamott was still looking at her. “I hope the truce is stable.”

“Very,” Raedawn said, not missing a beat.

“Good. We’ll need that if we’re going to convince the Neo-Sovs here.”

Raedawn lost her cool for a moment. “Convince the Neo-Sovs?” she echoed.

“David’s been explaining his idea for placing EMP bombs around the planet and blowing them all at once to attract the anomaly again.”

She looked at David, then at Lamott, as if they were both completely insane.

Lamott seemed not to notice. “It just might work, but we can’t do it without everyone’s cooperation.” To David he said, “This is all assuming you can get us some proof of concept, of course. Our own people won’t go for it without that, much less the Sovs. Nobody will go for it unless we can send something else back home first.”

David grimaced. “They’ll have to, because we’re only going to get one shot at this. The process involves destroying the anomaly, and there’s only one of them now. We can probably show proof of concept for drawing it toward the Earth again by detonating a few EMPs in a line between it and here. In fact we probably ought to do that just to make sure it doesn’t close up again before we’re ready to go, but as far as the actual transition goes, they’ll just have to take my word for it.”

Perry tapped the side of his glass with a fingernail. It made a soft ding, ding, ding while he thought, and went silent when he spoke. “Look, David, you know as well as I do that no one’s going to be willing to take a risk like that without proof that it could actually work. Not to mention that the Neo-Sovs will probably think it’s a ruse to get them to lower their guard.

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