1 - The Unexpected Visitor

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- July 2078 -


Kefler, project chief of the European Space Agency, had arrived over an hour early for work, as usual. It was the only way he could manage his growing workload. Budget cuts and staff reductions kept making the agency smaller but never seemed to lead to any less work for him to do.

He had already lost two major projects and over a third of his staff, and there were more budget cuts to come. He feared it would not be long before the ESA budget was so small that they would be going the same way as NASA and closing down physical projects almost completely, becoming a mostly educational body instead.

The ongoing negative swing in public opinion and the recent declaration of independence of the Galilean mining colonies were putting increasing political pressure on the entire program to focus on Earth-orbital programs and drop anything aimed further afield. Solving world hunger and disease were now much more popular aims for the majority of the civilian population. Exploration and expansion throughout the solar system were suffering fading support even within the scientific community.

Kefler's trim physique, immaculate, short hair and clean-shaven face made him appear a decade younger than his forty-seven years. The tendency of his job to require large amounts of overtime had mostly protected his pale skin from the ageing effects of sunlight.

He took another slow sip from his Grande Americano and continued to scroll through the budget reports displayed on the surface of his mahogany-effect desk. A few departments had completed the required expenditure cuts so he signed off the changes with his stylus. Others had not yet hit their targets so he dragged them across to his work tray for the day. It soon became apparent that many more had failed to hit their targets than actually succeeded. It was going to be a long day.

The intercom sitting on the far corner of his desk began to beep impatiently. Not even bothering to turn away from the document he was reading, he reached across and gestured to it with his free hand.

"Hilary, I thought I said no interruptions before 9 am?" he snapped.

"Sorry, sir, it's the American Ambassador to see you. He says it's urgent, sir," came his personal assistant's voice from the intercom speaker.

"American Ambassador? Must be urgent to drag him away from his sugar-coated doughnuts."

There was a deep but faint laugh from the intercom, definitely not his personal assistant's voice.

"Sir, he's... er... right here waiting," she said awkwardly.

'Damn!' thought Kefler. "Send him straight in."

The highly-polished oak door opened immediately and in strode the Ambassador, a barrel-chested man in his fifties with a neat beard and dark brown but thinning hair. He was shorter than Kefler expected, but still presented a large presence in his office.

"Please accept my apolo..." started Kefler.

"No problem," the Ambassador gestured with his hand. "No-one's at their best this early in the morning. Now, we have a lot to talk about and fast."

Before Kefler had a chance to say anything, the Ambassador dropped heavily into the leather guest chair facing him across his desk, dragged it forward a short distance and continued, "We both have secrets and we both have a problem. Now I have an excellent way to solve both our problems, but we're going to have to share some secrets to do it."

"I can assure you we don't have any significant secrets," said Kefler, well aware that the Americans were constantly trying to glean what technology they could from ESA research.

"Actually you're probably right," chuckled the Ambassador warmly, "But you THINK you do. You Brits have a shiny new ship in orbit that you can't afford to finish or fly, and we've got a stranded ship that we can't get to."

"I thought the U.S. had grounded all its ships?"

"Oh, we did. At least all the ones everyone knew about. But we've got a black-project prototype which nobody knows is out there."

"You mean Project Oppenheimer?"

"Your intelligence is better than we thought!" he chuckled.

"Not good enough it would appear," said Keller. "We thought that project was barely off the drawing boards, certainly nowhere near a launch! How did you launch it without the rest of the world detecting it?"

"There is no simple answer to that one. I haven't been given all the details. Suffice it to say that it did launch and completed its first test flight, but things didn't go to plan."

"And now it's stranded?" pushed Kefler.

"This is where we need to exchange secrets," the Ambassador sighed.

"You already seem to know everything. Why tell me anything?"

"Here's the deal: You've got a bird you can't fly. We've got the budget to fly it. We've got an ultra top-secret bird we need to salvage, and you've got the fastest way to get there. Due to certain political pressures on our Government, we cannot be seen to launch vessels, but what we can do is give you all the cash you need to fly yours on a joint mission to recover our problem. Otherwise, the Chinese, Russians or Indians might get there before us, and I don't need to tell you that would be very bad."

Kefler sighed for a moment as it all sank in. "So why us and not the French? They've three vessels that could make the trip. They are just as much part of ESA as we are."

"And two of those are currently on Mars missions," explained the Ambassador. "The third simply isn't big enough, and, not to put too fine a point on it, we'd rather do a joint mission with the Brits than the French. Relations have been a little frosty there since the whole secular education clash in the Coalition of Nations last year."

"So you're offering to fund the whole project if we get your ship back for you?"

"Better than that, we'll give you the money upfront if you take a crew of six of our guys out to the Oppenheimer."

"Six! That won't leave much room for our crew..."

"Trash! The Wagner, great name by the way – such stirring music, can carry nine and it only needs a skeleton crew of three to fly it. That means you can crew it with space left over for my guys. Our team is the best there is; they won't get in the way. If everything goes to plan our guys won't be there for the return trip anyway."

"Okay, but we're not talking a small budget to complete the craft," said Kefler.

"We're fully aware of that. Look, what we're offering you is a blank cheque – whatever it takes to get that ship flight ready inside of six weeks."

"Six weeks!"

"Money is no object. You need a billion? You got it. Need five?" pushed the Ambassador.

"A billion Euros should cover it. I need to cost it out, but I can't make this decision anyway. There are security issues and..."

"Don't worry. The Vice President is already in a conference call with the leaders of England, France and Germany. Start your math, this IS going to happen, today!"

Kefler buzzed for his personal assistant to come in, then he turned to his desk and called up his overview spreadsheet for the EUSS Wagner project.

"Coffee, Ambassador?"

"If you have doughnuts!" he laughed.

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