The Mars Project, Julie Steimle [read aloud txt] 📗

School, silly belated Halloween parties, homework, sports practice, and their required counseling sessions. Easy enough to watch and tap into. Their overconfidence was annoying.

With the project going forward, by Friday Agent Sicamore went to Washington DC to make his presentation.

Saturday evening, he stood in the well-lit corridor of pristine government building, holding his report in his arms as if it were a bullet proof vest. He took his breaths carefully as he glanced about himself,  half expecting to see Jeff pop up on the step, though really more concerned about the reminder from Zormna that her military had sleeper agents within their government agencies who were just waiting for word from their superiors to take action.

Agent Sicamore’s presentation was in ten minutes. He was confident that he was doing the right thing. He wouldn’t let himself be threatened. More than ever, he believed that the two alien teenagers were a threat to the U.S. government.

Yet, Agent Keane held plan B in his hands.

The what-if’s were too great. That was what made Agent Sicamore tremble eight minutes before he was to suggest a course of action against the refugees in Earth: incarceration for the princess and her supporters, possible physical removal from their organizations if they could find them all. The possibility that Zormna could contact her people and start an interplanetary war was real. However, he believed the Martians wanted a silent revolution and were willing to keep things quiet to support that. Sicamore was guessing that they wouldn’t bring in the other army until the last minute—just enough time for their own military to be fully prepared.

Then five minutes before his presentation.

James swallowed. He was ready. It was his people versus a dangerous unknown. They had to be prepared.

“Mr. Sicamore!” his personal secretary, Marc, called out to him, jogging with a piece of paper in his extended hand. “Urgent fax from the office, sir.”

Puzzled, Sicamore took the paper and looked at it. It was nearly blank except for a brief handwritten message in the center. The handwriting was oddly familiar.

 

Mr. John and Mrs. Claire Jones

4373 Sun Valley Lane

Apache Junction, Arizona

85208

 

Thought you’d like to know, they look well.

 

Z

 

Agent Sicamore almost collapsed. White, he fell back against the wall, shaking his head in disbelief. He crumpled the paper in his hands.

“What’s wrong?” Marc asked, worried. He tried to help Agent Sicamore onto his feet.

Agent Sicamore shook his head, muttering. “We have to go to plan B.”

Marc didn’t seem to understand. “Sir? But what about all your work? This might be the only time before they—”

“Marc. We have to go to plan B.”  Agent Sicamore nodded furiously to himself, his face and hands clammy. “Get me Agent Keane.”

Marc shook his head. “I think he is already in the presentation room. He’s been working with General Groeberg this last week to prepare them as you asked.”

The head of the Mars Project nodded, marching to the doors. He looked to his watch. One minute.

The doors opened. Agent Keane stood to the side with an encouraging smile. But Sicamore shot him a mournful look and shook his head.

“Plan B?” Agent Keane groaned like he had been kicked in the gut.

Nodding, Agent Sicamore sighed. “We have no choice.”

They entered the room.

Agent Keane addressed the men in suits and uniforms who were waiting their concise and informative report on their project’s progress and discoveries. “It, uh, seems that things have changed in the last few minutes. Bear with us as Agent Sicamore will fill you in on the details, Agent Sicamore….”

Agent James Sicamore stepped to the front of the room with a sober expression. His eyes took in all the important people he had gathered, all those who had supported the project and some who still needed to be convinced the project had been worthwhile. He said, “It is my unfortunate position to inform you that our project has had a devastating delay.”

“What kind of delay?” asked one general. “Do you have proof that they are hostile or not? That is all we need to know.”

Shaking his head, Agent Sicamore picked up the water bottle sitting nearby on the table. With trembling hands, he opened it and took a drink, thinking fast of the best way to handle the situation. Addressing the room again, he said, “I have no doubt that they are hostile. I do, however, have doubts that we are sufficiently capable of dealing with them.”

A grumble ran through the room. The egos of many important men didn’t like such a backward rubbing. And though Sicamore continued with caution, he did it firmly so they were not mistaken about his convictions.

“If these people are capable of evading our detection for so long, wouldn’t it suggest that they also have the technological capability of defeating us without effort? I suggest that we gather more information on their tactical capabilities before we take steps to confront them. We’ve had only peeks into their true capacity for self-defense and attack.”

“What of the girl and the boy?” one of the more formidable men in a business suit asked. It was one of their supporters who was more in the know.

Nodding to him. Agent Sicamore replied, “They seem to be at the center of an internal conflict among their own people. However, I wouldn’t approach them at this time. They seem prepared to effectively defend themselves. I believe they have an extensive network of spies as well as technology that has been tracking our motions. I believe we even have moles among the high ups in our agencies. I think if we stick with observation and as we keep track of them, we’ll eventually nullify that system. But that means searching through ourselves to find our moles.”

The generals and politicians nodded.

“You can observe the information I have given you, but it must not leave this room. And no action must be taken until we feel that we are sufficiently capable of handling them,” Agent Sicamore said.

The roomful nodded.

“Is that all, Mr. Sicamore?” an official on the end asked with authority.

Agent Sicamore nodded.

“Suggestions?” The official waited for the responses.

A general nodded with a looked to Sicamore. “We want all technological observations sent to us as soon as possible. I want to know their exact capabilities.”

“Yes, sir,” Agent Sicamore agreed.

“I think we all need to brace ourselves for invasion,” another general said.

Many nodded.

The room went uncomfortably silent.

“Thank you, Mr. Sicamore. We’ll be waiting for your reports,” the official said then stood up.

All of the men and women rose and exited the room, talking still in low rumbles and murmurs. They straightened their suits as they nodded politely to Agents Keane and Sicamore when they left. Once they were out, Agent Keane looked to his supervisor.

“What do we do now?” Agent Keane asked.

Agent Sicamore shook his head. He had been thinking as the group exited, leaning against the wall. Rising from it, he replied, “The same as what we have been doing. We’ll watch them and wait. We’ll keep our eyes open. And we have to get rid of our moles. And we have to find that hacker that broke into our system.”

Agent Keane nodded though he knew it did not include him returning to school. Yet he murmured, “What if Jeff is the hacker? Or Zormna? She is military trained in who knows what kind of advanced technology. And she did considerer her computer class a total joke.”

Laughing weakly, Agent Sicamore nodded. “Yeah…we might be taking them both for granted. When looking at them, I still see the thug and the princess. I forget sometimes that he is a brilliant student and she is a solider.”

They both exited the room. They walked down the now empty hall, departing through the front doors and down the many steps to the street where their cars waited. From there they would go to their hotels then eventually finish out their weekend by heading back to Pennington. It was their curse and duty.

Mr. Sicamore’s personal secretary, Marc, watched his boss drive away with a terse frown. Agent Keane’s car followed close behind. He shook his head before stepping on the local bus where he paid his pocket change into the machine. He took a quick ride to the nearest fast food burger place where he ordered a number five meal then sat in the back to eat in uninterrupted. Sitting at a single seat near the window, he watched the traffic roll by, chewing on his burger contently, though he checked his watch a couple times. On his way out, he dug into his pocket for the rest of his loose change, halting next to a pay phone, which was surprisingly still functioning. Or rather, he knew it would function.

Marc picked up the receiver and dialed.

It rang three times.

<< Hello? >>

Marc took a sip of his soda. “It’s M. They took plan B.”

*

Jeff smiled as he listened to his cell phone. “I see. Thanks M. Big Z out.”

He folded up his phone and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket.

“Who was that?” Zormna asked, carrying the picnic basket to his truck from her great aunt’s house and putting it in the front seat.

Jeff shrugged as he said, “A friend. Things are going to be ok.”

Zormna smiled. She knew what he was talking about so she left it at that.

They climbed into the truck and pulled on their seat belts. Jeff smiled contentedly at Zormna while she looked back at him with a grin. He wasn’t as irritating as she once thought he was. Things for the first time in a long while were going well. It was possible that they might be able to concentrate their efforts now on better things than just defending themselves. Their ‘bluff’ had worked.

Not that they had entirely lied. Zormna probably could contact someone in the Patrol under her old jurisdiction and have James Sicamore’s parents removed. But the hassle of explaining why she was not at the moon base or why she was running around with the likes of Jafarr Zeldar would have been too much. Instead, Jeff had some of his people keep tabs on the parents, to shadow them just in case. 

They drove up the street until they passed Jeff’s house. Then they continued up the dirt path after the street ended, rolling up the hill into the woods of the Pennington Forest until they reached the green bald spot called Stargazer’s Hill. It wasn’t far. They could have walked it.

They parked. There was already a white convertible parked there with several other cars on the hill.

Brian called over to the bald spot with his friends who were still getting over the fact that Sam had been an FBI agent. When Sam didn’t return to school on Tuesday, they half suspected that Jeff had beaten him up and left for dead on the Harvest cliffs, especially after hearing from Joy and Brian Jeff’s tale that Sam was an FBI agent. Adam and Mark confronted him about it. So, Jeff made Adam, who was the only guy in the group who ever went over to Sam’s house and fork over the address and phone number. The entire gang visited the place that afternoon. The house was real, but newly vacated. A For Rent sign was in the window. Brian just gaped at Jeff as the others stared at the place. But after that he was thoroughly forgiven by everyone.  

Of course Adam had been completely blown. And he spent the rest of the week murmuring, “My best friend at Pennington High was an FBI agent…”

But that evening Adam Arbor greeted them with a broad smile, offering to help Zormna with the picnic basket she was carrying.

Jennifer and Kevin already had a blanket spread out on the grass. Darren was also there, setting up his telescope for sky-watching. Michelle Clay, Stacey Price, and Jennifer McCabe also came. The gaggle of cheerleaders were sitting with Joy, flirting with the boys. Alex Streigle worked off to the side with Eric who was acting as chaperones, both putting up the volleyball net.