The E Utopia Project (18 page)
“I think I’ve
got enough to make you moan, writhe and squeal,” he said before he scooped her
in his arms and carried her to the bed.
She laughed,
making mock attempts to free herself from him.
* * *
All the men and women of Harvesting
Fleet 4 reported for duty on time and began checking everything in their ships,
a process that took more than three hours. The engineering and maintenance squad
had done a good job. All the ships were in good order.
The crews boarded their ships
and the fleet de-anchored and sailed toward the jump zone where they would
begin a hyperspace trip that would take them into the Solar System. The fleet
consisted of twenty Oxygen Harvesters and five Vanquisher fighters, making a
ratio of one fighter ship to four Oxygen Harvesters. All Oxygen Harvesters were
armed with missiles that could be called air-to-air if they were used in air
combat, or space-to-space if they were fired during space combat. Vanquishers
were a sixth of the size of Oxygen Harvesters. Apart from missiles, each Vanquisher
boasted of a laser turret and a rotary canon. The laser turret was capable of
360 degree-aiming and could focus powerful lasers at targets two kilometers
away. The rotary canon was capable of firing 50mm amour-piercing shells.
The ships travelled in V-formation
with the fighter ships evenly spaced on the fringes of the formation. OH64,
Sopoaga’s ship, was on the tip of the formation. The rear admiral liked to lead
from the front.
Sopoaga couldn’t help feeling
resentful when he looked at Commander Inkeri Jantunen, his ship’s new XO. She
was a Finnish tomboy with a figure that had only the slightest hint of
femininity. Her face would have looked somewhat womanly if her hair wasn’t so
short. Vice Admiral Frankson gave Sopoaga the privilege to choose his ship’s new
first officer and he chose Jantunen because she was the only woman available. The
admiralty had cannibalized Jantunen’s previous fleet when they increased the
sizes of the milking fleets. He had hoped she would have a voluptuous figure
like Nuate. Her record was impressive and she could speak eight languages,
namely her native Finnish, English, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian,
Ukrainian and French. Although Sopoaga knew that her linguistic skills would be
of great help to him in commanding the multi-ethnic group of men and women
under his command, he wasn’t delighted to have her in place of Nuate.
Commander Inkeri Jantunen
came from the town of Sodankylä in Finnish Lapland, the home town of Captain
First Grade Eemeli Hyvönen, Harvesting Fleet 4’s second-in-command. She joined
the Finnish conservationist movement when the Finnish government invited dozens
of companies to exploit newly discovered deposits of nickel, gold and other
minerals in the Finnish Lapland. The scramble for the minerals of the Lapland was
so immense that the region became nicknamed the Congo of the Arctic. The
Finnish government encouraged this rush for minerals and granted foreign
companies cheap mineral rights. The companies started their mining operations
with wanton disregard for the ecosystems of the region’s wetlands. Anyone who
tried to protest was accused of being against progress. The government and its
supporters argued that the mining would create much-needed employment and boost
the country’s economy.
Jantunen remembered a time
when she and her father went fishing in Finland’s wetland paradise. She and her
dad used to catch large pike that was more than two feet in length. Sometimes
they just came to marvel at the beauty of the wetland wilderness. Like maggots
feasting on flesh, the companies gored into the marshland, spewing phosphates,
cyanides, arsenic, uranium and other toxic wastes into rivers and lakes.
The government turned a blind
eye when the companies began to encroach on protected areas that were home to
close to a hundred endangered species of birds and over a dozen endangered
plants. Jantunen and other conservationists told the government that the damage
to the environment far outweighed any economic gains that the country hoped to
get from the mining. The wetlands, the conservationists argued, were home to
several tourist resorts that directly or indirectly employed hundreds of
people.
Jantunen met Eemeli Hyvönen
in the conservationist movement and together with others, they held
demonstrations, spoke to parliamentarians and distributed pamphlets, but the
government didn’t listen. The Finnish conservationists were overjoyed when the International
Green Movement offered them funding. The IGM funded the conservation movement
of the Finnish Lapland for a year before they invited twenty of the Lapland’s
leading green activists to the United States to meet the Executive Council.
Jantunen remembered the first
speech of the President of the Executive Council as if she heard it yesterday.
In the powerful speech, the President told them that what was happening to the
Finnish Lapland was happening to the whole world, slowly pushing the natural
environment into a dungeon of doom. The majority of the people on Earth
supported the reckless industrialization and the greedy extraction of natural
resources that was destroying the environment. Because the majority believed
that the worldwide unsustainable use of natural resources was economic progress,
they would always vote for governments that promised to maintain the status
quo, hence it was futile for conservationists to fight for their cause using
political means. He told Jantunen and her compatriots that the war to save the
world was a full-time job that needed greater commitment. The speech was so
powerful that all but four of Jantunen’s compatriots refused to be taken to
space for orientation.
Rear Admiral Sopoaga sat at
the main bridge of the spaceship OH64 and continued looking at Commander Inkeri
Jantunen, wishing she would somehow transform into the sexy Nuate. She stood
upright, looking into a computer, doing her best to pretend that she wasn’t
feeling his hostile eyes trained on her. Her posterior looked so flat and her
chest was so plain that he thought that if he made her lie on her belly on a
horizontal surface in a place with gravity, and put a spirit level against her
back, the spirit level would give him a perfect reading.
“Commander,” Sopoaga finally
decided to break the awkward silence.
“Sir?”
“Your record says you’re a
fine linguist.”
“My record says I speak eight
languages but strictly speaking, I speak five languages because Portuguese,
Spanish and Italian are just dialects of the same language, and Russian and Ukrainian
are also dialects of one language.”
“Impressive,” Sopoaga said.
“Do you by any chance know some Tuvaluan?”
Jantunen shook her head and
smiled. “Maybe I will learn a few Tuvaluan words from you, sir.”
Sopoaga smiled back, wishing her
figure was more feminine. “Maybe you will, commander.”
Jantunen walked to the
navigation console and stood beside the ship’s astrogator. Since OH64 was the flagship,
its course had to be checked more frequently than that of the other ships.
“What is the status of our
course, lieutenant?” Commander Jantunen asked.
“We are safely on course,
sir,” Lieutenant-Commander Karotu said.
Jantunen stifled a smile.
Although she was a tomboy, she still found it amusing to be addressed as sir.
She looked at the navigation console for seconds before she returned to her
seat.
“Commander,” Sopoaga said.
“Sir?” Jantunen said,
springing to her feet. She scampered toward the rear admiral.
“I wonder why the admiralty
did not see it fit to give you a more senior post,” Sopoaga said, his eyes
still searching her lean body for signs of femininity.
Jantunen looked at him with
surprise. “You do, sir?”
“Yes. Do you prefer to work
in space or on E Utopia?”
“If I were given a choice, I
would choose to work on E Utopia, sir,” Jantunen said.
“I think the admiralty should
have promoted you to captain and assigned you to our training camp on E Utopia.
Our recruits come from all over Earth and your linguistic skills will be very
useful at the camp. Maybe I will put a word for you to be promoted and
transferred to E Utopia.”
“Thank you, sir!” Jantunen
said with delight. If she was transferred to E Utopia she would enjoy exploring
the planet when she was off-duty. She would visit the biomes and aquariums that
hosted animals from different parts of the Earth. Working on the ground on E
Utopia would be far more enjoyable than working in the cramped ship.
“I’ll recommend you only if
you perform your duties to my satisfaction,” Sopoaga said, noting that her hips
were not as flat as he initially thought. Maybe one day she would let him touch
them as an incentive for him to recommend her for transfer to the ground
workforce.
A plain woman is better than no woman,
he thought, trying to
banish thoughts about Nuate.
Sara and George lay on the
bed. George felt as if he was in a mild stupor. He always felt like that after
sex. Sara, on the other hand, felt as if she had just finished recharging her
batteries. George wondered why he loved to do something that left him so
feeble. He knew that when he recovered his strength, he would crave for her
body again. He was almost falling asleep when Sara’s phone rang.
“It’s the Secretary-General!”
Sara said, sitting bolt upright. “Hello, sir.”
“Doctor Cummings, I have
talked to the President and he has tasked the Attorney-General and the
Secretary for Homeland Security to set up a team of bodyguards for you. They
will contact the Russians when the team is ready to pick you from the Russian
ambassador’s residence. I think they will pick you up today. They will act in
consultation with the UN Department of Safety and Security.”
“Did you tell them about my
wish to have my fiancé in my guard?”
“Yes. They said they need to
check his background first before they can include him in your guard.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“It was my pleasure, Doctor
Cummings. See you at the summit.”
“The team of bodyguards is
being prepared as we speak,” Sara told George.
“Great!” George said
groggily. “I can’t wait to get out of this little apartment and have some
fresh, oxygen-deficient air.”
The UN Secretary-General was
right. The team of bodyguards arrived at the ambassador’s residence two hours
later. The Russian ambassador bade her farewell and ordered three Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service agents to take her to her new bodyguards.
One of the Russian intelligence
agents went outside to talk to the Americans whilst Sara, George and the other
two Russian agents waited inside the ambassador’s house. The agent scooted to
the leader of the group of American law enforcement and security agents.
“From the Russian Bear,” the
Russian agent said.
“To George Washington,” a
baby-faced red-haired FBI agent completed the password.
“Alright,” the Russian said.
“Let me bring the package.”
He scooted to the servants’
quarters at the back of the mansion and returned with Sara’s dog. He led the
dog into the mansion and handed Sara the dog’s leash. Normally Snoopy would
have pounced on Sara to show her that he had missed her, but today the dog
remained aloof. The new environment and the presence of so many strangers made
the dog feel nervous.
“All clear,” the Russian
agent told his colleagues in Russian. “We can transfer the package.”
Holding her dog’s leash, Sara
nervously followed George and the Russian agents to the three black cars
waiting outside the mansion. She couldn’t help thinking that the men in the
black cars could be impostors who actually wanted to kill her.
“Ma’am, I’m agent Sean Kane
from the FBI Counterterrorism Division,” the red-haired baby-faced young man
said, extending an arm toward Sara. “I’m the head of your guard.”
Sara shook the FBI agent’s
hand. “I’m glad to be acquainted to you, sir.”
Agent Kane took a glance at
George and returned his eyes to Sara. “I’ve been informed that your fiancé
wants to be part of our team.”
“Yes. I want him to be one of
my bodyguards.”
“We will only accept him if
he promises not to interfere in our duties.”
“Don’t worry,” George said.
“I won’t interfere.”
“Fine,” Agent Kane said
before he ushered Sara and George into one of the three cars. He sat on Sara’s
right and George sat on Sara’s left on the back seat of the car. Two FBI agents
sat in front of the car. The remaining four FBI agents occupied the other two
cars.
They drove to the gate and a
member of the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service, who was on guard duty
at the ambassador’s residence, opened the gate. The three cars moved into the
street and stopped two hundred meters away from the gate.
“Let’s go,” Sara said
nervously. “What are you waiting for?”
“Go where? You haven’t told
us where you want us to take you.”
Sara sighed, realizing that
these were her bodyguards, not her captors. “I want to go home.”
“Okay, ma’am.”
“I stay in—”
“We’ve done our homework. We
know where you stay.” Agent Kane spoke into his sleeve, “We’re taking her home.”
The lead car moved and the
other cars followed. It was beginning to get dark. The sky was cloudy but in
these days of El Monstruo it didn’t mean that rain was about to fall.
Sara squeezed George’s hand
when she mentally replayed how he risked his life to save hers. The attempt on
her life had happened only three days ago but it had had such a profound effect
on her life that it seemed as if it took place a long time ago. Only a week ago
she was a lonely woman but now she was reunited with the man she loved.
Two police cars were parked
in front of Sara’s house. When Sara’s motorcade stopped, both George and Agent
Kane jumped out of the car and held a door for her. Sara chose the door that
George had opened for her. Two FBI agents led the way through the gate, two
flanked Sara and George and two walked behind them. Snoopy ran through the
gate, happy to be back on home territory. He even started to bark at the
strangers.
The bodyguards in front made
way for Sara when they reached the front door. It took the scanners on her door
seven seconds to scan her eyes. When the door opened Agent Kane blocked Sara’s
way with his hand.
“Wait a sec, ma’am,” the FBI
agent ordered. “Let us check the house first.”
Kane and another bodyguard
entered the house and checked every room before they allowed Sara to enter.
“How many bedrooms do you
have here?” Kane asked
“Three.”
“Good. I’ll need one bedroom.
I’ll be on guard inside your house.”
“Is that necessary?” Sara
asked.
“You asked for bodyguards and
now you have them,” the FBI agent said.
Sara petulantly pouted at the
infringement of her privacy.
“So you said you are in our
team?” Agent Kane asked George.
“Yes,” George said. “Consider
me as one of you.”
The FBI agent took a
semiautomatic pistol from his jacket. “If you’re one of us you’ll need one of
these.” He handed it to George.
“Thanks man,” George said,
holding the gun. “It’s a long time since I held one of these.”
“Be careful with that piece,”
Kane said.
George caressed the gun.
“Don’t worry. I can handle much bigger hardware.”
The sight of the gun made
Sara quail. Although George was one of her bodyguards, she didn’t like seeing him
looking so comfortable with a gun.
“I’m going to bath,” she
said. “You guys feel at home. I’m sure you’ll find some drinks in the fridge.
George is a great cook. If you cajole him, he might make you his great tofu
with fried rice.”
* * *
“Attention everyone,” Rear Admiral
Sopoaga shouted into the comm when his fleet was a thousand seconds from the
jump zone. “Check all the systems of the ship. We are just over sixteen minutes
away from the JZ.”
Commander Jantunen began
barking orders.
Sopoaga flicked a switch to
change the comm from intra-ship mode to inter-ship mode. The faces of all the
captains of the fleet’s ships immediately appeared on multi-functional display.
“Rear Admiral to all Captains,” Sopoaga shouted. “We are less than one thousand
seconds away from the jump zone. Order your crew to get the ships ready for the
jump. Acknowledge in order of your ship numbers, milkmaids first and fighters
last.”
“Copy that sir,” Captain
First Grade Hyvönen responded.
One by one the captains of
the rest of the ships responded in order of the names of their ships.
“Status check complete on
ship OH64, sir,” Captain First Grade Hyvönen responded after four minutes.
“Ship’s ready to make the jump, sir.”
“Copy,” Sopoaga said.
“Status check complete on
ship OH13,” Captain Nuate said seconds later. “Ship is healthy and ready for
the jump, sir.”
Upon hearing Nuate’s voice, Sopoaga
looked at Jantunen, wishing she was as attractive as the Niger Deltan. “Roger
that.”
One by one, the captains told
the rear admiral that their ships were ready to make the jump into hyperspace.
When the ships were thirty
seconds away from the jump, their computers synchronously shouted the jump
countdown in a female generic voice. “Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”
When the countdown reached
zero, the ships’ jump drives were automatically activated, launching the ships
into hyperspace. The astronauts felt no acceleration force when they entered
hyperspace. Travelling in normal space and travelling in hyperspace felt the
same. The only difference was that when one looked out the viewport, he was
unable to see stars and celestial bodies that were in normal space.
Thirty-one minutes later, the
ships came out of hyperspace and found themselves in the Solar System. Sopoaga
immediately sent a message to Eureka Space Station requesting the coordinates
of the new milking point.
“Rear Admiral to all
captains. Let’s maintain formation and head toward Earth. The coordinates of
our new milking location will be arriving any moment from now.”
The coordinates arrived in three
minutes. Sopoaga became increasingly worried as the fleet inched toward the
Earth. Why did the admiralty order Oxygen Harvesting Fleet 4 to carry weapons
this time? Why did they make him change the milking point? Was an Earth space
force awaiting his fleet? He and the fleet’s senior captains were under orders
to make sure that no ship got captured in the event of confrontation. If need
be, they had to blow one of their own ships to prevent it from being captured.
The Earth’s powers had not yet discovered the jump drive and the admiralty
didn’t want them to reverse engineer a jump drive from a captured ship. Without
jump drives no ship from Earth could reach E Utopia.
If the Executive Council and
the admiralty were so worried about having their ships captured why did they
order them to continue stealing oxygen from the Earth’s atmosphere? Why didn’t
they switch to extracting carbon dioxide from Venus?
“Commander Jantunen,” Sopoaga
barked when he was tired of asking himself questions which he couldn’t answer.
“Sir!”
“Con the ship,” he said. “I’m
taking a little rest.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Hyvönen will command the
fleet whilst I rest.”
“Okay, sir.”
Sopoaga switched the comm to
inter-ship mode. “Captain First Grade Hyvönen can you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take command of the fleet
for five minutes. I’m taking a little time out.”
“Yes, sir,” Hyvönen said.
“Raise me if anything
unexpected happens.”
“I’ll do exactly that, sir.”
Sopoaga switched off his
gravity shoes and weightlessly drifted away from the bridge. Gliding in zero
gravity always revivified him and helped him reduce stress. But today it didn’t
ease his worries. His fleet was carrying hundreds of missiles, and he wielded
the power to launch the missiles. Any misjudgment on his part could provoke a
shooting war with the Earth’s powers. If he died in war, would the Executive
Council and the admiralty honor their word and evacuate his chosen ones to E
Utopia? How would they bring his chosen ones to E Utopia if war broke out? The
Earth’s powers would surely blockade the Earth if war broke out between them
and E Utopians. If the increasing temperatures on Earth killed his family, he
would be guilty of their murder. When he returned back to Base, he was going to
ask Vice Admiral Frankson how the admiralty would evacuate the chosen ones from
Earth if war broke out.
* * *
Wong was surprised to see
Sara entering his office. He had spent the previous day running the show and it
hurt to revert to being number two. He had hoped she would return after the
summit. Now she was back and she would most likely tell world leaders her
theory about aliens.
Wong gave Sara a wooden
smile. “Glad to see you, Sara. How are you?”
“Still trying to recover from
the nervous breakdown, I guess,” she said icily.
Wong threw his hands up.
“Come on, Sara. I was just trying to protect you.”
“Protect me by telling the
world that I’m a nutcase?”
“I never used such kind of language.
One of the reporters did and I reprimanded her.” He looked at the two men
behind Sara. “Who are these gentlemen?”
“They’re my bodyguards.”
“Do they have permission to
enter our offices?”
“Yes,” Sara said. “They’ve
been cleared by the Secretary-General. This is George, who also doubles as my fiancé,
and this is Agent Kane from the FBI Counterterrorism Department.”
