Chapter 5

The secretary general came to an applause line in his speech, and everyone rose and applauded, everyone but Rear Admiral Alan Scarlett. Alan realized that something was happening by the way people were standing, but he couldn’t move. As people continued to applaud, someone grabbed the back of Alan’s chair and tipped it back and one person on each side of his chair slid Alan headfirst off his chair, straight onto a stretcher. As they strapped Alan down, he watched as someone in a navy uniform took his position next to Nadia.

Pandora stood with her parents and children in the crowd and listen to the Secretary General. He droned on about the new day dawning in the Western Alliance and how Alan’s caches of ice in orbit with the moon will improve life on the moon and space travel in general. The ability to get ice for reaction mass means that shipments of water from earth won’t be needed.

That’s when Pandora noticed that the man that the Secretary General was pointing at as he spoke wasn’t Alan. The guy on stage had two eyes. “Where’s Alan?” she muttered. Pandora started pushing forward through the crowd. “Where’s Alan?” she demanded as she got closer to the stage. Then the Secretary General gave an applause line and everyone on the stage stood up and Pandora saw it wasn’t Nadia either. “Alan!” she shouted, but her voice was lost in the applauding crowd.

Secretary General Ferdinand Jean-Pierre LeBeau waved to the crowd as he was whisked off the stage to a waiting helicopter. The VIPs all stepped off the stage, and the crowd dissolved, and Pandora was left standing alone, confused, and completely distraught. “Alan?”

Waves of loss and terror crashed over her as her world crumbled. Did Alan leave her? Did he defect to the East? Was he killed?

“Baby, come on,” someone whispered to her. Only two people on earth could call her ‘baby’ while she was in uniform, and daddy was one of them. Her father held their youngest child, Gerry, named for a dear friend who was captured along with Alan at the Battle of Venus Prime. Little Gerry was the most cheerful child she ever saw, and he was clearly Alan’s favorite. The other two claimed Gerry would never learn to walk because their dad never put him down. Alan would take long, long business calls with Gerry in his arms and threaten to fire anyone who complained about the baby at the meetings.

Admiral Schirra led Pandora to the APC/ALS and as she climbed in, she saw a marine at the driver’s controls. He had a huge hunting knife tucked into his belt, without a sheath. She snatched it from his belt. It was an old Eastern Bloc issue knife like Alan’s knife, and Alan never traveled without his blade. “Where did you get this from?”

“Ma’am, that’s uh ... it’s...”

“Get off this transport!” she shrieked. “That is an order!”

“But ma’am...”

“GET OFF THIS SHIP MARINE!” she held the point of the blade to his neck. She was upset and emotionally shattered, but she wasn’t stupid. She saw his hand reaching for something and she pushed the point of the knife harder against his skin.

The driver slowly got out of the driver’s seat and stepped back toward the large main door. His lips curled up into a snarl as he saw a tiny woman in an officer’s uniform, and he charged at her. Pandora struck like lightning. She struck his forehead with the butt of the big heavy knife as she sidestepped his attack, then drove his face into the seats as she planted a knee in the small of his back. Anna and Little Wally were in shock at seeing their mother strike so quickly. “I wanna be a Marine too,” Little Wally said.