Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles) Read Online Free Page B

helpful,” Scott muttered.
     
    “He’s working on it.”
     
    “I hope so. I’d hate to go toe-to-toe with these assholes, and then find out half my crews can’t fight.” Scott saw people around the table nodding.
     
    “What about the news media?” Scott asked. That brought a few smiles around the table.
     
    Jeff snorted a laugh. “The main news outlet is an Aljazeera-style twenty-four-hour news service, and the news anchor is the local equivalent of ‘ Bagdad Bob .’ Most of the local outlets pretty much parrot what they report, with some local stuff thrown in to make it look ‘fair and balanced.’ The word is getting out that a bunch of lunatics are running around free down here, without actually saying where we are. The story is, we’re the result of an old failed medical experiment and we’d been frozen for fifty years or so.”
     
    “Typical, half-truths and outright lies,” Scott said.
     
    “Oh, it gets better. In his compassioned wisdom, the Grand Ayatollah had graciously permitted us to live out our lives here, rather than permit our madness to infect, or contaminate the prosperous, peaceful existence of the rest of the people who live under the compassionate guiding hand of Allah, and his prophet, Mohammed, blessed be his name …” Jeff stopped to take a deep breath. Scott shook his head.
     
    “Heaven preserve us,” Brock growled. “You’d think after three hundred years we’d be past that sort of nonsense.”
     
    “Oh, that’s not all. The imams are calling for us to be … what was the word they used? Oh yes, we should be eradicated for the good of the rest of the faithful,” Jeff stated.
     
    Scott shook his head. “Sounds about right.”
     
    “They’re also jumping up and down in screaming fits, and warning of all sorts of eternal damnation for anyone who even thinks about coming here to join up.” Jeff laughed. “Not that it’s stopping the young men and a few women from sneaking aboard the extra late-night shuttles we put on.”
     
    “So, even President Westwood is swimming upstream on this one.”
     
    “Yeah, and he hasn’t come out publically to endorse our recruitment,” Brock groused. “Can’t blame him really. He’s walking a political tightrope as it is. He and a few other powerful people want the abductions stopped, and at the moment we’re the only game in town that has a hope of doing that.” Brock swore under his breath.
     
    “They have to be smart enough to realize that at some point, we have to take the fight to the aliens, damn it! That means we need the ships and crews to do it …”
     
    Scott held up his hand. “Brock, at the moment they’re thinking short term. Stop the abductions and the rest of the problem will just go away.”
     
    “True,” Brock murmured.
     
    “One of these days they’re going to wake up to the fact that we will, at some point in the future, have to take this fight to them.” Scott saw people around the table nodding in agreement. “So, first we stop them here, then regroup and consider our next move.” He didn’t doubt they’d stop the aliens. It was just a question of how long and how much blood they would have to shed doing it: the aliens’ and theirs.
     
    After the meal was cleared away, they got down to fleet deployment, estimated ship production, crew training and a host of other concerns. Whether the World Council wanted it or not, they had an army, navy, and air force again. As the military had done for centuries, they got down to the business of planning to defend those same civilians who wanted to get rid of them. At eighteen hundred hours the meeting broke up, and taking Kat along, Scott found a vehicle and a driver and had him take them to Brock’s home. Kat gave him a puzzled look as he knocked on the door of the neat, two-story prefab.
     
    He said, “I made a promise, and intend to keep it, no matter how late—”
     
    “Yes?” Pam said, opening the door. “General Drake!” she