Chapter 15
"And Seig Heil to you too!" A.J. snapped.
"Cut it out," Colonel Ken Hathaway said tiredly. "First, I'm not the one slamming the lid down. Second, it's a perfectly reasonable response from the government's point of view." Hathaway's subtle southern drawl was heavier than usual, turning his "I'm" into "Ah'm"—a sure sign of annoyance, which A.J. failed to note in his own anger.
"You can't keep me from calling out! This was my project. You can keep the data, but you can't just shut me in!"
"We can, and we will, A.J. I know it's grating on your free spirit, but you'd better deal with it. Or do we have to take away all your toys just to make sure?"
A.J. got himself under control with difficulty. Ken Hathaway was one of the main driving forces behind Nike, and A.J. had worked with him for months now. He knew that the Air Force colonel wasn't really the problem. The truth was, A.J. liked the man.
The whole situation still rankled, however. "No. Okay. Sorry. But send it up the line to whoever came up with this idea—we should be broadcasting this worldwide, not sealing it up tighter than a bank vault!"
"No, I won't pass it up the line, and yes, we should, at least for the sake of your funders and mine. Like it or not, there's still politics to consider, and that includes things like national security. What if this turns out to be an alien military installation intact enough for us to learn something from it? Can you tell me there's a single country on earth that wouldn't want that for itself at first?"
Reluctantly, A.J. shook his head. "No, I guess not."
"I guess not either. And speaking as a soldier, I damn well do agree with the idea that if anyone's going to get the first shot at it, it's going to be my country."
"I'm not into patriotism. Buncha tribal instincts."
The colonel rolled his eyes, the extra white making them contrast even more with his very dark skin. "A.J., that's just the kind of attitude you don't want to express around the wrong people. Me, I don't care what you think, as long as you're not actively working against our nation. But some of the more rigid types have no sense of humor on that subject. Trust me, they don't."
He flicked the display to another page. "Now, they don't want to shut us down. In fact, it's top priority to find out whatever we can. So, if you'll promise me—not some faceless guys out there, but me— that you won't try to sleaze around the security, you can have your connection back and return to work. Your Faeries are the only things on-site, and we obviously won't be getting anything else there for quite some time to come. So you are set to remain the top-billed star of this particular show, and I'd like you to keep that billing."
A.J. gave Hathaway a sour look. Despite only knowing A.J. for a few months, the blocky, solidly built astronaut apparently had read him very well. A promise to some disembodied abstraction like the government that was trying to stifle the discovery would mean relatively little to A.J., but a direct promise to someone who knew and trusted him, that was something A.J. would never break if he could possibly avoid it.
"You sneaky . . . Fine. Fine, I promise, I won't smuggle messages out, and I'll keep your silence as long as you say. No one else can run the Faeries like me, and there's no way I'm going to let someone else try. Dammit."
Hathaway smiled. "Good enough. Look, A.J., I'm sorry. But remember—we all want Nike and Ares to have their shots. If you pull some stupid crusading stunt, all of us could get screwed."
A.J. nodded unwillingly. "Yeah. Okay, you can trust me. I won't mess things up for your people or mine. Just let me back at the Faeries, okay?"
"In a shot."
Hathaway picked up the phone and called the MPs. "Mr. Baker is cleared to return to work immediately. Aside from the standard comm shutdown, he's got priority on everyone else. Anything he needs, make sure he gets."
After he hung up, A.J. demanded: "What about people who are expecting me to call? I mean, none of my friends would possibly believe I'm not going to call them and fill them in."
"I have no doubt that you'll be given a chance to call them soon— with some really clear guidelines on what to say, and a script if necessary."
"Ugh. You think?"
"I'd bet on it. Until they decide to release this, they'll be making sure no one can give it away. If you need to work with people, they'll find a way to bring them here and under the umbrella of secrecy."
"Aaaaugh. Well, hell with it, I'll go deal with my machines. They make sense and keep no secrets from me. You guys realize how lucky you are? I only told your people first because it was on your nickel. If you hadn't pulled the lid down right away, I'd have told half a dozen people by now. And if the data wasn't proprietary at this point, the transmissions wouldn't have been encoded."