So, the facts facing Charlie Travers is that the Anguilar knows where Earth is and they are going to go after that planet sometime in the very near future. The fact that one single planet can produce enough food for eight billion people is enough of an incentive for the Anguilar to want to conquer said planet so it can export that food to it Empire. There is nothing to stop them from doing jus that. Earth doesn’t even know that the galaxy is populated far more than they can or even could imagine. Charlie needs to change that, but it certainly isn’t going to be easy.
Charlie doesn’t want to cause a mass panic an “the aliens have landed” situation would cause. He wants to try and be a little subtle if possible. Sitll, there are others of his crew think that landing a Vanguard fighter on the White House lawn would get thing started off quickly. Fortunately, Charlie knows the humans better than most of his alien friends so he’s pretty sure that’s not the way to do what needs to be done. He has a friend, George Barnaby, a now retired General and Deputy National Security Advisor to the President, and Charlie is going to go look him up and ask for his help.
Keep in mind that when Charlie left the Earth, he was twenty-five years old. He was in stasis for another thirty-five and since then about two more years have passed. So Charlie should be about sixty, but he definitely looks and feels like he’s twenty-seven since he didn’t age in the stasis pod. Of course his friend George didn’t have a stasis pod so when he opens his front door, Charlie is looking at a middle-aged to old man. Now trying to convince George that he is the same Charlie that went missing thirty-seven years ago was a challenge. Yet, after a lenghty discussion George was convinced that this was Charlie.
Now about the other part of Charlies’ story where he was abducted and has been with aliens in space took a lot more convincing. Charlie had thought that might be a bigger problem so he brough Giblet, the Varnell, with him along with Dani, and Val. Giblet was definitely an alien but not so alien that he would scare the day-lights out of anyone that saw him. Still, it did take a little more to convince George that what Charlie was telling him was the truth.
Eventually, George was sold on the whole story and he volunteered to take Charlie and his friends to see his boss, the National Security Advisor. A meeting was setup so George loaded everyone in his personal SUV and began driving them to the White House. The story was that the National Security Advisor also had to be sold on Charlie’s story before taking him to see the President of the United States. Charlie kind of understood that but he was aware that they were wasting time. Then a whole lot of time got wasted.
George’s SUV was suddenlty surrounded by a bunch of other black SUVs with guys in dark suits and sun glasses jumping out with guns showing. While Charlie and his friends hadn’t planned on using their weapons, they were armed. So everyone, including George, was hustled out of Georges car, searched, relieved of their weapons, handcuffed and then placed in one of the big black SUVs. They were then hustled to a non-descript building where they were split up and each taken to a small interrogation room. Needless to say, Charlie soon realized he was dealing with scared bureaucrats that really didn’t know what they were really doing.
He eventually met the National Security Advisor who told Charlie that if he would prove who he was by showing him some of his advanced technology, like the shuttle Charlie had used to get down to the planet, then he might actually believe his story. So, Charlie volunteered to go get the shuttle, which was camoflaged invisible in a little league ballpark, and fly it back to Joint Base Andrews. That was pretty dumb of Charlie. He was told to take a pilot with him and another Marine as an escort.
They found the suttle unharmed exactly where it was put, boarded it and proceeded to go to Joint Base Andrews. Charlie was to find his friends all there and then they would supposedly proceed to the White House since the National Security Advisor would now be convinced of Charlie’s story. Only that’s not what happened. As soon as they landed at an out of the way hanger, Charlie found a large Marine pistol pointed at him telling him to leave shuttle. He didn’t find his friends but did find himself in another interrogation room.
So Charlie found what it was like to have to work with bureaucrats who didn’t like what they were hearing. They thought that if Charlie and his friends quietly went away, then their problems would also go away. Charlie is going to have to find another wasy to convince these people of the dangers they faced. It wasn’t going to be easy, but they had to get this done. Charlie needed the United States to commit personnel and their technology to enable his resistance army to continue to fight the Anguilar. Charlie hoped that the Earth wasn’t attacked by the Anguilar before they could put up some kind of defense, but that wasn’t going to happen. The Anguilar had already arrived.
Charlie should have known that convincing government bureaucrats and then politicians of anything was going to be a major undertaking. Even if he did get his message across, would they do anything to help themselves and him and just how long would their efforts take. Charlie knew they didn’t have long so things needed to get done. We’ll find out how much was actuall accomplished trying to get Earth into the fight in the next book, “Road of Vengeance”, now available on Amazon.