“You seen this tower thing?”

“The elevator? Just what you can see from here. I don’t know about this, compadre.”

We looked up the mountain, the summit was barely visible under an overcast sky. Shooting straight up from the top of the mountain was a ribbon of white light. When the UN agreed to provide troops to fight under Kristang command, the Kristang had constructed what they called a space elevator, built it in less than a month. They chose this mountain in Ecuador, because it straddled the equator. On top of the mountain, the Kristang had constructed a base station with a fusion reactor, and thousands of miles above was a station in geosynchronous orbit. What connected the two stations was a thin magnetic field, basically a stationary lightning bolt. We were supposed to go into orbit on an elevator car that rode the lightning bolt. One of the Air Force guys on my flight said he’d heard the Kristang sent pulses up the magnetic field, and the elevator car was pushed along by the pulse. This elevator in Ecuador was the first to be finished, the Kristang were talking about building two others, one in Africa and the other somewhere in Indonesia. I squinted and shaded my eyes with my hand, examining the thin beam of light. “I don’t know about this either, man. One thing I do know is if the Kristang can do this, I’m glad they’re on our side.”

“I hear that, amigo.” Jesse agreed.

Looking up at the sky, at the lighting bolt I’d be riding into orbit, I wondered what had happened to Fuzzy Face. We’d driven south in our ice cream truck, until we ran into a state police roadblock, and when the cops saw who was in the back of the truck, we’d been given an escort down to Lincoln, where a National Guard helicopter took Fuzzy Face away. After that, any information about him was classified, and I’d been discouraged from talking, or asking, about him. Wherever he was, I hoped we was being treated well.

A buzzing sound caught out attention, we both turned to watch a group of grey-painted tiltrotor aircraft, flying in formation and coming in from the west. As they approached, the lead planes slowed and swung their propellers up into hover mode, descending like helicopters. Before I could ask, Jesse volunteered “The Navy has two carrier groups off shore, the Lincoln and the Reagan. I met some of the Marines around here this morning.”

“They coming with us?” Two carrier battlegroups would have sounded impressive, before the Ruhar attacked. Compared to alien militaries that could lift people into space on a lightning bolt, our nuclear-powered carriers were obsolete row boats.

“Some Marines units are, but these guys? Nah, they’re here to provide security for the elevator.”