Camp David – 1985
Ronald and Nancy Reagan waited near the helipad as the helicopter touched down. As the blades stopped, their guests, Margaret and Denis Thatcher, were guided down to the ground and then walked over to their hosts. The President greeted them warmly, “Maggie, Denis, great to see you again.” The four of them shook hands warmly. He continued, “Maggie, a few words, private, let’s walk and talk towards the woods. No listeners,” Mrs Thatcher’s eyebrows raised slightly. She smiled again and moved to the President’s side. Nancy and Denis chatted and walked together slowly, and meandered.
When they had gone a few yards and could not be overheard by anyone, the President spoke, “Maggie, I need your help with a project. SDI, we both know it won’t work, but there is something else. I will send you a briefing note this evening, a ‘destroy on reading’ one, please.” He smiled at her, she nodded, cautiously, and he went on, “It is a personal Presidential Authority project, completely off the books, funded partly from funds siphoned from other projects, partly from some private and commercial sources. It is called Tizona. The thing is, to make it work, we need at least one of a couple of very clever guys, materials science people, fresh out of one of your Midlands universities. Also, we need a site, ideally not on US soil, so somewhere in England, on the coast, close to the twin USAF bases Bentwaters and Woodbridge would be ideal. And we need a total blackout, so someone, one of your people, to make that so.” He turned and looked at her, “I don’t expect an answer right now, that would not be fair, and I know you wouldn’t commit anyway. Read the brief later, then,” he paused and smiled at her, “Just say ‘Yes’ to me before you leave tomorrow.”
After that evening’s dinner, Margaret and Denis were finishing getting ready for bed. There was a gentle tap on their door, and a plain brown envelope slid under it onto the bedroom carpet. Denis walked across and picked it up. “Your name on it, Ronnie’s handwriting. Love letter?” His wife looked at him mock sternly and took the envelope from him. She lay on the bed, ripped open the flap and pulled out the contents, three sheets of paper, stapled together. When she had finished reading, she leaned back against the bedhead, her brow furrowed. Dennis went and brushed his teeth, and when he came back, she was still sitting there just the same. She looked up at him, then read through the briefing a second time. There was a shredder in the corner of the room. She got up, walked over to it and fed the envelope and its contents into it. Then she climbed into bed, and the pair of them went to sleep.
The next afternoon, the four of them met once again at the helipad. Mrs Thatcher walked up to the President and said, “Yes.” She continued, “We have had a lovely time here, and it has been so good to see you both again. Yes.”
– – o – –
Worksop is a town that most people only ever drive around. It is on the A57, which runs east to west between the M1 and the A1. All you see of it from the road is houses, a large number of commercial and industrial estates and trees. The town lies on the northern edge of what is probably England’s most famous forest, the Forest of Sherwood. The heart of the forest is some way to the south of Worksop, and the area in between includes Clumber Park, a rather splendid National Trust property, surviving areas of forest, farmland and occasional villages. Dotted around are various equestrian centres, and it was one of these which Aurora had come to visit. It was owned by a couple, called Rob and Gill Walton. Their home was a Victorian farmhouse, and behind it stood the stables, the menage and the paddocks of Gill’s equestrian business. A gravelled drive led from the road, to the left of the house, to a small car park for customers and other visitors. But Aurora, today, had no interest in any of that. She had come to visit a small, industrial building on the side of the drive opposite the house. It had its own parking area enclosed by chain-linked fencing and a locked gate. In the parking area stood a Transit van and a car, covered with a tarpaulin; there were signs of recent refurbishment, and of much more that was needed, Aurora thought. She unlocked the gate, walked through, and locked it behind her.
Above the doors was a sign, ‘Walton Advanced Engineering’. The doors were open, so she walked in. At first, she thought that no one was there. But in the corner, she spotted a man, sitting on the floor, hunched over what appeared to be a very large model aircraft, or possibly some kind of drone. She walked over to him. “Good morning, Mr Walton.”
The man started, looked up at her and said, “You need to go all the way down the drive; my wife deals with the horses.”
Aurora smiled at him, “Horses, maybe another day. But today I am here to see you.”
She handed him a square of paper, sealed in a dusty plastic cover. He took it from her, studied it carefully. Then he looked up at her, his expression was ambivalent, bits of shock, amusement, curiosity and even a slight hint of fear were what Aurora sensed from him. “Where did you get this from?”
She replied, “It was stuck on the side of a pallet. In a very interesting building, underneath an old World War Two bunker, on the East Coast.”
He grimaced, “So they stopped it all that suddenly, didn’t even unpack it.”
Aurora asked, “Mr Walton, how much do you know about Tizona?”
“All I know is that I made some components for them, put them on pallets, stuck these labels on them, and they were collected. Then, just after these were dispatched, someone visited me, told me the project had been shut down, and roughly, that what was best for me would be that I never mentioned the name to anyone or told anyone about what I had made for them. Bearing in mind that the two big men who were chaperoning him were both wearing shoulder holsters under their jackets, I considered that to be a threat. But that was nearly forty years ago, I doubt any of those three are still alive, and if they are, they will now be living off their, I assume, CIA pensions.”
He looked sharply at her, “Anyway, who are you?”
Aurora replied, “My name is Aurora. I own a rail gun you made.”
Rob Walton, “So, I was right about it. A rail gun.”
Aurora nodded, she had expected that he would have worked out what his products were intended for, “Two rail guns. One has been successfully test-fired. The other was under construction when work suddenly stopped.”
Rob looked at her thoughtfully, “So, what do you plan on doing with them?”
Aurora smiled at him, “Well, my first thought was to fire my sister out of one of them, you know, like they do at the circus. Then I decided to use it to save the world.”
Rob laughed, “Your poor sister! But seriously, it is a weapon of war, not a lifebelt?”
Aurora smiled again, “She was being a smartarse, she worked out what it was before I did. And I am planning on shooting this; it is coming straight at us.”
She held out her phone; it showed a picture of a nearly black rock against a very dark background. Rob squinted at it. “What..?”
“An asteroid, a long way away, moving very fast this way.”
“Ah.” Rob looked thoughtful, “Isn’t that NASA or someone else’s job?”
Aurora said, “Before they can see it, it will be too late to even make a proper plan. I have a plan, and I will have two rail guns. And before you ask, yes, I know they can only fire at Mach 6 in the atmosphere; I have a plan for that, too. I can fire them right out into space, going much faster than that.”
Rob leant back, “I asked who you were, you didn’t answer, just a name. Now, I am thinking maybe I might not like the answer.”
Aurora thought for a moment, then “Yes, there are several possibilities, aren’t there? I might simply be insane. ‘Mad in charge of a rail gun’ sounds like a criminal charge, really. I might be wrong about everything; that is not a problem. If I am wrong about the asteroid and right about the rail gun, that is not a problem, just a load of slugs heading out into space. But, if I am right about the asteroid and wrong about the rail gun, we are all dead, soon. But, trust me, I am right about the rail gun and right about the asteroid.”
Rob looked at her thoughtfully, “Were you here just hoping for more information about Tizona, or is there something else you want from me?”
Aurora, “More information about Tizona would have been nice to have, but I have what I need for now, and I will have all the rest soon. But I wanted to come and meet one of the outstanding engineers of the last century, only a true genius could have made what you did back then, and I thought maybe he might like to help me save the world?”