Rogue State

By Steve Lang

In the year 2345, Anslar, a nation ruled by a government bent on dominating global politics, is violently attacked when four blimps collide with three towers—the Anslar Federated Center—representing the financial center of the country. The impact from each blimp and expertly planted explosives inside the towers cause them to collapse, killing hundreds and igniting the fury of Anslar’s people and her government. Joe Stinson, a Cyber Security Engineer for the Anslaran government and a survivor of this tragedy, is recruited by the most powerful man in the world, the Anslaran Chancellor, to become an agent and international hit man for the Central Acumen Bureau (CAB). The Chancellor claims that Joe’s missions will avenge the attack on the towers and help the Anslaran economy recover, but Joe unknowingly begins furthering a dark agenda devised by shape-shifting reptilian extraterrestrials to conquer and destroy the people of Earth. With the aid of an alien grey named Telerum and a fellow agent named Stacey, Joe will have his eyes opened to a long-hidden world of betrayal, natural resource theft, and murderous ambition, all perpetrated by his own government. Will Joe find the redemption he seeks for his actions on behalf of the CAB? Is the Anslaran Chancellor all that he pretends to be? How will Joe and Telerum conquer overwhelming odds to save Anslar and the rest of Earth from the evil reptilian threat?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Lang
• Release date: Nov 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493775699

Steve Lang

Steve Lang's third poetry book, Tales of Telemachus has just been published by Resource Publications. It follows Cuarentena (2021) and Heavenly Hurt (2016). Steve's poetry has been published in a wide range of literary journals including: The Galway Review, California Quarterly, Allegro and Chiron Review. Though from Scotland originally, Steve has traveled widely, especially in Africa, and currently lives in El Salvador with his family, where he works as Director of a well-known international school.

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CONTENTS

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Thank you to my editor, Roger Gilmartin, for assisting me with the challenging but rewarding process of editing this novel. Sometimes people enter your life for a very good reason, and I am grateful for the time and effort you put into this work. I look forward to your editing my next novel. Thanks again.

Thank you, Dad, for illustrating the cover. Your artwork captures the concept, and I can’t thank you enough. It is truly a great thing when a father and son can collaborate on a work of art.

Thank you to my wife and son for allowing me the time to pursue my passion for this craft. This road has never been an easy one to walk, and I am glad you two are with me all the way. I love you very much, and I am grateful for both of you.

Chapter 1

It Begins

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It was the year 2345. My country, Anslar, had been involved in the imperial colonization of one country after another for a hundred years without any backlash, but there is an old expression that you reap what you sow. The people of Anslar got a harsh reminder of that axiom one morning as an attack from the sky rocked our world and shattered our illusion of safety. Three massive towers of corruption―the Anslar Federated Center (AFC), iconic symbols of a nation’s greed in Upper Miloria―were violently attacked, and three hours later crumbled into a cloud of crushed human bodies, dust, and debris on a sunny Monday morning.               

These buildings, well-built as they were, could not withstand the impact of four zeppelins colliding into their west sides. This attack was staged during morning rush hour traffic, increasing the number of innocent lives lost tenfold. It was a tragedy that forever solidified in each survivor’s mind where they were the minute the buildings were attacked. I still see the horror of it in my nightmares. This disaster began a tale of devastation, betrayal, and redemption that, in the end, would change the way humanity existed on earth.

My name is Joe Stinson, and I was a cyber security engineer for the Central Acumen Bureau, or CAB. The CAB is the eyes and ears of Anslar’s Chancellor. We listened to wiretaps of suspected enemies of the state and programmed viruses designed to disrupt the computing systems of Anslar’s enemies. I had attended The University of Miloria and graduated with a degree in cyber security, so I had the basic credentials, but I was told that Human Resources at the Central Acumen Bureau liked my military experience, which got my foot in the door. 

I mostly worked alone and rarely saw anyone in management. It was just me, three other engineers, and our monitors constantly scanning for terror threats across the CAB network and other classified locations.

I was not privy to the other darker operations of the CAB at the time, and concern about them was outside my pay grade, anyway. Our office was so small that many who worked in the AFC buildings had no idea who I or my co-workers were, and we preferred it that way. 

I happened to be working in one of the buildings at zero hour. The zeppelins—more commonly known as blimps—hit the tops of the buildings, but a blast from several floors below shook the building minutes before the first blimps hit.

Only later on did I find out that charges of prothermatite had been set around the vertical supports of each building. The stuff could eat through solid steel in seconds and was the actual cause of the collapse of all three buildings.

I had just finished using the men’s room, and as I passed through the break room heading back to my small office, I was knocked to the floor. Disoriented and frightened, I got to my feet and shambled forward as the floor vibrated.

As I cautiously passed by offices to see if anyone had been injured, I heard another explosion from outside and felt the building shudder as I instinctively put my palms on the top of my head and ducked.

That was all the motivation I needed to flee for my life, and I began to run rapidly toward the stairwell. Several other office workers were looking around confusedly, but a few were also following my lead. Taking the stairs two at a time, I completely forgot the rules for safe, single-file exit during an emergency. As I passed one floor after another, more scared people joined us.

A foul odor like the smell of rotting eggs wafted up the stairwell, followed by a choking thick, gray smoke. I could only assume that it was the smell of whatever had exploded below us and continued to run. We poured out onto the street and ran while periodically looking back over our shoulders. There must have been bombs on those blimps when they hit, because there were at least a few floors missing from the top of my building.

At the top of the remaining floors, all I could see was blackened exterior walls, shattered windows, and pillars of dark smoke and flame licking the morning sky. Giant chunks of the buildings and the destroyed blimps lay all around. The remains of the blimp frames draped over the ruined top floors.

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Pandemonium ensued for the next several hours as I watched helplessly from down the street. Firefighters and police raced to the scene as the three skyscrapers continued to burn. First responders were powerless to help those who had been trapped on some of the uppermost floors. These unfortunate souls began to jump out of smoke-filled windows rather than burn to death.

Some curious onlookers began taking pictures, but most of us were in a state of shock. Time went by in slow motion as thousands of people emerged from the other towers in a daze. What had happened? Who did this? Was it terrorists? Were the pilots drunk? Questions buzzed throughout the crowd as people attempted to make sense of the catastrophe before them.

I started to retreat a few blocks to escape the increasing smoke burning my lungs. I had also begun to cough continuously, so I covered my mouth and nose with the top of my undershirt as I wove in and out of the masses of scared people. Some of those wandering in confusion were moving toward the inferno, but most people were leaving the area in search of breathable air.

Two blocks from the AFC buildings, I ducked into a tiny bar with some people huddled inside. Many were staring blankly out the windows as they watched wisps of smoke pass by the entrance. I looked at my watch and realized that half of the day had passed; in all the commotion I had lost track of time. It was one o’clock in the afternoon and, stricken as I was, I was hungry.

I went to the bar and ordered three shots of whiskey, a bar burger with fries, and the tallest beer they had. The bartender complied without a word. I had drunk my liquor and was moving on to the beer when shrieks and screams sounded from outside.

Those who had been walking toward the scene of the fires turned around, and everyone began to run. The ground shook under my feet and felt like it would begin to split open at any moment. Glasses perched on shelves against the walls of my bar hideout slid off and shattered on the floor as the bartender steadied himself.

How could this have gotten any worse? Was there now an earthquake to deal with? Why were all of those people screaming out in the street? They were looking back at the Anslar Federated Center buildings with masks of terror plastered to their dirt-streaked faces.

The noise grew louder, and the rumbling continued to shake anything not nailed to the floor. It was a roar that penetrated all thought. Grabbing tables and chairs for balance, I worked my way deliberately toward the door and opened it, only to see a pretty young woman sitting on the concrete sidewalk, head in hands, sobbing.

I turned in time to witness one of the stricken towers begin to crumble, like a professional demolition I had seen of a building years before. Fear and disbelief rippled through me, and all I wanted to do was get the hell out of there. My feet turned in the opposite direction as people all around me ran from a massive cloud of dark gray smoke and debris rushing down the street toward us like a tidal wave.

It was coming too fast for me to outrun, so I ducked back inside the bar, which showed silent coverage of the disaster on the HoloVision. I had had enough of this, and after the initial wave of smoke passed, I was ready to brave walking the four blocks back to my apartment. My appetite was now gone, and since my burger never came I finished my beer, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the bar, nodded silently to the bartender, and walked out.

I saw hundreds of people covered in soot, some of them bleeding badly. They had stopped running and were moving through the haze like specters. There were cries of pain and grief here and there, but for the most part it was almost like a haphazard funeral march.

A long–bearded, old, homeless man was sitting next to his dog and shopping cart on the sidewalk. Each of them was caked with half an inch of soot as the man stared blankly ahead. The dog, a collie, appeared to be dead as it lay motionless on the sidewalk, eyes open and glassed over.

As I passed by, the old man noticed me watching him. I could see tears streaking his cheeks as he sat in quiet desperation, solemnly regarding the scene around him. The sorrow of having lost everything was written on his face, and that moment in time would replay periodically in my dreams of that day. Before I turned away, he placed the dog’s head in his lap, kissing it softly on the head.

When I was almost home, I heard and felt the ground rumble again. Once inside, I turned on the HoloVision, a device that projects a three-dimensional image. I was curious to see the news coverage and if anyone knew what had happened yet. Every channel seemed to have someone talking about it, and the term terrorist attack was already being used to describe the incident.

Dust and debris dropped off my arms and shoulders like toxic snowflakes, littering the carpet. The HoloVision showed the buildings as they stood prior to the attack, then showed them falling straight to the ground.

A few news agencies had been able to get to the disaster scene just before the towers fell. A man dressed in a soot-covered polo shirt and slacks was interviewing one of the firefighters.

Hi everyone, I’m Rob Starling here with one of the men who have been working tirelessly to rescue people since the AFC buildings began to burn, firefighter Fred Daily. Fred, does anyone have an idea what could have caused such an inferno when the blimps collided with these buildings?

Those blimps must have been filled with some kind of long-burning fuel when they hit that ran down between the floors. It makes no sense that this blaze is so out of control, and we’re having an incredibly difficult time putting it out. I’ve been a firefighter for twenty years and have never seen a fire this bad. We lost a few fire crews today and I’d just ask that everyone watching pray for them and their families. I have to go.

Then the soot-covered firefighter disappeared into the smoke and flames behind him. Repeatedly, the media displayed visions of Upper Miloria in a state of chaos with desperate office workers leaping out of windows. The locator beacons the firefighters wore that were used to identify where a firefighter in trouble is located were going off by the hundreds inside the burning rubble. The sounds of those beeping locators was eerie and sad, making my heart break as tears fell down my face. There was no sense my mind could make of it and I felt only fear and grief.

I turned off the HoloVision, walked over to the sliding glass door, opened it, and stepped into the semi-cool night air. Standing on my balcony, I watched smoke billowing from the rubble of the building that I had once worked in. How many of the people working in that building escaped? I would probably never know.

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After a while I went back inside, where I sat down and watched the HoloVision once again. The evening news was on, and there was an attractive young woman named Sally Pearson, dressed in a suit, talking to an older gentleman as they sat behind the anchor desk. After a few minutes, she introduced him as Fredrick Garuther, a retired five-star General.

Now Sally, we appear to have been attacked by terrorists. The reports are still coming in about exactly what happened at the Anslar Federated Center buildings, but at this point we assume that it is probably a terrorist cell. We’ll just have to wait until the investigation starts to figure out which country they were from, said Garuther.

"Are you sure this was a foreign terrorist attack and not just a horrible accident? Could an investigation find that this was the product of a domestic terrorist?"

The General seemed to bristle at having been questioned about his theory. This was no accident, and for an Anslaran to attack their own country just doesn’t make sense. But like I said, we’ll just have to wait and see what the investigation shows us, he said.

Thank you General, for your insight into what is sure to be the worst disaster in Anslar’s history. For all of us at News Channel Six, I’m Sally Pearson. Goodnight.

It was nice to see someone with a theory, at least.

The evening after the attack, Bill Weid, the Chancellor of the Federated States of Anslar, made an appearance on the HoloVision and, in an effort to calm a frightened public, addressed the nation. He stood behind his podium in the Pink House, the capitol building in Rothscot, and addressed a grieving, confused nation.

"My fellow Anslarans, our nation has experienced a terrible tragedy, and we are going to need each other to get through this. There has never been a disaster of this magnitude in Anslar, and while no explanation will bring peace to the families of those whose lives were lost, I will personally be involved in finding out why it happened.

Today, I authorized the military and our intelligence community to begin a full-scale investigation into this attack.  I pray for the thousands killed, as well as the children whose parents were in those buildings, and have no recourse now but to mourn the loss of their mothers and fathers.

I leave you tonight with prayers of hope. May God bless you all, and good night," he finished.

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I went to bed that night hopeful that very soon order and sanity would be restored to our world. I just had to trust in my country’s leaders; that’s what we were told. They would make it all OK.

Five days passed as the air continued to carry debris from the now extinguished fires, making breathing difficult. The massive pile of rubble smoked. Dark soot covered every exposed surface with a grayish powder.

I tried to go down to the site of the attack with a few people who lived in my building, but we were restrained by police. Their faces were covered with a mixture of smoke and sweat as they turned onlookers away to allow the firefighters and rescue workers to continue searching for survivors.

Before I turned back the way I came, I caught a glimpse of body bags being thrown onto the back of a van.

I suddenly became very sad at the thought of what had happened to all of us, and then a pretty woman in a blue dress, who must have seen my distress, walked up and gave me a hug. We wept together. In the midst of so much man-made madness, it felt good to hold another person and realize that I was alive. Sometimes hugging someone allows you to feel the energy within them like a breath of fresh air, a release from all your cares. I never wanted it to end.

After a few moments we relaxed our embrace. We pulled back to look at each other with genuine kindness. Her face was streaked now as tears of sorrow streamed down. She could not have been more than in her early twenties, but this disaster had aged her ten years.

I moved my hand to a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes, swiping it back. She allowed me to do it