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orchestrated much of the significant damage that the terrorists had been blamed for inflicting. Feeling the pressure, other countries soon followed. They are all so weak. In his mind, they were like sheep that he could fleece whenever he liked.
    Things were going to plan. There had been no significant war for twenty years and the real terrorists were in hiding now. Also, while he had no specific interest in the economy, he was grateful that it was strong – people with jobs and spending money accept almost anything, including the chancellor’s control. Until recently, an assassination attempt was his only worry; now it seemed that rogue elements within the new Interpol and other quasi-military factions were organizing to counter his new found power with a possible coup. For descriptive purposes, this latest irritant had been dubbed “the Network” by General Martle, the chancellor’s top military commander.
    To minimize these concerns, Jonathan worked hard playing the public relations game and was well liked by the average person. As a result, Martle was given carte blanche to handle the Network’s immediate threat. In case that didn’t work and someone wanted to attack him anyway, Jonathan augmented the Secret Service assigned to protect him with squads of Special Forces that rotated every four hours.
    Jonathan was a believer in keeping friends close, enemies closer, and personal threats the closest. In Jonathan’s mind, there were only two players still standing now that the world was consolidated under his authority: him and Dean Forge. Forge was the only man on Earth that could get past his heavy security in a showdown, so he placed his most serious threat on special assignment, working directly for him. That’s why Forge now found himself on the Moon with only an unproven female rookie. She was supposed to be the colonel’s backup, to face what scientists claimed were advanced aliens. The scientists were always looking for aliens, and if they were wrong again, Jonathan would find some other way to get rid of Forge.
    “Oh, my God!” his secretary screamed through the intercom on his desk.
    The sudden sound jerked him away from his plotting and made him aware that Forge’s intelligence from the Moon must finally be coming in.
    “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to scream. I meant to inform you that Forge’s team was starting to send back some amazing pictures.”
    Apparently, Forge has found something . “I’m on my way down.”
    The chancellor had never been in combat and envied what he considered to be Forge’s best quality. He wondered what it would be like to kill face-to-face and watch the light flicker out of his opponent’s eyes. A master politician and the architect behind the United Defense Corps’ creation, he dismissed the thought knowing, that he would always leave the dirty work to others – no reason to change the formula for success at this stage of the game. After thirty-seven years as a diplomat, almost everyone owed him a favor, and those who didn’t were afraid to say no. It had taken years of maneuvering and some luck to do what no one else in history had done: every government on Earth had finally relinquished its security assets and responsibilities to the United Defense Corps – which he controlled.
    For years, he had used Colonel Forge as the lynchpin on his most important and dangerous missions. Because of Forge’s success, the fledgling Corps gained a reputation for getting the job done. When a government needed help with terrorists, Jonathan Visen was there to make a deal, power would be transferred to the Corps, and the problem went away. Many of Forge’s missions had been responsible for destabilizing some of the more stubborn governments by creating their need for help in the first place. In the chancellor's mind, the ends certainly justified the means. Forge could never be allowed to know that he was used so immorally by Visen. The heroic colonel was described by the