the way around it before stepping in and relieving himself. He stepped out, quickly cleaned himself, then proceeded to investigate the rest of the office and discovered the food.
"Welcome aboard, Miss Shapiro. As you know, I'm Ian Williams, this young lady…" he indicated Alex. "…is my assistant and resident miracle worker, Alex." He paused as the two women greeted one another.
"Miss Shapiro, I'm going to break a few dozen rules here, because we need your help. My instincts tell me I can trust you, and that's what I'm going to do. If you agree to this, I'm going to have Cindy take you down to Marine country and have Master Sergeant Ames certify you with our weapons and fit you with armor. While you're doing that, I'm going to have a shuttle made available to you as well as a pilot, a few Marines and a couple of Techs.
"Tomorrow, you and Luciano will head back to Earth to help Colonel Carlson with coordinating the installation of defensive weapons in various places around the world. I'll need you to work your magic to make sure they get finished as quickly and as painlessly as possible. I know you have no experience with the weapons or technology involved, but we can fix that. What I need is your skill at coordination and your ability to cut through the bullshit and make things happen.
"But, understand, this is voluntary; I'm not telling you to do this; I'm only asking you to. You can say no," Ian explained.
"Uh, Admiral," Cindy said. "She's literally fresh off the ship here, are you really asking her to jump into this? Has something happened I don't know about?"
Ian nodded. "We have a better idea when the attack is coming; we have about three months left before all hell breaks lose."
"Admiral, no one on the planet knows what's coming. Most of the planet has not been told any details. We know that you are preparing to defend the planet against an attack, but no one has given any details. How bad is this going to be really?" Miss Shapiro asked.
Ian nodded. "We know the governments haven't been telling the people everything. To be honest, I kind of agree with them to a point. If full knowledge was widely known, there would be wide scale panic and riots, religious doom-sayers on every corner and no one would be able to get anything done. Once we get more of our defenses in place, and we have a better idea how much we'll be able to protect, we'll tell the planet the truth. They'll still panic, but we'll be able to tell them we've made preparations, and not just for the planet's elite."
"Sir, if you think I can help, I'll help. I can certainly understand the risk you are taking with me as well. You don't know me; I could very well be a spy for anyone. I swear to you on my life that I am not working for anyone and have no hidden agenda. Luciano, I am not as sure about. He is a cat; they always have a hidden agenda," Miss Shapiro replied smiling weakly.
Ian returned her smile. "I'm sure you got to see the size of this ship when Cindy and her team brought you here. Just so you have a frame of reference, she isn't the largest or the most powerful of our warships. In about ninety days, hundreds of other warships, most of them larger and more powerful than this one will arrive here to destroy us. By us, I mean all of humanity, and not just the warships. Their mission will be to sterilize the planet and destroy every human they can track down in this entire sector of space. We have no idea why they are coming to do this, only that they are.
"What the world leaders are having difficulty with is how we came about this information. Mental abilities such as telepathy, and telekinesis do exist in our universe. As does precognition. We were warned of the coming attack by multiple precognitives having the same, or close to the same vision. That opens a whole different can of worms about how the ability works and all that, but suffice it to say, the coming attack is a certainty and we have been treating it as such.
"A few minutes