It wasn't until a decade before the Arrival of what he and a select few already knew was inbound, the Draconista fleet, that things started getting weird. There wasn't a lot of information out in the open yet, but just the same, General Maxwell Calloway, United States Air Force, Retired, was paying attention, and he saw that the government, especially the Pentagon, was doing a lot of strange things. He was living in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, at the time. He had always maintained his list of contacts, 'those who were always in the know' around the Beltway, and throughout the endless corridors of the Department of Defense; otherwise known as the Pentagon. He had maintained a contact with every member of the JCS, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the really 'Big Whigs' in charge of their perspective branch of military service, both past and present. Every year, Max Calloway would throw a cocktail party for a few old friends and catchup on the latest scuttlebutt, as Admiral Harold Fairbanks, the CNO, Chief of Naval Operations, liked to refer to the latest word and rumors that circulated through the halls of that great five-sided concrete fortress in Alexandria, Virginia. Calloway and Fairbanks had been friends for the better part of thirty years up to and including Calloway's stint as director of the 'unofficial' Montauk Project in New York. Fairbanks was one of the very few active duty military officers who knew the inside story of what really went on at Montauk. At one of Calloway's little cocktail parties, Fairbanks had pulled him to the side and confided in him about some of the weird stuff that was happening."Damn, Max, I don't know what the hell is going on," Fairbanks started. "I don't have the whole story yet, but I can tell you this much. The workers at the navy yards on both coasts are making a killing in their Union-scale overtime pay. I've got ships being refitted that aren't even due for refits for the next couple of years, yet, I got the word from on high to refit the entire fleet, plus a lot of the recently retired ships, and boats. Cruisers, Escorts, Destroyers, Frigates, Subs, and Carriers. A lot of my ships and boats are getting shiny new weapons, missile upgrades, and the like. Some are being outfitted with lasers and experimental weapons systems like the Kinetic Energy "Rail Guns," that are on the USS Kitt. A lot of times my ships have to arrive and depart by night. My carriers are being worked on up in Bremerton both day and night. I know that you still have a lot of contacts in places that I can only imagine, Max; and I know that you like a good mystery; maybe you might check into what's going on and see what you come up with? There's a lot of bullshit going on and those of us who are supposed to know don't know." Max had assured his old friend that he'd check into it and get back to him when he had some useful intel to give him and the two men returned to the cocktail and dinner party.That following Monday, Max had gotten on the phone with another old friend, an exec with Boeing, who told him that all of a sudden the company was ordering parts for the old ASAT anti-satellite missiles and assembling them in their plants in Texas and New Mexico. When Max had asked him how many ASATs they were building, he told him, "We're cranking out a dozen a day, Max, and that's a dozen a day in both plants.""Now why would the Pentagon need to build anti-satellite missiles?" Max asked more rhetorically than as a question."Beats the hell out of me, my friend," the Boeing exec had replied, " but what the hell, business is booming and your guess is as good as mine."More weird things started happening. Gas prices skyrocketed, and after that the cost of food went up. Then the price of uranium and other rare Earth elements began to go up, then sharply up, so much so that new pits were opened in Australia and Canada. Long abandoned mines were reopened too...
