NOW: TWO MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK ON THE FESTIVE NIGHTBEAK

The Jagged Clam, a long range scout, got reports from an asteroid based scientific outpost The Doctor Faingerp (named after the famed inventor of Cythuselah life-extension technology) that unusual energy readings were coming from a point near the station. Faingerp station was in the asteroid belt around Epsilon Eridani and built into JFD11-3, a small (16 km wide) asteroid. Jagged Clam, on alert anyway after the loss of the Nightbeak, moved to investigate.

Upon arrival at a point 5 Lsecs out, with no unusual readings, the Clam tightbeamed Faingerp back, asking for status and clarification. Faingerp station reported back that the readings weren't on the standard scans - that they were showing up on some experimental quantum interface technology.

At that point, a series of Tunneling Rings opened in space, overlapping and with projected symbology, and a small craft nosed through. The craft was only about 100 meters long and didn’t seem to have detectable weapons or tunneling engine flywheels. The Sciencedrone on the Clam logged that he was unsure how it even made the Tunneling Ring in the first place.

Several individuals in space armor exited the craft, life forms identified in the Warbrain database as Sol Thirders. The Thirders landed on JFD11-3 approximately 500 meters from Faingerp Station. They did not engage in any attacks and did not seem to be armed as scanned from the Clam. Faingerp station, with better scanners and closer to them, said the Thirders seemed to have no weapons, but two of them were carrying what appeared to be liquid projectors, similar to the kind used to spray repairmesh on hulls. One was carrying a simple wood stick, about 2 meters long, which sounded like an error on Faingerp’s end.

The Jagged Clam sent multiple warnings and attempts at communication but none were answered. The Thirders then appeared to use their gear to draw a giant (500 meter) circle on the surface in some sort of red liquid, then to draw a five pointed star inside the circle, while the staff-wielding one drew multiple smaller symbols using the stick. Scans from Faingerp station said the material appeared to be organic in nature, which also didn’t make sense.

After the drawing seemed to be complete, the staff one stood, waving their arms and staff around for a minute. The captain of the Clam was holding off on combat actions - direct fire was ruled out due to the proximity of the station, and the Clam had limited boarding warriors. Since it seems like the Thirders were perhaps just leaving a message or engaging in a religious ritual, they waited.

reported back then that all of their scanners were going crazy - mass changes in the asteroid, tectonic shifts, and quantum tunneling readings off the charts. The circle started to glow red. The sprayed material which had dried once sprayed appeared to revert to a liquid form, which was impossible. Then the asteroidal mass inside the circle seemed to just fade out. What was left was a shifting blue-green glow, with lightning discharges, from inside the circle. Sensor pings hinted at a much larger space inside the circle with no discernable end, which must have been an error, since the asteroid was objectively 16 km long.

After a few seconds of this, the Faingerp ordered all tents to evacuate. When the first lifepod started to detach, large black tentacles of unknown origin unrolled out of the circle. Spanning over a km in length, they flailed around, thumping the surface. From scans, the tentacles also appeared to leave from and re-enter spacetime, looking like so many sausages growing and shrinking, suggesting a multi-dimensional state, far beyond the Clam’s ability to analyze.

Presently several tentacles with eye stalks also appeared and seemed to be looking at the staff-wielding Thirder, who was gesturing at Faingerp station. One of the tentacles plucked up one of the spray Thirders and yanked it back inside the circle. The staff Thirder appeared to become agitated, shaking a fist at the Eyestalks. Then they waved their staff around and slammed it into the circle a few times, which caused some color glimmering throughout the circle. The eyestalks then rolled around, then looked at Faingerp Station.

The tentacles continued to extend out several more km. Some of them grabbed the escaping lifepods, others grabbed structures of the station and tore them out of the surface. For the next minute the Clam watched as the tentacles proceeded to demolish the station, including any survivors, and then start ripping huge chunks of the actual asteroid out, pulling all of it piece by piece into the circle. The Thirders flew back to their vessel, which generated a Tunneling Ring and left.

The Clam stayed to continue gathering intel. There didn’t appear to be any logical explanation, since by another minute later, more than half of the mass of the asteroid had disappeared back through the circle, presumably inside of the same asteroid, yet the mass scanners continued to show it getting lighter. When the asteroid started to break up, the circle broke, the light went out, and the asteroid returned to its original state, albeit with only 40% of its original mass and size, and all tents lost from Faingerp station.

Surveying the wreckage revealed little additional information. The only notable finds were some traces of the organic material painted to make the circle, and a few Cyph’d bodies. The bodies were, in some cases, torn apart from the inside, again suggesting a multi-dimensional attack.

Reports of the event were sent to the Cyph’d Consortium, which then got sent to the Greater Collected Domains council. They were immediately classified, and the Jagged Clam was ordered to consider the event top secret.

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THEN: LATE JUNE, 2015

A few key House elections loomed, and it looked like they were going to do an end-run around her appointment, but the DNC pulled out every favor they could. Wendy also herself visited any state getting ready to run a House election, and most of them ultimately agreed that she was probably a better choice. A coalition of the Democratic party upper-echelon members, Democratic Governors and various media and social influencers formed behind Wendy.

In two cases, though, things didn’t go quite so smoothly. Randy Mensham, an appointee from Virginia selected by the governor had a House election being fast-tracked and Wendy couldn’t persuade the governor to delay it. Randy ended up, surprisingly, resigning anyway, making loud and public announcements that it was suicide, that anybody who become President was doomed to be nuked, and that it wasn’t worth it. The second choice pick also dropped out once he heard Randy’s speech.

In New Hampshire, their House candidate - a Ms. Lorraine Singer - was extremely vocal about becoming President. She had a run-in with Wendy at the state capital after Wendy had tried to persuade the Governor, then got in an argument later at a nearby diner, where she firmly declared that nothing would ever change her mind. Days later, though, Lorraine developed some kind of hostile ambivalence… she would argue the merits of both becoming President and then not becoming President, going in circles, going at all hours of the day and night to anyone who would listen, calling radio shows and writing long editorials, until she had some kind of nervous breakdown. She ended up taking a break from politics.

On July 4th, 2015, with no House elections able to be completed, Gwendolyn “Wendy” Ashe became the 45th (Acting) President of the United States of America: the first woman President, and the first President by Succession. The night of the appointment, she made a brief speech to the press. She didn’t make an imposing figure - she looked like a well kept forty something Irish American redhead, who didn’t even dress up, sticking to what the media called her Severe Librarian outfit of skirt, arm length sweater and glasses. Her adoring First Husband was by her side (who honestly seemed confused by the whole affair), and after the speech, both were hustled off to an undisclosed location. One reporter on-site at their Princeton house said the First Couple only brought a few suitcases of personal belongings, plus a small truck’s worth of books and papers. The house was sealed up with the expectation they would be coming back as soon as they could.

The same reporter also noted that President Ashe walked the perimeter of the house, waving at it several times. When the reporter asked, she said she was giving it a blessing. She had never discussed her religion much, and when the reporter asked if it was a Christian blessing, the President didn’t answer. When she left, a secret service detachment stayed behind to keep an eye on the house.

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President Ashe addressed the nation every couple of days from an oval-office look alike from wherever she was bunkered. Most of the broadcasts were suggestions to get back to work, for states to drop martial law and start electing House members and affirming new Senators. Some Under-Secretaries were promoted up to Secretary. A national day of mourning was scheduled.

Things continued to improve in the US for the next few months. People were a little wary of President Ashe at first, given the unusual circumstances of her appointment. She did her best to calm everyone’s fears of her doing anything radical. The engine of government was slow, in first gear, but rumbling to life and picking up steam. States ran emergency hearings and elections; some succession plans coughed up a few more representatives and Senators once people saw things were happening. Some governors appointed Senators; others still waited to see what would happen. A Congress started to form. She had an open invitation that anybody sent to Congress could have a stop at the bunker to visit her for a personal congratulations, in private. Quite a few took her up on it.

When the DNC handlers, and some special interest donors and bigwigs met with her, they had a lot of suggestions they expected her to rubber-stamp. They suggested David Shulkin, Under-Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Vice President - she approved it. They made a few more suggestions for other cabinet positions - mostly party favorites from the Diplomatic corps and a few private sector individuals - and she approved them. The small Congress approved whatever she sent, in turn, with a surprisingly bi-partisan attitude.

For the next few months things slowly started going back to normal.

Meanwhile, another suggestion of hers was heard by the right people. Even though the capitol had been glassed, if this was an overt attack against Earth (and not an accident), other seats of power would have been destroyed. Capitals. Military targets. Civilian airfields or infrastructure. Since that hadn’t happened, the higher-ups conceded they were probably accidental and a new seat of government could be staffed.

Several alternatives were floated, and the end result was the Federal Government temporarily moved to Philadelphia, with the understanding that as soon as the cleanup and rebuilding was complete it would move back to DC. NYC seemed a better option for some but too northeast for others; Virginia made a play for it, but the historical underpinnings of Philly gave the choice a lot of credence. President Ashe assured the people of the U.S. that the government would eventually move back to D.C. She authorized the National Guard and the Army Corp of Engineers to D.C. to start breaking up the glasspack and wreckage, and get ready for the re-construction.

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There was some concern that building over a still somewhat radioactive zone with a quarter-million human remains underneath might be an issue, but President Ashe said she’d work it out.