Narrator

"If all of human history could be compressed into a single idiom, it would probably be "Playing with Fire." On the one hand, mankind has always prided itself in advancement through pushing boundaries, whether social, technological, or geographical. On the other, fire can and will eventually burn you. This was also the idiom running through Defense Secretary Clayton's mind as he sat on one of the Oval Office's couches and considered the request of the Japanese man sitting across from him. Japanese Minister of Defense Taro Kano was not smiling, a true rarity for a Japanese man conducting business. Robert Clayton could recall the polite grins and head-bobbing nods he would see whenever the Japanese came to talk to him directly. Even in the aftermath of the Hakone Incident, the Ambassador would speak of the case as if it was no worse than a glass of spilled milk. The same ambassador was sitting next to Kano now, and looked like he was about to be sick.

"President Dirrel sat at his desk at the other end of the room. The man had a grim smile on his face, and Clayton wondered if the President wasn't thinking back to the many loud arguments that had taken place in the Pentagon. The past several weeks had been a minimally publicized hell, but hell nonetheless. The National Security Advisor had been fired outright, and the directors of the CIA and DIA had both quietly handed in their resignations. The Secretary of State had almost resigned over the news as well, but had been encouraged to remain, at least for a few months, to keep up an air of normalcy in the administration. If Clayton hadn't been at a NATO summit during the whole incident, he reflected, his head might have joined the others on the chopping block. The American public knew little about the Hakone incident, the only noticeable change beyond the top-level personnel had been the unannounced and unpublicized addition of stars to the CIA memorial wall. A vague statement by a female JSDF member at a Ginza ceremony had gone largely unnoticed. Even so, the truth was that Japan now had America's President in just as troublesome a position as the President had once placed Prime Minister Motoi… and that was just the international scene. Dirrel had been forced to blow through an immense amount of political capital to get the Senate and House minority leaders to keep quiet, and the concessions involved had sealed the fact that he would *not* be running for reelection."

"She turned to point back at the pad, and that was when she saw the other group approaching them. The first member was Jake, also from PR, and who was supposed to be out on vacation. The second was a man in his mid-fifties with thinning hair and sporting the dark navy service dress of an Air Force officer. The third was her boss's boss, NASA Administrator Kosinski. Her first thought was that the officer and administrator were also on a tour—a sizeable chunk of Atlas V launches were for the National Reconnaissance Office, after all—but as she started into her explanation of the launch pad's new crew access arm, she saw the administrator give her a small wave and gesture for her to follow."