The Chief of Staff was bold, she admitted that to herself and he was well versed; knew the right buzzwords. She liked Mike Gerard because he was informed and organized. He made a great Chief of Staff. Often times she felt like she was playing catch up because he was always seven steps ahead of her. That made her feel slightly inept, but wasn’t that his job? To brief the President and Vice President on the situation? Isn’t that the reason they were in the situation room; receiving a sitrep? It was just like in the Army. Someone was always briefing the commander and the XO on what was going on and the [i]old man[/i] made the decision. Everyone else just had to live with it and support even if it ruffled a few feathers.

The problem for Brienne Sylvester was she could be something of a control freak and wanted to know first, but that would be wrong. She was a news junky listening to everything she could get ahold of. When she heard the news from several different sources and listened to the NSA’s Intelligence briefing on the world situation it made it easier to filter out the fake news or the stuff that was irrelevant—not important. Fortunately, she was patient and disciplined. This was a problem, managed internally for the Vice President; one the other staffers would not know from watching her; she held her cards close to the vest when she needed to.

"Good morning, AJ!" Brienne Sylvester stated with a warm smile. It was one of those smiles that could have gotten her elected to President if she ran; one of her more charming charismatic traits.

Not one for beating around the bush, Bri dove right in. “Obviously the Russian President is jockeying for position. They had a fall from grace thirty years ago and want to re-emerge in this new world as a Super Power just as they used to be. We need to placate them somehow. Give them something, but the aliens reached out to the Swedes. They have the communications technology. The equipment. I say we allow the Swedes to continue as a mouthpiece for the world. But the key thing to remember here is, the world is nothing more than a confederation of 193 nations. That is 193 voices, not one. More than likely, whoever is talking to the Swedes is representative of everyone on their end. The Swedes do not represent the entirety of our planet, but neither do the Russians or the Americans. As the Global Superpower we do have a better leg to stand on, but the Russians could argue for that same position. Knowing they are not what they once were, their only card is to unite with us and push the Swedes out.” Most of the people around the table knew what she was saying. She just felt it necessary to clarify the point to fully comprehend where the American policy on Russia, Sweden and the aliens was coming from.

“We need to make a positive gesture to the Russians to include them in our communications, but they do not need to be consulted on what we say to the aliens. First, we need to talk to Sweden to find out what is being said at both ends and insure the United States is kept inside the loop. Who is the American Ambassador to Sweden? We need to get him or her dialed in and representing us in this conversation.”

“Do we know what the visitors are saying to the Swedes? If we consult many of the science fiction authors, they would have us believe that many of the alien invaders want to come here and destroy the dominant species, so they can harvest our natural resources. Obviously killing the human species is not on their agenda. We should count ourselves fortunate in that regard. Any assistance we may render to them may provide us with a technology coup; even if we have to reverse engineer something to understand how it works and manufacture it for ourselves, it will still be a win.”

“We also need to dissect every message the visitors send to the Swedes. Maybe we can garner some intelligence about them from their messages. That will help us to understand who we are dealing with. We have no idea what sort of capabilities, strengths, numbers or resources these entities may have. We must take these first few steps carefully with trepidation.”