When I awoke the next day, I found a limousine waiting for me. I had planned to do a little sight seeing, but I suppose the President had other plans for me. I was taken back to the same Pentagon War Room that I had visited the day before. I found the same technicians busy at work. More images had been taken and I was able to view them. I could now plainly see several other ships in formation. Shortly after I started looking them over, I was tapped on the shoulder. It was General Johnson.
“You made quite an impact on everyone at that briefing yesterday when you mentioned Hitler. Is the Empire really that bad??”
I replied, “I wish I had been exaggerating, as the Joint Chief said, but I don’t believe I was. One of their machines of fear, the Death Star, was a 120km diameter spherical space ship. Its primary weapon was a single laser with enough power to destroy an entire planet. It was constructed by slave labor taken from a prison complex on the planet it was constructed around. Upon its completion, the weapon was tested on that planet. It was used a second time, as part of an ultimatum to a member of the Rebellion, in the attempts to discover the location of their main base.”
The general stood, silent for a few moments. Then we heard some noise. It turns out that we had some work to do.
I was quickly ushered to a small round table. Also seated at the table as General Johnson, several of the Joint Chiefs and some technicians. Someone asked, “Now that we have decided that we are not going to reveal any of this to the public, we are going to need a cover story for it, for the photo that was given to the press earlier and for any possible leaks we may have in the future.”
Another voice chirped in, “Well, future leaks should probably be handled on a case-to-case basis. We do not know what is going to happen in the future.”
“Well, if we only need to discuss the photo that was given to the press, what kind of cover would work?” I asked.
All of us talked for a couple hours. We decided that a 1-in-a-million chance of several occurrences would work. A burst of solar radiation corrupted the stream of data as the image was being downloaded from the satellites, similar to how a solar flare can disrupt cellular phone calls. In addition, a software glitch, which had since been repaired, caused the satellites to be looking in the wrong area of space. The direction change was jus a fraction of a degree, but it was enough to cause incorrect information. Finally, we added in that some further file corruption was caused by a Windows fluke error while it was being saved.