Battle for Earth

by Hammer Trollkin

  Liz and Mia have not yet met them, having been out of town on a special family vacation. The class began with the normal warm-up period. The students practiced punches and kicks. They split into groups to work on katas. The class moved to a time of sparring practice, fighting practice. Liz and Mia have shown good aptitude in all the forms they have learned in the year they have attended the karate sessions.

  Today, Liz paired up with one of the newer students, Tom, one of the twins. Tom is not a complete novice to sparring, having benefited from many years of wrestling and tussling with his brother Bill.

  A shout. Time to line up for some focused practice. Because of his larger size and greater physical strength Tom was clearly surprised that he was not able to outright win the sparring contest with the girl. While it is true he was careful not to hurt her, he had definitely wanted to best the girl in the match. After class was over, Tom made a point to go over and talk with this interesting person.>

  “Hi, I’m Tommy. I mean, I’m Tom,” said Tom. “You’re pretty strong-

  Liz squinted a little at him. “If you finish that with ... strong for a girl ... I’m going to clobber you.”

  Tom smiled a little at that but then he decided she might be serious. “No, that’s okay. I’ll stick with, you’re pretty, and you’re strong. I mean, you’re pretty strong. Just strong, not just for a girl strong. Well, you are a girl...” Tom decided the conversation wasn’t going very well. “I mean ... uh ... this is my brother Bill. We just moved to the area. From out of state”

  Mia had been monitoring the conversation and came to the conclusion she should help out a bit. Bill had wandered over and was standing there with his mouth open just a little, eyes wide, no doubt glad he hadn’t said anything. Mia stepped up and touched knuckles with Bill. “Hi. I’m Mia.” She touched knuckles with Tom and smiled. She nodded her head toward Liz. “This is my sister Liz. She can be a little cranky until she gets her after-practice snack.”

  Liz glared daggers at Mia for a second. Then she smiled a bright smile. Tom looked like he thought the entire room had gotten brighter. He was about to say something but decided he should probably rub a smudge off of the floor with his foot instead.

  Liz looked from Tom to Bill and then back again. Identical. They looked exactly the same. They must have a lot of fun with that. Think of the tricks they could play on people. “New around here, huh? Where do you guys live? Maybe we can all hang out sometime.”

  Their grandad smiled as he put his WalkMate away and strolled up to the group. He had met Tom and Bill’s dad while the kids were practicing. Their dad seemed a decent sort. They had recently moved into the mobile home park down the block from the girls’ neighborhood. Tom and Bill’s dad had run out on a quick errand and would be back in a minute. Tee took the time to get acquainted with Tom and Bill. It was hard to not like these boys. He wondered where this might end. END TIMELINE DROP. +

  ***

  After what feels like a long day of surfing, I’ll wrap up with a brief update on other events. What’s this? A timeline drop? This doesn’t seem like a normal timeline drop at all. Communal? Communal!!! Do you know anything about this timeline drop?

  *COMMUNAL: Happy birthday Viz! We wanted to surprise you with the drop. We were rummaging around and found the recording. Tee had loaded it to an old cloud storage site, from a vintage WalkMate. We found it and wanted to surprise you.

  Oh, I get it. That’s a recording of when Para and I first met Rock and Roll. At the dojo. Oh Communal. You’re such a sentimental. I can’t wait to show everyone. Wait, the vid is attached too? That should be fun.

  “Para, you’ve got to come and see this!”

  Para and I watched the video together. Eight years! Hard to believe. Thank you Communal, that was a lot of fun!

  Para agreed. “Their expressions are precious. Oh, do you remember when you could make the twins totally shut up just by raising your eyebrow?”

  Viz’ memory was kicking in too. “Or how you could stop them in their tracks by putting your hands on your hips and tapping your foot?”

  Para nodded. “Yeah, too bad all of that stopped working. We could have kept them out of so much trouble.”

  Ha! A good end to the day.

  ***

  DARKEST BEFORE DAWN

  *COMMUNAL. Later that evening, after threading-the-needle, Roll went off by himself. He usually felt wonderful after a day of surfing. Viz had scolded the twins about romping around the Solar System. What if the bugs saw them? It was more than that though. There was so much happening so quickly. Lack of sleep probably wasn’t helping. Really, little things seemed to bother him now more than they used to.

  He had found a secluded spot near the beach in Donkey Stream Park. No one bothered him there. He pulled out a bottle of 90 proof whisky. Half left. He took a long pull. Or half gone. It’s all about how you look at things. He was sure it was the brand of whisky his mom used to drink. Roll wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. This was an anniversary of sorts. A sad anniversary. Thirteen years since his mom had left. They never heard from her again.

  Worldwide invasion. Planning for an interstellar war. Here he was, excess baggage Roll, a Shockwave operative. And he didn’t know where his mom was; or if she was even still alive. He could probably find out. What would be the point? He took another pull. Maybe she was never really there. He had imagined it all. She had been drunk most of the time anyway. Yeah, not actually there.

  He thought about heading home. It was getting late. Too late. But the memory captured him once again. He was carried back to that night. It was the night before his mom left, never to be heard from again. Roll had only recently turned four years old. He woke to the sound of his mother yelling. She did that sometimes. Then she would usually calm down for a while. He heard what she said; he heard her clearly.

  She said: “One is ENOUGH. TWO is too much.”

  She had raised her voice even louder and repeated it. He was only four, but he knew what she meant. Twins. One would have been hard enough. How could she handle two of them? Two was too much. The next day she left, never to return. His dad was always so ... passive. She walked all over him. Two was just too much. It would have been okay without Roll, if there had only been Rock. Roll had messed it up for the whole family.

  He took another pull. It burned going down. And it melted a little part of him. The part that cared. What would it be like if he just didn’t care anymore, about anything at all? Two is too much.

  September 18 th . 09:00 hours. Shockwave headquarters. Main conference room. Information and planning meeting. Topic: Darkside, enemy base, the Moon. I’m sitting here trying to stay focused. Important meeting. There is no unity at all. Roll has arrived. It’s ten after nine. He’s late. That’s not like him. Even lately that’s not like him. Mr. T took a long and piercing look at him. Yikes, hyper-scanned. But Roll doesn’t look apologetic or worried. He just shrugged his shoulders and sat down. Now I’m really worried about him.

  Back to the meeting. Dissension. Argumentation; back and forth, back and forth. We need to keep the nuclear option open. Someone said it would be worth taking the time to build a real space force based on bug technology before we take the next step. Take the time? What time? This should be done, that should be done. On and on.

  Mr. T is mostly sitting and listening. He speaks up once in a while, in an attempt to keep the meeting somewhat calm and orderly. Time ... is ... going ... so ... slowly. This is getting ridiculous. It has been going on for over an hour. Mr. T is standing up.

  “Colleagues, this is not getting us anywhere. General Whitehall, my team, will you please stay? For the rest, we will be in touch. Let’s call this meeting adjourned, 10:05.”

  Mr. T is standing there. Other than Shockwave and the general, the rest are all looking at him, beaming out an air of importance. Their expressions shout it out, who are you to shoo us off? It’s awkward. Mr. T is still standing there. It’s quiet. Battle of the wills.

&nb
sp; Wait, he’s gesturing. He’s pointing at me, Para, the twins, the general, our general. And he is walking out of the conference room, heading toward the lunchroom. We follow. Even the general. The rest can let themselves out. It looks like we will be having a little subcommittee meeting in the lunch room. Mr. T is having a thought, looking at us one at a time.

  He said to the group, “Would you excuse us, just for a minute?”

  Mr. T looked at me and motioned to follow him. We went to his office. What did Mr. T want to talk to me about? Had I done something wrong? My mind was racing. He was frustrated from the meeting, that much was obvious. I think we all were.

  There’s no time for upgrading our ship and weapons technology. And we can’t just nuke the place, even though that had been strongly suggested and seemed to be the prevailing mood. Let’s have Shockwave nuke them! I wouldn’t be a part of something like that, not with all those people on base. Unless... No, there has to be a better way. But I understand the tension. A portal gate would soon open that would let a darkness even worse than the bugs get to us.

  We have no idea where Empire headquarters is located. The queens have a way to hide that, or it could be, they don’t know. We have to push through the bugs and get to the Empire. Otherwise they’ll sneak up behind us and get us, eventually.

  Mr. T is looking at me. “Dear-heart, what would you do?”

  Dear-heart. Serious stuff then. I knew Grandad had a plan. But he wanted to hear what I thought. And actually, I had been thinking a lot about all of this.

  I even had a reply at hand. “If we wreck the portal anchor on the Moon, we have something like 50 years. Who knows? Let’s use that number. Then the Empire is coming. Can we advance enough in 50 years to meet them head-on? That might be possible. But they would expect us to have advanced significantly by that time.

  “It would be one world, the Earth, against ... a lot of worlds. We don’t have any idea how many worlds are in the Darkstar Empire. But if we let them open the portal, we should be able to slip through. Shockwave should be able to slip through. We could then nuke the Empire side of the portal gate bridge to buy us time. And we would know where the Empire is lurking.

  “If we fail and they move enough ships over the bridge, we lose those 50 years. That’s something to really think about. I want to have kids and grandkids. But I want to have them on Earth. Or, at least I want it to be my choice where I have them.

  “In this war, I think we need to keep the element of surprise. We need to be humble and realize what we are up against. We have to be brave and take the fight to them! Now. We can’t wait for them to come for us at a point and time of their choosing.”

  Grandad nodded a little, looking serious. “Exactly.”

  We headed back to the lunch room, where the rest were still milling around. There wasn’t even any small talk. It seemed a little tense. Couldn’t they talk about the weather or something? Para usually jumps in to smooth things over.

  Oh no, Roll is saluting, and here it comes. Whew. I thought he was going to have a snide remark. At least that didn’t come out, probably owing to the poke to his ribs from Para. The general smiled. Just a little. It was an awkward smile. You been drinking Roll?

  Mr. T invited us to sit down. We all sat down. The team had been impressed with how the general had been able to help us so far. And how quickly he could make things happen. I knew Mr. T had told the general some things about the capabilities of Shockwave. But he hadn’t told the general everything.

  Mr. T closed the lunchroom doors. He took out a small control unit and punched a button. After that we could hear a quiet buzzing sound, a background hiss. He had activated some kind of machine that would keep anyone from eavesdropping on our conversation. Then Mr. T did tell the general everything.

  He explained each of our abilities, in detail. Yeah, Mr. T had gotten a dosing of strength enhancing nanites in addition to his delving ability. It was not the same as with Para. But Mr. T was stronger than your average 5-or-so men, put together. That had been obvious to us of course. And we could tell his aches and pains didn’t bother him like they used too. Mr. T told the general all about our abilities and how we had gotten them. He totally opened up to the general.

  When he had finished explaining the capabilities of Shockwave, Mr. T was open for questions. “Any questions general?”

  The general didn’t look surprised at all. “Not at this time. How do you want to handle the situation at Darkside?”

  Mr. T was ready for that question. “There are still some details that need to be ironed out. It should work out something like this. We need to let the bugs open the portal. Or take the base and open it ourselves. Then Shockwave will slip through and locate the Darkstar Empire. We will need to destroy the other portal gate, the one on the Empire side. That will have to happen quickly, before any Empire ships can traverse the gate.

  “We’ll keep the Darkside anchor site for our own use and study, if we can. That mode of transportation isn’t as elegant as quantum porting. But it seems to be the only way to move massive pieces of equipment, like star ships. Fleets of star ships. Eventually, we’re going to want to make our own system of starways; our very own freeway system among the stars.

  “First things first. We will need to do something about the bug blockade. I’m still working on that one. We will need to exterminate the bugs at Darkside, without harming the hostages. To do that will require some large but portable life support domes. The kind they were planning to use on future Mars missions. A sufficient number of domes will need to be set up to temporarily house all the hostages. Just for a short time.

  “We will need, let’s say, a couple dozen special forces types. They will help to take the base and free the hostages. The spec-ops guys will need spacesuits. Rock and Roll can move the personnel. But the domes will have to be lifted by ship. A couple of heavy lift ships should do the trick. It will need to be well coordinated.

  “The bug blockade ships must be neutralized first and we will need to take control of, or destroy the Darkside anti-ship weapons. The operation will have to move along quickly. No room for error. We’ll want to rig Darkside base with a nuke. Just in case we lose control of the portal. We can’t risk having the Empire come through the portal, no matter what. Not even a single ship. I’ll draft a more detailed strategy and have it to you by tomorrow, 08:00.”

  Our little lunch room meeting finished like this.

  “In the meantime, could you please pull together the special forces team, housing domes for all the hostages, and get us a couple of heavy lift ships? Oh, we’ll need some of those new descent pallets, the new units with rocket assists, to drop the enviro-domes to the Lunar surface.

  “I don’t think we will need the transport ships to land on the Moon, not with the descent pallets. That should help in putting together an emergency launch. Or, I understand from our engineers that we will be able to fly a bug ship by the time we need one, 100% guaranteed. They were working on a ship for the Nemesis 12 rescue, but flying a bug ship at that time would have been touch-and-go.

  “Now the engineers and pilots should be far enough along the learning-curve to pick up the hostages using a bug ship. Come to think about it, we may be able to use a bug ship to transport the housing domes too. But I think we keep that as a contingency option. Your choice. Thoughts?”

  The general was stone faced. “I’ll pull some strings. I’ve been thinking along a similar line. Let’s talk tomorrow about the blockade. I may have something that will help with that.”

  Who is this general? He must have closer ties with the president than only an advisor. I suspect the general will have another meeting in the afternoon with the same crew we met with this morning. He’ll just let them know how this operation is going to go down, and what their role will be in the process.

  September 19 th The general did have a plan for the bug blockade ships guarding the Moon. He joined us again for a short discussion. Two days in a row with the general. We may have to g
et him his own seat at the table. There are nine enemy ships left. The general has requisitioned 9 Goldilocks bombs.

  They are light enough for Rock and Roll to port without a combined lift. The twins will play leapfrog with the 9 bombs. They’ll line the bombs up at our desert staging site. Then port the bombs to the bug ship decks, in a coordinated effort. Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll. Hindsight can be so painful. Had this strategy been developed earlier, Nemesis 12 could have been spared.

  We had become procedure locked, thinking only of bomb placement inside the ships. Port onto a bug ship, handle any threats, place a bomb inside the ship, port to safety. It would not have been safe to port into the ships when they were fully loaded, with bugs crawling around everywhere. Porting bombs to the hull of an enemy ship never came up in our discussions. Now it seemed so obvious.

  Of course, there was still the problem of the bugs scanning the sudden appearance of Rock and Roll and the bombs. The outside placement solution might be successful with two, or even four ships. But the rest will probably run. That problem would need a resolution. Who knows what sort of bombs might be available to the bugs. They all needed to be destroyed to avoid any sort of retaliation.

  I can see it in Grandad’s eyes. This should have been considered prior to committing the Nemesis 12 group. Hindsight is 20/20. I don’t think that’s a platitude in this case. There was hardly any time to think it through and give input before the military put Nemesis 12 on the line.

  Porting is such a new military option. How much sleep were you getting at the time, Grandad? Maybe 2-hours a night? None of us thought of it. The general already knew of porting by then, right? He didn’t think of it either, not at the time. Don’t blame yourself! Yeah, I can see it in his eyes; he does blame himself. Go easy on yourself Grandad.

  ***

  *COMMUNAL: Says the pot calling the kettle black.