by Sean Robins
“You’re going to jeopardize the whole thing. Stay put! That’s an order!”
I didn’t think for a second she’d listen. Once Liz set her heart on doing something, there was no way to talk her out of it. I considered my options, and my heart sank when I realized I had none. Once Liz attacked the Deathbringers, our cover would be blown anyway. Our only chance was to get rid of these five as fast as possible and hope they couldn’t send a message out. And if they did, we might end up kissing any chances we had of defeating the Xortaags goodbye.
My face felt hot, and my palms started sweating. A vision of the world burning with billions of corpses scattered all over sprang to my mind, the direct result of what Liz was about to do. Under my watch. My responsibility. I could almost smell the stench of the corpses. I gritted my teeth and prepared myself to order the rest of the pilots to follow Liz.
Nothing happened. Liz’s Viper stayed on course. There was no further communication from her. I tried to contact her but got nowhere.
Tarq’s voice spoke in my ear. “Jim, I have taken control of her Viper. I am bringing her back in with the rest of you.”
I asked, “Were you monitoring us?” and immediately thought, duh!
“Yes, and a good thing too,” said Tarq, “given that she was about to doom us all. I have also blocked her communications, but we can hear her over here and let me tell you this: She is furious. Does she kiss you with that mouth?”
Despite everything, picturing Liz alone in her cockpit throwing a tantrum brought a fleeting smile to my face.
Tarq added, “Also, FYI, I am going to demote her due to insubordination.”
I said, “Tarq?”
“Yes, Jim?”
“She’s gonna kill you,” I said mischievously.
Tarq did not respond, so I added, “She’s gonna kill you like a rabid dog in the street.”
“I know,” said Tarq, sounding resigned. “I am thinking about having security take her to MICI as soon as she lands and do the RoboCop thing again.”
With a knot in my stomach, I forced myself to watch while the enemy vessels closed the distance and started shooting at the helpless jet fighters. I desperately wanted to help them, but I knew it would be a fatal mistake. Sitting in my cockpit, watching my friends getting slaughtered, killed a part of me, an innocence I didn’t even know I still had. I thought I knew war, but I didn’t. War isn’t just fighting, danger, and fear. War is strategy, and strategy is pitiless. This was war—and without a doubt the most painful thing I’d ever experienced in my life.
Earth’s Exosphere - 12.45 EST
Prince Mushgaana, sitting on the captain’s chair of the command starship, absent-mindedly followed the battle on the bridge’s main display, a colossal VR screen front and center. Around him, the starship’s crew members were performing their duties with an air of professionalism and efficiency. Mushgaana had worked with this particular crew for a very long time, and he knew they were capable of functioning at peak efficiency with minimal supervision. They certainly were more focused on the job at hand than he was.
This battle was a foregone conclusion. So were the next few. The real battle would come when they attacked the Akakies’ homeworld. After that, there would be no one capable of challenging their supremacy in the galaxy.
As a member of the royal family, Mushgaana could have anything that he wanted on his own planet. Luxury, pleasure, the adulation of women and courtiers. He could have wasted his life, like his four older brothers, on arranging petty military exercises, participating in martial art tournaments, and cracking down on the occasional rebellions in a couple of planets in their so-called “kingdom.” There were also regular “Mind Power” competitions, during which the royal family members pitted their telepathic and telekinetic abilities against each other. Mushgaana regularly participated in those contests, and he always won hands down. But he was a lot more ambitious than that, partly because due to his physical appearance and small frame he would never be respected in a warrior race—and specifically by his father—unless he did something no one else ever had. When he was a young man, he had decided conquering a few planets and killing all their inhabitants would do it.
It was Mushgaana who convinced his father to appoint Maada as the commander of the fleet all those years ago when they were both young men. The two of them had planned their first military campaign, and the second, and the third. Each victory brought them more resources, technological advancement, economic growth, and most importantly, respect. The advanced technology they often found on other planets and reverse engineered had transformed Tangaar from a planet on the verge of destruction to a thriving and prosperous one. Their overfished seas had been stocked with alien species; their forests rejuvenated with fast-growing, carbon-sucking trees adapted to the planet’s dry heat. New materials had revolutionized construction, and new luxury goods had pacified the upper classes. Most importantly, the colonization of the conquered planets had solved their over-population problem. A lifetime later, their kingdom was the biggest and strongest in the galaxy, both Maada and he were legends, and his brothers—tall, muscular “warriors” that they were—would happily kill him in his sleep out of pure jealousy if they got the chance, especially since the king had officially appointed him as his successor, breaking with a centuries-old tradition of naming the oldest son crown prince.
This whole conquering-the-galaxy plan had started as a means to impress his father, but he had soon developed a taste for it, and his motivation had become to rule the galaxy one day. Sooner or later, the kingdom would be his, and he wanted to expand it as much as possible even before he was crowned king. This was in sharp contrast to Maada, who had no personal ambitions. Whatever he had done in his life was for the good of the kingdom and its people. Mushgaana regarded the general’s concern for the planet’s downtrodden with some amusement, well aware of the lie at the center of it. They were predators, Maada and he; why pretend otherwise? The kingdom benefited from Mushgaana’s actions, but he benefited most.
One of his officers said, “Your Highness, the general is doing his one-man-army again.”
Mushgaana smiled and pulled up the screen the man was referring to. Maada was singlehandedly fighting some thirty enemy fighters while a couple of hundred of his fighters were hovering nearby, watching the battle. He was not even doing it from a safe distance: He was engaged in a short-range dogfight, giving the enemy fighters every chance to take shots at him.
He contacted Maada. “General, you promised me not to take any unnecessary risks.”
Maada answered, “What risk?” After shooting down a couple of enemy aircraft, he added, “I was getting bored. Why should people under my command have all the fun?”
Mushgaana had to admit watching the general in action was a privilege, even after all the years they had fought together. The man was truly invincible when sitting in a Deathbringer cockpit. His space fighter was considerably more advanced than the enemy aircraft; still, they outnumbered him thirty to one, yet none of their missiles or bullets would get anywhere near the general, despite the close range. Those other pilots watching, as well as the command starship personnel, would tell this story to their children and grandchildren.
He said, “One of these days you will get yourself killed, and I will have to lead our fleet to glorious victory alone.”
“Perish the thought,” said Maada as he kept on collecting enemy scalps.
New York - 13.30 EST
Zheng was in an intense conversation with army generals, planning a defense strategy against a ground invasion, when the air force commander, a tough-looking American woman in her fifties, told him, “General, please take a look at this.”
She brought up a screen that showed enemy spaceships deploying small sphere-shaped devices around Earth at an altitude of forty-five thousand feet.
“What the hell are those?” asked Zheng.
“We have no idea,” said the woman. “But we’ve discovered a pattern. It looks like th
ey’re planning to surround the whole planet with these things. We can safely assume this is why they’ve been neutralizing our air defenses.”
“Can we shoot them down?”
“We can try,” said the woman.
Zheng nodded. “Give the order. Also, send up our chopper squadrons.”
Everyone within earshot stopped and stared at him incredulously. The woman, eyes wide, said, “Our helicopters? What good are they going to do when our most advanced jet fighters are so comprehensively outmatched?”
“Probably not much,” said Zheng. “But they can at least draw some enemy fire, giving our fighter jets a chance to shoot a few of those things down. It’ll be more useful than having them sit on the ground, and I don’t think a few thousand more casualties will make any difference in our current situation.”
The air force commander held her chin up. “This is murder. I respectfully refuse to carry out this order.”
Without saying a word, Zheng nodded to one of the SCTU soldiers in the operation room. The man stepped forward, brought up his assault rifle and shot the commander in the head. Her blood sprayed on the oval table all the other generals were sitting around, painting it red. The terror already dominating the room was now palpable.
Zheng repeated his order to the air force’s second-in-command, who said, “Given that it’s a suicide mission, can we at least ask for volunteers?”
Zheng thought about it for a second and then shrugged. “If it makes you feel any better. But trust me, it makes no difference. There’ll be plenty of volunteers.”
Half an hour later, the new air force commander pointed at the Command Center’s main screen, which showed thousands of military helicopters flying off the ground and carrying their crew towards certain death, and said, “You were right, General.”
Zheng shrugged. “I often am.”
Earth’s Troposphere - 13.35 EST
By the time the order to shoot down the mysterious spheres came, most of the remaining fighter pilots in Lieutenant Jianguo Liu’s squadron had exhausted their BVR missiles, but Liu had very soon realized shooting BVRs at enemy fighters was about as effective as throwing rocks at them. He’d decided to hold on to his, waiting for a better opportunity to put them to good use.
An opportunity such as this.
Using the targeting system on his Chengdu J-25’s head-up display, approaching from behind, he fired two missiles at the spaceship deploying the small spheres at an altitude of thirty thousand feet, and another two at the spheres themselves. The second two scored direct hits against two of the spheres but had zero effect. They didn’t even budge them. The spheres were protected with some kind of shield.
Liu slapped his knee and said, “Damn it!” in frustration.
The first two missiles did much better. The spaceship, which was bigger and slower than the space fighters, veered right and avoided one, but the second missile hit it on the starboard side. The vessel started losing altitude and exploded after a few seconds.
In a day when Liu had witnessed a lot of his friends die in a hopeless battle against alien invaders, this small victory filled his heart with joy. It also attracted the attention of a few enemy fighters flying nearby. They changed direction and came straight for him.
Earth’s Troposphere - 13.45 EST
Maada could not help admiring the defenders’ courage, albeit grudgingly.
One reason why the Xortaags always attacked with an overwhelming show of force was to intimidate the enemy into surrender, thus saving valuable resources. In his long military career, it had been his experience that once the defenders realized they were completely outmatched, they would either officially surrender or run away.
Not these people, though. They had suffered horrible losses, but they kept coming. In the process, they had managed to destroy nearly fifteen hundred of his space fighters. For such a technologically primitive planet, this number was completely unacceptable. Now they had focused their efforts on shooting down the ships deploying the Voice of God, having had some very limited success there too.
Maada decided that he had seen enough and asked the fleet’s command ship to patch him through to enemy vessels. He said in English, “People of Earth. My name is General Maada, the commander of Xortaag Royal Fleet. You have certainly realized by now you are fighting a lost cause. I have no particular wish to keep killing brave men and woman to achieve an inevitable outcome, so I offer you this: If you surrender, I guarantee you will not be harmed; you will be treated fairly, and you will be allowed to continue living in accordance with your own customs and traditions. Surrender now and save your lives.”
He was well aware that after the Voice of God came online, people on the planet would essentially turn into mindless drones, their lifespan drastically reduced, but in his mind, he was not lying. They would still be alive, enjoying life for the foreseeable future, even if their minds were controlled.
He kept the channel open, waiting for a response, which arrived shortly after. “Fuck you!”
This was followed by the sound of cheering and other expressions of defiance in several different languages the meaning of which Maada did not know but could guess.
Maada said, “Suit yourself,” and told his fleet, “Kill them all.”
After returning to Winterfell, Kurt, Allen, Liz and I went to the Command Center. Liz was mad and completely ignored me. Her silent treatment would normally annoy me, but right now it didn’t seem like such a big deal, with Earth being conquered and all. Tarq, Barook, Sergei, and Keiko were already in the Command Center, following the battle on various screens. Keiko was standing next to a monitor with her shoulders back and chin up, doing her best to maintain her tough-as-nail-badass-chick image, but she had tears in her, well, eye. Tarq was biting his nails and avoided eye contact with me. He didn’t even try to hide the terror on his face. He was either imagining this happening to his world, or he’d developed some affection for us humans. The Command Center’s atmosphere was so heavy I could taste the dread in the air.
“They are sending helicopters to fight space fighters now,” said Tarq, his face blanching. “What is wrong with your people? Anyone with half a brain would have surrendered by now. Are you suicidal as a species?”
“Nope. Just not pussies,” I said.
Tarq sighed. “Ever the wise-ass, even now.”
“Especially now,” I said. “What’s the point of wise-assery if you’re chilling on a beach?”
Tarq threw up his hands in the air and turned away from me.
Looking at the choppers attacking the Deathbringers, Kurt murmured, “Charge of the Light Brigade.”
“Nice one,” said Liz.
“Thanks,” answered Kurt.
“They are bringing out the big guns,” said Sergei.
One of the screens showed a nuclear missile racing towards one of the spaceships deploying MFM. “About damn time,” I murmured.
“It’ll hurt our own planet as much as the Xortaags,” said Liz.
“Better than doing nothing,” I said.
The missile reached its target. I hold my breath and waited for a big boom, but nothing happened. It didn’t detonate.
“Nuclear weapons have been obsolete for a couple of your centuries,” said Tarq, staring at one of the smaller screens. “I cannot explain the scientific details; it’s been too long since grade school. Suffice it to say all space-faring species have a device that neutralizes the chain reaction needed for both fission and fusion.”
“This fucking sucks,” said Sergei.
It did. I’d hoped the armed forces either stop or at least hurt the Xortaags. I rubbed my temples and thought about pulling out my hair, then looked over Tarq’s shoulder to see what he was staring at. “Is that…?”
The screen showed a crimson Deathbringer engaged in a dogfight with a dozen F-44s. Tarq didn’t take his eyes off of the screen. He just nodded. His hands were shaking, and his skin was flushed. I put a hand on his arm, careful to keep my palm at the surface o
f the hologram. “Are you okay?”
He turned his head to look at me for a second, and there were tears in his eyes. He shook his head and said, “I’ll be fine.” I resisted an urge to hug him. It wouldn’t have been very manly.
Liz, who was so focused on the battle she missed this exchange, asked, “Why do our jet fighters’ missiles have no effect on those damn spheres?”
“The Xortaags stole this technology from a civilization even more advanced than ours,” said Tarq, biting his fingers, “and the spheres are protected with a force field that simply absorbs the energy of whatever you throw at them. We could not even knock them off orbit. Their energy source will not last forever, but all they really need is to last for a few of your decades.”
“We are lucky the Xortaags could not figure out a way to use this technology in their spaceships, at least not yet,” Barook added.
I glared at him. “Lucky! Huh! I should’ve bought a lottery ticket today.”
We all stood there and helplessly watched our planet burn, our military destroyed, our soldiers killed. I thought of all the movies I’d seen about alien first contact, but nothing resonated. I’d imagined the anger, the desire to protect, the adrenaline rush of combat, but not this darkness. I suppose, if I’d considered just this situation, I’d want to be doing what I was doing now, planning a counterattack, but I couldn’t have known how it would feel, having to wait, having to watch. Liz, having forgotten her anger, stood next to me and held my hand. I squeezed her cold fingers, trying to find solace in the fact that right then at the literal end of the world and in the worst moment of human history, she was standing by my side, giving me her unconditional love and support.
Pacific Ocean - 14.30 EST
Captain Gorge McDowell had never felt so impotent in his life.
