The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  The ruddy-skinned, young American, Private Walter McCauley, kept his eye on the gravimetric monitoring network feed being relayed from the Citadel. The network of sensors – both ground, Moon and space-based – would be the first indication of the expected invasion of near-Earth space. He was on edge as he’d never been before and had already taken his doses of anti-anxiety medication today. He didn't want to make a habit of taking that one extra pill to calm his nerves as he sometimes did. It was okay when he wasn't at the tip of the spear defending Earth, but today might be the day-of-days and he couldn't afford to be in the sleepy, foggy state that an extra hit might bring. No, today he’d need to accept some stress and balance on the line between drowsiness and focus.

  Sergeant Avantika Sharma had dreamt of being on a real capital ship ever since she’d become hooked on old episode of the classic Star Trek shows in her freshman year at university. The slightly overweight Space Force NCO of British-Indian extraction had made her close-knit extended family proud. The young woman’s father could not stop talking about her to anyone in the local community in West London who would still listen. With McCauley on sensors and comms, her role was defensive systems and stealth. First Officer Morgan would lead offensive actions and, along with the Captain, would navigate the ship.

  “Ma’am, we have the last of the modified Skylifts in position. Counting twenty-five in formation alpha, ma’am,” reported McCauley.

  “Very good, Private,” said Winters.

  “Backup laser links now in place for all Skylifts and Vipers, Captain,” continued McCauley, reporting the secondary comms and control links that would be used should the Citadel be knocked out of action; the Atlantic would, in that case, take over command of the remaining Alliance Space Force. If she were to be lost, control would pass to the Seattle HQ.

  The WESTFOR Space Force defence was centred on the Citadel and formation alpha had the missile-bearing Skylifts in a loose cloud surrounding it. Vipers had already formed an inner spherical picket around Citadel. The Moon bases and asteroid mining colonies would be left to fend for themselves with whatever ground-based defences they had or hadn’t installed. Concentration of force was the only way that the defenders could meet the alien threat; they wanted to avoid being divided and picked off at all costs. For all the grandiose rhetoric of WGA cooperation with the Russians and Chinese, little of anything tangible had been put in place to coordinate the respective command structures and non-Alliance countries were operating largely independently.

  ***

  “Captain, we’ve got multiple gravimetric detections... Counting forty-one arrivals in quick succession!” exclaimed an alarmed-sounding Private McCauley.

  “Type, Private?” asked Winters.

  “Gravity signature indicates alien destroyers, ma’am”

  “Distance and heading?”

  “30,000 kliks and now stationary, ma’am,” he replied, his tone calming slightly as he responded instinctively to the fact that they were not closing in.

  “That’s pretty much their entire remaining fleet after Stellar Shield wiped out more than half of them,” remarked Morgan, sounding unflustered.

  “Sergeant Sharma, are they conducting radar sweeps or anything else?” asked Winters.

  “Yes, Captain, but they won’t have seen us though, and the Vipers will reflect very little with the radar the enemy have used so far,” Sharma explained, reassuring Winters. The Vipers were stealthy by design even when they didn't have active cloaking field generators installed. There simply hadn’t been the time to do so after losing so many in Operation Stellar Shield. As it was, the defence contractor had been pulling out all the stops to replace the complement on Citadel.

  “Ma’am, it’s Commander Smit on Citadel,” said McCauley as he changed a setting on his panel to ensure the voice link remained persistent on all their earpieces.

  “Captain Winters, this is Commander Smit. Hold position. Let them make the first move. We’re going to try to open a dialogue with them. Stand by…”

  “Acknowledged, sir,” replied Winters.

  “Alien Commander, this is Commander Dietrich Smit of the Western Global Alliance. We wish to talk by whichever means we can. We want peace, not war. We want a peaceful coexistence that can benefit both humanity and your own people in trade, knowledge and exploration. Please respond to our earnest request,” said Smit, in his crisp, perfect English with only a hint of his Germanic mother tongue.

  “Captain, we’ve also sent it as text too. We know they understand English as they’ve used it in their one and only message. Let’s hope it does the trick ... although I doubt it. Be ready for anything,” said Smit.

  “Aye, sir. Now all we can do is wait,” Winters replied.

  ***

  April 8, 2063 Hereford, UK

  Sergeant Matt Hart of the Special Space Service and his wife Zara had deliberately stayed at home with their two boys that crisp, clear Sunday. April 8th—is this a day that will go down in infamy? Hart wondered as he loaded the last of the large, ten-litre water bottles into the small bunker he’d built. For the past two weeks, he’d spent almost every spare minute excavating under the house’s thick concrete slab. He’d hired a small excavator and Zara had taken a week off to assemble supplies and help her husband. Their neighbour had asked him what on Earth he was doing, disturbed by the noise and curious at the mini-Bobcat machine in the back yard. He’d told him that he was building a cellar to be used as a music studio. He suspected the neighbour was glad that it’d be below ground so the old fellow didn’t need to deal with the racket that it might bring.

  Hart didn’t really care if the neighbour believed him or not. His bunker would either been needed soon or it’d be unnecessary and his neighbour’s thoughts wouldn’t matter anyway. Civil Defence had measures in place, but having seen real war zones and places where society had fallen apart, he was under no illusions as to how effective the official measures would be. The bunker was necessarily small. He couldn't excavate too much of the area under the house’s foundations without destabilising it; even with the reinforced concrete walls he’d poured himself, which would lend support to the slab above. The bunker consisted of just three rooms: the bedroom, furnished with two bunk beds; the family room where they could cook, eat and play and the storeroom-bathroom, which was where the chemical toilet sat flanked by two walls of shelves packed with supplies. Washing would be infrequent and the first thing to be sacrificed should things get bad. There was a small generator in the storeroom too, with air intake and exhaust pipes poking out of a garden flowerbed. The entrance was via a trapdoor under the small deck that Hart had cut away from its supporting posts and added wheels to so that it could be slid aside onto the back lawn for ingress and egress. He’d recessed the small trolley wheels into the legs – which were once supporting posts – to disguise them. It would provide a degree of seclusion to their underground safe house.

  Although he should have obtained planning permission from the local council, he didn't care and considered it a trivial matter when all was said and done. If the alien threat turned out to be nothing he’d just have to pump it full of concrete if he ever wanted to sell the house. He hoped there’d be a local council around to worry about things like that in future. Very few people in Britain seemed to be taking the threat so seriously. But Hart knew different and saw through the government’s down-playing of the situation. He’d seen warzones and he’d seen the aliens up close and knew what they were capable of and how uncompromisingly violent they were. If they ever mounted a ground invasion there would be no moralistic pleading over the value of human life that would get through to the monstrous beings. He suspected they’d snuff out a human life as a human would a house fly.

  He reached up to the top shelf in the bunker storeroom and checked that the weapons and boxes of ammo were still there. He was paranoid about having guns at home for the first time—unlicensed firearms being a far more serious offence than a breach of council planning rules. He was more
worried about the Army catching on than the civilian police. The crooked major he’d needed to go through for the ancient SA80 assault rifle and the 9mm handgun had driven a hard bargain. The Army had stopped using SA80s decades ago but the major had somehow managed to acquire a consignment that had once been destined for the scrapheap. He’d bought some night vision goggles, a survival knife, four-full-face gas masks and other more basic clothing and equipment from an Army surplus website. This gear sat next to the two weapons and boxes of ammo. Antibiotics and painkillers sat one-shelf down and were probably even more important than the weapons when it came to long-term survival. Outside of Hart’s nuclear family, only his patrol leader, Captain Chris ‘Motor’ Buick, knew about the bunker. Buick had made his own preparations and would be in radio contact with Hart if the worst happened.

  He walked from the storeroom and into the bedroom then the family room. Everything was in order—or as good as it was going to get in the basic, functional space. Climbing up the stairs, he felt the warmth of the April sun on his face and took a few seconds just to relish its goodness. Birds chirped in the trees and he could hear the boys playing hide and seek upstairs. A distant lawnmower hummed, the smell of freshly cut grass drifting in the light breeze. Bells rang out from the nearby church making Hart think back to the pope’s speech two weeks before, which had impressed him more than he’d thought possible. All seemed right with the world and part of him didn't want to face reality and join Zara who was glued to the TV awaiting the news. Today was when the alien deadline was to expire. As expected, no one had seriously contemplated surrender, not after the damage inflicted by Stellar Shield. Nevertheless, the consequences of that defiance might soon be felt and that frightened Hart more than he cared to admit. Reluctantly, he closed the trapdoor, slid the deck back over it and joined his wife on the couch.

  “What are they saying on the news?” asked Hart, kissing Zara’s forehead and taking a seat next to her. She was watching and listening intently, the news headlines having just started.

  “Just watch,” she replied tersely, pointing at the screen.

  The info bar at the bottom of the screen was red: ‘Breaking News. Alien fleet spotted on telescopes.”

  Dana Alessi, the agitated news anchor, was replaced by the live feed from the Keck Observatory telescope that had somehow managed to hone in on the alien fleet 30,000km above Earth. The cluster of shapes, set in the blackness of space, was all too familiar to Hart, having seen the destroyers before in orbit around Gaia. The sight made his blood run cold. It had justified all of their hard work on the bunker in the last two weeks, which had cost a considerable chunk of their bank balance to construct.

  The newswoman continued in her urgent voice, “More than forty alien destroyers have been sighted near Earth. They aren’t doing anything at the moment, but our sources say that there are radar emissions from their location indicating that they are on a war footing and are sweeping for targets. The advice from the government remains the same: stay at home unless absolutely necessary. Remain calm and check on elderly or vulnerable family members or neighbours to see if they are okay. Keep up to date on developments and follow any emergency instructions on TV, radio or the web should they be broadcast. And, of course, we’ll be keeping you right up to date here on GNN.”

  She paused for a moment and could be heard taking a sip of water, clearly trying to calm her own nerves. She was not doing the viewers at home any favours with the contagious anxiety she portrayed, thought Hart.

  “We’ll keep the live telescope feed on screen, but we now hear from Don Murdoch in Newark, New Jersey, that looting has broken out there in several large supermarkets and big-box stores and a similar pattern is emerging in cities all over the country. Don?”

  Zara switched channels to a British news network. They had the same telescopic feed of the alien fleet but were talking with one of their correspondents about the state of emergency that had been called after PM Carlton had just emerged from a COBRA meeting at 10 Downing Street.

  “There’s a heavy police presence in all major town and cities. They’ve been granted emergency powers and night-time curfews are in effect from sunset tonight. Looters will be arrested and armed looters or anyone else deemed to be a threat will be shot on sight. In some places, the Army are out in force securing major shopping areas and distribution hubs. We’re told that the Royal Air Force is now maintaining several round-the-clock combat air patrols. We are on a war footing and people need to keep calm, conserve their food and water and stay at home. Nothing has happened as yet and the Space Force as well as the Earth-based militaries are on high alert...” said the correspondent.

  “Bill, I’m bringing in former Space Force Colonel, Kenyon Smith, now. Mr Smith, when do we expect to see the first engagement and how do you think the WGA Space Force will fare against this fleet? We must note, of course, that there was quite some success in the Stellar Shield operation,” asked the British-Caribbean news anchor man, sounding strained, but grasping at a positive side to the story. The former Colonel, dressed smartly but casually and clearly sitting at home somewhere, came up on the inset view with the alien armada still dominating the TV picture.

  Speaking quickly and in clipped received-English, he said, "Firstly, we need to remember that Stellar Shield was a one-off. The number of Viper spacecraft, the modifications to those and the number of miniaturized nuclear devices would have put quite a strain on the Alliance's resources. It’d take quite some time to replenish those. Secondly, we had the element of surprise, which we no longer have. Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if the aliens have changed their fleet defence MO and sensors to guard against similar attacks. There are ways to detect even the cloaked ships we have and the aliens have proved adept at learning and adapting. So I think that we’re going to see a more head-to-head battle being fought here and that does not favour our defenders, I’m sorry to say,” said Smith, as though it were obvious why.

  It was not obvious to the news anchor man—or perhaps it was, but he felt that his audience would benefit from the question. “Why so, Mr Smith?”

  “Well, it’s a number game. We have one properly-designed capital ship and they have forty-two. We’d better hope that the Space Force and Earth-based branches of the world’s militaries have some tricks up their collective sleeves. If they don't, the aliens will be victorious and will be able to dictate their terms. I don’t think that’s a situation any of us want to see ourselves in, is it?”

  “No… No, it isn’t,” replied the anchor man, seemingly lost for words and staring at close-up live feed of the powerful alien ships massed high above Earth. After a short pause, he pulled himself together.

  “Err, thank you.” He looked down at this personal display and seemed to find something that reminded him of what he was supposed to be asking next.

  “Mr Smith, we’ve also been receiving reports of the Alliance Citadel firing a stream of projectiles over the past ten hours or so and they appear to be heading in completely the opposite direction to the alien fleet. Do we know what this is about? Why would they possibly be firing in the wrong direction? ” asked the news reporter, back into his usual, measured cadence.

  “Well, we know that the Citadel is armed with a kinetic energy weapon – a mass driver – which has been used on ground targets for several years. This would be the first time, outside of tests, that it has been used in what appears to be an offensive action. I must say though that I, like you, have no idea what they’re firing at. It must be something, since the reports tell us it’s been going on continuously for ten hours! Could it be a second fleet? I do hope not and one would have thought that they’d prioritise the one we’re looking at now on our screens. No, I have to admit I’m quite flummoxed by what they’re doing. I still have contacts in the service and I have asked but no one is saying anything, which is to be expected in a time of war. We are at DefCon One as you’re more than aware of.”

  “Do you think they should be using the mass driver on t
he alien fleet?”

  “Yes, I do—it’s an obvious first move in my mind. Let’s hope that they’ve managed to start talking to the aliens. That could explain the lack of shooting so far,” said Smith.

  The news anchor seemed to look to the side of the camera and placed his left hand to his earpiece, saying nothing.

  “What the hell’s going on, Matt?” asked Zara, sensing the news man knew something they did not. Then the live video feed – which actually had a few seconds delay – made everything clear as a flash of blue-white light pulsed from one destroyer then ten, then every single last one of the three-hundred metre long ships of war. An explosion flowered to life at the front of one of the destroyers as the fleet started moving in all directions as if scattering to a looser formation.

  “Holy shit!” cried Zara. “Go get the kids!”