The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Okay, stay calm. We’ll engage them if we need to, but stealth is still our key advantage here,” replied Winters. “Any theories on how they’re doing this, Sharma? Anyone?”

  “Has to be gravimetric triangulation, ma’am,” Sharma called out.

  “Explain.”

  “If each drone has a gravimetric sensor sensitive enough to find our rough position, combining forty of them to triangulate us might pin our precise location,” Sharma explained.

  “Well how on Earth do we counter that?” said Winters, unable to think of any way to hide apart from attacking the drones themselves. That would then precipitate further particle beams from the destroyers and she suspected they were ready to act at a moment’s notice if it meant killing their most deadly human rival.

  “We could hide in one of the debris fields from one of the dead destroyers?” Sharma suggested tentatively. “The gravity signatures of the debris might fool them.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Morgan forcefully, furrowing his dark brow, “that debris is travelling pretty damned fast—kilometres-per-second fast. We get hit by a big chunk of that and we’ll have more than the drones to worry about!”

  “I agree with Morgan. Let them come. Between the amour and cooling system, we should be able to deal with any drone plasma strikes. It’s the particle beams that scare the shit out of me. If one of them gets through the deflector shields we're toast. We’ll take our chances and resume our attacks on the destroyers or there won't be much left of Earth to defend. If it gets bad, we’ll finish off the drones with our secondaries. Commence firing the primary weapon, Morgan. Full power and rate of fire,” concluded Winters, satisfied with her own logic.

  There were no dissenting voices. The angry swarm of drones continued closing in on their prey as the jinking, evading Atlantic chalked up another destroyer kill. Eight down, thirty to go. Three-quarters of the alien fleet remained. It was not lost on Captain Sonia Winters that the Atlantic was the last tangible resistance in this pivotal battle for Earth.

  ***

  April 8, 2063 Hereford, UK

  Special Forces Sergeant Matt Hart had conveniently missed the recall to the nearby Army base where his unit – the Special Space Service – was based. Whatever the consequences were, they would pale into insignificance if what he thought was happening was indeed happening. He now sat on the lower bunk bed, comforting his eldest boy, Callum, in the bunker under their suburban home. Callum was eight years old and was more frightened than his younger brother, Quin, who understood less of what was happening to their comfortable, innocent world. Quin could be heard playing with Zara in the other room, which doubled as the kitchen, dining and living room. The spartan underground den was new and exciting for Quin who called it his ‘Bat Cave’. Hart knew the novelty would soon wear off after the realities of life in the basic, cramped space started to bite. Callum was starting to calm down and took Hart up on his suggestion to play a game on his scrolltab. Hart’s attention was diverted when he heard something akin to a crack of thunder outside followed by a rumbling, deep explosion, the ground shaking as if an earthquake had struck. He moved into the other room.

  “Love, put the radio back on, would you?” Hart asked Zara, who looked up from her conversation with young Quin.

  “It is on. Can’t you hear the static?”

  He moved past her and turned up the volume of the old set—nothing but static where the emergency broadcast was once playing repeatedly. He pressed auto-tune and still found nothing. He switched to long wave and eventually found the emergency broadcast again, crackling, hissing and distant. He went to the trap door and slid it aside, followed by the deck-on-wheels. The night-time scene glowed all around with the orange of the thirty-metre high inferno coming from the Hereford Army Base just two kilometres away. Hart slowly shook his head in disbelief, dearly hoping that his friends and colleagues had gotten out in time. In any other circumstance, he’d have gone straight there to help, but this was no ordinary emergency and his family needed him more. If the base was gone then he knew societal breakdown was in the making. He usually liked to be proved right, but not on this occasion.

  He turned around and took a few steps to look past the house and out towards the road. All was quiet, but something he could hardly miss caught his eye as he looked up, at eleven o’clock. Streaking across the sky was an enormous shower of debris burning up in the atmosphere. He ducked back down to the bunker to retrieve his binoculars and focused on the stream of artificial meteors. Some of the larger pieces were recognisably manufactured—the remnants of something human or alien-made. One piece looked like part of the rounded bow of an alien destroyer with the exposed deck levels visible through the fiery tail. Being one of the few who would recognise this piece of debris among the hundreds falling to Earth, this heartened him a little. But he knew that the aliens had come in force and one downed destroyer was a small percentage of their armada. He took a few minutes longer, staring mesmerized by the light show, until another familiar shape started glowing to life: the cylindrical modules and link-tunnels that were once part of the Alliance Citadel from where he’d departed to Gaia. He couldn’t watch any longer, feeling a deep pity for what he felt had surely become of Earth. Were he and his friends on Operation Rapid Denial to blame? Were Crier and Fuzzy’s lives lost in vain, the first of millions to come? There was nothing he could do about it now—what was done was done. He turned away from the debris shower and trudged down the stairs to the bunker in sorrow. He turned to slide the deck back in place and took one last look at the sky as the flashes of particle beams reached down from space and over the horizon, sealing the fate of countless lives below.

  ***

  April 8, 2063 Western Global Alliance Space Ship, Atlantic

  The Atlantic had surpassed all expectations and continued to batter the enemy ships, remaining hidden and dangerous. She continued to evade them, firing on the move and never keeping a predictable flight path. The humans aboard were her Achilles Heel, restraining the acceleration and, therefore, the speed with which she could desert her last known position as betrayed by her laser beams. Her constraints kept Atlantic within a defined sphere in any given time interval as the alien drones seemed to have learned. This knowledge and their gravimetric sensors meant they were now closer than ever to the human bastion.

  “Ma’am, they’re closer than ever—only one-hundred klicks from our current position!” cried an increasingly anxious McCauley.

  Winters wondered what on Earth command were thinking when they assigned him to their flagship vessel. He was smart and competent, but she was well aware of his psychosomatic anxiety issues and could think of any number of safer bets. She pushed the thought away—she’d just need to show leadership and manage him.

  “Okay, Private, don’t worry, we can handle them if they start firing on us. We’re built to handle plasma and particle fire, remember,” she replied, projecting calm and control.

  “Ma’am, Seattle’s gone offline,” reported Morgan gravely. “Our laser downlink to them was just severed.”

  “Morgan, retrieve the cached list of the facilities which were still online when Seattle went down. We can try to initiate a reconnect. Try the Pentagon, Cheyenne, Army, Navy, Air Force bases. We should be able to link into most of them and get some form of comms,” proposed Winters rapidly.

  “I’ll try … just bringing up list … status report as of two minutes ago...”

  He paused for a whole minute just looking at his viewscreen.

  “Morgan?” said Winters, concerned.

  “I’ve checked and double checked ... the Pentagon, White House, all Air Force and Space Force facilities, Army bases, naval bases, naval air stations ... all offline. Even NSA and CIA. Other WGA countries also have nothing online. Wait a second, I missed one – it’s a long list – Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station is still online. Damn, these aliens are efficient! Looks like they’ve hit almost every military facility in existence. These bastards have really
done their homework!”

  “Can we connect to Cheyenne?”

  “Hang on... Yeah, their laser transceiver details are here. Let me select the … reorient the comms laser ... okay, we’re connected to Cheyenne,” said Morgan, breathing a sigh of temporary relief.

  “Good. Request a situation update from them,” instructed Winters, as another fatal blow caused the ninth alien warship to reach its expiry date.

  “Ma’am, drones are now within fifty klicks and closing!” called out the highly strung McCauley.

  “Cheyenne, this is the Space Ship Atlantic. Do you read?” said Morgan.

  “Yes, Atlantic, go ahead,” replied a distant-sounding female voice, interspersed with hissing and interference.

  “We are currently engaging the enemy destroyer fleet with nine kills, twenty-nine still active. Forty alien drones are tracking us. We’re fully operational and in full stealth mode. Crew of four fit and well. Our command HQ in Seattle is down and just about everywhere else that we can link up with. You were the only facility left on the list. Can we get a status update, Cheyenne?”

  “Atlantic, confirm everywhere has been hit—all military installations. We’ve been getting reports of strikes from orbit but nothing from the ground or the air. Other bunkers have survived. We have contact with some of them. Seems only the deep or the classified bunkers have made it. Confirm that all known ballistic missile silos and ground-based lasers have been taken out of action…” said the radio operator, as some indistinguishable conversation could be heard and a male voice took over.

  “Atlantic, this is Major Tom Hughes, Officer Commanding. We’ve assumed operational control of WESTFOR—there’s nowhere else we’re aware of that can. All radio signals are being jammed and fixed line comms are down too. We have no word of the president, vice president or anyone else in the chain of command including other WGA leaders and generals. Until otherwise notified, I am the Commander in Chief of US and WGA forces. The link is secure so I can tell you that unless you guys can take out the alien fleet then they’re here to stay. From the info we’ve gathered we appear to have run out of options. Our priority right now is communications and getting the network—”

  “—What happened?” a troubled Winters interrupted, turning to look at Morgan face-to-face.

  Before Morgan could answer, Sergeant Sharma jumped in with a perturbed, rapid-fire report, “Captain, cloaking field down, deflectors to thirty-percent!”

  Private McCauley, now breathing heavily, hardly containing himself, cried, “We just lost our laser transceiver and half a dozen other sensors. They’re fried! You know what that was? Jesus, we’re fucked!”

  “What was it, McCauley? Come on now, we don't have time for this!” shouted Winters, losing her patience with him.

  “EMP! Half the alien drones just exploded in our face and let rip with massive electromagnetic pulses. They’ve fried our sensors, cloaking field and deflector! Fuck!” he cried, reaching for his pharmaceutical saviour in the form of a little, round pill. He stashed it in his mouth, chewed it up and swallowed it down. Within seconds, he started feeling better, even though it was far too soon for any chemical effect to have occurred.

  Before Winters could speak, the rain of particle beams started spearing at them from five-thousand kilometres away. She knew that, no longer hidden and with deflectors at thirty-percent, Atlantic was now highly vulnerable. The passive stealth design helped reduce her radar signature and the matte-black surface made visual detection harder. If she was a non-stealth shuttle, Winters was certain the aliens’ accuracy would've been much better. However, she was no longer invisible and this made Winters race through all of the options that were swimming in her mind. After what seemed like an eternity of thought, she reluctantly made up her mind.

  “Morgan, plot an evasive course to the centre of the alien fleet. Execute ASAP.”

  “Okay, we’re on our way,” he replied a few seconds later.

  The remaining twenty drones gave chase, firing searing slugs of plasma at the advancing Atlantic. The heat-dispersive armour was doing its job with the active cooling systems behind assisting, but it was getting incrementally hotter as the drones kept up their rate of fire.

  “Ma’am, targeting pursuing drones with secondary lasers,” said Morgan.

  The secondary lasers made short work of the small drones. Morgan let out a whoop and exclaimed, “All drones destroyed!”

  “Nice work, Morgan,” said Captain Sonia Winters sadly, making eye contact with his warm, dark eyes. The mental engagement with his familiar, masculine face gave her comfort as she started to feel a wave of sorrow wash over her. As the menacing destroyers grew with proximity and their shower of particle beams continued mercilessly, Winters considered how it had come to this. Her mind transported her to another time and place. She shed a single tear as she visualized her still-young mother and father smiling down at her as she made a sand castle on the beach as a child. A world of innocence now just memories. The dearly beloved fiancé she’d lost seven years before awaited her in heaven. She knew the time would soon come when she could return to his loving embrace.

  Sensing her thoughts, Morgan knew how her plan would end. He reached over and held her hand. “It’s okay, we’ll still have time to get out if we do it right,” he said tenderly. “We need to keep our heads and sock it to these bastards for all they’ve done.” His gentle tone hardening.

  The measurably calmer McCauley looked on but said nothing. Sergeant Sharma looked down and said nothing.

  ***

  April 8, 2063 Secret Service Bunker, Somewhere in the Continental United States

  The fifty-second President of the United States, Stephen F. Powell, stared at the display in the control room of the secret underground bunker that had so-far avoided the alien bombardment. The head of his Secret Service team had done his job well in insisting they leave for this bunker of last-resort late last night. Air Force One touched down in the dead of night on the secluded airstrip tens of kilometres from the nearest major settlement. Only an inner circle even knew of its existence, which Powell surmised was the reason for its continued survival.

  “Play the footage again, Bill,” said Powell, still unable to come to terms with the implications of what it showed.

  Like the periscope on a submarine, the surface cameras gave them the outside view of the world. They could be articulated to cover the whole sky, as well as more terrestrial vistas, and carried powerful optics. The footage began by showing a cluster of bright objects drifting across the night-time sky. They looked like satellites orbiting the Earth but were larger and more elongated. Several seconds in, there was an almighty flash of light, momentarily filling almost the entire frame. It subsided over the next few seconds. Where there had once been the fleet of orbiting ships was now the faint orange glow of a debris field, like the embers of a bonfire suspended in the night air.

  General Fred McIver returned to the utilitarian room—a far cry from the Space Force control centre that had once existed. He’d accompanied the president on Air Force One having been in Washington with the Commander-in-Chief at the time the evacuation decision had been taken.

  “Mr President, it was definitely a nuclear device and probably the Atlantic’s, given the size and effect of the explosion,” said McIver

  “How can we be sure?” asked Powell.

  “Sir, even though all frequencies of radio were already being jammed – and still are – there were signs that the detonation affected our radio gear in a particular way. The frequency range affected – five to twenty-five megahertz – was consistent with what we’d expect from a nuke based on old test data and research papers we’ve managed to access on the cached internet,” he explained, referring to the selectively cached copies of all of the most important web pages. All bunkers’ internal networks regularly stored offline copies to preserve and give access to knowledge should access to the internet be knocked out.

  “So why are we still being jammed then if the a
lien fleet has been knocked out? Wouldn’t they have been destroyed by the nuke?” asked the troubled Powell.

  “Sir, it was the most powerful device ever exploded, but we’ve no way of knowing for sure if it neutralized all of them. I would say not, unless the aliens are jamming us from somewhere else. However they’re doing it, we’re still cut off from the rest of the command structure,” replied McIver.

  The young lieutenant looked up from her display, turning around to get her superiors’ attention. “Err, Mr President, sir, the jamming’s stopped!” she said, for a moment disbelieving what her ears were telling her.

  “Put it on speakers, lieutenant,” instructed McIver.

  The faint voice of an authoritative-sounding man filled the room. “Please stay calm and remain in your home...” Clearly a recorded civil defence message rather than a military broadcast.

  “Sorry, sir, it was the first signal it tuned to. Let me try the military channels…” she said apologetically.

  Before she’d done anything, a new, synthetic, monotone voice filled the room loud and clear in halting English. “This is ... the commander of the fleet ... of the beings you call ... aliens.”