Incursion

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “You see that monitor there?” He pointed to a monitor showing a gritty live stream of the moon occluded by what looked like a massive spaceship. Though I could only discern it’s outline, it didn’t resemble anything I’d seen outside of a sci-fi movie.

  “That image is live. We lost most of our satellites in the energy wave. This is our only eye in the sky. As near as we can tell, the blast that we’ve experienced was a massive electromagnetic pulse. Half of the global power grid is down.”

  “The crash…” I said.

  “Your chopper going down wasn’t an isolated incident. Most machines have shut down, anything with electronics.”

  “But not here,” I pointed out.

  “No, not here. We’re so well shielded you could drop an EMP directly over this place and we’d still be able to make our morning coffee.”

  “That’s great and all, but what does any of this have to do with me?”

  The officer gestured toward the ship on the screen. “It seems that not too many people have written professional papers on xenopsychology or first contact, Dr. King. You’re on our list as the subject matter expert. We need your help.”

  “My help? I don’t think this is within…I mean, with what?”

  “To predict the behavior of these visitors and, if possible, communicate with them. The EMP hitting us is an added bonus.” I snorted at his choice of words. “We weren’t expecting you to arrive in such dramatic fashion.”

  “Look, I’ve written theoretical papers. Ideas on what might happen, not what will happen.” I said. “We’re talking about real aliens? Genuine living, intelligent beings from another solar system?” The enormity of the situation dawned on me and suddenly the air in the base felt very thin. “This is real? That is an alien ship near our moon?”

  “That is our assumption, ma’am,” the officer said. “The ship slipped into a near-lunar orbit a few hours before the EMP hit Earth. We were monitoring it but didn’t want to take any action until we knew what was going on. We suspect the alien craft is somehow related to the pulse.”

  “So just after they showed up, you sent your people to get me?”

  “That’s correct. We wanted to be on top of the situation.”

  “Are we under attack?”

  “We have no proof of that or not ma’am. We are on the alert but not yet at DEFCON 3.”

  “What does that mean?” This was spiraling out of control. I hoped we might be dealing with Spielberg’s E.T., not Cameron’s xenomorphs.

  “It means that we might be going to war with an alien race,” the officer said. “There’s another problem. It might even be a bigger one.”

  “Bigger than an alien invasion?”

  “Without power, critical systems failing all over the world. People are dying in hospitals where generators won’t start up. Planes are falling out of the sky. Human civilization as we know it has ground to a halt. The worst part is that we don’t know if we’ll ever get power back. The pulse seems to have originated from a supernova, some nearby aberrant star that imploded unexpectedly, according to the big brains. They’re still trying to figure out if the EMP is the only problem we have to worry about. The rest of the world’s militaries may not know what we know. They may assume that we are the ones responsible for the EMP. We’re scrambling to make sure that we get the word out it wasn’t us. Thus far, any and all radio calls to the ship have gone unanswered. It is possible that they are ignoring us. It’s possible that they lost communications due to the EMP or for another reason. Either way, it’s dead silence all around.”

  “Sir!” a woman called up to us. She pointed at the largest screen.

  The ship was moving. It slid away from the moon and toward us, toward Earth.

  I hardly registered the officer’s words. “Well, shit. Here they come.”

  5

  David

  I absolutely despised the heat. It was one of those summers where the last gasp of sweltering humidity seemed determined to see October. At the rate things were going, we would still be wearing our light uniforms in December. Half the reason I signed up for flight school in the first place was because I could spend most of my time in an air-conditioned cockpit.

  I was finishing up a little PT in the gym when the alarm on my watch went off. I jumped. More time had passed than I thought. I grabbed a quick shower and sprinted back to my quarters. I had less than fifteen minutes to get my ass to the hangar. I kept my uniform and gear handy at all times. You never know when the brass was going to call a drill. Even when you do know, it pays to have your shit together.

  It took me just twelve minutes to get to the hangar. I headed to my jet to run maintenance checks. Before I could reach it, every lightbulb in sight exploded all at once. The noise from the breaking glass cut through the hum of computers and engines. I dropped to the ground as blue arcs of current spiderwebbed the room and shattered glass fell everywhere.

  It was over as quickly as it started. Every instrument and electronic in sight had gone dark. I stood and saw a few small fires starting up but they were quickly extinguished by the ground crew. The fighters themselves would be all right; whatever had caused everything to short at once wouldn’t have fried the planes, thanks to their grounding cables.

  My squadron had carried out their training flawlessly. As the airmen recovered our CO rushed in. “Let’s go, boys! Wheels up in five!”

  We ran to our jets. I strapped in and was running pre-flight checks when I noticed that the flight crew was mounting air-to-air missiles on my plane. Standard practice in an attack scenario of course, but I could tell from the markings that they were nuclear tipped.

  There’s something about seeing nuclear missiles in person that no amount of training can prepare you for, and now I had them strapped to my jet.

  Oh, shit. This just got very, very real. This wasn’t a drill. They weren’t scrambling us as a precautionary measure. If they were strapping nukes on our planes, that short wasn’t a short. It must have been an EMP. That meant a foreign power had just made a first strike against the United States.

  I shook my head and finished my checks. My co-pilot jumped in behind me and thumped me twice on the shoulder. He looked familiar but I but didn’t have time to figure out who he was. For now, he was the guy who would watch my back, and I would watch his. Good enough.

  The tug attached itself to my plane and we moved slowly onto the runway. I shut and sealed my cockpit and tested the rudder controls. Once I was sure that everything that should move did move – and nothing that shouldn’t didn’t – I strapped my oxygen mask on and triple-checked that my microphone was active.

  “Flight checks complete, ready for takeoff.” My co-pilot echoed the statement.

  The tow truck disengaged from my jet and I gently pushed the throttle forward to bring the plane to the runway. As the fighter turned, I got a proper view of the hangar where ground crews sprinted across the airfield making sure each fighter was properly fueled and prepped for takeoff. Nonessential vehicles were headed into storage areas. Every jet we had was being suited up for battle. This is what we trained for, but I suspected more than a few people wondered when the other shoe would drop. If someone had taken out our defenses with an EMP, a nuclear detonation was sure to follow.

  We were next in line. The ground control radios were EMP-hardened, so at least I still had air traffic control to get me off the ground safety. The guy’s voice sounded young and scared to my ears. Not that I blamed him. “Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, now’s as good a time as any. Clear to take off. Go fuck them up for us, man.”

  I nodded, gave my ground crew a thumbs-up, and pushed the throttle forward.

  Once I was airborne, another fighter pulled up parallel with us. “Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, this is Little Papa. Good to go?”

  I smiled underneath my mask. It was Jim, one of the guys I’d trained with. We were stationed at the same base and had gone through a lot of shit together. I couldn’t ask for a better partner.

  “Let�
�s go, man.” I gave him a thumbs up and we raced across the sky together.

  “Flight, this is ground.”

  Finally, maybe we were going to get some answers about why we were up here. “Go ahead, ground.”

  “We’re sending intercept coordinates. You will be engaging a large aircraft entering our atmosphere. You’re to strike while the enemy aircraft is in the blackout zone.”

  Entering the atmosphere? What the hell were we shooting at? “Ground, can you confirm what our target is? Are we shooting down a satellite?”

  “Negative. Target is a large aircraft of unknown origin, presumed extra-terrestrial,” ground control replied.

  Extra-terrestrial, like not from Earth? Was this some kind of elaborate drill after all? “Ground, we’re shooting down a UFO? For real?”

  “Affirmative. The vessel is believed to have initiated the EMP which struck a few moments ago. It made for our atmosphere soon after and appears to be attempting to land. Engage and destroy.”

  Well, shit. This was new. My long-range radar was already picking up the UFO. It was bigger than an aircraft carrier and it was less than a minute from breaking into our atmosphere.

  Hitting the target while it was in blackout made sense. Any radar systems they had would be blind, or at least less functional. That wasn’t a huge window of time to hit the target. Worse, I’d have to rely on a targeting laser instead of radar myself. My fighter was going to be too damned close for comfort when those nukes went off.

  I harbored no delusions that the aliens – if that’s really what this UFO was-were defenseless. For all I knew, they’d blast us out of the air before we could get anywhere near them. I figured at least one of us would be able to get a nuke in before we went down.

  “Alpha, Alpha, Alpha, you get all that shit?” It was Jim, over the radio.

  “Affirmative, LP. We’re going to need to pour some steam on if we want to get within range in time,” I replied.

  “On it. Let’s do this!”

  I shook my head as I throttled up enough to break the sound barrier. If I’d known I’d be shooting down ET this afternoon, I maybe wouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning. But this was my job. Someone had to stand between my people and anyone who wanted to hurt them. Might as well be me.

  6

  Alexandra

  “Excuse me, Doctor.” The officer hurried down the stairs to attend one of the computers. A flurry of activity from the soldiers and suits around the room told me that this wasn’t a minor problem. A sign on the wall clicked from DEFCON 4 to DEFCON 3. I pressed myself against the wall while soldiers, officers, and politicians rushed past. The man who had been telling me about the ship was speaking into a red landline, his face a picture of concern that bordered on outright fear.

  He must have been speaking to the President. Even I knew that she was the only one with the authority to order a nuclear strike. What a responsibility, especially for such a young President. Alicia Lee was the youngest person elected to the office of POTUS in the history of the country. Her campaign was bolstered by backings from several tenured Congressmen who felt that it was time to shake decades of old politicians occupying the position. Since then she had led a bold administration that had managed to unite both sides of the aisle, even if it sometimes took a heavier hand than her male predecessors would have used.

  “Yes ma’am.” I heard him saying. “That’s correct. We have two birds ready to takeoff.” He nodded and listened for a few moments. “I understand. God be with us. Thank you Madam President.”He stood, placing the handset on the receiver. “Scramble the jets, we are going in hot!” he yelled to the room.

  A few cheers erupted, but the politicians and officers remained stoic. They were about to sentence their servicemen and women to death. It wasn’t something to celebrate. At the back of the bullpen, I spotted a young female officer in USAF blue and wearing a flight cap as she strode away from an older man who seemed to be her superior officer.

  I tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey, can you tell me what’s going on?”

  “We’re going to nuke it, doc,” the woman said. “We were willing to leave the aliens alone while they stayed near the moon but since they’re coming toward us-and after that EMP-we’re going to hit them before they can hit us.”

  I stared.

  “Dr. King,” she addressed me with a quick nod. “Well, looks like we’re going to nuke it,” she said. “We were willing to leave them alone if they stayed near the moon but now that they’re coming toward us and after that EMP, we’re hitting them before they can hit us.”

  I stared at her. “You’re going to blow them up? They didn’t do anything!”

  “We can’t take that chance. We’re talking about the entire human race here. Our birds in the air are going to strike before it can pass through our atmosphere. With any luck, their computers aren’t too different from ours and the blackout phase of entry will scramble any radar or targeting instruments they have. If they reach our lower atmosphere, there won’t be much we can do to stop them.”

  “I thought your team of scientists said the EMP was from a supernova. If that’s true, whoever is on that ship hasn’t done a thing to us.” Leave it to the military goons to toss reason out the window the first chance they get to blow something up.

  The woman licked her lips and peered at the screen.

  I persisted before she could say anything. “We’d be firing the first shot in a war we have no idea how to fight…with very little chance of winning.”

  Someone from the bullpen announced, “The craft has entered Earth’s exosphere.”

  The woman pursed her lips, then said, “I’m sorry, Dr. King. I have work to do.” She turned from me and walked off to rejoin the other personnel in execution of the strike.

  I listened as the radio feeds from the fighter pilots piped into the room. The pilots were issued coordinates for their target. I caught that they were armed with nuclear-tipped missiles, just four of them, but these had several times the power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was it overkill? Not enough? I guessed we were about to see.

  A video feed from the lead pilot was placed alongside the satellite feed showing a bird’s eye view. The pilot was breathing hard and his point of view tilted as he made several passes by the alien ship.

  He must have been getting a better view of what he was up against… Or was it hesitation? After all, he must have known that even going near that ship meant risking his life. I wanted to think he was smart enough to consider his actions, but if the behavior I’d seen today was any indication of the overall military attitude, he was probably gunning to blow the alien invaders out of the sky without a second thought.

  7

  David

  We were almost to the coordinates of the target, pushing our fighters’ altitude ceiling to the limit. A few minutes before our initial approach we got another confirmation over the radio. This was live fire, not a drill. Updated coordinates came through and I accelerated into my approach.

  That’s when I saw it.

  The massive starship glowed as it fell through the outer atmosphere. It wasn’t like anything I had ever seen, even in movies. It was roughly the shape of a Blackbird aircraft – except hundreds of times the size. It looked like someone had pulled the nose of the plane out ahead of the rest of the fuselage, Pinocchio style. At the very front of the ship was a structure that flared out a little from the rest of the nose. I couldn’t see it closely enough yet, but it was a different color from the rest of the hull and looked a little like a folded-up umbrella.

  A solar sail? Long-term ship, meant for long voyages. I was speculating, but if I had to guess I’d say these guys were a very long way from home.

  Instead of bulky, solid wings, it looked like someone has scooped chunks out of the sides, forming a kind of rounded horn-like wingspan. I spotted guns mounted on the inside of the wings and a bridge that extended above the rest of the craft. I could see an opening on it’s bottom, shie
lded by gargantuan blast doors. Circular openings on the sides of the ship made it look like an insect with its legs drawn in.

  The word ‘behemoth’ sprang to mind.

  How am I supposed to do anything more than scratch the hull of this thing?

  I flew a few passes to get a better look at what I was up against. The gun emplacements looked like the turrets we used to mount on old WWII bombers. Enough space for a single man and probably a hell of a firing radius.

  Metal plates overlapped most of the hull like an armadillo’s scales. The area around the engines and the structure supporting the bridge were especially reinforced. The wings were similarly armored but the plates did not completely enclose them. I saw at least three weak spots that were possible targets for the missiles.

  It dawned on me that I was about to fire the first shot in a potential war with an alien race.

  Aside from the fact that I would probably be vaporized soon after, I couldn’t help but question my orders. This was the first real proof of alien life in the universe and they were trying to land on our planet. But were they Invading, or just arriving? Did they not approach us before because they feared the very thing that was about to happen, that we would kill them?

  If I shot and the missiles were ineffective, I could be the man responsible for the extinction of the human race. Was taking the chance worth it?

  My finger hovered over the firing switch. When I joined the Air Force, I knew that I might have to kill fellow humans, but even our most grisly war wouldn’t match this if it went badly.

  We were about to detonate nuclear warheads on an alien spacecraft over American soil. The fallout would be felt on the ground and the additional EMP from the blast would fry most of the electronics still operating. We were about to plunge a panicked country into complete darkness on a hunch.