When Mo had ended his call, Hamilton said, “Turn the TV on. I’m sure they’ll be covering the troop deployment.”
Aerial picked up the remote and turned on the TV. The same reporter was talking about recent developments. “We’ve just been told that members of Congress are being called into an emergency session. For more on that let’s go back to Bill Lang on Capitol Hill. Bill?”
“Yes, Evelyn. The clerk of the House and the majority whip of the Senate have just sent out a memo to all members of the House and Senate to convene for an emergency session,” Bill advised.
“Yes, but what about the troops who have the perimeter of the Capitol Building surrounded?”
“That is rather perplexing, Evelyn, but we’ve been told a special ops team is on its way to retake the Capitol Building,” Bill replied.
“Wow! That should be an interesting encounter. Have you seen any sign of this special ops team, Bill?”
“No. But we’ve called in for extra cameras so we won’t miss a thing when this battle begins.”
“Well, I’ve got some breaking news so we’ll get back to you, Bill,” Evelyn reported. “This sounds unbelievable, but one of our engineers, while searching for a satellite feed, has come across an incredible battle apparently taking place just outside the Earth’s atmosphere! We’re going to John Bryant for an explanation and then we’re going to show you this live feed. What’s this all about, John?”
“Apparently, some sort of satellite camera is observing a battle between what appear to be two giant spaceships in orbit just outside the Earth’s atmosphere,” Bryant said.
“Spaceships? Are you sure it’s not somebody’s bad idea of a joke? This is certainly not the time for any such nonsense.”
“I know, Evelyn. I agree, but the images are so extraordinary I think we have a duty to show them, at least until something more develops on Capitol Hill, or we find out that it’s some kind of hoax.”
“All right, then. Ladies and gentlemen, this is live footage from an unidentified camera on a satellite orbiting just outside the Earth’s atmosphere.”
The screen changed to a view of two attack cruisers in a face-off less than a hundred miles apart. Fighters from both ships were on the attack.
“All right,” Bryant said. “To try to make sense of what we’re seeing, I’m going to call the ship on the left the Red ship. You can see it has a slightly red glow. The other ship I’m going to call the Black ship. The ships actually look identical, but their positions relative to the sun give them a slightly different color from our perspective.
“Here is what we know. These two ships arrived here just minutes ago. Hundreds of what appear to be fighter craft emerged from each of them and a fierce battle began. You can see the light; we assume they are some kind of laser flashes. Many fighters have already exploded and disappeared. Okay, there goes one of the Black fighters breaking out to attack the Red ship.”
A barrage of missiles shot out from the fighter toward the red ship. They exploded before they reached it.
“The missiles can’t get through,” Bryant observed. “The big ships seem to have some sort of shield or force field that blocks the missiles. Oh! Look at that, there goes a Red fighter, retaliating.” Missiles shot out from the red fighter. “Oh, my God! Look at that! A direct hit on the Black fighter! . . . Ladies and gentlemen. You don’t see something like that every day.
“We really don’t know what we are looking at, but whatever it is, it’s obviously real. This is no Hollywood stunt. This is live footage, coming from a point just outside the Earth’s atmosphere. In fact, we’ve got other cameras now pointed in the same direction, and they’re showing the same scene: two large spaceships of some kind, engaged in a fierce battle in near-Earth space, directly above the United States. We don’t know if these ships are alien or belong to governments on Earth, but they are obviously hell-bent on destroying each other.”
“John, could this battle have anything to do with what’s happening down here on Earth?” Walters asked. “It seems a rather extraordinary coincidence that two such dramatic events could be taking place and not be connected.”
“Well—Oh! A cluster of Black fighters are now attacking the Red ship. They’re not firing missiles but seem to be on a collision course. God, they’re going fast. I’d estimate they’ve covered a hundred miles in just a few seconds. Are they going to slow down and fire missiles or peel off? What’s with them? It almost looks like a suicide mission—they’re going to impact any second. Oh, my God! Did you see that? The fighters plowed into the Red ship, and there are a series of tremendous explosions that are lighting up the sky. I’ll bet they can be seen from the ground.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Bryant said, “twenty or more fighters just collided with the Red . . . er . . . “battle cruiser,” we’ll call it. The cruiser hasn’t been destroyed but it’s obviously in trouble. One entire side of it has been blown off.
“Oh, my God. Look at the Black cruiser. There’s some kind of yellow lightning striking it. It’s thick and seems to be wrapping itself around the ship. Oh! It’s exploding! The Black cruiser is exploding! Oh, my God!”
Mo, Hamilton, and Aerial looked on anxiously at the battle scene, wondering if anyone on Earth’s Destiny had survived.
“John,” Walters said, “we’ve got action on Capitol Hill. We’re going to switch back to Bill now, across the street from the Capitol Building. Bill, what’s happening?”
“Evelyn, that special ops team has arrived. About a hundred soldiers were flown in by some kind of jet copter that hovered over the mall and dropped them off. Others came in on foot from another direction. It looks like they’re getting ready to confront the troops that are in control. . . .There they go. About a dozen men charging up the steps of the Capitol Building while a dozen more are coming in from the side. What the—?”
When the first Loyalist soldier fired his laser, onlookers gasped as the side of a Purist soldier’s head was blown off. The defenders fired lasers back, and a couple of blasts hit the ground perilously close to the crowd of spectators that had gathered across the street. There were screams of panic as the crowd ran from the battle scene. More lasers were fired and soldiers on both sides fell.
“What kind of weapons are those?” Evelyn asked.
“Some kind of laser rifle, it looks like,” Lang said. “I didn’t know the army was actually using anything like that.”
“Well, this is a special ops team, so it figures they’d have the latest weaponry.”
Tarizon, Conquest Earth, Tarizon Trilogy Vol 3 Page 51
