by Ira Tabankin
“If my enemy wins this battle, they will make you their slaves. They will control every aspect of your lives. If you thought the recordings of what the aliens did on Titan was bad, you have no idea what my enemy will do to you. The technology exists to change you in any way they want. They can change your DNA; they can program your minds, so you love them and throw yourselves at them. They can do anything, believe me, anything they want.
“I took your three Presidents into space so they could see my base on your moon. I wanted them to see some of the technology we have and how together we can save the Earth.” So far, the only thing the world’s population heard was Kalteck’s voice, his face and image were blurred from view. As he spoke, the image of him slowly started to clear.
“You may be asking yourselves why I want to help you, the answer is amazingly simple, if my enemy controls Earth and Mars, my people won’t ever be able to return to our home world. If we help you defeat the enemy, then we can become friends, and together, our two societies can expand our knowledge of the cosmos. We can teach you so many things while you can provide us with a base station and food while we begin the long and difficult task of rebuilding Mars.
“I’m sure you’d like to see what a real alien, at least to you, looks like. However, remember, to me, you’re the aliens, and you look very different to me than you think you do. Remember that there are millions of species in the universe and all look different than each other. The Creator of All made each of us differently. Some of my people believe he did so as a grand experiment. He wanted to see which species survived and best held to his plans of being a good race and treating others well.
“You call the Creator of All, God, you call him by different names. You’ve written books and made movies about him. If you distill the various stories of the Creator of All across the universe, one will learn while everyone may call him by a different name, he is the same God to all.
“Now as to what I look like, I am going to clear the picture to show you, but remember, not all life forms look the same, and not all life acts the same. I assure you I am peaceful, and I came here to help you. Had I wanted to destroy you, I could have easily done so. Let’s count down from ten together, and at zero, I will clear the picture and greet you face to face.
“Ten, eight…five, four…two, one, zero. Allow me to formally introduce myself. My name is Kalteck. My people came from the fourth planet in your system, the one you call Mars. Let’s together stop my enemy who will soon be yours from conquering the Earth. I hope the Creator of All blesses each of you.”
The immediate thought that crossed the minds of most who saw Kalteck was one word, it may have been spoken in different languages, but it had the same meaning, DEMON! People screamed. Some fell to their knees, many ran to look in illustrated Bibles to make sure what they saw under the word Demon, or fallen angel looked like Kalteck.
The media went wild with all sorts of stories. Many religious leaders said Kalteck was the proof the Bible was correct. There was a God, angels and fallen angels, which meant there was also a Satan.
The Pope was asked what he thought about the alien Kalteck, the Pope responded with his head bowed and his hands shaking, “I believe we’ve seen without own eyes the Bible has once again proven to be true. All one has to do is look at the so-called alien and see he is the description of a demon or what the Bible teaches us are fallen angels who had sided with Lucifer against God. I urge all good Christians not to follow this fallen angel. We must be incredibly careful and remember the book of Revelation which warned to watch out for the three world leaders talking about marking us in the symbol of the Anti-Christ. I urge Catholics to be strong and not give in to their desires. We can fight the demon and bring forth the light of the Lord.”
The next voice heard came from Iran, where the Supreme Leader of Iran, “I am placing a fatwa against this agent of Satan who is here to test us. I urge all Muslims to rise up stop the leaders of the Great Satan, Little Satan, Russia, and China from taking control over the world. We know if the Great and Little Satan have their way, they will do everything within their power to strike down the followers of Allah and his holy prophet.”
The violence started before the Supreme Leader of Iran completed his speech. The streets of Europe were filled with opposing groups fighting each other with the common citizens caught in the middle.
In America, there wasn’t as much violence until the morning after when twenty suicide bombers exploded their bombs in the New York subway system. The damage shut down the system until inspections would be completed.
President Trump federalized the National Guard and activated them to provide security within their states. He also authorized the police arm of the DHS, some 50,000 agents to enforce the security of the nation’s travel infrastructure. DHS and TSA agents began screening people at train stations, bus stations and even pulled people over on the nation’s interstate highways. They discovered over fifteen cars and vans filled with explosives which scared the average citizens, and many refused to go to work after ten high rise buildings in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco exploded.
The three Presidents decided they should release the actual videos from Titan. They knew the recordings were going to shock the world’s people, but they thought they didn’t have any other choice. At 7 PM Eastern Time they held a three-way press conference where they released the full recordings. These shocked and scared the people. In America, where gun ownership was allowed, gun stores opened the next morning with lines of people waiting to buy weapons and ammunition. Ammunition mail order companies sold out within thirteen minutes of the videos being released.
Kalteck spent three days at Area 51 with Rhett. He spent hours talking to the three leaders and decided he had to take quick action if there was any hope of saving the Earth. He decided to make a major announcement. At 7 PM two days later, every broadcast was again interrupted. This time Kalteck stood in all of his glory in his seldom worn dress uniform, “People of the planet Earth, let me make a few things very clear, I am NOT a demon, I am NOT a fallen angel, I am a being much like you. I have a family. I desire peace am I am willing to die for peace. I would like to show you images from planets my enemy has conquered; I will show you images of how these people lived and then what happened when my enemy conquered them.” The broadcast images showed a peaceful city, but it was very alien to human eyes. The colors were different, the species looked like a cross between small furry animals with four arms, two of them having five fingers, their heads had three short antennae. Family groups moved in and out of shops. They smiled. Anyone could tell they were peaceful and happy.
The image changed to the giant ships which arrived over the alien city. Within minutes, bright-colored beams struck from the bottom of the ships which struck and destroyed the peaceful city. While the city was burning and its beautiful streets lined with the dead bodies, armored soldiers dropped from the sky, shooting energy weapons at any alien who moved.
Kalteck returned to broadcast. This happened to a planet twenty-nine light-years from Earth. When my enemy left, only 8% of the population survived, and most of those were pressed into slavery. Is this the future you want for Earth? Do you want to see your loved ones killed in front of you? Do you want to see your cities and homes destroyed? Do you want to see what happens to a planet that’s been bombarded by huge rocks? Just look at Mars, we cracked our mantel, we stopped our core from spinning, we lost our magnetic shield, and we lost our atmosphere. Is this the future you want?
“This has nothing to do with your religions. It’s all about an enemy who wants to control the universe. You have a chance to stop them or die. Make your decision. I pray you’ll make a wise decision.”
This time Kalteck left the broadcasts offline for six hours. Another unusual situation was when the broadcasts returned many of the ‘experts’ were no longer on the air. They’d never reported for work that evening. DHS officers secretly arrested many of the experts in America, the Russian FSB did
the same in Russia, and no one knows what happened in China, but almost every dissenter had disappeared and there were rumors many ended up in North Korean ‘reeducation camps.’ A very nice sounding term for concentration camps.
The next morning calmer heads began to speak out. At the same time, President Trump announced a major jobs program to begin building the new Monitors. The Department of Energy issued the initial contracts to the Oak Ridge National Labs to construct the nation’s first matter/antimatter reactor. At the same time, the President issued orders for new rail lines to be constructed between Oak Ridge and Virginia Beach, where Huntington Industries received the contract for the first Monitor.
Huntington was selected due to their experience building the most complex weapons systems in the world, the American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. These aircraft carriers displaced over one hundred thousand tons. They were eleven hundred feet long. They supported a total crew, including the ship, and air wings of over six thousand people. The ships were built with over twenty-five-hundred compartments. The ships carried their own antiair missiles, radars, and sonars.
Huntington started with the overall design of a combined battleship, aircraft carrier and spaceship to create Earth’s first class of space warships. The designers thought they could draw on their experience from building aircraft carriers, as suggest by Kalteck they brought in General Dynamics who had experience building nuclear powered submarines which were completely sealed so they could operate under the oceans.
The combined design teams worked around the clock and came up with an unusual plan. They were already building two Ford-class carriers, so they informed the President they thought the best plan was to cut apart the massive ships and use their already completed compartments and reactors as part of the new Monitors. They also surprised the President when they suggested the ships be built in the American Southwest desert under huge tents. They argued there wasn’t any space in Norfolk to build the ships. There also weren’t any additional workers as all of the current workers would be required to disassemble the partially completed carriers.
Trump quickly agreed with the suggestion. U.S. Navy Seabees were sent to begin building runways and rail lines to accept the materials. The Army Corp of Engineers brought in tens of thousands of people to build tent cities for the thousands of workers.
Two months after the announcement, the basic shape of the first Monitor was laid out in the desert. The plan was to use as many compartments from the aircraft carriers as possible. They were cut apart from the ships and either flown or placed on trains to bring them to the building site. The Chinese and Russians also showed the layout of their first ships. Kalteck was incredibly pleased the three had finally gotten their acts together. The Americans were leading due to already having thousands of compartments from the unfinished carriers. The Americans also decided to use the nuclear reactors from the carriers as backups for the antimatter reactors and to provide additional power in case the antimatter reactors had to be turned off or were damaged in the upcoming battle.
The three giant ships slowly began to rise from the large flat areas. Trillions of nanites assisted by over a hundred thousand human workers worked around the clock in three shifts. While the world had settled down and began breathing a sigh of relief, word came from Moscow that three human androids had been turned into suicide bombers. They exploded inside the Kremlin, killing the long-serving Russian President and Prime Minister.
The next morning four of the androids were stopped by Chinese security troops before they could enter the People’s Great Hall where the Chinese President Xi was preparing to address the body. The androids exploded outside of the Great Hall, causing massive damage, and killing two hundred members of the People’s Congress. However, their target, the President survived unharmed. The Secret Service quickly moved the President Trump to one of the war shelters an hour before four of the androids exploded in the lobby of the White House. The White House was heavily damaged. All tours of the White House and Capitol Building were suspended.
Chapter 11
The first two nuclear reactors that would have powered the USS John F Kennedy were placed on an armored train and sent to the new shipyards in Arizona. Two platoons of U.S. Army Special Forces escorted the train that also carried one hundred modules from the ship, which looked like a giant beached whale that was being carved up, which in a manner it was.
The steel that had been piled up next to the ships that was going to be used in their construction was placed on flat cars and sent to the new shipyard. A new ceramics plant was built by the Army Corp of Engineers to construct the outer hull and armor for the new ships.
The plan was to have both of the carriers stripped down to their keels within a year. Thousands worked around the clock cutting the ships apart. Everyone who showed up for work was hired on the spot. The carriers were built in sections which were connected together, these sections were now being cut apart and shipped west, in most cases they were installed as they were inside the new Monitors.
While the carriers were being cut apart, the initial American matter/antimatter reactor was being built, and its support systems checked. Rhett spent much of his time in the Oakridge National Labs overseeing the construction of the magnetic bottles, which held the antimatter from coming into contact with matter. If the two touched each other, the resulting explosion would destroy the city of Oakridge and the surrounding communities. The blast would be felt all the way to Nashville, almost 160 miles away.
Word reached the Oakridge National Labs that there had been a mistake or mishandling at the Chinese labs. Their first matter/antimatter reactor exploded. The flash from the explosion could be seen for hundreds of miles. It also set off a major earthquake in central China. The resulting explosion killed sixty-five thousand people and completely destroyed the Chinese science city. The seismographs in both America and Russia recorded the explosion, shocking both President Trump and the new Russian President Melotove by the force of the explosion.
President Xi couldn’t guarantee Presidents Trump and Melotove the explosion hadn’t been caused by the androids. He asked for help in making up the time. Both replied they would get back to him after their initial reactors went ‘hot.’ Trump and Melotove called their best security staff to see what could be done to further secure their labs where their reactors were being built to ensure there weren’t any security breaches.
President Trump ordered increased security for the Oakridge and Lawrence Livermore National Labs. They were now guarded around the clock by hundreds of soldiers, each lab was also supported by twenty-four M1A3 tanks, and forty-eight Bradley fighting vehicles. The Army had also moved Patriot 3 missile batteries to each city to protect them from an air attack.
Rhett wore his new rank with pride. The President had promoted him to the four-star rank of general and placed him in charge of the development and building of America’s first Monitor. She was named the UESS, United Earth Star Ship, The Enterprise bases on a popular vote, some voted for the name based on the World War 2 carrier and others voted for the name based on the Star Trek television program’s ship’s name. China named her ship the UESS Sun Tzu, and the Russian ship was named the UESS Lenin.
The Russian and Chinese ships were almost twins of each other since they’d stuck to Kalteck’s original design. However, The Enterprise was both two hundred feet larger and seventy feet wider due to the use of the existing modules and also differed by having the two nuclear reactors in addition to the matter/antimatter reactor. The Enterprise also differed from her sisters by having a backup AI and an additional hull covering of a newly developed armor skin that had originally been developed for tanks. The armor could defeat all known antitank weapons, including shaped charge warheads and solid penetrators. The new armor was a combination of ceramics and artificial spider silk mixed with depleted uranium. The new armor was also layered with a very reflective surface which was supposed to reflect lasers.
The Enterprise rose from her buil
ding pad like magic. The nanites and robots worked without pause around the clock while three shifts of humans worked alongside them. Due to the many completed compartments, the shape of the Enterprise differed from her sisters because she was flat sided instead of being rounded like an arrow shaft. The new armor plating couldn’t yet be formed in curves, and the compartments were flat-sided having been designed for the aircraft carriers, so the plans were modified to ease and speed the production.
While the first three Monitors were being built, Lockheed and Boeing won the contracts in America to build the space fighters, which resembled a stretched F 22 with shorter wings and a longer and thicker body. She was named the SF (Space Fighter) 100, nicknamed the Piranha after a small man-eating fish that could strip an adult to the bone in minutes. It was hoped the fighters could destroy an enemy ship of the line. She was armed with two laser generators and one central heavy particle beam projector. She also carried six antimatter armed missiles with triple stages to enable the missiles to speed up at different times of their flight, hopefully confusing the enemy ship’s point defense. She also carried defensive systems of jamming, decoys, and small rockets armed with buckshot, which were designed to act as point defense against incoming anti-fighter missiles and it was hoped would dissipate plasma weapons.
