Thunder & Lightning
by
Christopher Nuttall & Leo Champion

Dedicated to Barb Caffrey,
A damn fine editor.

Published by Henchman Press

Edited by Barb Caffrey
Oghaldzon created by Tony Jones
Special thanks to Paul Howard

Cover by Lydia Kurnia and Worlds Beyond Art
Thunder & Lightning copyright 2018 Christopher Nuttall and Leo Champion

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Published in the United States of America.

Prologue

It is unwise to summon what you cannot dismiss. 
Neil Gaiman

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. 
	Donald Rumsfeld

Fact: the first public demonstration of wireless telegraphy was carried out by Alexander Muirhead and Professor Oliver Lodge in the lecture theatre of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on August 14, 1894.
Fact: radio waves travel at the speed of light.
Fact: in 2018, the radio signals will have reached 224 light years into space.
Fact: there are 33 stars within 12.5 LY of Earth.
Fact: there are approximately 260,000 stars within 250 LY of Earth.
Fact: every hour, the radio signals travel an additional 1,079,252,848.8 kilometres from Earth.
Unknown: who’s listening? And what do they think of us?

Chapter One: Discovery

Selene Observatory, Lunar Surface
The massive dish antennae of the lunar observatory towered above Samra Hussein as she made her way carefully around, with only her suit’s own lights and faint star glow to see by. Here on the far side, the dark side of the moon, you never saw Earth rising, or the Sun’s light reflected. That was why the observatory was there. 
With its scientists, it was shielded by millions of tons of lunar rock from Earth’s endless cacophony of electromagnetic noise; free of any Terrestrial appearance, the far side was the perfect site from which to examine the stars.
Samra had, as one of the first few hundred children to have been born on the moon, grown up near enough to one of Brightside’s political fault lines that she appreciated her observatory’s neutrality. By international – and now, interplanetary – law it belonged not to any government, faction or corporation, but to the independent International Astronomical Union.
“Boss, are you all right?” came a signal through her laser communicator. It had flickered from one of the relay points, carefully positioned well away from the ultrasensitive radio equipment. Its own radio interference was a problem the observatory had always taken steps to avoid. 
Samra stepped a little back away from the massive radio dish.
“I’m fine,” she said.
When she’d taken this post, she’d insisted that all her staff take frequent walks on the lunar surface. That didn’t mean they liked it; some Earth-born in the big colonies refused to go out, even with careful supervision. Her people did as directed, but not all of them were comfortable with their boss coming out here.
While John was on the line, though, she asked “Is there any update on the supply shipment from Orbit Seven?”
“None,” the administrator replied, his voice reflecting her own irritation.
Nearly a hundred and fifty years since mankind had taken its first fumbling steps into space, it was still expensive to bring much up from the surface. Lunar colonists were supplied, for most of their needs, with goods made on the moon or in the zero-gravity factories orbiting Earth. For political reasons, the observatory had to split its purchases across every possible supplier, showing preference to none. It was a tremendous pain; items the observatory could easily obtain from nearby on the moon, instead sometimes had to come all the way from lower earth orbit.
“Last word,” he went on, “was that they were having production difficulties. We’ll see the supplies in, I quote, around twenty days.”
Samra sighed as she began to pace toward the observatory’s second dish set. Between dealing with power-seeking bureaucrats and directing astronomers clueless in even the basic facts of her profession, there were times she wondered why she stayed in this post.
A look up toward the stars – a steady glow of millions of them across the sky – reminded her; where else could you see such sights? As a young adult she’d heard an urban legend that Neil Armstrong, while taking humanity’s first steps upon the moon, had heard the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. She’d been walking alone on the stark lunar landscape since childhood and had never herself heard the adhan… but this vast specter of silent stars amused her, at times. Perhaps, somewhere amidst them, Allah was still watching over His children.
“Tell them that if the delivery doesn’t happen within twenty,” she said, “we’ll take our trade elsewhere.”
That wasn’t quite an empty threat; if she made enough of a fuss, or showed enough gain for the IAU, the bureaucrats would back her up. The problem would be showing enough gain to them.
The observatory, spread out across nearly two hundred square kilometres across ground near the centre of darkside, was hers… or almost hers. The IAU had appointed her and would someday replace her, but until then she was queen of all she surveyed. 
Not least because the current arrangement, of a lunar-born running the observatory, benefited everyone. Certain internet discussion forums had already raised the question of just who it belonged to; if Karl Bova eventually did manage to put forward his mandate for lunar independence, it would be hard to avoid the fact that the observatory itself was on lunar territory.
Of course, she thought grimly, that would almost certainly start a war.
It had been years since the formative events of lunar history; the Lawton Rebellion, the Han Pact, and so on. But as the moon became better-populated and more important to those inhabitants than Earth, it was hard for even an apolitical scientist like Samra to see how the status quo could remain.
If the Lunar Independence Front ever actually managed to win control of a significant number of lunar colonies… that wasn’t a day she was looking forward to. The moon was like Earth in some ways, but all it took was a leak in your pressure suit to remind you of the differences.
“Has anything else happened that I should know about?” she asked.
“No, boss,” John Laud said in his British accent. “Nothing too important.”
He was Earth-born, from the British Commonwealth itself. Although the British lunar colony of Albion was only five hundred miles from the observatory; several of the installation’s emergency plans relied on Albion’s help. There was also a small military base, in theory present for security against Lawton terrorists. In practice, as everyone knew, it was really there against the day another of the Great Powers launched a land grab.
“A small set of updates from the LEO tracking system. That’s all.”
Samra glanced at the display projected in front of her eyes, in the lower part of her field of vision. She still had an hour before she’d start to run out of air, plenty of time to complete the inspection. The Reform Islam practiced by the Caliphate colony where she’d grown up had adopted the principle of ‘Allah helps those who help themselves’. She’d never been very devout, but she understood the lesson. All lunar-born did.
“Very well,” she said. “Inform me if anything changes.”
She turned her attention back to the path in front of her. It had been clearly marked out years ago by the original construction crews. Lunar history was filled with tales of people who’d paid with their lives for forgetting they were on what was in fact an extremely hostile world. There were just so many things that could go wrong…
So she saw only a handful of other workers as she completed her inspection around the vast dish arrays, although there were dozens of small robots active. Farside was oddly oppressive, even to her; most places on the moon always had radio chatter and the internet. Here, radio was banned except for emergencies. The tiniest signal interference, this close to the massively sensitive radio telescopes, would make them convulse in seizures. The IAU would not appreciate the cost of having to repair multibillion-credit equipment.
Her communicator lit up again, with the icon that meant an urgent call across the laser network the observatory used instead of local radio. It had far, far less bandwidth than any radio network had, but all it needed was voice capability.
“Yes?” she snapped. “What’s happening now?”
“Director,” said Tony Jones. Her deputy’s voice was taut and grim. “I think you should come back in. At once.”
Samra didn’t hesitate. Jones was something of a cold fish, unusual on the moon, but a good worker who knew his business. Angling for her job when she left or was pushed out, he’d probably have handled the matter on his own if he could have. That he was calling her inside meant a very good reason to do so.
“On my way,” she replied as she headed quickly – few people ran on the moon, but with experience you could walk fast – towards one of the access points. Most of the observatory, like all but the older lunar colonies, was underground. “Have a briefing ready for me as soon as I reach the command centre. Heading there now.”
Its entire staff numbered less than three hundred, but the builders had dug deep to accommodate them and their supplies, and prepare for possible emergencies. Samra could have hosted, without trouble, ten times as many people as were there. The elevator she rode downwards felt welcoming, but then it always had, and not just in comparison to the stark hostility of the surface. The observatory’s facilities had to appeal to the staff to avoid a high turnover rate; she’d spent too much time dealing with contractors who disliked their facilities or family members resenting the installation’s dedication to pure science.
At the bottom of the elevator, airlocks hissed and she stepped out. She stripped off her pressure suit; below it she wore a standard lunar-style jumpsuit with soft boots. A tech moved to collect the suit while she headed for the command centre.
It was a spacious room of terminals, consoles and large screens on the walls, but right now Jones and several others – who should have been at different stations – were gathered with interest around a little-used console on one wall. Had something gone wrong with one of the Bridge Ships, with Message Bearer?
“Report!” she snapped. “What the hell is going on?”
Jones looked oddly deflated but said, “I think we’ve just earned our budget for the next decade. Take a look.”
As Samra went over to the console, Jones hit a button to show her an overview. The Selene Observatory had been given the best deep-space tracking equipment money could buy, which had led to another dispute between the IAU and the Great Powers. The Powers hadn’t liked any international organizations having the ability to look out into deep space.
There were rumours of secret deep-space bases and testing grounds; a tracking station like the observatory could well manage to follow a craft to its hidden base. The prominence of satellites and probes with similar sensors kept the observatory out of the public eye, because tracking a long fusion burn was easy.
The image in front of Samra refused to make sense. “Merciful Allah, what the hell is that?”
Jones looked down at Rebecca Hawthorne, who flushed. 
“Director, I was running a basic overview when the system reported the presence of a fusion light in an unexplored region of space,” she stammered. 
Samra let her speak; ‘unexplored’ didn’t even begin to cover the region Rebecca was talking about. 
“The fusion burn seemed far too large to be creditable, so I ran some checks, and they confirmed the presence of a series of fusion burns well outside the Solar Area, but coming toward us…”
Rebecca’s voice broke off. Samra felt her blood run cold. Could it be…?
Jones’ own voice was inhumanly calm as he said, “I ordered a sweep of that region. Collated the data from our own telescopes and the data dumps we get from the other stations in LEO. I had the computers run predictive curves, checked the results against images we’ve recorded over the past few months. We’ve double-checked everything, and…”
He hit another control. A cold image of deep space materialized on the console screen, hundreds of tiny starlights studded across it. A moment passed, Jones hit another key, and the computer highlighted… easily a hundred lights. Ones that weren’t stars, but something else…
“Aliens,” Samra breathed.
“Other than one of the black colonies somehow building that fleet and stockpiling enough Helium-3 to fuel it – and just incidentally, we ran a spectroscopic scan and we can’t identify the mine that fleet’s fuel came from – there is no other explanation,” said Jones. His voice was still cold; inhumanly cold for a time like this. “There is an alien fleet coming to Earth.”
Samra’s heart was in her chest, her head spinning.
“Don’t you understand?” She exhaled. “This changes everything!”
Her deputy gave a snort. “It won’t change a thing. You know how our political overlords think. They’ll try using the aliens as a means to pressure the spacers and the colonies to toe Earth’s line and stay away from independence. A week after the announcement of this makes it out – and that’s if our lords and masters even bother to tell the little people – there’ll be a million soldiers on the moon.”
“Director,” Rebecca coughed lightly, “I’m not convinced their fusion tech is even similar to ours. At this range the results are far from precise – but it looks like their energy efficiency is far higher than ours. Given the power of their burns, I’m pretty certain they’re somehow achieving far higher fusion rates—” She stopped suddenly. 
Samra rested a dark hand on the technician’s shoulder to calm her. “It’s OK,” she said. “How many others would have seen this?”
“Given the power of those burns,” Rebecca said, “it’s quite possible that other monitoring stations might have picked them up.”
There weren’t many sensors pointed in that general direction, but most stations tried to maintain a watch on as much of the sky as they could.
“The Rockrat stations around Freeport are in a good position to watch from that direction, and they have the sensors to,” she went on. “They’re almost certain to see them within a week, if they haven’t already.”
“That makes sense,” Samra said. “Tony, we have to inform the IAU before Freeport steals all the credit.”
“A word,” Jones said. “In your office, ma’am?”
She allowed him to steer her towards her office, which was large but sparsely-decorated. Two doctorates hung framed among the degrees on her wall.
“Director – Samra – we have to tell everyone.”
Samra closed her eyes for a long moment, gathering her thoughts. When she opened them again Jones was pacing back and forth on the office’s smooth rock floor, his pale face flush with excitement. This was a side of the man she’d never seen, and she was intrigued by it.
“It’s not as if the IAU could keep this a secret for long,” she said. She went to the terminal at her desk and quickly brought up, on the office’s primary wallscreen, a mirror of the terminal’s image showing the lights. “There are at least a hundred craft there, maybe more. And they’re pumping out a lot of energy. If this continues and they get closer, every spacecraft with the crudest detectors will see them. And then…”
“The secret will be out, and too late,” Jones concluded. “And what happens when the Security Council decides that the best way to greet them will be with armed force?”
“We don’t know what they actually want,” she said. “They must be aware of our existence, but how do we assume they’re friendly?”
“Interplanetary war seems hard enough,” said Jones dryly. “Interstellar war?”
“In six months we might learn how hard it is,” Samra said, and scowled at having fallen into the trap of arguing a viewpoint she didn’t really believe. She’d wondered for years whether there was other intelligent life out there, but if there were – they seemed well hidden. A hundred years of endless listening for alien signals had yielded nothing. But surely they wouldn’t be warlike…
“I told you,” she said with a very slight edge to her voice, “they can’t keep it a secret forever in any case.”
“Long enough to start a war because they think it’ll give them a political advantage,” said Jones. “Samra, if…”
She could tell what he was thinking: lunar politics were a powderkeg. The colonists had rebelled before against the governments and corporations that had established them. Some Great Powers had established limited democracies to pacify their colonists; others, like the Chinese, had simply used brute force. Now that a united lunar identity was starting to form across the various colonies, the Lunar Independence Front was gaining real support – and a lot of attention from the Powers in charge of the colonies. The situation was getting to where all it would need to explode was a spark…
“You have an open mandate to announce any discovery you deem to be of great significance,” Jones reminded her softly. “Announce it; they can hardly blame you for following the procedures they gave you.”
Samra finally nodded.
“I’ll send out the bulletin,” she said. “You might want to pretend you don’t know me.”
If she played her cards right, she thought as she sat down at her console, she might be one of the people to make first contact. She’d always dreamed of meeting aliens; how might Allah’s other children appear to her eyes? 
Jones shut the door behind him; she began to write up the bulletin, thinking of just how much the solar system had changed.
Alien contact, in her lifetime!

Chapter Two: The Never-Ending War

Western Exclusion Zone, Africa
“Missiles launched,” came over the radio to Captain Christopher Fardell. He nodded to himself as their icons appeared on his helmet display; they’d been launched from a stealth ship off the coast. The General Franks was designed to be hard for space-based radar to locate; the low-tech Wreckers wouldn’t have a clue the ship existed. “Twenty seconds to impact.”
“Heads up, people,” Fardell said to his platoon. The twenty-one other suited figures made gestures of acknowledgment; after five years of training and endless live operations against Wrecker bases, his troops behaved almost as one. They could see the missile icons as well as he could. “We move as soon as they hit.”
There was limited intelligence on these particular Wreckers, although the agencies had been poking them with whatever remote sensors they had. Wrecker factions ranged widely – these ones might be radical Islamicists, independence nuts, eco-terrorists or just plain criminals. Not knowing what he was about to face made his job harder; simple fanatics were easy to deal with. It was the ones who thought who could be really dangerous.
There were no betraying active emissions from this base, but there rarely were; active emissions were as good as phoning American forces to say “Kill us now.” But there might have been passive sensors, and if those existed they’d now be lighting up with warning of the hypersonically incoming missiles. He could almost sense their presence as they screamed through the air. It had taken time and effort to find this particular base, and there was a probably a reason the Pentagon wanted it taken intact instead of simply levelled from orbit.
If they wanted it intact, they shouldn’t have sent battlesuits, Fardell thought as the first missiles impacted on the base. They were loaded with compressed high explosive; he could feel the ground shake from kilometres away as shockwaves collapsed underground bunkers and fortifications.
 Other missiles blasted in, targeting suspected enemy barracks and supply locations; they took no prisoners. Fardell knew that the spooks weren’t happy at all about that part of the plan, but the General had put his foot down; he wouldn’t risk his men’s lives any more than strictly necessary.
“Advance,” he said to his platoon.
Battlesuit regiments had few traditions; they’d been raised in a more practical era. Advancing while shouting battle cries was the mark of fanatics and incompetents. The battlesuits preferred to make their presence known only when their blows landed.
“Eye-spy, are you tracking us?”
“On you, sir,” Lieutenant Lance Seeman said.
The coordinator was the safest man in the platoon, watching the engagement through drones, satellites and suit-sensors from a bunker in Texas. He had detachment, but sometimes the distance that gave him meant he didn’t properly understand the situation on the ground. The Pentagon had had to learn hard lessons about leaving tactical decisions to the man on the ground.
“Have you now,” Seeman reported. “Feeding you data.”
Most of the information was useless, but Fardell filtered that out with long-practiced ease. They’d been briefed carefully before the insertion, into a part of the continent that had once been called Nigeria. That had been a hundred and fifty years ago, and the continent was a mess. Fardell’s own ancestors had been slaves imported from here, and every time duty sent him back to the continent he couldn’t help being grateful to the slavers. Africa was that bad.
The city they were heading into had been known by several names since decolonization and then the collapse, when between disease and warfare most of the continent’s population had been wiped out. Most of the native survivors tended to keep to themselves, but ever since the European-African War and the European occupation of North Africa, Wrecker renegades had used the forbidding, empty continent as a base.
There were rumours of meaningful civilizations active deeper in inland Africa, but Fardell doubted any of them had much potential. South Africa was advancing north, Europe slowly moving south and the Caliphate growing westwards; it was possible that someday the Wreckers’ poisonous refuge would be drained.
Until then, he and men like him had the endless task of penetrating the continent, destroying the bases and getting out. It was hard, because the wars had left arms everywhere and made desperate local leaders corrupt, or even more corrupt than they had always been. Few of the legitimate colonies lasted more than ten years. The illegitimate ones would grow to be troublesome, if not dealt with. Since the Los Angeles bioweapon of twenty years ago, the United States government had taken a hard line on them.
“Captain,” said Seeman, “I have movement coming down the highway toward you.”
A hundred years ago, the Army would have inserted spotter teams in the area, risking themselves for intelligence. Nowadays Lieutenant Seeman had robotic flies and butterflies at his disposal to collect information without that risk.
“How many?”
“At least fifty,” Seeman said. “Older weapons.”
Legacy weapons, such as the ever-present AK variants, were harmless to the battlesuits; they couldn’t penetrate the suits’ armour. Small explosives and missiles were a threat, but much less of one than modern missile systems and plasma cannons.
Wreckers were often primitive, but they could be surprising. Some groups only had AK-47s, but others had in the past jerry-rigged plasma weapons and would need to be eradicated by orbital strikes. The first thing every trainee learned was that your battlesuit didn’t make you invincible.
“Sign of anything dangerous?” Fardell asked.
There was a long pause while Seeman focused in on the data.
“Nothing detected.”
That wasn’t grounds for Fardell to relax. Plasma weapons could be tracked with ease once they’d been activated, but HVMs and mines could be much harder to identify until it was too late.
“Looks like we’ve been rumbled,” Lieutenant Browning muttered. “Must have spotters of their own out here.”
The suits spread further apart as they reached the ancient highway, which despite its condition showed signs of recent use – wreckage had been cleared out of the way and some attempt had been made to fill the worst potholes. He brought up an overview of the developing situation; supporting elements were already beginning to move toward blocking all possible routes out of the ruined city. It was on Twenty-Second Platoon to go in. Well spread out and pausing when they could behind the wrecked vehicles along its side, his people advanced up what had been the highway.
“Lance, send the warning.”
A remote drone, old enough to be classed as expendable, had been flying stealthed over the city. Now a voice thundered from it:
“This is the United States Army, operating under the Wrecker Protocols.” 
Fardell could hear it even through his suit from miles away; the Wreckers in the city immediately below its blasting speakers had to be feeling the voice through their very bones.
“You are surrounded and trapped!” the deafeningvoice went on. “Surrender now and you will be treated fairly! Resist, and the Protocols’ enforcement provisions will apply. You have five minutes to decide.”
Fardell brought up the orbital view, which was limited; the long-ruined city had tens of thousands of places the wreckers could hide. The Wrecker Protocols authorized any country to engage Wreckers to do as they saw fit to them; international law didn’t require Wreckers to be given a chance to surrender, or to be treated well if they did.
If they did surrender they’d be resettled – to nice penal camps in Antarctica. That might have been why not many of them did. Fardell would personally have rather had more flexible rules of engagement so more would, but since the nuking of Madrid and the bio-attack on LA… two attacks in one year by groups based out of Africa had given the West a harder line on them. Mercy hadn’t been an option politically in two decades; it was ‘soft on terror’. In about four and a half minutes, Fardell’s platoon would go in and shoot anyone they saw. Only rarely would they accept surrenders…
“Four minutes,” Seeman muttered. “There’s no sign of any concentrated movement, but one of the spotters heard shots…”
“Deserters being taken care of,” Fardell guessed. It wasn’t unknown for some Wreckers to realize their mistake when faced with real force. Their attempts to surrender could be… taken badly… by their more fanatical group-members.
A red alarm flashed across Fardell’s visor; incoming mortar fire. He mouthed a curse as the shells popped up from launchers nearby, rushing into the air to come down amongst the suited platoon. Analytical software was already running; direct hits from these shells would be nasty but near-misses were likely to be survivable, unless these Wreckers had more tricks.
Explosions blasted up among his troops as they spread out, their sensors already probing for the enemy spotters…
“Got them,” Seeman reported. Coordinates appeared in Fardell’s visor; a skyscraper that had somehow largely survived decades of neglect and heavy fighting. “Engage and destroy…”
Fardell raised his right arm. Instead of a human-like hand, the suit’s right fist was the mouth of a heavy plasma cannon. A stream of blinding white light blasted out from it at the skyscraper, which exploded as the energy impact vaporized parts of it. Streams of explosions detonated amidst the ten-story building as it crumbled; absently, Fardell realized the Wreckers must have had other explosives in there.
His people knew what to do. They advanced at a fast run, faster than an un-suited sprinter could have gone, directly toward the line of major buildings up the road. They’d started to glitter with weapons fire. There were other defences along the way; some of Fardell’s soldiers swept their plasma cannon along the ground, leaving scorched trails in the knee-high shrubs and vegetation around here but also detonating nearly a dozen mines.
“Launching HVM strike now,” Seeman said. Icons indicating High-Velocity Missile launches lit up in Fardell’s visor as a drone fired. By now the US Army had plenty of experience taking down buildings; every one that the first fire had come from exploded under the impact of a missile.
The suited platoon ran forwards at the speed of galloping horses as the Wreckers launched their own counterbattery fire, desperately hacking at the battlesuits and what drones they could detect with mortars and twentieth-century machine guns.
Ground-based lasers on the shoulders of some of the platoon activated, turned and flashed as they detonated the incoming shells. Small-caliber bullets started to patter off Fardell’s suit with all the impact, to him through the armour, of small hailstones. Wreckers with automatic rifles, mostly young men and many with the glazed eyes and jerky movements that implied battle drugs, ran forwards from what was left of their positions. They sprayed bullets, mostly from the hip, and were cut down by the suited troops.
Fardell grimaced, although this was his job. These ones had had no chance, as the commander who’d sent them would have known. Battle drugs did wonders for your aggression, bravery and pain tolerance, but at the cost of your judgment. These ones’ tactics had been obsolete since the First World War, but they’d been too impaired to have a clue. 
Small explosions blossomed among the platoon as someone further away with an autocannon opened up. As he got the range on the fast-advancing platoon, some of the indicators for Fardell’s people began to show minor damage…
“Alert!” Seeman snapped as a new icon appeared on the display.
Instinct took over Fardell’s body as he threw himself out of the way before he’d consciously recognized the icon. A plasma blast, a ball of white-green sun-stuff contained by magnetic forces, shot past him, close enough to have burned an un-suited human.
Instead it struck Corporal Chester, slightly behind Fardell and to his left. The captain watched in horror as the suit went pale white and then imploded, burned out by the plasma. Chester hadn’t even known what had hit him.
“HVM strike on the plasma gun,” Fardell snapped. “Right the hell now!”
The target had been designated the moment the first emissions had been detected; the drones circling above had already prepared a missile. On Fardell’s command, Seeman sent the missile streaking own into the position the shot had come from, sending it up in a blazing white gout of uncontained plasma fuel. The superhot wave ignited neighbouring buildings; Fardell paused as audio-filtering software indicated screams in a large one that might have once been a warehouse. The screams didn’t sound drugged.
“Gunnard,” he said, “check it out.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Gunnard Frederickson acknowledged, gesturing for his squad to change direction slightly.
Fardell took a moment to scan the overall situation. The Wreckers were collapsing; they’d never stood a chance to begin with, but they’d fought as though they hadn’t cared. Seven Americans, including three of his people, had been killed by their desperate swipes. A handful ran toward the badlands away from the advancing suit platoon, but they weren’t Fardell’s problem. They’d run into the support formations, regular troops positioned to deal with fleeing Wreckers.
“Sir, I think you should see this,” said Frederickson. There was a grim note in his voice that worried Fardell – those fires were starting to get out of control. “It’s… not good.”
“On my way,” Fardell said. He headed toward the warehouse as support troops in armoured cars and armoured personnel carriers began to show up. Their task was to secure the city, taking whatever intelligence and prisoners for interrogation that they could. The way those fires were spreading, Fardell didn’t give the support elements much time for that job.
The warehouse the screams had come from was nothing special, but the dozens of Wrecker corpses around it now suggested it had had some importance. The Wreckers had tried to hold an impossible-to-defend building… why?
Fardell stepped through a hole blasted in the wall and muttered a soft curse. The warehouse was filled with female bodies, some still alive. They were handcuffed naked to railings running through the building. Nausea filled Fardell and a reflexive part of him activated a chemical implant before it became overwhelming. He’d heard that the slave trade had resumed in parts of Africa. He’d never before come face to face with evidence.
“Support units up here now!” he snapped.
Frederickson’s squad had already started breaking apart the railings the women were chained to. It was God’s own mercy that the wreckers hadn’t secured them by their feet as well – getting them out ahead of the fires was going to be hard enough as it was.
“Have them all out of here and get them some medical attention before it’s too late!”
Fardell stepped back outside as the first heavy lifters arrived, powerful VTOL engines thundering as the heavy craft landed. Guarded by unsuited support troops, medics spread out to the area; a gesturing officer directed more people inside to help the still-chained women.
One by one they were escorted into the waiting lifters for transport back to a Forward Operating Base. There they would be interrogated and tested carefully, because the Wreckers might have tried to slip some of their senior people out amongst the slaves – but Fardell doubted as that. If the battle had gone just a little differently, or these growing fires spread a fraction more quickly, these women would have died.
The fires were spreading anyway, starting to give the unarmoured soldiers real problems. They were beginning to pull back; it didn’t surprise when Seaman’s voice came telling the suited platoon to withdraw. Fardell rapidly gave orders, directing the eighteen surviving troops to filter south out of the city.
“Understood,” he said to Seeman. “We’ll make our way back to FOB Helena.”
“No,” said Seeman, “not Helena. Transport is coming to pick you up at this location.” A map-point lit up, far enough from the burning city that the approaching transports – whose markers Fardell could also see on the map – could safely land. “You’ve got redeployment orders, sir – you’ll never believe what’s happened!”
Fardell blinked. The platoon had only been out here eight months this time; they were being moved back from Africa before the year was up? They’d had two weeks’ leave only a couple of months ago… He knew it was more than impossible, but he had to ask: “One of the big Wrecker factions has surrendered?”
“No, sir.” Seeman’s voice hardened a little. Some things, of course, you couldn’t discuss over potentially insecure radio networks. “Await pickup at the location as designated. You’ll be filled in on the way.”
Christopher Fardell shrugged and headed for the evac point.

Chapter Three: The Rulers of the World

United Nations Building, Geneva
“Mr. President,” came through President James Cardona’s earpiece from his chief of staff. “Task Force Douglas reports mission success, Wrecker base cleared. Forces returning to base now.”
Cardona gave a curt nod. Until a few days ago, an operation like that would have been major business, requiring direct Cabinet-level input for its planning and legalities. There were thorny legal problems of operating within the African exclusion zone, and political ones with the use of strategic assets like orbital bombardment and battlesuit systems. Now, it seemed mundane next to the confirmed discovery of alien life.
The original United Nations had died almost seventy-five years ago in the terrorist attack that had levelled Manhattan; the rebuilding program had purposely left its building out. The expanding Great Powers were no longer interested in coddling smaller ones; America hadn’t been the only major nation to find the UN increasingly irrelevant in a world of Wreckers running rampant.
There had been no final council or last discussions; the Great Powers had simply shut the old organization down and settled for creating something new, to allow them to work out their conflicts between one another. Back then, there’d been much less to fight over – the working relationship had blossomed and survive the development of space assets and the rise of dangerously separationist views on the moon and in the asteroids.
The replacement UN had its detractors, of course; smaller nations who considered it a tool of the Great Powers to divide the world between them. They had some cause to think that; most of the smaller nations that had existed at the turn of the millennium no longer did. Their names, flags and sometimes even their populations had fallen to history as the Wrecker War had ground on. But the new UN had survived, more or less intact.
Switzerland – the only mainland European nation east of Russia to maintain independence of the European Union’s government in Brussels – had volunteered to serve as the new organization’s host. There’d been proposals to locate it on the moon, but those had been laughed out of their hearing rooms. Switzerland’s historic neutrality, and present well-guarded independence, had made Geneva a safer bet even before the situation on the moon had gotten troublesome politically.
“Welcome back, Mr. President,” said the tall Swiss Guardsman at the door to the conference room. Despite the bright colours of his fourteenth-century uniform, the Guardsman carried what Cardona could tell was a first-rate modern energy weapon – and the President would have been surprised if that old-style uniform didn’t have body armour woven into or hidden beneath its colours.
Only top-level world leaders and their guests had access to this room; the seven Great Powers liked to work out their differences without scrutiny, to prevent national pride and domestic politics from becoming obstacles. Protocol meant less here; the leaders didn’t have to like one another, but they always respected one another. That was a given, at this level.
The room was large, with faintly buzzing anti-surveillance devices in two of its corners. There were desks, larger ones for the world leaders each flanked by sitting room for advisers, around a seven-sided table. 
The Swiss Guardsman firmly closed the door behind Cardona, closing what the President had been told had been built as a Faraday cage. Surveillance from outside could simply, point-blank, not penetrate the room; the buzzing bug stompers inside were to take care of anything hidden that had missed the careful sweeps. You could never be too sure.
By longstanding agreement, the chairpersonship rotated annually around the room. This year it was Great Britain’s turn; Prime Minister Tim Keck held the position. He was a tall, balding man in a grey suit and Cardona was glad he held the gavel right now. The US and the British Commonwealth were firm allies; his chairmanship might give America a slight ally. The Russians and the Chinese, too, were firm allies, although they did occasionally work against each other. The Europeans and the Japanese worked with each other sometimes and at other times with the Americans, while the Pan-Arabic Caliphate had little in the way of allies.
President Cardona sometimes wondered if that nation was Allah’s joke on his believers. If it had been established even ten years earlier, before the southward expansions of Europe and Russia and China’s push west, it might have had a real chance at power. As it stood, they were the weakest of the Great Powers. Which didn’t mean they were objectively weak, not with their own orbital installations and weapons systems in space. All seven Powers had ringed the planet with weapons, carefully watching for trouble from the others.
A hundred years ago, at the turn of the millennium, America had been the most powerful. Now nobody was quite sure which country was, but all agreed that all-out warfare would be apocalyptically disastrous. Hence the need for chambers like this.
Prime Minister Keck banged his gavel on the table as Cardona sat down. He was the last to, and he noticed that the other leaders’ aides were absent as well. Just the seven world leaders sat around the table, although a bureaucratic-looking grey-haired man in a grey suit stood near Keck’s side.
“The room is now sealed,” Keck declared unnecessarily. A green light above the main door indicated that thousands of volts of electricity were flowing through the electric mesh in the walls on every side, and the door itself. “I call this meeting to order.”
“The issue at hand is the discovery of the alien fleet heading toward our world,” Keck continued.
None of the other men and women around the table showed any surprise. They’d had a day to get used to the news after the Selene Observatory’s public announcement. Nobody had argued with the need for an emergency meeting.
“I have asked Rick Davenport, of the International Astronomical Union, to brief us on the discovery.”
“Careless,” President Siegfried Gerwulf of the European Union commented. “The news should have been kept under wraps until we’d made a decision.”
The grey-suited man by Prime Minister Keck spoke up. He was a senior administrator of the International Astronomical Union, which had become one of the more distrusted and disliked organizations in the system. It was also arguably a necessary one; President Cardona strongly suspected humanity would have already fought its first interplanetary war without it.
“The decision to release the information came from Observatory Director Hussein herself,” Davenport said with a tight face. His organization was risk-averse, and given the choice would almost certainly have sat on the information until after the Great Powers had formalized an agreement. “It would be possible to discipline her, should it be required…”

* * *

“It will not be required,” said Caliph Baha Ihsan. Despite his title he was an elected leader, although not all in his land could vote. He eyed the bureaucrat with disdain. “Any reasonable interpretation of the regulations as given would support her actions.”
Keck banged his gavel lightly. “It’s not important right now,” he said carefully. “Mr. Davenport, would you summarize for us what has happened since yesterday’s initial announcement of the fleet?”
Davenport was already holding a remote. A computer-generated image of a starscape appeared in high resolution on one wall; a handful of the stars had been circled in red to identify the alien ships. More than a handful of them. Humanity might have been in the middle of private attempts to build the first starship, but the aliens had already built far more than near-future humanity could hope to.
“There’s actually very little we presently know, beyond their existence,” said Davenport. “The observatory’s initial report, of course, led to just about every other research program being dropped in favour of focusing every sensor, telescope and radio receiver on the aliens. But the sheer distance to them makes it impossible for us to know some details. The inherent limitations of passive sensors are a problem, too. We don’t…”
“Caveats noted,” Keck said with a hint of irritation. “Mr. Davenport, would you tell us what you do know?”
The IAU administrator looked unhappy.
“Sir, we have around a hundred alien starships coming into the solar system,” he said. “Roughly twenty-seven hours ago they began a fusion burn, angling their course Earthwards. Gentlemen, madam, there is no question of that; the aliens are coming toward Earth.
“It should also be noted that the alien craft are large. The largest one we’ve been able to get data on is over a hundred kilometres long.”
Cardona nodded slowly, listening. The privately-run Message Bearer project involved converting an asteroid into a starship; its intent was eventually to settle a new human civilization outside of Sol. But that asteroid was about fifty kilometres long, dwarfed by this alien ship.
“We can tell very little else about the aliens,” Davenport continued. “Their fusion tech shows some signs of being more advanced than ours, and the technical capabilities of sending a fleet of craft this size this far, are obviously impressive.
“So far there have been no signals detected from them, or any detectable response to the signals that various factions and individuals have been sending toward them. We have no idea as to what they might want or what their intentions are.”
“We cannot run the risk of assuming the aliens are friendly,” Chinese President Liu Juanfeng said, glaring around the room. He voiced the question that had been forming in Cardona’s mind: “How many aliens could they fit onto each ship?”
“We – cannot presently tell,” Davenport said uncomfortably. “Assuming the aliens have the same requirements as humans, maybe a hundred thousand per ship? Possibly many more. If they’re prepared to accept much higher population densities than we are, or have hibernation systems, there could be many, many more.”
“It could be an invasion force,” Russian President Aleksandra Zakharovka said. She was a grey-haired woman with tired eyes; Cardona had heard that hard-liners in her country had been pressing for stronger action with regard to the lunar tensions. She’d had enough to worry about before the aliens. “They have to be aware of our existence, so why haven’t they attempted communication?”
She leaned forwards, her thin frame projecting determination and concern. “We have no choice but to prepare on the assumption that we are facing hostility, perhaps an invasion. If they are friendly, well and good. If they are not…”
“There is the danger,” Cardona pointed out, “of our accidentally sparking a war on our own ground before they even arrive. And if we reinforce the moon we may trigger a rebellion.”
“Too bad,” snapped President Liu. China had responded to its lunar-separatist problems a lot more roughly than the US had its own. “We should have cleaned those separatists out before they started to unite to the level of real danger!”
“Water under the bridge,” said the Caliph. “A military solution is right; we could destroy everything we want to preserve.”
Cardona said nothing. The urgent need for Helium-3 ensured that the Great Powers would push to maintain their control over the lunar mines, to say nothing of the scoops orbiting Saturn and Jupiter. Humanity had been dependent for too long upon oil to repeat that mistake intentionally… but it was a dangerous line to walk. Without a steady supply of Helium-3 fuelling them, Earth’s economies would grind to a halt. But if a moon rebellion were triggered, the resulting devastation would destroy the mines and the world economy anyway.
“It’s possible,” Prime Minister Keck mused, “that the Lunar Independence Front will accept this requirement given the circumstances. The settlers often take a more pragmatic view of things than some of our own citizens. The threat may be more apparent to them.”
“The only way the Front would accept more forces on the moon would be if those forces were put under their own command,” said Cardona ruefully.
The American colonies, like the British and Caliphate ones, had their own semi-democratic assemblies, and at least something of a voice in their own affairs. The European, Russian and Chinese colonies were governed by appointed strongmen from the homeworld. Some of the larger corporations also had colonies, which had been the source of some of the nastier revolts.
“That’s unthinkable,” Zakharova snapped.
“We’re getting off-topic,” Keck said. “Unless they change course, in six months this alien fleet will reach Earth orbit. We have to be ready by then.”
“My organization has come up with a proposal,” said Davenport. “We have plenty of our own craft capable of reaching the alien fleet. We can send a ship, or several, to intercept the aliens and meet them short of Earth. In the event the aliens are hostile, there would be some warning. Time to prepare for war around Earth orbit.”
“Director Hussein’s proposal,” said Cardona.
There were a couple of chuckles. Selene Observatory’s director had in fact made the proposal, shortly after her announcement of the fleet.
A hundred starships, he thought. Each more massive than humanity’s largest, and clearly far more advanced. It would change the balance of power in the solar system; it was almost certain that each of the other Great Powers would try to make a private agreement with the aliens. Certainly the State Department had indicated an upcoming proposal to him along those lines.
“A joint mission, then?” he said.
“An armed mission,” said President Liu. “If we begin now, we could line up a meaningful defence force before they arrive. We can easily equip those ships not currently armed, and of course we’ve done our own research into space warfare possibilities…”
Cardona smiled, thinly.
“And if they opened fire, we’d have a look at what their weapons are capable of,” he said.
Officially, the Great Powers limited their weapons research. Unofficially, all seven were working furiously to develop new weapons and tactics for their use. Space warfare theory was a confusing field of study, but all projections said that the practice of it would likely be long hours of boredom interspersed with moments of terrifying danger.
“Damn it,” said Keck, “what the hell do they want?”
The discussion went back and forth without much structure; Keck held his gavel but didn’t use it. The real agreement had already been made, in principle; it was the details that were now to be worked out, and reactions to some of the possibilities. Cardona was surprised by some of those; that the aliens might want to establish their own colony on Mars or perhaps Venus, or perhaps on one or more of the outer planets’ uncolonized moons.
A brief argument over who’d have overall command when the aliens arrived was, by mutual agreement, tabled for later. Cardona knew that Congress and the Senate would never allow American spacemen to serve under Chinese or Russian command, and he suspected those countries’ legislatures would have the same problems accepting US command over their space assets.
After an hour of carefully vague discussion – nobody wanted to reveal their own strengths, or how much they knew about the others’ – President Cardona concluded, “We can certainly establish much larger defence networks.” Specifics could be worked out by ministries and staffers; if the IAU supervised, it might be possible to place far more weapons in Earth orbit without giving one Power temptation to strike first against the others.
“We may want to evacuate the orbital stations when the aliens get closer,” Cardona said.
“That would be a serious problem,” said President Gerwulf, shaking his bald head firmly. “We need the products manufactured in orbit.”
“Then move some of your platforms out toward the asteroid belt,” said Keck. “If the aliens are hostile, those platforms are all but defenceless. A single missile would destroy your investments.”
The discussion shifted, becoming more heated with indirect jabs at each other about other projects going on in the asteroid belt. Cardona kept his mouth shut, although it was no surprise to hear that the Chinese knew a little about the secret American program. America knew a thing or two about the secret Chinese one, after all.
He’d sometimes thought it would be a lot easier if everyone just agreed to broadcast every message in the clear – but some pretence at secrecy did have to be maintained. Some of the manufacturing platforms could be sent away from Earth on slow, minimally disruptive orbits, just in case. Others would stay above Earth until the very last moment, supporting the defence program.
“There’s a final issue,” said Keck as people prepared to adjourn. “If the aliens do prove hostile, we will have to expand our stockpiles of Helium-3. Can we all agree to fund expansion of the lunar mines?”
“If we pay for it, they may well expand the mines themselves,” said Cardona.
The bottleneck for everyone had always been the cost of shipping more people out of Earth’s gravity well. It was no surprise that children born outside of it were less interesting in supporting Earth; few of them had ever been there, or were likely to go.
“Given the other demands on our resources,” Cardona went on, “it might be tricky to force them to expand their supplies.”
Keck murmured for a moment.
“True,” he said. The British Prime Minister glanced down at a list of rough minutes; aides would transfer the tentative agreements and limited plans into usable details to be worked out at that level. 
The tricky part would be to ensure no other power succeeded in making a separate deal with the aliens – or, for that matter, the Rockrats. For all anyone knew right now, the aliens might turn out to be Rockrats themselves. Or communists, or fascists, or… there was no way of knowing.
“Six months until the world changes again,” the Prime Minister mused. “Are we going to be ready?”
“We’ll make ourselves ready,” said Cardona. “Think of this as a great opportunity.”
“Think of this as a great threat,” President Liu said. “We know nothing at all about these aliens. I cannot help but wonder: just how much do they know about us?”

Chapter Four: Preparing the Ground

Lunar City, Lunar Surface
Crowds surged around Samra Hussein as she headed for an elevator on the arrivals deck of Lunar City. It was a massive underground complex, most of it, built by entrepreneur Sam Bova as a safe haven where miners and their families could relax between shifts. Its detractors had called it a waste of resources; Bova had taken fire from sceptical investors. They’d been proven spectacularly wrong – and made a ton of money – when the place had become the most popular location on the Moon, a freeport that accepted anyone from anywhere. 
She reached a bank of elevators. They all went down, and as she arrived one opened. She jostled her way in, crowded between a miner in off-shift coveralls and a young woman in barely anything. Luna City claimed to be the least religious place on the moon, and Samra believed it; there were three major casinos, dozens of bars, any number of whorehouses… and only one place of faith.
It didn’t help that Lunar City was now a self-governing enclave, the centre of the Lunar independence movement. Russian and Chinese miners visited, completely against their countries’ regulations, and came back with ideas of independence. Dangerous ideas, to their governments…
The elevator slowed, its doors opening out onto the high-ceilinged Main Concourse. Unlike the functional grey designs of most lunar colonies, this one was decorated, between the mall-like store entrances, with colourful designs that made her eyes widen slightly. Lunar City was not a place to bring young children.
“Samra!” came a voice from behind her. “Welcome to the Lunar Capital!”
Samra turned to see a short, wild-haired man in a brightly-coloured suit; personality launched from every aspect of him, from the mauve suit to the wild white beard and slicked-back green hair. Karl Bova was the son of Sam Bova, the entrepreneur who had founded Luna City; he would have been attractive if he hadn’t put so much work into looking unusual. Some people questioned his sanity, but nobody questioned his competence or determination. Lunar City had expanded tenfold into a real Lunar capital since he’d taken over from his father.
“The camera algorithms picked you up as you came in,” he explained. “I thought I’d welcome you personally.”
“Thank you,” she said. She had technically bent the rules by ensuring that Bova’s attention was drawn to the discovery, but there had been little choice; she desperately wanted to go meet the aliens. If that involved spending time playing politics, it was a price she was willing to pay.
Bova took her arm and escorted her onto the Concourse, which was packed with thousands of people in all kinds of dress. Most were enjoying themselves; rich miners and wealthy visitors sampling real pork, cow and chicken from the farms Bova had established. There were poorer visitors too, some of them trying to reverse that status by playing at the garishly-coloured digital slot machines in alcoves between the storefronts. Vendors with trays of drugs, alcohol and food passed by, hawking their wares.
“The entire place is buzzing with excitement!” Bova proclaimed as they headed down the concourse. Samra felt people staring at her; she kept her face blank, hoping Bova’s presence would deter attention. It was surprising no press had come onto her, but maybe Bova had something to do with that.
“Aliens! In our lifetime!” Bova went on. “What else could you have brought that would have caused such excitement?”
“I don’t know,” said Samra. “What is going to happen now?”
Bova led them right, onto a smaller and less-crowded corridor. They passed a bank of ATMs, neon lighting advertising exchange in seven currencies. Next to them were a line of digital slot machines.
“You’re going to give a press conference,” Bova said. “As one of the Lunar-born, you’re going to be telling everyone how the moon enabled you to see the aliens before anyone else. Before the UN decides to drop a few thousand soldiers here and take away our national independence.”
National independence? Samra blinked. She tried to be apolitical, but nobody in as politically-sensitive a job as hers could afford to be completely clueless when it came to politics. The IAU would be furious over her decision, even if their own regulations had justified it. It would have been easier if the moon were independent or unified, and not a patchwork of independent states, semi-independent states, corporate states and directly-ruled-from-Earth colonies. Governments had their position on Lunar independence; people like Karl Bova differed. Everyone had been waiting for years for the other shoe to drop.
“We have our sources on Earth,” said Bova, “and we know that the United Nations Special Security Council held an emergency session yesterday.” Guards nodded at them, mostly at Bova, as they cleared a restricted area of the city. Bova signed their paychecks; they knew who the boss was. “That’s the council that only allows world leaders to sit at the table, and we have some reason to believe they came to decisions about cooperation when the aliens get closer.”
The tone of his voice made it clear that he expected that, as the semi-official representative of the Lunar colonies, he wanted to attend as well.
“By the way,” he paused, “have you heard anything from them?”
Samra shook her head. “Nothing,” she said curtly. “I find it impossible to believe they don’t have radio, but there’s been no attempt to signal us. Some of my people think that’s ominous.”
“And why?” Bova asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I honestly don’t know,” Samra admitted. “The IAU banned all attempts to communicate with the aliens, several hours after word got out. But in that time there were several hundred signals sent, almost certainly confusing them. They may be waiting to talk once we have a confirmed embassy out there.”
They came to the door of a room, guards outside of it nodding respect to Bova as they showed. They didn’t, yet, lower their assault carbines.
“And so you’re determined to have that meeting with the aliens,” Bova said. “You give this conference, Samra, and you’ll have a lot of people convinced that you should be included on the flight to meet them.”
The guards stepped aside as Bova reached to open the door “The conference is in an hour,” he said. “We’ve had reporters flooding in. Knock them dead!”
Samra smiled wanly as she stepped through the door; it was a small refresher room, a green room with sofas, what passed for a wash-stand in the minimal Lunar gravity, and closets. A little of Karl Bova could go a long way, but she’d made her choice. The Caliphate had already started proclaiming her an Islamic Heroine, and while that might call her neutrality into question, it wouldn’t be easy to avoid a brief visit to Arabia to meet the Caliph himself.
She stepped into the shower-like fresher booth and ran a hand through her hair as the digital screen began suggesting cosmetic options, all of which she ignored. Her hair was short, as long hair was discouraged for safety reasons on space habitats. It contrasted with her dark skin as she undressed from the transit skinsuit and replaced it with a plain grey business suit. It would never have passed muster on Earth – the close-able jacket-cuffs and pant-bottoms were designed to provide protection against an atmospheric leak, and instead of heels she wore elegant black boots – but it was as close as she could come on the moon to formalwear.
She looked herself over in the mirror, applying a dash of powder to her face. She was barely into her forties but looked thirty; despite two doctorates, growing up under low gravity tended to have that effect, making you look younger. “The things we do for funding…”

* * *

The things we do for money, thought reporter Spencer O’Dowd, although he himself considered Lunar City the most interesting place on the Moon. It was, after all, where the stories were, he thought as he headed down a slot-machine-lined corridor toward the Concourse.
He was a short, slightly hyperactive man in his forties with a receding black hairline; he’d been compared to Karl Bova and he didn’t mind that, since he himself considered the agitator one of the most interesting people on the Moon. He’d been kicked off Earth, meaning out of New York City, after a dispute with his editor – the intent had almost certainly been to get him out of her hair. Maybe she’d hoped he’d defect to a Lunar syndicate or something. Instead, she’d dropped the scoop of a lifetime into his lap!
“You really, really think I’m not going to use it?” O’Dowd muttered as he shouldered aside a two-bit stringer and placed himself firmly, edging aside that shaven-headed CNN bitch, in his preferred vantage point. “Fuck you. Fuck you.”
He adjusted the optical sensor on his shoulder and aimed it toward the stage; Lunar City had tight laws on what could be recorded there. What happened on Lunar City stayed on Lunar City, as the advertisements proclaimed. The press conference itself would be recorded – that was a given – but no more, outside the camera angles, would be. You never knew what could come up incidentally, and what shouldn’t.
Karl Bova, the hyperactive madman, appeared at the podium and began to talk. O’Dowd tuned most of it out; it was the same old stuff, although playing this time to what might be a new audience. Every election cycle, politicians would announce their determination to extract more Helium-3 from the Moon; every new set of administrations would discover the risk in pressing that powderkeg too hard.
“And now,” Bova finished, “Director Samra Hussein.” There was a round of applause from the Lunar-born reporters and polite clapping from everyone else in the crowded room.
O’Dowd studied Hussein with interest. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much in her public file, other than how she’d been born in the Subhnallah Colony, which had been established half a century ago by the Caliphate. Academic records in her public profile showed a BS in physics from a respected Caliphate university, an MS in astrophysics from Oxford and doctorates in astrophysics from MIT and astrobiology from Stanford. She looked younger than the forty her records had indicated she was, but she would have looked even younger if she’d grown her hair longer; the IAU wouldn’t have trusted her to run the Observatory if she hadn’t been competent.
He listened carefully as she outlined what had been learned so far, in the two days since the alien fleet had been discovered. Most of it was scanty and imprecise, which didn’t surprise O’Dowd; he could tell from their expressions that some of the other reporters felt differently. They were used to a single world you could cross within hours, but space was different; space was bigger. It took weeks to go from Earth to Mars, longer to the asteroid belt. There was a reason the Bridge Ships were so huge – and according to Director Hussein now, the alien ships were even more massive.
A reporter from one of the British colonies called out a question: “Do the aliens even know we’re here?”
“I believe they must,” Hussein replied. “We have been broadcasting signals into space for more than two hundred years, meaning anyone within that many light-years of Earth will know that we’re here. It’s inconceivable that they could have star travel without radio receptors, although they haven’t yet responded to us.”
“Do we know what they want?” O’Dowd’s shaven-headed competitor from CNN asked. “Are they an invasion force?”
Hussein’s smile flickered; clearly, she thought the question was stupid.
“It would be logistically difficult to prosecute a war across interstellar distance. You might remember how much trouble we had colonizing the moon and Mars, and cosmically speaking both worlds are right next to Earth. So far there’s no evidence the aliens have super-technology like faster-than-light drives; what we can see puts them as more advanced than we are but not much more advanced. With a few years of work, we could get to where we think they are…”
The questions continued, and Hussein’s answers impressed O’Dowd. She was answering them with enough detail to convince everyone that she knew what she was talking about, which would make her popular on Earth. Most talking heads spoke in bullshit riddles to cover their ignorance; Director Hussein had the confidence to admit her own ignorance, which in O’Dowd’s view would resonate to a bullshit-weary public. She was willing to admit that humanity didn’t know most of what needed to be known. That, the seasoned reporter thought, would look good. It made her credible.
Presently the conference ended. O’Dowd waited for most of the press to leave, while Hussein talked with Bova. He felt his respect grow; the woman was all too human. She was real. The viewing public would love her.
As he approached, Hussein turned from Bova. Her eyes were tired but intelligent.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” O’Dowd said. “But I’d like to talk further with you about the aliens and the welcoming fleet you suggested. Do you have plans for dinner this evening?”
Her eyes flickered over him. It wasn’t an ‘oh, that’s nice’ examination or a ‘not fucking likely’ one, but a more dispassionate one. They weren’t going to bed anytime soon, but that wasn’t his interest anyway. If she could be convinced to help him, or to let him help her…
“I do not have plans this evening,” said Hussein, after just long enough that he could see she’d considered the matter. “I would be delighted to accept your invitation.”
Bova was typing on his phone. “You two go eat at the Mad Duck,” he said. “I just told them to expect you. Private room?”
“Thank you,” said O’Dowd. He owed the Lunar City madman a favour, which was probably what the man had been banking on. Bova was crazy but not stupid, and making nice to the press was as an important an aspect of the man’s quest for Lunar independence as the… armed aspects O’Dowd was quietly sure were happening but hadn’t yet been able to find evidence of.
Hussein said nothing as they shouldered their way back toward the Concourse, crowds increasing as they walked. Some people, more astute than others, had seen the press conference and noticed Director Hussein; most were focused on their own pleasures. Lunar City was like that.
The line for entry to the Mad Duck was several dozen people, many of them playing on their phones while they waited. O’Dowd went to the head of it, where a sharply-dressed bouncer with an eyepiece recognized them immediately. Facial recognition algorithms through the eyepiece, most likely.
“Mr. O’Dowd, Director Hussein,” the bouncer said. “Come right in, please.”
A few people glared at them for jumping the line; O’Dowd shrugged it off and Hussein didn’t appear to notice. A hostess in a cocktail dress and improbably high heels took them through the crowded restaurant to a comfortable private room; Bova had organized the real VIP treatment for them. One-way mirrors gave a view of the bustling restaurant, which was one of Lunar City’s most exclusive. O’Dowd noticed mining magnates on the floor, a well-known porn star, a couple of successful professional gamblers.
“So what do you want?” Hussein asked when they were seated. O’Dowd had ordered his usual drink, a double Glenlivet; Hussein had ordered a cocktail that looked alcoholic but didn’t contain a drop. She was a scientist but also at her level, by necessity, to some extent a politician; of course, thought O’Dowd, she’d have tricks like that. His respect for the Director went up another notch.
He had to smile. The woman was good-looking enough that men would be asking her out all the time, even though his own motives in that regard were as pure as newly-fallen snow. His interest lay in a different direction. And he sensed from how she’d presented herself at the press conference that only honesty would work.
“I want a place on the welcoming fleet,” he said, leaning over the dark wood table at her. “In return, I can make you a star…”

Chapter Five: The Defence of the World

Washington, DC
“She’s quite a clever little self-publicist, isn’t she?” remarked General William Denny, Commander of the United States Continental Command.
President Cardona gave his old friend a droll look. “She’s also someone who spotted this threat with enough time that we can respond,” he said. “But that doesn’t matter right now; our task is making sure we get equal or superior access to whatever the aliens are offering – if they’re offering anything. And that we defend ourselves, if they’re a threat. As a nation, and hopefully as part of a global alliance.”
He stood up and began to pace, back and forth behind his chair in the secure briefing room. It was similar to the one in Geneva, guarded electromagnetically against every known form of surveillance. The walls were bare, for easy sweeping, except for a large American flag hanging behind him.
“We’ll determine later exactly how the welcome fleet will be comprised,” he said. “Our priority right now is to make sure we have something to bargain with, if it comes down to a war. Politically we have a balance to walk: between being seen as aggressors, versus having too much faith in their goodwill. We must prepare.”
Everyone had known that humanity would eventually encounter aliens – but not many people had expected it to happen in their lifetimes, particularly a race as mundane as these seemed to be. Where were the exponentially superior technology, the faster-than-light drives, the psionic abilities? The people, now, who claimed to have made contact with aliens were being laughed at – the kindest responses had been that their aliens had obviously been very different to the ones now heading for Earth.
And there was no doubt of that. Which worried the President, who had sat in on a number of planning sessions. The human Message Bearer project had been aimed at establishing a base in the asteroids of Tau Ceti before heading inward to the habitable-seeming world the telescopes had detected. It would have been supremely ironic if the aliens had been coming from there, but it looked instead like they were coming from a very different part of the sky. Simple prudence would have indicated establishing a base somewhere outer in the system, but the aliens hadn’t stopped; they were still coming in toward Earth. Which implied… what?
He steepled his fingers as he sat down. “Admiral?”
Admiral Nelson Oshiro was a sturdy Japanese-American, commander of the United States Space Force in which he’d spent his entire career. The USSF might have based many of its traditions on the wet-navy it had originated from, but it had a few quirks of its own; one of them being a reluctance to spend much time on formalities. The traditionalists in the older service branches might have decried that as laxity, but the sinking of the USS William Jefferson Clinton during the Taiwan War, and the USSF’s subsequent saving of a disastrous situation, had proven them beyond all doubt to be the premier service.
But right now there was worry on the Space Force commander’s face.
“My office has been working on various scenarios for decades,” he said in a grim voice. He, like many others, had cursed his country’s failure to develop space before the other Great Powers got there. The US could have had a commanding head start; they’d let it drop. “Although we only have limited information on the aliens’ actual capabilities, there’s nothing to indicate we’re facing an impossible foe.”
“With all due respect,” said National Security Advisor Casper Henderson, “is there any actual proof the aliens are necessarily hostile?”
“None,” said Chairwoman Jessie Bark of the Joint Chiefs. “But in military terms, we look at capabilities, not intentions. Intentions change, and we could perceive them wrong. Even if we made contact tomorrow and became convinced they were friendly, we’d still have to continue analysing them as a potential threat.”
“The fact remains,” Oshiro continued, “that we know almost nothing about their capabilities. Their ships may all be warships, or they may genuinely be expecting to find nobody in our system. If we were the ones arming those ships, we’d have turned them into carriers rather than direct warships. At that size they’d be easy targets for our missiles.”
“Unless they have force fields or something else we don’t know about,” said General Denny.
“Unless,” agreed Oshiro. “Mr. President, if it does come down to war – will we be on our own, or working alongside the other Powers?”
Cardona felt oddly uncomfortable.
“It’s impossible to say,” he said. “If the aliens decide to greet our welcome fleet with a hail of missiles, we’ll have no choice but to conclude they’re hostile and join forces with the other Powers – and we do already have some working agreements to that effect. But shared command may not materialize. Assume we won’t have direct control over anything without the Stars and Stripes on it. We may work out some kind of an agreement, but don’t hold your breath.”
“Yes sir,” said Oshiro. “In that case, expect the aliens to attempt to seize control of lower-earth orbit before they land, assuming they plan to invade. That’s the worst-case scenario, unless they’re going instead for Mars or Venus. We’ve simulated possible conflicts in LEO for decades and every outcome the models predict would be disastrous. If they destroy or capture most of our space-based infrastructure, we’ll be cut off from the rest of the Solar System and strangled.
“Unfortunately,” the Admiral went on, “we may not be able to fight them off. The vast majority of our space-based weapons are on fairly immobile orbiting platforms, easy targets. The manoeuvrable systems might get blows in, but if it does come down to fighting… whatever happens, the civilian infrastructure will be devastated. Completely. We need more warships, but building them might be tricky in the time we have.”
The President nodded slowly. Humanity had once hoped space would be a place of peace, but that illusion had only lasted until the Seven Powers had gotten to where they could use it for military advantage. There weren’t many purpose-built warships yet – the USSF had all of twenty-one tiny spacecraft designed specifically for fighting – but it would be possible to arm a lot of others in a pinch. Expanding rapidly would be difficult, in part because of various treaties but also due to infrastructure limitations. And if the industrial modules remained in orbit producing components, they’d be destroyed in hours if the aliens opened fire.
Oshiro, after a pause, said, “Area 51.”
“You propose,” Cardona said slowly, “starting the expansion program. Can that be done without tipping off the other Powers?”
“It depends on how much they may already know,” Oshiro said. “Under current circumstances, they might not object too much to a rapid expansion.”
The IAU might have been encouraged not to track national spacecraft too closely, but the other Powers didn’t have that restriction. America tracked their craft, after all. And the CIA was almost certain that America’s rivals had their own versions of Area 51.
“Perhaps,” said the President. “I assume we have plans for advanced warships already written up.” It wasn’t a question.
“Insofar as anyone can build warships,” Oshiro said with a shrug. “Bottom-line, we can expand our orbital defences as much as possible, but a real shooting fight is going to be devastating whatever the outcome. If the alien ships really are carriers, they will probably be able to knock us completely out of LEO without much trouble.”
“Brief me in detail on the plans later,” the President said. He glanced around the room, finally settling his gaze upon General Denny.
“William,” he asked his old friend, “the aliens are landing. What now?”
Denny tapped a map on the table
“Two years ago,” he said, “we conducted a set of worst-case wargames that assumed we completely lost control over space, while our theoretical opponent, an alliance between Russia and China, maintained full control.”
Cardona frowned. He remembered reading those reports; the simulations had shown complete devastation.
“We assumed,” the general went on, “that neither of our opponents, even with command of space, would seek to invade our heartland. That invasion would be bloody and very difficult logistically. Our conclusion was that they’d settle for grabbing a few vital locations like the Panama Canal, and declare it a victory.
“Unfortunately, we can’t rely on the aliens being that rational. We’re seriously hampered by having no clue as to what their ground forces might even be like. They could be tanks and battlesuits; they could be robotic fighting machines; they could be something completely, well… alien. It’s difficult,” he paused, “to prepare for an opponent one knows nothing about.
“We’ve planned on the assumption they intend nothing less than complete conquest,” Denny continued. “Logically, and assuming they’re human-sized and have human-like requirements, there could be around a billion in their fleet. That’s a formidable force by any means, and they will have complete control of space. Our exercises make it clear: if they’re over our heads able to drop rocks and tank-killers, manoeuvring large forces will be impossible. The fighting might be reduced to National Guard forces and pre-placed Army units, including battlesuits and stealth tanks, as opposed to a continental-scale land war.
“I must admit,” he concluded, “it’s not an optimistic prediction. We would be distributing units around continental North America with instructions to engage only when or if the aliens land. In the long run our losses will probably be appalling, but frankly – if we lose control of space, we might as well accept that we’re going to suffer badly in a ground war. Our limited knowledge only makes handling them that much harder; they might not care about the land at all. They might be water-breathers. We can only make a few suggestions and prepare, if we must, to pivot completely at very short notice.”
The President nodded, then turned to Joint Chiefs Chairwoman Jessie Bark.
“Mr. President,” she said formally with a slight bow of her head, “it is the recommendation of my office that you declare a full state of emergency and activate the Reserves. Once they’re up and running, we can recall the forces we’ve placed across the world, including the anti-Wrecker units in Africa. I’ve taken the liberty of putting those commanders on notice that they may be recalled fairly soon, although that’s going to have diplomatic fallout.”
The President scowled. The US forces operating inside the Exclusion Zone were doing so only with reluctant permission from the British Commonwealth’s member state South Africa, and the Europeans, who ruled North Africa. The Caliphate had never been openly asked – politically, it had been difficult to have that discussion with Mecca – but through covert discussions they’d quietly agreed to officially look the other way at the American incursions. This quid pro quo had involved US support against those countries’ enemies… which would be reduced if the American task forces left Africa.
“I’ll worry about that with State,” he said. “What about putting more troops on the moon?”
“We’d like to at least station more space-rated forces there,” said Oshiro. “Politically, we’d be within our rights to, so long as we kept the other Great Powers informed…”
Casper Henderson leaned forward, one hand playing with the spectacles on his nose. It was an affectation that sometimes annoyed the President; Henderson’s eyes had been fully repaired a long time ago.
“That might set off a Lunar rebellion,” the National Security Advisor warned. “These aren’t the days of Lawson and Hastings, when dissent could easily be crushed. There are hundreds of thousands of people on the moon now, many of them talking about a united Lunar state.”
“Treason,” said Oshiro flatly. “We built that damned rock into one of the most important assets in the Solar System. It’s ours.”
“If it be treason,” said Henderson, “so was George Washington’s. Revolts happen, Admiral, when people feel like they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by revolting. As happened when Hastings was in charge, and Bova’s a lot smarter. You may consider it treason and I may agree with you, but what have we done to engender loyalty from them?”
Cardona eyed the man. “Do you have an alternative suggestion?”
“We ship them weapons,” Henderson said, “that can be used to defend themselves against alien attack. But not ones that can be used in a revolt.”
“They’ll be turned on us anyway,” Oshiro snapped. “You know that space warfare isn’t easy; a single breach in a spaceship’s hull can mean disaster. What will stop them using these weapons against us?”
Henderson met the admiral’s eyes. “The moon, too, is dependent on components produced in LEO. If they cause us trouble, we can blockade them. Hell, with the cloud-mining projects coming online around Jupiter and Saturn, we’re not even going to need the moon so much going forwards.”
President Cardona decided to intervene before it could get too heated: “We’re getting off-subject,” he said with a firm look at both men. “Admiral, please see that some additional anti-space weapons are shipped to our moon colonies.”
“Yes sir,” Oshiro said.
The President looked around the room. “Congress will be meeting tomorrow, and I will be asking them to vote on declaring a state of emergency. We may already need to declare one; the alien fleet’s discovery has had an impact on the economy. We also have to get Area 51 started on building some of their designs. Admiral, ensure that Admiral Waikoloa has everything he needs to develop the force.”
Oshiro nodded, but there was a frown on his face. “Mr. President, the more we send him, the higher the chance other Powers will notice us shipping material to the Belt. It’s not going to be easy, security-wise.”
“The only group we really need to hide it from are the aliens,” Cardona said. He didn’t like risking the loss of one of America’s best-guarded secrets, but the situation was no longer the same. “How much do they know about us?”
“We’ve had teams considering that for several days,” said Oshiro. “Assuming they’ve been intercepting our transmissions, they could know a great deal – everything from our appearance to some of our languages, most certainly English. Most secure transmissions are by laser nowadays, but they might well be able to decipher anything we send out with radio, no matter the encryption levels. But on the other hand, the aliens could be so – different – that nothing of ours makes any sense to them at all. We have no way of knowing.”
The USSF’s commander paused, then went on: “They may well have a good picture of what we do have in the Belt. Rockrats don’t normally use fusion burns if they have the option not to, but the bridge ships do; so do the fastships. They should easily be able to track those at that range. We never pointed the way to Area 51 like that, of course, but… things can be inferred.”
“There’s no way to know until the hammer falls,” concluded the President. He stood up, placed his hands on the table and glanced around the room. “We may be overreacting here; the aliens may well be friendly. But there’s no way of knowing, so we have to take the prudent course. I expect that each and every one of you will carry out your duty with the same dedication you have always shown.”
He looked down at the table.
“Six months,” he said. “Six months…”
“Five months,” Oshiro said, “three weeks and one day.”
“Six months,” President Cardona mused again, ignoring the admiral. He glanced at the big map on the table, which had been updated to show the current deployment of major American forces, and the known deployments of the other Great Powers as of this morning. He wondered what it would look like in six months. “A lot can change in half a year…”

Chapter Six: Area 51

Area 51, Asteroid Belt
Aliens! thought Admiral Paul Waikoloa as he stood in his office, for once heedless of the faint tug of his magnetic boots, and stared at the image on his screens. Aliens! The part of Waikoloa’s mind that was endlessly fascinated by the sheer scale of outer space was delighted; it was proof, at last, that humanity was no longer alone in the universe. The trained and dedicated military officer that dominated, most of the time, was concerned; like it or not, the aliens had introduced a new factor into the increasingly tense political situation. It could get explosive.
He knew, without false modesty, that he was good at his job. He had joined the USSF as a young man and had been streamlined into service as part of the highly-classified Esoteric Threats Assessment Unit, a department that had studied the potentials of space warfare against the other human powers, or even an alien force. That post might have earned him his classified commission as Admiral and his even more classified post on Area 51, a hidden base among the asteroids. The planners had worried about the potential damage caused by even a brief exchange among the Great Powers; Area 51 was not just a test bed, but also a secret production facility, unknown to anyone outside the Pentagon.
He took another sip of his tea, held neatly in a beaker; one of the disadvantages of the secret nature of the base was that it couldn’t be spun to provide a gravity field. That would have tipped off any Rockrat who stumbled too close to what looked, on first glance, to be a nearly worthless asteroid – although there was really no such thing – to the real nature of the base, and the Rockrat Association would be…alarmed to discover the base. Rockrats talked endlessly to each other, trading the pleasure of personal company for long-distance radio communications; the news about the base would be flashed across the solar system before anyone could stop it. Rockrats owed no loyalty to the United States of America; many of them would be quite happy if Earth vanished tomorrow. They would see the base as a dagger aimed at them…
Which, Waikoloa was prepared to admit, was more accurate than he would have liked it to be. Everyone knew – well, everyone who didn’t have their head stuck up their ass – that control of space and the resources in space would determine which of the Great Powers would become the greatest. So far, there were only a tiny handful of warships, counting all of the ships in the system, but Area 51 had been designed to start producing warships at a great rate…should they become needed. Waikoloa was convinced that, sooner or later, there would be war; separatists on the moon, the Rockrats, the Jewish colony on Titan…all of them would provide a potential flashpoint for an armed struggle right out of a science-fiction nightmare. Instead, aliens…
His hatch chimed. “Come in,” he called, already knowing who would be there. The hatch hissed open, revealing his exec, Captain Callie Brown. A tall blonde woman who looked perkier under zero-gravity than she would have in a proper gravity field, she had qualifications in half a dozen different subjects and experience in space warfare, something that was surprisingly rare among the USSF. Space combat just didn’t happen very often. “Captain.”
“Admiral,” Brown said, as she stamped across to stand beside him. Waikoloa winced; that battle had been fought and lost a long time ago. The base would never be spun up to produce a gravity field…even if it did leave everyone stamping around if they had a chip on their collective shoulder. Area 51 had too many disadvantages for it to be a very popular posting, even if some of the equipment was luxurious; the fraternisation rules had been relaxed more than any traditionalist would have considered proper. “I have completed the inspection routine.”
Waikoloa had to smile. “Aliens coming to the solar system and we’re still running inspections,” he said. It wasn’t that surprising; the news had caused a minor panic across the solar system, with prices for Helium-3 soaring before the United Nations Security Council capped it, much to the anger of the miners on the moon. The offer of additional financial inducements for the miners hadn’t defused all the anger; like all good Americans, the miners considered their right to earn as much as they could paramount. “At least we’re not panicking…”
Brown shook her head. There had been panic across the globe once it sank in that there really were aliens coming to Earth, from America to Japan and the Caliphate. All sorts of crazies were coming out of the woodwork, from neo-communists in South America to more unreformed Muslim groups in Africa and even some parts of Arabia. Nearly fifty years since the overthrow of the House of Saud and the last unreformed Islamic government; it astonished Waikoloa that any of them could still believe that they had a chance to overthrow the Caliphate and restore their barbaric states. The protesters in America and Europe were equally astonishing; they believed that the aliens were definitely friendly, super-advanced beings who would take the human race to new heights of civilisation. Waikoloa would have settled for an advanced launch system, ending the endless bottleneck of reaching LEO…
“True,” Brown agreed. She grinned faintly. “I was discussing the matter with the research teams studying fusion drives for the future; they’re pretty certain that we can duplicate the alien drives within a year, maybe even less. There’s nothing really new in them; it looks as if they merely achieve much greater levels of efficiency than we do. It’s unlikely that we will achieve a monopoly on the drive tech, but we can at least put a few units into production.”
Waikoloa nodded; the only clear proof that the aliens had anything that was more advanced than what humanity possessed…and it was something fairly simple. The dreamers who talked of faster-than-light drives, or antigravity, would be disappointed; Area 51 had been exploring countless possibilities that had somehow never been translated into reality. Maybe one day, humanity would break the light barrier, but until them, the iron laws of Einstein still held good.
“And, of course, we know nothing about what weapons they possess,” Waikoloa said. Area 51 had invented more than a few nasty tricks for American warships; he was pretty certain that the other Great Powers and the Rockrats had invented their own weapons as well. Space warfare was a confusion business; it was nothing like when his father and grandfather had marched through Mexico and Central America, seeking to enforce peace on the region. “They could have everything we have, or something that we don’t even have on the drawing board.”
“They will certainly have the numbers advantage,” Brown said. The total population of the human solar system was ten billion, but more than nine billion lived on Earth; the moon, Mars and the asteroids didn’t account for that much of the population. The Rockrats valued manpower beyond anything else; they had been willing, years ago, to accept women from the various exclusion zones on Earth as brides, just to boost their population. Waikoloa found it impossible to believe that the aliens would have brought ten billion or more of their own people alone, but with most of the human population trapped on Earth, they might not need ten billion to win…
He rubbed his head. If, of course, the aliens had come looking for a fight…
“And our orders are to do something about that,” he said. The United States would be launching some of its orbital industrial units out towards the asteroid belt, placing them away from any possible alien attack…unless, of course, the alien fleet split up and assaulted the asteroids. It hardly mattered; none of the units could be pointed towards Area 51 without breaking the secrecy. The large colony on Ganymede would receive most of them eventually – there were enough Americans there to make something useful from the industrial units – but it would put them out of action for at least two months. That would leave them only three months to produce components for defence. “What did the think tank have to say?”
“Doctor Kelly Jorgensen told me that the design for the first advanced warship has been finalised, checked through by professionals, repaired, and then completed,” Brown said. “She wants to show you in person, but I think that it’s a workable design; one of them can be constructed at a yard at Earth, where we can put it through trials without having to worry about compromising our secrecy. There’s nothing really new in it…”
“Then let’s go talk to her,” Waikoloa said. “I have to compose a report on our productive capabilities for the President within a week.”
Brown nodded, her face sympathetic; people on Earth rarely understood that it took time for events to happen in space. The aliens had spent years travelling through space; some of the commenters on the planet had wondered aloud why they had taken so long, let alone why they weren’t arriving tomorrow. The alien starships had been decelerating from nearly half the speed of light, but assuming they came from the closest star in that region of the sky, they would have spent at least fifteen years in transit. The program for launching a human starship towards Tau Ceti expected that the flight would take at least thirty years; volunteers were being warned, right from the start, that there would be no going back…
“I wonder what Conrad Hamilton thinks of all this,” Brown said, referring to the brains behind Message Bearer. The multi-billionaire had spent a fortune on assembling the components for the first human flight to another star; a handful of probes, everyone agreed, didn’t count. “I would think that he’d be pretty pissed.”
Waikoloa laughed. “I saw a brief update from the Pentagon,” he said. “He was talking about redirecting Message Bearer towards the alien home star…or what we think is the alien home star. Personally, I think that that’s a rather bad idea, but frankly, I’d be happier if Message Bearer was somewhere well away from the aliens when they finally reach Earth.”
The interior of Area 51 was just the same as any other asteroid habitat, from the dull corridors, mind-numbingly boring, to the carpet of air-producing grass, something that added a slight smell to the air as people walked through the corridor. Waikoloa was used to the smell by now; it existed on every space habitat or colony, even some of the bridge ships. He considered that a lunatic risk – if something went wrong on a bridge ship, it would be almost certainly impossible to rescue any of the passengers – but it made a certain kind of grim sense; running out of air would be fatal on a spacecraft.
He quickly inspected a pair of sections before entering the main cavern. Area 51 was unique in one aspect; there were no children or even young trainees assigned to the base. The Americans on the base all had contraceptive implants; Waikoloa enforced only two rules when it came to sexual relations. No children…and whatever happened in the bedchamber stayed in the bedchamber. There was little point in trying to ban sex; Waikoloa knew better than to issue an order that would never be obeyed.
“Admiral,” Doctor Kelly Jorgensen said, as they entered her office. She had a much smaller staff than most people would have expected; the endless limitations on manpower ensured that automation and semi-smart computers would have a much greater impact than anything the unions would have allowed, back on old Earth. Her staff members were mainly designers with a handful of engineers…and two people, not counting Brown, who had real experience fighting in space. “How are you today?”
They exchanged small talk for a few moments before she continued. “We have been designing warships for the last ten years,” Kelly said, telling Waikoloa something he had known for almost as long. He didn’t blame her; like most semi-civilians, Kelly couldn’t resist the chance to lecture the military officers who intruded into her domain. “The latest designs have just been finalised.”
She tapped a control. “Observe.”
Waikoloa couldn’t help, but feel a flicker of excitement as a spacecraft design appeared in front of him. A groundpounder would never have understood the excitement he felt as the spacecraft appeared and started to rotate; the design would never have won any awards for beauty, but few spacecraft could hope to actually appear attractive. Apart from the doomed attempt to create a spacecraft that bore more than an imaginary resemblance to the ancient Starship Enterprise, which had failed miserably, few spacecraft were truly awesome in appearance. The spacefarer in him saw past the appearance and knew…
The spacecraft was tiny, little more than forty metres long, composed of a handful of modules and weapon launchers, based around a fusion tube and fuel tank. It wouldn’t have a large crew – only ten men at most could operate the spacecraft without becoming far too compressed into one location – but that wasn't important, not with the computer support. Like almost all spacecraft, it would be built out of standardized parts; almost all of the Great Powers kept their basic equipment standardized, not only with their own ships, but with the other nations as well. It would be easy to construct and easy to operate…
“Acceptable,” he said finally. He saw Brown smile and knew that he had failed to hide his excitement. “How many can you produce within the five months we have before the aliens arrive?”
Kelly hesitated. “A lot would depend on how many supplies we could muster without breaching the security of this area,” she said. Waikoloa nodded grimly; Area 51 had its own miners, but every time a mining mission was launched, it ran the risk of being noticed. In theory, there would be no Rockrat activity for years in this part of the asteroid belt – the belt was so vast that it would be centuries before the rate of expansion reached Area 51 – but Waikoloa knew the hard way that security was an easy thing to breach. “Assuming that we continued at the current rate of production, we could have as many as fifty of the spacecraft ready before the aliens arrived at Earth, but we would be ramping up our own production rates to the point where we could triple that in a few extra months.”
Waikoloa scowled. He wouldn’t have thought of expanding the production machinery himself, even though it was obvious in hindsight. It would mean a trade-off, building fewer warships in the first few months to ensure that they could build additional warships later, but it might be worth it. He’d have to discuss it with the President; there were alternatives, but few of them were truly worth the risk, or the political costs…
“The real bottleneck lies in the crew,” Kelly continued. “It should be noted that we don’t have anything like enough people to crew even the first fifty ships, although we could in a pinch run them all with five crewmembers. We would need to bring up more crewmen from Earth, and that would risk breaking security, let along the need to actually give them practical hands-on experience with their ships. There’s only so far that you can go with simulations, Admiral; the crew will need some actual training…”
“I am aware of the limitations of simulations,” Waikoloa said, grimly. He strokes his chin as he studied the design for the American warship. “What about the space fighter designs?”
“There’s really little more to report since we last studied the concept,” Kelly said. She tapped the control and displayed an image of a ball-shaped craft, sitting in the middle of empty space. “The fighter design bears some resemblance to a Rockrat mining craft, but obviously we’ve replaced the mining tools with weapons and some advanced lasers…although the Rockrats might have similar lasers for mining. The catch is that they have low endurance; the Rockrats don’t mind moving slowly, but a slow-moving space fighter will be an easy target. The fusion drive is the most capable that we can produce for such a small craft, but it burns through its fuel quickly and if it runs out…”
She didn’t spell it out; Waikoloa’s mind filled in the details anyway. The hapless fighter would race off into the void of space and would be almost impossible to recover, whatever else happened. He liked to think that the USSF would do what it could to recover the pilot, and the IAU had organised an interplanetary rescue treaty which would – in theory – bind every spacefaring power to rescue any stranded pilot, but the iron laws of physics would make rescue very difficult.
“I want you to start preparing to expand our productive capabilities and produce as many warships as we can before the aliens arrive,” he said, carefully. “I’ll have to discuss it with the President and the Pentagon, but I suspect that that will be the decision they will take; fifty ships won’t make that much of a difference if the aliens are implacably hostile when they enter Earth’s orbit.”
Kelly hesitated. “It occurs to me, sir, that the other Great Powers will have similar programs of their own,” she said. Waikoloa nodded; he had taken it almost as a given, it was human nature to scheme and try to garner whatever advantage they could from any given situation. “You could recommend cooperation to the President…”
“I could, yes,” Waikoloa said. He paused; it was a good thought, but it was well above his pay grade. “I’ll mention it to him, but, for the moment, assume that Area 51 stands on its own. We should be used to that by now.”
Kelly said nothing.

Chapter Seven: The Welcome Fleet, Take One

Washington DC
“Ah, Captain Buckley,” the President said, as his aide showed the man into the room. “Have a seat, please; I’ll be with you in a moment.”
He quickly completed his brief study of the briefing paper from Area 51, marked it with his Presidential Seal, and turned to face Captain Joseph Buckley. He’d read the captain’s file carefully, although it had been sheer luck that Buckley and his spacecraft had been available for the mission. The iron laws governing the flight of the bridge ships between Earth and the outer colonies – Mars, Venus, Mercury and the moons of the various gas giants – meant that whenever a bridge ship was needed, one was never available. The Neil Armstrong, one of the largest spacecraft built by humanity, had been a month out from Earth when the aliens had been discovered.
Buckley himself was tall, blond and rugged, with a nose that showed the signs of having been broken once or twice in the past; his file claimed that it had been a training accident in the Space Force Academy. The dividing line between civilian and military spacemen was much thinner than most people assumed; Buckley might have had no real military experience, but he certainly possessed the training necessary to handle any real emergency. The Neil Armstrong wasn't a warship by any stretch of the imagination, but, like all heavy colonist-carriers, it sometimes had to deal with internal dissent. Not everyone coped well in space, even colonists who had been selected for Mars or the asteroids; Buckley had occasionally had to sedate someone who had become hysterical out in space.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, finally. Buckley would have returned to Earth somewhat unwillingly; the Neil Armstrong might be generating Earth-standard gravity as it spun, but returning to the planet had to be uncomfortable to him. “I assume that you have been following the news of the aliens?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Buckley said, as calmly as ever. The USSF would not have given an excitable man command of the Neil Armstrong. “Several of my passengers wanted to return to Mars the moment they heard about the news.”
President Cardona smiled. Thousands of colonists, from all of the Great Powers, went to Mars; not all were allowed to return. The Neil Armstrong and the handful of other bridge ships were important because, unlike most ships, they had a nearly unlimited cruising range; they could have followed Message Bearer to Tau Ceti if they didn’t mind spending years on the journey. They took colonists and certain pieces of equipment that couldn’t be launched along the slow-transit orbits to their destination; they brought back some rare materials and the occasional group of short-term colonists who had finished their contracts. What the bridge ships couldn’t do was reach high cruising speeds; what some ships could do in weeks, they took months.
“I’m not surprised,” the President said. He leaned forwards. “How do you feel about the aliens?”
Buckley looked wary. “It does rather put what we have accomplished in perspective,” he said. “That fleet of theirs is an awesome achievement, although we could duplicate it now; indeed, to some extent we have with Message Bearer. I’m not so sure that I like the sheer number of ships they have sent; if they have sent so many, that argues that they’re pretty certain that they intend to settle somewhere in the solar system. We can pack a thousand people on the Neil Armstrong if we use hibernation drugs; the alien craft could carry many more humans. If they are colonists…”
He paused. “On the other hand, I can’t see how they’re unaware of our presence, which means that they may have a plan for dealing with us, one way or the other,” he said. The President nodded inwardly; there was nothing new here, but the endless question – just what did they want – remained. “They may intend to ask if they can settle on Mars, but…if they have so many ships, it argues that they have no choice, but to come here.”
The President lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“The plan for Message Bearer is to send one ship to Tau Ceti,” Buckley said. “We know that there is a habitable world there and we believe that it is uninhabited. The aliens have made a massive investment in sending their fleet here; unless they have some super-advanced economical system that allows them to make such an investment, they have made a massive gamble on an uncertain outcome. It could be that they are refugees, fleeing from something even worse.”
The President rubbed his eyes. “That’s something none of the research teams thought of,” he said. “The general consensus is that the aliens intend to settle somewhere in the solar system.”
Buckley frowned. “Mr. President, if I may ask--” the President nodded “--has there been any communication from the alien fleet?”
“Nothing,” the President said. “The IAU has been attempting to signal them with every idea every halfway sane scientist could dream up, everything short of sending up smoke signals or launching missiles across their bows. So far, no response at all; I cannot help but find that ominous.”
He shook his head. “But that's not the issue at hand at the moment, Captain,” he said. “You may have heard that there is a great deal of pressure for the dispatch of a welcoming fleet to intercept the aliens a few weeks short of Earth itself, just to find out what they want. We believe that they will have been confused by the cacophony of messages from Earth and the asteroids; they may well talk to actual representatives from Earth itself.”
He leaned forward. “It has been decided that the Neil Armstrong will lead that fleet,” he said. Buckley’s eyes flickered with a barely-concealed delight. “There will be twenty-seven ships in all going, including at least three from each of the Great Powers, as well as a Brazilian and Israeli ship. The ships will be armed, just in case, but we hope to establish a peaceful contact.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” Buckley said. “Exactly what is the overall plan for contact?”
President Cardona stood up and paced around the room. “The Neil Armstrong itself will carry a large part of the diplomatic team, including both Director Hussein, whom you may have heard of, and at least one reporter.” Buckley made a face. “Ideally, the aliens will pause to allow you to establish communications; we will have enough scientists on board the Neil Armstrong to talk to them…unless they are completely alien, of course.”
He looked down at Buckley’s grim face. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “If the aliens are hostile, we will be sending you into terrible danger without proper support at all, or even a real chance of escape; you will be far too close to the aliens to escape before being destroyed. The mission is volunteer-only…”
“I volunteer,” Buckley said, at once. “Sir, I cannot say how much I want to do this…”
Cardona’s lips twitched. “Understandable, I guess,” he said. He understood the desire to take a role in history; who would remember the first people on Mars or Venus when compared to the man who had commanded the welcoming fleet for an alien race? Buckley would have a place in history that no man could match. “You will have tactical command of the welcome fleet, but be diplomatic; some of the Russians and Chinese will be reluctant to serve under an American.”
“Understood,” Buckley said. He paused. “And if it does come to a fight?”
“Give them hell,” the President said. “It’s one hell of a hot potato I’m dropping in your lap”
“I’ll say,” Buckley said. “Sir, what happens if the aliens just ignore us?”
The President scowled. “If they just pass your fleet, we have plans to intercept them with missiles nearer to Earth orbit,” he said. “It has been decided that we dare not risk letting them enter geostationary orbitals, let alone LEO, before we know just what they want. Try not to let it get that far, Captain…”
Buckley looked, for the first time, concerned. “Mr. President, just who is in command of Earth’s defences?”
President Cardona fought down a bitter laugh. “Well…we have some command agreements with the British, the Europeans and the Japanese,” he said. “If we lose our commanding officers in space, the British commander will take command; the same for them if they lose their commanding officers. The Japanese and the Euros have made similar agreements; the Israelis and the Brazilians have agreed to place their space-based defences, such as they are, under our command.”
He shrugged. “We have had some covert talks with the Russians, the Chinese and the Caliphate,” he said. “If it does come down to blows, they will join us in the defence of Earth, but under their command unless something goes really wrong…which, you must understand, is a hypothetical of hypotheticals. In other words, if the situation calls for it, they will join up, but only if the situation calls for it.”
“Politics,” Buckley said. He nodded once to himself. “What happens now?”
“You have a week of shore leave, as do your crewmen,” the President said. “After that, you will return to your ship and prepare for the mission, along with the other ships. Don’t let the IAU walk all over you; the UNSC agreed to back whoever ended up in command when it came to the safety of the fleet.”
He held out a hand. “Good luck, Captain.”
Buckley grasped his hand and shook it firmly. “Thank you, Mr. President,” he said. “I won’t let you down.”
* * * 
An hour later, President Cardona stood up from his desk, walked over to the side of the Oval Office, and placed his hand against a certain hidden sensor. There was a moment’s pause as the sensor checked his identity, and then a hidden door hissed open, revealing a small elevator. Cardona smiled, as he always did when he entered the secret system, and stepped inside; a moment later, the elevator was plunging down towards the heart of the secret governmental infrastructure. Bare seconds later, the doors hissed open again, revealing part of the vast complex built under Washington.
He remembered his feelings when he had first seen the complex, kilometres upon kilometres of rooms and systems, deep under the city. It was an awesome construction, the more so because he knew that few of the citizens of Washington really appreciated what had been built under their city. How could they? Information on the secret complex was closely regulated, mainly to prevent possible enemies from using it to attack the very core of America; there were other complexes, but Washington remained the heart of America’s government.
“Mr. President,” the Marine guard said as he saluted. The President returned the salute; he had long since creased to wonder why the complex’s commander bothered to station guards that far inside the complex. It was more than just overkill; if the complex were ever to be assaulted by the enemy – whoever the enemy were – America would probably have lost any war by that point anyway. He nodded once at the guard and proceeded along the grey corridors, following the mental route he had marked out in his mind; one of the reasons he liked the complex was that it was one of the few places he could go without ever-present Secret Service guards.
He reached an unmarked door and – again – pushed his hand against a sensor. The door hissed open, revealing a small briefing room and a young man sitting in the room, waiting for orders. The young man, wearing the black uniform of the Space Marines, stood to attention as the President stepped inside; he crashed out one perfect salute and then held it long enough for the President to return it.
“At ease,” the President said. He had never been in the military – he had been one of the eighty percent of the country to escape the draft during the middle stages of the Wrecker War and had developed his own career in space administration – but he was comfortable enough with soldiers to avoid passing the buck to General Denny or one of the other senior military officers. He would not have been at ease with just letting the young soldier carry out his mission without meeting him in person.
“Sergeant First Class Gavin Reynolds, US Space Commando, reporting,” the young soldier barked out. The President, curious, allowed his eyes to wander over the young soldier, looking for clues as to his augmentation. Apart from the faintly unnatural look in one of his eyes, there was nothing; the technology was fairly well understood. It could never be released to the public domain – it constituted a strategic advantage – but it was useful enough to risk some degree of exposure in cases like this.
“At ease,” the President repeated. Normally, young soldiers received a briefing package on their first visit to the White House and the subterranean command centre; there hadn’t been time for Reynolds to be briefed on protocol. Space Commandos were very rare; they had been lucky to be able to recall Reynolds from the moon in time for him to be inserted into the welcome fleet. “Please, take a seat.”
Reynolds sat. “I understand that you have been augmented and rated at Augment Three,” the President said, shortly. “Exactly what are your capabilities?”
“I can survive in space for short periods, I have inserted weapons and communications, I have some inserted sensors and I have enhanced strength and internal armour, sir,” Reynolds said. His voice was very even for a man who had just informed the President that he was practically a cyborg. He could walk on the moon without a spacesuit; the President dreaded what the Rockrats might do with such technology.
“Good,” the President said. He knew that Reynolds would have been briefed on the aliens, what little there was known about them. “You have volunteered for a dangerous mission.” He studied Reynolds’ face carefully; they’d had to ask him to volunteer without telling him more than it was something to do with the alien fleet. “I must ask you, now, if you want to back out now.”
Reynolds looked slightly insulted. “I’m the only Space Commando on Earth,” he said. “If the mission requires one, then I am the only one who can carry it out.”
Cardona nodded. “You may be aware that there is a welcoming fleet being launched to meet the alien fleet,” he said. “The IAU has selected the main body of representatives who are to meet the aliens, including Director Hussein herself and several diplomats and scientists. This has caused some concern among those in the know; the group that the IAU has put forward consists of people who are…inclined to be well-disposed towards the aliens.”
Reynolds understood. “And you fear that one of them will end up telling the aliens more about us than is wise,” he said. “What do you want me to do about it?”
President Cardona sighed. “We have prepared a cover identity for you as a simple expert in space technology,” he said. It was true enough; every Space Commando had such expertise drilled into them, learning more than most people born outside a Rockrat Freeport would ever learn. Reynolds might look like a typical dumb grunt, but he had degrees in several different areas of space technology and weapons tech, although those degrees would never be made public knowledge. “You will be attached to the core group of alien experts…and you are to act as one of them, until you receive other orders.”
Reynolds showed the first trace of emotion; doubt. “That is a rather vague order,” he said. “Do you have anything specific in mind?”
“No,” the President said. He understood Reynolds’ concern, but there was really no way to know what would happen until it was too late to issue orders. “In the event of peaceful contact, you are to keep us informed of what’s happening and avoid any discussion of weapons or weapons technology. If there is an exchange of fire, you are to act as you see fit…with the warning that you cannot allow yourself to be dissected.”
Reynolds nodded; President Cardona felt a moment of shame. Positioned in Reynolds’ chest was, among other mechanical devices, a fusion cell. If it were treated roughly, it would explode with unpleasant results for any spacecraft, human or alien. The order he had given was practically an order to commit suicide…but what choice was there? Reynolds was a billion-dollar investment in implanted micro-technology; if the aliens dissected him, it would be all too revealing.
“I understand, Mr. President,” Reynolds said. He met the President’s eyes for a moment. It didn’t make him feel any better; he knew now why few politicians actually met the men they were sending in to combat, although Wreckers were a far different prospect from aliens. “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”
Cardona didn’t smile at the weak joke. “It may be an overreaction,” he said. “It may be that your expertise will come in handy when it comes to opening relations with the aliens, but just in case, we would feel better if we had you present on the Neil Armstrong. It gives us options and that might become very important; we believe that the other great powers will be making their own precautions along similar lines.”
He grinned weakly. “I wonder if any of the support staff will be who they claim to be…?”
Reynolds didn’t smile. Instead, he looked down for a second. “Will anyone on the ship know what I am?”
“Captain Buckley will know about you,” the President said. “You will report to him, should it be necessary; he may have instructions for you that you can carry out, as long as they don’t compromise your cover. Maintaining that is the priority…and good luck.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Reynolds said. “I’ll do the best I can.” 

Chapter Eight: Rockrats

Freeport One, Asteroid Belt
“Irving Schlock, you are cleared to approach the main spaceport, berth thirty-seven,” the coordinator said. Jake Ellsworth, one of the hundreds of Rockrats who used Freeport One as a base port, nodded as he triggered the final approach burn of the tiny gas thrusters; it hadn’t been a long delay before clearance to approach had been provided. Freeport One had once been an isolated base in an undeveloped part of the asteroid belt; now, there were hundreds of small spacecraft arriving and departing every day. “Please be advised that several mandatory updates have been generated for the asteroid development zones; failure to accept the updates may result in your later claims being disallowed.”
Bureaucrats, Ellsworth thought, as he brought the Irving Schlock in towards the counter-rotating spaceport, perched on the end of Freeport One’s massive axis. He didn’t mind that one so much, although some of the other regulations could be a nuisance; a single accidental claim-jump could cost him his reputation. The mandatory update would tell him which asteroids had been claimed by his fellow Rockrats for later development and, more importantly, which ones had been confirmed as almost valueless. Most asteroids were worth some credits, although iron and rock was plentiful in the belt; the real strikes would come if he found some higher elements like uranium.
Freeport One grew in front of him slowly; no one would be foolish enough to trigger a fusion flame so close to the asteroid. The Irving Schlock wasn’t operating under the control of the coordinators on the asteroid, but Ellsworth knew just what would happen if he accidentally triggered the fusion drive; the emplaced weapons on Freeport One would destroy him before he could do any real damage. The Rockrat culture placed self-responsibility first; if someone did trigger a drive, the Rockrats would be certain that death was the mildest thing he would deserve. Placing one’s own life in danger was fine; risking others without their permission was not.
A dull thump ran through the little ship as it docked directly with the asteroid; he checked quickly as the airlock matched up with the hatch on the other side, followed by the direct link into Freeport One’s internet. Automated programs checked out his computer connection before granting him limited access; he checked to see if there were any good entertainment movies waiting in his private cache on the internet before unstrapping himself and floating up into the main cabin. Like many Rockrats, he did most of his mining work naked – not least because he was alone; few Rockrats worked in pairs, no matter how much safer it was – and he pulled on a standard outfit before checking the airlock again – Rockrats without a great deal of paranoia didn’t last long – and entered the spaceport, sealing the Irving Schlock behind him.
An official greeter welcomed him as he passed through the second set of airlocks into the main body of the spaceport. “Captain Ellsworth,” he said. “Welcome back to Freeport One.”
“Thank you, Charlie,” Ellsworth said. Charlie was the son of one of the handful of people who actually kept Freeport One running; a boy who was a curious mixture of European, Chinese and African. His grandfather, one of the first Rockrats, had married a refugee ‘mail order bride’ from Africa when the Exclusion Zone went up; their daughter had married a Chinese-ethnic Rockrat and had four sons before returning out to the Rockrat lifestyle. “Anything interesting happening apart from the aliens?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said seriously. “My Dad will want to see your manifest first, of course.”
“I bet he would,” Ellsworth said, and picked up one of the standard communication terminals before making his way into the next office. Jamie Hong glanced up at him from his desk; Ellsworth had occasionally wondered if the man had bureaucracy in his blood. In zero-gravity, Hong had a desk that wouldn’t have shamed a bureaucrat on Earth; rumour had it that Hong and a few hundred other Chinese had deserted the Party’s iron control on one of the Chinese asteroids to come join the much more reasonable Rockrat culture, where they had fitted right in. “Morning, Jamie…”
Hong nodded once at him. “Welcome back,” he said. “Anything interesting on the manifest?”
“Less than I would like,” Ellsworth admitted. He passed across a datachip without comment. “I’d also like to register a temporary claim on one of the asteroids I studied; there be gold in them there hills.”
The joke slipped past Hong, but his son giggled. “Gold?” Hong asked. “That might fetch quite a high price from one of the industrial stations out there, or you could forward it to Earth and see what they might offer you. How are you for money at the moment?”
“I have enough for a load of Helium-3 or Deuterium, if I have to use it,” Ellsworth said. Rockrats preferred Helium-3 to Deuterium; Deuterium was hell on the drive tubes. “What are the current prices?”
“Pretty high,” Hong admitted. He named a price; Ellsworth stared at him. “It’s the aliens, you see; they have everyone scared and excited at the same time. The mines on Jupiter have been forwarding fuel loads to us to add to what we have found in the asteroids, but the price is starting to rise higher and there’s a great deal of inflation as well. The cost of weapons has also gone through the roof; you might want to consider a quick sale of the gold and take what you can get.”
“Fuck me,” Ellsworth said. He didn’t doubt Hong’s word, not for a moment; if he was caught lying to one of the Rockrats, his reputation would be at an end. Hong might have been willing to serve as a middleman, but if he gouged his customers, he would rapidly find himself out of business. “What would I get if I sold now?”
“I’m not buying on speculation at the moment,” Hong informed him. Ellsworth appreciated his honesty; Rockrats wouldn’t offer to buy or sell unless they were serious. Hong cast his eye down the manifest. “You might get two to three hundred credits for the gold and around fifty to sixty credits for the other materials on spec; I can open a line of enquiry for you with the industrial stations if you don’t mind waiting a week.”
“Please do,” Ellsworth said. He started to pull himself towards the hatch and then paused. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“Kyle Short is going to be holding a meeting tonight relating to the alien crisis,” Hong said. Ellsworth lifted an eyebrow; the chairman of the Rockrat Association – the closest thing the belt had to a real government, not least because trying to organise Rockrats was like trying to herd cats – rarely attempted to assert any power, unless something had changed radically. “Any Rockrat who has paid his dues is entitled to attend and vote.”
“I’m fully paid up,” Ellsworth said. “I guess I’ll see you at the meeting.”
He left Hong’s office and pulled himself into the asteroid, entering one of the tubes that led down to the interior surface of Freeport One. Like most asteroid habitats, Freeport One spun to create gravity, with most Rockrats spending time in the Earth-standard gravity field to keep their muscles in trim when they were not on their ships. Ellsworth, like almost every other Rockrat, kept a small apartment on Freeport One; it provided a convenient place to shower, change into more practical wear, and head out to one of the entertainment centres. One of the main attractions of Freeport One was the brothel; jokes aside, not all the Rockrats were either married to refugee women or gay.
“Welcome back,” the bartender said. Ellsworth nodded to Ian; the bartender had been around longer than he could remember, seemingly unchanging. There were rumours that he had been waiting on Freeport One when the first settler had converted it into the first freeport, complaining about the millions of years he had waited for the human race. “Your usual?”
“A double-orgasm would be nice,” Ellsworth said, looking towards the brothel’s entrance. Moments later, Ian put a pink drink down in front of him. “Oh, very funny.”
Ian’s face was as impassive as ever. “You asked for a double-orgasm,” he said. “I’ll put it on your tab.”
Ellsworth glowered at him, but sipped it anyway, wondering just what went into it. It tasted surprisingly good for its colour; he finished it and ordered a beer, before leaving the bar and heading into the brothel. There was a short wait before he could meet one of the girls, but once the formalities were out of the way, he was able to spend an hour with her. She told him her story as they were getting undressed, an attempt to convince him to pay her extra; she had come out to become a Rockrat without knowing just what it entailed and had been forced into prostitution to support herself. Ellsworth’s sympathy was limited; she was earning more lying on her back with her legs open than he was mining every day.
Afterwards, he entered the main communal hall and found a seat.
The Rockrat Association had been formed to give the Rockrats some collective bargaining capability, something that had seemed more important at the time than it did now, several years after several industries had been established in the belt. The Association, rather like the IAU, was charged with enforcing fair play; composed of Rockrats who spent a year on Freeport One and paid a small salary from the dues Rockrats paid, it was very responsive to the needs of the members. Board members were nominated by their peers and elected by popular vote; coordinating it each year was the final duty of the Chairman.
Kyle Short was midway through his term as Chairman, a tall muscular man with a formidable reputation and a scarred face. He claimed seven Rockrats in his direct line of descent; unlike most other Rockrats, he had married another Rockrat, one of the rare female Rockrats. Ellsworth privately wondered how they’d been close enough to conceive a child; both of them had continued their careers out in the belt.
“This meeting is hereby called to attention,” Short said, glancing around. There were nearly seventy Rockrats in the room, the largest group assembled in one place since the Chinese refugees – including Hong – had come to Freeport One. “The secretary will now read the minutes of the last meeting…”
“Mr Chairman, I move that we skip the reading of the minutes,” a Rockrat called.
There was a general roar of assent. Any Rockrat who cared could have read the minutes on the internet. “I need a show of hands,” Short said. “All those in favour?” Almost every hand, including Ellsworth’s, went up. “The motion is passed.”
Short paused long enough for the chatter to die down. “The aliens are coming to Earth,” he said. Ellsworth smiled; he’d checked the internet for the briefing notes, along with every other Rockrat who could be arsed coming to the meeting. None of the Rockrats would make any allowances for Rockrats who hadn’t bothered to read their notes. “This may be good news for us as they don’t seem to be heading anywhere near Freeport One, although they could change course quite radically unless they have limitations we don’t know about. Our attempts to signal the aliens have received no response; to the best of our knowledge, none of the Great Powers nor the IAU have succeeded in gaining any response from the aliens.”
He paused. “The question remains; what do we do about it?”
There was a long pause. “What about the corporate rats?” someone shouted finally. There were some mutters; the corporate employees were not regarded highly by the Rockrats. “What about the dirty ones on Earth?”
Short tapped the table meaningfully; ‘dirty ones’ was a common Rockrat insult for people who lived on Earth. “They’re preparing their defences around Earth and sending some additional infrastructure out here and to the moon,” he said. “It is unlikely that they will be willing to waste time on defending us; we are not as important as the mines orbiting Jupiter, or the moon, or even Mars. We may have to look to our own defence.”
The debate raged on, but it was surprisingly orderly to Ellsworth’s ears; the Rockrats knew that everyone who had proven his right to stand among them had a right to be heard. Not everyone had something to say, but everyone who did had to have a chance to be heard; the stewards kept order long enough to make sure that everyone said their piece. The debate raged from the increased prices for mining to the increased prices for fuel, something dear to the Rockrat heart; if the price of fuel went too high, some of them would go out of business and have to mortgage their future on a final desperate gamble. The other main question was that of defence; if the governments were unwilling to defend the Rockrats, could they defend themselves?
“We have started a small program of establishing a black colony,” Short said. Ellsworth smiled with the others; there were dozens of black and grey colonies out there in the belt. Some of there were religious colonies, from Mormons to strange cults that worshipped one god or another, others were popularly supposed to be pirate colonies, although space piracy had never really caught on. The handful of people who had attempted pirate attacks had been spaced by outraged Rockrats. “Hiding from the aliens should be possible, unless the aliens have some technology we have never heard of.”
Ellsworth shook his head. He had read enough news articles from Earth to laugh at what some people on the planet below thought was possible; the Rockrats, who lived and breathed space, knew the aliens might be advanced, but they had shown nothing magical or hyper-advanced. They might have some advanced technology, but nothing that would provide a decisive advantage.
“The second program involves defence,” Short continued. “We can use our own infrastructure to produce weapons to mount on our ships, perhaps using them to fight the aliens…or the strengthened governments and the IAU. The main problem is that if they expand their own defences, they will have the capability to come after us, whatever the aliens do. This may pose a threat to our very existence.”
Ellsworth scowled. “Can we arm enough ships to make a difference?” he called, before anyone else could speak. He was considering the issue, but he had to know if it was worth the effort before he committed himself one way or the other. There was always a place for a skilled Rockrat on the outskirts of the solar system. “What about payment for the use of the ships?”
Someone on Earth would have questioned the Rockrats patriotism, but the Rockrats understood basic self-interested economics. Their ships were the basis of their wealth, both actual and future earnings prospects; if they were converted into space fighters, as ludicrous as that seemed, it would damage their ability to earn future credit. The concept of calling a spade a fork, something that seemed to be practiced on Earth quite frequently, meant nothing to the Rockrats; Rockrats who didn’t keep a tight grip on reality tended to end up dead.
“We have constructed a proposal to use credits from the Association’s store to cover the costs and compensate ship owners for the loss of future earnings,” Short said. He looked nervous and well he might; Rockrats didn’t like the concept of becoming dependent on something as hazy as interplanetary financial dealings. They preferred solid results to the shadowy money of wheeler-dealers; the prospect of losing control over their own finances would worry many. “It would not cut that much into earnings; it will take a month to assemble standard weapons packages and equip them onto volunteer ships, and then, one month before the aliens arrive at a point where they can make a high-speed transit towards one of the Freeport outposts, we will call in the ships and prepare for a possible engagement.”
The discussion became heated as the argument raged, but what clinched it for many was the thought of what might happen if defence of the belt was left to the various governments, under the uncertain supervision of the IAU. If any of the Great Powers achieved a preponderance of power in the belt, that Great Power would have the muscle to take on the Rockrats and force them to come to heel; it was important to avoid any excuse for military action. Not every Rockrat was keen on the idea of becoming a military ship; several wanted to find a quiet asteroid, set up a habitation tent, and wait for it to all blow over. Others wanted to head out with Message Bearer; Conrad Hamilton had already informed them that he was looking for more recruits for the interstellar voyage. There would be no room to take along refugee women for their breeding potential, as had been done years ago for Freeport One; everyone who went on the ship would have to be a useful pair of hands.
“The preliminary motion has been passed,” Short said, after the vote had been taken. Two-thirds had voted in favour of the motion, although that meant less than it would seem; Rockrats who had been out in their ships would have to have a chance to register their vote, which would take upwards of a week as transmissions of the meeting and the issues at hand were beamed out to the ships, then the vote would have to be registered and filed. “However, under the circumstances, we are asking now for volunteers to serve as the first line of defence.”
There was a long pause.
Jake Ellsworth was the first to hold up his hand.

Chapter Nine: The Welcome Fleet, Take Two

Geostationary orbit, above Earth
There were few spacecraft, Samra had decided years ago, that really lived up to the promise of endless science-fiction movies. The iron limitations of physics and science, to say nothing of the need to interchange components as much as possible, dictated that most spacecraft would have as much sex appeal as a slug. The concept of graceful lines and the sense of sheer power manifested by such timeline classics as the Starship Enterprise or the Star Destroyer had floundered upon such laws; most spacecraft that lacked the ability to land on Earth had the appearance of semi-random construction by an unimaginative committee.
The Neil Armstrong defied most of those conventions. Five kilometres long, constructed of lunar rock that had been launched into orbit and then processed by the first industrial stations to be established in LEO, the spacecraft had never been designed to land on a planet. Instead, it gave the appearance of a travelling ring-class space habitat, endlessly spinning to produce a gravity field tuned to the level of the destination world. In the three months since the ship had arrived at Orbit One, the spacecraft had been renovated completely, improving both its living quarters and scientific equipment, converting it into a travelling scientific base. The ship wasn’t armed heavily – Samra had heard that Captain Buckley had been privately furious about it – but it was important not to give the impression that humanity was a bunch of savages.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Spencer O'Dowd said as he appeared behind her, holding two drinks. Orbit One was the oldest facility in space still active and looked it; the original International Space Station had been decommissioned and turned into a museum piece long ago. The older facilities from before then, Skylab and Mir, had been destroyed; the scientist in Samra detested the men who had made those decisions a century before she was born. “I hear that we are actually getting good cabins on that beauty.”
Samra smiled to herself. It had all paid off, from courting the press to making the bargain with O'Dowd. The reporter knew where a lot of skeletons were buried; some of them he had unearthed to gain an advantage, others he had merely threatened to unearth…just to ensure that he received the position of official reporter. The IAU had wanted to keep reporters off the flight…until the demands for press coverage had started to come in, and grow louder, and louder, until the bureaucrats had given in.
“I’d be happy with a broom closet,” she said. “We just have to ensure that we get to talk with one message.”
She scowled; she hadn’t understood, really, just how many human factions would want to risk everything to ensure that they were the only ones to talk to the aliens. The aliens had been bombarded with message after message from different factions, from the Zionist colony on Titan to the Rockrats and the Great Powers on Earth; if they had been interested in playing divide and rule, they would have found it easy. The IAU had finally managed to get agreement on a joint mission as part of the welcome fleet, with diplomats from the United Nations taking the lead, but no one had any illusions. There would be attempts to make private deals with the aliens; the only reason why no one had broken ranks already was that the welcome fleet seemed to be the only means left to approach the aliens.
A little more information had come in as the aliens grew closer. Half of the alien craft were massive, each fully a hundred kilometres long; the others were smaller, but still larger than the Neil Armstrong. The alien fleet was starting to look more and more like a colonisation fleet, something that had started more debate, from selling the aliens Helium-3 to allow them to reach another star, to inviting them to settle on Mars or Venus along with the human race. Samra favoured the latter; the aliens had been out in interstellar space, well away from any radio noise; who knew what they had heard and recorded? Talking to the aliens could become very profitable for the advancement of science…
Her terminal buzzed. “Director Hussein, your presence is requested in the main lounge,” it said. “Do you require escort?”
“No, thank you,” Samra said, and broke the connection. “Coming?”
Orbit One had begun life as the first real space habitat in Earth orbit, a standard Stanford torus-design that showed very clear links to the Neil Armstrong’s design. It had first served as a dormitory for space workers, and had then become the solar system’s first space hotel and collection point for lunar colonists. There were larger habitats now, some of them built from asteroids that had been moved into Earth orbit, but Orbit One was history. Where else could the welcome fleet depart from?
The main lounge, like everywhere else along the wheel, was set at standard Earth-gravity, allowing the delegates who had come up from Earth to avoid zero-gee as much as possible. Even with gene treatments and supplements, there were still people who had real problems coping with a lack of gravity; back when Orbit One had become a hotel, it had kept an entire team of doctors and lawyers on call to handle emergencies. Lawyers had never gotten much further out into space than the moon; the Rockrats detested them and the corporations had managed to avoid most of their liability. Samra approved; the last thing she wanted was someone looking over her shoulder – and probably down her shirt – while she made First Contact.
“Welcome to Orbit One,” Rick Davenport said. The IAU Board Member shook her hand with the practiced ease of a professional politician; Samra was privately convinced that he detested her for daring to follow orders and transmit the news that the alien fleet had been detected. “You’re quite popular at the moment; some of the newshounds would be delighted to interview you.”
“Thank you,” Samra said, as she glanced around the main lounge. The crew of the Neil Armstrong had been reduced to the bare minimum; while hundreds of people had wanted to join the welcoming party, only thirty-seven had been accepted. She had met with all of them, from the official United Nations Ambassador - Rudolph Giacometti, of Switzerland – to the scientists who had been excitedly discussing the prospects of analysing the first real starships at close range. “When are we going to board?”
“Once all the speeches have finished,” Davenport assured her. He pressed her hand again and left the pair of them alone as one of the representatives from China began yet another speech, most of the room ignoring him. The politicians were also being largely ignored; the men and women of the welcome fleet had been selected and – now – there was no going back. Samra had approved most of them personally; only a handful had been slipped through the net and arrived without being examined first.
“Cheeky bastard,” O'Dowd said. “What on Earth do you think he wants?”
Samra shrugged. “I think he’s a politician,” she said. “I think…”
O'Dowd elbowed her. “Heads up, here comes our lord and master,” he said, taking a pair of glasses from a robotic maid and passing her one. Samra looked up to see Captain Buckley and one of his crewmen, heading over towards her. “Remember to salute properly and genuflect at the right moments.”
“Shut up,” Samra muttered back, as she took a sip of the orange juice. She’d met Captain Buckley, but there hadn’t been any real time for a proper session; he’d been occupied with the Neil Armstrong and she’d been preparing the contact team. She raised her voice as Buckley approached. “Captain; thank you for coming.”
Buckley’s expression reassembled, just for a moment, a man approaching the hangman’s noose. Samra sympathised; she hadn’t been happy during her first press conference, and even though she had grown used to them, she still disliked them. She had organised the final departure party on Orbit One just to avoid having to give any speeches herself; there were too many politicians who thought that they should have a chance to say their piece to allow the woman who had only discovered the aliens to have a word.
“I would be happier were we already underway,” Buckley said. “Departure is in five hours and counting.”
“Good,” Samra said. She pulled him away from the main group and into a corner; O'Dowd followed her like a mother hen. “Captain, is everything prepared for the flight?”
“The ship is ready, if that is what you mean,” Buckley said. His lips twitched. “You had a chance to tour it before you moved the equipment on board, so I hope that you are satisfied.”
Samra nodded. “I would be happier with more space, but short of moving Message Bearer over to intercept the aliens, that would be impossible,” she said. “Captain, do you have any particular concerns you wish to raise in private?”
“Maybe a few, but not at present,” Buckley said. He nodded to his assistant. “This is Commander Roberts; I believe you have met?”
Samra smiled briefly at Roberts, a big dark man with surprisingly nimble fingers. “He showed us around the ship,” she said. It had been a quick tour; civilians, including herself, were not permitted to enter the central tube of the ship, regardless of the reason. If worse came to worst, she had been briefed; the habitat-area would be freed from the main body of the spacecraft through explosive bolts, although she found it hard to imagine an emergency that would allow them to do that, rather than destroying the spacecraft outright. “It was a remarkable tour.”
“Quite,” Buckley said. On the podium, Ambassador Giacometti had just begun to speak. “I would appreciate a chance to have a few words with you once we are on board the spacecraft and boosting out on our course.”
“Of course,” Samra said. She wondered, briefly, just what couldn’t be said now, on Orbit One; had Buckley been given some classified instructions from the USSF? Even if he had, he wouldn’t have told her about them, would he? “I have some minor issues to raise with you as well…”
“Excuse me,” a voice said, from behind her. Samra turned slightly to see Gavin Reynolds, one of the space technology experts; the tall man had only been introduced to her a week ago and she didn’t know him very well at all. He knew his material, she’d found out, but there were few records of what he had done when it came to turning his knowledge into practical work. For some reason, that bothered her; the Americans had to have had a reason for sending him on the welcome fleet.
She dismissed her concerns. “Yes?”
“The Ambassador would like to ask you a few questions,” Reynolds said, his voice droll. Samra rolled her eyes; Ambassador Giacometti wanted a photo opportunity of the two of them together, where he could take all the credit for her work and whatever credit there was when it came to talking to the aliens. “You might want to head out the door.”
Razia Khan went through worse than this, Samra thought, remembering one of the heroines of the Islamic Reform Movement. Razia had defied the religious police in Saudi Arabia, hiding a recording device on her person; it had recorded her arrest, beating, and gang-rape at the hands of the religious police, a recording that had started a revolution. How can I do any less?
“I’m coming,” she said. It wouldn’t be long now. “Captain, I’ll see you on the Neil Armstrong.”
* * * 
An hour later, they were finally permitted to board the Neil Armstrong, walking into the zero-gravity section of Orbit One, and then into the zero-gravity section of the Neil Armstrong before entering the main habitat ring. It was surprisingly roomy; they'd had plenty of time to organise the sections of the spacecraft into workspaces, sleeping chambers and research laboratories. The bridge ship had been intended to carry a vast number of colonists, most of them in drug-induced hibernation; it could carry a hundred wide-awake crewmen and scientists with ease.
“Now hear this,” the intercom buzzed. Samra recognised Commander Roberts’ voice and smiled; she liked the man. There was something about him that reminded her of her father. “We will be disengaging from Orbit One in twenty minutes; if you are not intending to fly with us, do not attempt to remain on the ship any longer.” There was a pause. “Director Hussein to the bridge, please.”
Samra exchanged a puzzled look with O'Dowd, but followed the markers on the hull back into the zero-gravity section, and then into the crew-only section. The bridge itself had been marked as off-limits, but she didn’t worry about it; she imagined that Captain Buckley had his reasons for calling her to the bridge. The bridge – the nautical term had stuck despite the slightly ramshackle appearance of any spacecraft command centre – was smaller than she had expected for such a large ship; a handful of consoles, a handful of chairs, and four crewmen.
“I confirm one minute to departure,” the helmsman said. “Hatches have been sealed.”
“I thought that you would like to see this,” Buckley said, as he pointed Samra towards an unoccupied chair. She pulled herself down and buckled herself into the chair. “Mr. Reynolds assisted us in designing the craft and asked to observe as we departed.”
Samra favoured the young man with a smile. “Thank you,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
“There’s less to see than you might think,” Buckley said as his helmsman began a short countdown. The spacecraft had no sci-fi viewscreen; the closest there was to any omnipresent display was the views from cameras mounted on the hull. There could be no viewport on the bridge; she’d been told that it was the best-protected section of the spacecraft. “Still, it is something…”
“Release,” the helmsman said. Samra had half-expected a dull rumble running through the ship; there was nothing, but the ever-present thrumming of the fusion pile at the rear of the spacecraft. “We are free of Orbit One; I repeat, we are free of Orbit One.”
“Begin reaction burn,” Buckley ordered. This time, Samra did feel something; a faint…sense of motion that rose and fell slightly as the reaction jets fired, nudging the Neil Armstrong away from Orbit One and pushing the massive ship into an exit orbit. It seemed to take forever; it seemed to happen very quickly. One of the cameras focused on Orbit One as it fell away in the distance, the spacecraft rising up towards the stars. “Reaction burn…terminate.”
The sense of motion faded; she knew, intellectually, that the spacecraft was still moving, but her body insisted that there was no motion, none at all. Time passed; the spacecraft kept moving, heading away from Earth…and towards the aliens. She wondered if the aliens knew that she was coming, if they could see the human ships; they would definitely see them when the fusion drive was ignited.
“I confirm that we have laser link-up with the other ships of the welcome fleet,” Commander Roberts said. 
 “They are ready to join us when we go fusion.”
Samra felt her breath catch in her throat; she had almost forgotten that there was more than one ship taking part in the mission. Standing orders had the aliens being forbidden to visit the other ships, just to hide the fact that humanity had launched an armed fleet at them, just in case. Samra couldn’t believe that the aliens had come all that way just to fight, but she hadn’t been charged with making the final decision; that decision had been made by politicians on Earth. 
“Good,” Buckley said. Samra met Reynolds’ eyes and saw just how excited he was; she shared something of his excitement, while Buckley and his crew were taking it in their stride. “Issue the standard warning, John.”
Roberts took the intercom. “Now hear this,” he said. “Fusion burn will commence in five minutes; please ensure that you assume fusion position and do not move until the all clear is sounded.”
Samra checked her seat out of habit; she would be safe. Some of the faster ships had to have people in water baths, just to prevent them from suffering damage caused by heavy acceleration; the constant-burn ships, in particular, could be very dangerous under the wrong circumstances. The Neil Armstrong wasn't a constant-burn ship; it would be slower, but much safer.
“Trigger the fusion drive,” Buckley ordered. This time, Samra felt it instantly; a pressure that pushed against her body, a cold dispassionate force of nature that chilled her more than any contact with a heavy male body, or the time when she had been trapped under her own wardrobe. The heavy thrumming in the hull increased; she knew that if the aliens were watching, the welcome fleet had just highlighted its own position for them to track…and project their course to rendezvous with the alien fleet.
Reynolds glanced across at her from his seat. “We’re on our way,” he said. Annoyingly, the high boost didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all; Samra almost envied the colonists who spent their entire trip in a stupor. They would never know what was happening until they were woken up at the far end. “Thank you for this chance.”
Samra could have kissed him at that moment. “Thank you, too,” she said. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

Chapter Ten: While the World Waits…

Camp Macintyre, Near Virginia Beach, USA
“Captain Christopher Fardell reporting, sir,” Fardell said, as the door to the general’s office hissed open. The invitation – which no sane officer would dare refuse – to meet with the general had surprised him; most generals didn't seem to know that anyone below the rank of colonel existed under normal circumstances.
The news of the aliens had surprised everyone, but Fardell found it irritating on more than a personal level; the entire armoured combat suit unit had been pulled back to the States at short notice, rather than completing the task of destroying the remains of the Wrecker force in the Exclusion Zone. Hunting smart Wreckers – the stupid ones didn’t last past the time they sent a betraying signal to attract an orbital KEW – was a hard task, but it was also challenging; Fardell had been quite looking forward to it after discovering the slaves. Whatever cause of the week had motivated the Wreckers, it clearly hadn’t included peace and freedom for everyone. America had lost most of her remaining racism during the long Wrecker War; the reminder that not everyone shared American values had stung.
The unit had been given a week’s leave, but then they’d only taken part in garrison duty, something that Fardell privately detested, a role fit only for the National Guard. The Battlesuit Regiments were designed for rapid mobile firepower, not standing in one place and waiting for the enemy to attack, or holding down a region that might have become rebellious if troop numbers were pulled down sharply. It did have the advantage that no one was shooting at him and his men – American citizens generally didn’t consider their own soldiers an army of occupation – but it was boring.
General William Denny looked up at him and returned his salute. “At ease, Captain,” he said. Fardell relaxed very slightly; he still had no idea why he’d been called to face the General. Short of some hideous breach of regulations, and he knew that he had committed none, nor had any of the men under his command, he found it hard to imagine why the General would want to talk to him in person. It wasn’t as if there was anything special about him. “How are your men holding up?”
The US Army encouraged honest reporting; it was one of the edges it held over non-western armies. “They’re pissed off at being taken from Africa,” Fardell reported. “There’s been no word on just what we found in the base, but everyone saw the women and everyone wants to get stuck into the bastards and give them hell, sir.”
Denny’s lips twitched. “There was little choice,” he said, as close to an apology that Fardell knew he was likely to get. “We may be overreacting to the aliens, or we may not have considered anything reassembling just how dangerous the aliens might be to us; in many ways, we’ve become overconfident over the last fifty years.”
Fardell said nothing, but there was a certain amount of truth in the statement; the civilised world – meaning the Great Powers – had never had to take on an equal opponent since the final Arab-Israeli spat, a year before the Caliphate Movement led to the establishment of the Caliphate and the Treaty of Jordan. The Wreckers could sometimes be dangerous – New York had proven that, as had Marseilles and Stalingrad – but they didn’t pose a threat on such a scale. How could they when their only real weapon was random terror?
“But that’s an issue for another time,” Denny said. “You may be interested to note that we recovered several dozen storage mediums from the Wrecker base, most of them packed full of pornography--” Fardell laughed; a century after the Internet had really taken off, porn was still the number one content “--and some of the videos hiding real information. Most of it was written as vaguely as possible, for obvious reasons, but we did manage to use it to track down some of the Wreckers’ supporters in America and Europe. The death sentences were passed last month.”
Which didn’t, Fardell knew, mean that they had been executed by now. The suspects, their guilt confirmed by lie detectors and drugs, would be kept in a very secure location and interrogated until they gave up everything they knew about the organisation they had supported, maybe even played a role in directing. Once they had been drained of information, they would be shot and their bodies broken up for organ recycling. Publicly, they had been dead since the sentences had been passed; no one would bother to raise the issue once their guilt had been proven.
The general stood up. “You may have been reading the various papers on how we can insert some of our soldiers though a high-speed descent from orbit,” he said. Fardell nodded; the concept was hardly new, but it was very much a case of a white elephant. He had no doubt that it could work, but where on Earth could they send orbital transports that they couldn’t insert them though cheaper means, such as stealth helicopters or parachute drops? “The planners believe that the aliens might use such a means to insert their soldiers on the ground, once they have taken control of the high orbitals and used them against us.”
Fardell scowled. The troop movements might make some sense under those conditions; if the aliens were hostile and they did manage to take control of LEO, they could pick off any large force that was moving across the ground, like rolling down an interstate. They could sink ships from orbit, pick off aircraft with laser weapons; who knew what else they could think of that humanity couldn’t even imagine…?
“You look like a man with a question,” Denny said. “What do you want to say?”
Fardell kept his face blank. “Do we know that the aliens are hostile?”
“If we knew for certain, we would be panicking a lot more,” Denny said wryly. “What we do know is that in two weeks, the welcome fleet will intercept the alien fleet…and then? The aliens may open communications; the analysts believe that that is what they will do. Or…they may open fire on the fleet. Or…they may just head through the fleet and carry onwards towards Earth. If that happens…”
He paused. “We have to assume that the aliens are just like us; maybe not intentionally hostile, but willing to take advantage of weakness,” he said. “If they don’t make contact with the welcome fleet, we will have to assume that they are hostile and if that happens, we dare not let them into LEO without a fight. I don’t like this, Captain, and neither do the analysts, but if they try to enter LEO without convincing us of their good intentions, we’re going to open fire.”
Fardell felt his blood run cold.
“But it may not come to that,” Denny said. “And, besides, it’s way above your pay grade. Your unit has been assigned to a particularly important mission.”
He tapped the massive map of America, ranging from the Canadian border to what had once been Argentina, and then looked up at Fardell. “Your unit has had experience in almost all manner of American terrain and, if worse comes to the worst, you have operated with units from the British Commonwealth, the Europeans and the Russians. That makes youan asset.”
“They don’t call it the British Commonwealth, sir,” Fardell said. It was a fairly common American mistake. “The British may think of it that way, but the Canadians, South Africans and Indians resent being called the British Commonwealth; the entire system has much more in common with the pre-federal America than it has with Europe or even ourselves. It’s a union of equals.”
“Thank you,” the General said, dryly. Fardell said nothing. Correcting a General wasn’t always a smart career move. “Regardless, the aliens have forced us to make some…less than optimal decisions. One of them is that we are forced to spread out our regular forces to support the National Guard, which in turn is garrisoning the United States in hopes of providing a rapid response to any alien incursion. Your unit, Fardell, will be assigned to providing rapid support and firepower to National Guard units, serving as a reserve and reconnaissance force. When – if – the aliens land in America, you will move up to support the Guard or engage the enemy, depending on the exact situation.”
He grinned. “Given that America is not the centre of the universe, it is equally possible that the aliens might land elsewhere,” he continued. “If they land in Canada or Brazil, the locals may request our support; in that case, your unit will be earmarked for a rapid transit to Canada. If they land in the Exclusion Zones, you may be transported back there and asked to provide intelligence on just what they’re doing there.”
Fardell frowned. “Do we have any idea at all where the aliens might land?”
“None,” Denny said. His hand ran over the map briefly. “We don’t have the slightest fucking clue. They may come down right in the middle of the United States; we have a contingency plan to handle that when – if – it happens. They may come down in Panama; if that happens, we may have real problems evicting them…assuming they can defeat the heavy defences we placed there when we annexed the region. They may come down in Europe or Russia or China; if that happens, we may be dependent upon the locals dealing with the aliens for us. There are just too many imponderables.”
He shrugged. “But, again, that is hardly an issue. Your role is fairly simple.”
Fardell smiled; it was good to know just what his superiors were thinking – assuming they were thinking at all; many front-line soldiers would have doubted that – but at the same time it was sometimes pointless. As Denny had pointed out, issues of strategy were well above his pay grade; his job was merely to carry the orders out or die trying.
“We have established a small base here--” his hand tapped the map near Fredericksburg “--with support units here, here and here. You may have noticed that the base is camouflaged and we have actually been unable to locate it from orbit – knowing, of course, that there was something there to be located. Your unit will be based there and, hopefully, will escape being noticed by the aliens if they have hostile intentions. Once the aliens show their intentions, then we can decide how we are to use you and your unit.”
“And, of course, we can visit the beach at Virginia Beach with them,” Fardell said dryly. “They might like the water…”
Denny gave him an ‘I am not amused’ look. 
“Or they might like Africa,” he said. “I could just imagine some politician selling them the Exclusion Zone, complete with Wreckers and bio-collapse, in exchange for whatever technology the aliens have. It might be a bargain and a solution to the Wrecker problem into the bargain.”
“Yes, sir,” Fardell said dutifully. He kept his private thoughts to himself. “Are the Wreckers going to become involved with the aliens?”
“I don’t know,” Denny said. For an instant, he looked like an old man; Fardell wondered if any of the generals from a hundred years ago had felt the same way when the Twin Towers had fallen, when they discovered that the rules of warfare had suddenly changed. “All I know is that we have our duty…”
He cleared his throat. “The quartermaster will see to transporting your unit and your suits, complete with all the equipment you might need, to the base without exciting attention,” he concluded. “I don’t think that anyone would betray you--” Fardell nodded; ever since a handful of reporters had been shot for reporting military secrets, security had become much tighter “--but, just in case, you will operate under covert protocols. Good luck.”
Fardell saluted. “Understood, sir,” he said. “We’ll report in once we reach the operating base.”
* * * 
The massive skyscraper reached nearly a thousand meters into the sky, holding for a brief period – before New York built an even bigger skyscraper, which had coped with the nuclear blast surprisingly well – the record for tallest skyscraper in America. There were taller ones in Japan, Europe and even other cities in America, but Virginia Beach was proud of its monument. The Fulsome Building had been the first to be partially constructed with materials from orbit.
At the moment, a month before the aliens would arrive at Earth, it was almost half-empty.
“I wasn't able to sell a real policy today,” Carola Eichwurzel grumbled, as she entered the small flat she shared with her fiancé. Carola – a young blonde girl of Swedish descent, whose parents had immigrated to America to escape the chaos of the European civil unrest – worked for one of the largest insurance companies in America. “At this rate, there are going to be more lay-offs and maybe even a collapse.”
Markus Wilhelm nodded from his chair as he tested the telescope. It had belonged to his brother, who had loaned it to him when he had emigrated to the moon as one of the long-term colonists of an American colony; he had enjoyed looking at Orbit One and the other habitats in Earth orbit over the last few years. One of the handful of perks residents of the Fulsome Building had was access to the roof; Wilhelm had used it as a base for observations.
“The aliens have everyone scared,” he said. He couldn’t understand it; why would the aliens come God alone knew how many light years to start a fight? It made no sense; Wilhelm might not have had the fancy degrees in space travel that his brother had – his own expertise lay in economics – but he did understand the basics. The aliens had placed a great deal of effort into crossing from one star to another; the Message Bearer project, operating on a much smaller scale, had been awesomely expensive. He dreaded to think of what would happen if they had tried to build a hundred starships at once. “What did your boss say?”
Carola gave him her patented look of death. “He said – and I quote – that unless we learnt what the aliens were doing, damage caused by alien attack would not be considered a viable reason to claim damages, unquote,” she said. “Everyone wants to be insured against alien attack, but it’s the one thing that we are not allowed to even offer a policy on, just like an act of God.”
She paced over to him and placed her hand on his shoulder. “And we cannot prevent people from cashing in some of their current portfolios because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case,” she continued. The case had been a political nightmare; facing public pressure to reform the insurance companies, Congress had passed laws that nearly made it impossible to function. Insurance was a gamble at the best of times, but the mega-deaths caused by various Wrecker attacks had sent prices soaring into the stratosphere. This would have been good news for companies…except few people could afford to pay the premiums. The ruling that, if a policy was disallowed, the claimant could recover the premiums had very nearly been the final kick in the teeth. “I’ve been sworn at and shouted at and cursed at all day…”
“Poor baby,” Wilhelm said. He pulled her down and gave her a kiss. “Don’t worry, love; it’ll all be over in a month.”
“Yes,” Carola said, slowly. Her eyes darkened slightly. “Are you sure about that?”
Wilhelm lifted an eyebrow. 
“There are an awful lot of people heading out of the city and deeper into the country,” Carola said. “Half of the employees at my company have already given their notice of intending to take the week the aliens arrive as holiday; it’s quite likely that we will all get at least a few days’ holiday and everyone is talking about heading out to stay with their family, or something. Don’t you think that we should be heading out as well?”
“It’s not that much of a risk,” Wilhelm said, inspecting the telescope carefully before pointing it at her breasts. She snorted and pushed it away gently. “We can watch what happens from the roof with this baby and record it all, before selling it for big bucks.”
Carola watched as he carefully cleaned one of the lenses. “Would you like a moment alone with Miss Telescope?” she asked. Wilhelm rolled his eyes at her teasing. “Are you sure that it’s safe?”
“They didn’t come hundreds of light years to start a fight,” Wilhelm said. “Besides, the news from the refugee camps is pretty bad…and it’s only going to get worse. Even if the aliens are hostile, we have several military bases nearby to protect us, and anyway…where would we go? My family lives in Chicago, yours in Atlanta…and there’s no way that we can find accommodation somewhere under these circumstances. We could head out and buy some camping equipment, if we can find some, but again, where would we go?”
He watched the interplay of emotions on Carola’s face. He understood her concern, but where could they go even if they had to run? They didn’t have a vehicle of their own – private vehicles were rare in the city – and even if they obtained one, where could they go? Besides, he wanted to see the aliens arrive from the roof, whatever happened. He would have sold his soul for a place on the welcome fleet, but what did he have to bring to the gathering of scientific talent?
“I hope you’re right,” Carola said finally. She sniffed the air. “Is that goulash I smell?”
Wilhelm nodded. “Come on, love,” he said. He’d prepared the meal hours ago, leaving it to cook slowly; he normally cooked during the weekdays. “It’ll all have blown over in a month or two.”