“I need to know,” he continued. “Is it true that the government might try to hide the Noridian treachery from the public?”
“It’s a possibility,” I replied. “We have no way of knowing what, if anything, Earth’s leaders have decided at this point. Jaki, Dr. Helmer, and Colonel Memphis have been back on Earth for several months now and there’s no telling how persuasive they might be. It’s all guesswork until we actually arrive and can assess the situation.”
“So what if,” Dr. Decker continued. “We take out their ship and the powers that be had already made the decision to go with the Noridians? They’d probably lock all of us up so fast that no one would even know we’d returned.”
“That’s certainly a chance we take… Look, I’ve thought a lot about this too. If what you’re suggesting happens then there’s not a damn thing I can do. I’ll take out the Noridian ship before anyone has a chance to tell me otherwise but if I’m ordered to stand down and shut up afterwards that’s what I have to do.”
“Exactly, but that’s not what I’d have to do.”
I stopped what I was doing and locked gazes with him.
“Everyone on our planet has a right to know the real score,” he said. “Maybe you have to follow orders but I don’t. A number of my colleagues and I have decided to download a video diary onto the planetary net immediately upon our return—that way the truth gets out no matter what happens to us.”
“You could start a worldwide panic,” I said.
“Or, we could save the Earth,” he said.
“Why are you telling me this?” I wanted to know.
He actually looked a little startled when he said, “Because we want your permission!”
After a pause I said carefully, “I can’t give you permission to do any such thing… but, if it were to happen without me knowing about it I would hope it would be coordinated through Dr. Schein so it doesn’t give our game away too soon.”
We continued holding each other’s gaze as he slowly started to smile.
“I can promise you if we would have had your permission we would have certainly done that but since we won’t be doing anything…” he said while still smiling.
There she is. Home. The most beautiful sight in the galaxy is a little blue ball with touches of brown and cottony white. The night side sparkles like the finest diamond and the dayside is bluer than Lapis.
Growing from just a spec, we’d all been mesmerized watching Earth emerge on the view screens. Within hours we would be in orbit and the history of Homo sapien sapiens would be changed forever.
This was becoming real for everyone; what we were getting ready to do and the terribly high stakes of potential failure were sinking in. All of our military personnel had gone into combat with rookies at some point in their careers so we knew that look; we also knew what we needed to do.
You could hear Captains Hiromi and Kamiko as well as Iron Jaw quietly talking with different members of the boarding party. Checking equipment here, giving encouragement there. Getting an occasional laugh and giving the frequent advice to ‘trust your training.’
Even though I was mentally preparing and putting my own game-face on I couldn’t help feel a little surge of emotion as I suddenly realized how proud I was of my people. The professional soldiers I’d selected for my team, both living and dead, really were the cream of the crop. Finding a like-minded Iron Jaw Reynolds on the Earth Team almost felt preordained—for a man like that to decide to follow my lead was an honor. The civilians were certainly smart but they were also gritty and tough in their own way. And then there was Julie…
We had determined that Dr. Decker (who didn’t want to be on the boarding team), Dr. Cook and two other scientists (whom just didn’t have what it took to be on the boarding team), Julie (whom we wouldn’t let on the boarding team), and myself (who was sending all the others into harm’s way) would take a cloaked shuttle to the surface immediately prior to the raid.
That left 18 people including Major Reynolds to be divided up into 9 two-man teams to board the ship, quickly spread out, and take out an unknown number of Noridians. There were only 7 experienced military personnel available to the boarding party and they were each matched up with a civilian; but that still left two teams without experienced leadership. It couldn’t be helped.
The boarding team was already assembled in the large room outside of the pressurized shuttle bay. They would be taking a stealth shuttle to the Noridian ship and we would be taking one to the planet’s surface. It was here that we’d all been watching our approach to Earth on the view screens. Silva pulled me aside just before I started moving my team into the bay.
“Major, we’ve confirmed that the Noridian ship is in orbit and we’re now close enough to pick up Earthnet news feeds… it’s not good.”
“Put it on the screens and tell us what’s going on,” I said.
A number of the view screens now shifted to scenes of absolute devastation. Most of the screens were filled with smoking ruins; what might have been the wall of a building or two could still be seen but for the most part the screens were filled with a blackened rubble strewn landscape. As the viewpoint panned out it became clear that the rubble fields surrounded huge craters.
Except for a few gasps there was total silence until Silva started giving us a narrative…
“Most Earth cities are still intact,” he started. “Our ship is processing 1,139 different news feeds showing live and recorded events. What you are seeing are a score of cities that have been targeted by kinetic bombardment.
“I am sorry to report that Washington, Los Angeles, London, Moscow, and Beijing are all gone. It also looks like a number of military bases have been hit along with several impact sites that don’t correlate with any of our records; possibly secret bases or missile launch sites.
“The atmosphere is heavily loaded with particulate matter and weather patterns are affected but it doesn’t appear to be severe enough to cause a nuclear winter.”
“Why did they do this?” I heard Dr. Decker ask
“We’re correlating the stories now,” Silva responded. “But from what is being reported Jaki gave the planet a deadline to come together and invite their protectorship. When that deadline passed she took the gloves off and dropped all semblance of friendship. She gave an ultimatum and another deadline; and even though there was a significant international movement led by Dr. Helmer urging world governments to accept, the politicians still couldn’t stop arguing long enough to get their act together in time.
“As punishment Jaki ordered a number of cities destroyed—taking out a huge part of Earth’s political structure in the process.
“Several national militaries tried to strike back both on the ground and in orbit but that fight lasted all of two days.
“It looks like Jaki is consolidating Earth leadership around the French Prime Minister and declaring him the world leader. There is to be a major speech this evening from the front steps outside the Château de Versailles.
“In short, the Noridians have taken Earth.”
We paused just long enough to incorporate our new found intelligence into our plans. We still didn’t know how many Noridians were on the ground or still on their ship and we didn’t know the location of Dr. Helmer, Colonel Memphis, or anyone else from the Earth Team but at least we knew were Jaki was going to be—and we were going to be there too.
If anything, I think the images from Earth steeled our team to what we had to do. Amazingly I didn’t sense any panic—only a hardened determination to win the day.
We were all wearing the communications devices that Silva had printed for us. He assured us that unless the Noridians were specifically looking for our signal they would never detect it. We couldn’t afford any risk of detection at all but we were doomed without communications so, like in so many other things, we didn’t have a choice.