“When I was elected to lead this country,” the President said, talking more to himself than Paul, “I thought I wanted the job. I thought that it would be the crowning accomplishment of my career. Now…I think I made a mistake.”
Paul smiled, but said nothing.
There was half an hour to go.
“And tension is rising in the streets as the alien starship continues towards the International Space Station,” the talking head said. Joshua Bourjaily listened with half an ear as he typed away on his laptop. He’d actually managed to win back some prestige with his article on the secret military build-up, although not for the right reasons, at least in his view. His sources had started to offer him titbits again, but now that the MSM had access to the story, there was nothing exclusive for him. “In San Francisco, crowds have gathered to welcome the aliens to Earth…”
The television changed, briefly, to show a group of topless men and women dancing together in the streets. “Welcome to our new insect overlords,” one of them shouted, through cheers and giggles. They were clearly all very drunk. “We welcome you…”
The cameramen at the studio hastily cut back to the alien starship. Joshua had followed the negotiations with some interest; NASA had wanted to classify most of the live feed, but the MSM had refused to accept that. They’d pushed and harried NASA until they’d been forced, in the wake of congressional enquired into the failure of the American space program, to agree to share the raw footage. Again, it wasn't something that really interested him, at least not as a source of possible income. He didn’t have a steady wage; he only got paid for exclusivity, and every news service in the world would have access to the live feed. Even Al Jazeera had decided to show the alien contact, live and uncut.
“Only twenty minutes to go until the alien starship comes to a halt near the space station,” the talking head continued, her voice breathless with excitement. Joshua wondered, in a moment of pure spite, how she managed to keep awake from the excitement of pointing out the obvious, time and time again. “NASA scientists have informed us that the aliens will enter an orbit that will put them at rest, relative to the International Space Station, where they will either dock directly with the station or send a smaller shuttle towards the station.”
She rolled on and on, making it simple enough for an idiot to understand, dumbing down the science as much as possible. Joshua tuned her out as best as he could, ignoring her even as he wrote his own article, knowing that getting it online was his only hope of making money off First Contact. Once the alien craft docked with the station – or however they intended to proceed – the entire world would see what was going on…and, unfortunately, would have talking heads explaining the meaning of it all. There were times when Joshua wished he had chosen a better line of work.
There was fifteen minutes to go.
The house looked like a normal semi-detached, one that might be owned by an up and coming junior executive, or high-paid tax lawyer, with a wife, two children and a third on the way. Inside, it looked normal enough on the ground floor, but the upper floor rooms were studded with weapons of all kinds. Any of the gun control factions who saw the weapons would probably have fainted; Captain Brent Roeder and his men, all wearing civilian clothes, had amassed enough weapons to take and hold a shopping mall for a few hours.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Corporal Cody Fahy said, in-between stripping down a M16. SF34’s ‘deployment’ to suburban America hadn’t sat well with a man who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the shit hit the fan, he’d been loud in expressing his opinion that they would all die before being able to fire a few rounds in the direction of the enemy. “We should be out in the countryside holed up in a barn or a farmhouse or…”
“We’ve been through all this,” Brent said, as patiently as he could. There were twelve men occupying the house, all carefully briefed to keep themselves out of sight so that the neighbours didn’t see them, and the tension had been rising steadily. The suburb on the outskirts of Austin was almost deserted – the population had headed out to the countryside to escape an alien threat, if the aliens were actually hostile – but there were too many people around, still, to lower their guard. Everyone in SF34 had been warned about the discovery of one team – on exercise, thank God – that had been reported to the Police as a possible terrorist cell. Somehow, he was pretty certain that having a shoot-out with the local SWAT team or the National Guard would not endear him to his superiors…or SF34 to the politicians. “If something happens, we have to be emplaced in position to fight…”
“If we have to fight at all,” Fahy growled. “They’ve come hundreds of light years to visit us, sir; they’re not going to be hostile.”
“You don’t know that,” Brent snapped. “Tell me something,
“There, I knew that I was on a mission,” Fahy replied, dryly. “I knew what I was doing, even if it was just lurking under a blanket for a few days until Mullah Fat-Ass drove by, unaware that there was an American soldier ready to send him to a fiery end. Here, sir…here is
“There’s a vampire in the loft and a roomful of student nurses in the next house,” Sergeant Clayton Mancil offered, from his position in the corner. “What more do you want? A chance to fire automatic weapons with total abandon?”
“You know what I mean, sir,” Fahy said. He finished working on his M16 and picked up a second weapon, running through a basic set of checks. “This whole situation feels unreal.”
“Yes, but…it’s our duty,” Brent said, dryly.
“So shut up and soldier,” Sergeant Tessa Wireman said. The stocky woman didn’t look like a soldier, something that she’d used to her advantage in the past; as the only woman on deployment with SF34, she had to play the role of the woman of the house. The other men had to remain out of sight, but she could be seen in public; no one would even question her presence. “Best case; we all go home in a week and never speak of this…
She shrugged as they directed their attention back to the television set. There was little point in taking up defensive position, not unless the aliens had some kind of matter transmitter…and if that were the case, the war against them would become rather more unwinnable than it already was. The remaining soldiers ambled in with studied casualness, taking their seats and leaning back to watch, knowing that their overt brethren, deployed across the nation, would be watching as well.
There were ten minutes to go.
Ten minutes until the world changed forever.
NASA’s standard emergency vacuum protection suit felt hot and clammy to Ambassador Francis Prachthauser as he shifted uncomfortably within the heat, but there was no choice; it had taken hours of arguing to convince Gary to permit the diplomats to wear the protection suits, rather than a full-out spacesuit. The protection suits were supposed to provide protection against a brief exposure to vacuum, but it felt uncomfortably as if he was wearing a condom, one large enough to cover his entire body. He hadn’t spoken that thought aloud; the closer the alien starship grew, the more tense and silent the ISS felt, even to him.
The alien starship was settling down into its orbit now, catching up on the ISS on its stately orbit around the planet. The hail of communications beams from Earth had only intensified, but still the aliens made no reply. It was almost large enough to be seen with the naked eye now, even though it was hundreds of kilometres away from the station. Francis swallowed twice as he realised just how dry his throat was becoming. The entire situation was becoming increasingly
“If they don’t slow now, they’re going to ram us,” Gary said, softly. The ISS commander was as riveted to the display as the rest of them. Almost on cue, the alien starship twinkled with little lights, slowing the starship still further. “Impressive power source; I wonder what they use to provide their power. Those aren’t chemical rockets.”
