The alien ship has arrived at Mars. It got there long before anyone else did and is being confronted by the picket ships already orbiting Mars.
Against the background of Mars, the fast-moving blue stars of ship torch drives whirl and dodge. Swarms of smaller dots from fighters, Angel exo-frames, drones, and missiles dart around in apparently random movements, trying to dodge and maneuver for advantage.
No one says a word. We’re hoping and praying for our people out there as they get ready to fight for their lives. It’s still too far away for us to do anything but watch. In fact, this all happened a while ago—we’re just seeing the light-speed broadcast as it finally reaches us. It’s probably all already over by now…but still, we hope—
No…
Our cruiser at Mars explodes, blasted away by Saturnine treachery. At the same time, beam weapons from Deimos strike Phobos base in a blinding flash of light. Glowing hot craters cover the surface of Phobos, but there’s fortifications deep inside the moon. There should still be people in the armored depths of the satellite. Swarms of missiles launch from both bases as space around Mars fills with detonations and beam weapons.
It’s war, then.
We watch the rest of the short, brutal, and uneven battle play out with laser focus. Our surviving Angels and drones try to exact some revenge on the Saturnine ships, while the Venusian ships fight a desperate battle as Saturnine ships cut them apart, as well. Bright flashes of exploding warheads light up space, as ships and drones dodge invisible beam weapons and railguns.
The alien craft dodges impossibly through it all, somehow avoiding being blotted out by the combined fire of all three forces engaged in the deadly battle. It darts right into the maelstrom of fire between the two battling moon bases, just ahead of a massive swarm of missiles launched by Deimos, and…
There’s a blinding flash that takes out our reconnaissance satellite. The image shifts over to another recon drone, and we see Phobos come apart into glowing chunks of tumbling rock. The whole moon and everything and everyone on it…just gone.
It feels like a punch in the gut that’s knocked the wind out of me. Over three thousand service people, some of them friends from the Academy, just wiped out.
I watch the rest of the battle play out with a mixture of rage and nausea. Our remaining Angels and the Venusian ships fight on against the Saturnine craft in orbit. Deimos has had most of its heavy weapons destroyed or expended, but it’s got enough firepower to chase off anything left in orbit, so our Angels have to retreat to the surface at Pavonis Base. Reports come out of Deimos Base firing on surface targets, and aerial engagements over the Tharsis Plateau. After about an hour of fighting, everything dies down again.
It’s clear that what’s left of Saturn’s forces can’t overwhelm our mountain base at Pavonis without being wiped out in turn. So everyone’s going to wait for the main fleets to arrive.
When we arrive, there will be fighting for sure. We all want payback for Phobos, but more, we’ll be fighting to keep Pavonis Base from getting wiped out. We’ll also be fighting to keep Saturn from getting hold of that alien ship or its wreckage and using it to dominate the galaxy.
We’ll all need to be ready for what’s to come.
* * *
The days are filled with preparations and training. All this does more than just get us ready for the battle to come; it takes our minds off what happened here and is likely to happen elsewhere. We all stay too busy to worry about anything else and focus on what we can and will have to do.
Our computers and AI are updated and hardened with the latest information available from the never-ending cyber-battle between Jupiter, Saturn, and everyone else. Our targeting systems and countermeasures are modified with the latest data to defeat Saturnine systems, now that we have a better idea of what we’ll be facing.
The good news is they aren’t the vastly superior technological foes their propaganda (and ours) has painted them to be. A lot of their systems are modified versions of stolen Jovian, Venusian, and Lunar advancements. The bad news is we’re mostly using outdated equipment in this task force so we’ll be outclassed, anyway. Still, a lot of our computers are so old that their most sophisticated cyber-systems and viruses won’t really be able to attack us.
Now that we’ve actually seen modern Saturnine vessels and battleoids in combat, we can train more accurately. We train relentlessly for the upcoming battle. We take turns churning out new simulations about what could go wrong. What happens if Deimos blows away Pavonis Base before we get there? What if most of our fleet doesn’t get there before Saturn does? What do we do if a stealth Saturnine strike force hits us while we’re still on the way? How do we deal with a hidden Saturnine base on Mars? If the Venusians ally with the Saturnine, how do we deal with it? There’re so many things that could go wrong, it’s easy to come up with challenging scenarios.
We don’t bother with the other question on everyone’s minds. What happens if the alien is hostile? There’s no way to know what their technology can do, what their motives are, or what their psychology is like. Even the Saturnine are more understandable, since they were once human, like us. Anything could happen. Since there’s nothing but wild guesses there, we focus on training for what we know, and what we can do anything about.
We’re in the middle of a training simulation when I get the message. Dashiell Bertrand has woken up. I cancel the sim at once and make my
