The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  Hart couldn't argue. The shooting war had started, and for the first time he felt this thing was real. As he dashed up the stairs like the place was on fire, he called for Quin and Callum who, at the sound of their dad’s tone, came running at once. They looked up at him from the top of the staircase, their little eyes unable to grasp what had happened that could cause such alarm in their normally relaxed daddy.

  “What’s the matter, Dad?” asked his older son, Callum.

  “We need to get downstairs in the basement and pronto! Grab your favourite toy and your toothbrush—we might be there for some time,” Hart explained.

  He took a second to hug his two boys and looked into Quin's room. Hart knew that the boyish innocence and cosiness of his sanctuary might be gone forever after today. For the first time in centuries, Britain might find herself on the losing side of a major conflict. The country, never mind the world, was not prepared for this. He knew that, soon, all hell would break loose and that the way of life they had known would be no more.

  ***

  April 8, 2063 Western Global Alliance Space Ship, Atlantic

  “That’s their answer, guys. Move to position Bravo-One, firing the main laser, full power, two-second bursts. Let’s move!” ordered Captain Sonia winters, her crew already making it happen, as the warship started on its unpredictable path to the first waypoint. Fire and move, fire and move. The evasive path to the waypoint was designed specifically to avoid giving the cloaked ship’s position away.

  The first pulse of high-powered laser reached across 30,000km at lightspeed, blasting the lead destroyer on its curved upper bow. After the brief explosion, the weapon blister that had been firing from the destroyer stopped, but its other weapons emplacements kept pumping out streams of particle beam fire. The blue-white light flashed past them towards the Citadel. At least ten destroyers were concentrating fire on the space station, which was now returning fire with its mass-driver and station-defence lasers. The particle beam deflection field generator on the station seemed to be diverting most of the particle beams off into space—but not all. Holes and gashes could be seen appearing in parts of the structure as the high-energy weapons tore through the human construct. Air was expelling from several of the breaches. When Winters saw this she knew how it would end. The Citadel was just not designed for this.

  “Smit, this is Winters. You need to evacuate and set the station on auto—you’re losing integrity,” implored Winters.

  Smit and only two others remained—all three of them volunteers. They’d feared how vulnerable the station would be to particle weapons, even with the deflection shield installed. These were prototypes, never used in anger before, and nobody expected them to work flawlessly. There hadn't been the time to test them and there were no equivalent particle beams in human hands to test them against anyway. When the Citadel was conceived two decades ago, nobody would have guessed what its fate was to be.

  “Winters, concentrate on taking these bastards down!” cried Smit, clearly exerting himself as he pulled through the connecting tunnel in zero-g, “We’re already on our way to the lifepods... Out.”

  The tube connecting the Maintenance and Assembly modules to the rest of the station suddenly split apart, with the difference in angular momentum between the two remnants becoming apparent as they diverged. The Maintenance and Assembly modules started careening off towards a lower orbit as the Citadel continued firing forlornly as the angry squadron of distant warships mercilessly exploited the wounded station’s weakness. Winters let out a sigh of relief as the escape pod ejected clear of the dying station, sending the crew of three towards re-entry. An itinerant particle beam took a few pot shots at the fleeing pod, but missed and gave up, exposing the extent of the alien weapon’s acuity. Commander Smit and his crew would live to fight another day; although Winters wondered what there’d be left to fight with.

  The flow of projectiles ceased as the mass-driver was taken out once and for all. The stream of five-tonne tungsten shells had started reaching their targets and managed to score three hits before the alien destroyers started dodging the deadly hail of metal. Two of the hits dented the armour plating but bounced off into the darkness. Only the final hit caused appreciable damage, smashing into the port side of a destroyer and carrying on for some distance before the resistance of alien alloy finally stopped her romping advance. A plume of fire flared from the ragged hole in her hull and every one of her dozen or so particle beams was halted. Another flare sprouted from the top of the hull close to where the tungsten shell ended up and continued burning, consuming the destroyer from the inside out. Out of control, the destroyer now charted only a ballistic path, unlike the majority of the others, which were able to make evasive manoeuvres as the last of the shower of projectiles passed harmlessly by.

  The Citadel took a furious volley of hits as if the aliens had been angered by the audacity she’d shown in disabling one of their number. The deflector field generator went down, as was abundantly clear from the massive increase in hits that were piercing her and ripping her body apart. It wasn't until the once proud Alliance Citadel was floating around the Earth in pieces that the aliens finally relented. Now no more than space junk, Winters watched sombrely as the place she’d once called a home-from-home started on its final retrograde orbit to the fiery death that awaited. Humanity’s largest and most significant space station had lasted just twelve minutes under alien fire, but had gone down fighting.

  It was fortunate that the state-of-the-art WGASS Atlantic was faring better.

  “Now heading to waypoint Bravo-Two, ma’am,” reported Morgan.

  “Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing—four destroyers down. They’re sending in the Skylifts and Vipers now. Let’s see if they can make a difference,” said Winters.

  “Ma’am, the Russians report that they’ve scored one hit with the concentrated fire of their five shuttles. The aliens wiped then out after their first volley. They’re preparing to fire anti-satellite missiles and some of their ICBMs capable of reaching the aliens’ current position,” reported McCauley rapidly.

  “Acknowledged, Private. Report, Sergeant Sharma,” ordered Winters.

  “Ma’am, they still haven't painted us. Radar sweeps on-going though. No surprises so far—we like that,” she replied, with the only hint of a smile on the otherwise tense command deck.

  The Skylifts and Vipers made surprisingly unimpeded progress towards the alien fleet with only one Skylift taking a fatal hit thus far. It seemed than the aliens were concentrating their fire on ground targets, with two of their number firing solely on Moon-based targets. McCauley’s data link with Seattle reported the list of known hits, which was staggering in its distribution and scale. Military bases, airfields, naval stations, government buildings, military-industrial and research centres, navy ships, command centres, communications hubs, missile silos and intelligence headquarters had all been hit. The aliens clearly had some sort of priority list that seemed to start with WGA, Chinese and Russian facilities before moving on to other countries. Their aim seemed clear: the total destruction of humanity’s ability to wage war, while apparently sparing the majority of purely civilian infrastructure. The Seattle HQ itself had survived so far, but probably because the alien fleet had not yet reached line-of-sight on their orbit since the shooting started. The WGA Headquarter’s time would come soon and they were already evacuating staff into the bunkers below.

  ***

  April 8, 2063SVR Headquarters, Yasenevo District, Moscow, Russia

  Sergei Bekov, now Head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, awoke in the half-light of his destroyed office to the sound of the air raid klaxon sounding relentlessly in the street outside. He felt groggy and weak and his foot had been crushed under falling rumble. He tried to move and found himself aching and bruised, but otherwise unhurt. The taste of blood filled his mouth and his tongue was sore and swollen where he must have bitten down on it as he was thrown to the floor by the strike. He knew it wa
s an alien attack and was vexed with himself for not realising what seemed obvious to him now—that it would come hard and with little warning. It also seemed glaringly apparent, in hindsight, that his agency would be on the list of targets. In many ways the aliens were doing exactly what the Alliance would have done if the second Cold War had ever kicked off for real.

  He laid his head back down on the floor and took a breath, steeling himself for the unpinning of his crushed foot. He knew this was going to hurt. He tensed the muscles in his right leg… one, two, three … and yanked it free. It took two seconds for the pain to register but when it did it was intense and deep, causing Bekov to scream a visceral scream. It was more than a minute before the pain subsided to a throbbing, dull sensation. He took a minute more to get his breathing back under control and, when he did, he heard a weak sobbing from behind him. He got to his feet slowly, initially using his arms to support his weight, turning his head and zeroing in on the sound. The sobbing continued—female, perhaps his assistant, Svetlana. Bekov scanned the rubble and remnants of the collapsed roof for the simplest route out. Smoke was coming from the other direction—the one the trapped woman could be heard calling out from. He turned away from the cries and left her—either to be rescued by the people whose job it was or to die in agony, it didn't matter to Bekov. There was no way he was going to risk his neck for a replaceable minion. He had no time to waste, he had to get to the bunker where he would have privileged access and a degree of comfort the vast majority of the Russian people would probably never see again in their lifetimes.

  ***

  April 8, 2063 Western Global Alliance Space Ship, Atlantic

  The formation of twenty-five Skylift spaceplanes advanced towards the alien destroyers on their evasive trajectories guided by AI. With no stealth capability, the commercial spaceliners should have made easy pickings for the aliens.

  “Ma’am, they detected the Skylifts as soon as they started their approach, but are continuing to concentrate particle beam fire on ground targets,” reported Sharma.

  The Skylifts had been programmed to fire the missiles as soon as they came under fire or until they got to the optimum firing position for their designated targets on the alien warships. The second wave of attack would come from the Viper drones.

  “And the Vipers, Sergeant?” enquired Captain Winters.

  “Looks like they remain undetected so far, but some alien ships are modulating their radar, so they may paint them soon,” replied Sharma.

  “Acknowledged. Keep me updated.”

  The closest Skylift to its target unloaded its ten guided missiles in quick succession. The pre-set release sequence had been timed so that the same target point was battered by all ten missiles in a concentration of fire. The first five were armour piercing to get through the hull plating; the second and final five carried high explosive warheads. The aim was to carry destruction deep into the belly of the beast.

  The targeted destroyer, and four more of its number, replied with a fierce barrage of plasma fire into the Skylift swarm. The first slug of burning plasma ripped through the Skylift that had fired its missiles, melting large parts of the spaceplane's structure. The ten deadly rockets powered towards the underside of the destroyer’s hull, avoiding the furious onslaught of the plasma shots. The alien close-in plasma weapons system tore through the other twenty-four Skylifts before any more of them could release their missiles. The first human missile hit home, followed half a second later by another of its armour-piercing number. The third one breached the hull plating, allowing the fourth to push deeper through decks and bulkheads, equipment and aliens. The final six missiles mercilessly violated the pierced capital ship, wreaking death and destruction inside. The destroyer would not be able to recover and would suffer a slow, internal burning until her demise. As the Viper swarm pushed on relentlessly, only a floating cloud of debris remained where a hundred billion dollars’ worth of unmanned spaceplane once flew.

  Winters looked on, mildly pleased that the Skylifts had inflicted even one kill. They hadn’t expected much, so anything was a bonus.

  “Scratch one more destroyer. Seven down, thirty-one to go,” reported Morgan as the Atlantic’s main laser scored another hit after striking the same destroyer several times, creating a giant cleave in her hull. Contents and debris spilled out as the alien ship was prized apart by its own momentum. Fires could be seen erupting from the halves that had been ripped apart.

  “Continuing to waypoint Charlie-Three,” he continued.

  “Now it’s the Vipers’ turn,” remarked Winters, feeling a breath of hope return for the first time since the start of the battle.

  “Yeah, but it looks like they’re launching drones of their own, ma’am,” called out Private McCauley, as four small drones screamed out of a launch tube on the underside of the bow. It seemed every destroyer was following suit, launching four drones each.

  “I count close to one-twenty-four drones in all, Captain. They’re closing in on the Vipers,” said McCauley urgently.

  “Can we target them, Morgan? They’re outnumbering the Vipers two-and-a-half to one!” exclaimed Winters.

  “We can target them with our secondary lasers, but it will slow out rate of fire on the main gun,” Morgan advised.

  Winters thought for a second about the trade off—fewer hits with their main laser in exchange for a better chance of survival for the Vipers. She made her decision.

  “Set up a firing sequence targeting secondary lasers with one shot per drone. Execute now, Morgan,” she ordered.

  “Acknowledged. Executing now,” he confirmed.

  “Just one shot on each,” she emphasised. “If it works then we’ve preserved the Vipers. If it doesn't then I don't want to waste rate of fire or give away our position for any longer than we have to. The Vipers will probably get taken down by the close-in plasma system the aliens used on the Skylifts.”

  As the laser flashes struck their targets it was unclear in some cases whether the drones had been hit or not. Close-up tracking cameras showed some of their number disintegrate under human laser fire; although many just kept on going after clear hits.

  The round of secondary laser pulses was nearing its final targets when several particle beams converged on Atlantic.

  “Cease fire!” shouted Winters. “They’ve pinged us! Our little light show is giving our position away, even with the evasive manoeuvres we’ve been doing.”

  Two particle beams struck Atlantic but her deflector shield diverted them off into the depths of space.

  Enough of the alien drones remained to make short work of the Vipers using plasma cannons to slice through armour never designed for such a test. The forty-plus drones that remained seemed to fan out in a wide arc towards Atlantic’s general area. The alien armada kept up its barrage of ground targets, reaching through the Earth’s atmosphere to countless targets below. Winters hadn’t heard or seen anything from Seattle for what seemed like a while now, but she was too focused on the situation unfolding in front of her to notice. Regardless of Seattle’s status, she would carry out her mission to the end. She was disappointed and concerned at the fate of the Vipers, but now the victors of that battle seemed to be hunting Atlantic herself.

  “What are they doing? Are we still invisible to them?” Winters asked Sharma.

  “Affirmative, ma’am—all stealth systems operating normally,” she replied.

  “So why do I feel like we’re being hunted?” muttered Winters, not really expecting an answer.

  “Well, it looks like they’re steadily converging on our general location,” informed Private McCauley.

  Winters decided to act. “Morgan, cease firing the primary weapon and plot a course to Delta-One,” she instructed, trying to make the hunters’ job a lot harder by quelling the laser barrage and moving towards a more distant location.

  “Acknowledged. Laser ceased. On our way to Delta-One now, Captain.”

  “Your move, bastards,” muttered Winters at the
alien drones, knowing that they couldn't keep doing this indefinitely. If they couldn't engage the destroyer fleet then there was no point in them being there.

  “Got multiple explosions in the stratosphere over Russia. It looks like the few missiles they did manage to launch have all been downed. Nothing from the Chinese or Indians,” remarked McCauley, disappointed. He was feeling his anxiety rise, and, with it, the urge to pop the extra pill he kept stashed in his pocket. He resisted and willed himself to continue being strong as his hopes faded incrementally with each piece of bad news. It seemed that humanity’s defences were falling like dominoes and only Atlantic was having sustained success against the armada. As the only purpose-built warship humanity had, it stood to reason, thought McCauley.

  “Okay, Private,” replied Winters, reading his tone and body language well, “keep your chin up! We can take these bastards if we stay focused.”

  “At position Delta-One moving to Delta-Two as scheduled, ma’am,” said Morgan efficiently.

  “The drones changed direction shortly after we did and are still closing on us—they definitely have a bead on us!” stressed McCauley, fear rising inside him.