Robert Wilson and the Invasion from Within

by Scott Ruesterholz

Jersey City

  April 7, 2029

  Robert Wilson stands in the basement of the Jersey City Arbor Ridge Headquarters, which is now the headquarters for PEACE. He’s wearing a navy-blue suit with an American flag lapel pin, blue button-down shirt, and no tie. Now that it is time to actually get things done and not simply give speeches, Robert is glad to leave neckties in his closet.

  It’s nearly noon; less than twelve hours since this new initiative was created. Robert has barely slept a minute. After reminiscing into the early hours of the night with Mark Morrison and Chris Bailey, the real work began. The tent city that had been occupying much of the factory floor this week has been taken down, and the railway tunnels have been reopened. There is a din of activity on the floor as production resumes, with workers in their blue jumpsuits returning to the positions they’ve occupied for much of the past year building the first fleet of SF-01s. A similar scene is being played out across the other eleven manufacturing facilities under Arbor Ridge towers.

  Together, they should be able to produce 500 SF-01s a week, perhaps with supply chain prioritizations and more shifts, it could be pushed to 750. Robert though is seeking 40,000 new jets over the next three months. That’s 13,333 a month, or over 3,000 per week. To get that type of run rate going, the manufacturing of these planes would need to become the global manufacturing priority. To that point, President Victoria Larom had said two days ago that we needed a “whole of America” approach to win this war, leveraging not merely the resources of government but also of the vast private sector.

  Consequently, Robert has spent the past few hours talking with executives of large companies to lock-in supply chains. He and the President are taking a carrot and a stick approach to these negotiations. Robert is appealing to their patriotism and the promise of public recognition for their assistance, knowing that if they deny him help, Larom can legally force them to begin production under her national emergency powers. Other world leaders have offered similar assistance. Thus far, the carrot approach has been working. Competing defense contractors have offered their facilities as assembly lines for the SF-01, so Robert is sending senior supervisors from the existing production sites to oversee the ramp-up of activity at these ten new locations. Steel mills from North Carolina to India and China have offered the expedited delivery of fabricated metal to these sites. Chemical producers on the Arabian Sea will begin exporting the necessary product next week as they adjust refinery runs. Auto plants in Germany and Michigan are building the landing gear while Arbor Ridge has set aside video game console manufacturing to exclusively build the communications equipment needed to operate the SF-01 fleet.

  Even more quickly than global governments, the world’s private sector is unifying behind a singular mission: to build these planes. By April 14, the first SF-01 off this enhanced production platform will be completed. Over the first four weeks of the program, Robert hoped to get to a 4,000 plane per week production rate on top of 750 from existing basement sites and hold there to get to the 50,000 in less than three months. It’s an ambitious plan, but with the manufacturing industry mobilized in a way not seen since World War II, Robert is feeling optimistic.

  On top of this, the 756 planes stored under each of Arbor Ridge’s towers are beginning to be moved to training facilities across the globe, generally leveraging the existing infrastructure of nations’ military. While about one hundred planes would be operated from each tower, the remainder and those made at new locations will be taken to military bases in South Carolina, New Mexico, Southern France, Qatar, Guam, Chile, Norway, Australia, and Japan, among others.

  Recruitment emails have already been sent out to over 15,000 qualified players who have performed exceptionally well on Galactic Flyer: Invasion. Of the 15,000, 4,750 are currently serving in a branch of a participating nation’s military. When Robert had last checked about thirty minutes ago, there were 12,873 replies, 11,411 had accepted the invite, including 4,687 of those actively serving in the military. The response rate was extremely gratifying—he was pleased to see mankind excited to join this effort, for he felt only a willing army would be a winning army. These new pilots would be sent to the facilities that PEACE was establishing on military bases to undergo the necessary training and be assigned a squadron. Ultimately, Robert felt he had a pool of 240,000 qualified potential-pilots in his desired age group of eighteen to forty, which at the current response rate meant there was a more than adequate supply of talent, given estimated needs for 75,000 pilots. Not to mention, millions more began playing the game just today, suggesting that more talent could unveil itself in coming months should the battle prove to be long-lived.

  There had been some hiccups along the way, and Robert had faced some close calls, whether it be calling out the President on live television, telling the world he is actually an alien, or attacking a Chinese military base, but thus far, all of his gambles had been paying off. Whether this had been a stroke of good fortune or a sign of his talent, it is still too early to tell, but Robert is about to be reminded that he can’t afford for his streak to turn south anytime soon.

  “Commander Wilson,” a youngish aide in a purple jumpsuit (though the insignia on the sleeve has been changed from Arbor Ridge’s logo to PEACE’s), says as he taps Robert from behind. Robert turns around, startled—he hasn’t quite gotten used to his title as Commander of PEACE, having always thought of himself as a Mr. Wilson or preferably, Robert.

  “Does Thornhill need me?” Robert responds, knowing that the purple meant this aide worked in the command center.

  “Yes—he said it is very urgent.”

  “Okay, let’s head over.” Robert walks with the aide toward the elevator to head down a floor to the command center. As they walk, Robert asks him, “How have you liked your time here?”

  “Very much, sir. Major General Thornhill is a fair man, and I’ve learned a lot from him.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it. He isn’t working you too hard, is he? We need to be prepared for a marathon, not a sprint,” Robert replies as they get into the elevator.

  “No, sir. He works us hard, but we can take it,” the aide confidently replies, knowing it is both the truth and what he has to say as he shouldn’t criticize his senior officer to his boss.

  “Good. So, tell me, do you think we’ll win?” This is the first time Robert asks this question of a PEACE employee, though he will continue to ask it of line workers, pilots, leaders, and communications specialists many times in the days and weeks ahead to gauge sentiment.

  “Absolutely sir,” the aide confidently replies as they get off the elevator and walk towards the command center.

  “Why are you so confident?” Robert asks.

  “Because we have to win. Frozos doesn’t. We’re fighting for our lives; he’s fighting for some dirt. Who’d you pick in that fight, Commander?”

  Robert pats the aide on his shoulder and says, “I like our odds too.” Together, they walk into the command center; the aide slips over to his seat while Robert walks down the steps to the stage where Thornhill is poring over some charts.

  “Morning, Jake. Or is it the afternoon already? What bad news do you bring me today?” Robert asks with a smile.

  Thornhill pulls his weathered face up from his papers, hands pushing down on his desk. He may look weathered and weary but he can outwork just about any man half his age and Robert knows it—that’s why he picked him. “Well, I only have the news; you tell me how bad it is.” Turning to the row of workers behind him, he says, “Pull up sector 1401.”

  On the main screen on the wall, a satellite feed from the edge of the force field is projected.

  “Why that’s Tiberius’s ship.” Robert says, unimpressed but knowing there’s more.

  “Pan out,” Thornhill orders. There are two more transport destroyers—white oblong tanks mounted upon red semi-spheres. Surrounding them, there were at least one hundred small ships. Likely be
tween fifty and two hundred feet based on their relative size, they are in all shapes and sizes: black spheres like the one in Robert’s office, only larger, thin white disks, orange fighter jet ships. A varied armada of small vessels, likely perfected to offer a variety of tactical capabilities and bolster the defenses of the transport destroyers that carried planet-busting artillery and potentially even tens of thousands of ground soldiers.

  Hovering behind the transport destroyers, there is a hulking presence—a ship nearly twice as long and equally as wide as the destroyers. At its front, there’s a long red nose, sloping down to a narrow point, behind that a bulking black body, armed underneath with four long, blaster cannons, perhaps seventy-five feet long each, and at the rear of the ship, a wing extends, from which four giant turbo blasters sit. This spaceship is an engineering marvel that few on Earth could have even imagined, let alone built. Surrounding this ship, there are at least another one hundred small crafts to safely escort it across the galaxy.

  “That’s Frozos’s ship,” Robert says coolly and confidently. It looked to be updated and expanded from the one that had struck terror across the League of Planets when he was a student on Killjorn some fifteen years ago, but it had all his markings.

  A hole opens from the red semi-spheres in the front of each of the destroyers with fifty-foot-long cannons extending, just as the day Tiberius struck at the moon. One fires at Earth. The force field holds. The second fires; the shield holds. The third fires; it holds again. On the screen, the computer is able to show the trajectory of the laser beam, which, had it broken through the force field, would still have just missed the planet.

  “Interesting,” Thornhill ponders, “they are firing glancing blows at the force field.”

  “Yes,” Robert says, “they want to be sure they don’t blow up the planet if the beam succeeds in penetrating the shield. They need the planet intact as a base to operate from next to their speedway entrance.”

  Now, all three destroyers fire at the same time, hitting first the same exact spot on the force field, apparently testing if they can overpower it. Once again, the force field holds. There is a bifurcated feeling in the command center. Robert and Thornhill are relaxed, Robert trusting his technology and Thornhill long experienced in high stakes moments. Behind them though, there is palpable anxiety among the rank-and-file, less sure of the force field’s durability.

  After a few minutes pause, the three ships fire on different locations, perhaps testing if the force field weakens in other areas when facing an attack elsewhere. Yet again, the shield absorbs the attacks. While the command center is getting a close-up view of the attempted attack, on the streets of Earth from London to Singapore, slight rumbles can be heard and flashes of light seen as the attacks ricochet around the force field and dissipate out into space. People, far and wide, stop and look to the sky to see if alien forces are about to pour down. As none arrive, they hesitantly try to resume what they were doing, from grocery shopping to golfing or working, wondering if this would be a new normal they would have to grow used to.

  At the top of Arbor Ridge’s Jersey City headquarters, Mark and Chris call everyone back to their seats in the large boardroom. Robert is grateful for their faith in what he is doing; if anyone should feel such faith, it is they, for who else knows him better? They want to get operations back to normal, and that starts with not sidetracking every meeting every moment there may or may not be a military development, large or small.

  About 1,000 feet below them back in the command center, they see that the cannons are being pulled back into the red spheres. “Okay folks, show’s over,” Robert says, clapping his hands together. “Back to our regularly scheduled programming, please.”

  “But don’t you think Frozos’s ship will try to pierce the force field?” a mid-level strategist in the front row asks.

  “No. That ship is meant to intimidate. It’s part military weapon, part propaganda tool. If they try to fire and fail, as Frozos now is assuredly worried it would, the symbolic impact of his impotence would carry far and wide. That’s why he uses his own ship’s weaponry very sparingly. No one knows for sure what it can actually do, and the rumors are more powerful than any actual display of force.”

  “I’m reminded of a program from the 1980s I worked on that most of you likely read about in history books,” Thornhill says as he turns to his team. “It was President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, using lasers to strike down nuclear weapons, an idea we actually are implementing now. It didn’t matter that it didn’t actually work great then. What mattered was the Soviets feared it might, and that changed the calculus of the entire Cold War. The appearance of strength can be just as important as actual strength.”

  “Yes, that’s a good analogy,” Robert concurs.

  “But won’t people see Frozos not firing as a sign of weakness?” the aide asks.

  “No, I’m sure they’ll spin it as ‘the weapons are so powerful they are worried that a strike would also blow up the planet.’ That’s another reason the initial strikes were specifically aimed to avoid Earth.”

  Robert heads out up the stairs to walk out of the command center, but at the top, he turns and says, “We should release all this footage to the press. Let’s accompany the full video with a simple three sentences. Quote ‘Additional League of Planets invasionary forces, including what we believe to be Frozos’s own ship with him presumably commanding it, have arrived. Multiple strikes were attempted on the force field, which easily withstood the attacks. Recognizing the futility of the effort, Frozos avoided the embarrassment of a failed strike from his own ship.’ End quote. We may as well try to counteract the narrative he’ll make up. I want that sent out on our longest wave frequencies too. Thanks, everyone, for a job well done.”

  In the sky, high above Earth, Supreme General Frozos is standing in the conn of his great warship, named Magnus, looking down in disgust at a planet that is proving to be a stubborn thorn in his side.

  “Petulant, insignificant children,” he mutters to himself.

  This was not how today was supposed to go. Admiral Tyrone Tiberius was to have signed the surrender terms yesterday, and Frozos was to make a grand entrance today, welcoming the planet into the League of Nations with Presidents Neverian and Li at his side. Construction on the speedway portal just beyond Earth’s outer atmosphere would have begun imminently.

  Instead, here he stands, locked out of a planet that is technologically centuries behind the League and diminutive in size. He walks away from the giant window where he was gazing down upon North America and towards the captain’s chair. The conn is a great buzzing room. From floor to ceiling, it stands forty feet tall. The floor is shiny, black stone—an elegance reserved alone for his ship. There are two rows of curved desks emanating out from his chair—to his right sits the team who steer and operate Magnus, while to his left are the radar and communications team. The walls on each side of the room are mounted with two floors of monitors, manned by several dozen crew. These crew manage the weapons. Serving on Magnus is the highest of honors in Frozos’s space fleet, and these crew are the most highly trained and skilled fighters the League has. Frozos tolerates nothing less than excellence.

  Given his exacting standards, he is in an exceptionally foul mood today, after the embarrassing display of impotence he has been subjected to the past forty-five minutes. He clicks a button on the side of glossy white chair, and within ten seconds, a hologram of Tiberius is standing in front him, looking ill at ease, his reptilian eyes darting all across the room, avoiding eye contact with Frozos, his head bowed ever so slightly, and hands fidgeting with each other at his waist.

  “Well, Admiral, how much did we fire at the so-called force field?” a beleaguered Frozos asks.

  “Umm, Supreme General, we fired a total of seventeen shots, the last ten at full power. We tried firing in quick succession, with a longer delay, at different spots at the same tim
e, at the same spot. Our attacks had no measurable impact.”

  “Well, clearly we aren’t trying hard enough.”

  “But sir, we have fired the most powerful weapons the transport destroyers possess.” Tiberius emphasizes “transport destroyers,” holding out hope that Magnus may have more powerful, advanced weaponry that could take down the shield.

  “No, but there is no such thing as an impenetrable force field. We are just firing the wrong thing at it. What have we learned about its make-up? You’ve been here several days with nothing to do but stare at it. You must have run tests?”

  “Why yes, of course, sir. Our scientists continue to work through it. It seems to be a type of magnetized light, repelling forces like a magnet while moving through the air and space like light. No one has come across anything quite like it.”

  While Tiberius and Frozos are talking, there has been chatter over at the communications desk among five or six crew members. A young sailor, the most junior rank of the team, walks up to Frozos. She can’t be more than twenty-three and looks absolutely petrified. He turns to her, annoyed at being disturbed, and grabs a paper from her hand. It’s the statement that Robert dictated, which is being projected as far out into space as PEACE’s satellites can reach. Frozos crumples the paper into his massive palm.

  Continuing to look at Tiberius, rather than make eye contact with the sailor, Frozos tells her, “Tell your cowardly senior officer, that obviously, he is to block the message of this propagandist. Once you convey that message, you may take leave for the remainder of your shift. You’ve done your officer’s job; he can do yours.”

  She immediately scurries back to her desk to repeat his message, though he spoke loudly enough for the entire room to hear him. Returning to his conversation with Tiberius, he continues, “We need to begin construction in the next week as scheduled. I’ll have no more delays. You are continuing to lead the military effort. I expect better answers on how you’re going to get through that shield by then. This planet must not be allowed to resist.”