While Robert was speaking to the press, Admiral Tiberius had boarded his personal ship, a black sphere similar to that in Robert’s underground office, and gone aboard Magnus. He is standing in front of Frozos who is seated behind a desk, on top of which plans are strewn everywhere.
“I believe this strategy is our best way to end the nuisance of this force field.” Tiberius concludes.
“Interesting, Admiral. I commend the out of the box thinking. And you say two weeks?” Frozos inquires.
“Yes, sir. Two weeks for the first phase of the operation.”
“This reminds me of my childhood on the family farm. Have I told you about that farm, Tiberius?”
“No, sir.” A half-truth from the Admiral, who has learnt that when Frozos has a story he wishes to tell it is best to let him tell it.
“We had a family of foxes who, despite my father’s best efforts, kept getting into the hen house, killing our chickens. So, one day, we dropped a smoke bomb down into their den, and I shot each one as they ran out, panicked. We never had a fox problem again. We’ll give your plan a chance. Make the necessary arrangements back at headquarters.”
“Thank you, Supreme General.”
Tiberius bows and walks to the door of the office. As he is about to open the door, Frozos says, “Tiberius. You’ve had a long and faithful career, for which I am grateful. It is for that reason alone I am giving you a final chance to take this meddlesome planet and undo your wrong. Your next failure will be your last.”
Tiberius nods in understanding and leaves.
Chapter 18
Jersey City
April 29, 2029
Twelve days have passed since PEACE’s first military engagement. The success in space has, as Robert Wilson hoped, greatly boosted morale both among his recruits and the broader population. Public polling showed that over 80 percent had confidence in his leadership and over 70 percent “feel safe from alien attack.” More important than any opinion survey, daily life is seeming increasingly normal—the strongest sign yet that people do indeed feel safe.
After an initial rush to hoard goods, grocery store sales are entirely average, restaurants are filled. Financial market volatility has largely subsided. Topics of conversation at the office water cooler, local bar, and family dinner table have mostly reverted back to the daily dramas of life, the latest episodes of popular television shows, and how the local sports team is faring. From an outsider’s perspective, life would seem totally normal. Still untested, of course, is how durable this calm is or whether a military snafu could bring with it mass panic.
Life, of course, is not normal for those working at PEACE, but operations are progressing smoothly. Weekly plane production between new facilities and existing ones is set to pass 3,800 this week, leaving PEACE on pace to hit peak production of 4,750 within two weeks. Private sector partners have stepped up to the occasion mightily, integrating complex supply chains in days, sharing information and employees, to get product out the door and shipped as quickly as possible. Critically, diagnostic and flight tests show no deviation in quality from legacy Arbor Ridge sites and new facilities. There are now over 17,000 planes in PEACE’s fleet. This sum exceeds the combined Air Forces of the United States, Russia, and China. The fleet is nearing critical capacity to be able to defend the majority of the planet from attack should the force field fail, but there still are not enough planes to successfully wage a battle in space.
Pilot recruiting has been another source of optimism. There have been over 40,000 recruits thus far, out of 45,725 offers. Of these 40,000, 7,191 have passed through training, generally a two-week process, been enlisted, and assigned to a squadron and group command. That gives PEACE nearly 9,000 active pilots, including 1,200 legacy pilots on Earth and 550 on the moon. Of the 9,000, about 2,700 are either active or retired members of their nation’s military. Just over 3,300 recruits have failed out, primarily because the fear of death altered and impaired the way they flew from how they had performed in the virtual reality game. That leaves over 29,000 recruits who are progressing through training at various stages. Based on pass rates thus far, Robert expects about 110,000 recruits will be needed to achieve a fighting force of 75,000 pilots, well within the tolerance bands given 240,000 qualified game players, and he expects, should current trends hold, about 20 to 23 percent of recruits to be active or retired military officers, with a heavy skew towards the active force. At that penetration rate, there should be at least two or three military members in each squadron, a presence which he hopes will make it easier for trained civilians to cope with enlisted life.
Today, Robert is sitting in his office in the Jersey City headquarters of PEACE. It has been a whirlwind ten days for him. After the success of the first strike, he toured around PEACE bases across several nations to energize recruits and poll group commanders about how training was progressing. Equally important, he was meeting with the heads of state or defense minister in each country he visited: Canada, Japan, China, Vietnam, Russia, Austria, France, Nigeria, and Brazil.
The debate prior to the last military battle had opened Robert’s eyes to the reticence with which the national delegates viewed opening Earth’s force field. Of course, that was never the plan for the speedway portal operation, but the national representatives didn’t originally know that. There could be a time where PEACE needed to launch a strike from Earth that could briefly open the force field, and Robert worried he would lack the necessary national government support. While he technically had unilateral authority, he did recognize that acting contrary to the overwhelming view of the world’s governments would undermine his credibility, particularly if the operation was anything other than a clear success.
Robert has been meeting with world leaders to encourage them to deploy aircraft carrier groups, fighter jets, and anti-craft missiles to major cities. During these briefings, he always emphasized that the force field would be opened for mere minutes, so there would be very few enemy ships that would get through before the shield would be closed again, particularly given the rush of PEACE jets flying out into space. PEACE jets would continue to be the primary line of defense, but by deploying conventional militaries to major cities, there would be a secondary line of defense, which could hopefully engage a handful of ships, successfully. By adding this “insurance layer” to Earth’s defenses, he hoped that there would be greater willingness to open the force field if and when it is necessary to do so.
Meeting with these leaders proved to be a frustrating experience for Robert. Most leaders were reluctant to deploy militaries in a way that civilians would notice in their everyday life, like posting a battleship a few hundred yards from shore. The degree of calm from citizens has been a pleasant surprise to world leaders who did not want to take any policy that would upset that calm. They feared deploying the military would scare the public or be seen as a sign there was doubt about the impenetrability of the force field.
While this was the primary reason given to Robert in meeting after meeting, there was an additional reason. Many, particularly within national militaries, were wary of Robert and uncomfortable outsourcing so much of the globe’s defense to him. Some nations joined PEACE to monitor his actions rather than because they were supportive of the idea, not to mention fear of being left out if the initiative proved to be a popular success, as it has been thus far. To that end, they feared deploying their own militaries as supplemental defenses would make it too easy to launch an offensive against Frozos—an action for which they feared Robert was overly eager.
In these dealings, President Victoria Larom has been a helpful partner, able to supplement deft diplomacy with Robert’s more blunt style. Before engaging in this global tour, Robert met President Larom at the White House where he first laid out the idea of deploying national militaries. She was sympathetic to his idea, in part because Nick Neverian had been so uncooperative under constant interrogation, much more so than the other de
tained spies. Neverian was insistent that Frozos would stop at nothing to take Earth and he was prepared to wait patiently in jail for that day to come, certain a life of luxury and power awaited him.
Neverian never offered details for why he felt this way, just saying that Earth would be a “crown jewel” in Frozos’s empire. Larom didn’t divulge this information to Robert who was already sufficiently hawkish on military affairs. However, it did underpin her view that the planet should be planning for a long haul and that it would be wise to enhance defenses. She, though, did understand concerns from other leaders that overly blatant displays of force could upset the calm among civilians.
So, after Robert’s meetings with foreign leaders, where he offered his proposal and faced pushback, she would phone the relevant leaders to offer a compromise path that the U.S. was pursuing. It is highly unlikely that Robert would be opening the force field on a moment’s notice. He would likely be able to give at least one day’s notice before opening the force field to launch an attack. As a consequence, Larom proposed a “T+1 strategy”—essentially a plan whereby the military would be sufficiently ready to deploy to major cities within one day. This meant the U.S. was moving its aircraft carrier groups within one hundred miles of shore, close enough to protect cities within hours but sufficiently far away that they would go unnoticed by the public. Similarly, additional troops and mobile anti-aircraft systems were being sent near major cities so that they could be rapidly deployed.
The one drawback of this approach is that cities would not be immediately protected if Frozos broke through the shield. This is the risk they needed to balance against the risk of public panic. At this point, they continue to view the force field as impenetrable, so Larom viewed this risk as acceptable against the need to keep the public calm. Indeed, her middle-ground proposal has largely been met with approval from her fellow world leaders, particularly compared to Robert’s more aggressive proposals. Alongside the U.S., most nations have secretly agreed to this partial deployment strategy so that their militaries could be able to supplement PEACE’s defenses in one day’s notice.
Robert is heartened to have a partner like President Larom in the White House to deal with other world leaders, and he feels comfortable that her proposal is both prudent and sufficient to address his concern that world leaders would be overly hesitant to support a brief opening of the force field. With that matter settled and Larom promising her help where possible, Robert is able to focus entirely on PEACE’s mission.
Sitting in his office today, he is reviewing intelligence reports and photos compiled by Jake Thornhill’s team. Subsequent to the battle on April 17, there has been virtually no action by Frozos’s forces. That night, Tiberius deployed one of the transport destroyer groups to the moon to pin down the lunar forces, a move Robert expected. The remaining two groups and Magnus just sat in orbit around Earth’s atmosphere. All of the ships moved just enough to avoid being an easy target in the event Earth had deep space laser capability, which it does not. Otherwise, there was no action whatsoever; Robert had been beginning to find the degree of complacency among the enemy forces unsettling.
Then, yesterday, three more supertanker transporters arrived, escorted by an additional transport destroyer group. Up through this morning, there had been no activity from the supertankers, and speculation around their purpose has been rife. Robert has been dismissive of the theory that they are here to make another attempt at building the speedway portal. He is certain that Frozos or Tiberius has something else planned. For the past three weeks, the League’s top scientific minds must have been spending every waking hour trying to find a way through or around the force field, and this is likely to be their answer.
There is a knock at the door connecting Robert’s office to the command center.
“Come in.”
Thornhill walks in. “There’s action. Come over when you have a minute. Not imminent.”
“Thanks, Jake. I’ll be there shortly.”
After paging through the last bits of the intelligence reports, Robert gets up from behind his desk and walks into the command center. Up on the screen, the satellite feeds are being transmitted. There is finally movement. The supertankers have moved closer to Earth than in the photos from overnight that Robert had just been reviewing. From the opening in the rear of the supertankers, small crafts are pulling a dark fiber out. They appear to be welding the edges of these fiber sheets to create a larger sheet.
“Where are the ships?” Robert asks.
“About 200 miles from the edge of the force field, sir,” an officer in the front row says.
“Yes, but what part of the planet are they over?” Robert asks, a bit more urgently.
“Sir, they are about 250 miles south of Tokyo.”
“And what time is it, there?”
“11:43 PM”
“So no sunlight, then?” Robert asks rhetorically.
“No, it’s the dead of night,” the officer answers unnecessarily.
Robert looks to Jake in a state of genuine horror. “And, do we have any idea what type of material that is?”
Thornhill motions to the over-eager officer to button up, “No, it’s impossible to do any real testing, but our preliminary scans show no active weaponry. The only military ships are from the escorting, single destroyer group about 2,500 miles behind the supertankers. Elsewhere, one destroyer is stationed by the moon, another over South Africa, one over New York, and Frozos’s ship is over Finland.”
“Well, I’m not sure what we can do other than monitor it. All of this material is coming out of just one supertanker, correct?” Robert confirms.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“My goodness, that sheet looks gigantic.”
“Yes, they’re adding tens of thousands of square yards per minute,” Thornhill replies.
“Okay, keep me abreast of any developments. Otherwise, I want to know the second it is daybreak above Tokyo.”
With that command, Robert walks back into his office and picks up his phone.
“Madam President, this is Robert Wilson…. I’m afraid the day we’ve worried about is coming. They are trying to work around the force field. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t see this one coming….”
After a few minutes of back and forth with President Larom, Robert hangs up the phone. He stares at the phone for a moment, hesitates, and then picks it up.
“Mark, it’s Robert…. Yes, yes, I know I’m not supposed to. Just make sure the utilities charge the excess energy batteries to their full capacity today…. Trust me on this, and make sure other utilities do the same. Thanks.”
Technically, this phone call is in breach of the agreement that Robert had signed incorporating PEACE, but now is not the time to worry about details. Robert knows that Mark would be more understanding of the occasional slipup than Chris, who by his nature is a letter-of-the-law type of guy. He just hopes that his advice is heeded. A battle for Earth is all but inevitable now, Robert fears.
Chapter 19
Jersey City
April 30, 2029
It is now 4:00 AM in Jersey City, and Robert is standing in the command center. Like all the individuals in the room, from retired General Jake Thornhill to the lowliest aide, Robert hasn’t slept all night, and he looks it. The group is tired, unshaven, working off adrenaline and caffeine. Indeed, Robert has a cup of coffee in hand as he stares up at the screen. He doesn’t even care for coffee, but his taste buds have long gone to sleep.
Robert’s hunch from yesterday morning has been confirmed: Frozos’s army is deploying a shade around the planet. The nature of the material is still unknown but it appears extremely thin and light-weight—that is the only way one supertanker could carry so much of the material. From preliminary tests since sunrise, the material does an exceptional job at blocking sunlight and reflecting the heat away from the Earth. The project has been underway for
nearly twenty hours and enough space has been blocked off to block the sunlight from hitting 0.7 percent of the Earth.
Fortunately, there is significant cloud cover over most of Asia this morning, so the impact from the lost sunlight isn’t being felt on the ground. When clouds dissipate, there will essentially be a black blotch on the top of the sky, and it will continue to grow. This “sunsheet,” as the command center has taken to calling it, also appears to be motorized and rather than orbiting over a stationary spot on the Earth, it is moving alongside the sun so that it will be blocking its life-giving rays twenty-four hours a day. As an aide noted, this feature means that Frozos needn’t build a sheet around the entire planet to block out the sun. However, such a feat wouldn’t be necessary; Earth’s resistance would collapse well before then.
Indeed, Frozos can have a crippling impact on daily life on Earth, endangering its habitability, with a sunsheet that is far smaller than the planet’s surface area. By blocking around 10 percent of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface, models show Robert that global temperatures could fall by more than seventeen degrees Fahrenheit on average. That would make the Earth colder than during the Ice Age, which would greatly shock the nature and quality of life across much of the planet. Parts of North America and Europe could remain snow-covered year-round with beach summer vacations a thing of the past.
While this would undoubtedly be an unpleasant change and it would likely lead to death as societies readjusted themselves, wearing a winter coat all year is the least of humanity’s problems. Solar power is now a critical supply of energy for utilities. Some areas are likely to lack the generation capacity to keep the lights on without new investment. Sunlight also provides the energy for plants to grow, which provide the backbone of global nutrition and recycles CO2 into oxygen in the atmosphere.
Robert Wilson and the Invasion from Within Page 17