Aside from PEACE’s military buildup, the past few weeks have been uneventful on Earth. There was some disappointment but no surprise from the public when new sunsheets began to pop up in the sky. Indeed, there has been remarkable calm bordering upon complacency, bolstered by the belief that the force field is impenetrable and that PEACE under the great Commander Robert Wilson could blow up any sunsheet outside of the force field. Yes, there are armies at the gates, ready to storm through any opening, but the walls are high enough, trenches deep enough, so it is safe to continue to party in the city. That at least appears to be the sentiment held by most of the public—a sentiment that national governments have been happy to cement rather than deal with domestic strife. For his part, Robert is relieved to have a calmed populace even if more danger is lurking than they might appreciate.
But today, June 2, 2029, is going to be a day that interrupts the calm. With sunsheet coverage of Earth at 10 percent, it is time for another strike on the sunsheet. This mission cannot be as straightforward as the last one. To destroy all of the sunsheets would require turning off the entire force field at one time. That simply is not a plausible strategy. It would leave the planet extremely vulnerable to invasion and require nearly sending out the entire fleet of planes.
Instead, Jake Thornhill and Robert agree that the smartest approach is to launch a strike on a single sunsheet with a subset of the fleet. They can continue to launch these precision attacks and gradually chip away at the shield. Given each individual sunsheet is relatively small, one hundred SF-01s should do the job, especially as the small crafts in the destroyer groups are stretched thin trying to patrol so many areas.
The tentative plan had been to launch the first strike on the sunsheet above Moscow given it has among the longest days at this time of year. However, Robert has opted for a different strategy. Yesterday, intelligence photos revealed that one of the supertanker transporters, emptied of sunsheet materials, has begun the journey back to the League of Planets. The remaining supertanker sits above Los Angeles, well removed from the five transport destroyers. It is just now starting to be emptied of the sunsheet material it carries.
If PEACE can destroy this ship in addition to the Los Angeles sunsheet, Tiberius’s ability to expand his sunsheet would be greatly diminished, buying Earth potentially weeks of time to further expand its military preparation and destroy the other sunsheets. This will be the sunsheet they target.
Given she is based in New Mexico and has a reputation for being among the most competent and aggressive pilots, Robert has selected Group Commander Anna Small to lead this mission, giving her team just twelve hours to prepare. While destroying the sunsheet should only require one hundred SF-01s, taking on the supertanker will expand the complexity of the mission and give Tiberius’s military more time to rally its defenses. Consequently, Robert has decided to send up nearly 900 fighters.
It is about 3:00 PM in Jersey City, 1:00 PM in New Mexico, and noon in Los Angeles. As they were for Operation Icarus, Robert and Thornhill are standing on the base of the command center, prepared to monitor events from the live feeds of satellites and planes on the giant screens in front of them. Robert is standing calmly in a dark suit, red tie loosened from his collar, and top button open. He has just briefed the military representatives that PEACE would be launching a “targeted attack” on the sunsheet to mitigate the imminent threat it poses. This briefing was much more cursory than past ones, lasting less than thirty minutes and with scant operational details. Robert did not even have Thornhill on to discuss the technical aspects and intelligence as in past briefings, instead treating it as a formality. As no representative could dispute the threat posed by the sunsheet and recognized the strong public support Robert enjoys, he faced minimal resistance. Still, his newfound laxness did not go unnoticed.
As Robert sees it, the primary operational challenge of this mission is to try to maintain an element of surprise so that Tiberius cannot begin to move defenses during the twenty-two minutes it takes airborne fighters to reach the edge of the force field. Thornhill’s team have devised a solution to this challenge. They would launch the global SF-01 fleet from bases all over the world. In total, 28,000 of the 40,000 planes in the fleet will be used. By launching globally, Tiberius will be forced to hold his defenses everywhere, thinking a global strike is coming or in hopes that he can send planes through a globally opened force field. This launch pattern offers the clearest avenue to keeping the supertanker unguarded.
Right at 3:08, the global fleet, which had launched from the various runways and bases on which they resided, began the ascent to the force field. Over the next twenty-two minutes, Robert and Jake continuously confer with the satellite specialist team in the front left of the auditorium, while also monitoring the satellite feeds up above. Exactly as hoped, there is no major movement in Tiberius’s fleet, with small crafts merely tightening their patrol patterns around the nearest sunsheet—unsurprising defensive behavior.
Group Commander Small has led her squadron to the edge of the force field. Internally, she is filled with nervous energy, but she trusts her team and her training, giving her confidence in the mission’s success. Externally, she projects steadiness and calm, radioing the force she is leading, “Get ready; this is the day we’ve trained for. Let’s show them what we can do.”
Exactly at 3:30 PM, the force field projector in Los Angeles turns off. Seconds later, Group Commander Small flies out of the force field zone and into the hostile territory of space, the first individual from Earth to do so during this entire conflict. As was her style, she is at the very front of her group formation. Each squadron of twenty-four planes is flying in a V-shaped formation with row upon row of squadrons pouring into space.
Anna runs through their mission as she travels further from the atmosphere. The first section of about 400 planes will head for the sunsheet and destroy attacking enemy ships. About 250 miles behind them, a group of 500 planes who, at about 1,000 miles out from the sunsheet, will veer off and make a straight-run at the supertanker. Given the lack of gravity and atmospheric resistance in space, these space jets can fly at extraordinary speeds. It should take under two minutes for the second group to reach the supertanker absent any resistance.
As they near the breakaway points, the mission is going well. The first group has only encountered a few dozen small unpiloted drones, and several squadrons have peeled off to deal with them tidily. Thornhill radios Small to alert her to the fact that Tiberius is moving the transport destroyer over the Eastern Seaboard towards the Los Angeles sunsheet, alongside supporting crafts. At this pace, they should be back inside the force field before the destroyer is upon them, but there is little time to waste.
As the first group is firing on the sunsheet, tearing it to shreds, and the second nears the supertanker, the supertanker’s gigantic bay doors open. Hundreds of shots are fired upon the attacking SF-01 group. Thousands of spherical drones and midsize crafts catapult out of the behemoth of a ship!
Anna curses into her headset, which connects her to the fleet of SF-01s as well as the command center where Robert and Thornhill are carefully tracking the attack. It isn’t carrying sunsheet material at all.
“We’ve been set up!” Anna warns.
Squadron Leader 27 shouts into her intercom, “ENEMY FIRE! ENEMY FIRE! INITIATE EVASIVE MANEVEURS.”
Several dozen SF-01s are flying out of control, aflame, the laser attack frying systems and piercing their shields. The remaining 400 in Group 2 scatter, engaging in mass combat against the over 3,000 enemy ships.
Seeing this, Anna yells into her headset, “Group 1: attack the Supertanker. Assist Group 2.”
The 400 planes in Group 1 turn from the destroyed sunsheet and head toward the battle around the supertanker to provide relief to their overwhelmed friends.
Anna can’t believe the supertanker was a trap all along and is certain Robert is in a similar state of shock gi
ven his lack of communications. She evades another ship, taking a quick look up towards where the destroyer is approaching. They need to withdraw, before it’s too late, otherwise she fears the entire force could be lost.
She hears a voice in her headset: “Commander Small,” Thornhill says, “this is an order to retreat immediately. A destroyer group is fast approaching. Commander Wilson is reopening the force field.”
While being tailed by two drones, she calmly orders her group to withdraw. In the process of flipping her plane 180 degrees, she fires her laser cannon to take the two drones out.
About 625 SF-01s make an all-out dash for the force field. In a straight shot, they seem to be able to outrun the drones, though the midsize crafts are keeping pace and picking off stragglers. There’s just 1,000 miles to the force field—the race is on.
Anna sees, from the left corner of her eye, the transport destroyer group rapidly approaching. Hundreds of enemy ships will get through the force field before the control center has time to close it. Worse, the massive laser cannon is beginning to extend out from the front red sphere of the oncoming destroyer. She knows what she must do; they must protect Earth, no matter the cost.
She shouts into her transponder, “ABORT. ABORT. REENGAGE WITH ENEMY FLEET. NO ONE GETS PAST US.”
She pulls her ship up, turning away from the Earth to take down as many enemy crafts as she can, and her group instinctively follows her lead, knowing full well this is to be their last stand.
Robert’s voice crackles through her headset, “Commander Small, your order is to return to Earth!”
She grits her teeth. “No, Commander Wilson. I can’t let enemy ships or a laser blast into Earth’s atmosphere. Close the force field,” she calmly but firmly replies.
“But Commander Small—”
“Do it now, before it’s too late, sir!” she interrupts. As she fires on the incoming ships, she thinks of her three brothers. Knowing that they will grow up to have families of their own, safely on Earth, she feels at peace. Her sacrifice is worth it.
Seeing the solemnity of Thornhill’s face and the destroyer’s cannon now fully extended, Robert hits the red button once more, turning the force field back on.
No sooner does he do this than a great blast is shot from the destroyer, wiping out half of the remaining SF-01’s fleet. Commander Small’s camera on the screen goes to black. Had she not forced the force field closed, irreparable damage to the planet may have been done. One-by-one the remaining SF-01s go offline, having been outnumbered twenty to one.
900 pilots lost in a catastrophic miscalculation by Robert Wilson. Thanks only to the bravery of a twenty-two-year-old woman and the extraordinary loyalty she had built up in her group of pilots, mostly civilians who had never flown a military mission before today, that is all that was lost.
Disgusted by his failure, Robert walks silently out of the command center and into his office, takes a seat in his chair, and buries his head in his hands, shedding more than one tear. He had only just met with Anna Small a few weeks ago. She was a charming, motivated, and inspiring young woman with her entire life ahead of her. For her to be one of the casualties of the attack makes the loss all the more personal for Robert. He feels like a fool, a man who let his arrogance and zeal for victory blind him to the fact that Tiberius and Frozos were trained and skilled conquerors. He should have known that there was a trap.
More troublingly, he can’t help himself but wonder that if he had provided a more fulsome briefing to the national military representatives, maybe someone would have asked a question that caused him to rethink and avert this entire disaster. While training in Killjorn, Robert had excelled in schoolwork and technology while his military strategy skills were deemed “mediocre.” Did he overestimate himself in taking this role to lead the military resistance to Frozos? Were his successes to this point merely good luck? These thoughts race through his head as he replays the briefings he attended and intelligence reports he had read. Was there some clue he had overlooked?
While beating himself up, a paper that had been half-leaning over the edge of his desk falls to the ground. There was no perceptible gust of wind in his office, nor did he touch it. Rather, it finally ceased to fight gravity and fell to the ground, folded in two. Robert looks over at it and picks it up. Unfolding it, he recognizes it immediately as the paper he wrote on the very day that he met Frozos and was given the assignment to come to Earth. At first, as was often the case in these little moments when fate collides with reality, he thinks of his mother whom he did believe to this day was watching over him.
He likes to think that in some little way, she pushed the paper over at this very moment to provide a gentle reminder. As he stares over the phrase “REMEMBER THE MINE” over and over again in this hour of mourning, defeatism, and self-doubt, he is reminded of the most perseverant man he ever knew.
Chapter 24
Nayan
Earth Year 2011
At fourteen years old, Marcus is now nearly fully grown, standing at five foot eight inches, and hardened by years of hard work. His messy black hair has been replaced by a crew cut—the mandatory style for all workers. He and his father, Jesse, have been slaves for three years now, with Marcus still working in the raptium mine as a member of crew #1949. As he has grown older, stronger, and more experienced, his responsibilities on the team have grown. Originally, Marcus did mostly menial, lightweight tasks—bringing water to the miners, moving small debris off the mine cart tracks—but as he has grown, he now moves heavier material and loads carts with mined raptium ore for processing.
Crew #1949 is comprised of thirty-six workers, twenty-eight of whom have been working together for well over a decade now. Marcus has found them to be an amiable group of men, just looking to do their work, keep their heads down, and stay in the good graces of the guards. They consistently are more productive than about 67 to 75 percent of the crews and less productive than 25 to 33 percent. This is exactly where the crew chief, a bearded fellow named Cornelius but who’s official mine number is RR964, tries to place crew #1949. Productivity in the bottom half of mine crews can lead to curtailed meals, harsher assignments, and beatings from the more brutal prison guards. By the same token, he has seen the top performing crews literally work themselves to death when there really is no reward for being the best. His years working the mine and fostering an understanding of what the guards really need to see crews produce have led Cornelius to aim for this level of productivity. Productive enough to stay in their masters’ good graces but not so productive as to cause undue fatigue, or so he told Marcus once.
Marcus has become a popular member of the team. At fourteen, he is still too young to be a lead miner, but his official responsibilities are in assisting the trained miners and in loading carts with ore. From their first night in the mine camp, Jesse emphasized to his son the importance of being a helper, doing all that was asked, and going above and beyond what is needed. Jesse realized that a child could be seen as an unreliable liability by a crew, but if the child worked hard, never complained, and did what was asked, he could potentially be quite popular. At the end of each day for the past three years, Jesse has asked Marcus to name one unassigned task he did. If he couldn’t name one, Jesse asked him to think of one task he could have done and didn’t and to be sure to find a way to help that worker the next day. This attitude has boosted Marcus’s popularity, and he has even begun to do some mining, giving the primary miners who are getting older a half an hour break every now and then to catch their breath. The guards have been turning a blind eye to this behavior, uninterested in upsetting the apple cart of the steadiest producing raptium crew. In exchange for his going the extra mile, senior members of the crew often share extra rations or their leftovers with Marcus, who is after all a growing boy with a teenager’s appetite.
While all of the crew is friendly and polite to Marcus, he has noticed the fealty they show towards the guard
s. Cornelius told him on his fourteenth birthday, “In this mine, there is no living. Just surviving.” This mindset pervades the group; hope for freedom is all but lost. These workers have seen too many of their friends try to escape or rebel, only to die. Marcus is seeing firsthand the soul-crushing nature of servitude. These men have spent over seven years working under the League of Planets’s military rule and have given up hope of ever having control over their lives again. They have managed a way to operate within the system and lead a tolerable existence, but no longer push back against the system itself—a point Jesse frequently drives home.
While Marcus has been lucky to work with a decent, cohesive group of men, he knows Jesse’s work has been much more grueling. This is evident just based on their physical appearance. While Marcus has grown and filled out due to the rigors of his daily work, his father has been fading away. He barely weighs 120 pounds and has the complexion of a ghost—the physical effects of his three years in the refinery of Block C, melding nayanite with carbon. The average worker only lasts about fifteen months in these conditions. Jesse is entering his thirty-seventh month, making him the longest serving worker in this facility by over a year.
Marcus knows his father has seen at least two people die in each job in the factory, while some of the higher risk jobs have had six or seven deaths. While all are labelled as accidents, Jesse can tell those that are intentional from people who can no longer tolerate the cruel conditions and weight of slavery. He has come to recognize a certain look in the eyes of those prepared to commit suicide by industrial accident—the look of hopelessness and despair that can send chills down a grown man’s spine. Unlike Marcus, who has been able to develop a working relationship, if not outright friendship, with his crew, Jesse keeps to himself. Due to the high mortality rate, his crew is effectively a revolving door. Developing friendships only makes the deaths more painful, so everyone in the refinery keeps to themselves.
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