The First Shot

Reg was at her station when the alarm sounded. The alarm -- the only one that would ever matter.

Reg repositioned her chair into an upright position, then reached for the manual. The binder was old, but its laminated pages has seen little use.

“Is this for fucking real?” she asked Thomas. He unwrapped another piece of gum -- his third in an hour -- and popped it into his mouth. Reg thought his breath must smell like a goddamn dentist’s office.

The two of them were alone in a small, cigar-shaped room at the center of an orbital silo. The walls entombed them in a mess of old and new electronic equipment. Each of them faced a different side of the room, and their chairs were locked into tracks that ran from one end of the room to the other. Below them, a curved piece of glass flashed blue and black as the Earth passed into and out of view.

“About time, if you asked me. You ever think you’d be the one to fire one of these?” Thomas patted the console like it was an antique car.

“Never. I passed on an assignment to Europa for this. Took the job ‘cause it was quiet. Supposed to be, anyway.” Reg turned off the station-wide alarm. “Did you leave the door open?”

Thomas cocked his head towards Reg, and said, “Did I leave the door open? Of course I left the door open. Every day I come in here, we pull our shift, we leave -- have I ever left the door open?”

“Fuck you. Today’s the first fucking time we put this goddamned door to use, and it’s my ass if it’s closed.” Reg removed the cap from a dry-erase pen with her teeth, and started running down the list of tasks. She tapped an icon on her console, and a batch of static fed into her earpiece. She spit out the cap. “Command, this is Bunker 3, please confirm that that alarm is not a drill. Over.”

“Fucking aliens, man,” Thomas clucked. He clipped his seatbelt on and began checking systems on his side of the room. “I’m not even angry.”

The static cut out for a moment and a clear, male voice spoke into Reg’s ear. “Confirmed. This is not a drill. Please prepare for launch, and evacuate hut. Await coordinates and activation codes. Over.”

“Shit.” Reg looked over to Thomas. He shrugged and continued his work.

Given the recent news, Reg shouldn’t have been surprised. To say the last two weeks had been chaotic was an understatement.

The object from Exo-592 was discovered over a decade ago, but it had gone unnoticed by the general public until recently. Its point of origin, an exoplanet from a rogue solar system, had to be calculated from the object’s flight path. Initial articles noted the amazing speed at which the asteroid (as it was assumed to be) moved through space. There was little interest, even within the scientific community, until the object changed course. Five months ago the object’s trajectory shifted, and the new path intersected with Mars.

Immediately following the shift, humans across the solar system leapt into panic. For as many answers as the astrophysicists could provide, a dozen more questions arose. Their words were picked apart and muddied with speculation. “Are the Visitors Actually Egyptian Gods?” asked one article Reg had seen. Each planet’s culture had its own twist that made it the center of the story. For a while, the object was all anyone talked about.

Then, speculation went quiet, as humanity adjusted to the new status quo. It was like there had always been some thing hurtling towards them. It became old news.

Until it landed.

An initial hail of sub-nuclear weapons failed to stop the object before it reached Mars. When its trajectory altered again to let it pass through the atmosphere, the calls for its destruction faded behind an uneasy agreement to attempt diplomacy.

Twelve days ago, Reg saw the first video of the object, fractal and opaque like a giant snowflake, touching down in New India. Its hull was red from its descent. Clouds of steam cascaded from all sides. It was the size of a sports arena, and made the lines of tanks and artillery surrounding it look like insects in all the images Reg saw.

For ten days, it sat, immobile, unresponsive. Then, one day ago, every human within a 200 mile radius suddenly went comatose. They collapsed in the streets, in their homes, in schools, and at work. The images flooded in: hundreds of thousands of bodies, still breathing, scattered across the ground.

Drones could go into the zone without being affected, but people extracted from it couldn’t be woken. Their eyes scanned back and forth, up and down, again and again.

Last Reg had heard, the governments of the worlds were conferencing, to determine their next action. This, she supposed, was it.

A series of green lights illuminated above Reg’s head. She swiped them away.

“You know,” said Reg, “My grandma grew up on Mars. Not too far from the rapture zone.”

“No kidding?” Thomas said. He tapped an unresponsive interface. “Goddamn buggy programs.” He restarted the application. “So what are the chances you could have ended up raptured?”

Reg laughed. “Well, I’m here now, so pretty low.”

“What does that mean?” Thomas frowned, and swiveled to face Reg.

“Grandma wanted blue skies for a change. She moved to Earth. So I’d say chances were pretty fucking low of me being on Mars within the last twenty-four hours.”

“But where’s the speculation in that?” asked Thomas. The program flashed to life behind him, and he started working at it again. “I ask, ‘What’s the probability?’, you’re supposed to give me a number or something.”

“Why? So I can feel close to the thing? Do you know how much I hate that?”

“Hate what?”

“It drives me crazy! Anytime there’s some tragedy or life-changing event, everyone gets all ‘It could’ve been me.’ That’s a shitty way to look at things. It’s not me, and I’m glad it’s not me. And I don’t need anyone telling me I’m lucky, when I already know I’m not. If I had any luck, I’d be sipping cocktails in a villa somewhere instead of floating in this piece of junk while the fucking end times hit.”

Thomas chuckled. “Shit, I didn’t know I struck a nerve.”

“Hey Thomas,” Reg swung herself to look at him. He looked back at her with a smirk.

“Hey Regina.”

“What are the chances you shut up and do your job, and I’ll sit over here and do mine? You got a number on that?”

“I do, and that’s a fat fucking zero, friend.”

“Figures.” They both went back to their work.

A blue banner flashed across Reg’s screen. The coordinates had been received by the silo. She felt her stomach shift as the thrusters fired to reposition the station. They would be at an optimal position in their orbit within five minutes. All that they were waiting for now was the confirmation codes.

“You bastards ready to kick off this party?” came a voice from above. At the end of the room, a pair of boots descended along a metal ladder. Commander Lewis dropped to the floor, and both Reg and Thomas stood to attention. “As you were.”

They sat back down. Reg pushed the chair along the track until she was facing the orbital map. Dozens of parabolas and dots moved slowly around each other, showing the positions of the other bases spinning around the Earth. Ten of them flashed red and white, signaling that they were armed and awaiting the command to fire.

“Has the hut been cleared and sealed?” Reg asked Lewis.

“It has,” Lewis responded. She sniffed and leaned down to look at the orbital monitor as well.

“Commander,” said Thomas, “Silo doors are open, and rockets are primed.”

“Fantastic,” said Lewis. “Lieutenant Parnel, signal command that we are armed and ready.”

“Yes sir,” responded Reg. She swiped a view to the screen closest to Lewis, and Lewis entered her command code. Reg pressed send. Another dot on the orbital map began to flash red and white.

Lewis sighed.

“I suppose you’ve both figured out what this means.”

“We’re gonna teach some aliens not to mess with motherfucking humans?” Thomas said. “Vaporizing them should be a pretty good lesson.”

“Don’t get too excited, son,” said Commander Lewis. She folded her arms and eyed Thomas. His smirk faded. Lewis had a short frame, but her statuesque posture dominated whatever room she occupied. Reg thought of her as a mentor figure. “You both should know that Earth is officially declaring war on Exo-592. The decision was made thirty minutes ago, and just ten minutes ago a bomber dropped a nuclear weapon on the Mars object, destroying it.”

Reg’s pulse quickened. Everything was happening so fast. Watching the last two weeks unfold from a screen, it hadn’t felt real. Now that it was her turn to take part in the action, the actuality of it all was shattering that illusion. People had died. More were going to die. Maybe they weren’t people in the same way she thought. Maybe they weren’t even conscious. But there was a quantifiable number of lives that she was about to extinguish.

“Did anyone recover?” Reg asked. “Anyone from the zone?”

Lewis shook her head. “It’s too soon to tell. But we have an attack strategy. Our target is sub-continent D7, located on the southern hemisphere of the exoplanet. The population is unknown.”

Thomas sat back into his chair. He blinked several times, and the expression drained from his face.

“Shit,” he said. “It’s just sinking in how crazy this all is. All those people… just like that.”

“It’s not easy,” Lewis said, looking at each of them in turn, “what we must do. I understand if either of you are hesitant. Or eager, for that matter. Let me remind you that we serve humanity, and are here to sacrifice more than our lives, if necessary.”

Reg swallowed. She imagined thousands of people lying unconscious all around the alien spacecraft. In a moment, their bodies were torn apart atom-by-atom, and the most that would be left behind was a shadow. She thought of the cold minds inside their ship. What were they doing? Why were they here?

Several of the screens throughout the room flashed red. The confirmation codes had been sent. The station was nearing the launch point.

Reg and Thomas turned to face their consoles. Reg entered the confirmation code, and a klaxon began to sound throughout the entire station. Her hand hovered over a physical button, one of only a few in the room. She breathed slowly.

Thomas counted down.

“Three…”

“Two…”

“One…”

Reg pressed the button, and so did Thomas.

There was a shudder somewhere high above them. Then another, and another, and another. A screen showing an external view of the station illuminated to white light for several seconds, and then dimmed. In the distance, four bright lights sped away from the station.

Half a dozen similar lights appeared from elsewhere above the Earth: other stations firing their payloads. The orbital map surged as the number of objects on screen quintupled.

“Confirmed all missiles launched,” reported Reg. Thomas exhaled behind her.

“Congratulations,” said Lewis. “You’ve all performed exceptionally.” Commander Lewis walked back to the ladder, and said, “Stay alert. I’ll send Ramirez and Luka to take the next shift shortly.”

Lewis ascended, and Reg heard the sound of a hatch being swung shut.

“Now what?” asked Thomas.

“Now we wait,” said Reg.

“I can’t believe it. We kicked some aliens’ asses today. Doesn’t that pump you up a little bit?”

Reg shook her head. “Not today. Not tomorrow, either. Exo-592 is a fucking hike from here, even on a rocket.”

“Sounds like it’ll be a long war,” said Thomas. He shut down a couple of applications and sighed. “Why am I so tired? I’ve just been staring at screens all day. Are you tired?”

Reg shook her head again.

“Well, I’m tired,” Thomas said.

Reg punched up a screen with the missile trajectories displayed on it. It was zoomed out so far that they just looked like a single, long arch from one point to another point. Dotted lines showed the paths that the solar systems would take over time.

“Sixty-eight years…” said Reg.

“What’s that?” asked Thomas. Reg licked her bottom lip and sat back in her chair. Thomas swiveled to face her screen.

“In Sixty-eight years, the first missiles will make contact with Exo-592,” said Reg. “And then the war will start.”