Published 8/30/23, revised 10/21/23
World Building
In 2028, escalating political, cultural, and ethnic tensions caused by centuries of European colonialism and exploitation culminated in a series of major skirmishes between rival African warlords, provoking a military response. The war began as a small conflict over rampant warlords, but quickly escalated. Alliances were made and broken, civilians got caught in the crossfire, and other countries got dragged into the conflict until nearly the entire continent was involved to some degree. Major world powers saw it as an opportunity to test their new weapons and began supporting various factions. The UN attempted to stabilize the region, but with increasing arms shipments from major world powers, the violence spread and intensified.
In 2032, one of the warring factions orchestrated a terrorist attack on the United States in retaliation for supporting a rival warlord. They bombed the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, officially drawing the United States into the war. Opposing world governments also increased their involvement in response. The war quickly escalated into the largest conflict the world had seen since World War Two. Most of the fighting was limited to Africa, however; no major power wanted to attempt a full scale invasion of another for fear of nuclear retaliation. Although devastating, the African Wars luckily remained a non-nuclear conflict.
As the war raged on, the people of Africa became sick of living in constant fear and violence. In 2039, a tentative truce was signed. In the months following the war, European drawn borders were abolished and redrawn according to historical, cultural, ethnic and political precedent. In order to usher in a new era of peace, the newly formed countries banded together to form the African Federation. After more than a decade of constant violence, the African Wars ended in 2039 with the unification of Africa. For the first time in history, the continent stood united and looked toward the future with hope.
In the years following the war, the African Federation was transformed from a war-torn hellscape into a prospering member of the international community. With plentiful foreign aid from the UN, the African Federation rebuilt cities and provided basic necessities across the continent. They even launched a successful space program and contributed to the second International Space Station. The newly formed African Federation is poised to be a major player in the second half of the twenty-first century.
Chapter 1: The Attack
United States, June 5th 2053
New York City, Central Park, 11:28 AM
Second Lieutenant Daniel Ramirez was jogging through Central Park, along 86th Street Transverse. He was looking forward to the first day of Comic-Con tomorrow. Daniel almost couldn’t contain his excitement when he found out that his leave would line up perfectly with Comic-Con for the first time in years. Daniel was determined to make this year count; he had an awesome costume prepared.
Daniel Ramirez grew up in New York City. After losing his parents in a car crash when he was eight, he floated around the foster care system, never having a real family. Having nowhere else to go or any ambitions to pursue, he followed in his late mother’s footsteps and joined the Marine Corps right out of high school.
Daniel spent most of his time as a marine in Africa fighting persistent anti-unification terrorists. Although the overwhelming majority of people celebrated the formation of the African Federation, there were still a few extremists who kept fighting. Centuries of colonialism and exploitation doesn’t just go away overnight.
Coming up on the Great Lawn, Daniel saw something strange. In the middle of the open grassy field, there was a small unexplainable purple dome; and it was growing in size. People began to gather around it and stare in awe. It almost looked like some sort of hologram, but that technology was still a long way off. Daniel stopped about 200 meters away to watch what happened next. When the dome reached about 20 meters in diameter, it suddenly sent off a burst of wind in all directions.
The people gathered around the strange dome were thrown off their feet by the unexpectedly strong gust of wind. Daniel shielded his face as the shockwave blew past the nearby trees and hit him. He almost got knocked over, but managed to stay on his feet.
When Daniel looked back at the dome, he saw it swirling with colorful shades of pink and purple. All around him, people were staring at it. No one knew what it was and people began to speculate.
“What is that thing?”
“Is this some kind of performance?”
“Maybe it’s a hologram?”
Daniel reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to call the police when he heard a scream come from the crowd around the dome. He looked up to see horses running out of the dome in all directions. People ran away in terror as the horsemen trampled the crowd and attacked people with swords.
Daniel and everyone else around him ran away from the field, towards the city. As Daniel ran with the crowd, he turned back to look behind him. More people were coming through the portal; Daniel couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
They were carrying gladius style swords and tall scutum style shields. They wore helmets, chest plates, and greaves overtop chain mail armor. As Daniel reached 5th Avenue, there was already a huge crowd running away from Central Park being chased by strange people who looked like they were wearing medieval cosplay armor.
To his right, Daniel saw an enemy soldier running towards a police officer with his sword raised and ready to strike. There was a small child standing behind the officer, no older than five or six years old. Daniel’s marine training kicked in and he ran past the officer, straight towards the enemy soldier.
Daniel dodged the first sword strike and tackled the man to the ground, slamming his head on the concrete pavement. However, the soldier was wearing a metal helmet, so this didn’t do much. Daniel pressed his knee on the man’s unarmored forearm, forcing him to let go of the sword. The soldier used his shield to push Daniel off him and to the side. Daniel quickly grabbed the man’s sword and pointed it at the man just as he lunged forward. The sword impaled the man through the abdomen and Daniel stood up and dropped the now bloodied sword.
Daniel checked on the police officer and child who stared back at him in shock. He ushered them down East 84th Street, away from Central Park. As the three of them ran down the road, they heard the sound of police drones flying overhead.
The drones used by the police department are large quadcopters about the size of a car. Each drone carries two police droids, lying prone, under its belly. Daniel watched as the two droids lowered into their vertical deployment position. They fell to the ground, landing in perfect unison, and looked up towards the approaching enemy soldiers and cavalry.
The droids tried to protect the fleeing civilians, but with only hand guns, tasers and batons, they were unsuccessful. Daniel watched as three of the enemy cavalry charged towards the two police droids.
“New York City police department, HALT NOW!” The droids shouted as the horsemen got closer. The police droids had an artificial, but almost human, voice.
Daniel noticed something off about the enemy cavalry. The riders were sitting too far up on their horses, almost as if they were sitting right on the horse’s neck. Showing no signs of stopping, the cavalry continued to charge at the droids, who opened fire with their hand guns. One of the horses tumbled to the ground after being shot several times, but the other two kept going and trampled the droids into scrap metal with their hooves.
Everything around Daniel was absolute chaos. He had already lost track of the police officer and child. As everyone ran down the street, more police showed up, only to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of hostiles. There weren't enough officers or droids to protect everyone; countless people were mercilessly slaughtered.
Behind him, Daniel heard a loud bull-like roar. He turned around to where the sound came from just in time to see a woman in plain clothes get cut clean in half at the waist by a gigantic sword. Fear and shock overcame Daniel as he saw the beast wielding the sword–a huge creature covered in dark brown fur with two horns at the top of his head. It had inhumanly shaped legs, with hooves instead of feet, and stood over seven feet tall.
It looked like a much more realistic version of Daniel’s minotaur costume for Comic-Con. Except it wasn't a costume at all; it was a real, live minotaur. It locked eyes with Daniel. Then, it started running towards him far faster than any human could run. There was no way Daniel could outrun this thing, so he pulled out his sidearm.
As a marine, he had a habit of never going anywhere without his sidearm, if it could be helped. The minotaur raised its massive sword, ready to slice Daniel in half in one swing. He quickly took aim at the massive beast running towards him and fired several shots. The minotaur staggered, but kept running towards him. He adjusted his aim and fired another shot, this time at the minotaur’s head. The beast fell to the ground and rolled a few more meters before coming to a stop.
Daniel snapped out of the shock of what just happened. More and more enemy soldiers and cavalry were coming down the street and there weren’t enough police to stop them. Daniel gathered as many people as he could and ran into a nearby office building.
Inside the lobby, there were dozens of scared and confused people, some of them wounded. Two police officers saw Daniel’s group come in and walked over to herd them towards the back of the lobby with everyone else. Daniel walked up to them and, with authority, said, “We need to get these people out of the lobby and up to the roof.”
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The police officers looked at Daniel with an unearned sense of superiority. “Who the hell are you to be giving us orders? Get in the back with everyone else.”
Only slightly fazed by their incompetence and confrontational stance, Daniel replied with his full marine voice, “Second Lieutenant Daniel Ramirez, United States Marine Corps. There are more hostiles following us. We need to get these civilians upstairs and out of harm’s way RIGHT NOW!”
That was enough to get the two police officers, who suddenly felt very small, to fall in line. They worked together to get the civilians up to the roof, as Daniel said. They put the wounded civilians in elevators and sent them to the top floor while the rest had to climb the stairs all the way to the roof.
Then, just as Daniel warned, a wave of cavalry ran past the lobby windows, followed by a horde of minotaurs, and finally by regular infantry wielding swords and spears. One of the strange horsemen stopped in front of the windows, letting Daniel get his first good look at them.
Daniel couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What the hell…?” He muttered, as he rubbed his eyes to make sure he was seeing clearly. He looked out the lobby windows in complete disbelief as he watched the centaur trot around outside. The two police officers stood next to him, also staring at it in confusion.
The centaur, however, did not give them much time to process what was happening. It rallied a few passing soldiers and charged straight at the window, shattering it. Daniel raised his pistol and emptied the clip into the centaur. It fell to the ground, bleeding from several bullet holes in its chest and abdomen. Its plate metal armor did little to stop Daniel’s 9mm bullets.
Unfortunately for Daniel, he was now out of ammo. The police officers, however, had plenty of ammunition left. They fired at the men with swords and shields running towards them, missing an embarrassing number of shots, but taking down most of the attackers.
The last enemy soldier ran at Daniel, screaming as loud as he could. Daniel’s hand-to-hand combat training kicked in as he first disarmed the soldier and then pulled to the ground in a choke hold. He waited for the soldier to lose consciousness before releasing him. Daniel passed level three advanced hand-to-hand combat training with flying colors, allowing him to easily overpower the soldier attacking him.
“Geez, man, are you okay?” One of the officers asked Daniel.
“Like I said, I’m a marine,” Daniel responded as he stood up. “Let's get up to the roof before more of these guys show up.”
The three of them followed the civilians up the stairwell to the roof.
United States, June 5th 2053
Washington D.C., The White House, 11:55 am
President Olivia Bennett was enjoying a rather calm day. Right now, she was in the Oval Office with Representative Burk regarding a very important, but thoroughly boring, upcoming vote in congress. “Have you made the revisions to the bill we discussed?” Asked the President.
Representative Burk frowned. “Yes, but my party wasn’t happy about it. There are a lot of hardliners threatening to withdraw their support.”
“The bill won’t pass without your party’s full support,” said the President. “Throw them a bone, do whatever you have to do to get them back in line. I’ll see what I can do about getting more multi partisan support. This bill is too important to let the minute details kill it. ”
Representative Burk replied with determination, “We both agree on that, Madam President. I’ll see what I can do about–”
Representative Burk wasn’t able to finish her sentence. She was cut off as Secret Service agents rushed into the oval office. They went around the room closing all the blinds and surrounded the President.
“Madam President, please come with us.” One of them said, as two agents half carried half escorted the President out of the Oval Office.
“What’s happened?” Asked President Bennett.
One of her Secret Service agents replied as they walked through the hall, “There's an ongoing terrorist attack in New York City. We’re moving you to the PEOC.”
President Bennett couldn’t believe what she just heard. A terrorist attack? In New York City? How could they have let this happen? “Who is it?” She asked.
As they neared the elevator to the PEOC, one of her agents replied, “We don’t have that information at this time, Madam President.”
They got to the elevator and descended deep underground to the PEOC.
United States, June 5th 2053
New York City, Office Building Roof, 12:08
Daniel and the two police officers had gotten all of the civilians up to the roof. Now that Daniel had time to step back and look at the situation, he pulled out his phone and called Fort Hamilton. The operator picked up and said, “This is a military channel, all civ–”
Daniel cut him off, “Second Lieutenant Daniel Ramirez, I’ve got a group of civilians at the top of a building on the east side of Central Park. There are hostiles–”
The operator cut him off this time, “WE KNOW! Don’t worry, help is already on the way. Just keep the civilians safe and wait for reinforcements to get there.”
As Daniel talked with the operator, he looked over the side of the building and saw a group of enemy soldiers rushing into the building. “Shit! They’re coming in!” He said as he dropped his phone.
Daniel looked around him and took stock of the situation. He used the last of his ammo to bring down the centaur from earlier. There were dozens of civilians, some of them wounded, on the roof with him. The two police officers were treating their injuries, mostly lacerations and stab wounds. If they didn’t get bandaged quickly, they’d lose too much blood.
Daniel immediately knew that he only had one option: he was going to have to pull a Die Hard. “Stay here and treat the civilians. I’ll go back inside and slow them down.” He told the officers.
“You got it sir,” one of the cops replied. Daniel was glad their attitude had changed to be more cooperative.
Daniel went back into the top floor of the building. First, he went to each of the elevators and pressed every button. Sending the elevators to every floor would force the enemy to use the stairs, giving him more time to come up with a plan.
Then, he got as much furniture and office equipment as he could and began throwing it down the main stairwell to create a barricade. As Daniel left to collect more furniture, two enemy soldiers got past his makeshift barricade and followed him out of the stairwell.
Daniel turned around to see them as he heard the door open. He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon and threw anything he could find at them; computers, chairs, books, etc. The two enemy soldiers rushed towards him, their armor deflected most of what Daniel threw at them.
Daniel’s hand to hand combat training kicked in once again. The enemy may have had swords and shields, but it turned out they were much sloppier and less disciplined than the other soldiers he took down earlier. Daniel emerged from the battle with only a laceration on his thigh. The enemy soldiers were in much worse shape.
He wasted no time tying their hands and feet with computer cables and then dragged them over to a supply closet. After locking them inside, he grabbed a chair and propped it up against the door knob, just to be safe. He threw a few more chairs and tables down the stairwell before limping back up to the roof to check on the police officers and civilians.
One of the officers saw Daniel’s leg and said, “Let me take a look at that for ya.” The officer ripped off a piece of Daniel’s shirt to use as a bandage.
The officer helped Daniel to the ground and began wrapping the cloth around his leg. “I barricaded the stairwell,” Daniel said. “But I don’t know how long it will keep them out.”
He grimaced as the officer tightened the bandage. “There you go,” said the officer with a solid pat on the shoulder. “All patched up.”
Daniel looked over to the civilians. “How are they doing?”
“As good as can be expected.” The other officer replied. “How long until your army buddies show up?”
“I don’t know.” Daniel replied. “All they said was ‘help is on the way.’ There's nothing we can do now but wait for it to get here.”
Thankfully, everyone on the roof was relatively calm. The last thing Daniel needed was a bunch of panicking civilians. They all sat there on the roof, waiting to be rescued.
United States, June 5th 2053
New York City, Office Building Roof, 12:36 PM
Through the noise and chaos on the streets below, Daniel heard the sound of helicopters approaching from the east.
“Look!” Shouted one of the civilians.
Dozens of helicopters and military drones were flying over the city. Daniel watched as they flew down to the streets and deployed marines and droids. The sound of clashing metal was drowned out by the more familiar sound of gunfire.
One of the drones flew over to Daniel’s building. The drone was a military version of the police drones he saw earlier. In addition to two droids, this drone carried a 7.62mm machine gun mounted below its chin and eight Spike-B missiles mounted in the front of its chassis. He watched as it approached the roof and deployed two droids before flying down to the street, out of sight.
These were not police droids equipped with handguns; these were military-grade killing machines equipped with body armor, ARX-35 assault rifles, and all the other goodies modern soldiers carry.
One of the droids walked over to Daniel and saluted. “United States Marine Corps droid MD-A43. Are you Second Lieutenant Daniel Ramirez?” The droid had a deep mechanical and robotic voice, but it spoke with perfect enunciation.
“Yeah, that's me.” Daniel replied. “We’ve got wounded civilians on the roof with an unknown number of hostiles moving up the stairwell.”
The droid responded, this time with the voice of its human operator, “Ramirez, stay where you are and look after the civilians. Let the bots do their job.”
Daniel nodded to the droid in acknowledgement. Then, it handed him its sidearm and a few ammo clips. The droids descended into the building and he could hear gunfire.
The two droids moved down the main staircase, ripping right through Daniel’s barricade. They moved through the building floor by floor, eliminating any hostiles they came across with the efficiency and precision only possible from machines. They didn’t fire a single bullet that missed its mark. In total, they neutralized 36 hostiles before reaching the ground floor.
Daniel looked down to the street below and saw soldiers and droids battling the enemy. Centaurs and minotaurs charged at the marines, only to be gunned down by automatic weapons. Soon, the enemy formed into a dense block and marched towards the marines with their shields raised. It did no good, however, as the bullets went straight through their thin wooden shields and metal armor with ease.
White House PEOC, 3:37 PM
President Bennett, the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and other individuals sat around the briefing table as General Thompson and several people from the Pentagon entered the room. The new arrivals were barely in their seats before the President said, “Give me some good news, General.”
General Thompson was quick to oblige. “Yes, Madam President. Marines have secured the area around the anomaly and have either neutralized or apprehended most of the perpetrators. The National Guard is now on site and reinforcing the perimeter established by local police. Squads of droids and marines are sweeping every building within the perimeter for any remaining hostiles.”
“Good,” said the President. “Has anyone claimed responsibility for the attack?”
“Not yet, Madam President,” said General Thompson. “But the second we have any confirmation, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Do we have any idea what that thing is sitting in Central Park?” Asked the Secretary of Defense.
“Unfortunately, no,” the General replied bluntly. “We don’t know anything about it other than that the terrorists came out of it. Speaking of which, we have received a number of reports on non-human terrorist combatants. The reports have yet to be verified, but the sheer volume of them from different sources suggests that they may have some merit.” General Thompson paused to take a deep breath before continuing, “Madam President, this may be the initial wave of an alien invasion.”
The President let those words sink in as she sat there in disbelief at what she was just told. The rest of the room, however, burst into a heated discussion about the implications of what the General just said. This went on while the President thought to herself for a moment.
“ENOUGH!” Shouted the President, quite uncharacteristically. “At this point we don’t have any information on which to base this pointless speculation. Finish securing New York City, then get to work interrogating the captured terrorists. Find out who they are and where they came from. I want answers, goddamnit, now go get me some.”
The meeting ended and everyone got to work on their own tasks. President Bennett stayed in the briefing room after everyone left and pulled out her personal cell phone. She dialed her mother’s phone number.
The phone started to ring. “Come on, pick up.” Muttered the President. But it was no use. Her mother didn’t pick up. President Bennett knew there were a million reasons why her mother might not have answered her call, but she couldn’t help but worry. Her mother lived in New York City and was right in the middle of the attack.
Author's Note: This is my first ever writing project. I have never written anything before, but after reading a bunch of stories like Manifest Fantasy, GATE, and Summing Japan/America, I was inspired to write my own. I'm open to any and all constructive criticism that can help me improve my writing. I already have the first few chapters outlined so it shouldn't be too long before those are written and published as well.
Title image source: https://stock.adobe.com/images/tanks-lined-up-in-front-of-an-american-or-usa-flag-several-military-army-war-battle-tank-vehicles-on-the-terrain-ready-to-attack/489598439