3.23.

Captain Moon frowned as the Sensors of The Other Shoe scanned the proto-star’s systems once more. Sarah had said that the military lockout had come after they had discovered an ‘anomaly’ near one of the forming gas giants.

But there was nothing there. Nothing but an embryonic star system.

Frustrated, she was just about to order another sweep when the emergency signal came in from home. Earth was under attack by the enemy in great numbers.

She began barking orders at her crew. They turned and swept into the hyperatomic plane, making best time for earth at thousands of time the speed of light. The ship buzzed with the stress that she was putting on the drive, and she tasted oranges.

Hopefully they would arrive in time to make a difference.

In the gathering stardust that would eventually catch ignition and form a star in a million years or so, the stealth fighters returned to base, their target having left without gathering any evidence.

The Swarm generator remained cloaked. Soon, it would move to a new well of matter in the darkness between stars, this location no longer secure. But the preparations were still underway, and it would take some time to finalize them.

That was fine. If anyone else found it now that it had entered its active state, they would not know what they had found. Not in time to prevent their destruction.

~~~~~~

It was a beautiful building. With walls of white trimmed with gold, intricate engravings in the walls and beautiful architectural details that were created not by hand, but sculpted by technology so small the individual mechanisms were measured by the atom.

Senator Mike Fuller was surprised when his security detail had brought him back to the embassy when the sirens went off, but he trusted their expertize. When he arrived, he found that he was not alone. The building was filled with VIPs and security details. He frowned, wondering exactly why they weren’t taking shelter in one of the more secure locations.

“Mike! I am so happy see you here!” Tonom Genisi’s genial voice exclaimed, the shirtless man making his way through the crowd with a blue frumonas drink in either hand. “So sad, war. So sad. We be safe here though.”

“Is that so?” Mike asked. He saw his wife out of the corner of his eye; she was making her way over to them, having apparently arrived before them. “What makes this location so secure?”

“Acklatic Empire no believe weapons. But do believe shields. Very good good shields,” Tonom explained.

Abruptly, the sky changed color. Not just over the manor. The entire skyline of New York City was enveloped in a swirling white and gold barrier.

“Good good, your government accept my offer protect people of this city,” Tonom said. He downed his frumonas in a single pull, then handed the other one to Mike, who accepted it without processing what he was doing.

“Your shields, how strong are they?” Mike asked, looking at the white and gold sky.

“Strong strong,” Tonom promised. “Maybe Yonohoan flagship break through them. Maybe. In three days. Maybe. Rosanteans have nothing punch through. Safe here.”

Mike glanced at the frumonas in his hand, then sighed and took a sip. “Sure, why not. Let’s party hardy at the end of the world together, Tonom.”

“Yes yes!”

~~~~~

The satellites in orbit activated at precisely the same time. Reaching out to the others, beams of energy coalesced between them, forming a lattice work of protection.

The network was incomplete. Their coverage was imperfect, not encapsulating the Earth as entirely as they were designed to. The defense system was still under construction, bogged down by bureaucratic red tape and logistical nightmares.

They should have blocked even a grain of sand from passing through.

Sixteen troopships scattered their orbital insertion drop pods in a swift sweep past the planet. The pods oriented and fell to earth like dandelion seeds. Some of them struck the latticework of the defensive satellites and were vaporized on contact.

Thousands survived to make planetfall.

The troopships were vaporized by the Yonohoan flagship that stood sentinel in the high-orbitals around earth. Piloted by Diego Cruz and his Topokan allies, the flagship’s weapons had not stopped or slowed since the battle began. They found their targets half the system away and pounded them with coherent energies of terrible or esoteric natures.

Earth’s forces were greatly outnumbered.

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But they were not outgunned. Not this time.

The enemy had arrived in force.

But the defenders were ready for them.

The sky streaked with light and energy as the ships fired upon each other, often streaking as they slid through the hyperatomic plain or the slipstream to reposition.

The battle for Earth began in earnest when the Earth Space Force identified what they believed to be the enemy flagship and unleashed their trump card.

The subspace munition, Little Boy, thumped into the core of the Rosantean battleship. The commanders didn’t even register the hit thanks to the size of the behemoth. They registered the atomic detonation that followed, however. The ship was blown in two. The bridge vaporized.

For twenty minutes the enemy was disorganized until a wily captain managed to convince the others to interlock with him and follow his battle plan. The Rosanteans regained their cohesion slowly, but the loss of their flagship had cost them significantly. Both the strategic cost and the blow to morale marked Little Boy’s detonation as a key moment in the battle.

The defenders had stricken off the head of the serpent, but another grew in its place.

Captain Anders stood silently aboard A Good Question . His ship had minimal shields, no weapon that would carry it through the fight. But he had been entrusted with eight subspace munitions.

He watched the battle carefully, analyzing the layouts and trying to figure out the command structures.

The serpent might have grown a new head once, he thought to himself, but let’s see how many times it can pull that trick off.

While the native Earth ships were vastly outgunned, few of those had survived the first two battles for Earth. In this fight, the primary defenders came from the stars. The Yukopan vessels, all under the command of officers from the ESF, were every bit as capable as the Rosantean fleet. And they were determined.

Their children lived on that planet. They would not let it be taken until their bodies were broken and the light in their eyes had gone out.

The Rosanteans fought for a variety of reasons. Duty, honor, the belief in their superiors.

The Earthlings fought to defend their families.

Why the Yukopans had surrendered to Earth was still unknown, but they swiftly proved that it was not cowardice. Their families, too, now lived on that blue marble. They were so focused on the combat in the stars that for a brief window of time, they forgot to be afraid of the humans on their ships.

The battle in space carried on.

~~~~~~

While the night sky streaked with lights and distant explosions, the Rosantean army worked in silence. They had arrived on one of the southern continents of the target planet. In the center, which was mostly empty of civilization.

That was fine. They needed to establish a base of operations from which they would take over the entire continent. Being in the center, with no significant threats nearby, meant that they’d have plenty of time to dig in and plot their overthrow of the locals.

The colonel in charge of the operation was evaluating the base as the nanites swiftly assembled it. It was dark in the outback, and construction would end before dawn. Once the vehicles had been constructed, he would send his men in squads of ten to the largest cities on the continent.

They would meet resistance.

They would crush it brutally.

These primitive darkworlders had nothing with which they could counter the might of the Rosantean army.

Confident in his strategy, the colonel’s concentration was interrupted when he heard the sound of weapons fire. It lasted for just a moment, of from the southeast. He went to investigate and found his men standing over the corpse of a Yukopan.

He frowned. He was surprised to see the furry green alien here. His helmet highlighted the creature’s features, including its short horns and claws, and identified it as a juvenile. You couldn’t tell by the size of the things alone; they grew from infancy to their full size in three years. But mentally, their childhood lasted for decades.

He tisked. He hated killing kids, but it happened sometimes.

“Toss a disposal unit on it,” he ordered, “And keep an eye out for any others.”

His men obeyed his instructions, and the nanites began their work in reducing the body into its constituent atoms.

He looked out into the darkness of the night. A sudden flare, an explosion in space that lit up the night sky. He looked up and frowned, wondering if that had been one of his allies or his enemies.

“Um, sir?” one of his men said, and he turned. The light hadn’t faded yet, the burning embers of the explosion continuing to light up the area.

Which was teaming with the Yukopan.

And unlike the Yukopan child they had just slaughtered, these ones were not unarmed or helpless.

Their fur was not exposed to the air. They were encased in black matte armor, and as he watched they suddenly lit up blue with the light of strange-matter energy.

“Fire! Fire! We’re surrounded!” someone shouted.

The battle lasted twenty minutes.

When dawn came, the nanites had finished constructing the Rosantean base.

With nobody left alive to man it.

‎