13

For the first time since I stepped foot on this station, it felt like I was standing on the Florida beaches in the height of summer.

Amidst the loud buzzing and chugs of machinery, I observed the rows of factories; each building was two hundred feet tall, stacked on top of each other by reinforced mezzanine and sub-floors, accessed only via trolleys and another network of elevators and tramcars. Each deck had two thousand factories working simultaneously, with Station One having ten thousand busily manufacturing what I had on my priority list. Machines captured the carbon dioxide emitted in all decks and converted it to help power the station as carbon-neutral fuel and mineralized it into cement. CO2 scrubbers removed some of the leftovers.

I watched thousands of drones making and carrying alloys and metal ores from one place to another. These dog-like machines took wirings as thick as a train car while nanites flew like a million flocks of insects, shrouding materials for detailed work and seemingly attaching themselves to the metal. I wiped the sweat off my brows and walked away from the sweltering heat. It took another nine hours of planning, writing code, and programming, and then another nine hours of designing, scheduling, and queuing the things I wanted to create across all five stations. I had already placed hundreds of backlog orders until my eyes were heavy.

So far, the spheres have yet to find the lost quartz in China. They’re pretty savvy in hiding from me, but that only told me they’re scared. Prime still hadn’t even found my uncle, wherever he was in Syria, but with the spheres concentrated around the country, I hoped they’d find him soon.

It was a day’s work, and I had been on this station for almost thirty hours.

What was it now? 9 AM in California?

Once I reached the command center, I climbed the stairs to the left observation room. Amelia, Rachel, Jason, Tom, Seth, and Ryan were fast asleep on the floor, bundled up in newly-made thermal blankets using a second, rolled-up blanket as a pillow. Empty granola bars, chips, doughnut boxes, hotdog buns, almond packets, and water bottles were set aside—our little dinner last night. The station was practically devoid of anything edible, so I had to find a way to transport food here so we wouldn’t starve to death.

I took another trip down to Earth and raided a lonely 7-eleven in a small town in the middle of Wyoming. It was technically not stealing since I left them with five ounces of pure gold. Prime told me it was comparable to almost ten thousand dollars. I thought that was good enough for the trouble after I cleaned them out and scared the two attendants half to death. Fortunately, it was in the middle of the night, and I made sure Prime cut off the power (and the nearby cell towers) so they could not film me or post about our presence. But I reckoned the government already knew we touched down, though they still had no idea a human was flying the alien ship.

At least we’ll have a week’s worth of supplies.

Several more thermal blankets sat undisturbed in the corner. Prime notified me that Ben had woken up early and visited his men on the ship, accompanied by Freddie and Alonso. I had placed the ship in dock two, which was closer to the command center. His men’s vitals were stable for the past twenty-four hours, but they remained unconscious; The nanites’ treatment was ongoing.

Sighing, I gently closed the door and headed to the war table. It returned to the display of Earth and the forerunner stations now connected into one giant hub. Each station floated against each other, fixed by enormous hydraulic arms from the bottom and the top, with two thousand feet gaps between each station, connected by bridges and train-sized cable cars. I hadn’t visited the other four stations yet. Although smaller than the central hub, they must be empty, too.

“Forerunner, you need to sleep. Your melatonin and cortisol levels have increased drastically. You only had three hours of sleep last night,” Prime said worriedly, but he no longer said them through the walls. The voice came from behind me.

I turned around. A metallic silver sphere the size of a basketball hovered slowly toward the table, and one holographic blue eye filled up its entire face. Its surface was littered with nanite-sized multidirectional boosters, allowing it to fly at different angles. One thin metallic arm extended out from the bottom, ending with four claw-like fingers I had designed to strike. If Prime ever got into trouble, at least he could defend himself.

“Good morning, Prime. Do you like the new body?”

Prime’s eye narrowed. “It is unnecessary. We can use these resources for more important projects like speeding up your fleet construction.”

“Well, I don’t want you announcing all of our business across the station through the loudspeakers. And I kind of like it this way. I get to look at you while we are talking. Not just at a blank wall, which gets awkward sometimes.”

“If you want privacy, I can speak through your thoughts.”

“That’s not better, and I’ll look like a crazy person. If you hadn’t noticed, the others can’t talk to you through their heads. This is the next practical thing I could think of once we fill this station with personnel. I have a feeling you want me to recruit a lot of people next.”

“Yes. Under your banner, Earth will be safer and formidable.”

“Yeah. That’s complicated, Prime. And difficult. Humans aren’t cooperative when you force a leader on them or take things by force.”

“Then, you must invade Earth. You have the firepower.”

“Whoa! Bud! Easy there. Didn’t you hear what I said? Tyrants aren’t well-liked either.”

“Humanity must cooperate if they mean to survive against the other forerunners. These hostile forces remain a dire threat to the solar system—”

“Yeah, I know. You kept reminding me.”

“I apologize. I will minimize further reminders of anomaly-202 in the future.”

“You still haven’t told me why the forerunners need to fight each other.”

“It is the certainty of all organics, forerunner. All organics have evolved from one constant: Are you the Predator or the Prey? Empires are subjected to such an unyielding factor of the universe.”

“Well, I doubt winning this sector is just that. There must be something else than connecting to other higher classified forerunner species.”

“Yes. There is.”

“Can you tell me?”

“Is this an inquiry or an extrapolation of the hypothetical reward?”

“An inquiry, Prime.”

“There is a high possibility that Earth will meet my creators.”

I perked up. “Meeting…them?”

“Yes.”

Oh, boy. I massaged my temples and sat in one of the empty chairs. Maybe I do need sleep. I glanced at the table, where in a few hours, it would be occupied by consoles and computers displaying the readings and conditions of all eight stations operated by a future team of my choosing. I just had to find the right crew.

I tried composing myself for Amelia, Jason, and the rest of the team. I didn’t want to let them see that I am freaking out. There were a lot of hurdles I had to overcome, and none of them would be easy. I kept telling myself that it was okay to have some doubts, but it shouldn’t consume me, not when I had things to focus on, like getting this station up and running and surviving a large-scale war with a hostile alien fleet. But if the latter managed to travel the vast distances between stars, I had to assume they could destroy the entire planet. And if I failed, would another poor soul take my place as the forerunner out of the three thousand viable subjects left? Or would Prime abandon them as I feared?

And why hadn’t the quartz attacked the station yet?

I waited for Prime’s answer, but he did not interject. It was scary to think that these quartz were not a forerunner race and that they were technologically capable of wiping me out.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I closed my eyes, thinking I shouldn’t dwell on the what-ifs and other grim predictions. I am now responsible for eight billion lives. No matter how much I wanted, it to disappear, their lives—and mine—would forever change.

That’s another hurdle: Facing the disappointment of humanity because of my failure. Leaders were judged harshly for their fuck-ups more than their successes, and nothing sells more than cynicism. It didn’t bode well that whoever built Prime was putting all the eggs in my basket, someone less experienced than the other cutthroat motherfuckers left on Earth. I had maybe a week to plan everything against dozens of unknown variables, and I was already scrambling within a day of working as a forerunner.

I had to manage my time better in the future. Prime told me he had a limited capacity to control unmanned vessels to one fleet without removing the necessary operations in the forerunner hub.

I ordered seven frigate-class vessels built on engines of catalyzed fusion of antiprotons and positrons (generated from ultra-intense lasers called atom smashers) with Uranium-235, ionizing the surface for plasma burns around a self-generated magnetic field. The ships would be propelled by antimatter propulsions with hydrogen (in light of its low molecular weight) as the propulsive ‘fluid.’ Each ship stored antihydrogen protons to start fission with the depleted uranium coil. I called it the pulse drive (or P-drive for short) due to the laser’s pulse durations generating the antimatter.

Yet another thing to worry about was radiation exposure from the fission reactions.

Each quark interaction with helium-cooled antimatter particles caused tremendous energy via gamma rays for the surrounding fluid to undergo nuclear fission. I had to build thick gamma shields due to the waste heat (and fallout) that these machines would produce. Most forerunner vessels were built around this engine of destructive power. Prime estimated it could house a crew of five hundred for each frigate.

He had already listed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune as potential candidates for mining hydrogen fuel.

In under thirty hours, I created a storage of antihydrogen more than Earth had made a million times over. NASA gave a figure of $250 billion to make just one gram of antihydrogen alone. If I wanted to make money in the future, I might have found a way.

With the antimatter engines made, each frigate would take at least five and a half days to finish construction. The five stations’ top surfaces were dotted by low rocky hills, valleys, and flat, uneven terrain left over from the asteroid, and I had turned a quarter of that land into shipyards. For Station Two and Three, I dedicated the production of a fighter spacecraft, which I dubbed star-fighters, a one-man-operated vessel capable of traveling two hundred million miles in miniature antimatter engines. I ordered at least two hundred since they were smaller, taking only a day and a half to construct, and each factory deck could produce five at a time.

And Prime just gave me the good news that he finished making the first batch of star-fighters.

Station Four and Five would focus on building more factories, drones, nanites, and other materials, so that I could expand my production across the hub, and I planned on adding more frigates, corvettes, and star-fighters to my fleet. Stations Six, Seven, and Eight were on their way to Earth to join with the unified forerunner hub. Once they got here and connected to the system, they would start helping with producing my frigates and corvettes.

Crewing these spacecraft would be a different matter, but since Prime could manually control it (to a certain point), I pushed back the crew recruitment for at least another month if I survived this battle. I hoped to garner some support back on Earth.

However, once I start recruitment, it would be a shit show. Not many countries want to hand over their people to a potential enemy, even though I am on their fucking side.

As for the ground soldiers, I needed to recruit them as soon as possible. They wouldn’t control any vessel (merely transported inside it) as long as they knew how to shoot and work as a unit. I needed a dedicated ground force, people that only answered to me. I couldn’t rely on the other governments to supply me with soldiers. I’m not stupid enough to trust them with handling my advanced tech. They could steal it for themselves. I’ve studied enough history when you supply potential allies with your weapons and resources only for them to stab you in the back.

Was I right to think this way? Treating the other countries as a potential threat even before I gained any dialogue with them? Was there any reason they would be a friend? The only currency of friendship was what both parties could offer one another. I had a mountain of resources at my disposal, and Earth had the bodies necessary to feed a war. No matter how I looked at it, Earth had the advantage at the negotiating table, and if I were them, I’d ask for what I have in my vault.

Unfortunately, I needed experienced pilots to control the star-fighters, and that crowd was much smaller than many potential enlistees. I already had six of them, but once they recover from their treatment, they might choose to leave and return to the United States, then I am back to square one. I had to address the governments soon if I wanted personnel on board this station. Again, they hold all the cards on this one: I needed a population of skilled workers. Score two for Earth against my side’s zero. Lucky for me, I had something to trade.

And the motherlode of crunch time was training these men to fight in space. I mean, I’m playing everything by ear. How will I convince them I could effectively lead and know my shit? The only leadership role I had was leading thirteen men into a war zone, and they barely made it out alive with each mission, lucky enough that there were no casualties. How am I going to lead thousands of troops, battle after battle?

Then, I noticed it; a dull green flashing light at the arctic region of holographic Earth.

I pointed it out to Prime. “What’s that?”

“Radio signals. Humans are attempting to communicate with the hub.”

I got out of my chair so fast blood rushed up my head. It made me dizzy. “What the fuck, Prime? You mean to tell me they’ve been calling us all this time?”

“Yes.”

I glared at the robot. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“They are a low priority to the mission parameters you have given me. I have focused on building the fleet and reprogramming all five stations, especially with Stations Six, Seven, and Eight almost arriving to connect to the hub.”

“Well, next time, alert me to future communications from our people. You got that?”

“Specification noted. Would you like to open a direct channel?”

I thought about it briefly, but it wouldn’t be worth it. Not this early while I’m still scrambling about what I should do. “No,” I told Prime. It was better to be in a more favorable position on the negotiation table.

“Open channels restricted.”

“But let me hear what they sent. Pull it up on the holo-screen.”

They attempted to communicate in various spoken (and dead) languages and obscure ones from ancient Sumerian to a civilization I couldn’t even pronounce. They also tried binary, prime numbers, chemical elements, colors, pulses, and musical notes. I went through the messages, not knowing that they were calling another human.

I asked Prime to build a cell tower so my friends and I could communicate with our families back home. It felt like a week had passed when it had only been a day. I also ordered multiple satellites so that we could watch what was happening on the surface over our screen. It would take him five hours to build them. By then, the others were awake. Freddie and Alonso returned to the command center except for Ben, who stayed behind with his men. I had a couple of drones watch them, just in case.

Bringing up the satellites, we watched what was happening on Earth. The planet had devolved into pandemonium in merely twenty-two hours without radio contact since the aliens arrived.

A portrait of Ben and his surviving men (including the airmen who perished during the battle) was beside ours on every news channel across the globe, but mostly everyone believed us to be dead. We watched in shock as our portraits were plastered over every website and social media feed; former Marines heroically killed by the aliens. Dozens of people had filmed me being dragged into the sphere and survived, and it went viral, including when I boarded the ship with the others. Since I was the only survivor (and all those who got sucked into the spheres were dead), the world caught up to that detail, spewing a torrent of bizarre theories.

Kidnapped or mind-controlled, they said, or whatever psionic abilities the aliens might have imposed on me. A call to get us back to the surface, to beg for empathy from these aliens, and bring us former Marines back home. The media had already begun calling us heroes.

At least, that was the narrative.

Riots in major metropolitan cities, people fleeing to rural areas, and various religious denominations scrambled to control their worshippers and the narrative of their holy texts. Apparently, God created these aliens a long time ago too, and a specific passage in the books hinted at their existence. Half of the world ate that up. Celebrities and influencers clamored for the next viral thing about aliens. Doomsday preppers called it the end of the world. They were looting and ransacking stores and warehouses, and dozens of countries were cracking down on a total media blackout. A curfew had been placed across the United States.

Conspiracy theories started to spread that it would no longer be us if we did return. Body snatching. Potential cloning. Mind transference theory. Or imposter syndrome. They referenced all the horrible alien monsters in movies to us. There were even talks of quarantine, fearing we’d bring down diseases. Many people now believed we were aliens in disguise and the real version of us was somewhere up here being probed, eaten, or something more horrifying.

I’m pretty sure I am not an alien. I only had a very nosy robot inside my head. But once we return, the government will be on top of us. The lack of communication from “the aliens” allowed these stories to thrive. I debated whether I should respond.

One way or another, half of the people below already considered me an enemy. I had my work cut out to convince them to join my military.

“Prime, open up a limited channel,” I said.

Amelia narrowed her brows. “You’re contacting Earth?”

“No, but I want to let them know we’re friendly. I don’t want them freaking out while we go down there again.” I glanced over to Ben. “I don’t want to shoot more of your colleagues if they try to kill us.”

“What are you going to send?” Jason asked.

“Prime, how far can you broadcast?” I asked.

“To which extent, forerunner?”

I shrugged. “How about worldwide? I don’t want just the government seeing this.”

“What would you like to broadcast?”

“Send them Churchill’s beaches speech to the House of Commons. Broadcast it through all households. If they have a phone, a smart appliance, you make sure to play it.”

“Acknowledged.”

Churchill had a way with words, and this speech rallied Britain’s resolve against Germany during World War II after the massive evacuation of their stranded soldiers in Dunkirk. It was a message, alright. And everyone on Earth would know that we were possibly being invaded by a superior force and to hunker down for a long war ahead.

“That’s a bold move,” Ben said. “People might think you’re declaring war.”

“They already saw me, er, my ship, try to shoot down the quartz over New York. They’ll know who this message is for.”

“The quartz? I doubt they speak English.”

I shook my head. “Their leaders. We’re being invaded, and I’m here to help stop it.”