23

While most of the wounded settled in the med bay, Agent Finley insisted on going to the cockpit, but I didn’t let him. It took a few times to convince him, but when Meredith, Gaius, and Dad went out of the crew quarters to help out, Finley relented. He had talked to Dad and Gaius a few days ago because of my disappearance and Amelia’s.

“Just keep an eye on them,” I told Dad.

I glanced over the five bodies in the corner, covered by a thin sheet of thermal blankets. I placed the alien’s dead husk in another room for further study, where a drone guarded it from curious eyes. Ben was on the nanite table where the drones treated him for a concussion. Nick stood beside him, joking about how it was his turn on the operating table. The drone (or Prime’s vestige) reprimanded Nick for distracting the patient.

I frowned, and my father’s grip is getting tighter. “This is not your fault, son,” he said. “Go on. Talk to your alien. I’ll take it from here.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled and left the med bay. I caught Amelia arguing with Tyler, who was strapped on the nanite table, and I motioned for her to follow. She gave Tyler another smack on the shoulder and walked out with Freddie and Alonso.

“What’s that all about?” I asked Amelia.

She groaned. “I’m just telling the idiot not to be an idiot. That’s all.”

“I hope it sticks.”

“Don’t count on it.”

As we rounded the corner, tiny scuffling from within the crew quarters reverberated down the hall, quickly followed by the sliding doors closing. Sighing, I opened the crew quarters and found Daniel and Isaac sitting on the bunk beds, pretending they didn’t just open the doors.

“Oh. Hey, Tony,” Daniel said casually, trying to sound bored.

“Your mother told you guys not to come out,” I said teasingly.

“We didn’t!” Isaac shouted. “We were just here. Right, Daniel?”

“Right.”

Amelia walked in. “I’ll watch over them,” she said.

“You sure you don’t want to talk to this asshole again?”

Isaac chuckled and elbowed Daniel. “Tony said a bad word.”

“Pretend you didn’t hear that,” I said.

Amelia sat next to the boys. “I’m fine, just babysitting. This is probably easier than what you’re about to do.”

“Can’t we go with you to the cockpit? We want to talk to aliens,” Isaac said.

“Well, not today, buddy, but I’ll be right back. Just stay here, okay? Don’t give Amelia any grief.”

I took Freddie and Alonso to the cockpit, hearing Daniel and Isaac muttering how they couldn’t wait to see space. I reckoned it was their coping mechanism, their life-and-death situation five minutes ago all but forgotten. Still, I couldn’t help but worry about them.

Prime lifted the vessel thousands of feet in the air, far from the city proper. Yet it gave me a bird’s eye view of the landscape. I tried to find the second quartz vessel, half-expecting it to come after me (even though Prime had reassured me that he had taken it down). Billowing smoke from the two crash sites on my holo-screen alleviated my paranoia. Good. They’re all down. I ordered Prime to take us closer, risking it with my shields almost depleted.

“Three down, two more to go,” Freddie said behind me.

“And all we needed to do is go to Mars and the Asteroid Belt,” Alonso said. “No biggie.”

“Don’t count all our hard-earned chips just yet, guys,” I flipped through the switches on the console. “The last two quartz vessels are much larger than the ones we took down,” I remembered watching all the raw footage of the quartz vessels when they attacked the cities. I noticed that the Johannesburg and Mumbai quartz ships were immense and packed a lot of punch. It was one of the reasons why those cities got a higher death toll than anywhere else.

I noticed a yellow blinking light on the dashboard next to the red one (connected to the quartz captain).

“Minister Hennig is hailing you, forerunner,” Prime said.

I clicked the yellow button, keeping the quartz captain waiting a little longer. Let him wait. He deserved it after he tried to kill more of my people. “Hey, Tom. We read you.”

“Thank fucking Christ; you bastards are alright. You scared us half to death!”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

“Still need assistance?”

“Extra hands are always welcome, Tom. We got the quartz fleeing. They crashed into the city.”

“We see it. ETA in fifteen minutes.”

“I got Alonso and Freddie here with me.” Freddie and Alonso let out an excited holler from behind the seat. “We suffered a few casualties, but mostly everyone’s okay.”

“Is your family—”

“They’re safe. One of the bastards got in and took a number with the cops and the FBI agents.”

“FBI? What the fuck are they doing in your ship, Tony?”

“It—It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later. Just get your butt over here and join the party. The quartz is grounded. I think an aerial bombardment will kill them for good, but with plenty of civilians, we might have to evacuate the city first.”

“Noted. I’m flying this ship as fast as possible, but Prime Two said this is as fast as we can go without breaking up in the atmosphere.”

“Just stay safe. I’ll contact you when I find out more about these guys.” I killed the line. “Prime, can you aim your scanner at one of the crashed quartz ships? Let’s see if they’re still alive.”

It took a minute for Prime to scan the vessels while my ship descended several hundred feet above the tallest skyscraper.

A ping echoed across the cockpit. “I have detected similar figures that matched the dead quartz in the med bay, forerunner.”

“How many?”

“At least a dozen around the second downed vessel.”

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Freddie spat a curse. “They’re harder to kill.”

“Yeah, Tony had to throw it off our ship, remember?” Alonso said.

I shrugged. “The second vessel is mostly intact compared to the other. More survivors there.”

“They have not yet expanded into the city. They’re staying near their downed vessel,” Prime said. “Local police are currently evacuating all civilians out of Mission District, but I predict that once the quartz settled, they may attack the other humans.”

I needed ground forces to counter them. But given the pithy state of my military (and only eight combat-ready Marines and six fighter pilots), we’d get butchered facing a dozen (or two dozen) quartz. I might have to replicate more of the armor that Prime had made me with a few tweaks. I noticed they did not carry a gun or any ranged weapon. They probably thought they didn’t need it given their natural armor ignored our conventional weapons.

It was a boastful display of power for their species by butchering us with red-hot swords instead of guns. Only a nuke might kill them for good. Hell, the only quartz I’ve killed was through drowning.

But I got their weapon now, the scimitar, I thought. Perhaps it’s possible to replicate it. Use their weapons against them. It could almost cut through metal. Maybe it could cut through their carapace, too. I dreaded warfare where we had to fight the quartz face-to-face like in the good ol’ days with spikes and spears.

I should talk to the captain. He’s waited long enough.

But before I clicked the red button, a faint greenish light shot out into the sky from the second vessel and quickly created a dome around the area. The Blue Angels rushed forward, firing their missiles at the second vessel, but the dome blocked their attacks. One fighter jet hurtled too close, and to my horror, I watched as it slammed against the barrier and exploded in a split second. The quartz’s attack aircraft rushed back into the dome without exploding and landed near the second vessel.

“What are they doing, Prime?” I asked.

“They have established a magnetic plasma deflector across a radius of two miles.”

The second vessel built a perimeter around all their downed ships, trapping anyone inside and keeping us out. I trembled when I realized thousands of civilians were within the enemy line.

“How much firepower do I need to get inside?”

“Breaching it would require significant power, forerunner. It would be unwise to do so at your current capabilities.”

“What do you mean I can’t? This thing can blow off a skyscraper.”

“Yes. Eventually, we will run out of raw materials. We have spent most of it administering aid to the civilians and creating that armor you now wear. I recommend you return to Station One and repair the ship. Shield integrity is at eleven percent.”

“I’ll have to try. Fire at the dome.”

“Firing.”

I watched as the cannons hit the quartz’s shields without faltering. A minute passed, then another, and just as Prime predicted, my ship wouldn’t be enough to blow a hole through their defenses. I needed a much bigger one, or better yet, an entire fleet. I noticed the second vessel couldn’t use its weapons against us even when we were flying as close as possible. I realized that these shields required significant resources to summon, which was some good news. I could rest easy knowing they wouldn’t be able to bombard the rest of the city.

However, thousands of civilians were trapped within the enclosed district. Though they tried to flee the jam-packed streets, they were easy targets for the quartz’s attack aircraft, wantonly shelling them with fire. Those that survived were hunted down like rats. I couldn’t bear to watch the massacre with my weapons ineffective and with no way inside.

I got out of my seat, rubbing my hands over my face. I couldn’t get the screams out of my head as the missiles hit the civilians, followed by explosions. Freddie trembled, but he tried to hide it from me.

“What do we do now?” Alonso asked.

“I don’t know.” I sauntered over to the holo-table. “Prime, open up the link to the quartz captain. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

It didn’t take long for the quartz captain’s voice to reverberate across the cockpit. I expected another brow-beat deluge, but that was not the case. “You have defeated me, Tony Segerstrom of Earth, but I doubt this battle will be the last.”

I cleared my throat. “You tried to show me how dangerous the galaxy can be, captain, but I find it lacking,” I said. I couldn’t help but pull a hit there. “Maybe I have shown you how my planet is just as dangerous. After all, I killed one of your own with my bare hands.”

“This is a mere setback. We will recover.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt about that. Will you give me the courtesy of knowing your name?”

A pause. “I am Captain Gorr’gartag Iraket, the seventh scion of Merretta.”

I glanced over to Alonso. A Scion? And what the hell was a Merretta? He just gave me a shrug.

“Well, Captain Iraket, I strongly urge you to leave my planet and vacate the solar system. No harm will come to your crew if you don’t kill more humans. I’ll give you my word if that ever means anything to your people.”

“Big words for someone about to die.”

“You mistake me, captain. Maybe it’s you. The shields will not protect you and your crew for long. I have observed your technology, albeit briefly, and creating that dome pulls significant power upon the second ship. If it ever goes down, you wouldn’t have enough time to bring up the shield again. Let’s face it, captain: You are stranded, surrounded, outmanned, and outgunned even with primitive tech. We will destroy you.”

I zoomed out of the Bay Area, and Prime marked down the few dozen warships from the US Pacific Fleet approaching San Francisco Bay. On the news feed, the national guard had just been mobilized and sent toward the city to help with the mass evacuation. I zoomed out again, and the two remaining quartz vessels stayed put on Mars and in the asteroid belt, probably waiting for my next move.

I continued, “So, captain, you came into this planet without significant manpower. I mean, five ships? That doesn’t sound like an invasion fleet to me. You seemed surprised by our technological capabilities and designated us as a Class Zero Civilization, whatever that means. Still, it’s enough to know that you entered our solar system expecting the least resistance. Your soldiers even chose to wield a sword instead of a gun to kill us. That’s how confident you are with our subjugation. An easy meal.”

I paused. Letting the captain speak, but he remained silent.

“Then, you met me. You’ve seen my ships. You’ve experienced my strength. But you are not here for us, aren’t you? The humans, I mean. You said it yourself. We’re Class Zeros. We barely have any rights for contact with galactic nations like yours. Looking through all the evidence, you are here for something else. Something my planet has.” Something I know I possess.

“Don’t be a fool. My people greatly outnumber you.”

“Well, not today. Today, captain, we outnumber you. Eight billion of us against your measly thousand. So, it is in your best interest to cooperate even with a lower life form like myself.”

Silence seeped into the cockpit. Suddenly, another bright beam of light shot out into the atmosphere centered around the second vessel and lingered there for about three seconds. Then, it dissipated.

I groaned. “What is it now?”

“Forerunner, the quartz had sent out a beacon,” Prime said.

Hairs stood all over my body. “A beacon? To where?”

The comms again crackled to life as Captain Iraket’s laughter filled the cockpit. “Tony Segerstrom of Earth, this is war.” Iraket cut the line after.

“Uh, Tony? Did we make things worse?” Freddie asked.

“Prime, where are they aiming that beacon?”

“I am calculating the trajectory, forerunner. Please wait a moment.” The war table shifted to the entire solar system. A faint line came out of Earth, zipping and moving out of the solar system until it was a mere dot on the map, surrounded by dozens of stars that made up my quadrant (according to the Hyperion Network). The beacon’s trajectory was either aimed at Barnard’s Star, Luyten 726-8 A, or Ross 154, star systems that were within ten light-years of Sol.

“Alonso, do you still have contacts with the other Marines from our unit? The guys who retired?”

“Yeah. We go hunting and camping sometimes. Why?”

“Prime, help Alonso send an encrypted message to the names I will give you. I want them to meet me at this location.” I brought up the screen somewhere in the middle of Montana. “Let’s see who shows up.”

“Affirmative, forerunner.” Prime paused. “I have also detected a spike in activity across the web. They specifically mentioned you, Tony Segerstrom.”

Prime changed the holo-screen to snippets from TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms of the quartz and me falling from the sky and eventually the alien’s decapitation by my hand from different angles. They even filmed me eating a hotdog. Word was already out on who I was. You can depend on the internet to find out who you are in five minutes.

“Seems like you’re famous, Tony,” Alonso said, patting me on the back.

Well, the cat was out of the bag. “Prime, message Jason that I am going to address Earth by this afternoon. We gotta shape the narrative before it blows over and someone beats us to it.”

“Affirmative.”

“Also, make me a list of the smartest motherfuckers on the planet. Xenobiologists. Zoologists. Chemists. Engineers. Anthropologists. Linguists. All branches of science. I’m gonna recruit them.”

“How are we gonna convince them to come with us?” Freddie asked.

“Simple. I have alien tech. Scientists can’t say no to that. Plus, I have a dead alien.” Another ping on the console. “What is that, Prime?”

“I found Nathan Segerstrom, forerunner,” Prime said. “Your uncle and his SEALs are still in Syria, grounded by your government since the quartz’s arrival. Shall I go collect them?”

“No,” I said firmly. “You’ll end up getting shot at. I’ll do it.”

Over the horizon, Tom’s ship broke through the clouds, flanked by four star-fighters flown by the other pilots. Cavalry is here, I thought.

I turned back to the console. “Prime, can you patch me a direct line to President Howell?”

Alonso and Freddie froze for a moment. “You’re gonna talk to the president?” Alonso asked.

“It’s about time. San Francisco and New York just got attacked. I can help,” I said. “Let’s see if he accepts.”