Humanity’s greatest accomplishments have often been born out of conflict. It doesn’t matter whether we’re fighting over land, resources, or even ideals. The desire to emerge victorious pushes us to innovate in order to gain an advantage over our opponent. Swords giving way to muskets, carriers replacing battleships, the invention of the atomic bomb, the list of technologies spawned out of this desire goes on and on. Frankly, it’s a miracle we haven’t blown up the planet yet. We’re quite skilled at killing ourselves.
That said, nothing prepared us for the arrival of the Kuxpir.
The Kuxpir’s cylindrical spacecraft was spotted approaching Earth quite by accident in early January of 2023. The James Webb Space Telescope just so happened to be looking in the right direction at the right time. Overnight the world became sick with alien fever.
There were thousands of attempts across the globe to establish first contact every hour. The news channels switched away from the 24/7 reminders of depressing political affairs and scandals, instead featuring interview after interview with anyone who was even remotely knowledgeable about space. Massive “welcome parties” that put Woodstock and Burning Man to shame sprung up as the Kuxpir grew closer to Earth. Even a few religions spawned overnight, usually led by con artists claiming they had “heard the will of our visitors” and used fear to drain their parishioners' wallets dry.
The only ones that remained grounded and sane were the paranoid types in government. I know, that sounds crazy, but their anxiety might be why humanity and Earth is still around to this day. While the general population celebrated, cowered, or complained, strategic military assets mobilized. War rooms in bunkers worldwide were dusted off as the Kuxpir ship split into two and approached both the North and South poles.
Research outposts at the poles livestreamed the descent of the Kuxpir vessels, thinking the footage would go down in history. Each of the two, black, cylindrical craft were larger than Manhattan Island. Their smooth, vantablack surface absorbed all attempts at sensor probing and communication as they filled the horizon with their might.
Just like the first moon landings, everyone on the planet was watching in anticipation as the curved exterior of the alien cylinders receded. Then all hell broke loose. A myriad of weaponry far beyond our technology began to eviscerate the outposts. Lasers sliced people into tiny giblets while plasma globules disintegrated whatever they touched. Neither man nor structure escaped destruction.
No warning or manifesto was ever transmitted. The Kuxpir acted with simple violence without any discernible trigger or reasoning. The last images transmitted prior to the livestreams being cut off were of dagger-shaped aircraft launching from each half of the mothership.
Remember how I just said those paranoid types are why we’re still breathing? Thanks to them the greatest collaborative operation in human history was assembled, coordinated, and executed before the Kuxpir invaders could reach civilization. Aircraft of all make, model, and nationality scrambled to intercept while ballistic missiles both traditional and nuclear were primed and waiting for targets to be painted.
The world continued to watch, glued to their screens, as brave pilots flew into certain doom. Every Kuxpir aircraft shot down cost us five in return. Nearly 80% of our gathered forces were decimated by alien vessels far faster and more agile than even our latest generation fighters. To make matters worse, all of the launched nuclear missiles were shot down before they found their marks. But where technology failed us we made up for it in numbers. We were able to halt the Kuxpir advance and buy ourselves some time.
Great efforts were made to salvage every single scrap of alien tech possible. That’s when humanity did what we do best: Figure out how to reverse engineer more advanced technology and use it to fight back. Soon even ancient aircraft like the F-14 were retrofitted and able to take on the Kuxpir in a dogfight. The true prize of the research efforts, though, was the development of the Air-Core system.
Air-Cores were a simple concept: Similar to mecha found in many of humanity’s media, Air-Cores were anthropomorphizations of real-life aircraft. They ranged in size from 1.5 to 2.5 times the size of an average human, with bodies that consisted of nanities with non-Newtonian properties capable of self-repair when fed scrap metal and other repurposable materials. This same “digestive process” allowed an Air-Core to assimilate new weaponry, technology, and information at a previously unfathomable rate. Once a weapon was known to an Air-Core it could produce a high number of ordinance of that same type.
This meant that even a single Air-Core was a force multiplier. We were able to use these new Air-Core units to establish meaningful defensive lines across the globe. The Kuxpir continually tested and probed such lines as they expanded their corrupting influence outwards from the poles. They even revealed that they possessed similar units to our Air-Cores once their progress ground to a halt. Ultimately, each side found themselves in a hot stalemate that has persisted to the current day.
It’s been over thirty years since the Kuxpir arrived. All attempts at diplomacy have failed. Experts across the world have speculated that humanity has until the end of the century at best before we’re wiped out unless something drastic changes.
Imagine my shock when such a drastic change dropped right into my lap.
My name is Cinder Laros. I’m a 28 year old Systems Manager that used to live and work in Ashland, Nebraska. That’s a fancy way of saying I was responsible for the IT side of tractors, harvesters, and other farm vehicles/equipment in the area. Actual mechanics would handle all the real moving parts while I deployed all firmware and software updates.
That might make you think I just sat in a comfortable office with air conditioning pushing buttons, but trust me: I worked just as many long hours and terrible conditions as the mech-heads did. Not every tractor could be connected to the internet wirelessly, nor did some tractors have easy to access USB ports. Add in the need to sometimes service vehicles on location and I’ve been through my fair share of blustering thunderstorms knee-deep in muddy fields.
The good news is that the gig paid well. Very well. I made enough to afford my own single-story ranch house, a second-hand electric hatchback, an ATV, and a modest bachelorette lifestyle. That might sound like I was living like a queen but the truth is I was one to two major emergencies away from being in debt. Still higher than most these days, sure. But I need to stress the fact that I didn’t have a large enough discretionary fund to go buy extravagant sports cars or charter private flights.
Anyways, I remember it being a cool evening in October when the present I mentioned previously showed up. I was lazing about in my living room after work after a long day when I heard the first peel of thunder. Looking out of my windows I could see dark, rolling clouds fit to burst advancing across the browning flatlands from the west. Moments later my phone began to blare, alerting me that there was both a derecho warning and a tornado warning in effect. This was par for the course for storms in the Midwest but being complacent could be deadly.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
After running around the house locking all of the windows and securing the doors, I returned to my couch just as the power cut out. The derecho hit by the time I found a flashlight. For those who have never been in or heard of a derecho before, allow me to fill you in. Imagine a wind tunnel where they test cars, planes, and other things for their aerodynamics. Now imagine that you are the thing in the wind tunnel and the speeds are cranked up to 130 miles per hour or more.
My house was angled to the southwest such that one side didn’t take the brunt of the howling gale. The windows creaked and walls trembled all the same, just not as badly as my neighbors had it. I watched from my north-facing windows as siding and roof tiles were ripped away from nearby houses. Mailbox posts bowed as if to royalty while several western-aimed windows shattered inwards. I was about to seek shelter in my bathroom when I saw a bright flash of light from the west.
My first thought was that the flash had just been lightning. However, the more I looked to the west, the more I realized that there was a pinprick of light spinning and plummeting to the ground. Too slow to be ball lightning or any weather phenomenon I was aware of at the time. That meant something was falling out of the sky. And whatever it was was going to crash in one of the abandoned farms on the outskirts of Ashland.
I considered chasing after the crashing object then and there but quickly changed my tune when a transformer blew, ripped from the ground, and hurtled into the air. At that point I retreated towards the bathroom only to veer left instead of right in the hallway and enter my garage instead. The garage door rattled against the windstorm outside as I prepared my ATV for an excursion the moment the weather became more manageable. Usually I rode the ATV into and during work, so all I needed to do was ensure the gas tank was topped off and the toolkit latched onto the back was locked in place.
Half an hour went by before I judged it was safe enough to brave the elements. I still donned a helmet, raincoat, and goggles as I headed out into the chilly rain coming down in sheets. The wind was still moderate, but the major issue I faced were the roads in the direction of the falling object. They had become ruined, muddy messes that even my top-of-the-line ATV struggled to handle every now and again. Add in the half-bent, overgrown fields to either side of the roads casting dancing shadows in the headlight’s illumination and I might as well have tried to navigate my way out of a rave filled with mist, a thronging crowd, strobe lights, and music loud enough to shake your soul.
Okay I maybe did that once or twice in my college days. Five times, tops. The point is that I was half-blind and squinting quite a bit. I nearly missed the smoke pillar of the crash site being blown away by the storm. When I did spot it I pumped the brakes, angled my ATV directly towards it, and dove into the weeds and overgrowth. A minute later the shrubbery parted to reveal a charred depression in the ground. At the center of the crater was an Air-Core unit.
The Air-Core wasn’t a design I was familiar with. Years of growing up with Air-Cores plastered across patriotic billboards and broadcasted during commercials meant I could recognize most of the standard configurations. Yet here I couldn’t figure out what type of aircraft this Air-Core had been based on.
The Air-Core's serpentine head had two "horns" of long control surfaces, as well as a matte-black finish along her crown in which golden irises flickered. Her mostly-black body was toned with notable definition around her abdomen and golden accents throughout. Her arms ended in dark bulks from which sprang golden claws, each the size of my forearm. A long, thick tail lay limp beneath her, the underside golden and the top midnight. Just looking at her armored legs I could tell that she'd easily stand close to double my height just shy of 11 feet tall. Then there were four smaller sub-arms currently locked in place in alcoves along her back. I surmised that they were meant to spring out and be seen both over the Air-Core's shoulders and beneath their main two arms.
Overall her condition would have been written off as totaled scrap metal by any insurance agency. Her body was dented, scorched, and bent at odd, inhuman angles. There were no signs of life in her vacant, expressionless eyes. The only indications that her Air-Core hadn’t cracked and continued to function were the pulsing running lights along her form.
Someone sane would have reported the crash to the authorities and let the military come clean it up. Or, at least, someone more sane than I. But me? I saw an opportunity. To my knowledge there were no military bases nearby, meaning that the Air-Core was either an experimental craft or a free-agent. I was hoping for the latter, though my reasoning at the time was that if someone did come looking for her then I would be rewarded for any repair work I did. Hell, maybe taking the initiative here could land me one of those premium government contractor jobs that were all the rage these days.
My mind was made up within moments. Once I had made my choice I could focus on the next steps I needed to take. First, I needed to get the Air-Core somewhere safe and away from prying eyes. The abandoned field she crashed in used to belong to the Pollard family. An unfortunate car crash sent most of the Pollards to an early grave when I was still a child. Those family members that remained couldn’t handle running the farm due to all the memories and associations with the departed. They tried selling the property but were unsuccessful. That meant the land and buildings on it were deserted and left to the elements. I was betting I could use the old Pollard farmhouse, assuming it hadn’t been wrecked by exposure.
The major issue was getting the Air-Core to the farmhouse in the first place. There was absolutely no way my ATV would be able to drag her anywhere. I needed a tractor or tow truck to handle her weight and size as well as the inclement conditions of the storm still raging around me. Thanks to my job, I had access to just the kind of vehicles that would work. I’d have to make up a story for why I checked out a tow truck in the middle of a storm, far past business hours, but I wasn’t particularly worried about that. My co-workers had borrowed equipment far more often than I ever had. Besides, no one would look too carefully at my excuse if I said the tow truck was for something as simple as tire failure of my car.
I pushed the ATV as fast as I dared back to my modest abode. There I grabbed the keys to the workshop before racing out once more. By the time I arrived I was soaked to the bone. I could only imagine what my boss would think when he checked the camera feeds later and saw me impersonating a drowned rat while signing out a tow truck. My hope at the time was it would lend credence to my tale of experiencing car problems.
Getting the tow truck to the crashed Air-Core was an ordeal and a half. Despite the tractor’s torque and oversized tires meant for boggy fields there were still two moments when it got stuck on the way to the Air-Core. Gratefully for my heart and sanity, I managed to get going again without needing to go get a tow for the original tow.
My next challenge was where to hook the winch on the Air-Core. All I had to work with was the light offered by the tractor and a headlamp. I had no knowledge of what would be the best hardpoint to use in this situation. If I chose incorrectly then I could bend, break, or otherwise burst her already-damaged frame. And since I had no idea what model she was I couldn’t just look it up on my phone. Ultimately I took a chance and snagged a handle along the Air-Core’s back that I thought might secure her cockpit. Once attached the semi-truck hoisted her up such that only her lower half would drag on the ground.
The trek to the Pollard farmhouse was slow and meticulous. From what I could make out from the semi’s headlights the building was still intact but had seen better days. The red siding was rotting off, the remnants of the white paint were chipped, most of the windows were broken, and the rusted roof was pockmarked by holes. There were some blessings, though. The barn doors had been left unlocked and weren’t rendered immobile by the passage of time. Furthermore, the interior was empty aside from several stray bales of hay and four metal support beams. There was more than enough room to work on the Air-Core out of sight of the world.
Now came the next step in my plan, which honestly I was unprepared for. I had no experience working on aircraft, Air-Core, scale model, drone, or otherwise. And since I was trying to keep this project a secret I couldn’t badger my coworkers to explain basic mechanics to me. The best I could do was visit the nearby Aerospace Museum and rely on copious amounts of internet searching. I just hoped that I wasn’t going to get flagged by a three-letter agency for what I was about to start googling.