It was the 7163-9-8, 16:08 EDT. More than 24 hour had passed since the aliens had first assaulted Terra.

An attack for which they would pay, the men and women in the war room swore to each other. An attack which still was ongoing, and which still needed to be beaten back, to allow more and more people to evacuate. Multiple Gates had been destroyed. Some by enemy action, some by their operators to prevent them from falling into the aliens hand.

Because of their reptilian features, the soldiers in the field had begun calling the aliens Lizards.

From what little data they had, they were not lizards, but it did not matter. The current official title was simply Enemy Alpha. Which was not used by anyone in a conversations. So until their real name became known, most, if not all, would call them lizards.

By now, they had at least some idea of what the enemy was doing. They were by now certain that the construction uncovered in New York was at least a spaceport, and they had found five more sites. The indicators that at least part of the construction was meant to be an anchor point for a space elevator were increasing, which no one really liked. While a space elevator was not nearly as destructive as some science fiction producers liked to made it out, it was an immeasurable advantage for the enemy in getting resources and troops down and up into orbit. Which could not be allowed. Still, any further assaults on the known spaceports had failed, luckily those were carried out by Battle-Robots, so no human had been harmed.

At least the missle strike they had initialized at 20 o clock yesterday had worked. It had killed one of the enemies big transports, of which there were now, not counting the destroyed one, 24 in sight, as well as 2 of the two hundred meter long warships. Or at least that is what they thought they were, they could have been something different. Some more ships had been damaged, but not majorly so. Still, a success, and in this situation, any success was good. Sadly, they could not try again for the foreseeable future. Although the enemy would be very unhappy at the moment they could try again.

And then there was the matter of Therion. A world, which was now clear would be very important in the coming struggle, mainly because it actually had some space based industry, but which also was full of space fanatics. The research group that tried to develop an FTL-drive, which was generally considered to be a minor budget item necessary to keep those fanatics mostly in line, had managed to get a plan approved to enter an enemy ship with the purpose of stealing a drive unit. They were, as a lot of people were, admittedly, assuming, that the aliens used some kind of FTL travel. Luckily, as soon as that stupidity had been found out, it was immediately stopped. They had managed to order the parts for a Gate, which they planned to build in space to go through it and capture the drive? No one was exactly sure what they planned, not even they, but admittedly, they were the worst fanatics Therions government had, which were to good at their jobs to leave them out unsupervised. Which in turn meant that there were some internal investigations going on. Luckily, that was not important for the situation on Terra.

Another problem coming from the spaceports was that they now had confirmation that the super heavy tanks the enemy had used early on were not the heaviest they had available. Luckily, those could only be landed on the spaceports and were fairly slow. Which meant that anything near those things was in trouble, but it was an otherwise manageable problem.

The Battle-Robots had been invaluable, and having their active numbers reduced to just fifty thousand after the initial exchange had hurt, but it was better than nothing. Still, anyone fighting in themed been awake for more than 24 hours, and while they were all volunteers, they were getting tired. Considering that there currently was a lull in the fighting, the Battle-Robots team was using it to slowly replace the controllers with fresh players. They would not be nearly as good, not nearly as knowledgeable with all the small patches that had been doe, how to interface with the TacNet and would need to be trained to accept that this was war, but they would try their best, and the new fighters would at least be fresh and significantly better trained in using the machines than a random police officer would be. It was the best that they could do and it would need to be enough. The biggest problem was honestly, that they were relatively young. While most of them were at least over 18, and in the second wave, all would be, in the first wave, the youngest had been 12 years old. Everyone under 18 would be the first to be exchanged, if in any way possible.

But that was something to deal with after the crisis was over. At least everyone had been a volunteer, and not one of the children had been in any danger whatsoever. Medical personal was standing at the ready, just as a precaution, and every single one of them would get therapy on the UE’s dime, and, likely a significant amount of money as a thank you gift, and hopefully that would be enough for them to not be traumatized for life.

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The casualties of this cowardly and unprovoked attack had already been massive, especially the civilian ones. And those were not over yet. The current projection for the date at which almost all humans were evacuated from Terra, was in fact, the end of next week. Considering today was a Sunday, that meant seven days and change. And at least five of those days would need the Gates currently connected to Terra operating at peak capacity. Which was something the enemy would not let them do. Especially because they were very certain that the attackers had realized that they could, in fact, evacuate Terra. And action was taken to prevent that from happening. Which did not help at all.

But there were a few pieces of good news in all of that.

They would finally gain access to a few tanks of their own, and their shortage of assault rifles would end in roughly 17 minutes. Also, production of anti-armor weaponry had been ramped up, so those began to tickle down to the police. And they had begun receiving serious reinforcements. Beforehand, as few Gates as possible had been used to bring in reinforcements, so they had simply build Gates on the other end to bring the reinforcements in. And on the downtimes those Gates were set up to be used as emergency evac points.

Which meant that creating local superiorities was now significantly easier. And then there was the surprise, which soon would hit the enemy. They got the idea original from Therions stupidity, but it was still useful. Building Gates took time. Especially if you needed to build towers on which to put them first. But soon enough, combat aircraft with the flag of the UE emblazoned on them would take the fight to the attackers.

Elsewhere.

Lucas woke up. He sputtered, disorientated, tried to grab something, then heard a voice: “Be careful, Mister Tarson. You were in that pod for more than twenty-four hours. A bit of disorientation is normal. How do you feel?”

“I need to get back, those…”

“Your performance has been getting worse, considering your sleep deprivation. Another one has taken over for you. You did very good. You have helped save lives. A lot of them in fact. Please, be careful and rest. You need it. So, to get back to my original question, how do you feel?”

“It feels like my entire body fell asleep and is just waking up again. You know that annoying feeling of your foot waking up again? That is all over my body!”

“Ah yes, we suspect that this is a side effect from being in that neuro-controller pod. But from what we can tell, there is no permanent damage. Please rest. As soon as you wake up again, naturally of course, you might ask to get into the pods again to kill some lizards. But only if we have not stabilized the situation until then and managed to get away from using the Battle-Robots. Please only apply if that is what you really want, after a good night of sleep. It will help you, trust me on this. Your health is more important than your skills in a Battle-Robot. Although those look impressive from everything I have heard today. Oh, before I forget. A bill has been passed that basically says that the UE has now officially an army. You might want to think about joining it. But as I said later, when you can really think about it. By the way, recruitment will only begin in a week or so, mainly because they still need to figure out things out, like the budget and manpower targets, so, no pressure, right?”

“OK, I understood. Sleep first, everything else second. Why am I not hungry?”

“Oh, the pods are capable of keeping you alive and well for extended periods of time. Those functions are generally deactivated, because each activation triples the length of the next maintenance cycle. They simply activated the function while you were in. Which by the way is how it is done normally, although the necessary resources tend to be filled before one goes into the pod. But it is still possible to do. Please, while you are currently not hungry, this will change rapidly as soon as the stuff they pumped you full with to keep you at least a bit functioning, wears of. Which will likely be the moment you wake up again. So eat a full breakfast then, you will need it.”

“OK, I just…”, and Lucas fell asleep.

The nurse spoke to herself: “At least we can give them sleep drugs without fucking with their immune system. Or they having any kind of bad drug interaction, that helps. It is not optimal, but they need it.”

Elsewhere.

“You will not get the Gate you stupid lizards! Continue firing, I will set this thing up to blow. An old friend of mine once explained a fault in this specific design in a bit of too much detail.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you overload it just right, it makes a beautiful, big explosion. We will not see it, and I hope a lot of the lizards won’t as well, if you catch my meaning.”

“Oh, I understand. Do not blow to early!”

“Will take three minutes to set up, and then another five to blow, at least if the AI’s who’s job it is to prevent that do not interfere. I have a feeling, that in this specific situation, they won’t.”

“That feeling you share with me. Protect him boys!”

“Yes.”

“Understood.”

“Forward.”

Affirmations were called throughout the position. They were eight men and women against at least 70 enemies. They had the superior position, and they would hold for three minutes. A short query over the TacNet made certain that the Gate would be unusable as soon as the process began, and it was unstable on the other end, so they could not leave this position. But that was acceptable if that meant a Gate would not fall into enemy hands. Sadly, the AI’s could not blow the Gate. They were, for some obscure reason, designed to make that action impossible. A sad state of affairs, really. If only in this specific situation.

Five minutes later, none of the eight men and women, who so valiantly had held their post, remained. The enemy gathered around the Gate, quite possible the first they had gotten intact. They began to look at the strange yellow field in its middle, different from the normal blue ones.

When it blew up three minutes latter, 163 enemy soldiers were in the blast radius. And one tank fell on the side.