When one of the aliens’ massive ships crashed on Earth, Humanity responded immediately. Every nation, every military - hell, every corporation - laid claim on the Ship.

“It belongs to us!” one nation announced.

“How? We own the landing zone and the airspace!”

“If you touch that Ship before we do, we will nuke you into oblivion.”

Armies swarmed the landing zone, hundreds of thousands of soldiers posturing and threatening each other. I don’t know who acted more foolish: the troops, or the leaders.

How much time did we have left?

The Moon was being swallowed whole. Its surface was covered in massive, organic spires that spewed clouds of black, living smoke into space.

The aliens had girdled the Sun with a ring of metal that seemed to drink the light within. An armada of ships fired incredible beams of light across the solar system in an attempt to stem the corrupting tide. But one by one, their ships fell to the same plague that ate the Moon.

It was the scientists and the engineers who saved us.

They did not play politics. Power and social influence was meaningless to them. It happened overnight - they formed a new faction that spanned the entire human race. No leaders, no bureaucracy. They rallied around a singular goal:

Get. Off. Earth.

We saw them arrive at the Landing Zone. At first, they came in a trickle - grey-haired professors and rugged biologists and electrical engineers. They stood at the edges of the Landing Zone, just hoping for a look.

Then, there were more of them. They came in vans, in trucks, in half-broken-down cars. Research assistants and lab techs hauled every kind of observation instrument imaginable.

They asked for access. The militaries refused.

But that didn’t stop them. One old professor, with a walkin cane and mass of frizzy-white hair, hobbled into one of the Military camps. An entourage of nervous, excited-looking grad schoolers trailed behind him.

“Leave!” the Militaries demanded, “Leave now!”

The Professor spoke in a thick Austrian accent, “What are you going to do, shoot us?”

“You’re god damn right we will!” Some trigger-happy lieutenant replied.

“Yes? And then what will you do? Will you be the one to get this Ship up and running? How many degrees in astrononomical physics do you have, young man? How many years have you studied the nuances of astro-navigation?”

The lieutenant had no answer.

So, the Professor kept walking. His entourage followed.

The Ship was surrounded by a lake of blackened, cooled magma. Though it’s bulk was half-buried in the Earth’s crust, it still stood taller than any mountain. When they reached the Ship, the Professor took a moment to look up at the Ship’s enormous thrusters high above the clouds and fringed with ice.

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He put a hand on the Ship. And went inside.

That was all it took. Suddenly, we found ourselves all on the same side.

Soldiers abandoned their posts. Millions of civilians surged towards the Ship. If you were human, and you wanted to help, you were part of the crew. No one was turned away.

“Work together, or die.” That’s all that was on our minds.

With nothing left to fight over, the noise of politics vanished into the background. I wish it had stayed that way, but nothing good lasts forever.

We moved billions of people across the globe. All human effort was channeled into building a city inside the hollows of the ship, all while the Scientists worked furiously to figure out how to turn it on.

Skyscrapers and high-rises were contructed on the thousands of tiers of open space, their incredible scale dwarfed only by the Ship’s vast interior. Ecologists brought vegetation and fauna from all over Earth, and we transplanted it onto every flat surface: trees grew on rooftops, vertical farms sprouted on balconies, terraces were draped with foliage.

Despite my old injuries, I helped out as much as I could. There was an energy in the air - an excitement I had never breathed before. I had to be a part of it.

Weeks of intense, logistical miracles followed. But we were nowhere close to finished when the news came.

I was resting on a newly-placed bench, watching the work. Construction crews made of teachers, college students, and tradesmen were putting together a new “block” on one of the low terraces.

One of my subordinates darted through the construction zone. She had that walk - I could tell it wasn’t good.

“Sir,” she snapped to attention in front of me. I saluted her back.

“Sir, you need to watch this.”

There was a video on her phone. There was a hole in the aliens’ blockade. One of the plague things, a wet object the size of a meteorite had broken through.

It slammed into the Sun Ring. Corrosion ate through the glittering metal and the whole megastructure began to crack and chunks of it fell into the Sun, sending out immense gouts of flame.

At the time, we still had no idea what was happening. Who were the aliens? Were they on our side?

Thus far, they had ignored every last communication. We were beneath them, we were nothing to them. They seemed hellbent on killing the plague - no matter how much destruction it caused.

“How long until their Ring collapses?” I asked her.

“We think it’s only going to last a matter of hours.”

“And what happens after that?”

She pursed her lips. Nobody knew the answer.

If the aliens couldn’t beat back the plague...

...then what chance did we stand?

Up until now, I had avoided the Command decks. Every military leader in the world was up there. Bloodsworn enemies, all shouting and fighting each other, all vying for some kind of power.

But what I found instead was somehow so much worse.

It was silent.

Picture a gymnasium, with hundreds of folding tables stacked with monitors and servers and wires. Hi-def OLED screens had been mounted on every wall. Military aides quietly rushed back and forth beneath that eerie glow, whispering messages to their superiors.

Every screen was tuned to the same livestream: the battle between the aliens and the plague things.

It was coming to an end.

Every Ship in the ultra-advanced armada flickered in and out of existence. When the Ring finally collapsed, the Sun ejected one last blaze of light… and the armada broke.

This was no tactical retreat, it was a mad dash. Every Ship for itself. A few Ships scattered to the stars, but the vast majority were overwhelmed by the oncoming swarm of screaming, plague-ridden vessels. Wet, winged things slammed into the aliens’ ships. Burning away the metal and devouring them whole.

A silver-haired Russian aerospace general was the first to break the silence.

“Tell the world we are leaving. It is now or never.”

An overly-decorated Commander stood up, “No! Not until everyone is on the Ship!”

“If we wait for them, we die also. I am not dying for nothing.”

“Of course you have no problem condemning hundreds of millions to death. But I will not stand for it!”

They were both standing now, both shouting. The peace of our brittle equilibrium was cracking. And I was about to bring out the hammer.

“We aren’t leaving.”

All eyes were on me.

“And why is that?” the Russian asked.

“We haven’t figured out how to turn the engines on, much less how to fly the damn thing.”

Of course, the moment I opened my mouth I was made to look a fool. One of my pages ran up to me and whispered in my ear.

“Sir, we’ve found something.”

This time, it was not the Scientists who saved us… It was luck.

A welder was carving away metal from somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship when he accidentally broke through a wall and discovered something:

An alien.

It was still alive.

And it was furious.