Major General Daniel Roberts checked his uniform in the mirror before exiting the bathroom and heading toward the meeting.
After the false flag operation and the attack against the Marines at the crash site, he had been recalled to Washington for a debriefing with the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
They wanted someone to point the finger at, and he had been in charge of the recovery operation. It didn’t matter that both China and Russia seemed to have some hand in the attack, or at least knowledge of it, considering they had stepped down their nuclear preparation shortly after the attack was over.
Originally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had wanted to bring in Major Guiterrez, but Daniel would not sit back and let his people get dragged through the mud for something they couldn’t have prevented. He would shoulder that burden, but he wasn’t going to go quietly either. The people in the room wouldn’t like to hear it, but SECCOMM and the Army Corps of Engineers had been compromised. If they hadn’t been, the engineers wouldn’t have been backstabbed, and their comms wouldn’t have been compromised and then cut off when it mattered most.
Daniel waited outside the room, and eventually, one of the Secret Service agents put his hand up to his earpiece, then nodded. “The President is ready to see you now, General Roberts.”
The agent opened the door to the Oval Office for him, and Daniel strode into the room. A few hostile looks greeted him, but everyone else seemed neutral and maybe a bit curious to hear what he had to say, especially the President.
President McConnell gestured for the single plush chair across from the couch where he sat. “General Roberts, have a seat. This is an informal meeting and not an inquiry into the events that transpired, so nothing you say here will be on the record. That being said, I read your report. I want to hear the unfiltered truth from your lips. What happened?”
Daniel hadn’t voted for the man, and he didn’t much like most of McConnell’s policies, but he could at least admire the President’s no-nonsense approach to matters. It was likely a result of his rural upbringing in Kentucky.
“May I be blunt, Mr. President?” Daniel asked.
“By all means,” the President replied. “Hell, I would prefer if you were.”
Daniel nodded. What he was about to say was going to ruffle feathers, but after the cluster fuck in Brooklyn, he would be lucky if he wasn’t asked to retire quietly after this, so there was no point being political.
“Our military has been breached at all levels, Mr. President. It’s the only possibility for what transpired.”
As expected, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Vice Chairman, Chief of Staff of the Army, and even the Commandant of the Marine Corps voiced their disapproval of his statement.
“That’s preposterous!” the chairman declared. “I think a more logical answer is that you fucked up, and now you’re trying to pass the blame on to others.”
“Let’s all calm down,” the Secretary of Defense replied. “General Roberts, can you please elaborate on why you think the US military is breached?”
The four men still levelled glares his way, but Daniel ignored them. “Yes, Mr. Secretary. The first failure came when we moved to DEFCON 2. I’m aware that our nuclear readiness status is public knowledge, but the attackers were waiting for that moment, so I assume they knew the change was imminent. Failure two: not seeing enemy forces massing outside our quarantine zone. I was made aware of the satellite coverage going down multiple times during the time we were stationed at the crash site. I reported those failures to command and asked for additional satellite coverage to alleviate those issues, but never received a clear answer.”
“There are no records of those outages or your requests for remediation, General,” the Commandant of the Marine Corps responded tersely.
“No record on your end,” Daniel clarified. “The forward operating base was hit during the enemy raid, but my Chief of Staff managed to secure our logs and survive the attack, probably through sheer luck. Considering how much effort the enemy put into destroying the FOB, I imagine they would have done the same to my Chief of Staff had they known he had the files.”
A lot of good Marines hadn’t been as lucky. The attackers had used RPG’s and other explosives to either collapse buildings on top of the basement radiation shelters, or simply struck them directly, killing everyone inside. He suspected a truck bomb was used on the FOB, considering how much damage was present.
That got the group murmuring, but Daniel wasn’t done. “The Commandant brings up a good point, and it’s what I wished to bring up next: SECCOMM is compromised.”
“That seems highly unlikely,” the Chief of Staff of the Air Force replied. “Neither the Chinese nor the Russians have the capability to bypass our secure communications.”
“That may be true,” Daniel admitted, “but it doesn’t change the fact that our communications protocols were breached. If the Chinese and Russians aren’t capable of such an act, then they are working with a third party who is.”
Even the glowering faces of the four who were against him started to slip into contemplation at that revelation.
Daniel continued. “The loss of communications and the false nuclear strike alert, which are all in the logs, forced the Marines under my command to run for cover. The enemy must have had forces already in place, likely moved nearby under the cover of the satellite blackouts. They struck only minutes after the alert went out. They might have succeeded in killing off or burying alive every Marine at the site and making off with all of the alien tech, if it wasn’t for Major Guiterrez’s quickly realizing something was off.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
That last part wasn’t entirely true, but the major had done a fine job, and if Daniel was going to be departing the military soon, he wanted to ensure people like the major rose in the ranks.
Daniel felt like an outsider while the other people in the room discussed the issue. Nobody seemed sure how to handle such a breach in security. The President was about to ask for a quick break when a Secret Service agent leaned down and whispered something into his ear.
The president looked startled by whatever the man had said. Then he picked up a nearby remote and turned on the TV.
“—reports from the International Space Station show an unknown object approaching Earth. The image is blurry, but you can clearly see the outline of what looks like a ship.” The news reporter stopped, then nodded. “I’m getting additional reports that amateur astronomers and other scientific institutes have verified this image. An unknown vessel is indeed approaching Earth.”
The president muted the TV, and the room fell into silence. Then he turned to everyone. “Why am I learning about this from a news report and not from our very expensive and highly sophisticated spy satellites?”
The Chief of Space Operations paled. It was a newer branch of the military, but not only had their satellites failed to detect the attack in Brooklyn, but it seems like they had failed to spot something approaching Earth. Daniel didn’t envy the man.
“Mr. President,” the CSO started. “We don’t yet have any satellites pointing away from the planet. There were plans to build some, but the budget oversight committee deemed them a waste of taxpayers’ money, considering there was nothing out there.”
The CSO was tactful enough not to bring up the fact that President McConnell was part of that oversight committee before becoming president, and he had been the swing vote against the proposal. Honestly, Daniel thought the president’s choice had been the correct one until an alien ship crashed in Brooklyn, killing thousands.
The president looked like he wanted to dismiss the man then and there, but a general alert pinged everyone’s phones, and then the phone on the president’s desk rang. The president picked up the phone, listened to whoever was talking, then sighed. “Go to DEFCON 2.”
When Daniel looked at his phone, he saw the alert. SECCOMM had notified everyone that Russian and Chinese missile silos had opened and weapons were prepared to launch. He wondered if this was what had happened the last time.
Nobody seemed to know how to react, which wasn’t surprising given Daniel’s recent revelations. Nobody except Daniel himself. After the false nuclear alert, he had taken steps to ensure that it couldn’t happen again. At least not to himself.
He texted his contacts and waited for a reply. It didn’t take long for both of them to confirm that the news was true. Russia and China had readied their weapons, but not to attack the West. They did it in response to the unknown ship.
Daniel had to step in front of the president’s security detail to stop him for a moment and explain what was going on. He didn’t fight as the Secret Service members detained him, but they didn’t stop him from talking.
“Mr. President. I have some sources in China and Russia that confirmed the report is true. They also report that this escalation is in response to the unidentified ship.”
“Let him go,” the president sighed. Once they did, McConnell continued. “That may be so, General Robert’s, but it doesn’t change the fact that enemy nations are about to fire off nuclear weapons. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if a few of those weapons accidentally fell on North America or our European allies, either. So if you’ll excuse me, General, I’m heading to the bunker. I suggest you head to your designated bunker as well.”
***
The Abyss Pearl appeared well outside of Earth’s orbit to test the waters before determining how to approach the planet. The ship wasn’t exactly stealthy, so sneaking down to the surface wasn’t exactly an option. With the shields, the ship was probably immune to most of Earth’s conventional weapons, but he didn’t want to test it against a nuke.
As Jacob considered his option, a little part of himself couldn’t help but be smug about the name he had come up with for the vessel. He had spent weeks contemplating what to name the ship. His first thought was to go with something like The Garbage Collector since he would be using it to retrieve Franky. While that would be amusing, it hardly conveyed any sort of authority, even if he could change it whenever he wished.
He thought about using something humorous, but he cringed at his own suggestions. Dry humor just didn’t resonate with him. Eventually, he landed on the current name, The Abyss Pearl, because the ship had a milky white exterior, and it was a spaceship flying through the void. Not the most creative reason, but it fit, and it didn’t sound entirely stupid.
The sensor console beeped, and Jacob popped over to that drone and looked at the readout in confusion for a moment. “Why are radio signals being directed toward—oh!” Radio telescopes had completely slipped his mind.
Well, Earth was aware of their presence now. He had hoped to keep their approach quieter for a bit longer, but it was only a matter of time until someone noticed the ship. It was, after all, a diplomatic transport and not a combat ship, like Hallik’s little stealth scout vessel.
As they got closer to Earth, more and more pings appeared on the sensors. Most were just laser pings. The ship traced those back to the source, and Jacob was surprised to see just how many were coming from suburban households and open fields, with massive groups of people all looking into the sky or the displays they had set up for people to view what their hobby telescopes were showing them.
Jacob got an irrational urge to take his humanoid drone out onto the hull and wave at them. He quickly squashed that idea. While it would be hilarious, he had more important issues to deal with, like the weapons systems that were targeting the ship as it slipped into an orbit that would bring it near the ISS.
Things were happening far faster than he anticipated, and with so much going on, he was bouncing back and forth between three stations.
He finally relented and pinged his other passenger. “Katherine?”
“What?” the woman responded in annoyance.
She had given up staying aboard the ship after the second day since he refused to speak with her.
“We’ve arrived above Earth, and I could use your help.”
“Oh, now you want my help. Why should I?”
“I’ll let you operate the guns.”
There was a pause, and Jacob glanced at the object slowly approaching the ship. It wasn’t shaped like a missile, but it had a target lock on them and was adjusting its orbit to intersect theirs. While it probably wouldn’t be an issue, Jacob didn’t want to risk the possibility, and he knew Katherine was a better shot than he was. Honestly, it wasn’t even close, and her simulation scores proved that.
“Okay, I’ll help,” Katherine replied.
Jacob sighed in relief and unlocked the weapons control drone for her to operate.
She connected a moment later. “Ugh, I don’t know how you do it,” she said as she moved the drone’s limbs around. “This is worse than being in the first drone you gave me.”
“You’ll have to get used to it,” Jacob replied. “I didn’t have time to modify the ship for human operation.”
“Please, I could operate these weapons blindfolded, even in this shitty drone. Now, where’s my target?”
He transferred the object he had been tracking, and she adjusted her aim. Three quick bursts spat from the energy cannon and zipped across the intervening space. The first series of bolts missed the small object, but the rest impacted, and the satellite exploded into a small but intensely bright explosion that was far larger than it had any right to be.
“What the fuck was that?” they both asked at the same time.