Distant Solace: Unto the Breach

By Daniel J. Lane

In humanity’s darkest hour, a lucky few are saved from extinction by the Legion—a multispecies military force determined to bend the chaotic stars into a unified galactic order. But sanctuary comes at a price. The survivors are augmented, meticulously trained, and drafted into a vicious, perpetual war fought in a distant galaxy against a rebellious rival power.

When universe is a violent and indiscriminate killer, can humans, as a species, survive in such cruel and savage conditions?

Can humanity’s nobler ideals endure undaunted while we are beset by fear, war, and death?

Will humanity ever again know peace?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796000801

Daniel J. Lane

Daniel J. Lane’s love of science fiction started at an early age. He was instantly hooked in by the wonder and possibility that existed in these fictional worlds. Upon reading Starship Troopers written by Robert A. Heinlein, in his final year of High School, the idea of military service was planted into his head. Upon graduating, he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy and was selected to be a Warfare Officer. Where he served for several years on a number of frigates, amphibious landing crafts and minehunting vessels. He travelled the world extensively on exercise and operation before honourably discharging. Since then Daniel has gone on to be recognised as UN Peace Ambassador and is studying his Juris Doctorate whilst juggling commitments to sequels and other writing projects. The Distant Solace book series was written to be a love letter to the science fiction genre and its surrounding influences that Daniel has enjoyed his entire life.

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Daniel J. Lane.

Cover Artwork by Brendan Rowe

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019901645

ISBN:                    Hardcover                    978-1-7960-0082-5

                              Softcover                      978-1-7960-0081-8

                              eBook                            978-1-7960-0080-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/11/2019

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

782802

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

In memory of my father

You were my hero

Special Thanks

Caitlyn L., Patrick A., Brad C., and Melissa C.

Thank you for reading every version of this book,

no matter how bad it may have been.

You helped it become better.

PROLOGUE

03.00 h—The SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, 189 Bernardo Ave., Mountain View, California.

The room was chilled by excess air conditioning, and it was dimly lit by the cool-blue lights emitted by several rows of computer screens. The screens displayed a series of graphs with spikes of rainbow colours that moved up and down in rapid succession; their purpose was to analyse radio signals and monitor electromagnetic transmissions. Suddenly, the cold, dark room now smelled of freshly brewed coffee.

The smell of coffee snapped Harvey out of his catatonic state. He rubbed his eyes, and he pushed his thick square black frames back on to his face. He massaged his stubbled face with his hand, feeling his five o’clock shadow. It was from five o’clock—three and a half days ago. He ran his hand from his rough chin to his balding head and through his greying hair.

Harvey looked around to find the source of that revitalising smell; it came from his colleague, Seth, who was coming through the door, carrying two freshly brewed cups of coffee. Seth was pushing the heavy glass door open with a cup of coffee in each hand. Even without his hands full of coffee, he would have struggled, as he was a small-statured man. Seth had only been stationed as an assistant with the institute for about four months. He was absorbing the information slower than what was expected, but Harvey could not fault his heart of gold; Seth was one in a million based on that criteria.

‘Morning, Harv, thought you’d fancy a cup of joe. Made you one. You want it?’ Seth said.

‘Ye-ugh,’ Harvey responded with an approving grunt, before adding, ‘I could kiss you, Seth. You truly are a lifesaver.’ He took the coffee from Seth and held it in his hands. The coffee was warm in Harvey’s hands, and the smell filled his nostrils, injecting life back into his tired soul.

Seth asked, ‘Anything of interest crop up during your shift?’

Harvey blew into his coffee cup, cooling down its contents. ‘All quiet on the western front,’ he said, sipping his coffee.

Seth replied, ‘Just like yesterday and the day before that and the day before that, and well, you get the idea.’ Harvey and Seth shared a laugh amongst themselves.

The two men immediately choked on those words when suddenly one of the computers pinged an alarm; a signal had bounced back and triggered a warning. Harvey and Seth turned to face the monitor curiously. They both wheeled over in their chairs, pulling themselves along the desk, hand over hand. ‘Which one is it?’ Seth asked, a twinge of nervousness in his voice.

‘It’s the narrowband radio signal,’ Harvey replied. ‘One of the signals bounced back.’ He inspected the decades-old box printer attached to the machine. ‘Back in 1977, there were seventy-two seconds of uninterrupted radio transmission that all bore the expected hallmarks of something extraterrestrial in origin,’ he explained.

Seth picked up Harvey’s train of thought. ‘Yeah, the, ah, Wow! signal, right? It’s the strongest candidate for an alien radio transmission we’ve ever detected, right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right! Seth, you’ve been studying! Very good,’ said Harvey warmly, thinking that he might have been just a little bit wrong about Seth’s knowledge base.

The two men continued to wait for the ancient printer to spit out the paper. ‘We keep this shitty old method open because it worked once, might work again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it type of deal,’ said Harvey, waiting, his life ticking by slowly as he waited for outdated technology to match his current enthusiasm. Finally, the printer produced something.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Harvey said, looking at the paper he’d just torn from the printer. ‘Look at this.’ He turned to show the paper to Seth. The entire page was printed with question marks that were placed seemingly at random.

‘What’s wrong?’ Seth asked, confused by the mass of text.

‘These are question marks when they should be numbers,’ Harvey explained. ‘It’s an interrogative signal. We probe the galaxy for life, but this time, something out there is probing us, asking us questions.’

Seth put his hands on his head and said ‘Jesus Christ!’ as he exhaled loudly.

‘Seth, we need to wake up the watch supervisor. Who is on tonight?’ Harvey said, turning his attention back to the printer as it spat out page after page of erratically placed question marks without showing a single sign of slowing.

‘Uh, uh, it’s Eleanor,’ Seth said, a hint of panic appearing in his voice.

‘Go wake her up, Seth,’ instructed Harvey.

Several minutes later, Seth came barrelling back into the room with Eleanor in tow. She was still doing up her dressing gown and patting down her wild, unbrushed bed hair whilst he struggled to open the glass door in front of them. When they walked into the observation room, computers across the room were pinging, signalling messages received.

‘Harvey, what the fuck is going on? Why am I just being woken up now? How long has it been like this?’ Eleanor exclaimed, demanding answers.

‘Eleanor, it wasn’t like this when I left to get you,’ Seth said, defending Harvey.

‘When you left, Seth, all these systems started pinging like crazy,’ Harvey said, staring intently at a blinking screen. ‘The Widefield Array went off first. The full-array ATA-350 went mental. Even the Low-Frequency Array from Europe has started getting hits. However, now we have moved on to this, and I honestly don’t know what to do.’ He said this in an unnaturally calm tone.

Eleanor and Seth looked over his shoulder, and on an entirely black screen, there was a single-word question blinking in green text: ‘Population?’

‘Fucking hell!’ Seth yelled. ‘Who sent that?’ Fear and anxiety were running rife in his voice.

‘I don’t know, Seth, but whoever it is is asking us a very clear question,’ Harvey said, his voice remaining calm.

Eleanor said, ‘How do they know our language? Specifically, how do they know the English language? Right now, what system are we using to communicate?’

All valid questions, Harvey thought. He hazarded a guess aloud. ‘Well, they communicated with us, and step by step, they escalated from our most basic system to our most advanced system, which we are using now. It is the electromagnetic cipher that we have been broadcasting into deep space for decades. We broadcast our language, letter by letter, and send examples of how to use it in the form of simple messages, so likely this is a species so advanced they could have been listening or receiving our signals for who knows how long. Then perhaps they have reverse-engineered our messages. If they can do that, well, they can work out our language.’

His words sent a chill down Eleanor’s spine. ‘You make it sound like they have been spying on us, and that’s terrifying. We should move this up the chain,’ she said.

‘Sorry, Elle, it wasn’t my intention to scare you. Think of it like a giant interstellar fax or text message system, but we include instructions on how to read the messages as well. However, one thing we know for sure is that this signal is not of our solar system. I think we should make contact,’ Harvey explained, but Eleanor cut him off.

‘Don’t you dare, do not even fucking think about that!’ Eleanor roared her order. ‘We just don’t know what we are dealing with.’

‘Yeah, Harv, what if they want to visit us?’ Seth added. ‘Like Hawking said, it would be like when Christopher Columbus first came to America, which didn’t turn out so fucking great for the American Indians.’

Harvey was getting angry and could feel the blood boiling in his veins. He wanted to shout how ridiculous that idea was; instead he interjected. ‘What if we miss this opportunity? We may never get it again,’ he pleaded.

Eleanor snarled at Harvey, ‘Your job is to monitor the communications only, so sit there, Harvey, and take your fucking notes.’ Eleanor calmed herself and said, ‘Harvey, we did not expect communications to progress so quickly, so we need to notify the government officials with the proper authority to speak at this level.’

With defeat in his voice, Harvey reluctantly said, ‘Fine.’

‘Seth, please come with me, we need to make some phone calls, and Harvey, what are you gonna do?’ Eleanor spoke down to Harvey as she asked her question.

‘Nothing but sit here and take notes,’ Harvey replied, finally accepting his defeat.

Eleanor and Seth took off from the communications room and headed to the SETI Operations centre, leaving Harvey to monitor. He sat there, staring at the black computer screen, glaring at the green text: ‘Population?’

His mind was racing, and instinctively, he went to drink from a coffee cup, only to huff in frustration when he realised he had put an empty cup to his lips. ‘Ah fuck,’ he said, slamming it down.

The screen lit up again. Scrambled letters cycled through all the possible variations available as the message was delivered, forming the text, ‘Population?’ The word was sitting on the screen, and it was simply antagonising him.

Harvey thought about his options. He could wait for the proper authority and miss the chance to be involved in the most important conversation in the history of humanity, or he could throw caution to the wind and be remembered in history as the first man to have an intergalactic dialogue with extraterrestrial beings.

‘Ah, fuck it!’ he exclaimed as he came to a decision. He sat up, adjusted his glasses, and began typing.

>Population?

A few minutes passed incredibly slowly, and Harvey grew nervous; a spiked ball of anxiety and fear churned slowly in the pit of his stomach. The next message arrived, and that fear and anxiety melted away.

>Temperament?

He was happy about his answer; he didn’t want extraterrestrials to be afraid of Earth or its people.

>Leader?

Harvey was less happy with that answer, but there was nobody more qualified to meet any potential visitors.

>Temperament?

He chuckled in disbelief; he was having a conversation, albeit brief, with a being not of this world.

>Location of leader?

He kicked himself after adding the second part. He was of two minds about his answer. How would they know where that was specifically if they didn’t know it was on Earth? Then again, they could likely trace the signal back to planet Earth. The next question seemed to read Harvey’s mind regarding the specifics of the address.

>Precise location of leader?

Jeez-us fuck! Harvey thought. What was the address of the White House again? He looked it up on his phone, quickly finding his answer.

<1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC.

He wasn’t sure about giving out the address, but they would likely have the capacity to work it out themselves. Also, this way he’d totally get the chance to meet the president, and at least he was pointing them in the direction of the highest authority he could think of.

Several minutes passed, and no further questions were asked. Harvey could feel that spiked ball of anxiety and fear start to slowly churn again.

No response. The churning spiked ball in the pit of his stomach picked up speed, and he began to feel sick.

>Unify.

Harvey’s spiked ball turned to a lead weight in his stomach and sank. Fear and anxiety propelled through his body. That answer was as ambiguous as it was chilling.

>Unify.

>Unify.

>Unify.

Eleanor and Seth returned, catching Harvey sitting at the computer, looking visibly shaken.

‘Harvey, no, god! What has happened? What have you done?’ Eleanor screamed loud enough that it caused Harvey to shrink and recoil into his chair.

‘I’m sorry, Eleanor, I didn’t mean … I couldn’t help myself. What have I done? Fuck!’

She pushed him out of the way so she could view the screen, which was now blinking with text, a single word repeated.

>Unify.

>Unify.

>Unify.

It was the same ominous word being sent from across the stars and blinking on the screen in front of them.

>Unify.

>Unify.

>Unify.

>Unify.

CHAPTER 1

Change is the law of life.

John F. Kennedy

The day started out like any other. Alexander rested his head apathetically against the window of the train whilst he made his morning commute to work. He watched the cityscape as it rushed past the window. From his seat, he saw a colourful blur of narcissistic tags combined with spray-painted murals and statements from both sides of the political spectrum. He had his headphones on, and the music that was being blasted into his ears drowned out the noise of the other commuters, in addition to the occasional sound of grinding, twisting metal as the train charged to the next station.

Upon reaching the next destination, the doors clunked open loudly, and more people climbed in. One of them, a frail-looking elderly lady, hobbled on board, looking for a place to sit. Alex got up and gestured towards his now empty seat, giving it up for the senior citizen. Her eyes were kind, and she mouthed something that might have been thanks. Alex didn’t take out his headphones to hear; he just smiled a goofy smile that was part awkward grimace until the lady took the seat.

Alex grabbed the handle swinging from the roof and slid further into the aisle of the carriage. He was tall enough to look down on most, but he wasn’t the tallest. He grew past six feet in his early twenties and stopped caring, as he thought that was tall enough. His frame was athletic, trim in the waist but broad in the shoulders. He wasn’t a giant, but still his shoulders gave him grief in tight spaces. For that reason, he hated crowded spaces, like his morning train. He now carefully tried not to undo his earlier good deed by shoulder-charging some unsuspecting commuter.

He pulled his phone from his pocket and proceeded to look up the news, swiping through the breaking news headlines that were predictable: ‘Kiki Diego’s New Album Goes Thirty-Two Times Platinum’, ‘Felix Garcia Stops His Fifty Second Opponent: Round Two KO’, and then ‘The Middle East Continues to Burn’, ‘United States of America: Democracy or Dictatorship’, ‘Economy Update: Dollar Falls’, ‘Terror Attack: Panic Rises’. On and on they go about the world ending, yet here we all are. Another day. The train’s driver interrupted Alex’s defeatist and nihilistic thoughts about the state of the planet by announcing that they had arrived at Central Station, Alex’s stop.

He disembarked the train and made his way down the platform, en route to work. He could walk the way there in his sleep, which he almost was, given that his chemical state could be called uncaffeinated.

He calculated the distance in his mind. He checked his watch; he had time to order, wait for, and grab a coffee or arrive at work on time, but not both. He walked into the cafe and placed his order, as was his routine. He made small talk with the barista, flicked through the paper and looked at the same negative headlines, drank his coffee, and replied to the text messages in the group that included him and his siblings. (He had three—an older brother, younger sister, and younger brother.) He was stalling for time.

He glanced at his watch—8.40 a.m. He was ten minutes late. Disgruntled but unwilling to stall for more time, he headed off to work.

Alex worked in advertising and sales for a newspaper publishing firm called ANP (Associated News-Press) in a large tower in the city. He hated it; however, he had a bit of a natural talent for it, so it wasn’t something he had to work hard at.

He hopped into the elevator and climbed the floors to level 33, where ANP was headquartered, and he walked through the office. Cubicles separated individuals under buzzing and occasionally blinking fluorescent light; these cubicles hummed with the white noise of people on the phones. The room smelled of old coffee and dusty air conditioning. It is a cruel and unnatural hell, Alex thought as he sat down at his desk and began sorting emails into two piles: ‘shit’ and ‘shit that could get him in trouble’.

An hour or two went by, and he had become settled into his day on the phone, negotiating over price and ad space with people he didn’t care to meet. He received an email with the subject line ‘a matter needs to be discussed, my office’. It was from Brian Hedges, his manager. Alex rolled his eyes, mouthed the words Jesus fucking Christ, and got up and marched into Brian’s office, ready for a fresh batch of corporate babble and rhetoric.

He walked up to Brian’s office and took a deep breath in a private moment, preparing himself not out of fear but more out of frustration, the kind of breath one makes before conducting something arduous or difficult. He knocked and was instructed to enter. He opened the door and placed a neutral look on his face, masking his usual brooding scowl.

He scanned the room and saw nothing that commanded his respect. There was a fake fern caked in dust, a coffee mug stained with unwashed instant-coffee rings on the inside (if you counted the rings, you could likely tell how old the mug was, similar to a tree), and a desk bare of all other personal effects but awash in messy papers and various stationery. A motivational poster depicted jets flying in formation; below them was the word teamwork in big block letters, with the caption ‘Teamwork makes the dream work’ beneath it. Alex suppressed an urge to roll his eyes and gag at the cheesiness of it. He took a seat opposite Brian, who was behind his desk, looking into some papers.

Brian was a man in his forties who was the polar opposite of Alex—at least, that was Alex’s opinion. Alex could see the balding patches in Brian’s grey-laced once-light-brown and still-curly hair. Brian harboured two balding patches, one up the sides of his temples and one near the back of his head. Alex had a full head of hair, dark brown to the point that it could be argued that it was black, with the sides cropped close to his scalp.

The pair could not be more physically different. Alex was lean and muscular, thanks to regular weight training, boxing, and other similar foolish endeavours. Brian, however, was soft around the middle. Alex wasn’t violent by nature, nor was he a thug or a bully; thanks to a previous military career, the discipline they required agreed with him, so he made a habit of them. However, with Brian it looked like there might be some fight in him, only if that fight were for the last coffee, donut, and pack of cigarettes on Earth—a standard mid-morning meal for Brian.

Brian finally looked up from his papers and leaned back in his chair. He adjusted the jacket on his cheap-looking mustard-coloured suit. He spoke first, breaking the silence. ‘Alex, thanks for coming to see me.’

‘You called me in here,’ Alex replied.

‘Yes, I did,’ Brian replied. ‘There are a few things I wanted to talk to you about, a few issues you seem to be having.’

Alex remained silent, but he could feel his eyes narrow with contempt.

‘You’ve been late to work on occasion.’ Brian stuttered, ‘R-rather it has been a regular occurrence.’ He swelled up and asserted some authority behind his words. ‘So I wanted to ask, is there something going on that has caused this consistent tardiness—personally I mean, at home. Because you are always late.’

Alex thought, Well, it’s hard to disagree with that because that’s just a fact. I guess I am late because this job is bullshit, and the only reason I am here is to cash a pay cheque and go home. ‘Just had some things on my mind,’ he replied, a throwaway line in place of the undoubtedly volatile truth.

‘Anything you want to talk about? Because if you want to get something off your chest, you can open up to me in confidence,’ Brian probed, but he sounded so sincere.

That question puzzled Alex. Why did Brian care? Did Brian expect that he would open up emotionally and his recent transgressions would be forgiven? ‘No,’ Alex responded abruptly, Brian would get no such emotion from him.

All previous interactions Alex had with Brian had painted him as a self-serving, snivelling company man who cared only about himself and making himself look more impressive in front of anyone he sought approval from, doing things like waiting until the heads of department were walking through the office before he would run out and give a disappointing attempt at a motivational speech.

‘Well,’ Brian continued, ‘that’s good. We don’t want you distracted whilst you are here in future. Speaking of the future, I was going through your numbers and results earlier. They are good, but they aren’t great, Alex. We both know they could be great, and I want this team and company to be great.’

The self-serving snake rears its ugly head. Alex reflected on his previous thoughts and mentally reprimanded himself for doubting his instincts on Brian. ‘Define great?’ Alex baited.

Brian continued, letting out a sigh, ‘Alex, you have been here eight months now, and you’ve produced steady results. But you can do better. Your call volume is down also. Do you realise that by making more calls, you could close more deals and make more money for yourself and the company? Your improved performance makes us, the team, look better.’ Brian carried on with his lecture. ‘You have real leadership potential. It shows through when you want it to. If you knuckle down and work hard, well, the sky’s the limit for you here, Alex.’

That was in no way a definition or example of the word great. Alex had to cover his smirk by running his hand down his jaw, pretending to look pensive, resting his chin in the palm of his hand, and nodding as if in agreement with what Brian had been droning on about.

Alex had been lost in his thoughts. He had to snap back to reality and to what Brian was saying, and he caught up mid sentence.

‘You see, son, like this poster says behind me, teamwork makes the dream work, and I think that’s true. No one salesperson can hit the company’s required quota by themselves. If the team works hard together, they can achieve what one might think is impossible.’

Brian sat back and stared off into the distance, seemingly impressed by the depths of his own wisdom. Meanwhile, Alex’s skin crawled at being called ‘son’ by Brian. Brian wasn’t his father. Brian wasn’t even of the same calibre as the man Alex’s father had been prior to passing away a year ago. Brian wasn’t fit to even imply the connection. Alex felt his face getting hot with anger. ‘Will that be all, Brian?’ he said through gritted teeth, breaking the silence, interrupting Brian’s train of thought.

‘Yes, that will be all for now. Alex, back to your desk. Work hard and don’t be late any more. They are your takeaway notes from this chat, okay? Oh, and that teamwork, achieving-the-impossible thing too, tell the team I said that, okay? Pass that on.’

‘You got it, boss,’ Alex remarked, lacing his comment thick with sarcasm.

Alex made his way back to his desk swiftly, purging that uncomfortable conversation from his memory. He sat back at his desk.

‘How did that meeting go, Alex, my boy?’ The question was fired by Jeremy, one of his co-workers, who occupied the neighbouring cubicle. Jeremy had a cheeky grin across his face. He knew Alex had a distaste for being called boy, son, etc.

‘It was dreadful,’ Alex answered. ‘He thinks the whole universe revolves around him.’

‘Well, on occasion, Alex, so have you,’ Jeremy interjected.

Alex laughed and came up with his best off-the-cuff retort. ‘Look, whilst that might be true, the difference is that the universe revolving around me harbours intelligent life like you, Jeremy. Scientists smarter than you and me have concluded that there is no intelligent life orbiting anywhere near that man.’

‘Well, have you considered quitting?’ Jeremy asked. ‘Making the most of your remaining years in relative peace and comfort now that you are, what? Mid forties?’

‘Fuck off,’ Alex snapped. ‘Mid forties? I am twenty-eight, with the face of a twenty-three-year-old or the face of a nineteen-year-old who drinks heavily and sleeps exclusively on their face. Also, I have never quit a damn thing in my life.’

‘The army? Didn’t you quit the army or some shit like that?’ Jeremy shot back, but Alex corrected him.

‘Navy, and I didn’t quit, Jeremy. I served my time with them, and upon being re-issued my brain, I was allowed to leave,’ he said, offering the same anecdote he gave to everyone who asked about his military past. ‘I wanted to travel, so I joined to see the world.’

Jeremy interrupted, ‘And did you?’

‘Yeah, about seventeen different countries, some good, some bad, and I can confirm the planet is seventy-something per cent water,’ Alex quipped, causing Jeremy to chuckle.

The day trudged along, relatively uneventful, until the monotony was broken suddenly with a shout. ‘Fuck off, no fucking way! That can’t be real, it just can’t be!’

Everybody’s ears pricked up, and the attention immediately turned to where the noise came from. Alex whirled around to see what was the cause of the commotion. Jeremy stood up and looked over the cubicle where the noise originated from and had a conversation that Alex could hear only snippets of.

Jeremy came back over, looking pale, puzzled, and a mix of other emotions Alex couldn’t decipher. ‘What is it, Jeremy? What’s happened?’ Alex queried. Silence was the reply. ‘Jeremy?’ he asked again, with a more serious and pressing tone.

‘I don’t know!’ Jeremy shouted back, loud enough that it stunned Alex. He was now fixed on his PC, furiously researching something.

Alex stood up and asked again, ‘What’s going on?’ He demanded an answer.

The phantom voice shouted again from behind the cubicle, ‘Aliens!’

Alex looked around and saw that everyone else in the office was now on their feet, listening, with a confused look spreading across their faces. Even Brian had his head out of his door, eavesdropping on the commotion.

The owner of the voice, unseen, continued, ‘A spaceship or something hovering over the White House. There is a bunch of live videos blowing up the internet. Apparently, it appeared out of nowhere and is just hovering over the White House, right up in the sky. Google it, and you can’t miss it. It’s trending fucking everywhere.’

Alex suddenly understood why that might have rattled Jeremy. Alex raced for his PC, but everything seemed to move in slow motion. His mind was racing, but he struggled to grasp the concept. Alex had always believed there had to be something out there in this infinite universe of ours, but he thought it might be bacteria on Mars or something. He never expected it in his lifetime.

His mind was racing. Alex googled it as quickly as he could. Aliens? Surely not, it has to be a joke or a hoax. Yet there it was, trending on every media and news platform available. There were thousands of results; it was spreading like wildfire around the world.

He then clicked the first link and saw grainy live footage from a handheld phone. He joined the live stream and was a viewer numbered somewhere in the hundreds of millions. The video was being filmed from the fence outside the White House, and the camera was being pointed directly at the sky. There it was. ‘Fuck me!’ Alex muttered.

It was floating gracefully, an unmistakably alien object, an unbelievably long and gigantically round black shape that was just stationary high above in the sky. It looked smooth in the middle and ran to two needle-like points at either end; it looked like a giant pill that would be impossible and incredibly painful to swallow.

The video panned down and showed what appeared to be a crowd of thousands out in front of the White House. Thousands had their phones and cameras pointed in the air at this alien object. Alex thought, How bizarre and confusing it must appear to them, whoever they are, looking down at modern mankind waving an electronic device up at them, trying to communicate or achieve internet notoriety.

Alex got up from his desk; he felt he needed air. He couldn’t shake this sick feeling in his stomach. He needed air. Outside, he thought. Go outside and get some air. He began making his way out of his office and into the elevator, switching to his phone to continue to follow the live feed.

Alex stepped out of the elevator and strode across the lobby and outside. He took several deep breaths; it did not ease the tension he was feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Dozens of news stations had camera crews on location there now; Alex tuned into a live feed of a young reporter who looked to be in her late twenties. The wind was whipping her shoulder-length dark-red hair in front of her face. She was just describing the general atmosphere of the area out in front of the North Lawn of the White House, describing the crowd and the signs, then going back to the ship and reporting its unchanged status.

‘There are now thousands of people gathered out in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue here in Washington DC,’ she said. ‘The energy here is hard to categorise. Some of the responses we have had have been excited, with people hoping to catch a glimpse of beings from possibly another world. Other responses have been those of fear and apprehension. You only need to look at our history books to see that when one technologically advanced culture meets another, things don’t tend to end well for the less advanced culture. Then again, those are human history books, and what we are seeing today is likely very different from that.

‘Why are they here? What could they want? We have had no updates from the White House or President Westford, who is no doubt in talks with the leaders of other nations around the world on how best to proceed.’

The reporter began making assumptions that didn’t bring any comfort to Alex. ‘It is plausible to assume that there must be some kind of intelligence at play, based on the fact that they had the entire world to use as a parking space but chose the front lawn of arguably the most powerful man on the planet.’

The newsfeed continued. The reporter was now positioned so that Alex could see the ship, the reporter, and the immense crowd that had appeared to view the object. ‘One can only speculate as to the object and any possible occupier’s purpose for choosing the location that it did. And what does it say about any possible occupants? Are they explorers? Scientists? Conquerors? Or refugees? Is this a display of power? Is it a show of strength? What do they know about us here on planet Earth? Do they have anything to teach us about our own history? I saw one man just before, holding a sign saying I told you aliens built the pyramids. One thing is certain though: today will be forever marked as a significant day in the Earth and mankind’s calendar. Whether it is as a day of celebration or bereavement is anyone’s guess at this stage.’

*     *     *

An hour had passed since Alex walked outside. He looked around the city; he was leaning against a wall, and he could see that everyone was on their phones, like zombies, as if progress on Earth stood still. Everyone’s day had ground to a halt abruptly, and they were now connected and fixed on the news, no one wanting to miss an update.

The monolithic jet-black object was there, hovering high above ominously. Slowly and gracefully, another shape emerged from the large monolith; it was exactly the same shape, appearance, and colour—only smaller.

The departure that the smaller shape was trying to make from the larger object was hindered at first; it was struggling to pull itself free from the larger shape. The jet-black colouring appeared to be made of a sticky, tar-like mucous substance which was trying to hold the two ships together. The sticky substance became stringy and eventually gave way, and the smaller alien object was finally free; it hung suspended in the air.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd, cameras started flashing furiously, and the reporter at once began narrating the events. ‘Something has just come from the large object. It appears to be a smaller version of this large one. We are unsure what is happening, but it does look like it is descending to the White House lawn.’

The smaller object made its way down slowly, gracefully, directly down to the White House lawn. As the smaller object descended and made its approach, everyone began to see how big it actually was. It was incredibly big, at least 100 metres in length and 30 metres across. The ominous black shape began to descend horizontally, but as it closed in on the White House, it began to turn and finally landed vertically on the North Lawn, in front of the crowd and the reporter.

‘This is extraordinary. Just moments ago, a vessel of some kind detached from the … ah’—the reporter struggled for words—‘uh … mother ship and made its descent before finally touching down on the lawn outside the White House. This is tremendously exciting and, at the same time, terrifying. I am sure a lot of people feel the same way, but never could I have imagined I would be seeing something like this with my own two eyes.’ The reporter and her cameraman had now climbed on top of their news van to get a better vantage point.

Once the large object touched down on the grass, a large task force burst forth from the White House, covered head to toe in black tactical helmets, communication equipment, body armour, and combat boots. With well-drilled efficiency, they began splintering off into two-man teams—one operator with a sidearm and portable, hand-carried ceramic ballistic shields, and the other operator behind the shielding, popping viscous liquid. Up over their shoulder, some had the large mean-looking Colt AR-15 A3 and the smaller but no less dangerous MP5K-N submachine guns drawn. That is some serious fucking hardware, Alex thought as he continued watching the video.

The team ran towards the alien vessel and took up fire support measures, making a coordinated observation and fire point, with their weapons trained inwards towards the large alien object currently trespassing on the North Lawn.

The reporter continued her broadcast. ‘The army appears to have come out of the White House and formed a big triangle in front of the smaller spaceship, with assault rifles drawn.’

Alex rolled his eyes and noted her ignorance. He looked around. The world was at a standstill. Everyone was fixed to their screens. People stopped on street corners, sitting down on the sidewalks; cars stopped at and in the middle of intersections. Even stranger, no horns were blaring to move traffic along. All cars had a bright-blue glow coming from the various seats inside as they, with the rest of world, waited with bated breath as events unfolded.

It unnerved Alex, who looked back at his phone and continued watching. Shortly after, it happened.

First contact.

First. Fucking. Contact.

In the same way that the smaller ship effortlessly pulled itself free from the thick ink-black gelatinous syrup of the large object, with one smooth motion, a being stepped from the monolithic structure.

The first thing immediately noticeable about this alien’s appearance was how, whilst another creature might walk on legs, this alien floated freely in the air and had numerous tentacles below the waist, strikingly similar to a squid or an octopus. It was hard to tell how many appendages it had below its waist, but they all just drifted nonchalantly about its body, as if caught in a light breeze.

The alien’s skin tone was a pallid, ashen colour. The being also nursed a small and abnormally round pot belly in its midsection, giving it an oddly overweight appearance. This was in contrast to the top half of its body, which was an emaciated torso with slim shoulders, proportionally thin arms, and small fleshy mounds where a human’s hands would be.

Resting atop a slender neck was a gaunt featureless face with a flat surface in place of a nose and mouth, and a raised bony brow but no eyes. Instead of a rounded human-skull shape, it had a long, large bony triangular cranium that expanded in size as it moved away from the creature’s face. The skin around the being’s top half and face seemed to be pulled unnaturally tight. Alex became apprehensive when, despite this being’s lack of traditional eyes, it appeared to move its head left and right, as if it was looking and surveying the scene in front of it.

The previously talkative reporter stood staggered and silent, her back now to the camera and the microphone in her hand falling to her side in utter disbelief.

From the large black monolith and into the open came forth two more aliens, similar to the first in nearly every way. Their heads were rounder, more disc-like. It made the first alien appear more important. Its larger head and the way the other two were reacting to it indicated some kind of hierarchy. The trio of interstellar beings were floating in the air effortlessly and patiently.

Alex could not believe what he was seeing. ‘Fuck me,’ he whispered. He swapped the hand that was holding his phone; it had begun to ache. Alex was unaware that he had been holding the phone white-knuckled. His other hand was so sweaty that his phone almost slipped to freedom. Alex sat down on the sidewalk like so many others, watching intently as history unfolded.

The doors of the White House opened, and four large men in dark suits and dark glasses exited at a jogging pace. They stopped fifteen feet from the door. One leaned in, spoke into a device on his wrist, and then waited.

A man dressed in a dark-blue suit and a bright-red-and-white tie, with an American flag pinned to his lapel, emerged from the White House. There was an indefatigable confidence about this proud man.

The president of the United States was making his approach.

The president marched along the lawn; he held his head up, and the sun was on his face. He held his shoulders back, and his stride was long. The gentle wind rolled across greying hair.

‘The … p-p-president has appeared,’ the reporter spluttered out. Her composure began to return and rose to match the president’s unwavering confidence as he continued striding closer, seemingly unafraid in the face of the unknown. The president, flanked by his security detail, continued closer. He was now passing through the ranks of the previously deployed quick reaction force, waving his hand down, indicating for them to lower their firearms.

The president continued his approach until he stood before the visitors from another world. He was no more than three feet away from them. As if in a display of courtesy or curiosity, the lead alien hovered to face height. The president was taller than the alien. He might have been six foot something. At eye level, there was still a foot of clear air below the alien where it hovered; its tentacles trailed behind it perhaps another five or six feet.

‘The president appears to be addressing the alien,’ the reporter said, continuing her coverage. ‘It is unclear what the president is saying. We cannot fathom what it might be or whether this visitor will even be able to understand the president.’ The reporter’s voice slumped to a whisper. ‘The tension is so thick and heavy in the air right now, and I am uncontrollably shaking with anxiety.’

The president slowly and intently raised his right hand, offering it in a gesture that would invite a handshake. The alien turned to look at the president’s outstretched hand; its head swivelled around to look back at its companions sitting to its rear, back down at the president’s hand, and then back up at the president’s face.

The alien began extending its hand.

‘The president appears to be extending the hand of friendship.’ The reporter continued narrating the events with a noticeable calm in her voice.

The alien’s arm bent upwards at its elbow, and the fleshy mounds at the end of the arms were revealed to be wrist joints. Its once thin harmless arms suddenly resembled those of a praying mantis.

‘No, no, no, no!’ Alex tried to scream, but before he could make a sound, the unthinkable unfolded on screen.

The two spiked, raptorial foreleg-like appendages came forth, and the creature rapidly rose higher in the air. In an instant, the monster was poised to strike.

The president of the United States tried to recoil in total horror.

From an unseen point on the underside of its tentacles, the monster shot a thick ink-black gelatinous syrup at the president’s leg, and it caught on his ankle and the ground around it. The viscous liquid held him in place as he tried to run. With inhuman speed, the translucent spiked forelegs came crashing down, puncturing the president, who emitted a blood-curdling scream as he was penetrated by the being from another world.

As if that was the signal they were waiting for, the two other aliens leapt forward, firing rapid spurts of the thick black mass from their tentacles at the security detail and the quick reaction force. Some were lucky to run, and they fired as they retreated in a panicked frenzy. The unlucky ones were pinned and helpless like the president.

One of the soldiers caught the black mass in his face; as a result, it sealed his airways. He reached up to clear it away, but his hands became stuck in the inky gel. He began thrashing and kicking blindly, unable to pull himself free, unable to defend himself, and unable to breathe.

The pot belly belonging to the alien that pierced the president began to gurgle and twitch with life, each gurgle getting louder and the twitches becoming more violent. Suddenly, the stomach heaved as if its entrails, innards, and viscera were being vomited up. But where would they go? This alien displayed no mouth of any variety.

The president’s eyes fell on the translucent tubes that he was unable to wrench himself free from and that were painfully protruding from his chest and abdomen. His eyes widened as the terror of the circumstances was made clear.

This creature wasn’t fat. The creature was pregnant.

Small spherical clear shapes rushed down the tubes, and the president lost complete control as he felt them enter his body from the tips of the barbs that impaled him. He screamed in a high pitch. He could feel himself being filled up by alien lumps of some description; they were gently banging against each other, being pushed deeper inside of him—in, around, and between his organs—occupying what space they could.

The president’s scream began to die down. He tried to draw deep breaths but could only manage shallow, laboured breaths; an internal pressure was now placed on his lungs and diaphragm. The president drooled a mix of saliva and blood and coughed in protest. ‘No, no! Please, God, stop! Help me, God! Make it stop!’ He began to collapse on to his knees, but the alien’s limbs wouldn’t let him fall; he hung suspended on them.

The president of the United States felt bloated, like he’d eaten too much. The pressure on his stomach became too much; he could feel himself being sick, and he involuntarily expelled the contents of his stomach all over the alien and the ground. The president’s shaking, sweaty, and bloated face looked up at the alien’s gaunt, featureless, and expressionless face, and it tilted its large disc-shaped head as if in confusion.

The alien delicately retracted the deadly spines from the president’s body and began using a tentacle to wipe ink-black viscous mucus across the puncture marks, sealing up the bleeding wounds. The president began feeling sharp tearing pains inside as his organs were displaced by the thousands of eggs that had been laid and that now incubated inside him.

Once the alien was finished, it began lowering him to the ground gently. The president’s head fell backwards, and through teary eyes, he could see that only a few of his security detail had been lucky enough to get away. Some others who had also been trapped by the gelatinous mucus must’ve reached for a sidearm, and they had shot and killed themselves. They were the lucky ones, the president thought.

More were trapped and screamed hysterically as they awaited a fate identical to him and the two unfortunate others who were currently in the clutches of the other two monsters.

Bursting forth from the top of the monolith were tens of thousands of the squid-like aliens. The aliens swarmed, first swirling upwards then racing outwards, like a fountain of horror. Their tentacles were thrashing through the air, and they were wielding their unsheathed spiked limbs, searching for and descending on prey amongst the gathered crowd.

The alien’s tentacles cradled every limb on the president’s body to place him on the ground with the utmost care, the way a proud parent lays their child down to sleep.

CHAPTER 2

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

Thales

That’s when the world collectively went crazy. The grotesque scene had taken less than a minute, and every horrifying detail had unfolded in front of Alex and the rest of the world, who were tuning in. The live videos streamed from hundreds of cameras now showed scenes from dropped cameras or shaky, blurry scenes of absolute revulsion. The audio did not fare better; the previously crisp narration from the reporters on the scene had been replaced with chaos, violence, and screams of shock and dismay. The transmission was abruptly disconnected.

Alex felt sick; he felt unsafe. His fight or flight response kicked in, and adrenaline shot through his body, coursing through his veins. Alex gave in to the urge, and he bolted. He ran through the city. He had no specific route but figured that the general direction of his home was as good a direction as any.

An hour ago, the world had been frozen in time, and now the world was ablaze and burning to the ground in chaos and panic. Across the globe, more and more of the monoliths were reportedly seen plummeting to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of monoliths were somehow aiming for densely populated areas, crashing through the atmosphere like meteors, flying at impossible speeds only to gracefully slow at the last second, and spewing forth the horrors that had laid in wait inside. These horrors zoomed through the air towards their victims like a swarm of locusts or a ravenous school of fish, their tentacles flailing and their scythe-like appendages gnashing.

The unsuspecting or slow were the first to be hunted down. The misfortunate were pinned down from afar by the mucous ink shot forth by numerous barb-tipped tentacles, or the aliens simply grappled amongst them to prevent escape. The victims screamed, begged, and pleaded for mercy with tears in their eyes, but their hollow, faceless squid-like alien captors simply penetrated and impregnated them with eggs like lumps. All the human hosts could do as the alien eggs pushed their way deeper inside, underneath their skin, and displaced their organs was scream in horrified shock at the living nightmare they found themselves in.

Alex looked up from his phone to see seven large monoliths breaching the clouds, plunging towards the Earth, aiming for the city around him, the clouds and atmosphere streaming off them.

Alex ran. He ran past televisions in store windows as they depicted a scene in the Middle East; it was the first peaceful mass prayer by Sunni and Shia Muslims since 632 BC. There were new clips showing riots in India, the UK, and Europe. Alex ran past them.

There was panic in the streets of Alex’s city and in all the major cities around the world. The course of human history had taken a fearsome new direction. Vehicles were swaying in and out of traffic, careening into each other or speeding through densely populated areas where the people who weren’t run down or running away now walked around in aimless hysterics. Alex ran past them.

Mankind’s solitude in the galaxy was over, and the dominance of planet Earth was being contested. The foundations of people’s religious beliefs had been aggressively rattled. What all-loving god would allow such barbaric and sordid beings to exist? People were clambering over each other in a great flood of limbs and