There were four men and one woman, and all of them looked familiar to me, but I only recognized two of them by name—the two men whose faces appeared in the last two video windows on my screen. The first was Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and the second was Dr. Stephen Hawking, slumped in his motorized wheelchair. I heard Cruz and Diehl gasp behind me just as my own jaw dropped open like a castle drawbridge.
Dr. Hawking spoke up first. I saw the familiar heads-up display for an ATHID on the computer monitor behind him—it appeared that Dr. Hawking had been helping defend Cambridge from its alien siege when he answered the call.
He spoke using his famous computer-generated voice, which now, ironically, reminded me of Chén’s translator instead of the other way around.
“Who are you?” he asked. “And how did you get this number?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but no words came out. I’d just recalled the names of the other three scientists on the call—I’d seen each of them interviewed on countless science programs and documentaries. The Asian gentleman was Dr. Michio Kaku, and the other two people were famous SETI researchers, Dr. Seth Shostak and Dr. Jill Tarter. I recognized Tarter because she was a former colleague of Carl Sagan’s, and she’d served as the primary inspiration for Jodie Foster’s character in the film Contact.
I was on the phone with five of the world’s most prominent scientists, and they were all waiting for me to say something.
“Doctor Hawking asked you a question,” Dr. Tyson said, rolling his eyes slightly. “This is not a good time to be wasting our time.”
I shook my head, and forced my voice into action.
“I’m sorry, sir, of course,” I said, clearing my throat. “My name is Zack Lightman. I was stationed at Moon Base Alpha with my father, General Xavier Lightman, until it was hit—and the fate of human civilization depends on what I have to tell you.”
They all stared at me, waiting.
I told them, as quickly and succinctly as I could, everything my father had told me, along with what I’d seen for myself in our last Disrupter battle.
To my shock, none of them hung up on me. So I kept on talking until I had told them everything—and probably a few things more than once. I also used my QComm to transfer the data my father had obtained from Arbogast, including all of the raw Envoy mission footage and the transmissions we’d received from the Europans. It only took a few seconds before they were each scanning the data on their own QComms.
“Some of the things you’ve just told us are extremely unsettling,” Dr. Tyson said. “But unfortunately, they’re not entirely surprising. Since it was first formed, this council has encountered a fair amount of secrecy and military bureaucracy in our dealings with the Earth Defense Alliance command—especially pertaining to the release of classified information about the Europans. We were never given unrestricted access to that data.”
“Lieutenant, would you mind if we put you on hold a moment?” Dr. Tarter asked. “So that we can discuss the information you’ve just given us in private?”
“Sure,” I said, glancing at the countdown clock in the corner of my display, now ticking off the remaining minutes until the second wave attacked. “Take all the time you need. It’s not like the world is about to end.”
I don’t think they even heard my snarky reply, because they put me on hold before I’d finished making it. Their video stream windows froze and grayed themselves out. I also noticed tiny arrow icons linking their five video windows, to indicate that they were all still talking to each other on the call while I was temporarily excluded. That was when Cruz caught a glimpse of my QComm screen, which was now divided into over half a dozen windows, each with a different person’s face, just like the opening of the Brady Bunch—so he decided to belt out an impromptu parody of the opening line of the show’s theme song: “This is the story, of an alien invasion, by some fuckheads from Europa who are—”
That was all he managed to get out before Diehl snapped his laptop shut, cutting him off. He winced at me apologetically.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “The council has me on hold.”
Diehl exhaled and reopened his laptop. Cruz was still singing away.
“All of them have tentacles, like their mother! The youngest one in curls!”
Diehl laughed. Cruz laughed. I laughed.
Gallows humor.
As we sat there waiting, my QComm rang, startling me so much that I nearly dropped it. My display informed me that, in addition to the five other calls on hold, I had a new incoming call—from my father.
I hit the answer icon, and my father face’s appeared in another video window, along with the five grayed-out ones.