There were scattered cheers and some muted laughter. The admiral waited for total silence before he continued.
“You’ve all been summoned here today because we need your help. You people are among the most-skilled and highly trained drone pilots in the world. The videogames you’ve each mastered, Terra Firma and Armada, are both actually combat training simulations created by the EDA to help us locate and train individuals like each of you—who possess the rare talents required to help us defend our planet from the impending Europan invasion.
“As you just saw, our alien enemy’s existence has been kept a guarded secret since its initial discovery,” he went on. “This was done out of necessity, so that humanity would keep calm and carry on long enough for our leaders to organize and mount a defense against the invaders.” He slid his hands off the podium and scanned his audience again.
“But we’ve finally run out of time. The day we’ve been dreading all these years is now at hand. And you people are the EDA’s most promising recruit candidates, from dozens of different countries all over the world,” he told us. “Which is why we’ve taken the precaution of relocating you here, to a secure location, before the truth of our circumstances are revealed to the entire world.”
“Holy fucking shit,” Lex whispered beside me.
“The briefing film you just saw was first prepared in the early 1990s,” Admiral Vance said. “We’ve updated the computer-generated imagery over the years, but its contents have changed very little. The EDA has always intended to release this film to the world when the threat of invasion could no longer be concealed. Sadly, that day is now at hand. After threatening us with extinction for over forty years, it appears the Europans have finally completed their preparations for war.”
He gripped the edges of the podium, as if to steady himself. It made me realize that I was doing the same thing with the armrests of my chair.
“Here is our satellite imagery from early yesterday morning.” A new high-resolution image of Europa appeared on the screen behind him. The armada we’d seen under construction in the canned video was now complete. The six Dreadnaught Spheres had flowered open to take on their deadly cargo, and their long spiral storage racks were nearly filled to capacity with over a billion individual drones, ready for transport and deployment.
“This next image was taken just a few hours ago,” the admiral said as another image of Europa appeared on the screen. The band of gleaming alien construction ships that had been orbiting the icy moon was now gone—and so were the six massive Dreadnaught Spheres. And there was a giant circle burned in Europa’s southern hemisphere—in the exact same spot on the moon’s surface where the Icebreaker had aimed its melt laser during our assault on Sobrukai last night during the Armada mission.
“Holy shit!” I shouted, and I wasn’t alone. “That mission was real?”
“What do you mean?” Lex asked.
Before I could answer, the admiral spoke again.
“The EDA launched an attack on Europa last night,” he said. “Many of you Armada pilots took part in that mission, which was our one shot at destroying them before they launched their drones to destroy us. But the Icebreaker mission failed. And now their armada is on its way to Earth.”
I couldn’t keep my doubts to myself any longer. “This story doesn’t make any damn sense,” I whispered to Lex. “If these aliens want to wipe us out, why wait forty years to attack? Why give us that long to figure out their technology and prepare to fight them off, when they could have wiped us out back in the seventies? Why wait?” I shook my head. “It didn’t make sense when it was backstory for the game, and it doesn’t make sense now either. I mean, why send a fleet of robotic drones? Why not hit us with a virus or a killer asteroid or—”
“Christ, who the fuck cares, man?” Lex hissed back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her attempt to take another sip from her already-empty flask with a trembling hand. Then she cursed and retightened its cap. “Maybe they live for thousands of years? Four decades might seem like a long weekend to them.” Her eyes narrowed at the glowing image on the screen. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? They’re obviously through waiting.”
She turned her attention back to the admiral, and I tried to do the same.
“This is the enemy fleet’s current position and trajectory,” Vance said, just as an animated map of our solar system appeared on the screen behind him. The current location of the Europan armada was indicated by a chain of three amoeba-shaped blobs, each one larger than the last. They were stretched out in a line between Jupiter and Earth, inching their way through the asteroid belt like an interplanetary wagon train.