Graham smiled; then he motioned to a row of low, padded leather bench seats behind us. “You guys might want to be sitting down when you hear this,” he said, before sitting down himself. Milo and Debbie joined him, but Chén, Whoadie, and I remained on our feet.
My father waved his hand at the view screen covering the domed ceiling, and the image arrayed across them changed. We were no longer looking at a live feed of the lunar landscape outside the base, but at an animated three-dimensional graphic of our solar system, with the spinning planet Earth in the foreground and the moon lazily orbiting it at a distance, both surrounded by a series of concentric rings indicating the orbital paths of the other planets. My father made another gesture at the screen and the animation of our solar system began to speed up, making the planets zoom around the sun like a pack of race cars, each on a separate track.
“One of the things you weren’t told during your enlistment briefing is that this isn’t the first time the Europans have sent ships to Earth to attack us,” the General said. “Over the past four decades, they’ve done it exactly thirty-seven times.”
On the domed screen, the celestial clockwork of our solar system continued to spin forward until the orbits of Earth and Jupiter aligned, bringing the two planets into their closest annual proximity. Then, as the orbit of Jupiter’s moon Europa brought it as close as possible to Earth, the animation froze.
“Every 398.9 days, a celestial event known as the Jovian Opposition occurs,” the General explained, “when the Sun and Jupiter are both on opposite sides of Earth, and Europa is at its closest proximity to us. Ever since our first contact with them, the Europans have used that proximity to send a small detachment of ships to Earth, to conduct surveillance, test our defenses, and abduct live human specimens for study.”
He tapped his QComm display, and an image of Moon Base Alpha appeared on the screen, seen from above, nestled into the Daedalus crater.
“Once the Europans began to send scouting missions to Earth, the EDA decided to construct a secret defense base here on the far side of the moon,” the general said. “It was originally intended to function as a long-range surveillance and communications outpost. But when it finally became operational in September of 1988, and a permanent human presence was established here, the enemy’s tactics changed. When the next Jovian Opposition arrived, the Europans didn’t send their detachment of scout ships directly to Earth. This time they came here to Moon Base Alpha first—and attacked it.”
Video footage began to play on the domed view screen, showing a large formation of Glaive Fighters streaking down from the starry blackness of the lunar sky to descend on the tiny moon base nestled in the crater below, as Interceptors began to launch out of the base’s hangar and fly up to meet them, setting off a massive aerial battle.
“We managed to fight them off, but just barely,” he said. “It took nearly a full year to repair the damage. And when the next Jovian Opposition arrived, the Europans attacked again, this time with an even larger force, to match the increased size of Moon Base Alpha’s defenses. And once again, our forces were barely a match for them.”
“The same thing happened again the next year,” Graham said. “And the year after that.”
“Each year, they sent even more drones to assault the base,” Shin said. “And every year, we increased our defenses here in anticipation of their next attack.”
My father nodded. “This escalation continued for over a decade, until the Europans changed the game on us again last year, by unveiling a new weapon—one you’ve all encountered before during your Armada training. The Disrupter.”
A collective groan escaped the new recruits. On the view screen, we watched as a cluster of enemy ships appeared, descending toward Moon Base Alpha in perfect formation, creating an image that momentarily resembled a screenshot of the game Space Invaders.
A wire-frame diagram of a spinning dodecahedron appeared adjacent to it on the view screen, and I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“The Disrupter appears to function by coupling itself to a large celestial body, like a planet or moon.” On the view screen, an animation showed a spinning chrome dodecahedron making landfall on Earth and then firing a beam of red energy into the planet’s core. “The device then harnesses the planet’s magnetic field, using it to generate a spherical field that disrupts all quantum communications inside it.”
“All of the EDA’s drones have backup radio-control units,” Shin added. “Unfortunately the Disrupter interferes with normal radio communications, too, so they’re useless.”