“I’m a bit nervous about that, actually,” Graham said. “Me mum is still alive, but she thinks I died back in the nineties. My father had already passed by the time I was recruited, so I left her all alone—and she’s been alone ever since. The EDA has taken care of her financially, of course, but emotionally, well, what can one do?”
Graham blinked a few times, then swallowed hard.
“I hope she still recognizes me,” he said. “And if she does, I hope the sight of me doesn’t give her a coronary—that is, if the PM’s address doesn’t do that first.” He shook his head. “The poor old girl is in her sixties now.”
I wasn’t all that worried about how my own mother would react to the news our planet was being invaded. She had always been the picture of calm in the face of crisis. She seemed to thrive on it. But when she found out my father was still alive, well—that was another story.
“And you, Shin?” Debbie asked quietly. “Do you have any family, dear?”
Shin’s smile faded slightly. “Unfortunately, my parents both passed away years ago. About halfway through my tour of duty up here. So I never got to say goodbye to them, which was extremely painful at the time.” Then his expression brightened, and he reached over and gave my father’s shoulder a squeeze before slapping him on the back. “But my friend Xavier here had already gone through the same thing, and he helped me get through it. He lost his folks, too, a few—”
Shin cut himself off, then shot a nervous glance over at me and then my father, who was again staring intently at the tablecloth.
“Anyway,” Shin said, forging ahead, “right now I’m just thankful they got to live out their lives peacefully, and that they’re not around for … what’s about to happen.”
Everyone around the table nodded, save for my father, who seemed to be slowly turning to stone. Shin seemed to sense this, and he turned to me.
“How you doing, Zack?” he said. “You holding up okay?”
I nodded. Then I shook my head. Then I shrugged and shook my head again.
“Don’t look so worried,” Shin said. “The general forgot to mention one thing during his little pep talk earlier.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile. “We have a secret weapon—the greatest drone pilot who ever lived.” He jerked a thumb at my father. “Did you know that your old man has shot down over three hundred enemy ships? He currently holds the EDA record.”
“Your father has also been awarded the Medal of Honor three times, by three different presidents,” Shin said. “Bet you didn’t know that, did you?” He shook his head at my father. “He’s too modest to even tell his own son.”
“Seriously?” I asked him. “Three Medals of Honor?”
My father nodded, closing his eyes to his embarrassment—the same way I did when I received compliments.
“They were classified Medals of Honor,” my father said. “It’s not like anyone will ever find out about them.”
“I just did,” I said. “Mom will, too, when I get a chance to tell her.”
He gave me a half-smile, then dropped his eyes again.
My mother would be proud of him, but that might not be enough, and he knew it. I could see it in the defeated look that flashed across his face whenever I mentioned her. My father knew as well as I did that all of his noble motivations and heroic sacrifices might not be enough to win her forgiveness—or even her understanding—for what he’d done to us. Not in the limited amount of time she would have to do so. I still wasn’t sure if I had forgiven him.
I glanced over at my father. I knew he wasn’t planning to call my mother, but I’d do it for him, if I had to. I wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to her, after disappearing for seventeen years—I didn’t know what I was going to say when we spoke, and I’d just seen her earlier that morning—or if she’d be willing to listen. But I had to try.
When Whoadie finished eating a moment later, she got up from the table and went over to the observation window, then spent a moment staring down at the enormous radio dish nestled inside the enormous crater far below. “What did you say that thing was again?” she asked.
“That’s the Daedalus Observatory,” Shin said, with a tinge of pride in his voice. “It’s the largest radio telescope ever built—by humans, at least.”
“We built it to talk to the aliens?” Whoadie asked.
Shin nodded. “This crater is near the center of the moon’s far side, so this location is completely shielded from all of the radio interference created by humans, which makes it an ideal place to send and receive radio transmissions without them being monitored back on Earth.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, the Europans have never been interested in talking.”
“One of the first acts of the EDA,” Graham said, “was to create an internal task force called the Armistice Council, made up of a bunch of prominent scientists, including Carl Sagan—”