He picked up a large whiteboard resting against a nearby console and tilted it toward me so that I could see the two hastily drawn diagrams on it. He’d drawn a picture of the Death Star from Star Wars on the left side and a sketch of the Disrupter dodecahedron on the right. Both drawings were surrounded by arrows and notes that appeared to draw a comparison between the two. But it was hard to be sure—because I couldn’t read my father’s handwriting to save my life.
“Take the Disrupter, for example,” he said. “Why is it so difficult to destroy, when we have no problem plowing through their other drones? Why not make all of their drones that hard to destroy? Because the Disrupter is a level boss, that’s why!” He pointed to the whiteboard. “The Disrupter is their version of the Death Star—it’s a huge, nearly indestructible doomsday weapon, but it has a small Achilles’ heel that will allow us to destroy it.” He locked eyes with me. “It’s like they designed it that way—so that at least one pilot has to sacrifice themselves to destroy it. The shields only drop for a few seconds—just long enough for two perfectly timed core detonations to go off! Why would they engineer it that way, unless it was on purpose?”
I nodded. “I wondered the same thing,” I confessed.
“No weapons designer or engineer would build something with such an arbitrary weakness,” he said. “The Disrupter is more like something a videogame developer would come up with, to create a big challenge at the end of a level—a boss that requires a huge sacrifice to destroy. And then they send one—just one—to attack this base, instead of sending it to couple with Earth. Why? Because they wanted us to see how it worked! Then they let us destroy it! Maybe that was part of their test—to find out if humans are willing to make a heroic sacrifice to save their comrades? To see if our species actually behaves the way we portray ourselves in our books and movies and games?” He stood back up and began to pace, faster and faster. “They could be testing us to see if humanity lacks the courage of its convictions? Are we as selfless and noble as we think we are?”
“But how would the aliens even know about Vance’s heroic sacrifice?” I asked. “Or about anything that was going on within the EDA’s ranks during those battles?”
He bit his lower lip; then he held up his QComm.
“Think about it. Where did this QComm tech come from?”
I shook my head, not wanting to believe it. But he nodded in disagreement.
“The Europans invented this technology, and we barely even understand how it works,” he said. “For all we know, they’re using these to eavesdrop on us right now.” He rubbed his temples, wincing. “I mean, do you think it was a coincidence that of all the EDA sites around the world they could’ve attacked this morning, they chose the one where we’d just relocated all of our elite recruit candidates?”
He fell silent and stared at me. My head was spinning. I sat down in one of the leather chairs bolted to the floor.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
He frowned, looking disappointed that I needed to ask.
“Because you’re my son,” he said. “Maybe I just want to get your opinion.”
“On what, General?”
“On what you think we should do,” he said. “Do we ignore everything about the Europans’ actions that don’t add up and let the EDA launch their doomsday weapon at them? Try to commit genocide against the first intelligent species we’ve ever contacted?”
“But they’re coming here to commit genocide against us!” I shouted. “We have no choice but to defend ourselves!”
“I believe we do, Son. I think that’s what they’re doing: presenting us with a choice. We can try to destroy them, thereby ensuring that they destroy us,” he said. “Or we can take a gamble, based on our deductions and our moral reasoning, and try to stop the Icebreaker.”
“But then—won’t we just be allowing them to wipe us out when they arrive?”
“If they wanted to exterminate humanity, they could have done it decades ago,” he said. “They had the technological capability to wipe us out the day we made first contact with them. The illusion that we can defeat them in this war is just that—an illusion. It always has been.”
I didn’t respond. He took me by the shoulders.
“No one else knows all of this. No one else could read these tea leaves like you and me, Zack. I feel like there must be a reason the two of us are here right now. We’re in a position to decide the fate of humanity.” He smiled. “Maybe it’s destiny.”
I stared into his eyes. He was telling me the truth—or what he believed to be the truth. There was no doubt in my mind of that. It’s impossible to have a poker face with someone who has the same face as you.
“This is why you didn’t participate in that first Icebreaker mission, wasn’t it?” I asked. “The admiral benched you, didn’t he? He thought you might try to sabotage it?”
He nodded. “He knows me well,” he said. “We were friends a long time.”