Chapter 4: I’d Prefer the First Option

	Everything rested on Holt’s near-future decision-making. Alexander Holt had heard of the news of the incoming fleet as soon as anyone else on Earth had, perhaps earlier. What action to take at this point was his decision. He was the top Starforce officer now. 

	There was a small Supreme Military Committee that consisted of a top officer for each branch of the Terrestrial Republic military. Even though they had a civilian authority above them, the SMC was clearly on top of the military-officer hierarchy.

	In terms of that military hierarchy, this group was one step above the corps commanders covering various districts. The previous Starforce representative on the SMC, Heinrich Pascali, was a brilliant but elderly man, and had recently been hospitalized for a rather serious condition unrelated to the war. Holt had been nominated for a promotion to Pascali’s old position a few days ago, and the legal confirmation of that was a surprisingly quick action on the part of the Republic Senate.

	“Crimson alert. I repeat, this incoming fleet and the battle or series of battles it will trigger, will require a Crimson Alert.” This was rather stark for the beginning of one of his public broadcasts, but that made sense considering the nature of the message.

	‘Crimson alert’ was one military term that even average citizens understood, in large part thinks to its use in pop culture. Nevertheless, Holt’s following words proceeded to explain it:

	“A Crimson Alert is called when a singular battle has such high stakes that a loss would leave the entire Republic in a completely disadvantageous situation. I’ll be honest - in other words, a loss here leaves the whole damn planet screwed. Royally screwed. So, gentlemen…and ladies…, this is do or die. And I’d prefer the first option.”

	The “gentlemen…and ladies” were the men and women that were the rank and file of Starforce. Reports about Holt were of some legend – Holt was an officer that went a bit beyond endearing himself to his troops. He not only was extremely adept at the tactics of command, but he also personally participated in most of the major battles for which he had a command role. Some called that brilliance. Some called it maverick insanity. Whatever it was, it worked, as shown by the attitudes and morale of his subordinates, as well as his list of victories,

	His most famous stunt was during a near-Earth battle against a small insurrection, in 2304. In this battle, Holt personally participated…from the dangerous position of a Class I Starfighter squadron leader, a position typically associated with airmen several levels below the rank he had held at the time.

	“The insanity of my 27-year youth is gone. I might charge in like a maniac, but in something longer than ten meters, and with bigger guns,” Holt half-joked, referencing that legendary incident.

	Where he might charge to was still in question, at least for the few hours while the Drashnaki fleet traversed the distance from the Moon to Earth. Obviously, I was not privy to the discussions in the military planning rooms deep underneath Rome; but it seemed to be one of the most basic bits of military strategy to concentrate your forces, and to do so at an enemy weak point. Ergo, they’d concentrate their fleet on one or two of the Defensive Platforms.

	At the Auriok Shipworks plant, we went right back to work. Further production of the ASW Class II Starfighter design, which the plant made, would be necessary to replace the upcoming losses. The Class II was lighter and more maneuverable than the Class I, but not as well armored.

	Soon, it was 18:30, and we were released from the factory. Despite us understanding the work as an essential piece of the war effort, we still wanted to go home, damn it. We awaited the 18:45 stop of the eastbound train.

	We assumed the Drashnaki fleet was still in transit from Luna to Earth, but we were not in a position to estimate the travel time.

	Holt was scrambling. News footage from early in the morning on the 30th (which was midafternoon in the local time of the event) showed him touring a Starforce Eighth Fleet ground base outside of Bombay, disappearing into one of the cavernous hangars. He did not reappear – or did he? Colossal metal gates that were the hangar’s roof began to retract and open the hangar’s contents to the sky. And those contents rose into the sky – dozens of battlecruisers, and Holt could have been inside any one of them.

	The state of shock was undeniable, amongst both my friends and my folks. How could such a large enemy armada appear out of nowhere? And, although there had been mixed results in battle, how could the enemy’s victories, the ones that they did have, come so quickly?

	However, a certain calmness prevailed amongst myself and my parents, at the least. Father, the archaeologist in the house, ruminated from some of the old literature he had come across: “When you can keep your head when those about you are losing theirs, that is the true measure of success…” Furthermore, let’s be honest here: we, collectively as a planet, were certainly not finished or anywhere close to it. Deep down we all felt like this, but those who recognized this on an intellectual level, rather than just on a gut level, were much more composed. Humans were a hopeful species, and in our collective past, we had clung to that hope in other disastrous-looking situations. Also, on a less feel-good note, we recognized that the Drashnaki focus on large cities meant that Kinnacksville was likely to be spared some of the most brutal direct costs for the time being. Even enlightened people, as we fancied ourselves to be, had such feelings and while I wouldn’t announce that to the whole world that I had such feelings, I sure recognized it privately.

	One part of my recently-departed high school career came into vivid focus. A couple years back, there had been serious political talk about drastically reducing the Republic military, which one teacher had spun into a classroom debate. I had remembered bringing up the points in favor of such proposals: “we had been a world at peace, and did not have nearly the military need”, worries of abuse of the military by demagogic politicians, and so on. (While I had levied practical arguments, some of my debate teammates had trotted out the big philosophical points about war and militarism.) I had also argued that the “what-about-alien-invasion” argument had been better relegated to a library’s fiction racks, rather than an expenditure of real men and real dollars.

	How wrong I had been. Yet, as the facts change, opinions should change as well. War was/is evil, that seems obvious enough, but some could argue that it is at times a necessary evil, a distinction that is notoriously difficult to make. The current situation seemed like one of the precious few examples where the point was clear.

	The following was a defining moment; when we had been at the time of the announcement would be firmly fixed in our memories for a long time. At 21:00 on the 30th, the main battle lines clashed at an area in orbit between the7th and 8th Platforms. I had just downed a 300-gram steak, and had been grabbing the beer to wash it down with, when our house’s broadcast monitors has flashed a deep red and made their now-highly-familiar alert noises. News outlets of course been spending most of their time lately on The War, and most stations had placed a heavy focus on immediate footage, so as soon as it happened, the whole damn planet knew. Where the footage came from varied based on the situation. Of course, in the chaos of the ground attacks, there was normally somebody in position. In orbit, some fancier footwork was required. Medical, repair and clean-up vessels were often used as cover, those generally being low-priority targets.

	The platforms had defensive gun emplacements, sure, but there main use was as not-very-mobile aircraft carriers. Some hangers were recessed and covered; some were on the open decks. Sixteen fighter squadrons, two gunboat wings, several battlecruisers – not exactly common knowledge, but public knowledge nonetheless.

	The enemy finally came into full view as the publicly-accessible cameras began to angle themselves properly. The Drashnakis, for whatever reason, weren’t breaking formation. We didn’t have much of a formation, due to the necessity of scrambling various ships from bases all over the planet. They were an organized triangular wall of blue, black, and teal. Our presence was a thick but scattered line, the vessel markings being a mixture of those of Starforce’s twenty Fleets.

	Admiral Starnrok evidently didn’t see that line as thickly as we did, as their wedge pressed forward…While their ships (thankfully) did not reach all the way from the Seventh Platform to the Eighth, it still appeared as though the enemy was trying to split them apart. At the fore, at the wedge’s point, were a multitude of vessels that were barbell-shaped and hundreds of meters long, obviously their high-firepower capital ships. Our Falcon battlecruisers were among the few ships of ours with armor to take that punishment and return the firepower. Thankfully, the wedge’s fast approach at least made it easier to send ships in behind it, and that we did.

	It was at once both an awe-inspiring sight and a terrible one. The waves of Class I starfighters were in the hundreds, packed so closely that Starforce was lucky for the skill of the men flying them; as crashing into your own ships would be an especially unacceptable turn of events at this point. Drashnaki shipside batteries on the flanks were grazing several of the starfighters as they made their journey to the formation’s back.

	Now, the Drashnakis must have a barbell fetish, because awaiting them at the formation’s back lay many more barbell-shaped vessels, these rearguard ones being somewhat smaller. When the Drashnakis landed at Luna, we saw such ships act as carriers. Indeed, this batch of the shiptype was filling the same role. Aircraft carriers typically relied on their air wings and escort vessels for their defense, with a relatively small amount of shipboard weaponry, and these were no different. So, with the escort vessels occupied with the Republic’s array of capital ships, the ships were forced to launch their air wings, likely quicker and more completely than Starnrok would have thought advisable. And another common thread of aircraft carriers is that even with a well-designed ship and well-trained crew, the ships can only be launched so quickly. So, we were able to shoot down many of the Drashnaki fighters piecemeal as they disembarked their carriers.

	In this crisis, we were desperate for positive signs, and with the advantage gained in the fighter ambush, we collectively thought we had found one. That euphoria was cut short as the Drashnakis’ left flank broke formation and started to barrel towards the Seventh Platform. This bulge interfered in the path of reinforcements for the fighter battle, and, of course, the Platforms themselves were threatened.
	
	Presumably, all of the Seventh Platform’s ship component had already been scrambled, to face the enemy fleet. I saw only specks on the monitor – the odd ship landing for ammo refills or emergency repairs. A small group of Valkyrie gunboats tossed a pitiful handful of cannon charges at the approaching enemy wall. Defensive batteries on the platform’s east edge, closest the approaching horde, fired to similar effect. Our fighters were hemmed in by the push of the enemy flank itself, and our battlecruisers looked hemmed in by their Drashnaki capital-warship counterparts. I of course had no sure idea about any reinforcements

	A ruby-red Terrestrial vessel arrived as Drashnaki batteries charred the outer edge. Some specks, men presumably, dashed out of the platform’s recesses. The news footage quickly cut to a shot from the Ruby’s perspective, and they were indeed platform crewmen, pulling off the evidently amazing feat of running while in full spacesuit and carrying full armloads of equipment. The Ruby was a legendary passenger vessel, formerly making Earth-Luna runs and a occasional Earth-Mars trip. It was owned by a George Kemp, along with the sister ships Pearl, Sapphire, Jet and Emerald. Mr. Kemp never could be blamed for a lack of publicity, and we certainly add some with this desperate evacuation, announced as an emergency contract with the Republic military. All of us civilians were in the dark as to the location of the military’s cargo ships and troop transports, though the platform men didn’t seem too concerned about that right now. As soon as the Ruby’s hatch dropped and the ship gunned for atmospheric entry, a Drashnaki blow to the central tower caused Platform Seven to shudder, and start to split along its proverbial ‘fault lines.’

	Fortunately, the Sixth Platform, next in that direction, was not next door. Also in the area of fortune, at the main battle line I observed more brown/green/blue/white Republic vessels and fewer black/gray/teal Drashnaki Imperium ones. Obviously, the flank that sundered the Seventh Platform had departed from the battle cloud, but we had made many of their vessels depart more permanently. Granted, many of airmen were also fallen, but our fighter wings had never relinquished the early advantage they had gained from their surprise strike, laying low many carriers as well as their contents. It appears that we eventually gained enough leverage in the main battle to turn around and approach the remaining components of the Drashnaki fleet from the rear.

	Rather than continuing their push towards the Sixth Platform, the fleet, almost in one fluid motion, dived into the atmosphere – clearly retreat behavior. An anonymous battlecruiser crewman managed to get the following taunt broadcasted: “Had enough of getting slaughtered for today?”

	Unfortunately, the battle hadn’t been quite that one-sided. Especially with the drums of war beating as loudly and fiercely as they were, both admirals, Holt and Starnrok, were inclined to claim victory – and each with good reasons.

	Upon disembarking at the Bombay Starforce Base, Holt, flanked by the other somber-faced surviving battlecruiser crews, had a short series of remarks: “The events of the thirtieth will go down as a landmark day for not just Starforce, but rather, the planet as a whole. Colonel Kazansky and all you other starfighter mavericks, your maneuvers were brilliantly executed and pivotal to our victory. The capital-ship line, which I personally commanded, held, but at enormous cost. The dead airmans’ bodies, and the multitudes of scrap from once-great machines, remind us of the terrible costs we have been foisted into paying, but also remind us of our goal to prevent Them from wreaking further havoc and destruction. Indeed, much of the alien force did make a landing, though I feared the problem could have been much, much worse. My thanks – and an entire world’s thanks – to the Starforce pilots who flew and died today, and to the Navy missile cruisers which shot down many of the approaching remnant vessels. Rarely in the field of human history have so many owed so much to so few.” Indeed, Holt, Indeed.

	He went on to say: “Starforce was indeed dealt a heavy blow; that is a fact that cannot be denied. However, it was not a crippling blow by any standard. Without doubt, we shall rise again!”