Prologue
05/22/3032: Arcadia, United Teran Federation
"Order for Frank!" The barista shouted despite the cafe being mostly empty. She slid the coffee gently to the edge of the marble counter with the efficiency of a minimum-wage employee who had done it over a hundred times a day. A man in grey military fatigues stepped up just barely taller than the barista, a barista who could not have been no more than seventeen.
The man's unkempt hair fell into his face and he pushed it back in line with the mix of brown and silver strands. With an itch of his clean and well-kept beard, he reached down to grab his coffee with a large sigh and an uncomfortable twist of his cramped neck. Frank stepped away from the counter gently turning in his combat boots out into the hallway. Taking a sip of his coffee, he continued walking through the hallway grimacing at the taste.
The United Terran Federations coffee has never been very good and he always wondered why he kept ordering it. Accepting the fact that the coffee will never change he pressed a button and the communication center door slid open as he preemptively said "At ease!" Two soldiers stood up from their desks snapping from attention into parade rest. Captain Frank Ward looked at one of the men as he walked towards his desk. The man was barely a man, more so a boy. Nineteen years old, with short military buzzcut hair, glasses that were too large for his face, and not a single speck of hair to be seen on his pale face. "Private Miles, what's the schedule for today?"
Private Miles glanced at the other soldier standing up beside him, similarly dressed minus the glasses the soldier stood over Private Miles, with blonde hair swooped above his head and brown eyes that had the most dumbfounded look. Frank noticed this and with a raise of an eyebrow uttered, "Private Miles I asked you. Not Specialist Davis."
Miles shifted uncomfortably. "Captain...uh" he stuttered. "Well, we have the embassy security checked in already. Their next check-in isn't until 3:00. The radar center check-in is in an hour, and the security posts are scheduled to do check-ins periodically over the next four hours...nothing new Sir." Frank rubbed his forehead squinting his eyes shut from exhaustion and taking a deep sigh, "Ok, thank you. You can sit down. Don't talk to me unless something important happens."
Private Miles nodded, "Yes, sir." Quickly taking his seat and putting his communication headset on.
Sitting down Frank took in the communication room, a room he had been in hundreds of times since the Federation had moved him from Earth to Arcadia. A colony world in the outer region, their first attempt since discovering the technology that could get humanity off of Earth and into space. Leaning back he looked around taking in the humms of the large computer systems monitoring the airwaves. The bland carpet and empty green walls housed the room. While Private Miles and Specialist Davis were regulars genuinely assigned to his unit, a couple of other men would always be here, sent to learn how to do comms work for the military but never truly staying. As he took in the room he could only think about how boring this outpost position has been.
When the United Teran Federation formed he had been serving in the United States military for a couple of years and saw frontline combat. Now he just sits at a desk manning a communications center hoping that everyone meets their check-in so he doesn't have to call the entire chain of command and get everyone up in arms assuming an invasion was happening on Arcadia. He chuckled at the thought, Arcadia? Invaded? It doesn't even make sense to invade such an outer colony unless you just want to make the Federation angry. Continuing to think about how improbable the idea was he leaned back in his chair closing his eyes and slowly began drifting off.
"Captain!"
"Captain Ward!"
"Sir wake up!"
Frank jolted awake straight in his chair sending the chair backwards, the chair landing with a sharp thud causing everyone to jump. "What on earth do you need private?!" he exclaimed upset that he was disturbed from his rest.
"The radar center missed their check, Sir." Private Miles said sweating with anxiety.
"That's a common occurrence private. Have you reached out to their command personally?"
"Yes sir, Captain Briggs did not respond."
"Ok, well-" Frank was cut off as the private interjected, "The forward security base also did not respond sir, and neither did their Captain."
Frank reached down picking his chair up thinking through the information he had just been given. As he sat the chair down he stepped away from his desk walking over to the communications monitor that Miles and Davis had been working at. He picked up the phone sitting on the center console and began wordlessly dialing a number before putting it up to his ear.
"Fleetcom. Fleetcom this is Charlie 1-1 over," he spoke into the phone.
"Charlie 1-1 this is Fleetcom, over."
"Radar Sierra 1-1 is not responding, and Foward Camp Kreat is also not responding. Do you have anything on your planetary scope? Over."
"Standby Charlie 1-1."
Frank sat there patiently waiting, silently praying to himself that they would come back with a clear radar. Yet, wondering if they came back clear then why did the stations miss their check-ins and follow up?
"Charlie 1-1 this is Fleetcom."
"Go for Charlie 1-1."
"We aren't reading anything on planetary, follow up again with the stations, I repeat we are all clear in orbit."
As Frank raised the mouthpiece of the phone to speak again a sudden deafening blare filled the room echoing off the empty walls and metallic communication monitors of the room. The lights shuttered to black and slowly reignited into a dark gleaming red. Frank quickly raised the phone and in a nearly shouting voice said, "Fleetcom the base is under attack, I repeat the base is under attack. Recheck that radar!" as he awaited a response he began shouting orders at the technicians in the room. "Private Miles get on comms, Davis take the other men to the armory and get geared up!"
Everyone began rushing to their positions with Davis leading the other technicians in a run down the hallway to retrieve their rifles. As the organized chaos filled the room Frank could hear his heartbeat in his ears as everything began rushing to the forefront of his mind. He breathed in through his nose letting a ragged breathe out through his mouth in an attempt to calm his nerves. He could hear a vague buzz in his left ear.
"Charlie 1-1 do you copy?"
Everything snapped together at once and he could hear the sound of Private Miles radioing to headquarters. In addition to the banging of footsteps on metal as Davis and the other technicians rushed in with firearms.
"Fleetcom this is Charlie 1-1 I copy, over."
"Charlie 1-1, we are still not reading anything on the radar. Wait, standby...no. That's impossible." Frank could hear the thud of the fleetcoms unit headset collapsing on metal. Muffled voices began talking in the background before quickly escalating into shouting. A crackle occurred as the headset was picked up. "Sierra 1-1 their entire fleet is here, the whole fleet! Red dawn! Red Da—" An unmistakable sound could be heard, the sound of everything entering a vacuum as a deep guttural rumble rippled through the air over the microphone as the microphone went pure static the entire base shook. Frank slowly set the phone down as he walked to the one window in the entire room.
Peering out he could see the U.T.F.S Teran Freedom in the sky. It was not its normal elongated silver beauty ripe with ridges outlining the different rooms of the ship. You could not see the United Teran Federation seal crest across the middle of the ship. Not the hanger bay burrowed deep beneath the ship. Nor the large cannon that sits between the two perpendicular bows. No. All Frank could see was the implosion shattering across the sky as a blue beam penetrated through the ship into the fusion core.
Captain Frank Ward's mouth could only gently fall open as he watched a ship he had believed to be an indestructible, a genuine towering fortress that could propel itself through space, split into pieces in orbit. A tear formed in his eye as he watched the bow of the ship now stricken from the rear careen through the atmosphere towards the Arcadian colonies skyscraper. A building housing hundreds of apartments, hundreds of office spaces, and even more businesses. A building of people totaling thousands. As the bow exited the atmosphere Frank didn't even react as Specialist Davis and Private Miles walked up beside him watching through the dirt-stained glass of the communications center.
What felt like hours was only mere seconds as the bow turned end over end crashing directly through the upper half of Arcadia tower slicing directly through the metal and concrete support beams like the clean break of an ankle, sending the upper portion in a direct path downwards into the rest of the tower. Rock, steel, glass, and every resource used to build the tower imploded inwards as if a plant was going back into the ground. The tower finally fell silent with a ploom of smoke billowing upwards in a mushroom-shaped aroma.
Through all of this, Frank never looked away, encapsulated by the collapse of the tower he only noticed the oval-shaped ships brimming with tan scales, engines sticking out of the back like the tale end of a beetle, and a laser cannon directly in the mid center forming a ring, when the cannon began to form a blue light. The Captain watched as the light formed into a flame trickling into a spiral before ejecting itself forward from its housing in a direct line towards the communications center.
He tilted his head and a small smile crossed his face knowing his career would not end as boring as he thought it would. Despite the sadness that consumed his heart knowing the lives of the two men behind him who had yet to even cross the halfway mark of their twenties would end, he let the happiness of a fulfilled career consume him. The warmth of a life well lived filled his body in a way that he did not sense the blast tear apart his uniform, ripping through it like a wet cloth, he did not notice as his skin was sheared from his body at scolding hot temperatures, nor his feel his bone turn into smoldering ash as the beam ripped the building apart like a thousand-degree knife.