The first person to notice the alien starship was a woman working at a bodega in the middle of New Yaren City. She had just paused in the composition of a tweet using her handcomp - bitching about some asshole who refused to to accept anything but exact change - to look up at the blue, blue sky. She didn't know it, but she was the only person in the whole world who saw the alien ship for a solid three seconds.
Then other people started to look up as well.
They saw it, from across the flyover states of the Union of Amerin to the eastern seaboard, hovering in the sky like an oblong brick of black steel, shrouded by glittering lights as what appeared to be flight after flight of smaller craft launched from the sides.
The news of the alien ship spread. First on twitter, as handcomps were tapped into and films were taken.
Then, more frantically (if that was possible) on the news networks. Right, left, and center of the political landscape, every talking head in the world dragged every news story to a complete, screeching halt to bring up to date news on the alien ship. First grainy images were replaced by high resolution telescopic images: The bright red prow, curving and elegant and coming into a narrow spar that thrust several hundred meters beyond the front of the ship. There were narrow tubes set into that prow -
torpedo tubes? thrusters? Probe launchers? - and the very top of the ship was bedecked with what was a clear array of habitation zones and windows, like a city in miniature, thrown into space.
The back of the ship, near the engines, rose into a kind of command bridge - and almost immediately, everyone began to pick up radio signals transmitting from that part of the ship, bathing the world.
The sides of the ship were marked by immense looking tube-projections, thrusting out of the side.
The immediate response was:
Those look like cannons.
And then, almost immediately afterwards...
Those look like they're aimed at us.
***
President Rayne Blakk walked through the center of the United Sovereignty building, flanked by aides and security guards. The faint clamor of the protestors outside could still be heard, even through the thick walls of the old structure.
"What are they even protesting?" she asked her aide, who sighed.
"It's a mix of peaceniks, decentro-sovenites and religious fundamentalists," he said, shaking his head. "They're almost more mad at each other than they are at us, for once."
"What do the Fundies have to complain about?" Blakk muttered. "They're getting their fucking proof."
The primary Fundie sect, the one that caused the most problem, originated in the Southlands. It was an infuriating fact of geopolitics that everyone on Earth had had to deal with for almost fifty years now: The Fundies claimed that their old, ratty cities were built out of the colony ship that had brought humans
to Earth, and that the world had been "terraformed" to its current state by some ancient precursors. Who, of course, all looked exactly like Fundies and thus that meant that Fundies had a right to sit on their oil deposits and blow up buildings if they felt like it.
It was ridiculous, of course.
Scientific evidence was that all life on this planet, the only planet that humanity had ever lived on, had begun six thousand years ago, when God had brought it into being. Yes, evolution took place at the short scale with, like, microbes. Not to larger creatures, if it did, then there would be evidence of it in the fossil record. But during the Age of Exploration, they had dug up nothing that was alive on this planet more than six thousand years ago, ergo...
Blakk frowned.
Ergo, though, seemed like it might be wrong.
She came into the Security Council Chambers, nodding to the screens that displayed the faces of the six other members. There was the Union of Sovenite Social Republics' Premier, Mirren Kirtrech, and his allies in Easterland, Secretary-General Tuvin Grueb. Then there were the four allies of the Union of Amerin: The Berrin Empire, the Republic of Trace, Westland, and the Minister of Berrinskold.
Everyone looked grim. Determined.
And terrified.
Blakk could see it in the tightening of hands. The clenching of muscles. The nervous, glittering sweat on foreheads.
"So, lets cut to the nails," Blakk said, sitting down at her desk. "We have an alien battleship in orbit. My analysts tell me that the engine alone is producing enough energy to be visible from our nearest star and that they have detected what can reasonably be predicted to be weapons along fifty percent of the hull. By first approximation, they have the ability to level our entire planet from orbit."
"And the message they've been sending?" Premier Kirtrech asked, dabbing at his balding forehead. "Our linguists believe it...ah...ahem..." He coughed a phlegmy cough. "It seems to have certain similarities to the root language of, ah, certain regions..."
"It's Gothic, and we all know it!" the Minister of Berrinskold - a normally mild mannered nonentity named Justin Terendi - snapped. He leaned forward towards his camera. "The fundies were right the whole time, and we can't tap dance around this!"
"I refuse to give credence to some backwater religious maniacs," Blakk snapped.
Dear God, please, don't let the Fundies be right.
Blakk had been elected on a pretty hawkish platform. The Union had been involved in wars in the Southland, off and on, ever since the end of the Prenuclear General Hostilities. Before the PNGH, the world hadn't paid much attention to the Southlanders and their bizarre ideas about the origin of life on Earth...and after it, they had cared less about the beliefs of the Fundies and more about the oil. This had provoked some reactions - and Blakk had nearly six thousand dead citizens to avenge.
And now this.
"My linguistics tell me the basic translation to Berrinese," Premier Kirtrech rumbled. "Is that they are from an institution known as the Imperium of Man."
Blakk frowned.
"Well. That is what the...translation says...yes...but we're waiting on confirmation before..."
She trailed off, recognizing how flat she sounded.
"Before we make any hasty decisions."
***
The alien dignitaries came down on a bird shaped shuttle with streaming red banners and landed before the capital building of the Union of Sovenite Social Republics - and they were met by the arrayed dignitaries of half the world. Premier Kirtrech managed to keep a smug smile off his face as President Blakk stood behind him and fumed. The aliens had, in the end, chosen to land on the nation-state that had, from orbit, seemed the largest.
While the Union had more gizmos and gadgets, the USSR had, at the end of the day, more land. Land won by the blood, sweat, and tears of the Russk people. Kirtrech himself had been barely eighteen during the Patriotic Hostilities - a far more accurate name than the clinical, bloodless 'Prenuclear General Hostilities' that the Amerins preferred - and he was glad to see them finally get some advantage from the tactless lands they had to govern.
The alien shuttle hissed, whirred...and then the entire crowd gasped. News cameras from both sides of the Steel Wall trained on the aliens...and the whole world watched.
The alien was human. That was beyond question.
Her facial features, though, were...
Wrong.
She was an ethnicity that had never been seen on Earth, that much was true. She wasn't Russk or Amerin, Southlander or Evalian. Even the deep jungle Bushfolk would have found her extremely odd looking. The closest that Kirtrech could find in his memory was a burn victim he had seen who had had her face reconstructed into a waxy mask. But even that was far off the mark. The woman's face was
natural. It moved right.
It was just...
Alien.
She was dressed in a flowing blue jacket, with golden epaulets, glittering metals. She had a kind of hardened armor breastplate on her chest, a sword at her hip, and a fearsome looking metal plate hammered into her left eye socket. Then, as she came closer, Kirtrech realized that the eye-plate was actually an articulated camera-lens that glowed a brilliant, flaring red.
A cybernetic eye? he thought, while he noticed that she was flanked by two men in heavy armor: Blue painted, with blunt barreled, stocky weapons made of carved wood and metal. Behind them came a robed figure, twisted and stooped like an ancient crone. Her face was wrinkled, and her eyes were covered by a bandage, while she clung to a narrow golden-steel staff, tipped with a double headed eagle.
The alien came to the collection of dignitaries.
She was shorter than Kirtrech.
"Welcome to the glorious people's republic of-" Kirtrech started.
"You are seven thousand two hundred and twenty six year behind," the alien said - her lips making the wrong shapes, but the voice sounding utterly understandable to Kirtrech. He felt a faint headache as she spoke - but he was too baffled by what she said to make more than a trifling note of it. "My second has run up a list, this colony owes back tithes on the centennial on the order of twelve million tons of viridian ore." She frowned. "Explain why your entire ore output has been put to...frivolity!" She gestured around herself with one hand - her fingers as metal as her eye, Kirtrech realized.
"Fri...w..." Kirtrech stammered. "Excuse me!?"
"You owe eight hundred and sixty seven million tons to the Imperium," the woman said, frowning and glaring up at him, while somehow still managing to look like she was looking down her nose at him. "If it is not delivered immediately, then your planet will be found in arrears and we shall have to replace your Imperial Governor with one that can get things back on track."
Kirtrech blinked.
Gulped.
"Just one moment."
***
The debate was furious, hushed, and circular.
The ore - used in a majority of their construction projects - could not be delivered. Extraction on that scale, it was determined, would not merely bankrupt every single nation on Earth...it would destroy vast tracts of the planet. Farmland, valuable real estate. The economic and ecological effects of that were so bad that even the infamously rapacious Union of Amerin or USSR balked at the idea.
Fighting?
The idea was rapidly proved to be laughable. The single Imperial ship in orbit might be dealt with using their nuclear arsenals, but even that was a risky gamble. And with the knowledge that there
was a galactic civilization, the scientific community of Earth had looked at the solid-state emission theory of galactic expansion and realized that what they had believed to be natural emissions had, in fact, been radio communications from inhabited planets across the night sky. In any other time, in any other situation, it would have been the most groundbreaking thing to happen to Earth since the splitting of the atom.
As it was, it was barely a footnote in the face of the fact they were hideously, hideously outnumbered.
Negotiate?
The negotiations with the alien - Captain Lera Krin, as her name turned out to be - ran into repeated roadblocks, created by the fact that she didn't see Earth as a planet, inhabited by people.
She saw it as a
colony.
And it seemed the Imperium expected it's colonies to
pay up.
"Listen," she had finally said, her voice a fierce, quiet growl. "My dear
Temptation got diverted from the Spinward Front to deal with your world being reachable again. There's twelve planets that I should be patrolling for ork kroozers and lootships, but instead, I'm here, playing nice-nice with some backwater colonists who have no idea what the
fuck is going on. So, every second you spend dithering is another second I'm tempted to roll out the long guns."
It was then...
That the Union of Amerin's president had asked the question that would save the Earth.
"Spinward Front? So, is the Imperium engaged in hostilities?"
At Captain Krin's expression, she had nodded.
"...could we pay tithe in the form of, ah, devoting forces to your war?"
Captain Krin frowned. "How many?" She asked.
On the entire Earth, there were twelve million men and women in arms, ranging from the highly equipped UAAF Rangers to conscripts in Third World nations.
Five minutes after President Blakk asked about the Spinward Front, every single one of them had been tithed to the Imperium.
---
You picked the worst time on Earth to sign up for the army, didn't you? You are a...
[ ] A Russk from the USSR
[ ] A Amerin from the Union of Amerin
[ ] A Westlander from Eastland
[ ] A Eastlander from Westland
You joined...
[ ] The infantry
[ ] Helicopter Infantry
[ ] Artillery
[ ] Armored
[ ] Rangers
You are...
[ ] Male
[ ] Female
[ ] Either
[ ] Neither
Your name is...
[ ] Write in something Strangereal
