The bus stopped and picked up survivors, all bleeding, all in shock, most having no hearing at all. The dead were everywhere. They drove us to Stamford, Connecticut. We were taken to the hospital, and that’s where I stayed for the next week. After that, I was released, and I made my way to an aunt in upstate New York. I spent the war there, recovering most of my hearing and eventually working in a new shuttle plant. Just one of many in that area.
Because of my previous experience, I was placed in quality control. I didn’t know anything about shuttles or electronics, but I have a fine eye for detail and looked for what they wanted me to. We produced twenty-five percent of all shuttles made during the war. I am proud of that.
I returned to the Met after the war. I feel at home here, among the art. In a way, it feels like coming home. The place had been closed for five years and needed a lot of cleaning and restoring. New York has come alive again, though nothing like what it used to be. (pauses) I just get so angry. So much was lost. Most of the greatest artists, poets, writers, and philosophers were all here or in other major cities. Why couldn’t they have attacked those country people who know nothing? (she cries) I’m sorry, I’m sorry… that was wrong. Please, I miss my family, my friends, my life. It was all taken from me. I don’t wish harm on anyone else. I would never wish what happened to me on someone else.
Tim “Jackknife” Butler
Atlanta, George
I pull into parking lot A of Atlanta International Airport, park, and head to a coffee shop next to domestic Terminal B. The airport is bustling, people moving to catch a flight or returning from one. A group of sailors pass me, their black Terran Space Command uniforms in immaculate condition. They give me a nod and keep walking.
The airport is quieter than before the invasion but still full of life. Gone are the sounds of wide-body jets taxiing and taking off. The new passenger shuttles using anti-gravity technology keep this place quiet as a suburban neighborhood. I walk up to the coffee shop to see a middle-aged man in an airline Captain’s uniform waiting for me.
I was a flight commander for a group F-35As based out of Utah when the Veech arrived. I had just arrived at work, prepared to ram through some paperwork and get out early for a long weekend. I had just sat down when I got the first phone call. It was 9:30 A.M. I was told by my C.O. to bring my squadron up to ready status. That’s it. It was definitely strange. I tried to ask for more information, but he gave me nothing. A lot of thoughts went through my head. I thought at first it was a drill or some visiting dignitary, but my C.O. didn’t sound right. Whatever the case, orders were orders, so I stood up the squadron. We were ready. Then, we waited. We waited for an hour. I listened to the guys throw various reasons for their call up but stayed silent. I had nothing to add. Then I got my second call of the day at 10:38 A.M. Mountain Time. Aliens.
Yeah, my initial thought was that it was a joke. I thought maybe the other squadron commander was trying to pull one off on my guys and me, but that went out the window when he contacted me with the same perplexed and suspicious attitude. He thought we were the ones trying to get him. (Smiles.)
We conferred and realized that our C.O. wasn’t messing with us. Then one of the techs piped in a video of the ships sitting in space. That did it. The squadron room exploded with questions. It was that moment you’ve thought about for fun, but never really seriously, you know? A piece of your world crumbles as if you start to doubt everything you know to be true. It was… surreal.
We waited and waited. We didn’t have any information, though people were scrambling all over the place. Confusion. That’s the best way to describe it. I tried to call some of my contacts in the Pentagon, but nobody was answering. It was aggravating. I let my guys call their families but told them to keep the aliens out of it. Most of them told their families to stay inside, that sort of thing. I did the same thing.
Then we waited and watched. We were glued to that screen like it was the Second Coming. The guys were all experienced pilots, they knew the game of hurry up and wait, but this was something new. The tension in the room was thick. Anxiety. Fear. Adrenaline. We had it all. One of the guys, a clown named Will, tried to keep the mood light by going over things he had learned from sci-fi novels. He told us we needed to splash them with water or give them riddles. It helped.
We watched in real-time as the ships sat there. I remember it like it was yesterday. I think it was another hour or so before the media picked up on it. We switched to one of their channels instead of the satellites our tech guy had accessed.
We finally got word that the brass was waiting on orders. Nobody wanted to be seen as the aggressor, so they kept our jets grounded. The guys didn’t like that, but that’s just how they are.
After five hours of waiting, we saw the Veech launch their missiles. We couldn’t believe it. We knew theoretically it could happen, but we convinced ourselves that they wouldn’t attack after five hours of sitting. We watched as they shot out of the cruisers, then slipped right through our defenses. We didn’t stand a chance.
We saw them hit Earth. I remember the room being deathly silent. We couldn’t stop watching it, you know? It’s weird, but I can remember that moment with such clarity – the shock and fear, the sheer outlandishness of it. I imagine I’m not the only one who can remember it so vividly. There was no explosion, and for a minute, we had hope, but word soon came in about a sonic weapon. We didn’t know what that meant.
Being in Utah, we weren’t close to any of the impact zones, and we hadn’t heard a thing. A minute later, we got the go-ahead as their transport ships were seen opening and launching shuttles at Earth. The guys scrambled to their jets in record time, nobody wanting to waste a second. We were already launching when we received orders to head to L.A.
En route to L.A, my squadron was joined by two more coming from New Mexico. Word came down that the shuttles had landed in L.A. and were unloading ground troops. We couldn’t get there fast enough.
In all, we were joined by fifteen squadrons on the way to L.A. We were told our orders and objectives, then set loose. It was a fantastic sight. Almost five hundred of the most advanced aircraft in the world flew into L.A. like angels of justice. We were ready for some payback.
Did you know about their shields?
Nope, not a thing. I believe we were the first to engage the Veech, so nobody had information on them. We found out fast, though. We launched missiles at their shuttles – fat things that couldn’t miss. But we did miss, or rather, a number of our missiles did. They had some tech that threw off our locks. When we did hit them, a transparent dome would light up around the ship. The day couldn’t get any stranger, so we just kept hitting them. We finally got one, and it was a sight to see! The thing exploded with more power than it should have. Must have taken out a thousand or so troops unloading from it. That’s when the fighters, or interceptors, as they call them, showed up. There were hundreds of them, and it turned into the biggest air battle in history.
The fighters were sleek metallic things with four wings, which we called X-wings. Yeah, I know, but what can I say? They looked familiar. They could fly, I’ll give them that. They turned on a hair and had terrific acceleration. We simply couldn’t compete. We were annihilated. Our systems couldn’t track them, couldn’t lock on. The few times we did, their shields protected them. They were too fast. That’s the simple truth of it. The battle turned into a disaster for us. We lost unit cohesion, and our formations broke down, which just made everything worse. We flew into death that day. (He stops talking, takes a sip of coffee.) We lost a lot of good pilots. Will, the clown guy, died in the first few seconds.