Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers

One hundred million angels singin'

Multitudes are marchin' to the big kettledrum

Voices callin', voices cryin'

Some are born and some are dyin'

It's Alpha and Omega's Kingdom come

Johnny Cash - “The Man Comes Around”

The news from Zion hit Marshal Antuma like a thunderbolt. He’d grappled with the choice of where to send the second protecting force and came down to two choices. The two colonies outside of Sol that were the most important to humanity: Endymion...and Zion.

And he’d chosen wrong.

Perhaps the Khonhim had spotted the task force at Endymion and shifted targets. Or maybe it was bad luck. There were a thousand factors that may have played a part, not that it mattered now. He was almost tempted to shift the task force to one of the other colonies...Quivira, or Anzen, but forced himself to ignore that urge. It would be due to guilt and not tactical reasoning, so he kept the ships at Endymion and prayed.

Besides...he had a hunch the next target the Khonhim chose would be a little closer to home.

In fact, it surprised him they hadn’t struck Earth already. Destroying mankind’s birthplace would cripple their ability to retaliate, and the blow to morale scarcely bore thinking about. Given the chance, humanity could recover, in time, but they would never be the same. Man, without an Earth to call home...that kind of shock to the system would bring out the very worst in Homo Sapiens. It didn’t take a stretch of the imagination to predict their response...becoming a species that viewed everyone as a potential threat.

One that would have no compunctions adopting the philosophy; “Do unto others, before they can do unto you”.

In less than a generation, the other races of the Tetrarchy would become little more than slaves, serving the Terran Empire. And who knows what other species might lurk out there, plotting God knows what? They’d send out ships to scour the cosmos, and they would give every new race they discovered the stark choice of serving their new human masters...or suffering their wrath.

That possibility frightened him most of all.

So it was up to him to guard the solar system to prevent that from happening. There was one bit of good news in his favor, by sheer coincidence Mars and Earth were approaching opposition, which put them in roughly the same section of space. “Roughly” being the operative word, since even at their closest approach the two planets were separated by almost 60 million kilometers. If they’d been on opposite sides of the sun, he’d be faced with a grim choice...condemning millions of Martians to their fate to protect Mother Earth. At least they spared him that much, for all the good it did him.

His task force was currently scattered across the system, acting as his eyes and ears, while he and a handful of upgraded F-103D Starfire fighters flying escort held station above the two worlds. They had pressed every ship available into service to evacuate as many as they could, but it was a mere drop in the bucket. There weren’t enough vessels in the Tetrarchy to save everyone, and the imagery from Earth was gut-wrenching. Frantic families trying to escape, children torn away from their parents, security personnel forced to take increasingly drastic measures...while freighters and passenger liners packed to the gills raced away from the system like the plague ships of old, seeking any safe harbor.

But was anywhere safe?

There had been so many times in the last decade he’d wanted to scream, “I’m just a gamer!” His years in the Guilds had been fun, and he’d discovered he had a talent for tactics and strategy. He’d worked his way through the ranks to the very pinnacle of success, with a record that was still unrivaled...until the day they informed him he would now be doing it for real.

Nobody dies in a computer simulation. You don’t have to see their bodies or witness the devastation. You don’t have to write letters to the loved ones of fallen electrons, saying they died with honor. And even though Hélène had always been the maverick of the pair, the gambler who would take insane risks based on a hunch, on more than one occasion he’d made choices that condemned entire worlds of electronic avatars to death...because that’s what the numbers said. Kill a billion, save two billion.

Simple. Obvious. Cold.

Doing the same thing when real lives hung in the balance had almost destroyed him. He’d all but begged Minister Singh to relieve him for cause after the disaster at Uzaunx, only to be refused. They shot down every argument he made, and all for the same reason…that there was no one else. No one who had more experience. No one who had a better grasp of military theory.

No one.

Kwasi shook his head, forcing his mind away from that well-trodden path. Now was not the time for self-recrimination. Fate had thrust him into the role of Earth’s guardian and protector, and like Heimdall on the Bifrost bridge he would not waver in his duty...though he wasn’t so vainglorious to believe he possessed god-like powers. Be nice if he did, but as a mere mortal, he’d have to make do with the tools at hand. In fact…

An urgent signal pulled him out of his reverie as he punched the Accept icon. A face appeared on the screen. “Sir, we’ve got something,” the captain of the carrier Kestrel reported. “It’s stealthed and picking up speed...initial tracking data has it on a direct trajectory to Earth.”

“Where?” he demanded, as he signaled the other ships in the system.

“It slipped through the outer perimeter,” the captain grimaced. “It seems to use some masking technology we haven’t seen before. Current location is approximately 3.8 AU from Earth, just inside Jupiter’s orbit. ETA to Earth intercept...34 minutes.”

34 minutes? How did they get so close? “Flush your birds, Captain,” Kwasi ordered, as he tied into the Command circuit. “Marshall Antuma to all ships, we have a possible location of the RKKV. I’m ordering you to converge on those coordinates under maximum power.” He paused for a moment, as the acknowledgments started coming in.

“You are to stop that craft by any means necessary,” he informed the commanders, as he made the call. “There are ten billion people on Earth counting on us to save them. Nothing else matters.”

The flagship Jituttaz thrummed with power as it changed course, charging forward as it raced to intercept the planet-killer. Kwasi could almost feel the massive dreadnaught’s eagerness for battle as he brought up the display, his blood turning to ice in his veins as the cold equations told the tale. Kestrel was close, and its fighters might have a chance of engaging the enemy, but the numbers weren’t encouraging. They’d be firing from extreme range, and the hit probability for something moving at near light speed, and stealthed, were a poor bet by even Hélène’s standards. There was one ship that had even a prayer of intercepting the RKKV...and that was Jituttaz itself.

At least we’ll be bringing plenty of firepower, he thought. The Starfires on his flanks were far more deadly than the hastily constructed Comets of the previous war, and Jituttaz herself was no slouch either. Heavily armored, sporting multiple batteries of antimatter cannons, she could tear through the massive Khonhim ships they had faced before.

But would it be enough now?

Antuma watched the display as they closed the distance between them. The two vessels would intercept just outside Mars’ orbit, though the planet itself was well out of range. The clock seemed to tick down at an almost leisurely pace until the instruments declared they were nearing the target. They’d get only one shot at this; if they somehow missed, Earth would be a cinder well before they could be in range to try again.

“This is Antuma,” he said, “prepare to fire on my Mark. Five...four...three...two…”

A massive hit rocked Jituttaz, as klaxons began to scream all around him. “What the hell’s happening?” he howled when the dreadnought shuddered yet again.

“We’re taking fire!” his flag captain shouted back, and as he watched in dismay the Starfires began disappearing from his display, one by one. “Return fire!” Kwasi ordered as the damaged behemoth struggled to respond. The turrets were firing blindly...with the RKKV traveling at near light speed it forced them to rely on the sensor data of the other ships, but the data transfer was lagging farther and farther behind. The massive gun batteries had nothing to lock on to. They needed pinpoint accuracy to hit their target, and that was nowhere to be found.

Navigation, however, was another matter.

Kwasi inputted the command himself, as the damaged ship altered its course. There was no time to pass the order to the captain or the helm...and in the last few seconds, he prayed it would be enough.

They saw the resulting explosion from both Mars and Earth as Jituttaz and the RKKV impacted, rendering them down to their component atoms.