July 26, 2009 - International Space Station - Earth - Sol System, Milky Way

The crew of the ISS were busy with their daily tasks when a warning siren blared to life. The crew scrambled to their assigned stations to see what was the problem. A Russian Cosmonaut was looking at the radar telemetry station when his eyes widened in horror.

“Tracking an inbound object on a direct impact trajectory. Size of the object appears to be 3 meters in diameter.” His face held an expression of horror. “It’s going to tear through the center of the station.”

“How long do we have to evacuate?” a Japanese scientist asked.

The Russian looked over the data and the color visibly drained from his face. He somberly turned toward his fellow crew and uttered “It has been an honor serving wi-”

The space station erupted in a nuclear fireball as the alien missile impacted the Zvezda Service module sending burning chunks down into the atmosphere.

July 26, 2009 - The Facility - Köroğlu Mountain Range - Bolu Province, Turkey

“Ma’am an air burst explosion was just reported over Africa and NASA is reporting the ISS has just gone dark.”

MacKenna frowned at the view screens. “So it finally begins. Did we detect anything leading up to the impact?”

“No Ma’am,” replied a radar technician. “No monitoring station or space agency reported has anything either, at least not on any official channel we’re part of.”

“Issue a recall of any personnel currently on leave, assuming they aren’t already on their way here. Patch me through to Port-aux-Français.” She drummed her fingers on the console by her chair while she waited.

“Port-aux-Français here. We’re seeing the news right now if you’re calling about the loss of the ISS.” Dr. Guirade said as his image appeared on one of the screens. “French news stations are calling it a freak accident, and I presume the rest of the world is reporting something similar. We’re fairly certain it was an attack. I’m not sure how I feel about this finally happening. It’s been nearly twenty years. On one hand the waiting is finally over. On the other hand, we’re realistically no closer to being prepared than we were on day one of the Project.”

“What’s to stop them from attacking the rest of Earth like they just did with the ISS?” he continued. “Unless we’ve greatly overestimated their level of technology, they could destroy us and there isn’t anything we could do.”

MacKenna sighed at this old argument. “We’ve been over this before. They’re probably after resources and we’re just in the way.” She paused with a thoughtful expression on her face, “Or we’re the resource. We simply won’t know until their fleet shows up on our doorstep. We’ve not detected anything larger than those small craft in the asteroid belt leaving Titan yet, but we didn’t detect the first ship back in ninety-two until it was burning through out atmosphere. I don’t know if their warships just have better technology to avoid radar returns or something more exotic is preventing us from detecting anything, but we’ll have to wait and see. Keep us updated, MacKenna out.”

August 1, 2009 - The Facility - Köroğlu Mountain Range - Bolu Province, Turkey

The base alarm system started blaring out Alarm Red as the command room launched into action. The communications officer responsible for the hitting the alarm reached over and hit the button for the base intercom. “Alarm Red. Radar Contact within Atlantic Theater of operations. Alarm Red.”

MacKenna reached for her phone, hit a few buttons and waited on the line, before a voice acknowledge the call.

“Get planes in the air and have the NPS Freedom on stand-by. Get two teams prepped and ready for insertion if we manage to bring it down. Have the NPS Hercules on stand-by for a potential water recovery. Have the Hercules ready for salvage recovery either way. We might be putting that modified container ship to use.” She couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. Seventeen years of preparing, training, and building up the assets necessary for this one pivotal moment. She got up and left her office heading for the command center.

August 1, 2009 - Flight Control Tower - NPS Viraat - North Atlantic Ocean

“Our birds are in the air. Flight is en-route to target, ETA 11 minutes. Bogey is moving at roughly Mach 3 and on an intercept vector with the flight. That thing is fast, sir, faster than our boys can fly.”

“Has the target change course since it came through the atmosphere?”

“Yes sir, when we launched our fighters, the target veered from it’s original course and moved to intercept. It’s pretty agile, sir. It will be in missile range in eleven minutes. Can I voice a suggestion, sir?”

“Go ahead Seaman.”

“We might want to talk to the R&D folks back at The Facility and see if they can modify some SR-71 Blackbirds to be combat capable.”

“That’s a good idea. If this is indicative of their usual flight speed, we don’t have anything else that can match it.”

“Aircraft are entering engagement range sir. Communications, do you have the radio feed?”

“Yeah, want it on the control room intercom?”

“No, just relay anything important to the Captain. Commander, they’ve loosed their sidewinders. ETA to target twenty seconds.”

The Commander and the Seaman watched the computer readout that was giving nearly real time data. The icons for the four missiles in flight were closing in on the UFO. Two missiles appeared to have missed the target and detonated behind the craft, while two appeared to be direct hits. The icon was still there since as far as anybody knew they weren’t using any kind of IFF system. The seaman turned to the radio operator.

“What are they saying? Was the target destroyed?”

“Negative, two direct hits, one partial deflection that appeared to stagger the aircraft with out knocking it out of position, one miss. Pilots are loosing their AMRAAMs at short range before engaging with the vulcans.”

They all watched as the second salvo of missiles streak across the short distance of only a few miles before they all impacted successfully.

“Pilots report target is going down. Repeat Target is crashing.”

The Commander reached for a red phone nearby, “Where’s the landing, sea or land?”

The radar tech did some calculations before responding, “At it’s current rate of descent, it’s going to impact somewhere in Newfoundland, Canada.”

The commander reached for the phone to contact the Freedom when the radio operator spoke up.

“Sir! The craft launched a pair of missiles from rear launch tubes on it’s way down. Sir, we’ve lost our birds in the air.”

“Confirm, both birds are grey.” Said the radar tech.

The Commander swore under his breath before picking up the phone. “NPS Freedom? Get the ground team ready. We’ve lost our boys. If anything survives that crash, give them hell.”