It being the twenty-first day of the month, many in Leiben were surprised with the cloudless sky upon waking that morning.

Despite first appearances, however, over the course of the day cycle the city was wracked by powerful gusts of wind, the squat, aerodynamic buildings that dominated the capital channeling those gusts into its streets and alleys, effectively turning them into wind-tunnels. By early afternoon, most commuting was being conducted via the metro system and subterranean walkways that interconnected the buildings, and as a result very few citizens were topside when the solar flare alarm began to sound. The few up top who did hear the intermittent blare found it all quite odd, not so much due to such flares being a rare occurrence, but because of the peculiar manner in which it all happened.

There was a sudden, intense flash from the sky above, and all those who happened to be looking up were momentarily blinded, feeling sudden warmth on their faces they hadn't known over the last few days. Many kept their eyes to the sky a moment longer, finding it strange that the quickly dissipating flash had originated separately from the red sun further south, a few of them wondering whether it was some strange atmospheric phenomenon due to solar wind striking the upper atmosphere.

Even those citizens, however, soon found themselves bounding towards the nearest building or underground access point as the alarm's urgent blare began to make itself heard. No one wanted to be caught topside once the flare's full force hit the planet. The alarm had choked momentarily before singing out with all its might, something else those who had heard it before didn't remember having ever happened. By the end of the first minute after the event's onset, every window in the city had been shuttered and every citizen evacuated to a safer place, all except for the ATS users.

Almost every transport vehicle of the Automated Transit System inexplicably sputtered to a complete stop, their panicked passengers being forced to use the manual overrides to exit their allotted cars, some even having to shatter the side windows with little glass-breaking hammers. The few hundred ATS commuters scurried towards the nearest refuges, the unforgiving wind buffeting them violently as they hurried along like drunks in a footrace, some glancing to the sky with barely-suppressed panic while others laughed at the unexpected adventure.

By that time, almost every alarm system crammed inside a cramped room within the Anti-Air Threat Artillery Command Center had been muted, their overwhelmed operators struggling to take stock of the situation.

*****

Donovan Gaeta had been an AATACC Second-Lieutenant for more than two years, and the small, comfortable, air-conditioned Detection and Response Room was slowly becoming a second home to him. One year short of the thirty five year promotion barrier, Don had finally been evaluated as officer material, his electronic warfare background having weighed heavily in favor of the decision.

The promotion's details didn't matter, however. What mattered to him was the net effect it would have on his life. His current employment was in a home appliance repair shop, and the extra pay from his part-time commitment to the forces, along with his recent promotion, were allowing him to entertain possibilities that only a few years ago he wouldn't have dreamed possible. Lisa had recently begun to hint that they should once again request endorsement for procreation. It was time for offspring number three, perhaps, she had whispered to him more than once. Don had decided that morning to discuss the possibility with the lieutenant who warmed the seat beside his.

First-lieutenant Mara Springer had more than twenty years of service and four childbirths under her considerable belt. She possessed a healthy dose of lucidity, a larger dose of humor, and happened to enjoy dispensing advice when encouraged to do so. After the usual morning formalities, their conversation had focused mainly on the weather and other futilities, until he had finally broached the subject of family planning. Mara had found interest in the subject-matter, and they had spoken all morning about licenses, parental financing and his wife's current state of health. By morning's end, as they enjoyed the best grub an Army with a tight budget could afford, he had quietly decided to become a father again. Everything of relevance having been said, the afternoon began to drag along more slowly, the operators trading point position with one another so Don could get some drill-time on the principal console.

The AATACC's DRR was Capicua's primary instrument for the detection and elimination of air and spaceborne threats against its capital. Mostly that implied the detection and tracking of Apollo-type asteroids or similar bodies by way of the Active Electronically Scanned Array, an old-world Radar system scavenged from the Adamastor, the system being complimented by an ultra high gain antenna array of similar origin for threat pinpointing and ID. The AESA was an old workhorse and had been upgraded several times, but as yet no replacement program had been developed out of the sheer expense such an endeavor would entail. In fact, the only recent addition to the collection of detection instruments was the Plasma InfraRed Emission Detector, a relatively recent investment that, duly coupled with the Disposable Laser Cartridge Artillery System, was expected to intercept any inbound hyper-velocity target over the city's upper atmosphere.

The PIRED and DLCAS were the brainchildren of those who had been particularly shaken up by the long-past phantom battle, and both systems were currently an integral part of Leiben's continuing bid to be the sole power on Capicua.

A warning blip suddenly made itself heard, the response room's mellow lighting correspondingly morphing into red. Surprised at the unexpected exercise, Don sat a little straighter, flicking his eyes towards Mara; she appeared bored and a little irritated by the interruption to her private thoughts.

"Threat identified!" Don said, a little louder than was really necessary. Mara annoyance intensified. She was once again sitting in the primary's seat and he had just spoken her line.

"Threat identified!" Mara barked, staring at her second with an expectant quirk in her brow. Feeling foolish, Don quickly slid up his display screen and assessed the incoming data.

"Threat inbound from LCO, heading towards the equator at 62 degrees latitudinal inclination. Velocity barely sub-orbital, vertical component almost nil, with an altitude a smidge over one hundred clicks. No threat of impact with Leiben or any other manmade infrastructure," he summed up.

"Sub-orbital ..." Mara whispered. More loudly, she addressed her second.

"No intervention necessary. Inform the artillery batteries to standby but to not, I repeat, to not fire against threat."

As Don hurried to comply, Mara took a closer look at her own screen's display, the only one between them that provided a visual representation of what was taking place; the three-dimensional image before her eyes displayed the curve of a planetary surface and, high up and moving in a lazy arc just north of Leiben's outskirts, a small yellow blip surrounded by a triangle.

"What's its cross-section?" she asked.

"It's tiny. Must be a meteor, probably no more than a few kilos."

"No meteor would be moving at sub-orbital speeds. This is man-made, Don. We're looking at a man-made something coming out of orbit. Or maybe this is just an exercise."

A debate broke out between them as to whether they were at the moment party to a simulation, and indeed Mara was beginning to suspect that that was the case. All orbiting objects more than five centimeters across had already been detected and their orbits characterized. All fifty five of them. And there was no indication that any would be returning to Capicua in the near future. Just as Mara was thinking that, however, the yellow blip vanished.

Several things suddenly happened at once. Every single alarm system inside the room simultaneously elected to bleat, blare, and otherwise buffet the operators with an overwhelming cacophony of sound. In the same moment their display screens caved in, and Mara suddenly found herself staring at a transparent glassy pane and, through it, at myriad flashing lights fixed against the wall, warning her that something was terribly wrong.

"What did we do?" Don asked, holding his hands away from his console as if suspecting he had pressed a wrong button.

"Nothing. Restart your computer."

Pressing the rapid boot button on the wall, she began to pray as she waited for a response. An impossibly long second later, their display screens came to life again, and Mara's relief was quickly overruled by fear for what she might find once all systems were running. Working fast, she digited her pass-code when the prompt appeared, barking at her second to hurry and do the same. Before assessing the visrep on her screen, she pressed the Call-to-Quarters alarm button and, quickly pulling the C-to-Q pass-code tag out from the crevice of her substantial bosom, she broke it and read the eight digit alphanumeric code concealed inside. Quickly digiting the code into the appropriate prompt, she entered, and a brand new hooting alarm began to make itself heard somewhere beyond the response room. Hollering at her second to evaluate and deactivate the remaining alarms, she finally opened the visrep on the screen before her.

What she saw there nearly stopped her heart.

Several dozen blips populated the entire lower thermosphere above Leiben, and were belting down fast over the capital of her world.

"We're under attack," she stated breathlessly.

"What do you mean, under attack? You just said it was an exercise," he countered.

Not saying a word, she turned her display screen towards him. The expression on his face made it clear that he was seeing her point. She hurried to make a decision.

"These are way too many targets to leave to human intervention. I'm removing execution authority from the ArtBats and handing it to the MAGE. Do you agree?" she asked, her chest heaving.

"Seventy-three – no, seventy-five ballistic targets inbound at over five clicks per sec. Yeah, I agree," he replied, and then they simultaneously did the same thing.

Removing pen-keys from their pockets, they inserted the devices into their respective slots on the consoles before them. All visual displays promptly disappeared, only to be replaced by a series of command options. Working quickly, they progressed through each option. The last one was for Mara alone.

She opted to engage the MAGE.

A corded telephone suddenly chimed beside Mara, startling her. The phone rang once more before the lieutenant managed to unfreeze herself and answer it.

"Say, what the hell is going on over there, people?" an outraged voice shouted from some obscure office in the Strategic Command Center. It was Lieutenant-Colonel Timmons, the center's most highly decorated asshole.

But Mara couldn't let him be one today.

"Colonel, sir, we were moments ago tracking a single space-borne threat as it passed over Leiben. It then detonated and almost knocked out our defensive capability. Since getting our systems back online we've been tracking seventy-five targets closing in on Leiben at over five clicks per second. I initiated the Call-to-Quarters alarm and passed execution authority to the MAGE –"

"You did WHAT?" her superior screamed from on other side. She winced at his sudden rage and wondered for the first time whether she had done the right thing. The colonel began to laugh.

"Well then, Lieutenant, we seemed to have jumped the gun a little here. You may not have realized it all cooked up in there, but the solar flare alarm has sounded over the city, compliments of our Flare Early Warning System. What you're seeing is a clear sign of interference from the higher atmosphere due to unusual solar activity. We are not, nor have we any reason to suspect we are about to be, under attack. Now just relax and keep your hands off the console so I can overrule that decision of yours."

"NO!" she shouted before she could stop herself.

The complete silence on the line was disheartening.

"Apologies, sir, but that decision can't be made without authorization of the SCC commander himself," she reasoned, thinking hard as she mentally reassessed what she had witnessed over the last minute.

"Sweetie, I know you think you're very smart, but if I inform the Colonel you engaged the MAGE under these circumstances, you will be court-martialed. Am I clear?"

"Yessir, I understand that, but if you're wrong and I'm right, in a minute or two we'll all be dead. Please listen, sir. If the signals we're receiving were radar phantoms, and my second's telling me we're up to eighty-three now, their trajectories would be erratic. Not ballistic! And certainly not nearly parallel to one another. My conclusion is that this is either an exercise or a legitimate strike. I'll stake my career on it, sir!"

There was a long pause as her superior pondered on her words.

"Well, sunshine, you're in luck today, 'cause I'm not in a mood to stake your career on this notion of yours. I am removing execution authority from MAGE and handing it to the ArtBats. Where it belongs. Have a nice day, dear." The line went dead, leaving a very distraught Lieutenant to stare at her screen as a cascade of inbounds rained down over her beloved city.

*****

The moment after Lieutenant Mara engaged the MAGE, the Master Gigabit Ethernet system was flooded with several terabytes of data that had accumulated in the response room's databanks since the first bogey's appearance. It took all of ten seconds for the silicone-germanium processors to upload and process the information, and to reach a decision. Accessing the General Military Network, it ploughed through all firewalls and hooked itself up to the six Artillery Batteries that belted the capital, as well as to the three primary instruments with which it intended to perceive its foe. Accessing the Active Electronically Scanned Array, Plasma InfraRed Emission Display and High Gain Antenna array directly, it dispensed with the response room's torrent of data, preferring the much more direct influx those systems could provide. The master system duly noted that the inbound targets did not appear on the scanned array and presumed that it was due to stealth technology on the Threat's part. In fact, the signals only showed up on the PIRED because their inbound trajectories through the lower thermosphere were leaving an infrared-emitting path in their wakes. The system calculated the probability of interception at the nearest target's altitude, which at that very moment was just inside the mesosphere. Dissatisfied with the results, it decided to wait, and instead prepared the Disposable Laser Cartridge Artillery System for firing operations.

Surrounding Leiben like somber sentinels, the Anti-Air Threat Artillery Batteries stood potently, each with three cannon pointed out towards a non-existent enemy on the horizon. Upon receiving orders, only four of the batteries activated; the remaining two were under maintenance, vital hardware components having been removed for repair.

The artillery system, better known as DLCAS, had been the subject of a fifteen year research program before finally being fielded, and centered on an entirely new way to fire cannon. Designed around its munitions, each unit possessed a ludicrous combined reinforced/perforated chamber, which once activated opened to allow a two-meter long, 200 millimeter shell to be inserted. The cannon then resealed their breeches and traversed their snubbed barrels up towards the sky. Once there, the cannons' instrumentation extracted specific data from the shells to assist in calibration, and then paused for further instructions.

Momentarily foiled in its intention to strike down the incoming targets, the master system relied instead on the High Gain Antennas for targeting. By themselves, the HGAs were nearly useless, possessing such a narrow field of vision as to render them incapable of detecting the incoming objects. Combined with the PIRED, however, the HGAs would be able to pinpoint each target's real-time location precisely enough for it to be engaged. There was a rub to contend with, however.

What allowed the PIRED to detect the objects at all was the infrared signature they produced as they tore through the thermosphere, compressing the already hot gases there to a point where IR emissions could be detected. But with such a steep descending angle, with such a powerful IR signature compared to its size, and at an altitude of over a hundred kilometers, the targets frustrated PIRED's attempts to supply the artillery system with the precise data necessary for interception.

Added to that was another complication. The high gain antennae were unable to penetrate the ever-intensifying plasma surrounding the objects, meaning these would have to descend until they were low and slow enough for the shroud to dissipate. The system calculated that, at the current rate of the targets' deceleration, the altitude of engagement would be thirty-five kilometers. And so it waited another twenty seconds, tasking several HGA components in pairs to each battery in advance.

As the nearest targets punched through the thirty-five kilometer mark at over three kilometers per second, the ionization dissipated enough for the high gain antennae to precisely map their trajectories and the laser cannon system began to be fed real-time data. Finally receiving the necessary vectors, each individual cannon acquired its respective target and began tracking operations. At 14H50, local time, Unit 2 of the 1st Anti-air Threat Battery reached a firing solution and electrically initiated its shell.

The shell cartridge's rear section consisted of a cylindrical block of high explosives, encased within a copper cylinder and surrounded by a carefully spaced solenoid, the casing and solenoid forming an open circuit at their extremities via an instrument package.

At rest, that circuit was devoid of current, but upon the shell's electrical initiation, a capacitor bank, hidden safely within the Battery infrastructure, instantly pumped a powerful electrical charge into the solenoid, generating an intense magnetic field between itself and the casing for the briefest of moments.

At the point of highest magnetic intensity, the electric detonator at the shell's base fired, sending a detonation wave coursing through the Elastomer-bonded Octogen main charge. Before five microseconds had passed, the expanding shock front reached the metal casing and began to deform it outwards into a funnel shape, distorting the magnetic field between itself and the solenoid until they contacted each other, and in doing so progressively short-circuiting the circuit along the shell's length as the wave-front advanced. The detonation wave raced along the entirety of the explosive charge, the expanding plasma plasticizing its metal container, torturing it into a magnetic field-distorting, electrically inducting tube, and so causing a significant fraction of the explosive charge's stored chemical energy to be transformed into electrical current.