Matt Black - Book 1 of Re-Forge

Acts of Desperation

Defender and her crew stood ready to defend the Luna Colony at the 'L1' La Grange point. They watched video streams from Western ships attacking the French vessels that launched their ICBM's. The video data would be stored as a historical testament to those who perished and would be a warning to the future generations should Defender and the Luna defence, prevail. The video data stream bought home the horrifying POV reality of Armageddon.

Humanity had lived with this possibility since the nineteenth century, but nobody honestly thought humankind would be stupid enough to let a real Armageddon scenario unfold, but it had become a reality, right in front of their eyes. The crew of Defender and the Luna Colony witnessed as billions of souls perished and the beautiful planet Earth began turning cloudy, filled with roiling brilliant white flashes and deep red fire as nuclear missiles detonated in the upper atmosphere.

Gut-wrenching horror gripped them as the world that had birthed most of them was engulfed in fire. Defender's AI identified many hundreds of missiles launching from this side of the planet and was tracking all of them. The number was updated in real time from Canada Central until its signal was lost.

Matt looked at the disbelief on the faces of his bridge crew at the growing number of missiles launched. Matt thought: "More than two thousand and the entire Luna Colony's population is seeing everything that Defender saw."

Matt looked at Andy and said: "Andy, what is the ETA of the first missile."

Andy jumped as if Matt had given him an electric shock and far too loudly, he said: "Yes, Sir. ETA is in nine hours at their current velocity, and they are quite staggered, Sir."

Andy was also monitoring comms in Sharon's absence, and he said: "Sir, communications from the Earth Command Central has ceased."

Then he waited before saying: "All contact with Earth is lost."

Matt nodded and said: "The electromagnetic pulses from nuclear detonations will make communication impossible anyway, but it doesn't look good from here."

There was plenty of time for all of them to witness the end of all life on the planet below before the first missiles arrived. Matt was surprised at the reduction in numbers of attacking weapons as they detonated, and to confirm what he suspected he asked: "Carl, would cause the multiple detonations we are seeing?"

Carl answered from the President's apartment on the Moon: "Captain Black, if the missiles were programmed to detonate when attacked, then shooting at one would cause it to detonate or, the shockwave of other detonations could also set them off in a chain reaction effect."

Matt felt a sinking feeling in his gut as he thought: "Detonating nukes in space posed the deadliest scenario. This ruled out close quarter laser attacks until there was no other choice."

Aloud he said: "Do we have enough missiles, XO?"

Josh shrugged his shoulders and answered: "Captain, the real problem is the shockwaves created by multiple nuclear detonations. There is nothing to diminish the force of the shockwave, except distance. Their shockwaves are going to impact our defences as they close with us."

"Captain, our entire space bound defence network at the La Grange point has a total of two thousand anti-missile missiles. When we exhaust those, we still have one hundred and forty ships with lasers to put in the way and seventy missile platforms in total."

Joshua finished by saying: "After that, we still have Defender. This will become a battle of attrition, Captain. If we fail, the surface to air H/D laser batteries on the Luna surface will be the last line of defence. We have no other means of defending our colony should those assets fail."