The Milky Way Saga: Cities to Embers (Book 1 of 3)

SECTION THREE-Chapter 11:Where There's A Will, There's A Way

0600 hours, August 29th, 2160

Kindle Colony, Venus, Sol System

I was awoken by a the screams of a siren. Never good, not at six in the morning. What the hell is going on? I was put on leave after the soldiers I was training for the DAWN armor systems graduated. I was told I was too valuable to lose in a fight that wouldn't hold any significance. I hated not doing anything, that's why I joined The Establishers when I did. I got bored of sitting in my home every day. No different than what I'm doing now. I stopped watching the news about a week ago, nothing but This planet lost, or that many casualties. I hated the fact that we were lossing and I was just watching it unfold on the news. But today, I would finally see some action.

"VICE ADMIRAL ISAAC AUGHER FREE, PLEASE REPORT TO FLEET ADMIRAL FORD'S OFFICE, IMEDIATELY." buzzed across the intercom after the sirens stopped. Must've been a test.  

I headed to Ford's office; I figured there was something important happening so I didn’t change from my sweat pants. I didn’t have a shirt on; I never liked wearing a shirt in bed. I ran down the halls, bare footed, watching all of the young men and women stumble out of their rooms. “What’s going on?” “What happened?” I reached the end of the hall and saw the look on everyone’s face. Either they were gawking at me because I had a big, shinning, smooth metal hump coming out of my back, or because they were worried about the alarms, I figured it was the latter.

“Everything is fine, go back to your rooms, drills start in forty-five minutes.” They all moaned, and shuffled back into their rooms. I turned around and knocked on the door that I to the main office, to Ford’s office.

He opened the door, looked me in the eyes, and moved out of the way, motioning me to come in. I followed his gesture and walked in and sat. He slowly paddled over to his desk, which had alert after alert popping up on the view screen/ hologram projector. He hit the switch under it and shut it off.

“That damn thing as been going off for over an hour, alarm here, alarm there. I just got one that might have to do with you and me.” He looked worried, which made me very uneasy. “What’s that, sir?” He picked up a piece of paper that had our names on it. It was from the President of the Republic.

“The paper read, ‘Dear Fleet Admiral Ford and Vice Admiral Free, this war has been strenuous on us all, you know more than any of us’,” He looked up at me, then to the picture he had of Bailey and I on his desk, I looked at the one of him and his wife and his son at graduation. He went on, “’It has come to our attention that we might not live to see out the end of this war, and we ask you, in our lowest point in time, of all history; Do whatever is necessary to win this war. I am giving you presidential access to any and all requests you may have. Our experts are estimating that we have only a month left to fight, let’s make sure these terrorists understand that humanity’s last stand will not be an easy one. Sincerely, President Alexander Harvard Nicholas.’ Do you understand what this means, Isaac?”

“Not exactly sir, no.” He stood up and walked over to his medal case, so clean and so well kept (just like everything else in this room) that you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s as old as his first medal, dating back fifteen years before I was born. He examined everyone individually, then took out his Medal Of Honor, and put it around his neck.

“It means we can do whatever you want or I want to do to make sure these alien bastards don’t get to Earth, and Venus. They’re all we have left. We need to give them all we’ve got.” I shook my head. This was the best thing we could’ve gotten, and we should’ve gotten it years ago. 

“Sir, now what do we do?” I didn’t know what answer I was looking for, I guess any answer really.

“We win.”