Just another day in the office

"Mornin’, Fred.”
“Mornin’, Sam.  Ready for another exciting day of simulated space-based combat?”
“Sure!”  Sam stifled a yawn, sipped his grande mocha latte and asked, “hey - are we still in SIM mode?”
“Yup, Sammy.  Simming away as usual.”

Sam sighed and put his coffee down on his standard-issue gray workstation desk.  SIM mode, which stood for Strategic Infrastructure Manufacturing, meant that this would likely be another boring day with not much action to be had.

Sam and Fred settled into their neighboring office chairs amidst the cubicle farm that was the local IGCBCS (Inter-Galactic Computer-Based Combat Systems) office in New Liberty, the capital of their planet Cestus III.  (This always struck Sam as a bit humorous since Cestus I and II were just uninhabited asteroid fields. Couldn’t they just call it “Cestus”?)  Sam fired up his workstation and logged in to the IGCBCS system. He noted that the production, construction and research queues were still days away from finishing, and the long-range scanners were completely empty of movement.  Quite simply, there was a whole lot of nothing going on.

Sam checked the comm boards for the planetary guild and read through a variety of posts.  They included mundane discussions about the boredom of SIM mode, several cute captioned pictures of kittens, more than a few holo-pics of scantily-clad females of various species, and a couple of links to vid-clips of some band he’d never heard of.  Among these was only a single item of importance – a request from leadership to scout some known enemy systems.  So Sam dispatched a few scouts, noting they would take a few hours to reach their destinations.  That meant more “nothing to do” for a while.  He stretched in his chair.  “Hey, Fred.  You ever wonder about things?”

“Like what things, Sam?”
“Well, for one thing, all of us – I mean all the different planetary guilds – use the same exact ships and technologies.  Sure, some are stronger than others, but haven’t you wondered why no one has invented something new or unique?  A ‘game-changer’ if you will?”

“Actually, I’m here for the easy paycheck, not the existential conversations.  I just do my job and go home.”
“Seriously, Fred – surely you must have wondered once or twice about why we do what we do?”


Fred hated slow days at the office.  His queues were backed up for weeks and like Sam, his scanners were clear of traffic.  That meant he could expect long bouts of conversation with Sam.  He liked Sam, sure, but Fred was content being a punch-the-clock kind of guy.
“Sam, you need to read up on your history a bit more.  You know darn well that it’s the IGT that dictates what we can and can’t do.”

The Inter-Galactic Treaty, signed centuries before, abolished all physical combat and decreed that all future conflicts would be resolved via computer-based combat simulations with strict boundaries and rules.  Each planet made up a “guild” and “fought” against or formed alliances with the others.  All within the universe of linked computer systems.

“Yeah, well the IGT is responsible for stifling creativity and shutting down progress then!  We haven’t built anything military for centuries.”
“And what would you need that for, Sam?  We’re all on the IGCBCS now.  Plus centuries of peace courtesy of the IGT you so despise means you and I can go to our jobs in this lovely office without worrying about bombs falling on our head from orbit.  It didn’t use to be that way you know.  What’s so bad about that?”
“Well, for one thing, we’ve probably forgotten how to build those things by now.”

“As if that matters!   Who would we use them against?  Every single populated planet in the galaxy signed the treaty...”

Sam sighed for a while, wondering if he should even mention what was running through his head at that moment.  Fred was a good fellow, a solid co-worker and sort-of friend.  But the next thing Sam wanted to discuss could – well, it could make Fred think he was nuts.  “What the heck?” he thought.
“Fred?  You know about the legend of the Drekons?”
“Sure, who doesn’t?  It’s always good for scaring the little Junior Space Scouts around a campfire.  Wait, you don’t seriously believe –“
“Fred”, Sam interrupted.  “There’s a guy a couple blocks down on the corner of Astro and Empire every day – just outside the Starbuck’s.  You seen him?  Sort of a crazy homeless dude?”
“Is he the guy with the signs and the fliers and stuff?  I don’t get down there very often.”
“Yeah.  He was always yelling things like ‘The end is near, repent now!’ and ‘The Drekons are coming for YOU!’ and stuff like that”.
“I don’t see what that has to do with –“

“Fred, I go to that coffee shop every morning on my way in to work.  I bet you didn’t know his name – it’s Jeremiah.  He used to work for IGCBCS - in this very building, in fact, and he was pretty high up in the leadership if he’s to be believed.  Fred, he’s been there on that corner every day for the past 11 years, that’s how long I’ve been working here.  EVERY day, Fred.  Except now he’s been gone for the last 3 days.”
“So?  He’s a crazy homeless dude!  He probably got drunk and thrown in jail or he died, he was kinda old you know.”
“What if it’s something else?  What if, just maybe he knew something?”

“And did what?  Hijacked a trade ship and took off for an empty gas giant?  Look, Sam.  I like you. You know that.  We work well together on ops and stuff.  But the ‘legend of the Drekons’ is just that – a legend.  There is no race of scary aliens who are going to come back with super-advanced weapons and terrorize everybody.  It’s just a story.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some serious SIMming to do.”

The rest of the day was uneventful. Sam’s scouts found nothing unusual on the enemy jump gates, and the comm boards were fairly quiet.  Still, he couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness and maybe even dread when he thought about the sudden disappearance of old Jeremiah. 

At the end of the excruciatingly long day, they said their goodbyes and headed home.  As they headed out Fred shouted, “watch out for them Drekons, Sam!  They’ll get ya!” which caused some chuckling and puzzled looks from the incoming B shift employees.

Later that night, Sam was awakened by a prolonged beeping.  It was in incoming comm marked urgent from Fred.  His curiosity piqued, he answered right away - it was highly unusual for Fred to contact him outside of work, let alone in the middle of the night.  If the guild was under attack or something, the night shift guys would deal with it. 
“What’s up, Fred?  It’s 2 am!”
“I know, I’m sorry.  But this is important!  Listen, Sam.  You know my brother Barney, right?  The one who works at the spaceport?”

Sam rubbed his eyes.  “I suppose?  What’s this about, Fred?”
“Listen, this is gonna sound weird but hear me out.  Barney works the night shift in Traffic Control, specifically he operates the long-range scanners.”
“And?”

“I don’t know how to say this, Sam... he just comm-ed me a few minutes ago, totally freaking out about something.  He said that he’d picked up a large, unidentified fleet on a direct course to us.  There are no trade ships due in tonight, so CestusGov sent out a scout to check it out.”

 
Sam was suddenly wide awake.  This was without doubt the most interesting thing to happen on Cestus III in years.

“And?  What happened?  Who are they?”

Fred’s voice began to shake a little.  “Look, Sam – it’s like you said earlier.  Nobody has real ships any more.  At least not ships like these.  I can understand why Barney is freaking out!”
“Stay with me, Fred - what did the scout find out?”
“Sam, they blew it up!  Just like that, it was gone!  Before it was destroyed, it did a short-range scan and what it found is just crazy – crazy, I tell ya!  Readings off the scale – impossible numbers for propulsion, shielding, armor, and whatever energy source powered the weapons was unlike anything anyone has seen before!”

Sam’s first thought, that Fred was making fun of him for their earlier conversation at work, left him as he realized that Fred was being completely serious – and he certainly sounded quite a bit frightened.  Could it be that crazy old Jeremiah was right all along?  After all: real military ships, with high-powered weapons?  Nobody had used those for centuries!  Who else could it be but the Drekons, coming back?
“This is nuts, Fred!  Are you sure Barney’s not pulling your leg?”
“I wish, Sammy.  My neighbor’s wife works C shift at IGCBCS and she just called to say they’re being evacuated!  To where?  I didn’t even know we had an evacuation plan!”

Sam did a poor job of disguising his sarcasm.  “That’s ‘cause we don’t have one, Fred.  Why would we need one?  We also don’t have any military ships or even a single defense turret because we don’t need them either, right?”
“Sam, forget about that!  What are we gonna do?”
“How long did Barney say we had before whoever-they-are arrives?”
“He said around 45 minutes from when he spotted them.  But that was from before he called me, and he also called his wife, and my Mom & Dad in South Liberty first.”
“Damn!  That means we don’t have much time!  Listen, Fred – you’ve got to get out of the city, it won’t be safe in New Liberty.  We could head for the mountains, maybe meet up somew-“

Just then, the line went dead.  And the lights went out in Sam’s neighborhood.  All of them.  A low rumble shook the house like a mild earthquake.  Sam stepped out into the street, as did several of his neighbors.  They were shielding their eyes and looking at a very bright light that suddenly shone in the west, towards the outskirts of the New Liberty metro area.  Looking through squinted eyes, Sam spotted an enormous mushroom cloud.  “Oh man, that’s probably the Antimatter Plant going up!” Sam exclaimed.  “If I were an enemy, that’s what I’d hit first too”, he thought.
“What’s happening?” asked Mrs. Miller, his next-door neighbor.

Before he could reply, a series of explosions echoed through the neighborhood, strong enough to rattle the windows.  They came from the opposite direction, east, towards downtown and the IGCBCS offices.  The high-pitched whine of stellar propulsion systems could be heard over the distant booms.

Was the Legend of the Drekons really true?  To erase any doubt, he spotted a squadron of what had to be Heavy Bombers fly by overhead.  Thankfully they didn’t waste any of their payloads on his nondescript suburban area.

It was too late to try to get out of town, the bombardment was well under way and the power was out.  That meant his hovercar would be useless, since it got its power wirelessly from the AM plant like everyone else’s.  The Antimatter Plant was probably a pile of glowing slag burning a hole through to the other side of Cestus III by now.  This was it; he was trapped in his own neighborhood.  As he gazed upon the glow of numerous fires burning among the downtown skyscrapers, he tried to remember if the stories about the Drekons included anything about them taking prisoners...