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Micah Gurley: Invasion Day: An Oral History of the Veech War

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Micah Gurley Invasion Day: An Oral History of the Veech War

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Three billion people died the day the Veech appeared. Forced to reconcile with the world-shattering fact that humanity isn’t alone in the cosmos, the resulting war for the future of mankind shaped humanity’s destiny and challenged it to grapple with its place in the universe. For the men and women who survived Invasion Day and the devastating war that followed, their stories paint a picture of the everyday struggle and experiences of the regular folk who carved out a living at a time when the very future of our species was uncertain. Delve into their stories. Through riveting interviews with ordinary people from all walks of life, Invasion Day explores the human experience and how humans found the strength to keep going when everything they loved was at stake. These are their stories. cite

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Colonel Nathan Kratz’s office is in a large room with unadorned walls. Bare fluorescent bulbs hang from the ceiling, filling the room with light. Clutter fills the office, with manuals lining the walls, chairs, and an old wooden desk. Behind the desk sits Colonel Kratz. He’s a small man who doesn’t fill out his Air Force uniform. Thin with short black hair and wire-rimmed glasses, he leans back in a leather chair, with a knee resting on his gunmetal desk.

You want to know what everyone else wants to know, right? Why didn’t we know about the aliens? I don’t have all the answers; you need to talk to someone higher – if you can find one left alive. Look, I’m a colonel, and I’m only thirty-eight, and that’s because high command was gutted.

We lost thousands of admirals, generals, commanders, and colonels at the Pentagon. In short, they cut off our head. We had contingencies, but it left us reeling.

Most of the military people who knew earlier than the populace – and there weren’t many of them – were here or in Houston, so they’re dead. Shouldn’t have placed all our brass in big cities I quess. I was based in NORAD at the time, so I got lucky, but our ranks were thin out there. I can tell you what I know, but others have pieced it together a lot better than me. I think most of it is unclassified now, so anyone can see it.

I’ll give you the same answers I’ve given everybody else. We didn’t see them. We didn’t even know where they transitioned in at. Hell, we didn’t realize you could transition because we didn’t have the technology back then. We know now that you can only transition beyond the heliosphere, which is nine billion miles from Earth. Nine billion!

They could have hit a Lagrange point to transition into, which would have been a lot closer, but we’ve learned that most species won’t use a Lagrange point without doing some very fine science to make sure it won’t rip their ships apart. And to be honest, they didn’t need to. All they had to do was transition far enough away that the chances of us seeing them were low, and even if we did see them, so what? We couldn’t do anything about it.

We had telescopes that could see that far, of course, but space is enormous, and we weren’t looking for visiting aliens. Anyway, the Veech transitioned in, then used good, old-fashioned propulsion to get here. Based on the information we’ve gotten from other space-faring races, the Veech might have been observing us for a while though, checking us out or laughing at us. Who knows? We know they launched a few stealth shuttles at us before launching their invasion, but we don’t know much more than that.

I know I’ve said it before but the science was theoretical to us. We just didn’t have the knowledge to understand it, much less expect it. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office finally picked them up at seven million miles, and it was reported immediately but got snagged at almost every office on the way up. People would see the report about an alien ship, think it was a joke, and either ignore it or ream out a subordinate for playing a stupid joke. Well, It finally made it up the chain but by that time the Veech were sitting in orbit.

They parked fifty miles beyond the Kármán line, which is what NASA considers the edge of space. That’s sixty-two miles from Earth. Well, you can imagine what happened when it was confirmed. Chaos. Hysteria. Even after seeing it for themselves, a lot of guys just didn’t believe it. I have to admit, I was one of them initially. I thought it was a trick from China or Russia. Maybe a software attack to make us look like fools. Sadly, it was real.

There were fifty-one ships in their little flotilla, and they surrounded the Earth. There were two types of ships. The large vessels, their transport ships, were over five hundred meters long and seventy-five meters wide. There were thirty-eight of those. Spaced between the transport ships were a leaner, shorter ship that didn’t park in orbit but patroled between them. These were their battlecruisers, and they brought twelve of them to protect the fleet. Bit of overkill, really.

After we spotted them, they sat there for five hours. Five hours for everyone down here to scramble frantically about what to do. I heard there were planned responses for things like this, but none of those plans could be dusted off and reviewed quickly enough. I mean, who stays up to date on the response to extraterrestrial visitors. We got no calls, no greetings, no threats, no communication of any kind from the aliens.

The President and his science team were discussing attempts to communicate with the aliens using various means. Blinking lights, satellite, radio, even pictures, but they didn’t have enough time to implement anything. Politicians don’t work like that. They have to discuss everything, have panels, meetings, maybe even a poll. (He pauses, takes a sip of coffee.) Five hours was just enough time to cause a panic.

Word leaked quickly. You can’t keep something like that secret. We had reporters from every magazine, news channel, and vlog that existed. They had shots of the ships in orbit, some of them with pretty good quality. Who knows where they got them from, but there are some excellent civilian telescopes, and the ships weren’t that hard to see.

The reporters were to be ignored until someone had an answer for them, some information to share, but nobody had any, so officials were told not to accept questions. That didn’t stop the press from their usual doom-and-gloom broadcast, only this time it was true. That’s when the panic in the cities started. Fortunately, the panic wasn’t that bad because everything happened too fast. If the Veech had sat there for days, the whole planet would probably have erupted in riots or something. But most people didn’t even hear about it until it was too late do anything. A lot of people never even heard about it. I have to hand it to the media – they’re quick. They got that story out much faster than the government could have. Still, it was too late.

After those five hours, we picked up activity from the battlecruisers, deadly looking things that moved lower into the atmosphere. They launched missiles at us. Well, they weren’t exactly missiles, but it was undoubtedly a launch. Our missile defense systems failed against them. Miserably! There were just too fast, and our systems weren’t designed for those speeds. Not even close. It was like a raptor flying against a World War 1 bi-wing.

If it hadn’t been so terrible, it would have been laughable. We even had some of our pilots try to ram the things, but they were too slow to even intercept them. Then they hit. Every city in the world with over one million people got hit, with only a few exceptions. San Antonio was one of the lucky ones for some reason. Of course, D.C. got hit.

For a heartbeat, we thought maybe something went wrong with the weapons. We didn’t see explosions or fire. Some even cheered when they saw our great cities standing. It didn’t take us long to get images from our satellites. Sonic weapons. That’s what they used. It still boggles the mind. I mean, I don’t think anyone had ever thought of using sound weapons like that, and certainly on such a scale. There’s no doubt about how effective they were. Everyone within a ten-mile radius was killed instantly, with those further out becoming deaf or having a host of other medical issues. Twenty-five million gone in a minute! That’s not counting the old or young that died shortly after from their wounds or those that died in rioting, crime, or accidents from people freaking out in the following hours and days.

Of course, China got hit the hardest as they had sixty-five cities with more than a million people. Estimates are that they lost over three hundred million in the initial attacks. We don’t know for sure because they’ve never given us any information.

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