Early Warning

Being stuck at the sensor stations was about as boring as it gets. You’re shipped there by the company and then you’re stuck in a cramped space station for a week-long shift. Calling it a space station was actually rather generous given the reality. A civilian sensor station was a cramped box floating in the depths of space. At least the military RSOs had a little more leg room and accommodations. But not Bravo-Six-Two.

There, Milo and Jared spent their day between two daily shifts staring at screens in a dark room lit only by bright monitor screens. Beyond that room, there was one hallway, which either turned left, towards the bathroom and bunk beds, or right, towards the hangar where a small shuttle waited. While one slept, the other one stared, then the other one stared while the other one would go to sleep. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

It was Jared’s turn to stare and his eyes were fixed blankly at the screen. Usually he would be reading some magazine, but this time he was just sleeping with his eyes open. Then, he was startled awake by the sound of the monitor screen pinging loudly. He rubbed his eyes sleepily and squinted at the screen, still foggy and puzzled by the irregular interruption.

“Hey, Milo.” He called to the other sleeping person in the room, who was leaning back in the only other chair on the outpost with a book resting over his face. “Hey Milo, wake up!” He gave the man a light slap on the leg and they stirred. “Check this out will ya? We got something on the sensors.”

Milo groaned. “What kind of something? A ping or whisper?” He removed a book from his face and fitted his glasses back on as he got up to lean over Jared’s shoulder who was typing briskly. Jared began a computer analysis of the sensor feedback.

“No man, we got…a whole slipspace ripple going on! From the system’s edge. Here, look!” Jared poked at a specific part of the screen with his finger. “Frame Y-118-055!”

Milo leaned closer to the screen and his eyes widened. “Shit, were we expecting any navy here?” Jared spun in his chair a complete three-sixty degrees and look at him bewildered.

“Are you fucking kidding me? There isn’t any fleet like that anywhere near here!”

This can’t be good. The computer finished its analysis, and the whole room was plunged into an eerie glow as their screens flashed red and blared. Computer analysis confirmed alien slipspace signatures.

“Oh god…it’s the aliens! They’re here!” cried Jared.

Milo’s mind snapped into action; instead of paralyzing it, dread whipped his reflexes into overdrive. “How far out are they? How many are we talking?” He demanded. What if it’s just a scout? Milo thought to himself. If they warned the UNSC now, there could still be a chance that they could stop this before it began.

“Reading more than thirty signatures, no forty! More pouring in! My god, it’s an army!” Jared trembled, his voice panicking. “We have to get out of here!” Jared jumped from his chair and ran for the hangar. The screen he left behind along with his spinning chair showed a field of slipspace signatures on a direct course for Charybdis IX, and Bravo-Six-Two was sitting directly in their path.

“Hold it, Jared! We need to sound the alarm! Get back here!” But he was already gone. “Damn it!” Milo cursed as he jumped to the console and began emergency procedures. If they didn’t send out a warning now, then the entire planet would be caught completely unprepared. At his command the computer sent a warning message on a priority channel directly to CENTCOM containing their findings and relevant data. If they acted quickly enough there would still be time for an evacuation. Now, only one thing left to do.

“Enacting the Cole Protocol,” He said to himself for the first time in his life as he released a self-deleting worm into the system. The worm would wipe out all data on Bravo-Six-Two’s database; navigation data, star charts, ship traffic logs, destinations, colony data, all of it, and then erase itself, leaving nothing for the Covenant to use.

“You may have found Charybdis, but you’re not finding another one…” Milo swore.

He got up to leave for the hangar but stopped and looked back at the monitor. On it, Charybdis IX was a small blue dot in a vast sea of black. But that tiny dot had millions of people on it and they had no idea of what was coming. More than forty angry red icons were steadily closing in on it. Looking one last time at what was to come, Milo ran after Jared.