Timestamp: Event T-1.5 hours and counting...

Location: NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

It had been a quiet month for the men and women of NORAD: just the run of the mill stuff, like tracking two satellites falling out of orbit, or watching the launch of their replacements a few weeks earlier. Of course they always held their breath during those launches since they represented a forty-eight month building process, but outside of that things were pretty normal… in fact, it was so normal that it was hard sometimes for those sitting at the consoles monitoring space debris and working hardware that floated around the planet to remember what occurred not that long ago.

And, if one of them did forget, all it took to bring back those memories was to look at some of the pictures hanging on the back wall of the Main Monitoring room.

Although it was normally frowned on to have pictures hanging on the walls in the Cheyenne Mountain complex outside of personal quarters, the commanders of all operational shifts had talked to the commanding General and got him to approve of the pictures once they explained their reasoning for having them. The commanders then hung seven pictures.

Seven pictures that where taken by different persons, in seven different cities across America.

All of them with a common theme: all seven showing destruction. Destruction that staggered the imagination.

The first picture was a screen capture taken from a TV news cameraman that worked for a station in California, in the city of Los Angeles. What it showed was unquestionably the Griffith Observatory, or what was left of it as it also clearly showed that part of the building was flattened or missing.

No one knew for sure who took the second picture, but it was clearly taken in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a picture of the organ that was always seen in the background when the Mormon Tabernacle Choir preformed on television. The picture also clearly showed that most of the roof of the Tabernacle was missing, and a beam of sunlight was shining directly on the organ.

The third was taken in St. Louis, Missouri, by a newspaper reporter. The picture was of the St Louis Arch as it lay on the ground looking like a giant pretzel twist that had been broken in two.

The next was taken in Texas, near San Antonio. Like the first picture, it was a screen capture from a TV news cameraman from one of the local stations. The picture showed a simple limestone building that was constructed in the 18th century that had at one time been used as a Spanish Mission. It was missing one corner on the south side, and the damage gave the illusion that someone had shot the old building with a very large gun and had just nicked it.

The fifth was taken in New York and was, in fact, a collage of pictures. It was made up of photos that showed The Statue of Liberty, The Empire State Building, The Brooklyn Bridge and the UN General Assembly Building. Lady Liberty was missing her torch, the Empire State Building was missing the top tower complex, the bridge was missing some of the cables along with part of the decking, and the UN General Assembly Building was missing one complete side and in it's place, laying upside down, was a statue of a gun with a twisted barrel that had stood out front of the building. was now sticking out of the building where the missing wall should have been.

The sixth was taken in Orlando, Florida, by a reporter for the Times. The picture was of the Bio-Sphere from the Mouse-Eared "Future World" theme park. The magic wand on the sphere had the globe logo from another theme park skewered on it. The whole thing was lying on the ground with two black holes in the parking lot that so closely bracketed the whole thing that it gave the illusion of being part of it. The picture was taken from a helicopter that had to have been hovering high above and looking straight down on the site: making the whole thing look like a giant copy of the Mouse-Eared corporate logo poking at a large meatball with a stick.

The last was shot in Middleton, Colorado. It was taken by a Middleton High School Newspaper reporter and showed the Middleton Mad-Dog Football Stadium dressed out for graduation. It clearly displayed half of the seats missing, looking like they had been ripped out by something like a giant hand. There were people seated in the stands that were left and a large number of black gowned folks moving about on the field.

But there was something else common in each picture: A machine with four gray legs connected to a red and black saucer-like body. The whole thing looked like some giant crab from a bad 1950's sci-fi movie.

At the Griffith Observatory picture, the machine could be seen standing in the background. The same with the picture from Salt Lake, the alien-looking crab's pod top was seen though the hole in the roof. The picture from Texas had one laying on its side with a leg missing and a large hole showing at the top. The collage from New York showed one moving behind Lady Liberty, the Empire State Building had one with a leg raised as it was removing the tower. The picture of the Brooklyn Bridge showed a number of large helicopters with cables looped around a fallen pod as they tried to lift the thing off the bridge. And the UN General Assembly Building had two of the alien crab pods in it: one standing up in the background and another towering over the building with a leg raised like it was getting ready to stomp on some small insect that had gotten in its way. The picture from Middleton showed one flat on the ground dead center of the stadium, its legs sprayed out like someone had stepped on it.

The pictures had been up for a week, maybe two, when Lieutenant General Robert Smith entered the monitoring room on his normal inspection visit. As he looked at the back wall, he saw that someone had made a banner that ran the length of the pictures and had taped it above them. The banner only had one word on it written in very large letters:

Remember.

Lieutenant General Smith left the monitoring room without saying anything to anyone. He had gone straight to his office and, picking up his phone, made three calls. Three days later, Cheyenne Mountain maintenance staff entered the monitoring room and removed the banner. Everyone present turned from their posts and watched the crew remove the paper banner, then watched as it was replaced with a large bronze framed plaque that was the same size. The plaque had two words engraved on it:

Always Remember.

That was a number of years ago… And as with all things, memory can begin to fade with time, even with reminders. And time tends to dull the senses about an event, even when you experienced the event first hand.

But for some, the memory never fades.

Major Michael Collins had been on shift that day and remembered it quite clearly. The now Colonel Collins was halfway done with his twelve hour shift and had just re-entered the Monitoring Center and was looking at the big display board when he saw a alert pop-up.

Before he could say a word, Sergeant Stuart Evans called out to the room at large.

"Attention: Commanding Officer"

Colonel Collins replied, "Yes, Sergeant."

"Colonel, we have just detected a new target." Sergeant Evans said.

Colonel Collins knew that NORAD tracked every 3 centimeter object, or larger, in orbit around the Earth, and also tracked the small particles that were in a kind of "traveling" orbit that encircled both the Earth and the Moon. In partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and with NASA, they also keep track of comets or meteors that might impact the Earth or come anywhere near the planet. So, if Sergeant Evans said a new target had just appeared out of nowhere, something was up.

"Report, Sergeant" Colonel Collins replied as he made his way over to Sergeant Evans' console.

"An unidentified target just appeared from the dark side of the moon. There have been no reported additional objects in lunar obit since NASA's last mission four months ago so the space should be clear. Dr. Possible has been good for the past year and hasn't given us any surprises, thank goodness. And the next scheduled mission that would place anything new upstairs would be from the Middleton Space Center, and that's scheduled for launch in three weeks; a re-supply mission to the International Spacestation. However, it wouldn't go anywhere near where this target has appeared, Sir."

"Trajectory?"

"Calculating now, Colonel" Sergeant Evans said has his fingers danced over his keyboard. The answer came quickly.

"Based on the few moments we've been tracking it, Colonel, the computer models are placing it on a trajectory that will bring it straight at us."

Colonel Collins nodded, and then called out to the room at large, "Ok, everyone, let's keep an eye on this. If it's big enough that the space net picked it up that quickly, it could pose a treat that we need to deal with." With that, he turned and made his way over to his desk and picked up the yellow phone receiver.

Just as he had placed the receiver to his ear and punched the solitary button on the base unit, he heard Sergeant Evans call out in an odd tone of voice.

"What the…. Holy Frack…"

Colonel Collins looked up in time to watch Sergeant Evans turn in his chair and call out to tech that was working close by.

"Sergeant Hartford, are you following the updated target trajectory yet?" Sergeant Evans asked the man setting beside him, a Sergeant Jimmy Hartford.

"Picking it up now," Sergeant Hartford replied.

"Good, because I think something must be wrong with my station here. I could have sworn it just told me that the target just changed course and speed. I think I may need to reboot my systems after the diagnostics check completes."

Sergeant Hartford gave no reaction to Sergeant Evans comment. He just nodded his head and said "I've got it locked now Sergeant Evans. I'm giving it the designation "Tango Alpha 150 Delta" and I'm tracking now. Go ahead and run then diagnostics and reboot if necessary. I'll keep watching it until you are back up and ready."

Sergeant Evans nodded and then shook his head. Everything showed normal, but gut instinct told him to reboot his systems and go to manual tracking mode. That same instinct also left a lingering, nagging feeling about this whole situation: something wasn't just right about this, but it wasn't really wrong either.

Colonel Collins finished informing General Smith of the events with the new object in near Earth proximity with a "Yes Sir" and listened as the General disconnected the call on his end. He had just replaced the receiver back on the phone and looked up at the big board to see the target labeled "TA150D" flash from an Orange Color to a Deep Red. Silently he pressed a button on a raised area on his desk. As he did, a large display off to one side of the room changed. The display went from saying "Base Alert Level 5" to "Base Alert Level 4" per his orders from General Smith.

As he got up from his desk and made his way back to where Sergeants Evans and Hartford's consoles where, Colonel Collins saw the other members of the shift look up from their consoles and quickly take a look to the back of the room, then the big board, then back to their consoles. He could not blame them for taking a second to think about it, because he had had the same thoughts himself.

"Status report, Sergeant Evans" Colonel Collins said as he came to stand behind and in the middle to both Sergeants Evans and Hartford.

"Tango Alpha 150 Delta is still on course to enter planet atmosphere, Sir," Sergeant Hartford said as he looked out of the corner of his eye at Evans to see if his console was back up yet.

"Estimated time of impact?" asked Colonel Collins.

"Based on current data, Colonel, it should be sometime in the next hour to hour and a half, Sir." Hartford replied.

Before Colonel Collins could say anything, Sergeant Evans gave his own reply at that information.

"That can't be right."

Colonel Collins looked at Sergeant Evans as his systems completed the reboot and the tracking programs restarted in manual mode. As his fingers danced across the keyboard, the data on his monitor confirmed what his gut was already telling him. When he overlaid the model information tracks for TA150D, he just stared at the screen for a second, blinked hard and then said under his breath "Frack, that's impossible."

"Report, Sergeant Evans" Colonel Collins said in a level tone.

"Sir, when the system first spotted the target it made its time to impact with the atmosphere at just over 2 days. I asked Sergeant Hartford to track the target for me so I could reboot my systems when I thought it had detected an increase in speed and a change in its course," Sergeant Evans said as he paused just a heartbeat than went on. "As you know, Sir, an object on course to Earth will increase its speed somewhat; but it's impossible that it would increase its speed to the point that it would be 240,000 plus mph, Sir." Sergeant Evans spoke with his voice calm, but couldn't hide a bit of surprise that was also in it.

Colonel Collins knew the background information that Sergeant Evans told him. A space-born object would accelerate due to the Earth's gravity as it got close, but that increase would not bring the speed up to the level that was being talked about. That would take an engine or rocket of some kind.

That meant something artificial.

Something that was man-made.

Or, something that was made by aliens.

"Correction. Sir" said Sergeant Hartford breaking Colonel Collins out of a thought he really didn't want to have. "Tango Alpha 150 Delta will now reach planetary atmosphere in just under one hour."

Sergeant Evans turned to his console and looked at the information on the screen. Shaking his head, he spoke clearly as his training over-rode his emotions: "Confirmed, Sir. Tango Alpha 150 Delta has increased its speed. It also appears to have changed course again. Target now appears to be on a trajectory that would take it into Earth Orbit instead of burning up in the atmosphere."

Colonel Collins stood there for a moment, then turned and made his way back to his desk, all the while giving out orders.

"Sergeants Evans, Hartford, I want you tracking that target and nothing else. I want a status report every time anything with Tango Alpha 150 Delta changes or every 60 seconds. Do I make my clear, Gentleman?"

Colonel Collins heard both men reply "Yes Sir" as he again picked up his yellow receiver and punched the button again. As the phone rang, he looked at the pictures on the back wall.

"General Smith: Colonel Collins, Sir. I have an update for you on that earlier situation, Sir. The new target has changed course and speed twice now, Sir. I believe we have a true code 'Invade1' , Sir." Colonel Collins said when General Smith answered the phone.

"Status report, Colonel," Sergeant Evans called out. "Tango Alpha 150 Delta is holding a steady course and speed, Sir."

"Tango Alpha 150 Delta's current trajectory is confirmed, Colonel; if it slows down it will go into orbit on its current heading" added Hartford.

Collins closed his eyes and lowered his head for a second. Then he turned to face the board and said, "It's confirmed, General: we have an 'Invade1', Sir."

Collins listened for a moment then pressed another button on the raised area on his desk. The display off to one side went from saying "Base Alert Level 4" to "Base Alert Level 3". When the change happened, the sound of a horn could be heard from hidden speakers in the room. The horn was followed by a voice calling out a level 3 alert and for all personal to man their stations. The sound and the alert were repeated again then all noise in the control room disappeared.

As Colonel Collins waited for the General's orders, he asked the sergeants "And, if Tango Alpha 150 Delta doesn't slow down?"

"It could bounce off the atmosphere and back into space" was the reply from Hartford.

"Estimated time till it reaches orbit interface?" asked Colonel Collins.

"45 minutes, Sir" replied both men.

Colonel Collins heard General Smith's voice come back over the phone while at the same time he saw a second display beside the one that showed the Base Alert Level change. This display had been showing a single number 5. Now it showed the single number 3.

The heading above the number read "Defcon Level."