Several paragraphs of dense text began to scroll across the screen, an unreadable blur of legalese outlining all the details of enlistment. It would have taken hours to read it all, and then I still probably wouldn’t have understood a word of it.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I shouted. “I have to enlist before I can fight?”
“Only Earth Defense Alliance personnel are authorized to operate drones or engage in combat,” the computer repeated.
“That’s a little manipulative, don’t you think?”
“Please rephrase your question.”
“This is fucking ridiculous!” I cried, punching the console again.
“If you do not wish to enlist in the Earth Defense Alliance at this time, please exit this drone controller station and proceed to the nearest out-processing station.”
When I didn’t respond to this right away, the computer said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your answer. Do you wish to enlist in the Earth Defense Alliance at this time?”
Another tremor rocked the base to its foundations. The lights embedded in the ceiling of my station dimmed for half a second.
“Okay, yes!” I began repeatedly tapping the ACCEPT button at the bottom of the screen. “I want to fucking enlist! Sign my ass up!”
“Please raise your right hand and read the enlistment oath aloud.”
A paragraph of text appeared on my display, with my name already inserted at the beginning. I began to read it, and each word dimmed once I’d said it aloud:
I, Zackary Ulysses Lightman, having been appointed an officer in the Earth Defense Alliance, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend my home planet and its citizens against all enemies, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; that I will obey the orders of the officers appointed over me; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter. So help me God.
That last line was marked as “optional,” but I was in a hurry, so I said it anyway, even though I’d always been a devout agnostic. Besides, now I was thinking there just might be a God after all—that would explain who was currently fucking with my whole notion of reality.
“Congratulations!” the computer said. “You are now a flight officer in the Earth Defense Alliance with the rank of lieutenant. Your EDA skill profile and Armada pilot ranking have both been verified. Flight status—authorized. Combat status—authorized. Drone controller station access granted. User preferences imported. Interceptor synchronization engaged. Good luck, Lieutenant Lightman!”
My view screen suddenly switched to a familiar first-person view, from inside an ADI-88 Aerospace Drone Interceptor, prepped for launch. The song “You Really Got Me” by Van Halen began to blast out of the drone controller station’s surround sound system, making me jerk back in my chair. I relaxed as I realized that the computer had just made a Bluetooth connection to my QComm and automatically started playing the next song on my father’s old Raid the Arcade playlist.
I didn’t hesitate. I hit the launch release and my Interceptor rocketed forward, out of its launch tunnel—one of those disguised grain silos—and into the clear blue sky.
A real sky, filled with real clouds.
That was when I realized my view from inside the cockpit was slightly different from the one I was used to seeing when I played Armada. The HUD readouts and targeting reticle were identical, but they were superimposed over a live high-definition video feed of my drone’s surroundings, seen from the stereoscopic camera mounted inside the real drone Interceptor I was now piloting. With the door of my drone controller station closed, the illusion of being inside an actual cockpit was almost total. I could even see the fang-like tips of its sun guns protruding from the ship in front of me.
A split second later, my view of the sky was filled with another familiar sight: a swarm of Glaive Fighters firing in all directions, including directly at me. Thanks to Lex’s prodding, mine was the first Interceptor drone to be launched. Which meant I was also currently the only aerial target for the enemy.
As I banked to take evasive action, I got my first glimpse of the landscape below. The farmhouses, barns, and silos—everything was on fire. Including the ground itself, which had already been scorched black by sweeping laser fire from above.
According to my HUD, there were exactly a hundred Glaive Fighters attacking the base.
And this time it’s for real, Zack. If you don’t stop them, you die.
I had to make a few adjustments to my controller setup, but it only took seconds because the interface was so familiar. Then I took a deep breath and scanned the field of battle. Down below me, other Interceptor drones were beginning to rocket up out of the open tops of rows of disguised launch tunnels along the farm’s northern edge, all of which were now on fire. Hundreds of ATHIDs and several Sentinel mechs were beginning to stream out of the underground bunkers concealed beneath the flaming barns and utility buildings nearby.
My HUD confirmed that the lone Sentinel running out in front, leading the charge, was being operated by Lex—her call sign and rank were superimposed over her mech on my display. I watched as she launched her Sentinel into a power leap while simultaneously unloading both of its wrist cannons at a line of Glaive Fighters as they zoomed overhead, strafing the ground on either side of her drone with laser fire.
I banked my Interceptor around and scanned the sky directly over the base. Most of the Glaive Fighters appeared to be focusing their attacks on the entrance—those two large armored doors set into the earth, which were already starting to glow red and warp under the intense barrage of laser fire and plasma bombs. Once they made it through those doors, they would storm down the base and rain molten fire down on everything, killing me, and Lex, and everyone else inside Crystal Palace.
But I didn’t feel uncertain or afraid. I’d been preparing for this moment my whole life—since the first time I ever picked up a videogame controller.
I knew what had to be done.
I pulled back on my flight stick and firewalled the throttle, launching my drone into the mass of Glaive Fighters swarming across the sky directly in front of it. My HUD highlighted the ship closest to my position, and I took a bead on it, leading the target just enough to compensate for its speed and distance before I squeezed the trigger, firing off a sustained burst from my sun guns, scoring two direct hits. The first knocked out the Glaive Fighter’s shields, and the second destroyed it in a brilliant fireball a millisecond later.
Unbeknownst to me, I had just scored the first enemy kill of the battle, and the war.
After that, though, things began to go downhill.
THE BATTLE OF Crystal Palace, as it came to be known, was my first taste of real life-or-death combat. Even though I wasn’t physically inside my Interceptor, my body was only a few hundred yards away, somewhere deep within the underground base I was fighting to protect. If the aliens managed to breach our surface defenses and get inside, I would be killed, along with Lex, the admiral, and everyone else.
I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I also wasn’t going to wait around until RedJive got his or her drone launched and then proceeded to steal all the glory.
I cleared my throat. “TAC?” I said. “Are you there?”
I expected to hear the default synthesized female voice respond, but to my surprise the system had also imported my customized Armada sound profile, so I heard a familiar sound bite from Flight of the Navigator instead.
“Compliance!” my TAC said, using its digitized version of Paul Reubens’ faux computer voice. “How may I assist you, Lieutenant Lightman?”
“Engage autopilot,” I said, tapping the screen of my tactical display. I dragged my finger across it, indicating an S-shaped trajectory through the highest concentration of enemy fighters. “Take me right into the middle of that mess. You fly; I’ll shoot.”
“Compliance!”
Now that I was in a real battle, my Flight of the Navigator sound profile seemed inappropriate and distracting, so I switched back to the default female, which—fun fact—had been recorded by the actress Candice Bergen. Chaos Terrain had spared no expense.
With the autopilot engaged, I changed my controller configurations so that my throttle and flight stick now functioned as dual-joystick multiaxis firing controls for the Interceptor’s omnidirectional laser turret. As I did so, the turret’s three-dimensional targeting system activated, highlighting the enemy ships around me in an ever-widening spiral of overlapping red targeting brackets.
“Hello, fish,” I whispered, reciting an old incantation. “Welcome to my barrel.”
TAC piloted my Interceptor along the corkscrewing arc I’d laid out, plunging it directly into the enemy’s chaotic midst. A swirling whorl of highlight targets appeared on my HUD overlay. I cranked my music up even louder, took a bead on one of the leaders, and opened fire.
To my surprise, I managed to take out seven enemy ships in rapid succession, with precise, sustained bursts from my laser turret, before any of them even had time to take evasive action. Then the other ships on my HUD broke from their attack formations and scattered in all directions, all while firing back at me—or at where my Interceptor had been a millisecond earlier. Just as I’d planned, when my Interceptor passed directly through the center of the enemy’s symmetrical gauntlet, their ships were caught in their own crossfire for two or three glorious seconds, resulting in the destruction of at least a dozen more of their fighters. Then, as if controlled by some hive mind, they all ceased their friendly fire in unison, allowing my drone to escape and slip out the other side.