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**Mild language, violence implied but not described, Rated PG**
Harris had been hitting the snooze button on his alarm for over an hour now. He looked at the clock and began doing some quick time calculations to see how much longer he could stay in his bunk before he would be late to work. He quickly realized that point had passed.
“Damn, Jac will have my hide.” The thought added a sense of urgency Harris had been missing and he quickly jumped out of bed and dressed, donning his plain blue technician’s coveralls. Grabbing his S-Net News employee badge, he ran out the door. He’d shower tonight. Better to get to work on time and keep Jac happy.
“Glad you could join us today, Harr,” grumbled Jac without even looking as Harris walked through the door.
“Well I was here past 19:00 last night,” retorted Harris.
“Yeah, well you started an hour late yesterday morning, so I suppose it’s a wash. Anyway, I need you to get the external camera on Pod 7 working today. We got the Invader peace delegation coming into the system today and I don’t want corporate chewing my rear because we missed a shot of them.”
The Invader War had been raging for over a year. They were called the Invaders because there was nothing else to call them. They had arrived at Io with no warning, no attempt at communicating, and began firing on the Clarke Research Outpost, killing hundreds. In subsequent battles, the Terrans had been better prepared and defeated them at every turn. Now, the Invaders were suing for peace and were sending a delegation to Luna City to discuss terms.
“Don’t worry, Jac. I’ll make sure the pretty faces have plenty of pictures to go with their story.” With that, Harris grabbed his toolkit and began walking to the far end of Freedom Station.
It was not what Harris had planned for his life. He had wanted to be one of those ‘pretty faces’ since Secondary School. During the Dentak-Terran War, most of the kids his age dreamed of being a fighter pilot or jump marine, but Harris had been mesmerized by the battlefront reporters. He saw them as brave people going into battles with a camera instead of a gun, being there to give everyone back home the grim realities of war. And of course the fame was a good perk.
Harris spent 4 years at So-Cal Technical College, studying both Journalism and Technical Netcasting, figuring it would be a good idea to understand both sides of the business. After graduation, Harris took a Broadcast Engineer job with SNN. He wanted to prove his worth and then transfer to the on-air ranks. That was 5 years and four applications ago.
Scanning his badge at the security pad, he opened the access hatch at Pod 7 and began climbing the ladder. After making a quick visual inspection of the camera housing, he grabbed his PaND and tapped up Jac.
“Jac, this is Harris, you there?”
“Yeah Harr, what is it?”
“Looks like someone’s been messing with the P7 camera. The a/v feeder line’s been cut.”
“What do you mean, cut?”
“I mean there’s about half a meter of it missing and the edges are nice and clean.”
“Well, how could that be? You need a security badge to get in there. And why would anyone want to disable a stupid camera?”
“Hey, Jac, I’m not a Mental. I don’t know why most people do anything, I’m just saying what it looks like. At any rate, I’ll need to come back to the shop and grab some more cable to get it working.”
“No, you stay there, I’ll bring the cable. We need to get that camera up ASAP.”
While he waited on Jac, Harris climbed back out of the maintenance area and looked at the security pad. At two different points along the edges he noticed two small pin holes.
“Here’s your cable,” puffed Jac, out of breath.
“Take a look at this. I think someone must have jumped the security pad to get in here,” said Harris as he continued to study the pad.
“Listen, I don’t care if a snakehead broke in here at gunpoint, we need to get this camera up now!”
Jac’s slur brought Harris back to the task at hand. “You know, the proper term is Dentak. The whole war was a misunderstanding. They’ve even been helping us against the Invaders, you know,” responded Harris as he climbed back into the maintenance shaft.
“I don’t care if they wipe the Invaders out single-handedly, the cold-hearted bastards can’t be trusted,” Jac growled back.
Harris frowned as he began splicing in the new cable. “Well, Jac’s never forgiven them for killing his father at Alpha Centauri,” he thought. “Of course, that was war and soldiers die in war. Everyone’s just doing there job, right? Well, maybe in 20 years we’ll all be able to trust each other and put that behind us.”
As Harris was working, Jac’s PaND crackled, “Hey, Scheider, how’s P7 coming?”
“Tell them I’m almost done, Jac,” Harris shouted over his shoulder as he began bonding the second end. “There, see if they have signal in the control room now.”
“Yeah, they’ve got picture now. Let’s g--"
Before Jac could finish, the entire station shook from a violent impact. Alarm signals began blaring through the corridors as the computer began announcing “Hull integrity compromised. Sealing Pods 1, 2, and 3.”
“What? Pod 2? The control room!” shouted Harris.
Jac was already keying up his PaND, “Control room, come in! Marcus, are you guys OK? Answer, please! Damn, the circuits must be damaged. Let’s get back to the shop. It’s at the center of the station, we’ll be safest there.”
As they ran back down the corridor, the computer announcement changed.
“Assume battle stations. All military and base personnel to your stations. All civilians remain in your quarters.”
Jac’s PaND came to life. “Jac, this is Ronna, SNN Los Angeles. What’s going on there? We’ve lost the control room and studio there.”
“Got me Ronna, you’re the reporter,” Jac quipped. “There was a collision or explosion of some sort, then a general quarters alarm. We’re heading back to the shop now and we’ll try to get a broadcast connection established with the equipment there.”
“Well, we need to get someone on the air from there. You said ‘we,’ who’s with you?”
“Ronna, it’s Harris,” he said into his own PaND. “I interned for you during my last year at So-Cal Tech.”
“Harris, good. Looks like you’re getting your chance to be on-camera.”
“We’re back at the control room, Ronna. We’ll signal in when we get our equipment up.”
“Understood Jac. Good luck up there guys.”
“Well Harr, grab me that uplink hub and let’s get to work.”
They spent the next 5 minutes working to recreate a broadcast control booth from spare parts. As they were finishing, they felt several more impacts hitting the station.
“Jac, bring up camera P5.”
“No problem, Harr. Oh no.”
On the LCD screen in front of them, a quarter of Freedom Station could be seen floating towards the Earth’s atmosphere.
“Jac, get us on the air, now,” ordered Harris.
“SNN L.A., this is Jac and Harris on Freedom, are you receiving us?”
“My God, yes Jac. Is that a part of the station in the picture?”
“Yes Ronna,” answered Harris. “It looks like Pods 1 through 3 are floating free of the superstructure. I can’t be sure from the camera angle, but I fear they are drifting towards the atmosphere. If they do, they’ll burn up. Jac is going to pan through some of the other cameras to attempt to see what is happening. Please bear with us. Since the control room was located in Pod 2, we are working on a makeshift system from our repair shop.”
“No problem, Harris. Just to fill you in from here, the initial reports have unidentified ships attacking both at Luna and your location.”
“Thanks, Ronna. Ah, Jac, go back to P9. Zoom in to sector A4. There they are. I am pretty sure those are Invader ships. If that is true, the peace treaty must have been a ruse, but it looks like the Terran forces were prepared for that. In fact, the Invader forces look pretty small for a full-scale attack.”
Harris suddenly had a hunch that he hoped was false, “Jac, pull up P7.”
“Why, Harris? That’s the opposite side of the station?”
“Please, Jac, just pull up P7. Ronna, I am going to ask the audience’s forgiveness again. We are checking out the view from Pod 7. That camera was sabotaged yesterday and I have a bad feeling I know why.”
“No problem, Harris. Well, it looks pretty clear that way from the picture we are receiving. Maybe you should go back to one of the other… What is that?”
“It looks to be a jump hole forming. Yes, that is a ship emerging from it, but I’ve never seen one like it. I don’t know what all those spheres on the front of it are for, but the ship looks like it is in a hurry to get to Earth. Wait, the spheres seem to be separating from the ship. I think each one has a small engine driving it. Oh no…
“Ronna, get Terran Command! Those spheres are heading towards Earth. They are probably bombs of some sort. There must be a hundred of them.”
“Julio, did you hear that? Call Tomas at the Pentagon. They probably already know, but I want to make sure. Harris, what’s going on up there?”
“Ronna, the engines on the spheres look to have cut out. They must have not carried very much fuel, but they are already traveling at high speed. Those things are big, even if they don’t have a payload, they’re going to do some serious damage. Wait, I’m seeing some muzzle flashes from outer Earth orbit… It’s the Meteor Defense System! I had forgotten all about the MDS! It’s hitting them pretty hard. None of them are breaking up, but I bet… yes, they appear to be deformed enough that they are burning up in the atmosphere. Ronna, you should be able to see them burning up from there.”
“Ronna? Ronna are you there?”
“Harris, this is Cynthia, SNN Chicago. We seem to have lost signal from L.A.”
“Jac, do we still have signal from the Terrestrial Camera? Good, bring it up. OK, zoom in on So-Cal province. Go in tighter and pan around a little” Harris’s voice had dropped to nearly a whisper.
“No,” Jac said softly as tears began to form in his eyes.
“Harris, this is Cynthia in Chicago, what are we looking at?”
It took him several moments to find his voice.
“Those are the tops of mushroom clouds, Cynthia. So-Cal is gone.”
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