Once Parliament authorized the state of emergency, it was almost a working holiday at DISASTREX. For the first time in many decades, we were taken seriously by all branches of the government and the community. There was no doubt the threat was real, and there was no doubt that the military could not provide a solution. Our only problems were those you love to have: people wanted us to do more, faster and better. Our personnel budget quadrupled, and we had to innovate ways to get our message out faster and in more detail. It was lovely, lovely, lovely.
There were editorials pointing out that transportation was the next big weak link after getting the Alt Habs started, and articles pointing out how logistics would have to change as the population changed, and talk of insuring cultural redundancy, and environmentalists discussing how to minimize Alt Hab damage, not how to block their construction. Lovely, lovely, lovely...
Sadly, there were also the aliens, and while they weren't in on these discussions, they were busy. The Era of Good Feeling transformed into the Era of Breath Holding when it was announced that ships had left North Pole Base headed outward. ECM shielded their size and capabilities. But the human optical system is truly a wonder, and simple visual observation cut through some of the ECM, we determined that there were five ships. Two days later it was clear that Earth was their target!! We had two months to prepare for D-Day!
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Five ships; five cities. According to the DISASTREX HXAI analysis, this would put Mexico City, Tokyo, New York City, Seoul and Cairo at risk. Those cities would have to be evacuated. Five cities of 20 million each... 100 million people... six months... send them to brand new housing located in the remotest places on Earth.... doable, but not easy, or fun.
The major issue became who would leave and who would stay? Children, of course, would leave, but it was no longer as simple as the Titanic Days when the rule was obvious: "woman and children leave and able-bodied men stay to do what they can." These days women are as able-bodied as men, and the place the able bodies would do the most good was finishing Alt Hab construction, and developing the logistics infrastructure to support those places. The other neat piece we had was knowing almost to the day when the disaster would take place. It was decided to reverse standard evacuation procedure, and move the able-bodied out first to finish construction. As construction was completed the children and infirm would move out, then the rest.
Everyone was nervous. The plan was good, but this kind of thing comes along so rarely....
The problems started showing up in Week Four. No surprise that logistics at both ends were starting to clog up, but there was a bigger surprise: lots of people didn't want to leave on schedule. Some didn't want to leave, others wanted to leave early. Tempers were flaring, and the media was loving every minute of it. Some were videoing protesters who wanted to stay, some were videoing busses pulling out only half full, and some were videoing scalpers in the cities and profiteers in the Alt Habs. Media coverage was starting to get ugly. I worked my back channel with the media to emphasize how important a positive spin was on this. I got a reprieve for about a week. Given the time frame we were working in, that was heaven. We opened up more space to volunteer evacuees, and that reduced the protesting and empty busses.
My hardest choice was not laying down the line on profiteers and scalpers. The media picked up on this about Week Five. I got the mike stuck in my face continually about why DISASTREX hadn't regulated price-gouging.
"This is the best way we know of to get scarce resources allocated efficiently." I said. We at DISASTREX don't know exactly what is right. No one does. We are letting the people closest to the scene determine that. Yes, there will be some abuses, but I appeal to people on both sides of the scalping issue to cooperate. This is the first time we have seen this kind of disaster, we all need to see it through as best we can." My supporters pushed the cooperation theme hard on the back channels, and once again the media backed off. Thank goodness!
In Week Six we had a growing problem with "Dashers" -- people would start to get settled in their Alt Habs and discover they had forgotten something. They wanted to "dash back" and get what they'd forgotten. These Dashers were adding noticeable stress to the transportation net. We started doing PSA's to get people who were still in the cities to bring stuff out for Dashers. Yeah, there was risk, and there were abuses, but a lot of favorite dolls and teddy bears did get rescued. The media loved that part.
It was also clear by Week Six that even with free market conditions, Alt Hab housing would handle only 50% of the displaced by D-Day. We started asking people to move into temporary accommodations all over the world. It was messy, but it was actually easier to do than the Alt Habs. By Month One, Week Three, we were ready! The top five cities were vacant but for emergency response, military and selected media.
Nostromo got on the air and announced, "Earth is ready. Our defense forces are at peak states of readiness, and the full Belter fleet of ten ships is now headed for Earth. They will arrive in just one month." (which was half true, those originally headed for Mars would take another month to arrive.)
As with the Great Battle four months earlier, there was no surprise when battle would be joined.
On February 19th, the five alien ships entered Earth orbit. Even as they were doing so, two unarmed missile batteries orbiting Earth opened up with long-range missiles. The moon was on the far side of Earth, so the forces there did nothing. The first shots were dodged easily -- no surprise there -- and the unarmed batteries received effective return fire and were silenced before their second round went off -- no surprise there, either. The generals, and all of us, had hoped against hope, but the fate of those first batteries made it clear that it was no fluke the aliens overwhelmed Mercury. Now came the tough choice: committing more forces, and forces with live people operating them, or adopting a Fabian strategy of waiting for the aliens to show a weakness and then exploiting it.
Well, the Romans hated Fabius in his day, and it must be something in human nature. Nostromo gave "the hawks" a go-ahead, and the most massive launch of human firepower in history occurred ten hours after those preliminary shots. The last question resolved was whether to simultaneously launch everything to overwhelm their tracking systems, or launch everything so that it arrived at the alien ships at the same time and overwhelm their defensive matrix.
It was like arguing about angels dancing on a pinhead: we knew so little it made no difference. But making no difference did not make it unimportant -- reputations were being made and lost based on which side a general took.
The TOT (Time on Target) faction won the day, and bases with big missiles on the back side of the Earth started the launch wave. Before the wave was half completed, it was clear Earth's hardware was way outclassed. The aliens simply moved away from their orbit, really fast, (Later estimates put their acceleration at 10 G's.) and took up a different orbit. Earth's hardware wasn't dumb, lots of it tried to keep up, and as the volley crossed into the sun's light, we had a unique sight: a spaceship parade.
The aliens didn't bother to retaliate against that first wave. Instead they skipped into the atmosphere above Mexico City, and out again. It was showy. The people of Mexico saw five contrails taking different paths through the ionosphere, and those were followed thirty minutes later by a rain of close to two thousand missiles from Earth Defense. That was like a huge fireworks display because Earth Defense detonated most of the hardware when it was clear it would get sucked down by the drag of the ionosphere. A lot of metal fell in the vicinity of Mexico City, and some damage was done.
Meanwhile, the aliens had taken up a polar orbit and seemed to be waiting for what would come next. On Earth, the hawks were now discredited, and the cooler heads called for waiting, too.
After twelve hours of inactivity, the aliens swooped down on Mexico City once again. This time they came deeper, deep into the stratosphere, and those people left in Mexico City heard sonic booms. They also heard the booms of Earth Defense aircraft, and the screech of medium-range anti-air missiles. Earth Defense normally didn't have a lot of these, but they were quick to produce, so now there were a lot around the major cities.
This time the aliens tested their weapons, and this time there were Earth Defense casualties. There were no alien casualties, as best we could determine.
The next move by the aliens was fast. They had apparently determined what they wanted because the five ships now toured the top five cities and neutralized any air defense which showed up: Mexico City, Tokyo, New York City, Seoul and Cairo -- just like DISASTREX had predicted! Yeah!! But, somehow, I didn't feel that good.
It looked as if I would continue my stay at the DISASTREX Emergency HQ in Albany, for some time.
Then... they went away! They headed out in the direction of the sun, put out a huge puff of some kind of cloud, and Earth Command lost track of them!
"It's the Goddamn Ninja Trick!" I muttered as I listened to the reports, "DON'T GET SUCKERED IN!" I was just saying that to myself. But I did have my people put out a special DISASTREX Update saying, "Be vigilant, this crisis is far from over."
Twelve hours passed.... no change. Twenty four hours passed.... no sign of aliens. Was it over? Had Earth gotten off that lightly? Had we really scared them off with that silly parade of missiles?
No, we hadn't. Forty eight hours later, Earth found that the aliens had once again used their formidable ECM. This time they had used it to sneak back, and, somehow, there were now alien ships landed in the hearts of Mexico City, Tokyo and New York City!
How did we know they were there? Because all of a sudden there were huge domes composed of lightning -- ten blocks across -- spouting up over the downtown of each of these cities. The domes were noisy, they were ethereally beautiful, and they were shorting out every electric device within another ten blocks. An hour later we discovered that the Lighting Domes were also shedding ozone at a rapid rate, which was poisoning the air near the domes.
THE ALIENS HAD LANDED! Screamed the media. Now it was time to see what Earth ground defenses could do.