The sound of porcelain shattering on the tile snapped Saul Daugherty out of his restless morning sleep instantly.  Eyes bleary, he stumbled out of bed and down the hall, and then stopped halfway to his destination.  The sirens were blaring outside.  “Yuri?” he called out, casting off his daze.  His wife didn’t answer.  Saul slipped into the kitchen, stopped suddenly—there was a broken mug on the floor, a puddle of coffee around it, and a streak of red blood.  “Jesus,” he muttered.  “Yuri, come on, we need to get down into the basement.  The sirens—”

He froze there, confused.  She was leaning out the kitchen window, looking up at the moon.  If she could see the moon so clearly, why were the sirens, which heralded the coming of a tornado, blaring so loudly?  The sky beyond his wife’s silhouette was clear, the last morning stars still twinkling.

Saul walked quickly past the TV, not even registering whatever it was she had been watching.  He made his way around the puddle of spilt coffee and stepped gingerly over the narrow trail of blood, reached out to touch his wife on the shoulder.  “Yuri?  You’re cut.”

She held up a hand to hush him.  “Look,” was all she said, the same hand then gesturing to the moon.

Something wasn’t right.  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it—and then he saw it.  Instantly coffee, cup, and blood was forgotten.  Floating there in the center of the white disk of the moon was a single black shape, utterly still.

“What is it?” he asked, whispering.  He wasn’t sure why he kept his voice down.
Yuri looked back over her shoulder at him, her expression as shocked and confused as he had to assume his own was.  Then she looked past him, at the TV, and nodded in that direction, before turning her attention back to the shape in front of the moon.

Saul turned, faced the TV again.  He felt lightheaded, and leaned heavily on the kitchen countertop with one arm.  At first he his delirious brain told him it was some kind of science-fiction movie; it took him a moment to realize it was a breaking news bulletin.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

The footage wasn’t live, the newscaster said.  It had been taken by an amateur stargazer in Hawaii.  The ship, they said, had been floating directly between the Earth and the Moon for several hours, almost perfectly still.  When he looked closer at the television Saul could see two smaller, slimmer ships moving in a slow orbit around the larger, central craft and, just off-center of the nose of the ship, a series of flashing lights.

The sequence was simple.  Three lights formed the points of a triangle, then vanished, replaced by a smaller triangle, which also vanished, replaced by a triangle of solid lines, just smaller than the second series of dots.  Then this triangle vanished, replaced once more by the first trio of dots, and the whole sequence repeated itself.

The news anchor was talking about the lights being some kind of signal.  Saul couldn’t focus on her words enough to understand what she meant.  He was too transfixed by the sight of the ships themselves.  The central ship had to be massive.  Inconceivably massive.  The two ships with it must have been humongous as well, but next to the big one they looked tiny.  Saul was trembling, utterly in awe.

A minute later he had crammed next to his wife at the window, trying to get a better look at them with his own eyes.  Compelled, transfixed, he found he couldn’t look away.  They stayed squeezed in the small window until the sun rose, the moon faded, and the ship was lost to their vision.

~

“They’ve stopped,” Simon Fitzmoor muttered to himself, standing behind the glass doors that led out to the balcony.  Beyond the balcony, beyond the tattered grass lawn and the tall iron fence, the streets were bare.  Only hours before, and for days before that, they had been full of protestors and rioters.  And then, gradually, they’d all drained away, back, he presumed to their homes.  “Kinda spooky out there now.”

He turned, expected to see someone behind him.  The suite was empty.  It was very rare for any of the rooms in the embassy to be empty, and Simon frowned.  “Michael?” he called out.  “Liz?”

He wandered out into the hall, found it strangely barren as well—and then a hushed voice, heels on tile, and a woman passed across the far end, moving quickly, followed by a man.  Simon called out to them, but didn’t get a response.  He moved quickly to follow, eventually found himself standing just inside one of the staff lounges.  It seemed like everyone who had taken shelter in the embassy was crowded inside.  The voices, while muffled, drowned out whatever it was they were watching on the television on the far side of the room.  

Simon frowned again, then turned—and cane face to face with one of the embassy’s security officers.  “Sir?” the large man said, nodding slightly, “Red phone for you.”

Simon just stared at him.  “What?”

“New York, sir.”

It took him a moment to realize that the security officer was holding out a red cell-phone for him to take.  The screen was lit; someone was waiting for him to take the call.  It clicked in his head then—the red phone was a direct line to the U.N. Security Council in New York City.  It was a sort of inside joke among the “blue helmets”, referencing the Red Phone that supposedly existed as a direct line to the White House and the President of the United States.  It was something you saw a lot in movies, they told him; Simon himself rarely had time to watch movies.  It was an effective emergency line back to the people in charge, and that was all he knew about it.

“Thank  you,” he mumbled, taking the phone.  He brought it to his ear, hesitated only a moment, then, “This is Fitzmoor.”

He recognized the voice on the other side as Harold Davidson, the current president of the Security Council, from his thick British accent.  “There’s a plane on its way to pick you up.  Pack light and be ready to go in an hour.  We’re going to act before some yahoo makes this an international incident.  The POTUS is actually with us on this.  You’re headed for Canaveral.  Those lights—we think it’s a signal.  You can’t see it in the news footage but we’ve gotten a better look at it—they’re pointing at a door, a, a, a port of some kind.”  The words were shooting out of the phone rapid fire.

Simon opened and closed his mouth once, completely caught off guard.  “Excuse me, Davidson?” he said after a moment.

“You’re going up, as an acting ambassador.  We don’t know if we’ll be able to communicate with them, but by God we’re going to try, Fitzmoor.”

Simon gaped some more, then furrowed his brow and ducked his head back into the staff lounge.  “I don’t understand, Davidson, ‘up’?  Who can’t we communicate with?”  He started pushing his way through the crowd towards the TV, trying to see what the commotion was all about.

“You mean you haven’t seen it?” he heard Davidson’s tinny voice through the phone, though it had drifted away from his ear.  “Jesus, man.”

Simon let his arm fall limp, phone almost slipping out of his suddenly numb fingers.  The TV was showing a local news broadcast.  He understood enough of the local language to know what the anchorman was saying.  Everything clicked into place then: the empty streets, the strangeness inside the embassy, Davidson’s nearly panicked words.

The newscast was showing the spacecraft, floating between the Earth and the moon.

“My God,” he whispered.  Then, realization dawning, he brought the red phone back up to his face.  “You still there, Davidson?  I’ll meet the plane.”  Simon ended the call, and sprinted back to his room to pack.

~

Saul watched from the couch as Yuri pulled a sock, and then a boot, over her bandaged foot.  “I don’t want you to go out there,” he said, frowning.  He leaned back into the cushions and turned his attention back to the television, and the newscast that they’d been watching all morning—all morning, until Yuri’s cell phone had gone off, and the chief had called her into the precinct.

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow as she buttoned up her uniform.  “It’s my job.”

“It’s your day off.”

“We never really get a ‘day off’, you know, just a day home.”  She was looking at herself in the mirror, smoothing out her shirt and adjusting the badge and the gun on her hip.

“It’s going to get ugly out there.”

Yuri smirked.  “Why do you think they’re calling us all in?  Some yahoo hit the tornado sirens—it was stupid, but when confronted with… stressful situations, people do stupid stuff.”  She nodded at the television, at the shot of the ship floating in space.  “Imagine how stupid they’d get if there wasn’t anyone to keep the peace?  Everyone’s at home watching the news, but eventually, they’re going to get out onto the street.”

Saul heaved out a sigh.  “I’m going to worry about you, is all.”

“You married a cop.”  She grinned, leaned over to kiss her husband on the cheek.  “It’s not like we live in New York still. This is Oklahoma—our version of civil unrest is pretty tame.  I have my cell.  I’ll check in every couple of hours, and as soon as they’ll let me I’ll head home.  Okay?  Just relax and watch the news.  Love you.”

He smacked her on the ass as she turned to head for the door.  “Love you too.  Be careful out there.”

“Course,” she called as the slipped out the door.  It closed behind her, and the apartment was quiet.

Saul turned up the volume on the news and sank back into the cushions gloomily.  The woman behind the desk was repeating the same tidbits they’d been broadcasting ad nauseam all morning—amateur footage from Hawaii, flashing lights, no motion other than idle drifting through space, et cetera.  Saul was dying for something new, some kernel of information that he hadn’t heard over and over all morning—

And then he got it.  The anchorwoman seemed suddenly distracted, looking at someone off-camera.  Then, she said, “Ladies and gentlemen watching, we’ve just received word that the President is going to issue another statement.  We’ll be going to that—what?  Now?  Okay, we’re going to it now, stand by.”

The camera lingered awkwardly on her for a moment, and then the screen changed, and instead showed the President, standing behind a podium, calmly smiling at the camera and the gathered press.  “Big day,” he said, and grinned.  “I’m not going to waste your time with speeches or metaphors—this is bigger than me, bigger than all of us, bigger than, I believe, the United States.”  The gathered press reacted to that noisily, and the President calmly waited for them to simmer down, both hands held up, palms out.  “Non-traditional, I know.  This isn’t science-fiction, my friends, this is reality.  And in reality, cooler heads will prevail.  The United States will not be dealing with this event on their own—instead, we’re working directly with the U.N. Security Council in New York, and already we’ve put things into motion.”

Again the press reacted, and again the President waited for them to calm down before continuing.

“Already, at Cape Canaveral, the space shuttle Atlantis is being prepped to launch.  A representative from the U.N. will be riding up with the crew, and will be—now, now, hold on,” he said to the reporters before him.  “There’s more to it.  A media package is being sent out to all the major news agencies world-wide, with higher-quality images and footage of the craft taken from both the International Space Station and several orbiting government satellites.  Once you’ve seen these you’ll understand the point of the mission—those lights, flashing on the hull of the ship, we believe they’re a welcome mat, of sorts.  They’re directing our eyes to a door, or maybe port is a better term for it, an entrance, plenty large enough for the Atlantis to land in.  We’re not sure of what will happen once the crew is aboard—hell, we don’t even know if we’ll be able to communicate.  But we’re going to try.  More information will be available as soon as we get it ourselves.”  He smiled at the camera, and the broadcast ended; the shot returned to the news desk, and the flustered anchorwoman.

“We are in fact,” she said after an awkward pause, “Receiving the media package the President referenced—hang on, Mike, Mike, get it up there.”  She sighed, rubbing a temple.  “Okay, here it is—”

The next thing to appear on Saul’s television was a much clearer video of the ship, and the two large ships—and, Saul realized, dozens of much smaller ships—floating alongside it.  The flashing lights were far more visible, as was the triangular port they seemed to direct the eye to.  The anchorwoman’s voice accompanied the images:  “We’re being told, apparently, that the Atlantis has already launched and is en route.  Now… the ship itself, at best estimate, is roughly six-hundred miles from end to end, two-hundred miles wide… Jesus,” she muttered under her breath.  “Is this right?  This can’t be right.  It this official?  Jesus.  Jesus.”

She paused, took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen; I seem to have lost my composure.”

And with that, she got up from her chair and walked off-camera.

~

Simon floated in the back of Atlantis’ flight deck, carefully wiping the vomit off of his face.  “Sorry,” he muttered.  “Sorry.”

“Happens to everyone the first time,” Commander Malcolm said without looking back at him.  Beyond him, the ship—no, the fleet of ships filled the front viewport.  The commander muttered something under his breath.  “We’ll… ah, be aboard in ten minutes, it looks like.  Maybe.  Not something we’re used to doing.”

The shuttle was crewed only to the minimum—Commander Malcolm, and the pilot, Captain Reyes.  Both were armed with concealed handguns, something Simon knew they didn’t normally carry aboard the shuttle.  He also didn’t think they knew he was aware of their armaments.  He hoped they were considering the weapons a last resort.  “That seems like an abnormally short period of time, considering the distance we’re travelling,” he said, fidgeting in his pressure suit.

Captain Reyes was hitting switches and reviewing readouts.  “We weren’t told what to expect, but we were given a list of vague possibilities.  Stuff pulled from movies and books.  I think we’re in—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—I think we’re caught in its tractor beam.  Or something. We’re definitely not travelling under our own power, whatever it is.  You read that Houston?”

Simon wasn’t listening anymore.  The central ship was looming closer and closer, the triangular port growing larger and larger.  To say that there was room for the shuttle to pass through it was an understatement—an aircraft carrier could fit into the port with room to spare, if it was moving sideways.  The proportions of it—of everything—blew Simon’s mind.  The other, smaller ships were keeping their distance, allowing the shuttle to move freely towards the central vessel.

“I’d suggest helmets on, people,” Commander Malcolm said.  “This is going to be an unexpectedly short flight.”  His estimate had been wrong—they were already about to enter the ship.  “Shit,” the commander whispered, “Here we go.”

The three of them scrambled to pull the helmets back onto their pressure suits—Simon took the longest, being the least experienced.  Beyond the front viewport, the innards of the ship engulfed them.  Simon tried to see out, but he couldn’t fit in between Reyes and Malcolm.  The two astronauts were staring out the viewpoint, slack-jawed.  “There,” the commander said; “Landing platform.  Look at the lights.”  Simon still couldn’t see.  “That’s where whatever-it-is is taking us.  You two ready?”

The captain chuckled.  “No.”

“Of course not,” was Simon’s response.  

Commander Malcolm smiled.  “Then let’s get down to the hatch, gentlemen.”  He pulled himself out of his seat—and they felt the shuttle touch down on the landing platform—and all three men tumbled to the floor of the shuttle.  Simon threw up in his helmet.

“Gravity,” Reyes grunted.  "Artificial."

Simon struggled to his feet.  The gravity was a little stronger than Earth’s and it took him a moment to get used to.  He took his helmet off again and tried to wipe it clean, and mostly succeeded.  “Sirs,” he said, “If it isn’t already obvious that we’re dealing with a level of technology far exceeding… even what we expected having seen the size of this… vessel.  We should be prepared for anything.”

They were in front of the hatch by then.  Commander Malcolm had a gloved hand wrapped around the handle; he stopped, and turned to face the other two men.  “Okay.  Deep breath, gentlemen.  As outlined in the mission parameters provided by NASA and the U.N., I hereby hand control of this mission over to Ambassador Fitzmoor.  Ambassador, Captain, let’s make first contact, shall we?”  The commander turned back to the hatch, and opened it.

He moved out of the way to let Simon take the first step out.  The acting ambassador turned sideways to squeeze between the two astronauts.  He stood on the edge of the hatch, looking down at the platform—not the ahead, but straight down—and, taking a deep breath, he hopped down and landed with a grunt.  Only once he was out of the shuttle and he had regained his balance, he stood upright and looked ahead at the greeting party that was waiting for them.
The first thing Simon noticed was that there was no consistency amongst the creatures standing some twenty feet ahead of him.  There were five of them, one of whom stood before the other four.  The leader was roughly human-shaped, though significantly taller.  Its skin was covered in thick scales, and its head was shaped somewhere between a lizard and a man:  small reptilian eyes and an elongated snout, with two small nostrils on top of it.  Its arms and legs were longer than its torso, and it stood straight and erect—proud, Simon thought, almost regal.
The lead creature made direct eye-contact with him, and nodded its head slightly. Simon barely noticed Malcolm and Reyes landing behind him.  The ambassador was frozen in place, locked eye-to-eye with the lead creature.  A moment later it opened its mouth and spoke:  “Chu’lon, c’tho ho’crey; ca-llan Ju't'ho Callo Thu'din-Chot.”

Simon just continued to stare.  “I don’t understand,” he said, after a beat.  He gestured at his own ears and mouth with one hand, still eye-to-eye with the creature.

The scaled being chuckled.  It lowered its head slightly, then said something that Simon didn’t catch completely.  Then, it placed its hands on either side of its head, palms inches from where its ears would have been if it had any, and raised his hands.  It was a pantomime.

“It wants us to take off our helmets,” he said, realization hitting him a moment later.

Commander Malcolm cursed under his breath.  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said quietly.  Reyes muttered in agreement.  The lead creature let out another low chuckle.

The creature was looking directly at the commander.  “It understands us,” Simon said, taking a step forward and away from the two astronauts.  “It understands what I’m saying.  What we’re saying.”  He paused, looked back at the commander.  “I’m going to do what it says.  You two don’t have to, I’m not ordering you to.  Do you understand?”

The astronauts nodded.  Simon returned the nod, and then turned back to the creatures.  He reached up, once again eye-to-eye with the leader, and unfastened the clasps that sealed the pressure suit.  There was no hiss of escaping oxygen, and for a brief instant nothing happened.

Then Simon began to gasp for air.  His lungs burned, his heart was pounding in his chest, his head throbbing.  He was suffocating.

“Ambassador!” one of the astronauts—Simon wasn’t sure which one—shouted, but before the word was even completely out of the man’s mouth, Simon took a deep, ragged breath and, panting, regained his composure.  He took several more deep breaths, noting how stale and oddly sour the “air” tasted.

Once he’d caught his breath he made eye contact with the lead creature again.  “Helmet’s off,” he said, reflexively switching to his native French.  He’d been speaking English since boarding the shuttle.  It didn’t even occur to him that he had changed languages.  “Now what?”

“Now,” the lead creature said, “Introductions.”  And it smiled.

“How—” Simon stopped short as something occurred to him.  The creature’s words hadn’t been in English or French, but in its own language—yet Simon had been able to understand it clearly.  “There’s something in the air,” he said out loud, “Isn’t there?”

The creature nodded.  “Very astute.  Microscopic organisms.  Automatic translators, synced up with your brain—among other portions of your body.  They also process the primordial gasses aboard all Bulwark ships into elements breathable by the host—by, in this case, you.  A symbiotic bond between you and the creatures you inhaled when you took your helmet off.  You provide a warm place to live… they provide conversion of intake, physical and lingual.”  The creature strode forward calmly until it was only a scant two feet away from Simon.  “As I said before, my name is Prime Admiral Thu’din-Chot.”

Simon had to look up to maintain eye contact.  “My name is Simon Fitzmoor, acting ambassador of the United Nations of Earth.  On behalf of France, the U.N., and Earth itself, Prime Admiral, I greet you.”  He had been rehearsing that line in his head ever since he’d left Iran en route to Florida.

“Oh behalf of the Bulwark, ambassador, I welcome you to the Flagship Raeleen.”

“I’ll be damned,” Malcolm muttered.  “You can understand it?”

Simon turned his head to the side slightly and nodded.  “This is Commander Albert Malcolm and Captain Phillip Reyes, of NASA.”

“I welcome them as well, though they will not understand it if they do not remove their helmets.”  The Prime Admiral nodded at each astronaut in turn.

Simon glanced over his shoulder at them.  “I don’t believe they will.  It’s alright—they aren’t required to, they are simply my escorts.  I will be handling diplomatic relations on my own for the time being.  So I ask you—why have you come, and why have you invited us here?”

Thu’din-Chot smiled, exposing the sharp teeth of a carnivore behind its lips.  “If you would come with me to the flight deck, I would be glad to explain everything,” it said, turning to the side and gesturing for Simon to follow.  “Your… escorts may remain here and prep their ship to return to your Earth.”

Simon translated for Malcolm and Reyes, and then moved to follow.  The commander put a hand on his shoulder, and leaned in to murmur, “I don’t like this, ambassador.”

Simon reached up and placed his own hand on Malcolm’s reassuringly.  “It’s what I’m here for.  What we’re here for.  Just get Atlantis ready to take us home.”

He joined the Prime Admiral and two of the other creatures on a circular platform that was floating next to the disc they had landed on.  Of the two beings that accompanied them, one was completely concealed within a mechanical suit that looked like a ball with four legs coming out the bottom; the other was impossibly tall and thin, and had skin that made Simon think of jellyfish.  Neither addressed him as the smaller platform slid away from the one the Atlantis was resting on; it moved along a smooth rail system that carried it from the landing platform to the edge of the massive bay that, Simon realized as he took a look around, housed dozens of ships, each as different and unique as the creatures he stood beside.
Thu’din-Chot was watching him.  “The ships you’re looking at, ambassador—the ship you’re standing on, the ships travelling with us, all form the forearm of the Bulwark.”

“That word—Bulwark.  It's a name, but the... organisms I inhaled, the defined it for me--but they didn't define your name.”

Thu’din-Chot smiled.  “It’s the only proper name that the translators will translate.  Names normally do not bear translation… but the Bulwark is not a name, it’s an ideal.  The Bulwark is an intergalactic military force, formed to defend all life throughout the universe.  We are primarily, in concept, a defensive force… hence the name.”

“Then you have not come to our planet to make war?” Simon asked.

“We have not, no,” the Prime Admiral said, grimacing slightly, “But I would be lying if I told you our intentions were peaceful.”

“Why have you come, then?” Simon pressed, suddenly wary.

“We’ve come to ask you to join us,” the scaled creature replied.

Simon stared up at him, shocked.  “Join you?”

Thu’din-Chot made a sound that the microorganisms told Simon was an affirmative.  “Questions in due time, ambassador.”  The Prime Admiral went silent, and Simon felt compelled to do the same.

The platform they rode on stopped, and Thu’din-Chot gestured again for Simon to follow him.  The quartet made their way down a narrow corridor to what Simon could tell, somehow, was something like an elevator.  They boarded, and the creature with the jellyfish skin tapped a series of buttons with one translucent appendage.  Simon couldn’t feel any sort of motion from the “elevator”, but a few seconds later when the doors opened again they no longer faced a corridor, but a large, circular room.

“The flight deck,” Thu’din-Chot explained.  It gestured once more for Simon to follow, and the ambassador did so.  Around the outer wall of the flight deck, and along two smaller concentric rings, were several terminals, something like computers in Simon’s eyes, and at each sat a being different from the one beside him—there were very few, Simon noted, that bore any resemblance to any others he had seen so far.  At the center of the concentric rings was a third ring, this one made of pale orange light.

It was to this ring that the Prime Admiral led him; at the center of it, the very center of the flight deck itself, a creature that looked almost human stood.  It looked like a woman, with breasts and hips beneath her uniform roughly of proportion to a human woman’s and in roughly the same locations on her body—Simon, in fact, was taken aback by the similarity.  If her skin hadn’t been a shade of lilac, if her head hadn’t been crowned with thick tentacle-like appendages, if her neck and fingers hadn’t been several inches too long for her head and hands… He dragged his eyes away from the alien creature, forced himself to take a better look at the rest of the ship’s present crew, and realized that many of them—though not all—were of roughly human shape and proportion; even the Prime Admiral, he realized, could almost be taken for a man if taken in silhouette.

Thu’din-Chot smiled as he watched Simon’s reaction.  As the lilac woman gestured in what appeared to be a salute and stood aside, the Prime Admiral said, “The great denominator: seven out of ten races in the universe that we have encountered share the same basic blueprint as Captain Nialin here.”  He gestured at the lilac woman.  “Two arms, two legs, branching from a singular torso.  Females mostly structured on a curve, males on straight lines.”

“That’s fantastic,” Simon murmured, eyes returning to the female captain.

“It is a design that works.”  The Prime Admiral stood before the podium and brushed his scaled fingers across the lit controls.  Across the orange light that surrounded them an image of Earth appeared.  “Your home.  Earth, you called it.”  He tapped more controls, and the Earth shrank, more planets appearing on what Simon realized was a map of the solar system.  Without speaking, Thu’din-Chot continued to pull the map back and show more and more of the galaxy, until Earth was but a tiny speck on the map, until the sun was too small to see, until the Milky Way galaxy itself was little more than a minuscule smudge.   The map stopped shifting.  “It floats in a region of space mostly untouched by the Bulwark’s forces.”  He pressed more controls, and the area around Earth turned red, roughly half of what was left turned blue, and the rest faded to black; throughout the map small splotches of red appeared.  “The blue is Bulwark space.  The red unexplored.”

“And the black?”

Prime Admiral Thu’din-Chot was silent for a moment.  “The black,” he said eventually, “Is why you will join us.”

Simon stared at him hard.  “I don’t understand.  An empire so vast… why would you possibly need us?  We’re so tiny, relatively speaking.”

“It’s not an empire,” Captain Nialin interjected; she sounded offended.

Thu’din-Chot held up a hand, silencing her.

Simon frowned at the two of them.  “I just don’t understand.”

The Prime Admiral nodded slightly, and began to explain:  "Imagine, if you can the darkest corner of the darkest room, on the darkness night of your planet's year. Imagine in that corner, a shadow. Now imagine that shadow spreading across the breadth, width, and depth of the universe, devouring everything it touches, reaching unchecked even as far as your Earth, where you with your little guns and your flying craft would stand little chance of even firing a return salvo against it.
“This is what resides in the Black Space.  The Ktho.  A singular consciousness, spreading its will unchecked, assimilating all it touches, killing all that resists.  It is a mind, a very powerful mind, and all who fall under its sway are lost—they become one with the Ktho, one mind, one will, bent on only a single goal:  absorbing all else.  Becoming all that lives.

“The only defense for you—the only defense for any of us—is the Bulwark. Trillions of people, millions of races, have joined us, have taken up arms and fought this darkness side by side, back to back. Civilizations like yours who have never even traveled to the next planet out, and civilizations who ruled entire solar systems... all of them together, fighting, because quite simply ambassador, there is no other choice.

“Join the Bulwark, or die.  Take up arms, fight... or die.  Or worse, become one of them.”

Simon stared at the black space on the map.  “I don’t see how we could help—what could we possibly do against such a threat?”

Captain Nialin interjected again.  “Can you fight?  Can you hold a weapon?  Pilot or crew a vessel?  Operate a construction device?”

Again, the Prime Admiral silenced her.  “Every contribution helps, ambassador, no matter how small, how seemingly inconsequential.”

“And if I say no?  If the leaders on Earth refuse?”  Simon held his hands up—he had thought Captain Nialin was going to strike him.  She simply glared daggers.  

“Hypothetically.  I can’t tell you how people will react to this.”

“You won’t refuse,” she replied.  “In the end, you can’t.  We won’t allow it.”

“You tell me that this… being, this…”

Thu’din-Chot filled it in for him: “Ktho.”

“This thing, you tell me it’s some kind of mass-mind-controlling… creature.  One will, taking over and controlling all others… how is your Bulwark different?”  He addressed the woman directly.  “How is it preferable?”

Captain Nialin just smiled.  “We have art.  We have expression.  We have love.  The Ktho takes this away, replaces it with—”

The Prime Admiral silenced her once more.  “Within the Bulwark you have free thought.  It is not that you have no choice… it is that if you knew, truly knew, the threat the Ktho poses, you wouldn’t refuse.  We do.  We’ve seen our friends turn.  We’ve seen our planets die, entire populations wiped out or absorbed.  And as such, we don’t have the time or resources to convince you politely.

“Your people have a military—you must understand the concept of a draft, yes?  Of conscription?  That is what we are here for.”

“Your people will understand… once they’ve seen it,” the captain added.  “And then you’ll realize that, ultimately, the Bulwark is a necessity.  When the Prime Admiral came to my planet, my people refused, as yours surely will.  And yet, I would wager my life that you couldn’t find a single member of my species that wouldn’t tell you that the Bulwark is needed—not loved, but embraced, because the alternative…”

“Because there is no alternative,” Thu’din-Chot interjected.  “They know that now.  And in the coming days, so will your people.  Floating out here, in the backwaters of your galaxy, humanity thinks it’s safe. To you the universe is a vast sea, unthinkably large. Your fiction doesn't even come close to imagining a tenth of what is really out there.  You look in awe at this map, ambassador—yet this is only a hundredth of what the Bulwark encompasses. You think that because you're so alone out here, and so small, nothing could possibly ever take notice.

“We did. So will the darkness. It always does, in the end.  Perhaps on this rotation of your planet.  Perhaps in a thousand—the timeline makes no difference.

“It matters not. Your people will join the Bulwark. You will take our offer back to your United Nations, and you will broadcast it to the world, in every language your people understand. You will set up rendezvous points for the volunteers who elect to join us. Our transports will be waiting for them there.

“The number will be insufficient.

“So, we will take over your broadcast satellites, and we will show your people what happened to the people of Argest, what's left of the planet Bhlwer, what has become of the worlds orbiting Thel. What the darkness of the universe does to those it touches. Understanding the truth, more volunteers will come.

“But the number will be insufficient.

“We will issue an ultimatum.

“But the number, still, will be insufficient.

“So we will burn your crops, slaughter your livestock, poison your seas, and raze your production facilities. We'll extend a hand, one last time, and offer...

“Forty years of service across the vastness of the universe, across a dreamscape hardly imaginable even by those of us who have flown the width and breadth of it. Forty years of service in a war against a foe that would engulf you even had we never come here, while you fire your rockets and explosives to no avail. Forty years of service, at the end of which you will be rich, at home in the universe, free to go where you wish, and skilled enough to make what you will of your life. Forty years of service, in exchange for prosperity and peace, for freedom.

“Forty years of service... or starvation on the dying husk of your Earth.  Or assimilation at the hands of the Ktho.  Or as the vast majority would prefer:  death.

“We've burned and shattered uncountable worlds. With our help, once they've joined... they always rebuild. Your people will be no different. Your Earth will flourish a thousand times more verdant than what you know. We have that technology. Once you've joined us, once you've seen the truth, you'll welcome us to your world, and together we will remake it as it is today, and better.

“You will not be slaves. You will not be subservient to any race. Within the Bulwark all races are on equal footing, all species receive the same diplomatic rights and representation; all races have equal chance to move upwards into the echelons of power, of leadership.

“You will join us because there is no choice.  You will join us, because we will give you no other choice.”

Simon had remained silent through the Prime Admiral’s speech.  It was clear to him that the scaled being had rehearsed it and repeated it many times, but also that it was something Thu’din-Chot delivered with absolute conviction.  “You want me to pass this message on to the whole of Earth’s population.”

Thu’din-Chot nodded.

“Then show me,” Simon continued.  “Show me this Argest.  Show me Thel.  Show me this B—”  

“Bhlwer,” the Prime Admiral filled in.

“Show me this darkness.  Give me a real reason to take this message back--something other than words.”

An hour later he stood before Commander Malcolm and Captain Reyes, a silver cylinder in his hand with a bit of black cabling coming out one end.  He had removed his pressure suit completely, and was covered in sweat.  “Jesus, ambassador.  You look like shit,” the commander muttered.  “What the hell happened, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Simon stared at him for a moment.  Then he held out the cylinder.  “Go back to Earth,” he said, his voice scratchy.  “Get this to the U.N. as fast as you can.  Tell them I worked with a tech up here to get this thing working—it’s going to need a bit of tinkering, but it should almost be compatible with most of our electrical systems, like a DVD player.  It’s like a DVD—it’s a video.  Hook it up to a television.  The cabling is from my suit’s radio.  Compatible.  Show everyone.”

Captain Reyes started to say something, but Simon held up a hand to stop him.  “Go.  Quickly,” he said, then repeated:  “Show everyone.”

~

The anchor woman never returned to the news desk; Saul hoped she’d gone home to be with her family, if she had anyone.  The man who replaced her was just as flustered, if not more so, but it was pretty obvious that he was trying to jockey into a better position within the company.  Yuri called to check in again and told him that she was being sent home—they were working in tight shifts, she said, to keep internal stress down.  She’d been right, and people had started to hit the street, at first just talking to neighbors, then forming mobs, and in the worst cases, riots.  They were scared and, in a lot of cases, angry.  A lot of murmured sentiments about nuking the ship up there to Kingdom Come.  The entire force had been deployed.  Yuri was part of the first break shift.

He promised to have a hot meal and a cold glass of tea waiting for her when she got home.

Saul was in the kitchen, only half-halfheartedly listening to the constant blabber of the talking heads, cooking up a meal of beef and peppers, when he heard his wife burst into the house noisily.  “Did you hear it?” she called from the entryway.  She slipped into the kitchen, dropped her gun and badge on the counter, the clip removed from the former.  “Saul, did you—” She stopped and watched him for a heartbeat.  “You aren’t even watching it!”

“It’s just the same shit over and over,” he replied, looking over his shoulder at the TV.  “Nothing I haven’t heard all… day… long… Oh.”

The images on the screen distracted Saul from the French-accented voice speaking over them.  Video of the ship had been replaced with footage, marked with strange symbols, of an alien world.  A vast metropolis of graceful, curving structures—and moving among them, flying ships, and flames, and boiling smoke.  It was a warzone.  Saul and Yuri watched as the camera zoomed in and showed the fighting on the ground:  alien creatures, carrying weapons on their shoulders, retreating before a horde of shadows—then the camera zoomed in further and it was clear they were not shadows, but more of the same creatures, colored completely black, faceless.

The fleeing aliens were cut down in a matter of minutes.  The camera zoomed back out and focused on one of the larger battleships floating above the city.  It was firing into the shadowy horde below; one of the other, smaller ships nearby started firing downwards as well.  They watched as a much smaller ship veered drunkenly and collided with the second vessel, tipping it slightly.  At first, there was no change beyond that—then the second ship stopped firing.  It tilted awkwardly to one side, and already the larger ship was pulling desperately away—when the second ship opened fire on it with a fury that outmatched even the larger ship’s volley’s into the horde below.

The larger ship burst into flames, buckled in the middle, and exploded.  The screen went white.  When the glow of the explosion faded, the ships were gone, completely obliterated; below where they had been floating the city was flattened beyond the horizon.

The French-accented voice continued:  “This was but the first of Argest’s cities to fall; its name was Greydlist, it sprawled across an area of land the size of China, and when the Tretchly exploded it took most of that area with it.  Five billion lives were lost when Greydlist fell—and it was one of Argest’s smallest population centers.”

Saul was enraptured; he didn’t even notice the food burning on the stove.  The scale of what they had just watched was devastating.

“This is what will come for us,” the voice said, “Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in this lifetime. But eventually, the Ktho will come for us as it has come for so many other planets.  It is only in the Bulwark that we will stand a chance.  Rendezvous points will be scattered throughout the planet. Transport ships will be waiting.  Volunteers are being requested.”  He paused.  “It will be better if you, all of you, everyone, volunteer now.  A hand of friendship has been extended.  It will not be extended forever.  I myself have already accepted it, and hereby relinquish my French citizenship and join the Bulwark.  Join us.”

The screen went black, and then changed to the news desk, where a flustered reporter was hesitatingly reading off a list of cities near where the rendezvous points were supposed to be.

“Jesus,” Yuri whispered.  Then louder: “Tulsa.”

“What?” Saul asked.

She looked him dead in the eye.  “I’m going to Tulsa.  That’s the nearest rendezvous.  I’m going.  Will you—”

“Of course,” he interrupted.  “Of course.  How could I not?”

~

“You’ll really go through with it, won’t you?” Simon asked.  He had returned to the flight deck with his escort, the jellyfish-skin creature, and stood beside Thu’din-Chot as the Prime Admiral monitored the deck’s other stations from his central podium.  “Regardless of how many people come to you.”  According to Simon’s watch, it had been almost twelve hours since he’d arrived, six since Thu’din-Chot had confirmed that the message was being broadcast worldwide.  Simon felt as if he was being swept along a rapid current of events.  Already, down on Earth, people were loading into the transport ships to be brought aboard the flagship or be distributed throughout the fleet.

“Whatever number comes,” the scaled man replied, “It will be insufficient.  As I said.”

“Whatever number.”

“Whatever number,” Thu’din-Chot repeated.  “The entire population of your planet could join us and still it wouldn’t be enough.”

“What of the children?  Of the elderly, or the infirm?”

Thu’din-Chot turned to look at Simon, raising the scaled ridge over one of his eyes.  “Everyone can contribute in one way or another.  The children will be distributed to training facilities to prepare them for their adulthood in the Bulwark; it is a harsh fate, but, as with all we do, it is necessary.  The elderly will be given diminished terms of service that scale with their age.  The infirm… will no longer be infirm, if possible.  The legless will walk, the sightless will see, and so on.  You underestimate us again, ambassador—no, I take that back.  You underestimate us, recruit.”

“It’s monstrous,” Simon muttered, “To have to say such things to one’s own people, one’s own home.”

“You were merely the messenger, not the agent.  The guilt is not yours.”

Simon turned and started to leave the flight deck; his escort moved to follow.  The Earthling asked, “Then whose is it?”

Thu’din-Chot smiled as he watched Simon board the transport platform they had arrived in.  “It is a guilt we all become numb to.”

The doors slid shut and Simon was alone with his escort.  “Liquor,” he said under his breath.  “And a smoke.”

“Pardon?” jellyfish-skin asked.

“You have a recreation area on this monstrosity?  A place of drinking.  To relax.  Wait, what’s your name?”

“Lieutenant Thelithinosi,” the tall creature replied.  “And yes, we do.  You have nearly free run of the vessel still at this time, would you like to travel to the relaxation chambers?  And this is not the only planet in the universe to discover the concept of… alcohol.”

Simon smiled bitterly.  “Away we go, then.”

The platform’s door opened and he found that they faced a spacious chamber with a relatively low ceiling, dimly lit, with tables and chairs of various sizes and proportions scattered irregularly throughout.  At the center, he realized with a start, was a circular bar, and within it, a pair of bartenders.

“That is eerily familiar,” he said to the lieutenant.

“You get used to thinking that,” Thelithinosi replied.  “Come, let us find something to get drunk on that won’t kill you.  Liquor is one of the only things your microconverters won’t convert—so we have to be careful not to poison ourselves.”  The tall creature chuckled, a wet, bubbling sound.  “The risks of such an… integrated organization.”

They found Captain Nialin leaning against the surface of the bar, a shallow bowl in her long-fingered hands.  Lieutenant Thelithinosi gestured in salute in the same way the captain had when Thu’din-Chot had arrived on the flight deck.  Nialin motioned for him to relax, then gave Simon an odd look.  “I won’t hold it against you this time,” she said, “But you’re one of us now, you should get used to saluting me.”  She smiled, nodded at the bartender.  A short, stumpy figure with four arms worked its way to her.  “Two more of these,” she said, waving at her bowl, “For the lieutenant and the local.  And a test kit.”

The bartender grunted an affirmative, and then hobbled around to the far side of the circular bar to rummage around.

“None for me,” the Lieutenant interjected.  “My recreation time is coming up soon, and I would like to spend it on the aquaria deck.  Captain, may I leave Fitzmoor with you?”

“Mm,” Nialin grunted into her drink.  “You’re relieved, lieutenant.”

Thelithinosi nodded and saluted again, then slipped out of the relaxation chambers.
By then the bartender had dropped off both bowls of fluid and a silver disc with raised edges.  Nialin grabbed up the disk and held it up in front of Simon, and then nodded at it meaningfully.   Simon just stared at her, at a loss.  “Spit on it,” she added, frowning; “I hope the rest of your people are not this slow.”

After he had awkwardly done so she laid it back on the bar and tipped a small amount of her drink onto the saliva.  The two of them stared at it for several minutes, to the point that Simon began to feel he was missing something.  “What is—” he started, but she held up a hand to silence him.  He was getting tired of that.

The saliva on the disc had turned blue, and was softly glowing.  “Excellent,” the captain said, part of a smile appearing on her lips.  “Here, drink.”  She held up one of the bowls for Simon to take.

He kept his eyes on the alien woman as he brought the bowl to his lips and gingerly sipped.  It tasted vaguely grassy, and burned his throat on the way down.  Simon managed to suppress the desire to retch.  “How long,” he asked, “Until the razing?”

“Half another of your Earth’s revolutions.  At that point, the Raeleen will open fire from here, and we will move the fleet from behind your moon and surround your planet.  Already we have chosen targets industrial, agricultural, and oceanic.  One single swift strike, and then we’ll extend our offer one last time.  A half-revolution after that, and we will take our leave of your Earth, leaving those who will not accompany us to starve.”

“Your fleet’s behind the moon?”

Nialin nodded slightly.  “We didn’t want to intimidate you.  Not immediately, at least.  The ships hiding in your moon’s shadow are all weaponers—ships built and retrofitted specifically for warfare.  They are all very obviously so.”

Simon stared into the bowl.  Without hesitating he poured the whole thing into his mouth and down his throat; he squeezed his eyes shut and let the liquid burn his throat and his stomach, settling in his digestive system like a lead weight.  “God,” he hissed.  The room spun around him when he opened his eyes.

“One day, when we remake this world,” Nialin said, watching him closely, “It will be better than it is now.  Fuller with life.  Cleaner.  You know this is necessary, you understand what’s at stake here.  It doesn’t seem like it now, but in the end it will all be worth it.”

Simon just grunted, buried his face in his hands, and let out a sob.

There was a musical tone, two short notes, that rang out from somewhere on the captain’s uniform.  She tapped her collar and looked away from the human.

“Captain Nialin,” she said, identifying herself.

“Captain, this is Monitor Ghe’thi’na’ghe,” a small voice replied.

“Status report?” Nialin asked.

“Unrest and violence at dozens of rendezvous points on the surface,” the voice continued.  “Three instances of nuclear weaponry, none successful.  Our own casualties are nil.  Dozens of locals have been injured or killed, mostly by their own people.  Our crews are operating at ninety-nine percent.”

The captain frowned.  “What’s that one percent?” she asked, sounding perplexed.

“One of the medium sized transports has a machine malfunction.  It’s grounded for a few more hours, but should be off the ground again before our strike.  We’re in communication with the crew.”

“To be expected, I guess; we can’t do everything perfectly.”

There was a beat of silence on the other end of the communication.  “Captain?  We’re picking up something—weapons fire, directed at the Raeleen itself.  Monitor Thria reads it as nuclear.”  Simon lifted his head from his hands, ears perking at the word nuclear.  “The Prime Admiral has differed to your command while he oversees the transport.”

“Size?”

“Negligible.”

“Neutralize it,” Nialin replied.  “Do not retaliate.  Continue along the set timeline.”

“Yes, captain.”  There was another tone, and the communication ended.

“Neutralize?”

The captain just nodded.

Simon let out a delirious laugh.  “So many decades of war and destruction… Neutralized.  And not even worth retaliating against.”  His laughter continued for several minutes, until it died awkwardly.  He leaned on the bar, one hand covering half his face.  “I hope someone was watching that display,” he muttered.

“Why?” the captain asked.

“You won’t win most of them over until you’ve cowed them,” he replied.  “How long until the first transports arrive?”

Captain Nialin considered the question.  “Shortly.  Why?”

“I need a smoke.  A cigarette.  Hopefully one of your other new recruits will bring some up from the surface.”