“Gentlemen. Just what should we make of this object? Is it a weapon of some sort? A beacon? What?” The general sounded impatient. A mix of military personnel and scientists were gathered around a table in the military lab deep underground to examine an object that just fell to Earth.

The admiral heaved a sigh. “Galveston.”

“What?! Are you nuts?” I exclaimed. I looked at my best friend Blake Anderson as if he’d lost his mind. “You’re one of the few fighter pilots who actually got discharged.” After completing one hundred fifty sorties, fighter pilots were discharged from service. Not many reached that milestone since the war with the Gahjins started.

Blake shook his head. “This will be the greatest mission in history. I want to be part of it.”

“It’s a suicide mission,” I folded my arms.

With a smirk, Blake said, “Staying on Earth is a suicide mission. I’ll take my chances in space. You’re eighteen now. Sign up and come with me. They could use a whiz in electronics like you. Maybe a communications tech. You did pretty well with that in school.”

I grunted a laugh as I moved next to him and ran the palm of my hand from the top of my head to just below his chin. “You forget I’m something of a runt. And I don’t have a lot of muscle. I’m not the military type.”

Blake laughed. “Not everyone has to be studly like me to be in the Navy. Someone like you would be perfect for climbing through the guts of a ship to fix things.”

I sighed as I shoved my hands into my pants pockets and walked over to a screen showing current conditions on the surface. I rarely looked outside anymore since the war started. What once was a green lawns with flowers and trees was now just blowing dirt and dried, twisted stumps. Not only had the Gahjins been relentlessly bombing our cities, they found a way to dry up our oceans and lakes and then capture the water vapor for their own use. There was almost no surface water left. Government experts said we had almost a year left before the Earth was completely uninhabitable, even underground.

I looked down at my feet. “It’s hopeless, Blake. The Earth is done. We’re done. Why fight it? Sure, we responded quickly when the first automated bombs begin raining down on us. We built that awesome space fleet in less than a year to meet the inevitable Gahjin fleets. And they defeated us.”

Blake sat down. “Not right away. And at tremendous cost to them.”

I plopped down in a chair opposite Blake. “And we were defeated.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I miss my brother. That’s his chair you’re sitting in. He was sitting there just a year ago. Now he’s dead just like the rest of us will be.”

Blake leaned forward in the chair. “Your brother died a hero, Tyler. He was a captain of the second largest cruiser in the fleet. His actions bought the rest of the fleet time to return to Earth.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. “Yeah. And he’s still dead. And the fleet he saved was almost completely destroyed in the next attack. He could have just come home and died quietly like the rest of us are going to do.”

Blake jumped to his feet. “You’re brother wasn’t the kind of man to just lie down and die. Maybe you should be more like him.”

I walked over and grabbed my metal detector along with a backpack containing a few water bottles. “I’m not like him. Hey, rather than sitting here and complaining about the world, want to go scavenging with me? I make pretty good money recovering old electronics with gold and rare earth minerals. The government buys all I can find.”

Blake chuckled. “Sure. Why not? Who knows when I’ll get the chance again.”

We took the elevator to the surface where we were met by a very warm, dry breeze and blowing dirt. Few ventured to the surface any longer. My apartment was about a mile from what was once the Gulf of Mexico. Now it’s just a dry, rocky wasteland. But a lot of junk flowed into it along with what water was left. The junk was a treasure trove for me.

There were several dirt bikes stored in an abandoned shed that someone had left charging. Apparently there was still power being fed into the small building. My brother and I would just use them when we wanted. We always returned them and nobody ever said anything.

This day we chose to ride in the area where some old ship that had been docked for a long time, and eventually just sank into the mud that was the bottom of the Gulf before the mud turned hard as stone. Only the rusting conning tower of the old ship rose above the surface.

We were having a bountiful harvest of debris; six cell phones, some computer circuit boards and old engine parts. I jiggled the pack after I had loaded it with our scavenging efforts.

“What a haul, Blake!” I exclaimed. “Some of these are your finds. Sure you don’t want to share in the credits?”

Blake shook his head. “Nah. I need to go. Training starts in two days. Think about joining up. See ya.”

We shook hands and I watched Blake ride off over the dry surface of the Gulf toward what was once Galvaston. I frowned as I watched him. I thought to myself, “No way in hell am I going to sign up for some suicide military mission.”