(Meanwhile)
Across the desert, several kilometers outside of Earth's capital, an enormous military base, the same installation that was responsible for detecting the alien titan Zeru a year earlier, was currently on full emergency alert. Past the enormous radar and telescopic dishes scattered across the landscape, the barbwire fences surrounding the airfield and across the base's open grounds, sirens could be heard blaring from every single corner of the facility as men and women crisscrossed the tarmac, prepping vehicles and readying their weapons for combat. As of right now, the site had become a steaming cauldron of barely organized chaos, with soldiers rushing into battle positions and preparing their aircraft for launch. The engines of jets and assault vehicles roared into life, filling the countryside with a deafening howl, at the same time staff on the ground directed the pilots to their stations and guided the craft to their exit points.
While all this was happening on the outside, inside Fort Skuld's main tower, in the room that was easily recognized as air traffic control and surrounding the massive, circular table that was the beating heart of the base's operations, the officers in charge the facility were corroborating with their staff to try and figure out what was going on. Across all four corners of the chamber, surveillance personnel and airmen working diligently at the dozens of monitors were in a state of continuous panic, as whatever it was they'd managed to pick up on their scanners was raising all kinds of hell with their instruments. Not only that, but the men tasked with organizing the emergency protocols and communicating with the ground crews at their neighboring bases were oblivious as to what they were supposed to do next.
After all, this was the first time any of them had ever had to deal with a planet appearing out of nowhere a few hundred miles away from Earth's orbit.
Shit like this just didn't happen on a daily basis.
As the staff scrambled about the central hub, the General of the base, a dark-skinned man with a grey army cut, mustache, and wearing a blue uniform with five-stars on his shoulder patches, stormed into the room with his secretary right on his heels. Returning the salutes of the people he passed, the well-dressed commander then stopped in front of the central table. There, hovering above the platform, he spotted the large, blue hologram of the very thing the personnel at the base were now attempting to deconstruct.
While the General slipped his hands behind his back and furrowed his brow, he was quickly joined by an attractive, anthropomorphic wolf woman with grey and white fur, wearing a similar style of blue uniform, and showcasing the multiple insignia of a Colonel, which were sewn into her shoulder straps. "General Rin, sir," the female greeted, saluting her superior as she stood at attention beside him.
Acknowledging the woman's salute, the commander then frowned deeply, "Alright… would somebody care to explain to me what the heck I'm looking at right now?"
The female wolf with the mascara and yellow eyes quickly turned her gaze to the projector. "Sir, as you can see by the three-dimensional satellite rendering; a terrestrial planet the same size and density as the Earth, along with half a dozen small moons, has just appeared inside of our orbital path, and has situated itself several hundred miles away from our planet's position. The scientists over at the National Aeronautics and Space Travel Administration are gathering up Intel on the alien world and sending it over to us as we speak."
"I see. Great," the General muttered, looking the hologram over a second time as more numbers and readings suddenly started popping up around it. "Is there any chance the computers can tell us where this… thing actually came from?"
"That… I'm afraid is something we're still working on," the Colonel replied hesitantly, before turning her attention back to the General, where she saw him lean in closer to read the information materializing beside the sphere. "Though we have no idea what system or galaxy this planet originated from, the satellites did pick up an unusual amount of Hawking radiation and gravitational fluctuations. Based on the information we were able to collect, the scientists at NASTA theorized that the planet must have arrived here via a slip space rupture… most likely a wormhole in deep space. Its exit from the subspace dimension caused a cosmic shockwave, which rippled outwards at great speed and affected everything within reach of the planet. This explains why the computers picked up the strange resonance field bouncing off of our atmosphere."
General Rin, processing the information being pieced together, nodded in understanding, "Have there been any accidents or casualties caused by these resonance waves?"
"None so far," the Colonel answered, shaking her head, "However, we do have reason to believe that the anomaly may have upset some of the local air traffic around the Western parts of the continent. I have ground crews and air control looking into it right now."
"Good. While you're at it, contact our departments over in Central City and have them lock down any outward bound communications from the surrounding observatories and research facilities. The last thing we want is for the media to get involved in this and starting up a worldwide panic, like we saw during the first meteorite crisis several years ago," the commander of the base stated, recalling memories of the time Lord Slug and his army invaded the earth.
Though he knew it would be next to impossible to completely stop news of the alien planet's arrival from getting out to the public, since half of the world could practically see the thing hovering several hundred kilometers above them, the best thing they could do right now was stall and assure the people that they had everything under control… at least until they could get troops on the ground.
However, considering they were dealing with something a thousand times larger than some stray comet or space debris from another solar system, even the General was having trouble figuring out where to go from here. In fact… he was absolutely stumped as to what they could actually do.
After seeing the Colonel relay his instructions to a nearby airman and focus her attention back on the celestial object, the base commander then turned to the staff working on the monitors behind him and asked loudly, "How are we doing on the updated status of the alien planet?"
The team leader overseeing the personnel in that part of the room, a blonde man in glasses and uniform, moved away from the monitors and addressed Commander Rin in a serious voice. "The scans of the world show that the planet has a surface pressure of approximately 101.3 kPa… that's roughly around the same pressure as the Earth's. The atmosphere also has a compositional volume consisting mostly of nitrogen and oxygen, meaning that the air surrounding the world is definitely breathable." The sergeant then stopped beside the central hologram and, after typing into the keyboard on his side, threw up a series of slides for the General to inspect. "Photos taken from our planet's orbital telescope also shows that there is a dense layer of cloud covering a lush, green world of mountains, lakes and oceans… indicating a thriving ecosystem of alien flora and fauna."
Narrowing his eyes suspiciously on the windows rotating around the projection of the planet, Rin then gave the team leader a curious look. "And? What do you think?"
"Honestly, sir?" the blonde agent replied with a shrug and a smile, "I think it's safe to say that we've just discovered a planet that humans might actually be able to live on." He then nodded to the hologram alongside them, "Aside from the multiple moons and the enormous dust cloud orbiting it, the planet's atmosphere and structure is almost exactly identical to ours. It even has a strong magnetosphere, which is preventing solar winds and cosmic radiation from affecting its surface."
It was this breakdown of data that quickly had Rin regards the projection with suspicion. "Hold on a second… doesn't the moon's gravitational pull on the Earth cause the ocean's tides to rise and fall with each rotation?" When he felt the eyes of his subordinates boring into his side, the General quickly turned to face them with a concerned stare, "Since the planet is moving so close to ours… how come it hasn't flooded all of our lands and cities yet?"
Adjusting his glasses, the blonde sergeant glared up at the hologram. "That's actually quite tricky to explain," the team leader answered, pulling up another window with a large mathematical equation written in it. He quickly pulled it across so that it hovered directly over the alien planet for illustration. "With such an enormous celestial body suspended so close to us, you would think its proximity to the Earth's surface would be causing enormous gravitational turbulence. However, as you can see from these readings here…" He stopped to point out the thin shield surrounding the foreign world, "we have reason to suspect that the planet is producing its own artificial gravity well. This allows the planet to travel safely through space without affecting any of the systems it happens to come across, protecting it and its atmosphere from harm. It also explains why it's able to hold so many moons in such perfect geosynchronous orbit of it."
General Rin raised an eyebrow, "A planet that defies the laws of physics, huh? That's interesting." Tapping his finger against his hand, the stern commander gave the planet one last look over before glaring apprehensively. After seeing another wave of information appear in the hologram, another question then appeared in his head. "Wait… something about this doesn't feel right."
The female Colonel stepped forward curiously, "What do you mean, sir?"
"Planets don't just appear out of nowhere. I also doubt they have the ability to travel between dimensions on their own accord," the man said, drawing the attention of several other staff members scattered throughout the room. Moving closer to the hologram, the General then scrutinized the surface of the world with a wary eye. "The fact that this one not only has a breathable atmosphere, but also possesses perfect living conditions and an artificial gravity field, means that someone or something must have brought it here." He then turned to the Colonel with a steely look on his face. "I know it sounds crazy… but I think this planet might be inhabited."
This announcement had most of the people in the room go deathly silent. As the computers continued to beep, hum and communicate information between each other, the team leader that'd come to stand beside the hologram projector straightened up and faced the General with an anxious stance. "Inhabited? You mean… there might be… aliens living on that planet?"
"After what's happened to the Earth in the last couple of decades, I think it's been made clear to all of us that we're not the only ones living in the universe," the General stated with a frown, before focusing his attention back on the new world. "That being the case, if this planet is actually inhabited and the people living on it brought it here; my next question is… what do they want?" After an unsettling white noise fell over the personnel gathered in the chamber, the commander of the base quickly looked across at the men at the monitors, "Have the scanners picked up anything else?"
Realizing he was being called upon, an anthropomorphic male bear in an airman's uniform focused back onto his computer screen and typed away at the keyboard. After a few moments, the furry humanoid shook his head, "No. Nothing, sir. The satellites haven't-… wait." Placing a hand over his left headphone, the man then listened carefully as his station began relaying something back to him. Using the programs on his monitor to break up the signal a little more, the staff member's eyes then widened and he looked up towards the General in shock. "I'm… I'm getting something. A message!"
"Me too," a woman from another computer across the room shouted. The officer pressed her hand against her headpiece tightly as she turned her gaze towards her intently listening commander. "A signal is coming in from the alien world."
Rin, appearing startled at this news, looked across towards the female staff member anxiously, "Is it a cyber-attack?"
"No, sir. It's a video and audio stream being transmitted over the public airways. No malicious malware or software detected," the mediator answered, reaching up to her screen to adjust the power. As soon as she did so, she nodded victoriously and then looked back at her commanding officer. "Got it. The message is coming through."
"What's it saying?"
Before she or any of the other men at the desks could answer, a loud hum suddenly filled the room, followed by every single computer screen shutting down. All personnel currently on station recoiled in surprise, with most of the staff quickly moving to adjust their machines and screens. The General and his head staff looked about in alarm, initially thinking that they were experiencing a full system crash of some kind, with most of the staff quickly coming to the same conclusion. However, just before the crew could being the process of restarting their hardware, the computer screens and the massive hologram in the center of the chamber switched back on and, after the screens blinked and flickered several times, a figure suddenly appeared.
The staff in the room recoiled at the face that materialized before them; a scrambled, pixilated face of an alien humanoid with big ears. Because the monitors were all tweaking out and the quality of the image was considerably scrambled, it was hard to tell who the person was or what the alien looked like. Considering the circumstances and the way all of their computers had suddenly been hijacked, all the men and women in the room could think was that it was the most terrifying thing they'd ever seen in their lives.
Not even the face of the maniacal android Cell from seven years ago had anything on this invader.
A few seconds after the profile of the stranger was projected onto their monitors, through the static and the feedback of the transmission, a haunting, robotic voice suddenly spoke up over every speaker and intercom in the facility.
"We're… (tzt-tzt)… going… to drop… (tzt-tzt)… by."
Moments later, the face vanished and, for the second time in a row, the computers shut down and restarted, with power soon being restored to the base. As soon as the lights of the room came back on, the military personnel scattered throughout the room all stood or sat staring at their screens with a look of fear and uncertainty reflected in their eyes.
General Rin, sweat breaking out on his flabbergasted face, swallowed nervously, "Get me King Koku…"