Space Invaders: The Novel

In 1999, my friend Jeff Chapman wrote this excerpt for a video game humour book that was never published. Jeff died in August of 2005. I’ve waited a long time to post this and now feels right.

“That’s it. That is absolutely it,” Ched Kalinksi announced angrily, ripping the sheet of paper in half and walking towards the exit gate.

“Ched, come on,” Rask called after him halfheartedly.

“Don’t throw it all away, Ched,” Sasha pleaded. “It’s just two more exercises a week.”

Chad twirled around. “For a grand total of seven exercises a week, Sasha! When we got here we were doing four drills a week and that was too many! I’m 18 years old! I’m too young to spend every night of my life cooped up inside some big white gun, shooting aimlessly up at the stars!”

“But the invaders — ”

“Pfft! Invaders. I wish there were some invaders, geez, at least they’d probably let us have a night off. Face it, Sasha, there’s no invaders.”

Star Captain Second Class Quonza surveyed the attack fleet with admiration. He’d commanded many a successfully planetary invasion in his time, but this was the largest, sharpest looking attack fleet he’d seen in quite a turn. His lieutenants were to be commended on putting together such an impressive fleet together on such short notice — why, it had been less than six degrees ago that word of the next invasion had come down from Star Captain First Class Bariose.

Quonza recalled that it had struck him as strange that a ranking Star Captain such as himself should be needed to oversee the invasion of a small planet which was rumoured to lack even a rudimentary space fleet, but of course he hadn’t risen through the ranks so swiftly by questioning orders. It should only take a two- or three-degree turn to invade this minor, defenceless planet … this … what was it Bariose had called it again? Ah yes … Earth. Hopefully he and all his troops would be back on their respective planetoids in time for Unification Day.

While keeping his finger firmly pressed against the trigger, Ched crooked his arm to look at his watch again, for the fourth time in five minutes. He cursed himself for being so easily soothed by Sasha’s assurances that another two exercises a week wouldn’t kill him. Maybe they wouldn’t kill him, but he just might lose his mind to the boredom.

Ched adjusted his weight in the uncomfortable horizontally-mounted operator’s chair and stared forward into the night sky above. Maneuvering the big gun slowly to the east, he watched the steady pulse-pulse-pulse of energy bursts as they exploded from the energy cannon, and followed their tracer paths as they raced heavenward. Hard to believe he’d once found the sight so beautiful and exciting, that he’d once felt such a rush from having total control over such an amazing mobile arsenal.

It was still a pretty amazing feeling, when you thought about it abstractly. The Confederation only had three of these gigantic defensive guns, and as far as he knew, Sasha, Rask, and himself were the only three properly trained in their use.

He just wished they weren’t so damned well-trained.

“The planet is in range, Star Captain Second Class.”

“Oh my, it is an extraordinarily small planet, isn’t it?” Quonza asked rhetorically, with just a trace of disappointment. “Any sign of an Earthling space fleet?”

“None at all, sir.”

“Alright then. Lieutenant First Class, you may assume control of the bridge. Bring us into an orbit around the little planet. I would like to have a quick final briefing from my war council, in the council chambers.”

Quonza strolled down the main hallway with confidence, smiling brightly. Although he’d been told several times that Earth had no defensive fleet, it had really seemed too good to be true. Now he was virtually assured of a complete and total victory. He pushed open the door to the council chambers, nodded briefly at the assembled members of the war council, and sunk into the chair at the head of the table. “Well, gentlemen, it appears we really don’t have much to discuss.”

There was polite laughter around the table.

“Sergeant First Class, would you like to outline your basic strategy of attack for us?”

“Certainly, Star Captain Second Class,” Sergeant First Class Fructa replied jovially, stepping up to the screen with a pixelpen in hand. “In approximately 0.2 degrees, once the industrial centre of the planet has spun away from its star, our mothership will descend into the planet’s atmosphere here, hovering approximately 0.4 degrees above the planet’s surface … here. The mothership will then unload 10 columns of attack vessels from each of its eight docking bays, as seen here. These attack vessels will slowly move slightly closer to the planet’s surface, and then begin moving back towards the mothership … and they will basically repeat this pattern until one of the attack ships reaches the planet’s surface, at which time we assume the aliens will give up.”

“Now, supposing the Earthlings somehow manage to eliminate most of our attack ships? What then?”

“We’re prepared for that contingency. Should the clients somehow manage to eliminate all but one ship in a particular squad, that final ship will race back and forth across the sky and towards the planet’s surface at twice it’s normal speed.”

Quonza permitted himself a smile. “Ingenious.”

“I should add that we have assembled a full 10 squadrons of 80 ships, so in the highly unlikely event that the aliens manage to destroy one fleet, our mothership will simply descend a little further towards their planet’s surface and then rapidly deploy another entire squadron who will attack in the same furious manner. And if that fails, they’ll do it again. And if that fails, they’ll do it again. And so on.”

“Sergeant First Class, if this strategy of yours works half as well as I think it’s going to, I’m going to recommend a promotion to Lieutenant Third Class as soon as we return to the Cluster.”

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