Then they all went black, and my entire drone controller station powered down, throwing the tiny room into total darkness. Somewhere above me, I heard the muffled atomic boom of a power core detonation, followed by a horrible rumbling that could only be several levels of the base collapsing in on each other.

  I don’t know how long I sat there in the pitch-black darkness, listening to the aftermath of my mistake. But at some point the door of my controller station hissed open, and a terrible flood of light poured in, momentarily blinding me. As my eyesight slowly returned, I saw a female silhouette resolve in the doorway. Lex was standing there, with one hand cocked on her hip.

  “Did you see what happened?” she said, shaking her head. “Some moron Interceptor pilot chased that last Glaive Fighter into one of the launch tunnels, right before the whole hangar went up.”

  I nodded and got to my feet unsteadily; then I stepped out of my control pod, feeling almost as if I’d just emerged from a real Interceptor—and a real battle. Which, of course, I had.

  “I’m still not even sure what happened up there,” I lied.

  “We’d already won,” she said. “We’d just destroyed all but one of their drones—but then somehow the last Glaive Fighter got inside the drone hangar before it self-destructed,” she said. “Somebody screwed up.”

  When I didn’t respond, she studied my face for a moment.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said. “Didn’t you hear Admiral Vance screaming at you to break off over the comlink? Everyone else sure did!”

  She pursed her lips and gave me two thumbs-up.

  Before I could begin to formulate my defense, my QComm beeped and vibrated against my forearm; then its display began flashing red to get my attention. A text message appeared, ordering me to report to Admiral Vance in the command center. An interactive map of the base below it appeared, and a green path lit up, leading from my current location in the drone controller hub out into the corridor outside, then down to another bank of elevators.

  Just as I finished reading the message, that synthesized female voice spoke over the base PA system. “Lieutenant Zack Lightman. You are ordered to report to Admiral Vance in the command center on level three immediately.”

  As Lex stepped aside to clear my path, she softly sang, “You’re in trouble.”

  THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL map on my QComm took me on a circuitous multilevel route through the base. It seemed to be detouring me around the sections most heavily damaged by the hangar explosion, but I still saw signs of its aftermath everywhere.

  As I made my way down half-collapsed corridors filled with smoke and sparking electrical fires, several ATHID emergency response teams marched past me, coming the other direction. I also saw a few of my fellow drone operators, many of them covered in dust or ash. Some shuffled along like zombies, while others ran past me in hysterics. At every turn, I expected to see a corpse—someone who had died because of me.

  The dreamlike euphoria I’d felt during my arrival here had now completely subsided—replaced with a cocktail of confusion, uncertainty, and, most of all, doom.

  When I passed through the security doors leading into the Crystal Palace command center, the two guards at the entrance seemed to know who I was and what I was doing there. In fact, it seemed as if everyone who saw me fixed me with a withering glare. But I glared back at each of them defiantly.

  When I finally reached Admiral Vance’s office, I paused outside in the corridor and practiced saluting a few times, mimicking the way I’d seen soldiers do it in the movies. Then I took a deep breath and pressed my hand to the scanner plate on the wall. A tone sounded and the doors slid open. With some effort, I stepped inside, and the doors hissed shut again behind me.

  Admiral Vance was sitting behind his desk, but he stood up when I walked in. I halted just inside the entrance and gave him the amateur salute I’d just finished rehearsing.

  He surprised me by straightening his posture and returning it, raising a rigid right hand to his brow in a blur, then dropping it like the blade of a guillotine a half-second later. That was when I noticed the sidearm on his right hip. An old-fashioned nine-millimeter Beretta. I was pretty sure he hadn’t been wearing it earlier in the briefing auditorium.

  I lowered my salute, but made sure to remain at rigid attention, while doing my best to avoid making direct eye contact with the admiral—which was surprisingly difficult, considering he was only rocking one eye. The admiral let the silence wear on, and I realized that he was waiting for me to speak first.

  “Lieutenant Zack Lightman,” I said, clearing my throat. “Reporting as ordered … sir.”

  “At ease, Lieutenant,” the admiral replied, sounding surprisingly calm. “Sit.”

  He motioned to a metal chair beside his desk. As he took his own seat, the admiral reached over to shut off one of the computer monitors arrayed around his desk in a semicircle, but just before the screen went dark, I caught a glimpse of what was displayed on it—the same mug shot that was on my EDA security badge was clearly visible at the top, along with my senior yearbook photo and a lot of densely packed text—all of my private information, including my school records. Before I’d walked into his office, the admiral had been skimming my entire life story—and he’d made no effort to conceal this from me.

  “You had quite a first day, Mr. Lightman,” he said. “You’re going to be the first recruit in EDA history to be court-martialed less than an hour after they enlisted.” He smiled. “You might make The Guinness Book of World Records, provided it still exists after tomorrow.”

  “Admiral, sir—I’m still not even sure what it was I did wrong,” I said, and that was mostly true. “I was trying to stop that ship from getting inside the base before it self-destructed! What did you expect me to do?”

  “To follow orders, Lieutenant,” the admiral said, and I thought I finally detected a hint of anger in his voice. He tapped a key on his computer, and his display screen lit up. He clicked his mouse a few times and my Interceptor appeared on the monitor, turning into a steep dive to pursue the last remaining Glaive Fighter as it streaked down into the open mouth of the drone launch tunnel while the admiral shouted over the comlink: “Disengage and cease fire! Do not attempt to pursue that ship into the launch tunnels! I repeat, disengage and cease fire!” “Hey, you skipped right over all the footage of me kicking ass,” I protested. “Can’t we watch a little of that? You know, for context?”

  The admiral ignored me. The clip cut to another camera angle, which showed the last Glaive Fighter as it emerged from the opposite end of the drone launch tunnel and entered the hangar, with my ship close on its tail, still firing at it. The admiral paused the footage again.

  “I issued that order for a good reason, Lieutenant,” he said calmly. “If you’d followed it and broken off your pursuit, an armored safety blockade would have locked into place over that launch tunnel at both ends, preventing the enemy ship from flying into it. Like this—see?”

  On another monitor, the admiral pointed to an animated wire-frame graphic that showed a Glaive Fighter approaching the launch tunnel’s open mouth. But just before it got there, a thick circular disc slammed into place, covering the launch tunnel’s entrance. A second later the enemy ship crashed into it and exploded in a simulated fireball.

  “But that’s not what happened, is it?” the admiral said. “Because you ignored my order and continued to pursue the enemy ship at close range, the transponder inside your Interceptor disabled the tunnel’s safety blockades to allow it safe passage. Unfortunately, this also allowed the Glaive Fighter you were chasing to do the very same thing. Thanks to you, it was able to breach our defenses and enter our drone hangar, where it promptly detonated its reactor core.”

  He hit Play on the footage again, and I watched in silence as the Glaive Fighter completed its self-destruct sequence and detonated.

  “Bravo, IronBeagle,” the admiral said, giving me a sarcastic round of applause. “By some miracle no personnel were killed in that explosion,” he said. “But we lost over five hundred brand-new ADI-88 Interceptors.”

  I winced. That was a lot.

  “I did shoot down more enemy fighters than any of the other pilots,” I said.

  “True,” he replied. “But your little screwup did more damage to this base than the enemy’s sneak attack managed to.” He frowned at me. “Whose side are you on?”

  I didn’t have a response for that. The even-tempered disappointment in his voice was somehow far worse than the Full Metal Jacket–style bawling-out I’d expected. “Those drones took years to build, at a cost of millions,” he said. “But that’s just money. To humanity, they were priceless, since we’ve run out of time to build any more of them.”

  “But, sir—how was I supposed to know about those automatic security blockades?” I said. “That was never a part of the game. In Armada, the Sobrukai never tried to fly one of their fighters into an EDA base through its drone launch tunnels.”

  “That’s because we didn’t think there was any way for the enemy’s fighters to get past the launch tunnel security blockades.” He sighed. “Apparently, no one believed one of our own pilots would be dumb enough to tail an enemy ship making a suicide run into our drone hangar.”

  “It’s not fair to pin that on me,” I shot back. “I’ve never even been in combat before—and I never wanted to be! You brought me here and told me we were being invaded by aliens about ten minutes before they attacked this fucking place! I’m a high school kid! I’m supposed to be in school right now!”

  The admiral nodded, raising both hands in a calming gesture.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I apologize. This isn’t your fault.” He smirked. “Not entirely.”

  His answer threw me. I didn’t respond.

  “The EDA always knew the risks of using a videogame simulation as the sole method of training civilian recruits,” he said. “But under the circumstances there was no other option. It was the only way to locate and train millions of average people to operate combat drones in a short period of time without anyone knowing it. Your act of insubordination today—and its disastrous aftermath—are inevitable results of putting an unstable, undisciplined civilian like you on the front lines. But you’re one of our most gifted pilots, so in your case, I was told the benefits would outweigh the risks.” He let out a weary sigh. “Obviously, that turned out not to be the case.”

  He paused, giving me another chance to speak up in my own defense. I didn’t take it.

  “If you act without thinking in an Armada dogfight, there are no real consequences,” he went on. “Your player ranking drops a few places and the game gives you a canned cut-scene lecture that you promptly ignore.” He leaned forward. “But things have changed. This isn’t a game anymore. We can’t afford any more mistakes like the one you just made. Understood?”

  “So does this mean you’re not going to court-martial me?”

  “Of course not,” Vance said. “We need you, Lieutenant. Once the Europan armada begins to arrive, we’re going to need every able-bodied human being on Earth to take up arms and help us fight them off. And that may still not be enough.”

  His gaze drifted back up to the countdown clock mounted on the wall above his desk, and mine followed: 7 hours 02 minutes and 11 seconds remaining. I glanced down at my QComm and saw the countdown mirrored there. It was hard to believe the attack and subsequent battle had all occurred in less than an hour. I watched the seconds tick off.

  “But this was your first and only warning,” the admiral said. “You screw up like this again … you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong.”

  I stared at him in surprise. He glared back at me for several seconds, then gave me an almost imperceptible smile. I suddenly realized who I was talking to—Admiral Vance was also Viper, the Armada pilot currently ranked in fourth place, just above Rostam. Viper was also the name of a character in Top Gun, the film he’d just quoted.

  Until now, I hadn’t known that Viper and Admiral Vance were the same guy. This little detail had yet to be revealed in Armada’s ongoing storyline—which now seemed to have spilled over into reality.

  The admiral was still staring at me, waiting for a response. His grin was gone.

  “Do we understand each other, son?”

  I winced at the admiral’s choice of words.

  “Yes sir,” I said through clenched teeth. “But I’m not your son.”

  He stared at me for a moment; then he smiled and nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “You’re Xavier Lightman’s kid.”

  We locked eyes.

  “You look just like him,” the admiral said, matter-of-factly. “You fly like him, too.”

  The office seemed to be spinning now, whirling around me with increasing velocity.

  “You knew my father?” I finally managed to ask.

  “I still know him,” he said. He pointed to his QComm. “I just spoke with General Lightman before you arrived in my office. We talked about you, naturally.”

  The words fell on me like an avalanche.

  Since I was a boy, I had imagined countless absurd scenarios in which my father had somehow faked his own death, or lost his memory, or been kidnapped by the CIA and brainwashed into becoming an assassin like Jason Bourne. But the fantasies had been just that—fantasies. I’d never really doubted that he was dead. Not until this moment.

  “My father is dead,” I said hollowly. “He didn’t live to see my first birthday.”

  “Your father is alive,” the admiral said. He reached up to touch the jagged scar on his right cheek. “And I owe him my life. We all do.”

  My mind kept rejecting that any of this was even possible. That any of this was really happening. My father wasn’t just alive, but a general in the Earth Defense Alliance? A war hero, tasked with saving the world?

  I opened my mouth, but Vance seemed to anticipate my next question before I asked it.

  “The EDA faked your father’s death when he was first recruited. All our early recruits were forced to cut off all contact with their old lives. In return, the EDA promised to take measures to help support each of their families financially, while they were off saving the world.”

  So my father had knowingly and willingly deceived and abandoned us? How could he have—

  Admiral Vance cut into my thoughts again. “Try not to be angry at your father. He did it to protect you. To protect the world. And don’t feel too sorry for yourself, either. Your family wasn’t the only one that had to make sacrifices.” He glanced down at the wedding ring on his left hand. “Trust me, Zack. Your father never forgot about you. He was actually kind of a crybaby over how much he missed you, to be honest.” He studied me. “And even though you weren’t aware of it, he actually reentered your life several years ago, albeit in a very limited way.

  “General Lightman has been supervising your training ever since the Armada simulation first went online,” Vance said. “He took part in nearly all of your training missions. He also happens to be Armada’s highest-ranking pilot. His call sign—”

  “RedJive!” I blurted out. “My father is The Red Baron?”

  The admiral nodded.

  “Is he here?” I asked, glancing behind me, wondering if he was about to walk in. “When can I see him?” I jumped to my feet. “I want to talk to him, right now!”

  “Calm down, Lieutenant,” he said. “The general isn’t stationed here at the Palace.”

  He flipped open a clear plastic folder on his desk and handed me the single sheet of paper inside. It appeared to be some kind of office memo printed on Earth Defense Alliance stationery. My full name, rank, and other vital statistics were printed neatly across the top, followed by several lines of text that contained a lot of abbreviations and acronyms I didn’t recognize. The admiral’s name and signature were at the bottom.

  “What is this?” I asked, still trying to decipher the text.

  “Your orders,” he said. “Along with your duty station assignment. A digital copy has also been sent to your QComm.”

  I looked up at him. “I’m not staying here?”

  He shook his head. “Most of Crystal Palace’s personnel are being relocated to other outposts as we speak,” he said. “The location of this base is obviously no longer a secret to the enemy—if it ever was to begin with. Besides, as you know, nearly all of our remaining aerial drones were destroyed when the reserve hangar went up.”

  I continued to scan my orders, trying to figure out where I was being sent—then I saw it, printed near the top. DUTY STATION ASSIGNMENT: MBA—LUNAR DCS.

  “No way. You’re sending me to Moon Base Alpha?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s really up there?” I asked. “The EDA really built a secret defense base in a crater on the far side of the moon? Just like in the game?”

  “Yes, Lightman,” he said. “Just like in the game. Try to keep up.”

  His QComm buzzed on the desk in front of him, and he checked its display. Then he spun around in his chair and began to study the half-dozen display screens arrayed behind him.

  “That will be all, Lieutenant,” he said. He pointed to the exit. “Get your uniform and report to the shuttle bay immediately.”

  I stared back at him, not moving.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you let me see my father, sir.”

  “Can’t you read, Lieutenant?” he said. “He’s your new commanding officer.”

  I glanced back down at the printout in my hand. There it was, printed just below my duty station: CO: GEN LIGHTMAN, X.

  “Give your old man my best when you get to the far side of the moon,” Admiral Vance said, in a voice that suddenly sounded light-years away. “And tell him we’re even.”

  THE MAP ON my QComm’s display screen led me back through the undamaged sections of the base, down to level four. When I stepped off of one of the turbo elevators that was still operational, I joined the procession of recruits filing into the New Recruit Induction Center, an enormous carpeted room filled with a maze of high-walled office cubicles. It reminded me of the DMV offices in Portland—although, thank Zod, the line here appeared to be moving much more quickly. When I reached the front of it, a uniformed technician gave my retinas another scan. Then he retrieved a crisp new EDA flight officer’s uniform from the long rack behind him and presented it to me, on a hanger draped in clear plastic, along with a pair of black running shoes with dark gray soles, Velcro laces, and no manufacturer’s logo anywhere on them. The two-piece EDA uniform was dark blue, and its zippered jacket had gold piping along the shoulders and down each sleeve. My name and rank were stitched over the jacket’s left breast pocket, above the Earth Defense Alliance insignia.