One

What came out?

January 3rd 2154

It was a gloomy day as if foreshadowing the meeting that is about to take place in a few minutes, exactly at noon 'well that is unsurprising for the weather in Denver in the middle of the winter' councilor Elizabeth Gutierrez's thought. She was in her office reviewing the latest reports about the strange structure discovered on the recently exposed ground of western Antarctica, in the westernmost side of the Thiel mountain range, near to the cost of Ross gulf, discovered a couple months ago accidentally by a mineral survey on behalf of the United Earth Initiative or UEI.

She left the document on top of her desk and walked to the window of her office. She took a look to the gloomy city outside beyond the confines of the little 3 story tall building that currently held the title of being the heart quarters of the North American administrative zone. It encompassed mostly the mountain range that ran from the northern half of what used to be México in the old maps all the way to what used to be the border between Alaska and Canada, little more than the area of the land mass. Even with the deep murky cloud cover that almost never left the city the temperature was sweltering hot, almost 30°C, courtesy of the uncontrolled changing climate.

She reflected slightly, about how she felt and sighed. She was proud of the job she has done so far even if it was frustrating at times, like the past months. On top of negotiating with the bunch of kingdoms that still dotted more than 40% of North America, like the new Mayan and Aztec kingdoms in the south, the "great and marvelous" republics in northeast or the "Christendom" in what used to be the bible belt, about their peaceful integration in her administrative zone, most of them were just bunch of deserted wastelands with little of use beyond the underground resources.

She and the UEI at large were going to great lengths to avoid the more man made carnages, after sea level as consequence raised 70 meters in the 2070's, the weather went to crap and that little repeat of the Carrington event in June 12th of 2077. Those led to almost as much death as the wars that followed shortly after and lasted for another decade and only the emergency formation of the UEI by the last standing military governments of the time keep the world from completely becoming a wasteland.

But what worried her now the most was the series of events that surrounded the compound. When they were discovered 2 months ago, in November 8th, by a mineral prospection expedition everybody went nuts for a while. Once of the first reports made by the scientific and engineering division of the UEI were delivered to her and the rest of the members of the ruling council the situation only took a turn for the worse. The radioactive dating put the age of this installation at about 13,000 years old, predating every single human civilization and while some members like councilor Andrei Mihajlovich Pavlov and Friedrich Ludwig Müller from the Northern Eurasian and the European Administrative zones respectively, wanted bomb the structures out of pure fear to what the footage revealed to be installations with advanced technology, undeniable of alien origin. The rest of the council persuaded them from that course of action, not without first compromising the deployment of troops to the site.

She saw that course of action as extremely paranoid, after all. What could be there that represented a risk for their frail world? Autonomous AI? The initial concern, at least the only rational in her mind were more unknown pathogens like the ones that already ravaged the 500 millions of human still breathing in the planet, but even that fear proved to be wrong. Everything pointed that she was right and they were over reacting and wasting precious resources that could be of use somewhere else.

Or that was what she thought. The reports currently in her desk were weirder and weirder in tone. The first from a week ago, was about a sudden burst of radiation detected in December 25th from a large arch almost 7 times as big as the now flooded triumph arch in the Paris Lake.

The next reports were from the emergency evacuation of the personnel in the site until a NBC team could catch the fleet and inspection the zone to determine the source of the radiation and remove it if possible to allow the work there to resume but that was shot down by what the last report, an emergency one that arrived just 4 hours ago.

In the outrageous report with date of January 3rd were photos and video taken from a drone watching over the installation. In the last 4 hours from the arch what could only be described as a fantasy army has been pouring nonstop, with things that could only be described as wyverns, dragons, orcs, trolls and humanoid figures of similar size to a human being, everything that could be find in old videogames and movies and even older books. What followed was the drone filming tis own destruction by a fireball throw by one of the wyverns, the final part of the footage in the report showed the people from the expedition running to their ships.

The report concluded with only a text note from the governor of Palmer Island, only a fifth of the expedition could make contact with his meagre coastal defense forces that were dispatched to respond the SOS of the expedition. They have been harassed all the way by the wyverns and their ships showed burn marks. The only silver lining of the situation was the effectiveness of the 20mm guns against the aerial assets of the hostiles, although it seems that the wyverns shimmered for a few moments before being shot down. The preliminary estimations were around 500,000 troops and increasing.

She took a look to her phone, a gift from her father 20 years ago for his graduation of the then small instruction system of the UEI and one of the first models produced since their scientific and engineering division of the UEI managed to slap together technology from several different places, recoveries from what used to be China, Netherlands, US, Russia and few other places necessary to manufacture even the simplest electronics more than 50 years ago.

I was time for the meeting to start, in the past these were performed using long range radio and only in person to discuss the most pressing matters of the world but after painstakingly rebuilding the satellite constellations for the last decade, long distance videoconferences were possible once again.

As she sighed of the umpteenth time of the day and proceed to her desk, once there she opened the link and the faces of council were displayed.

'Good afternoon Elizabeth' Said councilor Huang Feihong from the eastern zone. A curious place where people from former far eastern countries had to put their past history of mutual bloodshed behind and after spilling more than never before as consequence of the the most heavily urbanized region of the world and once home to 3 billion of souls succumbed to the waves. 'I thought you wouldn't come'

She laugh in spite of the informality of the greeting but what her nervous laughter hide was genuine worry, the same concern that she could see in the eyes of Feihong and the rest , despite the grainy quality of the image.

'Nice to meet you again and I'm sorry if I made all of you wait, I lost the sense of time thinking in the whole mess at the South Pole.'

At the mention of the situation all the presents tensed up and then councilor Pavlov interrupted abruptly.

'So what if we cut the chatter and get down to businesses? We have had deaths already.'

'Al right, Pavlov. Well, General Cohen. How long until the fleet dispatched arrives to Ross gulf and can engage the enemy?' Councilor Subhash Khatri from the southern Asian zone spoke with a sense of urgency creeping in his voice.

General Cohen, commander in chief of UEI armed forces, the largest human army currently in existence and probably the only human army with mechanized forces at all, reflected, the fleet was 1 day away but the high altitude drone deployed by Major Carlos Ramirez, the commander of the forces in Palmer Island has made him to change his previous plan.

'About one day but there is a problem sirs, the hostile main force, 800,000 strong is our best guess, is advancing toward the coast of the Belgrano channel between Palmer Island and the continent so I have ordered to the fleet to split. The Enterprise and its strike group will detach from the fleet and continue to their base camp in the structure and attack their base camp in the structure in which the arch that served as their entry point to Earth is located. The Qin Shi Huang and the Peter the Great strike groups will attempt to intercept the main force before their can cross the channel'

'How would their cross the channel, in the footage that we have seen so far their infantry and cavalry are medieval in nature, true, fantasy medieval, with some lizard men, wolfmen, beetles and what not, but medieval nonetheless.' Pointed Councilor Müller with a cold and calculating stare.'

'That is what I though initially councilor but Major Ramirez sent this to our headquarters just before meeting began'

The face of the presents shrunk and the screen showed the southern coast the channel connecting the Ross and Ronne gulfs. There were several large beast resembling crocodiles, at least 100 meters long judging by the size of the infantry next to them, some were working loading the beasts with equipment and supplies.

The video ended and the screen showed again the face of the councilors whom were in a state of disbelief.

As nobody say added anything the general continued.

'We estimate that it will take them 18 hours to finish their preparations and cross the channel, Mayor Ramirez has reported aerial scouts harassing the southern experimental farmlands in Palmer Island and getting close to the settlements at the north'

That was bad, thought Elizabeth, the investment of resources on those farms was considerable and they have so much hopes that they would palliate some of the food shortages.

'Can't you begin air operations against them?' Asked councilor Pavlov.

'Admirals Malikov and Zheng just launched a preemptive attack to neutralize those…' trailed the general for a moment 'crocodiles, but their aircrafts found that the largest dragons are difficult to deal with, they are tied down in dog fights with them as we speak'

'Dog fighting?'

'Yes, I know, that is insane, the problems is that our radar guided missiles can't lock reliably on them until they are less than 4 nautical miles, and before anybody say anything this situation is unlike the pacification campaign of the southern and the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the founding of that administrative zone. We aren't using ammunition left to rot inside warehouses for half a century. Those lizards are almost like stealth planes. Our pilots have had to close in and use IR guided missiles but apparently they have some sort of force shield and required 2 missiles each, they were supposed to return and rearm but those bastards are fast, almost as fast as our transports, the escorts of the carriers had to engage them using their cannons to keep them from directly attacking the fleet. Admiral McElroy has been informed, I expect them to face the same problem once he begins operations against their base camp'

'Can we spare more strike groups?' Asked councilor Elizabeth.

'Negative, we only have 7 in operation worldwide and, the Julius Cesar is tied up in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Bismarck, the Napoleon and the Gandhi are in patrol of the dangerous maritime routes in the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic and while I have already ordered the Bismarck to the theater it will take a week for it to reach the battle'

'What else can be done then?' Bemoaned councilor Pavlov, he didn't like to be sitting in his office in Syktyvkar, capital of his administrative zone after Moscow became radioactive rubble in the 2070's, and as far as he from the battle he couldn't haste the deployment of the forces from his zone.

'Indeed, it is the troops from the southern cone zone that could deploy the fastest but I need access to the merchant transports of the southern cone zone, our navy lack of enough capacity to transport enough troops as fast as we will need if the strike groups of Malikov and Zheng fails to stop them from crossing.'

'Granted' quickly responded Francisco Icardi, councilor in charge of the southern cone zone that covered the southern tip of South America.

'Good, also I have ordered the all the aerial assets from the southern cone zone to deploy to the aerodrome near Palmer city to reinforce the overwhelmed air wings of our carriers and transport supplies and an advance relief force as reinforcements.'

'Let's say they manage to cross the channel and the marines in the fleet can't stop them before they advance towards Palmer city and the smaller settlements at the north of Palmer Island. What plan is in place to keep our people safe?' Tentatively hypothesize councilor Müller.

The General face hardened and his gaze became cool. 'There are two plans. If even with advance relief force we fail to hold them before the reinforcements from the continent arrive in mass, there is a transport that just left from the Indian subcontinent, loaded with nerve gas bombs. If they prove to be immune to them, there are two of our remaining six ballistic missile nuclear submarines, a Columbia-class and a Laika-class are already in range to strike them.'

The councilors froze at the mention of weapons of mass destruction, while they have been used as leverage against the hostile plethora of little kingdoms, caliphates, khanates, city states, republics or whatever name the humans that decided to stay independent and aggressive against the UEI chose to call themselves, nobody has used them in anger since the mayhem that enveloped the world for two decades shortly after the catastrophic decade of 2070's.

'Isn't that too excessive General?' Councilor Elizabeth knew that while her official policy in public was to reunite humanity by the means of diplomacy and mutual help, she wasn't naive enough to don't order the crushing of human groups that attacked the people of the UEI, but those "policing actions" were a far cry from using WMD against somebody, even if that somebody wasn't human, not to say what the climatological effects in the already delicate Earth's atmosphere.

The General shook his head 'It would if I suggested to just nuke them right now, yes, but that is only a failsafe if every else fails. We can't allow them to entrench in our world, we might not be able to expel them before it is too late. We don't know their capabilities.'

Elizabeth saw at the members of the ruling council, most were frightened, others like Pavlov and Müller had calculating cold stares, they agreed with her and one last order was given. 'Expel them from our planet by whatever means necessary.'