"The New Dark Ages" (an alien conquest story; always open)

[MarieDavisRPs]

"The New Dark Ages"

(an alien conquest story; always open)

​

13 October 2025, 0505 GMT:

Over the seconds, minutes, and hours to come, alarms began going off around the world at military and scientific installations around the globe alerting the Human race of the arrival of the alien spacecraft in Earth orbit. Even before military and political leaders could determine whether the aliens' intentions were friendly or not, evidence began arriving that those intentions were the latter: the International Space Station would lose contact with Mission Control in Houston, and less than an hour later ground based radar and telescopes both would reveal that the ISS had been attacked and was now in pieces; and, one after another for hours and hours to come, the tens of thousands of satellites in Earth orbit began to cease operation as they, too, were attacked.

Without orbital satellites, it was more difficult to uncover just what was happening up there in Low Earth Orbit. But ground systems were able to determine that the craft that would come to be called the Mothership had dispatched multiple smaller ships, which were spreading out around the globe, doing all of the damage.

............................................
​

If you are interested in partaking, first read the Seeking Writers Post, then PM me with your character idea and storyline (if you have one already).

 

[MarieDavisRPs]

Central Oregon

12 October 2025, 10:12pm (minutes after the alien arrival above)

Connie Wilson grabbed a beer from the fridge and headed out onto the back porch; her phone app had notified her that the International Space Station would be passing overhead in a few minutes, and -- knowing the sky was clear -- it was going to be a perfect night for a viewing.

She dropped into the old wooden rocking chair that -- like the property surrounding her -- had been handed down to generation after generation of family members for almost 150 years. Her great-great-grandfather had been the first Wilson to settle here on what had then been a 50-50 mix of 400 acres of thick woodlands and open, grassy prairies. Much of the lower elevation forest had been cleared to make way for additional ranch and farmland, the trees milled to build the home and outbuildings.

The 26-year-old Connie was the sole remaining resident on the property from the Wilson bloodline. Her grandparents had died when she was just a toddler, and her parents had passed away four years ago in a small plane crash. Connie had two older brothers who'd worked the property during their teens, but upon their high school graduations they had each headed out into the world looking for something more than driving tractor and harvesting potatoes.

Connie only ever heard from them when they were in trouble, needed money, or both. After she'd told each of them during separate phone calls that there was no help or money left to be given, neither had called her again. The last brotherly call had been more than three years ago.

Luckily, Connie had help with the labor in the form of both seasonal and year-round workers; small cabins out back of the house were available to them if they needed. They helped with the spring plantings, fall harvests, and daily chores, from milking the 50 head herd of goats to sheering the twice that large herd of sheep; caring for and slaughtering the chickens, ducks, and hogs; and even looking out for the herd of more than 200 guinea pigs than ran freely over the property nearer to the house.

Connie did what she could for the help with regards to pay, but those who came back year after year understood and accepted that there wasn't much to be had. She sometimes felt guilty that many of them only survived because of State and Federal Aid -- food stamps, health benefits, etc. -- but then she reminded herself of the steep property, income, and inheritances taxes she had paid or still paid each year.

Out here in the middle of nowhere, with the house's lights turned off and the neighborhood light pollution about as low as it got, Connie had a view of the Milky Way that most people only experienced at a planetarium or via videos on their laptops or phones. As she sipped at her beer and watched the sky, she followed the path of various satellites passing overhead, their metal surfaces reflecting the light of the sun that had long ago fallen behind the Cascades Mountain Range to the west.

She used to use her phone app to identify the satellites, just for the fun of it, but these days the only one she really cared much about what the ISS, and for a good reason: there were people up there. People! Floating around the Earth at 17,500 mph, circling the globe every 90 minutes. Connie had always found that to be the most amazing thing in the skies above her.

Until tonight.

Connie caught sight of a bright light moving slowly across the sky from west to east and smiled. She immediately and rightfully presumed it to be the ISS, but ... there was something wrong; it seemed a much more powerful reflection than normal, making her wonder if maybe the solar panels were tilted strangely or perhaps there was a replenishment spacecraft pulling up to it, adding to the reflecting surface area.

Then, that single, large point of light became two, then three, then several. Connie sat up taller, staring wide eyed; her mind was instantly filled with fears that the ISS was deorbiting and breaking up. She knew that NASA was planning on ending the nearly-30-year-old program in 2030, but she hadn't heard anything about an early abandoning and destruction of the station. Had it suffered an accident or been hit by a meteor?

As the porch roof began to obstruct her view, Connie hopped up and moved out into the yard. As she watched, the smaller-appearing reflections of light did something that baffled her even further: they began moving off in directions that told her they weren't pieces of the ISS. Farther apart from one another, they were more easily counted: 15 points of light, one larger than the others.

Connie considered for a moment that perhaps it was another SpaceX launching of Starlink satellites. But she'd seen one of those distributions a couple of years earlier, and the littler satellites had tracked behind the ship dispensing them in almost the same track. These smaller objects were moving out in a fan shape that was more than 50 degrees wide.

Impossible, she thought to herself. What the fuck is this?

She whipped out her cell phone and brought up the ISS tracking app to see if the News Link tab had any information on it; there was nothing of note. Then, she noted that the ISS icon was only just then entering her sphere of vision. Looking to the horizon, Connie found the reflection for which she'd initially come out; it passed overhead just as normally as it had more than 100,000 times since its launch in 1998.

Connie hurried around to the other side of the property, watching the strange lights as they began disappearing one after another behind the tall fir trees. She returned to her phone again, typing in What are the strange lights in the sky tonight? The answers that Google provided were of no use to her; if what she'd seen was the result of something planned, she was sure there would be some sort of posts about it. Nothing.

She headed inside to check for news on the television, computer, and radio. Again, there was nothing that could explain what was happening. Connie continued searching for answers for almost an hour when suddenly everything serviced from her satellite dish -- the television, the internet, and her cell phone -- went dark. She rebooted anything and everything that could be but with no beneficial result.

Checking the time, Connie realized that the ISS would be passing overhead again soon. Presumably that meant that whatever those other reflections were would also be coming over soon. She donned a warm hat and warmer coat and hurried back outside again, looking up to the sky anxiously.

Sure enough, one point of light after another appeared. Connie immediately noticed that only a portion of the lights were in the sky at any one time, though; they had continued spreading out as they'd circled the globe apparently, and now only the brightest of the lights and four others were in the sky at one time.

Something else was happening, too: the burning streaks of meteors burning up as they entered the atmosphere. Connie couldn't know it now, of course, but what she was actually seeing was the beginning of the end for the tens of thousands of satellites orbiting Earth as the aliens caused them to deorbit and enter the atmosphere.

Ninety minutes after it had first appeared to her, the ISS once again came over the western horizon. Connie noted that one of the new lights in the sky was fairly near to it, fairly defined as hundreds or possibly thousands of miles as far as she knew. Suddenly, the ISS reflection blinked out for a very brief moment, then reappeared, then blinked out again.

This continued for a while until the reflection became two reflections; the alien craft had somehow severed the station into two pieces, each of which was rolling uncontrollably and disintegrating, too. Even though it wouldn't happen in the sky above Connie, both pieces would eventually enter the atmosphere, continue falling apart, and burn up almost entirely; some pieces of one half would reach the ground across Europe, while the pieces of the other half would hit the Atlantic Ocean minutes earlier.