Look, you come up with a title for every single chapter summary of this book.
Armada: Chapter 16
Zack’s dad leads Zack to another part of the Moon base, which of course means we’re going to another place named with an 80s pop culture reference that’s a bit of a stretch at best:
“Welcome,” my father said, stretching out his arms, “to the Moon Base Alpha Drone Operations Center. We call it the Thunderdome.”
“Why?”
“Well, because it has a dome,” he said, pointing up.
Just wait, it gets even more tenuous:
“And we fight inside it, just like Mad Max.”
Just like Mad Max? Ok, admittedly, I’ve only seen Fury Road, but I’m like 99% certain that outer space drone warfare takes up little to no parts of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Were there not enough space-related fights in 80s pop culture that a more appropriate reference could have been used for? Because based on what I’ve learned from Armada so far, I’m pretty fucking sure there were.
Zack’s dad introduces Zack to the other two guys stationed on the base: Major Shin Hashimoto and Major Graham Fogg. Shin jokes that “Your father has told me way too much about you over the years. I’ve gotten pretty sick of it, actually.”, so Shin is pretty much my new favorite character.
“It’s just the three of you?” I asked. “No one else is up here?” […]
“The Alliance used to have dozens of people stationed up here, to help keep all of the different systems running smoothly,” he said. “But once the QComm network came online, almost everything could be done remotely with drones, so they cut back to just a skeleton crew, made up of essential military personnel.”
Wait, didn’t Zack’s dad just admit that he has no idea how anything works on the space station? How are these guys “essential” personnel?
I stepped over to the edge of the nearest drone controller station pit and peeked in. There was an OUT OF ORDER sign […]
“What happened to this one?” I asked.
“Graham spilled Coke Zero on it”
SERIOUSLY, BOOK, YOU ARE MAKING MY OWN ARGUMENTS FOR ME.
Zack gets to know his father and the other two men better. As you might have guessed, since this is an Ernest Cline novel, this just means they chit-chat about geek culture:
- “We play D and D four or five nights a week […] My character is a twenty-seventh-level Elven archer.”
- “do you guys have a band or something?” I asked.
“Indeed, we do,” Graham said proudly. “We call ourselves ‘The Bishop of Battle.’ It’s the name of-”
“The short film starring Emilio Estevez? […] From the Nightmares horror anthology?”
My father […] blinked at me in surprise [and] a goofy grin [spread across his face].
Yep, this is just like watching a father meeting the son he never knew for the first time.
We get reminded that all the characters in this book are man-children, as though that were a particularly difficult thing to forget.
“Care for some snackage, Lieutenant? […] You’re a Lucky Charms man, right? Dry, with no milk?”
“Dry with no milk” is actually a pretty good description of Armada, come to think of it.
“How did our favorite snacks end up in our EDA profiles?” […]
“The EDA knows everything about everyone, kid. […] The EDA makes the CIA and the NSA look like the PTA.”
“Great,” I said. “The government has been spying on all of us our whole lives, but at least we get to have our favorite snacks. Bonus.”
The other four recruits join them and meet Zack’s dad and the two other characters whose names I already forget. I’m just gonna call them the British one and the not-British one, because they’re pretty interchangeable except that the British one talks with a weird affect that I can only describe as “like someone who has probably never been to Britain thinks the British must sound”.
- “We prefer to call him ‘Limes’ instead,” Shin said. “It’s short for ‘limey.’ He hates it.”
Graham nodded. “Indeed I do.” - “I’m joking, lad,” Graham said, still laughing. “I must’ve watched the video clip of you chasing that Glaive into the base fifty times so far today! Priceless, that was!”
Debbie has some good questions.
“But when are you going to tell us why the EDA sent us up here? […] Why couldn’t we just remain back on Earth with the other recruits?”
Turns out it’s not a plot hole! Sort of!
“One of the things you weren’t told [is] that this isn’t the first time the Europans have sent ships to Earth to attack us […] Every 398.8 days, a celestial event known as the Jovian Opposition occurs [when] Europa is at its closest proximity to us [when] the Europans [use] that proximity to send a small detachment of ships to Earth […] When [the moon base] finally became operational in September of 1988, and a permanent human presence was established here, the enemy’s tactics changed [and] they came here to Moon Base Alpha first – and attacked it.”
They go on about how many times the Moon base has been nearly destroyed by these attacks. Which… kind of raises the question of why they have a moon base at all? The only reason that makes any sense to me is to divert the attacks from the civilian population on the Earth… but the book doesn’t give this as a reason. And the aliens attacked the Earth directly anyway a few chapters ago. So…
“It took nearly a full year to repair the damage. […] The Europans attacked again, this time with an even larger force, to match the increased size of Moon Base Alpha’s defenses. And once again, our forces were barely a mach for them.”
“The same thing happened again the next year.” […]
“This escalation continued for over a decade.”
OK, BUT WHY ARE THEY EVEN ON THE MOON THOUGH? THIS IS A WEIRD QUESTION TO HAVE TO ASK.
Then they explain that the aliens introduced a new weapon called the Disruptor. Honestly, the explanation in the book is entirely too fucking complicated. It basically shuts down all electronic communications within a certain radius. I just summarized a page or so of words like “magnetic field” and “quantum-disruption”, so you’re goddamn welcome.
Basically this means that if it gets activated on Earth, only the bunch of them on the moon base will be able to work the drones back on earth. I almost deleted my whole “what is the point of the moon base” criticism at this point, but then remembered that this would mean that their actual plan is for these three (now eight) people to control an entire planet’s worth of combat planes and shit, so, uh, still doesn’t really seem like a big picture kind of thing to be honest.
They tell a story about how they destroyed the Disruptor the last time around with incredible luck. Zack’s dad puts forth a genuinely interesting theory that he thinks the Europans let them destroy the Disruptor, because the odds of them doing it were so incredibly slim. He admits this theory makes no sense at all, but they share footage of the battle to let the recruits think about it for themselves. It’s not worth recapping here. There’s 80s references. I know you were curious.
They share some intel with the recruits. Three disruptors are on their way to Earth right now, but humanity has a secret weapon that will arrive at Europa roughly when the second wave of the aliens’ fleet will get to Earth. The secret weapon is a thing that will melt Europa or something. I don’t know. Shit’s happening in space. I honestly have already lost so much interest in the specifics.