Armada Chapter 25:
The second wave of aliens arrives, and everyone fights valiantly. We also learn a bit more about Zack’s dad’s plan:
During his chalk talk, my father had explained how the EDA’s hard-line intranet worked. It was an underground fiber-optic cable network directly linking all of its drone controller outposts together, creating a Disrupter-proof communications system that the Alliance had prepared in anticipation of the invasion. It would allow the EDA to keep communications open between its command outposts, and allow drone operators to help defend other installations remotely while the Disrupter was active, via hardwired defense turrets and tethered drones.
If everything went according to my father’s plan, we would be able to use our intranet connection at Starbase Ace to help him infiltrate the Raven Rock outpost during the chaos of the Disrupter attack.
I very kindly took the time to copy/paste this as I have literally no idea how I was supposed to summarize that on my own. I typed something along the lines of, “Blah” and then had to call in the big guns.
Everyone, including Zack’s mom, play their part in this plan, which all seems to be based around this hard-line intranet. Zack pilots his drones towards Jupiter, so he can hopefully stop the Icebreaker while his dad stops Vance and co from attacking as well. I haven’t read ahead, so I don’t know if this whole chapter is going to be Zack just telling me who is piloting a drone where. I’m so sorry if it is.
That was when we got word via a public EDA command broadcast that the second Disrupter was about to make landfall back here on Earth, in the unlikeliest of locations. At first, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Instead of activating the Disrupter in a secluded spot like Antarctica, this time the aliens picked a far less subtle location— the national monument at Devils Tower, Wyoming. The same spot where humanity makes first contact with the alien visitors in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Zack’s friends wonder if this means the aliens are mocking them. If so, I feel like there was probably a funnier joke to be made. This just feels like the aliens making another reference, not specifically that they’re mocking them.
There is so fucking much explanation about which drones are on the hard-line intranet vs the drones that are now offline with this new Disrupter activated. How could there possibly be anyone out there who read this and found it interesting? I really am genuinely curious about this.
Zack loses communication with his father for two seconds until Lex again saves the day by “execut[ing] some further computer wizardry, and a live video image of my father’s ship reappeared at the edge of my HUD.” I think Lex is a fine character, but it’s annoying that there’s quite a bit of the plot which hinges on Lex in two lines magically hacking something with no difficulty.
It happens again moments later when Zack’s dad goes into the base where Vance is and is immediately attacked by drones:
If it hadn’t been for Lex and Ray, he wouldn’t have had a chance. Thankfully, Lex was already inside the EDA’s security firewall, so she was able to access the base security system to guide my father and use it to help him avoid or evade as many of the tethered ATHIDs as she could while throwing up blast doors around his route to keep defenders away.
Zack’s father is attacked and then more things happen that I cannot fully describe without the power of ctrl c/ctrl v:
I watched helplessly as he struggled to get back on his feet, but he couldn’t. So he began to crawl. He pulled himself down the corridor, until he reached a charging dock where five dormant ATHIDs were stored.
He opened up the maintenance access panels one at a time and entered a long code on each one, and then all four of them powered up. My father detached the tethered controllers from each drone and used them to command the four ATHIDs to lift his injured body off the ground. Then he had them interlace their eight arms and legs around his body, forming something that looked sort of like a walking spider tank. This contraption lifted him up and continued to carry him forward.
I…why? Why do the four of them need to carry him like this? Am I meant to be picturing this as a crowd surfacing situation? Or the way a bunch of parents would hold a parachute while their toddlers like run around underneath it?
So Zack’s dad continues to be carried by the drones into the command center, and Admiral Vance orders people to shoot him. Zack’s dad is protected by shields somehow, but also gets hit in the leg.
Zack’s dad blows himself up to delay Admiral Vance, so Zack has time to be a hero and stop them completely. But the weirdest fucking thing is before he blows himself up…he warns them all to leave and his is like, “HA! I was just trying to delay you.” If that was the case why the fuck did he sacrifice himself? Why not just like distract them another way if they all immediately just left and were fine?
Seriously, Zack is like, “Oh! I only have a matter of seconds before they get back online another way.” SO HOW WAS THIS HELPFUL???
So two minutes later Zack is locked in battle with these guys. He fights Vance and wins in like a page. Vance is like, “Noooo don’t destroy the Icebreaker or all humans will die!!!” But Zack is like whatevs and blows it up.