“Command Central, this is squadron leader Pelishar One. What do you have for us?” The voice of the lead F-16’s pilot came in clear over the radio in the command bunker.

It had been hell on the base for the last two nights, and god knows what new horror these latest aberrations foretold. Luckily for General Abashell, he had not been here for the worst of it, but he was here now, and the legendary commander had been directing the battered base’s defenses since his arrival a few hours earlier.

After bringing the base back under some modicum of military lockdown, he had faced a slew of preposterous rumors about the seemingly superhuman nature of their attackers. That had culminated in reports that his own daughter had been killed on the base, something he had quashed with a stern call to her real commander back in Islamabad, a quick word directly with her just to be sure, and then a diatribe on what he would do to the next person who brought him a report that include the word ‘superhuman.’

After events had seemed to be somewhat under his control, reports of an even greater wave of launches had started to come in. They had heard of the missile launches in the upper atmosphere around the globe, and god knows he knew of the earlier launches from the very base he now commanded. As he had feared, the Russian military machine was reportedly now mobilizing in response, and the Kremlin was calling for full access to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Then, of course, there were rumors that all the missile launches were somehow linked.

But General Abashell had even more pressing concerns. Three hours earlier, as news flooded the world’s television and radio networks about the explosions in space, they had started to pick up some sort of debris falling into the upper atmosphere over Eastern Pakistan and sweeping west in a long arch. It had been hard to tell how big the objects were, but there was a string of them coming down in a line stretching as far as their radar could see.

Then, without warning, one of them had detonated, forcing them to dismiss the theory that this was merely debris from some rogue satellite’s demise. The explosion had been so high and so bright that people from over sixty miles away had reported it. A massive circle of flame in the night sky blossoming inward and upward in a great plume. He had not seen it himself, as Peshawar was hundreds of miles to the south of the line of falling objects. But radar and surface-to-air missile installations along the Chinese and Indian borders had sent back images of the detonation.