Yuval Goldmeir, a satellite technician, watched the OPsat satellite’s data feed of his section of the Golan Heights. It was a strategic piece of land, captured during the Six-Day War, and over three thousand square miles of basaltic plateau bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee in the west, Mount Hermon in the north, and the Raqqad Wadi in the east. He and many others each monitored multiple grids of the vast area, night and day.

Today Yuval Goldmeir’s area of interest was the town of Nawa, close to Syria. He leaned forward, frowning. The analytics built into the geo-security systems had picked something up, and alarms had demanded his attention.

He drilled down to a view position a few miles above ground. There seemed to be a single figure walking alone in the desert, about three miles southwest of Nawa. After rewinding the feed, he could see that the person had skirted the city, but had effectively walked across the landscape.

Goldmeir leaned back in his chair, half turning. “Yev … oy, Yev, what do you make of this?”

Yev Cohen, his closest technician colleague, swung around and craned to see his screen. He shrugged. “Miles away, and only a single person. Forget it.”

“We’re supposed to call in anything strange … and risk analytics has flagged it as a level-one threat.” He circled the figure and then typed some queries into his system. His eyes narrowed. “In seventy-four minutes, this person will walk into the Golan.”

“Then border patrol will pick him up.” Cohen turned back to his own screen.

Goldmeir continued to watch for a few more seconds before commanding the image magnification to drill down even further. The huge weight on the figure’s back now became apparent. The technician’s brows were furrowed as he hurriedly entered more commands, asking it to search for a high energy particle trace. His eyes went wide as a second warning began to flash on detection confirmation.

“A Traveler. I think it’s a Traveler … and radiation is off the scale.” He spun from his desk, his mind spinning. “What do we …?”

Beside him, Yev Cohen snatched up a phone.

*

The IAF F-15E Strike Eagle came in at just under Mach-1. Its radar saw the target long before the pilot would obtain a visual.

“Target acquired; deploying Vulcan.”

The bottom of the Strike Eagle opened and a multi barrelled weapon lowered. The weapon chosen was the M61 Vulcan, a pneumatically driven, six-barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling-style rotary cannon, which fired 20mm rounds at a rate of approximately 6,000 per minute. The laser-sighted and the computer-directed gun locked onto the lone figure.

“Clear to fire, Fox-1,” came the mechanical voice directly into the pilot’s headset.

“Firing.” The pilot let loose a short burst of fifty high penetration M56 rounds.

“Good strikes, command. Coming around.” The pilot banked, taking multiple pictures and preparing to head on home.