The Press of a Button
Commander McKay stood on the bridge of his starship. Calm and sure, confidence radiated out of him as he stared out at the black void of space. He knew that that day would go down in history. That day he would deliver a death blow against the opposing alien invasion. ‘aliens.’ he thought to himself. ‘Why did it have to be bloody aliens?’
McKay remembered the attacks. The first attacks during the alien invasion been terrible, the devastation that had been wrought all over Earth. However, one specific attack game back to him sharply. The aliens, the monsters, had first attacked all the world’s largest cities. This included New York, McKay’s home. He had been away on a bus when the aliens had hit. That was what saved him. It had also destroyed him. When he was five miles from the city, he watched the firestorm as New York crumbled, taking his pregnant wife down with it. He remembered what she had said as he left, “Look at our little daughter, one day she is going to grow up and make me proud, just like you.”
His daughter never got the chance. Well, Mckay was there now. He was ready to put a stop to all the deaths, ready to get revenge. Not just for his wife and child, but for all on Earth who had been lost. The ship continued on into the unfeeling depths of space.
When commander McKay arrived at his destination, he received a transmission from the person overseeing the mission, General Caraway. The general’s face flashed on to the screen. “How close are you to your destination?” she asked.
“We will be approaching in approximately one and a half minutes.”
“Good, now you need to remember the weak points on your target. This…. Structure takes up a large amount of space. It contains many levels and encompasses a wide area. However, if you detonate a nuke in a large hub of the 3rd quadrant-”
“I didn’t know we were using nukes.”
“Of course we are using nukes. We have to stop the vile aliens once and for all. Don’t you remember what happened to Dubai? Tokyo? New York?”
“Yes, General, you are completely right.” Images of Mckay’s family flitted through his mind. He could let that happen to anyone very again. That was why he was there, to protect. His resolve hardened his expression. “But,” he said, his expression faltering, “What target is large enough for a nuke?”
Then McKay saw it – the Hive. It was a large structure flowering high into the sky. Commander McKay’s face slackened. The Hive was where the young were kept. “Ma’am this…. This is the Hive. It’s where they keep their young, their children. This is a war crime. It’s an alien invasion and we’re the aliens.”
“Was it any less of a crime when they bombed New York? We have to do this to save the Earth. All you have to do is press a button, that’s much less of a crime then what they did. Get out of your ivory tower and into the real world. Sometimes we have to sacrifice our morals.”
Then Commander McKay peered at the Hive. Looking closer, Mckay noticed what looked like a female alien with two younger beings. It was a mother.
“General, you’re right. New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Beijing. It was all inexcusable and vile. But, General, that means that it would be just as inexcusable to do the same, to murder their young. The one thing we can never sacrifice in this war is our moral sense.”
“What else could I do but fly away? I couldn’t press the button, I couldn’t detonate the bomb. I came home with my tail between my legs.” McKay, no longer a commander, sat on his living room floor with his grand-niece on his lap.
“Great Uncle George, is that why my mommy calls you a traitor?”
“Yeah, that’s why. Also, as I left the Hive I told the aliens we were coming. They all evacuated. When another commander inevitably arrived, the kids had all left, everyone. People shouldn’t be so angry. The aliens left the day after I did.”
“Why didn’t you press that button? You could have been a hero. You would have been the one to end the alien invasion.”
“I joined the war to save the children, I couldn’t cause the deaths of any others.”
For more science fiction short stories, check out Specimen.
For fantasy short stories, check out A King Apart and The Ivory Tower.
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