Divided (#1 Divided Destiny) Read Free Page B

because the population of Earth was too large to control if there was chaos. For Earth to surrender, the world needed leadership, not anarchy. However, if the current leaders didn’t surrender, it would be a simple matter for those beams to crisscross the globe, taking out those that gave the orders. Those leaders would be replaced with others, who would likely be more amenable to the aliens’ demands. They had never fought an enemy like this. No enemy that they had ever fought had had the capability to do this.
    “That gives us a chance. You are among our best and brightest. I need ideas. Anyone?” General Sampson looked at the assembled scientists. The silence was deafening as everyone looked at one another; the situation was unprecedented, and it was clear that normal tactics weren’t exactly going to cut it.
    “If we breach the shield, we can take it down,” a male scientist with a strong Southern drawl offered.
    “Good, how do we do that?” General Sampson asked.
    Julian rolled his eyes again. A general leading a brainstorming session—the world really had gone mad. However, he was the highest-ranking officer on base, and this was an alien invasion. He had been here to be shown some piece of new technology, not that any of that mattered anymore. Nothing they were working on would do them any good against their current threat.
    “Hit the ships with something stronger,” a female scientist near the front of the room suggested somewhat timidly.
    “Like what? We’ve already fired our strongest air-to-air missiles,” an older male scientist said.
    “I would hardly call them our strongest; they were standard missiles,” the Southern scientist scoffed. “We should drop the MOAB.”
    “In case you haven’t noticed, that ship is currently hovering over New York. That’s a problem all on its own, but there’s no sense in making it worse,” Julian pointed out. He growled in frustration at the sea of blank looks before him, and these were supposed to be their best and brightest. “We need to breach the shield, but blowing up half of New York won’t help with that. We start throwing bombs onto that ship and that’s what will happen.”
    “Oh, so you have a better idea?” came a shout from one of the corners of the room, a smug, smarmy colleague that Julian had never liked.
    “Of course,” Julian stated confidently. “We need to analyze the energy pattern of the shield. We might be able to overload it with a certain electrical current. Once the shield is down, the ship will hopefully be as vulnerable as any aircraft.”
    General Sampson looked pleased. “Good, that’s what I wanted to hear. Now, how do we analyze it?”
    “Keep attacking it. The more we attack it, the more data we can collect,” Julian suggested.
    “In case you haven’t noticed,” the same smarmy male scientist piped up, a smirk playing across his lips as he repeated Julian’s patronizing words, “every time planes attack that ship, it shoots them down. People die.”
    “People are dying anyway. We might all die,” Julian told him bluntly with a careless shrug.
    Julian stared the room down. In a sea of military uniforms, suits, and other professional attire, he was the only one there in jeans and a casual shirt, and he didn’t care. However, they would be wrong in assuming he didn’t care about the lives he was suggesting would be lost in order to test the alien shield. He did care, but he didn’t let sentiment get in the way of making the hard decisions. Not that he’d had to make any really hard decisions before. It was just the type of man he thought of himself as, the type that did what was necessary, not what was popular, which was perhaps why no one liked working with him.
    “Besides, as I’ve already said, that ship is hovering over New York. Even if we do succeed in bringing it down, the shockwave will cause as much damage as the impact. Perhaps I was hasty earlier,” Julian said wryly. “It doesn’t matter if