Prologue

"A-201, all clear."

"Roger, sending off."

"A-202, all clear."

"Roger, sending off."

"A-20 …"

"Roger …"

Deep below the metallic earth lies an unending number of silver monoliths, each hanging from a mechanical hand slowly sliding along rails. The rails stretch and folds as far as the eye can see, lit up many piercing white ceiling lights. The monotonous environment is frequently broken by announcements of departure as the silver monoliths drop one by one, once the pillars reach the ground they are each swallowed by the same hovering black disc, seemingly erased from the world.

This underground facility contained one of the many secret projects operating on Earth. Each of the pillars represents a line of defense for humanity, they are volunteers either stupid or brave enough to sign up for an unknown recruitment call posted by the Unified Government, a unified front of humanity made to fight off the alien threat.

The alien civilization at war with humanity, simply denoted as the Azathoth, has mastered a form of travel that allows them to travel to and from parallel universes; Effectively bypassing any form of defense. Thankfully, it gets incredibly expensive to open up the humongous portals necessary to transport alien warships, so only small strike craft have been sent past the front lines. Combining this with the fact that their technology level is on par if not better than humanities, makes the Azathoths a formidable enemy for humanity. Requiring all of humankind to band together against a common threat.

This prompted the Unified Government to start preparing for the worst, aliens finding the exact location of Earth. Project Cradle was the solution the UG came up with. Using experimental technology to upload human consciousness to computers and creating a superintelligence(SI), resulting in something far more flexible than an AI and "smarter" than any one human. By sending these SIs out to parallel universes a early warning and defense system is established. If these SIs can delay the alien fleets, or even defeat it, for an hour or two then their mission will be accomplished. Even a dozen minute of warning can be the difference from Earth being utterly annihilated by antimatter bombs or safely defusing the bombs early.

"Your Majesty, our mages have sent an urgent report. They detect large spatial activity down south and within our borders, rough area of activity is around the Great Range. A scouting party has already been sent."

A voice sounded from a metallic box sitting upon his desk, one of the many new inventions the mages have cooked up in their labs. The noise aroused King Charles from his thoughts.

Activity near the Great Range is way too close to the borders. Could this be the paper pushers down south finally making a move? Took them long enough, this could be an excuse to start a war, something he desperately needed right now to distract the angry peasants.

"Send a scouting airship instead, I need confirmation of this fast."

"Yes, your majesty."

With great civil unrest within the borders, an outside enemy would be the perfect target to shift the attention to. King Charles thought to himself, I can promise to give them whatever reforms they want after the war, and by the time the war is over they will have forgotten about all their previous grievances. With this his reign is secured for another 20 years and anything past that would be his heirs' problem.

Somewhere in the forest by the Great Range.

*THUNK*

A metallic pillar fell from the sky with the force of a runaway train. Crashing squarely into the ground, driving away the surrounding dirt and burying itself halfway within. The normally loud forest fell silent for a single moment before returning to the usual ruckus. The silent metal pillar stood aloft within an ocean of trees, forming a stark contrast between itself and the surrounding greenery.