The first ship was to be launched on July 4. The whole country was watching as the President made ready to cut the ribbon and launch the first ship.

Of course, though it was a public holiday, all leave was cancelled for all essential services, yes even for the lunch order chef at an observatory. A big screen filled the canteen and the eyes of all staff were on it, focusing everyone's attention the way a great lie had focused our nation for the last five years. Pastors, priests, nuns, imams, rabbis, all denominations were there to pray for a happy outcome to the war.

I sat with the Chief Astronomer as we watched the countdown and saw the first of the ships preparing to take off to a fanfare, much waving of flags and a seemingly eternal performance of the star spangled banner.

"Of course, you realize the ships will never get there," he confided to me as he toyed with a toasted cream cheese cinnamon bagel. "Every single scientist involved in the project has played their part in sabotaging it. Myself, I've carefully forgotten to make any allowance for Omega 5's moons, with any luck the fleet will just plough into them. Not that they'll get that far, everybody shares my views, everybody's doing shoddy work, slight mistakes that won't get noticed but won't damn well work, that's for sure. Even the seatbelts are an inch short, I hate to think what might be wrong with the engines. I wouldn't be surprised if the ship just goes up in flames on the launch-pad."

I watched the launch in a new light, suddenly expecting to see July 4th fireworks. Loss of life is tragic, true, but it was harder to feel sympathy for these people, the Family Fleeters, who were perfectly happy to carry out genocide ‘just in case.’ The countdown began: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five and then silence, as if it had all gone wrong, or the announcer had simply forgotten how to count.

A burst of flame emerged from the bottom of the ship and it started to rise; seemingly slowly, but deceptively so. They say that if anything is going to go wrong, most likely it'll happen in the first 30 seconds after takeoff. We counted them down, as the ship rose into the sky. No disaster happened, the first of the fleet was launched. The countdown to war had officially begun.

We sat staring at the screen for a long time, our lunch getting cold in front of us. We were still sitting there when we heard about the Chinese invasion, after which we watched every second of news until they closed the channel down the next day. We followed events as they were reported live. We watched the entire US fleet taken out in 13 minutes. "We threw everything we had at them," claimed some general or other, but of course we had nothing to throw: 274 intergalactic spacecraft, but no planes, no ships, no ground-troops. If the Chinese had invaded from space we'd have slaughtered them, as it was they slaughtered us.

I made the Chief Astronomer a roast chicken and red pepper sandwich on rye bread and we continued to watch the news. We saw President Abraham sign the treaty of surrender and saw him hand over the keys to the land of the free.

Our long, long silence was finally broken by an enraged scream from the Chief Astronomer. "Just in case of what, exactly?" he shouted at the TV. "Just in case of what?"

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