by Cliff Ball
DON’T MESS WITH EARTH
by
Cliff Ball
Smashords Edition
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PUBLISHED BY
Cliff Ball on Smashwords
Don’t Mess With Earth
Copyright© 2010 by Cliff Ball
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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DON’T MESS WITH EARTH
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chapter 1
The President was not looking forward to his first press conference, especially in the White House Press Room in front of all those scowling reporters. He had wanted to do it in the comfort of the Oval Office, sitting behind his desk, with no one around but the TV people and the Secret Service. In the end, he felt it was necessary and the right thing to do to give this press conference in person, because he was the one who ordered the strike and he was confident he did the right thing when it was ordered. What he was about to tell the people of not only the United States, but also the rest of the world, filled him with trepidation, only because it could anger enough of the right people to get him impeached and kicked out of office. The United States government had kept this secret now for more than sixty years, and now was time to tell the world. He himself had not known about it until scientists had finally figured out the technology to do what he had just ordered the military to do. The previous administration was informed, but that particular president, since he was leaving office, wanted to pass the buck, and let the new administration deal with it. So, here he was, a new president with less than one month in office and he was walking into the Press Room as his press secretary was introducing him, feeling as if the whole world was on his shoulders.
He stationed himself behind the podium, looked around the room, took a deep breath, composed himself, and began, "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the Press and those of you at home watching on TV or the Internet. I am here to inform you of an action we, the United States, have taken no other government on Earth would have known about until shortly before this press conference. I suggest all of you sit back, relax, and listen to the whole story, because this may take a while, and if it takes longer than that, I’ll have the story broken up over a period of three or four days. Well, it all started a few thousand years ago...."
The world had become chaotic, there seemed to be no order or no morals among most of the population. There was a tiny nation in a remote part of the planet that had been progressing technologically faster than anywhere else in the world, their ancestors had found this land a thousand years earlier, saw the direction morally that humanity was going, settled on that land, and quietly worked on technological advancements for the betterment of their people. They were currently experimenting with jet propulsion to see how fast an aircraft could fly, and were also working to see if anything could escape Earth orbit using crude missile technology, but the missile technology was mostly used to defend their country if the need arose. They had already invented the means for flight, the combustion engine, and radio, among other technologies. They had no desire to share their technology with anyone. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was in the first stages of an industrial revolution, beginning with the construction of steam engines, factories for mass production, trains, and the telegraph. The Terrans, as they were known, wanted to leave the planet and search out one in which they could live peacefully, away from all these primitives. Humans as a whole were living upwards of six hundred years, so the same people who were planning, developing, and working on a technology could continue to do so until the tech came into being. One day, a messenger from the region later known as Asia Minor, came to Terra City to inform them of some interesting news going on in the area around Asia Minor. The leader of the Terrans received the messenger, who asked of the traveler, “What news do you bring that is so urgent?”
“I come from Assyria and there is a man in that region who claims that his God, Jehovah, is going to bring something called rain and flood the Earth with water. He says that his God is angry with mankind and wants to start over. The man, whose name is Noah, is supposed to be the godliest on Earth, so that is why he was chosen to build an ark and gather two of every kind of animal. I was sent by my leader to ask for your help in case this Noah is right about God wanting to start over.”
“Sorry, but you will have to inform your leader that we will not help you or anyone else. We know of Noah, since we have spies everywhere, so we’ve decided to leave this planet and find a new home elsewhere in the galaxy just in case he is right. We’re building a generational starship to do just that, because we have many families going. I know you probably don’t understand what I’m saying, so just inform your leaders that we say no.”
The messenger went back and informed the rest of the leaders of the Terrans refusal to help. The Terrans continued to work on their technology, mostly inventions that would let them leave Earth, and managed to create computers, rocket engines fueled with hydrogen, life support, and other technologies essential for successful space travel. The Terrans worked on getting the preliminary stages of space travel working correctly, while making plenty of mistakes along the way, like launching rockets and seeing them blow up right off the launch pad and then working out the bugs for the next rockets to achieve lift-off and orbit the Earth, sending people into orbit and some of them coming back worse for the wear, and some space walks that didn’t always work out the first time. A temporary space station was built in orbit, so that the generational starship that was going to be built in orbit could carry families away from Earth, without using up all the fuel to launch from the ground. The other nations eventually forgot about the Terrans, since the Terrans had cut off diplomatic relations over one hundred and fifty years earlier.
Noah was building his ark, collecting animals two by two, and warning the people of what was to come. Everyone criticized and made fun of him, no water had ever fallen from the sky, such a thing was impossible, and so he was considered a nut case. Noah continued onward though the bullying and the criticism, and when his ship was finally finished, Noah and his family began to have the animals come on board, two by two. The Terrans, at around the same time, had their designated families on board the last rocket taking off for orbit, when the sky did something it had never done before, began clouding up with dark, ominous clouds, then the rain began falling, causing everyone on Earth to panic. The Terrans immediately set the countdown to launch for the rocket, not knowing anything about weather since Earth never had any kind of bad weather, or even rain, at this point in history. As that last roc
ket was leaving Earth’s atmosphere, a massive tidal wave appeared and came crashing down on Terra City, destroying the city and killing the inhabitants who had stayed behind. The last Terrans made it safely out into space and boarded the starship, making its heading directed towards the next star system, Alpha Centauri. The trip would take hundreds of years since the star system was four light years from Earth, from all the information that had been gathered from the probes sent out in that direction. As they were leaving Earth’s gravitational pull, the Terrans watched from monitors all over the ship as the planet became completely engulfed in water, since it took almost a year just to reach Mars. They vowed that someday, they would return.
Two hundred years later, the Terrans arrived in the Alpha Centauri star system. During the two hundred years, the Terran scientists developed a sophisticated sensor system for the ship, which was necessary to avoid all the hazards in open space, shields to keep the ship from being destroyed by all those hazards in space, faster, more efficient computers, and an ion engine. Once the ship stopped, a sensor sweep was conducted on all the planets. The fourth one in the system, which was bigger than Earth, but had a similar orbit, seemed to support human life. A group of scientists went down to the planet in a shuttle to determine if there was humanoid life of any kind and what kind of animal or plant life the planet contained. After a week, they determined the planet was safe for the Terrans, who numbered in the thousands on their generational ship from the few hundred who had boarded the ship two hundred years earlier. A location similar to one on Earth was chosen for a settlement, and once everything was off-loaded from the ship, they immediately began to build their new civilization. They also chose a name for their new planet, calling it Terra.
Once the Terrans were firmly established on their new home, they built probes and sent them out to explore the rest of the galaxy, to see if any life existed elsewhere besides Earth and Terra; the probes though, wouldn’t be sent to Earth, since scouts would be sent later to determine what happened to the remaining humans after the flood. One probe had been in space for ten years when the probe sent a signal to the Terrans informing them it had come across an alien civilization. A few minutes later though, the probe suddenly stopped sending data in the middle of the transmission, making the Terrans fear the worst. They decided to build weapons to defend themselves, along with a full military just in case the aliens found out where Terra was and attacked the planet. Their space program researched a satellite defense system, and began developing a fleet of star-faring warships, with a few to be utilized as explorers. The satellite defense network became active five years later, the military was active and ready for an invasion, and six starships had been built. One other probe had picked up signals from another alien civilization, but the probe had gone unimpeded further into space. Three of the starships were sent on exploratory missions, these ships were capable of sub-light speed and equipped with the latest in Terran technology.
The aliens who had destroyed the first probe never seemed to appear in the Alpha Centauri system, or at least that’s what the Terrans thought. These hostile aliens had cloaking technology for their ships, so one was dispatched to Terra to find out about these new star-faring aliens. The ship stayed outside the sensor range of the satellite defense network, while the aliens, who were called the Ragnor, got through the primitive shield with a small shuttle and three scientists on board. Their intent was to study these new aliens known as the Terrans, even experiment on them, so that the Ragnor could understand these new neighbors in the galactic neighborhood. Mysterious abductions began happening all over Terra, then the people who were abducted earlier from one location, returned to the same location a few hours later, most of whom couldn’t remember what had happened, but a small number complained of a massive government conspiracy. Enough Terrans complained about some sort of government cover-up, that some of the Terran movies began having plots about aliens and abductions, even going so far as to claim that the government shot down an alien ship in the desert and were conducting experiments of their own on the aliens. Unfortunately for those involved, the government had no clue as to what was happening, but they did begin to suspect aliens were involved when they met another alien culture two years after sending out the explorer ships.
The Terran ship was eight light years from Terra when it was approached by a highly advanced starship. The aliens contacted the Terran ship first, informing them they were the Talgeria, from the star system known to the Terrans as Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse was over six hundred light years from Terra, but the Talgerians were exploring the galaxy one star system at a time. The Talgerian ships seemed capable of traveling faster than light and had explored fifty percent of the galaxy over the last six hundred years. There were many other humanoid species out there, but the Talgerians considered one species in particular to be a thorn in the side of everyone, and they were known as the Ragnor. Nobody knew where the Ragnor Homeworld was or even knew what the Ragnor looked like, especially since they were very adept with cloaking technology, so attempts to stop their experiments and secretiveness was met with failure. The Talgerians and their allies were attempting to develop technology so they could disable the Ragnor cloak and then show the Ragnor the full military wrath of the species they had angered. Unfortunately, a device to de-cloak a ship was proving rather difficult to invent.
The Talgerians gave the Terrans the knowledge to build starships capable of crossing space faster than what the Terrans were currently capable of; the Talgerians used and sometimes created, wormholes, short-cuts in space, to get around quicker. The Terrans were also given better sensors, shields, inertial dampeners, and all else required for space flight. The Terrans asked the Talgerians if they had ever visited Earth, but the Talgerians said they had yet to make it to the outer rim of the galaxy. So, after one thousand years, the Terrans decided to send a ship on a mission to Earth, to see what happened to their cousins after that great flood had consumed the home planet. They wanted to see if the Earth humans had made any technological advances at all in the thousand years the Terrans had been gone, or for that matter, if humanity even existed on Earth any longer. If the Earth humans still existed and were advanced, the Terrans would ask about getting their help with the pesky Ragnor.
Four months after leaving Terra, the scouts arrived in the Sol System and made their way to Earth orbit. Once in orbit, the planet was scanned, and once the scans were complete fifteen minutes later, the Captain of the scout ship asked, “What do the scans show, Ensign?”
“Sir, the scan of Earth reveals seven continents; when our ancestors left, there was one giant land mass. There are one hundred million humans currently alive on Earth, all living within four thousand miles of each other. I’ve detected no radio signals coming from the planet.”
“Can you find out where the location is of the biggest group of humans?”
“There is a large population near the edge of a desert on their western side, a rather long river to their east, and a small sea to the north. If you want more detailed observations, we need to go down there, sir.”
“Commander, would you, two security guards, and a historian, please go down to the surface and scout out what’s going on down there.” ordered the Captain.
An hour later, the Terran away team had landed the shuttle far enough away from any human settlements so they wouldn’t be discovered by anyone. In the distance, the scouting party saw pyramid-like shapes and a hive of human activity, since this was mostly a flat desert environment. Upon closer inspection thirty minutes later, they saw humans building a pyramid, and there were two other huge pyramids in the area already built, along with something being worked on that appeared to be half man and half lion. The Terrans approached a few humans who looked like they were in charge to find out what was going on. Commander Lomanco approached a man on a wheeled vehicle that utilized horses, and said, “Excuse us; we’re travelers from far away. What is happening here?”
“Greeting strangers, welcome to Egypt. Wh
at you see is our slaves building a monument to our pharaoh, or what you may call a king. These pyramids will be our pharaohs’ resting place until he leaves his body and goes to his next life. These slaves have built other pyramids and a sphinx, which is also being built, for other pharaohs, and they will continue to do so until the end of time.”
“You wouldn’t consider releasing them to go back to their own land?” asked the historian.
“Land?! They have no land. Their ancestors freely joined Egypt and now, many generations later, we have dominion over them. Some of them claim that their God will send them someone to rescue them and send them home. Well, after three hundred years, we have yet to see any God rescue them,” mocked the Egyptian.
“What of your enemies, couldn’t they exploit any displeasure these slaves have with your leadership?” asked Lomanco.
“Our enemies fight amongst themselves, the strongest one being the Athenians across the Mediterranean Sea. They’re fighting the Trojans, Spartans, and Phoenicians; they have no time to deal with our slave problem or us. Do you plan on challenging our Pharaoh?”
“No, we don’t want to challenge your rule or the power of your Pharaoh. I do have a question for you; do you remember a man named Noah and a great flood that would have happened a thousand years ago?”
“A man named Noah and a great flood? No, can’t say that I have. Is it important to the Pharaoh and Egypt to know of this Noah?”
“No, it’s not that important. May we ask your slaves if they have heard of this man and the flood?” asked Lomanco.
