Don't Mess With Earth

by Cliff Ball

  Computer specialists went to work on the ships that received the virus, and as they were purging the virus line by line, they discovered that it was a Terran computer virus. No eyewitnesses though had seen any Terran ship attack, in fact, a few had said, no starship had even been seen doing any attacking. One Ragnor who had survived on the space station, reported a weird energy beam coming from out of nowhere, but could give no other details. The satellites in orbit had no pertinent data of anything happening other than an attack on the planet. Admiral Sudano sent an order out to the rest of the two hundred and fifty Ragnor starships to report back to the homeworld at once, an attack plan was going to be devised to avenge their planet and its people.

  On the Ragnor planet, scientists in suits designed to protect them from everything but the massive radiation emanating from the cities, were investigating what had happened. They discovered chemicals and diseases not known on their planet, which caused plant and animal life to die off quickly, and the Ragnor themselves to die slow and very painful deaths. The scientists estimated that it would take at least a century before the nuclear winter dissipated, while the soil would be contaminated for even longer and not able to grow anything for the foreseeable future. The remaining thousand or so Ragnor who had survived on the planet, were euthanized because of the diseases they now carried or because of irreversible radiation sickness, putting them out of their misery. The remaining ten thousand Ragnor on the one colony world were told they could never return to the homeworld and those who were left of the species were to re-populate as soon as possible and as rapidly as they possibly were able to do.

  The Ragnor military also grudgingly admired the Terrans, because they never thought the Terrans had this kind of mean streak or had the temerity to go this far to get rid of an enemy, but Admiral Sudano told his troops to focus and see that the Terrans were the enemy. On his flagship, after watching the video taken of the devastation on the surface of his home planet, Sudano laid out his plans, “We can not let this travesty stand. We will attack the Terrans with the full force of our military, no hiding behind cloaks this time. We are going to go directly to Terra and do to them what they’ve done to us. No species in this galaxy will intimidate us into giving up and dying just because they want us to. We will finish this war once and for all!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Minister of Planetary Defense rushed into Terran President Homers’ office, looking more than a little frightened, and said, “Mr. President, I’ve received a report that three hundred starships are approaching the solar system, they appear to have weapons on standby mode. The military isn’t sure, but they think it’s the Ragnor,”

  “Three hundred starships that are standing by to fire their weapons? Are they sure it’s the Ragnor?”

  “Yes, we’re most definitely sure it’s the Ragnor, starship configurations are the same from intelligence reports we’ve gotten of the uncloaked ships. We’ve always had to deal with our ships being attacked by cloaked ships, so why they’re coming here without being cloaked is a mystery. I’m sure we’ll find out, sir.”

  “How many weapons capable military starships do we have available?” asked the President.

  “We have one hundred in system, most of which are either in dry dock getting upgrades or the crews are back on Terra for rest and relaxation. We have another fifty exploring the galaxy, none of which are close enough to get here in time. We do have our satellite defense system, but it has never been tested in battle conditions. Our planetary based weapons are currently being readied as we speak. We’ll take as many of the Ragnor down as possible before we’re taken down ourselves, sir.”

  “Issue a Condition Red alert throughout the planet, get everyone back on their ships, and the ships that currently do have crews, order them to meet the enemy and attack. I’m going to find out if any of our allies can help us or if they know the reasoning for this unprovoked attack. Also, have you spoken with the Mars Observation Post and asked them of their situation?”

  “We have tried to contact them, but, there has been no answer now for more than eight months. We fear they and Earth may have been attacked by the Ragnor from what we know of our current situation,” answered the Minister.

  “That is really unfortunate; the people of Earth were really coming along technologically for the past sixty years. Everyone was hoping they’d be able to meet us on nearly equal footing and be partners in a new space age. Well, anyway, I will not hold you up any longer; get our planetary defenses up to full capacity, and I will see if I can’t contact any allies.”

  Ten minutes later, sixty Terran starships left dock and headed for the oncoming Ragnor fleet, which were still millions of miles from Terra. The Ragnor met the Terrans with a heavy exchange of weapons fire, the Terrans with mostly atomic based weapons, because energy weapons drained a lot of power from the Terran power supply on the ships, while the Ragnor had mainly energy based weapons that used up little of their power supplies. The crews of the other Terran ships managed to get aboard their ships twenty minutes into the battle and flew out to meet the enemy. Even though the Terrans were outnumbered three to one, they put up a tremendous fight for survival. Ten heavily damaged Terran ships, after the commanders of the ships ordered everyone on board left alive to abandon ship, managed to make a heading directly for the enemy ships, taking out ten Ragnor ships in a kamikaze style desperation move. The ships blew up, creating massive fireballs with large pieces of shrapnel causing damage to other ships that were near the explosions. Two hours later in a large, but rather short battle, eighty Ragnor ships were destroyed or heavily damaged, while the entire Terran fleet was annihilated, and survivors were in escape pods waiting to be rescued, if ever.

  The Ragnor fleet approached Terra, attacking the satellite defense system, which was shielded, but not battle tested. The satellites that were equipped with weapons launched their nuclear weapons at the Ragnor and some were equipped with energy weapons, but those only caused minimal damage to the enemy starships. The Ragnor easily brought down the satellite defense grid in less than thirty minutes with the satellites’ weak shielding, began orbiting Terra, and what was about to be an orbital bombardment of the planet first before any troops were sent to the surface. The EM pulse cannons on the surface, which were newly acquired and experimental technology for the Terrans, opened up on the orbiting starships, followed by nuclear tipped missiles from the ground. The EM pulses managed to fry the systems of twenty of the ships, which left them defenseless to the nuclear missiles, which destroyed those ships, and the remaining pieces of the ships burned up in the atmosphere. The other Ragnor ships bombarded all the missile and cannon sites until they were smoking holes in the ground.

  As the Ragnor began bombarding the cities of Terra, Admiral Sudano contacted President Homer, who appeared on the ships’ monitor looking disheveled, somewhat dirty, and very stressed-out, since he was told that he was getting no help any time soon from any of the other species who had a grudge against the Ragnor, “This is Admiral Sudano of the Ragnor Fleet. We have your planet surrounded, your ships are destroyed, and your cities are on the verge of disappearing from your world. We demand your immediate and unconditional surrender.”

  “Considering I have no other option and the fact that you wiped out most of our military assets, then I surrender all of Terra to the Ragnor. What does your government demand of us now?”

  “What government, Terran? You do realize you had your military wipe out my homeworld and that I and my fleet here are almost what are left of the grand and glorious Ragnor Empire. You must answer for your crimes.”

  “Your home has been destroyed? When?” asked the astonished Terran President.

  “Do not pretend to not know about the massacre of my planet. You will answer for whomever or whatever committed this atrocity. Who ordered the attack on my planet?” insisted Sudano.

  “I have no idea, but, I can assure you it wasn’t me or anyone else in my administration that ordered it, since we have
no idea where your solar system is located. Besides, if you are blaming the Terrans for wiping out your planet, then I’d like to see some proof of Terran duplicity. Can you provide that proof?” asked the President, as sounds of explosions roared in the background and pieces of the Presidents’ office were coming down around him.

  “Of course I can provide the proof, Terran. We found a computer virus in our systems written in a Terran computer language. It was designed to shut down our space station, shipyards, cloaking devices, and everything on our planet tied into a computer network. We know you did this and now you will pay dearly for this crime.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You’re basing this whole attack on the fact that someone attacked your planet using a Terran computer language? Maybe we could figure out who actually did this if you let my computer engineers take a look at the computer language used to shut down your network. Please, before more innocent people die.”

  Sudano cut the connection to the Terran President so that he could take a few minutes to consult with some of his aides and other military leaders directly under his command before he gave an answer. Ten minutes later, the connection was re-established, and Sudano gave his answer, “I will give you time to prove your innocence, Terran. My computer specialist is sending you a screenshot of the Terran computer language as we speak. You and your engineers have two of your hours to confirm or deny that someone on your planet wiped out my planet. In the meantime, all bombing will cease. That will be all for now.” Sudano cut the connection before Homer had a chance to respond.

  President Homer looked at the downloaded screenshot on his computer and having done some programming of his own in his spare time before he was the President, realized the computer language used to take down the Ragnor was at least, for computers on Terra, four generations old. He consulted with the computer programming specialists in his own administration, who were still working in the remarkably quiet basement of the government building and not panicking about the planetary bombing, to be sure he was right, and they confirmed what he had suspected, nobody on Terra would have taken down an enemy using such an outdated language. Homer contacted Sudano an hour and a half later, “Admiral, I have confirmed that we were not the ones who used this computer language to create a virus for your planetary computers. The computer language is four generations old, and, as far as I know, nobody on Terra even uses it or has software running based on the language. I think I may know who might have conducted this terror campaign against your world,”

  “Who would that be, Terran?” asked the skeptical Admiral.

  “I have reason to believe that it was the people of Earth who somehow figured out how to upload a computer virus written in Terran to your networks, then kill off your planet, and knew you would blame us for it. It appears that their scheme worked, because we might’ve killed each other off if cooler heads hadn’t prevailed,”

  “You actually think your cousins on some backwater planet on the outskirts of the galaxy had the means to do all of this? Last I heard, they were just inventing aircraft and had fought a major planetary war, so excuse me if I’m skeptical, because that was a very short time ago,”

  “I do think my so-called backwater cousins could have done this, from the last report I received from the Mars Outpost, the people of Earth were sending out robots and probes out of their solar system and even landing some on the other planets of their solar system. They have advanced quite a lot in less than a hundred years; we were expecting them to land on Mars in the next ten years. So, for them to do something so bold like this, doesn’t surprise me in the least, especially since we haven’t heard from the Mars Outpost in more than eight months. If they’re responsible for no communications with my people on Mars, then I too have a grievance with the people of Earth.”

  “Do not pretend to sympathize with me, Terran. We will take care of our Earth problem too,” then he said to someone off screen, “resume the annihilation of the Terran homeworld, we’re done here.”

  President Homer went from a hopeful look to a shocked look on his face and was about to say something when an explosion in the background interrupted the video feed, leaving a dead connection. Terran cities evaporated faster with Ragnor bombs than with human made bombs, and the Ragnor laid waste to the entire planet, making sure it would take more than a century for the planet to be inhabitable again. Terra was cleared of all Terrans in less than a day. Sudano sent out an order to half of the fleet that the remainder of the Terran starships needs to be hunted down and destroyed, while the rest of the fleet would hunt down and kill the people of Earth, once all of the ships that needed repairing were repaired. Two months later, the half of the fleet that was repairing at the Ragnor Shipyards was ready to strike out at the humans of Earth.

  Two weeks later, one hundred starships arrived at the coordinates of the Sol System, or at what the Ragnor thought was the Sol System. Instead of finding a system of nine planets, all they found was emptiness. Admiral Sudano suspected that the system was cloaked, even though he wasn’t entirely sure, since how could these primitive humans have that kind of technology already? He ordered his best scientists to scan the area, with everything available to the Ragnor, but they found nothing discernable. Sudano ordered a ship to stay behind and watch for any changes, while he sent the fleet to protect the last two worlds of the Ragnor, he didn’t want any more sneak attacks on the worlds left to his people. The Admiral was now tasked with the rebuilding of the Ragnor civilization.

  As the Ragnor fleet had approached the Sol System, the sensors on Mars detected the approach. General Jay Wilson, who was in command of the American Base, contacted Secretary of Defense Houston, “This is Mars Command; we’ve detected one hundred Ragnor ships approaching the solar system, they should be here within the next two hours. I advise we activate the cloaking field to hide our star system, sir,”

  “Thank you General Wilson, I give you permission to activate the system. Once they are gone though, power down the cloaking generator. If that is all, then I’ll sign off and let your team get to work.”

  Wilson had his people power up the generator, which was placed on Mars due to the sensitive political nature of the whole project that President O’Bana revealed after he had committed the United States, and Earth in general, to an act of war against the Ragnor and Terrans. O’Bana and Houston reasoned that if the cloaking generators were on Mars, no act of terrorism or world wide war would affect the Sol System from being cloaked, unless, of course, the United States of America ceased to exist. Once the whole world found out about the entire mission the Reprisal and its crew had been ordered to do once it returned to Earth two months earlier, the United States started getting threatened with sanctions and even threats of war against it. The American people were not pleased either, but this had been set up by a long dead President, who believed the alien technology that the United States would have for themselves once the technology was figured out, would be used in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

  When news reached the various Earth news outlets about the Ragnor fleet of one hundred ships having arrived and not finding the solar system, it started a worldwide panic. The President of the United States had promised the world that neither the Ragnor nor the Terrans would find out about the duplicity of the Americans trying to blame the Terrans for the Americans wiping out the Ragnor home, so why had the Ragnor fleet appeared, is what everyone was asking, while the mainstream media was predicting gloom and doom for Earth. Then, when a lone Ragnor ship stayed for quite some time, waiting for something to appear out of thin air, Russia attacked the United States without warning, followed by China. Russia began with the launching of nuclear missiles on major American cities, including Washington, D.C., followed up with troops from both countries landing near major military installations, Area 51, Los Alamos, and other strategically important technology research sites. Area 51 couldn’t secure the Reprisal since the invasion happened so quickly, but they did keep the underground part of the base secured,
even after a nuke was dropped on top of it days later, since the invading forces thought they had annihilated the formerly top secret installation. The United States of America’s federal government collapsed six months later when President O’Bana, the vice president, the Cabinet, and everyone in the line of presidential succession were systematically targeted and killed, while remnants of the military fought for the various remaining states that had enough money and power to fight back, but it was to no avail. China and Russia brought down and then occupied the remaining states in less than a year, while some Americans who had escaped tried to conduct guerilla warfare from the Appalachians and Rockies.

  The American Mars Outpost officially surrendered when the Chinese used the Reprisal to land their armed forces, capturing the Mars Base with very few casualties to the Chinese, while the Americans who survived the initial onslaught were mercilessly executed. The Chinese scientists utilized the communications array on Mars for their leaders to contact the Ragnor using a range of frequencies, “This is the Chinese government of the planet Earth trying to contact the leadership of the Ragnor. If you can receive this signal, please, we’d like to talk with you,”