Don't Mess With Earth (19 page)

The sergeant spoke into his radio and
informed the others where they could find the commander of the
Terran facility. Then he spoke to a corporal, “I want you to take
Traynor back to the cargo bay with everyone else. As for the rest
of you, let’s go.”

The Marine squads converged onto the
Control Center, where Commander Lomanco and everyone else were
caught off guard by the sudden appearance of the heavily armed
humans from Earth.
The Marines had all the
exits covered so none of the Terrans could escape. The Major in
charge of the Marines looked around the room at the captured
Terrans, saw one who appeared to be in a high ranking military
uniform, walked over to him, and asked, “We’re looking for
Commander Gregor Lomanco, are you him?”

“Yes, and it would be pointless to deny it,
considering I’m the only Terran in this room wearing a military
uniform. Who are you?”

“
We’re from the United States of
America on Earth and you and your people are under arrest for
spying, sabotage, and anything else considered terrorists acts by
our Homeland Security Agency. You and your people will be sent to
Earth where your fate will be decided. Your base is ours now, and
although I would prefer to nuke it, my government wishes the base
to be kept from harm.”

“
This is totally impossible for you
Earth humans to get this far out, you aren’t supposed to have
starships yet! My government will learn of this and come down hard
on your planet, you backwater barbarians!” said a confused and
completely angry Commander Lomanco.

“
Well, we have starships
and we are this far out; and no, your government
won’t learn of this, because we’re going to take care of that,”
then to four other Marines, “take him and the others to the cargo
hold and we’ll get them all to Earth shortly. The rest of you, get
this base secured, find the location you’re assigned to, and get
these computers back up and running.” ordered the Major.

Four
hours
later, the base personnel were put onto the two Terran ships,
manned by the other one hundred Marines, with the help of the
Terran engineers who knew how to operate the ships, after the virus
had been purged from the systems of the ships. They were flown to
Earth, where they landed at Area 51 in the dark, and the Terrans
were taken to the underground complex to be processed by the United
States government. On Mars, Lieutenant Woods and some other
computer specialists from the
Reprisal
were erasing the virus from
the base computers, and looking through the vast amounts of
information stored in the database. There were lists of who had
been on Earth in the past, who was currently on Earth that was
being watched by the Terran powers-that-be in case they do
something they shouldn’t do on Earth, the entire history of the
Terrans, their enemies, their allies, and Terran military secrets.
The
Reprisal
left a day later for the next phase in their
mission.

Back on Earth, President O’Bana was
finishing up his press conference, “We
now
come to the end of the flashback, ladies and gentlemen. The
USS Reprisal
is
on its way to finish the rest of the mission I signed off on. I’m
sure all of you are shocked by these revelations, and all of you
more than likely have lots of good and meaningful questions you
need answered. So that we don’t have chaos here in the Press Room,
I want all of your questions submitted in writing, so that my staff
and I can take the time to answer them in a clear and precise way
without being misinterpreted. I promise you we will have the
answers back to you within twenty four hours of the last submitted
question. Now, I assume I have phone calls from nearly every major
country on Earth, so if all of you would please excuse me, I need
to get to work.”

As O’Bana left the Press Room, Vice
President Jim Borden greeted the President, and said, “You’re right
about phone calls from every major country on Earth, the red phone
has been ringing off the hook s
ince the
moment you informed the world of the Terrans and the Ragnor. You
may need to speak to Russia first, because they aren’t happy at
all. Of course, neither is China, France, the UK, or the rest of
the G-8. There is also some intelligence that Israel, India, North
Korea, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, and China have all increased their
military readiness, including activating their nuclear missile
sites. We don’t know though if they’re aimed at us or waiting for
aliens to invade the planet, but, it would be a safe bet that
they’re all completely and totally serious about defending
themselves. You might just have to speak to all of them at the UN
just so you’d have them all in one place.

“
I have a question, Mr. President.
What do you want done with Terrans here in the United States, like
that talk show host in Chicago? I know she supported you, but she
is an alien who seems to be gathering quite a power base around
her, and brainwashing quite a few of our women in the process. She
may very well threaten your power one of these days if we don’t put
a stop to it. Or, what about that movie director/producer who made
that successful cash cow of a science fiction movie franchise? Do
you want Homeland Security or the FBI to round them up in a very
public manner, or do you want it done quietly?”

“
I want every Terran in the United
States arrested and the famous ones arrested publicly, show their
fans how phony they really are.
Either
agency can round them up, let everyone get some good publicity for
once, assuming this whole thing goes right in the public opinion
department. I also want those two Terran ships to be taken apart
like the Ragnor ship was, then I want our best engineers and
companies like Lockheed, to build us a fleet of starships that can
defend the planet from a possible attack from any of the other
species in the galaxy. Let it be known that no one messes with
Earth but those of us who live here. Now, I have to go smooth some
feathers with my colleagues.” O’Bana walked off towards the Oval
Office.

O’Bana goes to his desk in the Oval
Office, takes a deep breath, and phones Russia first.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin answers the phone,
hears who it is, and says, “You Americans have gotten us into what
could be huge mess. Also revealing that the Soviet Union knew about
the aliens and attempted to do something ourselves takes our
relationship with your country back a few steps. I was KGB, we knew
all about Area 51 at the height of the Cold War, we chose to do
nothing about it, unlike your country that seemed to have
interfered in our attempt at reaching the moon. Revealing to the
entire world this secret is arrogant, it could get us all
killed.”

“
I did what I thought was
best,
exactly like you and your predecessors
would have done. As for Area 51, I think the KGB heard exactly when
most Americans heard about it, mostly through rumors, and you could
probably never confirm those rumors until now, so don’t go all high
and mighty on me, Vlad. So you think I’ve gotten the whole world
into a mess by taking this fight to the Ragnor and the Terrans?
This is a pre-emptive action and neither side will know we had
anything to do with it, I can guarantee you that.”

“
We all know about your
countries’ pre-emptive wars, Mr. United States
President, so I choose to be skeptical. I assume you’re calling the
other leaders of the world, who will probably be as condemning or
more so that I have been, so be prepared. Goodbye, Mr. O’Bana.”
Putin hung up the phone.

The President sighed, dialed another
number, and reached the French President. O’Bana was thinking that
he wasn’t sure what the official French response would be, since
they never seemed very consistent when it comes to supporting the
American position
, so he was pleasantly
surprised when President Sarkozy supported the Americans and their
endeavor, but asked if there was anything the French could do to
help. O’Bana said support was all he needed from the French. Great
Britain, who wanted to maintain close ties to the United States no
matter what, also supported the decision, even offering military
support, if needed. Unfortunately, the majority of the countries
that O’Bana called, including China, Japan, South Korea, India,
Mexico, and Australia condemned the action against the Terrans and
Ragnor. Some even threatened to go to the United Nations and get
sanctions imposed on the United States, which O’Bana knew the
Security Council would never agree on, since the United States did
have veto power and would nullify any call for sanctions. Now, all
that was to be done was to wait for the
Reprisal
to return to Earth after
the last mission.

Six months later, the
Reprisal
arrived
at the Ragnor solar system, still cloaked, while the solar system
itself was invisible to the naked eye. Captain Kell asked,
“Lieutenant Woods, if we were to bring down their cloak, do you
think they’d know or would they still think they were
cloaked?”

“
I think the frequency we’re using to
bring down their cloak will only let us see the planets and the
sun, I don’t think they’d know or anyone else would know about us
de-cloaking the star system. Once we can see their star system, we
can go in and find the Ragnor home planet, and do what we’re going
to do.”

“Proceed with the de-cloaking then,
Lieutenant.” ordered Kell.

Woods typed in a series of commands
on his console, which activated a device on the ships’ deflector
array, and it began to transmit the exact signal to reveal the
Ragnor star system to the humans. As the signal was transmitting
for nearly twenty minutes, the star system appeared to ripple into
existence, revealing ten planets, and a red star for a sun. Sensors
revealed the fourth planet as the Ragnor home, because for one
thing, it had a massive space station in orbit and a shipyard,
which had ten starships in port, and dozens of satellites in orbit.
Kell ordered Woods to fly the still cloaked
Reprisal
and approach the
space station, and also ordered for Ostoro to be brought to the
bridge.

Ten minutes later, the Earth starship
was a few hundred yards from the Ragnor space station, just as
Ostoro was arriving on the bridge, guarded by the two men who had
been guarding him for the past two years. On the monitor at the
front of the bridge was an image of the space station with the
planet in the background, and the look on Ostoros’
fa
ce showed that he thought he knew exactly
where the
Reprisal
had been going on this long voyage, “I thought we
were going to the star system known to you as Alpha Centauri, since
you had landed and taken the Terran facility on Mars. What do you
plan on doing to my people?”

“Watch and you’ll find out, Ostoro. Woods,
initiate the computer virus on the space station.” ordered
Kell.

Woods typed in a sequence of commands
and a Ragnor program popped up on his screen, he then said, “First
step we’re going to do is initiate a virus written in Terran
computer code so that the Ragnor will later assume that the Terrans
invaded their star system. The space station and the shipyard will
shut down in about fifteen minutes if my calculations are correct,
while they’ll get all sorts of computer errors while the virus is
working through the system. If done correctly, the virus may even
be transmitted to the surface and affect all networked computers.
If your planet is anything like ours when it comes to computers and
networks, then the virus should affect nearly every computer on the
planet. Your people won’t know what to do without access to
computers, causing a panic of the likes probably never before seen
on your planet. Ok, the virus has been completely transmitted; now
all we have to do is wait.”

“I applaud you. That’s very impressive, for
humans from a backwater planet. Is that all you plan on doing,
giving a virus to the computers? You disappoint me, humans.”
remarked Ostoro in his usual sarcastic tone.

“As someone on Earth once said, ‘You ain’t
seen nothin’ yet.’ You’ll see what we plan on doing next, just you
wait. We hicks from some backwater planet know how to bring you
cosmopolitan aliens your just deserts.” said Kell, in a sarcastic
tone herself.

Ostoro rolled his eyes and waited for
whatever the humans were going to do next. Twenty minutes later,
the space station and the shipyard did shut down. Lights could be
seen all over the station blinking on and off during that time,
while the beacons on the station blinked fast one time and really
slow the next.
What appeared to be a small
shuttle started drifting through space, and a scan revealed that it
was without power. Apparently the computers on Ragnor itself did
become infected with the virus, because the humans could see the
city lights on the dark side of the planet all shutting off, and
causing total darkness for the Ragnor who were used to having
electricity.

“Woods, initiate the next phase in our
mission.” ordered Kell.

“
With pleasure, sir.” answered Woods,
who typed in some more commands on his computer, activating the
electro-magnetic pulse cannon
housed in
front of the ship.

The EM cannon
on the
Reprisal
was directly aimed at the space station and the
fired, which fried the electronics on board the station, making any
attempt at fixing the virus affected computers completely undoable.
Those Ragnor who had the presence of mind to look out a window,
only saw a bright energy beam come out of nowhere, and they weren’t
sure what the beam of energy was supposed to be doing. Later
though, some found out that anything electronic that was
independent of the computer system didn’t work, and some even
opened up the problem machine and found melted hardware. The
shipyard was unaffected by the EM weapon so that the Ragnor would
find out who had supposedly attacked their planet and hopefully,
the humans reasoned, they would take their revenge on the Terrans.
The
Reprisal
flew directly over the planet and used the EM cannon again,
aiming it at population centers on the ground, causing every kind
of machine run by or aided by electronics to fail. All
communications, whether computer aided or the radio, failed and the
Ragnor began to panic. The cloaking system for the entire solar
system failed then too, because the main power source was on the
planet and affected by the EM pulse, so it shut down the cloaking
nodes throughout the solar system, letting the whole galaxy see
where the Ragnor lived. What the Ragnor didn’t know yet was that
worse was yet to come.