I'm starting something a little different today. I'm in the process of working on the second book in my "Anton Solo Mysteries" series, and I needed to clear my head. Ironically, I was watching the TV show, "NASA's Unexplained Files" and something on there got my mind spinning. It had to do with a mysterious storm cloud that appeared in Jupiter's atmosphere. One of the theories offered up was that the cloud was the result of the NASA Probe, Galileo, being plunged into the Atmosphere. The probe, which had a Plutonium-based nuclear propulsion system, was destroyed in this manner to prevent it from potentially contaminating the Jovian Moon of Europa, which shows signs of potential life under it's methane ice caps.
My brain, as usual, heard this theory and thought something off the wall, "Hmmm, what if that propulsion system actually hit something under the clouds, like an alien city?" Before I knew it,t he pasta salad was put aside an about 90 minutes later, the short story below is what resulted from it...
The Bombing of Homeworld
By Tony Solorzano
Alarms sounded across the planet as the government went into crisis mode trying to ascertain the extent of the damage done by the unprovoked attack. People outside of the attack area wondered what happened and why. Who would attack their homeworld with such a devastating weapon? What had they done to deserve such an attack? And how would they respond in kind?
The Video screens across the planet blared on as the news media continued their reporting. “We're continuing our coverage of the unprovoked attack by alien forces from another planet in our System. Government agencies have been mobilized to help mitigate the damage from the alien weapon that has devastated a swath of our peaceful society. We're going live to one of our reporters near the blast area,”
The video cut to another figure speaking off camera, as the feed now showed a devastated landscape with nothing but smoking ruins and towers of black smoke rose into the skies. “We're coming to you live from just outside the remains of the City of Arvenos, which was first settled nearly 200,000 years ago and held the ancient remnants of our civilization's origin. It's now all a smoking ruin as a city of 15 million inhabitants has been turned into an irradiated wasteland. We're still not sure how the weapon penetrated the cloud shield, but the results as you can see, has wiped out the birthplace of our race from our arrival on our sanctuary.”
The person speaking paused a moment, “I'm being told that the authorities are moving us to a more secure location, out of any potential fall out from the aliens' terrorist act. We'll return you to our main studios now and will update you at the top of the hour.”
The next few days would be more of the same, the media recounting the attack from the skies upon this civilization's oldest city, the massive loss of life and the response to the unprovoked attack. Pundits debated the cause of the attack, pointing out that despite their efforts, the strange little planet's inhabitants never seemed to answer their attempts at dialogue. Over and over, the strange transmissions received from the backwards little rock only convinced society that their attackers were war mongers, nothing more.
Cries for revenge echoed through the legislative chambers of the planet, calling on their leaders to teach the attackers a lesson. All over, able bodied adults volunteered to enlist in the planet's defense forces, intent on protecting their planet and the surrounding moons, where their industrial capacity lay. Before the end of the second week after the attack, over 30 million of the planet's 4 Billion survivors were in training, preparing to become the planet's response to the attack by the interlopers from the inner system.
A month after the attack, the planet was ready to launch its new fleet of ships. Ships capable of reaching the inner system and the seemingly psychotic inhabitants of the third planet from the sun. The Leader of the Society addressed the planet, as their ships of war readied to leave the atmosphere and send their own message to the murderers.
“My people, Today we send a message to the ones who would attack us without provocation, to the ones who think that they are alone in this planetary system, alone in the Universe. Today, we show them what happens to those who seek to destroy who we are. Millennia ago, our people came to this sanctuary to escape an insatiable enemy who wished to destroy all who opposed them. The irony is that they were once our brothers and sisters, our ancient ancestors suffered from a devastating Civil War and fled to start over in peace. We now know that enemy established a base on the 3rd planet in the inner system and launched the attack on our civilization. We now know the truth, in their lust for destruction, they in fact, destroyed themselves. And their descendants are now on the precipice of following in their ancestral blood lust. But Now, Now we will strike. Now we will end their terror forever!!!”
A cheer went up over the planet as the ships lifted off and launched towards the cloud shield, intent on reducing the planet of their ancient enemy to cinders. Meanwhile, on that planet, life continued on as the inhabitants went about their normal days. All knew that the planetary probe that was destroyed in the gas giant was done to protect the potential life signs seen on one of that planets moons. As night fell on the Western portion of one continent, a scientist picked up a phone and contacted one of his colleagues.
“Dr. Seely, it's Quinten Carmody over at Cal Tech, Can you get the Array at Mauna Kea turned to Jupiter? I've been picking up some strange anomalies on my 21-inch coming out of the atmosphere. I don't know what to make of it.” The astronomer waited on the phone as the “anomalies” suddenly winked out as they made a jump into orbit over the planet they called Earth.
THE END...
