The Legend of Earth

Chapter 31



Thirty-four hours after receiving the warning from Admiral Allen, the Human shield was in place, forming a thin veil around the planet out to around a million kilometers. Nunif Juikil had watched the mad scramble of spaceships – either bolting to the planet’s surface or out to form the defensive line – with both a sense of amusement and confusion.

His confusion came from the question of how did the Humans learn of his attack? As far as he knew there had been no direct contact between the Kracori and the Humans, or any of their allies. Besides, those who knew of the plan were very few and exclusively Kracori. Even the nasty Klin had been vanquished and were no longer involved in any Kracori operations.

His amusement came from knowing that the Humans had learned too late of the Kracori plans; in fact, this latest maneuver had actually cleared the path even more for his small fleet of nine spaceships.

Originally there had been ten ships assigned to the mission, yet when Nunif saw the actions the Humans were taking, he had sent a coded burst-message to the tenth ship ordering them to break off their approach. The other nine ships were already on station and drifting in dark mode just outside the orbital distance of the planet’s moon. They had all arrived from different directions in order to strike at all areas of the planet at once. Number ten had taken the longest route to its station, and therefore had not arrived by the time the Humans had learned of the attack.

Nunif smiled. The fact that the Humans had sent their ships away from the planet meant that they did not know the details of the attack, just that one was imminent. And now there was not a single Human vessel in the space between Nunif’s forces and the planet. There was nothing they could do to stop him.

At the predetermined time, Nunif ordered that the nineteen high-energy neutron and twenty-four traditional hydrogen bombs he had aboard be armed. Even subtracting the weapons in ship number ten from the total, his small fleet still carried within it one-hundred seventy-one neutrons and two-hundred sixteen traditional devices. These were very special weapons, with the neutron devices being the most-powerful of their kind ever built. Coupled with the destructive power of the traditional bombs and the searing radiation from the others, the planet Earth would be turned into a nuclear wasteland … beginning in approximately twenty minutes.



Nunif’s established a shallow well and headed for Earth. The original plan had called for his fleet to use gas jets to slowly drift to the planet’s atmosphere before revealing their presence. It even had an option for conversion to a suicide mission should they be detected prematurely.

But seeing that there were no forces available to oppose them, Nunif opted for revealing his presence now, especially seeing that the Humans were expecting him. Their detection devices on the planet would immediately pick up his gravity signature, along with those of his other eight ships. They would know immediately what was coming and they would be powerless to prevent it.





At precisely the moment Nunif activated the arming computers on his bombs, a small secondary timer – one hidden deep within the maze of electronics of one of the hydrogen weapons – was also brought to life. There was one just like it on each of Nunif’s other ships. The tiny device was very simple, just a timer attached to the bomb’s detonator mechanism. Once activated, the device was independent of all outside signals and power sources – and it would rundown in exactly five minutes….