All that had once been the glory and majesty of Washington D.C. had been destroyed on that bright afternoon day in early November, when the Juireans had unleashed a catastrophic rain of fire from high in orbit above the planet. Nearly every major city center around the world had been hit, with the more severe damage reserved for the most-densely populated areas. New York, Tokyo, London, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo and so many more had suffered the most. Sprawling cities like Los Angeles and Paris had not suffered as badly. They had taken their hits, of course, yet the conflagration that followed had been more easily contained. In other locations, it had been the fires that caused the most death and destruction.
Ryan put his hand on the thin booklet and tried to reflect on just what The List contained. It was a resolution — a reckoning of sorts — the culmination of a quest for revenge that had started the moment the first fireballs had dropped from the sky.
It had been the Juireans who had perpetrated the attack and the devastation that followed, and yet it was the Klin who had set all the events in motion. The Klin had convinced the Juireans that the Humans of Earth were a threat to them, so severe in nature that only a preempted strike could protect them. And so the Juireans came, and they killed. They killed over a billion Human beings, most in the course of the three-hour bombardment of the planet. So many thousands more were lost in the fires, starvation and disease that followed.
And that was what made the sins of the Klin so diabolical and unforgivable.
In the aftermath of the devastation, the Klin had arrived as mankind’s Saviors, bringing with them food, shelter and energy — an express path out of the darkness and onto the road for revenge. They helped the people of the Earth recover in record time from an event so tragic. But what made Danny Ryan so livid was the fact that these same beings who had come as our friends were the very ones you had caused the tragedy in the first place. At least the Juireans were honest about their intentions. The Klin, on the other hand, turned out to be despicable backstabbing bastards of the first-degree.
Adam Cain had been right all along.
Now the Human race was about to make things right. And it was the Klin — in their rush to make Humanity strong again, strong enough to confront the Juireans head-on — who had sowed the seeds of their own demise.
As it turned out, the superior technology of the Klin was not so superior after all — just more advanced. The science behind everything the Klin made available to the Humans — to help in their recovery and in their war against the Juireans — had been easily understood once revealed to the scientists and engineers. Across the planet there had been countless ‘ah-ha’ moments as the best minds Humanity had to offer began to dissect the science behind the wonders of the aliens. Cold fusion technology, gravity drives, advanced metallurgy and energy-based weapons systems soon became readily understood — and duplicated — in countless secret facilities around the globe.
The transformation had been so remarkable and so swift, that already the Human race had been able to field a star fleet of their own, and right under the noses of the unsuspecting Klin.
Whether the Klin had expected the Humans to steal the science and technology of their weapon systems, starships and means of reconstruction and energy production, Ryan would never know. If not, then the aliens truly did not understand mankind….
All he had to do now was accept the fact that mankind had, in the course of eight short months, gained just about all the knowledge it was going to from the Klin and their surrogates. If that were the case, then The List could be acted upon, and all the months of tippy-toeing around the truth could come to an end.
Danny Ryan, President of United States of America — default leader of the survivors of the most evil plot ever to be unleashed upon the people of the Earth — was about to authorize The Purge.
Chapter 48
Admiral William Keller sat on a couch in a crude reconstruction of the Oval Office, in a building that had been hastily erected on the grounds of the now bull-dozed under White House in Washington D.C. All around the area there was construction, rebuilding that which had been destroyed. However, the losses from the national museums and historical artifacts that defined America had been lost forever. The Capitol Mall was no more; gone, too, was the Capitol Building, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. Boxy temporary structures now dotted the landscape, where the great monuments of America’s great heritage had once stood, now sad reminders of all that had been lost on 11-6.
Throughout the inner circles of all the governments around the world — among those who knew the truth — a seething anger dwelled. All this death and destruction, all the loss of life and of history, had been caused for no valid reason whatsoever. The Klin had simply used Humanity with no regard for life or property. In this way, they were so much worst that the actual creatures who had dropped the bombs.
Every time Admiral Keller came to the new White House he had to pass through the ruins of this once great city. His office was in the Pentagon, just on the other side of the Potomac, yet a world away. Surprisingly, the massive building in Arlington, Virginia, had been spared in the attack, but not so the great monuments across the river. And he knew that Washington was just one of a hundred such cities struggling to recover after the attack.
As he sat on the couch, watching the range of emotions cross the President’s face, Keller was anxious to get started. He carried a special Smith and Weston 45-caliber with him that he hoped he could use personally on as many of the traitorous Converts as he could get his hands on. The despicable low-life’s were about to get all they deserved.
The document sitting on the President’s desk contained the names and locations of almost seventeen-thousand individuals from around the world. The names were broken down into two categories — the Saviors, or 2G’s, and the Converts.
Originally, the list of 2G’s had contained over twenty-five thousand names just on its own. These were the Klin accomplices who had been born and raised off-planet, and who had come to be known as the Saviors. Yet over the months, it had been discovered that the 2G’s were more innocents than villains in the events surrounding the attack upon the Earth. Having been raised by the Klin from birth, most of them truly believed that the Juireans had perpetrated the attack upon the Earth unprovoked, and that the 2G’s had been sent to the planet to genuinely help their fellow Humans. So many of them soon discovered that the environment in which they had been raised was nothing like the reality of being native-born. Whether it was from an instinctive drive within us all to be social creatures, the 2G’s soon longed to be part of the greater Human family, and quickly rejected their Klin masters, especially when the truth was revealed to them.
Through these new additions to the Human race, people like Ryan and Keller were soon gathering a comprehensive list of individuals who made up the second category of names in the document: the Converts.
Keller would never understand what would make a native-born Human turn against his own race. He understood that throughout history there had always been traitors and spies, yet these had been individuals working against people on behalf of other people. The Converts were working for an alien race and against their own flesh and blood and DNA. It made absolutely no sense to Keller, and only showed how base and deprived Humanity could really be.
“Well Admiral,” the President said, snapping Keller out of his own thoughts and back to the present, “are we sure about this?”