Spectres: Prologue - Draft

Spectres

Prologue:

The War, the Invasion and the Survivors

World peace; an ideal that has been held in the forethought of all human leaders for centuries, and a concept which, thanks to the most devastating, most ferocious and oddly enough, the shortest war in human history, was made a reality a few decades ago. However it is unlikely that the leaders of last century could have predicted the changes that came with it.
         
It began in 2010, when the United States looked like they were beginning to climb back up from the Global Financial Crisis. It all looked like it was going according to the government of the time’s plan. In fact, the biggest economic crash since the great depression occurred, ironically enough, just as people were beginning to regain their confidence in United States investments. No one knows what triggered it, but the crash is still called the cause of World War III. The economy of the United States crashed twice as hard as it did at the start of the crisis in 2012. The crash was so severe that it lost its position as the economic super power of the world. While the world was in frenzy, the Chinese government sat back and raked in the money. While the US economy fell through the floor, the Chinese economy rose through the roof. By 2020, eight years after the start of what is today called the Changing of the Guard, the United States lay forgotten and China reigned supreme as the new economic super power of the world.
         
2030 came around, and the gears of war began to shift. Due to the events of the past couple of decades, racial tension was high between the states and China. Some believed this period to be the second Cold War, but most people disregarded that as stupidity. It was much more severe than a Cold War. Both parties were gearing up for war. You see, despite the fact that the United States no longer controlled the world economy they were still regarded as having the strongest military in the world due to a large amount of military funding sourced from the UN. The UN knew that if the United States lost their military strength, they’d be the target of ruthless assault and invasion.
         
In response to the inevitable war, many scientists came forward with new technology to prevent nuclear attack from the Chinese. The most notable of these professors was one Zackary Noss, a short and eccentric old man, whose plans were regarded as the most feasible solution to nuclear war. He developed a plan for technology he called Electro Magnetic Defence. The idea was that in the event of a nuclear attack, one need only to activate the EMD and it would fire an invisible beam which would forcefully shut down anything it touched. If this could hit the nukes successfully, it would disarm them in midair. The United States funded his research, and it was all carried out according to plan. However, due to some very clever espionage the Chinese got their hands on his research and development. The EMD utilised electromagnetic pulse technology which Professor Noss himself had invented. Chinese scientists used the EMP to create a weapon. It was more devastating than a nuke, and was capable of levelling a city without the pollution or radiation. The weapon, which the Chinese named the Z1 Mine, was completed at the same time the EMD was. The Chinese released the news of their Z1 Mine to the world, but overlooked to things: In the research they received, there was no mention of the EMD its self. The plans only referred to the potential of the EMP technology. Also, the Chinese simply assumed they were the only country in the world to develop such a weapon. They threatened to fire it, and after Professor Noss assured the United States government that the EMD would be more effective against an EMP mine than it would a nuke, the US replied with, “we’re not afraid of you.” As a result, the Chinese fired.
         
Poor little Professor Noss could not have predicted what would happen next. The EMD worked perfectly despite the Z1 Mine’s speed, thanks to computers which could instantaneously lock on to any form of airborne weapon and the EMDs ability to fire instantly. However, the United States had a weapon of its own. Originally it had been called the Z1 Mine as well, however after discovering China had developed an inferior model it was renamed to the Z2. The effect of the Z2 mine was devastating. It was launched towards Beijing, and travelled at speeds that doubled the average nuclear missile. It was a very small spike, about the height of an average full-grown man and about four inches in diameter at its smallest point. How the US developed such an advanced weapon during one of their greatest periods of economic difficulty is still unknown to this day, but they did it somehow. The ominous spike struck the ground in the centre of Beijing, and then sent out an enormous horizontal shockwave, which covered the entirety of Beijing as well as a ten or twenty kilometres of land surrounding the huge city. It levelled buildings instantly, simply reducing them to ashes in seconds. Most of the terrain surrounding the city was totally levelled, and the instant it happened the entire world stood still.
         
Needless to say, the world was consumed with rage, and the President of the United States of the time became the target of many attempted assassinations, as well as protests and other similar public outcries. Little Professor Noss was driven into insanity by the devastation his technology, which had been designed to protect, had caused. He developed a mine of his own, small enough to attach to the human body, and with a destructive force small enough to level only one building, and set out for one of the most important buildings in history: the White House. You see, circumstances worked in favour for Professor Noss. The President himself had requested a private meeting with him to discuss the possibilities of EMP technology. However, when Professor Noss arrived after being escorted to the building inside an official US Government car, the last thing on his mind was discussion. The beauty of the Z3 Mine that Zackary Noss had developed was that it would not be detected by any form of X-ray or metal detecting device. The second the president was in view, he detonated it. The exploitation of many security flaws and loopholes created by the US Government resulted in the destruction of one of the most important buildings in the US, as well as the official end of the third World War.
         
Zackary Noss was praised as a hero, despite his act of terrorism. After this event, an amazing thing happened. Most of the other wars that were being fought at the same time were finished, and the world achieved something which, until this point in time, most people thought was impossible. Ever since the end of World War III, humanity as a whole has been at peace with itself, if one disregarded the diehard racists and political activist, but that wasn’t hard considering how small and insignificant the amount of those that remained was.
         
It took a couple of years for the dust to settle, and for the world to become truly peaceful, but by 2035 the gears of war had become permanently stationary. At this time, something amazing happened. For the first time in human history, the planet Earth was contacted by extra-terrestrial beings. The alien race called themselves the Stellarens, from the planet Stellar in an adjacent solar system. The aliens sent forward a representative to make contact with Earth’s leaders, and gave a rather absurd speech. Apparently, Earth was the one hundredth known planet to achieve what the Stellaren representative called “total absence of domestic turmoil.” At the time, the UN understood this to mean world peace. After this, the Stellaren representative came forth and said he was one of the leaders of what he called the Interplanetary Alliance, an organisation similar to the UN, except made up of representatives of the known peaceful planets. At the time we understood it to be an alliance of various extra-terrestrial allies, and Earth was being invited to join this alliance. The Stellarens confirmed many things that scientists had been attempting to prove for an age: namely, that aliens existed, and that apparently extra-terrestrial invasion was a serious issue throughout the known sectors of the galaxy.
         
It took a few years for Earth to select an appropriate representative, however once it was completed many advancements occurred for the planet. Namely, the IPA gave the Earth the technology required to travel through space at enormous speeds, reducing the amount of time it would require to travel between populated planets to a couple of days, or perhaps a couple of months depending on the distance. It also resulted in multiple interplanetary immigrants, as well as the creation of galactic passports so that humans could also move to another planet if they so desired. Thanks to the technology provided to Earth, it did not cost much more to fly to another planet than it did to fly to another country. After about twenty years, it became apparent that Earth had an incredibly high standard of living even considering its underdeveloped countries (which, thanks to the IPA, were fully developed nations by 2095), as a large amount of extra-terrestrial races were moving to planet Earth. By 2103, the world had its own common economy and currency, and interplanetary trade resulted in further advancements in human technology. Professor Noss was awarded the IPA Tech Award – despite the fact that he was long dead - for his development of EMP technology, which surprisingly had not been invented in even the most advanced of planets. However, at the start of the year 2115, this peace was abruptly interrupted.
         The invasion was sudden and effective, and a blockade which surrounded the planet Earth prevented any interplanetary reinforcements from entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The only way Earth was able to communicate was indirectly with computers. The alien race conducting the invasion introduced themselves as beings from the Planet Belavor. The Belavorians were a vicious race of blue skinned human-arachnid hybrids which began negotiating with the planet Earth before they landed. Their demands were fairly straight forward, and pretty predictable. They wanted unrestricted access to all human technology, land and resources. If Earth failed to comply, they would force the leaders of Earth into submission. Needless to say, our leaders told them politely to go fuck themselves, and they didn’t like that very much. Thankfully, prior to the invasion the Stellarens and humans used EMP technology to invent new forms of weaponry, including EMP machine guns, sniper rifles, pistols, mounted guns and artillery, so when the Belavorians landed we were ready for them.
         It was 2116 before they landed, and in the beginning it looked like the Global Military of Earth were going to push them back. Every time a Belavorian battalion landed, Earth had two battalions ready and waiting. Every piece of artillery the Belavorians threw at us was met head on by two of our own EMP firing tanks. Eventually the Belavorians grew tired of being decimated despite the fact that they initiated the first interplanetary war in human history, and therefore at the beginning of 2118, their trump cards appeared.
         
The huge Belavorian controlled robots that landed during this stage of the war were separated into two categories: Ghosts and Wraiths. Ghosts were the smaller of the two. They had heads similar to that of a dog, four arms and two legs and were about 20 feet tall. They were armed with a variety of machine guns located on all four of their wrists, on both of their shoulders and in their breast plates. The Ghosts were difficult to handle, but after a few shots from a dozen or so of human tanks – which were not in short supply thanks to the abundance of IPA funding – they would fall. The Wraiths, on the other hand, were a different story. The Wraiths had six arms and two legs, a more human-shaped head and were about 50 feet tall. They had eleven machine guns: one on each wrist, one on each shoulder, one in each breast plate and one atop their heads. They also had two rocket launchers, located in the palm of their top two hands. They also had some sort of force field surrounding their bodies, which meant it took about three times more fire power to take down a Wraith than it took to take down a Ghost. Wraiths, thankfully, were few and far between, as the Belavorians must have decided that it was too expensive to send them out when a Ghost or two could do the job just as effectively; however whenever a Wraith was sent out to the battle field, it was not uncommon for an order to retreat to be announced so a couple of Z4 Mines, a new weapon developed by Earth which had only a quarter of the fire power of the Z2 Mine, to be fired at the battle field.
         
This order was made possible by a fatal error on the part of the leader of Belavor. They had decided to land at Old Beijing. You see, after World War III Beijing was rebuilt at a different location, and the desolate plains left behind by Old Beijing were left as they were to serve as a memorial for the victims of WWIII. This meant that the human race could fall back and fire as many Z4 Mines as possible without having to worry about any more damage. The strategy had one fatal flaw, however. Simply put, it was incredibly difficult to retreat from a Wraith once it was on the ground. They were immensely fast, and could easily mow down most human battalions before the chance to retreat presented its self. Even with the Z4 strategy, many lives were lost whenever a Wraith landed. As a result, a team of human strategists came up with one of the most dangerous and farfetched plans in the history of not just Earth, but the IPA as a whole. It was discovered that the EMP fields of the Z4 Mines were deactivating the Wraiths and Ghosts before the robots were destroyed. This was only noticed when two Ghosts and one Wraith were not directly hit by the blast, but were only just in range of the EMP field. As a result, it was decided that two Z3 Mines would be made and fired at one Ghost and one Wraith, so that a team of Earthling soldiers could highjack one of each model. The plan, named Operation Spectre, was criticized as suicidal stupidity by most officials when it was radioed to the IPA. Despite this, Earth went ahead with the plan. A Z4 Mine was adjusted so that it would wipe out the entire Belavorian army, but leave the Wraiths and Ghosts unscathed. The most prominent Difficulty in Operation Spectre was that if they simply used a Z4 Mine to only just catch the machine in the shock wave, by the time human soldiers reached the Wraith to attempt to highjack it there was every chance that it would be reactivated. Therefore, Earthling soldiers had to get close enough to fire the Z3 Mines to shut down the force field and deactivate the machine, before using its boarding ladder to climb to the cockpit, force it open and pilot the machine back to the command centre that Earth had erected just outside Old Beijing. After the Wraith was captured, Earthling soldiers would then focus on capturing the Ghost. The order of retrieval didn’t matter; however most soldiers agreed that they would rather bring the more powerful of the two in first.
         
Amazingly, the plan was executed perfectly, and by 2120 - thirty years ago now - Earth had its hands on one Wraith and one Ghost. The weaker of the two war machines was easy enough to replicate, and could be piloted by anyone. The Wraith, however, was a different story. The Wraiths were part machine, part Belavorian, and in order to pilot a Wraith it was necessary for a Belavorian soldier to use twice the amount of their brain than ordinary Belavorians do. Scientists up until this point had determined that the average human uses only ten percent of their brain capacity, therefore they determined that due to there being Belavorians using double their usual brain power it was believed that there would be Earthlings somewhere in the world, human or otherwise, who possessed a similar ability. While Ghosts were mass produced and pilots were being trained left right and centre, the world wide search for any citizen of Earth who displayed any form of super human brain power was conducted. The percentages were really just made up figures to help people understand what it was that scientists were looking for. Really, it wasn’t superhuman intelligence that gave one the ability to pilot a Wraith; it was the ability to establish a psychic connection with living things that people were looking for. Until the capture and imprisonment of the Belavorian pilot of the Wraith, Psychic abilities were subjected to large amounts of scepticism throughout the world, and although they only had the story of one Belavorian to use as evidence, this scepticism quickly vanished. Scientists developed a test to determine whether or not anyone who claimed to have the ability was genuine, and by 2123 the first hundred Wraith pilots were discovered and the first hundred Wraiths were built.
         
Once the gift was discovered, Earthling scientists used the DNA of captured Belavorian soldiers (of which there were plenty, due to the Representative of Earth’s plea to capture as many as possible for the construction of Wraiths) to construct as many Wraiths as possible. It was discovered that certain Points of Contact were necessary to control the Wraiths, due to the fact that Wraiths were alive and breathing. Without these Points of Contact, humans would be unable to establish a psychic connection with the Wraith and it would be physically impossible to pilot it. After analysing the body of the captured Belavorian Wraith pilot, it was discovered that these Points of Contact could be located in six different places: The palm of the hands, the soles of the feet, the middle of the back and the forehead. No human had all six Points of Contact, and the locations of the points were always completely symmetrical. That is to say, if one had a Point of Contact on the left hand, there would always be another point on the opposite hand. The same applied for the feet. It also meant that the Points of Contact on the back and forehead were always located in the centre of the corresponding area.
         
Technology was developed which allowed these Points of Contact to be awakened, and two vital points were discovered: The PoC’s on the hands and feet allowed for the most accurate control on the Wraiths, and the more PoC’s a human has, the more prowess they will have in battle with their Wraiths. By 2125, Earth had a fully functional and deployable army of Ghosts and Wraiths, and the war became an epic stalemate between the two opposing forces: Earthlings and Belavorians. It was soon accepted that Earthling Wraiths and Ghosts were more powerful than those originating from Belavor, not because the technology was superior, but because for some unexplainable reason, Earthling Points of Contact seemed to be more effective.
         
Once again, the forces of Belavor decided that they needed to regain the advantage in battle. They formulated and executed a devastating plan which forced many citizens of Earth to realise their worst fear: abduction. The Belavorians beamed into various cities around the world and abducted one hundred or so humans from each city. Thankfully, the devices the Belavorians used to teleport into the city were not large enough to beam Wraiths, Ghosts, Artillery or large battalions, so only small teams were sent into human territory, usually during the dead of night. Originally, the people of Earth, human or otherwise, were told to lock their doors firmly at night; however this was no obstacle for the Belavorian forces. The first abduction was conducted, and Earth remained totally ignorant for quite a while. Somehow, the Belavorians had a way to tell whether or not a human would be missed by others. As a result, the humans they abducted were specifically chosen so that their presence, or lack thereof, would not be noticed for quite some time. When one hundred missing person cases were reported, Earth’s leaders brushed it off. They denied the possibility of abduction until the abducted humans were returned.
         
What the Belavorian scientists did to the humans – and humans were the only ones that were abducted – remained totally unknown. All that was known was, that out of the one hundred missing person cases that were labelled as abductions, only fifty percent returned, for better or for worse. What ever happened in the space ships of Belavor, it changed the people that returned, who were later called Survivors with a capital ‘s’. They developed a strange sort of mental disease, which scientists named Extra-Terrestrially Induced Hyper-Schizophrenia, or E-TIHS for short. It was an extreme case of paranoia, which grew exponentially worse as time moved on. After the first sufferer of E-TIHS was imprisoned, the disease was nicknamed Survivor’s Syndrome. This was due to the odd effects it had on the mentality of the Survivors. As more and more were imprisoned in psyche wards, it became apparent that their memories had been altered. They all believed that the Belavorians had left them on Earth, and abducted everybody else. As a result, they saw innocent people, whom the Survivors ironically called the Survivors, as people filled with immense jealousy towards them. They soon believed that this jealousy was turning into violence, and adopted a ‘kill or be killed’ attitude. As a result, the first known Survivor killed a man who was offering help when he saw the mentally instable male curled up on a footpath in the foetal position. The abductions were totally random, and unpredictable, and seemed to go ahead despite there being military personnel in every major city on the planet. Once they had been found, the Belavorians’ confidence grew, and they began to abduct anyone, regardless of how many friends or how much family they had. This lead to a huge increase in Survivors, which also caused an increased amount of cases of severe Survivor Syndrome. Some people, however, were not affected by the disease upon their return; however their memories were still wiped clean.
         
The Survivors became the subject of great debate by 2130, and many theories were developed as to what exactly the Belavorian forces hoped to achieve by creating them. It soon became obvious that they were an obscure weapon, and many people became distracted from the war and began to focus more on the problem of Survivors. A proposal to dissect a Survivor’s brain to discover what went on inside them was put forward, however was also knocked back instantaneously due to human rights issues. You see, when one died after suffering from Survivor Syndrome, all of their internal organs liquefied. As a result, to effectively dissect and analyse the working brain of a Survivor, the Survivor had to be alive. The proposal was denied constantly, until 2145. The war had been going on for twenty-nine years by this stage, and showed no sign of stopping. If the number of Survivors continued to increase, then it wouldn’t take long for Earth to become a desolate planet ruled by Belavor. Therefore, the son of the professor who first proposed the dissection of a living Survivor stepped forward and gave a rather enthralling speech. The first Survivor was found clutching a piece of paper when he was imprisoned, and this piece of paper was called the Survivor’s Letter. Professor Jamie Gaven opened his speech by quoting this letter.
         “‘The city is dying. The streets are filled with decay. Each day I find myself looking through my window, only to see the same scene: clouds the colour of the setting sun and streets that lay dead or dying. No one lives here, I have it all to myself and I’m lonely.’ Ladies and gentlemen, those are the opening lines of the world renowned Survivor’s Letter. I think if one avoids looking at the words literally, they can be applied to our beloved Planet with great accuracy. Earth is our city, our countries are our streets, and due to the problem of the increasing number of Survivors, our streets are indeed either dead or dying. These Survivors are still considered to be Earthlings by every citizen of the planet; however in my honest opinion I think this is utter stupidity. There is more the Extra-Terrestrially Induced Hyper-Schizophrenia than most people seem to think. It is not a mere mental disease, it is a weapon implanted in the brain by the scientists of Belavor. One does not need to look far to realise the seriousness of the implications that are involved with allowing Survivors to live. They murder our women and children, and rape and pillage our beautiful planet as they are being remotely controlled by the Belavorians themselves. If we continue to treat the Survivors as sick Earthlings, it will be our downfall. Human rights no longer apply to beings like the Survivors, and while some may consider me evil for saying so, it is undeniable that it is true. It may be sad, but it is definitely true. All we need is one living Survivor. The so called Survivor’s Syndrome has a one hundred percent chance of eventual death, therefore how can it be considered evil to bring this salvation to one of them early. Given the brain of one survivor, it may be possible to find a cure for the disease, or better yet, a weapon we can use against the Belavorian forces! So I ask of the leaders of Earth: whether you are human, Stellaren, Envolian or a mixture of all three, please, for the sake of the survival of not just the human race, but all Earthlings, revoke your decision to prohibit my late father’s research. The fate of Earth as we know it rests in your noble hands.”
         
It took a few months for the Earth’s leaders to reach a decision, but once they were given extra evidence after the speech they let Professor Gaven do as he pleased. He fulfilled his promise by 2147, three years ago, and developed a cure for Survivors Syndrome. It was discovered that the Belavorians were injecting a special toxin into the human body which resulted in insanity, and eventually reduced every internal organ to liquid. Scientists had believed that the organs were liquefied after the Survivor died, due to the death like sleep the Survivors entered a few hours prior to their death; however the death like sleep was brought upon by the toxins. It shut the body down completely, and then the liquefied the body. By creating a counter-toxin, Jamie Gaven was hailed as the most revolutionary scientist of the Interplanetary Age, which was the name given to the current Era back when the Stellaren originally made contact with Earth.
         
The year now is 2150, and my name is Johnes Macaber. I’m a seventeen year old Stellar-Human hybrid, and a Wraith pilot. I have witnessed firsthand the seriousness of this war with Belavor, which has now been going for thirty-four years. Thankfully, due to Earth’s amazing scientific ability, we are reaching a stage where the end of the war is in sight. There is a long way to go yet, but due to the war being held on our home turf, our Ghost pilots outnumber the Belavorian Ghost pilots, and the difference in numbers between our Wraith pilots and their Wraith pilots is rapidly approaching zero.