The Legend of Earth (The Human Chronicles Saga -- Book 5) (36 page)

“May good fortune follow you, Mr. Cain. Maybe someday, when the Juirean race has recovered, Humans and Juireans will become friends.”

The screen went blank and Admiral Allen and Adam spent a long minute in silence staring at their reflections in the shiny black screen.

“Ain’t that some shit,” Adam finally said, breaking the silence. “Tell me you were recording that, Admiral?”

“Of course, and I will get this out to Earth right away.” Allen placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “Good job, Captain. When he requested you personally, I didn’t know what to expect. This will come as welcome news back on Earth. Without the Juireans to worry about, it looks like we’re pretty much in charge of the whole damn thing.”

“Yes sir. But now that we own the galaxy, what are we going to do with it?”

Chapter 46

Adam pulled the furry hood of the parka tighter around his head and trudged a little further in the near-knee-high snow drifts. The velocity of the wind was high, yet one of the things he found about worlds with lighter gravity, lower air density meant weaker winds. The velocities may be the same, but rather than fighting to remain upright against the force, it was more like a soft breeze on his pink cheeks.

It had been two hours since the conversation with Lord Wydor, and afterwards Adam had felt a strong urge to get outside and experience some wide open spaces; the close walls of the flying saucers had suddenly felt more confining. Even though the weather outside the command complex was terrible, Adam welcomed the change. It helped him put things in perspective, something this mind had been attempting to do for several months already.

Adam could see where Malor Tower had once stood, marked by the few remaining metal frame elements still anchored securely in the massive concrete foundation, although now twisted and warped into something resembling a scene from an old black-and-white gothic horror movie. He moved between two twisted spires and made his way to where he estimated the center of the structure would have been, at the very spot where the Contact Monument had once stood. In a surprising flash of Jerry Seinfeld-type thinking, Adam thought the Juireans really had to work on naming their monuments and structures better, maybe use a little more imagination and flair.
Contact Monument
had never really done it for him. But that was a thought for another day.

The Kracori asteroid had done a real number on the planet, even though it hadn’t arrived with the tremendous velocity and punch of a traditional impact event. Adam looked out across the vast alluvial plain below the mountain and out to the Southern Sea beyond. He was sure the Kracori had been originally aiming for the very spot he now stood, however they missed. The massive rock of nickel and iron had instead struck almost a hundred kilometers out to sea; the hundred meter high tsunami sweeping in from the ocean, across the vast plain – where the still-smoldering remains of Juir City had once stood – and then reaching the very base of the Kacoran Plain itself. And then the waters receded, leaving the land below virginal, as it was before the first ancient Juirean had ever set foot upon its grasses.

He would be leaving for Earth in a few days and was not looking forward to twelve long months cooped up in a metal cocoon. But it would be good to get home. He had been gone for three years – four if you didn’t count the brief six-day stay just before the Juireans attacked. He was sure he would find things so incredibly different from when he left….

He stretched out a wide, cynical smile as the cold air struck the skin of his face.
I make it sound as if I had a choice about leaving,
he thought.
That was hardly the case.

Indeed, very little that had happened to him over the past four years had been
his
choice, and he placed the blame for such circumstance squarely in one place:
on aliens!
Since his first encounter with these odd creatures, they had brought him nothing but pain, misery and heartache. They had disrupted his life and taken away his future.

Yes, a year
was
a long time to spend confined to a big metal disk, but Adam Cain swore – then and there – that after he got back to Earth it would be a cold day in Hell before he would ever return to space again!

Chapter 47

Seven Years Later…

It was a particularly cold day in Hell when Adam’s shuttle landed atop the Kacoran Plain, near the cluster of twenty-four buildings that now made up the provisional capital of the EU – the
Expansion Union
. He watched through the shuttle’s viewport as great clouds of snow were thrown back by the craft’s chemical landing ports as they settled onto the hard, icy surface of Juir.

He wasn’t surprised to see that the climate still hadn’t returned to normal on the homeworld of the Juireans in the seven years since he left. It would normally be winter in these latitudes, however, the temperature worldwide was still sitting about ten degrees below normal. Harsh winters covered more of the surface these days and lasted longer into the year, and the experts estimated it would still be another ten years or more before the planet would heal itself completely from the Kracori asteroid attack.

Adam felt the sudden shift in gravity as the internal well dissolved, leaving him suddenly about fifty pounds lighter than he was used to. It had been years since he’d experienced the sensation, and for a moment it made him smile thinking about all the amazing feats he had been able to accomplish back in the day.

What is this crap?
he asked.
Am I feeling nostalgic?

He might have been in a way, he acknowledged. A lot had happened since his return to Earth so many years before, after an excruciating long and boring ride back to the planet. In fact, putting that in context, he had spent two out of the last seven years just traveling from Juir to Earth and now back to Juir again. Two years out of his life wasted aboard a giant metal Frisbee.
 

His tenure back on Earth had been a whirlwind, too, so much so that it seemed like only a blip in time looking back on it now.

He had been welcomed back as a hero, a role for which he was completely ill-prepared to play. The current president of the United States, Sean McLaren, had kept the promise of his predecessor and pardoned him – along all his cohorts – for any culpability in the Juirean attack on the planet. In fact, he was made out to be the lone voice of reason, unheeded by those in power at the time.

But it hadn’t ended there.

He was also given credit for stopping the
Kracori
attack as well.

The entire population of the planet was well aware of the nuclear plague the aliens had attempted to infect them with – the resulting EMP was something that couldn’t be hidden and had to be explained. What very few people knew, however, was that the Human defenders had had nothing to do with stopping the attack.

Within the enclaves of the powerful, it was decided that this particular bit of information would not have been welcomed among a race of people sitting on the brink of hysteria. If they had known the truth – that the Kracori had been only minutes away from irradiating the planet for generations, and that those they had entrusted to protect them had failed – that would not have done anything to instill confidence in their leaders. There would have been a complete breakdown in trust that their governments could keep them safe from all the disparate forces in the galaxy who –
for some god-damn reason
– didn’t like Humans very much.

So that part of the story was kept quiet, and after much convincing, Adam went along with the deception. The new official version was that Adam had warned the authorities of the impending attack, and then through sheer skill and determination, the authorities were able to stop the Kracori.

It made the Human race sleep better at night knowing that their leaders could protect them, even if it was a lie.

And so now Adam Cain was considered the
savior
of all mankind.

He had gone on the lecture circuit – another thing he abhorred – before finally settling down in a genuine log cabin in the pristine, pine-shrouded mountains outside of South Lake Tahoe, California. At the time, Sherri Valentine was still with him, but that soon ended. It seemed that when two people are thrown together through some tragic or life-threatening event –
such as spending three years being chased by aliens throughout the galaxy
– then trying to maintain that relationship in light of the everyday and the mundane was very difficult to achieve. He had not heard from her for nearly three years.

Riyad Tarazi had faded away as well. He was semi-famous now – although nothing like Adam – and had made a fair amount of money off a book he wrote about his experiences in space. Adam hadn’t had the time to read it yet, but he was sure Riyad had glossed over some of the more unsavory parts of his adventures. Adam hadn’t heard from him in a couple years either.

Lieutenant Andy Tobias was now
Captain
Andy Tobias, still in the Navy, yet spending most of his time off-planet, as most of the military did these days.

Chief Geoffrey Rutledge had retired from the Navy and was now living in Key West, Florida, running a small fishing boat operation with his buddy John Tindal. Unknown to Adam before this time, the two of them were actually fairly accomplished musicians, and they moonlighted as a duo at the Hog’s Breath Saloon on Duval Street four nights a week. They were known by the professional name of
Local Knowledge
, meaning they knew their way around. In their case, that meant a lot of places – including the galaxy.

Yes, Adam
was
feeling nostalgic. But now he had a job to do, one that had brought him twenty thousand light years across the galaxy and to a planet he swore he’d never return to.

Adam was escorted to the main structure on the mountain, a building unceremoniously called NU-6. Aliens never were very creative at naming things –
but neither were Human bureaucrats!
It was a nine-story concrete structure, housing the Administrator’s offices and the primary diplomat corps for Earth. Most of the surrounding buildings housed the military headquarters for the galaxy, as well as various Human trade missions.

Below the mountain, and on land that had once been Juir City, a new city in its own right had sprung up: Consulate City. With a population nearing half a million – including an estimated thirty-five thousand Humans – this was where the diplomatic missions from nearly eight thousand worlds could be found.