Everyone at the Hino Shrine was at least mildly surprised when Ami let out a string of German that did not sound at all proper. (They were right.)
Ami took a deep breath to settle herself, closed her computer down, and turned to the others. "The negotiations - fell apart."
"I thought they were going well," Usagi ventured.
"They were." Ami visibly settled herself again. "Apparently there were three other groups in communication with the aliens, attempting much as we were. The aliens have no idea which if any of us were legitimate, and so were negotiating with all three. I thought I'd managed to convince them that we were simply at the stage where we were, as a race, attempting to find our identity and that interference from above would interrupt that natural process."
"I knew we should have attacked them!" Haruka clenched a fist. "Let's go deal with them!"
"That's exactly why they broke off negotiations, Haruka-san," said Ami. "Someone attacked them and destroyed one of their farmships."
"All right!" Haruka pumped a fist. "See, they can be brought down!"
"You might want to check the news reports, Haruka-san," Ami informed the gung ho Senshi. "Just the wreckage from the downed ship hitting the ground has created a series of craters. Poland and Germany are gone, Haruka-san, and the aliens haven't fired a shot yet."
Haruka had the grace to flinch. "Okay, so we've got to find a way to hit them and not be underneath them at the time."
"It's worse than that," said Ami. "If we do fight the aliens and win, this will be the Great Freeze."
That brought the buzz of background conversations to a halt.
"Waaa! I'm not ready for a thousand years of ice!" Usagi began wailing. This was ended when Rei bopped her on top of her head.
"How so?" Haruka asked, not particularly comfortable with the concept either.
"Dust?" Michiru asked. "The 'nuclear winter' effect?"
Ami nodded. "Just one of their ships coming down kicked up enough dirt and dust to begin a global freeze. A fimbulwinter. The aliens now are looking at the effects of that, plus the radiation released by the Earth ship, and are unsure that we can survive as a species without their intervention."
"How bad is this?" Makoto asked, not being an expert on dust clouds, just that this didn't sound good at all.
"90% of all life on Earth could be wiped out," said Ami quietly. "Conservative estimate. Some species - the ultravores that already survive in the worst conditions on Earth - they'd survive anything short of total planetary destruction. The more advanced and specialized species would almost certainly die off."
"Uhm, but isn't this all fore-ordained?" Rei pointed out. "Everyone gets frozen, thousand years in ice, Crystal Tokyo's formed, Usagi and Mamoru marry... we've had a few years warning that this was coming."
"TV, they've got a helicopter... oh no." Minako turned pale as she watched the footage.
"Tsunami," answered Setsuna as she walked in. "Well, my princess, this is where it begins."
"What begins?" Usagi asked.
"We begin fighting back!" Haruka declared.
Seeing a sad look and faint tinge of revulsion on Setsuna's face, the Senshi started to worry when she nodded.
"Do you want to tell them what will happen if they attack?" Ami asked Setsuna coldly.
"No, I can't," said the Senshi of Time, looking even more stressed. "You know I can't reveal details of the future."
"We attack the big one, don't we?" Ami asked. She apparently saw confirmation in Pluto's silence. "I thought so."
"What?" Usagi looked back and forth between Ami and Setsuna.
"I play chess, Usagi-chan. Thinking several moves ahead is necessary. The big ship is likely their command center," said Ami. "If we destroyed it, most likely the remainder would retreat."
"That's good," said Haruka. "That's the one that's 10,000 miles across near the moon, right?"
"It would also devastate Earth's biosphere. We'd need to freeze Tokyo just to ensure some survivors. Other than certain ultravoric life forms such as are found in volcanoes, I'd expect a thousand years to pass before any life could survive on Earth's surface. Am I right?" Ami asked. "How many thousands of survivors are we talking about?"
"It doesn't matter," said Setsuna after a moment. "There is no Crystal Tokyo if there is no Great Freeze. You'll unleash a paradox storm if you don't and that could kill far more."
"So we're talking a few hundred people dead?" Haruka said hopefully.
Ami shook her head. "More like six billion by the time it's done."
"Oh come on, they're alien invaders," said Haruka. "We have to - six *billion*?"
Setsuna let out a deep breath. "-it could be worse-"
------------
The really darn big ships slowly moved into new positions.
The debate had taken quite some time. Hopes that the race would prove itself to be mature enough that further intervention would be unnecessary had been rudely dashed. Worse, they would have to make do with only four meals a day now that one of the farming ships had been hit. More energy would have to be invested now to keep the Earthers from having extinguished their own ecosystem. Not to mention the Earthers had put together an extremely dangerous, even suicidally insane, weapon/vehicle.
Finally though the hippo/camel form of one of the Shepherds appeared on the screen. "It is deeply regrettable that this is necessary. It is our deep hope that this simple action will curtail further attempts to visit violence against us. The punishment is being delivered to what has been determined to be the nation of origin of the combat vehicle responsible for the attack. It is our sincere hope that everyone except those from the nation of California in the Empire of the United States will have a nice day. To the inhabitants of that nation, our regrets for this coming action. Thank you."
(On California, in the United States, on Earth, there was a non-legally binding but nearly universal name change. From California to the state of Panic.)
The Shepherds had gone out into the universe, full of dreams and hopes, innocence and the best of intentions. The first race they'd run across had been the T*kri. There had been much rejoicing at this meeting among the Shepherds. Other life, even if they resembled armored squid, and the two had met under such auspicious circumstances. They'd been welcomed with open arms, err, tentacles.
Things had very quickly degenerated. The T*kri were not a friendly culture and had been of a roughly Dark Ages technological level. Once they'd gotten their hands on weapons, they'd begun slaughtering the Shepherds and taking their equipment.
In their 155,000 year history, it had been their first war. Not their first battle, but the Shepherds had never been particularly enamored by large scale battles. Part of their herd mentality, perhaps, or their herbivorous ancestry - but this was the first time they'd had to face violence of this sort since the time they'd had problems with large bloodthirsty carnivores in their prehistory. They still didn't like it, but they'd learned a few things since then about waging war.
The legacy of the T*kri (pronounced Ta-c minor-kerih) was unleashed on very precise vectors for the area determined to be the originators of the nuisance. Meteors which seemed to break apart over every major city in the nation of California. From these meteors, hundreds of relatively tiny meteors were sent out.
The most advanced sciences of the Shepherds had been in genetic manipulation, biology, and agrarian applications of those sciences. They were mainly herbivorous and so had concentrated on plant strains for thousands of years. During the T*kri attacks, the applications of animal based genetic engineering had been explored.
With three examples of human DNA, developing the rest was simple. Child's play for the most part. Within two hours they could have done a vast number of things with that DNA. What they actually did was:
See other episodes by Ranma-mite
(Posted Sun, 12 Jan 2003 22:29)
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