The Legend of Earth

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.

And snuggled up against the base of the mountain were the buildings of the Union Assembly, where representatives from the twenty-three sectors of the Expansion held court.

Adam was amazed at all the changes that had taken place here in seven years, especially in light of the planet’s harsh weather. But when one has the resources of a galaxy at one’s disposal, then anything was possible.

Yes, it turned out that the Human Expansion was still run out of the planet Juir, at least officially. Most of the actual day-to-day operations, however, took place on Earth, a task made easier by the sustained-wormhole (S/W) relays invented by the Klin, which allowed for instantaneous communications between Earth and Juir. It seemed that in their haste to leave the Cluster, the Kracori had left an S/W relay station in orbit around Juir. Human and alien technicians had quickly learned the secrets of the device, and had actually improved upon it. Now most starships and planets within the Expansion utilized this revolutionary new technology.

Even though communications had improved greatly in the intervening years, travel time throughout the