Gronth Ch. 10 Endgame

Defense of Earth

The Gronth were coming in their billions. The billions of Gronths that had fought over the gold on Zandor was just a fraction of what the Gronth Emperor eventually sent to conquer the Terran planets.

"It makes me mad that we couldn't have destroyed more of the enemy at Zandor when they were still far away from any habitable Terran worlds." Hoshino said.

"We would have let the Gronth know that we set the whole thing up just to kill Gronth fighters and destroy their warships," Zhao explained.

"I understand why we couldn't shoot down any of their ships off Zandor. It still makes me mad that we couldn't take advantage of the situation though."

"That's it. You're getting mad. M.A.D. mad." Matt said, becoming excited by Hoshino's words.

Being the only other native English speaker in the bunch besides Matt, Fairfax was the only other leader to get the ancient military reference.

"M.A.D.. Mutually Assured Destruction," Faifax announced.

"We studied the concept during our military history classes," he explained to the others.

The acronym meant nothing to Zhao, Baranov or Hoshino, who had been born off-world. Matt decided that he should explain the idea to the other military men.

"Mutually Assured Destruction, or M.A.D., was the official policy of the nuclear superpowers during the 20th Century on Earth. Each of the nuclear superpowers had thousands of nuclear warheads ready to send towards their enemies. The only reason that war was prevented was the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction. If one power sent their warheads, the other superpowers would send all of theirs."

"There would be no more life on Earth," Baranov realized.

"The United States alone had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth twenty times over. Other superpowers had just as many," Matt said.

"Everybody loses, so nobody dared to start a nuclear war," Fairfax said.

"Do they still have them?"

"Believe me, they may have been dismantled. The components have been hidden, but they still have them" Matt said.

The North American envoy for the Earth's old military superpowers was adamant.

"We destroyed all of our nuclear weapons at the same time the Chinese and Russians did." the envoy said.

"We need you to turn them over."

"I told you. We don't have any."

Has everyone else surrendered their weapons of mass destruction?" He finally asked.

"Even North Korea and Iran," Matt assured the U.S. envoy.

"We destroyed them all."

'We need them to defeat the Gronth Armada."

'Okay, but they better not show up on anybody else's inventories. I'm still responsible for them."

With the U.S. and its allies finally complying, Matt had assembled thousands of nuclear warheads that had supposedly been destroyed over two hundred years ago. Knowing that the Gronth would not choose to attack Zandor again, Matt chose to house the atomic and hydrogen warheads there.

Baranov had also been successful with the former Soviet countries, and Zhao had convinced all of the Asian countries to turn over their nukes. Hoshino's wish had finally come true. He would get to strike the Gonth at a distance. A small nuclear warhead had been tested with great success against an empty Gronth Lander Carrier still orbiting Zandor.

"It works. You can send in the reverse integrators," Matt said to Colonel Cruz.

"Just like last time I suppose," Sofia asked.

"Just like last time."

"What about the plutonium and radioactive elements from the atomic bomb that you used on the Gronth warship?"

"That explosion was in orbit. Can you take the radioactive waste out of the space surrounding the planet?"

Sofie shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't see why not. I can try it and let you know if it doesn't work."

Sofie's experiment was a success. Not only could she use the reverse integrators to remove Zandor's orbiting nuclear waste, but the fallout that would occur around Earth after the battle of Terra.

The process of nuclear fission to produce an atomic bomb involving putting pieces of Uranium-235 together or by imploding Plutonium had never been studied by the Elani. A-bombs simply produced too much nuclear waste. Nobody wanted to get those kinds of toxic compounds and elements in space, even Gronth space.

"Fusion bombs are much less messy. Would you like us to make you some of those missiles to use on the Gronth instead," Namiya offered, once she'd heard Matt's original plan.

"We haven't ever found a way to trigger a nuclear fusion bomb, a thermo nuclear explosion, without using an fission bomb as a trigger." Matt said.

Namiya just shook her head at the idea of all of that radioactive fallout. The Elani had developed every kind of fusion reaction hundreds of thousands of years ago. They had never had the need to make warheads, thank goodness, but they definitely knew how to make them.

The nuclear warhead that Hoshino had used against the disabled ship orbiting Zandor had been a small nuke, about than 30 kilotons of TNT explosive power. It had totally destroyed the Gronth vessel. Matt explained all of this to Vana and the scientists that Namiya had brought into the meeting on Tellan to speak with Matt.

"We can do that amount of energy, no problems. Are you sure that you don't need more?"

"That will do nicely. How soon can you have them ready?"

Hoshino was as happy with the newfound abilities as he ever had been. The Elani were building the fusion missiles as fast as they could, but their primary concern was to get the humans off of their established home planets before the Gronth arrived.

Zhao had determined that of all the Terran planets, that Earth would be the most difficult to defend. Most of the Expansion planets like Wolf, Sharolie, Gliese and Keppler were not nearly as heavily populated as Earth was, and the inhabitants of those planets weren't nearly as possessive of their traditions as the Earthlings were.

New Yorkers didn't want to leave New York. Londoners didn't want to leave London. It was the same all over the planet. Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Cairo, Beijing, all contained over a half billion people each, and very few of them wanted to leave their homes. It would be impossible to fight the Gronth without causing massive human casualties. All that could be done was to insure that no humans were still on the planet when the Gronth attacked.

The Elani were busy preparing thermonuclear missiles for use in outer space, but Matt still controlled thousands of fusion warheads that the Elani had made for him. Which Terran targets to destoy with the fusion bombbs was a very tough decision to make, since Earth was home to all of the Earth Analog and Terran planets. It was essential to prevent the Gronth from taking over. Earth's cities and old cultural centers might need to be sacrificed. Earth was going to have to nuke itself.

Huge shimmering portals dominated the crossroads of all the major cities and towns. Every language translator equipped Elani met rural people in their homes to ensure that they understood the consequences of remaining on the planet. The vast majority of Earthlings readily chose to leave the planet, but there were still a few die hard holdouts who refused to leave.

"How are we doing on the evacuations?" Matt asked Sushma, the woman tasked with the immense task of relocating six billion children, women, and men who were not already in military uniforms.

"Over 95 percent of the people have moved off world," Sushma said.

"I was hoping that we would have achieved more than that by now."

"You'd be surprised at what people want to bring with them. They are only allowed to bring what they can carry on them. It's down to lives or things."

"They prefer worldly goods over their lives?"

"It's not the poor or middle class people that have a problem leaving Earth. It's the wealthy that have been giving us the most difficulty."

"What do they expect us to do? We are already trying to make evacuation as painless as possible," Matt said.

"They want us to make an exception for them. Some of these people have been exceptional all of their lives. All we can do is to force these people through and let them bring nothing," Sushma said.

"We can't force people to do anything, you know that. We'll leave that option open for them to leave up until the very last minute, but we can't afford to let any Gronth through. Can you set that up?"

Consider it done. I'll even set up translocation portals right by their homes."

Terrans and Elani had done an exceptional job in setting up temporary living quarters for the human refugees. Ben and Nancy Seabolt had planted enough sardu to feed everyone temporarily, the Elani had set up solar generators to provide power. Reverse integrating toilets had been established in several key areas and people did what people who were faced with diversity had always done throughout history. They made do with what they had, and tried to live their lives to the fullest.

Different races and cultures were all thrown together by their need, and everyone cooperated with each other. When many of the so-called leaders came through the last-minute portals without anything, not even their clothes, the refugees took them in and helped look after them. It was finally obvious to the average person that the only difference between the people and the politicians was their wealth. When everyone was equally poor, the wealthy were just average.

"They're coming out of FTL and orbiting Earth now," Sofie said from the bunker on Luna.

"Where else are they appearing?" Zhao asked.

"Wolf and Sharolie," Cruz told the General.

"Just as you predicted," Zhao told Colonel Cruz.

"Here's your chance to show us what you've got, Hoshino," Matt told his friend.

Hoshino's Captains and hundreds of missile officers had been practicing shooting down Gronth Lander and Aircraft Carriers for months on the simulations. Now, they had live targets. The weapons systems would not allow the Space Force officers to shoot down the same vessels as other officers, so that every missile counted as a hit. The Space Fleet officers had all discussed who would concentrate their fire in what areas. There were no Terran ships or aircraft interfering with the battle in orbit, so the missiles had free range in their actions. The resulting destruction of Gronth ships was an awesome and inspirational sight to the Terran missile defenders.

"The Gronth attack has begun on Earth," Zhao announced.

As predicted, the Gronth Aircraft Carriers orbiting Earth unleashed their space planes and atmospheric aircraft. The spaceplanes soon found that the Terran forces only had missiles to defend against, and those were covered in shielding paint. No F-215s were there to challenge them in orbit, so the Groth space planes went down to destroy the huge cities that covered parts of the Earth.

Matt had withheld his planes on Earth to defend against the Gronth aircraft and landers on Wolf and Sharolie. Even with as much support as the missile defenses offered by shooting down Carriers, the destruction of the cities continued without pause until there was hardly one stone stacked upon another on the Earth. Even the pyramids in Giza were not immune to the Gronth aircraft. It had taken the alien fighters nearly a day to destroy the nearly solid structures, but the Gronth had spared many of the ancient buried sites that covered the Earth.

No defenses were sent to Earth at all while the bombardment continued. All of the defenders were sent to Wolf and Sharolie to defend those planets from the claw wielding warriors. Matt sent every available aircraft to attack the landers and aircraft on those two besieged planets, but nothing was sent to Earth. The Gronth had a free hand to destroy that vital planet of the Terrans. Zhao wanted as many Gronth on the planet as it could hold. There would be a defense of the planet, but not just yet. Timing was everything.

Thirteen hours was all that it took for the human forces on Sharolie to totally defeat the Gronth attackers, eighteen hours on Wolf. Those planets were mostly open landscapes, similar to Zandor in that respect, and the same exact strategies worked there too. Earth required a different strategy altogether.

Gonarth was winning on Earth, the grand prize. All the rest of the Terran planets would eventually be conquered, so he wasn't really concerned that the Terrans had successfully defended Sharolie and Wolf. They were both mostly barren land anyway, but he had wanted to see the Terrans fight. They were very good. He would not underestimate them like Kankree or especially Karak had done.

The Terrans had destroyed over a thousand entire ships with their fusion powered missiles. He would need to obtain the information on how to defend his ships from those missiles from the Terran scientists. They were very effective. No matter. The Emperor had sent everything that Grota could gather to defeat these pesky Terrans. He had thousands of ships remaining in orbit, and they were still sending aircraft and troops down.

The same types of translocating foxholes were now being used on Terra to defend the planet from the Gronth. This time however, destroyed buildings became defensive positions and Gronth warriors found it much more difficult terrain to overcome. Many more clawed warriors were needed. Thank goodness that the translocating 50cal "Ma Deuce" machine guns would shoot through glass and drywall without problems.

Many famous landmarks were destroyed around the world, their rubble becoming excellent hiding places for Terran troops. Huge columns became shooting stations for the Terrans, who had been trained for years to watch their flanks and rear. The new Gronth strategies weren't fooling the Terrans, they had seen all of it before. It was a good thing that the Terran troops were able to withdraw, rest a few minutes, and then be redeployed to a different posting.

"Take ten and change into your summer gear. It's 308 Kelvin where you are going. That's 95 degrees to you and me."

"The Gronth are fully functional at that temperature, and are destroying Sydney with their bare hands."

The mostly off-world troops didn't care what city they were defending, as long as the Gronth weren't taking over the religious sites. Matt had already mined most of those locations with fusion bombs, and was reluctant to take those sites out. It was better to shoot the Gronth out of those places.

"We must wait until more Groth are on the ground," Zhao said.

"They're everywhere. The Groth are even in places where I wouldn't go, including the deep tropical jungles." Baranov said.

"Gronth headquarters are in Papua New Guinea. That's where Gonarth and Kanree are located, along with the other Gronth Commanders. They don't want to risk being shot down on their ships in orbit."

"It's a good thing that we placed all of our nukes on Antarctica then," Matt said.

"It's the best way to exterminate the Gronth for once and for all," Zhao reminded him.

"We're getting clobbered." Fairfax lamented.

"We need to wait until a few more ships send down their landers before we spring the trap," Zhao said.

"It's like burning down a house to get rid of the roaches," Matt commented.

"Hey. Good news for a change. Most of the people must be relocated. I'm starting to get more fusion missiles from the Elani. It's too bad that we have to resort to nukes," Hoshino said.

"I'm hoping not to use them if I can avoid it."

Zhao, Hoshino, and Baranov all looked at Matt with a solemn expression on their faces. None of them had been born on Earth, so it really didn't matter to them if he destroyed the planet.

"Thirty minutes," Zhao finally said.

The order went out to all of the Terran fighters on Earth. It was time for the withdrawal to begin, starting with the soldiers above ground. Portable foxholes containing four soldiers apiece disappeared from the front lines located on every continent, and began showing up on the Alphabet planets.

Soldiers from Sharolie and Wolf were already there to greet their comrades in arms, while the remaining Terran soldiers did their best to stay alive and dispatch as many Gronth as possible. Once all of the soldiers from above ground had been withdrawn, soldiers down in the tunnels started to be translocated off of Earth. Finally, only the tanks were left. Alexander Egorov had earned the privilege of pressing the button. The big red nuclear button.

Alexander Egorov had been promoted to the rank of Colonel and was in charge of a tank guarding one of the entrances of the London subways. Some of those deep tunnels had been in use to protect civilians from air-raids during World War 2. Now, they were parts of an underground system protecting the Terran fighters who were pulling back from the front lines that were being overrun by the Gronth.

With a flourish and a silent prayer, Alexander hit the button that translocated him and his crew members inside the Lunar base to see what his actions had started.

From deep inside the Lunar base, an area the Gronth never expected to harbor life, Zhao and the rest of the Terran military leaders could watch the missile trails originating on the South Pole reach up, out, and down to strike the Earth. Boobytrapped locations such as the buker in Colorado and other hardened military locations soon followed the Elani fusion missiles in detonating. The Elani had carefully calculated the area and time of nuclear impacts so that the Earth's crust would remain intact. Nevertheless, the destruction of all life on Earth was soon complete.

With no Commanders to tell them what to do, the orbiting ships simply remained in orbit. Hoshino and his missile crews worked to shoot down the enemy ships as quickly as possible, even though most of them were empty.

"No more Gronth warriors," Zhao said.

"Just one," Matt reminded the General.

"Do you need help?"

"You forget General, only Colonel Cruz and I can translocate to an Elani planet."

"We'll keep shooting these Groth ships down. You take care of the Elani worlds," Zhao said.

Emperor Grota MMLXIX

Emperor Grota MMLXIX was having another bad day. None of the previous Emperors had ever experienced defeat after defeat like he had. It was those damned monkey-men.

Gonarth had announced his withdrawal from Wolf and Sharolie. The Terrans had destroyed most of his warriors and all of their ships. The surviving warriors on those planets, having had their ships destroyed by the Terrans, ate their fill of deceased comrades and waited to be picked up by other Gronth ships. If that didn't happen, they would commit ritual suicide en masse as was customary.

The battle for Terra had been going so well, but only minutes ago, communication from Earth suddenly stopped. What had happened to Gonarth? At last report, most of Earth's major cities had been obliterated from the face of the planet. Still, the huge buildings that had been destroyed had only helped the damned Terrans by providing cover from his marauding clawyers. Every time his warriors had gotten close to a Terran stronghold, the sneaky monkeys had disappeared. It was almost like magic. They were in a spot firing their damned projectile weapons at his warriors, and suddenly, they were gone.

Now, Karak's wife Kookie, wanted to see him about something to do about her husband. She had a list of demands for that idiot Karak. He had been forced by necessity to listen to Kookie when he became Emperor, but she was quickly becoming a pain in his cloaca. Why had he named her husband Lord Claw in the first place? Where in the hell had Karak been? The Emperor hadn't heard from Karak since before the battle for the gold on Zandor had ended.

"What do you want, Kookie?" the Emperor asked with annoyance.

"Since the majority of your forces have been conquering the Terran planets, my husband has found that the nebula people have abandoned their planets. He is planning to conquer all of those on his own. He's almost there."