With virtually every nation of consequence at war with each other, much of the planet was now covered by blasted wastelands, pockmarked with craters and rendered toxic by chemical weapons. Still the belligerent nations refused to back down, continuing the war even though it would almost certainly devastate life for a century or more after the cessation of hostilities.
The civilian populations of the globe (what was left, anyway; attacks on civilian targets had become quite a common practice) were a grim lot, with no hope for relief from the conflict that threatened their every living moment.
But all that was about to get much worse...
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They had long awaited this moment.
Their time had now come to strike.
Their people would once more have a planet to call their own.
Earth.
Centuries ago, a space-faring race had been nearly wiped out by a gamma ray burst that wiped out all life on their planet. With no other choice, they took to the stars in a massive fleet of ships. Since then, parasitic diseases, attacks from hostile races, and the natural hazards of space had whittled their numbers down until they were about half the population of Earth at the time of the Armageddon War, as it was called. When this race found Earth, they immediately, as they had done countless times before, ran a sensor sweep to compare the atmosphere, water levels, etc. with their homeworld. It passed. Excited preparations were quickly made for their conquest of the world; the humans had not gone unnoticed. They were outnumbered two to one, but made up for it with the sheer power and sophistication of their technology. This and their superior intellect would destroy the scatterbrained and impulsive humans.
As their ships descended through the atmosphere over the Mediterranean, the Many prepared to seize this planet for their own.
Now even the home of the human race, its birthplace and its nurturer, was under attack.
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