The Plovian Invasion

In 1981 the variant team The Host began warning the world that an alien invasion was coming. Zachriel fed data directly into the computers of intelligence organizations. Apollyon and Rashiel appeared in the homes of politicians and military officials, bearing warnings both startlingly detailed and maddeningly cryptic. Many of these accounts were disregarded, as the Host was unwilling or unable to reveal the sources of this fantastic information.
    While the world at large ignored the voices of the angels, which the US administration distrusted and the world feared, several private citizens took up the banner. Variant inventors Gabriel Michaels and Francis Bouie dedicated aspects of their businesses to preparation. Dr. Nathan Levinson started a network of other scientists and professors analyzing pieces of extraterrestrial technology provided by the Host. The fringe supernatural communities were petitioned by Lazarus Murdoch, gaining promises of aid.
    In retrospect, it is easy to wonder how humanity got taken so by surprise. You must remember the times, and the messenger, and the enemy. Unite against an extraterrestrial threat: Sure — we have enough problems on Earth without listening to some fool talking about uniting the world's militaries. The Host is warning us: And we trust them why? — a team operating outside any authority that never bothers to explain themselves. Alien invaders: they look just like us, but they're really black — that was a field day for the US press on both sides of the issue, and the fires were fanned by the Plovian agents on Earth. Those agents were doing everything possible to mute defenses: influencing the media, leading protest groups, sabotaging SETI sites and government programs.
    When the first ships appeared in 1983, the effect was somewhat similar to the shark coming out of the water in "Jaws:" we all knew it was coming, but it scared us anyway. The ships were huge, and almost literally came from nowhere — SETI had been blinded, governments dissuaded from looking — appearing over major cities across the globe. People panicked, and alien troops begin appearing en masse, with air support and armed with weaponry that made their soldiers Alpha Class Variants, strike troops Beta Class. Worst of all were alien variants with hideous arrays of powers ranking in at Gamma level. They were unstoppable, and demanded the world's surrender within the first few hours of their arrival —some people were actually recommending that we give it, ending the war before it began.
    A combination of factors combined to save humanity. First, the Plovians didn't want to eliminate humanity — they wanted our world, not our deaths. Second, they didn't want to destroy or pollute the planet — they could have used mass drivers or fusion bombs ensure a victory, but it would have been a hollow one, denying them a new world to settle. Third, the Host's dramatic defeat of the alien ship over Los Angles gave humanity a victory to rally around. Finally, the Plovian variants themselves were unstable, prone to seizures and spontaneous combustion in combat.
    The specifics of the conflicts are too many to count. In brief, the Host's victory in Los Angeles galvanized the world's variants and armies. Counterstrikes occurred, and damage was done to both sides. In the shadows, the world's mystical community manipulated probabilities and battlefields. In the labs, Levinson's allies, Michaels and Bouie unveiled anti-Plovian technologies that jammed their communications, blocked their matter transmission and muted their weapons, closing the technological gap. Split Second criss-crossed the globe, organizing variants around the world to strike back. The US and several other nations offered amnesty to variant criminals if they would help in the defense, and many came.
    In the end, the Host led an attack on the aliens' earth-orbiting ships while Split Second led a team of variants into space, attacking the "Command and Control" ships near Jupiter. The Host's attack was backed by not one, but a fleet of Enochs, the angel in hundreds of forms filling the skies. Ground Zero's team struck at the heart of the Plovian fleet, allowing Black Flag to destroy their engines as his teammates escaped. As Apollyon and Rashiel reached the commanders of the Earth Orbit fleet, the central Command and Control ship orbiting Io exploded, then vanished.
    Apollyon and Rashiel brokered a surrender while the Plovians were still in shock. Those ships around Io were more than Command and Control — they were the colonist vessels. (While Black Flag is seen as a hero by humans, he is a death knell to the Plovians, the monster in the darkness that will claim them in the end. His actions killed over 800 million defenseless Plovians in cryo-sleep, wiped out their political structure and obliterated irreproducible records of their technology and history. He was genocide in the form of a single man.) The Plovians, those that remained, surrendered to Earth authority. Fewer than 400 million still lived, and half of those were in stasis tubes.
    The final surrender took place in December 1983. The Plovians were concentrated into structures at the South Pole, isolated from humanity, while their culture, technology and society could be integrated into the vast body of humanity. Those in stasis would remain there for now, being awakened in units to ease the acclimation and burden of suddenly adding half a billion inhabitants to Earth. The surviving Telarez (Plovian variants) had never seen conflict and were spared any charged, falling with the rest under UN authority. While the remainder of the Plovian ships were storehouses of technology, it was inexplicable — most of their scientists were dead and their records destroyed. Even still, it gave scientists amazing avenues to explore. Finally, this event was the impetus for the creation of UNEarth.
    Years later there is still considerable prejudice against the Plovians, who are just now starting to emigrate northward from their Antarctic camps. The integration goes slowly, and many Plovians resist it — using the surviving art and literature (which came through mostly intact) as a basis, they see integration as the final death of their race, and they may be right. Four years after the invasion, there are no easy answers.

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