Cold Steel

Prologue

HISTORICAL ARCHIVES
SUBJECT: THE CICERO WAR, FALL OF EARTH
CONTENT TYPE: HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
LAST MODIFIED: 04/27/2310
VALID DOCUMENTATION: TRUE

    Have you ever wondered how the world would end? Fire, floods, huge asteroids plummeting to the earth, nukes--all of these thoughts have entered your mind at least once, right? Of course, all of theses are very probable assumptions; these were the most popular ideas surrounding this topic many years ago. But what about snow...maybe ice? No? Don't be ashamed if these thoughts have never crossed your mind; not very many movies or books featured the world ending in that way.

    It has been around two and a half centuries since the largest war in the history of humanity ended. The earth is hardly recognizable as a planet; if you were to look at it from afar, it would look like a massive snowball. However, if you were to look closer at this "snowball", you will see that the entire planet is encased in a thick, unrelenting snowstorm. However, beneath the endless storm lies so much more; destroyed cities, leveled plains, ancient war machines--a portrait of a horrendous struggle for survival.

    It's ironic how we looked up to the stars for millennia trying to grasp them, but only for them to invite themselves here to destroy us.

In the year 2063, the Hubble Telescope's daily routine was interrupted by astronomers at NASA. Throughout multiple images that were taken that day, the astronomers discovered a strange group of anomalies floating many light years away from earth. The anomalies appeared to be on a semi-set path, making slight changes in vectors every once in a while. The formation and movements of these objects seemed artificial, as if the objects were actually fabricated spacecrafts. Calculating what data they estimated about the group, the astronomers concluded that the objects' paths were directed towards earth.

    The weeks passed, and the images along with the calculated information were leaked to the public. The populations became distressed over the possibility of a real alien invasion--or joyful depending on what fantasies they believed about aliens. Of course the governments tried their best to cover this up, as they did with most things. However, secretly, the governments attempted radio communications with the aliens by sending them messages of peace, but every effort was met with silence; and every probe that was sent out was lost almost immediately after they came within contact range of the objects. So, in response to this, the governments prepared thousands of underground shelters for the preservation of humanity. These "NewHomes", as they are called, are where we humans live now; NewHomes are huge dwellings made out of reinforced steel and titanium--ultimately the best the nations could put together. The total number of NewHomes are unknown as of now.

    Along with these shelters came many rushed advancements in technology; concepts concerning new weapons, war machines--even spacecraft were introduced and researched in preparation for the possible invasion. One of the most intriguing of these concepts were the Juggernauts--giant, thirty-two-and-a-half ton, bipedal war machines armored to the teeth with reinforced steel, carbon fibers, and many other materials, making them practically invincible to almost anything. The weaponry these walking tanks were equipped with ranged from automatic rifles and artillery cannons to missiles and experimental weapons; almost literally every kind of WMD (Weapon of Mass Destruction) you could think of were scaled down--or up--and slapped to the tops and sides of these machines. The chassis and weaponry attached to these machines varied depending on what role the Juggernaut was built for; anti-air, ranged combat, CQC, aerial assault--there was a variant for every role of modern warfare. We were ready for anything that could be thrown at us--well, at least we thought.

    Once they came within our planet's orbit, the "Cicero"--a race of bipedal creatures donning sleek, white and silver armor--began an immediate assault by attacking our satellites and space stations. This was a distraction however; by keeping almost all of our spacecraft preoccupied, they sent landing craft and airships to invade by land and bombard by air. Even with our new defenses, strategies and technology, we were no match to them. They used highly advanced, plasma-based weaponry to shred our defenses and slaughter our citizens without wasting a single thought. Seeing that fighting independently would surely end in failure, the countries of the world joined together to combat the Cicero as a united earth; with our combined strengths and weaponry, we fought back with an iron fist in an attempt to match our firepower with that of the enemy. It worked for a time, delaying the war's end; but sadly, the war didn't even last a year. Despite our best efforts, the Cicero were victorious. If you lived through a battle, you wouldn't survive much longer; sooner or later, you would be face to mask with a Cicerean soldier and never be heard from again.

Yes, the Cicero won, but not with their weaponry alone; how they won was both truly remarkable and utterly horrifying. Around four months into the war, the Cicero deployed these huge terraforming machines we named Ticks. The Ticks came down like meteors, embedding themselves into the earth's crust much like a tick would dig into your skin (hence the name). The machines began freezing the water vapor within the air; they also shot special capsules into the atmosphere that seeded within the clouds, thickening them and rapidly cooling down the earth.

    As the first abnormal snowfall began, humanity began its era of living underground. With the combined effects of the snow and cloud coverage, this made earth almost completely uninhabitable to its native life, and a desirable environment for the Cicero to inhabit. And just to make sure that we wouldn't bother them anymore, during the last month of the Cicero War--month seven--they took hundreds of meteors from our own Kuiper asteroid belt and launched them at the earth in an attempt to exterminate us humans. They did so in controlled bombardments as to not disfigure the planet's surface too much; it would've been a waste of effort, time and resources if they weren't able to live on the planet afterwards.

Now we humans live like moles underground, working tirelessly to survive on the former planet of earth. Some say that this is a punishment from God Himself for our sinful nature, and to others it was an inevitable cause for a superior race to dominate over subordinates as to not have any future rivals to combat. Whatever the cause, there is nothing we can do now but to survive and have hope; hope that things will change and that we may one day see our once beautiful home return to its pristine state–a thriving world teeming with life rather than a desolate, frozen wasteland. No matter our fate, we will survive through this; we are strong, we are intelligent beings that have withstood every struggle thrown at us throughout the many millennia we've been here.

  Despite our current fate, one day we will retake our home and send these invaders back to the frozen hell they spawned from.

--==END OF DOCUMENTATION==--

Author's Note:
Here's the new-and-improved prologue; I definitely like it WAY more than the previous versions. Please share your thoughts and any constructive criticism, they've helped me immensely while writing. Hope you enjoyed and continue to read!