"So how long do we have?" Lieutenant Bronson asked with the glow of the monitor on his face. Opposite his face the 24 by 24 inch monitor displayed a massive blue fireball that at the rate of travel seemed to have been hurled by a cosmic giant across space. Orbiting the spacial greenhouse of the planet earth 800 steel ships floated in silence, carrying the human cargo of the planet. Every minute more ships joined the crowds, all in an attempt to make sure that the occupants of the ships would still be alive in 14 minutes.

"The energy will collide with earth in exactly 14 minutes." General Thompson replied dryly, taking a long draw from his cigar and exhaling into one of the intake vents on the ship's air recycling system. The two men were in the small room of the command bridge on UCSA Glory, just another grey steel dot in the last night sky over the continent of North America.
The general looked at the blue green planet on one of the four dozen screens around the control bridge, the half that was dark with night, the other half that radiated the blue and green. It struck him odd that something he knew as a given his entire life would not be true all too soon.

Leaning back into his chair, the lieutenant asked with a hint of anger in his voice,"how in the hell did this happen?". The general swiveled around in his chair towards the lieutenant, and made a very tired smile at the lieutenant.

"Mind coming a little closer?" Inquired the General "My voice has been failing on me." As the general took another draw from his cigar, the lieutenant rolled his seat closer to him. A mechanical voice on the loudspeaker said "13 minutes".

"500 years, 1000 galaxies, ten's of thousands of planets, all explored by human eyes as the result of one miracle." narrated the General with the voice of a teacher, "On new year's day 2500 anno domino scientists in a shuttle were able to use the epitome of complex technology to synchronize hyperspace and real space. Before, a trip to mars would be a 6 month journey, with this faster than light drive the trip took approximately half a second to get into orbit over mars. What was once a curiosity of science for the wealthy governments of the world became an industry that skyrocketed, no pun intended, to the point where rich corporations invested into massive colonization on the surface of mars."

The general paused to take another smoke, the metal voice announced 12 minutes, and the general continued, "But people realized that this technology was too precious to be thrown away merely on going from Earth to Mars and back again. No, no, hundreds of relatively inexpensive space ships ventured out into the universe and planted space telescopes to observe what was in the galaxies. 500 hundred years of doing this and you know what we found Bronson?!"
A few more centimeters of the cigar turned into ash, the metal voice announcing 11 minutes and the general burst out with angered enthusiasm, "Nothing! We would find some single celled good for nothings in a drop of water every ten years, but the only good thing that came from this is that we could rape a planet of all it's resources and not have the damn environmentalists on our back."

The general stared thoughtfully at the screen with the view of the Earth taking a puff every ten seconds or so. Monotone voices announced the time away, ten minutes, nine minutes, eight minutes. He thought to himself of everything that was achieved on this world. Of the great works of evolution which produced a species capable of creation, invention, and reason! He shook his head when he thought of how some things were exceedingly difficult to create and incredibly simple to destroy.

The general sat up straight in his chair and continued, "That all changed one year ago! A telescope satellite picked up the image of another watery blue and green world. When this image hit the news, there was an uproar of excitement. The faster than light drives of 10 diplomat vessels, 15 military gunships, and 90 curious civilian crafts were pointed towards the coordinates of the planet. I think the problem was that the coordinates were not exactly perfect, and it ended up that the inhabitants saw that their planet was suddenly surrounded by over a hundred strange spacecraft."

Another draw at the cigar, two more centimeters left to ash, seven minutes being commented by the soulless voice and the General continued, "I guess that I will sympathize with them because after all they did not know what was going on, and they must have thought we were attacking them. So they sprang into action and attacked. Blue plasma came from the planet and the military ships fought back and what do you know, we were at war. Just like in the old science fiction movies. The thing is that for the people on Earth, for them the war was simply something going on in a place 1000's of trillions of miles away. All that changed when somehow the enemy followed a military vessel through hyperspace and found our main worlds. That is when we realized the true power of our enemy. Because as you no doubt are aware of, three months ago a blue fireball just like this one came to Mars and destroyed everything on the surface of it."

Six minutes the dead voice announced, "Now we realized what we were up against, but we had a little trick up our sleeve as well. We call it the emp Star Spark, we sent a small rocket through hyperspace, activated the device and Voila, half of the planet's defenses were down, we made a massive advance, fired 150 nuclear rockets, and annihilated everything on the planet, but in the middle gap time of when the device was activated and when we came there were about 12 minutes. So we are guessing that some of the population turned tail and abandoned the planet. Now yesterday we had a big celebration with fireworks, champagne, you know, the works. People talked happily of how we avenged Mars, and how we have proven that we are the dominant species of this little niche in the universe."

The general paused, thought of how he was just like them what seemed a lifetime ago, took a quick draw at the cigar, which was now down to three centimeters, the voice without emotion said five minutes, and he continued, "But then, a special station that was hidden on Pluto by our brilliant enemy sent another blue fire ball minutes ago. So here we are, now more than 1800 ships waiting for the last few to arrive so that we may go wandering for another blue green planet to accept us. Oh, what we will miss now, a world where we could have grass to walk on, and blue skies to look at. All gone now, a planet which we had no problem calling Mother Earth," with anger in his voice now, "but if we ever find those few that escaped their planet before it's destruction we will annihilate them and avenge this atrocity!"
four minutes the metallic voice said, "Well, that is our cue," The Lieutenant pushed some buttons on one of the control panes in the room and the ship started to move quite swiftly, the Lieutenant asked with utmost concern in his voice, "So where do we go now? Or do we just wander aimlessly and hope we get lucky?" The general laughed and held his cigar in his hand, "What we are hoping to do is that we will go to this one planet where the faster than light drive is set to go, and when we get there we will turn that desert planet from it's current condition to the Garden of Eden. It won't be easy, it won't be fast, but maybe that is what we humans need, to have to actually damn earn something so that we won't just take it for granted. This time the humans have to be the parents and the planet be the child. It may have been our enemy that started it but it was the fault of both sides for continuing it."

The whole time both men looked at the screen with the Earth, and as they moved away they heard the minutes count away and they saw the world shrink to being able to be seen on the screen, then to the size of a basket ball, then a dodge ball, then a tennis ball, then a marble. Finally it got to the size where the whole world could be drowned with a tear, a blue flash ignited and it was gone. The millions of humans onboard the ships were silent, as they went through hyperspace to their new abysmal world.

After coming out from hyperspace, there were the ships of the enemy, orbiting the desert planet. The cannons on the human spaceships were activated, and the enemy spaceships did the same thing. Nothing fired, everyone just pointed with the knife at each other's throat. Both sides realized the futility of this and they knew what they both wanted to do.