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The Leech

This was the first time she'd seen a Leech in its natural state. And what was most disturbing wasn't the several rows of shark-like teeth ringing the first few inches of the inside of its mouth. And it wasn't the fact that the more you looked inside that mouth, the larger the space behind those teeth seemed, becoming a cavern far larger than could possibly exist inside a body that was roughly the same size as a human being.

What was most disturbing is that there was an invasion fleet of these beings on their way to Earth.

Which is why most of the population of the planet was now under the control of a single military command. A military command that hadn't existed before the first crewed mission to make use of a jump gate - before the advances in physics and engineering that had allowed a theory of jump gates to be developed, and a series of actual jump gates to be built, at progressively larger sizes, at enormous cost due to the materials and construction techniques involved.

That mission had successfully used the gate. But in doing so, the crew immediately learned of the existence of the Leeches, and that they were in the final stages of constructing the final set of huge jump gates for a huge fleet of ships. A fleet, it was soon discovered, that was an _invasion_ fleet - a fleet that would make use of those jump gates, tunnel openings with their exits in the Solar System, to begin plundering all life on Earth.

It was a definite War-of-the-Worlds type of scenario. With no guarantee that the Leeches hadn't factored Earth's bacteria into their plans.

And this Leech was but one of a hundred million on their way here.

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