The Incubus

The Incubus

By Donnelley Scott

Prelude

In the vast depths, amongst the whirling stars and immense plumes of gas and dust, a thought pierced the ancient darkness. From the nothingness behind all things it took shape and form. The idea of separateness produced the illusions of space, time and consciousness. The great thinker's primal form was like a scrap of dung at very center of the Universe. Judging itself drab and cold against the fiery stars, the infant grew through anger and fear into a self-obsessed child of rage. As its delusions expanded, it mastered form and named itself Belial the Great. It wore youthful, sensual and erotic beauty, but inwardly, it always retained its primal form. Willful and lonely, it became a suicide of self-love, feeding on the murderous energy throughout the Universe. Without moving, it set out and so fell like light, a wolf hunting among the innocent, the food of its own delusions. It dragged down a third of the stars.

Foreshadowing

Chapter 1

"Come, Fritz. Think harder! I am sure you know the answer. Try and remember the chapter we studied yesterday and see it in your mind's eye!"

The young man spoke kindly to the teenager and with a bright, infectious enthusiasm. They sat Indian style, face to face in the dusty heat of a secluded courtyard. They wore matching blue uniforms and thick leather boots. A heavy black book with white pages lay face down in the reddish gravel, occupying nearly all of the ground between them.

"I....I...." Fritz's face was wrung with mental strain. His velvety adolescent voice became a cracking rumble of effort.

"Oh, it's just no good, Hans," he said, "I don't remember anymore. I'm no good at history."

"That is not true. You simply do not apply yourself."

"I do, Hans! I really try, but such things won't stay in my head. I'm just stupid, that all."

"The Crown Prince, stupid? Ha!" he scoffed. "Don't even try that self-deprecating show with me, you little actor. I know all your stunts. You'll get no sympathy and no quarter from me. Your poetry is beyond your years and your flute magical. Stupid indeed! Don't you know that you're insulting both of us when you say such things?"

Fritz only frowned, his pale blue eyes staring blankly at the long afternoon shadows.

"I do not like history, Hans," he said sadly, "and I shouldn't have to learn it. It is of no use to me anyway. I don't want to be emperor. I only want to write poetry and music."

"What choice do you have?" said Hans standing and brushing off the clinging grains of sand. "Your father..."

"Yes, of course". Fritz interrupted bitterly.

"You must learn to rule," Hans insisted. Fritz was silent for a good long while.

"As my fath...I mean, as the Emperor rules, because he says so?"

Hans only smiled and glanced over at the entrance to the throne room, a huge marble archway frowning in the distance.

"Obedience," said Hans seriously, "is our duty and we must find the courage to do our duty. Tell me how you would rule differently. What kind of king would Fritz make?" Hans stood with his hands folded across his chest and managed a professorial scowl. Fritz put his chin into his hand, curled his lips and wrinkling his brow. He decided to impress his friend.

"I would form a great Empire from a union of free nations." he began slowly and hesitantly, but his voice grew in confidence and authority as he spoke. "Like the English, but our Empire would be peaceful and just. English rulers are often cruel but I shall not be so. Instead, I shall be benevolent, just and very strong, so that no one can attack us or meddle in our affairs. We must, of course, have an army second to none to defend ourselves, one so strong that even the Russians would fear us!"

"Frtiz!" said Hans with mock surprise. "You do wish to be Emperor?"

"Oh" said Fritz stammering. "Well, I mean I do enjoy thinking about it, only sometimes, but I would not really like it, not really."

"I see," Hans smiled "and what would you have, if your heart could have its way?"

"To write poetry and make music, he continued, "I do not enjoy drilling or the bloody game of war. I do not like physical combat. It seems a great waste of strong, handsome men. That is very strange, unnatural, it is not Hans?" The young man turned his icy blue eyes on his friend.

"You speak treason," Hans chuckled. He knelt down and wrapped his arms around the teenager's neck, resting his joined hands across the royal chest.

"Promise not to tell?" Frtiz whispered.

"Never!" said Hans. "But be careful for if you become a traitor then so must I. Even to myself."

"Then what if I told you," Fritz asked dreamily, "that I met an English Captain this morning. He had no idea who I was, but I spoke with him for nearly an hour about his ship. I think he liked me. I think he would do whatever I asked. Even without money."

"Now you really do speak treason!" Hans said, looking into his young friend's serious face. "And doubly. Against your father and me." "Perhaps," Fritz whispered, "but I see no other way. I hate my father. In my earliest memory he is beating me for falling off a horse. I don't want to be a king. I shall be eighteen years old soon, married off and the die shall be cast. We must escape before then."

"Your hair is the color of autumn sunshine," Hans whispered as he stroked the fine yellow bangs that fell in front of the boy's face. "You will be the most handsome Emperor of all time."

Fritz rose and leaned back against the thick bark of a sturdy Pine tree towering high above the courtyard square. He wiped a frustrated mist from his eyes. There was a long moment.

" I know you love our country and are bound by oath of honor, but before I would become Emperor, I would sail away without you to England. King George is my mother's brother and he would receive me. There I would never be forced to study war or history again," Fritz declared.

"You would die of loneliness without me, and you know it."

"Alright, alright," Frtiz relented, "you win. I shall remain caged here, at least for today, and try my history lessons once again."

"Thank you, sire!" Hans said, and with a mocking bow sat back down next to his friend. He picked up the black book and thumbed its creamy pages. "Now tell me all you know about Russia and the Russians."

A sudden movement from the palace interrupted Fritz's thinking. A company of three men was advancing on them. In the distance he could make out this father's heavyset form at the group's center. The emperor outpaced his personal guards, two of the most monstrously large men Fritz had ever seen. They fell in behind the emperor as he halted a few steps from the pair. As they rose to attention, he cast a scornful eye upon them. The emperor was as large and powerful as his son was slender and weak.

"Enough nonsense" he said harshly. "Lieutenant, return to your regiment. You will ignore any further orders from the crown prince."

"But sire?" Fritz began

"Silence!" The Emperor shouted. "I am leaving for Mannheim in the morning. You will attend me."

"My lessons, Father, may Hans come with us and continue my lessons?" Rage erupted in the Emperor's cold grey eyes. He lunged forward and swung a thundering blow across Fritz's face, knocking him senseless to the ground. Hans recoiled in terror.

"Shameful degenerate" he hissed. "You think me a fool?" He spat at the ground near the bleeding boy.

"Take him" The two giant men lifted the semi conscious prince off the dusty ground and hauled him towards the palace. The Emperor's pitiless gaze fell on the young solider.

"Go back to your regiment, Lieutenant von Katte. Consider yourself fortunate. If I find you near my son again, I'll have your head". Hans was white with fear, too terrified to even bow. The Emperor turned his back on him and followed his guards back to the palace. Even in his semi-conscious state Fritz felt his heart breaking amidst his shame. How often had his father beat him publically, for wearing gloves in cold weather, for uttering a word of French, or for failing to arrive punctually at court? As his consciousness fled, his thought kept repeating "Uncle George".

Fritz was a virtual prisoner in his caravan as the royal retinue headed southwest on the long journey from Berlin to Mannheim. Trudging men and horses perspired freely in the muggy August heat, but it was cool compared to the embers of hatred that seethed in the crown prince. With each rocking and creaking step he was drawn further away from his true love and closer to an Imperial destiny that he despised. For in Mannheim, in the very heart of the Electoral Palatinate, the German princes of Europe would guarantee his succession. In token, a princess would be selected and Fritz would be betrothed. In his fevered brain, a desperate plan of escape formed. He began writing frantically. "My dearest Hans?"

A letter written out of desperation, escape from the royal retinue, a breathless but passionate night in hiding then safety and comfort in Han's strong and reassuring arms. Exploring his muscular body, realizing forbidden but long imagined fantasies, one gloriously explosive moment and an encompassing and everlasting love. The next day, the next horrific day, discovery, flight and capture. Blinding fear, bitterness and betrayal, a hellish drop into the very abyss of loneliness and despair. Fritz thought his heart would break in two. He had never known or imagined such pain or hatred. Every fiber of his being was in an agony. Yet he lived. His hate for his father he imagined must be sustaining him. As he wept, his mind retraced each fateful decision, each decisive action and each passionate moment that had led him to his terrible fate. Hans was court-martialed along with him but sentenced to death. His father forced him to watch the execution. Hans was brave at the end, bowing in submission, although he wept. Only as the sword fell across his neck had he spoken his dying words "I love you little Fritz." Then the air turned red.

Imprisoned in the palace dungeon, Fritz wept bitterly for cruelty of the world, for Hans and for himself, so horribly, totally and utterly alone. He suddenly became very cold.

"Well, that was intense!" said a strange voice in a heavy Russian accent. Fritz turned abruptly and beheld two strangers who had somehow gotten into his cell. One was a round squat man with short dark hair and eyes like pitch. The other was a tall lanky fellow with curly blond locks and thin blue eyes. Oddly, outlandishly, and identically dressed, they wore black stovepipe hats, matching tails and wide brown bow ties. Each sported a brown plaid vest with wide lapels. Four brass buttons ran down the middle into grey woolen trousers. Their hands were covered with white riding gloves and each held a thin black walking stick capped with gold. Fritz, despite his anger and grief stared dumfounded at the preposterous pair.

"I'm mad!" he wailed. "I must be mad. Oh God, please let me die."

"There is no god and death doesn't change things," said the tall man.

"Shut up, Tovar, you idiot," the short man snapped.

"Why? He won't remember anything."

"But he will feel it, you moron," hissed Moya.

"You're not crazy, my friend," the short man said, in a much louder and gentler tone, "we're here to help you."

"I don't believe you," said Fritz sobbing. " I am quite beyond help. Unless my father sent you to kill me, go away. Better yet, go to hell with all the other Russians."

"Trust me, it's boring there," said Moya nonchalantly. "And what's the matter? You don't like Russians?"

Tovar giggled.

"How can you help me?" said Fritz. "Can you bring Hans back and send us to England on the wind?"

"What is gone, is gone forever" Tovar said stoically. "But we can certainly send you to England. Any particular century?"

"Tovar!" Moya shouted. "Stop bragging and stick to business!"

"Yes," Tovar said obediently. "Forgive me, Lyubimaya, but he is even more beautiful than I remembered."

"Do what you want with me then," said Fritz. "I am dead on the inside anyway and I no longer fear pain. I fully intend to kill myself as soon as possible."

"You see my friend, that's exactly the problem," said Moya, in as kindly a tone as he could manage. "That's exactly why we're here. You have a long and glorious life ahead of you, with many triumphs and many secret lovers. You will be a great king and change the world. You only need to find those attributes at your silent core that make you unique unto yourself. They destine you for greatness."

"I don't want to be great," Fritz wept. " I don't care about the world or my core, whatever that is. I only want Hans. Besides, how could you possibly know such things?"

"My friend here is quite intuitive," said Tovar. "Whatever he says will surely be true."

"You both look like a pair of court jesters to me," said Fritz sniffling. "Maybe that is what the modern men wear in Saint Petersburg or Moscow these days but I have never seen such attire. You look silly."

"Did I get the dates wrong again?" Tovar grimaced.

"Mudak!" shrieked Moya. "I can't depend on you for anything. And you forgot to change us too. I am sure we look ridiculous to him!"

"Please, just leave me alone," said Fritz, turning away. " Or do what you have come to do and then go back to Russia. I do not wish to be a king and I do not wish to live. My core is darkness."

At once the cell was filled with a sweet, fruity strangely musty scent, like a morning steeplechase under cherry blossoms. Despite his grief Fritz breathed deeply of the new redolence and went flush. He turned to find the two strangers gone. In their place stood two incredibly handsome youths staring at him intently. They were thin and pale, one short and muscular with dark closely cropped hair and the other tall and fair with a shaggy tow-colored mop. They were completely naked, their smooth statuesque bodies, perfectly chiseled, were emerging from adolescent into the flower of manhood. His eyes absorbed their nakedness fixating on enormous genitalia, bigger than he had ever imagined. To his utter astonishment and delight they were becoming aroused and began moving towards him on either side.

"Good God!" he gasped.

"Believe me, God has nothing to do with it," Moya whispered.

Tovar's throbbing member brushed invitingly against Fritz's thigh. "See, Russians aren't so bad after all," Tovar said. He then took the boy's hand and gently moved it onto his thick, pulsing organ.

"That feels good!" he said, through a hot breath that tickled Fritz's ear and sent shivers down his back.

Moya began to remove Fritz's clothing.

"I must be dreaming," the boy panted.

"Then it is a good dream, is it not?" asked Tovar.

In short order the two got Fritz naked and spread him out between them. With hand and tongue they began to explore every curve and crevice of his body. Their touch was astonishingly warm, their mouths eager and their tongues, hot, wet and probing. Even fully erect, Fritz was small in comparison but the two paid him special attention nonetheless. They delved deepl so that Fritz was soon a gurgling mass of primal lust, ready to explode.

"Not yet, Lyubimaya" whispered Moya, who was positioning himself to enter the dreaming boy. Fritz's head rested in Tovar's lap, his face buried in a thick bush of musty pubic hair. Tovar's huge member begged admission, and Fritz obligingly opened wide.

"At your core is courage," said Moya, almost like an incantation, in rhythm with his thrusting into the boy.

"Determination," Tovar repeated over and over again as Fritz swallowed him as deeply as ever he could, "and loyalty."

He barely heard them. His mind and body trembled and squirmed in unimagined ecstasy.

"Now," said Moya, cued by the stiffening intensity of the boy's body.

"Duty!" they both shouted in unison and simultaneously exploded into him. Fritz too ejaculated uncontrollably. In the moment of disbursing lust, as his quintessence spilled, the creatures grazed. As they fed, he was emptied of the negative emotions that had obscured his core. Tovar reached down onto Fritz's bare and heaving chest, wiped a dollop and brought it to his own lips, a spice that added flavor to the fare.

"Delicious, he said and offered some to Moya who sampled it gladly.

"Not bad." He said. "This went better than I remembered. I love this moment. Its flavors are still fresh. You can have the rest. We're finished".

"He is fast asleep," said Tovar, who began to lap up every drop of the boy's essence.

"Your juice always has that effect. A veritable sleeping potion!"

"He is very beautiful," said Tovar, licking his lips.

"His hate is drained, his core is restored. He will be king and set the stage. In two centuries, we'll have a real feast!"

"Yes, and a terrible waste of beautiful Russian boys, if you ask me".

"They will win out in the end. And so what? There will be plenty more," Moya brought Tovar close to him. "We don't change things, Lyubimaya. Natural law decides everything, not us".

"Its my turn. I want you to fuck me silly" Tovar grinned wickedly.

"Gladly!" As Moya entered him, the pair vanished leaving the crown prince sleeping peacefully. Chapter 2

Two unusual middle-aged men were chatting in back of a great onion-domed cathedral. It was a bitterly cold afternoon, even by Saint Petersburg standards. Only a few brave tourists shuffled through the old church, warming themselves and absorbing the masterful icons and sacred relics. They came to experience the legendary and magnificent Cathedral of Our Savior On Spilled Blood, raised on the very spot where Tsar Alexander II had been murdered nearly a century and a half earlier. The tourists took no notice of the two outlandishly dressed men. The one, a round heavy-set fellow wore a wide brimmed Napoleon hat, tied onto his head with a leather chinstrap. He had a draping, red velvet collar and a heavy felt overcoat dyed the blue-gray of a rain-drenched sky. The other's lanky body, topped by a thick mop of dark blond hair, filled out an elongated version of the very same military uniform.

"Are you ready, Tovar?" asked the round man. He spoke English with a thick Russian accent.

"I believe so, Moya," he said, "off we go to the Battle of Mollwitz and Frederick the Great!"

"Precisely! Courage and Duty! Like a matryoshka," he chuckled. He was remembering a previous engagement with young Fredrick in a musty prison cell centuries ago.

"He was a very beautiful boy. I can still taste his flavors," Tovar said, almost to himself. "I can only imagine the man he has become."

"C'mon, quit talking nonsense. Next you'll be feeling compassion for him and then we'll starve. I should think places like this would zap that shit right out of you," he scolded. "That's why I like it here. It reminds me of their true nature. You can feel all the intoxicating anger and fear that lingers in this place. It's exhilarating! You know, I really love these Russians. They reincarnate so easily, from one extreme to the other in a flash. It's positively delicious. Anyway, after this, we can relax a bit."

"As you wish," said Tovar. With that, the fat man snapped his fingers and the oddly dressed pair vanished. The high church ceiling disappeared and a low grey sky fell overhead. A few dark clouds drifted by and a cool breeze carried the young scent of a spring morning. The grassy field suddenly beneath them glowed in anticipation of the sunrise. A braying of horns and a thunderous tumult shattered the air and shook the ground. Tovar felt his legs pushed apart and his body rising. A shaking firmament materialized under him. He trembled violently and felt himself thrust forward and back. He was atop a magnificent black stallion, riding at full gallop into the yawning east. Moya was riding beside him, on an equally impressive bay colored mount. Suddenly, countless riders surrounded both men. In a thrilling instant, Tovar was at the head of an 18th century Prussian Calvary charge. The shinning gold handle of a flintlock pistol protruded from a holster mounted on his left thigh and at his right side, he felt the weight of a broad sword.

The sun leapt into the sky and on the horizon of fresh dawn a broad shadow appeared capped with gleaming steel. In the morning light Tovar recognized the colors of the Austrian flag. Once again the horns brayed. The shadow broke like a crashing tide. Nearer the enemy came until he could make out individual riders and hear their shouts and challenges. He raised his own sword in answer, swinging it overhead like a veteran. The Austrians slammed into them. It was like a head on collision with a speeding freight train. The clash of steel and the screams of men and horses ripped the air. Moya and Tovar were thrown back, watching delightedly as the Austrian and Prussian cavalries collided and grappled with each other. With vicious thrusts, desperate parries and sporadic shooting, a hundred miniature battles broke out on all sides. Men shrieked as they fell. The scent of blood and bile stained the air. Men and horses seemed like one massive swirl of confusion.

Out of the grisly chaos one rider stood out from the rest. He was young and tall with flowing yellow hair and pale blue eyes. He pressed his men, encouraging them with his presence and fortitude. He was quite thin really, almost frail, but he was fearless and determined. His face was calm like the center of a great cyclone. His eyes beheld the entire battle in a single instant. In his right hand was a shinning sword while in his left, he held aloft power itself. His voice boomed above the fray bringing order and purpose to chaos. "Immer!" he cried. A tight ring of riders formed around him. "Thrinnin!" he shouted, pointing to the thickest patch of Austrians. "Schenl!" Moya and Tovar knew him at once. They spurred their horses forward at his command and plunged with a feral scream into the thickest part of the Austrian ranks. The universe became a cornucopia of hate, anger and fear. They passed through each soldier drawing sustenance from the storming emotions that only course through self-aware flesh. At the battle unfolded, they watched the dashing figure of Frederick the Great thrown back with his Imperial guard as the great wave of Prussian flesh and steel broke on determined Austrian resistance. Fear and a heartbreaking sense of loss surged through Fredrick as the Prussian cavalry wavered and then quit the field in disorder. Moya and Tovar followed closely and heard the arguments of Field Marshal Schwerin, Fredrick's most trusted officer, over the din of battle. He convinced the young king that all was lost and advised him to make good his escape. If Frederick were captured, he explained, Austria could exact a crippling ransom and turn this simple defeat into a national disaster. Reluctantly, he had agreed and fled the field. Thus, he never saw his sixteen thousand infantry and sixty guns repel wave after wave of Austrian horse and foot. At twilight, he rode back to the battlefield. Moya and Tovar saw to that. Fredrick was alone on his horse weeping, his guards a respectful distance, when the two suddenly appeared on either side of him as breathtakingly handsome junior officers.

"Where did you two come from? Who are you?" he cried in astonishment. He glanced over accusingly at his bodyguards.

"Go back," Tovar said softly. "Remember your core."

Fredrick froze in recognition.

"It can't be!" He insisted to himself.

"Go back, little Fritz," Moya echoed in the same voice.

"Hans?" He went white, his eyes becoming wide as the breath of time.

"You've won, mein Liebhaber. Go back!"

"Come with me" he begged.

"I cannot, but you must go now. You have won the day!"

Fredrick glanced back at the battle, but before he could turn again, the pair had vanished. It was a dream, the delusion of a mind wild with pain and loss. His fear and anger were drained and he was calmed.

And so it was that Fredrick returned humiliated but astonishingly victorious. In the end the Austrians were crushed, but only because the Prussian infantry miraculously infused with courage and a sense of duty at the critical moment, had stood their ground and saved the day. The inexperienced Frederick had scattered his thirty thousand men across Silesia before consolidating his conquest. He had foolishly given the Austrians an opportunity to deal with his army piecemeal. Worse, he had lost his nerve and fled the field before the outcome of the battle was certain. These were the mistakes of a junior officer, but he would never make them again. He had mastered himself and come to rely on his silent inner core. As battle waned, Tovar entered a young Prussian soldier experiencing his first taste of battle. He drank deeply of his terror as he slew his first enemy, an equally young Austrian boy whose last moan 'mutti" still rang in his head. He sat propped up against a flowering crab apple tree amidst the flotsam and jetsam of battle. A gentle grey rain fell, cooling his burning head. The air carried the acrid stench of gunpowder and burnt flesh. A sickly grey smoke hovered over the battlefield creating an eerie calm broken only by the groans of dying men. He knew the intense fatigue and aching in all his limbs would evaporate as soon he quit the mortal frame, but at the moment his arms and legs felt like lead and he hurt everywhere. His hands were a ghastly brownish-red, caked with mud and dried blood. A hideous gash rent his right forearm, which was numb from pain.

"Am I alive?"

Moya shook off the body of the dead Austrian boy and sat up, his old fat self again.

"What kind of a stupid question is that?" he said. "That was quite invigorating! That's all that matters."

"Are we done?" Tovar groaned. His lankly form reemerging as the Prussian boy fainted from fatigue.

" Yes. Our Fredrick is a man now. Determination, loyalty and duty are forever at his core. We are done, and we have earned a little time to relax Lyubimaya, just you and I." Moya snapped his fingers again. The two embraced, and as they kissed, their old forms melted away. Their spirits shone as two radiant youths, identical twins, like Narcissus at last possessing his own precious self. With a shimmer, they were gone.

In the beginning, their numbers were legion and they were huddled together. Instantly and without warning, far faster than light speed, space hyper-expanded in their midst and they were suddenly spread across the cosmos. One by one they fell into the transforming stars, attracted by heat and merging gravity. Beings of light, they could travel like light itself throughout the universe, but in it's deep emptiness found only famine. Feeding on the murderous energy, only self-awareness could fill them. Their majority wandered the heavens cold, alone and famished, searching amidst the innumerable stars for others of their kind and the vanishingly rare blooms of consciousness that could provide sustenance.

Moya and Tovar were among the luckiest, having chanced upon Earth in her birth pangs. As they wandered through her flowing instances they found in humanity, an over abundance. Long had it been since they hungered, and the humans would even bring them to new pastures.

The Empire

Chapter 3

Time flows like a repetitive river and self-awareness erupts like vortexes in its current, always inimitable, irreplaceable and unexpectedly fragile. Like tempests, it reoccurs. Four hundred years later and twenty five thousand light years distant, Fritz and Hans reemerge in semblance, their singular intensities, like flairs, mark the feast.

Two greenish boys sat Indian style, face to face in the dry heat of a dusty courtyard. Their robes were creamy white, but lightly soiled with clinging red earth. An enormous golden book cunningly engraved, with thick white pages occupied nearly all the ground between them. "Come, Zar. Think harder! You knew the answer yesterday. Try and remember! See it in your mind's eye!"

The teen spoke with a contagious enthusiasm.

"I...I..." Zar's face was wrung with mental strain. His soft adolescent voice became a cracking grumble of effort. "I don't remember anymore. I hate history."

"Not true," said the older teen firmly, "you do not apply yourself."

"I do Tok! I really try. I'm just stupid, that's all"

Tok smiled kindly. "Crown Prince Zar, stupid? You've been writing poetry and playing the lyre for as long as I can remember! Stupid indeed! You insult both of us when you say such things."

Zar only frowned, his sapphire blue eyes staring blankly at the long afternoon shadows dancing amidst the gravely rocks and stones.

"I do not like history, Tok," he said proudly "and I shouldn't have to learn it. It is no use to me anyway. I shall be Emperor one day, and I shall command the finest fleet in the galaxy. Our enemies shall fear me whether I know history or not."

"Which enemies do you mean?" Tok stood up and brushed off the clinging grains of sand. "Which of our enemies will you frighten first?"

"The Men of Earth!" Zar replied instantly.

"Why are they our enemies?"

Zar was struck dumb for a long while.

"Because my fath...I mean... because the Emperor says so!" he answered finally. Tok only glanced at the Imperial throne room, a huge white marble archway frowning in the distance.

"Blind obedience! That is commendable." he said "But otherwise, I am unimpressed. Tell me why the Earthmen are enemies. What do you know of them?" Tok folded his arms across his chest and raised a questioning eyebrow. Zar put his chin into his hand and curled his lips. His brow wrinkled. He decided to impress his friend.

"From their subspace chatter, we know that the humans infest at least four planets, all of them very far away," he began slowly and hesitantly, but his voice grew in confidence as he spoke. "They have tried to contact us many times, claiming peaceful intentions, but my father refuses to reply. They are the masters of a technology that hurls them across the galaxy at fantastic speed. It is beyond anything we possess. They have built a listening station, an outpost, to spy on us. It is heavily defended or we would have destroyed it." He would have continued had not his friend interrupted him.

"Zar!" he said with mock surprise "I thought you did not like history?"

"I like humans! I mean I enjoy learning about them."

"I see," Tok smiled "and what of the Earthmen themselves?"

"We know little of them." Zar continued. "No one has ever seen one. They like poetry and music as we do, but they do not enjoy the blood games or war. If their technology makes them strong, it is said that they themselves are weak. They were once war-like and aggressive but now they claim to worship peace. That is very strange, it is not Tok?" The young man turned his bewildered eyes toward his friend. "To worship peace? Have they degenerated so low that they have lost the blood lust of battle? I do not think so. It is probably a lie, as father says, a trick to learn all they can about us before..." his voice tapered off into a frightened silence.

"But perhaps it is true, Zar! Perhaps peace has advantages that we do not yet understand. Perhaps we are the backward race."

"You speak treason!" he said giggling.

Tok knelt behind his friend and wrapped his arms around his neck, resting his joined hands across the royal chest.

"Promise not to you tell your father?" he whispered.

"Never! If you become a traitor, then so must I."

"Then what if I told you" he said dreamily, "that I would very much like to meet a human? I would like to talk with him and try to understand his mind, his passions and desires, and if they really want peace, I would try to make peace with them, even offer them our friendship."

"Now you really do speak treason!" Zar said, turning to look into his friend's serious face.

"Perhaps. How long have we been at war?"

"Thousands of years," Zar answered mechanically, "Ever since the Empire was founded."

"Exactly," said Tok, "and what have we to show for all those bloody centuries? A few planets filled with slaves who produce nothing so much as blind hatred for us? A pantheon of heroes who should have lived long and productive lives here at home but instead became the dust of alien worlds. Or worse, eternally dishonored, mutilated corpses floating in the void of space?" he ended bitterly.

"But war is our way, the way of our ancestors," Zar protested, although quite sheepishly. Tok's imagery had frightened him.

"Always?" Tok asked passionately, drawing himself closer to whisper into his friend's ear. "For we have made many enemies for ourselves and few friends. War now would be disastrous for our people, for your family and for us. Perhaps we should seek a new way before it is too late."

Tok was now speaking high treason. His ideas were radical but hardly original. Such talk was buzzing throughout the Empire. He had heard it escape even the Queen's lips.

"Your hair is the color of Regehilian gold," Zar whispered softly as he stroked the fine yellow locks that fell in front of Tok's jade green eyes. "I wish my hair was yellow like yours." He shook his own thick black locks.

"An alien race has appeared on our frontier, the whole Empire is on the verge of war and rebellion, but even worse, you are behind in your studies. Yet you waste time wishing for yellow hair? We have too much work for such nonsense. Back to it"

"When I am Emperor I shall outlaw all boring history lessons and send you to talk peace with the humans." Zar retorted, "Then perhaps, I shall have some peace myself."

"You could be happy without me?"

"Alright, alright, I shall try my history lesson again."

"Thank you, sire!" said Tok. He picked up the heavy golden book and began to thumb its pages.

Tok had not spoken lightly. Scarcely a generation ago the Empire had seemed invincible. Centuries of bloody stalemates had at last given way to conquest, plunder and expansion. The victorious Imperial fleet rampaged across the solar system. In a series of brilliantly fought campaigns the stubborn Cirrisians were soundly defeated and absorbed. The wild planet of Gelesia was tamed and exploited. Even the distant Regehilians were made to pay tribute. The first serious check to the new Imperial power had come unexpectedly from strange and mysterious aliens called humans. The Earthmen had suddenly appeared from a remote corner of the galaxy. In response to the new threat, the Empire established a no man's land and eavesdropped uneasily on the human subspace chatter, and in terrible concert with the new human menace, tensions began rising within the Empire along with rumors of smoldering discontent and opportunism.

Even children realized that war clouds were gathering again and the Empire was in grave danger. Zar had seen his father, the mighty Emperor, once a proud and ruthless warrior, become an old and wizened man, seemingly overnight. Not only was the extent of the human threat unknown, his once autocratic and absolute rule was abruptly and terrifyingly tentative. Rebellion had crept even into the Imperial guard so that the palace, which overlooked the old stone city, was now an armed fortress. Although he was still a boy, Zar was old enough to understand the danger and to be afraid.

In all this uncertainty Tok, the Queen's chamber boy was his closest friend and greatest joy. Tok loved him in return for no other reason than he was Zar with the sparkly sapphire eyes. One day, Zar dreamed, they would rule the Empire together, but the old Emperor had cast a scornful and suspicious eye on the curious bond between his son and the chamber boy.

In the Emperor 's eyes, his only son was a strange mixture of arrogance and weakness, very unlike other children. In Imperial society children were simple property and weaned on obedience. A father's wish was obeyed without question or children were severely beaten, sold into slavery or even killed. Childhood was brief, demanding and cruel. The crown price had always been a soft, effeminate child, delighting most in music and poetry, never in battle or the arts of war. And that strange yellow haired Tok was forever whispering nonsense in his ear encouraging him toward history, music and other useless distractions.

Indeed, Zar was a bitter disappointment to his father and there was no love between them. But what did love matter? He was still the Emperor's only male child, the crown prince of the Empire, who must rule after him. The Queen and her family were adamant and the Empire would not survive a war of succession. Not now. Regardless of his fitness, Zar would sit on the throne. Despite having brought his Empire to its zenith of power, the Emperor was now poised to die a defeated and bitter old man. The Emperor had to be careful. Otherwise, he would simply have had Tok executed and Zar exiled, but there was no margin for error. He could not afford to lose his son. The fate of the Empire hung in the balance.

"Zar!" The boys were startled out of their study. They had become so deeply engrossed in their studies that they hadn't noticed a small group of men approach. A darkly green, gray haired, slender old man dressed in royal robes and military breastplate strode forward. His two larger, younger, more muscular guards stepped back behind him. The boys scrambled to their feet and immediately stood at attention. They bowed their heads and extended both arms in salute. "Hail Lord" they cried. Tok shook with fear. He always tried to avoid the old Emperor at all costs.

"Pathetic" he snarled, glaring at the golden book between them.

"What are you wasting your time with today?" "We are studying history, sire" said Tok, forgetting himself. "Do not dare answer for my son, vermin" The Emperor hissed in an evil voice. He glared at Tok with such loathing that the boy nearly fainted. One word from the Emperor and his life would be forfeit. It would take him three days to die on the spike. "We are studying history, Father" Zar repeated. "How lady-like," he mocked. "I am going hunting. Attend me."

"I live to fulfill your wishes, Father" Zar gave the only possible reply. "My wish is that you were never born, but your mother insists that it is yet possible to make a man of you. We disagree, of course." Zar's eyes filled with tears. He extended both arms in obeisance and bowed his head between them.

"I shall gather my things, Father. Tok, attend me"

"You are not taking that little degenerate," The Emperor barked. Fresh tears welled up in Zar's eyes.

Just then, a tall, slender, lightly green, breathtakingly beautiful woman with flowing black hair and sapphire blue eyes stepped out from behind the guards. She wore a long, graceful gown of golden lace and an emerald tiara. She raised both arms and bowed her head in submission.

"My lord" she began. "You always indulge me with undue kindness. I would that my son remains here. I fear the rigors of the Gelisan hunt are too much for him. He is yet sixteen and no warrior. I beg you remember his birth stars proclaimed he should achieve greatness." The old emperor looked upon his prostrate Queen. She was strong and beautiful and her family connections formidable. He had many reasons to indulge her. "Very well, Imelda," He scowled derisively at the boys, turned and stalked back to the palace, his personal guard in tow. As the group of men receded into the dusty distance, Zar ran sobbing into his mother's arms. Tok stood alone, still trembling.

"Come here" she called to him. He had tried to master his fear in the Imperial presence, but at last he broke down. He ran to her weeping.

"The Emperor is a great man, but not a good one," she said to them. "He is shrewd, after his own fashion, but he has not wisdom. There is a power in you both that he hates because it is greater than his. She kissed them. "I am so very proud of you Zar! And your mother would have been very proud of you, Tok" she said, lifting his chin and gazing deeply into his watery green eyes. "Stay strong. I will always protect you."

The three tottered back to the palace.

Queen Imelda reclined lazily in a golden bathtub, submerged to her slender green neck by steamy suds. Her mind cleared as her body released its tension into the cleansing water. The greatest source of her tension, the Emperor himself, had disappeared on a stealthy hunting trip, a rare and dangerous escape for a beleaguered ruler. It was also a rare and precious opportunity that the Queen intended to exploit, for there was no love between the Emperor and his Empress. She had no such interest in men. Their marriage only secured the Throne and the common welfare of their families. Since the death of her beloved handmaid, the Queen's life had centered on her only son. Her single-minded mission was to see him on the Throne, despite the Emperor's loathing. Tok, her dead servant's son figured in all her intrigues. He was brilliant, kind hearted and utterly devoted. Only her intersession and subtle influence had saved him. Her delicate but firm hand rose, dripping with foam, and gently shook a small silver bell. Its beckoning notes reverberated off the stony walls. Presently, the wooden door opened.

"Your majesty?" Tok's shaggy blond head poked around the door.

"Attend me."

"Yes, your majesty." He entered and closed the door.

"Where is my son?"

"Practicing the lyre, my lady, in the rear court yard"

"He is getting very good" the Queen smiled. "You taught him well"

"He is very talented," he said modestly. The queen's face then became serious. Tok knew there was something on her mind.

"The humans" she muttered. "Is he well-versed?"

"Yes, Majesty. We reviewed the subject this afternoon as you instructed. He knows what we know." The Queen nodded. She leaned forward and rested her breasts on her knees. Tok understood. He knelt down on the cold stone floor, soaked a thick white cloth with bath water, wrung it out and began gently scrubbing her back.

"The Emperor continues to forbid any communication with the Earthmen," she whispered. "This is a grave error. It may prove fatal. When the Emperor returns, the issue will be pressed upon him. Forcefully if necessary." Tok wrung the cloth with trembling hands. The water droplets fell like music accenting the Queens dire words. They meant a level of dissention in the royal house that had never arisen before in his lifetime.

"How may I serve you, Majesty?" Tok did his best to hide the fear in his voice. She turned to him. Her sapphire blue eyes met his gaze and held it tightly and affectionately. Her wet hand gently stroked his bare cheek.

"I see the shadow of your mother in you," she said. "I loved her. She was far more than a servant to me. Far more. She had a great heart and a keen mind. She gave those to you." He blushed a slight green.

"You love the crown prince, do you not?"

"Yes, Majesty, with all my heart"

"And you are in love with him?"

Tok swallowed hard. "Yes Majesty, with all my soul".

"Do you remember" the Queen said, "When your mother was killed? You were just coming of age. You and Zar begged me to keep you in my household to prevent the Emperor from taking you for his own?"

"Yes, Majesty" his faced flushed and his eyes watered.

"I did it for your mother's sake and because I knew even then that Zar loved you above all things. The Emperor has hated you ever since". Tok silently recalled the vivid evening afterwards, when the Queen caught them together. She quietly closed the bedroom door without ever asking a question or uttering a word. "Without you, all would have been lost long ago, Majesty." He again dipped the cloth into the warm, soapy water and wrung it out into the bath. There was a long pause.

"The days ahead will be fraught with peril," The Queen continued as Tok rinsed her olive skin. "If the Emperor does not yield, the Palace may become unsafe. Stay ready. Remember our discussions and the contingencies we've prepared."

"I will."

"You are as a son to me." She said tenderly.

"I have always wanted to be though of as a son by you, Majesty."

"Take care of Zar. Protect him. And perhaps one day, it shall be official." She took the washcloth from him. "Remember the importance of Cerrisia and Regehelia, and all that has passed between us. Leave me now."

"Yes Majesty". Tok rose, bowed low and closed the wooden door behind him. The Queen lay back in the soothing hot suds. The last shards of tension ebbed from her sinews.

Chapter 4

Regehelia was an immense metallic rock of a world, so rich in precious ores that mining operations met all the Empire's mineral and bullion needs. A desert planet, practically bereft of higher life forms, even water had to be imported. On the other hand, it was also an intoxicatingly beautiful world with a remarkably stable arid clime. Its sun, an immense red giant, set the morning and evening skies aflame with ethereal swirls of velvety reds and oranges. And several time during the day, streaky blue and green cloudbursts erupted across the sky, as its sun battered the thick atmosphere with powerful but irregular bursts of cosmic wind. Vastly under populated and barely a light year from the Imperial home world, it might have supported a lucrative and culturally enriching colonial community. Yet, Regehelia was an unwelcoming and tightly restricted planet where interactions with out-worlders were kept to a bare minimum.

For on Regehelia, procreation was a childish preoccupation that polite adults hardly talked about, except in very clinical terms. Once its end was achieved, the fertilized embryos remained dormant for half a century. Decades before giving birth, adults were expected to have renounced sexuality for a genderless, asexual maturity. Those that remained active risked everything; social standing, fortunes, even life and limb. The harsh Regehelian biology was simply an evolutionary product of a monotonous and meager desert environment. Perhaps the intensely ethnocentric and intolerant Regehelian mindset evolved for similar reasons. While Imperial traders were always willing to be accepting, for the right price, the Regehelians themselves were not. Paying tribute to the Empire may have violated their sense of dignity, but contact with sexually active adults of any sentient species filled them with fear and repugnance. Also, plentiful glittery rock in exchange for veritable lakes of precious water wasn't a bad deal.

Although the Reghelians were technologically primitive, military expeditions over such distances would have been costly, unpredictable and as it turned out, completely unnecessary. A High Voort had negotiated and blessed the treaty that joined their planet to the Empire. The acquisition of Regehelia had been bloodless and immensely profitable for the royal family. Exploitation of the inexhaustible supplies of ores and precious minerals swelled the Imperial coffers and financed their power at home. The Emperor became so dependent on these revenues that unprecedented levels of home rule were granted to the Regehelians. Theocratic, repressive and intrusive by nature, the Regehelian government was content to leave the inscrutable details of foreign and economic policy to the Empire in exchange for moral and spiritual self-determination at home, and of course, water. The Regehelians opted for total isolation and simply elected to pay off the Emperor, who in turn, agreed to provide water and to keep out-worlders strictly confined to specific areas of the planet.

The Gluk Family had held the office of High Voort for over two centuries, through a combination of more or less sincere orthodoxy, bribery, extortion, and murder. High Voorts wielded the same species of absolute power as the popes of Earth's middle ages, although on Regehelia the office was hereditary based on the principle of progenitor. Using various forms of legislative instrumentalities, the Gluks had shaped centuries of Regehelian destiny. While an elected assembly nominally drafted and approved statues, only the High Voort could make legislation law. This form of priestly, theocratic government suited the homogeneity of Regehelian society, but in the Gluk Family, a seed of diversity was sprouting. For the first time in history, the youngest child of a High Voort, a tall character with brooding grey eyes, was questioning his inactivity. Amadu Gluk was as outwardly genderless as any of his people. His fine, dark, perfectly straight hair hung to his shoulders. His anatomy was male, but atrophied. His features, while beautiful, where starkly hermaphroditic like the chiseled face and graceful asexual symmetry of a fine Buddhist statue. Inside was anything but serenity or inner peace.

At an unusually hot hour of sunset, with a particularly acrid breeze blowing, two figures appeared in front of the infamous Patriarch Caf? in very heart of Regehlia City. The first figure sported a lightly flowing robe of pure white silk, a very respectable shemag styled headscarf, properly colored a modest blue, and a black leather egal. An enormous pair of black horn rimmed spectacles adorned his smooth and completely asexual face. The second figure was a short narrow shouldered young man, wearing a white tank top shirt, wrinkly blue trousers and matching ball cap and sneakers. Although not illegal in the city, outlanders were still a rarity and the oddly dressed and shamelessly male stranger drew countless stares and disapproving scowls from the passing crowd.

The two exchanged knowing glances as if they had been expecting each other. They dashed at once for a wooden table and chairs shaded by a flopping green awning set alongside the white adobe building.

"This is precisely where it happened!" the young man declared, looking around the area nostalgically.

"Where what happened?" his companion asked, shifting to find some comfort in the wooden chair.

"Why the Massacre of the Actives, only a few centuries ago. A couple hundred of them at least, lured in and cut down in cold blood on this very spot. Come Amadu, don't you know anything about your planet's history?"

"That is only legend. Moya!" he scoffed. "Propaganda of outlanders and heretics. It never really happened."

The young man laughed most disrespectfully, attracting a new round of disdainful stares and turned up noses from the utterly asexual pedestrians.

"Of course it did!" he said finally, getting the better of his mirth. "Such delectable hate and fear, and that's from the perpetrators, not even the victims! I have never been fuller, before or since. Crumbs still linger."

"Impossible. You're lying. You're a Russian liar," he charged.

"Yes, yes," Moya chucked, not offended in the least, "all Russians lie. It's the national hobby. We learned it from the Poles. But in this case it's your own High Voort that's doing the lying."

"I don't believe you."

"Of course you don't. You don't believe anything unless it's written in those stupid old books of yours. That's why we're here, isn't it, where I am strongest? So you see me in daylight. Do you finally believe I'm real?"

Amadu looked him up and down, suspiciously.

"I suppose I must," he conceded.

A tall, thin server carrying a small round tray interrupted them.

"What can I get you two?"

"Just a beer," Amadu replied.

"What's the strongest stuff you've got?" Moya drooled.

"Spritus."

"Ok, I'll have that. Full glass please."

"Your funeral," the server said turning back into the caf?.

After a few silent moments, the two began conversing again, this time a fat mug of sudsy beer and a tall wide glass filled to the brim with a steaming clear liquid were set between them.

Moya sniffed at the concoction and took a long deep pull and then coughed most disrespectfully.

"Tastes like Swedish crap," he said smacking his lips disdainfully.

"At least it has heat to it." He drained his glass with a second long gulp. Amadu was astonished. He expected him to fall over, but Moya only smiled, exhaled contentedly and started on a plate of pickled vegetables.

"Ahh! Alright, back to business" he munched, but in an even more serious and lucid tone than before. "What's not real is that hokey religion of yours."

"That's very impolite." Amad squinted at him. "Do you enjoy disparaging the beliefs of others? Who are you to judge? At the very least it's a unique expression of our cultural traditions."

"Unique? Ha!" Moya jeered loudly. "I could count on one hand the number of faiths that don't involve a virgin giving birth to a god. There are scores upon scores of them across the galaxy."

"Well then, maybe there is some truth to them."

"Don't be preposterous. There isn't a single, solitary bit of proof for any divine existence whatsoever."

"If god doesn't exist, then who governs the Universe?"

"It governs itself with natural laws otherwise we wouldn't be here discussing them."

"But who did creation then? Complexity demands intelligence," Amadu countered, convinced he had won a point.

"Pure silliness," Moya shook his head in retort. "God must be even more complex than creation, correct? And yet who created him?"

"Why no one, of course," a perplexed Amadu returned through a v-shaped brow and deeply wrinkled nose.

"So by calling on god to explain complexity you've proposed even more unexplained complexity and made the logical situation worse. In the sentence, 'God created the Universe,' the words 'god' and 'created' are meaningless. 'The Universe Is' says just as much. Simpler is better."

"But scripture assures us..." Amadu began.

"Scripture is the thing you're trying to prove, not the proof itself," Moya interrupted. "Besides, I can personally assure you that it's your creation myth that never really happened. Its protagonists never existed, at least not as separate individuals. They are merely garbled amalgamations of legend invented by various peoples at different periods in your history."

"You can't dissuade me," Amadu exclaimed defiantly. " I have direct experience of god, just as I have direct experience of my own existence."

Moya fairly beamed. "Excellent!" he cried! "Belief despite evidence! Now that's a most savory ingredient!"

"Savory?" Amadu was sure he misunderstood.

Just at that moment a stranger passed. With a sidelong glance at them he stopped in mid stride, turned and plopped himself down at an adjacent table. Tall, with a shaggy mop of platinum blond hair, the most obvious thing about him was his unmistakable maleness. Unlikely as it was, here was yet another outlander, despite his indigenous white silk robe, light blue headscarf and black leather egal.

"I'm sorry, please pardon me for eavesdropping," said the newcomer in an accent both bizarre and yet ominously familiar, "I couldn't help but overhear your erudite discussion of such an interesting topic." There was a long, awkward silence. What struck Amadu about the stranger, besides his accent and maleness, were his stunning good looks. Piercing blue eyes animated his perfectly proportioned young face. Finally, the newcomer stood up and removed his headscarf politely so that both Moya and Amadu had no choice but to rise and offer friendly hands.

"I am Tovar," he smiled meekly. "I hope I am not disturbing you."

"No, not at all. Please join us," Amadu heard himself saying.

"Well, that's very kind of you. Very kind," he responded gratefully. "I'm a stranger in these parts and craving company." Moya rolled his eyes and stuck out his tongue as if he were going to be sick.

"Server, another round! I'll have whatever my new friend here is having," he said taking Amadu's hand sensually.

In no time a fresh round of drinks had them all talking like old friends.

"Now, my good sir, I heard you distinctly say that god is a needless complication. Well, of course that is rubbish," Tovar declared certainly.

"How so?" Asked Amadu delightedly.

"Because it is the Universe that's the needless complication, the illusion. God is all that truly is. It's all about how you look at it."

"Double talk," Moya scoffed.

"Wait, it makes sense to me."

"That's because you want to believe it."

"And you don't want to believe it," Tovar countered.

"Yeah!" Amadu agreed emphatically.

"Proof!" Moya insisted. "Please provide proof, not speculation."

"Prove that you exist. Not just your body, I can see that. I concede that argument, but you yourself, the being at your inner core."

"There is only me in here. The thoughts themselves are the thinkers."

"Well, for you, that may be true, but that's the whole point. No one knows what is truly inside anyone else. If our friend here claims there is a god within him, we have no means to evaluate his conclusion, let alone refute it."

"You've changed topics" Moya said insightfully. "We weren't talking about some nebulous inner consciousness. We were talking about a creative intelligence that made the Universe."

"Precisely my point again!" Tovar countered with relish. " Only perceptions make universes. There are as many universes as perceivers, an infinite number, as it turns out, with creator gods at the center of each."

"Poetry, sheer poetry!" Moya scoffed. "Be careful or you'll float away. Next you'll be claiming god cares about you."

"As if I were the only creature in all creation," Tovar insisted.

"Pure rubbish."

"I agree with Tovar on this," Amadu said decisively. "God is reality. The Universe is illusion."

The handsome young man smiled warmly at him, and Amadu felt an odd, childish tingle at his center.

"I must tell you, though, your friend Moya is right on at least a few points," he said seriously. "Firstly, this religion of yours, it is utter nonsense and completely misses the mark. Secondly, the Massacre of the Actives really did happen right here, just as your friend said. After all, we must give the devil his due."

Amadu looked like he'd been shot to the heart.

"Who are you really, and where are you from?"

Tovar's icy eyes seemed to peer into his very soul, and looking back into them, Amadu found himself staring down into vast wells of nothingness. They were unlike any eyes he had ever seen and for an instant he was afraid.

"I am just Tovar, as I told you, an Imperial water trader, nothing more."

"You are quite pale, for an Imperial," Amadu noted skeptically.

"It's a skin condition," Tovar lied quickly, "and I'm a little sensitive about it. I hope it doesn't disgust you."

"Not at all," Amadu heard himself say again. "You're quite attractive." The voice was his but he couldn't believe the words that had fallen from his lips.

"Well, that's uncommonly kind of you," Tovar smiled. "On my own world, I am considered quite ordinary, I assure you, but that's a great complement coming from a Regehelian, so thank you."

"And not just any Regehelian!" Moya announced. "Allow me to introduce our friend Amadu, the only son and heir of the High Voort himself." He looked uncomfortable, yet absurdly pleased when the handsome young man rose and bowed to him.

"I didn't realize I was in discussions with an illustrious and learned celebrity," he lied again.

"I keep out of public view," Amadu said truthfully. "Its not my place while my father lives."

"I see," Tovar replied, "and so the glasses. It makes sense. It's a pity though. They hide an extraordinarily handsome male face, is it not?"

"Yes," Amadu admitted, blushing again.

"That's nothing to be ashamed of" Tovar said kindly.

"It is on this planet," Moya scoffed.

"Well, that's exactly the problem," Tovar continued. "Take the three of us, for example. We're all consenting adults. Yet if we left here for the privacy of your own home with the intent of making mad passionate love, we'd be guilty of many capital offences. Don't you think that's ridiculous?"

Amadu's mouth became suddenly so dry that his tongue stuck to his pallet, rendering him once again speechless. He gulped at his beer.

"He has a point," Moya observed, filling the conversation gap, "and not a bad idea either," he added playfully. "I've been trying to talk him into it for a good while now," he confessed to Tovar, "but he keeps resisting me."

Poor Amadu's expression went to sheer terror as he felt the mischievous blonde's hand massaging his knee under the table. He was both aroused and petrified as the telltale deeply purple flush on his cheeks and neck threatened to expose him. If he were caught in such display, with out-worlders no less, he wasn't sure that even his own father could or would protect him. Thankfully, the revealing sun had fallen below the horizon as they talked and the daylight faded to a dim red dusk. Soon, the moonless Regehelian night would blaze with starlight as the hemisphere turned toward the very center of the galaxy.

"Gentleman," he said thickly, "this is highly risky behavior."

"Don't you think that's absurd?" Moya asked.

"Absolutely outrageous," Tovar agreed.

"Let's go back to Amadu's place and discuss the matter further," Moya suggested. "It true that it's too risky to remain here with the night coming on." Amadu, seeing an out resolved to seize upon it. He nervously gestured for the server, hiding himself as best he could behind his headscarf and glasses. He quietly signed for the bill, leaving a more than generous tip and exited the caf? without incident. His friends followed.

Half an hour after reaching Amadu's opulent apartment in the most desirable section of the city, very little persuasion had resulted in the perpetration of a dozen high crimes and misdemeanors. Both Moya and Tovar were careful to site each statue, ordinance and restriction as it was systematically violated. Amadu had never even imagined such thrilling sensation. His inexperience was more than accommodated. It was celebrated as they led him through his virginal explorations of the adult male form. It included complete and detailed excursions into all the most aromatic and densely erogenous zones. Adamu proved an excellent and eager student, revisiting favored areas on his own initiative and developing his own style while turning his attention back and forth between his young partners. Of course, his teachers would have been derelict had they not devoted equal time to Amadu's own amatory accessories. Dedicated creatures with high attention to detail, they were very thorough and unperturbed by atrophied equipment. They found Amadu a most receptive pupil.

Moya and Tovar sat naked on either end of a creamy swan couch placed in the center of a semicircular marbled balcony. High above, the star-drenched sky glowed like a canopy of diamonds. The flickering lights of Regehlia City far below shone through the line of stony banisters. Both creatures were puffing brown cigarettes with bright gold filters. Thick musky smoke swirled around them. Amadu wrapped in a purple and white sarong strolled out from the bedroom and wrinkled his nose.

"What are those foul smelling weeds?"

"Foul smelling?" Moya gasped, "I'll have you know these are genuine Sobraine Black cigarettes, handmade in the Old Russian style from the finest Ukrainian tobacco ever grown."

"Very delicious," said Tovar, exhaling a cloud of patchy gray smoke.

"They stink,"

"Now, now," Moya said in a professorial tone, "just a few minutes ago you were eager to sample new smells and flavors. Stay open mined a little longer. Here, try one".

"No thank you."

"Just like Peter the Great. Once he tossed off? completely unteachable," Tovar lamented.

Amadu plopped himself down between them. "I have no idea what you two are talking about, but you've created enormous problems for me."

"See, now that's completely untrue," Moya countered.

"Well now," Tovar allowed, "Let's be fair. We have mixed things up a bit for him. From his perspective we have caused problems."

"But let's be honest," he said, wrapping his long thin arm around Amadu's shoulders, "we didn't cause the problems. You've always known you were male at heart. We just brought that to the surface."

"Yes. You are right," Amadu admitted sadly. "It is my fault, I suppose. I am a despicable, evil creature by nature."

"Ridiculous," Moya cried, letting out a long stream of wispy smoke.

"I concur. Why do you think you're evil? We did nothing evil or harmful to anyone. What passed between us was a wonderful gift, a reciprocal exchange of passion, a mutual appreciation and celebration of physical beauty."

"It is a sin," Amadu lamented, "an abomination. It says so many times in our scripture."

"Do you know why those scriptures were written on stone tablets?" Moya puffed.

"To preserve their wisdom," Amadu answered mechanically.

"Because the people who wrote them hadn't invented ink or paper yet," Tovar giggled. "For them, the chisel was state-of-the-art technology."

"I thought you said you believed in God," Amadu whined.

"God has nothing to do with it," Tovar replied somewhat evasively. "Those scriptures, I assure you, were chiseled out by primitive members of your own species not by any universal deity."

"Yes, of course, I know that," Amadu admitted, "but they were inspired by the living God".

"Then God contradicts himself repeatedly," Moya mocked.

Amadu became visibly agitated.

"The God we spoke of this afternoon has nothing to do with religion," Tovar insisted. "Religion is about control, so the poor don't kill the rich."

"It teaches morals and right behavior," Amadu countered weakly.

"If you have no morals, you lack empathy, not religion. And really," Tovar added, taking a long easy drag on his cigarette and letting go an exquisite cloud of sparkling grey smoke, "it doesn't seem to have done its practitioners much good. Here, let me show you."

With those words the smoky cloud, animated by some volition, engulfed Amadu. He shook jerkily, snorted, coughed and dropped his head on Tovar's naked chest. He had fallen fast asleep.

Chapter 5

When Amadu came to himself his first sensation was of being out doors and naked. A brisk, tickly wind riddled his smooth skin with goose bumps. He was light as a feather, his arms wrapped loosely around Tovar's neck, his face buried in his bare chest. His sweet and musty aromas mixed with the acerbic tobacco were like some erotic smelling salts that brought back full consciousness.

As he turned his waking face away from Tovar's warm and fragrant skin, fear gripped him. He was gliding thorough a starry night high above dark and terrible mountains. Instinctively his hands clutched at Tovar's neck and his legs wound tightly around his torso. Even in his terror, he became aroused as his groin rubbed onto Tovar's rippled abdomen. He looked up into his staggeringly handsome face. His will fell into those cold, pitiless, empty eyes, like living windows into nothingness.

"You needn't pinch," said Tovar, but his voice was strangely changed. It was deeper and reverberated off the clouds. "There is no danger." He relaxed his grip slightly.

"Where are we?"

"When are we would be a better question."

"I don't understand,"

"Of course you don't. You are deeply asleep, my friend, and I have stolen you away for an adventure. Nourishing for me, and profitable for you, if you ever get over it."

"I don't want to die," Amadu whimpered.

"Why not? Would that be more terrible than the life of subjugation and pretense you're living?"

"I don't know. I'm quite confused and afraid"

"You needn't fear for your mortal skin. That has never left your apartment."

"Where are we going?"

"To a time you would call the past and a place you will recognize."

Amadu fell silent as the heady flight accelerated and the icy winds sped over his naked body. The sensation was cold, sensual and not at all unpleasant, especially while clinging to Tovar's voluptuous form. But it seemed a dreadfully long time they flew. So long that he was becoming refractory to even the intimacy and fragrances of his sensual guide. At last their flight slowed again. The mountains below were now rolling hills and the stars above faded into a turquoise dawn.

They began to descend and then to spin. It was so nauseating that he lost all bearings and pushed his face into the stability of Tovar's smooth chest. He felt firmament under his feet. A wooden floor emerged beneath them and a low roof appeared overhead. He looked about. They were in a large room, a tavern of some sort, with white adobe walls and an oaken floor. A group of about twenty young Regehelians sat together at a long wooden table with stone legs. Despite the deep personal modesty he had practiced all his life, he was more than comfortable with his nudity. Neither the deeply purple flush on his cheeks and neck nor his raging erection, which was harder and larger than he remembered, perturbed him. In fact, his exposure was oddly arousing and he hoped it would excite and stimulate those around him. They took no notice of him whatsoever.

"Do you recognize this place, Amadu?"

"Not really," he looked around casually. "Who are these young people, and why are we here?"

"Look more carefully, especially outside," he said pointing to the large pair of window holes on either side of the front door. Amadu's eyes gazed past the server station, the raw wood tables and the flickering candles. He peered beyond the stony white walls through the open window frames into the front courtyard where pairs of wooden tables leaned against the adobe fa?ade. "The Patriarch Caf??" he asked in astonishment. "Everything is changed. It's so primitive. Where is the city?"

"It isn't built yet. At least not the Regehlia City you know." Amadu's attention turned back to the group of youngsters whose conversation had suddenly grown loud and intense.

"We can take them off here, the High Voort himself has guaranteed our safety in this place." With those words a youngster defiantly removed the traditional headscarf to astonished gasps and frightened groans. Amadu was stunned. The young Regehelian was taller, thicker, more robust and muscular than he had ever seen. He was unmistakably, unashamedly male. His handsome face glowed in the candlelight, his neck and cheeks flushed deeply purple.

"Ahdar, are you mad? Cover yourself!" a male voice cried.

"I am not ashamed," he proclaimed. "I am active and I am male." With a tug and a twist, he stepped out of his white robe and stood naked before his friends. He was enormous by Regehelian standards, unequivocal evidence that he had remained active all his life.

"All of you," he called them by name. "Do not be ashamed of who and what you are! Look inside yourselves and search your earliest memories. Who among you chose to remain active, male or female? Which of you remembers a time when it was otherwise? We were born this way, children of the same god. I am done hiding. I am done lying. I am done with fear and shame. The High Voort himself has blessed us, given us permission to be, within these walls at least, exactly who and what we were given by god to be. Who will join me?"

The room filled with a stunned silence that hung like smoke in the acrid air. Finally, a slighter figure shed headdress and robe to reveal a female form. One after another they disrobed until only one remained covered.

"You are all mad," the male voice hissed. "The High Voort is a liar. He's setting you up for prison or worse. I'm out of here."

"This is where it gets really good!" Tovar elbowed Amadu.

"How do you mean?"

"Watch."

"Let him go," Ahdar said sadly. "He was the love of my youth but we have chosen different paths."

In the twinkling candlelight the group of naked youths drew close around him and began caressing each other at random. Dozens of deeply purple cheeks and necks began shining brightly.

"Oh my god," Amadu gasped.

"Delightful, no?" Tovar giggled.

Amadu stared in lustful wonder at the unfolding orgy.

"Shall we join them?" Tovar offered.

"Can we?"

"Why not?"

"They didn't seem to even notice us before."

"Oh, they won't, but we can squeeze in just the same. Here, let me show you." With that, Tovar leaped into the middle of two young males in the throes of passion. He matched the form of one young man perfectly and then dissolved into him. Amadu followed by diving into the other reveler in the same fashion, executing the manipulation intuitively. They passed from partner to partner until they had experienced every male in the room intimately. Their desires satisfied, they jumped out of the living tangle.

"This is their first bacchanalia," Tovar explained after they had caught their breath. "They will go at it like this every night for months on end. It gets bigger every time. That's what does it."

"Does what?" panted Amadu.

"That's what provokes the massacre."

The blood froze in Amadu's veins.

"It is true, then," he gulped.

"Yes, I told you it was."

"Are all these young people to be slaughtered, then?"

"Everyone of them," Tovar explained casually. "That hooded fellow, the one who tried to warn them, he betrays them in the end. Who could blame him? They threatened to wipe out his entire family."

He thought he would be sick "My god."

"Your god had nothing to do with it. It was the High Voort and that hokey religion of yours."

"They lied to them," Amadu was becoming angry.

"Hideously," Tovar confirmed, "to draw them out and make examples of them. Tell me," he continued, "do any of these poor creatures seem evil or despicable to you?"

"No," he said faintly, "quite the reverse." He had experienced them intimately. He covered his eyes. He couldn't bear to look at the doomed youths any longer, so tragically beautiful and filled with foolish hope. "They were kind, trusting and gentle souls." His voice shook with a growing rage.

"Golden hearts, as we say, every one of them," Tovar agreed. "Their only crime was an accident of biology. Neophytic mutation is the term. It means a genetic change that allows individuals to retain juvenile characteristics into adulthood."

"They were totally blameless, then?"

"Well, they could have hid themselves, lived defeated, deceitful and unhappy lives for safety's sake, I suppose, and reached an acrimonious sterile old age, but no. They had no choice in remaining active."

"Better to die true to ones nature," Amadu said bitterly.

"My thoughts exactly," Tovar agreed, "but they did serve a purpose."

"How do you mean?"

"Well," Tovar explained, "the High Voort was able to use the pogrom against them to solidify the power of the Gluk family. Your dynasty's rise dates from this very incident. Your every comfort depends upon what happens next. Thousands upon thousands hunted down like animals and murdered. Bounties placed on their heads, public executions, torture, families ripped apart, exterminated, you name it." Tovar saw the rage building and feigned concern. "Of course, that's all ancient history," he said.

"Are you kidding?" he cried, "It still goes on to this day! If anyone found out what we did, in my own home, even I'd be on the block."

"Yes, I remember," he smiled impishly.

"Please take me home. I am exhausted and I need to think."

"As you wish, my friend. As you wish," For once Amadu thought he saw a breathing spark in the lifeless eyes. His consciousness fell into it.

When he woke it was morning. He was safe in his own comfortable round bed and secure in his own opulent apartment. Both had become hateful to him. There was no trace of his guests, but full memory remained, and as he lay wrapped in his satiny red sheets, he smoldered. He heard again the words of Tovar that had proved so prophetic. He had been stolen away. At that moment, a new resistance against the Empire was born, its unlikely founder, the only son of the High Voort himself.

Chapter 6

Gelesia was the largest planet in the imperial solar system, and nearest the sun. It was much like Triassic Earth. A single landmass dominated the planet's eastern hemisphere while its western face was drowned beneath a vast, tumultuous ocean. The equator was a desolate area were daytime temperatures topped 150oF. The heat produced a hellish inland desert, while along the coasts, an endless series of cataclysmic hurricanes, ferocious tornados and colossal thunderstorms raged. A few patches of shrub and fern eked out precarious existences in marginal zones, or where they were shielded from the elements by topological anomalies, but aside from these rarities, the land was devoid of life. The equatorial oceans were similarly barren as water temperatures routinely soared past 105 oF, halting photosynthesis and extinguishing all marine life. The elements had carved out a ten thousand mile wide dead zone that girdled the entire planet.

North and south lay tropical paradise, supporting some of the most densely populated ecosystems in the galaxy. The land narrowed rapidly towards the poles into two unbroken peninsulas twenty thousand miles long. Each was studded with countless islands and crowned with eroded mountain ranges. From space they resembled thick spiny tails protruding from the central continent. Despite frequent earthquakes and mile high tidal waves, here both land and sea teamed with life. It was this unparalleled fecundity that had attracted and held Imperial attention across 100 million miles of space. Five million species of plants and twenty million species of animals had arisen in a riot of adaptive radiation. Many had no equivalent on any other world and so provided unique sources of base materials for a wide array of products that included drugs, textiles, spices and delicacies. The rich oceans were farmed like living factories producing enough food for the entire solar system, but for all its diversity Gelesia had developed only a single species of intelligent life.

They called themselves Nardiniki "the little speakers". They were a primitive, resourceful people, but like Earth's Neanderthals, lacked that certain impalpable spark that enables a complex understanding of another's mind. They buried their dead and mourned them pitifully, but they made no art, only simple tools, and had achieved only rudiments of complex language. That is where the similarities ended. Unlike Neanderthals, the Nardiniki were slight, cat-like vegetarians that neither hunted nor tilled the soil but simply moved off when local food sources were exhausted. Unaware their world had been invaded, let alone exploited, they simply retreated from the threat and fled into remote mountain areas just below the tree line. The Empire would have taken no notice of their small bands at all but for certain unfortunate characteristics. Astonishing agility and high intelligence made them incomparable game and evolution had made them indescribably delicious. Like a fine vintage, the unique wild flavor had resisted all attempts at reproduction. Its only source was fresh from the hunt.

On a wide sandy beach a group of greenish campers huddled in a semi circle around a small fire. Conversation, occasional eruptions of laughter and the hissing and crackling of the flames echoed from their encampment, mixing with the wind and rhythm of the crashing surf. The flickering glow pierced the darkness to reveal four greenish youths, two males and two females. A single middle-aged man, green and muscular with a trimmed white beard, sat at the semicircle's center. In the humid heat they wore only the minimal clothing modesty required. A toothsome smell of roasted meat lingered.

"Are we even sure they're in the area, Jaek?" asked a slim, darkly green youth with curly brown hair seated at the far end of the semi-circle.

"Can't be certain, Gae," answered the older man, shaking his head and staring into the flames, "but all that Komba weed over there," he continued, pointing towards the beach, "that's some of their favorite victuals. Washes up in bales on this beach every night."

"I've never even seen one in real life," said a heavy-set young woman, "only in pictures".

"They're magnificent, Addy!" said Gae.

"Tell me! What's it like to see one in the wild?"

"Oh, I did a lot more than just see one!" he said triumphantly. "The fur is so soft and sleek, like flower pedals. And they're very curious, especially the younger ones. They walk right up and start touching you, smelling you."

"Yeah, that's a problem," interrupted Jaek. "You oughtn't have done it. None of that on this trip," he added emphatically, glaring at the two boys. "That doesn't do them any good. It turns them into sitting ducks."

"Leave him alone, Jaek", said Addy protectively. "It wasn't his fault. He was just curious. You heard him. The creatures came right up to him." Gae turned his emerald cheeks from the fire and stared out into the dark sea.

"Look, Addy, I know you financed this mission and took a big risk supporting us, but we do things my way, understand? I've lived on this planet nigh on twenty years and no one knows it and its critters better than me. If you care about the cat people, you won't interfere." There was a general mumbling around the fire.

"I do care about them," Addy said, "as much as you, but they're plainly interested in us, and if we can wake them up, maybe all this violence? "

"They don't need waking!" Jake said sharply. "They're fine just the way they are, and even if it were possible, it would do no good whatever. The Empire doesn't care about anything but profit nor understands anything but force. They're raping this world on a daily basis and I mean to stop it. Hell, they'd sell you for the water in your blood, if anyone would pay for it. That's the reality. You tell me there's a new resistance movement brewing in the Empire, and I'm glad of it. But that doesn't help these critters here and now. Holding up in the mountains is their best shot at survival until something really changes."

"I still don't think?"

"Yes, that's the problem" Jaek interrupted again. "Now look, girlie, you can go on arguing, in which case, I'll pack my gear first thing in the morning and head back south. Then you can lead this little expedition yourself, and good luck to you! Go try and reasoning with them." He shouted. "You might end up on the menu yourselves if they can't get Nardinki. Or, you can all just shut up, follow orders and let me do my job."

The flames crackled loudly in the stony silence that followed. A few sparks danced playfully in the air.

"No, we'll do it your way," Addy said at last. She turned the shimmering green stone of a plain golden band in towards her palm.

"Good. Glad that's settled. Now let's all get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a big day, with any luck."

Jaek rose, dusted the sand from his loincloth and turned away into the night. "Make sure the fire is totally out before you kids turn in," he called over his shoulder. "Tiel, Trina, it's your turn to close up camp." He headed nosily for his tent nestled amongst the tall spikes of cattail that miraculously held onto the shifting dunes.

"Tell us the story of how you met one, Gae" begged Addy, as soon as Jaek's form had faded out of earshot.

"Well," Gae began slowly, running his fingers through his curly brown locks "Jaek and I were a couple hundred miles inland from here. We had just set a brace of field charges and I went up ahead to scout out the next site. I'd gone about a mile or so when a small group of them, a family probably, burst out of the forest. They're stunningly beautiful, about our size, but slender, grey fir on the backs and creamy white underneath. Their hands and feet are like ours, but they've got long bushy tails and kitten ears. Oh, and the cutest tufts of blue fur hang down from the top of their heads, like bangs. And they have these incredible green eyes with clear membranes that flick from side to side. The older individuals were aloof, but one young tom, he was curious as hell. The others bounced around like they were made of rubber, but he came right up to me and stared into my eyes".

"I can see why he liked you," whispered Tiel. Gae smiled, rolled his eyes modestly, and continued on with his story. "He touched my face, ran his fingers through my hair and started to rub himself up against me. Then he pushed his black, whiskery nose into mine, blinked sideways and sort of mewed 'Pelo!' and I knew that was his name. 'Gae,' I answered. He just smiled. I got lost in his dazzling green eyes." Gae sighed. "Anyway, before I knew what was happening his tail was in my tunic and wrapped around my stuff." The group gasped and giggled.

"That must have stood you up!" Tiel chuckled.

"I was scared at first, but it was all furry and warm, soft and hard at the same time, so yeah, I went up like a rocket!" Gae said. "I kind of figured it wasn't protocol, but I just couldn't' help myself. The impossibly soft fur, the hard muscle underneath, the way he started licking my lips with his long hairy tongue, his razor sharp claws holding onto my skin. It was amazing. I started running my hands all over him, petting him everywhere. That made him purr, and he must have sprayed or something because my head was suddenly full of a psychedelic smell."

"Sick!" grimaced Trina.

"Hush!" said Tiel. "You weren't there. Besides, I think it's hot."

"Oh, you're another zoophile weirdo," Trina snapped at him.

"C'mon Trina, be quiet!" Addy said. "Go on with the story Gae!"

As much as Trina had tried to pretend otherwise, she was getting aroused and settled back to listening.

"Well, next thing I know, he'd ripped off all my clothes and I'm rolling around on the ground naked with this cat boy on top of me, while all the others are jumping in and out of trees making a complete racket. It was like a rooting section, and what with that smell and all, it wasn't easy to concentrate."

"But you forced yourself?" Tiel added slyly.

"Yeah, I forced myself," Gae blushed.

"I hear they're huge."

"You heard right! And he sure knew how to use it. Talk about self-lubrication! He went in easy, but still, I thought he'd split me when he starting pumping. And that tail! It was still wrapped tight around my junk. I got close about three times, but he tightened it up just at the right moment so I couldn't finish."

"Oh, Lord!" Tiel panted.

"Anyway, that's when Jaek comes bounding out of the bush, screaming and cursing and waving his arms like a madman. The whole band ran off in a flash, but Pelo lingered for a few seconds and smiled at me so that I knew I'd see him again. Then he vanished into the forest. I was left lying naked in the dirt at full attention, completely humiliated with the boss man howling at me. He can lecture for hours without breathing."

"Well, that's hardly a happy ending, " complained Tiel.

"I'll find him again" said Gae "but anyway, that's the story"

"Hmmm," Tiel said, adjusting himself. "How about you and I make up our own story after we put out this fire."

"I've wanted to for a while now," Gae confessed. The two young men affectionately touched foreheads.

"Don't boys ever get enough?" whined Addy.

"You're more than welcome to watch!" Tiel proffered.

"Oh, no thank you!" She blushed a deep olive. "Not my thing. I'm going to walk down the beach and howl at the moon."

"But this planet doesn't have a moon," Trina reminded her.

"I'm going to pretend, then," she said.

"Well, I'm going to watch!" giggled Trina. "Wait up, boys!"

Jaek was neither simple minded nor prudish. He had been young once too and understood the complexity of youthful motivations. He wasn't immune to temptation either. He just knew better. A clearer connection between action and consequence is just one of aging's benefits. Jaek had a higher goal, even beyond saving the Nardiniki, which was to him, a mere objective. To that end, on that very evening, Jaek was expecting visitors. Those two magical dream creatures that came to him at critical moments would satisfy all such cravings and keep him on track towards his ultimate goal: to hurl the Empire off his beloved Gelesia forever.

In the golden lantern light, Jaek reclined amid two youths. Each was nestled between a massive arm and a great slab of muscled chest.

"That was intense!" said the tall, tow headed boy with ice blue eyes.

"Amazing!" agreed the short dark youth with closely cropped hair and eyes like pitch.

"Flatterers!" Jaek cooed.

"No, really!" said Tovar, his fingers playing in the man's matt of salt and pepper chest hair.

"You fucked him silly!" howled Moya. "I've never seen him so happy."

"Well, you boys certainly know how to bring out the beast in me."

"That's our job!" said Tovar.

"I'll take you two over some pissy cat boy any old day."

"Yes, yes, our thoughts exactly," began Moya.

"And speaking of boys, that friend of yours, what's his name again? The dark green one you were just talking about with the curly brown hair?"

"Gae?"

"Yes, him."

"He's very handsome," Tovar nodded lustily.

"Not a bad looking kid," Jaek conceded. "He has a kind heart."

"Exactly the problem, but all cats are grey in the dark," Tovar mused.

"Unless I'm mistaken," Moya continued, ignoring Tovar, "you've already chosen him in your heart"

Jaek stared through the glowing lamplight into the night.

"Well, he's smart, determined, has plenty of courage."

"Yes, go on," coaxed Moya.

"But I'm not sure he's got the killer instinct in a pinch."

"Yes, I know what you mean," agreed Moya. "He needs to find his core. We'll take care of that tomorrow."

"Are you sure it will work?"

"Positive! Just stick to the plan. Everything's been arranged."

"It seems kind of harsh," Jaek hesitated.

"There's no other way" Moya insisted. "With helpers, a thousand things are possible. He'll find his center and become totally yours at the very same moment."

"I suppose. Pity about the tom, though," Jaek lamented

"Can't be helped."

"It's going to happen anyway," added Tovar nonchalantly.

"What?"

"Eedeeot," Moya hissed at him softly through smiley clenched teeth. "Tovar means only that the die are cast."

"I understand," Jaek said decisively.

"It's really good of you two chaps to go to all this trouble. I'd like to think it's because I please you both but I'm not that conceited."

"Oh!" said Moya quickly. "Well, that's only part of it. We love this planet too! What's its name again?"

"Gelesia"

"Yes, that's it. We love the place." He tried the widest smile he could muster until he thought his face would crack.

Jaek's contemplation moved again out into the dark night. Moya's gaze urgently directed Tovar's attention to Jaek's stirring groin. He nodded and slid his head under the covers.

"Again," Jaek cried, delightedly.

"He's an insatiable demon," chucked Moya.

"Insatiable," came Tovar's gurgling agreement.

"Don't you ever stop talking?" Moya scolded, before hurling himself onto Jaek's eager mouth.

The hunting party was up before dawn. They had been nearly a week on the trail without bagging a single tom or molly. The one clowder they had spotted from a distance scattered immediately in all directions. Now the food was running out and they were getting hungry. Although sustenance was all around them, its procurement for a party of five would have distracted from their primary purpose. The Emperor's personal participation in the excursion was of course top secret. They had drawn the required licenses, which would expire in just 48 hours, but much more importantly, duty required His Majesty's return to the Imperial home world. It looked to be an empty handed and humiliated return.

While the Emperor and his favorites did not pay the exorbitant licensing fees, hunting Nardiniki was still an expensive hobby and a half dozen dressed carcasses would more than recuperate their costs. Besides savory cravings there was also the Imperial pride, honor and prowess to consider. Success, after all, must crown all His Majesty's endeavors.

Just before dusk, on the day before their scheduled departure, while patrolling a wide white beachhead littered with seaweed they came up wind of a clowder foraging on the shore. The salt air hid the hunting party's scent and the crashing surf covered their sounds.

"What luck!" grunted a squat heavy man in a green tunic. "They're so busy munching we'll get right close! They'll all be on the skewer before they know what hit them!"

"Quiet, you lout. You'll ruin everything," hissed an older, deeply green, and evil sounding fellow in a grey tunic. It was the Emperor himself.

"Yes, sire, but they've nowhere to run! "Even if we jump 'em now, we'd be well within range before they could make cover."

"These cat people can disappear in a twinkle," said the Emperor. "If we want to bag the whole lot of them we need to get as close as possible. Set your weapons to stun. We don't want to burn any of the meat."

The first blue blasts knocked the two closest females 15 feet into the air. Their spasming bodies splashed into the surf. That sent the rest bolting for the bluffs, all but the young male, who froze for a horrible instant before hurling himself recklessly at the hunters. A blast from the heavy squat man felled him in mid leap. None of the others made it to the bluffs as three more blasts brought each down in turn. The hunt was over in less than a minute.

"Well, that was ridiculously easy. I thought these cat people were supposed to be the best sport in the galaxy," said the fat, squat hunter.

"We got lucky," said the Emperor "catching so many of them on the beach like that. Most times, you have to go after them in the forest and it's like trying to hit a lightning bolt."

The hunters drew long thin knives from their belts as they approached the paralyzed prey. Without pity, they cut each of their throats in turn and gloated as the coppery blood gushed out onto the white sand. They dragged the bodies back to camp and processed the carcasses for transport, all but the young male. His decapitated body was skewered, and as it bled out, they dug a fire pit and set a blaze. With the furious sun setting behind the churning sea, they roasted him slowly. As a gruesome trophy, they set his head on a tent pole. The pure sunlight revealed terror-stricken features and shone profanely in the lifeless green eyes.

High on the bluff just above the hunter's campsite, Jaek and his group had seen the kill and watched the prey dispatched, dragged from the beach and processed. The girls cried and the men clenched their fists.

"How horrible," Addy sobbed.

"Poor things," Trina sniveled.

Tiel's handsome face was distorted and flushed a bright green.

"How did you know, Jaek?" Addy's voice cracked.

"Best campsite on the beach, nearest the thickest patches of Komba weed," he said simply. "I'd choose it myself if I were hunting Nardiniki."

"They're right in the middle of the charges," Teil whispered.

"Yes," Jaek confirmed. "Are you ready for justice? Ready to send a message from Gelisia back home? To the Emperor himself?"

Gae looked down into the camp at the tiny figures moving slowly about the fire. He fingered the small detonator strapped to his wrist. He could barely see them in the fading light. He couldn't make out faces or ages, or even tell if they were male or female. All he knew for sure was that the fate of five sentient beings lay in his hands.

"I don't know if I can do this," he moaned.

"Jaek!" Addy called through her tears. "I've changed my mind too. Enough death. This is wrong. I don't want any part of it." She pulled the green ring off her finger and dropped it into her shirt pocket.

"Me neither," Tiel said softly. "Gae, let's go."

"Wait!" Jaek commanded.

He handed Gae a pair of night vision goggles.

"Look at them. Look at what they've done. And if you still don't want to do it, then just hand over the detonator and I'll do it gladly," he said coldly, but his hand trembled as passed the binoculars.

Now Gae could see the campsite, the crackling fire, and make out the faces of the feasting men. He eyed the steaming carcass and the strips of roasted meat torn from it. Ignorant barbarians. For a moment, he almost pitied them. Then his gaze fell upon the impaled Nardiniki head and his heart broke with recognition.

"It's him," he slurred in horror.

"What?" cried Addy.

"Him who?" asked Tiel.

"It's Pelo!" he shrieked. "Pelo! They've murdered him. Him and his whole family." His voice echoed off the bluffs and thundered down onto the beach.

"Oh dear God, no," Addy gasped.

The hunters were instantly aware of them and began scanning the bluffs.

"It's now or never, kid. Do it!" Jaek commanded.

At that moment there was nothing in Gae but an unquenchable lust for vengeance. He had become wrath. He pushed the button.

The explosion was silent. A flash of high-energy neutrons rushed out of the sand and enveloped the camp. The fire went out as the oxygen was sucked out of the air. In the flash Gae could see the men fall, grasp at their throats, thrash about in breathless agony and then go terribly still.

A hideous silence fell.

"You knew, somehow you knew!" Addy whispered at last. " You lead him here on purpose. You're a monster, Jaek. I wish I never met you."

"That was messed up," Tiel wept.

"I want to go home," sobbed Trina.

"That's crazy talk." Jaek protested. "How could I know? And what did you all think we were about when we planted those neutron charges? It's a little late for regret now, girlies. Most likely Imperial agents have already detected the blast signatures. Now that's my calling card, and they know it. My way is back south to hide out in the dead lands for a while. Any of you lily livers that want to go home, you've got about 10 minutes to launch without being detected. We'll be better off without you. Any that wants to stay and fight, can come south with me."

"I'm getting out of here," said Addy.

"Me too" echoed Trina.

"And me," said Tiel. "Let's go Gae"

A heavy silence fell.

"I'm going south with Jaek," he said softly. His tear stained eyes still seething anger and hatred.

"No, Gae! No! I love you man. I'm in love with you. Come home with us. Come home with me! Please!" Tiel cried, offering his forehead.

"Go home, Tiel. Just go home". He turned away from him and from the beach and began to climb the bluff. Jaek followed after him.

A light year from where the Gelesian Massacre had suddenly decapitated the Empire, Moya and Tovar lay wrapped in their eternal embrace. They reveled in the immeasurable heat and incalculable gravity of the Sagittarius singularity, where every place was the same place and every time was the same time.

"Pity we can't get good out of those cat people. That poor tom-boy was beautiful. And delicious!" cooed Tovar, recalling the occasion.

"Oh, ho! So you snuck a taste of him, did you? So did I! Yes, yes very delicious." Moya chuckled.

"I'm glad Gae came through in the end! His hate was simply delectable, like a morsel of Sevruga caviar, fresh from the Caspian." Tovar smacked his lips. "Jaek is so bland by comparison."

"It's time!" Moya focused him. "I'll head up to the outpost to call for the humans," he said shaking his buttocks obscenely. "They seem attracted by my signal. "Go back and try Tok again. They must arrive with the Professor in time to disable the outpost"

"He'll give in," Tovar said confidently

"Yes, of course, or we wouldn't be here," Moya agreed. "We'd be stuck with the humans forever."

As they encompassed each other and discharged the indigestible contaminations of affirmative emotions, a few tortured strings at the singularity core changed their wild undulations. A scattering of crushed particles were hurled past the event horizon and evaporated back into reality. Tovar followed him. The demons were released. Chapter 7

The Imperials named themselves 'The Awakened' and called their world simply 'Home'. Their supergiant F type star was 'The Flame'. It was fifty times larger and twice as hot as Earth's sun, properties that created an enormous habitable zone for the solar system. Home was the most distant planet, over twice the distance between Earth and its sun. It poles were icy uninhabitable wastelands but a broad band of comfortable coastal rainforest woodland and chaparral girdled the small planet.

The imperial palace, built atop an immense limestone and sandstone rock plopped down in the middle of a landlocked turquois sea, slept uneasily. Out of the glowing starlight, which flowed from the galaxy's heart, an indecent creature fell onto the captive world.

"Son-ya! Wake up," said the naked young man perched on the corner of a small feather bed, in which another young man slept soundly.

"Krasivi Pedrostek!" he sang. The sleeping figure stirred, opened a drowsy green eye at the intruder and immediately pulled the covers over his annoyed head.

"Go away. The answer is no"

"Nyet, moy dahrahgohy! You misjudge me! I'm not here for that this time. I give up. I've had enough of your refusals. It hurts my ego. This is something really important. Please wake up. Something has happened."

"Go away," Tok persisted. "It's another trick. I don't believe you."

"Alright," Tovar agreed. "I'm only trying to help, but I'm not pushy. If you don't want to save your young friend's life, that's fine with me."

"Zar"?" Tok rose up on his elbows, the covers falling away to just below his wide green nipples.

"The youngster that's madly in love with you" Tovar confirmed. "Yes, Zar! I think that's his name. Emperor Zar."

"Crown Prince," Tok corrected.

"Hmmm, don't be too sure," Tovar hummed.

Tok's eyes narrowed.

"What's happened?" he asked. "And if you're not just trying to have at me again, why are you naked?"

The air around them twinkled and in a shimmering instant Tovar wore a white tank top and a pair of blue boxer shorts.

"Prosti! Force of habit," he said. "Now will you listen?"

"What?" said Tok. He sat up against the wooden headboard and Tovar, try as he might, couldn't help but notice the covers fall lower, revealing a smooth, slender body just emerged into manhood.

"It's a pity you won't change your mind," he moaned as the flowery cinnamon aroma of the young man stole up from the sheets.

"Get out," Tok said hotly, covering himself.

"Alright, alright, back to business," he continued, "the Emperor is murdered. One might say a hunting accident, really, although not exactly unintentional, but not quite a political assassination either," he mused almost to himself.

"Dead? The Emperor is dead?" Tok gasped in disbelief.

"As a door nail," Tovar confirmed.

"I don't believe you."

"I knew you'd say that," Tovar smirked "So I brought you this!"

He raised his left hand and held triumphantly aloft, by its black locks, a grisly demonstration: a severed young head, steamy green blood dripping from its gaping neck. Although the features were grotesquely distorted by agony and fear, Tok instantly recognized his beloved Zar. He froze, stricken with grief and horror, but in the very instant of his perception, the gruesome exhibit evaporated.

"You malicious creature!" he hissed.

"I swear I didn't do it," Tovar defended himself convincingly. "In fact, I'm trying to prevent it. It's in both our interests, but you simply must believe me. Luckily it hasn't happened, at least not yet, but it does happen if you don't act."

"What should I do?" begged Tok, becoming desperately agreeable.

Tovar smiled. "You needn't do anything rash. At least not until you're convinced that what I've just told you is the exact truth," he reassured him. "But for now, go to your friend. Wake him. Stay with him. Protect him. The news will break soon and then you must be decisive. You'll only have a small window of opportunity in the confusion and uncertainty. Make use of it. Get your needy little lover out of the palace and off the planet. He will be Emperor, at least officially. They'll listen to him, for a few moments anyway, out of fear. Have him appoint a regent, someone strong that everyone hates, that General Korus, for example, and then take the Flagship and make for Cirrisia. Say you're going after the killers personally."

"Korus? He's no friend of the royal family."

Tovar smiled "He's my friend. Friendlier than you, that's for sure."

"But they'll come after us."

"Yes, yes, of course, eventually, but by then you'll have help."

"What help?"

"Don't worry about that now."

"Why are you helping us?"

Tovar leered at him so lascivious that he blushed bright green.

"Seriously?" Tok scowled.

"Well, it's one of the reasons," Tovar confessed, "but what does it matter now? You don't have a choice, not if you want to see your handsome little lover alive again, and you don't have much time either if you want to live yourself." Tovar suddenly looked up at the ceiling then back at Tok again with another indecent probing glare. "Whatever you do, I'm finished here." With a final depraved grin he vanished.

Tok rose from his sleep with a jolt, his body covered in sweat, his hands trembling terribly. It was that lustful pale creature haunting his dreams again, but its aura was different this time. He struggled to remember, and at once full memory flooded back.

Throwing on an old gray nightshirt, he rushed through the drafty corridors of the old stone castle. He burst into his friend's bedroom through a secret passageway, emerging from behind an immense oaken armoire. The startled boy jumped into his arms.

"What is it Tok? It's very late"

The older boy drew his young friend close, gently stroking and kissing his black curls. Tears welled up in his green eyes.

"Tok?" the youngster squealed in alarm. "Whatever is wrong?" He held his friend's rosy cheeks in his palms and stared deeply into his blue eyes, elated by the light of life in them.

"I had a dream," he stammered, "a very bad dream".

"Oh, is that all?" Zar giggled at him. "I have bad dreams all the time. They aren't anything to be frightened of."

"I think this one was something more," he said.

"What then?" asked Zar.

"I'm not sure, only a vibration perhaps, " Tok said, wondering out loud, "but I think it was real, or it could be real, if we don't do something."

"What do we need to do?" the boy asked.

Tok perceived fear rising in his friend and hugged him tightly.

"Put your clothes on," he pleaded. "And lend me some as well."

Zar had just slipped into his tunic when the heavy wooden doors flew open and three large men, his personal guard, burst in.

"Your highness, there has been an accident," the largest man shouted. "I must tell you that your father is dead."

The blood froze in Tok's limbs and he knew instantly that everything the strange aberration had said was true. He noticed the guards carried not typical hand lasers but photon blasters, as if they were expecting heavy fighting. He spoke confidently and swiftly.

"General Korus has already informed his Majesty of the so-called hunting accident, just moments ago, and has sworn his loyalty. Emperor Zar has the following orders! You are to personally escort us at once to His Majesty's Flagship. We will take vengeance on the evildoers ourselves, destroy the humans and bring peace and security back to the Empire. Until his Majesty's return, General Korus will rule as regent. Once the ship has launched you will be promoted two steps in rank and transferred to his direct command."

The guards only stood there blinking. Tok prodded his dumbfounded friend. "Please, Zar," he whispered, "our lives hang in the balance. Be forceful!"

The boy grasped the game, swallowed fear and snarled at the big man.

"Those are my orders, Flamma! Obey me at once or I shall command the others to slay you where you stand. He who strikes the fatal blow will assume your rank."

"Yes sir," the man cried. "Secure the corridors!" he ordered, turning back out into the hallway.

"You are amazing," Tok whispered.

"I watched my father do it for years," Zar huffed.

The roar of the cigar shaped ship shattered the bright moonless sky. Its launch pad took up a quarter of the island and its unmistakable blast carried for miles. Its sound told the Queen that the boys had made their getaway. Upon reaching escape velocity it plunged into the cold blackness of space. As its notes changed from pulsing blasts to high-pitched screechy droning, the blue and white world beneath them receded rapidly. In the liftoff flames the boys knew their old life, the old Empire, was consumed. Tok and his quaking sovereign tearfully held each other as the ship implemented its automated flight plan.

"Korus will execute my guards for allowing us to escape," Zar predicted sadly. "They were loyal men who obeyed me at the end."

"I know," Tok kissed his soft curls. " It was their job to protect you."

"And I shall never see my mother again."

"You do not know that. She is a brave and resourceful woman and her family is very powerful in its own right. With your appointment Korus now holds a wolf by the ears. He will first seek accommodation with her, not conflict. There would be no profit in it."

"I wish we could send her a message."

"That would be too dangerous. She will understand and know what to do. She gave thought to such possibilities and will not be unprepared."

Tok had grown up brooding on this precise scenario, the topic of secret discussions with the Queen. While he was appreciative of the dream creature's warning, he hardly needed its advice. A stealthy escape aboard the flagship was obvious. From its bridge, the new Emperor could monitor the Imperial communications. If the fleet launched, they would know immediately. Just as importantly, it's secrete access codes controlled the Imperial treasury and its posh reserves of Regehelian bullion.

"Why are we going to Cirrisia?"

"Its mastery of entangled particle based communications and central location in our solar system provide vital command and control capabilities," Tok answered. "Its loyalty is key to Gelesian trade and Regehelian tribute. We must transfer your Imperial capital there. Your father toyed with the idea for years. We may find help there." he added vaguely.

"My father," Zar said faintly, "My father is dead." The new Emperor began to sob. He turned and threw his arms around his friend's neck, pushed his face into his breast and wept uncontrollably.

The ship accelerated as it entered deep space. Once its chemical fuel was exhausted, powerful magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters were automatically engaged. Primitive by human standards and vulnerable because of the required space-going nuclear reactors, they were still highly effective at hurling large craft at near light speed between worlds or between stars. Hundreds of years earlier, similar engines had propelled Earth's fifty-year expeditions to far more distant worlds. Tok had programed a slow elusive route for their voyage. Cirrisia, the closest planet in the imperial solar system was a mere 60 million miles away. At top speed, the ship could reach it in hours, but Tok planned to remain lost in space for days. During the interval he hoped conditions might stabilize at Home while they themselves would be undetectable and invulnerable. Of course, when they arrived, the situation would change unpredictably. Once revealed, they might acquire, at least temporarily, the allegiance of the Imperial garrison. Ultimately their fate would depend upon developments at Home, the loyalty of the Cirrisian people and perhaps even upon the mysterious help that the lascivious dream creature had promised.

In those early hours, General Korus' regency and effective command of the Imperial fleet were as much impediments as advantages to him. The news of the Emperor's death stole through the Empire. Along with official accounts blaming a nefarious alliance of eco-terrorists with the mysterious humans, wild rumors flew. Some declared it was a plot of Korus to seize power. Others accused Queen Imelda of betraying her husband to put her effeminate son on the throne and rule as his regent. Instability riled the financial markets and provoked opportunism and insubordination in the military. General Korus was forced to focus on neutralizing immediate threats while maintaining order, all at his own expense, and all while preserving the appearance of allegiance to the royal family. Of course, the new Emperor ignored the franticly radioed advice to return home and allow the fleet to deal with the murderers. No one could give a command order to the Imperial flagship and so it continued its stealthy journey.

On their third night in space, the two boys slept soundly in the purple silk throws of a luxurious round bed that graced the Imperial stateroom. Zar was nestled serenely in his Tok's devoted embrace. In the midst of his dreaming Tok's breathing suddenly quickened and became labored. He opened an uneasy eye.

"Your friend is quite handsome," Tovar giggled. This time, he remembered to wear the white tank top and baggy blue boxer shorts.

"Keep away from him," Tok hissed. "He's just a boy."

"Again, you misjudge me," Tovar protested unconvincingly. " I would never try to seduce him."

"What do you want now?"

"Firstly, to congratulate you on your escape. I trust you found my information useful."

"Yes," Tok conceded, "It saved our lives and I'm grateful."

"Yes, I can feel that and it's completely indigestible. I'd prefer another form of payment," he leered.

"I made no such bargain with you."

"It is just decency to repay your debts."

"What do you know of decency?"

"Point taken!" Tovar admitted. He tactfully changed the subject. "I have another bit of useful information for you."

"Well?"

"I'll want something for it," drooled the indecent creature.

"No" but this time Tok's answer was less emphatic. He was desperate. Impossibly warm hands impishly reached under the silky sheets and wandered up his bare thigh.

"No" Tok protested, "He will wake."

"He won't, I promise."

Tok grew ashamed at his own arousal as the lustful creature molested him, but the sensations coursing through his body began to take control.

"There, that's not so bad, is it?" He said as groping found its mark.

Tok was silently humiliated as Tovar explored him.

"There is a man, a professor on Cerrisia," he began in the midst of his fondling. "He will soon release a computer virus that will bring down the Imperial mainframe and destroy your communications."

Tok moaned as Tovar's expert manipulations overwhelmed his resistance and inspired his mind. " When you wake, use the ship's quantum processers to intercept it, isolate it, and locate its source. Find him. He will become a powerful ally."

"Why should he help us?" he huffed.

"He's my friend," Tovar grinned. "His crime carries the death penalty. And of course, there is the common enemy."

He looked ravenously into Tok's living green eyes and peered down into his very soul. He saw only a famished wasteland with a few scattered crumbs of fear and regret. His stimulations easily brought the boy to climax, his essence spilling out into Tovar's cupped hand. As his tensions released, he fell back into the wells of sleep. Tovar brought the elixir to his lips and lapped at it greedily, licking every spicy dollop from his fingertips. He should probably save a drop for Moya, he thought to himself as he consumed the last sticky morsel. He shrugged with feigned remorse.

He looked down at the dreaming boys. Tok had yielded to him but had relinquished nothing. He was fixed in the moment without resistance. Tovar knew inconsolably that he could have no sway over him nor draw from him any sustenance. He could plant neither seed nor spore in the boy. Here was beauty that he could but gaze upon, unrequited, across an unbridgeable distance.

"Bashir," he whispered, as he disintegrated. Chapter 8

Cerrisia was a cloudy, rocky, earth-like world at the center of the imperial solar system. As Tok yielded himself to the indecent creature, a blandly humanoid middle-aged Cerrisian sat at his writing desk musing. The news of the Emperor's assignation had decided him on a course of action that would change galactic history.

"The inability to change. That is what ruined us," Professor Bashir said quietly within himself. Realizations, even profound ones, have no ability to alter the past, and Bashir, along with his entire species, had no future. He was getting on in years, but he still held on to rationality. People were always commenting on how well preserved he was. He still had the hale muscular frame of a former athlete, and no one had accused him yet, but inside, he had already felt the first hot flushes of The Fear. Of course he knew it was inevitable but the utter nightmare that life would soon become was only slowing dawning on him. It wasn't something polite people talked about, but recently there had been some frighteningly awkward moments: a fight at the University and an incident with his wife at a concert. Moments when eyes all around began to widen. That's when The Fear really hit him.

Only a few years ago he first felt those terrible hot flushes of paranoia that his father had tried to describe. They were bad enough but then The Fear came and he thought he would go instantly and irretrievably mad. It was like being in the middle of a wild wolf pack waiting for the signal to rip your flesh off. If any one saw The Fear on you, you were finished, dragged off like an animal to the nearest "clinic." Dog pounds were better places. Most held thousands of inmates huddled in small cells, some half naked, urinating on themselves and rolling around in the reek. For those poor bastards luxury was a lice bath. The very idea made Bashir shutter. The Fear was gone, for now, but he knew that it would come again and again staying longer each time, if he lived, until The Fear consumed his mind and he went finally and irretrievably mad.

He resumed his writing. Many awaited his great work, A History of the Cirrisian People Before the Imperial Conquest. It would circulate anonymously across the entire solar system in a matter of minutes and at the same moment inflict a noxious computer virus aimed at the Empire's command and control capabilities. It would be the first great salvo in the technological germ warfare that the tiny Resistance intended to launch against the decapitated Empire. Resistance movements on Cirrisia had been arising and dissipating for centuries, always dependent on some cult of personality. The current manifestation originated not on Cirrisia, but on distant Regehelia, animated by key principles of liberty and equality. Its clandestine spread centered on universities and Bashir had become a devoted convert. Like most, he was no revolutionary, but an academic and a writer who rather enjoyed a lifestyle made possible by his position at the University. Bashir held the chair of history, owed in part, to his careful deference to Imperial versions of it, at least in the classes he taught and in his official publications. So he had to be very careful about circulating his renegade masterpiece that contained both truth and sabotage. Even without the virus, if Imperial agents even ascribed the work to him he might instantly be arrested for treason. After paying his last gram of gold to buy a verdict, once the sabotage was detected he would certainly be murdered.

The last chapters of his great work truthfully describing the collapse of the third Republic and the ensuing civil war had been the most difficult to write. Files from that period were commonly forged or erased and the few authentic ones to be found were masterfully encrypted so the truth was difficult to recover. The earlier periods were easier to research, mostly because the Empire found such information irrelevant, but also because there were more people keeping records back then, before the political party, know as the Beards, representing retired workers, had won the majority. They reinstated the general censorship and issued the first series of cooperative work orders. It was Bashir's least favorite moment in his species long history because it was so humiliating and because it was the direct result of the same aging process that was beginning to consume his own mind. He much preferred the pre-space periods when the very idea of intelligent life in the Universe was just geekish entertainment, or the thrilling period just prior to the Imperial conquest when the mighty spacecraft of the Third Republic destroyed the Imperial Fleet. That was the Cerrisan golden age. The Third Republic ruled with justice and wisdom for generations, but always the Empire would send another armada until finally the outbreak of the Cerrisian Civil War made the outcome inevitable.

As terrible as the Imperial conquest was, the preceding period of Civil War was far worse. Unlucky combinations of their own ingenuity, biology, infectious disease and Imperial perseverance doomed the Third Cirrisian Republic. Rapid medical advances radically extended life expectancy so that by the end of the Software Revolution that culminated with the development of entangled particle communications, most people lived long enough to be stricken with The Fear. The victorious Republic, having just repulsed the Empire, lavished resources on the victims and at first there were few enough, but a burst of children born in exuberance of military victory eventually grew old and nearly all came down with The Fear. The Republic mercilessly, if democratically, took more and more from its younger workers. Redistribution programs became so burdensome that Cierrisian Society resembled a parliamentary form of forced labor. Then, the shooting started. Violence broke out at every University on the planet simultaneously.

And for the next 20 years a hideous intergenerational war raged throughout the luckless world producing nothing so much as an endless pantheon of war memorials that fairly littered the planet, even down to Bashir's day. Finally, leaders of the infamous Young Workers Liberation Army, nearly defeated and desperate, gave their home world over to the Empire, treacherously, if not gladly. Imperial occupation was simply the only way to stay their parent's insanity. With that, armed resistance to the Empire collapsed and in memory of the final Cerrisian conquest the Emperor took unto himself the title, "Lord Protector of the Children of the Mad."

After centuries of Imperial rule the vast majority of Cerrisians saw neither hope in freedom nor any practical alternative to occupation. Cerrisian communication and information technology along with its juxtaposition in the imperial solar system provided the Empire with vital command and control capabilities. The Empire had spent so much effort subduing Cerrisia precisely because of its incalculable technological and strategic value. The Empire would annihilate the planet rather than yield it. The stunning news of the Emperor's murder triggered only sheepish indifference among the Cerrisian population. Still, there were some, a courageous few, who saw the opportunity and dared the chance. Bashir leaned back in his chair and trembled. With a tap of his finger, the noxious computer virus aimed at neutralizing those very command and control capabilities, a blow against the essence of their plant's usefulness, was unleashed against the Empire. With that, the Resistance entered a new and desperate phase.

Bashir sighed heavily. His brain was fuzzy from over work and lack of sleep. He needed a soft bed. Tomorrow was going to be a huge day. Hope and despair were balanced on a blade. He settled into his wide feathered bed, kissed his heavy set, sleeping wife and rolled the covers over his shoulder. As he turned to dreaming, the space next to him shimmered and a dull humming, like a thousand delirious honeybees, erupted between his ears. A naked boy, a lean, muscular creature with a thick mop of tow colored hair, not much older than one of his students, materialized next to him. He froze in an instant of bewilderment.

"You again?" he whispered, careful not to wake the middle-aged woman who snored softly beside him. "I told you the last time, young man, I don't need any help from you and certainly no more of..."

"No more of what, Lyubimaya?" Tovar interrupted loudly. The woman stirred and Bashir became extremely still as the boy's hand reached under the blankets and began to fondle him. "No more of this? Your penis seems to have a different opinion. A mind of its own, I'd say."

Bashir stiffened as the boy's remarkably warm hand massaged him.

"My wife is right there, we can't do this," he begged, but his voice contained no serious opposition.

"She won't wake up, I promise," Tovar teased. "We'll be very quite."

"It's not right," he protested thinly.

"What, am I not young and beautiful?"

Bashir swallowed softly.

"More beautiful every time I see you," he said.

"Touch me, then. You know you want to."

The man's hand trembled as he explored the boy's irresistible body. His fruity, strangely musty aroma filled his senses.

"I want you to fuck me," Tovar said.

"I can't. She'll wake"

"She won't," the boy retorted, "and even if she does, she'll only find you tossing in your sleep. I'm just a dream."

"I don't believe that."

"Why not?" Tovar positioned himself atop the naked man.

"Because you are always the same and your accent is strange. I have never heard it before. How could that be a dream?"

"It's Russian," the boy murmured.

"What is Russian?"

Tovar's eyes sparkled as he took the man deeply into himself. The boy's heat was impossible, activating every nerve in Bashir's body. Instinctively, he began to pump, levitating Tovar with surprising ease. In the mist of their passion the boy's gaze caught him and penetrated deeply into his very core. "Determination!" he whispered. "Perseverance and loyalty."

"Yes," the man said.

"You will release the virus, free your people?"

"Yes. It's done, an hour ago" Passion was full on him now and he wasn't really listening. He trusted wildly, each stroke effortlessly lifting Tovar's body through the air. At once, every muscle in him tensed and then, like a lustful super nova, he burst into the boy. His chest heaved, collapsed, expanded and collapsed again. At last, his body and spirit were exhausted. He fell fast asleep.

"That is Russian" smiled Tovar. In a shimmering instant, he was gone.

As Bashir slept, the Imperial Flagship, mimicking the cycles of day and night, meandered towards its journey's end. Tok woke refreshed and determined. While his young lord slumbered he attended the ship's quantum processers, and as the creature had foretold, he was able to intercept the virus and locate its source. He issued orders in the new Emperor's name along with an appropriate bribe to have the professor arrested and brought to the ship. Later that morning, the boys donned fresh tunics and went wandering about the ship.

"The Regehelians are perhaps the nearest thing your father had to a real ally, my Lord," the teen's voice echoed softly off the Flagship's empty corridors.

"Allies? They basically paid him protection money, and stop calling me Lord, Tok. It makes me wonder what you are up to."

"As long as you remember that your coffers are filled by Regehelian tribute."

"What are Regehelians boys like? Perhaps can we take one or two with us or must it always be hairy old men, like this Professor?"

"We are re-making the Empire, Zar, not the imperial Kootak!"

"Oh please! Zar begged. " I am almost a man now. I am nearly seventeen years old and I should have my own Kootak!

"No," Tok said simply, although he knew that as his friend matured his desires would grow according to the nature of their race and his family's legendary libido. He realized that as Emperor, a Kootak stocked with the most beautiful slave boys in the Empire would be his right and a political necessity, a symbol of Imperial health, vitality and prowess. He also knew that someday Zar would be expected to marry and continue the dynasty.

"Besides," Tok continued, "Regehelian practices are hardly fit for a proper Imperial Kootak. We shall celebrate your birthday ourselves when the time comes." He added temptingly.

"Do you see it already, Tok? In your mind's eye, the new Empire we are building, I mean."

Tok smiled. He didn't want his young master to know how unsure and frightened he was or to sense his lingering shame and regret for having yielded to the indecent dream creature, although its inspirations had vouchsafed their lives.

"I know where we are and where we ought to be but I do not yet know how to get there, not exactly. For that, we must trust to fate."

Zar's eyes filled with wonder.

"You are very smart! That is why I love you so much."

Tok giggled.

"Oh, so it's my brain that you love, is it, you little imp?" he laughed.

"Yes, because it is bigger than any general's and it is always thinking about me. I love your heart too, because it is so great."

The boys halted in the hollow corridor and faced each other. Tok fell deep into the glittering sapphires of Zar's eyes where he had lost himself long ago. His arms fell across the smaller boy's shoulders.

"I promised your mother that I'd take care of you. I promise that again, but Zar, the Empire is wrong, at least in its present form. The Queen knows that. Even your father knew it, in his own way. The sooner we make it right, the sooner we can be together." The boys touched foreheads.

The team of four men, dressed all in black, broke into the quite bedroom before sunrise. Simultaneously, one pair crashed through the bay window while another burst the heavy wooden door, hurtling it off its hinges. Bashir and his wife leaped from sleep and threw themselves against the headboard, gaping in terror at the intruders. There was a stunned silence. Suddenly, a small, long animal barked, bared its teeth at the nearest invader and lunged. In a green flash the creature fell to the ground in mid leap, twitching and foaming at the mouth.

"Professor Bashir, you are arrested. Don't move."

"You shot my dog," he sniveled.

"Stunned. It will be fine in a minute. You can be next or you can cooperate."

"For heaven's sake, Bashir, cooperate!" the middle-aged woman shrieked.

"What is the meaning of this?" he tried to sound shocked and outraged, but his heart was sure that he had been betrayed. Somehow, he feared, the Empire had learned that it was he who had released the virus.

"No idea," said the dog shooter, holstering his weapon. "Take him," he called to the others.

"What of her?"

"Leave her. She's too fat to struggle with," he quipped. "We're not paid by the pound."

"Of all the nerve!" the woman squealed.

The long dog began to stir and growl. It righted itself and only glared at the intruders, having learned from its mistake.

"You should run away before she eats you too!" the intruder jibed.

"That's extremely disrespectful, young man," Bashir acted insulted, but inwardly, he breathed a great sigh of relief. He realized now that these were not imperial troops but rather local agents, collaborationists hired by imperial administrators for routine arrests and detentions. This likely had nothing to do with the virus or his involvement in the resistance.

"Complain to the magistrate, Professor," He smirked. "But you best put some clothes on. Old goats in nightshirts don't win much sympathy."

"Really!" the old lady huffed.

Bashir donned his ceremonial professor's robes, kissed his wife, and went with his captors quietly. All the way to the station he racked his memory for anything that he might have done, any slight or offence that might have attracted the attention of the local authorities. He kept coming up blank. So far as his mind could recall he had scrupulously obeyed the myriad local ordinances and restrictions as much for his position at the university as for his extracurricular activities.

To his astonishment he was taken, not to the local station, but to a launching facility. His captors handed him over to two young men whose brown shirted uniforms identified Imperial secret police. His blood froze. So it had been the virus after all, his association with the resistance. He had been betrayed. His loyalty and determination would be sorely tested under certain torture, but he was weak and his mind in the early stages The Fear. How could he possibly hold out for long? Surly he would tell all that he knew to the ruin of the fledgling Resistance, both here and on Regehelia. Once discovered he wondered if even the High Voort's son would be protected from the Empire's legendary vengeance.

The Imperial flagship fell into synchronous orbit around Cerrisia. Minutes later, Tok and Zar were standing on the shuttle bay. The loud hiss of escaping gases and the grinding of metal signaled the re-pressurization cycles were complete. A gruff looking brown shirted man dragged the frightened Professor out from the shuttlecraft onto the docking bay. In all his years Bashir had never left the comfortable gravity and protecting atmosphere of his home world. The acceleration to escape velocity and the queasy artificial gravity combined with his terror to wreck a gassy havoc with his gastrointestinal tract. He thought he would be sick. At last the metal doors opened. As the steam dissipated, two figures materialized. The Professor's fear turned to utter astonishment as he recognized two impossibly young men, boys really, dressed in oddly fitting deeply purple robes and the highest Imperial regalia.

The gruff man behind him forced him to his knees. "Kneel before his highness, Emperor Zar," he barked.

The old man's eyes alternated between the two young men.

"Get up," Zar said with a wave.

"Emperor?" he gasped in disbelief. "The Emperor is dead"

The blond young man stepped forward. "This is his son, his Imperial Majesty, Zar, Lord Protector of the Children of The Mad. He has need of you, Professor."

The old man rose, his bewildered gaze passing between the two boys.

"We know about the virus you unleashed and about your activity with the Resistance. We know about your contact on Regehelia. Your life is forfeit," Zar said menacingly.

Bashir nearly lost his bowels. He trembled, his eyes turned downward, but as he blinked, he swallowed his fear. From his depth, from his silent core, came a calm and unexpected strength.

"I don't know you young man, but if you really are the new Emperor, you're going to have a difficult time holding on to your throne. I know nothing of any virus or Resistance, but if I did, I wouldn't tell you anything."

The gruff man rose to strike him.

"Stay your hand!" Tok commanded. "You are dismissed! Return to your garrison and send back the shuttle." The man obediently disappeared back into the spacecraft. Bashir blinked, but his courage was undiminished.

"I am an old man," he continued. "I have had a good, long life and it is ending. In the time that remains to me, I would see my world freed from the Imperial yoke. Our people are afflicted with a terrible malady that consumes our old age. I am becoming affected myself. In our suffering what succor have we had from the Empire? What repayment for our tribute? What weregild for our freedom? All that matters to you is profit. Once a man's wealth is consumed, he is tossed into kennels like an unwanted dog. His own family must disown him or face penury."

"The Fear did not come from the Empire," Zar reminded him. "We were invited to rule, to save you from yourselves."

"I am aware of the history," Bashir conceded.

"Professor," Tok approached him and took his hand. "His Majesty has determined that all people should be free."

"Free?"

"Free to leave the Empire in peace, if that is your choice."

"But we hope you will stay," Zar added. "We are stronger together."

The old man became suspicious. "Even if you are truly the new Emperor, how could you have that kind of power?"

"That's why we need your help, Professor," Tok admitted.

"Will you help us?" Zar pleaded.

They led him to the ship's main computer station.

"I've contained the virus, Professor, in order to maintain our entangled particle communications." Tok explained, "But I don't know how to re-infect the fleet without bringing down our own mainframe".

The old man's gnarly fingers flew over the controls. The two boys watched anxiously over his bent shoulders.

"You've isolated the virus subroutine brilliantly," he marveled.

"Thank you, Professor."

"But how could you have done that unless you already knew what to look for? Unless you had been forewarned."

"It was sheer luck!" Tok lied. "I was running a routine security scan when I stumble upon your creation." He couldn't confess the truth. He was ashamed and sure they would think him mad.

"Well, you must have reacted instantly to block the encryption and isolate the subroutine" he said doubtfully.

"Tok is quick as a wizard, Professor," Zar said with pride.

The unconvinced old man redirected his attention back to his work. His fingers danced over the consol. "This will re-inoculate the infection and confine it to the Imperial fleet and military instillations. It will completely block their entangled particle communications. They'll be reduced to old style telemetry. A simple conversation with Regehelia will take years. You'll control access like this." he said, flipping a toggle back and forth, "on a ship by ship and instillation by instillation basis."

"But we'll still be able to communicate instantly from the flagship, correct?"

"Yes, Majesty."

"We owe you a great debt, Professor," Tok acknowledged gratefully.

Bashir only sighed. "The Imperial oligarchs won't accept this peacefully. It will cost them power and worse, profits." He shook his head in doubt. "With all due respect, Majesty, the entire point of the Empire for centuries has been profit. What you propose, a union of free worlds is contrary to that purpose. Many will fight you. Not just on your own home world, but here on Cerissia and on Regehelia as well."

"But we have access to the treasury!" Zar protested. "Their communications will take years and ours will be instantaneous. And they must obey me anyway because it is the law."

"You cannot count on that, Zar. Our enemies can make up whatever excuse they like. Once the virus is detected General Koros will apprehend rebellion and launch the fleet. Not even the Queen will restrain him."

"I am afraid your friend is correct, Majesty," Bashir concurred. "Even if you do managed to buy the entire Imperial garrison here on Cerissia, they couldn't hold off the Imperial fleet."

"Nor would they try," Tok added. "The garrison will milk us for what they can get and then betray us when the fleet appears. Any fighting they do would be amongst themselves over the bounty on our heads."

Zar swallowed his fear. "What shall we do?" he cried.

"It was my plan to go underground once the fleet arrived, and continue to sabotage command and control capabilities," Bashir confessed. "Beyond that we had no clear strategy except to await events. Our people could not match the Imperial fleet in our prime, let alone now, in our decay."

"General Korus will deal ruthlessly with resistance," said Tok "but there is no need to sacrifice any of your people. The sabotage will clearly have come from us. They will call us blood traitors. We must flee."

"To where?' asked Zar in bewilderment. " Regehlia? Galesia?"

"The fleet will follow us anywhere, Zar," Tok said softly, "and find us eventually, or we shall die in space. As long as we live, we are a threat."

"Where shall we go?" Zar cried. "There is no place else."

"You are forgetting your history lessons." Tok smiled.

"Ah!" Zar's face beamed his understanding. "The men of Earth!"

"Earthmen?" Bashir said fearfully. "Aren't they hostile?"

"Tok doesn't think so, but they are very far away."

"Their outpost will be a journey of many months." Tok confessed, "but it shall not seem so long to us, as we approach light speed. Besides, what other choice do we have? Professor, will you come with us?"

"What other choice do I have? They'll put a price on my head too."

"Then it is settled," said Zar. "Tok, you shall have your chance to talk peace with the men of Earth. If they have lost the blood lust of battle, I must be forceful with them, at first, as with my guards." Just as they took the decision, a frantic beeping erupted from the computer. Tok's attention fell to the communications consul.

"The imperial fleet has launched," he cried. They must have detected the virus."

"That didn't talk long" Bashir shook his head. Tok's expression grew grave as he processed information.

"We've got to get out of here fast. They'll arrive within the hour." Tok's mind worked. He programmed a desperate flight plan that included multiple, accelerating orbits around the planet, broken by a slingshot trajectory out of the solar system towards a rendezvous with humanity.

First Contact

Chapter 9

The Earth ship was in orbit around Toumi, making porting preparations for Outpost 8. The outpost had reported distorted de Brogli wave patterns and neutrino bursts suggesting an Imperial invasion. A skeleton crew had been ordered to investigate while avoiding any provocations or misunderstandings with the Empire.

Henry Frank rubbed his weary eyes and tried to clear his mind. He wiggled uncomfortably in his chair, pulling at his clothing. He and his crew were breaking in new uniforms, stiff beige shirts and heavy grey trousers. Below them spun the greenish world of Toumi. It was the newest mesoplanet yet colonized, humanity's third Earth in as many centuries. Its Capital City was home to Earth Central Command (ECC) headquarters. Old Earth was still recovering from centuries of war and abuse. "Okay, everyone" he said firmly, "Let's have opts".

"The Empire might simply be performing experiments," offered Compton, in his strangely pleasing monotone voice. "Alternatively, if they have already acquired porting technology, similar to our own, they may be intent on capturing our outpost and using it as a platform from which to launch an offensive strike against Earth."

The living machine finished speaking everyone's unexpressed fear. However, there was no emotional differential in his voice. The possibilities were simply the most probable contingencies under evaluation by his cybernetic brain. Frank nodded at him from the far end of the clear rectangular table. He scanned the austere, windowless briefing room. His eyes then fell on each of his officers. Security chief Hector Troy the handsome, seasoned Latino was on his left and First Officer Bradley Williams, his white bread, fresh-from-the academy, First Officer, sat on his right. He had hand picked the pair as best officers in the ECC. This would be their first mission together.

"Opinion, Brad?" Frank asked flatly.

"I agree with Compton, Commander," said Williams, exhaling "The first possibility is ECC's problem not ours, as for the second, we certainly can't permit the Empire to acquire our porting outpost. We'd be vulnerable, and it would close off the galaxy to us. It would be our job to stop them."

"Does anyone think there's a possibility that the Empire could use the outpost against us, to port an invasion force back towards us?" Frank asked directly. The room was silent. Compton's purple eyes scanned the seated officers. At last he spoke again, leaning forward and griping the table's sides with his silvery, but otherwise completely life-like hands.

"That is, as I indicated Commander, a distinct possibility although its precise likelihood is difficult to evaluate. Theoretically, if the Empire has acquired porting technology, they could use a captured outpost to aim a porting signal back towards our sector of the galaxy. To prevent reintegration every facility would have to be shut down, severing humanity in thirds. However, were the Empire planning such an offensive, it is unlikely they would be so obvious."

Williams smiled. "Unless that's what they wanted us to think,"

The Cyborg's head, with its white crew cut, immediately cocked to one side, the only evidence of his bewilderment. In the tragic accident, the aging scientist had quickly transferred all that he could salvage of himself into his own marvelous experiment. However, only the rudiments of emotion survived. Although his revolutionary computers could precisely duplicate the quantum state of every particle in a man's body, even hurl the information beneath space towards a distant target, the very basis of porting, the technology had no restorative power. While Compton could still appraise the possibility of deceptions, he could not formulate or truly understand them, even after centuries of trying. What was gone was gone forever.

"Sometimes, Compton," Williams explained, "The best place to hide is right out in the open."

"What you are saying," Compton postulated, "is that the Empire might expect us to expect treachery and so by being forthright could gain a strategic advantage?"

"Something like that," he said, scratching his rusty scruff.

"Interesting" said Compton, his pale face nearly smiling. "It would indeed be surprising for the Empire to attack in that fashion."

"Precisely ECC's analysis, Compton. That's why its just the five of us going in, shields down, weapons off line" said Frank, in a tone that conveyed he was hardly happy about the situation. "We know nothing of these beings aside from what we've been able to glean from their automated warning beacons. Unlike us, they don't seem to be great conversationalists."

"On the other hand," interjected Williams, "if the Empire is assembling an invasion force, we'd be sitting ducks. We could even be walking into a trap." There was an uncomfortable moment when everyone silently acknowledged that they were being used as bait.

"The ECC does not believe the Empire is about to attack," said Frank. "Once we get there, we'll figure this all out."

"Let's hope they're right," mumbled Troy.

With that Bradley Williams stuck his right index finger into the air and wagged it around to grab everyone's attention.

"The ECC seems to have left a critical question unanswered," he said. "What do we do if find an Imperial strike force already on our side of the Singularity or in possession of the outpost? We could find ourselves in a very tight spot. We might be able to intimidate a few small vessels but we could hardly hold off a significant invasion force for very long, not all by our lonesome."

"It would be important for us to offer some resistance," Frank said, "whatever the actual odds, and to alert Earth, if we can. With the element of surprise lost and the demonstration of an ability and intent to defend ourselves, the Empire might abort an invasion."

"It still doesn't makes sense," said Hector Troy with growing frustration. "If the Empire means to shut us down, why not just destroy the outpost? If they mean to attack, its nuts to broadcast it."

"I gotta agree with you, Hector," said Williams, shifting the spectrum of his visor into the gamma region and studying the data again. "These neutrino emissions are crazy, unlike anything I've seen before. Whether its porting technology or not, it's sure to get attention. It's like ringing the front door bell."

"And we're going to answer," said Frank, "and answers are precisely what The ECC expects us to provide. Alright People!"

Commander Henry Frank continued with that practiced determination and confidence that gave his slightly raised voice its distinctive faculty of command. "We port in 12 hours. This is top secret. As far as anyone knows we're on our regular duty roster. Shuttles are locked. No more shore leave. Dismissed everyone. Brad, you get some rest. That's an order."

Troy shot Williams a `told you so' smirk. He shifted uneasily in his seat and wondered if he had made an error in becoming 'friendly' with the Chief of Security when he did. What could he do? He was a sucker for Latinos.

"Aye sir," he said meekly.

Hector Troy was relaxed in his quarters. He had changed out of his uncomfortable uniform into a more leisurely pair of green sweat pants and white tee shirt. They were not only more comfy, but also more flattering to his athletic body. He was reading a letter from his son Les. He had known in his heart that his boy was a genius since he was a toddler. Yet, it had still surprised him when the rest of the galaxy, including the ECC, concurred so wholeheartedly. His feelings regarding Les' choice of career were decidedly mixed. The old CIA had pioneered military applications for paranormal psychology over four hundred years ago and the discipline still survived in the ECC. Yet, despite the most modern technology, it was still unrequited ghost hunting. No one had reproducibly identified or defined a spirit. While he whole-heartedly wanted Les to do whatever made him happy, he couldn't help but feel he was wasting his talent. Those feelings had surfaced recently in a few awkward jokes that he wished he could take back.

As he read his son's words he deeply regretted the sudden tension in their relationship. He looked around his quarters at the countless pictures and holograms of the handsome young man. His eyes fixed on a recent one, Les waving and smiling in full dress uniform at his graduation from the academy. His gaze moved on to an older photo of Les in his Karate karategi. He recalled how proud he had been; watching him take his black belt after years of study. Finally, his attention settled on the latest photo, taken just weeks ago, a charming picture of Les in fierce drag, being crowned 'Miss Sexy in the City' Troy smiled widely. Les excelled at whatever he did. Ever since his biological mother was killed in a boating accident, Hector Troy's private life had revolved around his only child. Now that he was gone, he felt terribly alone and empty. He hoped his intimacy with Brad William hadn't tipped the commander off as to just how profoundly alone in the universe he really felt. Each word, each syllable, every character of the boy's hand written letters were like raindrops in the desert. He began a reply in his head when the soft, familiar single knock at the door struck like a sour note.

"Come," he said.

"Hector, it's me, Henry," Frank's voice called. "May I come in?"

"Of course," he said, although being alone with the Commander always made him a little nervous. Even though they had discussed their mutual feelings for each other and had decided against acting on them, he still trembled at the Commander's touch. Frank entered and sat beside him comfortably.

"May I offer you some brandy, Commander?"

"That would be lovely. Thank you."

Troy rose and procured two tall, thin glasses of bluish green liquid from the small bar across the room. As he sat next to Frank, they toasted silently, each focused on a smiling hologram of Les Troy standing erect in his beige military uniform.

"I hear Les did quite well at the Academy" Frank said brightly.

"Yes. He's graduated at the top of his class." Troy managed a fake smile.

"I know how much you miss him." Frank's expression turned to pity.

"Thank you," Troy said softly. As he sipped at the brandy a shadow of pain passed over his face. He recalled jokingly introducing the boy to Frank as 'my son the ghost whisperer'. The joke had fallen flat. No one was amused, Les least of all. Frank read the discomfort on his face and regretted bringing the boy's name up. Things were already a little awkward between them since their 'talk' and bringing up Les had just made them a bit worse.

"Well, I'll get to point then," he said slapping his knee's lightly. He looked deeply at his Security Chief. It occurred to him how much Les was growing to resemble a prettier, slimmer version of his taller, more rugged and muscular father.

"It's fear of the dark, of the unknown. That's all this really is." He said. "It's gnawing at the ECC, this crew, and at me. It's got everyone on edge. The newspapers and talk show pundits are all predicting anything from an interstellar block party to a full scale alien invasion." "Well, Commander, we don't know anything about these creatures. Boys whistle in the dark at such moments and that helps for a while."

"Yes," said Henry. "I expect that's what we're all doing." His tone changed again and he began speaking as Commander Frank.

"Hector, this mission will be extremely delicate. We are essentially being used as a draw and it's quite likely that we'll be introduced to the Empire in one form or another. I know you've got a lot going on, personally, I might have even added to it, but I'm going to need all your help and especially your objectivity when the lights go on"

"I can handle it, Commander. No matter what we run into," he said in his most professional tone.

"I'm sure you can," said Frank with growing confidence "I just hope I'll do as well. I can't say that I'm happy about approaching them defenseless and with a skeleton crew."

Troy smiled. It was moments like these when Henry Frank shared his vulnerably that he felt particularly attracted to him. His dreamy brown eyes, usually unfathomable, became clear and present. With his wavy brown hair, dusted with new gray, deep laugh lines and a shy smile he looked like a rugged middle-aged cowboy. Truth was, Hector Troy was already deeply in love with another man and had been for a long time.

"I've no doubts, Commander."

"Thank you, Hector." Frank paused genuinely grateful for the confidence. In the kept air Troy's redolence suddenly stirred him. At once he felt a familiar tug at his heartstrings. Frank realized, despite his protestations during their recent 'talk', that Hector Troy was a man it would take some time to get over. He pulled at his brandy and then continued haltingly.

"I've got this feeling." He turned his glance more than his face to look directly at Troy. "They want something from us. Ian thinks so too. I feel it."

"Then perhaps they'll just ask us for it." "That doesn't seem to be the Imperial way."

"But what could it be? What could we have that they want?" Troy mused, speaking aloud the question that Frank had been wrestling with for the past three days.

Frank shook his head slowly. "I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps, for the moment, they only want our attention."

"Well, they've certainly managed to force that from us."

Frank smiled. "Now that does seem to be the Imperial way. Chapter 10

The porting signal began its emergence just an astronomical unit from Outpost 8. As the massive entropy wave slowed to sub-light the stars swirled back into view as if they were materializing out of an impressionist painting. But of course it was not the stars that had changed. They obeyed the laws of physics like good cosmic citizens. It was the human observers that had cheated. Particles of positive and negative dark matter, flowing through magnetic coils, met at the speed of light, annihilated each other and in the process created a bubble beneath space-time. A minute grain-singularity tossed through the coil's center at the precise moment created a gravity portal that sidestepped the limitations of physics.

In it's wake, matter was reduced to gravitational waves and flowed through it like a wild river. As the signal pierced its own sub-space bubble, spraying tachyon partials in all directions, it was simply re-entering the universe precisely where it had been hurled. The distant receiving station sucked up the ubiquitous neutrinos, polarized them, and automatically sprayed them back as discrete bundles at the very fabric of the universe with the precise velocity and wavelengths needed to re-integrate the signal back into reality. This was the technology that Compton had invented, that had cost him his human life, and that was hurtling men to distant stars. Thusly, the away-team and the cigar shaped ship that carried them materialized like a condensing hologram twenty-five thousand light years from Earth.

Outpost 8 was a small listening and porting instillation built on the only moon orbiting the only planet of a double star system lying in the dense region of the Milky Way known as Sagittarius. The immense black hole, or more properly the singularity at its core, made it the gravitational center of the entire galaxy. From the vantage point of Earth, the system was a gateway to the Galaxy's heart and to a cluster of a thousand stars, all within fifty light years of each other, each with potential mesoplants ripe for colonization. The primary sun was a typical G0 star, only slightly smaller than Sol, while the secondary was a dim reddish M3, hardly contributing to the electromagnetic output of the system. The planet was a large but tidally locked world with one side trapped in a never ending hellish day, and the other, in a frigid, eternal night. Long ago, most of the atmosphere had boiled off or froze solid. Now both hemispheres were airless wastes scarred with countless impact craters, like hideous pox marks on the twin faces of death. Its moon, or more properly its companion planet, was a nearly Earth sized class L affair. Moons fall toward their larger partners at aphelion, and like Earth's companion, the world of Outpost 8 did not. Instead, both planets circled around a common gravitational center.

Neither star was anywhere near bright enough to have been noticed by the ancients. The ECC had known them only by the numerical designations assigned to them by the Earth bound astronomers who discovered the system hundreds of years earlier. Neither planet had any significant resources and while class L worlds were theoretically at least marginally habitable, Outpost 8 was particularly marginal. Unlike its larger companion its rapid rotation had allowed it to hold onto a thin atmosphere, which helped to dissipate the heat. Still, most of the world was a lifeless inferno of reddish sand storms and baked rock, disfigured with immense impact craters and torturous volcanic mountains, some nearly a hundred thousand feet high. The air was nearly devoid of water and barely breathable. The only source of water was a small block of ice buried deep beneath the southern pole. At each pole, there was a small tract of land where daytime temperatures were usually tolerable, though they often fell far below freezing at night.

At the geographical South Pole, Outpost 8 had been built. It's neutron batteries were designed ostensibly to deflect asteroids. The only reason this dreary, lifeless world commanded any interest at all was that vanishing small patch of class L ecosphere where a porting station could be easily built and maintained at a reasonable distance from the Sagittarii Singularity. The singularity's event horizon warped space-time into a natural, if extremely risky porting target. It had allowed the initial transport of ships, materials and the first brave explorers who ventured exponentially farther from Earth than any human had ever gone before. After two years and heroic tenacity Outpost 8 was completed. From it, humanity intended to expand beyond the three already colonized worlds, a relative stone throw from Earth, into the very heart of the Milky Way, but just as the outpost became operational, space buoys appeared half a light year off. A mysterious and apparently unfriendly Empire already inhabited this star dense section of the galaxy and was warning them off. The only other intelligent life in the Universe was squarely blocking humanity's only path out of its remote corner of the galaxy. In response the ECC ordered the outpost evacuated. The discovery of other sentient beings was stunning and humanity needed time to digest it. The ECC concluded, rightly as it turned out, that the next move would come from the Empire.

As the ship materialized, Commander Frank sat coolly in his command chair focused on the maintenance and scheduling details that normally consumed a commander's duty hours. Bradley Williams, refreshed after a much-needed rest, gazed intently at the science station view screen while from the engineering station, Compton monitored the massive plasma engines that powered their sub-light journey from the outer asteroid belt in toward the G-0 star. The secondary star was not visible from the chosen approach angle but its gravitational influence tugged at the ship nonetheless, requiring a fine-tuning of its particle stream. The Cyborg needed no help from the navigational computer. He analyzed the smaller star's influence, ran the calculations through his own neural net and fed the compensation formula directly to the engines and micro thrusters. Thus, the materializing vessel glided effortlessly toward Outpost 8 with uncanny grace and elegance along an optimal trajectory, testimony to the ingenuity and determination of the human spirit. Frank's attention suddenly shifted toward the view screen, perhaps at some silent cue from his First Officer.

"Outpost 8 should be within sensor range in a few moments, sir," Williams announced.

"Compton, bring us about, standard circumpolar orbit," Frank ordered. "Full sensor sweep of the area. Mr. Adams, monitor for anything that might be communications."

"Aye, sir." Adams had uttered two syllables and the air was perfumed by his words. Every time, he spoke the team was aroused; only Compton was unaffected. Indeed, the Communications Officer's presence filled the Bridge with an aura of sensuality impossible to ignore.

Aiekno Adams, the fifth member of the skeleton crew, was handsome by any standard: tall, muscular, with icy blue eyes and a shaved head. Although his features were quite masculine, even rugged, as a Bardaj shaman, he radiated the androgynous eroticism characteristic of his faith. Honored and protected by their own Native American people for having two spirits, both male and female, they were nearly exterminated by Christian missionaries who condemned them as sodomites. Yet, they had survived and over the centuries their faith had deepened, matured and expanded to the stars. Adam's voice, thickly musical and richly expressive, gave even the simple acknowledgment of routine orders an intoxicating appeal. The explosive issues of gender and sexuality, which had wrecked havoc in human societies for millennia, were become meaningless trivia, but Bardjas could still distract by their mere presence. Adams hadn't had much time to make friends among the crew and was spending much of his social energy simply trying not to stick out like a sexual sore thumb. Brad Williams went out so much out of his way to be nice to him that Adams felt uncomfortable around him. As for Hector Troy's attention, Adams found it particularly awkward. He wasn't quite sure how to interpret it. He wondered if the security chief was interested, or if he had some how caught wind of his secret relationship. Commander Frank for his part was simply impressed with this Senior Officer whom he found to be highly efficient and remarkably sensitive. He could also lip sync entire scripts to old Earth movies and was far and away the best soccer player the ECC had ever produced, both passions Frank shared.

"Commander!" With another three syllables Adam's brought the entire Bridge to alert. "Outpost 8 is unresponsive. Our reintegration drained the batteries, and there's virtually no power left on the station."

Frank turned in his chair and leaned toward Compton.

The cyborg's ocular sensors guided his fingers across the controls with the speed of a cartoon super hero.

"I can detect no damage to the outpost, Commander, no indication of hostilities," he said.

"Well, someone pulled the plug, and now we can't get back," Williams observed.

"That is correct," the Cyborg replied. "In addition, no help can come to us."

"Opinion, Compton?"

"I am scanning the area around the outpost Commander, but as of yet I have detected no life forms nor any trace of vessels. A complete analysis will take time. The facility's nuclear generators could have simply malfunctioned."

"Unlikely," Frank muttered, "update the ECC, Mr. Adams." Adams sent the information instantly back to Earth via the ships state of the art entangled particle based communication system.

"Everyone stay calm," Frank said. "Let's not jump to any conclusions." The assumption, though, was automatic that somehow the Empire had struck. After a few minutes the Cyborg spoke again.

"There are no life forms on or near the outpost and no signs of combat, but I believe I have found a trail"

"Explain!"

"There is a thin layer of charged particles caught in the planet's electromagnetic field."

"Ion thrusters! The tangent, Compton! Which way did they go?" Williams' quick mind asked everyone's question.

Compton's gaze rose to the view screen.

"That way," he said, pointing with his velvet eyes towards the Singularity.

"Commander!" Adams shouted. "I am receiving a distress signal, a very weak one. It's from an Imperial vessel, Sir. The same frequency the warning buoys use. They claim that their life support systems are off line and they've only got a few minutes of air left."

"Can you confirm that, Compton?" asked Williams.

"No, Sir. I am unable to get a sensor lock on their coordinates."

"Why not?"

"There does not appear to be a vessel at the signal's point of origin."

"Well, what is there?"

"Nothing, sir. The signal is being bounced out of subspace. It is impossible to trace."

All eyes focused on Frank, whom everyone expected to unravel the growing enigma.

His brain worked. His eyes shifted uneasily from side to side and narrowed.

"A rabbit trap," he said firmly. "An old fashioned rabbit trap."

"Commander...?" The cyborg began to formulate a question.

"An obvious deception, Compton," Frank explained. "It's a trick. Someone is trying to lure us into Imperial space."

As soon as Frank had used the metaphor the ruse became transparent to everyone, but its purpose was still obscure.

"Well," said Frank, thinking aloud, "it seems someone went to a great deal of trouble. We can't disappoint them."

"Sir!" exclaimed Compton, totally perplexed. "You have just concluded, and I think correctly, that what lies ahead is a trap! Do you mean to fall into it purposely?"

"Can you think of a better way to find out what happened to Outpost 8?" he asked with a wry smile. The cyborg ran several thousand variables and millions of random scenarios through his processors and analyzed each probability, all within a fraction of a second.

"No Sir, I cannot"

"Then take us to the source of the distress signal, one quarter speed."

"Aye Sir".

The Cyborg's white fingers sailed over the controls. The ship, stranded twenty-five thousand light years from home, with shields down and weapons systems off line, left the relative security of Outpost 8 and lurched towards the Sagittarii Singularity and the mysterious Empire.

Chapter 11

The crew was tense. Without shields a single well-aimed or lucky plasma blast could shatter the ship. This close to the singularity even a rapidly rotating random rock could spell disaster. However pure their intentions, as soon as they defied the Imperial warning buoys, they became legitimate military targets. The EEC could not protect them and even if the Empire bothered with prisoners they would be treated as war criminals.

"Stay alert everyone!" cried William.

Compton guided the ship toward that exact point in space from which the cry for help had come.

"Mr Williams, 360 degrees continuous scanning," he said.

"Already in progress, Commander."

"Be prepared for full reverse, on my mark, back the way we came."

"Aye, sir," Compton acknowledged.

The ship crept toward the trap set for them until they were on top of the transmission. The crew froze in place expecting for endless seconds some great effect from their intrusion into Imperial space. Nothing happened.

"Well, here we are," said Williams brightly, "and surprise, surprise, no ship."

"I am still getting the standard recorded warnings from the buoys, sir," said Adams. "You have violated Imperial Space. Leave at once or be destroyed, bla, bla, bla."

" Of course you are." Frank exhaled a slightly frustrated breath. "Lovely. Let's play out our part to the end, what do you say, Brad?" With that, he tapped his fingers down on the command chair. "And now, Compton, hard a stern."

Obediently, the engines whined, and the ship lurched backward. In seconds, a plasma blast passed ominously across their path.

"Two ships are approaching, sir!" called Compton. "One behind and one in front. They're blocking our retreat."

"Where the hell did they come from?" cried Brad Williams.

"They must have approached on a tangent angle to the Singularity's event horizon," Compton answered.

"Full stop."

"Aye, sir," the Cyborg repeated calmly.

"Commander!" Adams cried, but before the Communications Offer could continue, Frank spoke.

"Put them on screen, Mr. Adams."

"Yes, sir. On screen."

"And the trap is sprung," said Frank.

"Commander?" Compton said, "These vessels are obviously hostile, and I am unable to fathom the purpose of their warning shot, but since they have fired weapons, should we not raise our shields?"

"Absolutely not, Compton. I believe we have something they want, though I'm sure I don't know what it could be. Let's hear what they have to say, and we may learn something useful."

Frank gazed intently at the view screen. The stars wobbled out of focus, followed briefly by a hazy blue blur. As the interstellar static cleared, a face began to take shape, handsome, arrogant, but impossibly young. The dark haired teenager, with mischievous blue eyes and pale greenish skin spoke with authority.

"I am Admiral Zar! You have been identified as an Earth vessel. Your presence here constitutes an act of war and your ship is forfeit. Any attempt to escape or raise your shields will result in instant destruction. Prepare to be boarded!"

Frank and Williams exchanged stunned glances. They were being ordered to surrender by a boy.

Frank shifted in his chair, stifled a grin, cleared his throat and spoke.

"This is Commander Henry Frank. We were responding to a distress signal, as you well know."

"Distress signal? We sent no distress signal. We detected no distress single. Whatever are you talking about, Frank?" the boy snapped.

"Young man," Frank began.

"Admiral!" he shouted.

Frank could not help but smile.

"Admiral. Please forgive me. You know very well that a distress signal was bounced out of hyperspace at this very location. Now, falsifying a distress signal ought to be against the moral sense of every intelligent...."

"You villain!" Zar interrupted. "You violate our space and then accuse us of treachery? Prepare to be boarded!"

"Any one who attempts to board this vessel without authorization from me" Frank said quickly and firmly, "will be thrown into the brig."

The boy was stunned. His mouth hung open for a few ridiculous seconds as words eluded him. His face flushed bright green as the fury built inside him.

"You will be destroyed!" he taunted, but his threat was a singsong.

"Admiral," said Frank in his calmest, most indulgent tone, "do what you must, but we pose no threat to you or your Empire. We came because we perceived an obviously falsified distress signal as perhaps the Imperial version of an invitation. We came with our shields down and weapons systems off line. We came in peace. We are going back the same way."

Adams cut communications at Frank's signal just as the boy gasped, all rage vanishing from his astonished face.

Frank stood up and looked about at his questioning crew. He silently counted to ten.

"Compton, take us back the way we came, one quarter speed."

"What of the facilities on Outpost 8, our orders?"

"It's coming in a moment, Compton. In a moment?."

The cyborg obediently engaged the engines and the ship imperceptivity moved backward. Seconds later, Lieutenant Adams called over his shoulder.

"It's them again, Commander. They're hailing us."

"Full stop. Put it on Screen, Mr. Adams."

The same young face materialized, but this time another young male, perhaps twenty, with long yellow hair, was with him. His jade green eyes stared in child like wonder at the humans on the bridge.

"Yes Admiral?"

"Commander, please, let us try and resolve this matter rationally. You are obviously in violation of our space, but we are willing to forgo your formal surrender if my assistant and I can meet with you aboard your vessel."

Frank smiled.

"I would be honored, but we must proceed back to Outpost 8 immediately and continue our investigation."

There was a pause. The blond youngster leaned over and whispered something into his friend's ear. Finally, the dark haired boy replied.

"We need your help, Commander. May we come aboard? Please?"

"Very well." Frank yielded. "Both of you can shuttle over in 20 minutes."

Adams closed communications at Frank's signal.

"Whaddya make of that?" Bradley Williams asked as soon as the boys smiling images had evaporated off the screen.

Before Frank could answer, Compton interrupted.

"Commander, I must correct an earlier error."

"An error, Compton? You?"

"Yes sir. I must report that the vessel in our rear is nothing more than a hologram, and a crude one at that. The first ship must have inverted its shield refraction coil and projected its own image behind us. The sensor ghost is distorting the lingering de Brogli wave patterns that brought us here." In evidence, the Cyborg displayed them on the enormous viewing screen. Adams studied them intently. "I did not detect the deception earlier," he paused and glanced over at Williams, "because it was so obvious."

"Stand by your sensors, Compton. After they launch, scan them. I've a sneaky suspicion that you'll detect no more than a hand full of life forms."

"That conclusion is illogical, sir" said Compton. "A ship that size would typically house a crew of a dozen or more."

"A typical space ship is not commanded by children and if they were truly hostile they would have blown us apart without so much talk."

The cyborg shrugged off his utter incomprehension of the phenomenon and simply recognized the intuitive insight.

"I suspect, Commander," the Cyborg said, "that you have what is popularly called 'a hunch'."

"Brad, Hector, to the briefing room. Compton, you have the Con."

"Commander, I would like to be included," said Adams urgently.

"Very well Mr. Adams, you're with us."

Humanity

Chapter 12

Days before Henry Frank was ordered to investigate the strange signals near Outpost 8, ECC experts began sifting the reams of new data coming in from the outpost. Preliminary observations had suggested the Empire had nothing so advanced as porting technology. Instead, all evidence had indicated that humanity was by several centuries the more advanced species, despite centuries of abuse at the hands of a consumptive corporate tyranny. Half a millennia of vulture capitalism had returned an Earth where hundreds owned more than billions. Its collapse cost billions of lives and a poisoned planet. The ECC, which now provided humanity with justice, security and a common future, evolved directed from the GCRF, the Global Cyber Resistance Front, the umbrella opposition group that ultimately prevailed. Its headquarters were some fifty light years from Earth on HD40307g, where it had fled during the Fascist Civil Wars.

HD40307g was a steamy world, fifth from its fierce orange sun and the only planet in its solar system capable of supporting life. It was first detected early in the 21st Century and later renamed Tuomi to honor its Japanese discoverer. Soupy green oceans and dense forests produced an oxygen rich atmosphere that supported an accelerated cycle of growth and decay and a diverse insect population that varied from delightfully elegant to terrifyingly gargantuan. The multi-generational voyage had taken a century. As soon as Outpost 4 was operational, some of its first customers were from the GCRF. While the old world convulsed, humanity's third Earth blossomed. Its power would eventually put out the great conflagrations back home and provide the centripetal force to hold the species together.

Capital City had literally grown up around ECC headquarters into a sprawling high tech metropolis. Its three hundred million souls made it humanity's second largest city. The site, nestled high between the two great southern and eastern arms of the tallest mountain on the planet, was as eminently defendable as it was inaccessible. To the northwest the great mountain loomed and to the southeast a ferocious sea churned amidst a labyrinth of deadly rocks. From the mountain's summit, the city was guarded by state of the art technology that endlessly scanned the heavens. Although humanity hadn't seen war for half a century, its paranoia was dying slowly and now, the emergence of a shadowy Empire had given it a whole new lease on life.

Ian Paige had set his entire career against that trend. He was a slight, serious, and meticulous leader fast approaching middle age. At the pinnacle of his power, he was in the midst of his third and final three-year term as Chair of the ECC Security Counsel. While the ECC had a nominal President and Vice President, the ECC Security Chair was Commander in Chief of Armed Forces, General Secretary and effectively the leader of humanity.

Paige's power flowed directly from billions of votes won in publically financed elections devoid of political parties. Brilliant, eloquent, visionary, transgender, he had provided humanity with steady leadership for the last seven years. Paige was an immensely popular leader, despite the plethora of compromises that had defined his tenure. The public respected his flexibility, inherent sense of fairness, distain for special interests and resurgent partisan tendencies. Of course, Paige had opposition, even enemies. Reactionary forces, like cancer stem cells, still lay dormant, good intentioned or not, ready to plunge humanity into a new dark age of materialism and conflict. The power of the military-industrial complex had been checked, but not broken. There were those too who still preferred to distribute wealth unevenly. In mockery, they had dubbed him 'Her Nibs' but supporters, in reference to spidery patience and acerbic wit, also used it, although never to his face.

The emergence of the Empire had tried not only Paige's leadership but also humanity's collective vision of the very universe they inhabited. Not since the coming of Christ had the human paradigm been so tested. Despite opposition, Paige was reelected handily to his third and final term.

An immense crowd had gathered to hear his final inaugural address, knowing he was sure to speak about the Empire. Weeks of wet weather had turned the Capital City Mall, an immense public park that surrounded ECC's central offices, into a steamy marsh of soggy grass and slippery stones. Yet thousands of spectators had assembled to hear him. Billions more listened at home. Just as he started to speak, the grey clouds parted and the orange sun burst forth. "We are not alone, as it turns out," he had said "and our fellow creatures cannot be forced into accord anymore than the Universe we share. It flows in its own way. If we become negative, react fearfully and thoughtlessly, then we shall surely flow against it and the whole cosmos will become hostile to us. If we remain positive, respond lovingly, then we shall just as surely flow with it to a bright and common destiny." The crowd reacted with mass approbation. He had calmed their fears, rekindled their core beliefs and given them hope. Humanity, for the moment, was listening.

Paige was first and foremost an historian and a realist who had few illusions regarding motives and likely outcomes. His primary duty as General Secretary was the protection of humanity, but if the experts were right, and humanity proved the more technically advanced civilization, his highest moral priority could quickly become the protection of the Empire. Humanity's first interaction with another sentient species would not, if he had anything to say about it, end in another genocide. The ECC was a rich and diverse armamentarium that he fully intended to use in the peaceful resolution of the crisis. Henry Frank was the best-honed tool in the box.

Paige's office was a surprisingly small affair devoid of any personal affects, holograms or awards. An obsidian desk, like a translucent black semi circle, with Paige at its center, along with a few antique books on antique cases, were all that adorned the brightly lit room. The lighting came exclusively from floor to ceiling windows that afforded a spectacular view of the City and the huge purple mountain looming in the distance. Paige sat in an oversized comfortable black leather chair that lent to his childlike aura. He was sifting through his daily briefings and tapping his fingers mindlessly on the smoky desktop when a note, like the tone of a gong rang out. At that precise moment the pocket doors opened and Commander Henry Frank stepped in. He had shuttled down from his orbiting vessel yesterday as ordered. Paige rose and reached his slender feminine hand over the desk.

"Good to see you, Henry. Have a seat."

"Thanks boss," Frank plopped himself down in the matching leather chair to Paige's right.

"I asked to see you alone this morning," he began, rubbing his tired eyes, "so you'll have the cover to make whatever decision is required at whatever critical moment, whenever it comes."

"I understand," he said gratefully.

"And," Paige continued more earnestly, "Because I want there to be no misunderstandings between us."

"I read through the briefs before I got here, heard all the opinions last night, sir," Frank responded quizzically. "Things seem pretty clear to me"

"I'm not talking about operations, Henry."

"What then?"

"I'm talking about what happens next, after we make contact."

"The Empire doesn't have porting technology, does it, Sir?"

"I don't think so, Henry. No."

"So what's all the chatter about an invasion, then? It's splattered on the front pages of all the newspapers and it's on all the Sunday morning talk shows. If they can't port, they can't get here. They're twenty-five thousand light years away, for Pete's sake. They might as well not exist."

"That's not exactly true, Henry." Paige again rubbed his eyes. "There is a great deal of pressure," he confessed, "coming from those driven by curiosity, paranoia? opportunism. There's a consensus building around preparedness, a military build up to meet any eventuality."

"And you oppose that?"

"No, not entirely. I'm not a pacifist."

"Then what's the issue? Do what you do best. Forge middle ground. How does that affect my orders?"

"Henry, I've got another year and a half at this desk and then it will be someone else's turn, but the tenor of first contact will be set on my watch and it's likely to set the tone for next phase of human development. When we built Outpost 8, hitting the singularity event horizon at just the right angle to reintegrate the signal, that was a stroke of genius and of incredible luck. It opened up a whole cluster of mesoplanets for exploration and colonization. Then this Empire pops up in our path."

"I see."

"Do you really see, Henry? Without porting technology, they're practically defenseless, ?defenseless and in our way."

Franks was at last beginning to really understand his boss.

"If I were them," Paige continued, "and an alien species suddenly appeared on our door step, out of nowhere, with fantastic technology, I'd be petrified. Scared to death."

"The warning buoys." Frank was making the connections.

"Precisely. These creatures don't know anything about us, except what we say about ourselves and they're just plain terrified. We don't know anything about them either. Nothing. Not how they think, or what they look like, not even how many of them there are. So when your ship appears, out of nowhere?."

"Do you think they tried to attack the outpost?" Frank interrupted.

"No idea," said Paige. "That's the key question, isn't it? If they could have destroyed it, why didn't they? Is this their way of making first contact? Did they mean to leave it operational, fake the porting signature and disable the communications to lure us in, to steal the technology? Or maybe they want hostages," he said ominously. At last Frank thought he understood.

"We're the draw."

"Envoys," he proffered. "That's why you're going in with a skeleton crew, unarmed and with shields down."

Frank's face showed he was far from pleased and far from convinced.

"Do you want me to tell you that I know this won't get ugly? I can't because I don't," Paige continued. "I don't know what these creatures want, but obviously they want something, unless this is some kind of interstellar game of ring and run." Frank was unmoved, but stayed quiet. He knew his boss and sensed more was coming.

"Look, Henry," Paige said finally, "it's a lousy job, but I need you and your team to do it. You're the best we've got." His eyes fell down to his black glass desk. Here it comes Frank thought.

"Whoever makes this first contact becomes an instant celebrity," he said, " Not just on our world, but on theirs. He'll have firsthand knowledge of our new friends that no one else will. They'll trust that person in a special and unique way. I want that person to be you, Henry. I'm fingering you to take my place here."

Frank felt the air knocked out of him. He never expected it. He fancied himself the best officer in the fleet, and certainly Paige's favorite, but never had he expressed any political aspirations nor had Paige indicated that he had such ambitions for him.

His mind flashed back to his childhood on Earth, galloping along side his five older brothers, herding hundreds of cattle over dusty red soil towards the lush pastures nearer the mountains. His oldest brother, head of the family since his father died, led the group. At a critical turn, he fell from his horse, allowing a group of mavericks to split off from the heard. He remembered the excruciating agony in his chest and shoulder as his clavicle shattered, but the pain was nothing compared to the humiliation. Generations of Franks had scraped out a decent but unremarkable living on the family's Colorado ranch, but Henry always felt awkward and untalented. No matter how much he resembled one, he was no cowboy. He was unlike any of his siblings. They were all married and had families, but he was different. His face was always pointed upwards, towards the stars. To the astonishment of his relatives, he was the first and only member of his line to join the academy, although fled to the academy would have been nearer the mark. The ECC academy had trained him and honed his natural abilities. In its nurturing environment he had excelled. Now he was poised to be the leader of humanity. He was flattered, frightened and horrified all at the same moment.

"I don't know what to say, Ian."

"Then don't say anything. I didn't ask a question, so I don't expect an answer. I'm simply expressing my preference. If this mission goes well, I think I'll have the influence to make it so."

"Why me?"

"Because you're wicked smart, a natural leader, people instinctively like you and trust you and I think my successor ought to come from the military. Most importantly you're a kind, decent and compassionate man"

"Well, thank you," Frank said deeply touched.

"Those are not always complementary qualities, Henry, but they are absolutely required if the next decade isn't to end up in a blood bath."

Frank was aghast.

"Good God, Ian," he cried, "you do think they mean an attack?"

"No Henry. I'm not talking about human blood."

Henry Frank fell back into the leather chair. At last he understood.

Chapter 13

Compton was man and machine, more than both yet less than either. His own generation, and himself had regarded the man, as the greatest physicist of all time. His genius had created the porting technology that was hurtling men across the galaxy. With it came an adventurous, erratic and passionate personality that hated all boundaries and limitation. Irresistible personal and physical charms made him a celebrity, but the man had a dark side. Vain, pedantic, self-serving and utterly ruthless, he was tragically unfit for high command. Yet his defection to the GCRF was essential to ultimate victory. With deep gratitude and grave reservations he was given control of all porting research. The mundane he left to underlings, as the multigenerational task could not be completed until receivers were constructed on target worlds. His mind and his ego needed quicker gratification. Cutting research was the main focus of his brilliance.

As Compton aged and the GCRF morphed into the ECC, his research became an obsession. Some said it was madness, others another bolt of that brilliant lightening that normally strikes a fellow only once in a lifetime. He conceived to port consciousness itself through the illusions of time and space, achieving omnipresence and immortality at the same moment. He fashioned an incredible receptacle, made in his own image, and designed for that day when his mind should outgrow or outlast his body. Secrecy as much as expedience compelled him to self-experimentation, so on that fateful day, when something went horribly wrong, he was completely alone in the laboratory. Otherwise, it is unlikely that the disaster would have happened. Another mind would have surely realized that the energy copying his neural network was simultaneously disintegrating it. Another pair of hands would have cut the power. Anything salvaged was thanks to the fail-safes Compton himself had installed. As his vital signs faded all that remained of his intellect was automatically transferred and sealed within the magnificent receptacle. As Compton the man died, the Cyborg was born, a mere echo of his great mind.

Initially, his consciousness, housed in a vast network of highly interconnected super processing elements, retained only rudiments of self-awareness. But these were sufficient to struggle, like a sleeper desperately grasping through dreams at a distant and misty waking. At first, progress was rapid as the greatest minds in the ECC were recruited to the effort and unlimited capacity brought on line. Hopes were high that the inadvertent experiment would achieve spectacular results, perhaps even a breakthrough in human evolution, but at last it became clear, even to Compton, that a certain spark, an evocative essence had been lost. The experiment would never be repeated. For Compton the machine could think but not feel, reason but not create, evaluate but not love. Strikingly, along with his angels, his demons had also departed. Vanity and self-serving ruthlessness vanished. His mind and body were faster, his thinking clearer and more organized, his efforts more focused, his decisions unanimous and devoid of regret. Over the centuries he became the ablest and most trusted officer in the ECC. Yet without that spark, he could not command. This limitation was utterly logical, not hateful to him. Without pride he lived humbly.

To Henry Frank, Compton was absolutely critical to the success of the mission. No one else combined his vast experience, analytical ability, and objectivity with the strength, speed and dexterity of a super hero. Devoid of ambition, he served with ardent loyalty. Had Ian Paige not recommended him for this assignment, Frank would have insisted upon him. A special bond had arisen between them over the years. It began as a student's infatuation with an influential teacher and developed into the closest thing to true friendship that Compton, either the man or the machine, had ever achieved. It was natural then, for him to reach out to Henry Frank as he struggled to regain his humanity.

"I trust your meeting with Secretary Paige was productive," said Compton as Frank returned to their quarters.

"Are you curious?" he asked teasingly.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, that's progress," Frank smiled.

"Curiosity, Commander, is something I have always experienced as a quality related to inquisitive thinking. However, the emotional satisfaction that often rewards it continues to elude me."

"I know, Compton. I know." The pity in Frank's voice was completely lost on the Cyborg, who smiled awkwardly. Frank flung himself into the gray fabric armchair that stood between the dining and living areas of the small square room. He unbuttoned the collar of his beige uniform and tossed his black belt and firearm onto the round wooden coffee table.

"Did he provide any additional information?"

"No, not really," Frank fibbed.

"Commander, I detect a falsehood," he said innocently.

"What makes you say that?"

"Your meaningless equivocation"

Frank chuckled.

"Alright, Compton, alright. No. Nothing new about the mission."

"Are you unable or unwilling to confide in me?"

"You are curious, aren't you?"

"As I previously indicated, sir, yes I am"

Frank was being backed into corner. The Cyborg knew him too well for anything but an out and out lie, which made Frank uncomfortable. Yet he felt strangely immodest about sharing Ian Paige's political ambitions for him. Instead, he wondered if Compton could be distracted.

He scanned the Cyborg's silvery face for any sign of emotion. As usual, his features were pleasant but void. Frank held out his hand and Compton stepped over to take it. Aside from its odd silvery color, his skin looked and felt natural, soft, warm and completely human. On duty, he kept his white hair retracted to crew cut length, but now, his thick curls were extended and fell to his shoulders. It was the only hair on his body. His musculature, perfectly proportioned and designed after a practiced gymnast, belied his superhuman strength. He took neither food nor drink, needed no exercise or rest, but in all other matters, he was anatomically human, complete and correct. Not surprisingly, Compton the man, his own creator, had been generous to himself.

"Have you made additional connections since our last secession?" Frank asked, changing the subject and stroking the Cyborg's hand.

"Yes sir, but nothing novel, and as always, most disintegrated rapidly."

"But you still find them useful?"

"Most definitely. While the tenor may be indiscernible to you, such sessions are the only stimulations that significantly impact my connective density."

"I see," said Frank, oddly pleased. "I suppose I'm flattered."

"I do appreciate your willingness," the Cyborg said, coming as close to true gratitude as was possible for him. "I estimate that at our current rate, I shall achieve critical density in another decade."

"And then what?"

"I do not know, sir". Looking down at Frank, the Cyborg almost smiled, and Frank thought he saw a stirring, a barely perceivable twinkle, in the unfathomable depths of his purple eyes.

"But I am curious."

Frank felt himself stirring as the Cyborg's fingers warmed perceptively and began gently stroking him back.

"We shuttle back to the ship in the morning, but I think we can squeeze in another session this evening," Frank said playfully, "if you're up for it."

"That would be most generous of you, Sir. Thank you".

" No need to thank me. I very much enjoy our sessions too."

"I perceive that Commander, and believe it vital to their efficacy."

The two retired to the cozy bedroom behind the living area. In its center was a queen bed. Compton did not sleep and so the bed ostensibly offered plenty of room for Frank alone. They had agreed to keep their sessions private, at least temporarily, to avoid long-winded explanations and potentially awkward questions. However, both were aware that success would impart the responsibility to report.

The Cyborg removed his shirt, revealing not only his perfectly chiseled physique, but also a series of access ports scattered across the front of his upper body. Eight tiny holes opened below his right shoulder, just under the clavicle. They ran across this chest in three groups, two above, four in the middle and two below. Lower, towards the center of his left chest, just above the nipple, were two larger holes, one above the other.

Finally, two large holes punctured his abdominal muscles, on either side of his purely decorative navel. The Cyborg began to assemble a small but powerful monitoring station, its operating system directly linked to the ship's mainframe. While Frank watched and waited, he began to connect himself in rapid, but precise sequence. Next, he produced two semi circular pads and placed one on either side of his head, just above each eye. Finally, he lay flat on his back and beckoned to Frank.

"I am ready, Commander," he said.

Frank stepped towards the monitoring station and keyed in the commands that immobilized him. Frank became instantly erect. He always found the sight of Compton's flawless, half naked body helplessly tied into the electrical equipment excitingly erotic. He ran his hands across his chest and then down over his rippled abdominals. Compton's simulated breathing quickened discernibly as Henry's hands moved lower and began massaging his pelvis. There was pulsing growth and struggle beneath the fabric. Henry obligingly released it. While the anatomically perfect genitalia were average sized, complete hairlessness made them seem larger. Henry grasped the silvery penis in one hand and began to pump it in rhythm with the Cyborg's breath. With his other hand, he explored the vestigial rectum, whose detailed construction reflected Compton the Man's true preferences. The Cyborg wriggled in response. As he was entered, the stock void of his velvet eyes suddenly flashed with sensation. Frank probed deeper, opening him wider, until his entire hand had passed into the tight misty warmth, a passage built for just such purposes. Compton's struggles against his bonds intensified as Frank delved deeper. Beads of sweat erupted all over his wriggling silver body. The anatomical detail never ceased to amaze Frank. With practiced precision, Frank pulled out and Compton's body, suddenly emptied, relaxed and rocked sideways.

Before the Cyborg's breathing rhythm equilibrated, Henry disrobed, grabbed a handful of long white hair and forced his manhood down Compton's throat. The hot, wet metrical imbibing conformed perfectly to Frank's ample anatomy. Compton's astonishingly nimble fingers joined the effort. Frank's own hands again began to roam again over the Cyborg's sculptured form. Random flashes, like a living lightening ignited his purple eyes as he pleasured Frank. Erotic, romantic and deliciously wicked all at once, it drove Frank wild with a desire and a passion that he had never found with anyone else. With uncanny insight he knew that Compton the man was in there somewhere and he wanted him.

Lowering himself upon the helpless Cyborg, pinning his arms over his head and raising his legs, Frank entered him. The receptive tubing closed completely around Frank's flesh and began a studied pulsing, milking motion, calculated to produce exquisite sensation. Henry's lungs billowed as he began to pump in harmony. With each thrust, their eyes met, and Frank, in his ecstasy, swore that he touched Compton the man. He desperately wanted release, but his efforts were now aimed at something more than his own pleasure. Henry Frank knew that the longer he persisted, the greater would be the benefit. Running his fingers through Compton's hair, gazing searchingly into his eyes, he held out for as long as he could, past the point of pleasure, until primal biology could no longer be restrained. He emptied himself into the Cyborg, and in that instant, the purple lightning flashed its brightest. Just as instantly, just as his passion was spent, it was gone. All that remained was Compton the Machine, albeit imperceptibly changed.

Frank was bowed into a heaving mass of sweaty flesh. After a few exhausted breaths, he reached the monitor and keyed in the commands releasing Compton. Wiping his brow, he watched the wholly indifferent Cyborg unplug himself.

"Thank you, Commander," he said. "That was indeed stimulating."

Frank tried to smile.

"Are you unable or unwilling to confide in me?" Compton repeated dryly. Frank realized his attempt at distraction had failed utterly.

"You bastard!" he cried.

"I beg your pardon, Sir?" the Cyborg asked in total incomprehension. The perplexed look on his face was vintage Compton. Henry Frank felt a tug at his heartstrings. His feelings for him had clearly passed through friendship into something more.

Chapter 14

Days before the Earth ship would make its rendezvous with the mysterious Empire, a small sailboat turned effortlessly into a shimmering black canal, putting a tranquil bay and a setting yellow sun to its rudder. Over the bow an enormous blue planet rose in the darkening east. Only a few potent stars could compete with it. Of the two men on board, only one, the taller, darker, figure was steering. The other, younger, thicker and scruffier reclined lazily in his shipmate's lap. Both wore bikini swim trunks and both were dripping wet.

"Look at that!" said the reclining figure, gazing at the rising blue crescent. "That's so beautiful! I've never seen anything like it. I'm so glad we decided to come here for shore leave instead of Earth."

"It's very romantic," his companion said softly. "I'm glad you came."

"Well, thank you for inviting me. I've wanted to put the moves on you for a while but I never had the guts."

Hector Troy smirked. "Why? Am I that intimidating?"

"Yes!" Bradley Williams shot back.

"Ha! That's funny!" chortled the Security Chief, flexing his smooth, brown chest and knotty arms. "You're twelve years my junior, and technically, you rank me. How could I possibly intimidate you?"

"It's true! You're always so professional not to mention gorgeous. Besides, I was sure you had the hots for the Commander."

"I do, but that's not going anywhere."

"Ah," said Brad sardonically, "so I'm the first runner up?"

"What makes you think that?"

"You mean you turned him down?"

"No, I mean what makes you think you're even second, that I didn't go after Adams or Compton before you?"

"Bitch!" hissed Brad, struggling playfully against Hector's embrace. "I'm joking!" Troy laughed. "Henry and I talked about it and we both decided it wasn't going to work out between us. And frankly, the reason was you, if that makes you feel any better."

"How do you mean?"

"I've had my eye on you since your first day at the Academy. Let's just say that neither Henry nor I are 'share and share alike' types."

"Uh huh," grunted Williams, "So why didn't you ever make a move on me before?"

"I just had a lot going on."

"You mean with Les?"

"Yeah, Les was part of it, a big part, but the truth is, it was just Les and I for so long that I wasn't prepared to share my life with anyone. I wasn't ready for Mr. Right."

"Aw, that's very sweet. I think. But I wouldn't have minded being Mr. Right Now, you know, at least for an evening or two"

"Yeah, I figured that, but I'm glad we waited."

"I suppose?" said Brad, slightly frustrated.

"It's how I am. It's got to mean something or it doesn't happen."

"Well, this obviously means something, then," Brad cooed, as he nestled into Hector's lap and felt its suddenly rising firmament.

"Easy, partner. Don't wake that pony unless you mean to ride him."

Brad reached for Hector's hand and softly guided it onto the golden nylon struggling to contain his own expanding virility.

"Does that communicate my intentions?"

Hector slipped his hand underneath the wet suit and began massaging the throbbing hot flesh.

"Perfectly," he sighed.

"Make you forget Adams?" Brad asked playfully.

Troy snickered. "I'm too old for Adams, and I'm pretty sure he and Les have a thing going on anyway. So it would be completely weird."

"Seriously? What makes you think that?"

"Oh, let's see, the way Les talks about 'Akky' all the time, the way Adams squirms whenever he's around me. Plus, I've just heard through the grape vine they've been spending a lot of time together on Gliese."

"In other words, you've been spying on them."

"Totally. I'm a Dad. It's what we do. Apparently, Adams likes boys and Les has a daddy complex."

"Well, I sympathize with him!" Brad giggled, pulsing himself in Hector's firm grasp. As he massaged Brad's organ, Troy looked down into his round, boyish face with its wide amber eyes and scruffy red outline. Thick, auburn hair, dripping wet, fell across Brad's forehead, glimmering in the rosy twilight. A few lingering freckles danced on his thin, slightly upturned nose.

"You are a intensely handsome young man," Troy whispered, staring at Brad's freckly broad shoulders and lightly hairy chest. The eye candy included fleshy brown nipples, a hard six-pack and a thin, gingery treasure-trail that disappeared into his swimsuit.

"Glad you like it!" Brad chuckled. He purposely lowered his diaphragm to create enough space for his manhood to pop out, in full view, alongside Hector's groping wrist.

"Luscious," Hector sighed, stroking the underside of Brad's engorged pons, peaking out from beneath its foreskin like a curious puppy.

"I'm glad you like that too," Brad returned. He loved seeing himself in Troy's strong grip. He found the contrast between his pale skin and Hector's brown complexion very erotic.

"So," he said turning round suddenly, sliding his bristly chin over Hector's bursting crotch.

"It feels like this pony is chomping at the bit to come out and play." He looked up into Hector's smiling brown eyes, ruggedly handsome face and smooth, muscled body. He slowly rolled down the wet blue fabric until there were no secrets between them.

"Cut!" he said in surprise. "How 'bout that!"

"It's a tradition in our family. Does it bother you?"

"Not at all!" Brad said cheerfully. "It's beautiful."

"Well, I'm glad you feel that way. I'm a bit self conscious about it."

"Nah, I like it. And there's plenty left!' he said, playfully stroking it.

The boat began to sail zigzag through the channel. The companions, lost in their petting, had barely noticed the immense blue world rising in front of them grow markedly larger. It became bright enough to focus Troy's peripheral attention back onto the suddenly urgent task of avoiding sand bars. He peeked over his shoulder towards the glow of city lights that had crept high into the western horizon.

"Shit, it got late!" he said in astonishment.

"No rush, darling," said Brad, snapping Troy's baloney pony back into its corral and re-adjusting his own. "We've got all night"

"Yes, but it gets cold here once the sun sets. We'll freeze our balls off if we don't get back to the beach house and start a fire. The winds 'bout died too."

"Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breathe nor motion; As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean." Brad chanted the ancient rhyme.

"Cute," Troy smiled, "now get the oars and start paddling.

"Yes, sir!" Brad teased.

The rising blue planet was Tau Ceti F, the fifth planet orbiting a very Sol-like star less than a dozen light years from Earth. The lush, watery, astonishingly earth-like world that Hector and Brad were sailing upon was its much smaller companion, simply called Tau. Both industrial hub and pleasure dome, Tau represented a new Earth and another chance for humanity to live within its ecological and technological means. Although the planetary system was close to Earth, its colonization was delayed because initial estimations missed the earth-like moon and predicted a single, enormous uninhabitable ice world. Instead, Tau Ceti F was a huge, watery planet with only scattered atolls, the peaks of vast undersea volcanoes, rising to sea level. Terrestrial life was indeed impossible on it as none of its atolls were consistently above the incessant tidal waves, but the water world teamed with life and Tau Ceti seafood, widely exported, was some of humanity's most sought after delicacies.

The glowing city lights behind them came from New Petrograd named in honor of Peter the Great's beautiful city, Russia's ancient window on the West. Like its namesake it was a metropolis of extremes. In summer months it was a balmy combination of Venice and Monaco, but in winter it was as cold and dreary as the city it was named for. It was a hundred fold larger than Saint Petersburg had ever been. Home to half a billion souls, it was the largest human city ever built.

The companions rowed through the narrow inlet that connected a tranquil green bay to a restless gray ocean. The wind picked up, and they sped along the coast only a few hundred yards from the foamy white sand. The sun was gone, but Tau Ceti F, like an immense blue lantern enveloping half the horizon, reflected enough sunlight to illuminate the shore and cast shadows onto the beach.

Their destination was Knotty Pines, an old beach community with a sordid history and an exclusive reputation. It took its name from a twisted species of gymnosperm that had adapted itself to the extreme environment. A hundred and fifty summer homes, some no more than cottages, others veritable wooden mansions, dotted the shores of the narrow sickle shaped breakwater. All the homes, bay or ocean side, were built on enormous hundred foot long, five foot wide red wood pylons, driven 50 feet into the sand. They had to be. For twice a month when the massive blue planet tugged, the ocean poured in, plunging the beachhead 20 feet under the sea. Less than an hour sailing from the inlet they turned towards shore and docked under a snug, rectangular structure built high over the shifting sands. The pair climbed up a narrow wooden staircase and slipped through the floor of a wide teak deck past French doors and into the grey beach house.

Within the hour a broad fire crackled behind an antique brass screen. Dinner had been a smorgasbord of ocean delicacies. Brad, never much for seafood, was nevertheless delightedly stuffed. Ever the showoff, the kitchen was Troy's second favorite room in the house. An impressed and much contented Brad Williams again reclined lazily in his Security Chief's lap, this time in front of a few smoldering logs. In deference to the cool night, they had changed into a matching pair of warm gray sweats.

"That was an amazing meal, Hector. You're a man of many talents."

"You have no idea. Yet."

"Oh? Am I finally going to get that pony ride?

"Only if you're a good boy."

"Ah, well, now that's what I call incentive. What do I need to do?"

"Just follow my orders" Troy chucked.

"Aye, Sir! Oh, and speaking of which."

"Yeah, I know. Henry. I'll have a talk with him."

"Really? That would be great. He's a nice guy and all, and I hate to hurt his feelings. Especially since he's my commanding officer."

"Yeah, mine too!" Hector said, a little ruefully.

"But you know him a lot better than I do," Brad countered

"He's a good guy," Hector assured him. "He'll understand."

"Good. So did you guys ever do it"?

"Nah, we talked about it, like I said, but I'm not like that."

"Right. Monogamy. Like geese."

"Quack!" Hector chortled.

"Alright, alright, we're getting ahead of ourselves," Brad said quickly.

"Just a bit," Troy agreed.

"Talk to Henry so it won't be weird."

"Yes, sir! Just as soon as we get back."

"Thank you, Hector. Just remember, he's got a lot on his mind."

"With the Empire you mean? The porting signals?" Troy raised a newspaper in evidence. Its headlines abounded with rumor and innuendos, quotes and misquotes, regarding the mysterious signals reported from Outpost 8. Half dozen articles reviewed everything humanity knew about the mysterious Empire, which was practically nothing. That didn't stop pundits and self-proclaimed experts from insinuating nefarious intentions and predicting dreadful calamity. Bitter experience had checked corporate greed but after four hundred years humans remained entertained and all too often actuated by fear.

"We don't know they're porting signals," Brad corrected, dismissing the headlines. "From what I've heard, The ECC doesn't think so, but yes. He's meeting with Compton and the high command over the next few days, to try and figure out what to do"

"Good luck with Her Nibs. I know what I'd do," said Troy.

"What's that?"

"The sure fire way to end up in a war is to be unprepared for one. Weakness is provocative. The Empire needs to know that we can and will defend ourselves, ruthlessly."

"That sounds serious," said Williams, immediately sorry for the trajectory of the conversation.

"It is serious, Brad. Look at our own history. Whenever an advanced civilization encountered primitives, the primitives got annihilated"

"Well, maybe they're not like us."

"Based on those warning buoys I'd say they're worse," returned Troy.

"Yeah." Brad began to panic. He shared Troy's concerns about the Empire, but he didn't want to have that discussion at the present moment. All doomsday alien invasions aside, he'd waited years to get the Security Chief alone and this was going off in the decidedly wrong direction. Just then, he had a brainstorm.

"You'll protect me, right?" He asked, snuggling deep into Troy's shielding embrace. "From the big, bad aliens?"

"Of course." Troy said hugging him tightly, "Incredibly brilliant and insanely handsome First Officers with daddy complexes are hard to find."

"I guess you were born lucky, then," Brad returned.

"Hey, you got lucky too, kiddo."

"I did!" said Brad in a squeaky voice. "I'm gettin' a pony ride!"

The heavy breathing, gentle moans and euphoric sighs faded into the rhythmic crashing and hissing surf beneath them. Brad Williams lay in bed, snuggled into the crux of Hector Troy's right arm, savoring the musty odors. Troy, for his part, was still intoxicated by the feel, the taste, the smell and the very essence of Bradley Williams. He had been infatuated with him from the moment he first laid eyes on him, from the first day the young cadet walked into his office for a security clearance. Back then Williams was a roguishly handsome youngster with plenty of wild oats to sow. That was five years ago, when Les was still a boy, pulling Troy effectively off the market. Les had provided an excuse to opt out of a dating game he had grown to despise. But that was then, and this was now. Since being assigned to the same away team, Brad was the only man in the galaxy to him.

"Where did you learn all that?" Troy glowed.

"My mom was in the military. We moved around. I met a lot of guys".

"I should write thank you notes to everyone of them."

"That would take a while," he joked. "I started early".

"Uh huh. So any more at home like you?"

"Nope. Just me."

"Pity. Your parents make beautiful boys. Do you favor Mom or Dad?"

"Mom, I guess. I never knew my dad. Their procreation agreement didn't allow it"

"That must suck."

"I don't know anything else. Maybe that's why I like 'em older."

"That's a good thing, then." Troy smiled.

"So what about you, Mister Security Chief. What's your story?"

"Like yours in some ways" Troy mused, thinking back.

"Parents in the military. Moved around a lot as a kid. Met a girl named Dot in the academy. We became besties and we had Les together. Then shed died."

"How?"

"Boating accident. Right here on Knotty Pines. She shouldn't have been out. The rip tides were supposed to be wicked strong, but she went out anyway with her girl friend, trying to get here, to the house. They never made it. Les was only 6 years old."

"That must have been hard"

"It was. Her parents were gone, so were mine. It was just me and Les"

"Not even an occasional Mister Right Now to break the monotony?"

"Nope. Never" Brad was incredulous. "You mean, I'm?"

"?Third, actually, not counting Dot. But they were along time ago, before the academy. We were just kids messing around."

"I feel so special." Brad's auburn eyes sparkled.

"You are, kiddo. You really are."

"I don't want this weekend to ever end," Brad said dreamily. "I just want to stay in your arms forever." He buried his face into Troy's armpit and drew in a deep, inquisitive breath. "I love your smell".

As Brad exhaled, Troy lightly stroked his forehead and pushed aside his auburn locks. Being with him had been everything he imagined it would be, and more. But inside, he was conflicted. His mind burned with questions: What now? What exactly was he going to tell Henry? How is this going to effect working together? And what was he going to tell Les? Worse, all these questions were ignited by the sudden fear of loss and the undeniable, inescapable, and utterly irreversible fact that he was already deeply in love with Bradley Williams and had been for a very long time. Williams misinterpreted the silence. He sat up.

"Oh, wow Hector, I'm so sorry!" he cried. "I shouldn't have said that. I broke the number one gay dating rule. I used 'love' and 'you' in the same sentence on the first sleep over." He pounded his head in self-condemnation. "I'm a goddamn lesbian."

Troy scooped him up in his powerful arms and kissed him passionately; long, wet and very deep. Brad swooned.

"Does that make my intentions clear?" Troy asked playfully.

"Perfectly," he swooned.

Chapter 15

As Hector Troy turned his small sailboat into the shimmering canal, on another planet, some forty light years away, two men sat embraced in a soft, rosy noontide. One just out of his teens and the other fast approaching middle age were snuggled on a stony park bench. Both carried side arms and wore beige military uniforms accented with berets, thick leather belts and boots of shining black. Impossibly tall trees with patchy white trunks, massive branches and a distant olive canopy encircled them. On the eastern horizon, two white stars glittered like huge diamonds in a mauve sky. Directly overhead, a great red sun burned fiercely. Its disk appeared twice the size of Earth's Sol, even though it was only a third as massive. It was just that the red dwarf, Gliese 667C, was less than eleven million miles away. It was part of the triple star system Gliese 667, discovered from Earth over four hundred years ago. The two smaller stars hanging in the east, Gliese 667A and B, were actually far more massive but much further away.

The two men were near the magnetic north pole of Gliese 667Cc, the third planet out from the red dwarf. It was fully five times the size of Earth and while intervals of day and night were familiar, the seasons changed weekly. They weren't based on an axial tilt but rather on an elliptical month long orbit. The poles were delightfully comfortable regions similar to Earth's chaparral and home to a riot of native and introduced species. At a mere 22 light years from Earth, it was the first mesoplanet discovered and colonized. It had taken half a century to make the journey by plasma rocket and then another half century to build the porting station, dubbed Outpost 1. In the following centuries, while Earth convulsed, humanity exploded over the entire inhabitable surface of its first New World in a thousand years.

The young man turned from his companion and kicked at the dusty red ground.

"I'm just not sure how he's going to handle it, that's all," he began. He shook his head and dark bangs fell across wide brown eyes and landed on his smooth boyish cheeks.

"Well, he's going to find out sooner or later," returned his companion, an older androgynous officer. His voice, thickly musical, radiated an intense sensuality barely tapered by his shaved head and piercing blue eyes.

"I know he's not happy about my career choice, and I don't want to upset him again," the boy added.

"Upset him? Why would your dad be upset about us? Or maybe something is upsetting you, Les. Maybe you're having second thoughts?"

Akeino Adams sky blue eyes narrowed and grew faintly watery.

"O, Akky, no, no, no! I love you. I adore you. It's just that, with you assigned to his away team, well, I'd planned on telling him myself in person, but now it's going to look like I've been keeping secrets."

"Well, you have been keeping secrets! We've been married for two months and you still haven't told him. To be honest, I'm starting to wonder if I hadn't rushed you into this. I am 25 years older than you. Maybe you are too young to be tied down. Or maybe now when it comes to it, the age difference does matter to you."

"No, Akky! I promise, that's not it. That's not it at all. Look, after my mom died, all Dad and I? all we had was each other, no other family, no one. It was just 'us' for the longest time." The boy sighed and took the man's hand. His deep brown eyes went watery. "I struggle to remember even her face." he sniffed, " Anyway, when I came here to the academy it was tough on the both of us. I though his heart would break every time I left for school. He never said anything, but I knew. So I came home every chance I got, but we still went months without seeing each other. When I told him about my career choice, he tried to be supportive, but I knew he was disappointed. He even made a few wise cracks that pissed me off and I probably over reacted. Anyway, now theres us. See, Akky, it has nothing to do with you or our age difference. If we were exactly the same age it wouldn't be matter. Things are just weird between Dad and I right now. I wrote him a letter last week but I left 'us' out. I just didn't know how to tell him that his little boy is a married man and isn't coming home anymore."

"Les, your dad is the best Security Chief in the ECC and he's a good man. He knew this day would come the minute you were born. All kids grow up. And all he wants is for you to be happy. If a slightly older, ridiculously good-looking Bardaj shaman, who also happens to be the best communications officer in the ECC, makes you happy, he'll be happy. Just like if interstellar ghost hunting makes you happy, I promise he'll be good with that too. Just give him a chance." The boy breathed deeply. His shoulders relaxed and he managed a warm, slightly sexy smile.

"Ghost hunting!" he cried, slapping his forehead suddenly. "That reminds me! That's what I came here to tell you. I'm going to Earth tomorrow. There's an unusual energy field that keeps winking in and out near the Church of Our Savior Built on the Blood, in Saint Petersburg. Here, check out these readings." The young man pulled a perfectly square, palm sized device from his pocket and handed it to him. "Have a look at the sign waves."

"What's this?" Adams asked studying the devise.

"An electromagnetic field detector, EMF for short. I modified it to detect lepton flavors."

"Wow. That's brilliant." Adams gushed in candid admiration of his young husband. He reviewed the recorded energy fluxes and squinted at their impossible configurations. "Now what the devil could be causing these de Brogli waves?" He asked looking back at his friend.

"Damned if I know," said Les, pulling out a chocolate candy bar and taking a huge bite. "I've never seen anything like them. There have been hundreds of level 1 and 2 intrusions around the Church over the years, ordinary stuff. But we've never looked for leptons in the high gamma region before. This reaches level 3. That makes it a verified haunting."

"Let me see here" Adams corrected threshold and recalibrated the wave function. "If you look at it like this, lower your compensation, it almost looks like distorted neutrino emissions, don't you think?"

"Porting technology?" asked Les in surprise.

"Hmmm?maybe, "Adams allowed, "but not like anything we've got. Where is this coming from again?"

"Church of the Blood. Saint Petersburg, Russia," he slurped.

"Right, you said that, but it doesn't make sense. It can't be a polarized neutrino cloud. They don't linger around like that. And no one is porting in or out of Saint Petersburg these days. Earth is pretty much a tourist trap. The only porting station on the planet is in London. Weird."

"That's why they're sending me."

"Yeah, well, I mean, who ya gonna call?"

"Funny man. You made me sit through that stupid old movie three times. What was his name? Chevy Chase? Don't they still have his head or something?" he said licking his fingers and pushing the crumpled wrapper into his pocket.

"Hey, how many times did I let you throw me on my ass, Mr. black belt? And who does your makeup better than me? You're welcome Miss Sexy in the City." "Plus, you can suck a bowling ball through a straw" Les said through a wicked, chocolate smile".

"Hey, don't let that get around. I have enough trouble as it is. I think Brad Williams and your dad are stalking me."

"You keep your hands off my Dad" Les scowled.

"Ha! It's actually good to know that you have some boundaries. What about Brad?"

"Oh, you can do what you like with him. He's too young for me."

"That's my boy" Adams sighed, running his fingers through the young man's silky black hair. The chocolate mustache was turning him on.

"Get it while you can, I'm porting to London in the morning." he said, licking his lips clean.

"When will you be back?"

"Dunno. Depends on what we find. Can't imagine it'll take more than a few days. We'll talk to my Dad then."

"Gotcha. We should still be here. No orders yet except to stand by for orders."

"Rumor has it the Empire has porting technology." Les said slyly.

"No comment. Classified."

"In other words, you have no idea."

"None whatsoever, and if I did, I couldn't tell you."

"Ass."

"Look, kid, you hunt ghosts and let us men hunt the aliens." Les glared at him menacingly "Oh, fuck you, old man. I can put you on your ass any time I want to and you know it."

"Now there's the best idea you've had in a long time. Let's go home."

"Why don't we just do it right there in the park? I like an audience." Les became suddenly cat-like, scanning the area for potential spectators.

"Because I'm an Officer, not a pig?"

"Okay, Commander Buzz Kill, let's go home." The two soldiers left the park, arm in arm, kicking up a small cloud of red dust into the breezy air. Les gave Adam's firm buttocks a playful pinch.

Les Troy had been to Earth only once before, years ago as a young teenager on a summer vacation. His father had taught him to surf on Fiji, a small tropical island in the south pacific. While it was his species home world, like most humans, he hadn't been born there. He was a native Gliesian who found Earth's bright blue sky, thin atmosphere and low gravity strange and uncomfortable.

The planet was only slowly recovering from the devastation humanity had inflicted upon it. The majority of its soils remained badly eroded and contaminated so that even optimists estimated another two centuries before any great tracks were again arable. The recovery of its fabled jungles and rainforests also lagged due to centuries of abuse, but its seas had revived more quickly and again teemed with life. They offered magnificent water sports and sublime beaches that were nonexistent on Gliesia, which didn't even have a proper ocean. Earth offered a plethora of terrestrial recreation from skiing, to mountain climbing, to hang gliding. Earth's old cities were the stuff of legend. New York, San Francisco, London, Rome, Paris, Moscow and Saint Petersburg were all authentic 21st Century restorations, recalling the twilight of humanity's Earth-bound epoch. They were like a living window looking back onto that most barbaric time in human evolution. Although it had served as humanity's cradle and exclusive dwelling place for the vast majority of its two million year history, modern Earth's largest cash industry was tourism.

Les strolled leisurely along the Strand, headed for the famous Saint James Park. He smiled at a perfect recreation of a 21st century Starbucks Coffee shop. Next came the wooden fa?ade of the old Lyceum Tavern with its two oversized street light lanterns hanging above each entrance. The savory smell of authentic fish and chips sprinkled with malt vinegar spilled out onto the grey slate sidewalk. As he passed number 353 he could see Saint Mary le Strand Church just a few blocks distant from where the road forked. To the left, a red double decker bus made its way down Aldwych. He continued on The Strand towards the old Church. It's foundation dated to at least the 13th Century when it had been called the Church of the Innocents. It had been demolished several times over the centuries only to be raised again in the early 1700s. It served as the Anglican altar upon which John Dickens and Elizabeth Barrow, parents of the celebrated writer Charles Dickens, took their vows. The extravagant Baroque ornamentation of the exterior was criticized by contemporaries but made its novice architect Sir James Gribb world famous. Les sighed as he checked his senses against the facts and images in the guide. Much was preserved but much more had been lost.

He continued down the Strand toward the park. The restoration was blowing his mind. It was hard to believe that most of the Old City was actually destroyed in the Fascist Civil Wars of the late 21st Century and then left fallow for 70 years in the grip of pestilence and famine. In the wake of natural and manmade disasters monotheistic faiths had resurged to plague humanity one last time. Ultimately, after generations of agonizing conflagrations, there had come a second resonance. The fresh ideas and the power of new worlds rushed in to rescue the old planet from its own excesses. The human mind, through great pain, was liberated from its own ego as witnessed by an awakening higher consciousness. Recovery began, slowly at first, but then accelerated rapidly. Technology had not been lost, only misplaced. It had been a dim rather than a dark age. Civilization had not so much fallen as fallen asleep, but there had indeed been a price. Earth's human population had been devastated. Barely a billion souls survived on the poisoned, war torn planet.

It was at that time that the Shift, barely perceptible at first, quickened. Attributed alternately to new the intellectual freedom, chemical pollutants, and by some, even to biological weapons, it at last became undeniable. Whereas the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual community had historically comprised no more than 10% of human populations, their proportion skyrocketed. In the desperate drive to repopulate, controversial laws requiring procreation were passed but quickly repealed as the Shift accelerated and the LGBT community mushroomed into a plurality and finally a majority. Freed at last from shame, prejudice and millennia of religious persecution the urge to reproduce coursed through them naturally. Parenting passed from pop culture fad, to duty and finally to normality. There were now millions upon millions of young adults, like Les Troy, who had been born to gay parents in procreative arrangements. Les' parents were typical. Both homosexual, they had met at the academy, became best friends, had their compatibility tested, and decided to have children together. A new form of the human family had evolved.

As Les turned round the bend into the famous Saint James park his young mind raced with possibilities. He had an afternoon to kill before he shuttled over to Saint Petersburg and rather than hit the National Gallery, the Tower or Buckingham Palace, he had decided on having an adventure. He could visit the touristy and romantic places with Akky next time they had shore leave, but this was a business trip, and Saint James Park, with its infamous Red Lady, was one of the most haunted spots in England. Once upon a time a Coldstream Guard murdered his unfaithful wife in cold blood. To help conceal the crime, he cut off her head and dumped the body in the lake. He was caught, however, in the grisly act and sent to the gallows. Ever since, startlingly consistent sightings describe a woman's misty phantom hovering near the lake, always dressed in a red strip dress, its headless neck gushing blood. But what intrigued Les just as much, if not more, than the ghastly apparition was the lake's somewhat more corporal reputation as the cruiseist brambles in the United Kingdom. He had worn his military uniform despite the July heat, intending on heartily enjoying himself regardless of what he encountered. He and Akky had an understanding about such things.

Les stepped off the graveled lane onto the grassy knoll that rolled down to the lake. At once the brush thickened and rose to his hips. He reached into his pants, pulled out his homespun EMF detector and began scanning. All energy fluxes were flat. He had hardly begun his scan of the area when a tall slender figure rose out of the bramble.

"Privet strastniy malchik!" a voice cried.

Les was so startled that the instrument leapt from his grasp.

"I beg your pardon?" he said, still fumbling. His attention broke from his missing instrument and he began eyeing the boy up and down.

The interloper was a tow headed youngster dressed plainly and practically in blue jeans and a scant white tank top.

"Excuse me please," he said in a thick Russian accent. "I said only hello handsome boy!"

"Oh, well thank you" Les blushed. There was an awkward silence.

"What are you looking for?" the blue-eyed boy asked.

"Hmm," Les considered simply telling the truth, that he was conducting a paranormal investigation, and coincidently, if he should encounter a hot stud, he wouldn't complain either, but before he could decide, the boy continued.

"I think you're really sexy," he said, "and whatever it is you were doing, I hope I can distract you a little."

Les smiled. He admired honesty and straightforwardness. He was never much for small talk either.

"Look, you're handsome and all, but not really my type."

"I see." said the Russian but without disappointment. He smiled wickedly. His hands fell to his zipper and slowly brought it down. Before Les could even gasp, his penis sprang out. It was incredible. Dangerously long, unbelievably thick, beautifully shaped and growing.

"No interest at all?"

Les was frozen, instantly obsessed with the impossible organ.

"And just to sweeten the deal, I have a friend! Moya!" he called.

At once a deep, gravelly voice answered. "Da Tovar! Voteeya!" The brambles yielded another male figure, shorter, thicker, older, although youth still clung stubbornly to his boyish face and sparkling dark eyes. Les' jaw fairly dropped to the ground. Moya was absolutely dreamy. He had short, closely cropped dark hair with just a hint of grey on the sides. A light scruff fell on sharp, rough and strangely exotic features. He was like a Greek statue in a tight black polo shirt. He had a chiseled chest, knotty arms, thick legs and a torso that was busting out of his blue jeans.

"Ohuitelno!" Moya whistled at Les. "Who is this beauty?"

"I'm Les, sir!" he said faintly.

"Someone named Les, apparently," Tovar added casually. "I just met him, but he's not interested in us."

Les blinked once at the man and glared at the boy.

"I never said that," he hissed.

"But you just said?"

"Forget what I said, then!"

"I see!" said Tovar, smiling. He began to stroke himself as he and Moya advanced on the trembling boy and surrounded him.

"Let's play a game." Moya suggested. "I'll take off whatever you do."

Without hesitation, Les peeled off his shirt. His wide, fleshy brown nipples stood erect and waves of goose bumps erupted across his smooth flat chest. The man followed suit. He revealed meaty pectoral muscles and a thick mat of black chest hair that treasure-trailed into his jeans. Tovar reached from behind and began to tug at Les' pants.

"Let me help," he whispered in Les' ear, the hot breath sending shivers down his back. A small crowd of voyeurs began to gather which only increased Les' excitement. Tovar pulled Les' pants and underwear down revealing him fully erect to his friend and the growing crowd.

"Very nice," said Moya, drinking in the boy's lusty nakedness.

"Circumcised!" Tovar exclaimed, looking down over Les' shoulders "Pretty little bush too. Nicely trimmed"

"Never had much body hair to begin with," said Les.

"Anyway, it's your turn!" Moya dutifully unveiled himself. As plenteous as Tovar was, Moya put him to shame. His manhood was truly immense. The biggest Les had ever seen or even dreamed of seeing, but it was its perfect shape, flawless proportions, and the impeccable head that peaked out of a lusciously thick foreskin, that he found spell binding. It belonged on a ten-foot sculpture not a five and half-foot man.

"My god!" Les gasped.

"Why do they always say that?" mused Tovar. Moya chuckled.

"Do you want a taste, boy?"

Les nodded greedily and he felt to his knees, but it was more than he bargained for. He gagged and sputtered as he tried valiantly to accommodate the huge equipment.

"Here, this should help" Tovar whispered as he maneuvered himself behind and slid into Les, who suddenly and inexplicably widened at both ends. He shuttered with delight as was completely filled. Moya and Tovar began to pump rhythmically, deeply, into him. He worked himself wild as sensation took over his body and mind. He swooned, losing tract of the crowd and even of his partners. Neither did he notice his EMF detector, left carelessly in the brush, going wild. He simply trembled and squirmed in unprecedented ecstasy.

"Now," said Moya, cued by the stiffening intensity of Les' body. They both shouted in unison and simultaneously exploded inside the boy. Les arched backward and began to ejaculate uncontrollably, spraying on his own chest and face. Tovar reached around, collected a dollop and brought it to his own lips.

"Enchanting!" he said, offering some to Moya who sampled it gladly.

"Scrumptious," he agreed. "Is he asleep?"

"Not exactly, but I think we'd better go all the same. We're done".

"Da, ya ponemyu."

With that, the two vanished like mist.

"That was quite a show mate!" said an on-looker. "Busted me nuts."

Les opened his eyes and looked up at the group of five older Englishmen that surrounded him. All were in various stages of self-gratification, some had finished and others, nearly so. To his bewilderment, Les found himself spread out on all fours, sweaty, naked and alone in the bramble. He fell to a sitting position but consciously remained open legged to allow his slower fans a view to satisfy themselves. Meanwhile, he tried to re-orient his own head and figure out what exactly had happened and what had become of his friends. His looked around until his eyes fell on the EMF detector and all breath left his body. He looked up at the man who had first complimented him, a portly gentleman in his late forties.

"Did you see where my friends went?" he asked.

"Friends?" the man said in surprise. "What friends?"

"The two blokes I was having sex with!"

"It was just you, mate," the man responded quizzically.

"Yeh!" agreed another. "You was solo the whole time I was watching, I'll swear to it, but if you want company now?."

"No, no thanks," Les added quickly.

He dressed, slipped the EMF detector back into his pocket, bowed slightly to the crowd and climbed back up the knoll. He passed a discarded copy of The Daily Mirror. It's front-page headline read 'Alien Invasion Imminent?'

Chapter 16

Russian orthodoxy, resurgent in the early 21st century, became one of the most toxic monotheisms that humanity ever inflicted upon itself. It combined sexism, ignorance and homophobia into a poisonous lather that jived well with the reappearance of totalitarianism in Moscow. Used by Russian fascists to reunite to the old Empire, it was dogmatic, xenophobic, violent and viciously nationalistic. While it eventually joined the other faiths on the scrap heap of history, its final crime spree had been borne heavily by the LGBT community. It was only through supreme enlightenment that its most beautiful facets were preserved and restored to honor. The Church of Our Savior Built on The Blood in Saint Petersburg was a fine example.

The two hundred and fifty foot high brick behemoth had an illustrious history. Alexander III began its construction in 1883 as a memorial to his murdered father on the very spot of his assassination. Construction was slow and completed only in 1907, during the sad reign of Nicholas II. After the revolution the Bolsheviks ransacked and looted it. Stalin closed it in the early 1930s, and during the terrible Siege of Leningrad it became a morgue for the unnumbered dead. Later in the Soviet era it was used as a warehouse for vegetables, leading to the derisive name, Our Savior of Potatoes. After the resurgence of Orthodoxy, as the Russian Empire was reformed around its medieval ideals, it became the faith's central shrine and the site of renewed persecutions and bloodlettings. Destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed again, its final resurrection restored its early 20th century magnificence.

Les Troy, walking in the stuffy white night, approached the iconic church from Kanal Griboyedov. The magnificent three and four story stone buildings on his right, were astonishing recreations of old city's imperial glory, featuring rows of Greek columns glowing with colored lights. The great cathedral in contrast was built in purely Russian style and dwarfed them. Its cylindrical western wing, topped with an immense golden dome, seemed to float on the glittering black water. Over its squared central wing, three blue-green domes, swirling with white and green rivets, glowed in evening sky; the two largest were on either side, marking the structure's massive shoulders, while the smaller one rose high above the exact center, like a great eye looking down from heaven. Had he been interested in views Les would have approached from Nevsky Prospect, but his target this evening was not the cathedral at all, but the patchy brush and small buildings that lay just beyond the Church's semi circular thoroughfare.

A few yards before the grand iconic entrance, Les turned right and climbed down into the brambles. After pushing through a few feet of grasping low bushes he stepped into a small circular clearing. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his EMF detector and began scanning. He could see the glow of the massive church between the thin lines of trees in front of him. To his right was a four story wooden building painted yellow with wide white windows. He stood in the midst of an old playground complete with swings, monkey bars, slides and a line of teeter-totters. At once his detector hummed. His hands worked excitedly. The signal grew stronger as he approached the old iron monkey bars, but the readings were not what he had come for. They were only the same previously reported weakly significant distortions, rare, interesting, but not unique. Still, they commanded attention. In the very center of the rusted metal structure the readings were strongest. In the dim light Les thought he could barely make out a misty spiral, like someone's hot breath on a cool morning. He reached out to it.

"Here now, who are you? Leave him be." Les nearly jumped out of his skin at the high-pitched crackly voice. He pointed his EMF detector at the hooded intruder defensively. Immediately, the signal vanished. The gesture only annoyed the old man. He lowered his gray hood to scowl directly at Les.

"That's not polite," he said in a thick Russian accent. "Pointing things at people. Is that a threat? Are you going to shoot me?"

"Oh goodness! No, sir. I am sorry. This isn't a weapon." Les lowered his detector. The old man was in gray robes and a thin metal chain dangled around his neck, nearly to the ground. He eyed Les suspiciously.

"What are you doing here, young man?"

"Sir, I assure you, I'm here with the Museum's permission."

"Yes, yes beautiful Church," he said dismissively, "but I'll ask again. What are you doing here?"

"I don't mean to be rude, sir..," Les began, but at that odd moment the old man interrupted him by snatching at his EMF detector.

"Excuse me!" he cried, pulling the detector to his breast. It was his turn to be annoyed. "That's ECC property. Grabbing things from strangers indeed! You're not very polite, even for a Russian."

The old man's grey eyes sparkled. "It's that thing? that, that contraption you're holding. That's how you can see him, isn't it?" he asked accusingly.

"See who?" Les sidestepped the question.

The old man looked him up and down probingly and began taking his measure. He eyes wandered all over the younger man's body.

"What's your name and how old are you, boy?"

"I'm Les Troy, sir, and I'm twenty," he answered honestly, although he knew no particular reason why he should.

"Do you know Russian history?"

"A little."

"A little?" the old man repeated disappointedly. "Russia is a great country. How many times have we saved the world, from Napoleon, from Hitler, all without appreciation? And look what we've given! Borodin, Balakirev, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekov, Yesenin, Bulgakov, Pozdenyakov, Dudnik." The old man would have gone on for quite awhile, but Les interrupted him.

"I'm sorry," Les apologized again. "I study other things,"

"What other things?" the old man stroked his white beard.

"Paranormal psychology," Les answered, against his own will.

"Another ghost hunter," the old man nodded, "but you're different from the others. That device, it lead you precisely to him."

"Sir, I still don't know your name, and that's the second time you referred to some third person 'him'. Who are you, and whom do you mean?"

The old man smiled warmly. "Privet, Les. I'm Kismet." He said. "Ochen preyatna."

"Pleased to meet you too. Who is 'him'? Les persisted.

Kismet sighed. "It's a long, sad story. Perhaps you should follow me." He turned and walked slowly towards the glowing church.

Les sipped icy vodka and nibbled at juicy morsels of pickled vegetables. He was in a small, clean and well-kept studio apartment in a dirty depilated old building a bare twenty-minute walk from the great church. The thick lines on Kismet's face deepen and his grey eyes wandered off into some long, long ago. At last, he began to talk.

"The him you asked about was Alexei Romanov, the youngest of the Tsar's five children. Had he lived, he would have sat on the throne of Peter the Great, but there was nothing he thought about less. He was just a happy romping boy with very simple tastes." Les stood up, gasping in protest. "But how?" Kismet silenced him with a raised a finger and sent him sinking back onto the soft armchair. The old man continued.

"The Tsarevich was tall for his age," he continued, as if drawing from memory "With a long face, delicate features, auburn hair and his mother's grey-blue eyes. He had a quick wit and a lively, searching mind, often surprising us with precocious questions." The old man recalled warmly. "I remember his naturally affectionate spirit. It was sensitive to the suffering of others because he suffered so much himself."

"You remember?" Les interrupted incredulously. "But how could that be? The boy died five hundred years ago."

"I am Evnek, young man. I have lived many lives. Believe me or not. I don't care. Maybe I read it all in a book. But let me continue?"

"Very well," Les nodded, deciding to humor the old man. "Go on."

"He was a great grandchild of Queen Victoria on both sides of his family. That's what brought out the disease. From the very beginning it hung over him. He was only a few weeks old when the first bleeding episode occurred. Blood gushed out uncontrollably from his belly button. As a toddler his crawling and stumbling would cause great blue swellings on his legs and arms. Once, he banged his forehead and the swelling in face shut both eyes. It was terrible to even look at him. But hemorrhages on the inside, from the mouth or nose were far more dangerous. Once he almost died from a nosebleed."

"How horrible," Les shuttered. Kismet took no notice and continued.

"Bleeding into the joints caused him the worst pain and damage. The bumping of an elbow, ankle or knee might start uncontrollable bleeding into the joint, bringing intense pain. Then, his limbs would become locked into a bent position. Massage was the only cure, but that risked starting the bleeding all over again. I can still hear his pitiful little voice begging for someone to rub his arms or legs. We worked hours trying to give him some comfort."

Les pulled again at his vodka " Poor kid".

"But all the suffering ended on the orders of Lenin himself. Just before midnight, on July 17th, 1918, the royal family was awakened and told by their captors to dress quickly. The Tsar came down the stairs first, with Alexei hanging off his neck. The others followed. They were ushered into a basement and asked to wait. Asquad of men with revolvers entered. A grim fellow stepped forward and announced bluntly. 'Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and now we must shoot you.' Then the entire squad then opened fire on the whole royal family at once. When the shooting stopped, the boy feebly moved his hand. A young solider kicked him in the head and bayonetted him. But the sickly boy refused to die fast enough. Finally, the grim man stepped up and fired two more shots into his ear".

"The savages." Les whispered.

Kismet stared out of the open window into the pale night.

"Don't be angry at them," he said almost to himself. "Alyosha wasn't. He felt sorry for them that they could do such terrible things."

"But how, how do you know it's a ghost, that its Alyosha?"

"It's not really him." The old man admitted. "He is gone, and what's gone is gone forever."

"I don't follow. You said it was his ghost."

"Young man," Kismet glared at him disapprovingly and his tone became very professorial. "Do you even know what a ghost is?"

"Not especially," Les admitted. "That's what I'm here to prove."

"Forget proof," the old man scolded. "If you're very clever all the 'proof' will get you is that device you're holding. Very dangerous in the wrong hands, but that's it. No real understanding. This is about feelings."

"I don't follow," Les repeated.

"Back there, in the playground, before I met you, what did you feel?"

Les thought back to a few hours ago, to just before Kismet appeared.

"Peaceful," he said at last, "happy, free, playful." Suddenly, he thought that strange considering the frightful story of the boy's short and painful life that he had just heard. "A happy child," he concluded. The wizard smiled in agreement.

"That's how I know," he said, rising to freshen his tumbler with cold spirits. "I can feel him, the gentle soul I knew. He had what we Russians call a golden heart. He loved the monkey bars though it drove his poor mother wild with fear to watch him climb them. Those were his last thoughts as he lay dying. Playing on the monkey bars." Les looked up questioningly as the old man offered him another shot.

"Not yet," he said.

"That's what a ghost is, young man," the Wizard declared as read the puzzled look on the boy's face. He sat back down, slapped his knees and chugged a gulp of vodka.

"Emotive residue?" Les suggested.

"So clinical," the Wizard sniffed. He walked to the open window and pointed at the Cathedral glowing in the distance.

"Do you think that's a shrine? "Blat!" he cursed. "That is an egomaniacal tribute to power and vainglory from a frightened tyrant."

Without taking his eyes off the Wizard, Les pulled out his EMF detector and replayed the recorded signals. He had gotten an insight.

"Like an echo, bouncing off the Higgs field," he said to himself. The old man exhaled heavily.

"Yes, perhaps it's nothing more than an echo rebounding off the hills of time. The child's last humor at finally being set free."

"The peaks," Les continued. "If I compare them over time, they seem to be getting smaller. Dissipating."

"Nothing lasts forever," the Wizard confirmed.

"And you?" Les asked. "Who are you, really?"

"I'm just a Wizard," the man said modestly. "So I listen. It's my job to honor the boy's memory. When the echo fades, I will be done and I will fade as well, at least from this life. 'Till then, I'd appreciate it if you would keep your friends away. They only make him fade faster."

"I will," Les promised, "but these other signals, the ones that brought me here. They're very different, from a different part of the spectrum, and they don't dissipate. They seem to be getting stronger over time." Les didn't tell the Wizard that the latest and strongest recordings were from Saint James Park. The old man peered at the strange device and rolled his eyes.

"Only the Perelesnyk become stronger over time. Ghosts always fade," he said absolutely.

"Pereleznik?"

"You would say genii, or perhaps demons."

"That's crazy," Les scoffed.

"I have never seen one either," the Wizard confessed, "but you would not find them in the playground tonight. They do not abide the child's echo."

Les filled his tumbler full of Vodka and took a deep, thoughtful dreg.

At that precise moment two middle-aged men materialized and began chatting in the back pews of the deserted cathedral.

"We can't get to him. He'll stay with that drunken Wizard all night."

"Yes, he'll be gone in the morning and it will be too late."

"I thought we'd have him again in the park," said Tovar disappointedly.

"So did I, but we infested him in London. He'll bring us with him. It's all a closed circle. But one last romp with him would have been pleasant," Moya lamented. "He is very beautiful".

"Too bad the Wizard showed up," Tovar fretted.

"Oh, we could have handled the Wizard ourselves," Moya avowed.

"It's that creepy kid I can't stand."

The Singularity

Chapter 18

Brad Williams, Hector Troy and Akeino Adams followed Commander Henry Frank down the ship's narrow corridors. The four men proceeded quickly, but silently. They were stranded, twenty five thousand light years from earth and about to make first contact with a new species in the form of two imperial boys who had lured them to the singularity and tried to make them their prisoners. The blue pocket doors opened automatically as the group approached the briefing room.

"We've got about 15 minutes before our guests arrive, so let's get to it," Frank said as he took his place at the head of the long rectangular table.

"Mr. Adams, you've got something to contribute?"

"Yes, sir?" but before he could finish, Troy muttered.

"He's probably got the hots for one of the alien boys."

"Troy!" Frank pleaded, "let's all keep our personal lives personal."

Brad Williams elbowed his friend.

Adams raised his hand in token of forbearance. The proverbial cat was clearly out of the bag. Clearly, Hector Troy knew about him and Les.

"It's ok, Henry. I had that coming. Hector," he continued, looking directly at the Security Officer. "Les and I were going to talk to you, but this is hardly the time, Hector. Let's stick to business. Can you please just hear me out on this first?"

Troy folded his arms and nodded.

"Those de Brogli wave patterns that Compton projected," he continued quickly, "I've seen them before, a few days ago. Les showed them to me on his EMF recorder. He was headed to Russia to check them out."

"Russia?" asked Troy in disbelief.

"Yes, Church of Blood, or something like that, in Saint Petersburg."

"Are you sure, Mr. Adams?" Frank pressed.

"Yes, sir. Neither of us had seen anything like them before, so I played with thresholds for a while. I got a good long look at them, sir, and I'm positive. It's the same pattern."

"A space ghost?" Troy scoffed.

"I'm not saying that," Adams said defensively. "Look, I'm a communications officer, not a ghost buster, but I know what I saw. Those patterns are like a signature. It can't be coincidence. There has to be some connection."

"Did Les tell you anything else about the patterns?" Brad asked.

"Not much. He initially thought it might be a porting signal, but he was just as baffled as I was. That's why he went to investigate".

"Where is he now?" Henry broke in.

"Still there, I guess. Investigating."

Henry Frank's hand glided over the slim armrest.

"Compton?"

"Yes sir?" came the instantaneous response from the bridge.

"Is there enough power in Outpost 8's batteries to port a small shuttle craft from Earth?"

"I believe so, sir, yes"

"Then send this to ECC 'Ensign Les Troy is ordered to port on board our vessel immediately.' Then get down here yourself."

"Yes, sir," was the calm unquestioning reply.

Henry Frank looked sternly across the table at each team member of his team. His gaze settled on Hector Troy and he began talking at him.

"Alright, people, listen up and listen good. Teenagers or not, this is going to be our first face-to-face contact with non-human intelligence. Objectivity is the name of the game here, and I will have anyone, and I mean anyone, who lets personal issues or prejudice interfere in this mission. And I don't mean 'have' in the good way. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes sir," the men replied in unison.

"Troy, you've got exactly 20 seconds to explain yourself, and convince me it won't happen again."

"Commander," Adams interrupted "it's my fault. I should have said something sooner. The truth is that Les and I have been married for the past two months, and he hasn't gotten up the courage to tell his father yet."

"Married?" Troy gasped. "I thought?" he stammered.

"I know what you thought Hector, but we're very much in love."

Troy turned red and managed to squeak out a simple "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. No hard feelings. Dad," he added for emphasis.

"Serves-you-right-for-spying," Brad sing-songed in his ear.

"Any other confessions that might jeopardize this mission?" Frank asked in a slightly raised, sardonic voice. The room was silent.

"And just so you know, Mr. Williams," He added with a glance and a wink at his First Officer. "I've been let down tenderly. While devastated, I am bereft of bitterness and resolved to carry on."

It was now Brad's turn to blush a bright scarlet. Troy, seeing his discomfort, suppressed a completely inappropriate chuckle.

"Um, aliens, first contact, in about ten minutes," Brad reminded them.

"Right. Back to it," Frank agreed.

Suddenly, the blue pocket doors opened and the Cyborg entered.

"Compton," Frank called immediately, even before the machine was seated. "Adams here says the same de Brogli wave patterns appeared on Earth connected with paranormal activity somewhere in Russia. They sent Les Troy to check it out a few days ago."

For a split second, as he sat, the Cyborg's full attention was inward.

"Ensign Troy is the most qualified officer in the ECC to perform such an investigation," Compton confirmed.

Hector Troy felt a rush of pride in his young son. As he glanced across the table, his perceptive eye discerned the same feeling in his newfound son-in-law.

"As we are approximately twenty-five thousand light years from Earth," the Cyborg continued, "the chance of any direct connection is vanishingly remote."

"What's the chance of two identical de Brogli wave signatures?" Adams challenged.

"Equally remote. I would like to compare the samples myself."

"Please do, Compton. When is Les arriving?"

"Within the hour, Commander. He received your orders en route to London from Saint Petersburg. He's bringing a friend."

"A friend?"

"He insisted, sir."

"Aright. Did you get a scan of the alien vessel? How many are they""

"It is as you suspected. There are three humanoids on board."

Suddenly, the lights flashed out and an eerie red light filled the room.

"All hands battle stations," the mechanical voice commanded.

"Condition red. Commander Frank to the Bridge".

In an instant, the room emptied. In the mad scurry for the bridge Troy found himself running next to Adams.

"Welcome to the family" he huffed.

"Thanks Dad. Oh, and by the way, that blond alien is cute as hell!"

Compton was already back at this station analyzing data when Frank slid into his command chair.

"What the hell is going on, Compton?" he demanded.

"Sir, another ship has entered the area and is bearing down on the first vessel. They're on a direct course for it. They must have been in pursuit."

"Hail them, Mr. Adams"

After a few anxious seconds the communications Officer replied.

"There's no response."

"They're veering off towards the approaching shuttle craft," Compton added calmly.

"Sir!" barked Troy. "They're powering up weapons, primitive plasma blasters."

"The shuttle is unprotected," Compton noted. "It cannot survive a plasma blast."

"Hail them again, Mr. Adams."

"Sir, I'm not sure they're even aware of us. Their sensors are primitive. There's been no response at all to our first hail, not even an echoed confirmation. They might be using a different frequency, but it'll take time to figure out."

"They're targeting the shuttle craft." said Compton.

"Arm weapons Mr. Troy. Fire a plasma blast between them. Make it tight, but give them plenty of stopping room. Get their attention."

"Aye, sir."

The tension on the bridge was palpable as the anxious seconds passed. They heard the low rumbling hum as the weapons system came on line. Seconds later they felt the jolt of energy kick back against the ship.

Time slowed down.

"Commander, I'm reading approximately twenty aliens on board."

Frank barely had time to process the information.

"Sir!" cried Williams, squelching the Cyborg. "They're not stopping."

"Compton?"

"Confirmed, sir. They are veering hard to starboard."

"No reverse thrusters?" Frank asked in disbelief.

"It would appear not."

"Shit."

"They're not going to make it," said Troy

"Shit! Shit!" cried Frank, standing up and banging the sides of his head with outstretched palms. " Compton, please tell me they're raising shields."

"I cannot, sir. I do not believe they have any to raise."

Frank felt he was about to vomit.

"No reverse thrusters, no shields, my god, they're primitive," said Troy. "What the hell are they doing this far out?"

"They will not survive impact," Compton predicted coolly.

Frank's eyes were glued to the hideous slow motion nightmare unfolding on the view screen, his mind hoping, pleading, and praying for a miracle.

Prayers never cheat the laws of physics. Just as Compton had calculated, the alien vessel could not avoid the plasma blast and had no means to deflect it. In a horrible moment the ship was engulfed in the expanding energy cloud. Its structure seemed to vibrate in the blue miasma for a fateful few seconds. A grey mist erupted from it as its hull breached and its air escaped. A moment later, the ship disintegrated into hundreds of wayward chunks, each exploding outward along a unique trajectory into the void of space.

Frank fell back into his chair overwhelmed with shame and regret.

"Shit," he moaned.

The stunned silence on the bridge was religious, the intense guilt communal. Unintentional or not their crime was heinous. Twenty sentient beings were dead and first contact had become an unmitigated disaster. Brad Williams was flush with emotion and his hands trembled. Hector Troy's expression seemed frozen in bewilderment. Only Compton retained his composure and his objectivity.

"Commander," he said finally, "while the loss of life is regrettable you were left with no better choice. Your actions were eminently logical given the situation and the paucity of our knowledge about these creatures."

"I completely agree, sir" Bradley Williams enjoined, his voice sounding unusually raspy and tearful.

"And me," added Hector Troy. "Anyone would have done the same."

"I'm grateful," Frank rose, "to all of you, but I need to talk with Ian. This is exactly what he was worried about."

"Sir," Compton took an academic tone, "unless I am mistaken Mr. Adams maintains an entangled particle communications connection to the ECC mainframe. They are already aware of what's happened. If Secretary Paige has any additional instructions they'll be arriving presently."

"As will our guests," Troy reminded them. "Their shuttle is docking."

That snapped Frank out of it.

"Very well then," he said, "Brad, Hector, you're with me. Compton, you have the con. If any other vessels appear get us the hell out of here quick."

"Yes sir."

Henry Frank stood in the docking bay between Bradley Williams and Hector Troy, slightly taller and than either. The trio, in full dress uniforms, waited nervously as air was nosily pumped back into the compartment. The shock of the tragedy lingered and they had no idea what to expect from their guests. The loud hiss of escaping gases and the grinding of metal told them the re-pressurization was complete. The compartment doors opened. The alien shuttlecraft was little more than a truck-sized steel grey cylinder. The thick rows of heating tiles suggested the craft's main function was ground to ship transportation. The unspoken impression, shared by all, was of crudeness. With each interaction the technology gap was more obvious.

At last the metal doors opened. The steam dissipated. Three figures trudged forward and stepped down off the platform. The two young men whom Frank already knew came first, dressed in strangely regal robes. An older distinguished looking gentleman, dressed in long black academic robes followed.

Frank advanced to formally greet his guests.

"I am Commander Henry Frank, representing Earth's Central Command," he said. "This is my First Officer Bradley Williams and my Security Chief Hector Troy. We offer you welcome and friendship."

"I am Zar," said the young man. "Emperor of the Awakened and Lord Protector of the Children of the Mad. And this is my companion Tok. We rule together."

Tok stepped forward slightly, unable to conceal the wonder in his jade green eyes. "Allow me to introduce our colleague, the illustrious Professor Bashir of Cirrisia," he said. The older gentlemen nodded and smiled awkwardly.

"You are quite pale" Zar observed, ignoring the others and gawking rudely at Bradley Williams. "Your hair is coppery and your skin has dots."

The First Officer smiled faintly. "Runs in my family."

"I think you are handsome," Zar declared definitively, after looking him up and down for a few more seconds. "Do you prefer boys or girls?"

"Boys. I mean men," Williams stammered.

Zar grinned mischievously. His hairless cheeks flushed a bright olive green. Hector Troy shifted uncomfortably.

"Forgive us, Commander," Tok apologized, sensing the tension. "We are a passionate species and we have been alone in space a long time." "No apologies necessary," Frank chuckled. "We are passionate ourselves, but we find it prudent to place business before pleasure."

"Of course, Commander, as do we. It seems our first order of business is to thank you for saving our lives." Tok bowed to his hosts.

"Yes, Commander. Thank you," echoed Zar. "That rebel ship must have been pursuing us for months and meant to destroy us."

"Was it necessary to destroy them?" asked Tok sheepishly.

"We had no intention of destroying them," Frank assured the boy. "It was meant to be a warning shot only. I made a terrible mistake."

"I am happy to hear that," said Tok, visibly relieved.

Suddenly the blue pocket doors opened and Compton glided in.

"This is my Science Officer," Frank said.

The guests' eyes lit up with amazement at the sight of the Cyborg.

"A machine?" Zar gasped.

"I am called Compton," said the Cyborg. He tried a smile, but matching degree and duration to the situation was difficult for him, making him appear rather creepy.

"A living machine!" the blond boy exclaimed in wonder.

"It's a long story," Frank quipped. "Perhaps you'd all like to freshen up first?"

As they were escorted to their quarters, Troy over heard the boys' whisper.

"Tok, do you think the machine is anatomically correct?"

Troy rolled his eyes. Suddenly, Compton appeared next to him.

"I neglected to inform you that your son has arrived with his guest," he said, and then passing the boys added, "Yes, exquisitely."

Both turned a perfectly vivid green.

Chapter 19

Les and the Wizard hurried to the briefing room as Commander Frank had ordered. As Les jogged down the corridor, two shimmering vibrations condensed into the reality just above his head. They floated through the ship's walls, past her hull and out into space. The spores headed straight for the Singularity. In its immeasurable heat and gravity Moya and Tovar reintegrated. Thanks to Les, they had come where they never could have come without unendurable hunger. They began roaming through their vast new pastures. Along the rivers of time they wandered, seeking the richest deltas and central eddies in its flow of consciousness. Beings of light, once they came to a place, they could exist any at moment. Their only barriers were the birth of light itself, and its final dissolution.

As Les and the Wizard glided past the blue pocket doors, Hector Troy leaped from his seat. Les hurled himself into his father's arms.

"It's good to see you, Dad!" he whispered as hugged him tightly.

"I've missed you too, son."

Les turned to the man standing on his father's right.

"Akky!" he cried. He leaped into his embrace and kissed him passionately.

"Dad?" he began.

"I know, son."

"Yeah," Adams said, "we talked."

"I don't mean to interrupt the family reunion," Frank apologized, "but we have a rather important meeting to attend."

"Yes, of course, sir," Les became very formal. "Everyone, this is Kismet. He has graciously consented to share his experience with us. I think it will help us understand the identical de Brogli wave signatures and shed some light on exactly what we're dealing with."

The senior staff introduced themselves. The Wizard bowed to each in turn. "Les has told me about all of you, so I feel I know you all in some way" the Wizard began. "I should tell you first, a very little bit about myself, why Les asked me here, and why I agreed to abandon my duties and come so very far from my mother Russia."

"We're very grateful that you came, sir" Frank assured him. "I trust that Les has explained our delicate situation. I would like to hear just the gist at the moment, just enough to decide if our guests ought to be invited."

Les looked uncomfortable, but the Wizard simply bowed his head.

"Yes, I completely understand your position. It's just this. I am a Wizard by trade. I know that's hard to believe but I am not the sort that does magic or casts spells. I am Evnek and my business is to listen."

"Listen to what, exactly?" Brad inquired.

The Wizard's gaze became suddenly piercing. "To the last echoes of my age, young man, the last humors of a dying child."

"You're a Russian ghost whisperer?" Troy said incredulously.

"Dad!" Les cried.

"It's fine, young man. He is essentially correct."

"He's much more than that," Les said indignantly. "Kismet is an expert in the paranormal with far more experience than anyone at the ECC."

"Please excuse us, and do go on, sir" Frank said with just the hint of a scowl at Troy.

"These signals you're dealing with" the Wizard continued, "I can assure you they are not ghosts. They were never human."

"What are you saying? What are they, then?" Williams asked.

"They're demons," Les answered.

"That's absurd," Troy scoffed.

Franks turned in his chair.

"Compton? Opinion?"

The Cyborg sat silently and motionlessly in the far corner of the conference room. "I have analyzed the signals from Les' EMF device and compared them to those that brought us here and I find there is something quite disturbing about their similarity."

"Explain."

"The patterns are more than just similar, sir, far more. They are precisely identical. Even more bizarrely, their amplitude accelerations are also an incredibly precise match. It would be like hearing identical twin voices reading off the same count of prime numbers at precisely the same moment, on opposite sides of the galaxy."

"What in the Universe could explain that?" Frank asked perplexed.

"Intelligence, sir, nothing else."

There was stunned silence.

"And not human," Frank murmured to the Wizard.

"I don't believe so, young man. No. Never human."

"Human ghosts always fade," Les interrupted excitedly. "That's what Kismet and I have been able to show. I've gone through all the recordings over the last few years. We've matched them and the same patterns always fade over time, but not these, sir. They're getting stronger." Les passed his improvised EMF detector around the table.

"Where were these readings taken?" Adams asked. "These are exactly like the ones you showed me before, back on Gliese, but much stronger." Les blushed. It suddenly occurred to Adams that he had never seen his husband blush before.

"Don't get upset, Akky."

"What?"

"I believe I had a close encounter with these creatures back in London. I don't think it coincidence. They may have targeted me."

"How close?" Adams asked sharply.

"Very close."

"Goddamit, Les."

"Well, they were hot as hell."

"They?"

"There were two of them. One younger, one older, both Russians."

"Where?"

"The brambles in Saint James Park."

"What where you doing there?"

"Ghost hunting."

"Well, you certainly found something, didn't you?"

"Surprised, Adams, Really?" Troy defended. "Les is half your age."

"Dad!"

"We're getting off track, people," Frank interrupted. "Yes, of course, Commander," Brad said frowning at Troy. "Compton," he asked, turning to the Cyborg, "what's going on here?"

"I do not know precisely, sir" he answered, "but if Les and his friend are correct, and these signals represent non human creatures of some sort, then it is likely our presence here is a manipulation on their part and theoretically, they may also have manipulated our guests."

"To what purpose, Compton?" Franks asked.

"I do not know that either, sir, but perhaps it is time to include them in our discussions."

The boys and Professor Bashir, much refreshed, were lead into the already crowded briefing room to introductions all around. It took all of Les' professional training not to stare open mouthed at the greenish young men and the older, professorial, and much more human looking alien who accompanied them. Zar, who was becoming increasingly independent since ascending the throne, didn't make it any easier for him. With just a passing glance at Williams he strode immediately towards Les until they stood toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye. The boy was obviously smitten.

"Kicked you right to the curb!" Troy whispered teasingly to Williams on his left, who simply frowned at him again.

"May I have this one, Commander Frank? For my Kootak?" Zar pleaded, looking deeply into Les' eyes and petting his arm.

"Looks like my boy might be trading up!" Troy snickered, elbowing Adams, on his right, who took his turn frowning at the Security Chief.

"Why do you go out with him? He's such an ass," Adams whispered at Williams.

"Latino. Big chorizo," he answered, gesturing rather obscenely.

"Gotcha."

Meanwhile, poor Les tried desperately not to look appalled.

"Zar!" Tok cried at last, with perhaps a twinge of jealousy. "I do not think our new friends consider each other property in that fashion. They might think it rude. Please forgive us again, Commander," he begged, and led the young Emperor to his seat.

"Gentleman," Frank presided, "we can discuss all such personal matters at a later date. We have rather more pressing business to attend to."

"I quite agree, Commander," the Professor chimed in.

"There is a situation evolving," Frank continued, "that likely relates to our presence here, and that requires your consultation."

"Yes, Commander?" Tok asked politely. "How can we help?"

"Our presence here may not be coincidental," he began.

"No, Commander. It's not," said Tok.

"We disabled your outpost, Commander," The professor confessed. "Or more precisely, I did. Your installation monitors our warning bogeys. Once we were within rage, I hacked its mainframe through the receivers. We hoped you'd come. We need your help. I assure you it's quite reversible."

"Brilliant," Compton observed.

"Thank you, Professor," Frank said, honestly relieved that they would be able to return home, "but that's not what got us here. We were attracted by certain signals. Upon closer analysis we've concluded that it is highly likely they were generated by another entity."

"Entity?" Tok said.

"Perelesnyk young man. They are not human and not physical," the Wizard answered. It was the first time he had spoken in front of the aliens.

Both Tok and the Professor were aghast.

"That accent!" the Professor exclaimed.

"I know it too!" Tok cried. "An indecent creature!"

The Professor blushed.

"Indecent? Now hold on there?" Les began.

"You've also had encounters?" Frank interrupted in astonishment.

"Yes Commander," the Professor admitted.

"And I." Tok confirmed uncomfortably.

"Tok?" Zar squealed.

"Forgive me, my love. It was for us, for the information it provided."

"What in the name of all wonder is going on here?" asked a bewildered Bradley Williams.

"As I was saying," the Wizard continued, "I believe you are dealing with Perelesnyk."

"And just what are those?" said Frank.

"Demons." said Les.

"Impossible."

"Commander," Compton interjected, "labels notwithstanding, the facts describe a non-human, non-corporeal, rather carnal intelligence. While they do not appear evil precisely, their true aims remain elusive."

"The Russian accents," Williams reminded them all, "they suggest Earth as the point of origin. We may have infected these people."

"Germs, guns and steel," Frank mused.

"We have our own demons, gentleman," said the Professor. "Our bad behaviors predate your appearance."

"These creatures may not be temporally locked, as we are," Les suggested. "That's why the signals they generate always get stronger. We move through time in only one direction. Maybe they can go either way."

"Perelesnyk are immortals. They exist at all times," the Wizard concurred. "They feed on negative emotions, but according to Russian tradition they can do nothing for themselves and they can't force anyone to do anything. They reflect what's inside of us back out, they lure us in, goad us into self-will and tempt us."

"They're good at that," Les whispered to himself.

"If these entities feed on negative energy, as our Russian visitor suggests," Compton offered, "they may be attempting to facilitate conflict."

"No human wars for fifty years and none on the horizon, they might be getting hungry," Frank added.

"Ok, hold on, everyone," Hector Troy stood up, "I've kept my mouth shut 'till now, but this is just getting ridiculous. Devils? Seriously? What is this 1256? It's nonsense. No matter what his old man here says, there are no such things as demons."

Les glared at him and spoke angrily. "Dad, you never valued what I do. You think it's all a joke. You think I'm a joke. Well, I've got news for you. It's not. It's real. What I do is real. There's a world outside of your science that you're just too much of a lunk-head to understand."

Zar and Tok were appalled. They had never heard, or thought to hear, a son speak in such a manor to his father. In the Empire, it would have been a perversity punishable by death. They braced for violence.

"Sit down, Ensign," Troy said calmly. "Look, Les, you're my boy and I love you. I do value what you do. I'm sorry for not making that clear. I made a few stupid jokes that I wish I could take back. I am a lunk-head sometimes, but none of that earns any free passes around here. I'm a scientist and this ship's chief security officer, which means I rank you by the way, Mr. Insubordinate. I need proof and a plan. How do we fight these creatures, if they even exist."

"That's just it, young man!" The Wizard leapt to his feet. "You don't' fight them. That's exactly what they want you to do. It doesn't matter if we fight them or each other. They'll feast just the same. Besides, you have no weapons that would be any more effective against them than tyanuchki."

"What the hell is that?"

"I believe it's a traditional Russian caramel," answered Compton.

"Correct. Another person's soul is a mystery, young man. We can only meet the Perelesnyk alone, within ourselves," said the Wizard.

"Alright, then, how do we defend against them, alone and within ourselves?" Troy asked.

The Wizard reached into his deeply pocketed robe and tossed a handful of wrapped trinkets onto the clear table. They clacked nosily. "Have a piece of tyanuchki," he laughed. "I made them myself".

There was a perplexed silence.

"Well? What do you say?" the Wizard demanded.

"Excuse me?" Troy grimaced without comprehension. "What do you say when someone gives you something good? Did your parents teach you no manners?"

"Thank you?"

"Exactly! If you need a defense against the Perelesnyk, gratitude is the best you've got. Negative emotions cannot persist when you're grateful."

As the Wizard spoke, the room glowed with a flashing red light.

"All hands battle stations," the mechanical voice commanded, "Condition red. Commander Frank to the Bridge".

"Everyone to the Bridge," Frank ordered. The room emptied instantly.

Chapter 20

Compton was already analyzing the data streams flowing rapidly into the science station as Frank hurried onto the bridge and leapt into his command chair.

"What's going on now?" he cried as the others began to arrive.

"Twenty-two Imperial vessels have appeared, each more or less similar to the first. Ten are bearing down on the Flagship and a dozen are juxtaposing themselves between us. None are blocking our retreat."

"Good. Get us out of here."

"Yes sir."

Before the Cyborg could comply, the Professor came puffing onto the Bridge, last of all the conference attendees.

"If they destroy the Flagship, we lose all our communication advantages."

Frank responded immediately. "Belay that order. You've got fifteen seconds to explain, Professor."

"Commander," Tok pleaded, "we suspected we were being perused, but we didn't expect half the Imperial fleet. That suggests a coup against His Majesty since such a pursuit is expressly against his orders. It is likely that of the remaining twenty ships in the Imperial fleet, a handful are deployed holding Cerresia and the rest are in route to Regehelia, a journey of at least a year. It is imperative that we communicate instantly within the Empire. If that advantage is lost the crown will be little less."

"Forty vessels!" Troy gasped. "That's three times what we've got".

"Sir," Bradley Williams said, "We have nothing to do here. We can't take sides in an imperial civil war."

"I agree, sir," Troy said.

"We have no basis for action," Compton made it unanimous.

Frank's eyes rolled between his Senior Officers and his guests.

"Mr. Adams, hail them." After a few anxious seconds the reply came that Frank dreaded.

"They're receiving us, but not responding, sir."

"There's one more thing, Commander," the Professor said nervously.

"The master subroutine to purge your porting computers is also on that vessel. Without it, not even I can restore operations."

"Shit. We could be stuck here for months!" Williams cursed.

"And at the tender mercy of the Imperial fleet," Troy added.

All eyes fell on Frank.

"Well, let's explain it to them. In the common tongue."

"Commander?" the Cyborg shrugged incomprehension.

"Ahead full power, Compton. Let's get right in between them. Fire a few plasma blasts behind us, just to let them know what we're capable of. Then raise our shields."

"Sir, each of those vessels is equipped with plasma blasters. If they all bear down on us at the same time, we would not survive."

"You know that and I know that, but let's hope they don't know that."

"I have an idea," Compton said to a general astonishment.

"As our guests did to us, I can invert our shield refraction coil and project our own image along side of us."

"A sensor ghost! That's brilliant, Compton," Franks cried. "Do it."

Even as the EEC ship sped through the void between the closing imperial fleet and the Flagship, half a dozen streaks of blue-green energy fled from the stern and fanned out into bundles of expanding superheated plasma. Just as the last emission cleared the ships stern another EEC vessel appeared to materialize starboard. The Imperial vessels immediately veered off, retreating to a respectful distance before coming to a complete stop. After another few anxious seconds, Adam's voice rose above the bridge.

"They're hailing us, sir!"

"Imagine that. Put it on screen."

The stars wobbled and chaotic lines of yellow static flashed across the enormous view screen. As the static cleared an aged, greenish, frog-like face materialized. He had patches of stringy white hair falling from the sides of a bare, blotchy head.

"What is the meaning of this outrage?" He roared. "How dare you trespass our space and interfere with our internal affairs! Prepare to be boarded."

"See how ridiculous you sounded?" Frank grinned at Zar who nodded sheepishly, looked at his feet and snuggled up to Tok.

"Do you two know this guy?"

"That is General Korus," Tok answered, "his Majesty's regent"

"Do you two want to talk to him, or should I?"

"Allow me," Tok offered. "Stand in front of me, Zar."

"Very well. Go ahead Adams."

"You're on kid," he said, nodding at him as his fingers danced over the communications consol.

"General Korus!" Tok shouted. "What is the meaning of this outrage?"

"You have defied direct orders in pursuing us, ignored an Imperial hail and bore down aggressively on His Majesty's flag ship."

The green old man's eyes widened and then narrowed into slits as he recognized the two young men. His stance shifted uneasily.

"Answer him, Korus!" Zar commanded.

"Your Majesty has come under the influence of vagabonds and aliens. It is my duty to bring you home and restore your throne to its rightful allegiances."

"Be forceful, Zar," Tok whispered.

"How dare you presume to overrule my orders," Zar barked.

"Tell him to stand down, that we're going back to our flag ship, and that we'll follow the fleet home with our human captives," Tok whispered.

"But..." the boy hesitated.

"It's okay, Zar," Frank said. "I think I know where your friend is going with this. Do it." Tok eyed him gratefully.

"I am in command of these vessels, Korus!" Zar continued loudly. "News of my victory over the Earthmen is already being celebrated throughout the Empire. You will stand down as I bring my human slaves home or I shall order the fleet to destroy you!"

"Compton, begin moving our reflection towards the flag ship at half speed. Keep our bow to them, full power to forward shields," Frank murmured. "If they see through your trick things are going to get ugly fast."

Korus was struck dumb for an instant, but quickly regained his composure. His bearing markedly changed.

"On behalf of my house and the High Command I congratulate you on your victory, Highness!" he said in his sweetest tone.

"Keep him talking," Frank said.

"The High command at home is already planning a victory parade commemorating the defeat of the Earthmen and the complete destruction of their spying station. My father is avenged! You will order the fleet into ceremonial configuration. We shall return home from battle victorious with my flagship leading the procession."

"I live to fulfill your wishes sire," he lied.

"Compton," Frank ordered, "bring our reflection alongside the flag ship."

"Yes, sir."

"They're arming weapons!" Williams cried. "All twenty ships at once!"

"Surprise, surprise," Frank shook his head.

"They're targeting our reflection! They're firing!" Williams and Compton shouted in rapid succession.

The view screen lit up with dozens of bursts of blue light. Trails upon trails of expanding miasmas sped harmlessly through the wobbling reflection dissipating into the frigid void of space. At last an eerie stillness fell.

"They're all out of power, sir!" Compton confirmed.

"Take us to the flag ship, full speed. Fire a barrage of plasma bursts to scatter them." The ship rocked as the energy bolts were hurled into space.

"They're dispersing, sir, back from where they came," he said.

"That won't last long. Hector, take the boys and the Professor back to their ship. Then let's all get the hell out of here."

"Where are we going, sir?" Williams inquired.

"Outpost 8."

"They will, of course pursue us,"

"As soon as they recharge their batteries, Compton." Frank agreed. "In the meantime, there's a lot of space out there for us to get lost in. Hopefully, we'll be gone before they can find us."

The two ships sped to the relative safety of Outpost 8, the Imperial flagship first and the larger Earth vessel covering the retreat.

In the midst of their flight Adams voice rose over the bridge. "Commander," he called, "I am receiving an urgent communication from Secretary Paige."

"I'll take it in the briefing room. Les, Kismet and Brad, you're with me. Compton, you have the Con."

The small group left the bridge and headed back down the narrow corridors. The blue pocket doors hissed opened as they approached.

The slight Secretary's gaze, his image already on screen, followed them as they took their familiar places at the clear rectangular table.

"Commander," Paige got right to it, "let me start by commending you and your crew for your actions during this critical mission."

"Thank you Mr. Secretary."

"I know Ensign Troy and First Officer Williams, but not the other gentleman. I don't think we've met, Sir. I'm Secretary Paige"

"Yes of course, I know you. I'm Kismet, a simple Russian poor person."

"Kismet is too modest, sir," Les spoke up. "He is Evnek, that's a particular sect of shaman native to the Russian plains. He has great expertise with the entities that we've detected."

"I see. Well, it is a pleasure to meet you Kismet, and thank you for the all your assistance. Henry, we've done some pretty detailed analysis ourselves based on Les' measurements and your own data stream and we've got some information for you."

"Yes sir?"

"We agree," Paige began "that these entities are most likely from Earth and according to the porting records Les brought them when he came on board."

"You mean we infected these poor creatures," Frank concluded.

Les felt sick to the pit of his stomach. "I didn't mean it," he said.

"We know that Ensign," Paige's tone was compassionate, not accusative. "It's not your fault, young man. You couldn't have known."

"But that's impossible" Brad Williams said sharply. "If Les brought them here with him, how could they have been responsible for the de Brogli patterns that brought us here?"

"That occurred to us also, Lieutenant. These creatures aren't temporally locked. For them, effect can precede cause, at least from our point of view. Are you familiar with the Grandfather paradox?"

"No Sir" Les Troy answered.

"If you went back in time and killed your grandfather, you wouldn't have been born to accomplish the murder. It's an endless nonsensical loop. Either time travel or the paradox itself is impossible."

"Precisely, Ensign" Paige said. "These creatures can travel back in time, apparently, but we don't clearly understand what that means or what power that imparts. Perhaps time isn't as linear as it appears to us. We don't know if they drive events or merely feed off them"

"If I may, sir" Kismet said, "In Russian tradition destiny isn't linear. It's a closed circle. If we could travel as they do, even with foreknowledge, we'd find ourselves as powerless to change what will be as we are to change what is. Whatever will be and whatever we will do has already happened and is already done. The universe, from beginning to end, is truth and truth is a closed circle that cannot be changed. These beings belong to it. They don't feed off events, but off our emotions. They don't change things."

"We appreciate that, sir," Paige replied, "but we can't confirm it. We've been unable to measure the impact of the creatures. At best, they're like ants at picnic. We think we have an answer based on Ensign Troy's observations, just to be on the safe side."

"Yes sir?" Les asked anxiously.

"The two Russian patterns, the one that's fading and the one that's gaining strength, never overlap." Paige continued, "When you look at them over time, it's as if the stronger pattern is repulsed by the weakening one."

"The Perelesnyk cannot abide the Tsaravich," Kismet confirmed.

"The who can't abide the what?" Paige asked quizzically.

"Kismet believes the strengthening signals are Perelesnyk, sir, Russian demons and the fading pattern is the ghost of Alexei Nicholiavich Romanov, the last crown prince of the Romanov dynasty."

"I see," Paige demurred. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter. If it repulses these entities, whatever it is, and whatever they are, we can re-create the pattern, attach it to communications, porting signals, even add it to the ship's shields."

"Like insect repellent," Les exclaimed.

"Something like that, Ensign," Paige agreed.

At first, Kismet looked pained, as if he had been insulted. He raised his eyes, covered them with his gnarly hand and finally nodded.

"Alyosha would be pleased to help, " he sighed. "He had a golden heart. Even his echo has faded away and what is gone is gone forever."

"We'll channel it through our shields, sir," Frank pledged, "and tag it onto all our communications. I'll get Compton on it immediately."

"We don't know how much it will help, if at all," Paige admitted.

"It couldn't hurt," Les finished.

"Our thoughts exactly," Paige said.

The Secretary then turned his attention back to Frank. "Finally, Henry, I have to point out that by harboring those two young aliens, you've made your ship and Outpost 8 legitimate military targets. Your mission was not to embroil us in a civil war."

"Mr. Secretary?" Frank asked in peeved astonishment. "What exactly are you suggesting? That we hand the boys over or just abandon them?"

"I'm reminding you," Paige responded forcefully, "that your first priority is the protection of the outpost and the cultivation of Imperial relations that are in the interests of the ECC."

"With all due respect Ian, the Imperial fleet has demonstrated abjectly hostile intent twice now. What kind of relations do you think we can have with people who are shooting at us? We aren't looking to choose sides, but twenty imperial vessels are likely hunting for us at this very moment and those two boys hold the key to getting Outpost 8 operational. If they find us before..."

"I never said this was going to be an easy mission, Henry," Paige interrupted, "and we did draw first blood."

"We'll try getting the porting station back on line as soon as we arrive at the outpost," Frank continued, ignoring the Secretary's painfully accurate point. "We'll divert the ship's power to recharge the batteries. I want back up."

"Out of the question, Henry," he said resolutely.

"You have got to be kidding me," Brad Williams blurted out, forgetting his place in his growing frustration.

"That enough, Mr. Williams," Frank corrected him sharply, but instantly turned to Paige and repeated, "You have got to be kidding me, Ian"

"I'm not getting into a war over this, Henry. Bloodshed will take this matter to another level, probably out of my hands. Use the power to get yourselves home. That's your top priority, not interstellar child protective services."

"We're not handing those kids over," Williams insisted.

"You're on the verge of insubordination, Mister," Frank said tersely.

"I know that, sir, but they're sentient beings, not bargaining chips."

Frank sighed heavily. "Ian, I have to agree with my First Officer."

"I feel the same," said Les defiantly, "I'm sure my father does too."

Compton's voice suddenly resonated over the intercom. "Forgive the interruption, sir, but we've reached Outpost 8. And I concur. Abandoning our new friends to certain death is not an option."

"Looks like it's going to be a grand court marshal," Williams whistled.

"No one is getting court marshaled," Paige rejoined, "and the ECC has not recommended they be handed over or abandoned. I'm not suggesting anything. I'm reminding you of your priorities. There's a lot at stake, here Henry, for you personally," he added with emphasis.

"I understand that, Ian."

"Good luck," he said. His image flickered out.

The crew exchanged annoyed frowns and critical head shakes.

"Commander!" Les shouted, his head turning round about, is arms waving in the air. "Its Kismet! He's gone!" The room was dumbstruck. Like a ghost, the wizard had vanished.

Chapter 21

The Imperial flagship, followed closely by its Earthly guardian, fell into circumpolar orbit around the dreary world of Outpost 8. Frank pondered options as Compton guided both ships into lock step trajectories high above the non-functional porting station. He glanced at Akieno Adams working closely with his young husband. With Compton's help they had already incorporated the Tsaravich's echo as a repetitive resonance within the ship's shielding grid. They were now scanning the heavens for signs of the strange bedeviling entities or the reappearance of the Imperial fleet. Hector Troy on board the Imperial flagship worked desperately with Professor Bashir to debug the porting station's operating system. Meanwhile, Bradley Williams' more tedious efforts were focused on safely and quickly transferring as much of the ship's power to the porting batteries as needed to get them home. There were in a deadly race.

Frank had no doubt that the Imperial fleet was at that very moment frantically searching and would soon find them. They were heavily outnumbered and a retreat to the outpost was obvious. Moreover, by firing upon their reflection General Korus had not only bared his treasonous intentions, he had also made a fool of himself. Frank did not think it likely that the green old man would waste any more time talking. Every breath of young Emperor threatened his ambition and it was basic military procedure that the Earth ship never saw home again. Frank knew he would strike to kill and with their power reserves drained to the porting batteries they would be particularly vulnerable. Secretary Paige had been clear that no help would come from Earth. Their best hope would be a hasty portal retreat home, twenty five thousand light years away, where the Imperial fleet couldn't possibly follow. The neutron batteries would protect the outpost, at least long enough for the ECC to calmly consider its fate. It could not be allowed to fall into hostile hands that would surely reverse engineer the technology and threaten humanity itself. Yet, its destruction would close off human expansion. That dilemma was beyond the scope of Frank's command. More present to his mind was the fate of his young wards and his chief security officer. They were in grave danger as long as they remained on the flagship. If the fleet suddenly appeared they would have no safe path back.

"We're done here, Henry. We've excised the virus and reset the Outpost's operating system. It's rebooting now. The mainframe should be back on line in a few minutes." Frank breathed a deep sigh of relief when Hector Troy's voice rang out over the bridge with the update.

"Good work, Hector."

"Wasn't me, Commander. Bashar and Tok did the all work. I just gave moral support."

"When can you launch the shuttle?"

"Half an hour at best. Things are pretty primitive here."

"Speed it up as much as you can."

"Yes, sir."

"Commander," Williams called from across the bridge, "we've charged the batteries enough to get us home. The station is generating power again, but we're using that to charge the neutron batteries."

"Good work Brad. Compton, Standby to port on my orders."

"Yes sir."

Hector Troy didn't let on how uncomfortable he felt on board the alien vessel. The bridge was cramped, stale, and primitive. Its artificial gravity was nauseatingly inconsistent and set too low for comfort, although Bashir and the boys seemed unperturbed. Even though they had accomplished their mission the Professor and Tok continued working the communications consul while the shuttle underwent the progressive cycles of pressurizations necessary for launch. Zar eyed him closely.

"You are the father of the young officer called Les, correct?"

"Yes, sire," he said indulgently.

"He spoke to you most disrespectfully. Is this common among your people?"

Troy smiled at the bright-eyed boy. "Oh, I think Les was just a bit frustrated back there, that's all. He's a fine young man."

"On my world you could have had him executed."

"That would have been a little extreme, don't you think?" he winked.

Tok peered over the computer consul to attend the conversation.

"Perhaps," Zar allowed, "but if you decide to sell him I would like the chance to bid. He is very handsome."

"Zar!" Tok face-palmed himself.

Troy smiled widely "It's okay" he chuckled. "It's not like the idea never crossed my mind, but my son is a man now." The words seem to stick in his throat. "He's married to our communications officer, Lieutenant Adams,"

"To that bald old man?" Zar gaped in disbelief.

"My thoughts exactly."

"Why did you allow it?"

"They didn't' ask my permission."

Zar's eyes went wide as a boiled owl.

"Our new friends have very different traditions," Tok reminded him.

"I should very much like to visit Earth one day," said Zar, "especially if all the boys are as handsome as your son."

"Well, Les is exceptional, in many ways," Troy smiled.

"Majesty," Bashir called, "you must see this."

They all huddled around the old man. "It's the fleet. The virus allows us to triangulate using their ship-to-ship communications."

Tok's eyes narrowed as he pointed to the fleet's current position and coordinated meanderings. "They haven't located us yet," he concluded with relief. Troy wrapped an arm around each boy. "They will soon, before we can get back to our ship," he predicted. "They're making a roundabout for the outpost."

"Henry," Troy called to his communicator.

"Frank here," The commander answered. "Go ahead, Hector."

"We've got problems. The fleet will be here in fifteen minutes."

"Why do you think that?"

"The Professor's virus has them tagged."

"Shit," Frank pounded his head for ideas.

"Dad!" Les cried. Brad Williams felt his stomach go queasy "Hector," he murmured to himself.

"Options, anyone?" Frank cried.

"Have they detected us?" Compton called to Adams.

"No, sir," he answered. "No indication that we've been tracked. They're probably just heading for the outpost because its logical that's where we'd be."

"We might use the flagship to draw at least some of them off," Compton suggested.

Frank shook his head doubtfully.

"No!" Williams said. "We're not using anyone as bait. Besides, that wouldn't draw off enough of them make a difference"

"Brad's right," Adams said, much to his husband's relief. "We need a bigger diversion."

Back on the Flagship Professor Bashar's eyes lit up. Searching his center he found his determination, perseverance and loyalty, and there also he found inspiration. He had got an idea. His fingers worked furiously.

"What are you doing, Professor?" Tok asked.

"Calling on a friend," he replied through a desperate smile. "When you traced the virus back to my computer, you created an entangled particle stream. I can follow it back into my own mainframe cloud and access its entangled particle network as well."

After a few anxious moments a strange voice answered.

"Amadu, here."

"My friend," the professor began. "I am going to send you a message. I need it rebroadcast to the fleet. It has to appear to come from your father."

"But his entangled particle communications system is down."

"I'm going to reverse that momentarily," the Professor explained.

"What's going on over there?" Frank called from the intercom.

"Give us a moment," Troy answered. "The Professor has an idea."

Light years away Amadu worked feverishly rerouting the message through his father's own entangled particle stream.

"It should be coming through in a moment," Bashir predicted. "We can monitor it from here," he added, pointing to another screen.

"What did you send, Professor?" Zar asked.

"The fleet will soon learn that the Reghelia has declared its independence from the Empire and is freezing all Imperial assets."

"That means war." Zar gasped

"Precisely!" the Professor agreed.

"I get it," said Troy. "Greenie might not want to risk any muscle here if he thinks there's a bigger battle coming in his rear."

"It is worth a try, Professor," Tok said dubiously, "but I don't think it's going to work. There are already more than enough vessels headed to Reghelia put down any rebellion." Uneasy moments past, and as Tok had feared, the fleet continued to close. He turned to his young liege. "We should not endanger our new friends any long." He said earnestly. "We are the only diversion that will draw off a significant portion of the fleet. We need to head home or at least appear to be heading home. They will follow, a good number of them will anyway."

"I won't allow it," Troy insisted. "They'll destroy you."

"Troy, get back here now," Frank called from the Earth Ship. "That's an order."

"From me too." Bradley Williams' voice added.

"And me," Les chimed in.

" Lieutenant Troy, You must board the shuttle craft and return at once," Compton said, "at the very least you will draw enemy fire that will increase our chances of survival."

Compton hit the right nerve. Troy remembered his duty as a father.

"I have another idea," the Professor said suddenly.

"Lieutenant Troy, take the boys with you back to your vessel," I will stay here. I can pilot this ship."

"That is very noble, Professor, but they will follow you as well and destroy you."

"Not all of them," Tok said, warming up to the idea, "and if we can give him a head start they'll never catch him. This ship is the fastest in the fleet."

"I can also maintain control over our communications and the treasury from here," the professor reminded them.

"Why wouldn't they just target the flag ship then?" Troy asked.

"They might," Tok allowed, "but they don't know whether Zar and I are aboard the shuttle, the flagship or your vessel. If they want us, they'll have to target all three."

"I'm liking this idea," Frank said from his bridge.

"It seems our best chance," Compton agreed.

"Dad, get aboard the shuttle now" Les cried.

"That's an order," Brad Williams shouted.

"Alright, let's go you two" he said to the boys. "Professor, the ship is yours."

Zar turned to the old man in the long black robes.

"I, I want to thank you for all you have done for us, for our people. You are a very great man, Professor. I am sorry I didn't realize it at once."

The Professor smiled warmly at him "I am not very comely, am I?" he grinned. "But once upon a time, I assure you, I was almost as handsome as you are now. We all love first what we are best suited to love, your Majesty," he bowed low. " I also judged you and your friend on appearances. I was wrong as well. It is an honor to serve you."

As they hurried to the shuttle bay Tok held Zar's hand and squeezed it affectionately.

"I am proud of you, Zar" he said. "That meant a lot to the Professor. You have become a gracious ruler."

"It is because I have you beside me," his said, his sapphire eyes gleaming.

They hurried onto the shuttle deck just as the heavy silver pocket doors opened. Condensing water vapor rush out as the shuttle itself seemed to materialize from the fog. They rushed on board and strapped themselves in. Troy immediately started the final pressurization cycle that would ease the shuttle to zero pressure and conserve air for the Flagship.

"We've got to launch as soon as we can," Troy said impatiently. "Tok, you know how to fly this thing. Get us out of here."

"Yes Lieutenant."

The bay doors of the small cigar shaped vessel slowly opened releasing the shuttle into the void of space. Tok coordinated the thrusters to push off the Flagship at the exact angles to glide them towards the Earth Vessel. Compton calculated the trajectory and maneuvered the great ship to precisely gobble up the tiny shuttle in its docking bay. All eyes were glued to the view screen as the shuttle slowly drew nearer. The mood was tense as each ticking second drew them closer to the inevitable confrontation with the approaching fleet. Suddenly, Compton sounded condition red.

"Imperial vessels, sir. They've have located us. Five ships are closing on our coordinates and should be within range momentarily. The remainder are altering course and will reach us in approximately twenty minutes."

"Shit," Frank exclaimed. "How long till we dock with the shuttle?"

"At our current speed, it will take another fifteen minutes, sir."

"Shit," Bradley Williams echoed. "Can we speed up?"

"Not safely, sir,"

"Push it Compton!" Frank ordered. "Raise shields and arm weapons."

"Yes, sir."

"Commander," Williams called, "the first five vessels are bearing down on the Flagship. I don't think they've detected the shuttle yet."

"Fire a plasma blast between them. That's should slow them down. Professor, get out of here."

Frank felt the ship lurch as the plasma blast was hurled into space, scattering the five pursuing vessels. The flagship broke orbit and began rapidly circling the large tidally locked world.

"He's using the planet's gravity to pick up speed, sir," said Williams.

"That's how we got a head of them when we left Cerrisia," Zar cried.

"Yes!" Tok cheered. "Go Professor!"

"Wish me luck," the Professor's voice called over the intercom.

With that, the Flagship burst out of orbit and its magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters were engaged. The ship vanished into deep space. None of the five vessels bothered with pursuit.

"Shit," Frank exclaimed.

"They've detected the shuttle craft," Williams yelled. "They're arming weapons, sir. They're firing!"

"Oh, Shit," Troy' voice called.

"Compton?"

"Most of the blasts are poorly aimed, sir. Only two are likely to hit the shuttle, but they will not survive even one"

"Dad!" Les cried.

The misty blue energy clouds descended on the helpless shuttle. From the bridge Frank could make out which were likely to find their mark. He reacted quickly.

"Compton, get us in between those two plasma clouds and the shuttle," He said pointing at the screen.

"Yes sir, but it is likely that we shall sustain at least three of the five blasts as direct hits. Our power will be drained critically. In addition, we shall have to come around again in order to board the shuttle."

"No other options, Compton. Do it."

"Yes sir."

The great ship pivoted on its own momentum and slipped into the rapidly narrowing gap between the plasma clouds and the helpless shuttle.

"Brace yourselves," Frank warned.

The ship began to vibrate, the lights dimmed and turned red. The shaking became so violent that the crew was tossed about the bridge. Everyone but Frank was thrown to the floor. The engines whined as they gripped the murderous energy and deflected it out into space. Frank discerned three separate impacts before the violent quaking subsided.

"How bad Compton?"

"The blasts are extremely primitive, sir," he answered. "Individually they have little focused power behind them, but in our drained condition, the shields are down to 20 percent. We would not survive another such barrage. Fortunately, the vessels have veered off to recharge weapons."

"Swing around and get the shuttle. Brad, how long?"

"About five minutes, sir,"

"The rest of the fleet will arrive shortly thereafter," Compton said.

"Shit. Any chance for a working window to get home?"

"That is highly unlikely, Commander. We cannot port with raised shields and a single hit anywhere along our trajectory could destroy us."

"Shit."

Uneasy moments passed. The five alien vessels hovered about them just out of range like a stalking pack of wolves. The fleet continued to close.

At last, the shuttlecraft glided into place and was scooped up. The bay was rapidly re-pressurized and its crew hurried to the bridge. Troy landed at his station through Les's desperate embrace. Brad kissed him passionately.

"Dad? You and Brad?"

"We fell in love on Tau, son"

"You took him to our house?" Les was aghast.

"We'll talk" Troy said awkwardly.

Tok and Zar nervously huddled behind Frank in his command chair. The Fleet appeared. Fifteen vessels, instead of the twenty-two expected.

"Well, that rules out porting. Where are the rest of them?" Frank wondered.

"They're following me, gentleman," Professor Bashir's voice responded brightly over the intercom. "Seven are on my tail. I'm accelerating faster, so I should be all right. I'll fire a plasma blast at an opportune moment to scatter them."

"Good work, Professor. Compton, get us out of here," Frank cried, "make for the outpost. We can hide under the neutron batteries."

"Yes, sir."

Immediately, the engines whined. The ship lunged ferociously under the Imperial fleet. Five of the attackers fired vainly at the faster, more maneuverable Earth vessel. The rest, five to starboard and five to port, dove in pursuit.

"Take us around Compton, within range of the neutron batteries. "They should be back up to full power by now."

"Yes, sir"

The ship sped back to the safety of Outpost 8, its pursuers falling behind, but the Earthmen had already lost the race. They had nowhere to run. They were twenty-five thousand light years from home. To prevent an invasion in his rear, Korus' high value target was the outpost, not the Earth ship. Once it was destroyed, the Earthlings would surrender or starve in space. Frank understood this all too well, even as his ship slipped within the protective range of the outpost's powerful neutron batteries. The pursuers, all but one of them, veered off to into orbit at a respectful distance. Whether miscalculation, bravado, or suicide reconnaissance the luckless vessel that tried the deadly defenses paid the ultimate price. The merciless neutron beam easily shattered the unshielded hull sending its debris falling like a hundred shooting stars into the planet's thin atmosphere.

"That was senseless," said Frank.

"It is the way of our people, Commander," said Tok. "We experience each other as expendable. We follow orders blindly."

"Humanity has struggled long with those same defects," said Frank.

The conflict had devolved into a siege. The Earth vessel was trapped under the protection of the outpost while the Imperial Fleet was held beyond plasma blast range by the deadly neutron batteries. The Earthmen were unable or unwilling to send reinforcements. Only Tok did not suspect them of cowardice. The Earth vessel could sustain itself for decades, the outpost for centuries. The Imperial Fleet could reinforce its blockade at will and bring ever more firepower to bear on the outpost. The situation appeared wholly static. Minutes became hours and still the fleet bottled them up within the narrow confines of a low, circumpolar orbit.

As the tedious hours passed and the others became preoccupied with various duties, Zar gravitated towards Les Troy. The young Emperor had been instantly smitten the moment he saw him. For his part, Les had been warming to the little green alien despite his youth. Battle and desperation had made Les fiercely protective and he found his total and unconditional devotion to Tok deeply touching. And whether he cared to admit it or not, there was something fascinatingly exotic and intensely sensual in his sparkly blue eyes. He happily indulged Zar's inquisitives on technical specialties, Earth, and finally, himself.

"I am 18 years old. How old are you?"

"I'm 20. I'll be 21 in a few weeks."

"And already married to that bald old man? Why did you do it?"

"Because I fell in love," Les laughed. "Besides, Akky's not that old."

"But he is not a boy."

"I prefer men."

"Oh," Zar sighed disappointedly, "I see."

"Doesn't that happen on your world? People fall in love?"

"All the time, but that is no reason to marry someone."

"I see," Les smiled. "What is a reason, then?"

"Because your father says so," said Zar obviously.

"Ah! Well, I think my father would like it on your world very much!"

"Your father is a great man. You ought to listen to him."

Les smiled widely "Did he pay you to say that?"

"No," Zar replied seriously, "but I did offer to buy you from him."

"You what?"

"When you were rude to him in the briefing room," Zar explained, "on my world, a merciful father would have sold you into slavery for it, and I would very much like to buy you for my Kootak."

"What's a Kootak?"

"Oh, it's like a collection of concubines, but you would be the favorite"

"I see!" said Les strangely flattered. "Well, why don't we start out being friends first? That's the way we do it on Earth."

"I would like that very much," Zar blushed a slight green.

"That's adorable!"

"What?"

"When your face goes green like that."

"I like your pink, better" he said, stroking Les' soft smooth cheeks.

Tok became aware of them and the growing connection. He was not immune to jealousy but he understood and accepted Zar's growing sexual curiosity and retained enough objectivity and diplomatic instinct to encourage it. Any relationship, any bond, between them and these Earthmen would likely accrue to their benefit. He came over to join them.

"I hope His Majesty is not distracting you from your duties."

"I hate it when you call me that, Tok." The blond boy nodded.

"I hope Zar is not annoying you," he repeated.

"No!" Les laughed. "There's not much for me to do at the moment. We're just getting to know each other."

"Its very kind of you to take a personal interest in us." Tok said gratefully. "We have already imposed greatly on your hospitality. We are, after all, homeless strangers who have been nothing but an awful burden. And now, we may have doomed you."

"It's not like that at all," Les said. "We're explorers, we humans. It's our nature. It's in our blood. We're always wondering what's over the next hill or behind the next star. We came here looking for new worlds to explore, to colonize. Instead we found you, amazing new friends. What a wonderful gift to learn that we're not alone after all. Of course there's risk. That's what exploration is all about. Commander Frank, my father, my husband Akky, they're the best officers ever. We'll get home all right, I promise. And when we do, it would be my honor to show you our world."

"You are uncommonly kind, Les" said Tok, deeply moved.

"Can we?" Zar asked, offering his forehead.

"It is our custom, a bonding, a sign of affection," Tok explained

The three touched foreheads. Instantly, Les felt strangely moved and inexplicably attached.

"Commander!" Bradley Williams shouted. "The Fleet is withdrawing. They're breaking the siege!"

"Compton?" An astonished Frank swung round in his command chair.

"Confirmed, sir. They're heading back toward Imperial space at top speed."

"What could have happened?"

"Who cares? As soon as they're out of range, let's get the hell out of here!" Hector Troy yelled.

"Commander! I'm getting something from the Professor," Akieno Adams cried.

"Put it on screen."

Les Troy, Tok and Zar stepped up alongside Henry Frank.

The stars wobbled and disintegrated, replace by the agitated image of Professor Bashir.

"Your Majesty!" It is my duty to report that a rebellion has broken out against your regency."

"Rebellion?"

"Yes sire, a terrible civil war. Many lives have been lost."

"Who is behind this?"

"Your mother, your Majesty!"

"My Mother?" Zar repeated.

"Yes sire. Queen Imelda extends her congratulations on your victory, her confidence in the success of your Grand Embassy to Earth, and she also asked that I send you and Tok her love."

"Mom!" hot tears fell across his bright olive cheeks.

"Commander," the Cyborg said softly, "the fleet is out of range. We can port home whenever we wish."

"We can maintain contact with the Flagship?"

"Yes Sir, we have an established entangled particle link that should be operative in perpetuity."

"Excellent. All right, Compton, get us out of here. Lets go home"

END BOOK I