The Incubus

The Incubus Book 2

By Donnelley Scott

Chapter 1

The flagship circled the dead planet a dozen times before it slingshot out of orbit and fled the solar system. The dim red star faded rapidly into the brilliant aura of its yellow partner. Professor Bashir smiled only a little vainly, admiring a natural piloting ability that only a few short months ago he hadn't suspected in himself. He checked his sensors. Not a single imperial ship was in pursuit.

"Shit" he thought. He had hoped to draw off at least some firepower from the Earth vessel, but it wasn't working out that way. He had no idea where he was headed but it didn't matter. He just needed to disappear into deep space, where he could maintain the new Emperor's entangled particle communications network and control the imperial treasury. In the dim light and stale air of the cramped bridge, the navigation kais stared at him. He plotted and laid in a meandering course for an imaginary point equidistant between his home world of Cerrisia and the desert planet Regehelia, but before the ship could comply, seven green dots appeared directly ahead and began to triangulate around his trajectory. He had drawn off imperial firepower from his friends after all, but his enemies had chosen interception over pursuit. He was in suddenly in grave danger.

He frantically considered options. To veer off abruptly, while traveling at half-light speed, meant slowing dramatically, enough to allow his enemies to catch him. His one slim chance was to juggernaut straight through them. While seven enemy ships meant seven chances to score the direct hit that would destroy him, at his current speed, it would be like flipping so many pennies at a lightning bolt.

His fear was that his enemies would fire synchronously at a point along his trajectory to create a huge plasma cloud directly in his path. Such a high-energy field would generate tremendous friction as he plowed through it. If he was stupid enough to raise shields, it would consume him. At the very least it would slow him significantly, and in the vacuum of space, he might not be able to re-accelerate fast enough to avoid a second deadly barrage of plasma blasts. Even if he got off an incredibly lucky shot and scored a direct hit, it would only destroy one or two of his attackers at best, a useless accomplishment since he'd be dead and the crown lost. Slim or not, he decided it was his best chance. Perhaps they wouldn't think of it.

His mind made up, he gave the matter no further thought. He held the helm steady and braced himself. The enemy vessels halted and formed a semi-circle tangent to his trajectory. A few anxious moments passed. Just as he feared, all seven ships fired in unison. The green energy bolts converged directly in his path, just an astronomical unit ahead. An enormous, unavoidable plasma cloud formed. He cut power and lowered shields. His acceleration ceased, but he had no reverse thrusters to engage. He quickly ran a dozen computer simulations. In half of them, his crossed the could at its densest point, and his ship shattered like glass. In all the others, his speed was halved and the second round of plasma blasts annihilated him minutes after clearing the energy cloud. There was nothing for it. He had cast the die and lost his slim chance. He estimated less than fifteen minutes to live.

His thought wandered back to his freshman days at University, where he had met his wife, both history majors and distance runners. She was young, slender, and tom-boyishly attractive. He desperately wanted family and respectability, so despite his own predilections he courted her with those semi-conscious, self-deluding rationalizations that are youth's specialty. Yet he had no regrets. Yes, he had foregone much, but he had gained much: three successful children, two delightful grand children and a long, noteworthy and very respectable career. Involvement in the resistance and spousal abandonment caused him only minor guilt. The first spasms of The Fear had already numbered their days together and his fortune was already sequestered for her. Although the passions that once animated their marriage had long ago faded, in their place loyalty and family had grown. As The Fear slowly consumed his mind, he knew his wife and family would be far better off without him.

His attention fell back to the navigation kais. A jolty rumble confirmed contact with the plasma cloud. His heart sank, but his mind cleared as the ship shook violently. His speed dramatically slowed. A slight deflection away from the thickest section of the cloud slowed him even more, but without it, he would have disintegrated. The low-pitched whining that suddenly filled his head meant the ship's hull was straining dangerously against the immense friction. Had his shields been up, he would have splattered across the cosmos. Abruptly, the rumbling, shaking and whining ceased. He was through the cloud. Rather than raise his shields again, he diverted all power to the engines, yet his enemies began closing. His ship's power would begin to outpace them in ten minutes but they would be within weapons range in less than five. The simulations were proving painfully accurate.

His attention turned to the Earth ship and his entangled particle communications feed. As he listened, he learned that they faced just fifteen imperial vessels instead of the twenty-two they had expected. His death might yet be meaningful. Commander Henry Frank's voice wondered aloud:

"Well, that rules out porting. Where are the rest of them?"

"They're following me, gentleman!" Bashir cried out triumphantly. "Seven are on my tail. I'm accelerating faster, so I should be all right," he lied. "I'll fire a plasma blast at an opportune moment to scatter them."

"Good work, Professor!" Frank's voice called. "Compton, get us out of here. Make for the outpost. We can hide under the neutron batteries."

Bashir was grateful. It was no small consolation to know that his death would increase their chances for survival. The new Emperor and his brilliant young companion might at least find safe exile with the Earthmen. He didn't need to admit his own failure to his new friends, to be the bearer of the news to the young emperor that his crown was all but lost. It would bear itself when his ship went suddenly silent.

The last minutes of the Universe's life from Bashir's perspective ticked away. He had rather morbidly started a countdown and watched calmly as his final moments metronomically passed. As he focused on the digital rhythm he felt deeply and profoundly tired. It would be good to rest. He rubbed his weary eyes and counted backward to himself.

"Well, that was intense!" said a familiar, adolescent voice with a thick foreign accent. Bashir opened an incredulous eye. In the chair next to him sat a thin youth with a shaggy blond mop and piercing blue eyes. He was strikingly handsome and completely naked. His ample manhood stood at stiff attention. Bashir couldn't help but stare.

"You! " he said, averting his eyes from the dangling member with no small difficulty "Have you come to gloat over the fate you devised for me, or to engorge yourself on my last terror? I am sorry to disappoint you, but I do not fear death. You'll have to get your next meal at someone else's expense".

Tovar looked at him crossly.

"I devised for you? I like that! No wonder you're such fast friends with those humans! You both blame others for the troubles you cause yourselves. You volunteered for this suicide mission. You did it for that blond Tok. You fell in love with him the minute you saw him. You know it's true, so you might as well claim it."

Bashir decided against an argument he couldn't win and instead, changed the subject.

"So you've come to gloat, then. Well, hurry up about it and take your leave unless you're immune to plasma blasts and the vacuum of space. I have less than five minutes to live."

"I am quite invulnerable to either and I didn't come to gloat over your death" the creature assured him. "On the contrary, I'd hate to see it. It's in neither of our interests"

"I thought you couldn't change things."

" But you can, correct?"

"Our choices decide outcomes, "

"Choose then," said Tovar, grinning mischievously. "But do it quickly. You have exactly three and three quarter minutes to live"

"I don't know what to do."

"See, that's exactly the problem."

"Help me," he begged.

"The natural law decides everything, not me." Tovar said coolly, imbibing the old man's despair. Bashir's center cleared. At his silent core, he found an inexplicable, unexpected inspiration.

"The shuttle's spare fuel tanks," he whispered to himself.

"You have three of them," the creature nodded.

"If I released them, fired a plasma blast ÉIt's a long shotÉ but.."

"You'll have to hurry. There isn't much time."

Bashir startled like a rudely awakened daydreamer and the nude boy was gone. A glance at his navigation kais revealed the seven imperial ships were now directly behind him in "V" formation and closing rapidly. He'd be in range of their plasma blasters in moments. He keyed in the commands that opened the shuttle bay doors. The entire contents were sucked out into space. He desperately worked the sensors, trying to locate the fuel tanks but they were too small. He could only make a rough guess as to where in his wake they might be floating. His aimed his best. His finger rested lightly on the vital control. Timing would be everything. His heart pounded in his chest. What a strange chance, he though, that his fate, the fate of the empire, might depend on a single intuitive finger-tap.

"Help me Tovar, you bastard!" he cried. His finger fell hard. He felt the ship shake as the energy bolt was hurled into space. Nothing happened. Seconds passed like hours of uncanny silence. Then came a blinding flash and a terrible, violent jolt. He didn't know whether he or his enemies had been destroyed, but his very musing answered the question. As the energy waves dissipated and his sensors cleared, he saw three vessels hanging lifelessly in space. Four others were scattered beyond any pursuit. His own ship continued to accelerate and was almost back to half light speed. Beyond all hope, he had come through.

Bashir sat in the reality of his escape and the damage he'd inflicted on the imperial fleet. Three ships were wrecked and some sixty sentient beings dead by his hand, but rather than pangs of guilt and regret, he felt only exhilaration. It had been a death-battle, and he had more than survived. He had won a brilliant victory. Although once upon a time, long ago, the Cerrisans were a war-like and aggressive people, he himself had never killed anyone. He wondered whether his raging erection was a normal, physiological response to battle. The bubbling tension flowing through his body craved release. He reached under his robes and began stroking himself.

"Congratulations on your escape!" cried a familiar young voice. "I see you're enjoying the fruits of victory". Bashir was ashamed. His hand froze in mid-stroke, like a schoolboy caught in the act. His mouth felt like it was glued shut. Sitting in the chair beside him was not only Tovar, but also a shorter youth, muscular with black hair and eyes. Both were naked as the night and fully erect.

"I brought a friend to help us celebrate," he said brightly. "Allow me to introduce Moya, a most insatiable devil."

The dark haired boy flashed a lascivious smile.

"Ochen priatna, Professor" he said in a thick Russian accent. "I've wanted to meet you for a long time now, to see if you were quite as handsome as Tovar claims. He goes on so about his Professor".

"Does he now" Bashir said, oddly pleased. "I suppose you're another of his order"

"One and the same" said Moya, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head. He spread himself wide, displaying only thin strands of dark pubic hair and enormous genitals. The Professor was enthralled. He reflexively resumed stroking himself before breaking the creature's spell.

"There are sixty dead and you may have started a war," he said at last.

"Seventy-three, exactly, but whose counting," Tovar said nonchalantly.

"Do you feel nothing for us?"

Moya stood up, his huge penis dangling between his thin legs. His eyes sparkled. "Feel for you? Feel for yourselves, you hypocrite! If we hadn't interrupted just now, you would have brought yourself to the best climax of your life. Ants at a picnic, indeed! That's insulting." He snapped his fingers. "It's your own reflection that disgusts you."

Bashir was stunned. His emotions ran riot. Like a dam-burst, guilt, remorse and shame flooded him. He wept inconsolably.

"He cries just like that young German soldier, the one that caught us at the Siege of Leningrad." Moya tapped his forehead "Do you remember him, Tovar? What was his name again?"

"Dieter, I think... Yes! Klaus Dieter! I remember him well".

"Thin as a famished rat, but still very handsome. Huge penis. He fucked the shit out of you before he ate you."

The two laughed out loud, forgetting Bashir in their mirth. His weeping subsided but his anger grew.

"Vile creatures" he hissed. "You cackle like carrion birds gorging on dead flesh. You brought the Earthmen here!" he said accusingly "You brought us here. You're trying to start a war between us so you can feed." His anger raised him up. He seemed to grow while the boys diminished. "I'll put an end to your meddling like I put an end to those vessels." He pounced on them. Bashir was amazed at his own strength. He easily overpowered them and tied their hands and feet with shreds of black cloth he tore from his robe. Soon, both naked boys lay bound hand and foot, sniffling and struggling uselessly. "This is going to be good!" squealed Tovar. "Hush, you idiot!" said Moya.

"Both of you be quiet!" Bashir barked.

The boy's pathetic struggling only aroused him more. Tovar feigned fear at his approached. His open hands fell hard across the boy's smooth round buttock with a loud slap. He began kneading it roughly and spreading him wide open. He gazed lustily into the hot pink folds. He spat into it and then without warning, plunged his erection deep inside. It was larger and harder than ever. Tovar shrieked, but his howls and wild thrashings only added to Bashir's pleasure. His skin turned cold, beads of perspiration saturated him and he screamed himself hoarse, but still the man drove into him, thrust after vicious thrust. Near by, Moya whole body emitted a halo of green light as Tovar was ravaged. Abruptly, Bashir pulled out of Tovar rolled over on top of Moya, and plunged into him. The dark haired boy screeched, his eyes bugged out and he convulsed wildly as he was violated. It was Tovar's turn to feed as Bashir ripped into Moya, who received each insult voraciously, fully absorbing every thrust until Bahsir exploded. His lust spent, he rolled off the sobbing boy. Each gasping breath seemed to drain all the air on the bridge. He rose slowly, gazing at his victims, still sobbing and struggling uselessly. He considered what to do next. He had no further use for them. His thoughts turned fully to darkness. He considered various endings that pleased his lust.

Deep within him, at his silent core, a thought sprang out like a light in utter opposition to the darkness. His eyes fell to the shreds of his professorial robe scattered about the floor. Humiliation pierced him like a sword. He was horribly ashamed at what he had just done and at what he had considered doing. He could not abide the predator, hunter and murderer that he had become. He fell to his knees as his thought fled.

When he came to himself, he lay face down on the cold metal floor. He rolled over and beheld the two naked creatures, wrapped around each other, sharing the command chair. Both were puffing dark brown cigarettes with bright gold filters. Thick musky smoke clouds swirled around them.

"Well, that was intense!" Tovar grinned at him."

"I don't know what you two did to me," he gasped.

"What we did to you? I like that" Moya countered. "Did we push the button and murder all those people?"

"It was all your idea!" Tovar reminded him.

"I'm not a killer" he whined.

"Strictly speaking, you're a mass-murderer," said Tovar pleasantly.

"Precisely." Moya concurred. "And exactly how were you going to finish us off, your helpless victims, just a few moments ago?"

Bashir was cornered. A great struggle arose within him. His very center seemed split into utterly opposing halves.

"That's not who or what I am" he resisted.

"Allow me show you exactly what you are." Moya took a long, deep drag on his cigarette and flicked the burning butt across the bridge. He exhaled an immense cloud of smoke, leapt off the command chair, flew through the gray vapors and landed catlike on all fours. The pitch-black color of his eyes seemed to flow over his entire body. His white skin gleamed and then turned dark. He shook himself and a thick coat of sleek fur emerged. His hands and feet transformed into heavy paws with terrible ivory claws. Pacing back and forth in the corner of the bridge, he stared at Bashir with ravenous green eyes. He froze with terror when the huge black cat crouched, ready to pounce, but it never sprang. Instead, it glared at him like a cat at a mouse hole, brushing its long black tail back and forth. Staring into its green, snake like eyes, he saw death, but in the next terrifying moment, understood that it was nothing but his own reflection.

"You think there are good and bad people in the world because such simplicity comforts you." Tovar said. "But there are only peopleÉ people who end up on opposite sides. And did you notice? The Fear is gone. You won't be troubled by it again."

Bashir closed his eyes, pushed his palms into his eye sockets, exhaled forcefully and at once felt whole again. He rubbed his cheeks down to his chin. When he looked again, the boys were gone. He had come face to face with Bashir the predator, the hunter and the murderer. He knew himself as few men ever do. He was changed forever.

Bashir hadn't time to contemplate Tovar's final words when the communications kais began beeping frantically. His entangled particle communications system was receiving an urgent message. It came, not from the Earth ship this time, but from the Palace itself. He was instantly alert. It could be a trap. A response might allow his enemies to locate him just when his greatest protection was concealment. Yet, the virus had disrupted the Fleet's entangled particle communications. They had been reduced to primitive telemetry. Messages between the Fleet and the imperial home world would take years. Even if he gave away his location to the Palace, over a light year away, the fleet couldn't possibly learn about it in time to catch him. The danger of revealing information or being fooled was greater, but he decided to risk it. His finger hit the com button.

"Bashir here"

"This is Queen Imelda," said a soft, feminine, determined voice. "Who is Bashir?"

"A Cerrisian scholar, Majesty, and a friend of the Emperor and his consort. We have been through many battles together."

"Where are my sons?"

`They are safe with the Earthmen, for the moment at least. The Imperial fleet, under the command of Koros the Usurper has their ship pinned down in orbit around the Earth Outpost."

"Bashir" she said anxiously. "Have you control over the Treasury?"

"Yes, Majesty."

"Please listen to me," she cried desperately. "A terrible civil war has broken out throughout the Empire. Millions of lives have already been lost. My own maybe forfeit if the palace falls. The treasury can turn legions."

Bashir thought for a moment. "Majesty," he said at last "my first priority is the welfare of my sovereign and the faithful discharge of the trust he placed in me. I have the power to clear the Fleet's entangled particle communication system. If you really are Queen Imelda, and if you speak the truth, our enemies would immediately recall the fleet once they learn of the rebellion. Once the Earth ship reaches safety, I shall release the treasury." Bashir's reasoning was simple. If it were truly the Queen, the treasury belonged in her hands anyway. If not, it was the Emperor's ransom. Either way, the siege would be broken, the Earth ship would return home and the boys would be safe.

"It is an excellent idea", said the Queen. "I do not know what Koros will do once he learns of the rebellion, but this may be my sons only chance. Do what you will with the Treasury. If you can, wish them success on their embassy to Earth and give them my love. If it is possible, I would speak with them."

Bashir's hands flew over the communications kais. "Yes Majesty. It is possible. Once the fleet withdraws. This ship has an entangled particle link with the Earth vessel. There will be no visual communication, but through it, you may speak with them freely."

The control board flashed as the final command was accepted and the Imperial Fleet's entangled particle communications came back on line. There was nothing more to do but wait. The next move belonged to the old green general.

Chapter 2

The huge blue world floated blithely in space. It was in the midst of another hundred and fifty year circuit, monotonously identical to the previous twenty five million. The sun was thirty astronomical units away and hung like a false morning star, heralding a day that never came. The lonely, twilight planet was Neptune. Its only sizable companion was a tiny pink moon with an icy cap and a meager nitrogen atmosphere hardly worthy of the name. It was Trident, named after the mercurial sea god's three-pronged spear. Neptune's immense, isolated and singular gravity well made a perfect porting target and Trident's substantial core of rock and metal allowed the construction of a re-integration station at a reasonable distance from Earth.

Half a million miles out from Trident, space began to quiver like a jet of hot air on a winter morning. Miles beneath the moon's surface of frozen nitrogen, a beam of negative energy sucked up vast quantities of neutrinos, polarized them, and sprayed them back as discrete bundles across a million miles of space. The quantum computer that lay deep beneath the surface precisely matched the velocity and wavelength of each particle to a patch of the cosmos twenty-five thousand light years away. The wobble became a tear, then a rip in the very fabric of space. Through it, a grain-singularity emerged and instantly evaporated. A discrete gravity wave followed, spraying partials in all directions. A cigar shaped vessel wobbled back into reality just as the rip in space snapped shut behind it. In its wake, a tremble of photons from across the visible spectrum burst like a cloudy rainbow and then promptly dissipated.

Emperor Zar and his companion Tok peered inquisitively at the strange blue world that suddenly filled the view screen. The overwhelming sense of fear and loss at having, only moments go, been hopelessly pinned down by their own Imperial fleet was rapidly dissipating. They were still huddled with Ensign Les Troy around the communications kais where his husband, Lieutenant Aiekno Adams, was transmitting and receiving ECC reintegration protocols. Les' father, Hector Troy and first Officer Bradley Williams, whose romance was now one of the worst kept secrets in the galaxy, were busy completing reintegration checklists. Commander Henry Frank was engrossed with the review, assimilation and authorization of all their work. The only crewmember not wholly occupied was Compton. The white haired cyborg simultaneously stabilized the engines, re-engaged the magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, losing only a fraction of the ships near light speed momentum, and plotted and laid in a course through the solar system for Earth. His deeply purple eyes fixed on the bewildered aliens. He managed an eerie smile.

"We are passing Neptune, the outermost planet in our solar system" he said softly.

"It is a very beautiful blue," said Zar in wonder.

"The apparent color is due to traces of methane in its outer atmosphere" the Cyborg explained. "It is the most massive of the ice giants. We shall miss Uranus and Saturn, but in a few hours, we will pass fairly close to Jupiter, the largest planet."

"It is difficult to believe that we have come twenty five thousand light years in a few moments" said Tok dreamily. "Can we see Earth from here?"

The Cyborg scanned the enormous view screen arched in front of them, floor to ceiling, across half the bridge.

"I can discern it as a vanishingly small dot on the lower right hand corner of the screen," he said, pointing vaguely, "but I do not believe it is yet visible to your eyes. We are still some three billion miles away."

"We will see Earth soon enough" Les promised brightly. "I told you we'd make it"

"You did!" Zar beamed, taking Les' hand. "You were very brave. Wasn't he brave, Tok?".

"Yes." Tok smiled self-consciously at Les. His jade green eyes overflowed with gratitude, and perhaps something more. "You have been very kind to us. We shall never be able to repay you."

Les smiled back clumsily. Tok and Zar were moving him like boys his own age never had before. He was appalled when he first laid eyes on them and the young green Emperor was clearly smitten. Later, when he learned that Zar had offered to buy him as a harem boy, he felt absurdly flattered. Now, as he gazed deeply into the wells of gratitude in their exotic eyes, he was positively aroused. Just before they ported home, as the three of them touched foreheads, he had become erect. Of course there was no question of acting on those feelings. He was first and foremost an ECC officer on a highly sensitive mission. He hoped his husband hadn't caught any hint of the growing attraction. He needed time to digest it himself before he shared it with anyone.

"Commander" Adams voice started Les out of his fantasy. "Its Secretary Paige. He's requesting to speak with you alone in your quarters."

Frank shook his mind clear and jumped out of his command chair.

"On my way" he strode off the bridge. The crew continued with their duties as the three young men watched the blue world recede into space.

The slim pocket doors hissed open and Frank stepped into his quarters. Paige's image was already on screen as he plopped himself down on a comfortable gray armchair.

"Welcome home Henry. It's good to see you."

"It was touch and go there for a moment, but we made it. Good to see you too, Ian " he added.

"You and your crew did a phenomenal job."

"I sense a `but' coming."

"No `buts'"

"Then why are we here? Why Earth, and not Tuomi? I would have thought you'd be anxious to have our new friends in Capital City"?

Paige looked uncomfortable. He pursed his thin lips, shook his head and gazed fiercely.

"The media is having a field day with this," he said finally, "and public opinion is all over the map. I've got folks on the right screaming for revenge and folks on the left accusing me of starting a war. And everyone is clamoring for a look at the Boy King. But HenryÉ"

"I thought you said no `buts'.

"Alright, you were right. There is one `but'."

"Go onÉ"

"There is a small but formidable consensus building that'sÉfor lack of a better wordÉ provocative."

"Provocative? I don't understand."

"If it comes down to a choice between closing the outpost or a fight, they'd opt for the latter. In fact, I'd say they're itching for it. Because its conclusion is forgone."

"You've got to be kidding me"

"No Henry. It's quite serious. What are our options, really? Close the outpost and resign humanity to four planets for the next thousand years, or a military confrontation with a bunch of hot headed aliens that we pretty much know we can beat."

"Accommodation?" Frank suggested sardonically.

"It'll take time for those cooler heads to prevail."

"And that's why we're here?"

"Precisely"

Frank felt a queasiness grow in the pit of his stomach.

"No one knows we're back, do they?"

"I've decided to keep that on the QT for a while"

"I hate this stuff"

"Get used to it."

"What does everyone think?"

"Last general communiquŽ was that you'd made it back to the outpost, safe and sound, and you're making repairs to the outpost in order to port home."

"How long?"

"A week, a month, I don't know."

"That story will get real stale in a few days."

"Let me worry about that."

"And the demons?"

"What demons? There are no such things as demons."

"Uh huh. I get it. And the boys?"

"Top secret too."

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do with them?"

"Earth's a big planet, lots to do, under populated..."

"They're green, for cripes sake, Ian"

"Until further notice, Henry, keep them out of sight. That goes for you and your ship too. That's an order."

"How are we supposed to get there without being noticed?"

"No one pays any attention to Earth these days. Keep to the far side of the moon and no one will even notice you. Good luck, Henry."

Before Frank could think of any suitable rejoinder, Paige's image wobbled out and the screen went blank. He huffed, lay back in his armchair and began pondering what on Earth he might do with two green alien boys and how to keep anyone from finding out about it. Unexpectedly, Compton's voice echoed softly "Commander Frank to the Bridge" He shook his head wearily and stalked out of his quarters. The blue pocket doors hissed shut behind him.-

Frank burst onto the bridge, unsure as to what in the solar system could possibly be so urgent. He plopped into his command chair and looked sidelong at the Cyborg.

"Compton?"

"There's a communication coming in from Professor Bashir," he said dryly. The boys huddled around Frank.

"Put it on screen" he puffed.

"There is no video, Sir. The message is audio only."

"Lets hear it then" he rubbed his tired eyes.

There were a few moments of hissing static that cleared quickly.

"Bashir, here! Do you copy?" came the professor's excited voice.

"Loud and clear professor!"

"You're home then?"

"We're in our own solar system, Professor"

`We've come twenty five thousand light years" Zar exclaimed.

"Is Tok there as well?"

"Yes, Professor. I am here"

"Well, that is wonderful news! I have news for you both as well."

"Yes?" they said in unison.

"Hold on just one moment. Let me tie in the particle feed"

There was a short pause, a few crackles of static, and then a soft, feminine voice broke in hopefully.

"Zar? Tok? Can you hear me?"

"We can hear you!" They shouted.

"Are you well? Are you safe?"

"Yes, Mom!" we are quite well! Our new friend Les Troy has taken care of us. He is very handsome. I think you would like him"

Les Troy blushed.

"Majesty" Tok said "Our hosts have treated us most kindly and we are quite safe in their care. We learned before we left the outpost that civil war had broken out across the Empire. Are you safe?"

"As safe as can be expected," she answered cautiously, "given our limited resources". She knew nothing of Earthmen except rumors colored by her late husband's fear. While she did not doubt that the Earthman had hitherto been kind, she was experienced enough to appreciate the magnitude of events and considered it unlikely that these strange, technologically superior creatures were unanimous amongst themselves.

"Bashir!" Zar cried, "Release the Treasury to the Queen. She is my Regent now."

"A moment!" Tok called out. "Majesty, recall for me, at our last meeting in the courtyard, what did you beg the old Emperor to remember?"

"AhhÉ I understand." Zar whispered. "You are quite clever."

"That the stars proclaimed Zar should achieve greatnessÉ and to be patient with him," she answered without hesitation.

"Forgive me, Majesty, but I had to be sure," Tok said, bowing modestly before recalling there was no visual.

"It is more than forgiven," she said. "You have fulfilled my command to care for my son."

"Bashir, please. Release the treasury to the Queen's command." Zar repeated.

"Yes, Majesty. Of course."

"Thank you, my son" she said simply. "This will turn the tide of the war on our home world. I do not know if it will come in time to save the palace. We are under heavy siege. If we must evacuate, I do not know when I shall be able to contact you again."

"It will be impossible to hold the Palace or the crown once the fleet arrives" Zar reasoned out loud, "unless in the mean time, the Earthman should teach us to build neutron batteries, like those on their outpost." He stared questioningly at Henry Frank.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Majesty" Tok said at last, "our new friends have done much for us already. We are already deeply in their debt."

"That request is beyond the scope of my command," said Frank honestly. At that very moment his regard for Ian Paige found a new depth of reverence. He understood why they were headed for Earth, not Capital City. "No doubt you'll have the chance to make your case soon."

"I understand, commander."

"I'll help," whispered Les. Zar took his hand and squeezed it.

Akeino Adams overheard the whisper, caught the hand-holding and widened his eyes at his husband.

"I am much obliged to you, Commander Frank," said the Queen. "My greatest treasure is in your keeping"

"I shall honor your trust, Majesty," he said.

"Professor, where are you headed?" Hector Troy called out.

"I don't know exactly, Lieutenant. I'm lost and mean to stay that way. I'm the common link in the network. And thanks to my virus, I can also keep tabs on the Imperial Fleet. At least we'll know when they're coming."

Suddenly, a loud explosion reverberated through the communications consol.

"Adams?"

"It's coming from the Palace, Sir."

"Mom!" Zar cried.

There were several more sounds like explosions, and then many voices calling out inaudibly. At last the Queen's voice returned.

"I am unharmed," she said, "but we are breached. The palace must be evacuated at once. I shall contact you again through the Professor when I am able. I love you both." There was a barrage of static, then silence.

"Mom!" Zar cried out.

"There's no signal." Adams said sadly.

Zar's eyes watered.

"The Queen is quite resourceful," Tok said, but his own voice quivered. "I am sure we will hear from her again shortly".

"Yes Majesty," Bashir added. "Shortly."

"May I go to my quarters, Commander?" Zar sniffed.

"Of course, Majesty."

"Tok, Les, will you attend me?'

Both nodded. As they left the bridge, Adams eyed them uncertainly. When they were out of earshot, Henry Frank shook his head.

"Compton, slow us down. We're in no rush," he said. The Cyborg nodded. "Hector, Brad, follow me."

The three young men sat Indian-style in the center of the carpeted room that had been allocated for his majesty's quarters. Zar's sniffling face was buried in Tok's lap. He caressed his thick locks and Les softly stroked his olive hand. A few salty tears leaked from Tok's jade green eyes as well, so that Les knew he was being brave for his lord.

"I am a terrible ruler," Zar sobbed. "I have brought death and destruction, ruined my family and lost the crown. I have failed our people and I have failed you."

"It is I who have failed" said Tok softly. He was thinking about the dream creature to whom he had yielded himself for information that now seemed dubious. "Perhaps I should not have listened to it," he said bitterly.

"No one has failed. Not yet. Les insisted. "And if you hadn't listened to it, you'd both be dead now. I was wracked with guilt because I thought I brought those creatures to you, but Kismet was certain they couldn't change things."

Tok looked at him questioningly. "But the information the creature gave me, it saved our lives"

"They never told me anything" Les said "but just because they know what happens, does that necessarily mean they can change what happens? You might have done the same things, even without them, just by co-incidence."

"That seems unlikely" Tok retorted.

"But how likely is anything that ever happens?" Zar spoke up. "That we three should have ever meet in the first place, let alone be sitting here, together, right now, Twenty five thousand light years from where we were yesterday? That my father would have been killed on that hunting trip, or that any of us would have ever been born?"

Les nodded. "Kismet said only story tellers know the future. The rest of us only know the story up to the part we're in. It's like the creatures have read the whole book, but we haven't."

"Do you remember," Zar said suddenly, "what the Wizard said? That even if we could go back in time, we couldn't change the future any more than we can change what is? "

"Our choices are meaningless then?" Tok sighed. "No" Les answered. "Kismet didn't believe that. Our choices do matter. But the future can only be changed from the present moment. That's what attracts them to us, because we believe our choices have consequences and that produces emotions".

"But once our choices are made" Zar continued "they can't ever be unmade, or undone, or done differently."

"What's done is done forever." Les finished. "Just like what's gone is gone forever. And forever goes on and on in all directions"

"Then those creatures know all about us and what will become of us?" Zar said eerily.

"I think so," Les answered, sharing his friend's discomfort.

"I'm glad we did meet and became friends," Tok whispered. Reflexively, the three tapped foreheads. Once again, Les became instantly aroused, only this time, as he glanced down, he realized breathlessly that both his new friends shared the sexual excitement.

"Do you think, when we reach Earth" Tok asked. "We shall be allowed to petition your government for the neutron batteries?"

Les' attention broke free of his excitement. Earth! It immediately occurred to him what an odd destination it was.

Zar noticed his confusion. "What's wrong?"

"Nobody goes to Earth anymore" he said.

"But that's your home world, isn't it?"

"Yes, but its a tourist trap. It's a long story.

"It's not the seat of your government, then?"

"Not anymore."

"Then why are we here?"

"No idea"

There was a short silence.

"They don't know what to do with us," Tok said finally.

Les nodded in agreement. "They're playing for time"

"That's understandable" Tok said. "How long does it take to build neutron batteries?"

"It took us three years to build outpost 8, but I think the neutron batteries went up in a couple of months once the materials arrived."

"The fleet will be in transit for many more months." Zar said.

"We have some time, then," Tok breathed.

"Earth is a nice planet." Les offered. "I think you'll like it"

"What's going on, Henry?" Hector Troy asked as he made himself comfortable in the Commander's quarters.

"Yeah, what gives?" echoed Brad Williams, pouring himself a tall glass of clear blue liquid.

"No one knows we made it back," Frank blurted out.

"You're joking." he said after a sip.

"Not this time, Brad"

"It's the aliens. That's why we're headed for Earth, isn't it? Nobody goes to Earth anymore." Troy said.

"Yup" Frank nodded. "It's the aliens. ECC wants them top secret until further orders"

"Why?"

"Politics"

"Well, what are we supposed to do with them? They're green for Pete's sake," Troy whined.

Frank widened his eyes, pursed lips and then twitched is nose from side to side. "No idea." He said honestly. "Any suggestions?"

Chapter 3

The shuttle landed softly, its reverse thrusters pounding the dusty red Earth. Henry Frank, his crew and their guests stepped out under a bright blue sky and a blazing noon sun. Off to the West, an endless line of immense snow capped mountains filled the horizon. In all other directions, the low rocky brush went on forever. There wasn't a tree in sight. After a few steps, Les Troy felt his stomach go queasy. He wasn't used to Earth's low gravity or intense white sunshine. Tok and Zar trotted a few steps behind him, gawking at the scenery and blinking at the dazzling light. They felt their legs unusually heavy. They gasped appreciatively at the distant mountains.

"They look quite terrible" Zar said. "I've never seen things so big."

"We have nothing like them on our Home world" Tok confirmed.

"I've never seen anything like them either" chimed in Les. "The Peaks on Toumi are tall, but they don't fill the whole sky."

Bradley Williams and Hector Troy followed, breathing deeply of the clean, cool air.

"Sure is romantic" said Troy, slipping his arm around Brad's middle. "It must have been a blast to grow up here, Henry"

"I hated it" Henry Frank called back, walking up front with Compton.

"The Commander did not share his ancestral interest in cattle farming. And he is a poor horseman," the Cyborg explained innocently.

"Thank you, Compton." Frank said.

"You're welcome, Sir" returned the clueless android.

Akieno Adams tagged along, alone in back of the group. While he had never been to the Great Plains, and while this land was not in his blood, it was in his soul. It was the Zion of his faith. As his thought fell upon each element, his heart discerned the Great Spirit that imparts purpose to everything that exists. Only his husband's captivation with the aliens distracted him. Adams wasn't the jealous type, so he told himself, and he and Les had an understanding, but he knew his husband well enough to be concerned.

"This place is great," he said looking around. "There's nothing but chaparral. Where is everyone?"

"Our rides should be here in about ten minutes. The farm house is a couple three hours that way," Frank said pointing towards the mountains. "This was the most discrete place to land the shuttle".

Henry Frank would have rather been almost anywhere else on the planet, but the old homestead where he grew up had several distinct advantages. First and foremost its remote, isolated location meant that boys of any color could get good and lost there for a good long time and there was a lot to distract them. Second, he owned the place and the old farmhouse was spacious, comfortable and at the moment, almost completely unoccupied. Lastly, and most importantly, there was a secure link to the ship's entangled particle communication network. Compton had placed the ship in synchronous orbit on the dark side of the moon. It would be invisible unless someone knew precisely where and when to look. The truth was that neither Henry Frank nor any of his Senior Officers had come up with any better idea as to what on Earth to do with their wards.

After a few moments, Compton's telescopic vision detected a stirring in the dusty earth. His turned his head into the northwest and pointed his white index finger towards the gray mountains.

"There are a number of vehicles headed towards us, Commander. Three, I believe, two small trucks and a large tractor-trailer."

"Thank you, Compton"

"There appear to be horses in the trailer, Sir"

"Yup!" said Frank straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of the convoy. "Those are our rides. The trucks are all loaded with supplies".

There was a general sense of shock, excitement and a twinge of alarm at the prospect of horseback riding.

"I thought you said the commander was a poor horseman" Troy called to Compton.

"Compared to my brothers, I'm pretty awful," said Frank "but compared to you greenhorns I'm a regular Ben Johnson."

"Who?"

"Ha!" laughed Adams "Just the best Hollywood cowboy ever!"

"I've sat through dozens of his old movies." Les rolled his eyes.

"What is a horse?" whispered Zar.

" No idea" said a wide-eyed Tok.

Within the hour, Tok and Zar were just as familiar with horses as anyone else in the landing party, excepting of course, Henry Frank. He and Compton trotted along, side by side at the lead. The Cyborg was able to adjust his balancing sensors to instantly become the best rider in the group, if not on the planet. Brad and Troy followed a few lengths behind. They were both thoroughly enjoying the new sensations, although Brad decided early on that he definitely preferred pony rides. The boys made up the middle, laughing at their own fear and clumsiness, each struggling to deter his mount from breaking out into a full gallop. Adams tagged along just behind them, getting the hang of rhythmically sitting and standing more precociously than his colleagues.

"How are you doing, back there, Akky!" Les called.

"I'm getting it," He answered, "better than you guys!"

"Tell me about it. My ass is getting pounded, and not in the good way. This beast is ferocious"

"Yours seems gentle as a rainbow" Tok laughed. "Mine is a killer"

"You're both cry babies!" squeaked Zar. "Now, this creature I'm riding is a monster"

"There all pretty friendly" Adams laughed. "They just want to run. I bet they've been cooped up in the corral for a while. They'll settle down. You just have to let them know whose boss"

"Mine already knows," mumbled Zar.

After an hour of bumpy but steady going, the brush and dusty scrub gave way to sparse tawny grassland. They reached a thin stream in the process of losing itself in the chaparral. The group turned northward to follow it. As the land steadily rose and it became stronger and wider. They stopped under a lonely cottonwood tree to let the horses drink and to refresh themselves. After another hour, the mountains grew larger, the stream quickened to a bubbling brook and a large house rose out of the greening grass. It sat alone, above the prairie, straddling a low hill thrown up by the frowning mountains. It was a long, two-story cobblestone structure with giant square windows, three on each floor. Warm orange light glowed out of them into the deepening dusk. A wood and rod iron deck stuck out from the second floor, creating a cozy ground floor porch and entranceway. A matching bench sat invitingly alongside two huge Spanish doors. Half a dozen immense cottonwood trees shaded the house. The barest hint of color in a few of the lower leaves was the only harbinger of fall's approach. On the north side of the house, a large coral and wooden barn stood. Behind it, the white-capped mountains loomed.

The horses needed no further steering. They knew the way up the steep incline, through the open coral gate and into the red barn on the right hand side of the old stone house. As the group dismounted and tied up their mounts, a short, slight figure emerged from the yawning entranceway. He wore a gray, short-sleeved ranch shirt, an old pair of dusty blue jeans, and a brown leather belt with matching boots. Brown dreadlocks fell copiously from under a red baseball cap. Round black glasses framed an agreeable narrow face with a wide nose, thin lips and sparkly hazel eyes.

"Good to see you again, Ryan" Frank called.

"Good to see you too, Sir" his voice was a high-pitched, almost musical drawl.

"I'll be jiggered!" he cackled, at his first close up view of the aliens. "They're green as thistle."

"Let's keep that on the down low, ok, Ryan?"

"Yes Sir, Mister Frank. I got ya, not a word outta me, Sir".

"I'd like you meet some friends of mine"

Ryan bowed and offered a friendly hand to each. When he came to Lieutenant Adams, his eyes twinkled with a recognition that Les couldn't help but notice.

"Have we met?" Adams almost whispered

"Don't see how that's possible, Sir. Been no place but here all my life." Ryan's pale, ageless face flushed

"Ryan's worked for my family for twenty years" Frank confirmed.

" But I feel I know you" Adams persisted.

"I am Nadleehe" he said.

Adams stared at him in wonder.

"Akky? What's going on?"

"Nothing Les, let it go. I shouldn't have pushed it. I'm sorry".

"Its okay" Ryan smiled. "Nadleehe is Navajo for two spirits."

"Oh my Goodness! That's like you, Akkie"

"No, Les" He said softly. " I'm Bardaj. Reverence for both spirits is my faith, but it's not in my blood. I'm a gay man"

"Gay as a goose" Troy agreed.

"Anatomically I'm male" Ryan explained. "But my spirit is both. I'm not gay or straight. I am Nadleehe."

Frank looked at him in astonishment.

"I had no idea, Ryan"

"Its kinda private, Sir"

"Way to go, Akkie, outing the guy at work" Hector Troy snickered.

"Would you quit picking on your son-in-law?" Brad elbowed him.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry," said Adams.

"I said it's ok" Ryan re-assured him. "I'm not ashamed of it. It's just complicated to explain to folks is all. Most just think I'm trans".

"But do you prefer boys or girls?" Zar squeaked.

Ryan smiled a bit mischievously. "I like both. Someone's outsides ain't so important to me as the insides."

"That's quite noble" said Tok.

"Well, I appreciate the complement son, but it ain't deserved. I was born this way, same as you."

"Don't you feel like a pig, now?" Brad whispered to Troy.

"Totally! Let's get to our room".

"Where are our rooms?" asked the Cyborg. They had forgotten his remarkable hearing.

"There's plenty for each of you to have your own" said Ryan, hauling off the saddles and reigns, one animal at a time. "But I expect some of you'll wanna bunk up all the same. Just tell me how it is, an' I'll get your gear to the right place. Meanwhile, ya'll must be hungry. There some hot chili stewing. Made it myself."

"Compton and I will share my old bedroom," said Frank.

"An' this sidewinder and I can bunk up" Troy drawled, throwing an arm around Brad's shoulder.

"Akkie and meÉ" Les began, but the instant fear and disappointment in Zar's face and in Tok `s jade green eyes stopped him.

"AkkieÉ" he stammered.

"No, noÉ its ok, Les. I understand" but his icy eyes were melting.

"The boys just need a little bonding time, Adams" Troy spoke up. "You can bunk with us." On the one hand, Brad had never been prouder of him, but on the other, he wished he'd kept his mouth shut. The mountain air was working on him like a barrel of oysters and he couldn't wait to get Hector alone.

"I recon I wouldn't mind company." Ryan called over his shoulder, "Mr. Adams and I have a deal in common, an' heaps a' talkin an' story tellin' to do that'd probly bore the rest of ya. With your permission, acourse, Mr. Les." The sparkle in Ryan's eyes made clear his intentions weren't entirely spiritual.

"Les?" Adams licked his lips.

`Whore' Troy muttered under his breath.

`You have got to be kidding' Brad hissed in his ear.

"I'm ok with it, I guess," said Les through a wrinkled nose.

"Are they going to..." Zar began, but Tok nudged him into silence.

"Well, that's settled then. You folk go grab some grub. I'll join ya as soon as I finish tendin' the critters."

Later that evening, the group reclined by the fireplace. The crackling embers, crickets and frogs along with the occasional coyote howls made the ageless symphony of Earth's nighttime prairies. The dancing flames, aroma of smoldering apple wood, and steaming cider were the ethers that vouchsafed their hearthstone against the walls of night. Troy laid back in Brad's embrace at the edge of the fireplace while Henry and Compton sat together comfortably in the center of a wide leather couch. The boys and Akeino Adams were huddled together on the floor in front of Compton and Frank, while Ryan tended the fire. He tossed on a few fresh logs and sent a plume of glowing embers up the flue as the conversation turned.

"I suppose, if I were human, I would be Hindu" Zar said. "I rather like the Lord Krishna."

"Your Jesus and Muhammad are both quite terrifying" Tok shuttered. "It is hard to believe your world destroyed itself over such fairy tales"

"Well, folks back then didn't see it that way," said Frank.

"Both faiths were taken quite seriously for thousands of years," Compton confirmed "and each became the basis for rival civilizations and excuses for unprecedented barbarism and slaughter".

"Tell us your creation myth?" asked Les.

"Tok is a better story teller than I am," said Zar . "He knows much more of our history than I do, and he knows the true stories, not just the Imperial versions."

"We believe" Tok began, after staring into the fire for a moment "That we did not evolve on our home world. Our ancestors came as exiles from a distant planet where all life began, whose flaming star was the center of the Universe and the throne of God."

"Cripes!" Troy gasped, "They're Mormons"

"Quite, Dad" Les snapped. "Go on, Tok"

"At first, there was perfect harmony in the universe. But the gods of Light and Dark fell to arguing over which was the strongest, wisest, and most beautiful. Their quarrels caused dissention amongst their children, until Night strove against Day, Fire against Water and Life against Death. Our ancestors were the creatures of a minor god called Awake, whom we revere as Maker. Alone of all the gods, he refused to rise up against Sleep, his own brother. In the midst of the great discord, he was at peace, because he was the first, amongst all his brothers, to comprehend the same substance in all the gods. He alone knew separateness as delusion. He sang a great song of truth to them, that all were one, but they were scandalized by it and refused to listen. Instead he was banished. He brought our fathers with him into exile because they begged him. He took them, along with our planet, to a new Flame, far from heaven's endless quarrels. In the long journey he fed them with his own life force until his great spirit was spent, disbursed within us. We are the sign of his life with us yet. Yet in each of us, the same divinities still strive, one against the other. In the midst of our discord, the spirit of the Maker that dwells within reminds us, if we listen, to always love the best in ourselves and in others, and never to fear the worst, for in truth, all are one substance. It is only when we listen, that we become awake"

"That's a beautiful story" Les sighed.

"It is the truth!" said Zar.

"It is our truth" Tok corrected.

"But you all don't believe that it really happened?" scoffed Troy.

"Some believe it, Lieutenant" said Tok. "Others think it a metaphor"

"I believe it!" Zar insisted. "And when we die, the spirit of the Maker that dwells within us removes the delusion of separateness from our eyes. One day his song of truth will end all strife and the cosmos will be made whole again."

Tok could see Troy was unconvinced. "What do you believe, Lieutenant?"

"Proof. I believe in proof, kiddo, reproducible, empirical evidence. Otherwise, you're just making shit up."

"That seems quite boring" Zar grimaced. Troy smiled back at him.

"I suppose, but the universe doesn't owe us a good time."

"My Dad's a scientist. Hard core" Les explained. "He's stuck there."

"Don't hold it against him," Adams advised the young Emperor. "He's a pretty nice guy, if you don't take him as seriously as he takes himself".

"Oooo, you had that coming" Brad chuckled.

"Ok, Akky" Troy folded his arms "Tell us what you believe."

"The Bardaj believe in balance and harmony, and an appreciation for all life. Gods are symbols of what we find praise worthy in the world, and in ourselves. At the center of all there is the Great Mystery, Ometeotl, that is the two energies, female and male. Most of us lack one or the other, but folks like Ryan here have an abundance of both."

"I see where this is going," Troy mumbled. "Compton, save us. Give us your perspective".

The Cyborg's velvet eyes reflected only the dancing firelight.

"I should say, Lieutenant, that your evaluations of faith are deeply skewed by your focus on its most negative expressions. I know human history as well as you do, but I feel no anger over it. For me, the universe simply is as it is. But I do not yet know why it is as it is."

"Beggin' yer Pardon, Lieutenant" said Ryan "but if you really wanna know, it all starts with accepting the world as exactly right and proper just as it is. It's like that blond yungin' said. You can see the best or worst in folks, `specially yourself. That's the only real choice. And whichever way you choose, that's your faith."

"Fine theory," Troy answered "but as a practical matter, some folks don't seem to have much good in them ".

"Yeah" agreed Brad "That old green guy, for example, he didn't give us much to choose from".

"General Koros is a most disagreeable man" said Tok "but I wonder if he was always so, or if circumstances made him that way."

"I wonder about my mother," said Zar, his mind porting 25,000 light years away. "Perhaps the Professor has had some news"?

"Why don't' we ring the old guy up" Frank leaned forward and lifted the credit card sized communicator at his side. His fingers sailed across its thin face.

"Professor? Are you there?" he called to the ceiling.

"Here, Commander" came the near instant reply.

"Zar was just wondering if you'd heard anything more from the Palace."

"And we thought you might be getting a little lonely" Zar added.

"That's very kind of you, Majesty. No, I'm sorry. I haven't. I can't say as I have a very clear perception of your time at the moment. I'm traveling fairly close to light speed. It seems to me that I just spoke to you and the Queen together, seconds ago."

"It's been days" Zar winced.

"Yes, I see that on the adjusted chronometer. But I'm sorry. I haven't heard anything. I will report back to you as soon as I do."

"Thank you Professor," said Tok.

Chapter 4

The old stone castle had become a fortress. It was strange to see real guards, not ceremonials, parading up and down the dusty courtyard. It was all part of ancient tradition, like the immense black flag thrashing from the highest steeple. It meant the old Voort was dying. A white banner would signal the old reign had ended and a new one had begun. But death was not coming easy. The black flag had been whipping and whirling in the endless wind for a month. Despite the most pious prayers and best medical efforts, life was slowly ebbing from the decrepit body. There was no expectation that old man would recover. The entire planet was ostensibly in mourning. It was tradition, and Reghellians were nothing if not traditional. In token, most had replaced their bright blue shemag-styled headscarves with black ones, along with matching leather egals. It was a polite nod at custom, nothing more. No High Voort had been personally loved (or despised) since time out of mind. One was quite the same as another. Truth-be-told, outside of the Holy Family, no one particularly cared.

Amadu, the only son and heir of the dying Voort cared greatly. At any moment, he would be presented as the sixty third High Voort of the Gluk dynasty, the Family that had ruled Regehelia for five hundred years. It would fall to him, as it had fallen to his ancestors for half a millennium, to guard the traditions and orthodoxy of the faith. Change was anathema. Conformity, continuity and ritual reflected the eternal holiness of the infinite godhead. For Regehelians, the universe was utterly divided into light and dark, good and evil, friends and enemies of the everlasting. The High Voort was his vicar, animated by his omnipresent and omnipotent brain. Chief among his decrees, as revealed and confirmed by each successive High Voort down through the ages, was an absolutely celibate and genderless maturity. On Regehelia, procreation was a childish preoccupation, over and done with long before adulthood. The prohibition against adult sexual activity had been the theological cornerstone of the Gluk dynasty. Outwardly, Amadu was asexual as anyone in his illustrious line. In reality, he carried a dark secret and a bitter resentment. Amadu Gluk was an active.

As his held his father's horribly cold hand, the burden of the impending throne weighed heavily on him. It was only natural for his thought to turn inward to review his life. He always knew he was different. He shared none of the playful amatory of his peers. As he grew older, and they outgrew their gender identities, his maleness never left him. He buried it as deeply as he could. As the son of the High Voort, his development commanded incessant scrutiny. Conformity was enforced by heinous retribution, but down inside, at his core, he always knew the truth. And as the years passed, the truth only became truer. He had never acted on his desires although they occupied much of his waking thoughts and dreams. One evening, as his father's health began to fail, one of his most vivid dreams came real. A stunningly beautiful blond youth with a strange accent had veritably walked out of them into the broad daylight and taken him on an incredible journey. There, he had learned the ugly truth about his family, his fortune and his faith.

On that long night, his old life burned away and he emerged into a new, clandestine, and very active existence. Slowly at first, encouraged by mysterious dream creatures, he had woven together a network of like minds throughout Reghellia, a secret society that defied his father's will. Sympathetic souls across the stars morphed its tapestry into resistance against the Empire itself. Indeed, it had grown beyond him. With the Emperor dead and his father dying, the snowballing resistance movement spanned all four planets of the Empire.

In the midst of his musing, the heavy green ring on his middle finger began to tingle, snapping his mind back to the present. Locked within its emerald crystals were dozens of fermions entangled with partners over a light year away. It could only mean that his contact on Cerissia was in need. He let go of his father's icy hand and gently laid it beneath the sheets. He glanced over his shoulder and then all around the bedchamber before raised his hand to his lips.

"Amadu here" he whispered.

My friend," the professor began. "I am going to send you a message. I need it to be rebroadcast to the imperial fleet as if it came from your father's consol."

"But his entangled particle communications system is down."

"I'm going to reverse that momentarily," the Professor explained.

"What's going on over there?" a strange voice called out.

"Give us a moment," another answered, "The Professor has an idea."

Amadu asked no questions. The tone in the Professor's voice communicated urgency. He hurried through the heavy wooden doors that lead from the bedchamber to his father's private office. He leaned over the old oak desk and worked at rerouting the message through his father's own entangled particle stream. He knew the risk was great. He had never met `The Professor', a key agent in the resistance movement on Ceressia. The movement grew in concentric circles; the only link to the next innermost layer was one key agent on each planet. While he was the nominal leader, each cell was essentially an autonomous unit, with no unifying goals or objectives except sentient rights and resistance to imperial rule. The movement owed its rapid spread to the interconnections between universities, and so naturally had evolved an academic rather than military culture. Trust was at this heart, and Amadu trusted the Professor. He had not decoded the message or even asked its content. He simply sent it to the imperial fleet as requested. Almost immediately, his communications consul hummed as dozens of blocked messages flooded in, like a river whose damn was suddenly vaporized. It would take time to go through all of them. Just as the system closed down again, a familiar voice echoed in from the bedchamber.

"Holiness, your father has passed. The white flag must be raised and the people honored with your blessing. You must prepare"

Amadu rose and turned into the bright light streaming through the bedchamber's balconied window that looking down onto the crowded marble plaza.

"It is time for truth, Arone."Amadu said. "The people deserve it".

The tall thin figure stepped towards him, out of the penumbra of light streaming in from the plaza. Its form was spidery, its bearing regal and its countenance stern, quizzical, demanding and utterly asexual.

"Your father is dead, Holiness" Arone said plainly. "Our traditionsÉ"

"Our traditions are flawed. They need to change".

"They have served your family and our civilization for five hundred years, Holiness, that is not a trivial accomplishment."

"Even if they are murderous lies?" Arone stepped fully into the office and shut the bedchamber door snuffing out the light.

"What changes have you in mind, Amadu?" In all this waking memories, he could not recall anyone, not even Arone, his most trusted servant, ever addressing his father by his first name. Nothing Arone said or did was arbitrary, so Amadu knew that his familiarity must have a purpose. He pondered it before answering.

"Many. The prohibition on activity, for example, is a primitive throwback to a barbaric age before science." Arone's face became hard as stone.

"Your own personal activity and maleness is not at issue" Amadu was aghast. He felt as if he had been struck in the face.

"How longÉ?" he finally managed.

"Your father and I have known for many years." He answered.

"Then you also must know that I was born this way" Amadu's surprise was morphing into anger.

"What of that? God burdens each of us differently."

"Burden?" He shouted. "You profane the diversity of our species".

"Our species does not see it that way" Arone said calmly.

"Because you have deceived them," he said bitterly.

"It is the function of this office to vouchsafe the wisdom of our ancestors. That task has fallen to you." Arone continued, ignoring the insult.

"I shall not perpetuate the deception of our people. It is time for the truth". Arone's countenance became even more serious, but devoid of anger.

"If you refuse the Throne, or worse, if you ascend it in such a manor as to undermine its very foundations, now, with the Empire in civil war, you will not only doom your own dynasty, but you will plunge our planet into a chaos unprecedented in modern times. Our world would be rent with unpredictable catastrophe."

"It is time we depart the Empire and go our own way" Amadu declared. "The die has been cast"

"If you are referring to the message you just tried to broadcast from your father's entangled particle communication network, I can assure you it was never sent." Amadu was stunned again. "You knew?" he gaped.

"The resistance movement you founded? Yes. And your contact on Cerrisia, The Professor, is it not? Yes. Your father and I were well aware. Did you think the eyes of the High Voort were blind?" Amadu's anger was turned to horror and astonishment.

"Why was I allowed to continue?"

"Because your father willed that the Throne should pass to you. There have always been resistance movements." He smiled "It was quite easy to keep this one under surveillance with you at its head. "

"Professor BashirÉ You may have doomed him." Amadu felt as if he had been played a fool.

"Perhaps" Arone answered. "Perhaps not. In which, case" he continued slyly, "perhaps the best way to help your friend is to ascend the Throne in such as way as to secure it."

Amadu breathed deeply, his mind imploded as ideas and emotions swirled through his head and seeped into his blood. A familiar aroma burst upon the stale air. He felt his neck flush and he instinctively raised his black headscarf to hide the telling skin. He desperately wanted Arone to leave.

"Let me think" his voice was forced. "Give me time to think"

Arone placed a genuinely sympathetic hand on his shoulder.

"I shall tend to your father," he said. With that the tall old man turned, opened the office door again and stepped out in the streaming light. The heavy door closed behind him.

Amadu spun around to face the oaken desk and the naked blond youth he knew would be sitting on it. The boy was lying on his side, his thick penis at full attention.

Amadu forced his attention away from the erect organ. "Where is Moya?"

"He is occupied elsewhere at this precise moment. Why? Do you miss him? I though you preferred me" he said, wiggling his genitals.

"Is that all you think about?"

"Not all the time" he said defensively. "Sometimes I think about food and smoking tobacco. And sometime I think about the end of time. This is only mostly what I think about", he grinned wiggling his genitals again.

"Well, put that thing away" Amadu averted his gaze. "I'm not in the mood".

"What's troubling you?" as he spoke, sparkles surrounded him and a thin white tank top and a pair of blue denim shorts covered him.

"Its your father, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course, butÉ"

"But it's more than just that"

"Stop playing games, you know exactly what it is" Tovar's face fell into a frown. He imbibed a deep, searching breath.

"I discern what you're feeling, my friend, but I only guess why you're feeling it".

"My father is dead" Amadu's voice cracked.

"As a door nail" the creature agreed without sympathy.

"And now, I must ascend the thrown knowing all that I now know, all that you showed me."

`Isn't it always better to know?"

"I almost wish I didn't. What good is it, if it plunges our planet into its own civil war, just when being united is most important?"

"Yes, fear sprinkled with doubt and confusion, delicious!" he smacked his lips. "What will you do?" he asked glibly.

"I don't know, but I must choose now."

"Precisely what makes any moment savory," he sang, "but my friend, really, what are your choices? Of course you must ascend the throne. Who else should, that dim-witted old-stick-figure out there? His mind is as narrow as his shoulders."

Since his earliest memory, old Arone had been a shadowy, authoritative and adversarial figure at the right hand of his father. Yet at that moment, Amadu felt oddly compelled to defend him.

"He has been a greater friend than I understood all these years"

"Friend? How can you say that? Hasn't he oppressed Actives for decades, and hunted them like animals?"

"It is true that he and my father were quite vocal," as Amadu spoke he began considering the last twenty years from a decidedly different viewpoint. "But I cannot remember a single instance in which anyone was executed, or even imprisoned for any length of time."

"It sounds like you are decided then, my friend"

Amadu's eyes radiated a teary resolve. His mind, freed from deliberation, flooded with memories of his father.

"Tovar, what happens after we die?"

"No idea" the creature shrugged.

"He suffered greatly" his eyes watered as they tried to see through the wooden door to the body that lay in the next room.

"Dying is quite evocative." Tovar offered, his voice nearly compassionate.

"Well of course" Amadu sniffed.

"Hmmm, but intensely so; even when it is not obvious"

"I don't follow"

"It seems to meÉ" Tovar wondered out loud "that at the moment of death, the dying experience in themselves, all the pleasure and pain they brought into the world, all at once, in an instant"

"That's impossible. I don't believe it."

"It's only my opinion," the creature conceded, "but you didn't believe in me, at first, did you?

"No, that's true. What is the basis of your opinion?"

"Well, you know, I am something of a coinsurer when it comes to emotions. I can tell you this: many times, when a person dies in terrible agony, there is a curious peace that's completely indigestible. At other times, when a death seems tranquil, it is accompanied by torrents of luscious passion."

"My father?"

"He died quite peacefully".

"You sound disappointed"

"Ah, no matter. I am here for you, not him".

"Me?"

"Yes, of course. Unless I am quite mistaken, and I assure you, I am not, you're about to have guests, rather important foreigners and rather soon."

"Outworlders, you mean?"

"About as `out world' as you can get."

"I have no time for guests."

"I didn't say immediately."

"Well who are they? And when are they coming?"

"AhÉ now that would be telling. Be patient and more will be revealed. But first things first, you've made up your mind. It's time now to go through with it"

"You're being evasive. Why can't you tell me?" The creature smiled. A shimmer appeared over its shaggy blond head.

"Sorry. I'm out of time" As he vanished, he managed a most lascivious grin. "Pity you weren't in the mood," he said. "I would have curled your toes again", and was gone.

Chapter 5

The two men hacked their way through the dense forest at top speed. The older, heavier man was in the lead, pushing aside branch and bracken with great waves of his knotty arms. His younger, slimmer and far more boyishly handsome companion was carrying a weighty bundle of supplies and trying vainly to avoid the thrashing recoils of twigs and branches.

"What's up Jaek?" the boy puffed. "We've been heading due west for five miles. I thought we were going to hide out in the dead lands till the heats off."

"That's exactly what they'll expect us to do!" Jake laughed. "Besides, Gae" he added more seriously "We may be in for more heat than we can handle whichever way we go. I don't know if you noticed, but those were imperial blasters those hunters were using. Commoners can't get them, certainly not poachers. We took out a troop of high-ups and the Empire is gonna be mighty sore about it"

"My friendsÉ"

"They'll be fine. They blasted off in that little pea pod hours ago and it'll be damn near impossible to track `em once they break orbit. There's a lot of space out there. They'll be home, crying in their cocoa by tomorrow morning".

"So where are we going?"

"Straight up those mountains" Jaek paused, gesturing toward the menacing peaks."

Gae looked at him like he'd lost his mind.

"What's up there? A ship? They'll be scouring the whole exosphere for any sign of a blast off by the time we reach the top. Why make it easy for them?"

"Now you're just going to have to trust me, Gae. I doubt they've got the stomach or the man-power for a landing party. They'll wait for us to do something stupid like blast off and make ourselves known," he said and went back to furiously hacking a path through the thickening jungle. Gae struggled behind silently.

The pair continued their climb through the sloping jungle. Gae trudged along hauling their thick bundle of provisions on his aching back. After another couple miles, he became aware that Jaek was actively searching for something; his wide, sparkling eyes scanned back and forth between the dense monotonous underbrush and the canopy far above.

"What are you looking for?" Jaek ignored him, shielding his eyes against the spots of bright sunshine that stabbed down through the breaks in the treetops. Before he could answer, Gae felt the rush of a musty wind, clamp-like force on each of his shoulders and multiple points of sharp pressure digging into his back and chest. Next, he felt himself lifted irresistibly off his feet. His legs flayed wildly searching for the ground while his arms grabbed at the two thick, scaly pillars that had snatched him. He tried to hoist himself up, or at least take some weight off his instantly aching shoulders.

"Just relax" Jaek called from below. "Don't fight him. Its dangerous". Gae couldn't have answered if he wanted to. The wind had gone out of him. He looked down between his dangling legs at the rapidly retreating ground, then up, into a mass of brown feathers. He nearly lost his stomach. His instinct was to fight, but the forest was already far below. The wisdom of Jaek's advice became clear. It was all he could do to hang on.

Though shock and terror made it seem like hours, the flight was over in a matter of minutes. The great eagle had soared up the side of the mountain with a few dozen powerful wing beats. They circled a clearing near the summit, and spiraled down. As the lush ground rose nearly to his feet, Gae felt the vice grip on his shoulders loosen and then release. He tumbled into a thick mound of grass.

Gae spit out blades of grass and wiped sweat from his brow. He looked up into the bright sun, then down into a low valley, a depression really, made by a small tract of land falling abruptly near the mountain's crown. Built into the mountain's side was a large, well-hidden metal door. It could not be seen from above or below. The huge bird that had abducted him was perched atop a lone fur tree that guarded the entrance. Precariously beneath the bird, as if parked in a driveway, was a familiar round spacecraft. He heard a rush of wind, turned and saw Jaek land on his sturdy feet in the same thick patch of grass where his eagle had dropped him.

"Welcome!" He said brightly, dusting himself off and throwing up his arms.

Gae's expression turned from surprise to anger.

"What are you playing at, old man?" he hissed, recognizing the ship. "You said my friends blasted off hours ago, and there's our ship," he pointed. "Where are they? Why are we here?"

"Now calm down, son" Jaek said through a smile. His countenance became serious when he saw that Gae had no intention of calming down.

"Turns out, that little hunting party we took out last night wasn't just high ups. It was the `highest ups'.

Gae's deep brown eyes blankly registered incomprehension.

"He means we killed the Emperor himself" said a soft, male voice behind him. "Its all over the radio, on every channel. We're supposed to be eco-terrorists in cahoots with the Earthmen"

Gae turned again towards the mountain's side and there, standing in front of their small space craft were his friends Tiel, Addy and Trina.

"You monster!" Addy shouted! She ran past Gae and began pounding on Jaek's chest. "You knew all the time. We can never get home. We're all trapped here".

Jaek absorbed the blows compassionately.

" I didn't know for sure till just now" Jaek said convincingly. "When I saw your little pea pod from the air, I knew you'd been forced to turn back. That synched it. There's no other reason they'd spend so much effort on a hunting party unless we took out someone really big"

"We didn't have a choice, Gae" Tiel confirmed. "They had the whole exosphere ionized. If we had hit escape velocity, they'd have been onto us instantly. We had to turn back. Thank goodness Addy saw the ion signature in the atmosphere before it was too late and we made it back here."

"Did they detect you?" Jaek asked urgently.

"I don't think so." Addy said "They'd be here by now if they had" Jaek shook his head in agreement.

"This place is far more than just a landing strip," Jaek mumbled to himself as he moved towards the stone entrance. "Be tragic if they found it."

"So give out? What's so special about it? And what's with the birds?" Gae rubbed his shoulder.

"They guard this place." Jaek said. "Have for thousands of years. He would have killed you if I wasn't with you, and eaten your liver. They know me after all these years."

The youngsters huddled together at the grisly thought. Jaek passed through them. A pair of warm arm arms slipped affectionately round Gae's middle.

"Its good to see you intact" whispered Tiel. Gae smiled.

"You'll all have plenty of time for togetherness. Jaek called over his shoulder. "Addy's right about one thing. You're all stuck here"

"I want to go home" Trina cried.

"Can't be helped girlie."

"Well, what is this place, then? I thought it was just a landing strip".

"It used to be a temple" Jaek explained "But its old. I've no idea who built it, or what god they meant to worship, but it's more than that. It's a relay station of some sort."

"Relay station? For what?"

"Folks, supplies, equipment. I don't know exactly. Addy here can probably tell you a whole lot more about it than I can."

"Addy?" they cried in astonishment.

Addy fingered her green and gold ring and shook her head up and down. She didn't look anyone in the eye.

"At college, I met a history professor." She began.

"A soft spoken old Cerrisian, a fairly well known historian... I suppose you've never heard of him? Professor Bashir"? The fish eyes all around confirmed they hadn't.

"Professor Bashir is head of Cirrisian resistance".

"I've heard of that group" said Trina. "They're terrorists"

Jaek let out a belly laugh. "I wouldn't go throwing that term around so loosely, if I were you."

Trina blinked. She looked inward. "Oh yeah" she squeaked.

"We're not terrorists, we're freedom fighters" Addy corrected.

"And by `fighters" you mean big anonymous talkers and deep thinkers of secret thoughts" Jaek chided.

"Its true, we haven't done any physical fighting" she admitted.

"And you're all proud of that?" Jaek mocked.

"Never mind him," said Gae. "What is this place?"

"My ring" Addy said "It contains entangled particles. The professor has one just like it. The temple is a transponder. With it, my ring can communicate with its mate anywhere in the universe. But I think it can do much more than that. That's all I've been able to learn so far."

"Addy?" Teil gasped in disbelief.

"I'm a little older than I look guys," she admitted. "I'm a physicist. I was working through the University studying the temple when I met Jaek."

Her friends stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time.

"So that's how you know Jaek, why you financed this expedition." Gae was beginning to add things up.

"We have a common interest in keeping the Empire off this planet, at least until I can learn more about this thing and the creatures who built it. C'mon. Follow me. I'll show you."

Addy led the group towards the yawing entrance, and down a wide flight of stone stairs into a large, dimly lit chamber.

They were in a small stony room, carved into the ancient rock. It looked very old. Addy led the group to a rusty metal table, nearly in the exact center of the room. She opened a small drawer on the table's side and found a simple looking silver box. She pulled the ring off her finger and slid it into the box's keyhole-like opening on the top. It fit precisely. Addy shined a small flashlight onto the crystals within the metal box. A precise pattern of photons was reflected through the ring's jewel. "Bashir? Are you there?"

"Bashir here" came a low, grainy voice" "Addy? Is that you? I've been worried."

"Its me, Professor. We're all ok. Turns out we killed the Emperor himself."

"It was you, then" he mumbled. "I thought it might have been. How did you manage it?"

"We didn't mean to" Addy cried. "It was an accident."

"It was no accident" Jaek interjected.

"We thought it was just a party of poachers." Addy pleaded.

"They got what they deserved" said Jaek. " Anyway, we're all stuck here. They've got the whole exosphere blanketed with ions. They'll be combing the skies for the foreseeable future. They'll shoot anything that reaches escape velocity. We'd be a smoldering wreck before we could break orbit".

"How long will we have to stay here?" whined Trina.

"The ion blanket will last months. They know we're here and that we've got no place to run." Jaek said.

"Months?" Trina felt all the air leave her lungs.

"Months!" echoed Tiel, snuggling up behind Gae.

" This'll be one of the safest places in the Empire come morning" sighed Bashir. "Addy, you always wanted the time to work on your experiments. If you're right, that's the fastest way off Gelesia"

"This planet is a paradise" Jaek protested. "I'm happy just where I am, protecting the critters that live here. Count me out of your resistance".

"If war breaks out, Jaek, how long do you think it will be before the Empire starts strip mining this planet for materials?" Addy asked. Jaeks eyes grew narrow. "How can I help?"

"I don't know when you'll be able to contact me again, Addy." Bashir said gravely. "I'm not sure where I'll be after tomorrow".

"I understand, Professor." The link went silent.

"Lets unpack. Addy said finally. It looks like we're going to be here for a while."

"C'mon, Gae!" Teil said excitedly. "Lets set up our tent!"

Chapter 6

The three boys stepped lazily up to the trunk of the huge cotton wood tree, its blushing leaves rattling above them in the cool breeze. Time was passing like wind over the mountains. The slim Latino youth, half a head taller than his two green companions, leaned back onto the tree's base and slid down to the soft turf. He gazed across the waving fields to the distant stony peaks and then to the barn. His two friends knelt down beside him.

"I am getting restless," the blond boy said at last.

"Me too" agreed the younger, dark haired boy with sapphire blue eyes. "We don't want to seem ungrateful, but its been two months. It's a beautiful place and I love being here with you, but Les, there is war on my home world. It is likely not going well for us. We cannot stay much longer".

"Those are the orders, Zar". Les sighed. "Besides, your mother said you're both better off here. They couldn't protect you back home"

"That's true, but I must agree with his Highness" Tok said, shaking his thick head of yellow hair. "We have grown to love this place, your Earth, but when general Korus' fleet arrives, it will destroy our world."

"That's still many months away," Les pleaded. "Lets give Central Command a little more time to figure out what to do with usÉwith you, I mean." Les blushed.

"He turns pink again!" Zar said delightedly.

"Yes" Tok agreed, lightly stroking Les' cheek. "He feels the bonding".

The three boys touched their foreheads with arms wrapped around each other's shoulders to steady their tripod.

He told no one, but this simple embrace had become the most erotic, intimate act in which Les Troy had ever been engaged. It surpassed even his love making with Akky. The realization discomforted him to his marrow, but as his lungs filled with the aromas of his young friends, his member stood at stiff attention. He could tell from their deep breathing and sudden redolence that something similar was happening in them. He was perched precariously on a dangerous line. He had an understanding with Akky about such matters, ÉAkky, by the way, who really didn't have much of a leg up to complain after spending the last six week cuddled up with Ryan the Nadleehe farm hand... but he had no such understanding with the ECC. As an officer, his duty was to safeguard these visitors, not become sexually involved with them. Truth be told, he was already involved, but it hadn't escalated to overt physical acts, at least not yet. Fine turn of events, he thought. Akky was getting it, and he wasn't.

The heavy breathing of his friends brought Les' mind back to the present.

"Yes" Les said. " I do feel it." He trembled as the confession fell from his lips into their inner circle.

The wind kicked up, and a rustle of leaves fell strangely from the tree above, scattering and swirling about them in the lengthening shadows. A dark figure seemed to dart away from them and twinkle into the gaping barn entrance. Les was suddenly alarmed. Everyone else was supposed to be out hiking.

"Who was that?" Tok cried

"I didn't see anything" Zar said.

"Someone went into the barn," Les confirmed. "You two stay here," he said, rising "I'll go see who it is."

"We're coming with you" Tok protested.

"Stay put!" Les commanded. "You're supposed to keep out of sight. You're both green, remember? It's probably nothing, a delivery of something. Stay put." The two green boys obediently sat back down. Les' tone told them this was an order, not a request.

Les walked semi cautiously to the large red building. As he approached the wide-open doors with high white molding, the stomping and snorting of horses along with their pungent smells greeted him. He sensed something, a strangely familiar tingly presence as he peered inside.

"Well, that was intense!" said a familiar voice. Les froze in his tracks with instant recognition.

"You? What are you doing here?" It was the same rugged Russian man with closely cropped hair and sparkling dark eyes whom he had met in Saint James Park. He had not seen him or his skinny blond companion for months.

"I like that tone" Moya sounded offended. "You were very happy to meet me in London".

"I didn't know what you were back then, but I do now" Les turned towards the door with every intention of fleeing with the boys back to the main house and raising the alarm. But just then, a gusty autumn wind blew the heavy doors shut. He turned back to confront the demon.

"Where are you going?" Moya asked

"Let me out. Let me go now!" Les demanded.

`Let you go? I'm not holding you. Only the wind closed the door. Open it. Go if you wish, or take it as a sign. There's nothing to fear. I mean you no harm." Moya flashed a wide-eyed innocent smile. "Here, I think you like me better like this." With a shimmer, the creature's cloths evaporated. The same chiseled chest, knotty armed, thick legged creature with an immense manhood stood statue-like before him'. Just as before, in the brambles at Saint James Park, the flawless proportions and fine features captivated him. Les couldn't help himself. The creature had again materialized into his most erotic fantasy.

"I wouldn't mind another go with you" the creature said slyly. "We have some time now, just to ourselves. Why don't you undress for me, like you did in the park."

Les was drawn in almost against his will. Almost. Every nerve in his body, every bit of training, forbade his actions. Yet, he stepped closer to the creature, pulled off his shirt, flexed his smooth, well-defined, but still boyish chest and smiled seductively. He knew full well that what he was about to do was wrong, against protocol, might endanger the crew, compromise the mission, but his will offered little resistance as Moya pushed his jeans down. His organ struggled against the fabric of his underwear. Slipping a thick finger under the waste band, the creature stretched the elastic and freed the pulsing captive. Les stepped out of them naked.

"You've shaved yourself bare".

"Yes Sir. Or rather Akky did it for me. It's a game we play".

"I think I like this better"

"Me too, Sir". The creature's hot hands wandered all over the boy's body, exploring him, and pushing him to the ground. His hairy muscles covered him, their fleshy heat ignited him, and the musty aromas enveloped him. Moya mounted him. Les felt the creature's enormity demanding access to his most private part. He struggled, quite uselessly.

"It hurts"

"ShhhhhÉ" Moya hissed, and forced the entry. The searing pain dissolved into radiant ecstasy. Only such self- abandonment to passion had ever filled him, and no lover had ever touched him so deeply. In the rhythmic exchange of lust, their eyes met, and Les fell heart and mind, into the void. At the last, impossibly deep stroke, he climaxed, soaking himself with his own essence. Moya licked him clean, relishing every drop.

They laid there, naked, the boy in the creatures powerful arms. Their heavy breathing began easing, their sweat evaporated, cooling the hot flesh. The soft neighing of horses, the smell of straw and an acrid note of manure brought Les back to the real world. He looked up into the creatures face.

"What are you doing here?" he whispered.

Moya smirked. "Would you believe me if I told you that I came to see you?"

"No"

"Its true" the creature insisted.

"Really?" the boy said doubtfully. "Kismet said that you didn't care anything about humans, that you use us and our misfortunes for food".

"That old wizard and the creepy kid he stalksÉ" Moya began dismissively. "He doesn't know everything and he was never any more human than I am."

"What is he then?"

"What "was" he" Moya corrected.

"You mean he's dead?"

"MmmmÉnot exactly. He was never alive in your sense of the word. You've simply moved beyond him, out of his range so to speak."

Les was thrilled with getting information from the creature. His professional interests and instincts were talking over. Rather than press the issue, he thought to probe broader for even more information.

"You know everything that has ever been and all that is yet to be, don't you"?

"Would that impress you?" The creature's grin widened.

"Yes, but maybe I just don't understand how it's possible"

"Of course you don't" The creature said. "You are flesh, and so must walk into the future backwards while the past unfolds before you. But if you were made of light then you would see the whole universe, from beginning to end, as an accomplished fact, complete in its entirety. You'd come back to your favorite moments as easily as you re-read the best chapter of a book".

Les knew he was getting nearer the mark, poking at the creature's essence, and so again purposely shot his next question wider to glean as much information as he possible.

"So you're not demons? Like Kismet said?" "Of course not. And I believe the term the wizard used was Perelesnyk. The insulting word `demon' is a corruption of your language. Russian is much more precise on such topics".

"So you're not evil?"

"I should say not! We like to have fun, of course. Who doesn't? And we think differently than you do. But tell me, of all the evil people that you've ever known or heard of, have any of them ever owned up to it? Or even understood that they were evil? That's because there is no such things as good or evil. They are simply illusions of your backwards marching and depend entirely on your point of view. Believe me, without eyes to look at them and give them names, these things simply don't exist."

"Did you really come to see me?" For a moment, looking into the creature's empty eyes, Les thought he saw a sparkle.

"You're very beautiful." Moya answered. "I am quite attracted to the part of you that is here and now. I wanted to play with you once more when you were in Saint Petersburg, but you wouldn't leave that drunken wizard."

"Oh, come on" Les rolled his eyes. "Sure, I'm hot, but there are much hotter boys than me". The creature stood up, abruptly aware of how much he had said.

Les felt an odd moment of fear.

"You are very clever" Moya said, "But I know even your darkest fantasies..." his eyes grew red like hot coals "...and they intrigue me." His tongue flickered.

"You do feed on our negative emotions, on our misery, don't you"?

"We feed each other."

Moya hurled himself onto Les. Like a huge black snake, he hissed, flicked his tongue and opened his mouth impossibly wide. He struck at Les' feet, sunk his teeth in, and began devouring him. Les tried to scream, to struggle, to call for help in his terror, but no air escaped his lungs. The elongating creature threw heavy, confining coils around him and began a deathly squeezing. His long legs slipped inside the creature's throat. The flickering forked tongue licked his smooth skin. Dozens of hot, curved teeth grabbed and tore at his young flesh. He looked down at his naked body, struggling, bleeding, being drawn down into the creature's gullet. His penis became fully erect again, and his testicles pulled up close to his body. He freed a hand from under the coils, but there was no thought of escape. Instead, he grabbed himself and began to masturbate furiously. His saw his cock and balls begin to disappear down into the snake and felt its sticky saliva on them. He climaxed explosively for a second time as his stomach slide down into the serpent. He was still ejaculating when the snake lifted him up and swallowed him completely. His mind fell into a dank blackness.

"Les!"

The dim stable light was almost blinding when Les opened his eyes.

"Jesus, don't you ever get enough"? He was naked, his right hand still stroking his flaccid, sticky member. He looked up at his husband shaking his bald head. Beside him, Ryan the ranch hand was chuckling.

"Akky?"

"The boys said you ordered them to say by the tree. We sent them back to the house and came looking for you".

"He sure is pretty" Ryan said, drinking in Les's nude form.

"Don't feed his ego, it's big enough already".

"Akky, something happened"

"I can see that".

"No, you don't understand"

"I understand perfectly. Get your cloths back on, you horny little skank. Its time to eat." Les shook his head, but obeyed. He needed time to process. As he came to his senses, he wanted to focus on remembering everything that had happened, everything the creature had told him. He needed to get to a computer, not into a distracting argument.

"Ok." He said at last. "What's for dinner?"

Moya lay in Tovar's eternal embrace, in the incomprehensible heat and infinite gravity at the singularity's heart.

"Talk about me feeling compassion!" he cried "You just told that earth boy far too much about us". Tovar fretted.

"Perhaps" Moya conceded. "But it's done, and everything is as it should be. He was so beautiful at the moment of freedom, when their porting device re-opened the universe to usÉ we owe him a great debt. It's one of my favorite fragments."

"Sentimentality! I knew you had it in you, lyubimaya! He's more fun than Fredrick, and I agree he's done far more for us. He's certainly a lot more fun than that wrinkly old Bashir."

"You're just jealous because he didn't like you more, and you were never able to penetrate that skinny young Tok, the one you really wanted."

"Never is a long time." Tovar said. "When it comes, we'll see".

"You just don't give up!" Moya chuckled, and fell back into Tovar's essence.

Chapter 7

Queen Matilda glided over the white sand, her back to the setting sun and her face to the waking stars. The foamy waves broke gently upon her feet, soaking the fringes of her flowing green gown. Which of the innumerable pinpoints of light, she wondered, marked the distant world where her sons now walked? All through the clamor, death and destruction of civil war, the stratagems and polices that had consumed her thoughts, her mind had always remained focused on the emperor and his consort, on the throne that was rightfully his, and on the rule and order that his birthright commanded. In the distance, across The Sundering Sea, her palace, like half the unhappy planet, lay in ruins.

Home was a small, icy world, barely within the Flame's habitable zone. Both northern and southern hemispheres were mostly ice caps but a wide stretch of arable land, running a thousand miles from the equator in either direction, girdled two thirds of the globe. The planet's only sea was a stormy grey sound, held captive, east-west, by the super continent, and north-south by grinding glaciers. In the days before the civil war, the most desirable environs were misty coastal forests along the equator that recalled the American Northwest. The ancient mountains were long ago ground to dust or had fallen back into the sea. All that remained of them was an array of white marble islets that jutted out, along either coast, from under the salty waves.

Far away, on a rocky island off the sea's eastern shore, the queen's castle lay smoldering, its walls breached and its deepest, most sacred catacombs despoiled. Eastland, its urban coasts and industrial hinterlands had fallen to the rebels after ghastly carnage, before the weight of fresh bullion from the freed imperial treasury could grease the appropriate palms. At a coded signal from Professor Bashir aboard the imperial flagship, a drone, hidden in the vastness of space was activated. At the queen's direction, loads of bullion could be launched to any coordinates. With such vast stores of gold at her disposal, the imperial ranks were swelling again and the wide land behind her, shimmering in the setting sun, was mobilizing. By the time Queen Matilda and her household had been forced to flee across the sea, most leading Eastland families had thrown in with the rebellion, but the vast majority of suburban and rural Westland remained staunchly imperial. Eastland, its streets still stained green with blood, was bankrupt, devastated, but defiantly prepared for an inevitable imperial counter attack. Even though millions had already died, and half the world lay in ruins, the lull in the fighting was hardly the end of the terrible civil war, but simply the end of its beginning.

While vast forces mustered, the queen's thoughts turned again to the entangled particle array that was her only link to her sons, some twenty five thousand light years away. Its matrix assembly and resonance transponder had been destroyed as the castle was abandoned, to prevent it from falling into rebel hands, but the particles themselves, the heart of the precious link, had been salvaged. A few hundred yards inland, at Imperial headquarters, engineers were laboring desperately to integrate them into a makeshift transponder, so far quite fruitlessly. She turned back into the setting sun to check on the progress.

Queen Matilda stepped onto a round, shallow indentation at the base of a wide, but otherwise unremarkable dune. The sand at her feet began swirling into a low, gentle spiral. It had extended just past her knees when a clear tube thrust up to surround her. A low vibration, like the wing beats of a hundred humming birds rose above the distant sounds of crashing surf. The ground gave way and in an instant, the sand swallowed up the tube and its royal content.

Deep in the subterranean compound, an aging, darkly green engineer peered into an elongated eyepiece connected to a small, square visor. It was aimed at a bright stage, where an emerald green, perfectly square crystal rested. Skilled green hands meticulously wove invisible threads of pure nickel around it, into a shroud precisely six hundred picometers thick. As the spins on the entangled quarks varied, impossibly faint fluctuations in the Higgs field would result; causing sympathetic vibrations in the nickel fibers that could be detected by magnetic resonance and translated as simple binary code. At least that's how it was supposed to work in theory. In practice, it was proving impossible to exactly align the individual nickel layers and keep them aligned without the sophisticated tools that had been abandoned with the palace. The engineer was on his hundred-something attempt when the Queen entered the make shift laboratory.

"Has there been any progress, Jyel?"

"Some, Majesty" he said, sparing her only a sliver of his attention "With his primitive equipment, it's a matter of pure luck. One must simply keep trying until a stabilized nickel matrix forms."

"Its been weeks" she sighed.

"We have been working round the clock, your Highness," he reminded her. "And forgive me, we do have other priorities as well" "Please, Jyel... my children." The old engineer's back stiffened, his face grimaced and his hands tensed. "Majesty!" he whispered, staring intently into the eyepiece "The matrix appears stabilized. And, I cannot be sure until the transponder is tied in and calibrated, but I believe a message is coming through."

Jyel threw a lever at the base of the stage, locking the entire apparatus in a magnetic fixative and engaging the resonance sensors.

"Myra!" he called over his shoulder at a young, female assistant, "Activate the transponder. Route the signal directly to this consol. Majesty, you will need to enter your security code."

The queen's slender green fingers flew over the kais as her eyes shifted between the control panel and the monitor overhead. The transponder code identified the signal.

"Professor?"

"Majesty? Is that you? I cannot verify your transponder code.

"It is, Professor. The palace was taken a month ago, and we had to abandon our communications equipment. We were only able to salvage the particles themselves. It has taken us all this time to construct a substitute matrix"

"A month already?" The professor gasped. "No matter. I must ask for the same verification you last gave Tok."

"That the stars proclaimed Zar's greatness, and that the Emperor must be patient with him," she answered again, without hesitation.

"Precisely, Majesty. Thank you. I can tell you now that the boys are quite well and happy in the Earthmen's care, but they have been just as worried about you as you have been about them. I believe I can patch you through to them. I am sure there is much to discuss. Is this channel secure?"

"Jyel?"

"Yes, Majesty, I can make it so. But I must caution that I cannot be sure how long the magnetic containment will keep the matrix stable. Its only an improvisation and likely to disintegrate at any moment."

"I understand." she said.

"Very well. Myra, encryption pattern alpha omega alpha. Everyone, clear the room."'

In a few moments, Matilda was alone in the dim laboratory. Her finger pressed on the glass kais.

"We are secure, professor" she said.

"I have them" he answered. "You are patched Majesty"

"Mom! Majesty!" The boys cried.

"I was frightened for you" Zar sobbed.

" I am quite safe, love. You needn't worry for me."

"Where are you?"

"Your father was nothing if not prepared," she explained. "He had multiple contingency plans. When the palace fell, I escaped across the sea to the Westland emergency compound. I am quite safe here."

"I am grateful for father's paranoia" said Zar

"And I am as well" Tok agreed.

"My children, I do not know how long this channel will remain open, so I must hurry to convey our situation. Eastland is lost to the rebels, but thanks to the treasury, Westland remains loyal to the crown and is very strong. I am told our victory would be assured, but for the fleet, which cannot be more than 6 months away. No matter the progress of our arms for the moment, Koros will lay waste our world when he arrives and make himself Emperor."

"I can confirm that" Bashir broke in. "The fleet is making a bee-line for Home".

"We must port Home immediately, then" said Zar. "Les, please! Take us home. I should prefer to die fighting for my crown even if the Earthmen will not help us."

"Ensign Troy here" said Les, announcing himself. "I'm sorry, Majesty", he explained, "but the nearest porting target is the outpost. Even if we ported back there tomorrow, we could not reach Home before the fleet".

"Our only hope" said Tok "was that the humans would share neutron technology. But we have not even been granted an audience with their leader". He was unable to conceal his frustration.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Excuse me" Bashir said at last "but that may not be exactly true."

"Bashir?"

"Majesty, forgive me, but you were correct about my involvement in The Resistance. I have learned of a discovery on Gelsia. Of course, I do not understand porting technology, but I believe porting targets must be deep gravity wells, is that not correct?"

"Compton here" the Cyborg's softly pleasing monotone voice broke in. "That is correct, Sir. Given the appropriate configuration, reintegration of machinery can be accomplished remotely, ahead of biologicals. What sort of gravity well have you discovered? That part of space was thoroughly searched for such phenomenon, and none was ever discovered."

"It does not exist presently" Bashir explained, "But we believe it can be created artificially.

"Commander Frank here. Is that even possible, Compton?" There was a short pause.

"Theoretically, Sir. Perhaps a concentrated beam of polarized Higgs bosons, but the energy cost would be exponentially greater than anything we have ever harnessed."

"That's because you're doing it the hard way" said a female voice.

"Who is that?" asked the queen "this is supposed to be a secure channel".

"Forgive me again, Majesty. Allow me to introduce my colleague Professor Adel. She is presently on Galesia, with a group of researchers"

"And your loyal subject" she added quickly. " I was born in Westland, my family name is Tolle. My friends call me Addy." Of course, she didn't mention that she was also part of the unit that had murdered her husband and his imperial guard. It had been an accident after all, sort of.

"Please explain" Compton continued.

"If you start out with entangled bosons to begin with, you can polarize them remotely. That cuts the energy costs by a log and disperses the build up, so you waste much less."

"Intriguing. But we have no such technology for sorting entangled Higgs Bosons. The possibilities..."

A sharp crackling interrupted him.

"Bashir? What was that?

"I think we're about to lose the queen"

"Mom!"

"I'm here, Son. But yes, the matrix is destabilizing. Don't worry. I am safe here. We will re-establish the link as soon as possible. Take care of my children Commander Frank. I already owe you a debt I can never repay".

"Mom! I love you!" "I Lo..."

The link went abruptly silent.

"I'm afraid she'd gone. For now, I mean." Bashir quickly added.

"Professor, please" Zar cried, "Get her back"

"I'll keep the link open on my end, Majesty, but that is all I can do. It's up to the technicians on your home world to re-stabilized the matrix."

"Zar, I am sure everyone is doing everything they can. Her majesty is safe. We must now formulate a plan, with or without help from our hosts. We must get home."

"Addy" Compton called.

"Here"

"With respect to your entangled bosons, there are several questions..."

"With all due respect, gentlemen" Bashir interrupted. "My colleague has already said as much as is prudent under our current circumstances". Bashir was no physicist, but he knew a bargaining chip when one fell into his lap. "If it comes to technology transfer, we need a bit of help ourselves." The three boys were seated around one end of the long wooden dinner table, Ryan and Adams at the other. Hector and Brad were on one side and Compton and Frank sat opposite them. Half-eaten bowels of chili and lumps of corn bread were in front of everyone. But all eyes were turned to Commander Henry Frank.

"That's beyond the scope of my command." he said to the ceiling.

" You've been saying that for a month. Sir." Les Troy fumed.

Hector Troy rose sharply. "You're on the verge of insubordination, Ensign!".

"I can take care of myself, thank you, Lieutenant" Frank said crossly. He then turned sharply on Les. "You're on the verge of insubordination, Ensign!" Les went quiet. Everyone sat back down.

"If entangled Higgs bosons are possible, they could revolutionize porting," said Brad, ignoring the outburst.

"Sir", Compton said quickly "Lieutenant Williams is correct. If it could be confirmed, the exchange would be more than equitable."

"They're in Civil War. The situation is more complex than simple horse trading"

"So we just let them kill themselves and then port there and take over? Is that Ian's plan?" Les Troy shouted as he rose from the table again.

Hector Troy leaned towards his son and gripped the side of the table. His knuckles went pale white. "You are way out of line, kid." He hissed. It was like he suddenly didn't know his own son.

"Mind your business, asshole" Brad whispered, pulling at Hector's sleeve.

"It is my business. I'm chief of security and I won't have it."

"Les, what's gotten into you lately?" Adam's pleaded.

Les tossed his Ensign flag on the table, glaring at his father.

"I resign," he said. "We demand to see Ian Paige."

"Commander, Forgive me" Bashir's voice interrupted. "May I ask why his Majesty has not been granted an audience with your leadership?"

"Because those were my orders"

"I don't want to seem ungrateful, Commander, after all you've done for us, but after all this time, and given our urgent need, even you must agree that such unresponsiveness begins to appear discourteous, perhaps even unfriendly."

"I'll see what I can do. Frank out." He touched the credit card sized communicator in his shirt pocket.

"Ensign, your resignation is declined." He tossed Les's flag back at him gingerly. "Take our guests to their quarters."

The tree boys left the dinner table as ordered.

"You got off easy, Ensign" Hector Troy shouted after them.

"Lay off him." Adams said as he tossed his napkin on the table. He rose and left without another word. Ryan followed after him.

"That really wasn't necessary," said Brad.

"You too?"

"You're being a jerk."

"Why? If that were any other officer, I'd have tossed him in the brig. But because he's my kid he should get special treatment?"

"Because something is obviously not right. Something is affecting him. Adams is frantic. Or are you oblivious to that too?"

There was a short silence.

"I agree" Compton said finally. "Under normal circumstances, Les Troy would never be insubordinate. The circumstances are clearly not normal."

"Explain" Frank ordered.

"I believe Les is under pheromonal influences".

"You mean those two are seducing him?" said Troy

Brad Williams rolled his eyes so far back that he just about saw his own brain.

" I do not think it anything our guests intend. It is simply their intense need being expressed chemically and Les is responding to it."

"Is he aware of it"?

"Of its chemical nature? I think not, Commander," said Compton. "But were he made aware, it would not likely change his actions. There is no coercion involved. Merely intense communication."

"In other words, he's into it"

"Precisely, Sir"

"Poor kid," said Brad with a chuckle.

"Poor Adams" said Hector far more seriously.

"Pour me a drink!" shouted an exacerbated Henry Frank. "I need to talk with Ian. Compton, you're with me."

The two left the dining room.

After a few moments of silence, Hector Troy began leering at Brad. "I'm horny," he said.

"Me too." said Brad. "Lets go to our room".

Chapter 8

Zar collapsed weeping into the king-sized bed they all shared. Tok leaned over him, trying to find words of comfort. Yet all he could do was stroke his young lord's thick black hair. Les leaned against the door, watching them, his chin resting in his curled fingers. He tapped a quivering lip.

" I don't want to stay here anymore," Zar sobbed. "I want to go home. This is not our world. Even the stars are strange. We do not belong here. If the Earthmen will not help us, then they ought to at least let us go".

"We have no means." Tok reminded him, silent tears falling from his jade green eyes. "We are like prisoners".

"No!" said Les firmly. "You are not like prisoners." He stepped over to embrace both of them. "We're going to get off this planet, one way or another"

"How?"

" I don't know exactly, Tok. Look, I'm not a physicist, but I know what entangled bosons are, although I can't imagine what they'd be doing on that planet. Anyway, I know Compton. He was hot for the technology, or at least as hot as a cyborg can be about anything".

"You think they will make us a trade?"

"Or will they try and cheat us"? Zar sniffled.

"Ian Paige wouldn't do that. I won't let them do that" Les' hand fell on Zar's trembling shoulder. Tok's slender fingers fell on top of it. His redolence suddenly made the air tingle sweetly. Les knew by now it was the boy's arousal scent. He felt Zar's thin arm fall around his waste. The boy was no longer sobbing.

"You will protect us?" he whispered.

"Yes, of course" he said as their foreheads touched.

"He is very brave, is he not Tok?"

"Very brave," Les felt himself falling into the shining, emerald pools of Tok's exotic eyes. The alien boy's thin fingers ran through Les's dark brown locks "and so very handsome".

Tok never had any such feelings for another creature besides Zar, but this dark haired Earth-boy, this Ensign Troy who had saved them, who blushed an irresistible pink, who smelled like burnt cinnamon, moved him deeply.

The bonding had joined them. He felt guilty for not having said anything to Les about its biochemical nature, but they were desperate and he was their only true friend within 25 thousand light years. And there was also the dream creature. Les had also been intimate with it as well, and he was the only other being in the entire universe who would understand that part of Tok which had not at all been revolted by its lewd advances, but had rather thrilled at it's indecent touches and probings.

"Guys" Les began, in feign of protest. Whether it was the last remnant of his training, a final shred of loyalty to his husband, or some combination, he did not know. "Maybe we shouldn'tÉ"

"He is blushing again!" said Tok, gently pulling Les onto the bed.

"I wonder how far down the pink goes!" Zar said jumping on top of him and unbuttoning the top of his uniform. Les tongue stuck to the bottom of his mouth. He gasped, short of breath as he felt the heat of Zar's young green hands explore his naked chest, and pinching his nipples.

"They are brown!" he said playfully. "Ours are green"

"Really?" All the fight had gone out of Les. Wherever this was going, he was coming along. "Show me".

Zar sat back on Les's thighs and slipped off his shirt. His thin shoulders and slender arms glowed a bright olive green.

"See!" he said happily, lifting his arms to the ceiling. I am 18 years old now, I am growing hair everywhere and can have my own kootak, right Tok?"

"Yes, Majesty" he said, "It is time. Were we at Home, you would be filling it with your first choices"

"I choose Les first of all!" he said "because he is brave and very handsome" Zar began to breath heavily as his exposed more pink flesh. It was strangely erotic and stimulating to have the young boy exploring him, but he noticed that Tok had withdrawn. The redolence had changed and the blond boy's skin had become a paler green. Les sensed he was growing jealous.

"Tok, come here".

"It is not my place" he hesitated. "It is his majesty's right.

"That's hogwash. We don't believe in that sort of stuff around here," he said as Zar's fingers started blithely poking into his trousers.

"It is not simply belief." Tok answered. "It is biology. Zar is of the royal blood. For our species, that has a rather profound meaning."

"I don't' understand"

"Show him, Zar" said Tok. The boy smiled impishly, lifted himself up off Les's lap and slid out of his pants. Les' jaw nearly fell to the floor. The bulge in the boy's thin underwear was impossible. It was every bit as large as the Russian creature's but on the diminutive green boy, it was out of all proportion. How had he kept it hidden all this time?

"Where did THAT come from?" Les gasped.

"It only gets like that when I'm hot" Zar giggled.

"That's notÉ I mean, who couldÉ what would you do withÉ"

"That" Tok smiled, "is what the burden of power does to our bodies when we come of age. The kootak is not only his right; it is a necessity of biology. Without release, it would become dangerous"

"I can see that" Les gasped, still unable to wrap his mind around the utility of the structure. "So yours isn't soÉ"

"No, not at all, although I don't know how it would seem to you in proportion to you own species."

"Show him, Tok!" Zar commanded.

"Yes majesty."

The blond boy moved in between his friends and began to disrobe. The same intoxicating redolence stole over the room. Les was taken by his wide, green areola and slender, elongated form. He was again surprising himself. Not only were Tok and Zar the only boys his age that had ever moved him, he had become quite smitten with them. He couldn't wait for them to be naked. Curiosity was natural, but the smell of these boys, their aromas, was utterly inebriating, mind altering... and then he understood. Chemistry! The bonding made sense, as did his behavior of late; behavior that had seemed odd even to him. His biology was interacting with theirs in ways that he couldn't begin to understand. His mind was clear enough to finally grasp what was happening to him. As Tok revealed himself fully, Les yielded wholly to that biology that had entangled him. As Compton had predicted, he stepped completely out of his own cloths, willingly, longingly. Face to face with naked green boy, he embraced him. Their nude bodies reflected onto each other the heats of their passion.

"I am only a little larger than you" Tok said, looking down at their dueling cocks.

"There seems to be a part missing!" Zar said, poking his head in between their hips, to better judge the comparison.

"That's a tradition in my family called circumcision." Les explained. "The foreskin over the head of the penis is surgically removed"

"You mean they cut it off?" cried Zar in amazement. "Why ever for?"

"Well, it used to be religious, but now its just tradition. They did it when I a baby so I don't remember it."

" I like it" Tok grinned.

"Thanks"

"May I?"

"Yes Majesty!" Les agreed happily

"It feels the same as ours," he said after a few manipulations. "Tok, what do you think?" Tok joined Zar's in exploring Les's stiff organ.

"Yes. It feels the same, only its very pink".

"Oh, man" Les sighed. "That feels amazing".

"These are his testicles," whispered Zar, as he invited Tok to feel them too. "He has two, like us. There is a little hair around them, but just a little."

"I keep all it trim" Les explained "And sometimes, Akky likes to shave me bare"

"We do that also. Sometimes" Tok said

"Oh yes!" agreed Zar. "I want all the boys in my kootak shaved bare. But I should keep my own hair because I am Emperor"

"Yes, Majesty" Tok grinned, "When you grow some!"

"Now see here" Zar said, focusing his examination now on Les's shaft. "He is a little thicker than you, although its not quite as long."

"Yes" Tok's thin fingers stroked the pulsing shaft of Les' cock, his eyes shifting between it and his own stiff member.

"And look, he pees just like we do" Zar spread the head of Les's penis and exposed the hole for Tok to see. " From here. Only he is pink inside instead of green.

"Very much like us" Tok echoed. I wonder if the other side is also the same. Les? Would you turn over?"

"Certainly, Majesty" Les flipped himself over, with his smirking face landing right between the curious boys."

"Not like that!" Zar cried. "You know what we want. Play the game right!"

"Ok! I was just kidding" Les said as he flipped over again, this time his buttocks landing where his face had been.

"It is very round and has no hair at all." Zar noticed. The green boys began kneading Les's butt cheeks, rubbing and lightly squeezing the pink flesh.

"I'm naturally smooth in most places" Les called over his shoulder.

"Boys only grow hair on their heads and around their genitals on our world" Tok explained. "Men grow it on their asses, chest and under their arms later in life, when they lose it on their heads."

"Something similar happens to us too" laughed Les. With each kneading, Les felt his cheeks pushed further apart.

"I want to see inside" Zar giggled

"Me too.' said Tok

"Go for it!" Les called. Together, they spread Les wide open and gazed into him. Zar's finger drew wide circles and prodded the exact center lightly.

"Again, we are the same. Only we are dark green and you are light brown."

Zar climbed on top of Les and began pushing his budge into the center of the exposed flesh. Les felt the boy's enormity, the girth and length of his endowment, through the slim fabric. This was going to burn, he thought.

"Do you think I will fit?"

"He should be able to accommodate your majesty. Our anatomy is remarkably similar." answered Tok, dreamily.

"And why shouldn't it be?" said a distant, yet hauntingly familiar voice. The boys up jumped in surprise. "You come basically from the same stock!"

There, on the far side of the room, between them and the door, was a thin blond youth, completely naked with oversized genitals dangling between its legs.

"The indecent dream creature!" Tok cried aloud.

"Indecent?" Tovar repeated in surprise. "After all I've done for you, I should get a reward". He grinned mischievously.

"Get out ofÉ" Tok began angrily.

"No, wait" Les rose, putting his hand on Tok's shoulder to steady himself. "Why are you here?"

"Why to watch your first time together, of course" Tovar answered. "Unless you'd like me to join in. I'd be delighted! And odd numbers are unlucky." Tok noticed the creature eyeing Zar licentiously.

"Never" said Tok.

"That's too bad" the creature said, still ogling the young emperor.

"What do you mean our first time? When will there be others?"

"Now, now, Ensign Troy" the creature responded "I'm not so taken with your beauty as my associate to be giving away answers."

"Where is Moya?"

"Occupied. That's all you need to know."

"I must say" the creature licked his lips and leered at Tok, who suddenly felt his nakedness "this is more of you than I saw at our last meeting. I find it quite pleasing" Tok instinctively covered himself.

"In return for the treat" said the creature, getting back to business "I'll give you a bit of information. Half the Imperial fleet is heading to Regehelia. It will arrive almost precisely when the other half reaches your home world."

"We already knew that," said Tok.

"Well, I only got a quick peek at your body," the creature said dejectedly. "There has been a change on Regehelia also" he continued, "a favorable one for your cause, but without any means to resist the fleet, it won't last long".

"Why should you care?"

"Tok, why are you so hostile? I had hoped we would be friends," he said sadly.

"I know what you hoped, and I'm not interested".

"Have it your way". The creature returned with feigned disinterest. "The next slice of information is really new, but it will cost you".

"We're not interested"

"Don't you think the Emperor should decide that?"

"Stay away from him" Tok fumed.

"Now wait" Les jumped in "Lets hear him out"

"I know what it wants, Les"

"As a matter of fact, I don't want anything of you" the creature countered, leering again at young Zar.

"Never" Tok clinched his fists.

"What information do you have and what do you want for it?"

"Majesty, no!"

"Is it about my mother?"

"Don't listen to it, Zar"

Les clutched at Tok's arm and pulled him back.

"Is it?" the emperor repeated.

"It certainly concerns her," the creature answered slyly. "It concerns all of you"

"Can you take us to her?"

"It wouldn't change anything"

"And this information of yours, it would?"

"The natural law decides everything. Its your actions that count"

"It's being evasive, Majesty. Don't listen to it." Even as Tok spoke, Zar stepped towards the naked creature.

"What do you want from me?" Tovar grinned wickedly as the boy approached him. He gestured obscenely with his fully erect penis.

"I can do that too," Zar said, wiggling himself for the creature. "Mine is bigger than yours"

"Really now?" Zar moved within inches of Tovar, and as he did, the creature reached out a groping hand and began to fondle him. Zar groaned in pleasure at the impossibly hot touch.

"Majesty!" Tok shrieked Les's arms fell across Tok's heaving chest and pulled him back, pressing the boy's green flesh onto himself.

"Tok" Les whispered into his ear. " Look at him. He's not being coerced." Les was right. Zar's eyes sparked with lust as the creature massaged him. "I'm not sure you have the right to interfere and we might learn something. Besides, if you don't want to watch, fine, but...". Les reached round and grasped Tok's penis. "You're hard a rock."

"Yes" he admitted through a breath.

Les began stroking him and pushed his own stiff penis against Tok's buttocks.

"Just go with it. And keep your eyes and ears open."

All resistance left him. Tok had to admit, it made good sense and appealed to his rising passion.

Tovar discerned the submission and smiled at the two boys widely. His attention shifted back to the squirming young Emperor.

"Now, lets see what we've got here" He slipped a probing finger inside the white fabric and began to slowly reveal the boy.

Zar's emerging manhood sprung out, sticking straight up into the air. It was long, thick and very green, decorated with just a few wisps of new black hairs. Its length and girth immediately captivated Les's senses. Its disproportionate size compared to the small boy, its practical hairlessness, and vivid coloring took his breath away. As the creature handled it, he wiggled the enormous organ at directly at Les. He realized then that the boy's genitals were the source of the sweetly intoxicating aroma that had stole through the room.

"You want what I have," he whispered. "You always have".

Les nodded.

"And I want what you have. Maybe we can make a deal. Bring the blond boy here to me"

Les obediently led Tok towards him. The creature was in control. It wasn't just about information. The entire room was filled with lust.

"Let him do whatever he wants with you" Les whispered in Tok's ear. I have a theory."

"No" Tok protested.

"Trust me".

The exchange was made. Les received the young Emperor as Tok obediently yielded himself to the creature's licentious embrace.

"What do you want of me?"

"You already know," said the creature.

"Yes. I do. I have from the beginning"

"And you have always refused me"

" I am only for His Majesty"

"I won't consume you," Tovar assured him. "They'll still be plenty for your friend. I promise"

He turned the blond boy around and pulled him down, impaling him upon himself. Tok arched back and fell willingly onto the spike. With a deep thrust, Tovar entered him.

"Ahhhh" he moaned as he was despoiled. Tovar was not nearly as massive as the young Emperor, but as he gave himself wholly to the creature, Tok felt filled to the ears. Yet, with each trust, he was delved impossibly deeper. His breathing grew shallow and quickened. Searing sensations, blurred pleasure and burning pain combined. The creature had the boy skewered and was now raising and lowering him effortlessly, pumping rhythmically. In the heat of passion, Tok's jade green eyes fell full upon Zar and Les, and he as watched them play he became filled with desire.

Compared to Zar's lithe body, even Les' still boyish frame seemed manly. He and Akky hadn't played their shaving game in weeks, so a thick, but compact mat of pubic hair draped his raging erection. Zar seized the organ and began massaging it his sapphire blue eyes beaming mischievously up at Les.

"It is very pink," he giggled.

"And yours is very green" Les smiled, as he fondled the boy. Zar was more than a handful and his flesh was hot, supple and practically hairless. These were utterly new feelings. Les had never imagined that a form, so fresh with boyhood, could ever arouse him. And yet here it was, this green boy, with his lithe, smooth body and heady redolence was fairly driving him wild with desire. Les fell to his knees.

"May I, majesty?"

Zar giggled again and offered himself to Les' eager mouth. The boy's stiff penis beckoned with a few glistening droplets of an intensely aromatic, clear liquid, dipping from the tip. Les delicately lapped at the sticky substance, exploring its bouquets. There was a strange and sudden tickly tingle on his tongue and cheeks that quickly spread to the back of his throat. As his muscles relaxed, he comprehended the elixirs function.

"Majesty" he swooned, as the love potion overpowered him.

Zar flashed his sapphire eyes. Les accepted the impossibly huge organ gladly. It pushed past his lips, filled his mouth and slid easily down his throat. His gag reflex had been completely suppressed to accommodate the penetration. The boy began thrusting, reaching down into Les' esophagus, cutting off his air, but the craving for the green flesh only amplified.

"Ooooo" Zar moaned. Les reached round, grabbed handfuls of buttocks and pulled the young ruler even closer, so that hairless testicles bounced off his chin with each thrust. He couldn't breath, but the raising air-panic only added to the erotic frenzy. He wished he could open wider and engulf the boy's entire genitalia. If he could have, he would have swallowed him whole. But it was no use. He realized there was only one way to have the boy deeper inside him.

"Zar" he gasped. "I need you to fuck me"

The emperor grinned wickedly and nodded. Les fell on all four while eyeing Tok and the creature on the far side of the room, in the midst of their passion. He could see the thin blond boy being lifted up and down on Tovar's lap. Tok starred back at him with a green light of desire that he had never imagined in the reverent boy. As he was repeatedly violated, Tok's genitals bounced up and down, and swung in slow, circular motions. An idea formed in his head. He crawled towards them, grasped Tok's bouncing penis and piloted it into his own mouth. Tok looked at him gratefully. As he was savoring the flavors and comparing them with Zar's, the young emperor attacked from behind. His huge penis began rubbing, probing, seeking for the wet heat inside him. He felt the head of Zar's penis push against his sphincter, a twang of burning discomfort and then a cooling, sticky wetness. The elixir was not precisely anesthetic; rather the pleasurable sensations were heightened, his muscles relaxed and the burning pain cooled. As Zar's huge equipment delved him from behind and Tok's ample organ reached down his throat, he masturbated himself frantically. He half wished for one of his husband's legendary blowjobs.

"This is what I like to see," said Tovar, triumphantly gazing upon the profligate depravity "young men enjoying themselves" He laughed. "Fuck him harder" the creature commanded. "Like this!" With a savage trust, he shook Tok to his bones. Les nearly choked as Zar complied and drove his own organ in even deeper. Les thought the two boy cocks would ram into each other somewhere inside his chest.

"I'm going to come" Tok huffed. He grasped Les's bobbing head to moderate his rhythm.

"Don't let him hog it all!" the creature cried. "Let it splash all over. I want to see it shoot".

As commanded, Tok withdrew himself. Les instinctively began masturbating him and went to work on the boy's dangling testicles, kissing and licking them and coaxing the boy juice out, all while Zar continued plunging recklessly into his rectum.

" I'm coming" Tok groaned.

With no further warning, the blond boy ejaculated, splattering his voluminous seed in Les's face. The fragrant tincture dripped down the side of his cheeks in huge dollops and rolled onto his heaving body. It clung to this nose and forehead and stuck in his hair and eyebrows. He was drenched.

"Me too!" howled Zar.

"Pull out!" Tovar shrieked

Les felt abruptly evacuated, like a beach ball suddenly bereft of air. A veritable torrent of hot, gooey liquid splashed his buttocks and back. He felt the fiery droplets fall on neck. The room filled with an intense, inebriating aroma.

"This is my favorite part," Tovar pushed the spent blond boy off and began licking dollops from Les's chest. He swabbed great glops between his fingers and fed the potion generously to Les.

"What do you think? The alien seed had a lightly creamy, slightly salty, strangely floral savor Les thought; so alike and at the same time vastly different from its human counterpart. Aside from an exotic flavor, the elixir produced a fascinating effect. It wasn't sedative, like the creature's semen had been back in Saint James park, and back at the horse barn. Instead it produced a feeling of gratification and well being, like some emotional itch had been satisfied.

"Hmmmmm" he moaned.

"Very delicious, is it not"? Les nodded agreement at the green boys, who seemed exhausted but pleased.

"But now it's his turn". The creature laid Les down and invited the green boys to join in the sticky feast. Les' eyes glazed over as his body was painted with the tickly wet heat of all the alien tongues.

"Get his cock and balls," the creature commanded, steering the boys away from their own essences, which he greedily gobbled up as fast as he could. The green boys complied and began working Les into frenzy. Zar struggled to swallow Les's shaft, but his inexperienced throat refused the entire accommodation. His sapphire blue eyes grew watery at each attempt, but he was determined. Tok, who had never known such lust and passion in all his short life, was licking and nibbling at Les's testicles like a famished child with a wad of Christmas candy. Les had never been able to ejaculate from oral sex, except with Akky, but this time, with these two boys, he felt a climax building into a Krakatoa Ðlike eruption. His body tensed and his testicles pulled into his body. He moaned and let out a burst of air.

"I'm gonna shoot"! he cried.

The creature, having just lapped the last savory drops of boy juice from Les's chest, sprang into action.

"Both of you get in position. I want to watch him shoot into your mouths. Don't spill a drop of it." "Its coming" Les's body heaved. "Ahhhhh!!" he cried, as a torrent of white fluid gushed forth. His juice splashed between Tok and Zar, who lapped at the hot liquid in mid air, swallowing huge dollops.

Les breathed heavily as his friends devoured his essence. With each breath, he felt inexplicably sleepy. But he was gaining experience with these creatures now, and kept his wits about him.

"You're a real spunk junkie," he said, laughing at the Tovar.

"Well, its delicious. Your two friends seem to agree!" Tok and Zar nodded through sticky smiles.

"I am surprised an immortal such as yourself has a taste for it."

"It is all of you that is immortal" the creature responded.

"I see," said Les.

"Of course you don't" snapped Tovar. "You experience existence as only here and now. But to us, this moment is just a flash. But this", he said licking the last drop of Tok's semen from his forefinger "is your flavor. Yes, it becomes diluted over the centuries, just like the tangs and savors of a good dark wad of Ukrainian tobacco fade, but it is far more of what you really are; your essence".

"Yes, I think I understand. It's why we fade and you grow stronger over time"

" Not precisely" the creature corrected. "It only seems so to your devises because we have no velocity through time. It is the Universe that dissipates. We are pure light."

"So you only reflect back what's already inside of us"

"Precisely"

"Then how can you tell us anything we don't already know?" But the question came from Tok, who was just coming out of his passion and had overheard the conversation.

"Who said I could"?

"You did!" Tok said angrily "That's why I let youÉ"

"I like that!" the creature interrupted. "You did just exactly what you always wanted to do, nothing more."

"Tell us what you promised!" Zar joined them.

"Easy" Les whispered, holding him back.

"Yes, easy!" the creature repeated. "Your earthling friend isn't done pumping me for information"

"I do have a professional interest" Les admitted.

"It was always more than professional" said Tovar, wiggling his limp genitalia obscenely.

"Tell us" Tok demanded.

"But my dear Tok, your young earthling friend already knows. He's half figured it out." The two green boys stared at Les.

"Me? I don't know anything".

"Yes, yes you do" the creature insisted.

" I have no idea what you're talking about"

"Entangled bosons" The creature reminded him. "After what your friends told you about that world Gelesia? Your mind was already jumping to powerful questions."

" I wasÉ" Les confirmed. He mused for a moment to recollect his earlier thoughts. "How did that kind of technology end up on a planet like that? Where did its inventors go?"

"Yes" the creature grinned. "Where indeed!"

"What could it have been used for? Who would they be talking to??" wondered Tok aloud.

"Its not just a communications station!" Les declared

"Then what is it?" cried Zar.

Les nodded his head up and down for a few moments.

"A relay station?"

"Relay? Relay for what? What could travel through entangled Higgs bosons?"

"Nothing. And that's precisely it!" The green boys looked at him blankly.

"You only have mass because you interact with the Higgs field. If you walked through a curtain of polarized Higgs particles, you'd have no mass. You'd wink out of existence. And wink back in again on the other side of the curtain!"

`I'm lost" Zar confessed.

"Don't worry about it". Les jumped up.

"Everyone, clean up and get dressed. I need to see Compton".

"Tovar, will youÉ ". In mid sentence, he realized the creature had vanished. There came a soft, but intruding knock at the door.

"Les, Tok, Zar. Come on out. Commander Frank wants to speak with you."

"Shit!" cried Les. It's my husband."

Chapter 9

The boys once again found themselves seated at one end of the long wooden dinner table. As before, Ryan and Adams were seated at the other end. Hector and Brad were on one side and Compton and Frank sat opposite them. The table had been cleared except for deep mugs of hot cider. And again, all eyes were turned to Commander Henry Frank.

"Ian is going to join us in a few moments from ECC. I've updated him on the situation back on your home world, as well as on your request for our assistance."

"They're not beggars at the door anymore" Les shot back. "They have something to trade"

"Can I count on you to keep your insubordination down to a dull roar, Ensign Troy?"

"I told you, I resigned"

"And I told you that your resignation was rejected. Consider yourself drafted".

"You can't do that"

"Oh, I'm afraid he can" his father practically shouted. "We're all still on field assignment. Technically, this is an away team. One more insubordinate word out of you, kid, and I'll throw you in the brig myself"

Les glared at his father, but he knew him well enough to know he was dead serious.

"Hector, give him some room, ok?" Adams pleaded.

"He can have all the room he needs. But as long as he's wearing that uniform, on my watch, he's going to obey orders, just like everyone else."

"Les" Bradley Williams began, talking around Hector Troy "I understand your feelings, but you'll be far more useful to your friends in that uniform than out of it." As soon as the words left his lips, he realized the potential double meaning.

"I bet he was pretty good out of it too" Adams whispered almost to himself.

"AkkyÉ" Les began

"Oh, no. No, no, no!" Frank barked. "We have no time for this. Ian will be on the screen in a few minutes. Ya'll can deal with that shit on your own time."

A firm "Yes Sir" went around the entire table.

"Compton, these entangled bosons, what are the long term implications of the technology?"

"Sir, there are many potential applications in combination with our own. I was working on something similar many years ago, but the power cost of sifting them out of the Higgs field was prohibitive. A number of my colleagues felt differently and pursued the research, unfortunately to no productive ends."

"Where are they? Could we get some of them together?"

"No Sir. It was many years ago. They are all dead."

"Well, apparently our new friends have solved that problem."

"I suppose it is possible. But I remain skeptical"

"I understand. For argument's sake, lets suppose they have. What could do with them?"

"I would like to run some tests first, of course" the Cybor said deliberately "but initially, we might combine them with our technology and attempt to port without a gravity well."

"You mean just aim anywhere we want?"

"Not precisely Sir. We would still require entangled particles at the target sight"

"I see. But we wouldn't need a porting station or re-integration computers"

"Exactly, Sir. My concern is that the procedure would not be compatible with biological material."

"I don't follow"

"You'd attain zero mass for a moment." Les answered out of place.

"Exactly" the Cyborg continued. "Biological material would lose essential integrity on re-emergence."

"So we'd only be able to teleport inanimate material?"

"That is correct Sir, and only if entangled bosons were present at the target".

"Bashir!" Les said. "If we transmit plans via the flag ship, they'll have time to build neutron batteries."

"I believe Secretary Paige is just joining us" Compton interupted, as a wide square of space above the table's center wobbled like hot air on a cold night.

"EnsignÉ" Hector said to his Son through clenched teeth.

"I'll behave, Dad".

"Good, it's in your friend's interest".

Akky couldn't hide a grimace of discomfort. The entire table noticed Ryan holding his hand.

The holographic image of Ian Paige's head floated eerily above them.

"Ian, its good to see you again"

"Good to see you too, HenryÉ good to see all of you" "Henry, lets get right to the point, shall we? Majesty, I first want to apologize for your diversion to Earth. I assure you, it was not intended as a slight or insult of any kind. The delay was intended only to afford us time to resolve the inefficiencies of our own government".

"I understand" Zar said gracefully. "May we assume the matter has been resolved?"

"Temporarily, yes"

"And?" Les spoke out of turn again.

"I appreciate your commitment, Ensign" Paige said stone-faced, looking through the boy. "Henry, I am ordering you all back to Outpost 8"

"You're just going to dump them off?" said Les, raising his voice

"I'll be happy to overrule Commander Frank and accept your resignation, Ensign" he glared.

"No" Adams whined softly. Ryan clenched his arm.

"I can't believe this, Ian," Bradley Williams interupted. "I won't do it. You'll have to fire me too."

"And me as well" said Hector Troy. Les was astonished.

"Sending them back is a death sentence, Ian. "Frank concurred. "At the very least we should offer them asylum".

"We want to go back" Zar spoke up, although tears were streaming down his cheeks. "We won't stay where we're not wanted".

"At least hear me out before you all quit!" Paige shouted. The room fell silent as all eyes narrowed on the floating hologram.

"The boy's aren't going with you. I'm sending you back with an offer to mediate peace. You all need to understand the risk and political hell I'd catch for turning over our neutron technology. And to what purpose? Even if we make the trade, our experts doubt the aliens could construct the batteries in time to save their home world. Why, it would take months to train technical specialists to even start the work. Its more likely that the technology would fall into Kodos' hands. And without entangled bosons on this end, the technology we'd be getting in return is worthless in the current crisis. Eventually, someone would figure it out and then the whole galaxy would suddenly open up. We'd be exposed to each other unpredictably and on hostile terms. I'm not prepared to risk that"

"Compton doesn't think biomaterial can be transported that way".

"We agree with that, Henry"

"So what's the big deal? They could only send stuff"

"What stuff would General Koros think to send our way after learning we helped his enemies? Unmanned drones, explosives aimed at our porting stations? Or worse? We'd retaliate, of course. No, Henry, no blood baths on my watch "

"Koros will never negotiate. We have no leverage." Hector Troy interrupted impatiently.

"You don't know that Lieutenant, but I'm open to suggestions," said Paige.

"Secretary" said Compton "What if we could collect a small number of entangled bosons?"

"How? That would be like finding a needle in a hay stack the size of the galaxy".

"I have been studying Ensign Troy's data, and his device, and I have a theory."

"Compton?"

"When you described ghosts as vibrations off the Higgs field, I was intrigued." The cyborg continued, "I investigated, and now believe that is what your device measures. The deBroglie wave patterns bouncing off the field would identify the particles we seek uniquelyÉ"

"We could transmit their signatures via the flag ship and then use my scanner to search for them locally!" Les cried

"It would be worth a try. We might collect enough to allow a small transport of non biological material" Compton gave one of his creepy smiles " and I volunteer".

"And you would build the batteries for them" Paige finished for him

"Yes Sir" I believe I would require less than four weeks, working round the clock."

"That's only half the problem," Hector said. "For this to work, we'd need them built on Reghelelia too, so Koros has nowhere to run".

"I believe" Compton continued, " With local help, I could construct a re-integration station in a matter of days, that could receive a conventional porting signal to accommodate the rest of the away team."

"Now you're asking me to hand over everything we've got" Paige shook his head in protest.

"Our fleet is no match for yours" Tok spoke up. "If it came to it, you could subjugate us, or destroy us without much effort. You have refused our every request for help even in our most dire need. Should it not be us who distrust you?"

"Ian, let us work out the details. The risk is minimal and the point is to catch the imperil fleet in the middle, not destroy it. Koros is not suicidal. Once he perceives the trap, he'll sue for peace. The war will be over and the galaxy will be opened on roughly equal terms. No blood baths."

"You're sure about that Henry?"

"Yes Sir"

"Alright. I'm gonna catch hell for it, but if you pull it off this will all be your problem"

"I understand"

"Keep me posted. Paige out".

Henry Frank let out a huge chest full of air. He had put himself on the line. Totally.

"Alright everyone, I want status reports and action plans from each responsibility center by 0600 hours. We port at 0900. Compton, get in touch with Bashir and brief him on the plans. We'll need to coordinate with the folks on Gelisia, Reghelia and their Home world. See if the palace is back on line.

"Thank you very much Commander" Zar said excitedly.

"Yes, thank you". Tok echoed.

"Thank you, Commander. For everything"

Frank smiled at Les. "Trust, Ensign," he said simply.

"Yes Sir." The table began clearing.

"Dad" Les called. "I wanted to say thank you too"

"Just doing my job, Son." Brad Williams elbowed him.

"What your father means is that we're both very proud of you, isn't that right, Hector?"

"Yes, of course" he said softly. Les ran into his arms.

"I've missed you kid"

"I've miss you too Dad. So much." As he basked in the strong warmth of his father's embrace, he felt a sudden, hard pull at his heartstrings. Akky!

"Akky!" he cried aloud. But his husband had disappeared with Ryan. "Shit" his eyes filled with tears. Hector Troy could only hug his Son even tighter.

The boys returned to their room and began packing their things. Now that came to it Les realized that the Frank Ranch had grown to feel like home. Worse, the reality of how far apart he and his husband had grown was bowling him over. He'd been so focused on the alien boys and their plight, and Akky was so preoccupied with his newfound friend Ryan that a wide gulf had insensibly opened between them. Now that they were preparing to return to space, there it was, yawning at him. The frightening though occurred to him, like bolt of emotional lightening, that he might have already lost him. The thought was bitterer because the fault was clearly his own. He had broken the rules first and became emotionally involved. It was no wonder that Akky had reached out to Ryan. His eyes began to water.

"Les? Are you alright?" Tok had noticed the shadows on his friend's face.

"Yes. I am fine"

"I don't believe you. It's us, isn't it? We have come between you and Lieutenant Adams."

"We need to tell him," said Zar, who halted his packing and joined them on the bed

"Tell me what?

"We have not been completely honest with you"

"About?"

"The bonding. It is chemical. I did not know for certain if it would affect you, but we were desperate".

"And I wanted you from the moment I saw you" Zar admitted. "And I hoped you would want me too."

"Forgive us" Tok pleaded. "I do not know of any antidote, but the effects are temporary. If you wish, we'll stay away from you, and in a few days, the effects should fade".

"That's the problem" Les smiled. " I don't wish it. And I guess I sort of knew, even if I didn't know exactly what was going on. To tell the truth, now that I think about it, Akky was worried that I was having second thoughts about us before I even met you guys, ...I said no; but now, well, I guess he was right. Maybe I did. Maybe that why I didn't tell my dad, maybe deep down, I knew. Oh god, I think I may have really hurt him."

"I am sure you thought you were being honest," said Tok

"Yes" Zar said. "When my father would be very cruel to us, my mother would say that those we love most are those we deem most worthy of forgiveness."

"I hope Akky can forgive me. I've kept things from him"

"You mean us?"

"Yes, and the creatures, the Perelsnik, I didn't tell anyone about them until it was too late"

"Neither did I" Tok said awkwardly. "Should we say anything to the others about this last incident?"

"I don't think so, no" Les said, "Unless I'm very wrong, Its not relevant"

"But he told us about the entangled bosons. We should share that with Compton at least."

"Did he, Majesty? Did he really? Or was my mind simply cleared so that my own thoughts could surface? And Tok, be honest, when you first encountered Tovar, that night when the Emperor was killed, you already had misgivings, and some premonition that something was wrong, didn't you? Before the creature ever appeared. And later on, when he appeared on the Flag Ship, and he told you about the virus, you were on high alert anyway. You might have found it by yourself, by coincidence. And when he molested you, wasn't there a part of you that enjoyed it, that wanted it?"

"Yes" Tok said softly. "Yes to all it"

"And this last time as well?

"Yes. I was very aroused by it. It was, as you would say, `smoking hot' " he confessed.

"I want to do it again right now!" Zar giggled.

"Easy, stud!" Les cried. "I'm still a little sore".

"You said you had a theory about them" Tok reminded him.

"Yes. I think Kismet was right. They can't change anything, and they can't make us do anything that we don't want to do"

"But what are they?"

"I'm not sure, Majesty. I'm more sure about what they're not."

"Please go on," said Tok.

"They're not life as we know it"

"He felt very much alive when he was fucking me," said Tok.

"Yeah, me too"

"And he gobbled up all our spunk".

"Yes Majesty. But living things consume energy, excrete waste, reproduce, change and grow. They seem to be going in the opposite direction"

"I don't understand."

"Their signature patterns! I've analyzed them to death and the most consistent finding is how remarkably consistent they are. I even wonder if there are really two of them," Les mused almost to himself "We could be dealing with an echo, a reflection of the same pattern bouncing off the Higgs field."

"You mean there may be only one of them?"

"Yes, but it keeps dividing in two and re-merging instantly. That's part of the reason why the wave pattern always seems to be getting stronger. The other part is temporal. It's like when a train is coming at you, and it gets louder. But once it starts moving away, the pitch changes and it gets softer."

"So when they move away from us, they will start to fade too?"

Yes, Majesty, but all their motion is through space. They don't move through time as we do. Instead, they exist at all times. To move relative to them, we'd have to stop moving in time ourselves. Then, they'd seem to fade, just like Alexis Romanov's ghost faded."

"But that can never happen" Zar squeaked.

"It can happen, Majesty. In fact, it most certainly will happen," he said gravely, "to all of us, one day".

"He means when we die"

"Yes, Tok. They'll fade then. Just like everything else in the universe will fade, from our own point of view, of course".

"I don't like talking about this" Zar was becoming uncomfortable.

"I understand" Les said. "The important point is that they don't share existence with us, so they can't change anything. They can only reflect back what's already inside of us, our deepest, darkest fantasies, and the parts we keep hidden. They feed, in a sense on those negative emotions because they're the most primal. But maybe feed' isn't exactly the right word, maybe it's more like reverberate'."

"Like when two waves collide?" Tok proffered. "Yes, exactly!" cried Les. "If they're concordant, they merge and get stronger, but if they're discordant, they cancel. I think that's partly why they're attracted to us. The patterns of our negative emotions match theirs. It's why they couldn't stand being around Alexis Romanov's ghost. His vibrations were dissonant. Kismet said he had a `golden heart'. Anyway, the point is that I don't think they're dangerous. At least not to us."

"But what about the others"

"Kismet said that we all meet the Perelesnyk alone, on our own."

"And what happened between the three of us?"

"Lets keep that on the quiet too. It will be our secret."

"Agreed" said both green boys in unison. The boys touched foreheads.

"Ok, lets get packed" Les said, adjusting his raging hard on. "We have a long journey ahead".

1