“Devolve the mallowpults and their crews, and then ride out to help our Purple Shirts,” Alex ordered his officers as he rode to the next mallowpult in the row to repeat the procedure with the next blue artilleryman. As he stabbed this native, he continued calling his orders, “And make a good show of it. We need to scare their leader into submitting peacefully.”
As if on cue, an entirely new horde of thousands of blue-skinned natives burst forth from a nearby forest. Leading their charge was a massive blue-skinned native wearing a glittering pink crown and riding atop the most grandiose marshmallow that Alex had ever seen.
Alex cursed. None of his sensors or scouts had discovered this group of flanking natives hiding in the forest, and the pre-battle intelligence briefing had indicated that there would be only a few hundred of the natives in total to subdue—the ones with which Alex’s squadron was currently engaged—not a vast horde such as this one. Alex made a mental note to add a demerit to the permanent records of the pre-mission Holo-Scouting Deck scouts once he made it home from this mission.
Alex squinted at the thousands of incoming blue men and then barked into his communicator, “In case you haven’t noticed, we have incoming from the north. Ricardo and Leif, set your Time-Phasers to automatic-shotgun-fire mode and provide suppressing fire from the ground. Draw them to your position, but withdraw and reset your attack from a safe distance if they get too close. The rest of us will take to the air and rain devolution down upon them from above whilst they are attempting to incapacitate the two of you. Make sure nobody hits that individual with the crown. If he is devolved, then he can’t sign our treaty.”
“What about the Purple Shirts, sir?” asked Leif. “Should one of us break off and go help them?”
Alex frowned. “Our mission is our top priority, and right now, our mission is at risk because of this surprise attack. The Purple Shirts must learn to stand on their own at some point. That point may as well be now.”
And with that, Alex launched into the air, four of his six officers following behind. In midflight, he reached down to the handle of his laser-Xyston and twisted the dial from Mid-Range to Long-Range. The lasers emanating from his handle twisted shape so that he now brandished a laser-bow. When he felt sufficiently high above the incoming horde, he began loosing devolution-arrows formed from solid orange light down upon the thousands of flanking natives, careful to avoid landing one upon the blue-skinned male wearing the crown.
Minutes passed. Alex ignored the sweat dripping into his eyes and continued devolving the natives.
The threat of the surprise attack quickly waned until it was not much of a threat at all. By Alex’s count, he had devolved nearly two-hundred and twelve of the natives himself, while his fellow officers perched on their saddles near him had devolved about half that number each.
The enemy began to panic and was on the verge of routing, for the limited range of their primitive weaponry left them with no way to return fire upon the B.T.T. officers floating above them. Thus, Victory seemed prepared to bestow her metaphorical laurel wreath upon Alex despite the surprise intrusion of this vast horde.
And then everything fell apart. A flash and a bang erupted from the ground in the middle of the marauding blue horde.
Alex screamed into his communicator, “Cease fire!”
Alex and the officers stopped firing into the crowd of natives as a man in a B.T.T. officer’s uniform appeared amongst them from within a bright blue light. This man’s uniform had two black stripes running down its sleeves, indicating his rank as Captain of his B.T.S.-class ship. He wore a domed maroon crown on his head, below which cascaded a few thick braids of curly black and gray hair that stretched all the way down his back, ending at his buttocks. His skin was dark olive in complexion, and a billowing beard flowed from his chin to his naval. He raised his fist in victory and called out in the natives’ language, “I accept your surrender, King Blimpinny. I look forward to a treaty ensuring lasting peace between your people and our-”
A dozen gigantic mallets crashed down upon Alex’s superior officer, Captain King Solomon. The Captain fell to the ground and screamed.
Alex cursed. He leaned down toward the Captain and jammed hard on his accelerator. He blasted the nearest blue thugs into puddles of devolved blue goop before landing next to his now-bleeding captain.
“Hmmph. Must’ve arrived a few minutes too early,” muttered the Captain, his domed crown lying on the trampled grass beside him.
“Really?” asked Alex as he leapt onto the muddy grass next to his captain. “I hadn’t noticed.”
The king of the natives bounded over to Alex and Captain King Solomon, towering above them. He raised his gigantic mallet for a deathblow.
Alex knelt, bowed his head, and yelled, “We surrender!”
*
The blue natives marched in a ring surrounding the Landing Crew of the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker. Firelight flickered from the torches that the natives carried. Alex sighed. He and the Landing Crew all had thick wooden clasps around their wrists that held their arms in place. Etchings of the natives bowing down in worship before gigantic marshmallows covered the manacles. Wooden chains linked the manacles to wooden bindings around each Landing Crew member’s ankles. The ankle-bindings were connected to one another with another set of wooden chains, which were so short that the Landing Crew had to shuffle in little awkward steps to move.
Deep bass drums beat out a marching pace with which Alex and the crew struggled to match due to the short chains. At the front of the procession bounced the gigantic blue native with the crown. Every now and then, a bulging blue man nearly eight-feet tall—who Alex had surmised to be the crew’s gaoler—would leap from the shadows with a torch in hand, gesticulate wildly without making a sound, and then either whack a Landing Crew member in the back with a gigantic mallet or spit a marshmallow in the victim’s face.
As he had been trained, Alex walked nearly in the center of the herded Landing Crew, giving him protection as the second-most senior officer on this mission. Around him marched the six marigold-shirted officers, all of whom had thus far survived this mission, and around them in a protective ring shuffled the twelve remaining Purple Shirts who had not fallen in the battle. Alex glanced over his shoulder at the man waddling in the exact center of the B.T.T. circle, the man who was in the most-protected position, Captain King Solomon.
“My apologies, Alex,” whispered Captain King Solomon. “It must’ve been the damned chronometer on the fritz again. We’ll be OK, though. I have a plan.”
The Captain winked and flashed a grin, and a few of his golden teeth sparkled in the torchlight from beneath his shaggy beard. Alex answered with an annoyed grunt, and then he faced forward. According to this captain, problems were never caused by his own error, but were always a malfunction in some other system outside his control. And then he always followed whatever mishap he caused with a convoluted plan to rescue the Landing Crew from whatever bigger problem replaced the original, much more manageable problem. Alex sighed.
Aside from releasing an occasional sigh, Alex remained silent for the remainder of the march, which lasted nearly four hours. The march ended when the group arrived at a village. Its outskirts were filled with dozens of farms growing a range of orange and yellow and indigo marshmallows. Ramshackle adobe shacks with thatched roofs formed a circle around a squat stone tower that stood atop a hill in the center of the village. Little blue-skinned children stared with blank eyes from the shacks. A few dozen blonde females with variously colored skins that ran the gamut of the rainbow leaned out of doorways and began following the group of captives at a distance as they passed the shacks. Alex heard Captain King Solomon smack his lips and knew that the man must be staring at the buxom blondes with lust in his heart.
Soon, the group reached the squat stone tower. Its crenellations formed a shape in exact replica of the crown that stood atop the bouncing blue native at the front of the procession. The wooden doors that marked the entrance to the
tower crashed open when two blue guards shoved them agape. The procession moved inside, and once inside the tower, Alex could see a multitude of tapestries on the wall, all seeming to indicate how this blue group had suppressed orange and yellow and red and green peoples through conquest. On a dais in the center of the room was raised a squatty, blue throne. The four corners of the dais were upheld by sculptures of an orange man, a yellow man, a red man, and a green man, each kneeling in submission.
The blue-skinned native wearing the crown stepped off his gargantuan marshmallow steed and tossed it to a guard, who caught it and scrambled out of the tower with it in tow. The king then waddled up the stairs of the dais to the throne and sat with a heavy thud. He glowered down at Alex and the Landing Crew of the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker.
With a scowl etched across his face, the crowned native began gesticulating wildly and screaming at his captives in his native tongue, which sounded to Alex like a series of clicks and grunts and moans. The Universal-Translator-Flake in Alex’s brain went to work, and the translation immediately clicked into place.
“King Blimpinny wants to know why we have attacked his people and created war with him,” said Captain King Solomon, leaning over to whisper in Alex’s ear. Alex rolled his eyes and then frowned at his captain, for Captain King Solomon knew he had a universal translator in his brain, so the Captain’s translation was completely unnecessary.
The Captain said, “Oh, don’t give me that look. I obviously know you don’t need me to translate for you. However, I’m setting the precedent to King Blimpinny that I must do so, because it causes him to underestimate our capabilities and it buys me time, both of which I need for my plan to work.”
Alex shrugged, not knowing how else to reply. Captain King Solomon winked at Alex and then shuffled forward out of the center of the Landing Crew so that he stood alone before the native king. Captain King Solomon began gesticulating wildly and speaking in the natives’ language. He barked. The native king barked back. Back and forth they went until King Blimpinny nodded.
The Captain returned to his crew and unnecessarily explained, “I explained the need for our treaty and the goods that it will provide to the king and his fellow natives. He became much friendlier when I explained that none of our weapons dealt lethal blows to his people and that they will have returned to normal by now. I told him he should send a squad back to the battlefield to retrieve those who fell to us in battle, because they are probably very confused. I then explained that there will be an alien species that enters this timestream three centuries in the future, and that King Blimpinny’s cooperation is essential to the survival of his people and his planet. He was receptive when I told him that if he sets the precedent for his people to live peacefully with the future-aliens this far back in the development of his people’s culture, then it will prevent a war that would otherwise stretch across this entire timestream as well as the three nearest realities in the Multiverse, killing quintillions. I offered to open B.T.T. trade routes to here in exchange for our treaty, creating wealth for his people far beyond what they ever dreamed imaginable. That seemed to motivate him more than anything else. Well, that and my revelation that if he cooperates, he will have the longest reign as king in all of his people’s history. By the end of our talk, he agreed to the treaty, but said he cannot sign it until we have completed his people’s rites of covenant.”
Captain King Solomon stared at Alex. Alex said nothing back. Captain King Solomon whispered harshly, “Are you daft? Ask me a question! Make it look like we are having a discussion! My god, man, at least try and make my ruse seem believable.”
Alex frowned. He then muttered the first question that popped into his mind, “And what do these rites entail?”
Captain King Solomon winked at him and said, “A sacrifice upon the Mallowpyre from both groups, followed by a trial by combat between me and the king. If I win, then it will prove to King Blimpinny that the gods are on my side and that the words I have spoken about the future are true. And then he will sign the treaty.”
“Trial by combat between you and the king is extremely risky, sir,” observed Alex. “He’s nearly twice your size and probably a tenth your age. You’ll be naming me as your champion, I presume?”
Captain King Solomon grinned and winked once more. Alex sighed at all the winking. “Oh, no need, Alex. I planned for this eventuality in case our mission went awry, and we found ourselves in this exact situation. I wore a set of Discharge Undergarments beneath my uniform. I’ve been dragging out this translation-ruse to stall as long as possible so that the equipment can fully charge. I’m sure you figured that one out yourself, because otherwise the bulge in the rear of my uniform would have been a suddenly bulbous addition to my normally flat ass, and these last few moments would have been unnecessarily exposition-heavy.”
A whining beep sounded from within the Captain’s uniform. “That’s my signal,” he said. And with that, Captain King Solomon turned back to face King Blimpinny. He accepted the terms for the rites of covenant.
*
The rites of covenant began at once. Everyone hastened outside, walked three times around the stone tower, and then followed a winding street away from the tower and toward a pyre upon which bright flames danced. The pyre was no wooden construct like Alex had frequently witnessed during his natural lifetime. Instead, it was a heaping pile made from hundreds of gigantic marshmallows that had been set aflame. The pyre was fueled by a continuous line of blue-skinned laborers who emerged from a nearby forest. They carried marshmallows that they tossed with great ceremony onto the fire, and then they returned to the forest to harvest more of these wild marshmallows.
The natives and the Landing Crew spread out to surround the pyre, and the sacrifice to the natives’ gods began. A blue warrior stepped forward from amongst the natives. Carrying his mallet and a satchel full of tiny marshmallows, he approached the flames. He tossed both the mallet and the satchel onto the pyre, grunted a prayer, and then knelt with his head bowed to the flames. A throng of natives sprang forward, snatched the kneeling soldier, and hoisted him onto their shoulders. They cheered him and sang a hymn, and then they tossed him onto the pyre. He burned with a grin on his face.
Captain King Solomon turned to one of the twelve remaining Purple Shirts and said, “Your sacrifice will ensure this timestream’s survival and will save countless lives. The Space-Time-Multinuum and I both give you our thanks.”
“Wait, what?” asked the purple-shirted teen.
Captain King Solomon pointed at the Purple Shirt, and the blue natives sprang forth to snatch the youth. They unfastened his shackles and hoisted him up onto their shoulders. They sang another hymn while the young man screamed in terror. Then they tossed him onto the pyre.
“And now that we’ve fed their gods with a sacrifice, it will be my turn,” said Captain King Solomon. He shuffled forward, and the natives freed him from his bindings.
King Blimpinny stood ferocious in the firelight, towering over Captain King Solomon at nearly twice the latter’s height. A wooden mallet rested on the native king’s shoulder, an enormous weapon with a head the size of Captain King Solomon’s torso. Alex strained against his shackles, wishing that he could battle the beast in place of the feeble captain.
Captain King Solomon and King Blimpinny bowed to one another. A trumpet sounded from the top of the stone tower. King Blimpinny bellowed a roar, raised his mallet high above his head, and charged toward the Captain. Meanwhile, Captain King Solomon stifled a yawn. He reached inside his right sleeve and tapped something.
A mammoth bolt of lightning flashed from Captain King Solomon’s uniform and crashed into King Blimpinny’s ample belly. The native king immediately flopped to the ground in a fit of seizures. Captain King Solomon strode over to his prone opponent, wrested the mallet from his grip, and heaved it onto the pyre. He then placed his foot on the fallen king’s chest and raised his fists in victory.
The surrounding natives squealed in fear. Captain Kin
g Solomon spoke in the natives’ language, “This trial by combat is over. According to the rites of this covenant, your king will now sign our treaty.”
The natives hissed and booed. Captain King Solomon produced a parchment and a small white tablet from his holster. He placed the tablet in King Blimpinny’s mouth. It ended the seizures and revived the king. The king sat upright, beat his fists upon the ground, and barked a rage-filled bark at Captain King Solomon.
“Yes, it was a dirty trick,” responded Captain King Solomon in the native tongue as he held the parchment out to King Blimpinny. “But I would do it again in a heartbeat before allowing you to wallop me with your mallet. And if you are now thinking that you might renege on our covenant because you are a sore loser, then let me offer you the following choice: you may sign to show me that the fate of this timestream is more important to you than your pride, or I can cut your children in half and split them evenly amongst your people.”
Alex choked back a groan. Captain King Solomon’s solution to every problem was to threaten to cut something of value in half—almost always children. It was apparently a negotiating tactic that had worked for him once during his natural lifetime before entering the service of the B.T.T., and he never missed an opportunity to return to its metaphorical well whenever he thought it would help him quickly attain a desired outcome.
King Blimpinny grunted. And then he nodded. Captain King Solomon placed the parchment in the king’s hand, pricked the king’s finger to produce blood, and then watched with a smile as the king signed. There would be peace in this timestream.
Captain King Solomon walked over to the Landing Crew of the B.T.S. Unicorn Husker. He pointed to a male and a female amongst the surviving Purple Shirts and said, “You two shall stay here in this timestream to ensure these natives abide by our treaty. You must be stalwart observers to confirm that they use the proper rhetoric about aliens in order to guarantee a future peace. If they do not, contact me at once so that we can blockade their B.T.T. trade routes. Your descendants shall continue in your post after your deaths. In three centuries hence, the B.T.T. will return to reclaim them once it is confirmed that the threat we came here to prevent has been avoided.”
And Now, Time Travel Page 2