by Laer Carroll
Freemen advanced to the dais and took a short stairway up to stand behind the lectern. He motioned to the chairs behind him. Jane hopped up onto the dais and went to sit in one of them. The two guards followed her up the stairs to stand behind her.
Men began to enter the room in ones and twos and threes. All wore camo clothing and wore or carried guns. The weapons were a motley assortment. They included several models of assault rifles and submachine guns and pistols. The latter included semiautomatic weapons and revolvers, including old Western-style Colts and such. Some seemed to be cap-and-ball weapons more suited to Western reenactments than actual warfare.
When about a hundred people were seated "Boss" Freeman spoke into the microphone and so over a public address system.
"Brethren! Resisters! The corrupt leadership has given in to our demands. To bring the news they sent the alien bitch who pretends to be a general in our patriotic armed forces."
Jane stood up and advanced to stand before the lectern. Freeman ceded the microphone to her but stood near.
"I fear I must disappoint you, people. I'm here to take Fancy home. Fancy, are you ready?"
A sweet female voice spoke out of the air.
"Sadly, I am. No one would listen to me. One of them even spit on me. I am annoyed."
"A friend of mine said a lesson should be administered. Shall I or will you?"
"I will. I'm coming."
The Boss grabbed the microphone stem away from Jane and spoke though not into it.
"She's locked up. She can't come."
A loud explosion sounded from somewhere.
Jane said, "You poor fools. Don't you understand even the most basic facts? These people you call aliens possess technology a thousand years ahead of ours. They are not helpless no matter how it seems. And this 'girl' you thought you kidnapped? She's survived for over five centuries much of it on worlds more primitive and war-ridden than ours."
She took several steps back from the microphone to let the tiny webcam on her chest get a better view of the room. Behind her one of the guards fired his assault weapon at her on full automatic. Jane did not even look at him as the bullets vanished impactless.
Most of the men in the briefing room were still seated when the closed door to the room exploded into the room, slamming onto the floor.
In the doorway stood the small woman named Fancy and called Princess. She was clad in flame but was otherwise naked. The red and orange and blue flames writhed and popped. Over the sounds came a loud voice.
"YOU CALLED ME NAMES AND SPIT ON ME. RUN FROM ME OR DIE."
Some men chose to die. They fired into the fiery figure. She pointed a finger at them and they burst into flame, dead before they could cry out.
A multitude of weapons opened up pouring effectless bullets into and around the woman who on another world centuries before had been called Flame.
She took a slow step into the room, giving the men plenty of time to race, fighting each other, to the door or doors behind the dais. Others took a quicker more dangerous route by jumping through windows.
Boss and his two henchmen were already escaping by dashing behind the dais. Jane angled her body to let her body cam get a good view of the escapees.
Fancy walked by her, only glancing at Jane still standing on the dais. She passed by the dais. As she did so the cloth hangings backing the dais burst into flame as well.
Jane followed behind Flame into the small room behind the dais littered with tables and chairs. Everything burned before her. The entire wall of the building exploded outward, falling still burning onto a green unkempt lawn.
Beyond was the compound with a parade ground in the center and several one-story buildings scattered around it. Running figures could still be seen.
An ancient tank stood at the rear of the parade ground. It snorted and rumbled to life, pivoting to point its guns at Fancy and Jane.
A quite female voice spoke to Jane. "Is it occupied? My special effects get in the way of my probes."
"It's on remote control," Jane said in an equally conversational tone."
"Oh, goody!"
She pointed a finger at the tank. It exploded dramatically. Seemingly miraculously no fragments struck any escapees or any of the surrounding buildings. One huge part flew toward the wooden wall around the compound, sending it crashing into the green land beyond.
Fancy followed the few remaining men in the parade ground to take refuge in some of the buildings. The protection was only temporary. The nearest walls began to burn. When they fell to reveal interiors they did so slowly, giving the escapees plenty of time to flee the buildings into the meadows beyond them.
The dirt roadway leading from the fortress had over a dozen vehicles driving away, kicking up dust behind them. The nearest then the furthest lost the rubber on their wheels, courtesy of Robot's disintegration weapon, and then the wheels. Their occupants abandoned the halted vehicles to run along the road.
Jane followed Fancy as she walked the perimeter of the compound burning and exploding everything, even the weapons littering the ground.
When all was done Fancy turned her face upward, lifted her arms, and disappeared into the sky.
<>
Jane and Fancy met with Karen Danburn that evening after Jane had taken Fancy to the Galactic's apartment and let her have a good long shower and eaten something.
"Good job," said the Earth Guardian to Fancy.
"Thanks. I am sorry I had to kill some of the men. Their firing was so wild it endangered their own people."
"They deserved to die for trying to kill you."
"But I was never in danger from their puny weapons. Jane, could you see if the men had families? I can't stand the thought of knowing I hurt families. And do something to help them?"
"Sure. No problem."
Three of the men did have families with kids. An anonymous campaign called Fallen Defenders accumulated enough contributions to provide fat family trust funds and generous student trust funds.
There were no more kidnappings of Galactics after the Flame episode.
<>
When Spring arrived so did the Frogs, though at the orbit of Pluto. The planetoid's highly elliptical orbit marked a widely accepted though informal definition of the edge of the Solar System. Though the intruders had exited the inner edge of the disc-shaped Kuiper Belt they had still been felt to be "far away." Now that they were inside the functionally meaningless edge of the Solar System they were felt to be a threat. This despite the news that their projected orbit would take them to the location of Mercury not to that of the Earth,
The plans to form up the Earthly armada to meet the intruders went into high gear. All leaves were curtailed and every crew member was sent to ships if they were not already aboard.
The Cat colonies on Mars and the asteroids readied token war ships to meet the war fleet when it got under way. So did the Lizard community in the floating city above Venus.
The Galactics on Earth did something similar. Every one of the 1700+ on Earth took to their flying belts and met over an anonymous stretch of the Pacific. Water began to rise in aerial streams to meet half a mile in the air. Melded into one giant mind the superbeing created by the Visitors transmuted the water into many devices which flowed together to create a miles-long space ship shaped like a green ball stretched three times its diameter.
Included in the body of the ship were thousands of missiles of several sizes and types. In its center and all along its length was a giant gamma ray laser capable of vaporizing small asteroids.
When the spaceship was completed the flying humans spilled into it and sent it spaceward to join the fleet forming five million miles outward from the sun.
<>
Jane got a new spaceship too. Karen Danburn gave it to her a couple of weeks before she was to leave Earth. The woman announced the present at a last dinner with her and Anna Prince. Kate and Klaus were in attendance.
"I felt the need for the Stellar Guardian to have a
more imposing warcraft than that SuperScout of yours. So I built you one. Here is what it looks like."
They were sitting around a dinner table in the office and living suite atop Anna Prince's skyscraper near Beverly Hills. Above the snowy top of the table a three-dimensional image flicked into existence.
It showed a slowly revolving vehicle that let them see it from all sides. It had the same dart shape of a SuperScout but one fattened a bit. It was white with a broad blue stripe on each side.
"I copied your SuperScout, so you won't have to relearn procedures. It's just bigger and so can carry more weapons. I copied all of your weapons and detection systems EXACTLY."
Jane understood that Karen had discovered the enhancements that Jane had added to extend Robot's functionalities, but didn't want to say so in front of Kate and Klaus.
"Not everything," Jane said, "scales up exactly."
"I have engineers to do a lot of the detail work. They took that into consideration. Naturally you'll have to test everything out. I can make any changes you want before you leave."
She took a sip from her wine glass.
"I did change out a few subsystems. You now have a power subsystem that operates by 'uncurving space' so that you have an effectively infinite power source. Your hyperspace jump engine now has legs about ten times as before. Your environmental subsystem uses Confederation transmutation tech rather than 3D printing tech. Plus a few minor upgrades."
"How big is this...HyperScout?" said Kate.
A scale appeared that showed the vertical and horizontal dimensions in feet. Jane's "HyperScout" was over seven hundred feet long and a hundred feet high.
"Twice the length of a football field and then some," Klaus said to Jane's exec officer. Kate nodded.
"Thank you, Karen," said Jane. "I like your going-away gift very much."
Kate had another concern. She asked it of Anna Prince.
"Have the top brass accepted your request to have Jane do all the talking with the Frogs? A Stellar Guardian really should be the one to do that."
"I didn't make a request. I made a demand. They caved with a lot of sour looks and muttering. If talking turns to fighting they insist that their Supreme Leader and his staff call the shots."
"As it should be. I want to leave that specialized function to the experts. That would free me up to pitch in where I think I can help out." This meant she'd be free to use Robot's detection and weapons functions aided by the HyperScout's Robot extensions to beef up any ships or formations which might be outgunned.
<>
Jane spent her last night on Earth with Phil. They had dinner at a restaurant atop a hotel just a block from the Santa Monica pier. A setting sun woke fire in the clouds on the horizon over the darkening blue of the Pacific.
Toward the end of their dinner he said, "When I was growing up boys were supposed to hide their emotions. 'Big boys don't cry' was the mantra they gave us. 'Hide how you feel' was another. I learned the lessons so well that sometimes it even hard to HAVE emotions."
He possessed her hands. "So I haven't said this to you often. Jane, I love you. I've loved you almost from the first. Marry me."
Tears sprang to Jane's eyes. Her heart seemed to turn over.
"Oh! Are you sure? Yes. Yes!"
He brought out a ring, a modest but lovely one of tiny diamonds setting off one larger diamond. Jane let him slip it onto her ring finger and held it up to admire it in the light of the setting sun.
He said, "We've been together so long that I don't want to want a minute after you get back from your mission."
"I feel the same way. We've been practically married for years. I want us to BE married as soon as possible. But I warn you. Mom and Natalie are going to want a wedding with all the trimmings."
"My mom will feel the same way. Are you up to dealing with THREE women each with strong opinions about what's right for us?"
"Oh, God. Now you remind me, after I've said Yes!"
<>
The Space Defense Force fleet of some six thousands ships assembled five million miles sunward from Earth. The formation's shape was near spherical but stretched twice its diameter away from and toward Earth. Its longest axis was over a thousand miles.
The larger ships were in the center but left vacant a large volume of space in the very center. The crews discovered why after the formation settled down.
A thirty-mile long battered vehicle which looked like a potato-shaped asteroid appeared in the vacant space. It was the Zone Guardian's warcraft. Made from an actual asteroid it had massive weapons able to turn a planet to dust. For lesser jobs its hollow shape contained over three thousand other warcraft. Aboard it was Heyalna--Anna Prince--her brain merged with the robotic brain of the mother ship and each of the smaller warcraft.
The cyborg supermind addressed each of the fleet's ships in the official language: English. Their video screens showed HER disguised image. It had a beautiful face framed by long curly black hair. She could have been a cousin of Anna Prince or some other similar woman.
"Greetings warriors, defenders of Earth. I am the Guardian for this zone of the Human Interstellar Confederation. I will be with you when you confront the intruders into the Solar System. However, I will be submerged in one of the hyperspace universes and watching events from there. I will surface only if you need me. I expect you will not. You are valiant warriors, well trained and led, with good equipment. I wish you good luck."
With that the Guardian's image disappeared to be replaced a few seconds later by Jane's face.
"Hello. You know me as General Jane Kuznetsov. Most of you also know that I'm a Galactic but from a system far away in space and time. I grew up on Earth and consider myself a native of Earth. The Zone Guardian has named me Solar System Guardian to impress the Frogs. I'll play that part and negotiate with the Frogs.
"However, the Space Defense Force Supreme Commander is my real boss. If the Frogs choose to fight us I like all of you will take orders from him. Let's hope we scare the shit out of them and we can just escort them to some part of Solar System where they won't cause us more than annoyances. Now here is the Supreme Commander Sergei Antonov."
The man whose image Jane's looked like everyone's idea of a stern military commander. He was a sturdy sixty-year-old in a bright blue shipsuit with red accents. His hair was a grey crew cut and he might be carrying a few extra pounds but carried them well.
"Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I want us to spend a minute of silence while those of us who appreciate God can ask Allah, Jehovah, Dharma, and many more for their blessing."
He looked down and was silent for sixty seconds, then looked up.
"Now let's go show these newcomers to our system that if they want a fight they'll get their asses kicked."
With that all the pilots of the fleet activated their space drives in an elaborately planned set of hyperjumps. Long planned and often simulated the Space Defense Force's Forward Fleet disappeared into hyperspace section by section.
Jane's HyperScout was in the forefront of the fleet. It and its hundreds of companions arrived at a selected spot three million miles further from the Sun, about a tenth of the distance to the orbit of Mars. It took several minutes for all of them to arrive and within a few miles of their appointed locations. This was within the expected errors for such a coordinated movement.
It took over an hour for the entire fleet to arrive. There were a dozen too-close approaches of less than a hundred miles. The crews of those ships were admonished to do better.
The fleet then spent several hours re-calibrating instruments and refreshing understandings of procedures before the next jump. This one was longer: six million miles. This maneuver was marginally better.
The next hyperjump was longer, the next longer still, till the usual jump time was settled down to sixteen million miles. Times between jumps settled down to two hours for the entire fleet.
It took more than three weeks for the fleet to traverse the distance to th
e orbit of Pluto. A cloud of drones flew several million miles ahead of the fleet. By then the ships of the fleet had shaken down to precision maneuvering.
Then the first drones encountered the Frog armada. Its formation was close to spherical and ten million miles through. As it detected the Earth fleet that figure shrank as distances between ships dropped to some 20,000 miles. The intruder formation ceased its hyperjumps. It was still traveling inward at about a hundredth of the speed of light.
The Space Defense Force matched its inward speed in a series of tightly carried out maneuvers and placed itself squarely in the path of the intruders.
Jane, as the Solar System Guardian, began the sending of a message in Interstellar on several standard frequencies of the hypercom spectrum. For over an hour the message repeated.
"Welcome. I am Jane Kuznetsov, Guardian for this stellar system we call The Solar System. Please identify yourselves."
Suddenly a message came in on one hypercom channel. In Interstellar it said, "We are the Illion Tor. By what right do you block out progress?"
"We are part of the Human Interstellar Confederation. You are intruding without prior consent. The Confederation considers this a possible warlike act. Please convince me that your intentions are peaceful."
Meanwhile Robot was searching through its copy of the Encyclopedia for a reference to the Illion Tor. It found one, then more. Jane went to cyborg mode to digest all the references. Several thousand milliseconds later SHE felt that SHE had mastered the material.
"We want only to find a warm place near the sun," continued the voice of the intruders, "to raise our children and live a good life. If you project our path you will see that we are aimed to stop near your innermost planet."
An image formed on Jane's hypercom screen in her control room of a humanoid figure. It looked remarkably human though having grey skin. She could not see any resemblance to a frog that might have caused anyone to give it the name Frog.
"I have that projection. I also know the reputation of the Illion Tor. But you have no way to convince us you are who you say you are. We must escort you to your destination and monitor your presence there."