Generations of Teelan Box Set

by G. E. Stills

“Yes, ma’am.”

  “That is all people. Pack and rest, we meet the shuttle at daybreak.”

  She strolled out of the cavern again and proceeded to the four unmarked graves to say her goodbyes.

  Daylight was just minutes away when the team assembled where they had landed originally. As they stood waiting, the horizon took on a reddish cast as the sun slowly rose.

  “The shuttle is coming,” Drago informed her.

  She gazed into the sky and with her AI’s help spotted the tiny object no larger than a black dot. It dropped toward their location like a stone growing in size as it neared. The shuttle slowed to a soundless halt a hundred feet above them and settled to the ground.

  The material of the shuttle glowed from its rapid descent, and even though it was thirty yards away, a wave of heat washed over them. A covered ramp extended and a man stood at the top.

  “Hurry,” he shouted. “The pilot wants to be back in space before the bugs have a chance to react.”

  Her team rushed forward tossing their gear into storage chamber at the rear and scrambling into their seats. She was the last to take a seat and had just finished fastening her seat harness when the craft lurched into the air.

  Rho’naa glanced at her watch. Three minutes had passed from the time the ramp extended until they were airborne. The minutes ticked by in silence then the pilot’s voice on the intercom interrupted her musing. “Rho’naa, would you please come up front.”

  She unstrapped her webbing and strode up the narrow aisle to the cockpit. When she stepped into the cabin the co-pilot rose from his seat and offered it to her. Glancing out the front screen she saw one of Nest 1’s moon was fast approaching giving her an idea of their velocity. She turned her head to face the pilot and a smile of recognition spread across her lips.

  “Steven, I haven’t seen you since we were kids. I didn’t even know you were on the Silencio.”

  “You were busy getting your team ready so I didn’t get together with you to talk about old times.”

  “We haven’t seen each other since we were what? Thirteen? Fourteen?”

  “Fourteen and the next year you vanished.”

  “I went into training. Special operations.”

  “Yeah I found that out.” He smiled.

  “It’s good to see you again.”

  His eyes shifted taking her in from head to toe. “You know I had a huge crush on you back then.”

  Rho’naa felt her cheeks heat.

  Steve cleared his throat and quickly became all business. “Selencio is going to meet us halfway out of the system.”

  “Wow. We must be moving at full throttle and isn’t that risky for Silencio to break cover and meet us? I mean the bugs are in disarray, but…”

  “There is risk, but we need to get out of this system quick. A bug fleet of sixty ships just entered on the other side of the system and is heading for Nest 1. They’ll know things are not normal soon if they don’t already.”

  “Shit,” she cursed. “Then the colony on Nest 1 will survive.” Meaning four of my team died in vain.

  “Not in vain, Rho’na. You have established the chemical spray is effective and that without the queens to guide them, the bugs are not able to organize,” Drago said.

  Through the front view screen, she watched the moon blur past the still accelerating shuttle. She engaged in idle chat about childhood memories with Steve while at the same time having a conversation with her AI.

  The Silencio met them part way. Both crafts matched velocities while still accelerating out system. The shuttle slipped into the landing bay and the bay door closed. The Silencio increased velocity and in two more hours, they left Nest 1’s system headed for human controlled space.

  ****

  Rho’naa paced back and forth in the living room of the small apartment command had assigned to her. The first week had passed quickly as Kyra and a panel of experts had debriefed her about Nest 1. The second week and third weeks, she had spent with family.

  This week has been a killer. I wonder if Keish’ar has received my warning about Sto’kan yet. Nope too soon. Damn I can hardly wait to see him.

  “Relax, Rho’naa,” Drago advised. “Everything that can be done has been.”

  “This inactivity is about to kill me.”

  “It is the military way of life. Day after day of boredom followed by intense activity and stress then more boredom.”

  “I know, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to live with.”

  The communicator on the table buzzed for attention.

  “Rho’naa,” she answered.

  “Report to headquarters ASAP. You know where the conference room is,” Kyra said.

  “Yes, ma’am, on my way.”

  A ground car was waiting for her when she reached the surface of the housing complex. It whisked her to the command building. She went through the familiar sequence with the receptionist and rushed down the hallway. Her soft-soled shoes made little noise on the highly polished tile floor. She stood in front of the door to the conference room and soon it opened.

  “Have a seat,” Kyra ordered. When she did, her grandmother continued. “I’m going to bring you up to date on what your mission accomplished, then tomorrow morning you will be leaving on a flight to Sto’kan.”

  The thought of going to Sto’kan and seeing Keish’ar brought a smile to Rho’naa’s lips.

  “The information your team obtained on Nest 1 is priceless. So valuable it may well tip this war in our favor.”

  Rho’naa leaned forward resting her chin in one hand and gave Kyra her undivided attention.

  “First we have established that the chemical compound is very effective at killing the La’new. Our research techs have developed a method of placing it in a missile that will be able to penetrate the hulls of La’new ships and release the gas into the ship’s interior. As we speak, these missiles are being produced in massive quantities.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Next, our scientists are sifting through the huge amount of data your team retrieved. I can tell you one thing that is extremely helpful. We have found the frequency the La’new use for mental communication. We can’t understand what is said, but…” Kyra smiled, “we can determined where the signal is directed and who sent it. On the surface this may seem unimportant, but it is far from. We can backtrack the signal to its source, and to simplify this explanation, we can use it to locate the queens.”

  The importance of this made Rho’naa’s eyes widen. Kyra confirmed her deduction.

  “Yes, we can use it to zero in on the queens location and concentrate our fire on that source. We both know what happens when the queen is eliminated.”

  “Take the queen out and it should be much easier to destroy the others.”

  “Those are our thoughts. Although the queens lay a huge number of eggs, their fertility doesn’t extend for their entire lifespan as we thought. For the first eighty years they lay eggs, after that, they are sterile. They still issue mental orders during their entire lives. We surmise that the queen on Sto’kan is of the sterile variety and cannot reproduce, therefore Sto’kan will not be overrun with La’new again. We still need to find and destroy her. I have sent a dispatch to Keish’ar with all the information we have obtained.”

  “That is good news. At least there won’t be a horde of angry bugs bursting loose on Sto’kan again.”

  Kyra stood. “On behalf of the alliance, I extend my thanks to you and your team, Rho’naa.” She spread her arms. “Now come here, granddaughter, and give your grandmother a hug. I’m so proud of you.”

  Rho’naa swept into her grandmother’s arms.

  “Now, hon, you need to go pack. You are booked on a flight to Sto’kan tomorrow and it leaves at O-three-hundred.”

  ****

  Rho’naa stood on the bridg
e looking out the view screen as the ship entered the Sto’kan solar system. A few more hours and her month long journey would be over. She would be wrapped in his arms again. A tremor of anticipation rippled through her.

  The hours passed slowly, but at last the ship reached Sto’kan. It had just assumed parking orbit when a fast shuttle approached and landed in the open bay. Rho’naa resisted the desire to rush up the ramp the shuttle extended like an excited child and instead maintained her poise as befit her status.

  The shuttle entered the landing bay of the Lank’ar, Keish’ar’s flagship. She strode down the boarding ramp, her eyes glued to the beautiful man standing among the others waiting for her. The man she hadn’t seen for almost a year, the man whom she loved with every fiber of her being. Barely, she heard the ship’s captain introduce herself and welcome her aboard Lank’ar.

  She followed Keish’ar’s example and kept their greeting official, coming to attention and retuning his salute, meanwhile her heart raced and her arms ached to be around him.

  “Captain, I will take Ms. Sutton to the office in my quarters and bring her up to date on what has happened here in Men-gar space.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Captain answered, just a hint of a smile that quickly vanished came to her face.

  “Ma’am, please come with me,” Keish’ar requested.

  She quickly fell into step beside him and after a short elevator ride, strode down a hallway containing officer’s cabins on each side. He ushered her into an office behind one of the doors and stepped across the threshold behind her. The door was still sliding closed when she turned to face him. A smile creased his lips and his arms opened wide. She bolted into them covering his face with kisses and tears.

  “I love you and have missed you so much,” he said.

  “I love you more.” She giggled.

  They broke their embrace, and taking her hand, he led her across the office floor and into his quarters proper. Their hands shook as they crossed the living room and bedroom undressing with each step.

  Hours later, their bodies satiated, he leaned back against the headboard. She rested her back to his chest and pillowed her head on his shoulder.

  “I want to know about everything you’ve done since we parted months ago,” he said.

  “And I want to know what’s been happening here,” she returned.

  “Ladies first.”

  She grinned and told him everything. “And now it’s your turn. How goes the conquest? Did you find the queen here on Sto’kan?”

  “Thanks to the information Kyra sent, we found her and the two dozen bugs guarding her. They have all been exterminated. The Men-gar Empire belongs to the alliance. The only conquest left is the single home system. Our forces have surrounded it. Nothing goes out of it and nothing goes in. The Highborn have twenty ships in the system that belong to their security force.”

  The rest of the fleets?”

  “They are part of the Men-gar-Human alliance.”

  “So what’s the next step?”

  “We’ll give the Highborn an ultimatum. Surrender unconditionally or die.”

  She smoothed her hand over Keish’ar’s leg. “Which do you think they’ll choose?”

  “Death.”

  His answer didn’t surprise her, even though she knew it would involve the loss of millions of lives. Her lover was Men-gar and their species had a far more casual view of death than humans.

  EPILOGUE

  Four hundred ships of the alliance fleet entered the system. Most of the ships were Human and Men-gar. The thirty ships of the La’new fleet in the system stood little chance and yet as always there was no request for surrender, no verbal communication at all. Instead, the La’new fleet surged forward into attack. The alliance fleet spread apart englobing the attacking fleet. When the signal was issued, they poured a rain of thousands of missiles on the La’new ships concentrating on one. Many of the missiles were destroyed, but many penetrated the hulls of the enemy ships and expelled the deadly gas they carried.

  One after another, La’new ships dropped out of the defensive net they formed. A few moments later, the defense net itself collapsed with the demise of the queen in charge. It was the same scene that happened time and again as the alliance penetrated deeper and deeper into La’new space, killing more and more of the bugs as they were termed by most.

  With the La’new fleet destroyed, a systematic and careful scan of the system’s planets was initiated. Days later, with the scan complete, the only life found was La’new life on the second and third planets. The hive cities were destroyed from space then ground forces with trackers landed to sweep the planet clean of any surviving La’new.

  Although the alliance consisted primarily of Meg-gar and human there was an ever-growing number of other species represented as they were encountered and joined in the struggle.

  Rho’naa switched off the recorded update and turned on her side to face the man in bed with her. He was a member of the Men-gar species and once her deadly foe. Now he was simply the man she loved.

  “We will be victorious against the bugs,” she told him. “I wonder what we will encounter next?”

  “Who knows, the universe is a vast place.” He smoothed his hand over her curves. “I just know the alliance will face whatever we come across together. That is in the future, for now we have something else to think about.” He leaned in and kissed her.

  THE END