Serve and Protect

by Douglas Varnell

  The situation got even more ridiculous when the liberal politicians got involved. It had been noted that gang members had begun to disappear along with their meth labs and crack houses. They accused Verron of singling out minorities on Earth for destruction; people of Arabic, Hispanic and Black decent were up in arms, even though in most parts of the world those population segments were doing better than ever before. With Hensley now a lame-duck President, the push was on by liberals to villainize everything that had been changed. Most candidates were making this election an anti-Verron campaign and those who wanted to be regenerated, rejuvenated, cured of cancer, or allowed to terrorize the streets of their city but were not able to get what they wanted, were determined to keep everyone else from getting it. There simply were too many people with needs and not enough Verron to supply it without totally destroying Earth’s economy. Political ads often included a child of color with a disability, posing the question of how she was not cured when some other child was given a cure for childhood leukemia, even when it was very well documented that as a percentage of total population, the minorities of the U.S. were actually being treated more often. There were also the same implications about Disabled Veterans. Thousands of Disabled Veterans had been to Verron and regenerated at no-charge. Many more had been treated for a minimal charge paid by the V.A. but somehow there was always someone who would endorse a politician complaining about how they didn’t get their treatment, when it was not Verron who prioritized them in the first place, it was the V.A. The bottom line was, that in a few months, it looked as if the political environment in France, Germany and the United States was not going to get better. This meeting was going so well with all the other planets offering-up such wonderful reports of progress, and even the dozen African nations couldn’t speak enough praise for how much the lives of their people had been blessed; then the report from the soon to be ex-President and his soon to be ex-Cabinet members was heard. Paul really was considering just shutting down his compound on Earth and cutting off all ties.

  When the meeting was finally over, he had a few hours before the big BBQ at the Mansion. He had had enough politics for one day and headed home to change into some running clothes and an escape to the mountains. He wasted no time with his jump to his suite and the now quarter-full closet. He remembered when there were only eight or ten hangers being used in the thing big enough for a two bedroom house. He laughed as he went to the front of the closet and the same eight or ten hangers he had always used. He was a man of habit; the rest of the stuff was gifts from well-meaning friends and family who were trying to improve his image. It had been worn no more than once or twice, but it just wasn’t the kind of thing he wanted to wear every day, he made a mental note to have the Queen Mother go through his closet and give the stuff to those less fortunate. He opened his sock-drawer and jumped back in surprise, closing it with a slam. He then slowly opened it again and asked, “OK, which one are you?” The little gargoyle looking creature, no more than ten inches long, smiled with his little pointy teeth and whispered, “Shhhh, I hide.”

  Paul shook his head and slowly closed the drawer and wondered where the other three were. He was amazed at how intelligent the little ones were. They actually began speaking just weeks after they were born. Finley and Burka hadn’t just had a child, she had a litter. Four of the most adorable baby gargoyles he had ever laid eyes on. The Mansion was their playground and the Queen Mother would never admit it, but she loved to watch them go at it. They wrestled like a bunch of kittens and were now flying, well sort of; they crashed a lot and seemed to get into everything. A few minutes later, another one of the kids came racing through the room looking for the fugitive in the sock drawer. Paul said nothing, she, there were two boys and two girls – easily identified by the little patch of orange hair in the middle of the tiny little heads of the girls, climbed all over the closet shelves and somehow missed the one drawer where her brother was hiding. Evidently she heard a slight sound of rustling wings somewhere in Paul’s bedroom and took-off. Paul opened the drawer and said, “She’s gone.” The little guy climbed out and answered, though a bit late, saying, “I Fo.” Their real names were Luta, Buta, Nuta and Suta; Paul had given them nicknames of Fe, Fi, Fo and Fooey, from an animated cartoon he had once seen. It somehow stuck and most people didn’t remember their real names. He raced off after his sister. A moment later, Paul could hear the screech of laughter and the ones who reached home first yelling, “I beat.” He remembered when he used to play hide-and-seek with his brothers. He was so small he could hide in the smallest kitchen cabinet shelf.

  Paul was still smiling when he headed out the back door for a run. He realized his anger was subsiding, then he remembered a Bible verse and quoted it to himself, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” Philippians 4-8 He then acknowledged he had a lot more to be thankful for than anyone in the Universe and he would focus on the good things that had happened over the past four years and stop dwelling on the negatives. He caught a glimpse of Ilna out on the terrace with Burka watching over Peter, James and John, Her and Pavel’s three little boys. They were only eight weeks old and already walking, sort of, around the terrace playing now with Fe, Fi, Fo and Fooey. The triplets were already as tall as their playmates. Paul shook his head and made the jump to his favorite running trail, thinking, “There is never a dull moment in the Dragon Palace.”

  As he ran, Paul continued to think on good things. Verron itself now had just a little more than 500 million citizens living on-planet, with over 350 million of them human. The other Verron controlled planets were doing very well also. Molnar, it turned out, had over 600 other tribes of the little mole-men scattered all over Molnar with their numbers being somewhere around 200,000,000. Also, there was a group of sand-people called the Salvian, who lived in the worst part of the central desert. The sand-people were at first a bit hostile, but had become a vital part of the Molnar citizenry. They numbered around 50,000,000. Humans had developed terraform colonies all over Molnar, mostly transplants from the Xhondar systems. Humans numbered 10,000,000. There was a joint Governorship, with one Lyncardi, one Salvian and one Human. Each knew what they were good at and worked diligently to excel in their own peculiar area.

  Darsai had grown like mad. For a while Paul thought he was going to need to impose a moratorium on how many people could move there. There were soon more Xhondarians on Darsai than there were native Darsains. They began to exert their power and attempted to take over the government from Governor General Boris Abarnikov. Paul made an appearance and let them know that Governor Abarnikov was his man on Darsai and he spoke with the same voice as the King on his decisions. If they had a problem, they could feel free to discuss it with him. Boris formed committees and local governing bodies around the planet and there were now 2 billion people living on Darsai. Paul had to give the community of Cyclops living in the mountains an area of 60,000 square miles for their own independently run state. They still reported to Boris, but everything inside their territory was Cyclops only, sort of like an Indian Reservation. King Verron agreed with their leader, Hesoid Kanatora, to restrict tourism to their area. He did not want his people exploited by a bunch of photographers. Despite their depiction in Mythology as ferocious beasts, Paul found them to be kind and gentle creatures with strong family ties. When they ran into Volvs, who tried to add them to their diet during the invasion of Darsai, their bad side came out. The huge Cyclopes were so strong they literally snapped their assailants in half. The remainder of the Volvs decided to avoid the area. Paul decided to later see if he could recruit a few to join his military as part of the defense of Darsai. They were the first he had seen that were bigger and stronger than the Klelta.

  Salenzo was a true blessing. They were known by those on Xhondar as the Warrior Nation. They quite simply, loved to fight. For centuries they ha
d comprised over 50% of the Xhondarian military; only when the civil war began where more people involved in the multi-billion man army. After the 3000 year long civil war, the last people still fighting were the Salenzo. Even during the past 10,000 years of peace, these men and women were continuing to train from childhood on the art of war. Since Xhondar had banned weapons and armed spaceships, they had become very much like the ancient Chinese in their use of other alternative weapons. These people could literally kill you with a twig off the forest floor. Paul had stationed a group of his best commandoes on Salenzo when they declared their allegiance to him as their Emperor. The Marines were training the Salenzo on modern weapons and teaching them how to operate the latest models of military spaceship, while the Salenzo were teaching Verron Marines their unique style of hand-to-hand and non-projectile weapons. When Paul finally equipped them with body armor, this race of people, were going to be his front line against creatures like the Volvs. They were not however, all about fighting; the thick forests of Salenzo grew billions of acres of Gwonle trees and their wood craftsmen were amazing in their skills. Everything from furniture to wooden sculptures graced the homes of the locals and exports were going through the roof. There was no shortage of other natural resources and Salenzo had quickly become a tremendous contributor to the revenue stream of Verron. There were 8 billion people living on the planet that was a little larger than Earth, with a circumference 32,000 miles at the equator. King Paul Verron shook his head as he ran thinking how he, Zimuel and Tlase had been the total population of Verron just about 10 years ago, now he was the ruler of four planets and over 12 billion Verron citizens and military Commander of allied nations exceeding 120 billion; that number did not include Earth.

  He began to think how much he missed his daily runs with his Dragon Guard. All of them maintained their physical and mental abilities, but usually worked-out in pairs or alone. He was proud of what they had become. They weren’t children anymore; the fourteen were respected members of the Verron military and governmental establishment and not a single one had failed to deliver remarkable results in every task they had been assigned. Ibrihim and Lydia, the youngest members of the team, now 16 and 18 years of age, had infiltrated dozens of terrorist cells throughout Iraq, Iran and Syria and a few in Germany and France, during the past 3 years. Even more amazing was their recruitment of over 25,000 more Arabic Christians who were scattered-out across the middle-east. The Arabic Christian community was now numbering nearly 100,000 residents and had become excellent fishermen, along with producing wool, olive oil, figs and some of the sweetest oranges and tangerines Paul had ever eaten. The thick rugs they wove were a hot commodity all over the allied planets.

  Paul smiled, as he thought about how a group of slavers spotted Lydia alone in the streets and decided she would be an easy target. Six men died on the streets of Baghdad and in a fit of rage, she tracked down the rest of the slavers and freed forty young women, killing a dozen of their captures. They were returned to their families except for 18 of them who now called Verron home. Ibrihim was actually recruited by ISIS. After being trucked from Iraq deep into Syria, he was unloaded from a truck at the largest of the ISIS training centers. After making certain there was no one there that didn’t want to be, he walked up on the side of a low ridge overlooking the camp and with all the strength of The Power he had within him, he created an explosion from the ground that erupted upward with such intensity, that when the earth and rocks came crashing back down, it buried the camp in the debris. No one was there to see it, but Hunter did follow him back through a gateway to witness the aftermath of the destruction. Not only did the ground explode, so did many of the people as well.

  Tala and Elena Myers took first and second in the AMA Superbike Championship that first year, with Elena barely edging Tala by 2 points. Paul Verron continued to sponsor and support Elena for her bid for the second U.S. Championship and for her first year in the FIM World Superbike. She had become the first female in history to win both an AMA and FIM Superbike Championship. BMW picked-up her contract for three more years and Paul got out of the motorcycle racing business. Tala ended up going to FIM Moto GP. She was the first factory sponsored female Moto GP racer. There had been others in the 600 and the 250 classes, but none had raced with the world’s top riders before. Sponsored by BMW in their formative years in Moto GP, she won a World Championship in her first season and then decided she wanted to do something else with her life. Now at almost 20 years-old, she was engaged to Brad and waiting for his Navy commitment to end so he could join her on Verron and get married. There were so many allied countries that needed training she was using her time as a Fighter Pilot training instructor and test pilot. She had developed an obsession with mountain bike riding and those flying suites developed by the twins. In her spare time she was on Molnar teaching the militia of 30,000 men how to fly, shoot and weald a sword. With her help, Chase and Daniel were able to design Lyncardi sized weapons with Klelta sized power.

  Chase and Daniel were almost always talked about and discussed as a pair. When they weren’t developing new weapons, they were with the twins. Now approaching 23 years of age, the two couples had already announced their engagement, but could not agree on a date. They didn’t seem to be in a rush. When King Verron and General Zarman decided that Verron needed a Navy or at least a Coast Guard and that development was needed for ocean going military ships for the allied planets, the four were constantly seen together working on their ideas. Their ships designed were not restricted to treading water. Neither boy saw a reason why a ship could not fly quickly to where it was needed then assume its role as a ship again. The concept was working well for the U.S., Australian, French and British Navy, why not others. They were armed like nothing on the seas of Earth and when Admiral Sullivan and Admiral Sullivan were invited to inspect their handy-work, they returned to Earth to discuss their potential for future U.S. Navy use. Their favorite creation was accomplished with the help of two Russian Nuclear Submarine engineers who had been rejuvenated when they arrived seven years earlier and were bored working on Spaceships. When they found out the two young Prince Verron’s were looking to build a submarine, they were thrilled to volunteer their years of expertise. They merged Verron whitematter reactor technology and Verron Steel structural integrity to build a 200 foot long submarine with two whitematter reactors, anti-gravity and flight capability. The submarine could be flown to its needed destination and submerge itself. While underwater, it could discharge torpedoes capable of locking onto virtually any target and travel at underwater speeds in excess of 800 mph. The submarine itself could hit speeds of 400 knots underwater and Mach 4 above. With plasma and whitematter warheads, there was no wreckage that ever floated to the surface when a target was hit. One of the most exciting things about the submarine was its ability to operate at tremendous depths. The deepest depth recorded on Verron’s oceans was 67,000 feet. The boys had taken their submarine their numerous times.

  With the testing being done in oceans of fresh-water oceanographers felt as if it would still be difficult for the sub to operate in Earth’s saltwater oceans. Never one to ignore a challenge, Colonels Chase and Daniel Verron and Chief Science Officers Kay and Fay Morgensson took the sub to the Mariana Trench. The pictures they returned with of the never before seen bottom of the 36,000 foot trench were spread all over every scientific magazine on Earth. Orders had been placed for four of the subs, Japan, the U.S., China and Russia. It was agreed that research only vessels would be built in a 100 foot length. Verron was not about to sell military weapons or vehicles to China and Russia, but decided to see how they did with strictly scientific technology. Vladimir Putin had been invited to Verron to inspect the progress of his purchase, he turned down the invitation.

  Katelyn, now 24 years-old, had just received her bio-enhancements. She fussed at Paul for not telling her earlier about them. She could have used them in her operations she commanded against the drug and organized crime families. Bart was no longer w
ith the FBI. He took a position with Vlad’s National Security Group. Now living on Verron and planning to marry Katelyn, the two spent most of their spare time surfing, scuba diving and whitewater rafting. It seemed everything they did for fun required that they get wet. Both Katelyn and Bart left Earth angry and frustrated. They had made tremendous strides in their battle against the drug cartels. They would never be able to grow coca plants again in any of their previous locations, all known processing and storage facilities were destroyed from Paraguay to South Texas. The mobs of bandits that controlled the border towns on the Mexican-U.S. border were tactfully eliminated. Then the Drug Task Force began to target the largest operations in the U.S. When gang members began to vanish, never to be heard from again and entire meth and crack labs were destroyed right in the middle of heavily populated neighborhoods, with no innocent casualties, the liberals began to protest and claim racial profiling and racist acts on the part of the DEA and FBI. The fact that numerous labs owned by the Russian Mafia, Hells Angels and Outlaws were eliminated didn’t seem to get any coverage by the press. Brad was called to Washington on a witch hunt and ordered to appear before a Senate Hearing on the brutal practices of the FBI and DEA. It was obvious that they intended to make Bart the sacrificial lamb now that the press was not on their side. Bart was crushed that the very people who had supported his operation and even funded it, were now placing his head on the proverbial chopping-block. On the third day, at a lunch break, Katelyn and King Verron showed-up to take him to lunch, on Verron, that was a year ago, it was a long lunch. A warrant was issued for Bart’s arrest and his property, such as it was, was confiscated by the Attorney General’s Office. A few months later, Mr. Brown was being pressured by the FBI and others and decided to sell his partnership at the law firm and move his family to Verron. There was no great need for lawyers on Verron but after rejuvenation of him and his wife, he started a business doing what he had always wanted to do. He now managed and co-owned a beach resort where Katelyn, Bart and Ginny surfed. He did commercial law on the side.