by Don Cook
Mike laughed at the funny connotations he saw in the similarities between “KERC Captain” and “Captain Kirk.”
“You do know,” Mike said, still laughing hard, “you do know how that sounds?”
“I know, I know, my Trekaholic sweetheart and best friend” Khraa/Astra chided, as Mike still laughed. “A Star Trek fan, even if he or she hasn’t partaken of that multimedia phenomenon for a while, is as addicted to that space saga as certain junkies are addicted to crack cocaine!”
Mike stopped laughing out of embarrassment.
“Sorry, dear,” a mildly chastened Mike said. “Please continue.”
“Anyway, Isokk had been given command of the exploration-cruiser HRMKS Vill-Shatt after we had a lovers’ quarrel. Isokk, bless his soul, left the second-in-command position open for me, later telling me that after I came on board. Shortly before the ship was about to stop taking on crew, I had a heart-to-heart talk with my Mom via visicom, our people’s version of Skype.
“She told me that she and Dad really loved Isokk, and that if I didn’t get over my bad attitude, I’d lose a really great man forever and never find one that good ever again. I snapped out of my bad attitude, arranged for my parents to take care of my pet wing-cat Flitty and my personal affairs, got my necessary gear packed, hurried over to the Dock-Module where the Vill-Shatt was docked, and reported for duty just in time.
“Before the ship undocked, I insisted that the ship-priest, our version of a ship’s chaplain, love-bond us. We got hitched when I was fifty, and he was fifty-two. Once we were love-bonded, we embarked on, you might say, our ‘working honeymoon’ during our stint on the Vill-Shatt. After that was over, we were given command of a planet-based expedition where I gave birth to my twins Svetlia and Shurrah when I was sixty.”
An astonished Mike asked, “You conceived… and gave birth to twins… at age sixty?!”
“I sure did, Mike” Khraa/Astra said, “and purely by ‘the good old-fashioned way.’” Both laughed. “We’ve developed techniques where our women can mentally put a ‘pause’ on our childbearing years. And our slowing of the female aging process allows us to do that, as well as helping our men stay more youthful for longer, too.”
“Lots of women —” Mike said excitedly. “Heck, lots of people would love to learn your peoples’ secrets of staying young! Even if physical immortality or eternal youth isn’t possible, for lots of Earthlings, extended youth is still the next best thing!”
“Well, Mike,” Khraa/Astra said, “you know how it is —”
Mike and Khraa/Astra said in witty unison, “It’s against the laws of Amkeria and most other interstellar nations in the Known Universe!”
Both laughed.
“Anyhow, Mike,” Khraa/Astra said, “Svettie was born first, and two moments, or rather three Earth-minutes later, I gave birth to Shurrah. Isokk delivered our twins and was the best kind of father any kid should be so blessed to have, right from the start. We had our youngest daughter Aleeta five years later when we were back civilization-side.”
A pause befell the pair as Mike saw that Khraa/Astra, who slowly grew sadder over the family and colleague-friends she had lost due to the Rubiaar IV attack, never really got to grieve for her slain family and friends and held it in to keep her alien nature a secret more closely guarded than Fort Knox. Mike knew his girlfriend, alien or not, needed to grieve badly, and, just like he had done with many FBI Agents he had counseled as a chaplain, decided to help her work through her long overdue bereavement.
“You never really got to grieve for the loss of your husband, your kids, your brother, and your friends, did you?” Mike spoke tenderly.
Khraa/Astra shook her head no.
“It hurts me to see someone who needs to grieve not letting themselves do so” Mike said. “Please, Khraavie… let me help you grieve.”
Khraa/Astra realized Mike was right, and nodded yes in relieved gratitude.
“Tell me about your family” Mike said tenderly.
Khraa/Astra’s grief slowly began to trickle through as she sadly recounted, “Shurrah, more or less, took after his father. He was a… Well, I guess you Earthlings would say, Shurrie was a ‘Harry Potter-as-science geek’ type, only more handsome.” Khraa/Astra continued in sad musing, “Svetlia or ‘Svettie’, she was pure tomboy, as I would have likely been if I wasn’t a telepath. She was sort of like a tall, more muscular version of Val, with same kind of strawberry blonde-reddish hair and sassy wit. She was sex-crazy to the point where she was starting to get sexually rebellious. I wouldn’t be surprised if Svettie had become sexually active behind our backs.”
Mike was stunned but not surprised by Khraa/Astra’s description of Svetlia that paralleled all-too closely that of the common present-day North American teenage girl.
Mike then asked, “And Aleeta?”
“Ah, my little Leeta,” Khraa/Astra continued, with sadder yet fonder musing, “that’s short for ‘Aleeta.’ My youngest was a precocious little girl who somehow managed to avoid getting into any serious trouble. She was a telepath, but thankfully, her powers were somewhat weaker than mine. Leeta and I connected well. She learned from me by listening to me.
“In my part of the heavens, telepaths usually listen well to their same-sex telepath-parent, although in my case, since both my parents were telepaths, I listened to both my mom and dad, and they were on the same page in life, thank God. Leeta learned that if she treated other people right, they’d likely treat her right. She was a good kid.”
Mike said, “The Lord mentioned you had what you had called a pet ‘wing-cat’?”
Khraa/Astra reminisced further, strangely perking up temporarily, “Yes, Mike. We had a pet flying wing-cat we called Flitty. I had her since my higher-learning days.”
“Flitty” Mike said. “Was Flitty a male or a female?”
“A female. A tabby-calico type. When a wing-cat’s wings are fully spread, it looks a lot like a bat, but it’s still a flying feline. Her species of cat is sort of a flying version of your Earthly housecats, only, when they find human friends they really love, they are as loyal to them as a dog would be.
“One time, Flitty had a brief illness that required infant milk-like formula to cure her. I admit that I had babied her with the baby formula I used to feed Leeta with after I stopped breastfeeding her, but it worked. Flitty was better in no time. But she still wanted more and more and more baby formula, and so we gave in to her on that one. People may rule dogs, Mike, but in a way, cats rule us people, even us telepaths.”
Mike laughed.
“Laugh if you will, good Earthman,” Khraa/Astra said, “but you know it’s true.”
“I hear you, Khraavie!” Mike said with more laughter. “I hear you.”
“Anyway, I eventually managed to wean her off the baby formula — mostly. But if I wanted her to do some work like a survey overflight, all I had to do was give Flitty her milkies, and she did it.”
“And your late husband?” Mike asked. “Isokk must have been quite a guy.”
Khraa/Astra’s grief came through with increasing intensity with increasing sobbing as she said, “He was, Mike. And like I said, Sokky — that was my late love-lord’s nickname — he was a very cerebral man with a romantic side, and a real gift for writing the best poetry ever. He was my best friend, my steadfast lover… and a good, awesome dad. All wives and children everywhere in the Universe should be so blessed.”
The grief Khraa/Astra tried to keep at bay for so long finally burst through in full force as she continued, pausing every so often to sob, “Isokk and I, through mathematics, studies of lost worlds folklore, and with the help of the space probe Seeker 1, located the planet Rubiaar IV. Under then-Minister-In-Chief Hargan, we were given command of an expedition of 144,000 scientists, their spouses, children, and animal-pals,” Khraa/Astra sobbed more heavily. “For three and a half years, we studied the planet whose entire populace died from extreme gender conflict as well as many of the same problems that decimate
d your Easter Island. Mike, it was barren as…”
Khraa/Astra sobbed a bit harder.
“Knowing what I know about Easter Island,” Mike said, “it must’ve been barren.”
Khraa/Astra sobbed harder as she said, “Then one day, without warning, just like your Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks…” Khraa/Astra struggled to talk through the sobbing, “Mephistula’s forces struck, laid waste to an already-desolate planet whose surface was already ravaged by a bio-doom-war. My family and most of my expedition were murdered by that, that vile she-beast and her soul-less robosoldiers! WHY DID MY SVETTIE HAVE TO GO BAD AND END UP IN PERDITIA?!”
Khraa/Astra, feeling the overwhelming pressure of her grief, broke down completely and wept hard on Mike’s right shoulder as Mike held her in his loving arms, while he stroked her head gently. He felt his alien sweetheart’s heart-wrenching pain as only someone who had lost many friends and loved ones could feel.
After almost an hour, Khraa/Astra felt she had cried out all of her grief and felt more relaxed and at home in Mike’s loving arms, and decided to ask the overriding question that she (and Glenn, Val, and Donny) wanted answered.
“Mike…” Khraa/Astra spoke as she, still in Mike’s arms, “after all this, do you still want to —?”
For no reason, Khraa/Astra spontaneously became catatonic, stiffened up, drew a quick hiccup-like breath, and then suddenly collapsed as Mike held her, while —
“You have pinpointed the source of the transmission that knocked out our entire private and public-sector communications grids?” Trudierre said with joy, as he holo-conferenced with his Defense Minister Napleau-Bonpharte in his stately den at the Minister-In-Chief’s residence on July 8th, Earth-time.
“By luck and espionage, we have, Your Excellency,” Bonpharte said. “We had spies planted in COMSMOCOM’s AMKEXPRA section, and they learned that the Amkerians received the same transmission we did.”
“From what I’ve learned,” Trudierre said, “the signal was preceded by a question about who won the Border War of 1742. Our receivers replied with the right answer ‘Kannatika.’ And that caused the entire national com-grid to crash.”
“Oddly enough, Your Excellency, the Amkerians got the signal before we did and theirs did not crash and fry.”
“Why us?!” Trudierre asked. “And not them?! We should have been the ones to get it first! And why wasn’t Amkeria’s media infrastructure fried into inaction but ours was fried out of action, right down to the last nano-bit?!”
“Our agents in Vaxerthony learned that the three given safe answers were an Amkerian victory, a stalemate, or that while the war officially ended in an agreed stalemate due to the Treaty of Gendelborq, Amkeria’s victory at the Battle of Naulinstron made Amkeria the ‘practical victor’.”
“PRACTICAL VICTOR, MY GLUTIES!” Trudierre snapped angrily. “There’s only one Kannatikan in KERC smart enough to engineer such a fiendish protocol based on that response! Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem, THAT VULGARITE SHE-BEAST! WHERE IN PERDITIA IS SHE?!”
“Thankfully, Your Excellency,” Bonpharte said, “we’ve found her location, too. Here, let me display it. And you will not believe the vast distance between her spacetime position and ours.”
Bonpharte’s image was replaced by a map of the Universe, with a thunderbolt-like jagged line with the in-line note “FIFTY BILLION LIGHT-YEARS OF SPACE OMITTED HERE” that ran down the middle of the map, with the Known Universe on the right side and the Milky Way galaxy on the left. Trudierre was astonished beyond intelligible words at the unfathomable distances, but also laughed with a mischievously evil chuckle.
“I’ve got your gluties now, Captain Khraa-Veh ven-Elheem!” said Trudierre, with satanically snide jeering as he laughed with an evil glee that would have caused Darth Vader or Ming the Merciless to experience a serious bowel-and-bladder accident. “And all those billions of light-years between us won’t save you!”
He then asked Bonpharte, as his holo-image returned, “When can a sufficient number of our domestically-docked starships be battle-ready, Nappy?”
“Within five standard-days, Your Excellency. Also, Mephistula is on this planet, which its locals call Earth.”
“Earth… Hmm…” Trudierre said, his intellectual curiosity radically piqued, familiar with his foe Khraa/Astra’s highly controversial “Homeworld Earth” theory (a theory Khraa/Astra put forth years earlier that was embraced gingerly by half the Known Universe’s scientific and academic community as strongly possible because it fitted the facts of ancient cosmic history and legend like a glove. It was dismissed by the other half as ludicrous, foolishly conceived and even dung-minded). It was a theory that, along with the discovery of both Khraa/Astra and Mephistula’s location, put everything in a brand-new light for Trudierre — the light of conquest!
“Ready 12 of our domestically-docked warships you deem best for the battle,” Trudierre said, with a dark pleasure that accompanied the scheme he was concocting, “and inform me when all is ready. And thanks again, Nappy.”
Bonpharte’s image disappeared as the briefing ended. Trudierre changed into a black sheet that made him resemble a sinister dark-haired version of Mahatma Gandhi, walked to a corner where an altar to Lucifraeon was placed, and sat in a lotus position. He then prayed in a lost heathen-like tongue, “Mephistula… Mephistula… Daughter of Lucifraeon… Queen of the Nephilimites… Come to me. Come to me. Come to me, now...”
In her den in her Washington, DC home at 2:01 AM Eastern Time that same day, Mephistula/Stanton paced furiously as she read Jefferson’s divorce letter that came with the papers served to her on July 6.
She wondered how she could contain whatever damage the divorce might do (and she knew that the potential for political fallout could be immense), as Mephistula/Stanton angrily reexamined Jefferson’s civilly-yet-coldly-worded hard-hitting “Dear Jane” letter dated July 1, which read:
Ms. Stanton,
I cannot live with the lies anymore. For far too long a time, I have been less than the man I could have been. I have lived in a loveless marriage where you brought home female coed after female coed for, shall we say, your “physical amusement”, while I had to settle for getting my manly needs outside of the marriage where I should have had them met by you. Yes, Mallory, I have been a rapist, philanderer and although I was a male feminist, I’ve been an awful hypocrite who makes Caiaphas, the Pharisee who led the Pharisaic charge to crucify Jesus Christ, look mighty WYSIWYG-congruent.
I’ve talked with Monique Levy — that’s right, her — and somehow, she forgave me. We agreed it was high time for me to come clean.
I will not tell you where I am going, or how Monique and I will break the news of our, shall we say, ‘evil escapades’ to the world. This will bring down the party, but for me, the party was over years ago.
In one way or another, you will hear from me, and Monique. And yes, to use an old divorce cliché, I’ll see you in court.
Sincerely,
Jefferson Innes Stanton
An angry Mephistula/Stanton crumpled up Jefferson’s letter, and tossed it in a nearby wastepaper basket. She sat down on her couch, despondent over the possibility that her entire world might be coming to an end, and nodded off to sleep.
Mephistula… Mephistula…
Pot-Trudierre’s disembodied, specter-like voice sounded within Mephistula/Stanton’s mind, as she woke up with a jolt.
Mephistula… Mephistula…
Mephistula/Stanton turned her head about as Trudierre’s disembodied ghostly voice sounded again in dark prayerfulness. Mephistula… Mephistula … Mephistula… daughter of Lucifraeon… Queen of the Nephilimites… Come to me. Come to me. Come to me, now.
“Is — is that you, Potty?” Mephistula/Stanton said, a fearful quiver in her voice.
Yes, Mistress Mephistula, Trudierre’s voice spoke hauntingly. It is I.
“Where are you?!”
I am with you in spirit, Dear Mistress. I have located our shared enemy, Captain Khra
a-Veh. And I know whom she has become.
“I know, too. She has taken on the identity of the ‘truther’ Astra Ruth Downey.”
We learned that from the log-entries Khraa-Veh made and embedded within her distress-beacon, Trudierre’s voice echoed. I wish to coordinate an attack by 12 starships with you against the planet upon which Khraa-Veh treads these days. They will be aided and assisted by Shrion personnel in five standard days’ time.
“Potty,” Mephistula/Stanton said, “you may invade Earth in seven. I will be in Minneapolis to conquer the party’s nomination for the US presidency this coming election. This American Presidential contest is the perfect distraction to allow for your invasion.”
But why invade at all? If we invade, why would you want to seek the office —?
“It’s part of my secret plan that I have had for centuries,” Mephistula/Stanton said, “and have kept secret from everyone else except for my father. When Captain Veh’s small reservist force destroyed by robot forces, I tried to flee to the Shrion Throne-World. But when Veh latched onto my fighter with her ship’s grapple-beams, her grapple-beams jarred my ship’s electronics. Consequently, I ended up on Earth, where I opted to go back in time. As the centuries passed, I drafted the battle plan we will be using.
“For ages, I thought I had to act alone” Mephistula/Stanton continued with dark glee. “But now, since all the pieces are falling neatly and serendipitously into place, Potty, I can now at long last implement this stupendous pet project I have refined over the eons!”
“As for your part, Potty,” Mephistula/Stanton said, “your invasion is merely a fuse-priming incident leading up to the election. My plan is to have your starfleet conduct a prolonged severe attack to soften up Earth’s defenses. Once I win the support of the Earthlings in America, I will summon their globalists and strike a deal between them and the Shrion leadership as the chief occupant of the White House. Then my father Lucifraeon and I will rule the Universe!