by Don Cook
“And as I’m sure you are aware, FBI Agent Bonhoeffer,” Trudierre said with a defiant sneer, “you are well outside of the FBI’s jurisdiction!”
“Yawls gotta admit, Potty-Boy” Mike said, with more down-home folksiness, “that when somebody’s home planet is bein’ threated, what I’m doin’ ain’t outta line.”
“WE ARE SUPERIOR TO YOUR PITIFULLY PRIMITIVE FORCES, ALL OF THEM PUT TOGETHER!”
“Well, you know, Potty-head,” Mike said, playfully chiding Trudierre with more condescendingly charming Southern folksiness and loving it, “yawls gotta hand it to good aliens like them there Amkerian space-soldier fellas. They may be from clear across the Universe like you, Darth Pottymouth, but they all treatin’ us Earth-folks right by standing up for us when we can’t. Now I’d say that’s right neighborly of them.”
“DO NOT DICTATE TO YOUR SUPERIORS, PUNY EARTHMAN!” Trudierre shouted, with an arrogantly tyrannical defiance all-too common among political leaders in their forties or younger. “AND YOU WILL CEASE-AND-DESIST WITH THIS ONE-HUNDRED-AND-TENTH-RATE HUCKLEBERRY HOUND ROUTINE RIGHT NOW!”
“Well, if that’s the way yawls want it —!” Mike, spurred on by his presently corny sense of humor, pressed a button on his spacesuit, and quickly morphed into a Groucho Marx-lookalike/soundalike, complete with holo-cigar-flecking mannerisms.
“You know, Potty-mouth,” Mike fast-talked like Groucho Marx, while he threw a series of switches and pressed several buttons, “you’re a real swell space-Nazi, and I’d love to stick around and talk with you forever, but now it’s time to play ‘Let’s Get the Heck Outta Here!’” Mike-as-Groucho threw a few more switches, grinned, batted his eyebrows, and flicked his holo-cigar as he said, “And trust me, you’re in for a real blast!”
“I WILL DEFEAT YOU AND YOUR STINKING PLANET, YOU TWO-HUNDREDTH-RATE FUNNY-BEING!” Trudierre cursed, Marxist-shaking his fist.
Mike-as-Groucho continued in Groucho Marx-irreverent eyebrow-batting, cigar-flicking, dry-witty jest, “Why, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever hoyd!”
Trudierre screamed, “AND JUST HOW DO YOU THINK YOU’LL ESCAPE?!”
Mike-as-Groucho pressed his left cufflink, reverted to his normal self, and said nonchalantly, “Allow me to demonstrate, my Pot-headed fiend.”
COMPUTER CORE OF HRMKS SKANDARIO
Blue 1 fired a molecule-altering ray that created an opening for a speedy escape.
COCKPIT OF FIGHTER-SPACECRAFT “BLUE 1”
“And one more thing…” Mike said at Trudierre in defiant triumph. “ADIEU!”
Mike pressed the joystick’s stardrive button on the joystick like a giddy teenage boy hitting the gas while joyriding.
COMPUTER CORE OF HRMKS SKANDARIO
Blue 1 activated its stardrive that enveloped the fighter within its blue light-orb, then morphed into a blue light-straw that streaked madly out through the gaping matter-altered hole in the Skandario’s hull that vanished just after Blue 1 dashed out while —
BRIDGE OF HRMKS SKANDARIO
“Computer,” Trudierre said with sad lameness, “define Earth-word ‘adieu’.”
OUTER SPACE FIVE MILLION MILES FROM EARTH
16:00 COORDINATED UNIVERSAL TIME (EARTH-TIME)
The HRMKS Skandario exploded in a supernova blaze of glory that lit up Earth’s night skies with a solar eclipse-like flaring over those parts of the Earth where the moon was in Earth’s shadow. The ship’s destruction paralyzed all of the invading starfleet’s remaining warships and sent its crews into a panic as Blue 1 entered Mars’ orbit.
COCKPIT OF FIGHTER-SPACECRAFT “BLUE 1”
“YEE-HAH!” Mike shouted in triumph as he watched as the Skandario explode into a supernova-like fireball! “HALLELUJAH! PRAISE THE LORD! THE VICTORY IS THE LORD’S!”
TELEPORT-CAPSULE INSIDE HORSE BARN,
THREE-CROSS RANCH, TEXAS, USA
11:08 AM CENTRAL TIME
Everyone in the teleport-capsule erupted into loud, football game-wild ecstatic cheers as they watched the fireball that was the Skandario blaze on.
“Dad did it!” Donny said loudly, being very proud of his father’s brave, daring victory.
“Yes!” Glenn shouted while he raised his fist in victory as if he was cheering on his school’s team at a high school football or basketball game. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“I knew Daddy would come through!” Val shouted, proud of Mike’s brazen victory that she and the others had just watched. “Gotta love his Groucho!”
Jim said, as everyone laughed, “Leave it to Mike Bonhoeffer to make like Huckleberry Hound and Groucho Marx to add insult to injury against an enemy!”
“Can we radio Dad, Uncle Jim?” Donny asked.
“Let’s try” Jim said. He then radioed Mike, “Earth-control to Blue 1, Earth-control to Blue 1, do you read? Over.”
Mike’s face came up on one of the viewscreens as he said with a grin, “Blue 1 to Earth-control. I read you.”
“Awesome job, Dad!” Donny said.
“Thanks, Donny” Mike said.
“That was one daring stunt you pulled up there, making like Groucho,” Glenn said, “but I’m sure it ticked off that big bad space-boy good!”
“I’m sure it did, son” Mike said with a chuckle. “I’m sure it did.”
Science-girl Val instantly realized that the explosion had likely unleashed much higher-than-usual levels of radiation, even for the radiation-filled vacuum of space where her father was, and became worried.
Val asked Mike with quiet fear, “Daddy? You know that explosion? What’s the radiation count? If that blast had the total destructive power of twelve 100-megaton hydrogen bombs…”
COCKPIT OF FIGHTER-SPACECRAFT “BLUE 1”
“You’re right, precious” Mike said. “I’ll radio the Karsarvan to find out. I’ll let you listen in to my communication with them. For now, this is Blue 1, over-and-out.”
Mike, worried about the danger from the explosion’s fallout, radioed to the Amkerian flagship, “Blue 1 to USS Karsarvan, do you read?”
“Karsarvan. Nimmax here. Excellent work, Mike! You can fly with our forces anytime!”
“Thanks, Admiral,” Mike said with extreme gratitude, but paused before he continued, “but the Skandario’s explosion will likely have more than enough fallout to be a devastating hazard for my home planet Earth.”
“Blue 1,” Nimmax said reassuringly, “look at your main monitor.”
Blue 1’s main monitor showed that the Amkerian starfleet had instantly deployed dozens of sub-compact car-sized radiation absorption probes that quickly encircled the blast zone where the Skandario once existed. Mike was puzzled.
“Those devices we just deployed are radiation-absorption probes” Nimmax pointed out to Mike. “We knew that Earth would likely be in danger from the fallout from an explosion that powerful. This probe-network is our cleanup response once we win a battle using nuclear weaponry. We’ve saved hundreds of thousands of planets and star systems, and quadrillions of human lives, after thermonuclear attacks like this one both from space and on these planet’s surfaces. And you can add your own Solar System to that list.”
Mike, wowed by the Amkerians’ life-saving anti-fallout technology, was unfathomably grateful as he said, “Thank you, dear God! And thanks to you and your starfleet, Admiral.”
“Don’t mention it, Mike. Anything to protect the Mother-world.”
Having just saved Earth from destruction by alien invaders, which gave him a too-good-to-be-true feeling, Mike’s concerns quickly turned back towards Earth and the battle Khraa/Astra had either waged or would soon wage against Mephistula/Stanton.
“I only hope,” Mike said, with somber heaviness, “that Khraavie defeats that big bad old Over-lady down there in Minneapolis.”
“You and us both, Mike” Admiral Nimmax said to Mike, equally as somberly.
“I also wonder what the media back on Earth is saying about the explosion” Mike commented. “I’m sure people on my pl
anet saw it and are likely pretty shook up.”
“We’ll let the Earth’s media cut in to deliver that bit of news, Mike” Makarrth said. “Then we’ll cut back to the convention. Operation Whole World Watching is still in effect, but Earth’s peoples deserve to hear about the blast in space from their own news-scribes.”
CTC NEWS STUDIO A-1, CTC BROADCAST CENTRE
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
SAME MOMENT (12:09 PM EASTERN TIME)
A somber, ominous shared mood of foreboding gripped every media outlet worldwide like a strangler clutching a victim’s throat, including CTC News Studio A-1.
“We are cutting in on our regular programming…” said an alarmed yet newswoman-calm feminine-curvy-yet-butch-styled East Indian-Canadian female CTC personality/substitute news anchor/backstabber Aja Kanata Singh, “…to bring you the one story that has stopped practically everything on the other side of the globe. At 12 Noon Eastern Time, astronomers across the Eastern Hemisphere where it is now night reported the sudden appearance of a brilliant flash of light that created a phenomenon similar to a total eclipse of the sun during what was, at first, a total lunar eclipse over much of the Middle East and Equatorial regions of Africa and Asia.”
The CTC broadcast cut to the image of the Moon as the brilliant and inexplicable explosion of the Skandario blazed behind it.
“At this time…” Singh said in voiceover, her quivering words in symbiotic calm fright with every other news anchor on Earth, “…scientists are at a complete loss as to why this surprise eclipse came out of nowhere — and from behind the Moon, where no eclipse of this sort could ever be expected…”
As the broadcast cut back to the studio, Singh, overcome by events, began to weep on-air like most of her anchor-colleagues did at other media outlets worldwide before Makarrth and his Earthling-Amkerian team hundreds of miles south of Toronto, Canada cut the entire planet Earth’s media back to —
EXHIBIT HALL THEATER, MINNEAPOLIS CONVENTION CENTER
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA
11:45 AM CENTRAL TIME
“I know this is your doing, Captain Khraa-Veh!” snarled and hissed Mephistula/Stanton in a voice that grew demonically deeper, and whose appearance had also become half shell-covered devil-like and half like Mallory Stanton, while still morphing ever more into that of an armor-skinned demon. “Where the hell are you?!”
Khraa/Astra, who was still invisible, miniaturized, and clung to a ceiling fixture, decided that it was time to act. She made herself visible and magnetically released herself from the ceiling fixture to which she had clung for days. As she slowly descended with the aid of the maglev thrusters in her spacesuit, Khraa/Astra reverted back to her normal size until she lightly touched down on the floor in front of the podium. Meanwhile, Rick and his CTC ENG team were recording all the bizarre action.
“Right here, Mephistula!” shouted Khraa/Astra, with her helmet’s visor in fully one-way gold mirror-opaque mode and armed with her ray-gun in her right hand, at Mephistula/Stanton. “Queen-mother of the evil Shrion Intergalactic Empire! Oppressor and murderer of innocents! Arch-terrorist! Destroyer of planets! Archenemy of all humankind! And the true creator of the nefarious New World Order!” Everyone in the Exhibit Hall Theater gasped in horror as Khraa/Astra added, “And the daughter of Satan by Eve!”
“I admire your use of my accolades, Captain Khraa-Veh!” shouted Mephistula/Stanton, who continued to morph back to her exoskeletal demonic-looking true self.
“I have a score to settle with you, Princess of the Dark!” shouted Khraa/Astra, as she psychically activated her spacesuit’s EVA devices, leapt upward, and flew around the Exhibit Hall Theater in a swooping bat-like fashion. She fired several rounds of high-radiation laser-rays at Mephistula/Stanton, who dodged them all.
But the invader candidate’s reflexes, because of the garlic Tranxa-as-Astra sprinkled on her, were gradually slowing down.
“I was only following my conscience when I fried the planet your Expedition was studying!” snarled Mephistula/Stanton, as she whipped out her own mini-pistol-sized ray gun from her purse, and fired at Khraa/Astra.
“What the Perditia sort of conscience —?!” Khraa/Astra said, before she realized it took a satanic conscience to enable Mephistula/Stanton to do what she did.
“My father Lucifraeon’s, or have you forgotten?!” Mephistula/Stanton snarled, as the laser ray she fired at Khraa/Astra struck a light-fixture instead of her target, sending sparks flying, as Khraa/Astra flew overhead. “My father’s conscience helped me to slaughter your dear, sweetly wimpish husband!” Mephistula/Stanton fired at Khraa/Astra again, but struck a bleacher and set it ablaze, as Khraa/Astra zipped by out of the way before Mephistula/Stanton snarl-shouted, “And your equally wimpish son!”
Mephistula/Stanton had fully morphed back to her true scarlet-colored, bat-winged, exoskeletal, physically satanic self, fired again at Khraa/Astra while the comely Kannatikan defender of life and freedom swooped down over the evil invader candidate, but missed and hit the ceiling, setting part of it on fire!
Mephistula snarl-ranted on, “My father’s conscience also spurred me on to slowly but surely seduce that redheaded daughter of yours over to the ‘rainbow side’ of the Force, as Earth’s Star Wars nuts might say!”
Khraa/Astra, now more vengefully infuriated than before, flew upward, swooped back down behind Mephistula/Stanton, and with her clenched right fist, hit the invader candidate in the back of her head, knocking her forward onto the floor, and sending her into a satanic hissing fit! Mephistula/Stanton got back on her feet, fired again at Khraa/Astra, and this time, the ray from the invader candidate’s ray-gun hit the right side of her suit. However, Khraa/Astra’s spacesuit, already low on energy, quickly absorbed the blast’s energy. Khraa/Astra spiraled downward until her suit was reenergized. She regained flight control and zoomed upward, ready to fight again.
“Wow!” Rick said during the bizarre fantasy movie-like action. “I thought this convention would be brutal, but nothing like this! I don’t have any words to describe this, Lyssa, except that this looks like something straight out of Harry Potter-meets-Star Wars! Are you getting this, Lyssa? Lyssa? LYSSA?!”
As Rick called out to her, Lyssa Legault was out cold, her face down and arms sprawled over her anchor desk. Most of the other personnel from other media outlets covering the convention had also either fainted or died from fatal terror-induced heart attacks because of the unusual horror unfolding in the Exhibit Hall Theater!
“Good shot, bat-hussy!” Khraa/Astra shouted. “But not good enough!”
Khraa/Astra zoomed by Mephistula/Stanton’s ten-horned head so closely that the evil invader candidate was almost thrown off-balance.
“I should have known why my Svetlia was so eager to go with the other kids on that parentless campout bare-body naked!” Khraa/Astra shouted. “If all us parents back on Rubiaar IV hadn’t psych-conferenced and stopped that all-naked parentless campout they had all planned, she and many of the other girls would have become real girl-goers. That’s lesbian for you Earthlings!”
“It was so easy to start seducing the she-teensters on Rubiaar IV into Perditia, especially your daughter Svettie!” Mephistula/Stanton said in arrogant nonchalance. “As you recall from your exploration of that dead planet, there was a treasure-world of alluring worship-artifacts that glorified my father Satan. I used the items that you had Svettie and the other teenster children of your expedition’s many scientists, technicians, and researchers study as part of their legally recognized education to seduce them and thus ended up sending of many of them into Perditia!”
Mephistula/Stanton cackled maniacally as she ranted further, “It’s all very similar to the way I had seduced a certain Englishwoman several years ago into writing her ticket off British welfare by creating that book saga about a boy wizard that became a mega-moneymaking multimedia global franchise!
“I love, just love entertaining humans into hell!” Mephistula/Stanton shouted with b
oisterous pride as she laughed more demonically, “That fictional boy wizard’s exploits, along with Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Exorcist, The Omen saga — even that multimedia saga set ages ago in a far-away galaxy! Those media-sagas were all my father’s gateways to our hellish side, thanks to my powers of suggestion and deception based on factual events from beyond Earthlings’ experience.”
“Ah, yes, that space war saga!” Khraa/Astra said. “That galaxy far, far away, Earthlings, is now devoid of any life-bearing world! Those same good and evil star-warriors that practiced the dark powers of that mystic league of paranormal knights, including that black-caped, armor-masked walking iron lung — both sides of that evil force killed each other off! What started out as a space saga-inspiring fantasy-history ended up becoming a real-life interstellar version of Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe!
“That’s right, Earth-people!” Khraa/Astra shouted. “That far, far away galaxy in which that superstitious space saga you all loved sooo much was set was all-too real! And yes, it is now a dead galaxy because all its mystic knight-summoned demons destroyed all life that dwelt upon all its billions of once-beautiful planets!”
As Khraa/Astra flew overhead from left to right, Mephistula/Stanton fired on her at point blank range and struck her again. Once again, Khraa/Astra tumbled through the air. Yet Khraa/Astra’s spacesuit was using up a great deal of energy in combat, and as a result, merely reenergized from the blast. The Kannatikan spacewoman regained flight-control of her suit’s maglev-systems, and dashed with a vengeance back into the fight!
“Thanks for recharging my spacesuit’s batteries, my dear fiend!” Khraa/Astra shouted mockingly as she dashed upward back into battle.
“I will finish you off, space-harlot!” Mephistula/Stanton snarl-shouted.
“Ah, but my not-so-dear princess of the power of the air,” Khraa/Astra said with gutsiness, “your secret is finally out of the bag!”
“That’s right, my queen of outer space!” Rick said, remembering his preteen days watching old sci-fi late-night movies, as his camera-woman tracked the two alien combatants’ every move with her camera, Lyssa Legault or no Lyssa Legault. “And you’re the one really ray-gunning the truth out there!”