Incredibly, the richest man in the known universe was still using cheap, every-man’s grocery store grooming products, so off she went to the most exclusive men’s clothier in Waston, where she purchased well over five thousand dollars’ worth of exotic men’s toiletries for her husband.
“Where the hell is my deodorant and shampoo?” Diet asked, in obvious exasperation.
“Oh that, I threw them out,” she said. “You’re upgrading. I bought you all kinds of the best men’s products made to replace them with.”
Diet rolled his eyes and pointed to the dizzying array of face-wash, body-wash, aftershaves, colognes, eau de toilette, microderm abrasion scrubs, antioxidants, peptides, hydrators and emollients that now filled his cabinet, to the point where it resembled hers.
“Noreen, I have no idea what even half of this shit is for.”
“It’s to keep your skin healthy and make you smell good,” Noreen said primly.
“Why, did I stink before you bought all this crap?” Diet countered.
“No, but why not improve on what we can?” Noreen asked. “You’re a baron, for God’s sake! You shouldn’t be using that off-the-shelf, grocery store crap.”
“I’m a guy, Noreen. The whole idea of men’s toiletries is to get the stink off, not to make me smell like a damned fruit salad. What I was using before, worked just fine. Get it all back.”
“Neanderthal!” Noreen snapped at her stubborn new husband.
“That’s Baron Neanderthal, to you!”
* * * *
Chapter-13
Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time.
I think I’ve forgotten this before.— Steven Wright
The Rak Planet Slithin
July, 3867
Like all the Raknii people, Blug had been shocked and horrified by the successive waves of disastrous news coming out of the war zone, and yet again by the appalling appearance of the Supreme-Master in that video.
Xior is the embodiment of the Rak Empire… the humans eat away at us the way that disease is eating him.
Blug found it hard to admit, even to himself, that these seemingly invincible aliens frightened him right down to his toe-claws. His mighty fleet of tens of thousands of Rak warships would be totally helpless to protect him, if the demons decided to invade Region-4, and that thought made him shudder. There was no logical reason to fear they might suddenly show up in Region-4. Combat had been limited to the frontier of Region-7 so far, and all of Regions 5 and 6 stood between him and those aliens. But fear gave no consideration to logic.
Blug dismissed all of that spiritual gibberish Xior had been spouting, the same way he’d originally dismissed that ridiculous prophecy — that dire prophecy, of which at least half didn’t seem quite so ridiculous now. He just could not, and would not, believe that some ancient mythical god was behind all of this disaster. Physical laws ruled the universe, not mystical gods dreamed up by weak minds.
Unfortunately, those physical laws were now saying that their empire was in chaos. Incredible aliens were conquering Raknii worlds at will, while their supreme-master was dying and spouting nonsense.
What kind of strange game is Xior playing at, even at the point of death?
Blug wondered, was it possible the horrors of his disease had truly driven him mad? Blug called for nearly stripping his borders of warships and concentrating the vast might of his region around his capital. It wasn’t logical. The humans could blow through whatever number of warships he could assemble, but it made him feel better.
He was confident that neither Harf nor Glan would be attacking any of his worlds. Harf was too timid, and Glan too honorable. No, it was those unknowable humans that he truly needed to defend against, and he wanted every weapon that he could possibly lay his hands on, between them and his own precious hide.
* * * *
August, 3867
Rak warships of Raan’s Region-6 were surreptitiously tracking several full fleets of alien ships gliding ominously through Region-6 space with impunity. Region-Master Raan’s orders had been explicit… they were to track and report, but under no circumstances were they to engage the humans. The reports of human invincibility to Rak weaponry tempered the warrior’s natural aggressive tendencies, as engaging these demons had been demonstrated, on more than one occasion, to be little more than suicide. And so, the Rak warships hid themselves within the shadow of the alien’s x-wakes, monitoring their movements, but taking extreme care not to reveal their presence to their enemies.
At first, the Raknii found it odd that the human ships were dropping out of x-space within sterile systems of no particular value, but later they realized that the alien’s relatively slow speeds indicated that those ships must be large transports, so they must be establishing supply depots along a particular route they had chosen. The demons were definitely going somewhere, but so long as they didn’t directly threaten any of Region-6’s worlds, Raan’s warriors remained content to just leave them alone. Whatever consequences might arise from allowing these aliens to push deeper and deeper into the empire unmolested, was best left to the High-Rak to deal with. As humans might have said, it was above their pay-grade.
* * * *
The Rak Planet Vnayrk
September, 3867
Hal had certainly eaten a lot of meat since his capture by the Raknii a year and a half earlier — a lot of meat. The Raknii diet consisted almost entirely of meat. While the large Raknaa assault troops generally consumed their daily allotment of meat raw, their smaller Raknii superiors routinely charred the outside of theirs over an open fire whenever possible, and within specially designed broilers while aboard ship. This meant that Hal had consumed a vast amount of charred meat during his time amongst the Raknii, with the insides were cooked to what humans might describe as rare to medium-rare. That much protein had caused Hal to gain a considerable amount of weight which, in view of his original emaciated appearance, was not necessarily a bad thing.
But being an omnivore, rather than a true carnivore like the Raknii, Hal’s body required vitamins and minerals from plant fibers, not found in meat alone. Hal had discovered local fauna which provided most of the nutrients missing from his daily meat ration, and he’d experimented with cooking them in various ways… approximating recipes that he had stored in his mind from that single download he’d received from his brother on Massa. Acquiring locally made approximations of pots, pans and skillets had been every bit as challenging as finding plants containing required nutrients, which his human body could digest.
Drix had gotten over his anger relatively quickly, as Hal found himself frequently called into yet more deep discussions concerning human philosophies of ethics and moral conventions. It soon became obvious that Drix was using these conversations, whose intensity occasionally bordered on interrogations, to seek out human philosophical contributions most compatible with the Raknii’s ancient ways and schools of thought, in the attempt to formulate and document an entirely new code of ethics and morality for his race.
* * * *
The Troxia System, Trakaan Space
October, 3867
“Admiral, I’m receiving an answer to our hail.”
“Very well, Smitty. Pipe it to my station, please,” replied Confederate Admiral Eileen Thorn. Fleet Admiral Roger Kalis, Commander in Chief of the Confederate Fleet and Supreme Allied Commander of the Combined Allied Fleets had recently changed the operational orders for Thorn’s Confederate 3rd Fleet. Confederate Intelligence had located a world of a previously unknown alien race, whose language had surprisingly shown up as the common denominator in the cat’s language translators, that enabled them to converse with their human captives. It was unknown whether these aliens were possibly a subject race, who had been conquered by the Raknii, or if they might be full allies of the feline predators, but Kalis deemed it important to find out, and had tasked Thorn to investigate.
Initial scans of this system were similar to the single scan taken by Con
federate Intelligence several months earlier, which appeared to show a prosperous, peaceful space-based civilization centered around the fourth planet, having manufacturing facilities in orbit and some activities apparent amongst the outer planets as well. The beta-translator was breaking out voice communications, sounding like routine traffic control, just as Admiral Bonhoeffer of Confederate Intelligence had suggested. So Thorn had transmitted a hail, identifying themselves and expressing their peaceful intentions towards the fourth planet, through that translator some hours earlier, after 3rd Fleet had transited into this system about four light-hours out from the system’s primary star, to give them plenty of time to evaluate what kind of reception they might get from these unknowns.
Thorn was initially startled at the image which formed on her monitor… a gray, ovoid face with a pointed chin, with a small, almost lipless mouth and two tiny slits where a human nose would have been placed. The alien had overly enlarged oval, slanting eyes that appeared all black, with no discernible whites at all. There was something eerily familiar about that strange face — something from deep within racial memory that Thorn couldn’t quite place. There was no record of it, but somehow she felt deep in her bones that this wasn’t mankind’s first encounter with these particular aliens.
“I am Fraznal,” said the voice accompanying the video, in almost perfect, if somewhat antiquated English. “I am the Planetary Administrator of this world. I greet you in the name of the Trakaan people. If your intensions are truly peaceful, as claimed in your initial transmission, we welcome your visit to our world of Troxia.
“We ask that you coordinate your approach with our traffic control on frequencies that I’m sure you have already detected, so that they may more easily reroute routine planetary traffic to avoid any potential accidents arising from your unfamiliarity with our standard traffic patterns and policies. Again, be welcome to Troxia, humans. I look forward to speaking with you again, when distances allow.”
* * * *
October, 3867
Eight months in space, loafing along like a wallowing garbage scow at a measly 125c, had the entire crew of CSS Defiant, flagship of the Confederate 2nd Fleet, pissing and moaning… which by normal Fleet standards meant they were somewhere just south of deliriously happy. What made it a concern was the fact that they were only about half-way to their intended target, after multiple refueling and reprovisioning stops along the way. It was the same aboard every ship in the fleet, but that was the best speed that the three giant asteroid-battleships could muster, given their incredible mass. The slow speeds and vast distances involved were a stark reminder of the difficulties their ancestors had faced during the Great Diaspora from old-Earth some 300 years earlier. By the time they got to where they were going, 2nd Fleet would be farther from home than mankind had ever been… well, except for those crazy intelligence bastards, zinging around the universe in those little invisible ships of theirs.
2nd Fleet had experienced a few breakdowns along the way, but after making repairs, the stragglers had no trouble catching back up with the lumbering fleet, keeping company with those three monstrous asteroid-battleships. Never had anyone dreamed they’d ever see anything quite like those great beasts… small planetoids in their own right, covered in weapons blisters everywhere. The spacers’ grumbling about how slow they were, was light-hearted, as they gave everyone great confidence in living through whatever was coming. With those big babies with them, most of 2nd Fleet felt like they could take on the might of the entire Raknii Empire and come out on top. Little did they realize, just how close they’d eventually come to doing just that.
* * * *
The Trakaan Planet Troxia
October, 3867
“Flying saucers, for God’s sake!” Indeed, disk-shaped Trakaan ships of all sizes orbited the planet they called Troxia, looking all the world like flying saucers. There was something disturbingly familiar about the idea of flying saucers, but damned if Thorn or any of her bridge crew knew exactly what it was. They all felt it, though… the appearance of these gray-skinned, bug-eyed aliens gave everyone on board an eerie sense of déjà vu.
Thorn was given landing coordinates for her shuttle crew, as she was scheduled to meet with the Planetary Administrator outside in an open park-like area, as humans were evidently much too tall to fit inside any of the Trakaan buildings. If anything, the Trakaan were perhaps even smaller than the Raknii, so with both alien species that they’d recently encountered being of such diminutive size, it made Thorn wonder if humanity might not rank toward the large side of the galactic norm for intelligent life?
That creepy, otherworldly feeling continued, even after Thorn and her staff landed and approached the arranged meeting place, where chairs had been arranged in the shade under some large trees — including human-sized chairs, perfectly proportioned to fit the human derriere. Yes, these little aliens obviously already knew quite a bit about humankind… including the dimensions of their asses.
* * * *
The Planetoid Discol
October, 3867
Noreen believed herself the victor in the little “battle of wills” she’d waged with Diet for the past several months, over his choices in men’s toiletries. Each had thrown out several generations of his toiletry products, replacing them with an entirely different set of their own choosing. She had been gratified when Diet finally stopped replacing her choices with his own.
She knew she was winning on a broad front of issues, when she returned from a three week business trip to Okla, which would eventually provide tens-of-thousands of new TBG jobs for the people of Native American decent who lived there. Industrialization had come slowly on Okla, as internal conflicts among the dozens of tribal entities had dissuaded most Alliance companies from building large-scale industrial complexes there, for fear of terrorist attacks by radical elements within Okla society.
Noreen had lobbied Diet for months to convince him that the additional costs of security necessary to ensure TBG assets remained safe were viable and that building them, despite the risks involved, was “the right thing to do.” Diet’s natural bent towards philanthropy and his deep-rooted sense of fairness had made convincing him to spend billions of dollars to provide jobs to disadvantaged workers had been easy, compared to getting him to abandon his cheap, drug-store toiletries. It took her several weeks to finally notice the levels in her toiletry choices were not going down with usage.
What the hell?
She took to keeping an eye out for changes in Diet’s hygienic routine and noticed that he was spending an inordinate amount of time inside his gigantic walk-in closet. When she investigated further, she discovered a small palm-lock installed along the back wall, hidden behind his hang-up clothes. The next time Diet disappeared into his closet for more than just a few minutes, Noreen verified that Diet had somehow disappeared and was no longer in there, so she brought in a folding chair to wait him out. After about forty-five minutes, the back wall of Diet’s closet opened with a hiss, and Diet stepped out, freshly showered and smelling of cheap “every-mans” cologne.
While Noreen had been away on Okla, Diet had his own subterranean bathroom dug under his closet — it was easier than arguing with her, and it emphasized the futility of trying to force the richest man in the galaxy to do anything he really doesn’t want to do.
* * * *
The Confederate Planet Ginia, City of Rikmon
October, 3867
Lincoln Collier’s single six-year term as president of the Confederate Stellar Accord was expiring in another month, and his one regret was that there had been so very little time of real peace, during his term in office. Just the few short weeks between the end of the Confederate War of Independence and the Raknii attack on Minnos, was all the actual peacetime the Confederacy had truly known since it had been formed in 3861.
Senator Patrick Franklin George of Lusia was currently favored to replace him in the executive mansion, but his opponent, Governor Jennifer Steele of Joja, h
ad been making up ground in the polls recently, so who really knew?
I guess that’s why we actually hold elections.
Both George and Steele were fierce Confederate patriots, and both had fully supported his decision to aid their former countrymen and enemies in the Alliance, after Minnos had been brutally attacked by those aliens. Their primary differences were whether the Confederate taxpayer should continue footing the bill for four full fleets’ worth of that support, now that the Alliance had managed to get much of their fleet repaired and their defensive infrastructure rebuilt. Some thought that the Alliance should now assume the lion’s share of the financial and military burden for continued prosecution of the war against the… well… lions.
Some were fearful of renewed Yankee determination to restore the Confederacy to Alliance control, and were nervous about having 80% of the Confederate Fleet so far from home. Collier wasn’t particularly worried on that score. The corrupting influence of the Consortium had been broken and President McAllister wasn’t stupid enough to stab her primary ally in the back, when she still had an alien war on her hands.
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