Maggor expanded the image of the human male into his head and brain.
“These humans are highly intelligent, inventive, adaptable and resourceful creatures with an almost insatiable curiosity and drive to explore and create. They have developed agriculture, music, art, medicine, urban civilisations, religions far too numerous to count, gone through an industrialisation process and have even produced a crude form of nuclear technology. They have also been taking the first stumbling steps into space exploration,” Maggor instructed.
“Conversely, they are prone to large-scale tribal warfare and at times the most brutal and unimaginable cruelty towards each other. Thus, their organised governments are not to be trusted or approached,” he continued, “However, most importantly for our purposes, their brains have an enormous capacity, of which they actually use very little. So, for Mind Profile transfer, they are probably one of the best adapted species in the universe” he added.
With a further wave of the hand over the plate, the image on the screen vanished. Samarasa stood silently taking in all this information, slowly grasping the strategy that Maggor was outlining to her.
“What I am ordering you to do Tega Samarasa, is the most important mission in our history. I am ordering you to travel to this Planet Earth and identify one volunteer, one individual, probably from the military, preferably a junior officer with no familial ties or commitments, who won’t be unduly missed, into whom you will transfer the mind profile of First Admiral Teg Portan. You will then transport this individual back to Garmauria for further briefing and rigorous acclimatisation,” Maggor finished.
Teg Maggor then passed his hand over the scanner plate and rasped the code word that opened his personal storage facility. The smooth seamless wall to the right of Samarasa opened into a small recess.
“In there is a key and the coordinates for the secret military facility deep in the Raxxon mountains base,” he rasped “I want you to proceed to that facility, Tega Samarasa, with this key and this mind profile, and take the ship berthed in Hangar Sixteen to Planet Earth. There you will carry out the instructions that I have just relayed to you. Do you understand your mission, Tega!?” he rasped in a direct military fashion.
“Yes, Council Leader!” she barked, snapping her heels to attention.
“Excellent,” he rasped throwing the data sphere to her which she caught deftly in her right hand, “proceed with your mission, Tega.”
She reached into the recess in the wall and removed the silicon key and navigational instruction disk before turning to the door.
“Goodbye, and good luck, Sama,” Maggor rasped softly.
She turned, snapped her heels together, and in the ancient Garmaurian military tradition saluted, with her left hand, fingertips to the edge of her left eyebrow.
“Thank you, Council Leader,” she said stiffly and stepped up to the door which silently opened down the middle to allow her to exit.
Then it closed behind her.
Outside the door she rested her forehead on the cold metal, and closed her eyes.
“Goodbye, Magga!” she said in a voice barely above a whisper, and an uncontrollable tear ran down her face as she knew she would never see him again.
With her heart filled with a great sadness, she started along to the teleportation room at the end of the corridor, wiping the rogue tear from her face.
There was no time for sentiment; she had a mission to carry out.
Chapter 18
Dejectedly, Billy Caudwell started the long slow walk home to explain to his mother the torn uniform and scars he had acquired at school that day. Lifting a nearby stick, he began to slash the stick through the swaying grass on the side of the hill as the shadows of the day lengthened. Imagining himself as some great avenging hero, he slashed down the grassy enemy as he stamped his way triumphantly down to the roadside. On reaching the roadside his mood changed. Feeling very anxious about what awaited him Billy began to drag his heels as if he could somehow postpone the inevitable. Absent-mindedly, he dragged his weary and pained body in the direction of home. He was so engrossed in his own misfortunes that he did not notice the roar of the small sports car engine until the driver shouted over to him.
“Excuse me son,” the polite voice said from behind him.
Startled, Billy turned to see a small British Racing Green open-topped sports car. Billy recognised the type of car right away; his father had once worked on one of these for a friend of his as a favour. The sports car was being driven by a smiling, smart, young man with dark hair.
“Is this the right way to Dunryan?” the well-dressed young man, James Dinwoodie, asked him.
It took Billy a few moments to realise that the young man was asking directions to the R.A.F. base that was about five kilometres out of town. Eager to help, Billy walked briskly over to the vehicle.
“Where did you say you wanted to go, Mister?” Billy said eagerly, his eyes greedily and enviously devouring the sleek lines of the sports car.
“Dunryan,” the intelligent, stylish youthful man replied, “is this the right road?”
“Oh, wow, are you a pilot, Mister?” Billy asked excitedly spotting the blue R.A.F. tunic, complete with wings above the left breast pocket, laid out on the passenger seat next to him.
“Yes son, that’s why I’m looking for Dunryan,” the dapper young man replied patiently with a smile.
James Dinwoodie had experienced the same eagerness and awe at the R.A.F. pilots he had met when he was a boy. He well understood that it might take a few minutes to get anything coherent from this excitable red-haired youngster.
“Do you fly the new jets?” Billy questioned wide-eyed with excitement.
“Well, I will, provided I get to Dunryan on time,” Dinwoodie pressed for the information he required.
“Oh, sorry Mister,” Billy began to grasp reality “you need to go….” Billy pointed in the direction behind the vehicle and began to explain.
Unfortunately, Billy Caudwell never had the chance to tell the young R.A.F. Officer just where the Dunryan base was located. As he was about to impart the important information, the world disappeared into a bright blinding white light and a loud roaring whoosh. The next thing Billy knew he was in a sparsely furnished grey metal room with a strange creature staring at him.
“Aaaaargh!!!” shrieked Billy, falling in an ungainly heap, with wide-eyed terror, onto his backside.
His mind stricken with sheer naked terror, he shuffled and scampered rapidly backwards. In his panic stricken flight his shoes scuffed, squeaked and slipped on the metal floor until he was jammed up against a cold metal wall.
“No!! It can’t be!” the strange creature howled, knowing that she had miscalculated almost at the moment that the young human and the red amorphous mass, the mortal remains of James Dinwoodie, had appeared.
The adolescent human had been too close to the teleport beam, and she had only calculated for one of them.
“No!” yelled Samarasa again, kicking the Central Control Column weakly with impotent rage.
The whole thing had gone horribly wrong. The entire mission and all of her efforts had been wasted. She felt the anger, frustration and disappointment seethe through her body like a river in torrential flood. In her fury, she lashed out, with some venom, at what remained of Flight Lieutenant James Ian Dinwoodie; which shuddered grotesquely under the savage blow.
After a few moments of self-chastisement she realised she would have to cover her tracks, and swung into action. Billy Caudwell huddled into a metallic corner and cringing with fear frightened he would wet himself, looked for an escape. His instinct told him that escape was unlikely, and his mind began to calm down from the sheer naked panic of the abduction. His intuition told him to do something or he would find himself dead in the next few minutes. From years of placating bullies, Billy dragged up the first thing that came to his petrified mind to disarm the situation and make contact with this strange creature.
“Does everyone in your c
ountry speak English, comrade?” he asked timidly, knowing that this was probably a life or death gambit for him.
The idea of an alien in an alien craft, despite the popularity of science fiction shows on television, was still too incredible for his mind to contemplate. To Billy Caudwell’s imagination the much easier explanation was that this creature was a Russian sent to spy on his country.
“What!?” the creature in the blue overall with the yellow and green blotchy skin with jet black hair had snarled absent-mindedly, and, strangely, breathlessly to him.
To Billy, she continued working without turning away from whatever foreign fiendishness she was up to. At the same instant the red mass that was James Dinwoodie disappeared in another flash of blinding white light. On the large screen in front of the alien, the car belonging to the young officer was struck by a yellow bolt of light. It then promptly exploded in a great yellow-flamed, black, petrol-fuelled roiling and smoking fury.
Still outraged with herself at her own stupidity and carelessness Tega Samarasa had not grasped fully what the young human had said to her. With her mind totally fixed on sorting out the mess, she had teleported the remains of the young officer, who was her original target, back to his vehicle and had then destroyed it with a pulsar-cannon bolt. It was only then that she grasped the significance of what the young human had said.
“What did you say, pink-skin?” she rasped turning to him and shoving her yellow and green blotched face up close to his.
Cringing away, mainly from the awful smell and terrifyingly alien face, fearing his last hour had come, Billy had tried to shield himself with his arms.
“I asked if everyone in your country spoke English,” he responded softly from behind his last line of defence.
He hoped against hope that this creature would not send him the same way as the red mass, to a burning, smoking death
“What makes you think we would all want to speak your silly language?” Samarasa probed, a wild idea beginning to formulate in the back of her mind.
“Well, don’t you have your own language in your country, comrade?” he asked, “It’s not like it’s the movies or anything like that, is it, where everyone and everything in the entire universe speaks English?” Billy responded, praying that he had given the right answer.
This young pink-skin is quite intelligent, and it can make some very complex deductions, almost like an adult, Samarasa thought to herself. She stared long and hard at the chubby, red-haired human she was just about to kill out of hand for ruining her complex, well-laid abduction plan. Maybe, she thought to herself, the mission is not a complete waste. Maybe, she mused, I can salvage something out of this awful disaster.
“I take it you have a name, pink-skin?” she asked calmly.
“Billy,” he responded swallowing nervously “Billy Caudwell, Miss,” adding the honorific after a short pause.
He had gotten her attention, he considered, and began to feel just a little bit safer. He knew he was still not out of danger and would have to proceed very carefully indeed.
Well, well, thought Tega Samarasa, smiling and starting to feel the fatigue of her exertions, he also knows a little bit about ingratiating and manipulating people. Maybe there is some useful material here after all, she contemplated. Looking at her options, Samarasa noted to herself that she was certainly not fit enough to track down another suitable military adult. Her limited time left was leaving her with the options of either aborting the entire mission or making the best of what Fate had thrown to her.
“How old are you, pink-skin?” Samarasa wheezed brusquely.
“I’m fourteen years old, Miss,” Billy responded slightly more confidently, tentatively letting his arms fall, but still on the lookout for a potential escape route.
“Well then, fourteen years old Billy Caudwell, my name is Tega Digima Samarasa, I am not from one of your puny Earth countries. I come from a planet called Garmauria. I am an officer in the Garmaurian Fleet,” Samarasa said softening her voice.
Billy said nothing, still unsure how to respond to this new approach from the strange creature.
“I am here on a mission to save the universe,” she wheezed, “and I have chosen you to help me with this mission.”
“Wh….wh….why me ?” stammered an astonished and petrified Billy Caudwell, still not entirely sure he would survive the next hour.
“Because you are young and intelligent; and, because if you do not help me, then I will have to kill you,” Samarasa gasped icily, “So, you really don’t have a choice.”
“Maybe I’ll report you to the police, have you arrested and put in prison,” Billy blustered, starting to feel much safer.
“Really, pink-skin?” Samarasa responded calmly, “How exactly will your Police Guardians rescue you from a spacecraft several hundred kilometres above your pathetic little planet’s atmosphere?” she indicated the View Screen which showed the clearest image of the Earth Billy had ever seen.
Open mouthed, he stared for a few moments at the image, and tried to get his mind to process what was going on in any reasonable manner. He failed. However, his survival instinct was strong enough for him to understand that if this was some strange alien fiend intent on destroying Earth, then it would have no qualms about killing him.
“Well, what’s to stop you killing me anyway?” Billy responded somewhat astonished at the calmness in his own voice, still crouched nervously in his corner.
“Well, young pink-skin, you’re not short of courage either. But, you’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?” Samarasa wheezed, “Come with me,” she added moving towards the Control Column.
Cautiously, Billy stood up and followed her warily to the metal island in the grey metal room.
“Hold this a moment,” Samarasa instructed, turning and handing Billy a metal cylinder.
It had taken a fraction of a second for Samarasa to implant the Mind Profile of the First Admiral into the young human’s brain. To Billy, it felt like an electric shock jolting up his arm into his brain for just a fraction of a second. It happened so quickly that he did not have the time to protest or even respond by dropping the small metal cylinder. With a mixture of astonishment and outrage he stood holding the metal cylinder, which was swiftly recovered by the alien.
“Well, there you go. Still alive young pink-skin?” she asked quietly, watching carefully the effects of the device on the young human.
The last thing she needed now was for the young human to keel over and die, after she had implanted the Mind Profile of Teg Portan into him. Though she still had another copy of the Mind Profile, she was unsure she would have time to use it.
Billy, still rooted to the spot with astonishment at the attack he just sustained, had a strange feeling of being very different. For a few moments he felt dizzy and quite sick, however, it passed leaving him with a feeling of calmness and confidence. Looking around the room he began to recognise things, and their functions, that he had never seen before in his young life. He already knew that this alien was a Garmaurian, yet now he knew where Garmauria was. He also seemed to know the history of Garmauria, and strange powerful space craft he had never set eyes upon. He had memories of space battles in places he had never dreamt of, with creatures his mind could not conceive of.
“There’s something you need to see now, pink-skin,” Samarasa broke his reverie drawing his attention to a viewing platform and passing her hand over the control plate.
Billy Caudwell’s real education was about to begin, and his life would never be the same again.
Chapter 19
Almost immediately a three-dimensional image appeared.
“Greetings, First Admiral,” the image began.
Billy looked at the face on the three-dimensional image and saw the features were not too dissimilar to those of the alien now standing next to him. “Wow, this is so cool,” Billy thought to himself, “One of these things would be worth a fortune.”
The skin on the face was slightly more yellow-gre
en than the alien next to him, and there was a greater strength in this one's eyes. The image seemed to be clothed in a loose fitting, slightly oversized, robe of a shimmering grey marbled colour. Around the shoulders, the image carried a large white chain with a wide seven pointed star, the same star that was on the collar tab of the other alien.
“My name is Teg Lugus Maggor. I am the last Leader of the Grand Council of Garmauria. I will probably be dead, as will be the rest of my species, by the time you hear this message,” the image continued.
For a moment there was a great sadness in Billy’s heart, which he could not understand or explain, but he did notice the noble bearing and great dignity in this creature and kept a respectful silence. He knew instinctively that this was a message of great importance.
“You have been chosen, First Admiral, for the most important mission in the universe, and I can say without exaggeration that the fate of the entire universe depends upon you. Already, you will have been given the Mind Profile of my friend, who was our Supreme Military Commander. His name was Teg Skarral Portan and he was the finest tactical and strategic mind that Garmauria ever knew. Let his skill, wisdom and strength be your guide, First Admiral,” the image continued and then paused as the tired looking speaker appeared to draw breath.
“On our home planet of Garmauria, data banks have been prepared to explain to you our history, our culture and our technology. You will travel to Garmauria for further instruction on our technology, and how to use it safely and effectively. Part of our technology has been to harness the fundamental particle of the universe, which we have called the Trion. In our arrogance, we believed that only we were capable of harnessing and controlling this powerful technology. We quickly learned that, in inexperienced hands, an accident with this technology could tear the very fabric of the universe apart. But, in our arrogance, we failed to share that knowledge and the technology with other species. We believed our species would live forever, and keep the technology to ourselves,” the image paused again.
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