The guards took hold of my arms. "You are playing into their hands, Mr. Salton. The Grotus are aggressive and will not be managed by any other species. They will win your wars and then crush you as well."
Harden smiled. "The Greens as you call them, I've been told they look a lot like Gruntas, only they are warriors and not farmers."
I replied, "They are a sister species. There are only a few minor genetic differences between us. One of those differences is their aggressive behavior. As I said, they will not be ruled or commanded by others. They are dominators and not allies. Mark my words, when you least expect it, they will turn on you. And when they come they will come harder and faster than you can imagine."
Harden Salton waved his hand with chagrin. "We have the Grotus under control. One thing that puzzles me though, you Grunta were one of the species in the War of Wars, soundly defeated by us Humans. You were a warrior species, and yet you choose to be farmers. Why is that?"
I replied, "Unlike the Grotus, we prefer to build and create rather than destroy. With the Grotus, the only thing you will build is your own defeat. I have warned you."
Harden Salton scowled. "You had best worry about your own demise. Your new debt to the empire, for all the trouble you have caused, will be one of conscription. You will be sent through that portal where you will soon join your brethren in battle."
I replied, "I will not fight alongside the Grotus. They wouldn't allow me to live. They have been our hated enemy since long before the AMP. I will be dead the moment I am seen."
Harden Salton laughed. "Oh, I don't think you have to worry about the Grotus killing you. You and the other Gruntas will be too busy fighting the Moddle!"
I turned my full body to face my new nemesis with a red angered face.
Harden Salton smiled. "Yes, those transports you passed were carrying Gruntas! Your entire planet. Men, women, children, even the elderly insisted on all going together. The handful of Gruntas that lived off-world, voluntarily returned for it as well. The decision was made after my spies uncovered that a series secretive meetings, and what appears to have been training for learning to fight, had been going on there for years. It is still unclear, but it almost seemed as though they were preparing for war, which is fortuitous for both of us I suppose."
My eyes burned with a new hatred for Harden Salton over what I had just been told. "I will return here one day. And on that day I will avenge the death of every Grunta that was made to pass through that portal!"
Harden Salton again waved his hand. "Take him away. I'm tiring of his presence."
Chapter 2
* * *
I was escorted from the room, as directed, under guard of the four Humans. I walked the grand halls with a blaster jammed into my back, continuously shoved along as the Human guards joked about the farmer heading off to war. When we reached the entrance, a white limo pulled up. I was shoved into the back.
As the limo pulled away, one of the guards said, "I heard they loaded up all of you reptiles in cages and sent you off to fight. I hope you don't embarrass our side."
The others laughed.
I replied with a calm voice, "Are you intimidated by my appearance?"
The guard shook his head. "Had I not known what I know, I might be. Your people didn't even put up a fight. They just rolled over. If that was me and my family, I would show no mercy. But I guess there has to be someone who's the weaker species, right?"
I nodded. It was taking every ounce of restraint I had to not end the guard's life with a balled-fist to his face. Human skulls were thin compared to Grunta. I had no doubt I could take down all four guards before they had a chance to react, but where was I to go from there? I was stuck in a hostile car, on a hostile planet, in a galaxy run by thugs.
I looked over at the guard. "Do you have children?"
The guard smirked. "Two."
I continued. "Would you fight to the death in another galaxy to protect your children here?"
The guard didn't like my new line of questions. "I think it would be best if you just kept your mouth shut."
As the guard waved his blaster pistol, a dark shadow fell over the limo. The driver stomped the brakes, causing the small gravity drive aboard to bring the limo to a quick halt.
One of the guards yelled out to the driver: "What's going on? Why have we stopped?"
The driver pointed quietly at the nose of the Jess and its large ion blaster tip aimed at his windshield.
I jumped across the seats, snatching the ion blasters from the Humans. I reached back with my right foot, kicking the blaster of the guard beside me, breaking his arm in the process. As the other adjacent guard attempted to react, I came back to my seat, striking him hard in the forehead with my elbow. I then lunged once again across the small open space, striking each of the other two guards in the gut as they pulled their hands up toward their faces.
With an outstretched hand I reached for the door handle and was soon rolling out of the limo. The ramp of the Jess had been lowered. I ran forward, swinging myself around and onto the ramp as it began to close. Before I could react, Raptor ran past, jumped down from the ramp, and sprinted back toward the building we had come from.
I walked forward into the cabin. "Raptor ran out!"
Garrett frowned as he looked at Go. "I thought you had him secure?"
Go shook his head as he frowned. "He jerked out of my hand and was gone before I could grab him."
Garrett looked out of the view-screen at the running dog as we lifted away. "He'll be OK. Harden likes him. He'll be returned to Joni."
Go turned to face me. "Welcome back!"
Garrett smirked as we continued skyward. "Welcome home, Mr. Cream!"
I replied, "How did you know where I was?"
Garrett pointed. "You still have my tracking device up under your arm. I listened to that whole conversation between Joni and her father before Harden came in. What an ass."
I looked toward the floor. "You should have let them take me. At least I'd have been returned to my people. They need to know of the Greens."
Garrett shook his head. "You really think they would send you through? I don't. I think that was just a ploy to get you out of the room peacefully. As soon as those guards had you off that compound it would have been all over for you."
I powered up the control console in front of my chair. "Weren't you worried about ground defenses before coming down here?"
Garrett smiled. "That's the beauty of the Alliance right now. There aren't any ground defenses anywhere. But I bet there will be after this. Besides, who needs ground defenses when you have a dozen destroyers sitting up in orbit and another half dozen on the ground. None of which are ready for any action. I actually feel a little bad about what's going to happen to their captains for the lack of preparation. I'm sure they will be heading through with the next portal opening."
"How did you know I would get out of that limo?" I said.
Garrett replied, "That was the one thing I wasn't certain of. If you had gotten into a brawl back there and I had to go in and get you, we would have been dodging ion bolts right about now. As I expected, you got out of there in a hurry."
I leaned back in my chair. "Slow Humans. The distraction of your ship gave me ample time to act."
I opened a comm channel to SS241. "We need to contact everyone in Omega. Harden knows about them and what we've been doing."
Garrett replied, "I heard."
Layda answered. "Knog? How did it go? Did they listen to what you had to say?"
I shook my head. "No, and they know about you and the Omega sector. Have an engineer go and shut down the portal gate coming into SS241 immediately. You'll have Alliance forces streaming through it if you don't. I would suggest you take what you can and clear all of your people out of there right now. Without the portal they will have a security contingent coming in from the next sector, probably in the next few days. Get out and take your people to Effica, and don't tell anyone where you are going until
after you have passed comm range. Have Jallis do the same, as they will be working their way over to him as well.
"Oh, and go into the museum room where Marcos kept his treasures. Box up the AMP artifacts and bring them to Effica with you. There are some extremely important items in there that we may need."
Layda sighed. "Aren't you the bringer of good news. I'll call in a few favors from freighter captains I know. We'll probably be moving close to a thousand people out of here. It will take at least half a day to coordinate that. I'll move the credits available that exceed what the tax logs say we have. It will take them some time to trace any of that down and we will have moved it elsewhere by then."
I looked into the camera. "How many credits are we talking? We will have to buy food and supplies to last for a good while. Feeding a thousand people will be expensive."
Layda smiled. "At the moment we have about one hundred fifty million in excess. That number is growing by close to a million a day now."
Garrett remarked, "What? How much?"
I cut in. "Transfer what you have. And see if you can divert incoming funds from some of those mines to the banks on Dallex. We can divert those funds again when we reach Effica. Call in a few favors from some of the governors you trust and make it worth their while. If we work this right, we might be able to keep a credit stream flowing as we are trying to figure things out. I know you have a lot to do, so get after it. We'll be in touch again as we are able."
The comm went silent as I switched to a new channel. "Commander Rika, I have new orders for you. I need you to take every armed ship in our fleet and every soldier with a blaster and head to Effica. Do not reveal to anyone where you are going until you are out of comm range with Dallex. When you arrive, you will be under the command of Layda Tullis. You are to keep her and her people secure from capture by the Alliance until you hear differently from me."
The commander replied, "I will follow your commands, my Emperor."
I turned to Garrett. "I don't think I'll ever get used to that."
I switched channels again. "Commissioner Bolis, construct a team of your top scientists and engineers and secure whatever computer and lab equipment you can move in the next two days. Commander Rika will be moving out with a fleet. I want you to have your teams and equipment ready for when he moves out.
"This is a top priority, and it must be done discreetly. The fewer who know that you are going somewhere the better. If you must, spread around a story of a mission to a newly discovered planet on the edge of the Omega sector. Don't offer any further explanation. It's critical that you move as much as you can. You will be heading to Effica, and we will need to build and maintain an infrastructure that will support, let's say fifty thousand people. You have your orders, Commissioner. Please carry them out with haste."
Garrett nodded. "Sounds like you are building a colony there."
I half smiled in response as I opened a new comm channel to the commissioner of agriculture. If we were going to be living on Effica, we would need food for the long term. The commissioner's instructions were along the same lines as those given the commissioner of technology. Several more comm calls were placed before we moved out of comm range of Alpha Prime.
A run back to the portal gate was our first course of business. We would have to make use of the Jess's stealth capability to get close enough to the gate to see what we would be up against. Three days later we were parked just inside our maximum visual range.
Garrett winced. "That's fifteen of those destroyers there now. I don't think we'll be able to get near that place anytime soon. If they widen their patrol patterns by much, we won't be able to gather any information at all."
I replied, "I think we need to return to Omega. We need time to come up with a plan and we will need more resources than the Jess can offer."
After setting a series of waypoints that would take us to our next destination, Garrett leaned back in his chair. "So we're headed back to Effica. I can't say that I am crazy about that call."
Go commented, "I don't know, I think Omega might be the best place for us right now."
I replied, "We don't have much of a choice. We can't go back through the portal until we have the means to take control of it. We could take the rest of the Talisan fleet, but I don't want war."
Garrett sat forward. "You don't want war? You already have war! Harden Salton just conscripted your entire species to go off and fight, just to expand his own empire! He has already declared war on you and me. I think I might reconsider that line of reasoning. You are not still for the New Alliance are you?"
I shook my head. "While I desperately want to go back through that portal, I don't want to kill innocents who are only in the New Alliance military because that is their job. These are people's lives we are dealing with, normal people who have families of their own."
Garrett huffed. "I don't know if they are normal or not. For all we know they are the worst, brutal thugs Harden could line up. I think you will have to get over your moral dilemma and realize that you might have to kill a few to save the rest. That's your wife and your kids out there. If it was me, I'd be going on a rampage right about now."
"Nevertheless," I replied. "I won't commit to any hostilities until forced to do so. We managed to open the gate without injury to anyone before, we can do it again."
Garrett leaned toward me, placing his hand on my shoulder. "I hope you're right, but right now I don't see that as much of a possibility."
Go joined the conversation. "You know, if we could find the helmet to that AMP battle-suit, I could just float into that portal structure and enable the gate. They would never know what happened."
I nodded. "I wish that were possible, but we don't have the helmet and we don't know how to get in touch with the trader who delivered the suit to Garrett."
Garrett thought for a moment before holding up his hand. "Hang on, we might just have that information. The Jess constantly records all signals. If that trader had a transponder, we should have a recording of it. We might track him back from there. The transponder would have been registered to somewhere."
Garrett swiped at several holo-screens until he had a listing of signal recordings for the day in question.
I asked, "You have records going that far back?"
Garrett nodded. "The memory stores on this ship are immense. Some universities would be thrilled to have as much. Here, it looks like we captured a signal, and we have a code. He turned his transponder off before the exchange, but he was still within range of the Jess's sensors when he did so. Registry is out of Novesta. When we get settled at Effica, we can try to track him down starting there."
Go looked over Garrett's shoulder at the display. "If you are trading in stolen goods, why would you have a transponder turned on at all?"
I replied, "I don't think this suit was necessarily stolen. It could have been a sale from someone's private collection. If we can find out where it came from, we might find the helmet we need as well."
The Grumar, Gasau Mont, watched and listened to our conversations as we flew. He was quiet and cooperative. The Green seethed with anger at every interaction with his captors. Go was given the task of carrying in food. After a close encounter with the Green, the food was set on the deck and slid over to the Grotus. With some effort, we managed to keep the Grumar from his sight. The Grotus was no longer giving up information.
The ride to Effica was long and uneventful. Every effort was made to stay out of heavily-traveled areas. The stealth abilities of the Jess allowed close passage to colonies and security stations alike. Without a transponder, we were nearly impossible to detect.
As a visual image of the planet began to grow in our viewports, a comm channel was opened.
"Layda," Garrett said, "we should be arriving in a few minutes. Where did you set up the colony?"
Layda replied, "We are right downtown in the old capital of Dostron. We have power, water, ample food supplies, and the Talisan are working like mad to get the
ir labs and farming stations set up. There are several hundred thousand Feldons who have settled in and around Monari, about five hundred kilometers from here.
"Effica is in the Omega registries as a new Feldon colony, so we should have decent cover for a while. We created a listing of fictitious names and loaded them into the data stores on SS241. If they check any of us, we have been here for at least six months. Jallis recorded the same names on Krakus. The Feldon leadership that was previously on SS241 will appear to have fled to elsewhere. Several governors have also been extremely helpful in getting us setup for supplies. They are being paid handsomely, but much of what they have offered was not asked for."
I replied, "What of Jallis? Was he able to make it there?"
Layda smiled. "He's here. We've been enjoying each other’s company during the few moments of rest we've managed. Together we have everything moving forward at a much faster pace than I expected. I'm the organized one, and he's the diplomatic one. Those governors I was speaking of, they have become fast friends with Jallis. He has their respect. And, Knog, we look forward to seeing you when you arrive."
At the journey's end, we landed in Dostron. I removed the suit helmet and set it on the floor beside my seat. I stood and walked through the cabin and down the ramp, with the Grumar in front of me. The Green would stay confined in Garrett's cabin until a determination of his fate could be made. His repeated daily threats to Go had worn thin.
It felt good to be on the ground, to have a sun shining on my face. The temperatures at the old capital city were moderate year-round. The fields surrounding the former capital were fertile. If not for the low annual rainfall, I was certain the city would be surrounded by lush green jungle. As it was, fields of grass dominated the landscape.
Layda came out to greet us with a hug. Jallis followed behind her.
Jallis held out his hand. "Knog, welcome back. I wondered how long it would be before the New Alliance caught up with us. Layda had slowly been increasing our reported tax revenues. We had hoped that would be enough for them to leave us alone."
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