by Sean Robins
“Why didn’t you use the same tactic when the enemy was occupying your planet?” asked Ella.
“Because, by the time they started landing, they had already destroyed our fleet and had complete air superiority. Maada would have slaughtered us if we tried then.”
“And he isn’t going to do it this time because?” I don’t know why I asked. I already knew the answer.
“This is where you come in,” answered Tarq. “The fleet will engage the Xortaags. Do not under any circumstances let them come to the help of their ground forces. After we recapture the planet, they might lose hope and surrender, given that they have nowhere to go.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “Just like Operation Royalty, we’re planning to use the planet’s population to mount a surprise attack on the Xortaags on the ground while the fleet is fighting them in the sky?”
“Probably in space this time but, essentially, yes.”
I chuckled bitterly. “Can we be any more Star Wars?”
Tarq gave a questioning look to my friends.
“What?” said Oksana. “Since when am I supposed to understand what Jim is talking about?”
Kurt smiled. “I think I understood that one.”
“Star Wars movies are notorious for using the same plot over and over again,” I explained. “For example, they used to have a Death Star with a ridiculously obvious weak point in every other film.”
“And people still paid money to watch these movies?” asked Ella, bemused.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Beats me. I’m a Trek fan.”
“Didn’t you force me to binge-watch all the Star Wars movies with you?” asked Kurt.
I shrugged. “They’re classics. Everyone must watch them once.”
Kurt looked thoughtful. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t see the Akakies beating the Xortaags, under hypnosis and a thousand-to-one or not.”
“And I want to add, using the same plot might work in the movies, but it won’t work in real life,” I said, playing with my wedding ring. “Especially given the fact that the last time, we were lucky to walk away with our lives.”
“Do you have a better idea?” asked Tarq.
Both Kurt and I shook our heads.
“So get off my back and get on with the program.”
Barook looked at him with admiration. “You are getting really good at this.”
“You have learned a lot of idioms yourself,” Tarq told him. “Go ahead. Use the one you told me recently.
Barook turned to us, pretended he was holding a shotgun, and with an exaggerated deep voice said, “I am cocked and loaded.”
Thank God for Tarq. With all the talk of doom and gloom, I really needed a laugh.
“Given that the alternative is to do nothing and wait until the Xortaags show up with our weapons and kill everyone, I suggest we move forward with my plan,” said Tarq.
I exchanged a look with Kurt and shrugged. Tarq was right. Plus, this time, there were fourteen thousand of us to their eighteen. We’d already beaten much worse odds.
“We have another problem,” said Tarq. “You remember I said Mushgaana, and in fact, all members of the royal family can read people’s mind from a distance? Guess where he is staying these days.”
“In the presidential palace,” Kurt said immediately.
Tarq nodded.
I threw my hands in the air. “Of course he is, because otherwise this would’ve been too easy.”
“The palace is a pretty big place, but we cannot risk running into him and exposing the whole mission, so we have come up with this.” Tarq flicked his wrist, and an image of a metal headband appeared. “This device masks your brainwaves and imitates ours, so if Mushgaana or anyone else—one of his brothers is on Kanoor too—tries to read your mind, they will think you are an Akakie.”
“So we’re going down as Akakies? Wearing a hologram, I guess?” asked Oksana. “Won’t it be easier to go as Xortaags as we have always done? This device can’t imitate Xortaag brainwaves?”
“It can, but it will not help us. It can generate brainwaves but not actual thoughts or memories, so if Mushgaana looks at you and sees he cannot find anything beyond the most basic brain patterns, he will get suspicious. On the other hand, thanks to MICI, he cannot read Akakie minds anyway, so we will not have an issue there.”
“So, if the team is going down as Akakies, this means we can finally see your true form, right?” I asked.
“No. Only Xornaa and the Marines.”
“Xornaa is a Marine,” said Kurt.
The Xortaag woman beamed and bowed her head to him. I cringed just a tad. I still didn’t like that woman even though she’d save my life.
“Make sure you take a photo of him,” I told Kurt.
“You really have to get your priorities straight,” he responded.
“Also, this might be slightly irrelevant, but we have some bad news,” said Tarq. “We have lost a planet.”
Kurt raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Besides us and the Xortaags, there are twelve other species with space-travel capabilities. There used to be more, but Maada and Mushgaana killed off a bunch of them. One of these species was called the Latoors. Their planet suddenly went dark a few days ago. When we sent a ship to investigate, we found out they were gone. An asteroid had hit their planet.”
I frowned. “Is that even possible?”
“It should not have been. They had a huge fleet. They should not have had any problems vaporizing an approaching asteroid, and if they had, they could have simply asked for help from us. More worryingly, when our ship scanned the area, they found evidence of what looked like a battle. Debris left from destroyed ships and energy weapon signature, but surprisingly, only from the Latoors. We do not have a clue as to what has happened.”
“We can safely conclude that the enemy fleet, if there indeed was one, was frighteningly strong,” added Barook. “The Latoors had more than twenty thousand ships, and they were completely wiped out.”
I could feel the onset of a headache. “Wait a minute. You are telling us there’s an unknown enemy out there, one that doesn’t even try to occupy and colonize other planets but drops freaking asteroids on them?”
“It is a possibility,” said Tarq.
Kurt and Oksana exchanged a worried look.
This is just great.
“Why are you so calm?” asked Venom. “It sounds like the perfect time to panic.”
It probably was, but this new threat felt kind of abstract, while the danger the Xortaags posed was very real and immediate, and crying over a dead species made no sense while our own people faced extinction. I decided I needed some time to wrap my mind around the story Tarq had told us—after we dealt with Maada, hopefully once and for all. Or at least until another clone of him showed up.
“And I thought the Xortaags were bad,” said Oksana.
“Have you noticed we’ve become desensitized towards this sort of thing?” Ella asked. “We just heard a whole planet was destroyed, and our reaction is meh. There was a time I’d cry if I heard an animal species went extinct on Earth or the rainforest was on fire.”
“For one thing, we might all get killed in a few days—”
“Three days, to be exact.” Tarq, ever so helpful, interrupted me. “We will reach Kanoor in three days.”
“So from our perspective, this is a moot point,” I continued, “and for another, we’ve blown up a plant ourselves. That sort of thing is bound to harden your heart.”
“You’re going to throw that in our faces for the rest of our lives, aren’t you?” asked Kurt.
“You can count on it,” I answered.
“Let me emphasize that we are just guessing,” said Tarq. “There is no species in the galaxy with the capability of doing something like this. If there were, we would have already known about them. Moreover, why would anyone go through the trouble of destroying a planet at the edge of the galaxy t
hat offers no strategic benefit at all?”
“For all we know, this could be some sort of natural disaster,” added Barook. “Or maybe a collective suicide. It is not unprecedented, and at least this theory explains why all communications from Mantux suddenly stopped and there were energy signatures and debris only from the Latoor ships.”
“Are you saying all the Latoors decided to go ahead and kill themselves?” Kurt asked incredulously.
“It makes about as much sense as a military attack,” Barook responded.
I couldn’t decide which one was scarier: a natural disaster that destroyed a whole planet, an unknown and invisible enemy fleet no one had heard of, or a planet-wide suicide pact.
Oksana shrugged. “Let’s focus on the operation at hand. If we survive this, we can investigate this new situation later.”
“Speaking of which, have you chosen a name for the operation?” I asked Tarq. “And, for the love of God, don’t call it Operation Free Kanoor.”
Tarq grinned and rubbed his hands together. “No, I have the perfect name for this one: Operation Endgame.”
Kurt chuckled.
I gave Tarq a sideways look.
“You got it?” he asked. “Because the game ends if we fail here. The Xortaags will enslave the whole galaxy and nothing can be done about it.”
I rubbed my temples. “Yeah, we got it. Trust me.”
After the meeting, and while everyone else was leaving the briefing room, Ella asked me, “Can I please have a word?”
“By all means. What’s on your mind?”
“Given that the Xortaag fleet has four thousand more ships than ours, and Invincible is equipped with a powerful array of heavy weaponry, I request that we join the battle.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We’re going to need Invincible’s CIC to coordinate our attack. Plus, you know starships are very vulnerable to Xortaag space fighters. They obliterated Akakie starships more or less with ease.”
“Akakie starships.” She held up her chin. “With Akakie crew. Invincible is part of Earth fleet with a human crew. Apples and oranges. We’ve run simulations and I’m confident we can hold our own and cause some damage. As for coordinating the attack, the Akakies can do it from one of their starships.”
I trusted her judgment. She knew more about running a starship than I did. Still, I couldn’t put her ship and crew on the frontline without due consideration. “Let me have a look at the simulations, and I’ll let you know.”
She nodded and stood up to leave. “Oh, I almost forgot. We have a new ensign on the bridge, and she asked me to say hello to you. Her name is Lilly Johnson.”
“Lilly’s here? How did she pull that off?”
“Apparently, her father was a friend of Tarq’s. There was also mention of her cashing in on the fact that her father had saved humanity.”
“OK, but a word of advice. Watch over that girl. If anything happens to her, you’ll have a pissed-off Canadian ghost to deal with.”
Mushgaana, sitting in his new office in Kanoor’s presidential palace, sent a telepathic message for his brother. Polvaar, can you come and see me for a minute?
“What do you want?” answered Polvaar. “You can tell me now.”
Face-to-face, if you please.
Being a prince, Mushgaana was no stranger to luxury, but the presidential palace here was something else. It looked as if everything was covered with gold. It was amazing how rich this planet was, and not only on financial terms. The Xortaag scientists were astonished at the wealth of science and technology they had already found on Kanoor, and they had not even scratched the surface yet. He should have come here instead of attacking Earth, as he had originally planned. He wondered what compelled him to change his mind. That one lapse in judgment had cost them dearly.
Mushgaana smiled when he remembered how furious Maada was when he found out they were going to invade Earth instead of Kanoor. He should have listened to the general. How many times had he proved to have better judgment?
It was a shame his little scheme to control Earth’s new president had failed. According to the reports he had received, it had initially worked: the two members of the royal family he had sent to Earth had brought the president, a weak and stupid man, under their control. But the Kingslayer had interfered again. That man had been a thorn in their side for a long time now. Mushgaana decided he had to do something about it once they were done here.
He heard Polvaar’s “voice” in his mind before his brother walked through the door. “You wanted to see me, brother?”
Yes, thought Mushgaana. Would you please take a seat?
Polvaar sat down, watching him closely.
It has come to my attention that you challenged General Maada during our attack on Kanoor. I advise you to make sure this never happens again. The general does not tolerate insubordination.
Polvaar did not answer. He just sat there and stared. His intense eye contact was beginning to unnerve Mushgaana.
I also wanted to congratulate you on both the courage and the skill you showed during the battle, continued Mushgaana.
That comment seemed to have surprised Polvaar. He nodded, but still said nothing.
Here is the thing: I harbor no ill will towards you and the rest of my brothers. On the contrary, I grew up looking up to you guys. You were my heroes. And I honestly think I have done nothing to deserve the animosity you show me. What do you say we put our differences aside and join hands in guiding the Xortaag kingdom to glorious victory?
Polvaar did not hesitate for even a moment. He stood and looked down at Mushgaana. “I will think about it.” Then he turned and left the room.
Mushgaana’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed sadly. In his brother’s eyes, he had seen what had always been there: contempt, because Mushgaana was much shorter and smaller than his brothers, and hatred, because despite his physical disadvantages, he had achieved glory on a level his brothers could only dream of. There was no overcoming the animosity his brothers had built up for decades.
Well, you will always have the general.
His PDD buzzed. It was Maada. The crown prince reached out with his mind and found the general’s. Speak of the devil.
“What?”
An English expression I picked up on Earth. How can I help you, General?
“We are ready here.”
Is this really necessary? Do you think the humans have any chance of getting Kanoor back?
“A few months ago I would have laughed at the idea,” said Maada. “But we still do not know how they defeated us on Earth, and nobody on Kanoor seems to know either. I think having a contingency plan is prudent.”
I hope you are wrong. Please convey my regards to the commander of the convoy and send them.
“I will, Your Highness.”
“A toast,” I said.
We’d gathered in the mess to do our traditional last-dinner-tomorrow-we-will-dine-in-hell routine. Tarq and Barook had joined us too, and for the first time in history, a Xortaag.
Plus someone new.
Kurt had entered the mess accompanied by a thin, pretty brunet whom he’d introduced as Patricia. She wore an engineer’s blue uniform and said her shift had just ended. She looked like a kind woman (I was a really good judge of character, especially when it came to women), which was probably exactly what Kurt needed.
“I can’t drink,” said Xornaa. “It messes with my abilities, and I need to be super sharp tomorrow.”
“So you aren’t perfect, after all,” said Oksana.
Xornaa gave her a questioning look.
I raised my glass. “To saving the galaxy. Again.”
“And hopefully for the last time,” added Kurt.
“First time for me,” said Patricia, patting Kurt’s arm.
I gulped down my drink. “I doubt it, because apparently the Xortaags can simply clone Maada and send him back.”
“Here is a thought,” said Oksana. “Why don’t they make a thousand clones of him? Can you imag
ine a fleet of Maada pilots?”
I shuddered at the image.
Xornaa pointedly cleared her throat. “I’ll share a secret with you if you don’t ask me how I know.”
We all looked at her.
She continued, “They can’t make any more clones of him. They’d found the cloning machine on another planet, and they somehow broke it. Or it ran out of energy or raw material or whatever.”
“So how do you know?” I asked.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m a spy. I still have sources on Tangaar.”
“So if we kill him, he stays dead?” I asked. “Great. Let’s go kill him properly this time.”
“At any rate, a decisive victory tomorrow means we will not hear from the Xortaags for a while,” said Tarq. “They cannot possibly have more than a few thousand ships left to defend their home planet. If we finally manage to unite the rest of the galaxy, we might even be able to invade Tangaar and put an end to this, once and for all.”
“Any chance of that happening?” Kurt asked.
“After everything that has happened, people still think if they stay out of the Xortaags’ way, they will be safe,” Tarq scoffed. “That said, the story I told you about the Latoors has freaked out everyone, and for the first time ever, there is serious talk of an alliance against that unknown enemy, if in fact there is one.”
“Any clue who the enemy actually is?” I asked.
Tarq looked at Barook, who answered, “No. Nothing. No energy signatures. No debris. It is like they appeared out of nowhere, destroyed a whole planet with magic, and disappeared.”
“Aliens who can do magic,” I said. “Exactly what we needed.”
