5231

The year was 5231. All sentimentality for the home planet of the human race had since fled from the hearts of her children. Earth had long ago been strip-mined clean of anything useful, and left as a molten core of refuse. Likewise, humanity had spread the disease of its presence beyond its home, leaving the first remnants of a shattered solar system in its wake, a mausoleum that would be mirrored thousands of times over. Signs of humankind permeated the Milky Way galaxy, and ancient races were beginning to take notice.

The Ren, overlords of all other sentient races in the galaxy, had decided that humanity was no longer worth its cost. They considered the fact that humankind now used the world that had been granted to them in their earliest days as a trash heap to be a considerable insult.

Now, dozens of other worlds were being given similar treatment, and hundreds more were being threatened by humankind. The Ren knew that they had to put a stop to this before the territories of their constituents were compromised; the Ren were a race notorious for the fury that they could bring if their meticulously-organized plans were disrupted. Now was one such time.

Across the galaxy, military units long held in reserve were being re-activated and geared up for an assault, an arrow-shaped offensive designed to drive humanity from any and all important planets and scatter them to the solar winds.

Darik`a stood before the command viewport of Peace and Order, gazing out across the Stamotian nebulae and admiring their beauty. There was no way they wouldn’t be; the finest artists amongst his people had painstakingly designed them to be as such, and then scattered the stellar gases in such a way that the rays of the system’s sun caught them just right, brilliantly coloring them.

Darik`a opened and closed the protective membranes over his eyes several times, the universal sign amongst Ren of withheld distress.

The tendrils lining his spine relaxed against his back, indicating to any observers that he was at ease. Within, however, Darik`a was a torrent of thought and emotion.

For the first time in eons, his people would be going to war.

Massive warships were being recalled from the farthest reaches of the galaxy to the throne-planet Va-Nar, homeworld of the Ren. Already, the press corporations of a thousand solar systems were deeming the massive military buildup “The Rearmament”.

It had been ages since the overlords of the galaxy, the noble Ren, had felt themselves unsafe. Even so, their military forces were well-armed, well-trained, and well-deployed throughout the galaxy.

Lyle Sanders was not a drug addict forced into the habit because he lived in a bad neighborhood, or because he was depressed, or because it was the only way he could make money. There was just nothing else to fuckin’ do on the Fuchsia Dream.

The attendant gig wasn’t so bad, really; punching ticket after ticket, serving watered-down drinks to whiny children, then sitting back and waiting for something to do – anything, man. Anything.

Sure, the other flight attendants knew. He knew they knew, but as long as he didn’t fuck up and didn’t do anything wrong, who cared? It wasn’t like most of them weren’t shooting up themselves.

That was a course he plotted for himself, though. There was really no room to move up in Consolidated Intergalactic Transport services, but at least he had some job security. And a girlfriend, even if only in name. You certainly wouldn’t prove yourself a good psychologist by pointing out that theirs was hardly a relationship – they were both addicts, who happened to have both reached the peak of their substance-induced sex drives one day and ended up occupying one of the unoccupied bathrooms for a few minutes together.

Lorraine really wasn’t much to look at. Haggard, you could say. Didn’t really take good care of her long brown hair or pale skin, didn’t take too much pride in her appearance. Low self-esteem was probably what put her in the needle’s frigid embrace.

Emptily she repeated to herself that she was her own woman, that this whole drug thing was just temporary, to relieve the boredom of serving on the crappiest space liner in the galaxy. Just as empty were her self-assurances that Lyle was in love with her, though she couldn’t have known.

He was a convincing liar.

An exhilarated cough and a smile of self-satisfaction heralded the arrival of something new but familiar into Lyle’s bloodstream, the same batch of ice he’d been shooting up with since they’d last made port. He flexed and contracted his hand, his godlike strength coming back to him.

A silent nod of acknowledgement from him, a loosening of the belt, and the suppression of a heartfelt whoop later, Lyle was on his feet and out the door, prowling the corridors of the Fuchsia Dream. Hunching forward slightly, the Beast formerly known as Lyle eyed passersby beneath a furrowed brow, drawing more than a few frightened stares.

Hours later, Lyle sat in the infirmary. White-hot tendrils of agony shot through the veins in his arm as the drugs administered by the nurse immediately brought him down from his high. If leather straps hadn’t bound his arms to the table, he would have reached out and killed her.

A mountainous figure of a man filled the doorway; the Captain. Loping strides conveyed Cap’n Theodos to Lyle’s side, disappointment infecting those deep green eyes as they gazed into him. Lyle turned away; thinking that he’d somehow let the Captain down was more painful than having to face the man’s rage.

“You’re lucky,” Captain Theodos said quietly. “You could have died. Or been permanently incapacitated. Or, worse, offended one of the passengers, in which case I’d have been forced to let you go.”

The Captain’s masked compliment caught in Lyle’s throat, keeping him from speaking. Not that he could have said anything of substance, anyway.

“You do good work, son,” Theodos continued “That’s the only reason I’m not letting you go. I see that you’ve got a life ahead of you…and I’d be real sad if that life involved whatever it is that we just had to bring you down from.”

A curt nod was all Lyle could manage. Hell, what did you say to something like that? Nothing that wouldn’t end up in Lyle looking dumber than he already did, and that definitely wasn’t what he wanted.

Sensing that the restrained attendant before him was at a loss for words, Captain Theodos placed a hand on Lyle’s shoulder.

“You’ll do fine, my boy,” he said before turning on his heel and striding from the infirmary, leaving Lyle to his thoughts. He shut his eyes tight and laid back, contemplating the rather one-sided exchange that had just taken place.

When Lyle again opened his eyes, they met Lorraine’s. She was straddling him, but being careful to let most of her weight rest on the bed; he presumed that he’d fallen unconscious, and Lorraine had come to take him back to his quarters.

“Smooth work there, slick, getting caught by the Captain and all. Vomiting on his shoes was a particularly nice touch,” she rasped, a bit of a mischievous grin crossing her lips as she imparted this knowledge to Lyle.

He groaned, now realizing how he’d been caught…and why. A faint memory of the stench of vomit brought him back to the instant when his lunch had decided that it matched the Captain’s boots better than his stomach.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Nor`od`un spread his mouth-tendrils in the Ren approximation of a smile. “Slipstream capacitors operating at optimal efficiency, Captain,” his engineering subordinate reported.

“Keep me posted,” he replied, allowing the needless gesture to fade from his visage. The Ren were supposed to have become a race entirely devoted to the efficient conveyance of ideas, having shunned the theatrical and unnecessary practice of facial expression several ages ago.

Artistic expression, poetic license, even the teachings of literature were simply abandoned, not even acknowledged by the Ren people as a whole, deemed unnecessary and archaic. Automated databanks containing all of the objective knowledge possessed by the Ren were all the reading that their posterity needed, in their estimation.

Nor`od`un sighed, his mind wandering once more. His ship, Fortune’s Favorite, while only a Corvette -- a tadpole amongst sharks -- packed a few surprises of her own. More than likely, it was well beyond a match for any human opposition it would encounter out here on the border worlds of human civilization.