First Immortals Ch. 13

From the moment that the ship had entered our solar system I had ordered the energy weapons to be assembled and prepared for use, and when the alien ray hit our planet we were just two hours away from having the first fully armed Stellar 2's ready. Unfortunately, according to the scientists, at the rate of depletion that was occurring our atmosphere would become unable to support life about an hour before our ships could reach the Parsks and engage.

I did the only thing I could think of, and scrambled every available aircraft with adaptable climate control on the planet. It was touch and go, but with all of them regenerating oxygen it soon appeared that we might have slowed the degradation down enough to engage, but only just.

Because of the importance of my presence in the command centre I didn't fly one of the Stellar 2's myself, although I really wanted to, so I had to just watch anxiously as the first of our elite pilots lit up their drives and shot toward the enemy to take on the unknown foe.

As soon as the Stellars left Earth I saw the alien ship launching a hundred or so smaller ships. I guessed these were fighters that were there to protect the mother ship. Unfortunately, the Parsks hadn't made the same mistake as the YW's in that regard.

As the first of our Stellars approached, the enemy fighters launched something similar to the YW's tumbling torpedoes and we lost four of our six leading ships to them, and two of the following wave of ten, leaving us with an attack force of ten craft to an estimated one hundred. Our next wave was at least five minutes behind, and with the rate at which our atmosphere was crumbling it was doubtful that they would be able to engage the Parsk mother ship in time.

Knowing the immediate danger to Earth one of our fourth wave pilots deliberately flew into the beam from the Parsk ship, but his craft exploded immediately without disturbing the beam.

Meanwhile our first ships had entered the area guarded by the Parsk fighters, and our new energy weapons lit up for the first time. This totally changed the battle as one by one the Parsk fighters exploded, and for a brief buoyant moment it looked like it would be all over in seconds. Unfortunately, the remaining Parsk fighters then created a circular formation and then released another volley of tumbling torpedoes creating further mayhem in our fleet. When the debris cleared, we had just two craft from the first two waves that had managed to get in between the Parsk fighters and their mother ship, and about twenty of the tumbling torpedoes were rapidly closing in on them.

The two A5K's were fired from maximum range in the direction of the Parsk mother ship, and there was a brief flash as they struck and then both of the Stellars were hit and destroyed.

The beam to our atmosphere flickered briefly, and then re-engaged, and we looked at each other in horror, knowing that within minutes everyone on Earth would die.

Then the beam slowly moved away from us. It was still at full strength but the Parsk mother ship was rolling and the aiming mechanism for the beam appeared to have been damaged.

A couple of minutes later our next wave of Stellars reached the Parsk fighters, and they seemed to have used all of their tumbling torpedoes, so they opted to try and ram our ships. Only two made contact before another five Stellars got through their formation and headed toward the Parsk mother ship, which was trying desperately to escape, but which now appeared to have limited directional control.

Five minutes later the A5K's had done their job, and the Parsk mothership was obliterated in a huge series of explosions. Our surviving Stellars ruthlessly chased down and destroyed all of the remaining Parsk fighters.

As suddenly as the Parsk's attack had started it finished, and we had won. There was subdued celebration in the control room, the celebration because we had won the battle, and subdued because we had just lost nineteen of our top pilots.

Rickson was ecstatic, because we had won the battle with minimal losses, and he immediately went to air with an announcement, but it didn't have a lot of impact. The war had been so short, and so distant, that the news services hadn't really got a handle on what was happening until it was all over. This lead most of the population to think it hadn't been real and most of the people I spoke to subsequently didn't recognise just how serious the situation had been.

I found it to be quite ironic. If we hadn't been prepared our entire planet would have died but, because we were prepared and we had dealt with it quickly, nobody really noticed.

There were a lot of 'I told you so' situations to deal with when we announced the reissue of the energy weapons, and we changed the blocker on every civilian who got one to not prevent them from killing aggressive aliens with them.

Of course, we now waited nervously for the Eriguons to respond to the fact that we had used the weapons that they had told us were banned. It was hard to plan our course of action beyond deciding that we would make a simple statement that we had been informed by another alien race that they weren't really banned. After that, I suggested, it was just a case of follow my lead. I still couldn't advertise the fact that I could understand the telepathy, so everyone just thought it was me making a decision because I was the boss.

I had a meeting of my senior officers, the ones who were likely to be taken to the Eriguon ship when they did come calling, and I told them that they should try to pretty much live in the MSU until the situation with the Eriguons was resolved. They couldn't be any use to me if they weren't in them when they were transported. I lead by example, and it was a very uncomfortable time as we waited for the inevitable angry summons.

Commandant Fressi invited me to a meeting, which he assured me was to impart good news, so we had lunch together. We did not get the opportunity to actually talk business until after we had eaten, and when the plates had cleared Fressi took a sip of his cognac and smiled.

"Commander, I am very pleased to say that the complaint against you has just been withdrawn, and in light of that the police department has decided to withdraw the charges laid." That was unexpected.

"I am surprised," I replied, "but happy of course. What happened?" Fressi grinned.

"If I tell you something, can I trust that it will be in confidence?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Your friend Mrs LeBahn was quite angry with the man who pushed her daughter to make the complaint, and she er... demanded that we look into some, um... irregularities in his history. She was remarkably well informed."

"I see," I said. I made a mental note that I would have to thank her.

"It would appear that he has been in contravention of the mind control clause of the religious extremists act for some time, and he is currently in custody awaiting trial."

"Wow," I hadn't expected that. I knew of the religious extremist act, which had been introduced to stop criminals who were hiding behind faith, but I wasn't all that familiar with the mind control clause except for the fact that it was designed to bring to justice those who incited others to perform illegal acts by leveraging their devotion. That was made a capital punishment offence, and I knew it had been particularly effective in stopping the large numbers of radical clerics who were recruiting and grooming impressionable youngsters for terrorism. Once the law had been introduced it just took a few undercover operatives to pretty much close down that particular recruiting path.

"So, the young lady concerned has decided to remove herself from this man's influence and, as a part of that, she has had a change of heart in regard to the charges." I realised that I had plenty to thank Anna for.

"Thank you for following up the information Commandant," I said and he grinned ruefully.

"I must admit that it did not seem to be solid enough when it was initially presented to me, but Mrs LeBahn can be very persuasive when she tries." I nodded my agreement.

"She is a very strong person," I observed.

"Um, Commander Scabbard, I wonder if I may ask a delicate question?" Fressi asked nervously.

"Go ahead," I replied, guessing where this might be going.

"I am... unsure... of the nature of your... um... relationship with Mrs LeBahn..." His voice trailed off and I decided to take pity on him.

"Anna and I are close friends, but we are not in a relationship," I explained. "If you wish to call on her you have my blessing." Fressi sighed in relief.

"Thank you."

I did go and see Anna to thank her, and we ended up spending the night together. Epsilon was not very friendly, but she was a lot less angry with me by then. It took her a while, but a few months later I was able to say that I wasn't just Epsilon's first man, I was also her second. It took a lot of patience and preparation, but she absolutely loved it.

We had two weeks of anxious waiting before the Eriguons finally arrived, and when they did it appeared that we had been taken to a different ship. About forty of us were transported that time, and we ended up in a large hanger that had three strange looking vessels in it. Again, we were frozen on arrival, but this time they were already arguing furiously as I arrived.

Once again, I will write their telepathic thoughts as speech, and again I was the only person from Earth who could understand them.

"... I still say we should just wipe them out now," one was 'saying'.

"No, we should wait for the battleship, it will be here in three yoins," another replied. Some quick maths told me we had about eleven hours before their backup arrived.

"We have their leaders, without them their people will just give up," said the one I saw as the troublemaker.

"We wait," the other said firmly, "I will release them now."

The freeze relaxed and words were beamed onto a wall.

'Why have you used prohibited weapons?'

'We have been told by another race that they are not prohibited,' I answered.

"That's it," the troublemaker said, "they have found out, I am killing him." We were suddenly frozen again.

"Wait," the other one who was communicating said, but still the troublemaker advanced toward me so I hit him with the MSU. He exploded, and as he did the freeze disappeared.

In retrospect, I should have considered the wording of my commands better. As it was the moment that the first Eriguon was hit by my MSU and we were unfrozen, everyone else wearing an MSU opened fire. I can't blame them, I had said to follow my lead and I had just killed one of the aliens.

Within ten seconds all of the aliens in the area had been eliminated, and apart from some fleeting feelings of panic there had been no message out. There had been at least fifty of them in the room we were in.

There was a long pause after the last of the Eriguons died.

"What the fuck just happened?" Rickson eventually asked, as fragments of Eriguon dripped off him.

"The one moving toward me was about to kill me, so I eliminated him. After that my team just followed my example as per my orders." I turned around to look at the people who had been transported.

"That was really well done, but we need to keep it up. They have decided to attack and destroy Earth." The brief expressions of jubilation following our victorious contact were replaced by looks of anger and determination. That was good; we all needed to be at the top of our game.

"OK, so now what?" Rickson asked.

"We need to secure this ship quickly, their battleship arrives in less than twelve hours, and we have to have the upper hand when it arrives," I replied.

"Let's go," Rickson said, and we went exploring.

I had a force of twenty-four military personnel out of which only one had been transported while he was not wearing his MSU, so we broke into three groups of six, all lead by people who had been able to make eye movements when they were frozen. The remaining troops were assigned to guard Rickson and the other non-military people there. That group followed behind us at a safe distance.

It took us less than twenty minutes to clear the rest of the ship, with the exception of one major stronghold that was securely locked. We encountered and eliminated another dozen aliens on the way, and as their attempts to freeze us proved to be unable to protect them from the devastation of the MSU I could hear them panicking. From their thoughts, I knew that there was a major prize on this ship that they were desperate to protect.

In its first combat test the MSU was an absolute success, and I made a mental note to thank Lab Rat and Susie with a serious all-nighter. They had really delivered.

Although the MSU was a major success, it was the two M2K's that were being carried by members of our team that got us through the last locked door, and inside I saw one Eriguon on a large platform surrounded by another ten who looked like bodyguards.

"Do not hit the one on the platform," I shouted as we charged in, and fortunately nobody did. Within moments the bodyguards had been eliminated and the one on the platform was the last Eriguon survivor on the ship.

"Who are you?" I demanded telepathically.

"I have nothing to say to you," he replied.

"Hold your fire," I said to my teams again, and then I used my MSU to blow the gripper off the end of one of his upper limbs.

"Who are you?" I asked again as he squealed in pain, "and do you want to lose both hands?"

"I am the King," he grudgingly replied. We had just captured the royal flagship, and the Eriguon monarch.

Fortunately, we had a few science officers in our group and they quickly got a basic handle on the ship and how it operated. It helped a lot to have the translator on my interface, and once we had sorted out the operating system it was just a case of getting used to the Eriguon controls. The reason we had never seen them coming was they were able to jump their craft. Clumsily, but successfully we used this capability to jump the captured ship into our solar system, and were able to establish communications with our people on Earth before they could launch our Stellars and try to destroy us.

Once we had communication I made sure that all of our remaining Stellars were scrambled and dispatched to guard the captured Eriguon vessel and we hurriedly established a megaband data connection and downloaded all of their information to our computers on Earth. Being the royal flagship we had access to an extraordinary amount of data, some of it very sensitive, but once we had the chance to sort through it we knew we would be fully informed about all of the so called superior races who were currently queued up to attack us. The data was going to be invaluable.

Eleven hours later the Eriguon battleship appeared on our sensors, and we immediately hailed it. For a while it was touch and go, but it seemed that the King was very important to the Eriguon race. It also didn't hurt to have a small fleet of ships armed with energy weapons ready and willing to destroy them as an added motivator, because less than an hour later we had their surrender with the only condition being that their King would be allowed to live and return to them. We agreed, but said the King would remain on Earth as a royal guest until we were confident that we would not be attacked again.

In that one crucial engagement we had effectively conquered the Eriguon planet, but we still had absolutely no idea where the hell it was.

The one-armed King was certainly not well disposed towards me, so I didn't get to be involved directly in the subsequent negotiations, but I do have to give Rickson and his team of advisors (OK, I was actually a member of the advisory team, but particular kudos to the rest of them) full credit for the result that they achieved.

By memory it was Lab Rat who I was fucking while she and Susie were in a frantic sixty-nine trying to make each other come first when the news reached us. We had been going at it for eight straight hours, and the girls had lost count of their orgasms hours earlier. We were all just about beat when an extremely excited Tilly burst into the room.

"Josh, they have announced..." She stopped when she saw what was happening.

"Don't you dare stop now," Lab Rat growled, so I didn't. The last thing we needed in an enclosed space was a frustrated and pissed off Lab Rat.

"Sorry about this Tilly," I said as I continued to plough Lab Rats matt black pussy, "please ignore the action and just tell me the news."

"Um... OK..." Tilly was staring, but we didn't mind. "Um they have announced that... we have been made one of the superior races..." she licked her lips, "and... nobody else will attack us..."

"That is fantastic news," I grunted as I slammed deeply into Lab Rat and she cried out in ecstasy as she came and Susie squealed in triumph.

"Their King will go home tomorrow..." Tilly was mesmerised, "oh fuck it Josh, when can I have some of that?"

"Now," Lab Rat, Susie and I all said together. The celebratory orgy lasted for another five hours.

So, that is pretty much it for the story of the Mayflower, the YW's and the follow up battles that Earth had with the other alien races. Over the period of just a few decades we went from being a tiny and insignificant planet that the other intelligent species could not even be bothered exploring into being one of the fifteen superior races that controlled space. This was achieved entirely through the bravery, persistence and determination of a handful of people who had the guts to take on the obstacles, both those within and external, and to see the job through.

It is also the story of the formative years of the Intergalactic Navy, a fine institution that was created in times of conflict, an institution that survived despite the best efforts of fools bent on its destruction, and it is an institution that proudly continues its fine traditions to this day.

But of course, it is not the whole story of Josh Scabbard. I had been privileged and lucky enough to take the lead role in what was the most challenging but ultimately beneficial period in the history of mankind. Alongside a number of amazing people, I have faced unprecedented situations, and I have emerged not just victorious, but also immortal.

Immortal.

The word sounds amazing doesn't it? It means I will never die. Well actually in my case it means I will never die from natural causes, and I will survive traumas that would kill anyone else, but as demonstrated by the incredible Neale Chuang I can still be killed by an event that is catastrophic enough.

Immortal.

As wonderful as it sounds, it does have its negatives as well. For quite a while things were great. I was a major part of the team that, over the period of about thirty years, developed, built and eventually tested our first true intergalactic fleet. A significant part of that role was field testing, and I eventually visited all of the home planets of the superior races. I was even welcomed and forgiven by the new Eriguon King after the old one passed away.

As the only human who could communicate telepathically, having my emerging gift of being able to know what people want, and also being pretty much the only human who didn't age, I was an invaluable asset to Earth, and I was made our intergalactic roving ambassador.

In that role I lived with our superior race partners, and yes, on eleven of those fourteen friendly home planets I had sex with the locals. I can tell you now that you need to have an exceptional athletic ability and an extraordinary tolerance of pain before you can experience the exquisite bliss that is the final culmination of sexual intercourse with a Sharamidian third sex pleasure squid. My self-healing was an absolute necessity in that case, but I have never experienced anything remotely like it either before or since.