Murphy Rules 02 - Taken

They called themselves The Q'Old and they named their star Kron and they called their home planet Dunzar, which orbited a yellow dwarf star similar to Sol. It was located two hundred seventy eight light years counter spin, according to galactic rotation and thirty-four light years closer to the galactic core and forty-two above. Their planet was the fourth out from their star and the only habitable planet of the six that orbited that small star. The others were just large hunks of rocks in stable orbits. Dunzar had no moon.

The Q'Old were now technologically about three hundred years more advanced than the inhabitants of the small blue white planet they were now approaching. Having hyper-light drive, which they stole from a visiting alien species to their home-world of Dunzar. Within thirty years the Q'Old had mastered space flight and all of the advanced technology that they had stolen, Their alien visitors were the first they conquered.

Culturally the Q'Old civilization was almost as advanced as a group of chest pounding gorillas.

Then they began their conquest of space.

Other species quickly fell before them. Or submitted to their rule.

Peace was not something The Q'Old understood or could even grasp. Kindness for the ill, infirm or the weak was not part of their culture. Survive or die. Submit or be conquered. And if you did not submit you would be brutality conquered and driven into submission or face destruction and possible annihilation as a species. The Q'Old did not care. They were getting the resources of your planet, with or without you.

As a species The Q'Old were worse than the bad boys on the corner. They did not care about you. They only cared about what you could do for them in the way of labor or resources. It seems as if Murphy had worked overtime in giving these guys every bit of nastiness that was on anyone's book. The Klingons might kill you but they had Honor. The Q'Old had the honor of a pissed off viper.

With their stolen advanced scanning technology they searched for a remote area of the third planet out from the local star. The planet beneath them had the most life forms upon it. The tiny worm things on the fourth planet were useless to them. However the several gas giants could be mined for the many useful gasses in their different atmospheres. There was a lot of it too. There was also the loose iron rocks floating about and plenty of ice too.

That was another inbred Q'Old philosophy: never pass up any useful resource, especially when you could get it free, or by force, or have others gather it for you. And there were a lot of living creatures on the planet below, hundreds of billions of them, all just waiting to be told what to do. Or die.

The Q'Old had yet to figure out some of the readings between lower life forms like cats and dogs, cows and horses or people. Of course when it comes to intelligence, there is some discussion about my cats rating above some humans whom I have met. But I do digress.

The ships the Q'Olds had stolen were equipped with the latest in stealth technology, as the original owners of the ship, only wanted to study different civilizations and remain behind the scenes until they were ready for actual contact. Thus far Humanity had not measured up. And that is how the Q'Old found civilizations they could readily conquer. The vast data banks of computer information, which was available to them, contained information on hundreds of different societies. Most of that information the Q'Old simply ignored. Or in some cases they had no clue as to what the information was for or what it meant. So it was ignored.

The Q'Old ship descended until it hovered over a remote building located in the woods of a mountain valley. They waited. If no one came out into the open they would, under the cover of darkness send an assault team down to capture one individual. Then bring the individual aboard for intelligence gathering.

The individual would be brain scanned and injected with drugs to aid the questioning and to numb the memory so there would be no recalling the event. Sometimes, as they were not experts in the medical side of things, or even remotely trained, the drugs killed the individual. But that was not a concern to the Q'Old. There were so many billions more to pick from.

Billy Conners was angry. Sally May had gone back to her mother. Again. He was trying to get a job. But damn! Just because he busted up Jimmy Bob s car, that was no real reason to fire him from the garage. He did say he would fix it. And he could. And he would to.

He went to the refrigerator, opened it and noted how little food there was. There was only one can of beer. Damn!

So he took out the can, popped it open and took a drink. He then opened the junk drawer where he kept his cigarettes. He grabbed the pack and pulled out the last one. Crap!

He stuck it in his mouth and brought out the lighter from his pocket. Then stopped.

Sally May did not like him smoking in the house.

Well she s not here, he thought in anger as he raised the lighter and flicked it into life.

He paused. And sighed. She'll smell it for sure when she comes home.

So with the can of beer in his hand and the unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, Billy went outside to sit on the large deck. He sat down and lit his cigarette. Blowing out smoke he thought about calling Jimmy Bob and saying he was sorry and ask for his job back. They were after all cousins.

He took another drag off the cigarette and changed his mind. After the beer he would drive back down to the garage and apologize to Jimmy Bob face to face. His cousin always did prefer that face to face stuff for family issues. Then maybe I'll talk to Sally May. And do the same. He looked at the cigarette between his fingers. He suddenly stubbed it out in the ashtray. And, he decided, to quite smoking too. She would like that.

Billy took a sip of his beer and rose.

There was bright blue flash!

Billy Robert Conners awoke. He felt odd. He could not move. Like the time he had been hit in the head with a speed-ball during a baseball game back in high school. Stunned and laying in the dirt looking up at bright lights. Lights? He asked himself. That game was in the afternoon. Lights?

Part of his mind was remembering every movie he had ever watched. In between the movie scenes there were passages of books. Wait he thought, remembering that Star Trek show about the Tribbles. He really liked that one. Then came his time in Iraq. That he did not like remembering. He tried to forget, but there was a strong insistence to think about it. He lived in the war again. Again he was watching Tanner take the bullet through his face. Him dying there in his arms. There was nothing anyone could do. He could feel the tears again.

Then he was with Sally May. Home again and she said, Yes. The joy he felt then.

Billy suddenly sneezed loud and hard. But he could not move his hand to wipe his face. He sneezed twice more as his memories came back and he thought about the war movies he had once seen: Dr, Strangelove then Failsafe. In Harms Way with John Wayne. Then Star Wars. Then all the other Star Wars and Star Trek movies. Then a slow march through all of the old SciFi classics. The Day The Earth Stood Still in black and white. Both versions of The Thing.

He suddenly sneezed again. His nose was running. He reached up and wiped the mucus from his nose and upper lip. Someone took his hand and pulled it and pressed it firmly down on the bed he was on.

Billy gripped the hand and squeezed it to let them know he was still here, like he had before.

Must be an ambulance he thought. Remembering being hit in the head during that weekend baseball game. And all laid out in the dirt.

It was dark and a bit chilly.

Billy found him self-laying in his back yard.

Epilog:

Following their well established and must be followed procedures for intelligence gathering, The Q'Old aboard Scout 1313-M captured one individual, drugged them so they would have no memory of what had happened, queried them about their planet and military strengths then released them back where they had been taken from. Leaving them none the worse for the experience. Until they came back in force with a plan to take over the planet. But that was left to the military advisers and command structure back home.

Billy Conners:

The Q'Old ship left behind a dazed and confused Billy Conners laying in his own backyard, right where he had been picked up, he tried to remember what happened and why it was nighttime. He had not had that much to drink. Less than two sips of the beer. So what happened? It had been a long day and perhaps he should just get some sleep. He went to bed and in the morning he discovered that he had a runny nose and spent the morning sneezing and coughing and would spend the next few days suffering from a slight summer cold. He went down to the garage and apologized to his cousin face to face. And went back to work. And Sally May brought him lunch and said she would see him at home. And he did quit smoking. Eleven months later Kathy Ann was born.

The Q'Old

The Q'Old advanced scout returned home in time to join in the planet wide celebration of the Emperor Kransk s Twenty Fifth year as their Supreme Leader. Every ship had been ordered to return home for the mandatory month long period of celebration. And the Q'Old did as they were ordered to. Else the consequences were beyond harsh. As demonstrated by the twenty-five brutal executions of criminals, one for each year of the Emperor s rule.

By the third day of celebrations, the one hundred thirty four crew members of the Scout 1313-M, had returned to their homes and families to participate in the Emperor s celebration. It was now six days after they had left Billy Conners with his summer cold back on his planet right where they were suppose to. Every one of the one hundred thirty four crew members of the Scout 1313-M now had stuffy noses and coughs and lung congestion. Within three days that number turned into hundreds of thousands among the general population. In three more days that number had reached four million, with the crew of Scout 1313-M all dead from respiratory failure. The doctors, all four of them, assigned to the Supreme Leader, none of whom had any training in diseases, had no idea what this was. It seems that no one ever bothered to study illnesses or diseases on their planet or brought back any from the planets they had visited (conquered). The Q'Old did get sick, but the sick did their duty or died trying or fell in combat because they were too weak. If they did survive they usually died in some argument or training exercise due to lack of stamina. By the time day 13 came, after the return of Scout 1313-M, ninety seven percent of the planet's population was sick. On day 26 (2x13) the last of the Q'Old passed into whatever afterlife they may have believed in.

Of course, if anyone had bothered to look, the answer was buried in the database of information on every one of the stolen space ships.

It should be noted that of the remaining population on the planet, they were all aliens, they were all fit, they were all captives brought to Dunzar to be slaves to the Q'Old, they also had childhood illnesses that had been treated by their medically trained doctors and nurses. So a few got the sniffles. Nothing for them. Thus ended the reign of conquest and terror of The Q'Old. All because Billy Conners had a stuffy nose.

Oh yes! The aliens all left Dunzar on the readily available star drive ships and went home.

And peace returned to that section of the galaxy.

"Taken"

The End