Chapter 44

When Peace Has Gone Too Far.

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Her eyes pan slowly around the room a bit more carefully and she begins to wonder just what kind of hospital this is. There are a few things that are striking her as odd.

First, she doesn't recognize any of the writing on anything. Not that she isn't able to read it, though that is also the case. But she has never seen the symbols used in it, in any form. She isn't the most worldly person ever, but not recognizing anything at all raises a few alarms with her.

Second, though it is somewhat connected to the first? She doesn't recognize anything concerning the instruments that are monitoring her. They have lights and screens, and she is assuming that the beep she hears is connected to her heartbeat. But that's where it ends. She has a reasonable grounding in medicine at this point. She couldn't be called an actual doctor, but she could deal with nursing or being an ambulance jockey easily enough if she had to. The fact that none of this is recognizable makes the alarms become klaxons.

Third, and honestly the strangest bit, she doesn't recognize the style of anything. In the sense that the bed she is laying on seems to do the same job as any other bed she's ever laid down on but the structure of it, the way it is actually assembled, is incredibly strange. A white plastic tub with articulation and the 'plastic' even has a little give to it. A person would have to genuinely struggle to hurt themselves on this thing. The light fixtures are panels in the ceiling and walls that glow. Now, there could just be l.e.d.'s behind some frosted glass or something. The problem is that she can't find it in herself to believe that.

This place is just entirely too strange. Shaking her head, but deciding to let Dave sleep for a few minutes she activates the flashing file folder in the lower left-hand corner of her vision.

Thank fuck she'd managed to get these things to not open automatically. That shit was making her crazy, and if she ever finds the cretin that made the 'Settings' tab in damn near microscopic text hidden in the bottom of the status page, she'll do her level best to force-feed the moron his left testicle.

Or ovary. She's not sexist, girls can be fucking worthless too. After closing the standard 'Hey, you woke up! Good job!' horseshit, she opens the second tab.

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YOU HAVE GAINED A NEW MENTAL ABILITY DUE TO YOUR STUDY OF DEAD AND ANCIENT LANGUAGES!

LANGUAGE SPONGE: 4 (8%)

THIS INCREASES THE SPEED AT WHICH YOU CAN LEARN THE SPOKEN OR WRITTEN WORD. THE TIME REQUIRED TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE IS LOWERED BY THE PERCENTAGE OF THE ABILITY AFTER INTELLIGENCE HAS BEEN FACTORED.

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YOU HAVE GAINED A NEW MENTAL ABILITY DUE TO YOUR STUDY OF ADVANCED, THEORETICAL, AND/OR HIGHLY UNUSUAL MATH!

MATHEMATICAL SAVANT: 2 (4%)

THIS INCREASES THE SPEED AT WHICH YOU CAN LEARN NEW INTRICACIES OR WAYS IN MANIPULATING NUMBERS. THE TIME REQUIRED TO LEARN A NEW MATH SKILL IS LOWERED BY THE PERCENTAGE OF THE ABILITY AFTER INTELLIGENCE HAS BEEN FACTORED.

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Mindy shakes her head in disgust. Great. She gets a bonus for being a magic nerd in runes and arithmancy.

Finally, she decides that waiting around in bed is just not going to happen, and starts stripping off the pads that are keeping track of her vitals even as she can see Dave finally blinking his eyes.

"About time, sleepyhead."

Dave rolls his eyes as he sits up.

"Obviously I am the easier one to live with."

At her look of confusion, he smirks.

"Dealing with you wears me out." Then seeing what she is doing his smirk fades and he sits up to start stripping all of his sticky bits off himself. "At least we're adults again. Or close to it. What do you figure, seventeen? Eighteen? Somewhere in there? Pretty sure I can drive but not drink yet. Any idea what the deal here is?"

She nods, looking at him.

"That sounds about right. As for what's going on, I only beat you awake by maybe five minutes. Your guess is as good as mine. I'm a little confused about the lack of clothes though. Even the loons in the magical world put us in something."

Dave shakes his head. "Do we play it like Half-Life and ditch, or HP and integrate? Gotta say, not loving that I can't read or recognize anything."

At that point, the door to their room opens and an unusual, worried-looking woman enters. She has a datapad of some kind in her hands and is wearing the kind of whites that would scream 'nurse' even if they hadn't woken up in what was obviously a hospital.

The unusual bit? She has an abnormally large cranium and seems to be suffering from an extreme case of male pattern baldness in her white hair, despite obviously being a woman and her face looking no more than thirty on the outside. She chippers up a bit when she sees them moving around, and jabbers at them in a language that might as well be the result of a mentally challenged Korean smurf trying to learn Klingon for all they can tell.

They look at each other and Dave turns back to the woman.

"I don't suppose you speak English?"

The woman nods excitedly and attempts once again to communicate.

"I Kinnay. I speak little human."

She is holding her thumb and forefinger about a millimeter apart. Then she rummages in the pocket of her scrubs and pulls out a pair of earpieces that look for all the world that they are smaller, sleeker Bluetooth sets. She hands them each one and then motions to her ear with her hand. Once they are both wearing the things, she speaks again. But this time they can make her out easily.

"Hello there! I am Kinnay D'Heshel, part of the nursing staff at this facility. The two of you were found out on the street about nine Earth hours ago. We weren't sure what was wrong with you, so we hooked you up to monitor your condition and waited to intervene in the event it looked like your condition was worsening. You were actually quite lucky you were seen and brought in when you were. The next Kodan patrol was due through ten minutes later, and there's no telling what they might have done if they had found you. How are you feeling? And what are your names, so I can both use them and get my paperwork filed."

They look at each other. Mindy is looking more annoyed by the second. She really doesn't like being in the dark.

"I'm Mindy. He's Dave. We're fine. What the fuck is a Kodan patrol, and why would they care about us?"

The woman looks significantly less enthused at this point, her smile faltering somewhat.

"Alex Rogan did not bring you? We assumed something had gone wrong, but when humans were found naked on the street it was assumed you were brought in by our most experienced Starfighter to assist. Humans had been left out of things because they were so technologically primitive, but it didn't take him long to set us straight. What you lack in technology you more than make up in cunning, determination, and based on the stories told, ruthlessness. Once the frontier was breached we would most likely have fallen, ours has been a largely peaceful society for a very long time, so when the Kodan managed to gain entry past the defensive perimeter shield constructed by our ancestors to protect this section of the galaxy and wiped out the base where we kept our elite forces, well, things didn't look good."

Dave blinks.

"You were scared enough of something to build a defense on a galactic scale and you had one military base? Please tell me you're joking."

The woman looks at him with renewed interest. "Are you sure you don't know Alex Rogan? I've seen him on the news channels, they keep replaying the interviews he gave between the invasion attempt that he stopped and the following one that was too much for any one ship to deal with. That's when he started the underground."

The two gamers are looking at each other in growing despair. Finally, Mindy looks at the woman with an expression that screams annoyance.

"No, we've never heard of your golden boy. But I need you to get out so we can get dressed. It doesn't sound like it's gonna be tough to figure out what needs to happen in this place."

She perks up at that. "Oh, yes! We have our people making you some clothes that will likely fit you better than standard Rylan wares are able to. Both Alex Rogan and his wife have claimed that our garments pinch in 'inappropriate places' and refuse to wear them when there are any alternatives. It will take them a few more hours however, they couldn't start until they had measurements and we were hoping that you would wake up long before you did. So he wasn't here to make the measurements until perhaps an hour ago."

Mindy pinches the bridge of her nose with her right hand.

"You had some guy come in and measure me while I was sleeping?"

Kinnay looks confused for a moment, and then she looks confused, and yet apologetic.

"Oh, I'd forgotten about human social taboos. Odd customs you have on earth." Then she waves her hand as though dismissing a gnat. "But that shouldn't be a problem. Every Rylan male I've ever spoken with finds you humans far too grotesque to want to copulate with. It's all the hair, they don't..."

Mindy's eyes literally flash in purple, causing the nurse to back away a step in shock.

"Get. Out. We will be out in a few minutes."

The poor nurse slips out the door at speeds that could possibly be relativistic.

Mindy starts stabbing the air in front of her and a few slashing motions have her once again wearing her clothes, including full armor plus her swords and spearheads. Dave takes a few seconds longer because he is trying so hard not to laugh. She sees this and gives him THE LOOK. He turns her way directly and places his hands on her shoulders.

"Mindy, you do realize that you are, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful, intelligent, sexy, and dangerous woman I know or will ever meet, correct?"

Her scowl metamorphs into a smirk and she strikes a pose.

"Damn right. So... Any of this ringing any bells?"

He shakes his head. "Nope. Kind of a common theme in fiction though. Humans being portrayed as these plucky and warlike people that somehow kick ass even if nobody really gets why. You see it all the time in fiction. My worry is that I have no idea how we're going to deal with spaceships." He shakes his head. "These people are so peaceful that they built a wall around a chunk of a galaxy rather than fight? Why? How? I just... That would be an absolutely asinine amount of resources, it just doesn't make any sense at all. It'd make more sense to build a few Dyson Spheres, weaponize the outsides and put all the people inside. This? This is just retarded on a scale that beggars the imagination. No wonder they needed a human to kick ass if this is as far as their tactical skills go."

Mindy shakes her head, grumbling. "I can't believe we have to waste our time trying to save a bunch tactless, bald, off-brand care-bears either, but at least I'm not too worried about getting attached to this place. I'm guessing that I'll be happy to get my 'grotesque' head the hell out of here." Then she looks at him curiously. "What's a Dyson Sphere?"

Dave glances at the door to hide the quirk of his lips as he tries not to smirk at Mindy calling anybody else 'tactless.'

"It's a theory that some guy came up with. Been in some sci-fi shows. Basic idea is that you build a shell around a star big enough that the inside edges are about as far away as Earth and then harness all the energy the star creates. Honestly, it's ridiculous. But it still makes more sense than what they apparently did here. How many planets would you have to mine to destruction just to build something like that? Probably take millions of copies of Earth just to cover our own solar system, never mind the light-years between stars. It's just about the dumbest way to spend strategic resources I have ever heard of, and we just came from Wizarding Britain for crying out loud."

Mindy shakes her head. "Well, we got two options. The door or the window."

Dave rolls his eyes. "We need more information, and you know it." Then he grumbles under his breath. "Need a library is what we need, actually. No idea how to deal with space stuff. I hope they still have books here, it'd suck if we had to learn it all the hard way."

At that point, they are distracted by a sound from in the hall. The unmistakable drumbeat of people walking in formation. The door opens again and the woman throws herself back in and shuts the door, locking it. She hasn't even looked their way yet when she starts speaking.

"Somebody must have told the Kodan you were here because there is a squad coming up the hallway!"

The door jerks a couple of times, as though somebody is trying to force it open. For now, the door holds. She turns back towards them and her eyes go wide as she takes in their new look. Dave smirks behind his helmet.

"Go ahead and open the door. It'll be fine."

The poor nurse blinks, and then unlocks the door. She ends up diving out of the way as it is thrown open and a squad of four armored creatures storm into the room. The brown, wrinkled skin of their lower face is visible under dark lenses built into their dark orange, nearly red helms, with the rest of their armor being similarly colored. It is bulky but looks like it offers reasonable protection. On the other hand, there is no questioning the aggressive nature of the weapons pointed at them. Two with what look like advanced pistols, and the two in the back carrying what a person could be forgiven for assuming are their version of sub machine-guns, at least based on how they are being held.

The one in the lead speaks with a voice that is mechanical. Strangely electronic, and devoid of inflection.

"Humans. You are under arrest and will be held under guard by the Kodan occupying forces. Lay down your weapons and prepare to be searched."

The four of them are a bit disgruntled when the taller one in the green trim turns to the shorter one in the purple trim and speaks rather than comply.

"I'm not thinking I want to go along with that. Think we can go ahead and assume that we are here to deal with these guys?"

Mindy shrugs and turns to their nurse.

"These the bad guys?"

She nods.

"Killing people, destroying property, splitting up families? That kind of thing?"

She nods again, at this point looking just as confused as the Kodan soldiers.

Dave smirks.

"Good enough for me."

Then the poor nurse has to blink in the face of a bright green light flaring into view and sees the four Kodan soldiers being flung at high speed into the wall of the room. While at the same time, the man, Dave, almost seems to teleport as he has moved so fast across the ten feet to then stand by the door.

She screams in terror as the two bloodthirsty humans kill the Kodan. No effort made to capture them. No negotiations. His bashing with a horrifically nasty-looking spiked implement and decapitating a second with his shield while the girl tears into another with a sword and a sharpened piece of steel flies out of a sheath on her leg and into the throat of the last.

In all, the fight lasted less than four seconds, and the Kodan never even got a shot off. What happens next is almost as bad. They start stripping the dead. Dave speaks as he does so.

"Armor is used primarily against energy weapons. Not terrible against physical attacks, but not great either. Comes with a dead-man switch on a transmitter though, so we better get moving. This place is going to be crawling soon."

Mindy jerks her head around towards the door where they can see more doctors and nurses staring into the room, their own faces set in an expression of shock.

"Four energy pistols that I'll need to see work to get any kind of real idea how they work. The two larger ones are odd. Lasers, basically. But you can get a shotgun-type cone effect by screwing with a switch that controls a built-in lens. Betting it tanks your penetration down to garbage, but it would make frying eyeballs easy. For putting down riots, maybe? It'd explain the dark lenses they all wear, anyway."

Dave turns back to the nurse.

"Can you get us in touch with the resistance? I think we need to compare some notes. As soon as possible."

The poor woman is wide-eyed, watching the weapons and armor get put somewhere in front of the two where it looks as though it simply disappears. Finally, at the sound of his voice, she nods and after picking her way across the corpses sprints down the hall with the humans right behind her.

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She had taken them to what was obviously her car, a four-wheeled device that drove fine on the ground and then had taken off after the thing engaged some kind of thrusters underneath. The two are quiet for a few minutes, as the woman is looking more than a little frazzled.

"The resistance has many cells, and I only know of two. Both in this direction. One is a field hospital that I assist at on my day off, and the second is a junkyard that some are trying to use to put together things to fight the occupation with. Do you have a..."

"Junkyard." Dave breaks in. "Take us to the junkyard, and if this Alex guy is all that, then have you translated technical manuals for him? We'll need stuff in English. Preferably on paper rather than on screens."

The nurse glances back quickly as she flies the car.

"Why would you need books on paper?"

Mindy breaks in. "Because we do. Can that be done?"

The woman blinks as she lowers the car back down to the ground. At the speed she was moving, Dave is betting they are at least a good thirty miles outside of town already. The nurse looks terribly confused, but she nods.

"Yes. Yes, it can be done. They can probably even print anything you want at the junkyard. I just don't understand why you couldn't use a tablet, they are so much more convenient. We are here, however, and you are welcome to talk to them about it. I need to get back quickly to work."

The two get out and look around the place. Junk is right. Part trash heap, part salvage yard, part airplane/spaceship graveyard. As they are looking around, various people start crawling out of everywhere and walking up to them. The two gamers sigh and turn to each other. Dave shaking his head.

"Rock, paper, scissors?"

Mindy looks mildly affronted.

"What? No, I had to do like ninety percent of the talking in the last fucking place! Get over there and crank your cock holster into gear, I am not going to be thrown under the bus two in a row!"

Dave laughs while the dozen or so aliens with their balding heads and huge craniums look about at each other highly confused.

"Cock holster? I rather thought the cock holster around here was..."

Mindy's growl is enough to get a couple of weapons raised in their direction, though nobody fires. They still look too lost to actually shoot.

"Shut up!" She points towards the people. "Go be diplomatic or some shit, or I will swear off sex for another month just so you can deal with my rage issues. For Christ's sake, I'm practically begging here!"

He laughs again and raises his hands, palms out.

"Fine, fine. Don't blow a gasket." He smirks. "Besides, now that we're the right size and you don't need to worry about giving Butterfly a carnal education she isn't ready for, I don't see you lasting more than five days anyway. I'd hate to make you go back on your word."

He turns towards the locals while tactfully ignoring the grumbling description of what she'd like to do to his 'horse cock' if he doesn't shape up. Some of it sounds like it could be fun if you squint a bit. Some of it, not so much. How exactly would she even thread a skinny icicle there anyway? And god help him why?

"Hello! My name is Dave, this is Mindy. We are from Earth and apparently, you all won the cosmic lottery, because the powers that be annoying little gits have sent us here to help you with your problems." Then he takes off his helmet and shakes out his hair.

The fact that every single one of these people gets a huge smile on their face as they rush forward to thank them and congratulate each other on the good job they did is quickly causing Dave a minor migraine. Just how much of an impression had this Alex Rogan guy made on these morons?

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A huge impression turns out to be the answer. After getting sequestered away into an underground facility that looks for all the world like they just buried one of the largest of their spaceships that was here and left tunnels to gain access to it, they had spent now two hours tripping all over themselves trying to explain what is going on. Finally, Dave puts a hand up because they are starting to repeat each other a fair bit.

"Let me see if I understand this. We are on the planet Rylos. You are Rylans. At some point generations ago, long enough back that you'd have to look it up because nobody really remembers anymore, your ancestors built the 'Frontier' which is a force field powered by an absolutely ridiculous number of little space stations that are set into a grid which surrounds a third of the galaxy."

He shakes his head in something between awe and disgust at what a waste of time that must have been.

"Then, you made it a policy to befriend new races within that barrier as they learned about space travel, and proceeded to completely ignore the fact that walls, even incredibly, stupidly impressive ones, still need somebody standing on them as the wall itself isn't a deterrent, just an obstacle. An obstacle that was set up to stop the spread of the Kodan. An overbearingly militant race that thinks genocide, slavery, and if all else fails to glass the surface of a planet are all fine options to handle getting a steak that is too well done. A race that rather than fight to protect others from, you hid and sacrificed two-thirds of the galaxy to."

He's rubbing the bridge of his nose now and feels the headache coming back.

"Then when the obvious happened and this defense was penetrated thousands of years later, they launched a sneak attack that took out the one military base that you maintained to protect a third of the galaxy." He pauses. "I feel that bears repeating. They took out the one military base that you had bothered to maintain behind your giant retarded wall of 'not in the face' and the only reason this occupation didn't start then is that some scam artist conned a human into fighting your war for you. Which led to him, his lizard buddy, and one ship wiping out the armada. Which I am getting the impression was less of an armada than it was a single space carrier ship. Impressive, based on these numbers I am seeing on your intelligence briefings, thanks for having it in English, by the way. But one ship and a bunch of fighters. And now the problem is that they have sent three of these carriers, destroyed the few replacement craft you had built in the interim as well as wiped out your replacement pilots and such, and now Alex is stuck dealing with trying to run an underground defense with the vast majority of the populace he has to work with being so distinctly anti-violence that they literally have to rummage around through the academies of their client races to find anybody willing to shoot at the bad guys."

He looks around at the now deeply embarrassed 'freedom fighters' as they try to find a way to present the material that will make it sound better somehow.

"Does that pretty much sum up what happened here?"

At the reluctant nods, Dave stands.

"Okay then. I need books. Paper books on every bit of the science that goes into your fighters and ship design on the whole. Books on piloting, gunnery, navigation, the works. If you happen to have any technical manuals or any specific information about the Kodan forces and equipment, I need them too. And I need a Rylan to English dictionary, preferably one designed to teach the skill. While you are either collecting those or printing them off, we need somewhere to sleep. It's been a long, disappointing day and I don't really expect tomorrow to be any better."

A few minutes later, they are taken to a ship-style bedroom. Two sets of bunk beds, two chests of drawers, and a light switch. Mindy looks at him a little confused.

"Are you sure you're tired? I mean, we did just sleep for nine hours or something."

Dave is already pulling a mattress out of their camping trunk and throws it on the floor. A real bed would have been nice, but at least they have options.

"Not tired. But I am going to need to work out a lot of frustrations dealing with these imbeciles and I was kind of wondering if you wanted to give the new equipment a shot. It's been almost a freaking year, for crying out loud."

With that, he drops his pants and underwear.

He is obviously very excited about something.

Mindy manages to break land speed records getting her clothes off and then tackles him to the ground like a cheetah after a gazelle. With a smile on her face as she laughs at him trying to get the rest of his armor and clothes off before he gives up and uses the inventory system to strip himself.

Four hours later when he is actually drifting off to sleep, she curls up into his side.

"The best thing we got out of the magical world is definitely silencing charms. And your new tool?" She smirks at his look. "It works.

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Author's Note:

Yes. I am going to be BASHY AS FUCK with this movie. 'The Last Starfighter' was brilliantly put together to appeal to people under the age of ten, and they managed to field what I still consider to be one of the better put together star-fighter type spacecraft in sci-fi. A case could be made for many others, and it obviously isn't as nimble as some of its contemporaries. But it can cross huge swathes of a galaxy without the need to sleep during the journey, so it's crazy fast. It includes a weapon system that offers the gunner all-around ability to target, with all the weapon systems on turret mounts and spread around the ship. It seems to be packing armor and shields that you'd expect on a frigate given how many shots they have to tank while they are suckering the rest of the armada in for the kill. The only disadvantage it seems to have is that it is possible to fire so much that you run down the energy generation system and need it to recharge. Granted, he'd already wiped out a dozen or more enemy fighters before that was an issue.

So, spoiler. They won't be here long. But they will eventually hit a more substantial sci-fi space fandom at some point and when they do, I want them to have a Gunstar shrunk down that they can pop out of the garage and use. One they have modified with runes. Significantly.

Besides, even as much as I am bashing it now, you need to understand that when I was a kid we were too poor to own a VCR. They were crazy new technology as far as we were concerned. So once every few months when a birthday or holiday came around, we'd rent one. (Yes, renting VCRs was a thing thirty-five to forty years ago.) I'd get a move. My sister three years younger than me would get a movie. We'd have to agree on a movie. And my mom would rent something that she'd watch after we went to bed, and then we'd watch it in the morning before she got up to stop us. (Incidentally, 'Romancing the Stone' is a far better movie than anything with that name has any right to be, give it a shot with an open mind if you see it on and you're bored.) For almost two years, the movies were: My selection, 'The Last Starfighter.' Her selection, 'Adventures in Babysitting.' Which I'll admit I actually liked the first couple of times. After that, not so much. And the only movie we could both agree on was 'The Goonies.'

So then fast forward twenty years. I watched it in the early two-thousands, actually bought the thing out of a bargain bin at Walmart, and found so much wrong with it that it just about made me cry.

So this is for me and my catharsis. Hopefully, you enjoy it too, but this one? It's for me.

For me, and their Gunstar. Because fuck a bunch of x-wings. :P