Story by Eric Lentz aka Aero Tendo
(Earth – High Orbit)
A strange patch of space seems to ripple just a tiny bit, and during that a second of that ripple, a strange looking satellite is seen. It bears strange markings, making it alien in design at first but only people on Earth who studied ancient languages could tell you that was one of the oldest languages known to mankind.
The strange satellite remained perfectly cloaked and avoided the already numerous ones floating in orbit with silent precision. A nearby modern science satellite detected the brief ripple and with the limited A.I. and directives to learn all that it could, it decided to report the unusual detection to the home base and then after a few moments of calculating it started a little closer to the last known position of it with all of the sensors continuously transmitting to the base.
However it was night time on the base and no one was really paying attention to that particular satellite, for if they had been they would have known what struck them after the satellite was destroyed when it partially unrippled and blasted it to atoms before then turning it's weapon to the receiving source.
The mysterious satellite powered up the beam and fired a rail gun weapon at it, which after covering the distance from orbit gained enough speed to destroy the satellite dish, and 85 of the entire base! Unfortunately for the satellite, the part that wasn't destroyed contained the computers on the surface and the backups underground.
(Earth – Guardian's Lookout)
Fusense senses the destruction of the base and in addition she feels how something was wrong with what happened as well. Fusense walks out and looks down from the edge, frowning, "That's not right… There aren't any meteors that are supposed to be close enough to do that kind of damage." And then she looks up at the sky, staring at space but other than an impending bad feeling, she didn't sense anything at all.
(Earth – Base)
A Jet-copter landed at the scene with a General and two of his staff members following behind him. The General looked around at the chaos with soldiers running around trying to do everything from finding an officer to get orders from to putting out the various and many fires that ran rampant throughout the whole base. Frowning, he shouted in his best command voice, which covered quite a distance, "ATT-SHUN! FALL-IN! FORWARD-FACE! "
Everyone within range of his voice turned and noticed that he was there and stopped what they were doing to turn towards him and ran like crazy to fall into a line where they all faced forward. Many of the soldiers were trying to tuck in their uniforms or fix their hair like they were trying to get ready for an inspection.
The General walked slowly up until he got somewhere halfway where a lieutenant was and yelled right in the poor guy's face, "What happened here Lieutenant? It looks like a war zone!" To his credit, he didn't even flinch and yelled out, "I don't know, Sir!"
The General got closer and yelled, "What do you mean you don't know? Where is your superior Lieutenant?" and then he backed off just a little so that the ramrod soldier could answer while looking at his name tag which read "Lt. Red Stone."
Lt. Red answered, "I don't know Sir! Moving his eyes to look directly at the General instead of the sky, where they had been this entire time It is pure chaos out there Sir! All I know is that at 22:31 the base received one hit, which took out almost everyone and without any warning! He then moved his eyes back to where they'd been before saying loudly I have not been able to reach anyone higher than a Lieutenant, Sir!"
The General seemed to absorb this little bit of data while the two behind him fell into step as he continued his way over the line and he didn't see anyone of higher rank than Lt. Red at all. The General thought to himself, "Damn! How could such a thing happen! No orbital warnings, no weapons were detected, and no energy blasts were detected either!"
Walking to the end, the General turned to look at the men, women, and creatures that had survived and was thinking about what to do next when of the two people with him broke the silence and said, "Excuse General Albertson, do you think we should notify headquarters about what we've found here?"
The General didn't even bother looking, as he knew whose voice that was and said, "No Tone, not until we have a clearer picture of what just happened here and what kind of damage we're looking at!" Inwardly he knew that Tone was a good, by-the-book officer and that he probably came across a little to hard to Wolf-man but this whole situation made him very unhappy.
The General then looked at the nearby destruction and started to bark orders to everyone which made them all feel more at ease about what to do with all the destruction around since they had such a high ranking person amongst them with more than one of them hoping he can shed some light on what happened.
(Far away in another universe – On the planet Larrod)
A 8 foot tall alien with white skin, dressed in a red cape that hung down from his shoulders to flow down to his knees was standing and staring at a screen that showed him a picture of a planet that was mostly blue with water and had land visible but none of that interested him. What interested him were the readings that he was getting that were shown to him just below and to the right side of it.
The alien stared at it with it's very deep, purple eyes and then reached up to rub at the chin in thought before he walked away from the screen to sit on a large black marble-like throne that was taller and wider than he was before he sat down where it then seemed to melt and conform into a comfortable chair for him. The alien didn't seem to even notice as he seemed lost in thought for a few minutes.
The alien looks to his right and shouts "Gateway! Cirque! Get in here right now!" As soon as he shouts that, two things happen. First a purple-lightning portal appears and a guy that is obviously human steps through with a smirk on his face as he watches a red balled blur come in through the doors at a very high speed.
Gateway says to Cirque, "I win again, you owe me a dollar babe." The red ball changes shape to become a rather attractive alien woman in a tight-fitting red outfit that did little to hide her curves but her expression was clearly not happy.
Cirque fishes out a dollar from a pocket and says, "One day Gateway I'll beat you and then you'll owe me for every dollar you've won off of me."
Gateway grins at her and chuckles, "Right… that'll be the day." Gateway watches as Cirque makes an angry sound before turning her back to him and crossing her arms with her tail wrapped in tight red outfit swishing behind her in short, sharp angry motions.
The alien sighs at their antics and knew he had to put up with it if he wanted to use them. The alien growls, "Gateway! Cirque! I called you both in here for more than another one of your pointless bickering sessions!"
Both of them turned to face the alien which was taller than them both and in stereo they said, "Sorry Lord Saitek-vbxp" Saitek-vbxp stared at them both and said, "From here on you'll call me either, Lord Saitek or Lord Vbxp!" with the two of them looking at each other for a moment as if wondering about the new command and they both said "Yes my Lord!" in stereo again.
Saitek-vbxp looked at them both and said, "Gateway, your home planet of Earth has shown some interesting things within the last year. I think it will be time to visit it very soon and you will prepare yourself since I want you to create the gateway in which I will visit through."
Gateway's jaw dropped before he looked at him as he said, "My Lord Saitek! Earth is so far away that once we go there, it will difficult for me to reopen another gateway back to here for some time until I've had a chance to regain my energy."
Saitek-vbxp glared at Gateway and said, "It is an order! Besides if all goes well, we won't need to return using your gateway powers, because we will have total control of the universe!" Standing up with his cape swishing about his body and the throne chair stays the way it is until it seems to think he's not going to be sitting down again anytime soon it starts to change back into it's more relaxed wider position.
Saitek-vbxp says to Gateway, "Now go see Tepeef, he should have a device to help you with the gateway to Earth." Gateway looked at him and then bowed his head before saying "Yes, Lord Saitek" and saw Cirque give have a big evil smile that he knew was her way of saying "Next time we race! You'll be too tired and I'll get my money back!" to him. Gateway looks at Cirque, thinking to himself, "Too bad she'll never know that I have a crush on her." While he looks at her emerald green, cat-like eyes and her jade green skin with those small pointy ears of hers that just barely stuck out of her light blue-purplish hair which changed depending on her mood and hers was right now leaning towards purplish to show she was kind of happy.
Saitek-vbxp turns his attention to Cirque who was the same height as Gateway so he didn't need to adjust his eye level as he says to her, "Don't look so smug Cirque, I have a task for you too. I didn't call you in here to watch me bark orders at him."
Cirque's hair went back to the middle zone for her hair color as she paid him full attention, "I'm sorry Lord Vbxp" and heard with her ears Gateway walking out of the door instead of using a gateway but then she realized that he would need to conserve every drop of energy for such a long trip to Earth. She kept her eyes forward as her Lord spoke again to her, "Cirque, you are in charge of preparing everything for the invasion force for when we go to Earth."
Cirque's tail swished side to side a little faster as she said, "Yes Lord Vbxp, I shall begin right away." With him nodding to her and says, "Don't tell Gateway about this until the day when he makes the gateway to Earth, I don't want him to get any ideas." Cirque looked surprised as she said, "Gateway is totally committed to you and this planet which he calls his home. I don't think he'd ever think of betraying you my Lord!"
Saitek-vbxp's purple eyes glow softly before he says, "Nonetheless, I don't believe in taking chances so you are under orders NOT to tell him, do I make myself clear?" and she gulps softly, "Crystal my Lord."
Cirque continues to stand where she is, knowing better than to leave until dismissed and she then hears him say, "Cirque, I also want you to prepare a Plan B in case things don't go as smoothly as planned and we need reinforcements. Now you can go and get started."
Cirque looks at him and says, "My Lord? I have only one question, when are we going to Earth? I will need time to plan, prepare and keep all this secret from Gateway."
Saitek-vbxp looks at her and says, "We leave in two of Earth's months from now. I believe Gateway would find himself chuckling at the irony of invading Earth on April Fool's Day." Cirque smiles a little as she thinks of Gateway in that kind of way before saying, "Yes, I believe you'd be right my Lord. I shall take my leave now and start preparations immediately!"
AN: Well, I'm sure you're wondering how and why a human is on such a far away planet to begin with. Well, that and more mysteries and answers will be revealed as I write! grin As for the base, don't blame me if I got anything wrong. If anyone wants to draw my chars in this story, feel free to! Just let me know where I can see it. :) I'm off to write more to my Kagraku story now. Which I bet will make some certain readers very happy (chuckles)
