Hello, hello, sorry for the wait. I moved this past week, and only just got internet yesterday. Starting Saturday we will return to your regularly scheduled chapters. :) Enjoy!

Chapter 11:

POV: Mara

Date: November 25, 2023

The banging continued. "Doctor, this is UNIT! We demand to search the house. This has been declared a military zone."

My brow furrowed as I walked to the door and opened it a crack. "Sorry, try that again, soldier?"

The UNIT soldiers standing on the doorstep had disturbing glowing eyes. "Ma'am, please step aside. We demand to see the house."

My eyes widened as Dad walked up beside me and sonicked them. "Oh, I don't think so." I slammed the door in his face and turned to Dad. "What's up with them?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the back door of the house being blown in. He instinctively reached out to shield me as debris flew across the house. "Never mind that now, everyone run!"

"Positions!" the UNIT soldier called out as I waved for the Nobles to hurry up the stairs after Dad. I followed their ascent as the front door burst open and the UNIT soldiers began to trade fire with the tall, bug-looking creatures who had come through the back.

Jenny followed at the back with the Meep. "Meep!" it cried. I couldn't have said it better myself.

"What the hell is going on?" Donna demanded.

"Shaun, where's your car?" I shouted.

"Er…five—five doors down!"

"Excellent! Jenny, get them out. Mara, with me!" Dad cried and pulled me with him to the top of the stairs as the Nobles followed Jenny higher.

"The Meep has been sighted!" the bug soldiers called out.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked.

He flipped his sonic. "Sync your sonic frequency with mine. Together, we can make a forcefield that will at least slow them down a little after they're finished shooting at each other."

I focused on doing as he asked while all around us chaos continued to ensue. I laughed and exchanged a delighted look with Dad as his plan worked and a blue forcefield formed between us and the downstairs. "Oh, excellent!"

Dad smiled widely at me and planted a kiss on my cheek before grabbing my hand to pull me upstairs. "Oh, how I missed you girls! Come on, let's get out of here!"

We followed the Nobles and Jenny into the attic crawlspace. I quickly sonicked a lock over the attic door before we ran to the other end. We stopped at a concrete wall.

Dad chuckled. "Oh, Nobles, we're getting lucky because this!" He flipped his sonic in the air and caught it with a flourish. "Is a sonic screwdriver, and if it's good at one thing, it's resonating concrete."

Shaun's eyes widened. "But that's not concrete, that's mortar."

Donna rolled her eyes. "Thank you, Bob the Builder."

Dad ignored him and used his sonic to loosen the bricks in the wall and push them to the side. "After you lot," he said, and waved us all through.

Donna looked at Jenny. "He's not bad, is he?"

My sister grinned. "Oh, Donna, you have no idea."

"Let's just move," Sylvia grumbled. "We have five houses to go, after all."

Between Dad's, Jenny's, and my screwdriver it took us little time to make it to our destination, and soon enough we were running through another house and back onto the street.

"Keys!" Dad shouted and held his hand out as Shaun tossed them over. Dad stopped to check a soldier in the street before jumping into the car.

"Meep, meep!" the Meep cried as we helped load the Meep into the taxi before Dad peeled us back out onto the road. At the other end of the street, the bug soldiers were running toward us and firing their weapons as they went.

"Oh my God!" Donna gasped.

Shaun laughed from his place in the front passenger's seat. "You did it!"

"We're alive." Sylvia turned to me. "Thank you. All three of you."

I smiled, but it slipped when I felt concern and suspicion rolling off Dad. "What is it?" I asked him silently.

"Not sure…" He straightened in his chair and chose to speak out loud next. "Something isn't right. Either we escaped…or we've got things very, very wrong."

Jenny and I exchanged a look, but stayed quiet so as not to alarm the Nobles as Dad drove us into a parking garage. He drove up several levels before parking the car and getting out of the taxi. I helped the Meep out of the car, and we followed Dad into the open space of the garage.

"Dad, what's going on?" Jenny asked.

Dad ignored her question, and instead pulled a barrister's wig out of his pocket and placed it on his head. "This court is now in session!" he called out, and sonicked the air just off to the side. "Intercept teleport!"

Two of the bug warriors appeared, causing the Meep to try hiding behind my legs. "Help me!" the Meep cried out in a panicked voice.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rose demanded.

"Silence in the court!" Dad shouted. "I'm invoking the Shadow Proclamation protocols fifteen, "P", and six. Under my jurisdiction, there will be no violence until such time as I deem it fit and proper. Is that understood?" He gave a hard look at the bug soldiers before straightening back up. "Now, exhibit "A"—the taxi. No scorch marks. Jenny, can you confirm?"

Jenny blinked but nodded after giving the taxi a once-over. "No scorch marks."

"Thank you! Now, we were hit by plasma bolts, but there isn't a mark. And that soldier in the street, he was unconscious, not dead. Exhibit "B"—those guns are stun guns. Is that correct?"

The soldier nodded. "The guns apply a mild and harmless neural anesthetic. Also, for the record, my name is Sergeant Zogroth."

"And I am Constable Zreeg," the other added.

Jenny smiled. "Oh, Zogroth and Zreeg! I knew the name Wrarth warriors was familiar. I know of the two of you—your work solving the mystery of the missing Princess Djalvia was magnificent."

"Thank you, ma'am," Zreeg said with a bow of his head.

I blinked and looked to the Meep. "That doesn't make sense, then. That would mean that the only soldiers trying to do harm were the ones with the light in their eyes."

"Correct, Mara." Dad leaned down to get a better look at the Meep. "Which leads me to my next question. Were those soldiers coming to hurt you, the Meep? Or were they coming to save you?"

Zogroth shifted. "If I may speak?"

"Address the court!"

"He likes this a little too much," Jenny grumbled in my head.

I snorted. "And that's surprising? He always has."

I could feel her amusement echo my own, and we both suppressed a smile. Zogroth continued with his explanation of the Meep's behavior. "The story of the Meep is a tragic tale. Their planet basked in the light of a living sun, until one terrible day when the sun went mad."

"A psychedelic sun," Zreeg confirmed.

"It's radiation mutated all of Meep-kind into cruel beasts who live for conquest."

"Oh, the eyes—Mara, Jen, the eyes! Oh, I am so stupid. That's solar psychedelia!" Dad snapped his fingers. "You remember that space station near Vroth? Same problem."

I shivered. I did remember that. We'd been traveling with him and Clara then. We may not have gotten off that space station if we hadn't called for Mum's help.

The memory of Clara sent a pang through my hearts. I was going to have to ask Dad what had happened to her.

"The Meep army captured the Galactic Council, beheaded them, and ate them," Zreeg continued. "The Wrarth Warriors were summoned, and we fought across the stars in a long and awful battle."

"Meep-kind died rather than surrender, and now only one survives." Zogroth gestured to the Meep that still stood beside me. "Their leader. The most cruel and despicable of all."

I took a step away from the Meep. The Meep looked up at us with those big eyes. "Meep, meep?"

Dad waved a hand toward the Meep. "Now, let's be fair. It's your turn, the Meep. Witness for the defense. So, what do you say?"

Before our eyes, the Meep's face contorted until sharp teeth were exposed. "Oh, to hell with this," the Meep snarled. "Exhibit "C"!" The Meep pulled out a pistol and shot the Wrarth Warriors. "No stun guns for me! Just die!"

The UNIT soldiers with the glowing eyes burst in, then.

"Obey the Meep!"

Donna shoved at her daughter. "Get out! Get Rose out!"

The Meep continued to cackle and prattle on. "Dad, do something!" Jenny shouted.

"No!" Dad shouted. "No, no, no, no, no! Last minute evidence. The Meep! Why is there another two-hearted species on this planet unless I and my daughters—"

"Your what?" Donna and Sylvia shouted.

"—are part of a strategy by the Wrarth Warriors to outfox you? And if you kill us and fail to take this other family hostage, you'll never find out, will you?"

The Meep considered his words. "Hmm, bring them!"

"Oi!" I shouted as a shoulder grabbed my upper arm. "Mister grabby, keep those mitts to yourself. I wasn't about to resist, was I?"

The soldier looked at me blankly before another one knocked me on the back of the head so that everything went dark.

POV: Jenny

Date: November 25, 2023

I had managed not to get knocked out by any of the possessed UNIT soldiers as the Meep took us back to the crashed spaceship in the back of a truck. I had blamed my dad and sister's tendency to never know when to stop talking for their current state of unconsciousness. I sighed heavily as I brushed some hair away from Mara's face. She was getting more and more like Dad with every passing century.

She began to twitch as she came back to consciousness, and I smiled wryly at her as she looked up at me. She groaned. "I never know when to stop, do I?"

I chuckled. "Never have. Looks like you probably never will."

Donna studied all three of our faces as Dad also came back to himself. "Who are you lot? What were your names? You said these two were your daughters."

The three of us glanced at each other. "We were just passing by. We didn't mean to drag you all into this," I said.

She looked to Sylvia. "Do you know them?"

Sylvia shared a look with Dad but shook her head. "No."

"You act like you do—especially Skinny Man. Ever since they arrived, it's like…" She trailed off as a faraway look came over her face, but then she shook herself. "I'm so stupid!"

"No!" Shaun shook his head. "No, you're not."

The faraway look came back over Donna's expression. "We could be living somewhere far away from here. Monte Carlo, Switzerland…and you'd be safe, Rose." She squeezed her eyes shut. "It's all my fault, I gave away that lottery money."

Dad cocked his head to the side. "Why did you do that, anyway?"

"Because…there are places out there where people are in danger, and in pain, and fear. And I could help. It just felt like the sort of thing he would do."

Panic rushed through Dad, but before he could say anything, the truck came to an abrupt stop. We all looked at the doors as another possessed soldier opened them. "Out," he directed. We didn't argue and followed more soldiers back into the site where the spaceship had crashed.

"Now I see why it landed in a steelworks," I said as we moved deeper into the site. All around us people were welding metal back together.

We stopped in front of the Meep, high on a metal throne. The Meep glared down at us with malice. "Hail to the Meep!"

Around us, the soldiers began to chant. I snorted. "Real original."

Both Dad and Mara smiled wryly.

"Human scum," the Meep continued. "Behold my vessel to the stars! Far beyond your tiny, grasping minds."

I rolled my eyes. "Is it, though? What you've got there is a Dagger Drive. Rather basic tech if you ask me. I've always preferred the Hydrogen Drives myself—much more elegant in their execution and very, very fast." I winked at the Meep. "And I like to go fast."

"What's a Dagger Drive?" Rose asked.

"A destructive form of Space travel," Dad answered. "It gets its energy by stabbing down into the planet. It would extract…oh, five square miles? The whole of London Town, burnt as fuel."

Rose gasped. "But that's nine million people."

The Meep cackled. "A great day for Meep-kind! The start of a new reign of terror, as the Meep returns to the stars for revenge and feasting! Now, activate the initializers."

Off to the side, another soldier nodded. "Initializers activated."

"Brandish the gravity stanchions!"

"Gravity stanchions brandished."

I turned to Dad with a raised eyebrow. "Any ideas?"

His face was grim as he returned my look. "Not as of yet."

"Take the prisoners on board," the Meep commanded. "Then I'll decide which one to eat first. Hail to the Meep!"

Our attention whipped around by the sound of weapons fire, only to be followed by Shirley making her way onto the platform. She grinned. "Evening, boys."