Prologue

Okay, you children have said you want to hear my favorite story again, the one all about how I saved the universe. It’s because it’s a long story and it takes forever and we can’t go back to the Womb until it’s done, right? Sure.

Talking about places is boring, though, so I’ll try to talk about people instead. This story starts in what we call “Year 14 of the Swarm Era” and it starts right here in Beerat, over in the Womb, but it won’t stay here.

You know how all my stories start with me just minding my own business and someone coming in to screw up my day? Well, I was in our hot tub, of all places, with two of my concubines and my oldest daughter, when Woomie interrupted us.

Sally was approaching her 14th birthday and she was getting worried about her test. I was with her mother and another conk, pretending to be examining her charms so that I could reassure her that even if she didn’t pass the CAP test, she was beautiful and sure to have competition for her services and she could get a good deal on a good man. Honestly, I was just comparing Monique’s and Joannie’s charms and trying to decide which ones I wanted to play with that night. Monique was perfectly proportioned and exquisitely beautiful, but Joannie’s were bigger, and, well, you know me. Bigger is always better.

<Excuse us, Governor, but we may have an emergency. General Atsuke will be contacting you momentarily.>

Huh? And “Up! I gotta go! Gimme that towel. You girls stay here, I’ll let you know if I’m coming back.” while I ran for my clothes. It didn’t happen often, but when an AI said there was an emergency no one in their right mind would ignore it.

Two minutes later I was sitting at my private desk looking all formal and official. Still wet, but dressed and sitting. And seething, because Woomie wouldn’t tell me what was going on. It wasn’t a local problem that the Governor needed to deal with, and thus it was up to the military to pass on what it felt like passing on to me.

Woomie told me the call was coming, and I accepted it.

“Governor Williams, we have bad news from Earth. The Sa’arm have landed there again. Can you meet us at your convenience?”

I had to blink a couple of times. How the hell could that have happened? If we could fight them off, why couldn’t they do it, with 7 billion people and all their warships, factories, and Marines? “How about the Executive Conference Room? I’ll be there in five.”

I poked my head back in the bathroom. “Girls, you will have to go on without me. Sally looks great. I’ve got to run. We got busy all of a sudden.”

Actually, Sally wasn’t really my daughter, I got her along with Joannie at my pickup, but I had helped raise her and she called me Daddy and I had high hopes for her test next month. She looked enough like her mother to give me a woody, but she didn’t act anything like her mother. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to have to take her in myself just to save her from having to kiss toads. I also hadn’t ever told any of the girls that this was an option. I wanted her to try to pass the test. I had enough women.

Too many, really. There were times when I considered asking the AIs if there was any way I could have three cocks, with enough balls to make them all work. Any less than three just didn’t look adequate to do the job I was asked to do. I had Joannie, Monique, Jilly, Cunny, Laura, and Mary in my bed all the time.

I’d left Earth with Joannie and three others. When I lost Tina I got Monique in replacement. When Hannah passed her test I lost her and got Jilly. I was fine with all that, but then Hannah took LaRhonda with her, so I got Cunnie as her replacement. Then, Tina decided that I needed two more as rewards for helping her and Hannah pass the test, so I got Laura and Mary.

On top of those six, I had Hannah and LaRhonda in my bed most of the time. Sylvia and Tina found their way there, too, occasionally. Only the first six were officially ‘mine’ but the others had prior claim. And sometimes I had to entertain others who needed it. I needed three cocks.

After that I ran for the conference room, asking Woomie who else had been invited and adding Tina and Eric. Bill, Jack, Kevin, and Hannah were already on their way.

Yes, Billy. I’m talking about your Grandmother Sally. This was about 40 years ago, back when she wasn’t much older than you are now.

The picture cleared within minutes. The problem was really two related issues. We had a large-scale crisis that needed action soon, and separate from that we had a much smaller-scale crisis that needed resolution immediately.

The bad news first. Earth already had a losing war in Africa from the dickhead ship that landed there last year, but that at least appeared to be almost a stalemate and most of the rest of the globe was going on about their business. Certainly, we were still getting one or two small shiploads of people every month, and Central Command was positive that they had the situation well in hand.

Everyone outside of Sol, of course, was outraged that a year after the landing Earth’s assorted national militaries still hadn’t nuked central Africa into a sterile volcanic pit. Yes, that would affect the ozone layer. Well, so will the extinction of all non-Sa’arm life on the planet, won’t it?

We had visited Sa’arm planets several times by this point. Even when the planet hadn’t been fought over yet, the Sa’arm made the whole planet look like Mordor. A few nukes in the center of one continent may be hard on that continent, and maybe whoever is downwind, but it was far better than what would happen if they didn’t stop the Sa’arm. This was a war of extinction. Why was it so hard to see that if we didn’t win, we would eventually lose?

Earth had just gone through a bad scare a month ago, when a huge dickhead fleet had almost made it through the defenders. That battle was almost a draw. We had already looked at preliminary reports of that battle for our own training, but mostly we were split between sadness at the sailors’ determination and sacrifice, and disgust at the poor tools they had been forced to fight with.

All of the inbound dickhead ships had been destroyed. None of their hive ships with all their hundreds of thousands of dickheads in suspended animation had made it. Unfortunately, they had taken most of the defenders with them. Towards the end of the battle there had been a complete Vacuna triad that actually landed, apparently in formation, several miles apart in northern Texas and started unloading dickheads. Those three Sa’arm ships had all been taken out within hours by a combination of cowboys, militia, and artillery.

The plasma beam turret on each ship was considered a ‘light’ weapon for ship-to-ship combat, but as a support arm for ground troops it was heavy artillery. It was apparently kept busy shooting up all the approaching vehicles and was not available to dominate the infantry action. The AAR had video of groups of pickup trucks all taken out by a single near-miss. That weapon’s only drawback for ground support was that it was a direct-fire beam weapon; it could not shoot at anything it couldn’t see.

Apparently, the dickheads didn’t win infantry battles when they were standing up to use their laser rifles and they were outnumbered by rednecks who were smart enough to lie down behind a rock to use their hunting rifles. And, if all the dickheads on foot are busy trading potshots with the natives, and the plasma beam turret is kept busy shooting up pickup trucks, there’s no one left to shoot down armor-piercing shells fired by howitzers hidden safe behind some hills. THAT was a useful lesson learned! It cost us a lot of rednecks in trucks, but we won.

Unfortunately, the part of the battle that happened up in space -they were calling it the “3rd Battle of Earthat”- had almost completely destroyed Earth’s defending fleet. Towards the end, when it started to look like we would win, something had happened. The dickheads had completely stopped fighting for several minutes, then shifted their tactics to maximize our losses instead of minimizing theirs.

The end result was complete destruction of the incoming dickhead fleet, and just short of complete destruction for ours. We had lost several ships to ramming before our people had realized what was going on. Our big question for that phase of the battle was how it was even possible. How did the ranges get that low? Most of our ships had higher acceleration than theirs and were, we thought, more maneuverable as well.

We understood that Central Command had called for nearby colonies to send reinforcements until they could rebuild Earth’s fleet, but we ourselves had not been asked to contribute anything. Either CC or Brak must have decided that we were too far away. Or maybe we didn’t have anything they wanted. Don’t know, doesn’t matter.

What does matter is that, apparently, another dickhead fleet had just arrived and what was left of Sol’s defenses -which the AIs still insisted on calling “Earthat Defense Command”- had been caught with their pants down. This time there was no defending fleet to oppose them and they had let several Sa’arm colonizer ships land. If all was not lost yet, it would be soon, because Earth had no one who could stand up to them.

As part of the Confederacy’s master plan, all Volunteers left Earth and only Volunteers who served in the Confederacy Marine Corps got CMC upgrades, training and equipment. Ergo, no one on Earth had CMC upgrades, training, and equipment. The assorted national forces had many good people, but they suffered a crippling technological disadvantage against the Sa’arm.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true anymore. For the last several years the AIs had relented in small areas. Replicators were in common use throughout the industrialized world, although they had limited menus. They would not produce anything not already available on Earth. Quite a few of Earth’s combat troops had comm implants and health-maintenance nanites, too.

Earth’s soldiers didn’t have all the upgrades that the CMC Marines had, but if they got in a ground fight, just having secure and reliable communications raised their survivability quite a bit. And, if they got hit, their implant-controlled nanites and Confederacy-designed armor gave them a much better chance of surviving until they got help.

The AIs explained their hair-splitting like this: They weren’t giving Earth any advanced technology. All they were doing was ‘lending the use of’ it. At any time, the implants could be shut down, the replicators and med-tubes turned into slag, the nanite-constructed buildings turned into dust.

Just about everything the Confederacy used, if it was more complicated than a pair of scissors, was AI-controlled with its own set of nanites to maintain it. Hell, maybe the scissors did too, just to keep them sharp. That was good, as it ensured that things were always ready to be used, but it also allowed the controlling AI to destroy the item, whatever it was, if it was being misused. Out in the Diaspora, the official reason was ‘to prevent the Sa’arm from getting any more of our technology’, but back on Earth the real reason was to prevent those unstable and untrustworthy humans from getting any of it, either.

People were always going to misuse their gifts, but that occasionally turned out to be a good thing. A lot of Earth-First groups got taken out when the AIs realized that one of the implant-carrying soldiers was at an EF meeting. Did their trainers forget to mention that the implants were always live, that the AIs monitored those soldiers, and could see and hear everything the soldier could see and hear?

Of course, EF had splintered once the dickheads landed in Africa and reality set in, but some people just couldn’t let go of their xenophobia. We were, at heart, still cavemen afraid of the dark and full of hate for those evil cavemen in the next valley.

The splinters that had thought that the war was a lie and the Confederacy was doing something horrible to the Volunteers had to concede that, perhaps, they may have been mistaken. The splinters that were angry about the Confederacy taking their best and brightest and abandoning Earth, on the other hand, had even better propaganda now. All those men and women gone, and for what? If they couldn’t stop the Sa’arm from landing on Earth, what good were they?

The remaining Earth-Firsters were more effective and more vicious than before, with all the crazy people out and only the paranoid angry still in. On the other hand, their viciousness turned a lot of public opinion against them. They had to hide better.

Who knew what EF would do now, with Sa’arm on every continent? Maybe, finally, they’d start killing dickheads instead of their fellow humans.

Our immediate problem wasn’t as bad as Earth’s. Really, it was minor, but it was a political issue. That, since I was the Colony Governor and Acting System Governor, made it my headache. Or, at least, that was why Bill wanted me in the loop for a non-colony affair.

CNS Senegal, the destroyer which had brought the news, had survived Earth’s destruction and brought a bunch of refugees and wanted sanctuary for them. What? They came all the way out HERE with refugees? Also, Senegal needed repairs.

Yeah, my bullshit detector went off even before I heard who they were. We were a whole week out from Brakat, and they, in turn, were a good two weeks out from Earth for most of our ships. Why would anyone come here first?

Even before I heard the whole story, when I saw the passenger list I had to stifle the impulse to order Senegal destroyed before she could off-load any of those bastards. I frankly had never heard of any of them by name, but the list also gave their title and last position held. Every worthless one of them was a DECO executive or office functionary. The passenger list did not include a single clerk, or cook, or gunner, or pilot, or even domestic goddess, anyone with an honest job. Some of my opinion must have shown, and I’m sure they could hear my muttered “ ... ass-rape every one of them with an enhanced donkey...”

Tina said “Tom, they aren’t guilty of any crimes.”

Hannah and Jack both answered that at the same time. I’ll give Hannah’s, since it was more polite. “Are you crazy?”

That opened the table to several suggestions about what to do with them. Tina was in a minority of one, but that was expected. Tina was easily frightened, but she wasn’t easily driven to hate and she stood by her principles. We had done well by having her help our consciences stay out of trouble. Aside from her, though, opinion on what to do was pretty well united. The real argument was what kind of explosive should be shoved up their colons.

Still, I’m not supposed to be giving in to my emotions. I’m supposed to calmly and logically determine the best course of action for my people. We need to find out the real story.

I got some pushback on that. Kevin was the worst, the bluntest. And he had the clinching argument.

“Governor, you send your mother a letter every week. Now we are discussing taking in the men whose ego and incompetence just got your mother eaten, while ensuring that we will never again get a shipment of colonists from Earth. You need to think about the effect on your position. The AIs will allow your replacement if the alternative is a civil war here.”

“Right. Thank you for telling me I have to do what I’ve always wanted to do.” I turned to the vidcon again, to talk to Senegal’s CO who had been sitting in his acceleration couch listening to us argue about how to kill his passengers.

“Captain Jenkins, we’re honored that you chose us for sanctuary and we’re glad you are here. We will of course honor your perfectly reasonable request for repairs and resupply. Um, that will take place immediately after you space every one of your Sponsor-level passengers. We would prefer that you not murder their concubines; they have done no wrong and any colony would be happy to have them.” I muttered “ ... as long as they aren’t pregnant” under my breath but the AIs catch everything and I’m sure the DECO people got that, too.

“Governor, I can’t do that. What possible justification could I use?”

“Incompetence? Cowardice? General fuckwittery? How about abandoning their post in the presence of the enemy? That’s a capital crime in every human society.”

Okay, slow down. Don’t yell at him. “Captain, during the course of this war, the human race has started more than a hundred colonies in as many systems. We lost some of those colonies early on when we were weak, but we have not lost a single colony to the Sa’arm in more than five years. We have learned how to defend ourselves. We have even gone out and taken several Sa’arm systems away from them. We ourselves have done it three times, and we are preparing to do it a fourth time. We know what we are doing out here.”

I shook my head. “If WE can defend ourselves, why can’t Earth? Those people you evacuated have been refusing to listen to us about what we have learned. They have been insisting for a decade that we do everything their way, when it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that they don’t know what they are talking about. They are still building ships that we have discarded as obsolete deathtraps, ships that a month ago they proved yet again can’t stop the Sa’arm. They refuse to build our designs, designs that we have proven work well. They still order good men into ground combat on planets that have millions of dickheads, every one of which will pick up a laser rifle or force knife and swarm over our Marines.”

Okay, I was unfairly maligning DECO. None of that was actually DECO’s fault. Everything I was bitching about was actually Central Command’s doing, not DECO. Still, from our distance it was hard for anyone to tell the difference. They were both bloated bureaucracies with no purpose beyond expanding their own power bases.

“Well, ‘their way’ has now led to the destruction of our species’ home planet. More than seven billion humans. Orangutans. Meerkats. Pine trees. Banana trees. Banana spiders. They are, by their own admission, mass murderers who want to relocate here so that they can continue to give orders and get the Beer killed, too. They are Genocides. What better excuse do you need? Tell them I ordered it, if you want. Say ‘The Governor demanded that the criminals be executed.’”

I took a deep breath. “Captain, my first thought when I saw your passenger list was to order your ship destroyed. I’m still willing to give that order, and my people will obey it if I do, but it’s a waste of a good ship. We are going to enforce that decree. You aren’t leaving this system until your repairs are...”