Chapter 15

Sean was in a state of shock; he would have about 2 weeks before he and his wife would go to G’Acrax as Earth’s Ambassadors to the Central Worlds and as a Representative to the League of Free Systems. The past 2 ½ months had been a blur; he had to call yet another emergency Board meeting, one to put Kirkwood back on as CEO in Sean’s absence and to award Tom Hardy Sr. and his son a position on the Board of Directors. Sean launched the colony ship, and it would reach Mars about the same time that he was reaching G’Acrax. Oh, how he wanted to discover the secrets to FTL travel. It seemed like a cruel joke; imagine being able to cross the galaxy in the time it would take the best ship ever designed by man to reach Mars. Somehow, he would achieve this dream; he had put the combined resources of the greatest minds on the planet Earth and brought them in on this project. The only goal was an FTL drive.

He had also put most of his wealth into a trust with Harrison’s law firm. Granted, Harrison was himself retired, but his sons and grandson were running the firm now. It was when he had come in for one of the meetings between himself and Harrison’s son that Harry showed up unexpectedly. He asked Sean to meet him in his old office, which the firm hadn’t used. Harry, from time to time, liked to come in for the day and spend a while just remembering the old days.

Sean entered the office and was shown to a chair. He sat down in it, and in a matter of moments, his world would change forever. Harrison gave him a sealed envelope and a file box that had been sealed as well. From the date on, both of them had been sealed for over 30 years. Sean opened the envelope, and inside was a letter in his grandfather’s handwriting; the letter described a situation that, until a few months ago, would have seemed beyond the realm of possibility. He told him of a family secret so dark and so old that he never guessed at its existence. Sean learned he was 1/4 G’Acraxian, and his great-grandfather had been from G’Acrax. He had crashed to earth with his expectant wife and had lived here as an ordinary man. Sean could not contain his disbelief. He looked up to Harry and asked, “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not in the Least,” Harry responded. That is why there is a box. I thought the same thing when Edwin gave me that letter and told me to keep it for you. Then he showed me the box with the evidence that proves the letter.”

Sean looked into the box. There was a leather-bound book; he opened it, and it appeared to be a diary of some sort. There are two sets of entries, one in English and one in some foreign, obviously alien language. Also, there were other things, such as a satchel made of some foreign substance that was as soft as lambskin but appeared not to have been affected by age. It looked new. On the outside was some Crest and a word; the word was not readable because it was not in English or any other Earth native language. When Sean opened the briefcase, there were various papers and documents inside; he decided to close it up and look at it when he was in private and more able to study their contents. Among the other items in the box, one other was a curiosity to Sean: a coin, a large gold one, to be precise. When he picked it up out of the box, he was surprised by its weight. He had handled gold and gold coins before. This coin had a rather interesting face imprinted on it, and it had to weigh at least 10 ounces. The date, presumably, was 3010, and it read 1000 GC. It was a weird combination, to be sure; either this whole thing was an elaborate joke by his grandfather, or it was the total truth, which had some interesting ramifications.

Harrison told him not to reveal to anyone the contents of the box that some would kill for information of this type, especially now that the aliens had come, and Sean should consider a permanent change of address as soon as reasonably possible.

The last couple of days had been demanding for Brooke; she was excited and nervous at the same time. Over the last week or so, Sean has shown a change of character; he does not eat very much, he talks even less, and he constantly works late hours at the office. Even for Sean, these hours seem impossibly long. He would come home for a couple of hours and then go right back to the office. His reason was always the same: he needed to make sure everything was on track with the colony ship and that Chester was up to speed with the company and the transfer of the company headquarters to the Lunar Colony.

He had a million other details to attend to and needed to make sure that the investors are getting the most complete, up-to-date information possible.

So, when the day to board the Galcruxian Patrol Cruiser arrived, she was surprised that Sean was early for the departure, and he was trying to hurry her into the limo that would take them to the Earth side space station and the awaiting shuttle to allow them to meet Captain R’Yclif and his men on the cruiser. They left at about daybreak, way before most of the neighbors were awake. They arrived at the spaceport by the time most of the early morning traffic was beginning to become unbearably bad. By 10 am, they were cleared for launch. By 3 pm, they were on board the cruiser and being shown to their quarters by Captain R’Yclif.

“I hope you will find these quarters suitable. I have taken the liberty of converting two smaller staterooms into one large one. I hope you will be comfortable.”

“I am sure we will be,” Sean replied.

Brooke asked if they were going to be put into suspended animation due to the length of the trip. They were assured that that would be unnecessary for this trip as they were anticipating a long journey and would have adequate supplies.

After the launch, Sean and Brooke were allowed to experience from the bridge and look through the large view screen, which they both felt unequaled excitement at seeing the future of mankind. Sean went back to his quarters and retrieved the box that he had fought so hard to keep from having to put into the ship storage area. He and Brooke were allowed 1000 KG of personal items, except for clothing; most were supposed to be kept in the storage hold of the ship. Sean had truly wiggled the concession for his box by reducing the weight of his items and by promising that it would not pose any danger to the ship. He began reading the leather-bound book and soon discovered that it was a diary of sorts. It was a narrative tale of the main events in one man’s life. It began.

March 15, 1948, in the countryside outside of the city of London, under the cover of darkness, an alien spacecraft crash lands in a deserted part of a minor planet on the extreme fringes of the empire. The earth was so far outside of the mainstream that it was not on any of the most current up-to-date charts. This is simply because it had long ago been declared hostile and the population uncivilized and barbaric. These people had been at war longer than the Central Worlds have been fighting our epic and grueling Ulster Wars. This was the main reason for the daring escape to this small planet. I, J’Ohan, had decided it was time to flee from the false accusations of selling trade secrets to a rival consortium, The Quiolian Traders Group. my wife and I were safe for the moment, but we were a very long way from home, and that is the way we wanted to keep it.

The Space Command and Exploratory Services should have been alerted to the crash via the onboard auto-distress beacon. This was activated as soon as the computer received information from the gyros that a collision was imminent. There wasn’t much time; even though they were on a long-forgotten and backwater little planet, the SCES could be right behind them. He had no choice. J’Ohan had to destroy the ship. However, before he blew up the ship, he pulled from the wreckage the small amount of gold and the personal items that survived the crash. He then put his laser pistol, along with everything else that screamed alien, inside the craft. Next, he proceeded to set the charges for the explosion.

They were hoping to use this as a reconnaissance trip, to study the planet and find a suitable location to blend into the society without too much notice. To do this would have been impossible back home on G’Acrax, the Corporate Headquarters of Enidocorp Mining & Exploration Consortium. This was because J’Ohan was from one of the wealthiest families in the Central World. His grandfather had created the framework and the structure for what was the largest consortium within the League of Free Systems. His father had galvanized its position and added to its power and profits.

However, the Ulster wars were threatening its spot at the top, as well as its ability to conduct its core operations. Eventually, he would have taken his place as the head of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive. Still, he had been framed for selling trade secrets by someone or a group of individuals within the organization. He was unable to confirm his suspicions, but he deduced that it was D’Amien D’Haun, a man with intense feelings of jealousy toward him. D’Amien was not only an opportunist but a schemer. He had tried to take over the consortium before to occupy the Chairman position.

J’Ohan was leaving it all behind him, the trappings of a life of privilege, prestige, power, and money for love. He finally found a woman who loved him for himself and not what he represented. She didn’t care that he was heir to billions of Mega-credits or that he was the heir apparent for the chairman of Enidocorp. The only thing that mattered was that he loved her, and she loved him, and she was going to have his child.

They were going to be free of D’Amien and his underlings, who were trying to usurp the power within the organization and had framed J’Ohan and even now were threatening to have them killed. D’Amien had already arranged for an assassination attempt on J’Ohan’s father and was spreading the rumor that it had been an enemy hit squad who had performed the heinous crime. All the while, he was consolidating power among the Central Worlds and within and outside of the Enidocorp Mining & Exploration Corporation in an attempt to seize the position of Chairman.

J’Ohan had been forced into hiding, and then he fell in love with C’Anela. By then, he was not in a position to offer her anything but his passion. He had a few credits that he could still use in his accounts on various minor planets that he had frequented for vacations and the like. But soon, even those accounts were frozen. However, he had been able to save enough to purchase the small spacecraft that he was now destroying.