Chapter 1

You'd think that a life of adventure, fame and material fulfillment is something that all people want, and those who have it are to be envied. Well it's not so simple. Being considered a hero is situational and usually only happens to those who do not want it. Being a leader is something that someone can choose to be and may want it in the abstract. But few would choose leadership if they knew the fine print... If given a choice, even leaders would wish that there was someone else to do it, but there never is.

I guess that I should start in the beginning. My name is Jack Masst. I am a soldier fighting a war that I can't win; for a people who do not know that there is a war; and who unwittingly help the other side. The price of failure is slavery or death for me and my people. You know that things are dark, when the best possible outcome is death. Torak is right I am depressing. If he was here right now he would tell me to cheer up. He would say that being given a chance to save the galaxy is great honor. But I guess since he started it all he can't think it's a bad thing.

I was majoring in history the summer before my senior year of college, when my life fell into shambles. The day that I went to propose to my girlfriend she broke up with me. If you have seen the movie "Legally Blond" remember the scene where she expects him to propose and he dumps her, well in my case the rolls were reversed. After that my grades went to the crapper, got on academic probation and lost my scholarship. I had a really tuff year.

I decided to go visit my uncle John who had been something of a mentor to me and I was the son he never had. He had been sick lately.

Uncle John asked me what I would do with 50 thousand dollars cash. I told him I would use some of the money to travel the summer and get myself together, and use the remainder to return to school. He asked me swear on our friendship that I would finish school, no matter what else happened. When I agreed he told me he wasn't just sick, he was dying of cancer. It was everywhere; I think the word is metastasized.

Three weeks later, when I was supposed to give the eulogy at his funeral, I couldn't, I was so emotionally shattered. Four days after the funeral his attorney gave the 50 k that my uncle left me as part of my inheritance. A week after visiting the attorney I started the trip changed the course of my life forever.

I was driving through Kansas in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, when a bank of bright lights passed 50 feet over my head and landed in a field off to my right creating a huge cloud of dust. I thought it was a small plane making an emergency landing or something. There was no explosion of burning fuel so I decided to quickly go investigate and offer what aid I could. I pulled over and approached the area that the plane should been. I could see nothing but the damage to the field. There were three deep ruts running perpendicular to the pattern of the plowed field, but the end of the ruts where the aircraft should be I could see nothing. This made no sense. I walked in the ruts toward the end but I couldn't see what caused them. As I reached the far end of the ruts I could feel some radiating heat and then I bumped into something I could not see.

As a sci-fi reader my mind immediately went to thoughts of a cloaked craft. Considering we only found out about stealth only after it existed for years why not cloaking technology. This meant that it was either a top secret US plane which was in trouble, or a ship from somewhere a bit further out.

The question was moot when a door opened above the ruts in what appeared to be nothing but air. What stumbled out was not a US pilot.

He was almost 7 feet tall with a slightly blue skin. His large hairless head had slits between his deep black eyes in the place where his nose should be. His long arms ended in narrow hands that had 4 fingers. He was dressed in white pants and a white long sleeve shirt with symbols like a military uniform, but not from any military that I knew of. There were several long narrow burn marks and what it look like blue paint splattered all over his shirt.

The pilot staggered to the ground and sat on the edge of one of the ruts. He pulled out something out of a cargo pocket on his pants that looked like a small computer or large PDA. He spoke to it in a language that I could not understand. He motioned me to come over and sit across the rut from him. He handed the computer to me and on the display screen was written in English.

PLEASE DON'T HURT ME HUMAN I MEAN YOU NO HARM

I said, "It's not me you have to worry about. If the government catches you, both you and your ship will be toughly interrogated, analyzed and dissected"

The interpreter computer beeped and some symbols appeared on its screen. I handed it to him his face appeared not to be happy with the prospect of a dissection. He spoke again and handed me the interpreter. It read:

MY NAME IS LT. TORAK OF THE VO'VAL STAR FORCE. I SURRENDER TO YOU MY SHIP AND MY SELF.

This confused me for a minute. Then I said into the machine, "I am Jack Masst a civilian. Civilian people here usually only surrender to police. I didn't know we were at war so that you could surrender to me. I am not a member of any military. However, the police would turn you over to the military if you surrender to them." I handed him the translator.