Chapter 1

At least we didn't have to wear uniforms! I felt a little silly as we were "sworn in" to be the Galactic Police Force. How in the hell could 8 people police a galaxy with approximately two billion sentient species living on trillions of planets? Well, the answer, of course, was that we couldn't! Everybody hoped that we would serve as a symbol of what the Galactic Council hoped to accomplish. Well, I wished us luck, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

We were issued a sort of uniform, I suppose. It was a copy of the skin-tight suit we had worn for Venta and I had especially asked for it. Our armament was a combination rifle and grenade launcher with all of the bells and whistles you could imagine. With this outfit, any one of us could have licked a whole army back on Earth.

The Galactic Council had no authority to pass laws, so we didn't have to worry about passing out speeding tickets and such. We were there to enforce diplomatic agreements among planets and to stop outright pillaging of planets unable to defend themselves. Our first job was an example of this latter situation.

It seams that there was a planet which was located in a very desirable sector of the galaxy, but its inhabitants, the Gralx, were just edging into learning agriculture. The Gralx had no way to defend themselves against sophisticated interlopers from other planets, and didn't even know that they had been conned when a local lordling sold his meager acres to a real estate developer out for a quick buck. The papers the lordling put his paw print on actually said that the developer had bought the whole planet and that the new owner could do whatever he liked with Gralxia.

So far, the developer, one Tar Orlo, was on safe ground as far as the Galactic Council was concerned. Then Orlo made his big mistake! Orlo had bought Gralxia without looking far enough into its characteristics: Gralxia's rotation on its axis was slower than its revolution around its star. In other words, Gralxia's day was 1.93% longer than its year! Now, this doesn't sound like much, but consider this: every 98 years, any spot on the planet went through a day-night cycle. So what? Well, every spot on the planet got hot enough to boil water as it faced the sun and then got cold enough to freeze water as it faced away from the sun. That's not most sentient's idea of a garden spot!

The Gralx were perfectly adapted to this cycle, of course, and simply moved to a new location when the weather got too hot or too cold. This would never do for Orlo's idea of permanently fixed cities where he owned apartments and sold housing lots. It looked like the only way to salvage his investment was to speed up Gralxia's rotation to give it a more "normal" day/night cycle. The question was: how to speed up the day without emptying the cash box?

Orlo consulted several "experts" and was told that all he had to do was move Gralxia's moons closer to the planet and that would cause it to speed up. In the process, the moons would probably break up and form rings, which would greatly enhance the property values because of the improved scenery. One of the "experts" calculated that it would only take 17 years for the planet's day to shorten to 25% of its year, which was acceptable for a majority of property buyers. Orlo could wait that long to make his profits, but he was unconcerned that this would probably wipe out the Garlx.

This is where we came in. The Galactic Police Supervisory Council (GPSC) ordered us to stop Orlo's plan to move the three moons of Gralxia by any means necessary. Well, if they had acted a while back (which couldn't happen because my team didn't exist then), getting rid of Orlo would have been sufficient, but, by now, he had sold stock in his scheme and it would go on with or without his presence.

Orlo's group had installed tractor and repellor beams on each of the moons and these would be used to move them closer to Gralx. In all three cases, the gang, oops, excuse me, group of investors had installed a fusion plant on each moon to power the beams. Ah, the obvious target! We had already learned how to kill a fusion power plant, so this part of the job should be easy. Later on, we could "persuade" each investor to pull his support from the project.

Galactic Ambassador Rik-Rik, the half bear/half alligator diplomat, had been appointed our contact person to liaison with the galaxy, so she arranged for us to inspect the type of fusion unit we would be attacking at the General Galactic Electric, Inc. manufacturing facility. GGE was very helpful and pointed out all of the most vulnerable points. They made a mock-up available for us to practice on, and we spent a week learning everything we needed to do to disable the unit.

We hoped they wouldn't be expecting us, so we split our team into three groups of 3, 3, and 2 members. Amy, Julia, and I were in Group Alpha; Jim, Augusta, and Justina were in Group Beta; and Cicero and Arthur made up Group Gamma. Amy, Augusta, and Arthur were the demolition charge carriers; the rest of us carried fuses.

All three power plants had been put underground and were reached by a single service tunnel in each case. There was little security planning in any of the installations, it was just cheaper to put the facility underground than it was to build housing for it. The complexity of the operation appeared to depend on the size of the associated moon; the smallest moon had the least elaborate construction. Group Gamma was responsible for this installation and they went in the same time as the other two groups. This turned out to be a mistake in planning on our part. There were no guards and Group Gamma simply walked down the tunnel and up to the power plant without being challenged. They set their charges and left; the charges blew just as Cicero and Arthur exited the tunnel. Write off one power plant!

This explosion alerted the other two installations and they were waiting for us. The guards were not professionals, they were just some goons with guns. Group Beta was nearly all the way to the power unit before they met any opposition. Jim was walking along the left wall of the tunnel while Augusta and Justina were on the right. They found their defenders when a bullet bounced off the wall beside Justina's ear. She squealed in surprise and that drew a mass of bullets as everybody on the defenders' side started shooting at her. She was hit in the head and knocked out, as well as being hit in several places on her body.

This really pissed Jim off, so he opened up with his grenade launcher and made a severe dent in the number of defenders they had to face. Augusta also began firing with her grenade launcher and the combination quickly opened up a path through to the power plant.

The were just outside the room containing the power plant, so Augusta went in to set the charges while Jim stayed with Justina to guard her body while providing a defense against any new attack. There were no more interruptions and Augusta was able to set the necessary charges quickly. Jim picked up Justina, which was no problem with his enhanced strength, and they ran from the tunnel just as the charges went off and the facility's power failed.

Group Alpha was delayed getting into the service tunnel because some alert individual had the sense to close and lock the main door as soon as trouble was reported. This caused several other doors to close automatically and we had to find our way through the maze of wiring in the control panel to force the door to open. I was the one stuck with that job since I was the only one to have any idea how the system worked. I fumbled around for a while and discovered that if I shorted the yellow wire to the blue wire with the red and green tracers, the door would open. I have no idea why, it just worked!

Some bullets tore in our direction as soon as the door opened. I did have the sense to jump away from the panel as soon as the door started to move so that I was not hit, but there were some close misses. Amy and Julia opened up on the defenders, who appeared to know what they were doing. There were some girders running along the roof, so I jumped to them. From the girders, I could see the defenders behind their barricade, so I popped them off with my grenade launcher.

I used my communicator to talk to the rest of the team, "You two check out the defenders while I cover you from here. Those guys look like pros, so watch for booby traps."

Julia's voice came back after a short delay. "These people are all dead. Should we continue on?"

"Yeah, you guys continue on the ground and I'll cover you from the rafters." We made our way for about 200 feet and came to another closed door. I said to Amy, "Short the yellow wire to the blue wire with the red and green tracers and the door should open. Be sure to jump back as soon as the door starts to move. I'll cover you from here and we'll try the same tactic as at the last door."